Archive for the Leadership
I was working on another project this morning at my kitchen table with the window open. It’s a typical Santa Ana fall weekend in San Diego where it feels like the threat of fires. When you’ve lived here through both the Cedar and the Witch Creek fires, your sensors are up for that kind of stuff in the fall. Both of those fires came within a mile of my home. Luckily, we survived with minor damage and big messes from both. Comparitively speaking, over 400 homes in my community were lost last year. It was a devastating time.
As you may have heard on the news, fires are raging in Santa Barbara and north of Los Angeles. I’ve been consciously trying not to turn on the TV or Radio this morning to protect myself from the negative energy of the news. This is often my process when I’m writing or working as I’m more productive. However, I did pop onto to Twitter for a quick five minutes.
Within one minute, I knew that fire was threatening somewhere close the Santa Clarita valley (or so I thought). I quickly thought of three twitter friends I had met in Ventura a few weeks ago: @respres, @jesseluna and @lindaptaylor. I sent them a tweet to come to San Diego if they felt at risk. They responded within seconds that they were fine but another twitter freind @QueenofSpain was in more danger. I don’t know @QueenofSpain but because she’s in their twitter tribe, she’s now in mine. That’s how it works. Their friends are my friends and so on. Below is our twitter streams. Start from the bottom and read up.
So, cross your fingers for @queenofspain and everyone else in the fire areas.
I wrote this post quickly to show you the enormous power of twitter. It’s so incredibly useful in times like this and can give you news faster than any other source available to us. Just think what it could do for your personal brand or your business. Pretty incredible possibilities huh?
Understand why I’m still having an affair with Twitter??
- QueenofSpain: @ResPres yeah, um…..not liking the direction this puppy is moving
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amarquart: @Karoli so winds 2 not helping keep contained? worried 4 u & @queenofspain… no relief insight (weather)?about 1 hour ago · Reply · View Tweet
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meresgreen: @QueenofSpain can you get out?
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QueenofSpain: @tsalagi1 we’re ok. We’re not in any immediate danger. Fire is a good distance. Worse for my son to be in this smoke.
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QueenofSpain: I-5 between 405 and the 126 is now shut. SO yeah, that’s us. Don’t come visit
about 1 hour ago · Reply · View Tweet
I’m truly amazed at feedback I’ve received in response to my post on Proposition 8: Why Should the Majority Get to Choose How the Minority Lives?. In addition to the 16 comments on the blogpost itself, I’ve received emails, phone calls, twitter tweets & direct messages, facebook messages, phonecalls and people walking up to me to chat. It’s been so enlightening. Below are some demographics about the folks that have reached out to me:
- 90% of the group voted no for Prop 8.
- Most of them have someone in their family that is gay and therefore directly affected by the law.
- Most were frustrated that a Utah constituency directly contributed money to the passing of a California law.
- A small % felt that the church should decide who was “married”.
- Many mentioned their concern that our children would be taught to hate minorities as a result of this law passage.
- Some didn’t have any direct ties to anyone Gay but were a minority and related to minority causes. Thus, wanted freedom for all.
- Everyone wants to know if I think there’s anything they can still do now to make a difference.
As for me, I’m disappointed that I didn’t write my post a month earlier and that I didn’t do more to influence the defeat of this proposition. Why? Because I think the public was miseducated, scared and that it passed for all the wrong reasons.
I am a straight, married, white female. So, why am I so impassioned about this topic? I want my daughter to grow up understanding equality and love for all…not hate and I feel that discrimination teaches hate. I grew up in a small town where very few black families lived. My grandparents had very racist views that just never sat well with me. I wish that bias could be erased for my daughter’s children. Additionally, focusing our energy on topics like this takes our focus away from solving what I see as more important topics like promoting flexible work for all of you.
There are things you can still do if you’re interested in being a Proponent of No on Proposition 8.
- See this great blog at After Ellen which contains some great celebrity pictures and stories.
- This Saturday is National Protest Day. Check out JointheImpact.com for more information about how you can participate in this national event.
- Join the When/If Prop 8 Passes, We’ll Do Something About It Facebook group.
Lastly, I think this video says everything there is to know about this topic. Please take the short 4 minutes it takes to watch it.
Refuse to Hate from Refuse to Hate on Vimeo.
