I always like to do something special in January every year.  I feel it’s so important that we take a pause and really devote some focused attention to our personal goals and intentions for the coming year.  It’s critical to keep our eye on where we want to go, especially for working mothers.  If you want any chance at work life balance, you have to put yourself in the driver’s seat and do some serious planning.

For our January events, I like the environment to be really nice so that you hard working mothers can relax and feel comfortable to enjoy yourselves and let your creative minds flow.  I want great food, great wine (a given, right? besides-what would Gary Vaynerchuk say if we had no wine and no sniffy-sniff?), great ambiance, great company (you provide that part and inspiring reading for a little advance prep to get you into the right mindset.

So, I started looking for the advance reading and I googled vision boards.  The first thing that came up was Joyce Schwarz’s The Vision Board Book.  I clicked through and remembered that Joyce and I had met last year at Blog World Expo.  I read her website, was amazed to see  that just like Matt Lauer and I, she also went to Ohio University, and then I called her.  Next thing I knew, an hour had gone by and Joyce and I had just finished a fabulous conversation about vision boards.

Look for another post about Joyce later this month.  She’s given us access to 20 free pages of her book and donated a free copy of the book that I’ll give away on January 22.

If you’re in the San Diego area, I hope you’ll join us for a fun evening devoted to YOU and your 2009 intentions.  You can sign up under the events tab.

If you don’t live in San Diego, I encourage you to have your own vision board party.  I’ve been creating vision boards with my grad school girlfriends for over seven years.  It always makes for a great day together as we catch up and plan our futures.  Or, if you don’t have time for a party, make it an event for yourself alone or with your husband or partner.  It really is a fun way to get focused on where you want to go.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with some homework: Christine Kanes’ great article on How to Make a Vision Board.  Enjoy!

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.

1. See this great blog at After Ellen which contains some great celebrity pictures and stories.
2. This Saturday is National Protest Day. Check out JointheImpact.com for more information about how you can participate in this national event.
3. 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.

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.

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.

I just returned from an 18 day trip last night. My last stop was Blog World Expo ‘08 in Las Vegas. I went to the conference to enhance my understanding of the New Media industry and to learn how to better serve you, my readers, as a writer/blogger. Little did I know of the almost limitless benefits that this little four day trip would bring me. I’m still digesting everything I learned over the past few days and I know I will be for quite some time. However, the one gem of the conference is this:

“If you’re a blogger, you’ve stepped up to your life, addressed your issues, cleaned things up enough that you’re willing to put yourself on stage to the world. You’re an entrepreneur, you’re authentic, you’re passionate, you’re open, you have a genuine desire to help others. You think outside of the box about life options.”

Those of you that know me or who have been reading my blog, know that this is my message to my clients and readers. Can you imagine how lucky I felt to be in a room with 1,000+ other likeminded people? SOOOO amazing!

That in itself would have been enough but in addition, I personally met and talked to at least ten bloggers on Technorati’s Top 100 list and I’m not talking about “Hi, How are you?, Nice to Meet You”…but real, genuine, meaty, helpful conversations. These folks are down to earth, modest, pioneers of their industry and they are ready to help open doors for the next generation to step through and join them. Crazy! I’ll be writing about some of them in the future in more detail but here are just a few of the folks I met, attended class or twitted with during the conference:

• Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library TV),
• Tim Ferriss (Author, 4 Hour Work Week),
• Mike Shinoda (Lincoln Park),
• Brian Clark (CopyBlogger),
• Guy Kawasaki (Alltop),
• John Chow (John Chow),
• Jeremy Shoemaker (ShoeMoney),
• Wendy Piersall (eMom)

So, the list of things we six figure moms can learn from the blogger community is long. This is a whole community of people making a living via flexible work options. They work long and hard but they love what they do and they live passionately. They are pioneers just like you can be. I feel like I just hit the jackpot.

As soon as I get a little sleep and collect my thoughts, I’ll share some more with you and we’ll continue on our journey together. In the meantime, feel free to email me with any specific questions.

