Musical instruments – the parents endurance test

As every parent will tell you, parenting is a joy, and experience not to be missed. You learn so much from your children. They are like little Zen masters just waiting to expose you to the next lesson in tolerance, acceptance and transcendental meditation; I.e. how to completely disconnect from your immediate environment and go to a quiet noise free place of tranquillity: calm, calm.

However, there is one part of child-rearing which stands out as a test of endurance more than anything else that you will be required to do as a parent. It requires more tolerance than putting up with a terrible two-year-old, who is laying prone in the middle of the supermarket aisle, kicking and screaming because you refused their request for yet another pointless piece of plastic that the marketers deliberately put at ankle snapper height, just by the checkout.

More endurance than hosting the seven year old birthday party, including ice cream on your BOSE sound system (I don't have one but it illustrates the point); cake mashed into the carpet and sticky handprints on your walls. Double the endurance required to survive stroppy teenagers whose only form of communication are the words “Huuump”, “Urhhh” and “gosh that's not fair”.

What could be so bad... Yes you've got it – the little dears learning to play a new instrument! As parents we love to encourage talent. After all, who knows they could turn out to be very good at it, world-class even and that would be the pension sorted! Besides our job is to provide society with well adjusted, confident individuals and telling them that they have no talent and they should desist immediately really isn't conducive to developing self-esteem.

So whilst they practice the latest addition to their instrument collection you have to put up with the wailing that causes these every fibre in your being too recoil and sounds more like a hellcat on heat catcalling than any form of music you've ever heard. Thankfully my children are actually very talented when it comes to music so the learning/ screeching stage doesn't normally last that long. Although I do have my doubts whether their latest fad in instruments will sound nice even if it's played well. Let's hope they move onto the next thing quickly.

What instrument do you dislike the sound of the most. Please share, I look forward to reading your comments.

The things you can do with pipe cleaners ...

A great way to learn anything is to watch someone else do it. The more you observe the more you absorb. Eventually there will come a point when you wil have unconsciously learned the skill and hopefully you will have the confidence to give it a go all by yourself.

When my youngest son, now 12, was under five he had a habit of asking us to buy him new toys all the time. Obviously not wanting to give him the impression that everything he asked for was available on tap, we’d tell him that he had to wait until his birthday or Christmas. One day, instead of asking me to buy him the thing he wanted he asked me if I could make it for him instead. I've always been good at creating things out of "junk" so I accepted the commission. This was the beginning of a long list of things that I'd made him out of cardboard rolls, left over bits of wood, plastic bottles etc.

I made him everything from a space shuttle to the characters in Harry Potter. Blue Peter presenters were amateurs compared to me. When my son was about 7 he stopped asking me and started making the models himself. He has made characters out of Sellotape using it to construct 3-D shapes, stuck objects together with duct tape to create costumes and weapons (he's forever making swords); but now he's favourite medium is pipe cleaners. The things he makes out of pipe cleaners are characters in his electronic games or from television programmes. They are very impressive so I’d like to share some of them with you.

 I'm sure my son would welcome your feedback.

The art of lying

When I was a child it was common for parents to smack (well actually they were more like beatings) their children. Literature was full of examples of corporal punishment and even the church advocated a sound whipping in order to control "naughty” or” unruly” children. Spare the rod, spoil the child. So naturally it didn't take me long to work out that it was best to avoid getting caught doing wrong. For me it was getting caught that was the issue because I quickly realised that there was a Grand Canyon of difference between what I considered to be "wrong" and what adults did.

My initial strategy was to lie. I used to lie about everything. "Who knocked over the vase?" "Not me" I'd say knowing full well it was me. Unfortunately, lying is an art and there are rules to lying successfully. My problem was that like many children I was unaware of what the rules were.

Basic rule of lying No.1: denying something you are observed doing is stupid beyond imagination. Especially if you deny it to the person who observed you doing it!

Few if any of us have Jedi powers of mind control;"I am not the child who broke the vase" doesn't work so if you are going to lie at least be smart about it.

My lying days were short lived. After a few unsuccessful attempts at lying and getting punished twice; once for the wrongdoing and once for getting caught lying, I decided that I might as well tell the truth and throw myself at the mercy of my parents. "Please I'm sorry; I promise I won't do it again". Then one day I accidentally dropped and broke one of my mum's favourite glasses. It was part of a set which she only took out for visitors and I was putting them away for her because they'd been left on the side. I was mortified. Luckily no one was around to see me so for once lying was a realistic option. My younger brother was the champion glass breaker in the household, so I concluded that my mum would automatically blame him. Moreover, as he was also a serial liar; when he denied it she wouldn't believe him. Finally I had a win-win strategy. The moment of truth (or more accurately, lying) arrived and I was just about to use it when something stopped me. Lying had never worked in the past. So instead of claiming it wasn't me I simply confessed. “Yes it was me - it was an accident I'm sorry”.

To my complete shock and amazement, all my mother said was “thank you for telling the truth, try to be more careful next time”. Wow, I remember being so stunned that I just stood there with my mouth open for a good 2 minutes. The truth had worked. From that day I decided never to lie again and I’ve stuck to it almost 100%. I have to confess that I have on occasion omitted certain facts (so as not to be unkind or cruel) but ever since that day I think I've only ever said something that was completely untrue once.

