Schoffner

Peace Through Business

"We believe that when you educate a woman, you educate a nation," says Dr. Terry Neese in her video message to the 2010 Peace Through Business In-Country Class. Neese, a former president of NAWBO (National Association of Women Business Owners), is now founder and president of The Institute of Economic Empowerment for Women (IEEW), a non-profit dedicated to empowering women around the globe—economically, politically and socially. Neese believes that if you teach women about entrepreneurship, democracy and freedom, we will indeed have a more peaceful world.

Its 2010 classes just started and IEEW has again focused on two war-torn countries, Afghanistan and Rwanda. In 2009 IEEW held eight-week in-country Peace Through Business classes, where the women students developed extensive business plans. Fifteen women from each class were selected for three weeks of activities, speakers and mentoring with women business owners in the Dallas, TX, area last August. The women participated in the International Women's Economic Summit and leadership development designed to not only enhance the business of the individual participants, but to teach them to be leaders in their community and their country.

"While we're reaching a few people here, they'll reach masses by paying forward the knowledge they've gained here" says Neese. She's not kidding. Rwanda graduate Sarah Mukandutiye began mentoring numerous women on farming projects and the development of business plans within a week after her return. And powerful connections created at the International Women's Economic Summit in August provided 100,000-pounds of clothing, medicine, toys and books for the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization (AFCECO), the non-profit orphanage run by 2009 Afghan graduate Andeisha Farid, a 26-year-old guiding force who grew up a refugee. Farid has vowed to make life different in her country and it's visible in the happy faces she sees in the girls and boys under her care. Her efforts have been featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, resulting in donations of $100,000 within days. 

"I know that what I have learned has prepared me for great destiny," said one 2009 Peace Through Business graduate. I can't think of anything better for a woman business owner to be doing but empowering others through a purposeful undertaking that fills one's heart and can change the world. Terry, in today's email you asked what I was doing on March 8, International Women's Day. That's one of many days that I'll be applauding you for your efforts for peace and understanding in this world!

THE 2009 PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS GRADUATES 

They'll never look at Barbie the same way...

 Allie Pohl's Ideal Woman Necklace is a real conversation starter. When viewed upside-down one might see a cat head, but when you ask Pohl what it is, she'll tell you it's a "Barbie doll crotch." And that's not the part of Barbie society tends to notice. The necklace is a silhouette from the waist to just above the knees, and it's been marketed for just a few months in fun fluorescent colors, plus a version with bling—Swarovski crystals.

Business owner Pohl writes that the necklace reflects her "belief that society is obsessed with the image of the perfect woman....My artistic objective is to critique trends that I find impractical or destructive to the female form. I strive to express the absurdities, conflicts and hypocrisies society presents about 'ideal' women." Each day she's worn one someone has made a comment, so she's set up a blog for necklace owners to share their experiences. 

The necklace is available in purple, turquoise, mirror, black, fluorescent pink, white and yellow on a 16-inch or 24-inch chain. The Ideal Woman is small (2 mm), medium (3 mm), large (5 mm) or extra large (7 mm). Prices range from $20 to $55. The Swarovski crystal one is a special order. 

Walk of Wreaths for Hospice Care

 

If you're a central Iowan, have you been holiday shopping in Valley Junction lately? Some 80 hand-decorated wreaths now are in shop windows, and nearly 70 are eligible for silent auction bids to benefit Hospice of Central Iowa, an organization that is near and dear to my heart. The rest of the festive wreaths will find holiday homes during a live auction taking place on December 17, 7 to 8 p.m. in Railroad Park (between 4th and 5th Streets on Railroad Avenue in downtown West Des Moines). There will be carriage rides, hot cider and caroling, and that evening is the final Valley Junction holiday open house (5 to 9 p.m.)

The Valley Junction Foundation's first Walk of Wreaths honors woman business owner Caren Sturm, owner of The Lagniappe on 5th Street and one of the Foundation's longtime leaders. Caren, who died this summer, was a driving force in the art community and in Valley Junction. A respected, beautiful and passionate woman, Caren brought people together and gave artists a stunning location to showcase their creations. She also was a patient of Hospice of Central Iowa, and I was blessed to call her a friend for many years.

