Outsourcing Domestic Help at Home

The thing about having a communication blog is that, really, everything communicates. Everything you say, of course, but also what you wear, how you spend your time and money, the friends you have... it all says something about you, intended or not. Even accurate or not, it communicates.

So, that's why I feel justified in talking about how to handle domestic chores on this blog. I am a huge fan of outsourcing. Really, I believe in outsourcing virtually anything that is not either one of your personal strengths, something you genuinely want to improve upon for your own internal reasons, or something you hold dear to your heart and soul and therefore do not want to hand over to another person to handle. Often, the three go together so keeping particular things "in-house" is a no-brainer. For example, my friend Lydia absolutely adores gardening. She is good at gardening, she wants to be a better gardener all the time, and she holds gardening dear to her heart. So, Lydia should garden!

I, on the other hand, am lucky if my thumb gets even the slightest tint of greenish yellow in Spring and, when I am honest with myself, I really don't prefer to garden. It can be fun to pick out plants and flowers and even a bit satisfying to stick them in the ground and have an instant remodel of my front flower mound. But really, I'd be equally happy (okay, maybe even more happy) to have our earth-loving, a-bit-too-laid-back, talented landscape designer/gardener work his magic in our garden and then adore his mastery when we have dinner picnics on the front lawn.

Still, sometimes I feel guilty about this position I so passionately hold. It's as though I have some old programming that says that my very womanhood depends on my ability to handle all of the zillion domestic duties involved in caring for a household. That makes sense since my mom really was a brilliant homemaker. Our house was drop-by-visitor ready anytime, she made dinner most nights, she showered every day(!!) and she was always ready to go out with my dad when he got home from work and wanted to see a movie or go get dinner on a whim. When I get particularly insecure about my total disregard for domestic prowess, I like to seek out others who share my position. It's validating. That's why I was pleased to find this article in the Wall Street Journal and then run across this wish-I-could-say-things-this-beautifully blog post a few weeks ago on my friend Melissa's blog.

We have a wonderful woman deep clean for us once a month and we have a brilliant, fun, totally fabulous person come in for two hours three days a week and do whatever makes life easier that day. Some days she just picks up the total crazy mess we've left in every room. She has installed a closet organizer system, reorganized our kitchen cabinets and cleaned out our garage. She has made dinner and played countless games with our girls while she did various things around the house. She is a huge, meaningful part of our lives and I could not be more grateful for the help. It would take a pretty dramatic change in our financial situation (which is not extravagant, by any means) to let go of this amazing gift in our lives.

I'm not sure what this communicates about me - or anyone else who does it any other way. I just want to offer it up to anyone who can swing it. Life is so much better with help. Feelin' the love tonight (and the thrill that tomorrow is Monday and Olivia will be here!), I guess.

2009 Theme: The Year of Sleep

So, I'm exhausted. My kids have all been sick for the last week - really sick, fevers, throwing up (sorry, just setting the scene), whining, "carry me", "I don't feel well" every couple of minutes, closed drapes and too much TV kind of sick. Poor little sweet babies; I wish I could take it all away for them. I would SO be sick on their behalf anyday.

But, I was writing about my New Year's theme here. So, let me tie all this in. I am exhausted all the time. I don't sleep enough. I simply don't want to give up evening and late night hours to sleep when it is such fabulous time to talk with my husband, work on projects, catch up on work, and occasionally sit on the couch and watch TV. Ever since we had babies, I have done this - stayed up later and later to stretch out the time I have to do things outside of mothering. And it's been fine, mostly. I would get 6ish hours of sleep, have a good amount of coffee in the morning and all would be dandy.

Until... sometime recently. I don't even know when. But I either hit the critical point of sleep deprivation - or I suddenly hit the critical point of aging where my body couldn't just push through the sleep thing anymore. Whatever the cause, my lack of sleep started to really show up in my life. I was edgier. I got irritated at the girls unnecessarily. I was short with Jim when it was totally undeserved. The strangest part for me was that I FELT tired so often. I really hadn't felt tired much in my life, except right before I'd go to bed. I began feeling tired even in the morning, which is my super productive, take-on-the-world time.

I decided to test out going to bed earlier to see what impact it would have. I realize this may seem totally ridiculous to those of you out there who already held sleep in its appropriate high-value place in your life, but for me the difference was astonishing! Even just a few nights in a row of solid 7.5 to 8ish hours of sleep made such a huge difference in my outlook, attitude, the way I ate, and, in particular, in my interactions with my family, clients, friends, everyone... which is why I decided to write about it here. Sleep is so very relevant to communication! Now, slap me with the obvious hammer.

I am so enlightened that I have decided that my theme for 2009 is sleep. The goal is 7.5 hours on average a night (averaged weekly.) I am very excited to experience life with a totally full sleep tank. The problem is, I'm going to bed too late right now... hope I can figure out a way to sleep in tomorrow. Otherwise, I have to go to bed at 8pm tomorrow night to make up the sleep hours.

How much do you sleep a night? What is your ideal amount?

Information Fasting

The December issue of True North Parenting is out. This time I wrote an article on Information Fasting. Check it out, if you’re inspired.