I mention this because my youngest son is the worst liar on the planet. Not only does he frequently break rule No. 1, he clearly has not mastered any of the other rules either. Such as rule No. 2: even if you are not observed committing the “crime”, leaving a trail of evidence which leads directly to you and then lying about it is even more stupid than breaking rule No. 1

Telling the truth makes life so much easier. You don't have to remember what you say and to whom because it's the truth so all you have to do is tell the truth again. People like and trust you because they know they can rely on what you say. Therefore you have better more open and honest relationships. Having lots of people who like and trust you is great for your self-esteem.

Just in case you aren't convinced and you still see lying as a viable option (clearly my youngest son falls into this category) I thought I'd share the final basic rule of lying with you.

Rule No 3: Karma, natural justice, what goes around comes around. Call it what you will, the universe has a limitless capacity to bring back into balance that which has been put out of balance. Therefore, somewhere down the line, the lie you told will eventually catch up with you and you will have to pay the consequences. Be warned!

What is the most ridiculous lie you've ever been told?

Do you lie your way out of difficult situations or face the music with honesty? Please share your thoughts; I look forward to reading them. a

Dissed by my cat...

Today I was "dissed" as they used to say, by my sons and my cat! Sometime after the word "diss" was in circulation, I learned that "dissed" was shorthand for disrespected. However this is not really what I mean; my sons are lovely and they wouldn't disrespect me in that sense. It's more like an embarrassment factor.

I mentioned yesterday that both boys were off on school journey today at different times. In addition I had to be at the radio station www.playvybz.com to host my radio show Tycoon Women Moments at precisely the same time that my older son’s coach was leaving.

I decided that I would leave it to his BFF’s (best friends forever – not sure if that is a guy thing or only girls use it) mother to wave goodbye to his coach. My solution: I would kill two birds with one stone and drop both of them to school in the morning (I had to take the younger one’s suitcase to school for him anyway). I would then return to wave goodbye to the coach and pickup my older son who needed to come back home pickup his own suitcase and get changed. The final part of the strategy would be to bring my older son and his suitcase back at about 2 PM and drop them off at his BFF’s house (which is conveniently behind the school).

Diss 1: I arrived at the school with both sons as planned and the oldest one gets out of the car without even a word of thanks or goodbye. When I called him back to ask why he had not seen the need to say either thank you for the lift or goodbye, he said “why do I need to say goodbye I'm seeing you again later”. “What about thank you” I said; his reply – “people are watching!”

Diss 2: as planned I returned to the school at 11 AM and waited 30 min in the cold whilst my younger son had an early lunch in the warm. When he came out to board the coach he looked astonished that I had returned. “I've come to say goodbye” I said “again” replied my son. "No hug then” I said "Everyone is watching!" He said in horror "Well how about a peck on the cheek" I said – "Gosh mum no way "is the censored version of the interpretation of the look he gave me! Needless to say I left without waving goodbye to a pulling-away-from-the-curb coach.

Diss 3: crazy, senile cat. This evening I arrived home after my radio show to see my cat waiting patiently outside the house, to be let in. I did think it was strange as the lights were on, however I didn't give it a second thought. My cat jumped off the stoop and climbed onto the bonnet of my car and then proceeded to look at me lovingly through the windscreen; making that direct eye contact cats do when they want to intimidate you. I had to make a phone call so it was sometime before I eventually got out of the car. My cat waited patiently, all the time given me long loving looks and after a while decided to curl up on the warm bonnet and take a nap.

As I opened the front door I called to the cat to come inside but she refused to budge. I spent 5 min trying to coax my cat to come into the warm before I gave up and went inside. By the time I got to the kitchen at the back of the house, my cat was already there waiting on the cold side of the kitchen window looking sorrowfully in ,as if no one had ever fed her or let her into the house before! I'm convinced she is trying to get us prosecuted by the RSPCA for neglect!

They say never work with animals or children; I say don't hold your breath if you expect animals or children to appreciate what you do for them.

Do you have teenaged children who are embarrassed by your public displays of affection? Please share your stories I'd love to read about them.

Grandma knows best - the secret to surviving other peoples' winter colds

It's 11:30 PM on Sunday and the end of a fun filled weekend. It was last of the autumn birthday parties in my household. Every family seems to have one of those expensive periods during the year when there is a convergence of birthdays. My family’s is September/October. Between 2 September – 4 October there are seven birthdays; nine if you count the birthdays of the now departed family members. This has meant some for or birthday celebration each weekend for the last for weeks and I'm glad it's finally over.

As I sit here and write my blog, my concentration is periodically broken by the hacking sounds of my youngest son coughing and sneezing. Yep cold season is back!

The worst thing about a child with a cold is the constant begging for medicine. They don't seem to get that the words "do not exceed stated dose" apply everyone and they aren't exempt because they are sick and therefore need medicine on tap. Unfortunately, most cough syrups work for about an hour before they wear off and if you have a troublesome cough that is causing your whole body to ache due to the strain on your abdominal muscles, then what you really want is relief not an annoying mum telling you that you cannot have any more medicine.

