Coach Cassandra Rae

I flipped on the TV one morning to have some “background noise” while planning my day. Rachael Ray’s show caught my eye because there was a woman in the audience who had moved to NYC to pursue her dreams of acting on Broadway. Her parents were trying to woo her back home (I missed the part that said where she was from) by offering to pay her grad school tuition and buy her a car. She asked the Rachael Ray show for advice (why, I’m not sure, since Rachael’s show is a cooking show), and Rachael had an astrologer and her mother on the show to give advice to this woman. The astrologer said something about Jupiter being in some house and that she should give it 6 more months. Rachael’s mom said that if the woman was asking the question, she must know that her time is up, then they asked her if she had given herself a time limit and she said that she had given herself 5 years, and this is year 4. This made me start thinking… Read the rest of this entry »

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I’m having a bunch of revelations this month. It’s odd. I feel sick, run down, stressed, sulky – but yet my eyes are open to a lot of things that need to change.

At ICA, my coaching school, there is a lot of talk around a UAC, or an Underlying Automatic Commitment. This is something that everyone has, lurking there under the surface, telling you how to behave. Your UAC could be that candy makes you happy, and that’s why you haven’t been able to lose those 10 pounds. Your UAC could be that you shouldn’t attempt to do anything if you’re not perfect, and so you never start projects you’re dying to try. I have a few UACs myself, but I think I hit the motherload.

My biggest UAC is this:

Being busy is the same as being productive, and being productive is being successful. Therefore, busy = productive = successful.

Huh. I think I really do believe in that equation, which is mind blowing as I look at it now. If I’m busy, it must mean that I’m wanted, or worthwhile, or smart, or popular…And if I’m all those things….then I’m a success! That’s why I have allowed myself to become so ADD-like in recent years, often keeping a dozen browsers open while I start one task while abandoning (or “just stepping away”) from the other. But while my ADD tendencies are fairly new, the busy-ness isn’t. When I was in elementary school I’d be balancing school and homework with piano lessons, Hebrew school, plays, soccer, baseball, & play dates. And that’s when I was 9!

I recently commented on Danielle LaPorte’s post about entrepreneurial time management, asking what she suggests someone with a full-time job, school, a new marriage, and a coaching business that’s on the ground floor should do to best utilize her time/not pull her hair out. Her answer was both eye-opening & insightful:

say no to more. let go of a few commitments.
make sure you have a sacred place at home to do your work.
get a support network in place – a mentor, two fellow entrepreneurs to jam with.
go easy on the Twitter and Facebook time – use it as a tool to create community and spread your love.
ruthlessly purge stuff from you living/working space
have just 3 goals for the year
be compassionate with yourself–everything is progress!

Having 3 goals a year scares the crap out of me (that’s only 1 goal every 4 months! I should have 10 for the same time frame!), but if I start there…..that’s progress. That’s focus. If I got together some other peer coaches from school to talk about the business building aspect…..that’s focus, too. And recently I’ve been dreaming about where I would want to make my coaching calls from, and all I can think of is a bright orange circle chair (like this, but orange) in a nice big office/studio. While I don’t have an office or a studio (or a circle chair at all), I need to find the best space that I do have to work with, so I know when I’m there it’s coaching time. Focus time. Gettin’-down-to-business time (not to be confused with Business Time).

I’ve already determined that my word for 2009 is FOCUS. Now I’m gonna implement that….

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Most of the students that I work with complain about their teachers. And I have to admit that I usually commiserate with them. I still vividly remember my chemistry teacher who spent more time impressing us with his ability to spell backwards (he claimed it was from years of inhaling mercury fumes) than he did teaching us any chemistry. And then there was the English teacher who always seemed to give tests with no notice at all.

But this is actually a huge lost opportunity!

Stop grumbling and start using your teachers to develop some valuable skills AND improve your grades at the same time. Really! I’m not kidding. Here’s how:

1. Stop and talk to them.
2. Ask Mr. Smith how he decided to become a biology teacher and if he likes it.
3. Find out what Ms. Franklin does for fun outside of school.
4. Ask if Ms. Patel has kids and how old they are.
5. Just don’t be an outright schmoozer. Nobody likes that.

So why would you do such a thing? Well, it never hurts for the person who will be grading your final to like you. And building a rapport with your teacher makes it that much easier to ask her for advice about what went wrong on the midterm.

Stay tuned for more on How to Love Your Teachers. There’s plenty more to this than just getting on their good side.

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Print by Angela Hogan; you can purchase it here.

If my husband Luke didn’t find me, he might have married his iPhone. If I didn’t find Luke, I might have married Twitter.

But, if you’re like Luke, you’re bound to be asking right now, “Twitter is stupid!” OK, that’s not a question, but I can see that you’re confused. You might want to better communicate by saying, “What’s so special about Twitter?” You can keep the whininess in your voice if you’d like. I get it.

Well, I’ll tell you what’s so special about Twitter, besides the fact that Punky Brewster, MC Hammer, & Wil Wheaton are on it. Forget them. This is about you. You posting links that you want to share with others, and getting links that would be of value to you. You connecting with not only your friends and “people you don’t know” (that’s what your friend The Whiner would say), but your friends, potential clients, experts in your field (or other fields), your peers, etc. You taking 140 characters and making them mean something, forming a connection to both others as well as creating a more well-rounded picture of yourself.

