I read an article recently and it continues to echo in many conversations I have been in lately. There is a lot of support for failure ‘out there.’ People are sharing with me they are frustrated, negative and feeling hopeless.
I am ready to change that thought into support for success…care to chime in [...]

Real quick, I want to ask 4 key questions and share a few best practices with you regarding the follow up stage after networking.
4 Key questions:
- What do you do with all those new business cards of people you just met out networking?
- If you divide the cost of the networking event by the number [...]

It occurs to me we move so fast, with social media prospecting, networking, attending events and following up that we may be running circles around ourselves and calling it “productively trying to grow our businesses!”
While trying to grow our businesses, sometimes, we work our system, and sometimes we are too busy to keep our system [...]

Picture this:
An office environment or a team of people working on a common project. Everyone knows their contributions and duties, accepts them readily and progress is moving smoothly. This is one of the best team experiences you have ever had in a work environment.
Does this happen often or rarely in your real world?
In [...]

In each of our lives, our businesses and where we choose to focus our time daily – we are leaders. Some of this time may be spent leading others, or working with peers and some may be working solo and leading ourselves.
Daily, all of us are some sort of ‘sales’ whether we call [...]

Highlights of my summer included a milestone birthday celebration trip with my best friend Kim. We splurged and took a mini-cruise from Vancouver, Canada and hit 3 other ports in that glorious country: Victoria, Canada – Port Alberni, Canada and Astoria, Oregon. I can still hear Kim’s laughter as I recall the side trips and [...]

Smile box?  What is that?  It was new to me and well, it was incredible!

Smile box looks like a video box inside the email and it played a movie of their new home, city sights and I felt as if it were a personal tour!  AMAZING and very personal.

This makes me think [...]

July 4th is always a very special day for me.  Celebrating our nation’s independence and being extremely grateful for those that continue to fight for our freedom as we know them today.  Thank you.
July 4, is also Gramma Van’s birthday!
According to stories my mom told us, as a child, Gramma used to [...]