So...What's Next?!?

Week in Review

This was a very compact week and some of it is kind of blurry. Let's start with a total flash back to 1988. Why? Because a high school friend posted this on Facebook and it is one of those songs that takes you right back to "that time."

Alright, now to recap the week.

My Family

My youngest stayed home from school on Monday and Tuesday. Monday he still had a fever every 8 hours or so, on Tuesday he was completely fine. I, however, was not. My head hurt and my body hurt and I just wanted to take some drugs and fade away for awhile. But I was home with my youngest, who was bouncing off the walls, so I did not get to hide away until my husband came home from work. 

However as I sit here and write this blog, I actually have the house completely to myself and honestly not sure what to do with such freedom. My youngest is staying the night at his nan's house and my oldest is at his first High School Homecoming Game. 

Concept Hub

I think I might have stumbled across something good. For several months I have been toying with the idea of an individualized training solution that was scalable. I built an invite only ning network with videos and books and a Q&A forum as a self-paced training solution, but there is an abundance of information there and still needs better navigation. Then a friend of mine who I spoke to in the past about the idea asked to sign up along with her business partner. We talked and I put together a personalized  10 session program for them at a value of $750 each. I posted some brief information on Twitter and another friend sign up. My first friend referred her aunt who signed up. I enjoy the one on one personalized training sessions, they are affordable to most people and it is scalable. Cool!

Community Outreach

Oh all the opportunities I have missed out on! I was supposed to attend a very cool fundraiser event for Africa on Sunday with my friend Stephanie who is doing some amazing work in photography, but I was contagious. I was dressed and ready to go to a girls night out comedy event last night that supported Start Up Chicks, when my headache got worse. And no I still have not scheduled an appointment to donate blood!

But what I DID do this week is give a social media presentation today to a full house at the Foundation Center for Arts & Humanities month. I was caught on film and it will be posted in a few weeks to view. It was a 2 hour presentation, so I am interested in how they will post the video...yeah I can talk about social media for two hours. Actually  8-10 hours if anyone wanted me to.

Goals for the weekend?

I have no goals. I have no idea what I want to do next. I am wondering around lost right now. I will catch up with you on Sunday and let you know what I wondered into.

Week in Review

Fall is here!

The weather has been an absolute delight this week. This kind of weather always puts me in such an optimistic mood.

I was thinking about that today. Why do I feel like everything is going to be great right when summer turns to fall? What I realized is that the major new beginnings of my life often happen in the Fall. 

I got engaged in the Fall.

I had my first child in the Fall.

I started College (FSU) in the Fall.

(Yes in that order...moving on...)

I started my first career job in the Fall

I started the job that changed the direction of my career, in the Fall

I started my company in the Fall.

Basically, it seems for me, new beginnings happen in the Fall. And I like new beginnings.

So, let's recap this past week, shall we.

My Family

My boys and I love to burn stuff. It is a way to release all the things we do not need to hold on to anymore. And it smells good.  

So this past week we spent some time burning some of the things that were representative of a bad start to a new school year for my oldest. 

It was also nice for me to sit by the fire with a glass of wine and tell myself it's all going to work out, it will all turn out fine. And I believe it will be. He is starting to find his groove and focus again and his grades have already started improving.

My youngest had his second week of chess club and is LOVING IT! (my little nerd :) ) I will be meeting with his teacher next week to see how he is doing, but it seems like the same as always. A rough start that will transition to a great year.

Unfortunately H1N1 has hit his school and the neighbor family is home with confirmed cases of the flu, so we are all washing our hands and crossing our fingers...

My oldest son, husband and myself have been watching Lost every night via Netflix streaming video. We are half way through season 3. Although the story keeps getting stranger, we keep our ritual to watch it together every night after my youngest goes to bed. I am not sure if it is because we are into the story or are just enjoying having something to do that is "ours." My oldest spent 6 years as an only child and I think he likes having these moments with his parents that he does not have to share with his younger brother.

