Hmm

Alright, peeps, I realize that I totally suck.  I've been too overwhelmed to run two blogs, The Frugal Hostess is much more fun, and I moved my website hosting but haven't done anything about it yet.  Bottom line: EntrepreNEW is coming back, but in a new location and at an undisclosed time. So, you know, see you later, and I realize I'll have to start from scratch.  In the meantime, come see me here.

XOXO,
EntrepreNEW

The Last Post Here = Pecans

My grandfather loved to shell pecans. He would do it for hours at a time, watching TV or sitting outside. Actually, I’m not sure “loved” is the right word; he was compelled - by an unknowable, unseeable force - to shell pecans. He would crack them, carefully picking out the meats with a little tool like a toothpick. These were then divided by type, with whole pieces kept apart from broken ones.

When the hubs and I moved back South, we reconnected with my uncle, who is the son of the pecan-shelling grandfather. Once, we were invited to his house for dinner, and he loaded us down with things from his garden. We got blueberries, I remember, and we got pecans.

Interesting. It seems that my uncle also has a pecan monkey on his back. My aunt remarked that he does it just like my grandfather, dividing the broken from the whole, spending hours carefully picking them out. When he reached into their chest freezer to get us some pecans, she suggested that he give us one container of whole pecans and one of broken pieces, in case I wanted to use them for baking or whatever. But my uncle said no, that he was giving us two containers of whole pecans. His tone meant business (everyone in that family inherited that same tone, and I am very familiar with it), so I didn't argue. We took home two containers of whole pecans that probably took a whole week to shell, and we ate them up more quickly than I'd like to admit here.

If you’ve read this blog before, you know that I left a gig at a big corporation to start a business, and you may know that I have some, uh, less than loving feelings about the whole deal. One big reason I left is that I didn’t want my effort, my hours and hours of hard labor, to benefit the people who would make the real money as a result. They weren’t good people, and they didn’t deserve the fruit of my labor.

I put this together today, thinking about my grandfather and my uncle and their freakish obsession with pecans, and I realized that my uncle wanted us to get the very best fruits of his labor. He insisted that we take the best pecans because he wanted his painstaking work to have meaning. His labor was/is the same thing as his love.

The lesson for me? Stop giving your love away to people you hate. Ha. Put another way, ask yourself if the beneficiaries of your labor deserve the love you’re giving them. And if they do, figure out a way to save the whole pecans for them. If they don’t, feel free to toss them the broken pieces while you’re looking for someone who deserves your real, whole, best stuff.

photo by Ibex1

We're Moving!

I hate this phrase:

Pardon Our Progress.

Like, how annoyingly front-row-of-the-class, you-forgot-to-give-us-homework quote-quote clever can you get.

So, I'll just say that I'm doing some cleaning up, dramatically improving my business website, moving my blog, and just generally renovating my small but mighty internet empire. Ergo, you won't see any new posts on EntrepreNEW for at least seven days. (Do you find it as amusing as I do that I'm doing this a mere 60 days in?) Please try to hold it together.

In the meantime, I hope you will visit our sister site, The Frugal Hostess, for the same smart-assed-ness on the totally different topic of entertaining at home. I'll miss you!

Social Media for the Savvy Hotel Salesperson

My latest for eHotelier....

In this economy, hotel sellers need to use every possible tool in the shed to drive business results. Here are some ideas for using social media to help make your booking goals.

Step One - Get on board; social networking is not a fad.

Get yourself set up on your network of choice. Carve out a rainy Sunday and play around with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. If you like to take pictures or make videos, add Flickr or YouTube. All of the sites make it easy for you to import your Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, or Gmail contacts. You don’t need to be especially technically-savvy to do this, and I promise you can’t break the site or your computer.

Also, don’t feel like you have to do everything at once. It’s better to do a great job of networking on one site than to do a mediocre job on three. Take your time and figure out what you like best.

Step Two - The requisite cautionary note.

Understand that everything you do or say online lives forever. Forever is a long time, so be careful what you say and who you copy. You’ve heard that before about email. Multiply that by infinity, and you’ll get an idea of who can ultimately see what you’ve said or written on the web. Check your company’s policy, and try to get your boss as a follower/friend/connection for a bit of CYA. Your clients are watching, as are your future employers.

Horror story: You whine to your Facebook friends that your boss is a huge pain. One of them comments in sympathy, which shares what you said to all of their friends, many of whom you don’t know. Unbeknownst to you, one of your friend’s friends is married to your boss. Opposite of a brilliant career strategy.

Step Three - Do something! Here are some ideas:

Prospect. Using search.twitter.com, set up a search for “bride,” “wedding planning,” or “engagement” within 15 miles of your ballroom. Reach out to brides in the planning stages. Caution: lighten up on the spam-attacks. Try a low-key approach, like, “Hi, I don’t want to get too spammy, but I see on Twitter that you’re planning your wedding. I work at the Wedding World Hotel. Let me know if you’d like to talk more.” This can work for meetings and other events, as well, if you tweak the search terms.

Promote special events. Having a client event or industry networking happy hour? Use Twitter to get the word out to your local tweeps, and invite people be creating an event on Facebook. This is also a great way to test the waters before you invest. Ask for feedback on possible attendance to see if it’s worth your time.

