Updating Location

Much of my marketing these days is through social media.  So I tend to add a byline that indicates the opportunity to work with me is limited to the USA and her territories at this time.  Yet, time and time again I receive friend requests, comments, and even messages from people inbthe Phillipines.   I pray for those devastated by recent storms.  However, my experience has been riddled by scams or indications of such by online "marketers" of these areas.  Thus, I avoid connecting with most international people.

Then it hits me...I am one.  Could people look at my personal page and think they same!?  Can your location affect reaching a successful destination?  I am about to find out if the tides shift to the even better by updating my pages to home...Ohio where my family is and Georgia where our house and my in-laws reside.  Let's see how this work!

Finding Your Way on a Broken Road

At times we can become so consumed by our struggles, our circumstances, our emotions, and even our surroundings that the lonliness sets in and it feels as if you have no one to support you, that the task is left to your own, and any step if one determined by yourself.  I understand this.  When I moved with my family the month's that followed became riddled with unreturned calls and texts.  My friends, clients, and team had left me.  Each impacting me in such magnitude I couldn't take a step.  My "leadership coach" was careless and faulty in his guidance.  He did not feel my loss.  My upline leader only cared for the minutes of our call and a progressive email IF I made an appointment with her assistant. 
Yet my loss is mine.  I wished and hoped and hoped and prayed for better results, for a better path- an easier, straighter one- but as always I am reminded that the easy way lessens the success as well.  It reminds us that it is up to each of us to define our course of action and not be swallowed up by our problems.  The path has curves, steepness, and it's breaking off at the edges and filled with potholes in the middle.

To thine self be true.  Are you in it for you?

God Bless the Broken Road that led me straight to you.

So Many Ways to Connect

It never quite struck me how many opportunities we have to engage online.  Until recently, that is, when I no longer subscribed to an internet bill (or cable, water, trash, satellite...any others I can live without).

When tapping into free wifi or using tethering, your online time becomes much more organized and mindful about where you need to go and what you need to do in the short amount of time it is available to you.

That is when the realization of the numerous places I have covered in marketing my business.  Previously, I had the notion from a trainer I no longer recall, that the more places you are, the better and farther your reach.  However, in a very short time, all I have known about marketing has changed- improved actually in my humble opinion- to become what it always should have been: relationships, engagement, connections. 

Let's see if I can list them all and you let me know how many you are listed in, too!

Of course, here to start: http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=492132345492491137#allposts

https://www.facebook.com/31gotogirl
https://www.facebook.com/BFFCharmed
https://www.facebook.com/AngelaMMorris

https://twitter.com/31gotogirl

http://www.pinterest.com/31gotogirl/

https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=21802808&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile_pic

At one time, I was on merchantcircle.com, but I will have to update that.

I suppose there are more than I am even remembering!  How's myspace these days?

Simply Charmed Gifts by Angela Morris, Independent Founding Consultant

•  I would like to tell you about my new venture, Simply Charmed Gifts.

  
  SCG is brand new, having only debuted in September, though I have been working with them since May. I was fortunate to meet the CEO in July and have been promoting this unique jewelry line and founding-a-company-opportunity since because her mission and mine were very similar- to inspire, to empower, to motivate, to demonstrate, and to transform the lives of women who seek such. We weren't selling the necklaces yet, but I have been assisting in marketing, creating materials, and developing my first leadership team. You may have seen a few posts about Simply Charmed Gifts on my page or the first facebook party invite two weeks ago. Last week, I learned the first consultant to join in September, 7 weeks before me because of a waiting list, became the first Senior Consultant in the company. She is my team leader, so I have an excellent example to follow. Another consultant, surprising to me, a man in a woman dominated company, celebrated the highest party sale last night with an $1007 order. The first ever! These are amazing accomplishments, which further motivates me to be and share the first among firsts! Will you help me raise the bar? The CEO and I had a conversation last week as well that she felt I am the one who will be next, be on the top, and stay on the top! She offered to begin coaching me! This is another huge blessing and opportunity. Demonstrating my worthiness continues to be a crucial internal push. I faithfully believe God has led me to this opportunity with Simply Charmed Gifts as the chance to move into a position to lead, empower, inspire, and assist other women to pursue the quality and quantity of life they seek as well as connect with other empowering women!
  
