Category Archives: launch

Friends

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I’ve been thinking about friendships a lot over the past few days.  I’ve decided that honestly, I’ve got the best group of friends that a gal could ask for.  That includes my old friends, my new friends, my online friends and my biz related friends.  Each and every one of them are just wonderful.

In the past six or so months, I’ve really had some awesome support from my friends.  When I went through that crazy stalking shit, they were right by my side.  When I started my own biz, they were there to support me.  And now that my friends are going through some things of their own (separation pending divorce, new business jitters, being up for an entreprenurial award) you better believe that I’m right there for them!

I think my favorite part of friendship is when we can get together (or over the phone or blog or email or whatever) and just share ideas.  To just talk about what’s going great or might not be working in our lives or our business, and share those out-of-the-box ideas…awesome. Nothing can pump this gal up more than chatting with her friends.

A week or so ago I reached out to a newish, biz-related friend (a fellow LWLer).  I had a question about being an expert (Millie) at our upcoming LIVE event.  When she replied to my email, she not only addressed my particular question, but she also said that I should give her a call because she had some ideas about my business.  She had unsolicited ideas to help me make my business a success…Come on, how great is that?!?

I think it’s a great thing when we can all stop thinking about others as our competition and just show support when we can.   There’s more than plenty to go around.  I like to tell folks all the time that if they like me, they’ll like my friends.  Expanding on that, if you like the way I do business and help you, then you’ll also like how my friends do business and help those they know.

There are so many little things in life to be grateful for.  At the top of my list…my friends!

WooHoo!!! Gotta Love Twitter!

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Thanks to Twitter, I’ve made some new business friends.  In particular, I really enjoy reading and learning more about Guy Kawasaki.  If you haven’t yet heard, Guy and his friends have started up an awesome blog aggregation site called Alltop.com.  Within the site itself, various blogs are divided up between different categories.  The categories are then even further divided up.

Well, take a bold step (and doing something totally out of character for myself), I shot Guy a DM (direct message) on Twitter and asked if it would be possible to get my site listed in the Women’s section of Alltop.  I just received confirmation that he’s accepted and it’s done!

I’m so excited by what this will mean for my site.  I mean so many more people that until now have never heard of my site will now be reading it!  And as one would expect, there’s a trickle of fear involved as well.  Hello…I need to have some good content on there if I expect folks to keep sticking around.  But I’ll just throw that out into the Universe – good content, good writers, good commenters & good giveaways – and know that it will be provided for me.

Heck, I don’t doubt that this all came from my recent cleaning and organizing trend.  Not to mention the focused intent I’ve had going on lately.  I’m so grateful that things are moving forward like this.  I just love knowing that you get what you ask for.  As Michael Gerber said a while back in a teleconference I was listening to…if not me, than who else?  So why not me, right?

Why Do We Wear Belts? And Other Random Thoughts

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I bought one for the first time last week.  My girlfriend kept giving me a hard time for my (brand new) jeans being too big and my always pulling them up.  So I figured what the hell, I’ll buy a belt.  Um…why?  I mean I love that my jeans now stay up and joy of joy, they don’t drag on the floor any more.  But what’s the point if my belt keeps riding above the loops of the jeans and sticks to me?  I’ve already loosened it as much as I can.  Any looser and well, no need for the belt.  I just don’t really get it, but oh well.

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Onto the next topic…crazies on the road!  No really, each time I went out today, some crazy driver did something stupid or totally inconsiderate.

At the farmer’s market, all these big SUVs that barely missed scrapting the ceiling of the parking garages would crawl like a snail through the garage, taking forever.  The would inch over the speed bumps, hanging out their windows hoping they won’t scrape the ceiling.  Maybe they shouldn’t park in parking garages then.  And when I finally did manage to find a parking space, I have to pass it by since some SUV took up all of their space and some of the space next to them to park their monstrosity so it’s not like I could park after all.

At the grocery store, same weirdness.  First, some kid on a bike, talking on a cell phone total whizzes by completely disregarding the 4-way stops that the we all have to stop for.  So you go to make your turn, at your turn, only to have this kid, not paying attention, yammering away on the phone, blow by so you have to slam on your breaks.

Then when it’s finally time to park, I pull into the lane, empty spaces on both sides.  The gal in front of me turns WIDE making me think that she’s going to park her itty bitty car on the right side, so I wait to park on the left side.  She starts waving for me to go around…hello, spots on both sides here, I’ve got on a blinker, either way, I wouldn’t be going around.  I motion that I’m taking the spot on the left so I can’t go around, she pulls up, then proceeds to back into the space on the left.  What?!?  Two spots, wide open on the other side, and yet she still feels the need to swing all the way, nearly into the spot only to back into a space on the left.  Whatever.  I was parked and out of my car before she even managed to finish parking.