So stop in at Valley Junction in the next few days and look over the wonderful wreaths. Consider putting in a silent bid, or join us on December 17 for festivities and live auction bidding.

 

New Pajamas, New Beginnings

 

There's nothing like a soft, cuddly comfort of new pajamas on a cold winter night. Especially if you're woman who has just arrived at a domestic violence shelter with just the clothes on your back. Not many people would connect starting a new life with getting to choose from a closet of warm pajamas, but it was obvious to Kelly Sargent, founder of Helen's Pajama Party and owner of Brainstorm Marketing in Des Moines. The non-profit is named after Kelly's mother, Helen, who passed away when Kelly was a child. In 2006 Kelly asked 50 friends and family members to buy new-with-tags pajamas for Des Moines-based shelters. Her effort resulted in 150 pairs which she proudly took to a shelter. She left seeing a greater need; she'd delivered only enough for a six-month supply for just one shelter. 

Nearly 3,000 women now seek shelter from domestic abuse each year in Iowa. So today Kelly works to provide each one with a new pair of PJs. Last year Kelly met that goal and expanded to include shelters in Nevada, Arkansas and New York.  She's relentless in her all-consuming efforts, using cash donations to shop for bargain tops to match donated bottoms and working with friends and groups like Rotary and the Central Iowa Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners to fill the need. What difference does one pair of pajamas make? 

Read these words from Sister Charla, the director of New Beginnings in Dubuque: "The first night a woman comes to stay with us, we invite her upstairs to what we call Pajama Dreamland to choose a pair of pajamas that best fit her. We explain that we aren't just talking about size. We are including her dreams and hopes. Today a newly arrived victim, with eyes sparkling for the first time since walking through our door, said that if it were just size it would be easy, but considering what we asked, she said, 'Suddenly I have so many possibilities. Pajamas with flowers: I can plant my own, and no one will stomp them dead. Pajamas with soft colors: I can dream and know my dreams have a chance. Pajamas with puppies: I've always wanted my own dog, and now I could have one. Pajamas with lace and bows: I'm a woman and maybe I can learn to be proud of that. Pajamas with clouds: I can go to sleep and not be afraid.'

Sister Charla continued: "With so many choices, I asked her if one pair would be enough, and she said, 'To have one sweet dream is more than anything I have ever known. One is enough.'"

Bet you didn't know a pair of PJs could evoke such thoughts about one's future. I look at pajamas in a whole new way now, and I purchased a leopard pair for my donation this year. I hope you'll consider helping Kelly's indefatigable effort to make life better, one pair of pajamas at a time. Most needed are small, medium and 2X at this time.

WBO Pet Project

We aren't our work. I've been telling myself that for years whenever I get too caught up in being a business owner. Work is not my identify. So I get excited when other women business owners show their passions in ways other than building a profitable business. With expertise and good customer service we can meet client needs, but sometimes what most fills our hearts is in the nonprofit arena.

Three women I know — Becky Mollenkamp (Becky Mollenkamp Creative Services), Sara Henderson (SOS-Small Office Solutions) and Karla Rendall (Liberty Bank) — have recently combined forces with two other concerned pet lovers (Monica Wimber of McKee, Voorhees & Sease and marketer Holly Hartling) to create The Pet Project Midwest, a non-profit that complements current local animal organizations by providing services they don't offer. They started Iowa Pet Alert -- sort of an "Amber Alert" for animals -- and use social media (Facebook and Twitter [@IAPetAlert]) to let folks know that a pet has been lost or found. The goal: speed the reconnection of pets and their owners. Aren't these women something?

They're also paying attention to the economy. You've no doubt heard of the increase in homeless pets; their owners have fallen on hard times and can't afford the cost of feeding and caring for their animals. So The Pet Project Midwest plans to open a Pet Pantry -- sort of a food bank for animals -- in January and is accepting donations of products to stock their shelves. Of course, they're also accepting dollars, but their 501(c)(3) status won't come through until early 2010 (so $ are not tax deductible yet, but will be soon).

