I took to business the same way I’ve taken to most things that interest me, both feet in and fired up. I had a lot to learn at the beginning, but that didn’t (and hasn’t) stopped me from being passionate and willing to talk to pretty much anyone about what I’m doing and why I believe in it.

Even so, it took me a while to realize that living what matters to me — doing business with integrity, empowering women to create the businesses and lives they want, ending unhealthy/unhappy client relationships, to name a few — is a way to change the world.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not world changing in a Rosa Parks or Ghandi kind of way. More in a ripple effect way.

When I choose not to work with (and thereby support) businesses that bully their staff, when I support the creation of whole business communities that engage in business with integrity and collaboration, when I don’t reward dysfunctional work relationships by putting up with them, I am voting for and contributing to a different way of doing business. I’m helping create the new business paradigm so many of us have been hoping and waiting for.

I didn’t set out to change the world — nor do I think I’ve arrived. I’ve simply been driven by my own experiences to change what isn’t working, what doesn’t sit well with me, what offends my sense of right. There remains a spark of idealism in me, I am compelled!

How can you be an accidental role model for how you want business to be done? What new paradigm of business do you want to see realized? Then live it! You have the power to change the world, your world, by being different and doing business differently.

Disengage from the business paradigm that don’t work for you, and start creating one that does.

Liz Gaige
Marketing Navigators Consulting

Maybe the whole idea of “hunting” is where women get off track with what business development and sales truly entail. I mean, it’s not like you go out to a networking group or prospect meeting in camouflage gear. Well, at least I hope you don’t. (Ladies! I don’t care where you live, baby blue camouflage is still camouflage; it is and always will be, a poorly made fashion decision.)

We don’t chase or clobber people, we engage with them. So what’s with the “hunting” nonsense, anyway?

Those and similar misconceptions are why I’ve so often heard clients say, “I don’t like sales. It’s just not me.” We get the whole idea all screwed up – and freak out about it – because we’re using words that don’t work for us.

I wasn’t comfortable with marketing and sales at first either, but I completely relaxed once I realized marketing = education, and opportunities can be win-win collaborations. Boy, that sure takes the pressure off.

Obviously when we practice and improve our marketing and sales skills, our efforts create more opportunities for us to do business with people. Shift your thinking, get out there, and do it. No weapons required.

Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

It’s easy to say “make business development a game,” but it’s way more complicated than that, right?

Rule #1 of the new Business Development Game…have fewer rules!

Isn’t life already bogged down with an awful lot of rules? Surely some of them aren’t necessary. How about trying this instead:

1. Make a list of your clients
2. Grade each with 1-3 stars based on how much you enjoyed working with them, the more stars the better
3. Cross off all the clients with only one star
4. Add an extra star to the remaining clients who are profitable to your business
5. List why you like the clients with 3 and 4 stars and look for commonalities like industry, type of work, age, gender, etc.
6. Start marketing to more of the clients who fit the bill for enjoyment and profitability.

That’s it. Yes, really!

Quit making up complicated rules that don’t actually exist and just start where you are right now with what’s already working. Do more of what works, less of what doesn’t.

And have some fun out there.

Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

pas·sion [say pash-uhn]¹
n:  Any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.

Most of us think of our passion as the thing we love, the thing that makes us supremely happy. But passion is actually anything we have a strong compelling devotion toward, which can also include the negative.

At a morning Coffee Talk recently, I asked the women in the group how many of them spent time criticizing themselves.

“How often do you go over and over past events in your mind, or with your friends, wishing you’d done this or that differently, beating yourself up about how you handled a situation, or criticizing yourself for a decision you’ve made?”

Sadly, the answer around the table was a unanimous, “All the time.”

When you spend time doggedly agonizing over the past and all the ways you screwed up, the ugly side of passion has reared its head.

Stop and think about how much time you spend criticizing yourself. It’s sobering to realize that your devotion — your passion — has become focused on passing judgment on yourself instead of acknowledging and embracing The Amazing You™. The evidence is in how regularly you find fault in who you are.

Yikes! Would you let someone speak that critically about your friends?! I’ll bet not.