On the way home, some chick decides not to take the turn on the yellow and sit through the red.  That’s fine, no need to risk a ticket or whatever.  But she doesn’t even pull up to the line.  She’s half a car length away.  I toot my horn and motion for her to move up so that I can make the right on red (totally legal).  Nothing.  I wait a minute and toot again.  Again, nothing.  One more toot, the passenger in the backseat turns to look at me, I motion to move up, I’m already half into the turn lane so it’s not like they don’t know what’s going on.  Again, nothing.  I give up.  Right before the light changes, she finally pulls up to the line and I pass to make my turn.  The woman is glaring at me.  What?!?

So yeah, seems like there just might be some crazy, inconsiderate people on the road today. Don’t even get me started on our wacky neighbors and how little they understand the basics of street parking.

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And today’s much happier and final topic…I found workshop space!  I kept telling myself that since things with LWL took off so quickly and without my thought behind the process (it’s all about timing), that I was going to spend the month of May figuring how to get more business.  In particular, how to find the right space to teach workshops.  Well, I seem to have lucked out yesterday and found a whole slew of affordable (and local) spaces.  Can’t wait!  Things are really beginning to take off and I’m loving that feeling.

Must Blog. No Energy.

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I had a blogging presentation with a group of Beverly Hills mom-prenueurs (and you know how I hate that term!). Overall, things went quite well. I also noticed that having a pricing chart made things much easier since the ladies where able to see what the different packages entail when it comes to beginner blogging. Nice.

Then I started feeling the twitches of a migraine trying to work it’s way through. I crashed for an hour thinking it might help, but I still feel it niggling about. Hopefully some food will help.

Remember a while back I briefly mentioned some varmints in our ceiling or floor in the (what would be the) dining room? Well, that’s actually what woke me from my nap. Turns out now they’re scratching away at the wall in our bedroom. I guess I need to let the landlords know.

Okay, off now to find food. Return one of the shirts I bought for the hubster. Find an affordable & cute black patent purse (dammit!) for the wedding in June. Track down some pretty petal shoe-thingies. Don’t be surprised if I come home with some new makeup. I’m just in that sort of mood!  Tift Merrit show at the Troubador tonight.  Woohoo!

What Do You Need to Know Before You Buy Your URL?

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Okay, I twittered this, but 1) I haven’t blogged yet today and 2) I’m hoping to get some more answers still.  So here goes…I’ve been asked to write an article about what one should know before even purchasing a business URL, let alone start up a website.

This is a big deal since many people immediately run out and buy a URL because their starting up a business and wind up spending a lot of money they don’t need to spend: paying more for registration, paying for services that you don’t need, spending more on a website than is needed, etc.  So I’m hoping for this to be more of a tutorial/how-to sort of piece.

So I ask, any suggestions for your fellow webbies and bloggers?

Bring On The Clients!

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I just got back from a beauty, southern Californian outdoor cafe kind of lunch.  I was meeting with Lisa Steadman, of the BreakUp Chronicles (and author of It’s A Break Up, Not a Break Down).  She’s a fellow LWLer and I wanted to catch up with her so that I could interview her for my site later.

Overall, it was a wonderful lunch (well, my salad was a little lame, but the company more than made up for it).  We covered everything from women in business just starting out, the upcoming LWL Live event, service menus, coaching.  You name it.  I have to say, she really gave me the motivation I needed to get focused about turning my free workshops into making some real income.

I’m really pumped to get moving on this business thing.  In fact, I had already schedule my May off from leading the free LWL workshops (though I am still considering doing Santa Barbara ones).  I figured I would take the time to 1) celebrate my birthday ALL.MONTH.LONG of course and 2) focus on learning how to line up some paid workshops.  So this was all perfect timing.

Also, for anyone in the LA area interested in getting some help getting a business going, the good folks at PerfectBusiness.com will be leading a free workshop Saturday the 19th in downtown LA.  I’ll be there as well hoping to get some insight.  With luck, I might even be able to swing a speaking engagement out of it.  It could happen.

Okay, enough procrastinating.  I still my article on blogging to finish up.  I just need my closing paragraph and it’s ready to go to the boss lady.  I have to say though, writing a 700ish word article on blogging basics…not so easy when it all depends on certain basic knowledge.  Hopefully it will go over okay.

PS – I really need to purge and merge my categories.  Since merging the two blogs I have far too many duplicate categories and it bugs me.

Blog, Blogger, Blogging

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As you may or may not know, I’ve been teaching some workshops for the LWL group on blogging basics.  For the most part, I’m working on introducing the blogosphere to these busy, start-up, business women and letting them know how blogging and commenting in blogs can help improve their business (or at least their search engine rankings).