My Coach (@intandem) said it best: “Use it to get others to know, like & trust you; you get to know, like & trust others. I tweet on a mixture of personal, business and marketing topics so ppl can get a 360 view of me. Also offer answers to be helpful.” Wil Wheaton also sums it up by saying:

Twitter didn’t have to be about What are you doing? but could be about What’s on your mind right now? It was, as the saying goes, a light bulb moment for me, and I started using Twitter for off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts that didn’t warrant their own post here on my blog.

In order to both give & receive some value out of this weird thing, I make sure to tweet about:

• my personal stuff (”Feeling really overwhelmed by all the things I “have” to do. Seems like a big, fat, juicy, oily, cheesy, crunchy list is in order”)
• links that I find personally interesting (”Anyone have over $100 to hear Carol Brady sing?: http://tinyurl.com/57nmtn“)
• links that I find professionally interesting (”My word for 2009 is FOCUS. What’s yours? http://is.gd/f0r6“)
• responding to other’s tweets (”@sweetblogomine What’s sriracha? Sounds like someone that wears fancy pants would eat that.”)
• promoting my blog (“My 30th Year, reflected upon on my 31st birthday: http://is.gd/fRzX One of my most personal posts, for sure”)
• promoting my business (”Updated my site! You can now find packages & pricing (Services), an updated landing & FAQ page, & a new Testimonials page! http://is.gd/becg“)
• retweeting other’s tweets that I find interesting (”RT @problogger Post by @Jimconnolly about affects of highly photoshopping avatars: http://tinyurl.com/97xhxv – via @LyricalVenus“)

Here are some Twitter Basics & Tips that I got from my friend who got me to join:

• If you want to put a short link in your post, you can make it small through is.gd. I have it on my toolbar, so I just click it when I’m on a page, and it makes a very short link to that page.
• To search for types of people you might want to follow, you can use:
  • Twellow
  • Mr Tweet
  • Twitter Grader (enter your own name & it’ll bring up people like you on the bottom of the page. You can also use the Twitter Elite in the site to find The Big Guys)
  • Twitter Search (you can also use this to check your own name & see if you’ve missed any @s as well as using it to find specific search terms)
• I also found these posts to be helpful:
  • Twitter Tips – Tools for your Tweets
  • Twitter Tips for 35 Twitter Users
  • Ten Top Twitter Tips
  • Twictionary – a dictionary for Twitter (although in all honesty, you just have to know what “@”, “RT”, “#”, “tweet”, & “follow” mean/do)

Just know this: Whatever you do, do not answer the question, “What are you doing?”, which is what Twitter asks above the box that you post your tweet in (yes, your 140-character Twitter post is called a “tweet”). Nobody cares unless you’re someplace, or doing something, awesome. There is nothing worse that a profile whose tweets consist of “Eating a turkey sandwich”, “Watching Baywatch” and “Going to bed. Night twiends!” The only thing that’s worse is a profile of an obvious spammer, who only tweets links to www.makemoneyquickyoulazyschmuck.com. Twitter is really there to connect with other people, & if I don’t see any @s or any links or any questions I would think you’re just there to promote yourself (=spam) or hear yourself “talk”.

Now that you’re a twexpert (see how this affects you? It’s a disease) please make sure that you follow me, and leave me a comment below (or @ me if you got the hang of things) so that I can make sure that I follow ya back!

May the tweet be with you!*

*That was for Luke. I figured a Star Wars quote would stop him from making fun of Twitter again. It’s also a dis back to him because Star Wars is for nerds. Thankfully, he likes when I make fun of him.

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I see lots of movies. Last night it was Adventureland. It is worth seeing.

I sat in a comfy seat in my small neighborhood theatre cringing for James. And for myself because it made me think of my worst job ever as a checker and more at the local A&P one summer during college. I needed the money to pay for school expenses the next year, so I didn’t quit. I wasn’t a good checker; people complained when I worked the Express line. That’s how slow I was. The movie also played memorable and forgettable 80’s music. The 80’s experience – music, acid-wash jeans, and significant ozone depletion caused by AquaNet is considered (by me) to be it’s own category of torture.

That’s how the worst job in the world feels.

This post is dedicated to worst jobs, ever – yours, mine, and all the awful jobs that we pray every day would end. They can come in all forms – office or outside; your own business or dutiful employee. Caveat: many think that in today’s crestfallen economy we should be 100% grateful for any job. While we are grateful for the income, if the money doesn’t make you sing while walking to work, it may count as “worst job ever”.

Here are some characteristics of the worst-job:

• you are the only person at work who is planning on leaving
• cleaning surfaces at work involves q-tips
• your parents tell you it’s “character building”
• you get yelled at for arriving early to work
• good ideas, or any idea, are not welcome

What was your worst job ever? Go ahead and comment about your experience.  This is your chance to vent, laugh, cringe with me, and feel free to throw in some of your own advice about what to do if your current job is your worst job ever!

Endnote for those from New Jersey. Adventureland  reminded me of the amusement park about 40  minutes from our house on Route 22 , Bowcraft. Bowcraft was the kind of place that we were forbidden to go to – ever. It was that scary.

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