My girlfriends Susie Galvez & Mary Foley have posted their most recent Girlfriend We Gotta Talk radio show on their website. This week’s guest is yours truly, the Mighty Mouth herself, talking about what it’s like to get cancer for Christmas. It’s quick, it’s fun, and it’s funny – give a listen!
Below is something that my good friend Mary Foley sent out to her Live Like Your Nail Color Club this week. First, let me say this: Grrlz, get your mammograms. Guyz, encourage the women you love to get their mammos. Trust me, it’s a very good thing. Also, check out Mary’s radio show with Susie Galvez, Girlfriend We Gotta Talk, on Thursday, Oct. 16 at 5:30pm Eastern on WHAN 1430AM in Ashland VA – or as a podcast on the GFWGT website starting on Friday, Oct. 17 – to hear me talk about how a mammogram saved my life when I got cancer for Christmas last year. Another thing I gotta say: Mary has been one of the MVP’s on my Fight-Cancer team. Bodacious, bold, and fierce. She’s the shizzle, all that and a bag of chips, the whole nine yards, and so much more. OK – here’s Mary’s message: Hey – are you familiar with my 4 steps for doing your nails and living like your nail color? Today I was thinking about STEP 1. STEP 1 is called “Preparation” because before you put on new finger or toe nail polish you have to prepare your nails. Take off old polish, trim, file, maybe do a little exfoliation to clean up your cuticles. Bottom line is that you’re getting back to your naked nails. It’s a great time to reflect on your true, authentic self. So many women put themselves down one way or another. Truth is there’s some really good stuff inside each of us, if we allow ourselves to remember. To shift from criticizing yourself to recognizing the good stuff, I recommend you ask yourself a simple question while you’re preparing your nails for new polish: Ask Yourself — > What’s 1 thing I’ve done recently I…
My friend Tom Lawrence of The Equity Companies offered this answer to the question “Are investors fleeing traditional investments and looking for alternative places to stick their cash (like T-bills that pay nothing, but aren’t going anywhere) and might they pour cash into VC funding? Or are they hoarding cash and not investing in any funds?”: Equity Capital Corp. provides growth capital to existing businesses. We call this Venture Capital. Some people believe Venture Capital is a description only of that capital used to start new enterprises. Venture Capital is placed using a variety of instruments, common stock, warrants, debt, leases, supply chain financing, revenue financing, bonds, preferred stock, convertible bonds and stock, and a host of others too numerous and esoteric to mention. Our firm has been providing this type of capital, regardless of the instrument or name, for nearly three decades. Markets have reacted to similar financial crises with some degree of consistency over this period. There is always plenty of money for a really good deal in a capitalist society. There are just not as many good deals. The difference in many instances is the status of the economic climate. There are exceptions. A car that runs on water would be great even though the economy is down. A car no one can afford that runs on water would not do well in such (or any) economy. People invest to satisfy two primary psychological goals: (1) greed and (2) fear. That is why markets work. For every trade these two elements take a side. Most venture investors know that preservation of capital is more important than profits because it takes a lot of profits to pay back lost capital. T-bills are the safest investment going. And, while they pay little, they don’t lose your capital. Plus, even…
Back in early ’07 (prehistory, in the current Prez race), John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced that her breast cancer had come back. Incurable, but treatable, was the statement. Edwards said he would not halt his campaign. At the time, that seemed to be a mutual decision. In light of recent revelations it would seem that perhaps Edwards’ ego (and other, more fleshy parts) might have been driving the bus on that decision. Elliott “was Ness, now Mess” Spitzer’s flame-out was less of a surprise – relentless scolds are less likely to live lives above reproach. Neither, it would appear, do egos with hairdos. I really wanted to think better of Edwards. The Ego has landed. Right on his carefully styled head. Directly into the sewer. And with Jay McInerney’s old squeeze, no less. Ouch. It appears Ms. Hunter didn’t care for Elizabeth Edwards. I’m shocked. Shocked. I’m still waiting for a national-scale female politician to slip on the sex-scandal banana peel. I think I’ll be waiting a while. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…
Mary Foley (author of “Bodacious Woman: Outrageously In Charge of Your Life & Loving It”) & Susie Galvez (author of several books, including “The Thrifty Girl’s Guide to Glamor”) have a new radio show, Girlfriend We Gotta Talk, in metro Richmond VA, Thursdays @ 5:30pm on WHAN 1430. Not in metro Richmond? You can listen to the podcast on Fridays on their website. If you listen carefully, you can hear the Mighty Mouth herself – I provide the intro and outro voice-overs for the show. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…
I just watched the July 1 edition of The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, and I just stopped jumping around and cheering. Hey, I’m an enthusiastic girl – what can I say? Why the excessive enthusiasm? Every single person on the show said that there was one fail-safe tool that was always part of their sales approach: STORYTELLING This was an E ticket ride, panel-wise, too: Lisa Robertson, Joe Maloof, Michael Port, Donna Flagg, Kendra Scott, Michael Port, Guy Kawasaki, Dave Lakhani, and Janine Driver. They all spoke of the power of storytelling in business. So did Deutsch, who as an advertising legend certainly knows the power of a great story better than anyone. Want to warm up a first meeting? Tell a story. Want to show the power of your product or service? Tell a story. Want to communicate your value better than any set of features and benefits? Tell a story. I’ve been heard in these precincts since Day 1 saying that your story is one of your most powerful business tools. I’ve also said, several times, that sales is a seduction, and you’ve got to take the Sheherazade approach: tell a compelling story. It will certainly save your business – maybe even your life! That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…