Since last week’s election, you have inevitably saw some of the statistics covering how President Obama maximized social media tools to connect with his constituents. During his campaign, he reached out to connect with people using the internet through Facebook, Linked In, My Space, Twitter, and other social media tools. He even paused to email a thank you note to his team before his acceptance speech. Undeniably, he had many competitive advantages over John McCain, but one cannot debate that social media played a huge part in his election.
President Obama’s ability to reach out and connect with Voters, specifically Generation Y is due to the fact that he embraced their language: texting and communicating with social media tools. Compare this to John McCain, clearly a novice, and it’s easy to see how a younger generation might feel they have only one clear choice for President. They just can’t relate to someone who can’t communicate with the tools of today. It’s a text book example of the generation gap.
So you say, interesting enough but how does this impact me, the working mother?
Think about it for a minute. If Barrack Obama can use Social Media to have a landslide competitive advantage over his competition, then why can’t you? If you’re an entrepreneur or you’ve been thinking about starting a venture, what can you learn from this recent presidential election? What can you implement for your own business? What can you plagiarize from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign? If our President used Linked In, Facebook, My Space, Twitter, why wouldn’t you? After all, he did spend millions on his campaign, likely the largest budget for market research this year. Why wouldn’t you maximize the research that he’s already done and copy that for your own business?
Clearly, I am a Social Media evangelist. I believe that Social Media is the path for working mothers to flexible work. In fact, I believe that it’s the path for not only working mothers but for anyone looking to lead a more independent lifestyle. Think about it. For the first time in history, the playing field has been equalized by the internet. We’ve all got the power to step up to the plate and hit a home run. Why shouldn’t it be you?
So, go see what your new President did to get elected and copy, copy, copy. Working moms, the man just showed you exactly how to do it. All we have to do is watch, listen and implement for our own businesses. How lucky are we to be living in these times?
Got examples of things you’ve already done? Love to hear from you so that other moms can learn! Leave a comment and if you like this post. Please stumble it!
Here are a few other interesting articles covering our new President’s Social Media success and predictions about how he might continue to use it moving forward:
Mashable: How Will President Obama Use His Massive Social Media Influence?
Search Marketing Gurus: Barack Obama: The First Social Media President?
Advertising Age: Obama’s Rivals Should Steal From His Social Playbook
Read Write Web: Obama’s Social Media Advantage
Yes, I know. This topic is controversial…especially to working mothers. Well, I guess I mean to say to any mother or any parent for that matter.
As some of my Twitter buddies know, I was in Hollywood over the weekend. As I drove down Santa Monica boulevard, I knew I’d be late for a meeting with Denise Wakeman of The BlogSquad (more on Denise coming soon) due to all of the Proposition 8 demonstrators lining the street. The level of energy was noticably high as people yelled and sang and honked their car horns on every block in support of gay marriage. Today, as I drove through my conservative San Diego neighborhood lined with demonstrators in the rain, the energy was much different. These demonstrators equally as passionate, had showed up to urge us all to Vote “Yes”.
Bottom line for me is that the whole issue feels like discriminition all over again just like with females, jews and blacks in historical times. Why should I (an upper class, caucasion, female) get to decide how a minority lives their life? I am the more fortunate (supposedly). Shouldn’t I lead by example and create systems to make society work for everyone? Call me Pollyanna but can’t we all have everything? For example, if I’m afraid that allowing a gay person to have a child means my child will be taught something I don’t like in school, shouldn’t I address the laws around what is taught in the public school system in lieu of taking away a fundamental right from someone? Is it really okay for me to have that much power over someone else’s human rights?
I do agree that there are some surrounding complications with what is age appropriate to be taught in schools but let’s address those issues in separate laws and make this one purely about gay rights. Isn’t the real issue about whether two people in a loving union can provide a good home to raise children together? My daughter has a friend in her class with two mommies. She also goes to a Jewish preschool and we’re not Jewish. I’m glad that she’s exposed to diversity at such young age and I hope when she’s my age that the world will be a lot more embracing of differences. I love being around and learning from people who aren’t like me and I want to rejoyce in them. It doesn’t mean I want to be like them. It just means I want to understand them and maybe look through their eyes for a bit.
