ltdLive 2012

Pasadena Convention Center

Is it just me or is your calendar suddenly full, too? Yesterday morning I went to a seminar. In the evening I attended a meeting. Today I'm working and I have a meeting, and tomorrow there's more to come. Many events want my attention and some of them I'm even interested in. I think it's partly exuberance in the new year, partly a need to get something going in a tough economy.

Worth checking out at the Pasadena Convention Center on February 1st and 2nd: ltdLive 2012, a Conference for Entrepreneurial Women. ltdLive was created by Pasadena author and entrepreneur Nada Jones for "women who live at the intersection where business and life converge." Meaning, perhaps you're stuck at home with three kids and perhaps you'd like to occupy your brain with something else and make some money in the process. Or perhaps you're already an entrepreneur, and you're ready to take your business to the next level. Dance atop the glass ceiling in your glass slippers, as it were.

We used Nada's book, Sixteen Weeks to Your Dream Business, as a jumping off point for the Business Builders' Boot Camp in which I participated--goodness--two years ago. Nada came to our final session and helped critique business plan presentations. She's friendly and approachable, not to mention a smart business person who knows how to motivate others to stop sitting around dreaming and start doing the thing they've been dreaming about doing.

I was going to call her a sharp cookie but then I thought, that doesn't sound appetizing at all.

Visit ltdlive.com for details and to sign up. This might be your year.

Re:Launch

Once upon a time you learned a profession, you got a job, you worked hard at that career and you retired with a pension at the age of 65.

THE END.

And I do mean, "the end." It's the end of that kind of career. The internet and the recession have radically changed the workplace and we have to change with it. We will have several careers in our lives. Many people who've been laid off or downsized (same, insidious thing) have turned to entrepreneurship or small business ownership. Many of us come from a background of working for companies that had departments for accounting, planning, marketing, IT, acquisitions. Now we run all the departments. At least I do.

Did our 20th century educations prepare us for the 21st century work force?

You may remember last year I participated in a Business Builders' Boot Camp. I loved it and promised to let you know if there was another. Now the same people who ran Boot Camp are holding a two-day strategic planning retreat March 4th and 5th at the Historic Blinn House, home of the Women's City Club of Pasadena (pictured above). Men are most welcome, by the way.

The retreat is called Re:Launch, as in relaunch your business. Donna Chaney, of Chaney Financial Services (my one and only advertiser!) and Lilli Cloud, marketing and personal branding expert at bluefeet, are the warmest, most engaging business aces you will ever have the pleasure of learning from. And for their Friday lunch speaker they've got Karen E. Klein, the Smart Answers Columnist from Bloomberg  BusinessWeek, Q&A Columnist of the LA Times Business section and all-around business brainiac.

You can waste time and money figuring this stuff out as you go, or you can learn it all at Re:Launch. For more information, click the links. Or contact Lilli Cloud at 323-466-3518 or lcloud (at) yourbluefeet.com

I think I'm in the wrong career. I should be writing ad copy.

Tomorrow: I'm excited to host Pasadena Daily Photo's first ever guest post! Stop by and meet Altadena author Des Zamorano.

Honoring the Best in Business

Last Friday I attended the 11th Annual Women in Business Legislative Update and Awards Luncheon--not my normal milieu, as I work in the arts. But if you've been following Pasadena Daily Photo you may remember I attended a Business Boot Camp at the Women's City Club of Pasadena. An artist has to be a business person after all.

Business Boot Camp was created by CPA and Financial Planner Donna Chaney, pictured at left. At Boot Camp, women participated in bi-weekly workshops led by a variety of business leaders from bankers to entrepreneurs to marketers, and even ourselves when we had skills to share. We got so much out of it a few of us decided to nominate Donna for this year's Empowerment Award, and she got it!

Donna's unique idea, and her dedication to making the experience available, empowered many local women to start a new business, enhance an existing business or bring more viable practices to our work. Donna deserves her award and many of her Boot Campers were there to cheer when she received it.

With Donna is Tamika Farr, Executive Director of the YWCA Pasadena-Foothill Valley, who was honored as an Outstanding Non-Profit Executive Director. Under Ms. Farr's direction, the YWCA has expanded and increased by 20% the number of community members it serves, increased community partnerships by 50% and procured new program funding resources. I haven't actually met Tamika. She and Donna were talking, I took the photo then she disappeared. I think she likes me.