Concept Hub

Wow! What an ego roller coaster ride. I recently read a quote that said "when you think it is all about you, God will find a way to humble you." That he did. The past year or so the social media space has become so noisy, and whereas I once was uncomfortable with the amount of attention that I received, now I wonder where all the attention has gone? The answer is it is spread thin. Very thin! Among all the new people in this space. I struggle with the direction I see so many people trying to go with social media though. Frankly I downright disagree with so much that is out there and I am sick of the self-absorbed people in this space. This is the part of the industry that really has been wearing me down lately. So I made a few decisions. One, I started joining the conversations again. I realized that the "been there done that" chip I was carrying around on my shoulder was not getting me anywhere, so I fired up my Twitter account and started seeking out some new and interesting people as well as some familiar people that I once learned from. I even attended a Tweetup last night!  

I also decided to dedicate some time to outlining a plan for the TAG Enterprise 2.0 society and possibly a related conference in the Spring.  I started blogging on the TAG Community more and developed a strategy for my own participation on the Lens site.

Notice none of this is billable. However, I was referred a few new clients who were told that I have been doing this social media thing for along time and was the person they needed to talk to. I also launched my first bootcamp and after tweeting about it had a few more people express interest in participating in a bootcamp. My billable hours this month might actually be higher than it has been any other month this year, all through word of mouth. Not counting my chickens before they hatch, but it has been a nice ego boost to get the vote of confidence from some great people.

Meanwhile I am still working with PBA on building a community at Lens. I have recruited a great guy to help with the outreach, someone who has been volunteering with me on Digitainment.

But for the most part, I am reading a lot, writing a lot, and spending time nurturing my relationships. 

My Community

I posted recently that a friend of mine and I have launched a new idea to match nonprofits with emerging artists. Well I set up a new twitter account to get some feedback on the idea, and 3 times now I have received notice from SlideShare that our slides were "hot on twitter" and were being featured on the front page of SlideShare. To date the slides have been viewed over 300 times, and I have not pushed them out to hardly anyone...

So, I decided it would be great if we could launch a few pilots in conjunction with some holiday campaigns. I have reached out to a CEO I know who runs a large agency that serves nonprofits and he has expressed interest in working with us. I am also talking to a friend who works at Big Brothers Big Sisters. I think we just might be on to something here.

Beyond that, I met with a potentially new client last week who told me a heart wrenching story about a woman who had some very rare complications while delivering her second child and almost died. In fact, 90% of the women who face this type of complication do die. Basically the blood does not clot and this woman went through 19 pints of blood! He was tearing up I was tearing up and the one thing that came to mind is how many times I keep telling the people at the blood bank, "not now, call me again later." Well, the people who need the blood do not have time for later. So I will be making my appointment to give blood. My family and I are also participating in Light the Night this weekend. Last year my husband took the boys and participated in memory of his cousin. This year I am going to join him.

Beyond that the weekend plans are to decorate the house for the fall festivities. I will post pictures.

Update

Light the Night is NEXT weekend...

Avoiding Burnout

As I mentioned on my corporate blog, I am coming up on my 4 year anniversary of running this company. Over the past 4 years I have faced and overcome a lot of challenges, but the most difficult of challenges for an entrepreneur/small business owner is burnout.

Here is the thing:

• Good ideas get shot down
• People do not follow through
• Lots of energy gets put into ideas that do not work
• Clients shift and change their mind
• Clients do not always pay their invoices on time
• Service providers, such as lawyers and accountants try to take advantage of you
• Competitors invade your space by over promising and under-pricing
• Fakers ruin the reputation of whole industries turning prospective clients into skeptics
• People have very short-term memories

Yes, all of this is true whether you work for someone or on your own. But then add in

• The need to manage resources
• Paying others before paying yourself
• Being pushed out by the bigger players
• Having to be more innovative and agile than those with more resources
• Only being able to eat what you kill
• Playing the role of sales person, researcher, writer, campaign manager, accountant, hr, and communications manager... all in one day.

No I am not whining or complaining, I am simply listing the many things that can eventually cause a person to burn out. For some of us, we also add being a parent and balancing family with work.

So, yes the past few months I have been fighting the symptoms of burn out. The key word here is FIGHTING

So, here are some of the top 10 ways I have avoided burn-out.

1. Accept the changes that you are not in control of as the Universe looking out for your best interest. Yes this is a leap of faith, but so is working for yourself.
2. Look at your competitors as a source of inspiration and learn from them, as opposed to  a source of pain. 
3. Take inventory of your accomplishments to-date.
4. Take some time off. Even if finances are screaming at you that you cannot afford to, sometimes you cannot afford not to.
5. Seriously consider what your other options are. It just may be time to move on and do something new. You will only know if you seriously and thoroughly evaluate what other options exist and what the advantages and disadvantage of all options are.
6. Re-evaluate your visions for the company. Your target might have moved which is why the goal no longer seems realistic. Perhaps you were shooting for more than you really wanted or maybe you simply were not challenging yourself to shoot for more than you have.
7. Start up a side project. Get your start-up/entrepreneurial juices flowing again, even if it is simply to have another reason to get out of bed in the morning.
8. Read books about inspirational business leaders.
9. Re-invent your business. 6 of my favorite words are : Where Do We Go From Here? It is a fresh starting point no matter where you are standing.
10.  Hang out with friends and family who tell you what an inspiration you have been to them. There is nothing like not wanting to let someone down to get you going again.

Honestly, after running through steps 1-10 I still do not have a solid answer of where I want to go from here, but I have found my groove again and things continue to move along while I figure the rest of it out.

Week In Review

It was a wet one...but everyone knows that already....

My Family

I am not sure how my oldest son pulled it off, but the new Halo game came out on Tuesday. This would have been a challenge for him, because although he pre-ordered the game and paid for it with his own money, per house rules he would not have been allowed to play the game on a school day. Of course, thanks to the rain and the floods, there was no school on Tuesday, and ...yeah...you can guess how he spent the day.

My youngest started Chess camp this week and he already learned all the moves that I could not figure out when it was just the two of use trying to learn the game. He definitely is enjoying it already.

My husband continues to work, and work, and work...but I cannot complain when there are so many people without work .

Concept Hub

I finished a project I was working on and have been taking some time just thinking about what direction to go next. As I was telling a good friend last night, the social media space is noisy, but beyond that it is noisy with people who simplify it, which makes selling a holistic and comprehensive strategy more of a challenge. I have been posting some Enterprise 2.0 over at the TAG community and getting some good traffic on that blog. I'll reveal a little secret here....most of those posts are over 2 years old. I have been trying to get people to understand Enterprise 2.0 for a LONG time. But all in good time I suppose.

Also, I launched a new idea for fund raising. I met with Monica over at Milk Money Consulting and she endorsed this idea which gave me the motivation I need to introduce the idea to the online world. Here are the slides;

The Idea

View more presentations from Concept Hub, Inc.

Community

Yesterday I was feeling kind of down, but I had an awards dinner that I had to attend. The Atlanta Children's Shelter was honoring 8 women/moms who have hit rock bottom but in a very short amount of time, not only picked themselves up, but have excelled! Who was I to feel bad about ANYTHING. Here are some pics from the event.

Well, gotta pack. I am heading to Helen, GA this weekend...a much needed break.

Week in Review

It has been a heads down week for me. I am finishing a project and been thinking about next steps in my life. There are so many areas in my life that seems to be hanging in limbo it seems all I can do is take things day by day.

So here is a recap of the past several days.

My Family

Parenting continues to be the most interesting role I have in my life. There have been points of frustration this week, only for me to realize that my boys are just exhibiting the same traits that I have, some of which can cause the same long-term problems that I am plagued with, and others that, although frustrating to others, will serve them well. What will serve them well is that they take nothing at face value, question everything and stubbornly stand for what they want. These honorable traits can be very frustrating to a parent!

Concept Hub

As I mentioned I am finishing a project. I have always suspected that pitching to what I would term as "institutional bloggers" which are blogs that look more journalist vs the everyday blogs were not as valuable. This week I saw the evidence of that suspicion. I believe building online communities through interpersonal relationships with real community members, but others have argued for a PR approach to raise awareness of a site & drive traffic to the site and let the community develop. This has been a long term debate that I have only been able argue my side based on a hunch. Through my research for my latest project I can see how the PR approach does drive traffic which spikes only temporarily and does not translate to stickiness or community building.

This week I was also invited to deliver my Mapping Corporate Goals to Social Media presentation for ISPI . This was the second time I have delivered this presentation and both times it has been very well received. In fact my favorite feedback of all time came from a senior manager that was in his late 50s. He said he finally is starting to understand social media, that it needs to be a corporate wide strategy not just a PR or Advertisement initiative. It was a very rainy night that night, but I believe the clouds parted and the stars shined down when he said that.

Here is the presentation.

Mapping Corporate Goals

View more presentations from Concept Hub, Inc.

Community

I am the social media director for Digitainment and my role is to create a Georgia community around entertainment initiatives. The community continues to be very active.

I am also the chair of the Enterprise 2.0 society and I have renewed my commitment to raise awareness of the difference between social media for PR/Marketing and Enterprise 2.0. That is one of the things I have been heads down on this week.

Finally, Concept Hub is a very proud sponsor of the Atlanta Children's Shelter Awards Banquet that will be happening this Thursday. 

The Weekend

Last night I hung out with some friends at Shout in Midtown. It was fun and I got to see a side of Atlanta I rarely get to experience. I left the restaurant around 1am. I was not able to last any longer. My friends stayed a little longer. I noticed that around 1am is when things start getting interesting. The dance floor was packed. After I made my way through all of the hormone hyped bodies I had to walk several blocks to where I parked my car. On my way I passed a very beautiful woman dressed to have a great time, being led away from a club as she gracefully and continuously spit up the contents of her stomach. Another man was led away by a friend on each arm, it seemed his legs no longer functioned. Yeah...good times.

The rain does not seem to want to go away, and something in the air has 3 out of 4 of us battling allergies, so most likely we will be playing games in the house this weekend. It might also be a good weekend to catch a movie, there are a few new releases.

Who knows what we will do...as with everything else in my life right now...it's all up in the air.

Week In Review

This week has been a bit of a blur, definitely with it's ups and downs. Monday we drove home from St George Island leaving us little time to jump back in the groove, but life keeps moving and we have to keep up.

My Family

My husband has come home from vacation to a plate full of work. He has been putting in very long hours to meet deadlines and it does not seem to be slowing down. I am hopeful this is another sign of the economy improving.

The boys are back in the groove of school. My oldest has gone into overdrive with extra-curricular activities. In Elementary school we kept him in one activity at a time, in middle school he seemed to have no interest in anything, which I accepted but told him he had to have at least 1 activity when he started High School because it would help him get into college. He signed up for Debate right away. Last week he informed me that he has also signed up for a career club, a club that sends books to Africa and...table tennis (!?!)

 

My youngest is doing well. It seems he has at least 2 hours of homework each day though, but for the most part he is staying focused. He is interested in Chess club, which started this past week, but I still need to figure out scheduling before I sign him up. I should have that figured out next week.

He has become an incredible reader, bringing home a new book each week which he buries his head in. He is also enjoying the new neighbors we have. We have had 3 families with young children move in to houses on our street over the summer and they all tend to hang out in the cul de sac at night.

Concept Hub

It has been a great privilege to have Mallory work with me this year, but unfortunately business never got to the point where I could bring her on full time. This month she starts her new job at the Georgia Aquarium and I look forward to see what great things she will introduce to their already thriving social media program.

Mallory has been instrumental on the PBA Lens on Atlanta project, which will launch quietly next week. I will be highlighting that project on my corporate post this weekend.

I am also finishing up a project for another social network site that is in soft launch; iglued. It has been described as a social management tool for busy volunteers. I am very excited about the potential of this one and very happy with how their road map is coming together.

The other social network I have been involved with, eRollover also has some exciting growth happening which will be announced in the next few weeks...and that is all I can say about that. 

Community

This has been a lame week for me in regards to community outreach. I continue to contribute to my Concept Hub for Job Seekers site, and I learned that one of the members just landed a new job. More good economic news :)

I have gathered some things to bring to Goodwill...yeah I know, that is a stretch when it comes to community outreach.

I do have a few upcoming fund raisers on my calendar, and over the weekend I will be working on my plan to help promote Arts & Humanities month, but admittedly this has been a slow week for community involvement.