Whether you are for or against Gay marriage, I’d like to ask you to think about one thing. You could be a minority someday. Your life could change in an instant. Would you want someone to make decisions about your life that hadn’t walked in your shoes? Take Michael J. Fox, for example. He’s now a minority due to Parkinson’s Disease and he’s now a proponent for Stem Cell Research, another highly controversial and highly debated topic. Two weeks ago, I heard him talk about this topic at The Women’s Conference. I heard him say how all he really wanted to do was get the two opposing groups at the top of the Stem Cell issue in the same room for a chat. You know what he said he learned? “For the first time in my life, I realized that because of politics and money, there are just people out there that don’t want those conversations to even happen.” Folks, we’re talking about medical research that any one of us might need some day to save one of our children’s lives. Michael J. Fox is using his personal fortune, fame, pain and influence to fund this cause and he can’t get people in a room for a conversation. What’s happened to us?
Because you are a Six Figure Mom and you’re smart and educated, I have high expectations from you. So I urge you. If you haven’t voted yet, regardless of which way you are voting today. Do one thing for me? Make sure you are making your choice for all the right reasons, okay?? Thanks for indulging me today. I just couldn’t leave this one unsaid.
As I walked into a meeting Wednesday afternoon, my phone vibrated with a new email message. “angiesmom is following you on Twitter”. I got a huge grin on my face. My mom is following me-too cute! You see, my mom is young. She graduated early from high school (read brain child), got married at age 18 and had me when she was 19. We grew up together, more like sisters than mother-daughter. She’s so playful and pretty into technology for the baby boomer that she is. (She knew the intricacies of AOL long before I did).
I haven’t ever talked with my mother about Twitter but she reads my blog so I guess she knows about the affair. Likely, she thought she better get more informed to see if an intervention is necessary
My mom has never been the stay-at-home, PTA president type. She’s always worked and been a career woman. Over the years, I’ve wished that she had stayed home with me and sometimes resented that she hadn’t. This summer, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my relationships with the people in my life. This included the one with my mother. As you guys know, mother-daughter relationships are always complex. We daughters put a lot of pressure on our mothers don’t we? I often think about what’s coming back to me from my daughter in the future…I’m sure in volumes to the nth degree.
What my summer of reflection has brought me to with my mom is that she supports me in all kinds of ways. Ways that are her own. No, she’s not a PTA mom but that’s not who she is. As I wrote in my last post, this seems to be the age of authenticity. My mom’s been living that message for a long time. She’s been steadfastly her as long as I can remember…Independently Nina. Here I am striving to be as clean and real as I can be and I’ve had a role model doing it right in front of me for as long as I’ve been alive. What do you know?
My mom gave me the coffee cup in the picture above sometime during my sophomore year in college. I’ve had it in every office I’ve ever had. She likely never knew how many times I shut my door, grabbed it during a tough afternoon in the office, had a soothing cup of tea in lieu of losing my temper over a negotiation gone sour. It really is the little things that keep us going sometimes isn’t it?
So, this week, I’ve received another new gift from my mom. One that, until now, she didn’t know how much it means to me. Because, after all, I’m really in love with Twitter and the magnitude of it’s power for all working moms and business owners.
My mom is following me on Twitter. Amazing! Thanks for everything Mom!
(Note, my moms twitter name isn’t Angiesmom. I’ll protect her a little until she gets the hang of things. Didn’t want her to have 500 followers overnight! You can, however, follow me @aaswartz on Twitter)
Last Thursday night I attended the 15th Annual Women Who Mean Business Awards Ceremony presented by the San Diego Business Journal and Procopio. I was among 111 finalists and I had also nominated two other women. I’ve never been more proud to be a loser! As I sat at a table of 12 people I didn’t know who wanted to know my story as an honoree, I watched and read the details of each nominee as they were featured on three large screens in the front of the room. I was in awe of the talent surrounding me. What an esteemed and accomplished group of women doing great things in our San Diego community.
As I drove to the event that evening, I was having a phone conversation with a friend who couldn’t understand as I explained that winning wasn’t important to me. My friend was coaching me that the only reason I wouldn’t win was because I hadn’t set my intention to. I was laughing and trying to explain that I was already a winner and that getting a trophy just wasn’t that important to me. I was in a very calm state of mind with no expectations for the evening.
