2011 Blog Posts

February 25, 2011: As told by Julia.
We held our first meeting at my home. The breakfast meeting had five women in attendence. I was the "Presenter of the Month". After having a lovely breakfast of lox and bagels, we sat around and introduced ourselves. Carmela and I talked about our vision for the group. I spoke for about 15 minutes. My topic was "Yoga 101". The hour went by very quickly so we chose our next speaker of the month, brought the meeting to a close and said our good-byes. Everyone considered it a very successful meeting and the group expressed collectively what a great idea it was to have a women's networking group here in Scripps Ranch.

March 25, 2011: As told by Julia.
Our second meeting was again held at my home. Paulette Millander was our presenter of the month, discussing long term care planning. It was a facinating talk which resonated with everyone, not just as potential consumers of long term care but because we now had other SR professional women in the group who did similar work who could both refer clients to Paulette and for whom Paulette could refer her clients. This was networking at its best! The group continues to grow and everyone remains enthusiastic.

April 29, 2011: As told by Julia.
Today's topic was setting goals for our businesses. Part of networking is bouncing off our ideas of where we see ourselves and our businesses in the months/years to come. Some of us said that just by discussing the future of our businesses, that this helped us to make important decisions about where we were going and how we were going to get there. We also discussed that to make the group work we had to make a commitment to coming to meetings, straighten out the kinks in our web site and phone and continue to have representation from all sorts of professions in our group.

May 27, 2011: Unfortunately, this meeting was cancelled at the last minute due to unforseen circumstances.

June 24, 2011: As told by Carmela.
This morning each one of us discussed how we go about getting referrals. This was a productive conversation because it gave us an opportunity to see how everyone else goes about getting referrals and what works best for us as entrepreneurs and business women. This started a brainstorming session where we bantered around ideas to help hone our skills in getting referrals.

July 29, 2011: As told by Paulette.
This morning's meeting was held at my home. We had an open discussion with the topic "Defining Your Goals for the Coming Year".We welcomed two new members who discussed their businesses. It seems that every new person who comes to the group has a connection with other members because their profession is of personal interest to the group members and their business is, in itself, interesting to the business side of the group as a whole. I think it was evident through the several animated conversations that one hour is not enough time for us to talk about all the things that we wanted to say to each other.

August 26, 2011: No meeting this month.

September 30, 2011: Welcome new members Katie Barry (Publishing, Editor) and Nancy Eklund (Hairstylist & Makeup Artist). Bridgette Tabor also informs us that she is now a sales representative for Cookie Lee (see "Presenter of the Month" for the month of October for more details). Due to the Jewish holiday of Rosh HaShana, the meeting was changed to the morning for breakfast. We had a lively discussion about how to incorporate social networking into our businesses, specifically Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter. We discussed adding another day so that we are meeting twice a month instead of once a month. Members will soon receive an email asking which day and time is best for them to attend this added meeting.

October 28, 2011: Welcome new members, Susan Heck (Waiora) and Coleen Choisser (interior designer). Due to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday our next meeting will be held on Friday, November 18th from 8:00 - 9:00 a.m. for breakfast. Our "Presenter of the Month" will be Susan Heck who is an independent sales consultant for Waiora, a natural Cellular Defense product, and Chava, a "vital chocolate" product. The meeting will be held at the home of Julia Carson.

November 18, 2011 (Upcoming meeting). Julia finally organized the business card file and a section so each member could have their promotional materials available to the group. Please bring any fliers, brochures, literature, etc. about your business that it can be put into this folder for other members to peruse and/or take if they think they can pass your info along to others. Remember, it all about networking!