Hello Everyone!

Well, December is just around the corner... have you got all of your Christmas shopping done? Have you started?? Well next week is the perfect time as many of our WiN members will be setting up their displays and providing us all with an opportunity to at least start our shopping!

Important** This month the meeting will begin at 12noon so that tables can be set up at 11:30. Below is a list of those who have requested a table. If I have forgotten anyone or if you would like a table please let me know as soon as possible.

Just a quick note we will not have a guest speaker next week which will allow us more time for shopping and networking. Please let me know if you plan to attend. Bring along a guest or two. This month the meeting cost is $15 for both members and guests.

Tables:
Joyce McCulloch - Free Life
Nancy Graham - Thistledown Pet Memorial
Cathy Raven - Partylite
Amanda O'Neil - Pampered Chef
Pam Mansfield - Bookeeping Plus
Heather Chapman - Silpada Jewellery
Susan Peirce - Sunrise Graphics
Barb Smith, Twila DelFatti - Silver Connections
Brenda Ford - Immunotech
Tracee Bowman - Totes
Janet Reeds - Reeds Gift Baskets
Glenda Ashby - Silpada Jewellery
Patricia Hughes - ACN
Liz Porter - Jockey Person to Person

If you are not able to bring your own table please let me know.
A small door prize would be greatly appreciated.
Don't forget your empty wine bottles for JobsRUs and if you can, a non-perishable food item for the food bank.

See you next week!
Heather

WiN Meeting - November 5th, 2009

Hello Everyone!

Next Thursday, Nov.5th is our next WiN meeting and our guest speaker is Joan Ann Evelyn of Astrological Consultations (full details below). Our 5min spotlight speaker will be Sue Sutcliffe of OrGano Gold Healthy Coffee.

A small door prize would be greatly appreciated and don't forget to bring your empty wine bottles for JobsRUs.

Please let me know as soon as possible if you plan to attend.
Hope to see you next week!

Warm regards,
Heather

WiN Meeting - Thursday, Aug 6th

Hello Everyone!

I hope you have been enjoying a wonderful summer so far, aside from the not so wonderful weather!

Next week is our August WiN meeting. There will be no guest speaker this month, just more time for networking! Because of the increased networking time if you would like a full table to set up your product/materials let me know and I can arrange for that.

In September our guest speaker will be June English of Investors group. If you are interested in the 5min Spotlight Speaker spot please let me know.

I hope to see everyone next week!
Please email or call to let me know if you will be attending.

When: Thursdsay, August 6th, 2009, 11:30am registration - 1:30pm
Where: Queen Street United Church, 35 Lindsay St. N., Lindsay (map)
Cost: Members $15, Guests $20 (a light lunch will be served); 1 year membership $35
Payment by cash or cheque can be made at the door

Warm regards,
Heather Chapman
WiN-Kawartha Lakes
joinus@womeninnetworking.ca
705-786-1550

WiN Meeting - Thursday July 2nd

WiN Meeting - Thursday June 4th

May Meeting

Happy Friday and Happy Spring!!

Just a quick reminder of our upcoming meeting on Thursday, May 7th. Please let me know if you will be attending.

Our guest speakers will be Brenda Ford and Claudia Tomczak of Immunotec and our 5min Spotlight will be Vicki Reeve of Articulate Lawn Sprinklers. Full Details attached.

A small door prize is always welcomed and don't forget to bring your tin cans and empty wine bottles to help out our friends at "JobsRUs"

WiN member, Cheryl Evans of Sunny's Massage Therapy will be hosting a Spring Open House at her clinic on Saturday, May 2nd from 10am to 3pm located 228B Kent St. If you get a chance stop by, there will be a variety of product and service demonstrations, including WiN member Gloria Broad of Mary Kay and others.

I look forward to seeing everyone! Please pass this flyer along to anyone you think might be interested in joining us.

Warm regards,
Heather Chapman
WiN-Kawartha Lakes
705-786-1550

WiN Meeting - Thursday, March 5th

Hello Ladies!

Can you believe we are in March already! Sorry for the late reminder but time has sure flown by fast. Please let me know today or tomorrow if you will be able to attend.
Full Details Below.

REMINDERS:
1. If you are able to bring a small door prize that would be great!
2. Remember your tin cans and wine bottles for JobsRUs.
3. Please pass along to anyone you thing might be interested and/or bring a guest!

I look forward to seeing everyone this Thursday!

Warm regards,
Heather

Hard Sell

I am not a very happy camper.

Last month I took a young business friend to a networking meeting with the idea that she might like to check out the group for membership. At this meeting business cards are exchanged with the idea of two parties meeting later to get to know each other better.