It’s been pretty basic thus far, but I’m ready to reach out further and expand my horizons.  So in the process, I’ve been reading a lot of blogging blogs, women in business blogs, business blogs and well, tons of books on the subject as well.  I’m taking it all in wherever I can. 

So currently, I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

  • The best blogging techniques.
  • How to get traffic to your blog.
  • How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

What I Am Doing VS What I Should Be Doing

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What I Am Doing

I’m transferring all my blackberry photos (man some of them really suck) to the memory card so I can add them to flickr.

I’m sitting her (dressed for once – yoga pants still count as being dressed, right?) putzing around reading blogs and other online stuff.

I’m twittering and twittering – basically talking to myself.

I’m waiting for the UPS guy to deliver our wine shipment – of course it was a 9:00am – 5:00pm window.

I’m sitting her shivering just a bit with cold hands because I’m out of milk and don’t feel like herbal tea.

What I Should Be Doing

I should be writing an article on blogging for LWL.

I should be catching up on some business reading so I can prepare for my next workshop.

I should be editing the interview I did months ago so I can get that up on my site.

I should be writing up a slew of interview questions for various authors.

I should be writing up and editing a couple of blog posts for my site.

I should be responding to the emails I have sitting in my inbox waiting for me.

I should be finding a location where I can lead paid workshops.

I should be folding the laundry properly and washing the current batch.

I should be vacuuming – or at least scheduling a cleaning lady.

I should be looking for something to make for dinner tonight and tomorrow (and buying that milk for my tea!)

Well, it looks like there’s more that I should be doing than I currently am doing.  Guess I should get busy then, huh?

Some Fabulous Women in Business

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I had posted this in my local LWL group yesterday, but thought I’d post it here as well. I know I’ve got some business women (and some LWL gals) that read my blog so I thought you might find it interesting.

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I’ve been poking around the web today, catching up on my many (many) blogs and I came across some stuff you guys might be interested in.  It might be just the motivation someone needed today.

First, this is from the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive conference.  It’s the audio from the Boss Lady discussion panel .  These are some great women that didn’t let anyone tell them they couldn’t do it.  By far, my favorite panel in the whole SXSWi ’07 conference.

Second, this is from this week’s BlogHer Business Conference (currently going in NYC).  She’s a 64 year old woman that knows nothing about blogging, but knows it’s good business.  She’s proof positive that you’re never to old to start a business and you’re never too old to learn something new.  Check it out , you just might learn something.

Lastly, there’s been a lot of talk on this board about insurance and our small business options.  One of my favorite small business blogs, Shifting Careers addresses this current challenge and let’s us know about the changes on the horizon.

Enjoy!

I’m Here. I’m Here at Last

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Let’s start by saying wowza, I feel better!!  I’m not totally 100% better, but I’m nearly there.  Yesterday was the first time in a looong time that I didn’t need a mid-day nap.  And woohoo upon woohoo, I also didn’t need the vaporizer.  Oh, the best part, the hubster and I “caught up” on some lost time *wink wink* So yes, it’s been a smashing weekend overall here at the LA Blogger Gal household!

While out sick I’ve managed to finally get caught up a bit on my LWL workload.  I’ve got all my confirmed RSVPs for next Tuesday’s blogging workshop and I’m just ready to go.  So now I think I’m going to focus on learning how to lead some paid workshops (and contact those realtors).  Well, that and get started writing up my social networking workshop for later in the month.

Some randomness:

  • sometimes lean cuisine just sucks ass.  ‘Nuff said.
  • I managed to get our taxes into the accountant with plenty of time to spare only to have it sit in his office waiting for me to pick it up (my fault) and yep, now the biz taxes are late…that’ll cost us *sigh*
  • looks like we might be going to Ireland in November!!!  Herbie will be out there on tour and our friend has invited us along thinking it would be cool.  And boy howdy would it be cool!  I’d even be more than willing to call it “Christmas” and skip any and all gifts – Ireland would be more than enough.
  • Doing that crazy blog party, I was lucky enough to win a book from Robin Bielman’s blog – There Goes the Bride by Lori Wilde.  Let me just say, after months of reading business books, chick lit and the more highbrow literature-y books (damn that book club) it was a very welcomed escape. A very light and fun read.
  • And speaking of winning, I won a beautiful turquoise pendant the other day from Hostess with the Mostess.  Pretty cool if you ask me!

And now, I’m going to pick my way around the chicken in my lame-o lean cuisine and finish getting ready for the LWL incubator gals and happy hour in Venice.  All while being serenaded by guitar strumming husband.  I really is a smashing weekend I tell ya!