When I first started gardening there was a pretty high plant mortality rate. I'd forget to water, and who knew plants could die overnight? This would be followed by a cycle of self-recrimination, guilt and regret. This was not enjoyable.
When I got my first crop of tomatoes and my petunias were going strong, I got the payoff of my efforts, uneven as they were. Since then I've never looked back. My first garden filled me with anxiety about being able to take care of it. Now my garden is gorgeous and the anxiety is gone, I trust myself to do what is needed to keep it thriving, and it is a constant source of pleasure.
I'm trying to think of social media as a garden -- it takes consistent effort before you see the payoff. I know it will be the same for my clients. It's hard to know where to fit it into the day already full of priorities. It's easy to forget until it becomes second nature, and it can be a source of worry and regret. The turning point with gardening came when I started to enjoy the process. I can see a glimmer of the same thing happening with my conversations on Facebook and Twitter -- the process is becoming enjoyable and is starting to be a regular feature of my day.
The Decorah eagles have had more than a little to do with this. I want to see what the eagles are doing and how their feathers are coming along. Checking in on them every day is not a chore, it's genuine interest and involvement in their well-being. And I find that I enjoy the chat almost as much as I enjoy the growth of the babies; when the chat room is down it isn't as much fun watching the babies flap their wings and huddle up together. It's the difference between traveling alone and marveling at the scenery and traveling with someone else and marveling together. I've gotten very adept at traveling by myself and enjoying it. Now I'm re-discovering the pleasures of sharing the trip.
Realtors talk about working their farm -- consistent effort towards a goal they believe in. Participating in the conversations of social media are a farm, too, or a garden if you prefer. The results are incremental at first. Some days you just don't feel like it but it is constancy that yields results, and the effect is cumulative. I'm trying to cultivate the same habit with Facebook and Twitter, and I look forward to the harvest.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
I don't need a to-do list, I need a dream.
Here's where I am, today, in the Now.
I've been floundering. It hasn't been clear to me what it is I need to do about work, and that lack of clarity has been confusing and dis-heartening.
For a while I thought the answer was to start a business that I could do on the side when more consulting came around, and Cheeky Quilts was born. I took my avocation of making contemporary baby quilts and scaled it up, and everyone who saw one, wanted one. It was satisfying and it kept me occupied sewing, but making quilts for a living is never going to generate the kind of income I'm looking for, even after down-sizing.
Then there was a broken pipe in the wall between the living room and bathroom of my house. It took months to get the repairs made correctly and I couldn't work while the house was full of sawdust and drywall dust. I had to move out of the house for what was supposed to be three or four days that turned into three weeks, and as soon as we got back in we found more damage that the contractors had missed and needed to move out again. It was a trial. I ended up selling the house and renting a house nearby, but I'd lost half a year in the turmoil.
Then came Cheeky Furs. The baby quilts I made were all backed with faux fur which has gotten quite wonderful in the last few years. Instead of focusing on quilts with a limited audience, I started making full-size throws and fake fur scarves. They are unique and huggable. I built a website for myself (cheekyfurs.com) and booked some holiday craft show events. The throws and scarves were a big hit, but I was netting less than minimum wage and working like a dog. My ego was satisfied and the artist in me was happy, but that wasn't a long-term solution either. I had to go into production and sell to some stores, or find something else. The holiday season was over, a new year was starting, and I still couldn't figure out what to do.
In January I got an email from UCLA Extension saying that the winter quarter was about to start. One thing that had become perfectly clear in the previous year of disruption was that my marketing skills weren't as up to date as they needed to be. Finding a job looked less and less likely, and it also became clear that I was going to have to invent work for myself. My opportunities in the current market are just not that good, and I wasn't even getting phone interviews from resumes I was sending. Maybe I should take a class.
I dropped out of college my senior year and never finished my degree. I've never felt that it held me back because I was always able to find work through people I knew, who knew my work. I did well, I progressed, I worked hard and I advanced. But this world is not that world. There are hundreds of younger, qualified applicants competing for the same jobs I am, and I'd lost my edge. I had to try something new, what I was doing wasn't working.
