Rest assured, you are not alone. The world is filled with people like you who have a great story to tell but don’t quite know how to get it written, let alone published.  This is why we have created the Aspiring Author Workshop. Come spend an afternoon with Jon Malysiak, Chicago-based literary agent, author/playwright, blogger, and me to help you put your dream of becoming an author in motion.

WHEN: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 – 1:30 – 4:30pm (or a variety of additional dates scheduled after)

WHERE: 101 N. Wacker, 6th floor conference room - Chicago, IL., 60606

PRICE: $219

We will book only 7 spots per workshop to provide the maximum one-on-one support.

Workshop Details

The first hour of the workshop will consist of a group consultation/discussion with Jon Malysiak where you will have the opportunity to talk about your book idea and get insider advice from a publishing industry veteran on how to get started with the writing process. The second hour will be YOUR time to start putting your words to paper. And finally, the third hour will be your chance to share what you’ve written with Jon and get additional insider advice from me on how to market and promote your book. You will come away from the workshop with a clear perspective on the publishing process and an exciting start to making you way to that point where you WILL hold that book in your hands with your name on the cover.

Jon Malysiak is the co-founder and President of the Jonathan Scott Literary Agency, (www.jonathanscott.us) a boutique agency located in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood. Jon has been a publishing professional for more than fourteen years, first as an acquisitions editor with several top Chicago publishers and, since, 2005 as a literary agent at Jonathan Scott. He is also the author of the soon-to-be-published novel Birds of Dreams—a satiric look at reality television—and two plays. In addition, he is the creator and writer of the Author-on-the-Town blog (http://author-on-the-town.blogspot.com) and a certified high school English teacher.

Unleash your thought leadership and creativity now. Sign up!

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I just finished our first “Worlds Biggest Book Club” with our first book, and still free on Kindle for 18 more days, called “Do the Work” by Steven Pressfield whose credits include a number of movies including “The Legend of Baggar Vance.” In that movie we are inspired by the following dialogue:

Bagger Vance: See, the trick is… to find your swing…
Rannulph Junuh: What’d you say?…
Bagger Vance: Well you lost your swing… We got to go find it… Now it’s somewhere… in the harmony… of all that is… All that was… All that will be…

In Steven Pressfield’s new book, “Do the Work” you will just as powerfully get inspired by statements like, “The ‘Real You’ Must Due the ‘Resistance You’” and

“The Opposite of Resistance is Assistance.” There are so many amazing ideas and suggestions in this book that you MUST go read it, NOW, TODAY.

This is where a reference to my son comes in. Please read on and see if you see the connection:

If you had a second chance at life, would you recognize it? Would you do everything in your power to live as if there were no tomorrow?

Last year the threat of “no tomorrow” was very real for me, but the universe offered up a gift, an opportunity to learn the true nature of acceptance and gratitude. Although disguised as a malicious malady, it was no less rewarding to receive, and I am a better person because of it. I learned so much about myself, the world and my relationship to it. Cancer is increasingly becoming a household name and will continue to touch our lives as all things get harder, better, faster, stronger.

It’s been one year and I’m well. In fact, I haven’t felt this strong since college, so I thought this is as good a time as any to ride my bicycle from Chicago to the Panama Canal. That’s 3,000 miles, 6 weeks, 9 countries. I’ve been training for the last 4 months, and even got a job as a bike courier during the day for efficiency’s sake. I will take off Sunday May 8th at 9am from The Bean at Millenium Park. If your in the neighborhood, stop by and see me off.

I’m going to maintain a travel log throughout the trip, documenting the unique and curious experiences I encounter along the way. If you have experience in places on the route, or know of anyone/anything I simply must see, don’t hesitate to let me know! I can use all the support I can get. I’m getting incredibly excited as my departure draws near and I’d like to invite you to follow me on the Interweb. You can visit www.onegraham.tumblr.com for more info. Click the links at the top of the website for details.

I look forward to seeing you when I return on June 24th. Until then, don’t stop ’til you get enough.

All my best,
Graham Lee Giovagnoli
www.onegraham.tumblr.com

———As a mother, as a coach, mentor, speaker and advocate of young people trying to get a good start in life, I hope you can take some inspiration away from Graham. . . . I know I did.

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• MY LINK YESTERDAY to Steven Pressfield’s Do The Work got this enthusiastic endorsement from reader C… (pajamasmedia.com)
• How To Get Serious About Your Creativity (twistimage.com)

Chicago Cultural Affairs Commissioner, Lois Weisberg, will be retiring this year. It’s interesting that she is leaving just as we are revisiting the human phenomenon that 12 years ago became an international notoriety when Malcolm Gladwell showcased her in his groundbreaking New Yorker article, “6 Degrees of Lois Weisberg.” Our book, Networlding 4.0: The Great Exchange, shares Lois’s powerful talent for connecting AND creating opportunities. In the following excerpt from our book, we reveal more as to how she connects in valuable,mutually beneficial ways and how you can do the same thing, starting today, with your network.