I hung up the phone and revisited the following as I prepared to enter the ceremony:
- The day Six Figure Moms Club chose me (and believe me, it chose me long before I ever embraced it), i started winning because I’ve been so inspired by every working mother I’ve ever met.
- Knowing that another working mom has the confidence in me to nominate me for an esteemed award like this already makes me feel like a winner.
- The members of the Six Figure Moms Club tribe and the commentors on my blog are the awards that drive me to push harder.
I’m different today now that I own my own businesses than I was in the competitive, corporate world and I’m proud of my transformation. I was pretty competitive in my old self. I still am but I have to say I like my self actualized self a lot better. I’m putting this out there because I know there are some of you that need to cross the same bridge that I have and it’s a bit scary. Believe me, I know. But let me tell you…it’s so worth it. Take it from a loser. You might not win a trophy…but you’ll win much more.
Just so you know, the winners were really phenomenal, here are just a few examples:
- Barbara Bry, Founder of Athena and Proflowers.com and Producer and co-host of Radio Show, “I’m There for You Baby:The Entrepreneur’s Guide to the Galaxy” et al
- Pat Brown, NBC 7/39 Emmy Award Winning Journalist and community servant
- Midge Constanza, Women’s Rights Advocate and Assistant to President for Public Liaison to President Jimmy Carter
- Debra Emerson, Executive Director, St. Madeleine Sophie’s Center, Adult Developmental Disabilities Center]
- Ruby Randall, COO Vistage International, and past CEO of Anthony Robbins Companies
It’s been so interesting to me lately to watch the faces of people when they ask me what I do and I answer that I’m a blogger. Of course, my answer includes a few other things too (executive coach, speaker, web 2.0 evangelist and a writer) but the blogger part always stops people in their tracks. If someone isn’t intimate with the blog community, their face gets distorted, they get a somewhat condescending smile and start asking questions. “You do what now?”
I’m not offended. I’m actually quite flattered. You see, I perceive bloggers as cutting edge and I’m happy to consider myself as part of a new and upcoming industry. However, uninformed people don’t take me serious as a blogger. They think I’m playing. It’s so entertaining to me how people react to things they don’t understand.
You see, blogging is just another form of media like TV, Radio, Magazines, Newspapers, Outdoor Advertising. You can make money with blogging similarly to how Dr. Phil or Oprah make money with TV. It’s all about personal branding and having a consistent, authentic message. Not only is it another form of media, it’s the newest form and it’s GROWING…while other mediums are decreasing.
A career in blogging is a huge, personal commitment. I spend at least 20 hours per week on my blog/internet presence. That includes writing, marketing, programming, search engine optimization, strategy, research, benchmarking, making friends in the blogosphere, monetization, researching, helping friends in the blogosphere and much more. And get this, 20 hours doesn’t seem like nearly enough. (This doesn’t even include my torrid relationship with Twitter. Remember that from my previous posts? And, by the way, if you aren’t already, follow me @aaswartz on Twitter)
So, why am I sharing this and why is important to you? A couple of reasons:
- I want you to open your minds to the outside-of-the-box career options that you might not have considered yet as a working mother. Perhaps there is something right there that could make a huge difference in your happy factor.
- The Tipping Point for the Web 2.0 world is getting closer every day. Given the current economic situation and where the stock market is, might you want to consider investments in Web 2.0 space when you are thinking about reinvesting your money??? I will be. If you are skeptic about the Web 2.0 Tipping point. Check out my recent comment at Harvard Business Publications.
- The Social Media community is fresh and inspiring. They have a lot to teach us. Go meet them and see what you can learn. The industry is fast paced, upbeat, positive and so inspirational. Why wouldn’t you?
Yesterday, it was my great pleasure to attend Social Media Simplified in Ventura, Ca with some of the brightest and most successful people in the industry. Make sure to stop back later this week when I’ll be talking more about what I learned from Mari Smith (The Pied Piper of Facebook), Deb Michek(Twitter Evangelist Coach Deb), Denise Wakeman (The Blog Squad), Linda P Taylor (”Insider Secrets”), Nancy Marmelejo (Viva Visability) and Simon Leung (Google SEO expert).
Hint Hint: If you can’t wait to read my post and you’re feeling twitventurous, go to http://www.search.twitter.comand search on #smsv and you’ll see all the tweets related to this wonderful event. Pretty sweet huh? And you wonder why I’m having an affair with Twitter?