Establish expertise. Post links to articles that relate to your business niche. If you sell association business, talk about the new badge swipers you saw. If you focus on entertainment business, tweet about concerts coming your way.

Follow key clients and hot prospects. Follow and retweet your customers to build or strengthen strategic partnerships. Set up searches to understand what’s happening in your best account’s industry so that you can match your solutions to their problems, before they even ask you to. Learn your new contact’s likes and dislikes before you meet. Get the real scoop on a competitor’s top client to help build your share-shifting strategy.

Watch the competition. Follow your competitors – both the hotels and the sellers. Not only can you stay on top of what they’re doing, but you may get some great ideas to try. Either way, you’ll know what the playing field looks like from a different perspective.

Make people laugh. In between tweeting great industry-related articles or posting pictures of your ballroom, be sure to be funny. Be non-controversially funny, maybe, but be funny. If you put something good out there, it will spread, and you’ll be known as that funny sales manager at Awesome Inn and Suites.

Memory Lane Monday: Surprise Potty

The first hotel that hired me was, uh, modest. I mean, to me it was the freaking Plaza, but looking back it wasn't that fab. Luckily, I knew nothing about hotels at that point, so I was totally convinced that I was selling the best product imaginable. I was like the love child of a crackhead cheerleader and an ADD kid sans Ritalin about that place.

In my eagerness and excitement about the (tiny but who knew) bonus I was earning, I volunteered to lead a tour of extremely important people through the hotel. I can't exactly remember who they were - there were, like, eleven or twelve of them - but I do remember that we planned the tour for weeks. We had meetings involving all the departments, and we staged staff members at every turn of the tour to delight our guests with their cheerful attitudes and helpful happiness. There were special shuttles arranged, delicious foods prepared, and even a champagne toast planned for the end of the experience.

We met them in the lobby and proceeded to our first stop. We saw the restaurant, the lounge, the ballroom, and the five meeting rooms. We visited the pool, the fitness center, the gift shop, and the hair salon. We talked about the jogging trail, the shopping center, and the nearby creek. And finally, finally we headed up to look at guestrooms -- our most important commodity, the thing we had planned the best. First we saw a room with two beds - a double/double. Next we looked at a king room. And last, we went to the top floor to our best suite.

I slipped the key card into the lock, chattering all along about the last movie I had seen. I faced the corridor, pushing the door open with my shoulder. My guests were gathered around, hanging on my every word, laughing, thoroughly charmed. I led them in. And there, to our left, with the door wide open, was an Asian man noisily - nay, angrily - dropping every kid in China off at the pool.

photo credit: davefigley via creativecommons

Three Lessons for the Red & Green Ball Skirt Crowd

When I started out in business, I was much younger than most of my colleagues. Rather than take advantage of that by playing it up, asking for help, and thus developing life-long mentors, I just pretended like I knew everything and then worked my a$$ off trying to figure it out. This strategy was flawed for a number of reasons that you can guess, including the fact that I wasted tons of time in my twenties at work, when I should have been having adventures and discovering new hobbies and drinking beer. So that you, Fair Reader, don't make the same mistake, here are some suggestions:

Let your personality show. I was so nervous about being taken seriously that I acted like a 60-year-old British librarian with a back brace in my first interview. I even wore my hair in a bun. I later found out that I almost didn't get the job because the woman interviewing me thought I wouldn't fit in with the light-hearted team. Trust me: no one is fooled into thinking that you are older and more experienced than you are. When you are young, you're getting hired because you are enthusiastic, smart, and cheap -- not because your employer thinks you're the most seasoned candidate. Go with it.

Correct trumps creative. When it comes to the dress code, that is. So many younger women are fooled by chick lit and Glamour into thinking that their weekend wardrobes can be mixed in with business attire to create funky new looks. Seriously, you are not skilled enough to pull this off. It is much better to have five boring neutral suits that you wear every day and know that you're OK than it is to try to mix it up and cross your fingers. My favorite example of this was Billie, who worked for me when she was about 23. A selection of her ensembles included: a wrinkled, Oxford-cloth shirt tucked in (tucked IN!) to the bodice of a strapless dress; a satin, red and green plaid ball skirt (which touched the floor!) with a black suit jacket; fuzzy purple knock-off Uggs with a knee-length skirt; and a black leather cheerleader-esque pleated (I know!) skirt. Horrific. Please note, you should totally push the envelope when you are a little more established; just don't do it before anyone can tell if you have a clue or not.

Don't leave last. It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but everyone loves those early work happy hours when you're getting to know your boss and co-workers. You look forward to them when you're young because there's a good chance your boss will both pay for your drinks and spill some juicy gossip. I am a big believer in bonding over booze, but don't let yourself be the last one to leave. No matter what. Even if you are having SO MUCH FUN!!! and bonding with everyone or even falling in love. Be among the first third of the departures. This ensures that you get the points and cred for being there without any of the scandal and humiliation of being there too long (or leaving with the other last person there - ewww).

photos by hammadty75; Strawberry Holiday; & Michael Saffle

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