Enter grandma with the solution; a recipe for an effective cough syrup that you can drink to your heart’s content and that works just as well as the store bought varieties. It's based on onions and is very easy to make. Therefore in case you need it for yourself or a troublesome male with a cold (yes male, women are far more stoic when it comes to dealing with a cold) the instructions are below.

You will need:

1 onion (large)

Sugar (six tablespoons)

A small container with a lid (jam jars are really good)

Method:

Peel and slice up the onion thinly – you can dice it if you prefer. Put a layer of chopped onion into your container and cover it with sugar (about a tablespoon full). Repeat this process, alternating layers of onions and sugar until the onions and sugar are all used up. Put the lid on the container and store it in the fridge. Leave for 4 – 6 hours or overnight. The onions will seep and produced a clear sweet syrup.

To use: take a desert spoonful of the syrup to ease your coughing as required. The onions should continue to produce syrup for a few days (3 – 5 days depending on how often you take the syrup). When no more syrup is produced discard the onions and start again.

Hope it helps

Do you have any home remedies? Please share, I'd love to read about them.

NB : this is a home remedy for a cough syrup and is not meant to replace professional medical advice. If you are worried about your health or if you have cold symptoms that persist for more than a few days then seek professional advice from your medical practitioner.

image by Sick Man by David Castillo Dominici

A monent in the day of a busy Tycoon woman

The games adults play

I have just come back from tae kwon do and as always my whole body hurts! However, this time I was the victim of optimism beyond reason. Our instructor had the "brilliant" (I used the word in irony) idea of getting the class to play leapfrog – yes leapfrog - to increase our agility. Now I may look two thirds of my age (or even half it on a particularly good day), but I am really 50. What I know from my past career as an exercise professional, is that older people are less flexible, take longer to warm up and are slower to heal!

I knew from the moment he said the word “leapfrog” that it would all end in tears. Apart from the fact that even as a child I wasn't particularly good at leapfrog. (Indeed the prevailing memory I have of playing it is misjudging the height of a bollard I was leapfrogging over and colliding pelvic bone to immovable concrete object – you do the physics. It was not a pleasant experience). Most of my class mates are males over 5’10” so I didn’t relish the thought of having to support their weight on my back.

Anyway I decided not to be a whoosh and reluctantly joined in. It’s true what they say about abstinence improving your performance because despite the many years break, I was actually not that bad at it. So where were the tears? From one of my classmates; a particularly weighty and sometimes stroppy 13-year-old, who repeated my experience with the bollard only this time I was the bollard!

Falling over is bad enough when you are 50 and possibly the only thing that could make it any worse is a heavy teenager, who is in the act of propelling themselves forward, falling on top of you. Hence the pain and the twisted joints! Oh well at least it provided me with something to blog about – I'm desperately looking for the positive! OK, if I’m honest, it was actually quite fun.

What was your favourite game when you were a child and do you still play it? Please share your stories, are always look forward to reading them.

A marvellous day

Today has been one of those marvellous days where everything has gone... well... Just fantastic! I woke up feeling really empowered, like I had suddenly been given and extra jolt of confidence and inspiration. I could tell it was one of those days where, as a friend of mine used to put it "you're on your branch" or was it "in your tree?" anyway today was definitely a power day.

I was due to lead a workshop at the city business library on how to become a Tycoon Woman. I had no idea how many people had books because bookings are done by the library however; I decided I'd be content if at least 10 people showed up. I was just about to leave when there was a knock at the door and there stood an older white lady holding a shoebox. She didn't have to say anything. I knew that the box contained our missing tortoise and sure enough Shelley had returned. She looked a bit like a lost French legionnaire who had trekked across the Moroccan desert, but apart from that she was intact. What a result! We were convinced that we'd never see her again. She had been missing for four weeks. The day was getting better by the minute.

I arrived to deliver my workshop with ample time to spare and to be told that not only was it fully booked, several people had turned up on the off chance that someone would be a no-show. What more could I ask for – nothing, but I also got a fabulous audience who gave great feedback.

It's great when life hands you a marvellous day. Whilst it is possible to treat each day as having the potential to be amazing; the reality is that some days it's more difficult to see the potential and/or the blessings than others. So when the universe makes it a no-brainer ...enjoy!

Tying up loose ends

Ok I’m back at last. It’s been two months since I posted in my blog despite promising faithfully that I would write something every day, week, month, bi monthly- failed on all counts (lol). Many times I thought of writing something but what was going on with me seemed either too embarrassing or too painful to write about publicly and I really didn’t want my blog to just be me posting my pain all over the net for everyone one to see.

I started writing this blog to chart my journey from public sector employee to private sector business owner. Whoever said that business is about making mistakes was soooh right. I think I must have made more mistakes than most. For months I felt like I was all over the place trying to meet all the requirements, looking at all possible solutions, trying to find the unique formula that only I have, which will make me millions.

And guess what? So is everyone else! Which means that, very little if anything is unique? The amount of people I have come across that have exactly the same idea as I have about working with women, targeting public sector workers and helping people to start businesses and become entrepreneurs.

