Final Day

Today I fly home from my month long adventure to the States. The time has flown by and I have had a ball, met the most interesting people and have been warmly welcomed by all.

A massive thank you to all............

Thank you to The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for giving me this opportunity http://www.wcmt.org.uk/

Thank you to Josephine & Charlie for making it the best trip.

Thank you to Karen, who is my children's March Mum for a month, the gift of this to us all is very special.

And thank you to all the lovely people over here and back home who have helped me with my travels.

My sincere gratitude to you all

Lou x

A Gathering of Interesting Women

The last event I attended was Monday evening, entitled as above. There were over 100 women there and I experienced a whole new concept in networking. This concept was created by Carolyn Fausnaugh who is a professor of Entrepreneurship at Florida Institute of Technology. I also had the pleasure of a brief meeting with Carolyn, what an amazing person. Thanks to Donn and Renee for organising this event and inviting me, Renee, can I clone you please? If you want to experience the new concept in networking then watch this space.................!

The lovely Donn and Renee!

Looking After Their Own

I took these photographs at Lake Eola, Orlando. Here there is a high level of respect for the military, whether in service or retired.

There is a funding and support mechanism for Veteran Military who wish to start and continue in business. I was privileged to be invited to a Vet Net Meeting where I met approximately 70 retired Military Business Owners.

It's all about attitude!

Girlie Stuff

Well even I enjoyed a couple of hours shopping at the Millenia Mall! I am one of a minority of females that I know that really do NOT like shopping. Even I was blown away by this. They have valet parking!!! And the photo on the right is for my daughters to prove that I will be bringing presents home and they are from Abercrombie & Fitch, and no they aren't paying to advertise here. Seriously, I mention them because whilst here I have been impressed by the level of customer service I am receiving. At the Washington Mutual Bank in Melbourne the teller remembered my name when I went in a second time to change travellers cheques!

However, the sales assistant in Abercrombie & Fitch took service to a whole new height. I was working out what sizes to buy for my daughters and she came over to help. She was approx an English size 8, the same as my daughters and offered to try the clothes on in order for me to determine sizes. Hey, we could learn alot from this attitude!

Talking of Attitude....................I went into Anthropology, amazing store, I could have spent a fortune in there. Lots of lovely house and gift stuff. It was whilst in there I remembered that the same store in New York was the inspiration behind the company 'Lello' setting up their first business. Lello is one of the businesses that has owners with a fabulous attitude featured in our book. I completely understand where the inspiration came from, thank goodness I can adorn my home in their goods over the internet! Not bad from someone who isn't into shopping x

Disney Entrepreneur Center

Wednesday was a trip to Downtown Orlando to meet Joshua and Jerry at the Disney Entrepreneur Center. The center has been open for only 6 years and houses all of the 'not for profit' business agencies to assist pre-start, start up, fledgling and established businesses. Jerry explained that it took a long time to etablish and knows that all the hard work was worth it. Jerry is responsible for attracting the mix of public and private funding that ensure the service exists. Disney being one of the private funders, prides itself in being able to help the business community of Orlando. The idea of having a true 'one stop shop' for business support in my opinion is invaluable as in England there are all sorts of agencies with different support packages available to help businesses and it's an absolute lottery as to whether the business finds them. Sometimes they are that hard to find that business owners give up trying as they are too busy running their businesses to spend the amount of time it takes to search.

I spend time updating myself with what support is available for businesses in the geographical areas in which our business 'Making It' operates and I find it difficult to keep up and it is the arena in which we work, so how the business owners feel, I don't know!

Here at the center, as a client makes an enquiry they are seen by the incredibly personable Joshua. Joshua will then establish their needs and refer them to the most applicable agency. Some businesses may be eligible for support with more than one agency. In this case after each intervention the business owner will meet again with Joshua who is the client interface and brokers the relationship. As everyone is in the same building there are shared facilities such as training and conference rooms, also shared is the receptionist Pam who clearly makes a difference on a daily basis and of course this benefits from shared costs.

There is also a charge made for some of the seminars on offer for business owners. Again in England there are so many publicly funded seminars that are 'free'. Of course they are not free, they are paid for by the taxpayer and unfortunately the fact that they are free devalues the service. Frequently the agencies that we supply trainers for have to book up to 35 people onto a seminar in order to achieve an attendance of 18-20.

For businesses that are high growth at the Disney Entrepreneur Center they are offered a volunteer board to assist them through the growth period at no cost. The volunteers are usually business owners that have successfully been through the programme themselves and are now more experienced and achieving a high turnover and good profitability. The nuturing of business in this way has proven to be invaluable for them.

A huge thank you to Jerry, Joshua and Pam for your time and hospitality, definitely a highlight of my trip!

Learn Something New

In response to the last posting re: the law of attraction I received an email from my sister Angela in Cheshire who has always had a passion for riding horses and she told me an interesting fact: The law of attraction is similar to what horses do naturally. If turned out in a field with a large herd of all breeds and colours they pair up with the ones most like themself.

On Tuesday evening I went to the Crowne Plaza Hotel which has an oceanfront restaurant, for a seminar on marketing with small business owners, Floridians certainly know how to do this in style! The evening began with networking, something most people hate to do. We were invited to be seated in a conference room with a main facilitator. We were given a time limit of 30 seconds each using a microphone to introduce ourselves to the 70 or so people that attended so that people could connect with someone they wanted to speak to and sit with over dinner, which was set up in the next room. I thought this was a good idea and taught you how to be succinct in explaining your business to others, although I wondered how people felt that didn't get invited. It reminded me of school PE lessons and the picking of the Netball and Hockey teams, where the same girls were always the last to be picked. I was always a softie and when I was Captain always picked these girls first, which is probably why we didn't win!

The dinner was lovely and the speakers were all local business owners who gave their own marketing tips and yet again that day I learnt a few new things, particularly how to market your products and services for nothing. The organisers have promised to email me the presentation slides so that I and anyone else who is interested can have those tips too.

My favourite thing I learnt that day was completely useless to me but cool! If you download google earth and want to look at certain places on the globe and you depress ctrl, alt A, then the cursor turns into a flight simulator. When I arrived home Charlie (who loves gadgets) and I spent ages flying to friends and families homes, it made us smile anyway!