So I enrolled in Advertising in the Digital Age and a whole new world opened up, something more fascinating than I could ever have imagined. I've spent the last twenty years doing marketing for technology companies, so I'm comfortable with learning new things. But on-line marketing seemed to me to be new fancy tools to do the same things. Oh, how wrong could one person be.
I was the oldest one in my class by at least a decade and I felt like I stuck out like an old, gray thumb. But it didn't take me long to see that all the experience I have still applies, it just needs to be applied differently. The final project was a marketing plan for a band I'd never heard of: Neon Trees. How many marketing plans have I done in my life, maybe a thousand? And how many new products had I researched and embraced? Hundreds for sure. Still, I was overwhelmed by what I didn't know. Don't know their music, don't know much about what's left of the music business, blah blah blah, the committee in my head had lots of cold water to throw on me.
The marketing plan was good; when I presented it to the "client" there was one part they called genius! My well of confidence that had become so empty was filling up again. I rediscovered something I was good at, and I realized how much I missed doing marketing. I have enough space between me and the bad endings I'd had the last few years to feel optimistic again. I have something to say again for the first time in what feels like a century. It is a wonderful feeling.
Social media for marketing seemed so advanced and so foreign that I wasn't sure I could keep up, or that I would be interested enough to try. It has been a delight to find myself passionately engaged in tackling something big that seemed beyond me. I shouldn't have worried -- this is marketing, not calculus. I can soak it up and retain it and synthesize it without angst. I'm having a blast, and I'm seeing where I can fit into this new world with what I've learned in the old world.
At least now it seems possible.
I've been floundering. It hasn't been clear to me what it is I need to do about work, and that lack of clarity has been confusing and dis-heartening.
For a while I thought the answer was to start a business that I could do on the side when more consulting came around, and Cheeky Quilts was born. I took my avocation of making contemporary baby quilts and scaled it up, and everyone who saw one, wanted one. It was satisfying and it kept me occupied sewing, but making quilts for a living is never going to generate the kind of income I'm looking for, even after down-sizing.
Then there was a broken pipe in the wall between the living room and bathroom of my house. It took months to get the repairs made correctly and I couldn't work while the house was full of sawdust and drywall dust. I had to move out of the house for what was supposed to be three or four days that turned into three weeks, and as soon as we got back in we found more damage that the contractors had missed and needed to move out again. It was a trial. I ended up selling the house and renting a house nearby, but I'd lost half a year in the turmoil.
Then came Cheeky Furs. The baby quilts I made were all backed with faux fur which has gotten quite wonderful in the last few years. Instead of focusing on quilts with a limited audience, I started making full-size throws and fake fur scarves. They are unique and huggable. I built a website for myself (cheekyfurs.com) and booked some holiday craft show events. The throws and scarves were a big hit, but I was netting less than minimum wage and working like a dog. My ego was satisfied and the artist in me was happy, but that wasn't a long-term solution either. I had to go into production and sell to some stores, or find something else. The holiday season was over, a new year was starting, and I still couldn't figure out what to do.
In January I got an email from UCLA Extension saying that the winter quarter was about to start. One thing that had become perfectly clear in the previous year of disruption was that my marketing skills weren't as up to date as they needed to be. Finding a job looked less and less likely, and it also became clear that I was going to have to invent work for myself. My opportunities in the current market are just not that good, and I wasn't even getting phone interviews from resumes I was sending. Maybe I should take a class.
I dropped out of college my senior year and never finished my degree. I've never felt that it held me back because I was always able to find work through people I knew, who knew my work. I did well, I progressed, I worked hard and I advanced. But this world is not that world. There are hundreds of younger, qualified applicants competing for the same jobs I am, and I'd lost my edge. I had to try something new, what I was doing wasn't working.
So I enrolled in Advertising in the Digital Age and a whole new world opened up, something more fascinating than I could ever have imagined. I've spent the last twenty years doing marketing for technology companies, so I'm comfortable with learning new things. But on-line marketing seemed to me to be new fancy tools to do the same things. Oh, how wrong could one person be.