At first I was horrified. Every time I came across another one I felt like chucking it all in and either getting a ‘real job’ lol or changing my business model.

Then gradually I began to realise two things. First: If other people have the same idea then at least it is a money spinner or why else would they be trying to do what I am doing. Added to that look how much free information is now out there for me to use i.e. I can see what they are doing/have done and build on it. Second:- and this is the more important one – I can’t think of any area of business where there is only one person or one company operating in it. As that would be a monopoly and monopolies ( as Rupert Murdock knows) are illegal. Unfair competition!

When you think about it, how many hairdressers are there? Chinese restaurants, web designers, graphic designers, actors, singers,  you name it! There are always new people joining the game and fed up people leaving it. The trick isn’t to be the only one – would be great, but statistics are against you. The trick is to be bigger, better, badder than anyone else.

So what makes you shine out in the world of personal services – personality of course! Charisma, rapport, connection, all the things that tell other people that you are in it for them and not just the money.  AND the one thing I can, hand on my heart, say about me is that I am passionate about people, about making sure that people experience the best of me and I make a positive contribution to their lives.

I believe in meeting people where they are. That mean being with whatever they are experiencing without trying to fix them from the outside or pushing away the difficult stuff. Being with ‘what is’ as Bryon Katie says. It is not always possible to change ‘what is’ yet it is always possible to help someone have the best experience they can have in those circumstances.

I totally appreciate that this may sound all lovey-dovey and touchy-feely for some, well so be it. I know that for others it will be the what has been missing and they will want to work with me because I am authentic about being truly human and celebrating the caring and compassion that can be missing from business.

I believe what has been holding me back all these months is that I’ve been running away from this because I was afraid of being categorised as flaky. So many of the business Guru’s I spoke to tried to tell me that business and  for the want of a better word ‘spirituality ‘or you can describe it as coming from the heart, do not mix. I now realise it was because these gurus are so caught up in the old way of being they are not prepared to consider that there may be another way. And there is!

More and more people are questioning why in order to get ahead you have to trampled on someone else. When I worked in the public sector, the questions we always asked were ‘how can I help you? How can I be of service?’ ‘How can I make your life better?’ And we meant it. Yes everyone has examples of where the public sector failed to meet this but it doesn’t take away from the original intention.

The private sector is waking up to the fact that customers are interested in doing business with companies that genuinely care about them , who are interested in helping to make their lives easier and better more than they are interested in making a buck. Unfortunately (or even fortunately) genuine caring isn’t something that you can fake,  so unless you are able to connect to your sense of being part of the human community and really get that people matter you are going to be the ones leaving the entrepreneurial gene pool.

So fell with renewed optimism and purpose, I’ve decided to bring my internet presence together in a coherent whole. I’ve changed my blog title to Tycoon Woman and my twitter profile name. Don’t seem able to change my blog address so that will stand as a testament to the journey -  http://theadvanceguardess.blogspot.com/ .

For the second time I’m going to commit to regularly writing in my blog, hopefully this time I’ll actually manage to do it.  

PS some encouraging comments will definitely have a huge motivational effect

It's Long!

Awhile back my son used to describe everything as ‘long’. If I asked him to do something, which he didn’t want to do like,  tidy his room or redo his homework (putting in the effort that I was pretty certain his teach had in mind when she or he had set the assignment), he would slough in a way that is actually only physically possible if you are between the ages of 10- 19 (after that you seem to be subject to the same laws of body  manipulation as the rest of us), throw back his head in despair and proclaim to the world, the universe and anyone else within earshot, who clearly would not have been in the slightest bit interested –‘that long! ‘.

The words would be accompanied by a sound that is best described as exaggerated hopelessness with a bit of pure drama queen. Such was the distress conveyed by his utterance that I would immediately go into 'don’t be such a drama queen' mode (which is long had for irritated and cross).’ What do you mean it’s long’ I would say. ‘It wont take more that x minutes if you just get on with it’ To which he’d reply with a look that clearly indicated that he thought that I was at least as dense as the school year below him if not more so –
 ‘no I mean its long’.

Possibly because I couldn’t be bothered to engage in yet another teenager drama I never gave any thought to this at the time ending the discourse with the mum’ s ‘in case of no time to discuss’ classic phrase
 'just do it OK!

Like all words of youth culture ‘long’ seemed to disappear from their vocabulary quickly so it wasn’t until recently when I have be buried in the attempts to get my business earning cash that the qualities of this word are now becoming abundantly clear to me.

My deep apologise son !

I get it ‘it’s long!’ Nothing else seems to describe the complete absence of will to want to get on with the tasks. I fully understand why I need to do them and I am more than capable of doing them, but ‘it’s long!'

It’s long = I am so bored by the notion of doing that, that I can’t even be bothered to use the energy required to think up a credible excuse for not doing it.

It’s long= why me? You do it! Oops there is no one other than me to do it!

It’s long = I know of a million other things that I would rather do even if this is on the list of the top 10 things I need to do today.

It’s long. It’s long. It’s long. 


You have to admit it - young people do have a way with language !