If you’re in the coaching business like me, you hear people talking about life purpose all the time. Whether it’s other coaches or clients looking for a more meaningful life, seems like I’m talking about this topic at least once every day. As for me, I’m at a great place with life purpose. I feel like every single thing I’ve done in my career specifically served to lead me to this very moment. Yes, that’s a “whoa that’s big” statement. (For those of you who don’t know, I’m a recovering Telecom Professional, MBA, CPA type turned Executive Coach, Blogger, Writer, Speaker). Actually, I’m so happy with my career that I think my friends are getting a little sick of me and sometimes frightened by my delight. They are looking at me and going. “Ok, Missy. It’s great to be in your fabulous euphoria, but come back down here to Earth with the rest of us and tell us how to get from where we are to our next step”. Fair enough.

I left my corporate position over four years ago. I can tell you that those four years have been the most excruciatingly difficult times of my life. Yes, even more difficult than high school and puberty. Why? Because going through two transitions at the same time 1) Becoming a parent and 2) Changing careers was almost more than I could navigate and still stay sane. (In an earlier post, I quoted colleague Tim Kelley, who said, “Your LIfe Purpose is the Thing You Struggled With The Most In Your Own Life”….Are you getting my life purpose and the tie to Six Figure Moms yet?).

Anyway, why am I writing about this today? Several clients have asked me lately. “Angie, Do you really think it’s necessary to do all this self discovery work to find out what I’m supposed to do with my career?” All I can do is laugh. Because I know, from looking back at them from the vantage point of the fabulous but difficult road I’ve already traveled that they are only cheating them self by even asking the question. And again I ask myself, “How do you get a horse to drink?” You know, the, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink” adage? (If only I could invent some kind of elixir or kool aid to serve all of my clients…hmmm, I’ll have to work on that. But I digress…).

SO, the point of this whole story today is this, it’s not at all about finding your life purpose, but in finding the courage to embark on the journey. To search for your purpose because it is the path to finding your best, most authentic self and to be able to look in the mirror and see how fabulous you really are. Who can resist that?

I’ll be writing more about this topic over time but today I ask you to open your mind to your own self discovery. YOU are waiting.

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I have been following Nancy Collamer’s writings since my daughter was born in 2005.  She writes about career options for working mothers.  I got excited when her blog reminded me that I needed to check out the new WSJ blog, “The Juggle”.  Thanks Nancy, for the reminder.  However, I was a bit surprised and disappointed when I read the site.  I had the preconceived idea that if WSJ was reporting it, then the subject matter would be refreshing for the six figure mom.   Back to the old rule, “never assume anything”.  I felt out of touch with most of the topics (although I did like, Do You Read Your Kids Diaries or Facebook Pages and left a comment) and wondered why WSJ isn’t writing for their target market.  At least I think we’re their target?

I don’t mean to imply that the topics aren’t important to me but I can get that kind of information from many other sources.  I expect a higher level of subjects from the Journal.   Is it me or do you guys also feel this blog is a bit lackluster?  What topic would you like to see in the their blog?  Maybe we can help them kick it up a notch.  I’m all for molding what is offered for the six figure mom because sometimes we certainly seem left out.

Recently while waiting for an appointment, I read one of Cosmopolitan magazine’s famous lists about what men really want in a relationship, Why He Likes You.  Although Cosmo’s target audience is likely much younger than our Six Figure Moms Club husbands, the survey results seem omnigenerational.  When was the last time you read a Cosmo article and compared it to how you treat your hubby?  What if improving your relationship is that easy?  Below are just a few hints of what men enjoy from the survey but be sure to read the article.  You just might end up reconnecting with your spouse with very little effort.  They love us because:

• We have great memories
• We smell good
• We let them rescue us (or at least feel like they did)
• We pamper them
• We set them up for success
• We make them look good

So you say, “how can such a simplistic view apply to me?”  Ladies, that’s the point, it really is that simple.  Why am I choosing to include this here?  Because, making our relationships a priority is an integral stop on the road to your best life.  Now, go spoil your man a bit.