Some of you may know that my husband, Erin Defosse, has been spearheading the formation of a new amazing private international multi-language (Spanish and Mandarin) school for the Austin community – The Magellan School.
Since we both fancy ourselves entrepreneurs, we understand each others need to try new things and hopefully make a difference.
The location was just announced (see a copy of the latest newsletter below) on Far West/Mopac and it will be the first of its kind here in Austin!
The Head of School, Marisa Leon, is fabulous! I interviewed her and have met with her on several occasions since then. She is remarkable with kids, brilliant, and extremely observant. As a parent, I am so thrilled that she will be leading a school that my kids will be going to!
I will be the only one in the family who probably won’t be fluent in Spanish so I’m foreseeing a future where the kids will be saying things about me behind my back. 🙂 But it’s a risk I’m willing to take for my kids to be global citizens and be able to communicate with so many more people in the world.
They are still accepting applications for the Fall. Even if you don’t have pre-K to 2nd grade school age kids please consider donating (tax deductible) and be part of the founding financial supporters of the school to help ensure its continued success.
The early years of any start-up/entrepreneurial endeavor are so critical and any financial or volunteer support you can give will go a long way to making Austin one of the key global centers in the world! I firmly believe that schools like this will attract companies and families to our fine city. Giving even just a little goes a long way. Check out the Magellan Giving page for more information.
When a child discovers that he or she can change the world for the better…the world usually changes!
The Magellan International School
has found a home!
Dear Parents,
On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Magellan International School we are delighted to officially announce that MIS has found a home! After many months of searching for the ideal location and negotiating a lease we can now tell you where the School will be located. The address is:
The School facility is conveniently located in Northwest Austin near the corner of Far West Blvd. and Chimney Corners and across the street from Doss Elementary. It is just a few minutes from Mopac. The facility was originally built as a school. Here are some of the highlights:
• Over 8,000 square feet, most of it comprised of very large classrooms
• Designed to meet the requirements of a primary years school
• Ample playground with a fully built out playscape and separate areas for Pre-Primary and K+ students
• Secured access with digital keypad in main entry
• Easy drop off and pickup driveway
Most independent schools don’t have the opportunity to start off in such a facility and in fact many start out in a home, retail space, or within a church. Being able to start on day one with a real school building is truly a blessing. So, make sure you spread the word and also remind those you know that we are still accepting applications for Pre-Primary through 2nd Grade. Visit our Admissions page for more information.
From now until August the MIS team will be busy at work on the facility giving it a new upgraded look, performing any required maintenance, and filling it with the furniture and supplies that will be needed to start classes on August 24th, 2009.
As a non-profit school we ask for your support as we work on our facility. We will be patching, painting, cleaning, decorating, gardening, and many other ‘INGs. If you believe that you can assist us in any way please don’t hesitate to contact us at (512) 961-6431 or administration@magellanschool.org. We would love to get your help!.
Securing the facility involved many of our supporters, including Board Members and families, that came together to provide the financial backing that allowed us to sign the lease. To all of you that have supported our School and, indeed even enrolled your children before we could even give you a street address, we thank you immensely for the trust and faith that you have placed in us.
We are very excited about having reached this major milestone in the history of the school. That said, we still need your financial support in the form of tax deductible donations to enhance and grow our program even further. Please visit our Giving page for more information.
In summary, we are delighted that we now have ourselves a facility and eagerly await the beginning of classes on August 24th!
I try to mix my parenting and business posts here on entrepreMusings. Of late I feel like I’ve been doing more parenting related posts, but I just couldn’t pass this one up. This morning as I was getting the kids ready for swim classes and soccer, my 6 year old son said the most brilliant thing! We have a busy day today as I’ll be taking them both to my daughter’s swim class, then to my son’s soccer game, and then later back for his swim class. Then we are heading out so they can see their dad finish the Shiner 100 mile bike race later this afternoon. It’s two hours from Austin so I’m sure they will both take naps in the car. [UPDATE: It ended up being a 5 hour roundtrip because I didn’t have the right directions.]
Anyway, my son was getting dressed for soccer, and he wasn’t sure what shirt to bring. Sometimes they wear a black one and sometimes they wear a white one. I told him why don’t you bring both just in case and then all of a sudden out of the blue he said “You are so smart mommy!” I said “Really?” He said, “Yes you are so smart to think of bringing both of them.” I was like “Wow, thank you sweetie. I’m so glad you think I’m smart.” I gave him a huge hug and kiss and told him “I hope you still think that when you are 12 or 13 years old.” He looked at me and said something like, “If I’m still playing soccer and you tell me to bring both shirts, you will be smart.” We both laughed and my daughter laughed along with us.