Persistent Solutions

Check out my new website, built by me !!! Nothing like putting your mind to something if you want to get it done! So I've cracked XHTML, squeeze pages and even flash. Taken hours and several all nighters but I've done it. Yipppe. Now to build lots more- Affiliate marketing here I come! PS be kind we all have to start somewhere :) www.thenewgamerevolutionuk.com

Affiliate Marketing

The smart money is on having multiple income streams. So I'm looking into affiliate marketing.

If you have had  the same idea- don't let anyone sell it to you as a get rich overnight with minimal effort system. It really isn't and if like me, you know next to nothing about HTML, building web pages, creating mailing lists of 1000s of customers, identifying the right products to market and strategies to drive traffic to your site then it is definitely not a walk in the park.

No matter, I've decided that I am going to crack this one no matter what it takes. I too will be making $10,000 per month within a year - years a year- that's what the promotional literature says! Nothing is going to stop me. There's determination for you!

I will look back in a year at this and smile. From a blog with no traffic to $10,000 per month affiliate marketing genius.

And so it begins..

How To Be Alone

Not Quite Black and White

The hardest thing about being black is the inability to be invisible. Gosh it is so hard to explain just how much of a benefit being able to disappear into the crowd is.  I guess if you have ever been on holiday to somewhere where your sink colour is in a minority you may just start to understand. However, tourist are always afford a very different type of treatment be it adulation or harassment so the experience isn't quite the same and besides you know deep down inside that it is temporary - lasting only as long as your holiday - and things are so much easier to bear when you know there is an end in sight.

Because you can't be invisible, the second  hardest thing about being black is never quiet knowing when the different treatment you receive is because you are black or because of something else that isn't clear or immediately apparent to you.

The other day I was at one of my networking meetings and everyone had a set amount of time to introduce themselves. The order was determined by where you sat in the room and I was position about two thirds of the way, in terms of the direction imposed by the facilitator. As I listened to the people ahead of me, it was evident that many of them were 'stealing' significantly more time than had been allocated. Some deliberately, others just not as accomplished with their elevator pitch. Despite this nothing was said and the flow continued in this vein until I stood up. I launched energetically into my pitch and was happily taking the same liberty to extend my time when the facilitator gestured to me to finish by drawing an imaginary line across his throat. Cut it short !  So I promptly made a joke about being told to get off and finished. 

As I sat down, (feeling somewhat humiliated for not being as smooth and concise as I was during my practice session in the mirror, or as I was on previous occasions when I had both been on time and wowed the audience) I watched to see if anyone else, who was attempting to abuse the time restriction, was being told to speed up.  Perhaps, I mused in an attempt to anaesthetise my injured pride, as I licked my metaphoric wounds, we are running over time and we now need to speed up so everyone has to be quicker ie keep to time!  I set  an  imaginary stop watch to assess how much time others were taking and watched to see if they too would be told in sign language to shut up. Yes others ran over and no, no one else was given any silent cues to get off the stage.

So now begins the battle to quash the victim mentality. How many other reasons could there be for what happened. Ok I was the only black person, of African heritage, in the room, but there were two Asian men. Did they run over? Not really.  What about the other women who spoke?  Yes at least three of them were very long winded. Indeed I remember thinking 'gosh she is taking a long time that's almost double!' But she was before me so perhaps I was speeded up because she had used up too much time and I just had to pay for the facilitator’s earlier leniency. But at least two women who spoke after me were also over. One was clearly very witty and stopping her mid flow would have deprived all of us of the joke. But still, I was just looking for the gesture, not for her to be pulled off the stage with a shepherd's crock like they do in American talent shows.

So, I was long and boring that's why I got the sign. No I wasn’t boring I was engaged with the audience, I saw no eyes glazing over. It was just the time thing.  Perhaps I didn't appear to be coming to a natural end anytime soon. Maybe that was it.  Maybe I missed all the facilitator's earlier 'cut it short' cues, I hadn't been watching all the time. Yet I do recall looking at him when one or two of the worst offenders were over running and I hadn't seen any gestures   More to the point I hadn't observed any reaction in any of the speakers that might indicate that they has been told to wind up.

With my rational, logical head on, I can convince myself that the most likely explanation is that it was a combination of all of the above, which lead the dynamics of the situation to cause ME to be the one who was singled out by nothing more than FATE. The universe has ordained that I was to be the one that had to start the change of pace.

So, I can dismiss my feelings of being singled out because I am black and with my rational head on, I can make sense of my different treatment. BUT it is so much harder to shake of the experience and the deep nagging doubt that actually it is because you are black! Don't get me wrong I don't believe for even a moment that if, in fact, my different treatment on this occasion was because I am black: it was malicious or even conscious. Unfortunately, history dictates how society filters information about black people. How our actions are weighed up against the so called 'norm' of the more acceptable 'racial' groupings. (Deliberate quotes around the word 'racial' because there is only one race and that is the human race). And my experience is that this filtering works to my disadvantage. I am not able to make the same mistakes as my peers and I have to be significantly better in order to be perceived as ok. It's a huge pressure, feeling like you have to second guess everything you do to ensure that it is without fault!  And before you go thinking 'just another black chick with a chip on her shoulder' - remember chips are the natural consequence of continued injustice and it's not having a chip that is the issue but how you chose to deal with it.