Stop focusing your energy on shredding yourself to bits! Instead, channel the beautiful side of passion. Re-direct all that energy and power toward unearthing and appreciating the things that make you wonderful and unique.

————-
Okay, admit it. What makes YOU wonderful? Come on, it’s practically anonymous on the Internet, you can tell us. You know you don’t hesitate to advertise a weakness (that’s such a girl thing, just quit it!)

Take a moment to share what makes you The Amazing You™!

Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

¹Source: Dictionary.com

Okay, wait a second. Maybe it’s not that easy to find your passion. Maybe you have been looking for the thing that’s going to ignite your passion in business for a while, but it hasn’t made itself obvious. Now what?

I was in a waiting room today, flipping through a magazine, and came across one of those 3D print ads that were popular about 20+ years ago. On paper it just looks like a repeating pattern of nonsense colour and lines, but if you look right at it, with your eyes out of focus, and gradually bring your eyes back into focus, you suddenly see a 3D image that wasn’t there before, hidden amidst the pattern.

I don’t know what that process is called (leave me a comment if you do, I’d love to know) or how it works (the geek in me really wants to know!), but it is WICKED. Do you know that the image on paper will actually move as you move the page? Trippy. And I tried it a second time, just to see if I could bring up the image again — trick my eyes and brain — and the image was slightly different the second time.

Hmmm, so what does that have to do with passion. Well, when we’re staring straight at it, sometimes the answer isn’t readily seen. Even when it’s right there. It’s worth it to take the time to relax, lighten up your gaze, and be open to something new and alive making an appearance where you’re not expecting it.

Work is so much easier when you’re doing stuff you love and tapping into what comes naturally. It’s worth it to take the time to find out what that is for YOU.

Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

Feb 19, 2010
PS: They’re called 3D stereo images, and I found one online… 

Old Rule: There’s only one right way to do business.
New Rule: Do business your way.

Ladies, we are going to break some rules this year. We’re going to rock the boat. We’re going to quit apologizing and just be ourselves, thank you very much. And, we’re going to challenge some ideas about business and how it gets done.

Historically, industrialized commerce has been a masculine world run in a focused, linear, analytical manner, with no need for emotion or feeling. It was created by men for men, so it has suited them just fine.

News flash! Women are fully entrenched in the workforce and starting businesses at 2-3 times the rate of men. Trouble is, the structure hasn’t changed. We hit a glass ceiling or try to build business in a framework that doesn’t come naturally, and it can be tough going. Like being left-handed in a right-handed world.

But that’s just the way it is. I mean, the “old boys” are dying off, but they won’t ever be completely gone. What’s a gal to do? Well, toss out the old rules for a start. How about this, instead:

We may do business with men,
but we don’t have to do business like men.

Hey, I like men. They are lovely creatures. Some of my best friends are men. But I’m not one. I don’t want to be one. So why would I act like one in business?

News flash! Gentleman, Art of War as an approach to business is soooo last century! There’s a new game in town and here’s how it’s played. Money is a tool, not a scorecard of value or success. We don’t need to crush anyone in order to be successful. We can care more about the community than money and still make lots of money – which we then use as a tool, not a scorecard.

Don’t get me wrong ladies, we may still need to make some concessions when we work with men, just like you would make adjustments to accommodate someone who is, say, hard of hearing. Understanding their communication style, slowing things down, sticking to a single goal-oriented topic…all of these efforts just make things run more smoothly.

But I am a woman in business, so I’m going to act like a woman.

• I will work with people I like and respect and whose values I can support.
• I will be in business with my heart and soul, not just my mind.
• I will be collaborative with no need to outdo my colleagues.
• I will utilize my feelings and emotions to help me make better decisions.
• I will talk about my clothes, my nails, my shoes…and then get down to business and negotiate like a pro.

Ladies, we don’t need to fight the existing business paradigm. We just need to disengage, respect our values, do things our own way, and build strong companies that together create a new model of how the business community can operate.

THAT is some serious rule breaking.

Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

Old Rule: Play it safe.
New Rule: Don’t be a chicken. Literally!

Forget quote of the day, here’s an idea to take with you through the year. Seth Godin answers the question, “How do we rise above the grip of resistance-addicted lizard brain into unleashed, energized, full tilt mojo and artistic moxy?”