He then couldn’t find his shirts and was looking in the wrong drawer and I told him to look in the other one and there they were. He looked at me in disbelief and happiness that I found his shirts and again said “You are so smart!” I was smiling from ear to ear and gave him another squeeze and tickle. He was truly being genuine and he learned that I responded positively the first time so I thought he was quite brilliant to say it again so soon. He’s picking up quick that when mom is happy, life is easier and he’s more likely to get to play the Wii. 🙂
I didn’t understand why people said boys have their moms wrapped around their fingers until I had a son. My daughter has me wrapped too. The wrapping loosens a bit when they whine but when they say and do brilliant things and when they flash their adorable smiles or are peacefully sleeping, it gets wrapped so tight it squeezes my heart and takes my breath away…
Jack Baum was one of my favorite investors and board members at the first company I founded. He was outspoken, introduced us to key customers and other key investors, and was a real supporter of us founders. He isn’t afraid to say what was on his mind even if it was not politically correct. He also took time to listen to our perspectives and since he is an entrepreneur himself, he could relate to us.
I interviewed Jack (pdf) for The University of Texas at Austin’s alumni magazine, The Alcalde, for an article that was published in the November/December 2005 issue. My writing partner, Pam Losefksy, and I pulled these articles together a while back and you can see them on the Success Profiles page of this blog. You can see the full article on Jack by clicking HERE (pdf).
Jack is the President/CEO of Food, Friends & Company, which owns Cozymel’s Mexican Grill and is now creating an upscale seafood restaurant called Red Sails, as well as a Pan-Latin concept called Tango. He founded Canyon Café, Sam’s Café, and Newport’s in Texas as well as Sagebrook Technology Partners, an investment firm that provides capital to early-stage technology companies. (Sagebrook subsequently merged with 2M Capital.) Has competed in five Ironman triathlons and finished in the top tier in the amateur division.
The main point he wanted to share was:
When I look at the traits of successful people, I think of a triangle or a stool with three legs. First, successful people have meaningful relationships with their family and friends. Second, they take the selfishness and the ego out of making money and elevate
what they do to make money to a point where it’s good for society. And third, successful people know how to recharge their batteries.
He also shared the following advice:
When I talk to young people, I often use the metaphor of training for a marathon, which is something I know a lot about, to illustrate how to be successful. I know I can increase my training by 5 percent a week without injuring myself. If my goal is to run a marathon, and the longest run I’m capable of today is three miles, I then calculate how long it’s going to take me to be ready and I can enter a marathon after that date.
I think the same thing happens in life. A lot of young people coming out of college are rushing to get their careers started, but I think they need to look at it more as a marathon than as a sprint. I believe they need to say to themselves, “Here are the tools that I need to put in my toolbox to be successful. I’ve got plenty of time to do it. I don’t have to do everything today.” If they can have that perspective, they are more likely to stay balanced and to keep each leg of the stool on the ground.
I have a lot of respect for Jack. He seems to have found ways to keep his three legged stool balanced for the most part from what I’ve seen. He flew in to speak to my entrepreneurship class a couple of times and was always a great hit with the students.
The marathon analogy works well for start-ups and life. There are many times in an entrepreneurial endeavor you feel like just giving up because it’s just too hard and all your muscles ache and your brain is fried. But you get up and keep going until you make it over the hump or you hit the wall. Some companies make it across the finish line, some make it but fall apart afterwards, some make it in record time and are the darlings of the race, and some people’s mind/body just have to call it quits because that’s just how it has to be at that point. They pick themselves up and try again later with another company. And such is life.
Is it possible to remain above the fray in times like these? I think some of us if not most of us think we have some control over our destinies, our thoughts, or our feelings and it comes as a shock when we find ourselves in the middle of a tornado and we can’t figure out how we got there. There are common sayings like “Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.” or “Man plans, God laughs.” or “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” but most of us still feel like we have some control over what happens to us. Of course, we have control over what shoes we choose to wear one day, but the big things that really seem to matter just seem to all of a sudden happen to us. Take for example the recent outbreak of swine flu (NY Times)!
When something like your company is wildly successful or a terrible failure we try to make sense of it. If it’s wildly successful we can self importantly point to the things we did right, giving some credence to that strange phenomenon called “luck.” When it fails we can point to a few things we did wrong but more often we point outside of ourselves to the economy, other people, the market, timing, etc.
Companies are starting right now, companies are falling apart right now, companies are doing well and growing, and others are doing their best to survive. I know of one great success story that happened to someone in one of my networking groups, but it’s not public news yet. The internet is littered with stories of companies failing or going bankrupt. Fred Wilson did a long post about one of his first investments in Geocities, a company that Yahoo is planning to shut down. I mentioned the 11 companies who recently graduated from the Austin Technology Incubator in my guest post on Austin Startup and they are at varying stages of of the start up life cycle.
We often think we are above the fray, minding our own business when the sky falls, the funding arrives, a legal battle over patent infringement ensues, or when we find that perfect person for the job, but are we really? I think this is especially true of entrepreneurs. We think we are different and to some extent we are. We think differently. We view risk differently. We are less afraid and more afraid at the same time. We become defined a certain way but we still have to fit into a society that is mostly designed for non risk takers, and we realize but for a few minor genetic or family of origin differences we are all deep, so deep in the fray of humanity.
It’s an exhilarating yet at the same time humbling realization. At least I think so.