They need unopened puppy and dog food, unopened cat and kitten food, collars, leashes, pet beds, kennels, dog houses, cat litter, litter boxes, flea/tick medicine, pet shampoo, nail trimmers/ files and brushes. They'll also take manufacturers' coupons to help them purchase pet products at reduced prices. Please consider putting them on your holiday list. I've never bought dog food...before last week! And it was for them.

What's your bad business habit?

You may recall my writing (October 6) about one of my bad business habits: multitasking. To improve my focus, I turned off the distracting "ping" that alerts me that a new email has just arrived. It's been 42 days, and I still have it off. Yes, it's helped me avoid interruptions, and I'm showing small improvements in keeping myself on one project at a time.

I heard years ago that it took 12 days to create a new habit, and I thought that if something could be done in less than two weeks, maybe there was a chance for me to correct some behaviors I didn't care for in myself. Well, this morning I read a new time line: 30 to 60 days for a new habit. I prefer to think in baby steps, a day at a time, but I know I have a long way to go (well beyond 60 days) to break out of my years of multitasking madness.

That two-month timeframe came from Karen Leland's blog on Web Worker Daily: Teach an Old Dog New Tricks: How to Break Bad Work Habits. Her bad habit: impatience. (I can identify with that since I sometimes jump to another project if I'm not coming up with the creativity and flow that I'm looking for when I'm working. I always think I'll "clear my mind" and all will be well when I pick it up again and view the project with fresh eyes and a recharged brain.

Karen's simple formula for getting started is what I'm actually doing with multitasking:

Step 1 - Call out the bad habit and identify its negative consequences. When you spell out the crazy-making, frustration or lack of productivity caused by your bad habit, you feel pretty wimpy about continuing it. "Naming the habit" sounds like it should be easy, but creating a true awareness and verbalizing it may not be that simple. Sometimes it can be uncomfortable to be honest about where there's "room for self-improvement." For some, we're looking at ourselves from a new perspective, and we may prefer to just ignore what we see.

Step 2 - Create alternative actions. We can't just think "I gotta change." We need to identify solid action steps to take toward that change...and then take them. That's building a new pathway in the brain that over time will become stronger than your known mode of operation. It's not too late to form new neural connections, folks; it just takes a while to rewire ourselves. And, as I well know, nothing will change if we don't want things to be different and choose to act.

Who is flying the plane?

I've been reading Malcom Gladwell's The Outliers: The Story of Success. It focuses on factors beyond intelligence and ambition in the lives of people whose achievements fall outside normal experiences. Gladwell makes a case for the impact of generation, family, culture, class—even the year you were born—on your human potential. 

The chapter I can't stop thinking about is "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes." It details how crashes "are much more likely to be the result of an accumulation of minor difficulties and seemingly trivial malfunctions" than something like a rudder snapping off in midair. Yes, weather, minor technical problems, the stress of delayed flights and fuel-exhausting holding patterns, etc. can be contributors. But Gladwell says the typical accident involves seven consecutive human errors, one made on top of another that combine for catastrophe. 

In 52 percent of crashes, the pilot had been awake for 12 hours or more at the time of the crash, and in 44 percent of disasters the pilot and co-pilot hadn't flown together before. Then Gladwell provides a ton of fascinating supportive information (including conversations between pilots, co-pilots and air traffic controllers) and concludes: "Planes are safer when the least experienced (the co-pilot) is flying, because it means the second pilot (the captain) is NOT going to be afraid to speak up" to provide course corrections and other input. One person is supposed to be checking the other, and they're to be working cooperatively.