I was the oldest one in my class by at least a decade and I felt like I stuck out like an old, gray thumb. But it didn't take me long to see that all the experience I have still applies, it just needs to be applied differently. The final project was a marketing plan for a band I'd never heard of: Neon Trees. How many marketing plans have I done in my life, maybe a thousand? And how many new products had I researched and embraced? Hundreds for sure. Still, I was overwhelmed by what I didn't know. Don't know their music, don't know much about what's left of the music business, blah blah blah, the committee in my head had lots of cold water to throw on me.
The marketing plan was good; when I presented it to the "client" there was one part they called genius! My well of confidence that had become so empty was filling up again. I rediscovered something I was good at, and I realized how much I missed doing marketing. I have enough space between me and the bad endings I'd had the last few years to feel optimistic again. I have something to say again for the first time in what feels like a century. It is a wonderful feeling.
Social media for marketing seemed so advanced and so foreign that I wasn't sure I could keep up, or that I would be interested enough to try. It has been a delight to find myself passionately engaged in tackling something big that seemed beyond me. I shouldn't have worried -- this is marketing, not calculus. I can soak it up and retain it and synthesize it without angst. I'm having a blast, and I'm seeing where I can fit into this new world with what I've learned in the old world.
At least now it seems possible.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Fnding my voice
The thing I find most challenging about doing a blog is how much to share. Don't want to over-share, but do want what I write to be real. Don't want to expose myself too much, but want to open to a new way of sharing things more personal and meaningful than How are the Dogs? (Fine, thanks.)
The recession has been really rough for me. Life-changing, as it has for so many others. I've done alot of thinking and writing about it in my weekly writing group. I'm told that my expression of what I'm going through is relevant to many people. So I'm trying to stay true to myself and true to my story. It's a stretch for me, but I want to take full advantage of my Social Media Marketing class, so I'm diving in. Here goes......
The recession has been really rough for me. Life-changing, as it has for so many others. I've done alot of thinking and writing about it in my weekly writing group. I'm told that my expression of what I'm going through is relevant to many people. So I'm trying to stay true to myself and true to my story. It's a stretch for me, but I want to take full advantage of my Social Media Marketing class, so I'm diving in. Here goes......
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Bouncing Back
I didn’t know that so much bouncing back would be required of me; I fear I may be bounced out. I’ve come back from divorce, from bankruptcy, from crippling depression and from getting fired by email. Those I handled and survived. Now, at 59, I face a new daunting challenge, one I didn’t expect.
I haven’t been able to find work. I’ve been a successful marketing consultant for 15 years, a successful corporate executive prior to that, a successful entrepreneur before that. I am accustomed to working hard and doing well. I have gotten used to opportunity being widely available. Now, not so much. How do you bounce back from that?
I keep broadening my job search. I've had my resume professionally re-written. I have Tweeted, Facebooked, Plaxo’d, and LinkedIn. I have had informational interviews and met friends-of-friends who might know of something. I haven't found anything that anyone is willing to hire me for.
Where have I gotten? What am I to do now?
I’ve never had a setback like this. I know I’m not the only one. What are other people doing to survive this economic disaster? I graduated from high school in 1969; my classmates who have done well are starting to retire to spend more time at the house in Traverse City in the summer and Florida in the winter. Their kids are out of college and out of the house. And then there’s this big group of us who have worked hard and built lives around work that’s in jeopardy or obsolete now. We have to keep working to replace our lost retirement capital, and there are too many of us fighting for the same jobs. We have mortgages and families to support. We are having to consider options that seemed impossible a year ago. We’re selling timeshares and postponing vacations and raiding our 401k just to stay afloat. It’s like standing on a sand dune in a stiff wind, one step up, two steps back and just a windburn to show for it.
I’ve always been good at getting jobs and finding work. But I’m overly ripe now. Things I’m good at can be done by someone half my age with half my experience. Times are hard, and I'm not sure I have the vitality to start over again. I’m at a crossroads, dragging my feet all the way. Now what?
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