Over at Ford Motor Company, all sorts of great stuff is going on – first and foremost, the car company that started an industry made a profit for the first quarter of 2008. This is good news indeed for Ford, who has seen its revenues slide, and its losses slide further, every year in the 21st century. Ford is probably the most emblematic American company of the 20th century. Henry Ford created the assembly line, offered profit-sharing to his workers, reduced shift hours to eight (from nine), and turned the US, and the world, into car nuts. That story – the story of Ford’s dominance in the auto industry – rolled on like thunder, until the sun of the rising Japanese auto industry started casting a shadow over Detroit in the ’70s. Since then, Japan has risen to dominate the market in every sector but trucks, with Ford and the rest of Detroit struggling to compete. A story coming out of Dearborn – by way of Vegas – gives some real hope to Ford fans, and investors, in what feels like the nick of time. James D. Farley, the marketing whiz-kid who put Toyota’s Scion line on the map, who understands that the voice of the customer must be part of the story any company tells – Ford stole him away from Toyota. And he’s determined to make Ford’s story a 21st century success story. Farley’s dealing with an old-world corporate culture at Ford, and it looks like the new sheriff in town is making some real progress. Ford’s ‘Drive One’ ad campaign was created after Farley spent time with dealers, listening to their passion for Ford’s products – asking people to ‘drive one’, to see what Ford has to offer, is storytelling at its simplest and most effective. “We…
Retail. Look at it this way: the current crop of presidential candidates are marketing themselves wide, via the national news media. They’re also marketing themselves locally (particularly in Pennsylvania, where I am very glad I do not live this month), tailoring their messages to local concerns. National political messaging, tailored to a locality-based group of voters, requires that the story be tweaked to make it fully resonant with the target audience. Local = retail. If you’re a company with national presence – say, for example, you’re Microsoft, with a global presence – it is, of course, important that you tell a consistent, authentic story to your world-wide marketplace. For Microsoft, that’s always been some version of ‘we’ve got what you need’. As a company that currently produces what many people believe is the only OS available (they’re wrong, but Bill Gates isn’t going to tell them that, is he?), they’ve built a pretty impressive market presence and penetration. However, what – and who – really sells their products? Their partners. Those partners are the engine that really drives the company’s continued presence, and expansion. Those partners tell the MS story, but they also must tell one of their own, developing their own relationships and trust with the customers they serve with MS products and services. Retail, baby. Some retail is purely transactional, like MickeyD’s and BK. If you hit a drive-thru, you aren’t looking for a relationship with the store. You just want a #5 combo, and you know just where to get it. If you’re in a transactional business, you still have to tell a story: that your customer can rely on getting exactly what they want, when they want it, at the price that they want to pay. Still retail. Still tellin’ a story. I read a piece…
As a person participating in the fun-filled romp known as chemotherapy, your ‘umble correspondent has been able to make all sorts of wonderful discoveries. There was “anorexia”, wherein our heroine was introduced to the practice of picky eating. Not something she had been familiar with previously, at all. There was “chemo brain”, wherein she learned just how stupid “dumber than a box of rocks” really was. Is. Whatever. Today, she learned that the two can be combined in new and interesting ways. Say, f’rinstance, one learns that one’s blood is dangerously low in something called neutrophils – due to the aforementioned chemotherapy’s Sherman-like march through one’s bloodstream toward whatever cancer cells might have the temerity to remain within one’s corpus. (Note – there ain’t none, one just has to run the bases, like any other home-run hitter.) One reads up on neutrophils, and white blood counts, learning that a diet rich in beef, cooked mushrooms, and red/orange/yellow wegetables is just the ticket for getting that neutrophil level back up to the mark that will prevent our heroine from getting hit with Neulasta. That being the drug used to hammer one’s marrow into manufacturing neutrophils, while also apparently causing bone pain – IOW, not something our heroine is inclined to entertain the deployment of, since she’s got entirely enough chemicals runnin’ ’round her veins, thank you very MUCH. Anywise, the thought of some yummy beets seems like a good thing, and she hits the local Kroger in search thereof. What ho! Organic beets! With greens on top! On Wednesday, the beets are steamed and enjoyed, with a steak and sautéed ‘shrooms. Yum. She feels better already. The greens were left in the weg crisper, and today’s lunchtime seemed like just the time to wilt ’em, butter/salt ’em, and get outside ’em….
What if your story never gets told? Impossible, you say? What if you were a woman in the 17th, or even the early 20th, century? What if you were black, in the South, in 1930? Or black in the projects in the South Bronx, or the South Side of Chicago, today? This question has been rolling around in my head for a while, and became a sharper internal inquiry after hearing a lecture this last Saturday night by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard history professor and editor of the first encyclopedia of African and African-American history, the Encyclopedia Africana. The stories in that 2.5 million word encyclopedia are, in large part, being told for the first time outside the small family, church, civic, and cultural circles that lived them. How can an entire race of people take their full measure of place in the world without a full understanding of the fullness of their history? I don’t think they can, and I also think that’s one of the legacies of that great American original sin: slavery. That a scholar of the repute and reach of Dr. Gates has pulled off an achievement that W.E.B. DuBois conceived of in 1909 is good news, for every person in the U.S. Children who learn a full picture of history have a better chance of finding their way, and their place, in the world. The current state of race politics aside, failure to educate all our children is a guarantee of both economic havoc and electoral ignorance. Long ago and far away, I was a young grade-schooler who learned that women and people of color weren’t as important as dead white guys. I carried that with me until college, and started to break free as women’s history began to bubble up from the…
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