As the person with the chip, I try not to let mine immobilise me and I don't openly challenge everything that happens to me or label as racist everyone who treats me differently. There are good moments when I can see the bigger picture and leave it at that and there are bad moments that really hurt and they take a while to recover form, i.e. they heighten distrust, making you suspicious of every action. 

The Abyss Of Self Doubt

Apologies for the late blog. I’ve had a busy few days. Interesting stuff, unfortunately none of it is making me any money! So I think I’d better talk about how hard it is to make money initially. Don’t get me wrong – I truly believe the money will come, eventually and in bucket loads. Why else would I have taken the trouble to register for VAT? Trouble being the operative word here! So I’ll start by warning you about the VAT man. Basically they are fallible and the worst thing about them; having reference to ‘Her Majesty’ in their title gives them a false sense of infallibility! What’s more, not only can’t you prove them wrong; by making you wrong, you get to pay a penalty! More of that later as, I sense you already moving to click the back arrow.

Back to money. When it comes to money, the first thing is  you have to THINK BIG. Aim for the stars, so if you fall you can land on the moon (actually I think it’s the tallest tree on earth, if I remember the imagery correctly, but you get the picture). So I am calling in abundance. Second, you have to believe you will succeed, or you might as well give up before you start!.

I’m still busy going to network meetings and talking to people, although perhaps not as many as my conversion projections would suggest.  In sales’ speak that means how many people you have to speak to before you convert one into some one prepared to pay you, well in this case me. I won’t scare you with the numbers and to be honest you only have to do it that way until you get people prepared to recommend you, nothing sells you better than personal recommendation. This is me looking on the bright side. However, I often find myself starring into the Abyss Of Self Doubt.

The Abyss Of Self Doubt: I have no clients. Not a single one. No one is paying me for my services.  I have very clearly defined services and a fantastic elevator pitch to describe them. However, as yet they remain in my head because I have no leaflets and even though I have a web page it says UNDER CONSTRUCTION – a lot of help that is to potential clients!. It's all going round and round in circles. I don’t want to produce my publicity without sorting out my branding and without publicity I won’t get any clients,  so I won’t earn any money and I won’t be able to pay someone to do my branding and without branding I can’t do my publicity … I think you get the drift.

I can't get to grips with why I don't seem able to move forward. What is really going on for me? I did think it was because I'm not used to doing my own administration, but clearly that is just an excuse. Something else is prevented me from moving forward with my business and making money.  I am not making any money at present (waling voice). Indeed I am not even spending money. So imagine my surprise when the HMRC sent me a VAT  bill. Yes a VAT bill!  When I already told them that I was not trading! When I already called and asked them if I needed to submit a VAT return for August as I was about to leave the country, AND as they had sent the notice so late, there was no time to respond before I left.

They said ‘no you don't need to send in a VAT return. Your application missed the deadline and our system doesn’t show that one is due. We will send you a bill for the next quarter’.

I said ‘Are you sure? I don't want you to write to me telling me that I should have sent you a return. Can you please put that on my records, so that if somebody else sees it they will know that you told me this?’

 ‘Yes’ said the very helpful (but as I discovered later) very ill informed person on the phone.

Clearly it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that it all ended in tears. With me having to quickly put in a VAT return, which basically said I have spent money on an IPad and have not made a single penny because I DON’T HAVE ANY CLIENTS!.  I DON’T HAVE ANY CLIENTS!.  

I am finding it so hard to find clients. I've done the ‘Painless Selling’ training. According to this - there are opportunities to find clients everywhere! All you have to do is start a conversation with a complete stranger! Show them their pain and behold you have a client! Yeh right!!!.

In the first place I really don't want every single conversation I have to be a sales pitch.  Definitely incongruence there - how can I be putting forward the philosophy that you have to be open and honest with people and come from a place of integrity, if I only ever talk to people because I'm trying to sell them something?

Anyway I have a deep aversion to sales people. As soon as I detect the sales pitch my guard goes up and I become completely defensive, horrible and nine times out of ten rude! The only thing I can think if is ‘GO AWAY!’ So if this is going to work for me (and I really want it to) I have to find another way.

I thought of talking to everyone I meet regardless of their client potential.  Every conversation would just be a conversation. A sharing formation rather than a sales pitch. But how much time do I have to do that? I worked out that I would have to speak to over 1200 people per month to get 20 clients wow. (Oops Just gave you the scary figures!) Clearly that isn’t doable! When would I have time to coach them?!.

Ok enough of the Abyss of self doubt. It really isn’t as bad as all that. I’m getting stuck into my networking via 4Networking  -‘ … the first joined-up national Networking organisation to let you decide where you go to meet like-minded business people, how often you go and how you can generate results for your business. They guaranteed 3 ten minute meetings at every event - up to 4 times a week – in nearly 200 linked breakfast groups’

I volunteered to be the group’s marketing assistant because you get your membership for half price and you can call any business you like and invite them to breakfast and then set up a meeting with them before anyone else can – what power. Takes the sting out of cold calling and I’ve already managed to find a business to trade coaching time for design skills.

So I shall leave on an optimistic note. The most powerful business tool I’ve discovered to date is self belief. With it you can get through the Abyss of self doubt and come out the other side more determined to succeed. Without it … I guess you just die in there! 