I didn't see which cards my friend received and she happily scheduled two networking appointments. She said, "This is great!"

I saw her just the other day. She has decided not to join the group right now. Seems like the dreaded multi-level marketing husband and wife team were one appointment and the other appointment kept her waiting for 45 minutes. The MLM people kept trying to get her to buy for two hours until she finally said she had to go. All during this time she kept telling them that she was not interested. But they kept bangin' away at her. Both appointments had nothing really directly to do with the group, but they did reflect back on the group. Badly.

I don't know what I am going to do about the MLM people. The other person had already demonstrated to me his loser mentality, so as far as I was concerned he was a non-entity. But I will tell you that from now on, any of my guests will be shielded from the MLM team. They will not get a chance to ruin the opportunity of a new member just because of their selfish ways.

Why don't the old fashioned MLMers get it? We don't like their hard-sell pitch.

You Don't Say!

Way back before I went on vacation, I held a preview for our upcoming classes that will start very soon.

There were two women from the same company who had attended together. In fact, Rebecca brought Kathy with her. Because our course tuition offers a very generous discount to those in the non-profit world, both women expressed interest. It seems that each is a board member of a charity.

Out of curiosity, I asked Rebbecca to tell me about the charity she was involved with. It happens to be the Aurora Gonzalez Community Center. I shared with her that last year Certified Networker shared profits from an event with the Center and also collected over 300 children's' books for them. Kathy perked up and looked at Rebecca and said, "The non-profit I am connected with raises money for those situations and we're looking for a charity to give to."

Now these two women sit by each other in the office each day and even share client opportunities. Yet it took an outsider (me) to be the catalyst to them figuring out how they could help each other.

Kathy laughed and said, "Yeah, we each know that we leave the office to go to these board meetings, but we had never asked anything else!"

Networking is about finding out about each other. Not just the surface stuff, but the next level and the next.

What are you in the dark about with your best friend?

Vacation Musings

Okay, I'm back from vacation.

Not to Costa Rica this year, darn, but to share a little over a week with my friend Marcia Housel. She is my friend who was diagnosed with Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer this summer. I am so pleased to tell you that as of right now, her tests say that she is cancer-free!

She received a certificate for completing her chemo and posted it on the door just like she does when her grandchildren bring her things that they've been recognized for. I thought I'd take a picture of her with the cert.

Also, in my email queue when I arrived home was an email from a friend who also has a friend with stage 4 cancer. This friend wanted to write a children's book as one of her "bucket" items. The link to the book is here. It is a true story about hair loss and the woman's pet cat. If you have someone in your life who is going through chemo, she might appreciate this book for the people in her life.

I think Marcia looks marvey without her hair and believe me, each day when I got up to my "hair all over the head" look, I was somewhat jealous. What Marcia has decided is that when her hair comes back in, her hairstyle will be a pixie type do instead of the old style that she had to tame each day. She has beautiful white hair, so it will look great.

And by the way, this is the view out their back window at dusk. I vacationed for years at this lake when my kids were little and this is the first time I saw it clothed in snow. Beautiful!

WiN Meeting - Thursday, February 5th

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful Christmas and New Year! Just a reminder that next Thursday, Feb 5th is our February WiN meeting. Please let me know by this Friday, Jan 30th if you will be attending. Full details below.

Also, please help support "Jobs R Us" by bringing in your empty wine bottles and tin cans. We will collect them at every monthly meeting.

See you next week!
Warm regards,
Heather

WiN - December 08 Meeting

A Great time had by all!

Really Getting to Know You

It's always fun to meet with networking friends, because I usually walk away with a new idea.

This week was no different when I had coffee with Certified Networker Sharon Czarny, owner of Czarny Insurance Agency. Sharon wanted to meet with me to talked over an idea. I hope our conversation helped her because she shared a really great networking exercise with me.

It seems that David Marrufo who is the Educational Coordinator of her BNI chapter, is really creative. Not too long ago, he had every member write something about themselves that others might not know. Each slip of paper was folded and then he collected them and put them into a paper bag. He then went around the room again and having each member draw a slip. His instructions were that each member had to find out who was connected to the information they had in hand. That in itself is a great networking exercise, but here's the twist David added. The members had to count the number of guesses or people they went through to get to the right person. Whatever that number was, they had to schedule that many one-to-one meetings with members. Sharon said that she had 8 meetings set as a result of this exercise.

I love it. BNI's success is based on members really getting to know each other, so that they feel comfortable referring each other. David's creativity will help that to happen for their chapter members.

Thanks Sharon for sharing!