So crashes in commercial airlines have been far more likely to happen when the captain is IN the "flying seat," writes Gladwell. And when pilots and co-pilots come from a culture where respect for one's superior reigns strong, airline disasters had resulted because of the lack of clear and direct communication between the two and with air traffic controllers. A first officer can be more hesitant to "correct" his superior officer. But a captain who is not at the controls isn't concerned about being polite and using mitigating language to hint that a correction needs to happen. He "commands" and the first officer doing the flying listens and obeys. 

That got me thinking. It's not one thing that usually pushes us over the edge on any business day, but an accumulation of lots of little things. And so I ask myself:  Am I truly awake and watchful for "the accumulation of minor difficulties and seemingly trivial malfunctions" in my business, or am I oblivious?

I try to focus on "must do" priorities, the big stuff, the writing projects on my desk that take precedent because of their deadlines and importance. The "little" things along the way that I need to address get put aside for later action, sometime when I'm tired and I can be on autopilot. Well, autopilot can malfunction. Maybe we shouldn't sweat the small stuff, but don't miss dealing with it either. It can build into a disaster. 

Plus, as a sole proprietor, I'm asking, Can I be the pilot...and the copilot? Doubt it. So do I have the right checks and balances in place to keep my craft on course...or able to make course corrections as needed? After 30 years I'd hope so, but the map of the world and business keep changing.  But If you have experienced and trusted employees, do you let them play the co-pilot role and sometimes fly the plane? Like the pilots who are supposed to be working cooperatively, can they be honest and direct or do they have to watch their verbiage because of your authority or attitude? Gladwell is always good for the getting people to look at life a little differently.

IQ, EQ and now...TQ

Yes, there was a Trust Quotient (TQ) even before unscrupulous investment bankers caused consumers to question everyone's truth in the marketplace.  But your mother's advice to "Just trust your gut" has morphed. Now the world even has "trust consultants."

Today we're connected worldwide, but it can be impersonal. In this age of social media relationships and speed networking opportunities, people are trying to determine who to trust (because that's who we want to do business with) as well as how we can best exhibit our ability to be trusted (so people will want to do business with us). 

In 2001 David H. Maister, with Charles H. Green and Robert W. Galford, published The Trusted Advisor, stating that professionals must earn the trust of their clients and keep re-earning it throughout their careers. They broke trust into component parts that, when assembled, could move an outside advisor to a client's inner sanctum. Green's work is the basis for a TQ self-diagnostic formula/equation from The Trusted Advisor. Basically the equation is "credibility + reliability + intimacy and a low level of self orientation = TQ (trustworthiness).

In 2008 Jeffrey Gitomer came out with his Little Teal Book of Trust: How to Become a Trusted Advisor in Sales, Business, and Life. He says there's no simple formula for trust, but gives a step-by-step game plan to achieve it. This year Andrew Sobel  published All For One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnership. He also has a model for developing enduring client relationships.

And on Friday of this week, there's a Trust Summit in New York City, featuring four leading consultants on trust in the business world: Maister and Green (mentioned above) and social media gurus Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, co-authors of the 2009 book Trust Agents; Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust. Brogan and Green say the most valuable online currency isn't the dollar, but trust itself. 

The economic recession has created changes internally and externally for most companies. Perhaps the people who loved doing business with you and only you are gone from a client's company. Or maybe clients have cut back on purchases of products and services you painstakingly provided in the past. Some might have pulled projects in-house to provide work for their own employees. Whatever the case, take a minute to think about trust and its role in solidifying your business reputation. 

Will You Join Me in Multitaskers Anonymous?

I'm taking the pledge.  For such reasons as needing to calm myself, restore focus and have fewer stacks of paper at my fingertips, I'm now trying to do just one thing at a time. After years of believing I could only accomplish all my goals and responsibilities by multitasking, I think it probably would be easier to have my tonsils removed through one of my big toe nails than to put the kibosh on managing multiple priorities in rapid-fire succession or simultaneously.