  All that said, I am not a follower and I am uncomfortable being second. Flaw or motivation? What do you think? I feel uncomfortable just writing all this (which I first wrote to my sister) because it is a lot to say (and who likes to read a blogged novel); I am putting myself out there to be even more transparent about my own aspirations (and can be held even more accountable to them); and to ask you to help me. First and foremost, I am looking for a renewed connection with you (ladies, we have to help each other in order to have a stronger network), yet we all are resources in different ways, and I appreciate the buyer, the hostess, the new team mate, and the feedback...whatever you are willing to offer another woman, a sister, a friend!
  
  You can see some of the information I have posted on my business page at https://www.facebook.com/BFFCharmed that displays the jewelry and how to use it, along with a special offer to receive the round pendant at a discounted price.
  I am writing you today in hopes you will find this just as exciting as I do and be part of the first order I enter, become my first online/catalog party hostess, or be among the first team mates and founding members of Simply Charmed Gifts!
  
  I welcome any thoughts you have about my  Simply Charmed Gifts business!
  
  THANK YOU so much for listening, for your support, for your business, and for connecting with me!
  
  Many Blessings, Angela

Oh Lucky Day

March 17th, 2013...almost exactly 8 months ago felt like the luckiest day ever!  My husband and I have always shared the connection of sun-seekers, heat-seekers, beach-seekers, and ocean-lovers.  Imagine our JOY in making a permanent move to the Caribbean where the air is salty, the water is clear, and the waves are minimal.  Our daughter's inner vision of becoming a mermaid only made stronger by the time in the water and on the sand.  She is my most precious marvel and basques in the delight others find in watching her from the shoreline in her snorkeling flippers, diving in with wonder, and using her small and well toned tan body to kick her feet and arms as if they truly were fins!

Our move was thought to be permanent and the excitement of the opportunity in front of us for our life goals and my business seemed boundless.  Instantly, I became the Virgin Islands Go-To-Girl and pictured myself a year from now with the island covered in thirty-one products with the feeling of knowing "I did this" and was able to spread the mission and empower other women to the Proverbs 31 cause.

Instead, it has been 8 months of struggle, difficulty, reaching out, looking in, and putting a lot of "fake it until you make it" into my chance with a culture I cannot comprehend.  Business people have scowled at me with "You're not local, are you?"  My response was "Yes!  I live here," joyfully expecting embrace for not being "off-island."  That was met with time and time again with a scoff...the meaning and understanding of which was misinterpreted not because of my fresh-face but because what has now been explained to me as the "face of a stranger."  If it needs classification, I am of Italian descent with dark tan skin and dark hair...however, not quite dark enough to ever be considered "local" it seems.  Surely not everyone feels this way, but I only know that I do not wish to and I do not wish to be anything less than welcoming to anyone anywhere.  However, these bias exists and some find it socially appropriate to act on them, irregardless of how naive they are about their target.  It puts a lot of weight on one's soul.

I have sought the assistance in business from leaders above me, coaches in the company, in requesting a liaison for the territories, and even in other consultants to no avail.  I feel discarded, unwanted, uncared for, and abused.  A point exists when that "oh lucky day" becomes the change in your entire direction of wants, needs, wishes, goals, and resourcefulness.

For many years, I have been the solicited advice-giver, the instructor, the mentor, the marketing goddess among my circle, and the word-of-mouth provider...FREEly.  Some of even my closest friends have been the takers and glory mongers from my generosity.  Still, I do not wish to be less of a generous Leo, as nature will always prevail.  Yet, that moment arises and I realized "I am not a follower."  Even as a leader I have been a follower and afforded attention, connections, opportunities, and more to those who unwisely do not appreciate nor engage in return. 