It's More Than I Thoiught

Last week I attended a networking event in Findlay for those clients of Flag City Online. Now I gotta tell ya' until just recently, I just didn't think those city online directories were really worth anything. But then I got to know owner Karla Lewis better.

For Karla, the online directory is just the jumping off point. Beyond that, she hosts now monthly networking events for all her clients. That's just one thing she does, but I want to focus on that today. I had to arrive late for the event (which Karla knew about) because I had an appointment in Toledo that morning. As I arrived, the assembled group was beginning to do introductions with a twist.

Evidently when each person arrived they somehow received the company name of another person in attendance. (I'll have to find out the logistics from Karla!) Instructions must have been given that each person was to find out about the other person. Then during introductions, instead of self-introductions, each participant gave the introduction for the person theyhad been paired with.

The introductions were wonderful. People bragged about each other. As a new member of the group, I found out quite a bit more about people that I thought I knew pretty well.

Hats off to Karla for making this community be REALLY connected.

Collaboration Makes More

Friday night last week, I attended a party to help celebrate some January birthdays. Joy MacLeod, is a member of our Certified Networker community -- all those in the area that have graduated from the course.

Within the past year, Joy has been on a mission to launch a business of being a patient advocate for cancer patients. While out there networking she found two other people that were wanting to provide services to cancer patients, too. Instead of looking at them as competitors, the three decided to form a non-profit that would service the cancer community. By chance, all their birthdays are in January, hence the party which will hopefully give them some money they can then use for their new organization.

Some of their objectives are to provide housing for those coming to the area for treatment -- sort of like the Ronald MacDonald house does for families with ill children. They also want to be a centralized resource center so cancer patients know all that is available to them. Additionally, they want to provide the patient advocate services that Joy is all about. Their organization is called Cancer Connection of NorthWest Ohio. They have applied for their501(c)3 status and expect that they will receive that designation very soon.

As Joy said Friday night, "All of us have been touched by cancer in some way. We want to connect cancer patients and their families and caregivers to physical, emotional and spiritual resources." If you want to know more call Joy at 419-902-4742.

I am so proud of how the CN community members make a difference in the community.

Are Robins Snowbirds?

Today, I played most of the day. First I went for a short winter walk with hubby, Steve and then later I headed out to a Secor Metro Park to strap on the cross country skiis. I really didn't put in that many miles, probably about 2, but the trail was untracked and it really got my heart to pumping!

Before leaving home, I packed a sandwich and some strawberries, so at some point I came upon a wonderful bench where I could sit to eat my lunch. I cleaned the foot of snow from it and enjoyed my meal while watching the birds high above.

What really fascinated me were the two Robins in a tree that had dried black berries on it. Now, it's January 18. What are those Robins doing here? Have Robins stopped heading south because of the mild winters we've been having for the past decade????? Or was it all a fallacy that Robins migrated.

Part of networking is gathering information and also getting questions answered.

So who's out there that can fill me in on Robin behavior?

Fill Those Slots

I learn so much from the people I network with.

Monday Sarah Wicks, AFLAC, was my guest at the WEN West meeting. That meeting always ends with everyone joining in a circle and then each of us pass one business card to the right till the leader says stop and then that action is repeated to the left. The two cards each person has in their possession, are the people to meet individually in the next month.

Sarah participated. She always jumps right in. That's what I like about her.

She showed me something else, too.

You know those little slots in your planner which are supposed to be used for credit cards or other credentials? Well, here's how she uses them. She inserts the business cards of people she is meeting with in the next week. That way they are handy, right there, in case she needs contact info.

Great idea.

Thanks, Sarah.

Tapioca Marketing

This weekend, well actually Friday, I had a hankering for homemade Tapioca pudding. I used to make it all the time when my kids were young, but it had been YEARS. So with a winter storm predicted, I got some food in for the weekend between appointments on Friday, including the Tapioca. Now this looked like new fangled Tapioca, not the red box type. But what I actually found out was it was "pearl" tapioca, which meant it was more involved to make.

But never fear, I put the pearls to soak on Friday afternoon, so they could soak overnight as the instructions read.

Saturday, I could almost taste how good the pudding was going to be, but another challenge presented itself. I was supposed to make this in a double-boiler type pan, something I don't own. But I used a steamer insert with the upper part of the steamer lined with aluminum foil so that the steam wouldn't get in. I used a bowl inside this contraption for the actual cooking.

Well, to make a LONG story a little shorter, my pudding never gelled. Today, while I was out cross-country skiing, I figured that I could still bake it in the oven, just like a custard pie, without the crust. It worked. Finally tonight I had my first taste. Not pudding consistency, but still very good.