Networking

Apparently someone accessed my Google account from the USA on 22nd September and I have been advised to change my password. Nice of Google to tell me with such urgency!  Anyway I should be thankful after all they are hosting my blog. Talking of blogs this is the second entry of the Advance Guardess and today it is all about networking.

Conventional wisdom is that the key to business success is networking. Now, as was pointed out to me at the networking training day I attended (yes you can be taught to network), networking is not pitching or even begging for work. It is about exchanging information in the vague hope (shouldn't really use the word vague but that is how it feels at the moment) that at some future point in time a little light will go on in the head of the person you once exchanged business cards with over a all English breakfast (apparently just tea or coffee won't do it, which is a big downer for me as I do not have the metabolic capacity to network over breakfast 3-4 times a week!) and they will remember you at an opportune moment. Presumably when someone else is talking about the sort of work you do. I have been promised that it does work and thousands of entrepreneurs swear by it.

My first attempt at serious networking took place last Tuesday with an organisation called 4Networking - fried veggie sausages, fried mushrooms, hash browns and toast (far too many calories I felt). I actually really enjoyed it - the networking not the breakfast.  For the first time in a long while, I started to feel like working for me could actually work. And despite taking the plunge, I confess I have my doubts – I spend more time in headless chicken mode, than Dragon's Den, entrepreneur mode.  Self employment is such a radical change. A friend put it succinctly. I'm used to earning money and I have to make the shift into making money. So much of what I do is about process rather than production. It all contributes to the business, but when you are doing your paper work or networking no one is paying you! To make matters worse, you have to spend money all the time you are not making money.

So back to networking. The biggest danger is getting stuck with the really boring people who just wants to drone on about their stuff and don't give you a chance to talk about what you do. Half an hour with one of these = missed opportunity to speak to 3 maybe even 4 really focused, concise, potential contacts.  It's my own fault. I'm usually very good at side stepping these types of people. I can recognise them by the desperate look in their eyes, the way they make a bee line for you because everyone else is avoiding them (previous victims). They are always the first person to speak to you and if you don't get away in time, they eat you alive. Those who have escaped look on in deep pity with eyes that say you could have been talking to me sucker! I’m going to call this type of person The Oblivious, because they ignore non verbal queues.

The other danger is people who see it as an opportunity to hit on you, in that sleazy way that older men do. The leery eyes, invading your personal space and spitting unwanted remains of their breakfast through foul smelling breath.  As yet, not been hit on by any sleazy older women. (Pretty sure they won’t have the bad breath) In case I've put you off, let me just say that everyone was really welcoming and I really shouldn't be so judgmental!

Another lesson worth sharing with you about networking is that there is quite a bit of it you can do for free.  So avoid paying to join groups for as long as possible. Shame no one told me this. I coughed up £200 to join and you still have to pay £10 a time for breakfast! And it's not optional !!

I think that is enough about networking for the time being. I remember that I was going to explain what my business does. This is good as I have to do my profile for the networking website, so I can kill two birds...

I am a leadership development coach for women aged 45-55: the '50 in the middle' group. For the slow, 50 is in the middle of 45 and 55.  It's not that I turn anyone away if they approach me for help, I just target my marketing and specialise in issues faced by this group. It's called a niche in the jargon.  So why this niche? Falling into the '50 in the middle' group myself I feel that I have quite a lot of expertise in this area. Why leadership - women create leaders, that what we do. I think it time the world had more women leaders to follow (very nice link to my company name if I say so myself - it's called Leaders to Follow in case you missed it - it was a very seamless tie in). I should say at this point that I am not referring to leadership in the traditional sense. Observing how leadership operated in the organisation I worked for and the many, many I had close dealings with, I came to the conclusion that rather than being vested in a few individual, real leadership is fluid. It's something that people at all levels in an organisation step in and out of as the situation dictates. If you create a fluid leadership culture people naturally take responsibility for what need to be done, resolving issue becomes more organic, communication more viral, it become a more supportive environment to work in and as a result the organisation become more effective. So how do you create a fluid leadership culture? By empowering people to believe in their capacity to lead. And how do you empower people to believe in their capacity to lead ... The answer is very simple, so simple it begs the question why don't more organisation do it?  YOU TREAT PEOPLE LIKE THEY MATTER. Really matter because they are people and how valued they feel affects them on a physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual level. Not rocket science.  If people feel good about themselves they perform better. Here's the eight ball - you have to treat people like they matter because they are people and people matter! NOT because it is profitable for your bottom line, not because of an ulterior motive of any sort. Simply because you value them as people. There is a different quality to the experience and people sense it. Check it out with yourself - can't you always tell if someone is smooching up to you just to get something?

Sure you can. And so can everyone else. So in addition to working with women individually I work with organisations to develop fluid leadership cultures. That's it in a nutshell.

Signing off now. 

Advance Guardess

I promised myself that I would start this blog today and even though it is 2 am and I am listening to my husband snore at a decibel level that would precipitate divorce in 99.9% of marriages, I am sitting up in bed typing on my iPad. A fabulous invention despite what all the jealous dissenters say. I absolutely love it and I am proud to admit it. Better stop before I lose my point.

