Being Creatively Fit: Whitney Ferre was just fabulous speaking to NAWBO Nashville!

I love learning new things, and especially love a speaker that surprises me. I’ve never thought of myself as creative or using my right brain (too much of a list maker and one who labels everything in sight) but Whitney Ferre of Creatively Fit made me realize that, why, yes I am creative and that by using my right brain creative side, I can spur on my business and my life.

Not only was she just fun to have as a speaker, but she really engaged the NAWBO Nashville crowd with her wit and energy. We had a blast doing her creativity exercises – with a big shout out to @ExpoMarkers guy Steve Gradman who sent our group a bunch of fun stuff to use during the sessions. Now I was expecting a few markers after I tweeted him to ask if Expo would want to be part of our meeting. I got a huge box of goodies including T-shirts (have to admit my 7 yr. old snagged a bright red Expo shirt,) white board eraser stuff, and gobs of markers – the skinny purple Click ones were my personal favorite!

Anyway, back to Whitney . . . she wrote a new book called The Artist Within, A Guide To Becoming Creatively Fit which came out of her work with clients who developed their business skills through using their right brain and their creativity. I’ve got my very own copy – and you can get yours, too. It’s a fascinating look at what you can do to stretch your limits and look at your life and work from a fresh perspective. As I mentioned, I really didn’t think of myself as creative, but then realized . . . well, yes, I am. I have to be in order to visualize how a space can look when it is organized or staged. I need to be able to clearly articulate that not only for my own use but to my clients as well. So even though I can’t draw, act or sing (really, really can’t sing), what I do IS creative and the more I listen to that part of me, the better I will get at what I love to do. So thanks, Whitney, for sharing at our NAWBO luncheon – your talk got rave reviews and we so appreciate your being there! You can find Whitney on twitter @creativelyfit !

NAWBO Blogging Panel… great fun & I learned a lot

Yesterday, I moderated a panel at NAWBO Nashville (National Association of Women Business Owners).

Our panel consisted of:

• Kate O’Neill of www.metamarketer.com an “unmarketing” firm focusing on internet strategy
• Erin Richardson of All American Pest Control and her blog “The Buzz of Nashville“
• Barry Owen, of Keller Williams and his blog on Active Rain
• Claudia Young of www.cookeatfret.com

I chose this panel to have a wide range of backgrounds and blogging experiences, and it played out just as I hoped. The group of professional women ate it up and would have willingly stayed for a much longer time to keep learning!

Kate, who is an SEO expert, explained the basics of what a blog is, how to create one and what it really does. The other panelists used their personal experiences for their parts. The best part is that having Kate’s expertise, the others were able to play off of her comments. Erin’s family has been operating her pest control company for nearly 50 years. Erin is the Business Development Director and is using the blog as a marketing tool and a way to enhance her company’s exposure in the community. Barry is a Principal Broker and trainer at Keller Williams in Green Hills and maintains 3 blogs focusing on the real estate market. He looks at the blogs as a sort of “brain dump” where he can explore his ideas, educate the market, and grow his reputation as an expert in his field. Claudia uses her blog as a form of self expression exploring her passions and frustrations with food.

Here’s the main ideas we gleaned from this talented panel, in no particular order, just how I remember it:

1. Blogging must be maintained – you can’t just start it and not keep it going.
2. To be effective, you must use key words embedded naturally in your text to get the search engines finding your blog.
3. Keep your information to the point, yet entertaining (always a struggle).
4. Have a purpose for your blog – a clearly defined goal when creating it
   • who is your target audience
   • is it for personal or business reasons and focus it that way
   • why are you writing the blog
   • have a clearly defined point of view and stick to it
5. Start with a blog site like Blogger (which is what I use) or Wordpress.com, but to truly integrate your blog with your website, consider a move to Wordpress.org.
6. Don’t go into it with an eye to making money – most blogs don’t but can be great enhancements to an overall marketing strategy, or can be strictly for personal enjoyment.
7. Blogging doesn’t take that much time, overall, once you’ve determined your purpose and focus – on average, our bloggers spend about 30 minutes writing a blog post, however, the research for them can take longer.
8. Encourage comments on your blog, and comment on others blogs as a way to increase your web traffic and to gain exposure via other bloggers.

I’m sure there was more but this is what I came away with. I’ve been writing my blog for a while now, and I learned that I need to define my purpose a bit more and perhaps tweak my profile to better reflect what I blog about. I don’t look at it as a way to make money but as a way to give my current and potential clients some insight as to who I am and what I’m all about. I think that is why most bloggers start out – to gain a voice in the vast expanse of the internet world and, if you are in business, to help grow that business in an organic way that, if all goes well, can make your company grow and stay current in today’s market.

Thanks to all of my presenters – you have no idea how much I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to join NAWBO and sharing your knowledge and experiences with us!

hosting the NAWBO organizing panel today

Today I moderated a panel of some of my favorite other Professional Organizers at NAWBO. It was our monthly luncheon and while I know tons about organizing, I realize that my knowledge is not the end all and be all of organizing, plus one of the basic premises of what I do is to acknowledge that my personality and operating style may not be in synch with everyone so I figure I’ll give the NAWBO divas some other choices. I brought in Cindy Sullivan, Lisa York and Cynthia Lindsey. All really good at what they do – which is organize. Plus, they are all people I like and respect

I created a list of questions and we all took turns answering them – stuff like tips on how to arrange your desktop, best filing practices, time management, multi-tasking, etc. It’s amazing how many people want to know this stuff. I had one gal come up to me afterwards and tell me it motivated her to go home and get rid of stuff, and so many people said how much they got out of it.

We talk a lot about simplicity as organizers, and really try to live it. It’s not about the stuff, it’s about how you use it. Do you love it or do you need it is how I approach “stuff”. This is the message we tried to get across.

We had quite a few handouts which people really seemed to like as well. I love doing these types of things – it makes me feel great knowing that I can share what I know with others – and that others actually want to hear it!

So lots of fun – and if you are a woman business owner – check out our local NAWBO chapter. It’s a great group – small enough to really get to know everyone and big enough to have some resources you can use.