This post is my contribution to Blog Action Day, joining thousands of other bloggers to write about one topic for a single day. This year’s topic is poverty.
I grew up in Southern Ohio in a county with one of the highest unemployment rates in the state. Incidentally, also close to another county where the number of drug trafficking arrests were also high (no pun intended). Families who lived on welfare were abundant.
I remember houses that still didn’t have inside toilets and days when families would gather to get government subsidized foods like cheese. Five pound blocks of cheese were handed out from the back of 18 wheeler trucks to long lines of people who drove a long way. Sometimes this subsidized food was the only protein in a family’s diet.
The summer of my sophomore year in college I worked as a mentor for the Job Training Partnership Act-Youth Training Program. The government funded program served to provide jobs for kids 14-21 from low income families and to provide job training. As mentors, we taught resume writing, job search, professionalism, interviewing skills, self image, self esteem, and general life skills. The kids were placed at job sites all around the county and did jobs ranging from working as a court assistant to painting bridges.
The main thing I learned from this summer was that I could make a difference in these kids’ lives just by showing them that they could break the welfare cycle in their families. You see, many of them thought that their mission in life was to collect welfare checks. That was all they knew. Their parents had been living this cycle for generations so they were waiting to turn 18 and earn their place in the welfare ranks. I was so saddened and moved by this fact that I worked harder to connect with them and show them that I was not so different.
Although my family wasn’t on welfare, we certainly weren’t wealthy and I was putting my self through school at Ohio University. I had some help from my parents, a few scholarships but I worked two, sometimes three jobs to make it all work. I wanted these kids to know that they had to strive for something better and that they had the power to change. How is this related to Poverty you ask? Were they starving? Some of them were, Yes. But the bigger picture is that they weren’t contributing everything they could back to the society. They were settling…and they didn’t even know it! What if each one of these kids had a mentor that helped them be their personal best? What could THEY do to solve poverty? The five of us mentors did what we could over the summer to lead by example and to influence our teams to step up to their lives. We had a lot of fun with them and tried to be leaders. They made us better too and taught us a lot about leadership as well.
This summer job changed me forever and had a tremendous effect on my views of welfare and handouts. To this day, I don’t donate money to causes that have no built in efforts to improve the process and I never give money to people on the streets. This isn’t because I’m unsympathetic, it’s because I believe in systems to make things better and process improvement and making a bigger difference than just 50 cents in someone’s hand. I certainly don’t mean to suggest that I have the answers. I haven’t studied the welfare system in detail. I am an armchair opinionator at best, but I do know that there is no incentive to change anything. What if we used all that money to motivate people to end poverty?
Six Figure Moms, what are you doing to teach your kids about world poverty? As important, what are you teaching them about poverty in the US? Where I live in sunny San Diego, it’s easy to think that every body lives a happy, prosperous life but that just isn’t the case. In the spirit of giving in December, our Six Figure Moms Club event will focus on Microfinance. Look for more details coming soon on our events page.
Hope you can join us. Today, take some time to visit other blogs. As of the time of this post, there are over 11,000 bloggers participating in Blog Action Day writing about Poverty. I’m excited to read what they’ve written and I hope you are too.
Ok, I admit it. I’m crazy in love with Twitter. Just like my historical attractions to men, this is happening with Twitter because I’m learning things I never even conceived. My relationship with Twitter started about six months ago when we casually started seeing each other. I signed up for a twitter account and then installed the Twitter application on my facebook account. By doing this, I could tweet and my updates would show up in Twitter and on my Facebook page as “status updates”. So efficient which really does it for me. I thought Twitter and I knew each other pretty well. But little did I know, our relationship, analogous to relationships with men, was to grow in layers.
Next I went to Blog World Expo, a true Twitter explosion. The entire conference was run using Twitter as it’s heartbeat. Below are just a few examples of Twitter’s usage.
- The conference leaders created a unique identifier (a hash code in Twitter lingo) for the conference and instructed attendees to identify all messages with this code. That allowed us to track all conference related tweets.
- Most sessions had twitter displayed on the presentation screen so that attendees and seminar leaders could have live, direct communication during presentations which made for a real-time, interactive learning experience. This also allowed participants to almost be in two places at once since you could be reading other seminar tweets from other rooms.
