Power Networking

We all know the value of networking. Personally meeting prospective buyers, learning about them, positioning ourselves and the work we do and leaving them with our business card is one of the tried, tested and true starting points to productive business relationships. This is block and tackle stuff. But how many of us do it effectively and consistently?

Crystal Flaman (www.crystalflaman.com) does, and she has found a way to make an impact in a cost-effective and memorable way. Crystal has developed a series of small cards that resemble fortune cookie messages. Each bears an inspirational messsage that she wrote. The two I received say "Focus on the best and it will manifest," and "The people you need most will cross your path now."

While the cards themselves are unique, the real magic in Crystal's approach is in how she distributes them. On an excursion during a recent professional association meeting in Orlando, Florida, she walked down the tour bus aisle and stopped at each seat with the cards fanned out in her hands like playing cards. She asked acquaintances and strangers alike to take two cards each - keeping the one that speaks to them and promising to give the other to somoene else some time during the conference. In effect, she turned everyone on the tour bus into her sales team.

Wow!

Crystal - whose separate "ordinary" business cards describe her as an "Entrepreneur, Professional Speaker, Ironman Triathlete, 100k Ultra-Marathoner" - is, above all else, a humantarian. When I asked her why she decided to participate in a punishing 100 kilometer Ultra Marathon, she told me that she and a friend did it to raise money for families in Africa.

The world needs more Crystal Flamans.

Three Great Quotes

We all fall down. That's part of life.

Hopefully you realize that it's not the falling down that defines failure, it's the not getting back up.

Here are three quotes to consider when you lose your way. Hopefully they can help you get back on track, as they always seem to do for me.

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming... WOW! What a ride!" – Anonymous

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." – Teddy Roosevelt, speaking at the Sorbonne in Paris, April 23, 1910.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." – Mark Twain

To your success,


Robin.