I took my son to soccer practice today and his sister, of course, wanted to come too. After getting both of them into the car, I realized I forgot something inside the house so I went back inside. On the kitchen floor I saw dirt from his soccer shoes and some chocolate from one of those Quaker Oats chocolate chip granola bars he had just finished eating as a snack. At first I thought it was all dirt but upon closer inspection I discovered the piece of chocolate. I found it amusing for some reason. I picked the pieces up and threw them in the trash and found myself smiling as I walked back out the door.
I guess I wondered how often we think the chocolate in our lives and businesses is dirt and how often we percieve the dirt as chocolate. But there they are side by side and both get thrown away because they are on the floor. I think I did try to eat dirt a time or two when I was a kid. I was quite the tom boy. I certainly do love chocolate. I also thought how funny in his boyish ways he dropped a piece of the favorite part of the granola bar on the floor without realizing it next to the dirt that came off of his soccer shoes. I’m not sure why I found it funny but probably because it was just a symbol of his boyish enthusiasm and excitement about going to do something he loved to do – play soccer!
So while we were out in the blazing heat of the early evening, my daughter and I were sitting on a partly shaded big rock and then she started wandering around playing with another little boy. She was throwing rocks into some standing water with the little boy but sometime during this play time she found a little patch of little purple (my favorite color) flowers. She brings me one and said “This is for you mommy,” and I said “For me? How beautiful! Thank you sweetie.” Then she brings me another one and tells me I have to save them and put them in some water when we get home. I told her I didn’t think we had something small enough to hold them because they were really tiny little flowers. She said “uh huh!” and I said “OK.” A few minutes later the wind blew them off the rock and I couldn’t find them. I had to tell her that they blew away and she said “the wind?” I said “Yes, the wind blew them away.” She then profoundly said “Oh, OK.” Then she ran off to play.
So the point of this post is…well I guess there really isn’t one. But if I had to make one up maybe it has to do with…well heck I don’t know what it has to do about anything.
By day I run operations at The Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) and this year it turns 20 years old. By night I am mom to two amazing kids, work on Babble Soft, and often fail at my attempts to meditate. I did a guest post on the Austin Startup blog called obviously enough:
I shared my story of being a founder/CEO starting my first company at ATI and how I see how it has evolved over the past several years since I first officed there on the other side of the fence back in 1998.
Here are some links to some interesting reads relating to entrepreneurship, people, parenting, and even Oprah! I’m mulling over a couple of other blog posts in my head but until then check these out:
The Fine Art of Catching Liars – an interesting read on Time.com about research done by a psychologist on how to determine if someone is lying. Might be useful for those of you who have older kids. My kids haven’t started lying yet as far as I can tell. My son just told me that he told some people at last week’s Easter Egg hunt that he ate some candy in one of the eggs when he didn’t. I asked him why and he said he didn’t know but he seemed to think it was funny. I’m honestly not even sure why he confessed that to me randomly. I told him well that could be lying unless he was joking around with the other kids. I think I’ll have an easier time detecting if my son is lying than my daughter. I can already tell she will be pretty good at spinning a believable story and hide her true feelings.
Venture Capital Down 50%. It’s Not Just The Recession Folks – an article on TechCrunch analyzing how the decrease in venture investing is different this time around than in the post bubble bursting era of 2001-2002. They say that clean-tech investing is down because so much more time and research is needed. Health care investment is holding or not falling as fast.
Susan Boyle – The Biggest YouTube Sensation Ever? – an article on Mashable that links to the most viewed YouTube video of all time. It’s of Susan Boyle singing on Britain’s Got Talent. She shocked the world with her voice given her age and appearance. A true “you can’t judge a book by its cover” story. What an amazing voice. She’s 48 years old, never been married, and his been taking care of her mother for quite some time. Even Simon Cowel (American Idol judge) was blown away. Go HERE to see the video.
Capsula Music – My brother-in-law sent this to me. It’s an album of funky, psytrance music that is supposed to work in the background of your mind while you go to sleep. I’ve listened to it while working on my computer but haven’t tried it yet before going to sleep.
How To Nail An Interview – for those of you looking for a job. This was linked to in a post by one of my favorite bloggers, Seth Godin. It lists 22 tips on how to do well in an interview.
Ashton Kutcher and Evan Williams (Twitter Founder) talk on Oprah – a post on Mashable about how last week Oprah joined twitter. She interviewed Ashton who became twitter’s first user to gain 1,000,000 followers! He was competing with CNN and he won. Yes, I followed Ashton and Oprah!
Enjoy the videos and articles. There is so much going on in the world and probably these links are some of the more trivial pieces of what is truly happening but that’s what I see and what people are sending me.
If Seinfeld can do a whole TV show about nothing, I figure I can do one blog post about nothing much or much of nothing. Well it is about something but nothing that requires a whole lot of thinking like some of my recent posts.
I just got back from a really neat event here in Austin at a place called Austin Museum of Art – Laguna Gloria called the Art of Business. Business people who paint or take great pictures showcased their work and the highest bidder at the end of the night would win the piece. I left before the end of the event. I went because one of my co-workers was exhibiting a painting. I realized when I was half way home that I should have taken a picture to put in this blog post. I’ve asked her to write a guest post for me and she’s going to work on it next week. It’s going to be on creativity and I can’t wait to see it!
