Tomorrow…California Here I Come!

On Monday I leave for California and the International BNI Convention. My friends Sue and LuAnn and I are taking the first 2 1/2 days to drive a Mustang convertible up the coast and enjoy the sunshine and ocean. Then we head back to San Diego and the convention. It’s an exciting time for me and for my company, OrgTrack.com. I’ll get to spend time with my clients and prospective clients, in a jam-packed four days of work and fun.

Take this week and spend a few minutes thinking about where you are, and where you want to be. I have a goal of the number of new customers I want to have by the end of the week. What’s your goal this week?

Go Wrap Soap

Feeling overwhelmed? Looking at the long list of todo items that seems never-ending? Wondering how you will possibly make a dent in anything that massive? Go wrap soap.

My friend Judith makes wonderful homemade soap and sells it at her shop here in Pepin, Third Street Deli and Juice Bar. She is a great source of wisdom and food, both of which she spreads freely around our community. On Saturday we were discussing our feelings of feeling overwhelmed by all we had to do each day. Her answer, she wraps soap. It gives her a true feeling of accomplishment. She has something tangible in front of her to touch, smell and perfect. When she’s done wrapping soap she can decorate the wrappers with glitter and stack them in her shop for sale. It gives her a true sense of accomplishment.

What is the corollary in your life? In mine it’s doing the dishes, something that is mindless and that I’m always behind on now that I don’t have a dishwasher. Another friend paints a room, or moves furniture. Maybe it’s pulling weeds out of your garden, or straightening a closet. Whatever it is, next time you are feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of your life, find a small, significant chore that you can accomplish in a brief time that has a visible impact. Go wrap soap.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Days

I live in the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and this weekend is our Laura Days celebration. We’ll have 3000-4000 people come through here, and that’s pretty good for a festival that doesn’t serve beer!

When I was 10 I read the “Laura books”, as they are called. It’s a series of books written about pioneer life on the prairie. The most well-known television series was called “Little House on the Prairie”, named after one of the books. I live in Pepin, Wisconsin, home of “Little House in the Big Woods”.

(picture at right courtesy of Midge Bolt)

My Grandma Anderson was born in a sod hut in North Dakota, and never read a book in English until she was 70, when I was 10 and introduced her to the Laura books. We read them together, and I remember that time in my life with great affection.

When I started my first company I needed to come up with a name. Anderson Consulting was taken at the time (who’d want it now?) and BMA Consulting was just too boring. Then I remembered the Laura books, and since my favorite color at the time was purple, Plum Creek Consulting it was. When I say my company name in front of women of a certain age, 95% get the connection immediately. Men, maybe 30%.

And everyone in my village thinks it’s amazing that I named my company Plum Creek and then ended up making this my home. I think it’s pretty amazing too! Stop by sometime, if only virtually. www.pepinwisconsin.com. Check out the photo albums - I have this thing about taking sunset photos from my sailboat.

Quotes That Don’t Fit

I am a collector of quotes. I have them taped all around my desk, I even created a website where one of the features is that you can sign up to receive a Quote of the Day from my collection. While I often don’t connect with a particular quote, it isn’t very often I run across a quote that makes me stop and think - No Way! Here’s one such quote:

Robert L. Schwartz says “The entrepreneur is essentially a visualizer and an actualizer… He can visualize something, and when he visualizes it he sees exactly how to make it happen.“

Has this been your experience? It sure isn’t mine. I have started several different ventures over the years, and while I might have thought I knew how it was going to go, I soon discovered that there was so much that I didn’t know that I thought I knew that….well…the journey is always a series of lessons on its own.

To me an entrepreneur needs to go with the flow, make decisions on the fly, and use her experiences and expertise to make the best decision that can be made with the information at the time. To me making a bad decision is better than making no decision, and no decision actually IS a decision. Things can always be changed as you go, but to me any movement is better than standing still. I am an agent of change, and it doesn’t frighten me. Quite the contrary, I revel in it!

So what do you think? Did you know how it was all going to work, step by step, before you started your last adventure? I did not, but I still enjoy the ride!

Hello fellow beans!

All right, here we go….I’ve been avoiding this for too long. What you say? Beth M. Anderson doesn’t want to give an opinion? Easy to do when you have people asking you questions, much harder just to go for it. So here goes….

This blog is for the ramblings of a professional networker who has friends and colleagues all over the planet, thanks to BNI, Business Network Int’l, the world’s largest word-of-mouth referral organization. Dr. Ivan Misner, the founder of BNI, is mentoring a group of BNI people who want to write, and he says a blog is something I should have, so now I have one.

Let’s see where this ride takes us. Please bear with this geeky end-of-the-line baby boomer who is getting to know this new set of tools…