So why am I telling you all this?

Well, sometimes we do marketing that doesn't work. I'm sure we all have those leftovers that we're now wondering what to use or throw away.

Jeremy Haselman, a young financial planner for Northwest Mutual, had that happen to him. Early in '08, someone convinced him to plop down some money to be included in a "wedding-focused" brochure. Of course, Jeremy didn't get any business from this and when he was considering throwing the many leftovers out, he thought, "I should at least get to know all the rest of the advertisers in the flier." That is exactly what he did and now he knows a few that he can work with in the future and some that he won't waste his time. But Jeremy took a leftover and turned it into something positive.

Pudding and advertising have a lot in common!

That Name Game

I was asked to speak about networking at the monthly N.O.G.A. (Northwest Ohio Gerontological Association) this past week. Usually, their meetings are more formal educational events, but this one they dedicated to networking.

As I entered I was given the typical label of half of two people or things that go together to put on my name tag. I was Butch Cassidy. Okay, I knew I had to find the Sundance Kid. But I didn't find that person before we had to sit down for the meeting. Angie Weid, Organized Solutions, was the person who invited me to speak and she made the introduction. I talked for just a few minutes focusing on the idea of making appointments while AT the event, rather than just collecting business cards. At the end of my talk, Angie announced, "Okay, now you all have been partnered with someone. If you haven't found them yet, you're going to be able to do so, because we're all going to do some more networking. BUT, this person can be your first appointment."

What a great addition to this usual game. Make an appointment to get to know this person better. I did see appointment books and PDAs being used. I scheduled two appointments and made several other contacts, too.

What did you do at your last networking event to reach your new goals for the new year?

Making Me Feel Comfortable

I mentioned dancing lessons in my last post.

Well, believe it or not, I have been tapped to be a "celebrity dancer" for our annual library foundation fundraiser. Our library in Perrysburg is named the Way Library after Willard Way, a long ago citizen, who gave money to start the first library. With that in mind, our event is called Dance aWay With the Stars.

Okay, you have the setting.

Now, I love to dance, but don't get to do it often and I don't know what I'm doing when I do dance. I figure moving my feet to the beat is half the battle!

I have been assigned a "professional" who is helping me to learn the maranga and who will also dance with me the night of the show. As far as I'm concerned, I hit the jackpot with this assignment. Neal Hopkins, was a professional dancer in another life. He has the dancer body, tall and lithe. Think Tommy Tune, but just not quite as tall. Neal now owns a State Farm insurance agency.

At every practice Neal has made me feel like a dancer, even when I turn the wrong way or can't get my hips to sway appropriately. (Believe me, this is not easy!) We have fun. He knows what we need to do and knows that I want him to take charge. Cool!

But the best part happened in an email. You see we received an email from the library letting us know that photos would be taken next week at practice and that we needed to wear something dressy. Right away my anxiety level increased. I don't go clubbing. I don't have slinky clothes. What was I going to do??????

Neal put me at ease, when confirming our practice time for this week, he wrote, "We'll talk about what we need to wear for next week's photo." Right away, because of my experience already, I knew that I didn't have to worry about this little item one more second. Neal will handle it and will make it easy.

Thank you, Neal!

And isn't that what networking is all about, making others feel comfortable and relaxed so they can enjoy the moment?

No WIN Meeting in January

Happy New Year, I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful Christmas holiday. I know most of us are probably back in the swing of things by now but I wanted post a reminder that we will not be meeting in January. Our next WIN meeting will be Thursday, February 5th at the Queen Street United Church. Full details to follow soon.

Kind regards,
Heather Chapman

What's New For This Year?

In my opinion, networking doesn't pay off 'till I sit down and chat with a person that I've met at a networking meeting or event. With that in mind, I am changing my goal this year. From this day forward, I want to walk away with two appointments from each networking event that I attend. And this is not about selling, but finding out what these people do, how they do it and what I might be able to do to help them. Simple.

Another thing that I want to get better at is either entering business card info and comments into my database and then throwing the card away....or throwing the card away immediately. I would say that I am 75% there, but I must admit that there are some business cards sitting on my desk right now.
Bad Girl!

The reason for some of this is that I have tried not to walk into my office at least a couple times per week, just giving myself permission to be Debby! Usually that means reading, but also it could mean yoga or dancing class. (more about that later) When I have really busy days, the paperwork and business cards can mount up, especially when those busy days link together. So, my thought is that I will spend a maximum of 1 hour in my office on a night when it is not a "work night." And the only reason for that time will be to remove those little cards from my desk.

There, you have it. My two resolutions for the year.