Answer:

“The lizard is the prehistoric brain stem, the amygdala, the part of our brain responsible for anger, revenge, sex and safety. It’s what a chicken has, all that a chicken has.

The lizard is mistaken.

The lizard successfully believed, for a really long time, that safety was good. Avoid saber-tooth tigers. Duck your head. Don’t raise your hand. That = survival.

Now, of course, that equals burger-flipping and Wal-Mart greeting. Safety is a recipe for food stamps.

What the lizard ought to be doing is pushing you to do art, pushing you to stand out, pushing you to do work that matters and to make a difference. So, you rise above by seducing and quieting the lizard, and then, when it’s snoozing, do exactly the opposite of what it wants you to do.”

I’ve never wanted fear to be the thing that stops me from being what I was put on this planet to be, or doing what I was put on this planet to do. I mean, fear is just a thought, right? Who’s boss of me anyway, me or my amygdala?!

- Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

I looooove challenging “the rules.” Even from a young age I was the kid who asked and even more often pondered, “But why?”

Typical answer, “Because.”

“Yeah, but why because?” I suspect I drove some adults cross-eyed.

Fortunately for my parents and teachers, when I was a kid I actually obeyed even if I didn’t see the logic or agree. Now? Not so much.

All along the journey from childhood through adulthood we accept an awful lot of unspoken “rules” and assumptions without challenging whether or not they work for us or are even grounded in reality. I love the story of the young woman who asked her mom why when she was growing up had her mother always cut the Sunday roast in half before cooking it? The mother didn’t really know, her own mother has just always done it that way.

When the daughter asked her grandmother, she said, “Well, for many years I didn’t have a pan big enough for a whole roast so I always cut it in half and cooked it in two.”

Moral of the story? Ask the questions, challenge the assumptions!

There is no better time of year than RIGHT NOW to examine your beliefs, ask who made the “rules” you have never even questioned, and start demanding, “Because why?!” And if you don’t like the answer, let it go and make yourself some new rules.

Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

It never ceases to amaze me what I discover as I learn more about my colleagues and clients.

You can know someone for years and after all those conversations suddenly discover they are involved with a charity you want to support. Or they know the CEO at a business you’ve been trying to find an “in” with. Or they have a niche area of expertise you had no idea they had.

“You do that kind of work, too?! Wow, I didn’t realize.”

When you’ve built trust and connected on a more personal level you can begin to discover ways to connect with each others’ networks in a very authentic way.

I mean, it’s one thing to get the email address for a contact, it’s quite another to have a personal endorsement made to a personal friend of theirs. It’s often the cherished contacts that are the most valuable and the ones that are only offered when you have a genuine relationship. And, it goes both ways. You too are more inclined to only connect colleagues with your innermost circle when there’s a high level of trust involved.

It pays to strengthen your existing business relationships, and to continually work to cultivate new ones. It also pays to weed out the ones that are no longer working for you.

- Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

There’s something about taking a business relationship one step deeper that builds a whole new layer of trust. In my experience it’s usually different when dealing with men in business, but with women I occasionally find moments when I can connect on a personal, authentic basis — talking about what truly matters to me. That’s when some of the strongest relationships are forged.

I’m not referring to discussions of intimate, personal detail. That’s just unprofessional.

I’m talking about having the freedom to talk about your values, your purpose, why you do what you do, why it matters to you.

Here’s where it gets dicey. There are still boundaries to respect, especially in a client relationship. And it’s not okay to start thinking your friendship waives your business and professional responsibilities. That’s where women can easily get tripped up. We blur the lines between personal and business out of a misplaced need to be nice.

I’ve had friends as clients and hired friends to do work for me. As long as you clarify expectations up front, it can work extremely well. Set the guidelines. Like, not taking extended personal calls from friends during office hours, but letting them know that after hours and weekends are a great time to catch up.

And it works both ways. When you set healthy boundaries for yourself and your business, you must also respect others’. That means you can talk about your values, but your friend doesn’t have to hire you for their project just because you’re friends.

I think of it this way: you can be personal, just don’t take it personally.

- Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting