So...What's Next?!?

Light the Night

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...

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

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.

The Price of Knowledge,The Value of Wisdom

Honestly if I was stopped in the street and asked what is the difference between knowledge and wisdom, I would be stumped for a few moments. I think my answer would be;

Knowledge is based on things you have learned, either through instruction, experience, reading a book, or observation of others.

Wisdom is knowing how to live your life based on the vast amounts of knowledge that has been acquired. 

So, I have been looking over some financials recently and I would guestimate that I spend at least $15K a year on learning what not to do. This would be what my poor decisions and mistakes have cost me, not calculating opportunity lost. 

Alright, let's put that in perspective. A good formal education would cost at least that much and all you get is instruction. What I received was pain, regret, a few kicks in the ass, and enough deterrent, in some cases, not to make the same mistakes again. I have gained a little bit of wisdom...at a very bargain price.

I have been reflecting on the past 4 years, where I was before I started this company, where I am now and where I want to go. The value of what I have learned over the past 4 years is truly priceless. But the ROI of what it has cost me, both in money, time, and stress, can only be realized if I apply what I have learned to the way I live my life; If I can turn my knowledge into wisdom.

One thing I have learned is the importance of looking past the monetary value of a proposition and looking at the holistic experience of being involved in a project. I have witnessed the constipation of success due to a blockage caused by monetary stress (nice visual huh?)

I have seen people not give their all because they did not feel they were being compensated for the value of their all, and the end result is they harmed their own reputation and were never offered the next prize because no one knew what they were capable of. I have seen people stress about money to the point they are blind to the fact that the opportunity in front of them is the experience that will enhance or expand their skill set and make them that much more valuable.

I am amazed  that people are willing to pay private schools and universities an enormous amount of money for knowledge, but will not take risks and push themselves to gain the experiences that will lead to wisdom.

Case for Volunteering

I have calculated that I spend at least 20 hours a week on volunteer work! This is on top of probably 50+ hours working on my business and time with the family, and yes...even time for myself. Occasionally I even squeeze in time for a few friends.

Right now there are 3 primary places that I donate my time;

• I am the Chair of the TAG Enterprise 2.0 Society
• I am the Social Media Director for Digitainment
• I support the Social Media efforts of The Atlanta Children's Shelter

What do I get in return?

Of course I have made some great connections and I receive good visibility among clients and prospects. But what else?

I have noticed that I am able to try out new ideas and grow both personally and professionally through my volunteer work. In the everyday world of work we have to stay on our toes and continuously navigate familiar waters. There is not always a lot of room to try out a new idea or new style because expectations for the status quo are so strong. This is true even for a very small company like mine. Also, when it comes to client work, I tend to stick very close to what I know, not experiment with new, untested ideas. Oftentimes too, my clients are simply tipping their toes in a new project and we are not able to push it along as far and fast as I would like.

So as a volunteer I am able to "take the bull by the horns" and "push the envelop" on a project a little more. I also get to work with a larger team than what I am currently working with at my job. This has given me an opportunity to learn the art of influence and management, and of course compromise.

I have found myself reacting to situations in familiar ways, but because I am in a situation that is not day to day work, I get to step away for awhile, reflect, and try a new approach of strategically responding versus reacting. 

I have been thinking about this quite a bit, not just because I am grateful for the opportunities I have to grow professionally, but also because I keep seeing people missing out on opportunities to volunteer. I see people saying they do not have time, or when people do "sign up" to contribute, oftentimes they drop the ball and do not take advantage of the opportunities in front of them and at the same time, tarnish their reputation.

We are all very busy right now, stretched to the limits, but this is not the time to stop stretching & growing. In fact, this is the time when we need to stretch and grow and improve to improve our skills and techniques. There is no better way than to find a place to volunteer.