This picture is of Andres Chagolla, Manager of MCbiz and me at the Awards Ceremony.   Above us is a close-up of the beautiful award itself.  (The photo doesn't really do it justice.)

A BIG THANK YOU for all of you who came to the event to support me.  It was wonderful seeing familiar friendly faces in the crowd.

More news...I'm really excited about a new program I'm developing that will help business owners:

- get more business

- be paid what they're worth

- enjoy more profits

- reduce their sense of overwhelm and

- bring more balance and harmony to their lives! 

Stay tuned for more updates on that...

Plus once that program is up and running, I'll be working on something special for my corporate friends who are wondering what's next for them and perhaps are even (secretly) yearning to break out of the nine-to-five (or seven-to-six) existence. 

Finally, I updated the calendar on my home page (Thank you Debbie!).  You can now just go to my website and flip through the months to check out what's happening.  If you like, you can sign up for an RSS feed so that whenever it's updated, you get notified right on your desktop. 

Hundreds of women business owners from around the world are assembled at the Biltmore Resort in Phoenix. And today at the conference, Patty DeDominic, founder and CEO of the PDQ Careers Group of Companies, shared the idea that 'leadership is a state of mind'.

The idea re-awakened in me a couple of concepts I'd considered for inclusion in my upcoming book, Leadership without Limits:  Inspiring the Best in Yourself, Your People and Your Organization. 

1. Where transformation typically starts

2. From where leadership emerges

While outside forces might touch and inspire us, the transformation of our psyches and souls happens on the inside.  All true change begins within making transformation an inside job.

Mahatma Ghandi and Michael Jackson both spoke about this notion decades ago.  Ghandi implored us to "be the change that you want to see in the world".  Jackson petitioned us, if we wanted to make the world a better place, to 'take a look in the mirror and make that change'.

"Dreams are extremely important. You can't do it unless you imagine it."

Greg had his entire office staff take a skills inventory assessment that highlighted where they were strong and which specific skills they were missing.  I met with each of them privately and Greg worked with them to create personal career development plans.

We then met as a group, reviewed each of their roles and responsibilities. Everyone discussed the  information they each needed to get their jobs done and how missing and inaccurate information wasted valuable time and resources. 

Greg ended up realigning some tasks to capitalize on his staff's strengths, hired two new staff members and has since enjoyed remarkable success.

“One of the things that was most valuable for me was getting everyone in the office together to discuss our roles and work flow.  We had never done that before and things were beginning to slip through the cracks.  Loretta helped us refine our processes and keep better track of our expenses and progress.  Her objective, outside perspective helped us identify what was really important for the company's success.  I heard things in those meetings that had never come to the surface before and we were able to take action on them. 

"We’re running more smoothly now. I’ve let go of many of the tasks I had been performing and can now take a more strategic focus of the whole company.  As a result of these changes and more, we’ve booked twice as much revenue in the 1^st half of the year as we had this time last year and already have contracts that will yield twice as much revenue for the 2^nd half of the year as well. We might have had this growth anyway, but without Loretta's guidance, we would have looked like complete idiots!”

Greg MacLiver

CEO, Owner

All Things Metal

www.allthingsmetalllc.com

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Get More Business, Make More Money: Strategies to Grow Your Company, Women's Leadership Exchange, July 22, Tempe AZ. Visit  www.womensleadershipexchange.com to register.  Select the Tempe, AZ event.

Leadership that Transforms People & Delivers Profits and Harvesting and Valuing the Wisdom of Diversity, International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, Annual Conference, Pre-conference workshops. November 15- 19, San Antonio TX. WWW.IFEBP.ORG

Leadership without Limits: Inspiring the Best in Yourself, Your People and Your Organization, The Awakening Conference: A Voice for Change, May 15- 17, 2009.  Call 602.347.7799 or visit: http://theawakeningconference.com/ to register.