- Most conference related communication was done using Twitter. (This included anything related to conference materials, schedule changes, meetings, after hours events, lunch, etc.)
I really started to get the power of Twitter for business and my heart raced faster.
The next big step in our relationship was the Vice Presidential Debate last Thursday. Did you realize that on certain channels, Americans could tweet their thoughts while Sarah Palin and Joe Biden were debating. Check out Hack the Debate? Seriously! Tweeps were sending their tweets into public television and they were appearing across the bottom of the TV screen complete with their Twitter names and pictures. They were likely censored but this was an historic moment for social media. Think about that. People all around the globe had the opportunity to weigh in on the VP debate. I kept thinking, “the only way this is really happening is if the government does not really grasp how Twitter works”. So incredible. I couldn’t sleep well that night thinking about the possibilities for working women and the next thing that Twitter would teach me. What WOULD be next?
So, the next thing was a random encounter with a work colleague I hadn’t seen in three years. I started to update him about me. He stopped me and said, “I know all about you Angie. In fact, a bunch of us were just talking about you at lunch. We were talking about how often you update your facebook page. We keep track of what you’re up to and in fact I know who you had lunch with yesterday.” A bit embarassing for me that this friend thought I had nothing better to do than update my facebook page so I asked him if he knew about my friend Twitter. He did not. So, what’s a girl to do to explain her relationships? Until the world catches up, it’s nothing but opportunity for those of in the know.
So why am I choosing to out myself and my relationship with Twitter? Because ladies, each day the picture becomes clearer and clearer to me that there are so many opportunities for all of you who have even a slight interest in the internet to create so many great opportunities for yourself. Coincidentally, our live Six Figure Moms Club meeting in San Diego this week covers this topic. You can reengineer your career using New Media options if you want to.
If you would like to learn more about Twitter (or New Media in general), check out expert, Mari Smith’s, Twitter LIngo Demystified
Mari is amazing and continues to stay on the cutting edge of New Media as it seems she in a different learning conference every other day. If you only choose to follow one person on Twitter. She’s a great person to start with. I’ll be writing a post about her soon so stay tuned for more on Mari.
I’ve talked with women all over the US about the loss of identity that often occurs when professional women have children. This feeling seems to be common among executive women that I speak to who usually range in ages between 30 to 45.
For example, I once interviewed a woman who was previously a partner in a very large law firm in Washington DC making over $.5 Million per year. Prior to deciding to start a family, she was the major breadwinner for her family. Once she and her husband embarked upon becoming three, they decided her husband’s career would become the focus and hers would take the back seat.
They left DC and relocated to the Midwest where he settled into a lucrative lead position in a prominent company. She got pregnant, had a baby and started consulting. At the time of our interview, she was a bit lost and although she was doing great work and award winning research, she felt uncomfortable charging for her services. Why is this? It is certainly a phenomenon I see in many women once they off ramp from their high powered careers to care for their children. It’s like our identities are so tied to success and the path that planned for ourselves that we don’t know what to do once we take a detour. What’s up with that? Do we feel guilty? Are we just confused? Can it be that we have tied our self worth so deeply to our salaries that we don’t know what to do once we take a different path? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic so please post your comments and let’s discuss.
Very interestingly and conversely though, women just a few years younger and still without children, can’t imagine this being an issue. Last Friday, I had a discussion with Ginger, Founder of Girls Just Want to Have Funds , a 20 something women’s finance group in Washington DC. Ginger posed the question of “Why Do Professional Women Lose Confidence?” to her blog readers. These readers are a few years younger, well educated and most do not yet have children. They are likely the Six Figure Moms of the future. The responses indicate that this group of educated, young ladies feel they will not experience this same emotion once children enter there lives. Hmmm. I’ll be interested to watch them and to understand whether a younger generation is better equipped to deal with this juggle/struggle. It will be interesting to watch their responses over the next few days.
What do you think? My bet is, as sorry as I am to say this, that unless they’ve been able to build a flexible career for themself already, they’ll be dealing with the same issues that you Six Figure Moms of today are. What CAN we do to help create a different path for them? Well, for one, if you are in a supervisory role, think about what you can do to make change. If you have power, you can be a change agent. What’s stopping you? Your image? Shame Shame ladies!