I’ve started singing in my day job office more…to the delight of some people and to the dismay of others…mostly the interns because I made up a “Lame Intern” song when they didn’t show up to one of our happy hours. It was to the tune of Nobody by Sylvia (link to YouTube video) and most of the interns are too young to have ever heard the song before. It’s kind of early soft country. I’m trying out a new voice teacher that was recommended by a friend I made at the Landmark Forum. I got to know her better during the seminar series. She’s probably as close to a professional singer I’ll come to know since she has sung at Austin legendary places like Antone’s. It’s a very different style of voice learning than I’ve ever experienced before and so far it seems to be having an impact on my voice and even my confidence level. It’s called Speech Level Singing and apparently people like Pavaroti and Barbara Streisand are coached that way.
I’ve been procrastinating heavily on updating the books for Babble Soft. I’m about 3 months behind. I did get our taxes done with the help of a tax accountant and we owed money this year for a variety of reasons.
I also have two more fortune cookie fortunes and they are:
A visit to a strange place will bring you renewed perspective. That’s good because I’m going to a strange place in June.
Hear with your ears but listen with your heart. All I know is that heart listening can be a weird mixture of joy and pain.
OK, that’s enough of the random stuff for a blog filler post.
One of the distinctions discussed in the Landmark Advanced Course is one of Agreements. These aren’t agreements that you sign like contracts, these are social agreements on how the majority agrees to act around certain issues. Some of the most notable social Agreements that have changed over time are how we as a society agree to treat women, Black, and gay people. These shifts affect our lives, our businesses, our entrepreneurial endeavors whether we are consciously aware of them or not.
Not too long ago women did not have the right to vote or were not easily able to work outside of the home. If they did try to work outside of the home, they were also expected to keep the home front in complete order. If you transported a man or woman out of the 1950’s to today, they would be shocked at the amount of freedom women have thanks to the women’s movement. They also might be surprised how day care, store hours, and business flex time schedules have changed to accommodate working women.
Same goes for Black people and gay people. Not too long ago Black people couldn’t drink from the same water fountains, use the same bathrooms, or eat at the same restaurants as White people. Not too long ago it was taboo to be gay. It was considered an abomination, a sin and in many places it still is, but no one can argue that the perception has shifted. If you watch TV or see the movies, gay people are showing up everywhere! Mixed race couples were also frowned upon and yet now you see many more mixed couples (race, religion, ethnicity).
So much has changed and it’s because of the people (entrepreneurs, change agents) who took it upon themselves to help make the shift. The interesting and ironic thing is that the people who tended to resist the shift the most early on are the people who were afraid of changing what they felt was the ‘right’ lifestyle. Some of the biggest resistors to the women’s movement were women! Women who were happy (or told they should be happy) living the stay-at-home-with-kids lifestyle looked down on the women who wanted to work and be treated as equals. I saw an Oprah show once where a stay at home mom actually said she felt that women who chose to work loved their children less than those who chose to stay at home!
In other parts of the world, where horrible practices like foot binding in China or female circumcision in certain African tribes occurred, the older women were the ones fighting the hardest not to change the practices because in some strange way they found comfort in familiarity and felt if they had to go through it why shouldn’t the next generation?! The psychology behind these extreme behaviors is mind boggling, but we humans are creatures of habit.
The uneducated Black people were among the many who would by their behavior hold back other Black people from a well deserved education and prosperity. I dare say there were many closet gay people who often fought against gay rights because it might expose them.
Agreements shift in business as well. What one generation thinks is OK in business, the other does not or they modify the agreements slightly to make things work for them. I believe we are living in part of a shift right now in thinking on how things should operate on Wall Street and on the US Capitol Hill.
The shifters consist of entrepreneurs, politicians, and well known leaders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Gloria Steinham, Carly Fiorini, Indra Nooyi, Indira Ghandi, Sirimavo Bandaranaike (first female priminister in the world who happened to be from Sri Lanka – where I was born), the Pope, and all the change agents whose names we may never know but who have a profound affect on their businesses/communities which in turn affects cities, countries, and the world. [Yes, that sentence was way too long!]
These shifters see something in society that is missing or needs to be changed (from technology to social policy) and they begin the shift…most likely not even realizing the role they are playing at the time in making the sift. Big shifts take time. Some are good shifts and some are bad, but they happen nonetheless. I’ve started thinking about the shifts we are making as a society and here is what I see:
Parenting – shifting from the primary caregiver being the mother to shared care between mother and father. I have a handful of women friends whose husbands stay at home while they provide financially for the family. This is a huge change from even our parents generation where that didn’t or very rarely happened. Most of our fathers barely changed a diaper! Even my company Babble Soft might be contributing to a shift in how we take care of our newborns when we no longer have the same nearby family support structure and need to know more about how our baby is progressing for doctor visits. It seems that we are still early in this shift, but it’s happening.
