Gifts for absent husbands

I was buying a present for my husband for this birthday this morning from one of his favourite stores. I felt a bit rushed and somewhat perplexed about what to buy him. Normally I don’t struggle at all but this year it’s a tad different. There was an added element of complexity to the ordinarily joyous process of gift-giving. The gift had to be small and light and not contain anything ‘tricky’, so that it could make its way effectively overseas to where my man is currently living.

I was staring at all the stuff, beautifully displayed, hoping something would jump out at me. The woman working in the store came up gently and said “you look like you need a hand”.

I explained my situation and as a I did she slowly nodded and leaned in with this look of ‘knowing’ on her face.

During the course of her ‘recommendations’, she spoke to me about how her husband spent 30 years travelling overseas for work, how it took time to reconnect when he returned (but that it did get easier), how her children were often wary of their dad and where he fit in to the scheme of things when he got back, how she encouraged immediate bonding with the kids and their dad by disappearing for the weekend with girlfriends, and how she used to cope with it all. She joked about how she always struggled with gift-giving when he was away, so eventually they simply celebrated when they were next together. She told me how now, in semi-retirement, they travel back and forth to Noosa more often (the place they would take family holidays) and enjoy each other’s company in different surrounds. She runs her own interior design business and he consults in the city, but they allow themselves breaks after a big project. She spoke of the simple pleasure of the perfect small leather travel bag which she keeps packed with only the essentials, so that she’s ready to join him wherever and whenever their fancy takes them. And the big lesson… she spoke of how she’s come to realise that a marriage is about quality not quantity.

The strategies she imparted were wonderful and her gift ideas were spot on. The way she relayed her experience touched me deeply, as it was emotive, personal, yet helpful, and therefore highly powerful. I bought more than I intended to because I was so intrigued by her story, I just wanted to keep listening. I believed in her and the ideas she proposed, so I chose them all. I wanted to breathe in her experiences and make them my own. Hell, I want to be her in 15 years time!

Again, the lesson is clear. Be relatable to your prospects.

Tell your story in a way that matters to them. Find some common ground. Help them with their predicament. Make your story interesting, intriguing. And they will ask for your help. They will buy.

Go and be you. Unapologetically you. And tell your stories to those who need to hear them.

Email marketing platforms in review

Email marketing isn’t dead. Let’s just put that out there first. It is VERY much alive and well. Email marketing is also one of the most cost-effective marketing tools out there. It is easy to manage, gives you full control and allows you to establish direct contact with your customers. So, as part of your overall content marketing plan you need to be considering how and when you harness email marketing.

Email marketing is a proven strategy with which to promote your business. It helps you attract new customers and maintain close relationships with existing loyal customers. You can manage your contacts by simply keeping a list of names and email addresses, or you can create a complex database full of subscribers segmented by demographic slices and engagement levels. The challenge is knowing what will work for you and what choices you need to make. Which method you choose, and what tools you buy, really just depends on how big your budget is and how sophisticated your business is at this point.

The first step is to know WHY you want to do email marketing

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Chasing Sunsets

I had coffeee this week with a guy I haven’t caught up with for a while.
He’s a photographer and videographer who does really great work.

When I asked him how he’d been going, how business was ticking along, he surprised my by saying ‘just ok”… and then he qualified it by saying that it was probably because he’d been busy chasing sunsets.

I thought ‘chasing sunsets’ was a metaphor, you know, for being distracted by shiny things like most entrepreneurs are. But no, he’d LITERALLY been off chasing sunsets, with his camera, trying to get the perfect shot!

I laughed at the fact that my brain went straight to the metaphoric reference. But he’s a dude and dudes are mostly very literal creatures. So I dug a little deeper. What I found out was that he’d been spending over an hour every night for over a week trying to get the perfect sunset shot….just for his own amusement, oh, and to dish up some Instagram gratification. Really? Yup. To get likes.

And yet he had been moaning about the fact that he wasn’t charging what he was worth, that people were taking advantage of his generous nature, that he was spending the most time with the clients paying the least, that he hadn’t increased his database for ages….

Had he spent those 10 hours getting his podcast out there to grow his audience….
Had he spent those 10 hours creating that free video series optin to grow his database….
Had he spent those 10 hours refining his packages and communicating those….

…he may have felt a little differently about his business. A little bit better than ‘just ok’.

Chasing sunsets is absolutely delightful. I get it. And at the moment, they are stunning where we live. It’s great for the soul. It may also be great for getting likes on Instagram. But is it what you do FIRST, when the other stuff is undone?

Prioritising business growth activities is often a struggle for creative business owners, especially if they’re not things you love to do. BUT, your business won’t flourish by chasing sunsets.

What sunsets have you been chasing lately?