I am not a follower.

I am not a follower.

I am not a follower.

What do you do When Your Adventure Becomes an Ordeal

I feel the need to lead in that I am generally an empowering, positive individual.  I believe I am a good person and I strive to be more of a Godly person everyday.

I have to keep in mind that my general "attitude of gratitude" keeps me focused and THAT is what I emanate from my core interactions with others.  One of the maintenance guys for our apartment property said he knew I was an "angel" and thankful for their work without saying it because "he knew that's is how I am."  What an amazing blessing and needed recognition that left me speechless.

Over and over again I have punished myself for what must I be doing wrong to gather the interactions I have among some, not all, locals in St. Thomas.  I am blessed to meet some amazing families through the St. Thomas Reformed Church here.  However, even that community heeds warnings that this island has changed for the worse over the years and issues precaution in venturing out, especially at night, into the exact areas tourists flock during the day.

The impact of the struggles we have here, the verbal altercations, the lack of courtesy when so much of it is demanded were beyond the hardship we expected when moving so far from home.  I cannot comprehend it.  I cannot avoid it.  I do not welcome it.  I want to protect my family and friends from it.

That in and of itself is what I might most frightening.  When I start my emotional distress from the verbal and attempted physical assaults I do not find solace.  The stories of other women in my life in St. Thomas are reflections of my own experiences.  We do not have the independence here we enjoy in the states.  Yes, crime happens everywhere, but as my husband pointed out moments ago, in the 12 plus years we have been together he has never seen or heard me so upset and dealing with so many problems that I cannot go out alone.  Our quality time is compromised as venturing out for groceries or to do laundry alone seems to incite the numerous people loitering and sometimes even shopping that they have found a target for their proposed inequities.

So what do you do when that core strength you have to lead a life of adventure, celebrating the moment, defying others wishes for what is your own decisions, become an ordeal.  I do not want to think, react, or be this way...leading a clandestine life recluse by my own desires and decisions. I do not want anyone to ever feel I am less than gracious for their presences, their connection, their engagement, their friendship and love.  So how do you find your way back to that sense of adventure when it has become what is lacking in definition, an ordeal?

Two Questions to Make You Money

I recently had the joy of a lunch date with one of my newest team mates.  The date had a bit of reluctance to it as it was not somewhere I wanted to eat, but also all our previous gatherings generally ended up with the dispelling of advice that seemingly was never followed.   With this particular team mate I had begun some tough love pushing her to stop borrowing from me and instead start creating her own materials.  Please do not misinterpret my intentions.  I very much want to assist and support her success but doing for her was not helping her grow.  This woman is amazingly business minded, too, and organizes her ideas by writing them all down.  So, I was reluctant to attend another lunch with her because I felt a failure in getting her to act on her ideas.  But an amazing thought came during our discussion that day and I formed two questions for her to be able to tackle her marvelous compelling ideas without being so overwhelmed by them and the cost of doing business using those ideas.   Bottomline: Make money, don't spend it.  Mission: Make more money than you spend.  She has some struggles she shared with me that made it even more evident to me how necessary it was to make money and stop the spending.  We may want the newest and prettiest but if it is going to slow us from reaching our true goal, what's the point when you can make do, or even make equisite, with what you have!  If you want to make money, apply these two questions to everything: purchases, posts, conversations, afflications, decisions... #1 Does it help my budget?  #2 Does it help my business?  For example, if you are just becoming a consultant, you do not need the shinest business card to convey what you do (no need to spend more money).  The free ones in matte print will do just fine, as will your own clear God given voice and handwriting.  That pretty paper on the artsy site can be printed yourself or not at all.  Let your business and products speak for themselves without being dressed up.  People do not remember or keep the wrapping paper...they keep what's inside and they treasure you forever for the thought.