Job Changing – In our parents and grandparents generation it was not uncommon for someone to hold a job with one company for 30 years! Nowadays most people change jobs within 2 to 7 years. I know in the technology field if you saw a resume where the person has spent more than 10 years at one place, you wonder about their ability to innovate.
Marriage – with divorce rates averaging 50% for first marriages, 67% for second, and 73% for third marriages it seems that we as a society are more accepting of this change in lifestyle than in the past generation where it was much rarer to get a divorce but people were tolerating the situation. People were living alternative lifestyles in private and now they are living them out loud in public. This is despite the increase in marriage counselors! I wonder if the marriage shift has any correlation to the job changing shift?
Technology/Communication – It’s acceptable (for the most part) to have a gadget (cell phone) attached to you at all times. How we all lived before cell phones and iPhones, is beyond me. It has created a shift in how we communicate (voice, email, twitter, text messaging) that is unprecedented. It has yet to be seen if this is good for humanity in the long run but we seem to be heading towards an ‘always connected’ society.
Medicine – We’ve seen a shift from non-profit based medicine to for-profit based medicine which has led to some great innovations in the medical field but also to movement away from what is best for each patient/the system and towards what seems to be the best for the lawyers. 🙂
Elder Care – Only a generation ago, it was common for aging parents to live with their children but now it’s more common for them to go to a retirement community, an assisted living place, or elder care facility in at least the American culture.
These are just some of the shifts I see. Do you see these shifts too? I wonder how they are going to effect business, entrepreneurship, our day to day lives 5, 10, 25, 50 years out. I wonder how our children will react to living through these shifts. I’d love to read your thoughts in the comment section below.
Yes, I was feeling kind of pathetic since I’m sort of a mommy blogger and Dooce is the top mommy blogger on the planet making reportedly up to $500K per year from her blog. I am grateful that Laura took an interest in what I was trying to do with Babble Soft and asked me if I knew about it. And my lame excuse is I’m doing way too much, have two kids, thankfully no pets, and I haven’t found a way to get her blog to come to me in email form like the other blogs I read. Believe me I have tried several times to figure out how to get her blog in email…I’m going to blame it on the proverbial ‘mommy brain syndrome.’
I almost didn’t make it because our son has been home sick the last couple of days. I was thinking about taking him and our daughter with me and I am SO glad I didn’t. Fortunately their dad was able to rearrange his schedule to watch them. It would not have been fun at all because they would have lost their patience and my son would have been worn out in say 20 minutes.
Heather is an awesome and hilarious writer! She curses profusely, swears, and talks about all the things people don’t talk about but should on the topic of motherhood and life. So I began tweeting about some of the things she was saying and reading from her book and here are some of the more colorful tweets (corrected for iPhone typing errors):
@dooce about to talk about sex after vaginal birth.
Took 7 months after baby born before they had sex. 6 weeks is bs. Says @dooce
Her vagina was ready after she wore a tampax and her husband wrote a thank you letter to them.
Then @dooce says she got a urinary tract infection.
@dooce now talking about her dog called Satan and when they took the dog coco hunting.
All of a sudden I started getting tweets and direct messages on twitter asking what was going on with me. A few people thought my account was hacked since the tweets were very out of character for me. I was sure I had lost some followers, but I think I actually gained a few.
I’m so glad I went! I met her husband Jon (@blurb on twitter) and chatting with him for a while. He is on tour with her and manages the back end of her website. He was so cute and funny about how he took pictures of her and then sat in the audience listening to what I assume has to be the umpteenth time she’s spoken at a book signing on this tour. He participated a bit in the Q&A portion and then stood off to the side while she signed books. I checked his twitter stream when I got back and saw that his two tweets were:
I went to chat with him for a while and gave him some gift subscriptions to Babble Soft web and mobile software (which is iPhone ready – I noticed Heather was reading something to the audience from her pink cased iPhone), and he seemed genuinely interested in checking it out. I gave him extra ones to give to any of their friends or readers if they wanted to.
I was in the 3rd group of people to get the book signed and somewhere around 8:30 p.m., I knew I was not going to make it to 9:30 after having been most of the day with a sick kid, and I started to leave. I was almost out the door when I said to myself, I don’t really want to leave without a signature at all do I? So I went back up the stairs and asked Jon if he would sign it since I had to go, and he graciously did!
I just finished the Landmark Advanced Course that builds on the lessons learned in the Landmark Forum. It was a very powerful course and although it turns out I’m not an elephant or a horse, I discovered courageous parts of myself that I have suppressed because of the fear of what other people would think of me. And worse yet the fear of what I would think of myself.
To me, life has always been a journey of learning and self discovery. The Landmark Education courses have been one of the most fascinating steps I’ve taken on that journey. I’ve gotten more out of these two courses than all of the professional and personal advisers/counselors I’ve seen and books I’ve read…especially more than the romance novels I used to breeze through for mind numbing distractions from my text books in undergrad.
Some people stop pushing the envelope of self discovery because it can be a very scary process and others stop because they realize there really is no envelope to push and are at peace with themselves and the world. I haven’t met any of the latter kinds of people who have kids…in fact, I’ve met very few of the latter kind. So I wonder if the way to achieve the rare occurrence of enlightenment is not to have kids. Hmmm.