Our yodeling friend is performing in Helen, GA this weekend. If this sore throat and aching muscles is not anything more serious than fatigue (I hope, I hope) we will be visiting with here this weekend. Beyond that we have a bit of house work and yard work we need to catch up on.

I hope you all have a great weekend and enjoy the changing weather.

Not in the 'cards' or not playing the cards you have?

Alright, my blogging got off track last week. If you did not notice, there was no week in review and my Monday post is being posted on Tuesday. Obviously I can blame the long holiday weekend or I can shrug it off and say "hey this is my personal blog anyway, I posted as scheduled on my business blog;" but instead I will re-commit to getting back on track.

Some of the people reading this blog have been following me on this journey throughout all 3 phases and might be wondering why I am trying to post on a schedule all of the sudden. Let's look at the phases;

• Phase 1 was drafted from inspiration and emotion. It was the blog of an "artist."
• Phase 2...was really me just going through the motions honestly.
• This phase is me finding my "groove."

Something I have noticed is how when things do not go our way we often shrug and say "well it was not in the cards." As many of you know, I am highly spiritual and I do believe many things happen for a reason, but I also believe that we cannot always shrug our shoulders and say "it was not in the cards." Sometimes we have to admit we have not been playing the cards we have.

This is why this blog is on a schedule. I have created a vision of where I want to go and I have taken inventory of the cards I hold in my hand and which ones I need to discard and which ones I need to draw. I also know that I may not always be holding the winning hand, but that does not mean it is time to fold. More often than not, it just means I need to play smarter.

This blog is my "personal brand." It is what comes up first when someone googles my name, and I want it to be representative of not just who I am, but who I am striving to be.

With that said, I will add that I am at a point in my career where I am examining the cards in my hand and looking around trying to decide how my hand will play and what decisions I need to make. Over the next coming months I will be making some key decisions of how to play my hand and I will be sharing my thought process when appropriate.

In the process I might even take some time to learn how to play poker.

Floating in My Blue Ocean

There is a book that I read a couple of years ago called Blue Ocean Strategy. Tim Moenk referred the book to me and we both focused on the importance of creating our Blue Oceans.

The brief explanation of a Blue Ocean is an appealing offering that has little to no competition. A red ocean is a competitive environment where everyone is cutting costs, adding value adds, and in some case cutting throats to get a deal. A blue ocean company has diversified their offerings enough to stand away from the blood bath.

My favorite case study in the book is Cirque du Soleil:

Cirque du Soleil very successfully entered a structurally unattractive circus industry. It was able to reinvent the industry and created a new market space by challenging the conventional assumptions about how to compete. It value innovated by shifting the buyer group from children (end-users of the traditional circus) to adults (purchasers of the traditional circus), drawing upon the distinctive strengths of other alternative industries, such as the theatre, Broadway shows and the opera, to offer a totally new set of utilities to more mature and higher spending customers.

When I launched this agency I was definitely in a Blue Ocean. Although the market was young, the offerings were unique and we leveraged the distinctive strengths of other areas. More and more I have watched as social media has gone from an industry that no one understood or respected to an absolute bloodbath and I wonder if I have lost my blue ocean.

Today I spent some time reviewing what is going on and who is doing what. I found it interesting that what the new people entering in this space are offering is the same thing that other social media consultants offered 4 years ago when I entered. Offerings that I looked at and decided was going to be a red ocean as I set out to find my blue ocean.

This concerns me sometimes, but more often than not it keeps me searching for ways to find new oceans to float in.

Week in Review

A good week.

Family

The kids are getting in the groove of school, as am I. My youngest is having his standard challenge of focus...but I think his teacher this year is not going to be so fanatical about it. Yes I believe focus is important, but that the TRUE challenge is he gets bored. This is standard in my family tree. However, I see a bit of maturity in him, which gives me a bit of hope.

My oldest shows signs of focusing on his career. He has mentioned more than once that his participation on the debate team will help him get in college. Today I volunteered to participate at the Digitainment booth at the Atlanta Music Convention. There was a room specifically of the US Gaming Arena, and they invited Digitainment to host a booth there. I also recruited my son to be there.

They had plenty of games to keep him busy. 