The luncheon was presented by State Senate District 21, State Assembly District 43 and State Assembly District 44 and hosted by Senator Carol Liu and Assemblymember Anthony Portantino, both of whom welcomed the huge crowd with brief speeches. I think they knew the main attraction was the awards.

25 outstanding businesswomen were honored, and it was inspiring to cheer them on and witness their triumph. One woman can do many things--build a business, build a family and/or build a skyscraper--and when a woman achieves the heights in her field it makes us all look good.

Susan Stroh: Coaching it Out of You

Susan Stroh is one of those people who asks about you first. To start a conversation she says something nice about you--not your outfit, you. She points out something intriguing she heard you say, or mentions how well you carry yourself or how interesting your work is. She knows how to focus outside herself. I imagine this skill comes in pretty handy in her work. But I wanted to focus on her this time.

Susan and I met through the Women's City Club Business Boot Camp. A writer and editor (she published 15 personal essays in 2009 alone), Susan has an office but she'd rather work at Pasadena's Central Library, so we met for a cup of coffee at Central Grounds. With our shared backgrounds in acting and writing, we found a lot to talk about--my acting, my writing, my blog--wait a minute--I was supposed to be interviewing her. How does she do that?

Besides her own writing, Susan's in the business of coaching other writers. It fits. Her gifts for getting people to open up and for seeing an individual's strengths are ideal for a writing coach, because each writer is different. With novelists, for example, coaching might involve a good deal of brainstorming. With those working on a memoir, a session with Susan might be about coaxing an idea to fruition. Susan describes part of her process as "finding what the client is doing right and encouraging them to do more of it."

I told her I'm so intent on my own work I don't think I could focus that hard on someone else's. I asked how she does it. Her answer: "Standing back and creating a vacuum for the writer to fill is so satisfying to them that it's satisfying to me."

She can be tough. She expects agreements to be kept and deadlines to be met. "So many people mean to write, plan to write, say they're going to write, and put off writing. I help them keep the promises they make to themselves."

"I know," I said. "I had to set a deadline, then tell people about it so I'd be accountable."

"What's your deadline for?" she asked.

And I was off again, telling Susan my story instead of getting hers. I'm not selfish. Really I'm not. She's just that good at coaxing my story out of me.

Morning classes for Susan Stroh's ten-week Memoir and Personal Essay Writing Workshop begin January 20th. Evening classes start February 2nd. For more information and to sign up, contact SusanStroh (at) sbcglobal.net or call (818) 497-7486.

Women's City Club Business Boot Camp

Standing: Lori Webster, Jennifer Hamilton, Diana Manchester, Jane Neff Rollins, Author Nada Jones, Susan Kitchens, Anne Louise Bannon. Sitting: Donna Chaney, Elke, Margit Holakoui, Randi Burton. The women model scarves hand-made by Burton.

I've been going to Business Boot Camp where the barracks are swell, the mess hall ain't half bad and I never have to say "Sir, yes sir!"

When the Pasadena Women's City Club "Women in Business" Committee was looking for something more active than a speaker lunch, member Donna Chaney of Chaney Financial Services was considering a business planning workshop. She came across a book called Sixteen Weeks to your Dream Business: A Weekly Planner for Entrepreneurial Women by Nada Jones and Michelle Briody. Donna says, "My interest met [the committee's] and bootcamp was born."

Donna couldn't have known what a huge project she was getting herself into. But she did know she'd need a partner and she asked Lilli Cloud of Blue Feet to help. Both business-savvy women lead a large group of women at varying levels of savvy as we've devoured the book, embellishing with input from experts within the group and without. We're learning about budgeting, web design, branding, marketing, business plans, you name it. And at last week's meeting Nada Jones, one of the book's authors, surprised us with a visit. (She's even in the photo, which I took long after the meeting when most people were already gone. My apologies to those who missed posing. We'll do it again.)

Among the many things we've learned is the difference between PR and advertising. For example, if I post about a business, that's PR and I get to say what I want to say. If someone buys an ad on the blog, that's--well, that's an ad. I've made a proposal to the group: if a member chooses, I'll post about her business here on PDP. Once I've had my say, if she's still brave enough to advertise on PDP, maybe she will. See how I'm grokking this? (Hey, I'm blogging with integrity here.)

A new session of Business Builders Boot Camp will start in April, 2010, with further information coming out in February. But if you're interested, you don't have to wait. Contact Donna Chaney at 626-768-0080 or donna (at) chaneyfinancialservicesinc.com. You don't have to be a member of the Women's City Club to join.