I’ve been becoming more aware of an ability/talent I was given to sense people based on what they say, don’t say, their body language, etc. I’ve heard that 80% of what someone conveys is not through words but through their body language. I happen to be more attuned to that 80% than most people. People tell me the most intimate things about themselves and their lives and sometimes I think they are surprised at what they tell me based on how I notice them.
I am sometimes pretty raw and honest about what I see in certain people with varied results. Sometimes I don’t say anything because I sense the person would not get in the slightest what I’m saying and think I’m crazy. But ironically, this ability doesn’t work as well with my close family and friends. And people have had a hard time knowing me because to deal with the bombardment of cues I get from people, I ‘was being’ a person who unknowingly suppressed my ability to share what was going on with me. In the words of Landmark, I was not being “authentic or fully self expressed” because fundamentally I didn’t trust people with my being. I was loudly letting them trust me, but I was quietly not trusting them with myself.
There are no magic pills or overnight fixes, just different ways of looking at things, and I think the path I’ve chosen has helped me understand other people and myself a little better, and therefore be a better friend, manager and connector. I’m sharing more and being more open and vulnerable than I have ever been in my life, and my close friends (and even people I’ve only recently met) and family are responding with such kindness and support that I have found myself with tears in my eyes more often than I expected.
There is another course in this 3 part series, but for now I am not planning on taking any more courses. I’ll digest, make some changes, and consider what’s next. I know they are a business so they will do their best to up sell me on their other courses…which is fine because I know I have the choice whether to sign up or not. Landmark Education is a global, fast growing phenomenon written up in Harvard Business Review and other reputable publications, and I think they will continue to grow given how they deliver their curriculum. They don’t do any outside advertising but rely solely on word of mouth and occasional press mentions. Of course those who do the research also pull up stories of their roots in something called EST. But from what I’ve heard of EST, the courses I’ve taken are drastically different and much less intense. The only way to know that is to see how it has changed the life of someone you trust and care about.
At any rate, I have met some amazing, brilliant people in these courses who I dare say I’ll probably be in contact with for quite some time. I’m a bit envious of the younger people who are taking the course because what a head start they will have in making transformation happen in their lives and their organizations. We had a few 18 year olds in the group. What a gift they have been given to have access to this technology at such a young age!
It’s all about Living A Powerful Life and Living A Life You Love! That is the reason I signed up for the Landmark Education courses. I’m on my way…stay tuned…
I haven’t had time to post for a few days (almost a week!) for a variety of reasons including kid’s birthday’s, anniversaries, my awesome & amazing mother visiting, life, shopping, etc. Yes, my mom reads my blog …well I know she at least subscribes to my blog. 🙂
It will probably be close to another week before I post again because I’m attending the Landmark Advanced Course this weekend where I’m supposed to discover who I am – which I think is an elephant or maybe even a horse. I also hope to discover what I want…or maybe I’ll discover that I already know what I want, and I just need to be brave enough to say it all out loud? Who knows.
At any rate, today is April Fool’s day and I’m pretty sure I missed all the twitter April fools jokes since I usually only check twitter in the evenings while I’m doing some work on Babble Soft. But at my day job, our office manager and I pulled a good one! We told everyone that there was a full breakfast spread in the kitchen. She even sent out an email with pictures she found from the Internet showing the food we bought (breakfast tacos, fruit, etc.) and several people fell for it! It was a pretty darn funny, last minute joke. People came with watering mouths only to find a sign telling them to look in the fridge and then a sign in the fridge that said “April Fool’s – you’ve been suckered!” It had us laughing for quite some time. Some people told us they were going to get us back so now we have to watch our backs. 😀
The only other April Fool’s joke I noticed was on the AustinStartup blog where they said they were acquired by TechCrunch. I sort of believed it for maybe the first two sentences and then realized how unlikely that was. I’m not usually easily fooled. I think I can count on one hand the times in my life where I was totally surprised by something and one of those times was when my guy (yes guys) and gal friends hired a male stripper for my 25th birthday. I was completely shocked. I can’t recall if I told my mom about this…oops!
I also had a voice lesson today and it’s definitely not an April Fool’s joke that I’m looking to find some musicians to jam with from time to time. I recently started this journey to find people with day jobs who like to express their musical tendencies. I have met and communicated with some interesting folks so far and even ventured on to a Craig’s List search (despite my fear of running into creepy, potential crazy folks that might want to kill me) for the first time in my life. I found a couple of listings that sounded interesting but one group already found their singer.
But what I have discovered is that I need to create a demo of me singing a few songs. Although I have a presence in the major social networks, I have avoided My Space like the plague. But My Space seems to be the place where people with musical inclinations put out their “look at me, I’m an awesome musician” crap. Ugh.
So now I need to find a way to cobble together a karaoke type demo of me singing some songs. I already know the two songs I’ll start with. When I get a reasonable recording maybe I’ll upload them on the blog.
In the meanwhile if any of you know of some musicians looking for an amateur female vocalist to join them to sing cover songs, create some original music, pull together a CD to market on *gasp* MySpace or YouTube, and maybe play in public from time to time please keep me in mind.