My blog is called ‘The Advance Guardess’ because I think of myself as the advance guard. Whilst I may not know much about military operations, I do have a vague memory of the advance guard being the troops who go ahead of the main body of soldiers to forge the way.  To do battle and test the strength of the opposing side. (The snoring is getting louder and soon I will be forced to give him a very hard shove. Possibly harder than required to get him to change positions, but hey, the noise make me aggressive!) As I was saying I think of myself as the advance guard.  I finally took the plunge and did it. I left local government after 23 years of service. I had been thinking about it for ages. Dreaming of a life where I did something else. Anything else- I was becoming that disillusioned. I think if I hadn’t left when I did, I would have been heading for the mad house!

Working for a local authority had sapped all my creativity over the years. I thought in regulations and spoke in policy process and the dogma of management speak. Thinking back, I can only say - gosh I must have been so boring - although at the time I didn't see it.  So what did I do for the public sector?  I was a middle manager, working in regeneration. I worked hard and unlike many of my colleagues in other departments, I had a large degree of freedom to determine my work. Perhaps I was being a little too harsh when I said it sapped all my creativity. More accurately, I would say it was boxed into a very narrow area. So yes, I had ideas but they were reactive ideas, in response to programmes defined by the political masters,  who despite the rhetoric,  only ever wanted to hear their own ideas repeated back to them. Anyway I am rambling.  I was explaining why I am calling my blog the advance guard. As you know, well I assume you know. unless you have just returned from a tour of duty on the space shuttle, George Osborne from the Con-Dems will be, in a few days, announcing to all of us lesser mortal, just how bad the cuts will be for ordinary people and in particular public sector workers. Estimates of over 600,000 put out of work are very, very scary!  Even if it's not as bad as that, there will inevitably be many thousands of people who will find themselves looking for work.

I think of myself as the first person to leave the public sector ahead of the cuts. I am forging the way ahead, learning from all the pit holes and reporting back to the soldiers following in my footsteps, how the land lies and any particular hazards to watch out for. Hence the notion of the Advance guard.

Here is my first reconnaissance.

So I've been out of work now for over 6 months. When I left I decided to take the opportunity to reinvent myself. I had started to hate the tedium of the corporate world and the office politics. I was a relatively senior manager - third tier as they say. For those not in the know this means there were two levels of management above me. In my department this meant that I was part of the senior management team.  My line manger was a really nice progressive manager who walked his talk and really took to heart the notion of interactive leadership and the stage 4 manager.  More jargon but basically it means that he was a nice bloke who sought your opinion and always had your back. Now I know, because of the prejudice about public sector workers, many reading this will interpret it to mean that we were inefficient. They maybe even assuming that he over looked poor performance and inefficiencies and let his staff get away with doing a bad job. On the contrary - he definitely was not one to suffer fools gladly, yet he trusted his mangers to do a good job and we did. So naturally having seen the way the rest of my organisation behaved (and Allan Sugar types in the private sector) I had mixed feelings about stepping into another organisation. Basically I didn't want to start to be told what to do and I didn't want to have to learn or get involved with the new office politics. I wanted to be my boss.  To run my own company. And so began my journey into the world of self employment.

To be honest it has taken about 6 months to clear my head. I am surprised at just how long it has taken me to recover (and I mean recover because I've experienced it like an illness) from the stress of my last job. Yes stress. Despite popular misconception, working in local government isn't an easy ride. One of the most striking differences that were only too apparent to me was the fact that you were never given a sole project to work on. When I left and was asked to decide my area of focus I found this very difficult to do because I've never had a single area of focus. It is usual to be given at least 3 maybe even 5 major programmes to work on with the resources allocated, sufficient only for one! All these reports you hear about people with ridiculous job titles sitting around doing nothing - who knows maybe there is some truth in it,  but in my experience anyone sitting around with a fancy job title was most likely an external consultant brought in from the private sector to tell us how to be more efficient!

Since leaving I've  being so torn between what to do, where to focus and what information I need that sometimes, not only can't I think clearly,  I rush around doing little bits of everything in a organised or disorganised chaos.   I call this my headless chicken phase. You know running around like a headless chicken. I’ve been thinking about this metaphor and I can really see how deep an analogy it really is. Until this point I had always  imagined the body darting around under the force of delayed signals from the brain. However, I now experience it is from the pot of view of the head laying some distance from the body watching in complete despair as the body darts from place to place in a complete frenzy without direction or guidance and all the time knowing that time is running out so that eventually it will be too late and as the body collapses in a heap the mind dies knowing that it was a futile struggle and nothing was accomplished. That's how it felt most of the time at work. So imagine my surprise to be experiencing the same thing now. Now that I am supposed to be living a life of freedom! Fortunately, It's not all the time. I am constantly moving from headless chicken to advance guard and vis versa. So hear is my web log - blog of my process of remaking myself as an entrepreneur, disjointed and jumbled as I experience it. I’m hoping that as order comes to my blogging, order will also come to my new freelance experience. Oh I forgot to tell you what I am actually doing. But I’ve e got to sleep now so I'll leave that to my next entry.