In the past I've felt pretty good about all I could get done in a day, but maybe my satisfaction with "overachieving" has too many nasty side effects.  For several years researchers have told the consequences of multitasking: 

• we're really not as efficient as we think (I never believed that)
• the chances of retaining information drops more rapidly when we aren't wholly focused on one item at a time (that might be possible, might not)
• by perpetuating a lack of ability to focus we're shortening our memories (oh, please, let that not be true)
• multitasking could be a leading cause of stress, depression and even early memory loss (okay, I get it; I need to stop multitasking)

I can't go cold turkey. But I'm taking baby steps. So far I have three to embrace.

* I decided to ignore the "ping" telling me that yet another email has arrived. I'm not good at this, so I finally turned off the "ping." New plan: I'm going to try to deal with emails in the first hour of the morning, then only look at them when I switch projects, before I stop for lunch or late in the day when my mind needs a little time-out. 

•  When random things I need to do pop into my head while I'm working at my desk, I frequently jump up, take a little break and do them so I won't forget. Talk about a productivity killer. I've now devoted the blue "stickie" (a Post-it note on my Mac) to "totally unrelated work needs to remember" and I type thoughts there as my brain shouts them out. The green "Stickie" gets "totally unrelated home needs to remember."  Both can be dealt with at the end of the day. 

•  Since overlapping deadlines can drive me to multitasking madness, I'm taking a good look at projects to be sure that my clients and I are setting realistic expectations and deadlines. Will clients think I'm extraordinary—the only person they'll ever turn to again for services—if I get a project done in two days when they don't need it until next a week? Of course I want to believe that!  Won't they be pleased and see my commitment to customer service when I drop everything to make them the center of my universe and deliver what's needed without delay? Sure, Pam, they'll NEVER forget that! 

In many cases, I'm sure that I'm the problem, NOT the client's needs. But when they suggested a tough turn around time, I'm going to try saying, "That's not going to work for me, but I could get it to you on (date)." Many times in my 30 years I've rushed to do a project that was needed right now, only to have my draft sit for a month or two because the company got busy taking good care of its customers and put their own needs on hold.

I admit I get an incredible rush from getting though a daily to-do list while also handling more than a handful of unexpected issues. That's a difficult high to give up. But I'll work on it: "Hi, I'm Pam, and I want to quietly focus on one thing at a time so that everyone gets my best from me...and I get to keep my memory."

“Words have always been changed by people; and people have always been changed by words.”

I've frequently turned to my books of quotations when I needed inspiration for a headline, speech, promotional piece or even filler for a newsletter.  I'd find a nugget that would resonate, smile at the perfect wording, and use it for my client. But I never thought of putting a plethora of those powerful statements on three-by-five cards to paper my walls, or posting one of them in my office in hopes that it might provide a teachable moment for someone who walked into my workplace. But Dr. Mardy Grothe has me thinking today. That headline is a Grothe original.

Grothe started his quotation journey in college (thanks to Thoreau's Walden), covering his apartment's walls in the inspirational wordings that he'd discover daily. Want to change your life or help someone change theirs? Post some thought-provoking quotes in your business. You'll become the company's "philosophical officer," says Grothe, who's billed as America's most popular quotation anthologist. The psychologist turned business consultant and platform speaker has parlayed his passion for quotes into five books for language lovers (written within one decade!): Ifferisms, Oxymoronica, I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like, Viva la Repartee, and Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You. He shared tidbits from those books and kept his audience well-entertained on September 15 at the Central Library in Des Moines.

Sixty-seven-year-old Grothe admits he'd frequently use a thought-provoking quote as a response to a patient in his clinical practice in Boston. Does he "talk in quotations" in conversations to family members? Nope, he says, but Grothe's heard that a marriage has been saved by his "Quotes of the Week" newsletter. The subscriber now makes his wife breakfast and reads her Grothe's email epistle every Sunday.

One couple attending the Des Moines presentation read Grothe's books to each other, and Grothe says that reading to your partner is an excellent relationship-builder for couples. Hmm. I purchased his "Viva la Repartee: Clever Comebacks and Witty Retorts from History's Great Wits and Wordsmiths."  Start expecting the Schoffners to be sharing better wisecracks and off-the-cuff comments in the weeks ahead.

Dr. Mardy Grothe