Brian Clark at Copyblogger did a post recently called How to Tell the Truth that was just spot on. I LOVED it because it is so true. It’s a short post and I was trying to think about how to summarize it, but I just can’t because it’s so perfect. So I hope Brian doesn’t get upset with me for quoting it verbatim here:
“Everyone wants the truth, right?
Ask your spouse or your boss or your employees or your customers… they’ll tell you all they want is the truth.
But that’s a lie.
We hate the truth. Our reaction to real truth is hostility and fear.
Do we really want to hear the truth about why we’re fat, or why we’re broke, or why our kids are under-achieving? Tough stuff to process for most.
And yet telling the simple raw truth is one of the most effective attention and persuasion tactics available. Especially these days, with people sick to death of being lied to and betrayed.
But if people reject what you say, truth or not, you’re back where you started.
Guys like Buddha and Jesus had this problem.
The solution remains the same.
Tell a story.”
I sent the post to my friend, Robb Lanum (a screen writer), and he liked it too and added “Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
My big problem is that I have a tendency to tell the truth good or bad, and I don’t always have a great story behind it. It usually turns out great if the truth is good (e.g., our product is awesome and will save your life, you look great, you did a fabulous job) but if the truth is not so good (e.g., our product is good but you need to have xyz to make it work, I screwed up, you screwed up) it’s hard to recover. Sometimes I wish I could keep my mouth shut but fear, Southern Baptist guilt, and feeling like I should do and say the right thing (because I would want to hear the truth) usually overcome me. A strong conscience sucks to deal with sometimes, but I selfishly hope my kids inherit it without having to feel the hell, fire, and brimstone in their minds!
This is probably one of the reasons why I’ll never be a great classical marketer. As Seth Godin recently wrote in a post called Is Marketing Evil?, the best marketers know how to create a great story about their companies and products and then they know how to get it out to the universe (usually with a reasonable budget!). He ends the post with:
“Just because you can market something doesn’t mean you should. You’ve got the power, so you’re responsible, regardless of what your boss tells you to do.
The good news is that I’m not in charge of what’s evil and what’s not. You, your customers and their neighbors are. The even better news is that ethical, public marketing will eventually defeat the kind that depends on the shadows. Just ask Bernie Madoff.”
So ‘eventually‘ with any luck my tendency to tell the truth will keep me out of jail. Now I just have to learn how to spin a fairytale captivating story! Here’s a video clip of “A Few Good Men” starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson that shows how most people can’t handle the truth…most notably the one (Jack) telling the truth:
The following is a guest post written by Rachel Euretig, PR Manager at Intuit (makers of Quicken, Quickbooks etc.). Intuit first approached me to write something about a new campaign they were launching to help small business get a piece of the stimulus pie. I responded by saying, what a great idea but I’m so strapped for time that I’d welcome a guest post instead and here it is…
Rachel Euretig is a public relations manager at Intuit Inc., a leading provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, financial institutions, consumers and accounting professionals. She is responsible for the company’s best-selling QuickBooks small business products and services. Rachel joined Intuit from LEWIS PR, a global technology agency headquartered in London, where she was an account director in the San Francisco office. She holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Eco-friendly tees that inspire positivity with simple words such as: BREATHE DEEPLY and TODAY MATTERS. A chiropractor’s office that instituted an “honor box” system, allowing patients to pay what they can. A former Marine who survived the 9-11 attacks and then went on to fulfill his childhood dream of starting a fishing rod business. These are just three of the amazing stories you’ll find at www.smallbusinessunited.com.
We at Intuit recently launched an initiative called Small Business United in order to give entrepreneurs a much-needed boost in this tough economic climate. The campaign features a stimulus package aimed at helping America’s small businesses save money, get more customers and save time, by offering:
Free software and services from Intuit valued at nearly $1,000 per small business to help them succeed.
$315,000 in small business grants.
$50,000 in donations to organizations that help budding entrepreneurs get started and advise existing businesses looking to grow.
How can you get involved? Well, first, check out the free software and services to see if there’s anything that can help your business.
Second, share your stories with us and other entrepreneurs for a chance to win up to $30,000 in business grants. We know that America’s entrepreneurial spirit is stronger – and more united – than ever. According to a recent study we conducted, nine out of 10 small business owners said they rely on peers for support and advice. Fifty-one percent of small business owners said they feel a special bond or connection with other small business owners, while 53 percent believe they can learn from their peers’ mistakes and successes. Do you agree?
How to enter:
Go to www.smallbusinessunited.com to share stories about your successes and challenges. In addition to the monetary grants and free Intuit products and services that Intuit is offering, you will also receive the Intuit Small Business Word of Mouth Marketing Toolkit and a profile page on the Intuit Community Web site to help promote your business.
Finalists will be selected based on a combination of ratings from the community, quality and creativity. The ratings will account for 40 percent of the overall score, so easy-to-use tools are available to help participants share their entries with family, friends and colleagues.
