Across the Desk

If you're a woman and you've ever had to negotiate anything that involves money, you likely either paid too much or got paid to little. It appears to have something to do with biology. Men? Not so much. They apparently can negotiate like a surgeon. I'm thinking it's time we all had a little bit of medical school when it comes to negotiating. On this episode of Ballsy in Review, we touch on noodlin...

Sometimes, in the best of both worlds, your business life and your personal life hit a patch of nirvana. Most times, as an entrepreneur anyway, your business life kicks the stuffing out of your personal life. Late nights. Missed dinners. That kind of thing. I took a chance last year while trying to help my son, who is on the spectrum, and reached out to an organization to offer my services. Why? B...

You hear the guru's spouting the catch phrase, "what's holding you back?" Once you find that out, your life and business will be as close to nirvana (not the band, though that would be cool) as is humanly possible. Or you could be a stubborn jackass, not ask for help and struggle along like a lunatic for months. Which I did. Until now. Today we touch on the power of getting the right coach, how th...

What does it mean to you if someone says, "why don't you try this experiment with your business?" Does it immediately make parts of your anatomy pucker? Or does it give you a bit of freedom to try some things you wouldn't have tried if they weren't experiments? If that option to hypothesize, test and measure with minimal risk wasn't there? That's what we discussed last night at Women in Tech / Bal...

I firmly believe that all entrepreneurs owe themselves the favor of investigating in to personal development. Quizzes and tests and conversations with people who know more than you do about the business of being you. Delving in to they why's and how's of your personality, brain patterns and work habits can only help to make you better at what you're trying to do. To that end, I'm a bit of a person...

Learn more about how having the right event data can make the most of your marketing and events budget ! Why is this important? Case in point: A large company THOUGHT they were spending their events budget and attending / participating at over 400 events. Turns out it was only 120. Yikes! Tracking your own data and knowing the best events to attend, sponsor, showcase at and speak at is one the bes...

Did you know that execution comes down to 3 main things? People. Strategy. Operations. Not those on their own but how the leadership abilities in charge of the organization engage with those three components. Is your leadership style to delegate and then completely step away? Yikes. Are you a micromanager who builds distrust and angst within your team. Oy vey. Or do you take the time to have real...

Ursula the Sea Witch knew what she was talking about. In the absence of our real voice, our body language will reveal many things we might not expect. Subconsciously you could be leveraging your assets or you could be influencing decisions being made about you without even realizing. Those assets can be problematic when you aren't aware of what they're up to. Eye contact, your chin up, stance, wha...

The Behavioral Revolution: How to change culture and behavior with 21st century science – Paul Gibbons Changing behaviors matters – what people say and intend has value, but without alignment of actions with words, results don’t happen. I provide insights from 21st century science (nudges, habit change) and offer leaders tools they can use to drive change – in business, and in society. Paul Gibbon...

Meet Sarika Kharbanda who is a globe trotting scrum master who embraces technology as a means of building teams, attending events and training organizations. How? Well for the purpose of this podcast, she uses a Kubi :) Find out how to use tech to create engagement, build opportunities and laugh with your full face and have it mean something to who your talking too!

For over 10 years Allison Graham has been helping professionals grow their top line revenue. Her bestselling book, From Business Cards to Business Relationships: Profitable Networking & Personal Branding Made Easy is the foundation for her original work. She’s been featured as an authority on sales and networking in the media and worked with some of North America’s most influential brands. Tha...

Meet Katy who is one of the fabulous speakers for Spark the Change Toronto 2017! Katy Saulpaugh is an expert agile practitioner who has implemented culture and technology change strategies at all scales for private, public, and nonprofit clients in the US and Europe. As agile practice lead at Enterprise Knowledge, LLC, she specializes in agile coaching and facilitation and has enabled clients to b...

Meet Luc Galoppin - one of our great speakers at Spark the Change Toronto 2017! Organizational Change Practitioner and Author Luc Galoppin looks at organizations like communities that need development, not as machines that need fixing. He is the co-author of Managing Organizational Change During SAP Implementations, Guest Lecturer of Executive Education in Core Business Integrations of Sustainabil...