I need to revisit it myself. A bit info overloaded again lately… it comes on so unconsciously, you don't even know it's happening.

Funny story: I’m sitting with an associate in my entrepreneur’s group two days ago, waiting for others to arrive to start our meeting. She has the True North Parenting magazine in front of her, having just closed it when I sat down. We started chatting and somehow got onto the topic of focus. She says, “This woman in this magazine just wrote a whole article about how she put away all her books and gave away her magazines and just made herself stop taking in new information for a while. I totally need to try that.” I was smiling, waiting for her to laugh and acknowledge that it was my article, but she didn’t. I said, “You know that was me who wrote that, right?” (perplexed that she hadn’t admitted to the joke yet.) She was totally shocked! She was just sharing the ideas in the article with me, like a good idea resource. It was very cool. I felt like that scene is When Harry Met Sally when Jess says to Marie during that dinner where they are supposed to actually be hooking up with Sally and Harry, instead of each other, “Oh my Gohd, I have never had anyone quote me to me before!”

Networking Fumble. Party Pitch Planned.

Sometimes I go to the Bend Chamber of Commerce events. I was reluctant at first, expecting a stiffly formal, hyper-networky experience. While networking is clearly the goal, and no one is ashamed to admit it, I've found them to be an overall nice experience. It's actually refreshing to be somewhere where the networking aspect is just way out in the open. "Selling yourself" is invited, and everyone is clearly looking for ways to both make new business connections for themselves and to facilitation business connections for one another. I love it when everyone is just up front about what they're up to.

A recent Friday morning I went to an Entrepreneurial Council meeting put on by the chamber. These are educational meetings, with a speaker who shares business tips, insights, strategies with the group. After a few minutes of planned networking, the formal business of the meeting began. The council chair did a few announcements and then, to my surprise, he said he thought we had a small enough group to go around the room and introduce ourselves and our business. There were at least 40 of us! Only my second meeting, I had no idea this would happen. The first meeting I attended had more like 60 people and we did not introduce ourselves.

Now, ordinarily this is a good opportunity. Here's this audience of 40 people waiting to hear about my business. Given the nature of my business, this is my target audience, no less. You can't pay for this kind of targeted exposure! Why am I not thrilled?

I am totally unprepared. And when you are a "communication coach and consultant", you, um, really should be prepared to say what you do. And when your business name is Eloquence Communication, ideally you can say what you do, um, eloquently.

I know what I do, of course. I even have a "pitch" I can say. However, I realized sitting in this room that the pitch I have isn't the right one for two reasons. First of all, it is mostly designed for small business owners and entrepreneurs - this room is full of these AND people from larger organizations. Second, my pitch does not include a specific description of the benefits of working with me. Crazy! While I work regularly with people on these very things, I have not taken the time to rethink my own "elevator speech". Fine time to realize this!

So, I fumbled through a less-than-eloquent description of what I do, counting on the big smile and facade of confidence that are necessary in these types of situations. No one looked phased (great business people never do) but no one rushed up to me to discuss my services either. And now I am working very actively on what I prefer to call my "party pitch language" so that I am never in this missed-opportunity situation again. I'll keep you posted.

Keeping Your Word is a Big Deal

I have a new client who is right in the midst of a huge level leap in her business. She needs a ton of help with a zillion things. Since I happen to know people who do three of those things she needs help on, I told her I'd send along referrals. I have worked with two of the sources I recommended, so I can refer them with confidence. The third is someone I met recently, was impressed by our first interaction, and decided to make a referral based on our meeting.

Making referrals feels really good, doesn't it? I love it. I love that I am helping the person to whom I am making the referral. It's hard to decide who to go to for help, if you don't know anyone first hand. And I love that I am almost literally handing over business to someone. We all know that referred business is so much hotter than business that comes virtually any other way.

So, explain this to me. I called the guy I didn't know well to tell him about my client, then I followed up with an email. He responded a day and a half later. If it were me getting that referral, I would have responded faster, for sure, but that's not that long, so not a big deal. But in his email response, he said he'd call me that afternoon. He didn't call me that afternoon, nor did he call me the next day. On the third day, I emailed him and said if he was interested in my client he needed to get in touch asap because my client wanted to have a meeting the next Monday (it was Friday.) He did respond then by email and followed up with a phone call. At this point, though, I'm curious if he is really all that interested in this new business. I am nervous that he won't respond fast enough to my client when she calls and that it will reflect on me because I referred him. I don't want my client to become annoyed at me because I brought this flaky guy into her life.

I addressed the situation with the guy when he called. It was awkward. I had the impression he thought I was being unreasonable. That he would argue, if we knew each other better or he wasn't trying to preserve the possibility of me passing along more business, that he really hadn't taken that long to respond to me. Even his apology sent this message, "I'm sorry if you felt like I didn't respond as quickly as you expected."