Judges will review entries and select 50 finalists to receive a $5,000 grant and a Pure Digital Flip Video camcorder. These finalists are then eligible to compete for the top grants by supplementing their story with a video that will be posted on the site for public viewing and rating.
The group will be narrowed down to four first prize winners, who will each receive $10,000 plus $2,500 worth of Intuit products in addition to their finalist grants and awards. The grand prize winner will receive an additional $25,000 and $2,500 worth of Intuit products and services.
Entries are due by April 24 and finalists will be notified by April 29. Winners will be announced in June.
The judges include a panel of independent small business experts:
Anita Campbell, CEO of Small Business Trends, an award-winning Web site that provides information and intelligence about the small business market and business trends affecting that market. This comprehensive resource includes a blog, radio show and regularly features small business experts from a variety of industries.
Donna Ettenson, vice president of operations of the Association of Small Business Development Centers, which represents 63 state and regional small business management and technical assistance programs. She is also a certified Franklin Covey facilitator for the “7 Habits for Managers” and “Focus” workshops.
John Jantsch, marketing and digital technology coach, award-winning social media publisher and author of “Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide.” He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system and Duct Tape Marketing Authorized Coach Network.
Becky McCray, publisher of Small Biz Survival, a Web site about small business and rural issues, based on her own successes and failures as an entrepreneur. She is also the co-owner of a retail store and cattle ranch, and a consultant for small businesses and city governments.
So many entrepreneurs and business people are scrambling trying to figure out what to do during these interesting times. Companies are shutting down, investors are upset, entrepreneurs are having breakdowns and wondering how they are going to make it through the next few years let alone their lives.
Large companies like AIG are literally crumbling based on decisions made based on statements surrounding the awarding of bonuses that weren’t properly scrutinized by the US Congress or internal management. All of the actions and behaviors that should have been considered sub-par that were looked over are now coming under extra scrutiny because times are tough. When times are good, people look the other way on many things they should not because they figure “Hey, it’s not hurting me.” When people raise the flag like they did on Bernie Madoff during the good years (the SEC had received repeated requests to investigate Madoff and they didn’t follow through) people looked the other way. It’s shocking to me how often people look the other way when incompetence and potential illegal activity might be going on.
Maybe I have an extra sensitivity to this because in my first job out of college I was a public accounting auditor and in my second job I was an internal auditor with training in fraud detection. It’s often the people you least suspect who are committing fraud, holding a check or two in a drawer, moving money around in accounts thinking no one will notice because no one is really paying attention. They think to themselves “Oh, I’ll put it back. I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m trying to help out here. I really need this. They’ll understand. Plus, I’m going to put it back.” But when it comes time to put it back or right the wrong, they don’t have it so what started out as a simple stop-gap gets more complicated. Who’s fault is it? Definitely the person doing it, but also the people who should be paying attention. Most people are too distracted to pay attention…not only in business but also in their lives with their spouses, their children, their own financial situations.
Then all of a sudden, the weight of the world is on not only those who intentionally or unintentionally rob and profoundly affect innocent people, but also on those who should have done a better job at oversight. The finger pointing starts flying, but we are all to blame. Humans keep repeating the cycle because we get caught up in the game, in the story, in as Landmark education says “wanting to look good and being afraid to look bad.” The “fear of looking bad” overwhelms most of us and paralyzes our ability to make the best decisions at work, at home, and in life. I know how strongly that fear affects me despite having pushed the ‘potential for looking bad‘ envelope a time or two!
And the weight of the world is heavy when it falls. And the weight of the world is difficult to remove. And the weight of the world is stifling.
But the weight of your young children is different. Today I got very upset with my kids for locking all the doors (they thought it would be a fun game) to our room because I was trying to find my keys so we could go to Home Depot and get some air filters while their dad was riding his bike. I sent one to our living room and one to stand in the hallway while I tried to open the door with a gadget we have just for such occasions. I was frustrated because it delayed our errand running until after lunch and it took me longer than expected to open the freaking door!
While our 6 year old son was waiting in the living room, he decided to pick up his English chapter book (Cam Jamson and the Chocolate Fudge Mystery) and start reading. My son decides he is going to continue reading his book after lunch but that he has to do so while sitting on my lap despite there being several other places to sit. Their dad was back by that point and the doors were all open, but they were both still getting hard stares from me. We were all in the living room, and I was sitting on the sofa.
So he climbs on my lap and reads his book and asks me from time to time how to say a certain word, and I feel so elated (like only a mom could) that of all the places he could sit he wanted to sit on my lap to read his book. I remember thinking “he won’t want to sit on my lap for much longer” and how the weight of him felt so right and perfect. Our almost 4 year old daughter then decided to climb up next to me and put her head on my left shoulder and look at our son reading. The combined warm weight of them blended with their interest in reading/learning overwhelmed me, and I kissed their heads repeatedly and dropped a few emotional tears onto their heads…just like any other sappy mother. 🙂
And the weight of young children on your lap is light. And the weight of young kids sitting peacefully on your lap is not something you easily want to remove. And the weight of young children is uplifting.
Now, the weight of teenagers is apparently not so glorious…
I went to 
tonight only because one of the interns, 
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