Stretch Your Mind and Body  

Join us as we speak with Margaret Saunders, from Bedtime and Toilet Training Solutions about her unique way that you can get your child to bed in a gentle, loving way. Margaret Saunders is a later in life mother. She had her two daughters when she was 39 and 41. She lives in a seaside village called Dromana, which is 1-1/2 hours out of Melbourne, Australia. She runs her successful parenting business Bedtime And Toilet Training Solutions whilst her daughters are at the local High School. Margaret’s winning parenting style is now sought and practised by parents worldwide. She specialises in toddler bedtime and toilet training, overcoming bedwetting and getting babies to sleep gently and easily. We are really looking forward to hearing the wonderful solutions that Margaret will share with us.

On todays show, Carol Deckert joined Charly Leetham to talk about achieving balance in networking. 

With the focus on social networking increasing and the number of places to connect on the up - many business people are overwhelmed by the sheer 'enormity' of it all.

Networking is the process of meeting people, either in person or 'virtually', that you would like to develop a stronger (perhaps more formal) connection with.  These connections, in turn will enrich your life in one, or many, areas - depending on the type of contact.

The one thing that many business owners are very concerned about is the amount of time it takes to network, versus the time required to simply get the work done!

Carol shared some fantastic insights into this, including:

You should network where your target audience is.  If your target audience (or market) uses Twitter, ECademy and Ryze - then that's where you should be networking. It doesn't make sense to network on Facebook or Myspace if your target market doesn't.

Use an egg timer to limit the amount of time you spend each day on your networking and only do what you can in that time. This means being focussed and addressing the important requests first.... but you can do it!

Schedule your day to maximise your networking. For Carol, networking at the end of her work day works best - but for Charly, networking at the start of her work day is optimum.


Charly was also asked how she manages to work from home and handle the 'interruptions' from family and two young teenage children.... her answer may amuse you!

Carol is networking coach and her site can be found at RUNLancaster and her networking blog. Carol is available for coaching and advice.

This week on Stretch Your Mind And Body our guest speaker is Carol Deckert from RUNLancaster.com. Carol is a business colleague, and friend, of Charly - and a networking wizard! Carol Deckert is a netweaving/networking coach! She will help you prepare your profiles for each of the online networks and help you develop your networking plan as a critical part of your marketing plan. Offline networking is very important as well. As a coach, Carol covers any and all online/offline connection activities and can help you effecting and efficiently build your business using networking techniques to netweave! Netweaving is the next step in networking - making your connections solid - by offering to help others before expecting a payback to yourself! How do you build a business by doing that? Hire Carol and you'll explore the ways that will work best for you! We love the way Carol signs off her introductions: "Having said that, how can I make YOU smile today and what can I do to help you?" Join us and learn how you can network with the best of them...

This morning Charly and I had Jill Freeman from Roar! Sales and Marketing Training and Development on our Blog Talk Radio Show. Jill has 16 years of experience in sales, marketing and teaching small business owners how to increase productivity. Her passion is to help people to find out what they want.

Jill worked in the corporate world for a number of years and eventually it took its toll on her health and her family. So she decided to leave the corporate world and start her own business. She calls herself a "corporate drop out".
A lot of small business owners struggle to make marketing and selling a priority. Running their business is consuming all their time and leaves no time for marketing. A lot of small business owners lack marketing skills and have no idea about all the different marketing channels and possibilities that are out there. For a lot of them, the online world is scary and confusing and they don't have a presence there at all, but nowadays this is crucial. This does not have to be complicated, it can just be like a big business card with a summary of what you do and your contact details.

The main thing is to build a relationship with your customer, to work out what they really need and to have pride in your products and services and be happy to sell them.
Part of building trust includes referring the customer to somebody else if they are better suited to the customer's needs.

One of the things Jill highly recommended was to join one professional group like a Business Women's Association. There is no need to join lots of groups as you can't get the most benefit by spreading yourself too thin.

Have a business plan, use your intuition, be prepared to question your strategies and change. Don't cling to things that don't work.

Jill very much believes in one to one coaching as well as group coaching.

Connie and Charly discuss how you can 'Balance Your Mind And Body' for a healthy and fulfilled life. In this show, Charly and Connie will be speaking with Jill Freeman. Jill Freeman is a dynamic business coach and owner of ROAR!. With over 15 years experience in sales, marketing and business development, she brings unique ideas and a fresh approach to coaching for those who are just starting out in business ownership as well as those who are looking to for ways to boost sales and productivity. Jill also is an expert sales and customer service trainer. She has taught sales and marketing techniques to sales professionals both individually and in groups. She is a bright and sassy business professional with a mother earth alter-ego!

On todays Show, we spoke with Tonya Ramsey from Journey To Self and Life By Design.

Tonya is such an inspiring woman.  Not only does she run her own business and have a 4 year old son -- she is also studying at University Full Time. Wow!

Not surprisingly, Tonya spoke to us about Balance today. Balance In Your Life and how you can achieve it.

Speaking from her own experience, Tonya shared with us how the Family works together as a collective to achieve the tasks that need to be done for a happy, healthy, home life.  It was wonderful to hear how Tonya's husband, Ben, and their son both chip in to 'make the household run'.

Tonya also spoke about how Women, specifically, tend to take on too much, the reasons behind that and provided some excellent strategies on how to reduce those situations. 

We hope you enjoy listening to this weeks show and are able to take something away from it that you can action today!  Please let us know if you do and how it goes for you!