People have different time frames and urgency in business. He may not need business that badly - or possibly he doesn't want to set unreasonable expectations for response time in the future. All his prerogative, of course. None of that is the point (though the ramifications of this type of "client training" are a good topic for another post). The point is, you should do what you say you will do. If you say you'll call, call. If you forget to call, call as soon as you remember and apologize for not honoring your commitment (and don't let this happen very often - get a better task-tracking system and/or hire an assistant if you need to.) If you can't meet a deadline, tell the person you are very sorry you won't be able to honor your commitment and give them a new, realistic date - and meet that commitment no matter what.

Actually, do this with everyone in your life. Because you never know who is a source of business referral... but most importantly, because your actions communicate your character, and you want to feel great about who you are for yourself and for the people who matter in your life.

The Little Things

When I hung up the phone after leaving a message on someone's voice mail today, my husband (who I didn't know was listening) said to me, "You want to know something I really like that you do?" Intrigued, and more than a little bit excited by the mysterious and unexpected feedback, I said, "Yea, I do!"

"Whenever you get off the phone, even if you are just leaving a message, you say 'GOODbye'. You never say 'bye' or 'bye bye', you always say the whole word, 'GOODbye' (emphasis and upswing on the first half of the word).

I felt really good, hearing that from him. I loved it that the feedback was positive, of course, but it was even more than that. It was such a little thing to notice, the way I say goodbye on the phone. I think that's what I loved most about it. I felt so... well, noticed. At the risk of being dramatic, I'd even say I felt known, like he gets me. Because I care about the way I communicate so much and that he was paying attention to this thing that matters so much to me was really validating.

This made me think about how this applies to so many scenarios - noticing the little things. From mentioning that you read your client's latest blog post to showing your audience in a presentation that you identify with them by sharing a personal story that reflects their own experiences. When my husband noticed the way I say goodbye on the phone, I felt really good and connected to him. That's the way we want to feel with other human beings - in marriage, of course, but really in all parts of life.

What little thing can you notice and share today so that one person feels the connection between the two of you more powerfully?

Style Statement by Carrie McCarthy & Danielle LaPort

In my last post on Branding Clarity, I said I would share some of the tools we use to help our clients get very clear on who they are, what they must say, and how to express themselves most powerfully. So, I'll tell you about one of the coolest finds ever for clarifying your personal style and your business style - Style Statement: Live by Your Own Design by Carrie McCarthy & Danielle LaPort.

I saw Style Statement: Live by Your Own Design on one of those bump-your-hip tables in the center aisle at Barnes and Noble on a date night with my husband. The cover is lovely and the name intriguing, so I added it to my ridiculous pile of books to look through while I drink my non-fat, half-caf, two pump, extra hot white mocha (yea, I'm one of those coffee orderers). I had just enough time to flip through the Style Statement book by the time we had to head home and relieve our babysitter. The book is filled with photos of beautiful things. There are stories about real people and how they define themselves with two simple words and change their lives as a result. I was intrigued enough, in my quick flip-through, to order the book online the next day.

Since then, I've been increasingly astonished at the value of the concepts I learned in this book. First off, I didn't love the layout of the book. It was confusing for me. I chalk that up to a low tolerance for high art. I don't understand many things that others consider brilliant artistically. I also didn't do the exercises just the way they suggest them. I found it cumbersome. That could be because I have spent a lifetime contemplating my proverbial naval so a number of the questions seemed obvious to me and felt like I'd be getting off-track. Anyway, all that said - I am deeply grateful to Carrie & Danielle (they have formed a company with this name - Carrie and Danielle - through which they do Style Statement consultations) for the ideas they have given me in my work. I use a process that has many similar elements to the questions and suggestions that Carrie & Danielle make in their Style Statement book in my Branding Clarity sessions with clients. And, while I have a number of other question streams and explorations that I mix in, we do land on a two-word phrase much like the ones in Style Statement to drive branding in my client's business that is based on "foundation words" and "creative edge" words from the Style Statement book. Check out the book to learn more about those. It's too technical to explain each term for a blog post. If you're intrigued, you'll want the book. So get it.

The most important thing is that your phrase (just as for a Style Statement) feels accurate and uplifting. It should inspire you to work better, brighter, more powerfully. If it doesn't, it's not the right phrase. Try again.

So, what do we do with this phrase in Branding Clarity? We use it as a reference. We look at all expressions of your business: marketing materials, internal documents, presentations, logo and colors, language and word choices, key phrases... and ask whether they match this fundamental, distilled description of the client's brand (personality...style...)

Here's an example. Allison Hull, owner and designer at Lemon Halo in Bend, Oregon, went through the Branding Clarity process with me and we landed on Bold Fanciful as her branding phrase. It's not easy, landing on the right phrase, but when you do land on it, you know pretty quickly. It feels right. It makes perfect sense. You think to yourself, "Of course!", while an underlying feeling of giddiness lingers in your belly. Especially after a few days of sitting with the phrase, it simply either works or it doesn't. Bold Fanciful works for Allison. She felt revived, energized, pumped up to take her business to the next level once she claimed her phrase. Images came to mind, and colors and ideas. So inspired, she called her graphic designer and had a new logo and all new marketing materials created and began the process of redesigning her website! It's been at least two months and if you ask Allison today about the Branding Clarity process and the value of her branding phrase and she'll light up and tell you it rocked her whole business!