He also got to exercise his social skills beyond his core group of friends, which is something I am going to encourage him to continue practicing.  My goal is to get him to continue going to these core networking events with me so that he can learn about the career options that exists, practice his business networking skills and perhaps find jobs that will be relevant to his career goals. 

Concept Hub

More good meetings, more proposals. I HAVE to tell you that I brought a client to StudioPlex Studios to meet with Les Ottolenghi and I could NOT have been more proud of how that meeting was handled. 

I also had the GREAT privileged of being the presenter for Training Pros Executive Round Table. 

My approach for that presentation was that Social Media impacts EVERY department in an organization and that a social media policy and strategy NEEDS to be part of the organizational culture. Here are the slides of the presentation.

Mapping Corporate Goals

View more presentations from Concept Hub, Inc.

The event was at The W in Buckhead. It is an absolutely beautiful facility. Here are a few pictures;

 

 

Community 

I love that I have set a content calendar for this blog. If you have not noticed that pattern yet, on Monday and Wednesday I try to blog about leadership ideas and on Friday or Saturday I write a week in review which encompasses my family, my career, and community activities. I then my post a weekend blog.

This content calendar keeps me focused on what I need to do to develop content for the blog, which keeps me committed to doing something noteworthy in the community.

So this week I get to tell you that I and Concept Hub are very much involved with promoting the Arts and Humanities Month in October. I will also be presenting on October 9th. More and more I am drawn to the vibrant activity  in Atlanta relating to Arts and Entertainment and I feel privileged to be involved in highlighting the talent that lives in this city.

I am also staying continuously involved with the Atlanta Children's Shelter. This week I hope to bring my husband to the shelter and share with him why I am so impressed with the work they do. I also hope to donate some of my younger son's nicer clothes and toys to the shelter and let him understand what these donations are providing for children who are facing some hard times right now.

For the remainder of this weekend I am in planning mode. I have a new project with a new client and a few new directions that I am navigating. I also plan on organizing the house a bit and even getting the traveling dump known as my car cleaned out.

Overall....It's all good.

Week in Review

It is finally Saturday. On Monday I realized that this was going to be a long week, and it was. It was a good week, but a long one.

Here is a recap.

My Family

It is time to select after school activities. Over the summer my youngest son and I attempted to teach ourselves chess. We could only get so far. This Fall he is going to start Chess camp and then teach me how to play.

My oldest has signed up for the Chattahoochee High School DEBATE team. This is going to be fun. He is already a pretty good debater...not sure where he gets that from ;)

I mentioned in an earlier post that we started watching LOST. We are almost done with Season 1. We just might make it through all of the seasons before the 2010 season starts.

There was one episode, the one where Claire returns, but so does Ethan and Ethan begins to kill the survivors until he gets Claire back, yeah I was having a hard time handling that episode. So I jumped online to see if I could find out more about what I was getting myself into. I discovered Lostpedia! So, now I know what I am getting myself into. My oldest son and husband are not real happy about me cheating though :P

Concept Hub Inc

Lots of meetings this past week, a couple of new proposals went out as well as a few invoices. I put together a new Capabilities Presentation.

Capabilities Presentation

View more presentations from Concept Hub, Inc.

I am going to add a couple more case studies to it in the next couple of weeks.

I am starting to look at some new directions; not drastic changes but a necessary evolution. The landscape is very different right now, not just because of the recession, but because of the maturing market. I have been checking in with a few peers to test my assumptions and they are feeling some of the same things I am feeling.

As the time is right I will post updates.

Community Outreach

This week I presented a Job Search Presentation to a group of professionals "in transition." I have also been growing the Concept Hub Job Seekers site. I find these activities to be incredibly rewarding. I can see the hope return to people after I share with them a  few ideas or insights. In return I renew my own hope in regard to the challenges I am facing.

As far as plans for this weekend - more taxes!!! I also recently learned that someone I have a lot of respect for is fighting liver cancer. I have been trying to think of what I can send to him that shows that he has my support. The church I used to go to has an amazing bookstore, and I think it is a good time for me to visit again. It's been awhile. So I am planning on early services tomorrow. I have a meeting scheduled with a good friend and business partner tonight, and overall looking forward to laying out my plans for the near future.