Losing your voice – literally or metaphorically

I’ve lost my voice. My actual voice, not my writer’s voice, has just disappeared.

Well, truth be told, the word ‘just’ is incorrect. I knew it was coming for 3 days. There was that telltale tickle, the waves of heat, the loss of strength, the lack of energy. And this morning it was gone. No sound. Nada.

I’ve been using my voice a lot lately, more than usual and more fiercely. Coaching, speaking gigs, presentations, networking, parenting, daughtering. And I’ve been speaking for so many other people too: voicing their fears, propping them up, going in to bat, celebrating them, fighting for them. A change in domestic circumstance has meant I’ve had to tell the story over and over again, and I think I’ve literally run out of words. I’ve exhausted myself by prioritising everyone else’s emotions and interests; my own have slipped by the wayside.

And so I instinctively knew that my voice was bound to give way at some point. It’s my body’s way of saying “ssshhhhhhh…” It’s time to listen. Continue reading →

3 Quick Ways to Stay Visible During School Holidays

It’s school holiday time (in Vic anyway)…and you know what that means?

It’s the juggle struggle of running a business whilst running the social lives of your children at the same time!

Being visible in school holidays comes down to planning

And even if you don’t have kids, you’ll probably experience that deafening silence when you email one of your clients or that cagey low-talking when they answer the phone. Because chances are they’re dealing with a child tugging at their attention, wanting to be fed, wanting a cure for boredom, wanting to make noise the minute they get on the phone. It happens to the best of us, even with the most well-intentioned children and the most carefully organised activities – they just NEED you when you are the phone.

So, how do you deal with this predicament? How do you manage to do all the things you have to to keep your business ticking whilst you have the kids home from school? You can’t always take weeks off every time the school holidays roll around, nor can you palm your kids off the entire time (or can you???) Continue reading →

Are measurable results the only ones that matter?

Did you know there’s a new version of the ‘star chart’ in schools? The digital-age version called Dojos. You do a good deed you get a Dojo, you do something dodgy, one could be taken away. Standard action-reward stuff, just now in an app for all to see.

We’ve all come across these before. Perhaps you rememebr the chart that had your name on it, either on the fridge, comparing you with your siblings, or on the school wall, highlighting your actions compared with your school mates’. There was your name, in neat handwriting down the left with a hopeful blank column, waiting to be filled with stars.

In the class Dojo system, there is currently a predictable distribution of ‘points’ — nothing unusual amongst an average population of 9 year-olds. Most have earned two or three Dojos. One girl is streaking ahead with six. Then there is Tom without a single star to his name. There’s always a Tom.

Everybody, including Tom, knows he’s at the bottom of the Dojo pile. And nobody, including Tom, really knows why. Dojo-less, Tom now bears the label of ‘the naughty one’ because he can’t seem to get to grips with performing at a Dojo-worthy level, of doing the measurable Dojo-worthy things.

And so it is in business, where most success is defined by what it’s easy to put a number on.

Revenue, sales, profits, visitors, growth, impressions, likes, database size, event numbers, open rates, page views etc. All the things that fit neatly on a spreadsheet. And yes, they’re important, and the truth is spreadsheets – like Dojo apps – don’t lie.

The problem is, they don’t tell the whole story. There’s no measurement for the intentions we have, the effort we made, the impact of our work and the difference we will make over time—not just this term or this quarter.

Interestingly the people with the most Dojos, or gold stars, or numbers on their spreadsheets, don’t always win.

In fact, sometimes they lose. They’re often so busy reaching for the stars to stick on the chart, doing the Dojo-worthy deed, that they forget to really see the brightest stars or the daring deeds outside the Dojo.

I hope you’re spending some time NOT measuring your success on an app or a star chart.

You ARE creative: find out how then use it

Creativity and self-expression are transformative – both in business and in daily life. And I believe everyone has the capacity to be creative.

But don’t go getting all uncomfortable and start backing away….I can hear you now saying “but I’m NOT creative. I can’t do that!”

The truth is, you can, and hopefully you’ll see that too, when I let you in on what I believe is ‘creativity’.

Creativity according to Jo Johnson

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There’s nothing wrong with being an ostrich

There’s absolute validity in knowing what your competition is doing. And there are very good reasons to study those in your field, particularly if they are ahead of you in skill or experience. HOWEVER, there is also real danger in obsessing about who’s doing what, when and why, and how much more they’re earning/doing than you are.

Think for a minute about how many days and how many brain cells you’ve wasted this year worrying about her over there….or him down the road. Think about how many grey hairs you could have saved yourself by not stressing about the fact that so-and-so seems to be everywhere doing everything, whilst you’re stuck behind a computer trying to make ends meet.

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