Have you ever sat and wondered what your mom might think of some of the decisions you make when it comes to business? We all know moms have the power to make us feel 9 with our hand caught in the cookie jar. Or maybe that's just my mom ;) But ultimately, if we use making our parents proud (or grandparents or favorite aunty)as part of the barometer for decision making, I think things might go diffe...

I have to be honest - this isn't my best podcast for WWW. Further honesty - I had too many homemade Blondies (Think a brownie but without the chocolate. I'm allergic to chocolate. Yes, you read that right.) There's a connection to the book here but you'll have to read the book to put it together. Kirstine Stewart is the current Chief Strategy Officer for Diply. Before that she worked for Twitter,...

The older I get the less I use the word hate. I think I stopped liking it mostly because I realized the power of it. The power to demean someone. The power to change the dynamics of a situation. The power to influence decisions and thought processes and personal development. Used in passing, such as "I hate when that happens" isn't a huge deal. It's when it's used in a personal interaction that I...

I've spent years networking. Years I tell you. At first on behalf of my employer but for the last 3 on behalf of me. That's scary for some people. It was for me. So I went to countless networking groups and events. This had its benefits in helping me craft my message, hone my offerings and getting my face in front of a lot of people. But it also wasted a lot of time. Time my business doesn't have...

Can you whip off a white lie and not even blink? Do you commit to events or meetings and then bail? If your word is your bond, is yours crazy glue or sticky tack? If this got you feeling a bit cringe worthy, then take a seat. I did a poll a few years ago to find out what people thought of me. I was happily surprised to find that the top 3 consistent words were: Loyal, Trustworthy and Honest. Sound...

I will bet quite a bit of money that if you ask any business owner what their number one struggle is, 98% will answer the same damn thing. Sales. And if you are a solopreneur, you're not only the entire production team, communications team and admin assistant, you're also the whole sales force. That's a lot of hats and most people only have one head. Today during Ballsy Women In Business, we talke...

Entrepreneurship can be challenging for anyone. For women? Sometimes you need other women to get a better understanding of what you might be going through. Carrie Green, founder of the Female Entrepreneurs Association, has developed a community that women can find business resources, emotional support and the ability to take action for your business that you might otherwise struggle with. I stumbl...

People can get caught up in the myths and legends surrounding entrepreneurship. We see Oprah and Richard and Steve and Arianna and all the fancy folks and figure that will be us in a year. Nope. Nope it won't. Downer right? But wait! All of these people have something else in common - education. Continuous learning. Determination. Smart teams. Processes. All the behind the scenes stuff that we don...

What is there to not love about Monday's? New ideas. New week. New opportunities. Oh that's right. Your boss sucks. And they suck the fun out of Monday's. My boss is awesome and that's because I'm the boss. In this episode of Entrepreneurial Entrails, I chat about saying yes to change, putting the fun parts of you (don't be dirty) in to your business and making Monday's suck a whole lot less than...

Have you ever wanted to attend a conference or event but the cost didn't work for you? Either what you would get out of the conference wasn't worth the price or your budget just wouldn't allow it? Consider volunetworking. Just about every large scale event you can think of depends on volunteers. Hiring staff to man all the areas of an event makes the budget near impossible to maintain and takes aw...

We can all have some challenges when it comes to personal development. For example - if we don't think we need to work on it at all. If we think it's too touchy feely. Or girly. Or a waste of time. Or all of the above. To be honest - that's kind of where my mind usually goes. But in the spirit of going outside my comfort zone, I went with an author that I've grown to know and respect through watch...

Winning is about negotiation versus capitulation. You may or may not agree with that but the truth of the matter is this: at the end of the day, what are you trying to accomplish? Part of setting up a win/win in business is having a clear idea of what your goal is going in to the negotiation. If you are wishy washy, it comes across. In your ask, your body language and your spoken language. Those a...