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Lois, as her friends know her, was said by Gladwell to be one of the most influential people on earth because she understood the power of our networked world well before Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform popularized it. Weisberg, 85, is the only remaining member of May Richard M. Dailey’s original cabinet.

Some of Lois’s contributions to the city included innovative ideas like the famous Cows on Parade public art project in 1999. This idea was spread around the world and duplicated by cities taking on their own unique themes. She also worked with Maggie Daley to create the successful Gallery 37 and After School Matters programs focused on the arts.

For 22 years Lois has been supporting the arts in Chicago. She has done it with a passion focused on a vision of what could be for the city as well as the talented people who would make your visions turn into realities.

As Gladwell illuminated in his article in January of 1999, “There are probably Lois Weisbergs in Akron and Tucson and Paris and in some little town in the Yukon Territory, up by the Arctic Circle. We’ve all met someone like Lois Weisberg. Yet, although we all know a Lois Weisberg type, we don’t know much about the Lois Weisberg type.” From here, Gladwell began to make more “explicit” the infrastructures built from the minds and hearts of people like Lois.

To do this Gladwell, a social scientist, directs our attention to the experiments of Stanley Milgram of the famous Six Degrees Experiment. Gladwell said perhaps it should be referred to as “The Lois Weisberg Problem.” I have been sharing that experiment with audiences for years and, each time, I would note how many were not familiar with it, even after “The Tipping Point” was a bestseller. The experiment began in Omaha, Nebraska, where a hundred and sixty people were randomly selected and given a packet of postcards to mail to a randomly selected stockbrocker in Boston.

When, surprisingly, postcards from the packets were received by the stockbroker within five to six mailings, the “small world concept” or “six degrees of separation” was born. But Gladwell went even deeper into this phenomenon, explaining that an equally important part of the experiment created by Milgram was the realization that the majority of the packets were delivered to the final recipient by the same three people. What this revealed was that there are certain people who are better “connectors” to diverse individuals than others and that illumination was well evidenced in Lois Weisberg.

Gladwell went on in the article to explain that Lois has a powerful pyramid of pyramids of connections. In other words, Lois is connected to “Connectors.” That awareness that started with this article now plays out perfectly on the site LinkedIn.

Here, you can see, right under the heading “Contact” you can click on “Network Statistics.” From here you can see your first degree, second and third degree connection numbers. So, for example, Melissa has 5000 connections. Melissa’s connections are made up of eight years of connecting with top networkers on LinkedIn. Therefore it is not surprising that her second degree connections exceed two million and her third degree, fifteen million. She is connected, like Lois Weisberg, to connectors.

So, bringing this into the real world, how can you build a similar network? Follow this mantra: care, connect, promote. It’s Melissa’s mantra and if you can adapt it to your world you will be on the path to success. You don’t need 5000 connections to get there. Just start with five or ten and keep going. You will get there faster than you realize!

We are looking for the best Networlding businesses around the U.S.

How do you know if a business is a great Networlding company?

Please answer the following questions about the company or companies that you think are the best places to Networld.

Help us by naming and answering the following questions for five or more companies and and once a month three winners will receive a gift certificate to Staples for $50.

* Please keep your open-ended responses to two-sentences or less.

1. Does your nominated company have a broad base of pro-active networking employees who come from a place of values? If so, how many can you identify? (Hint: LinkedIn is a great tool to find these people. Hint. Hint: You can go to the “Advanced People Search” page on LinkedIn and type in words like “change agent” and/or “integrity,” for example, to locate people who lead from a strong set of noble values.

2. Does the company value diversity? How does the company show it?

3. Does the company have a positive public perception? How does the company give back to the community?

4. Do the employees of the company “triad”–the term used in the book Tribal Leadership. This is a networking technique that effective leaders use to connect and then refer people they know to one other where it makes most sense with the greatest possibility of success for the two connecting as well as others that could be impacted by their connection.  Think Warren Buffett being connected to Bill Gates by someone who knew them both. These connections are made based on common interests, values, and projects that people you know might want to collaborate on.

5. Open Ideas. Is there something your nomination does that is novel? Tell us about the uniqueness of your nomination

Please have your nominations and answers in by the end of the month.

From your responses we will compile a list of the best Networlding companies across the country!
If you have any questions please email me at melissa @ networlding.com.

The article continues on to share that this new organization will continue to provide exceptional word-of-mouth marketing programs that leverage the power of their pre-existing relationships with top bloggers such as Liz Strauss Successful-Blog.com.

The company has locations in Austin, Seattle and Houston.  Ivy Worldwide is recommended by community influencers as the best company with the best approach for word-of-mouth marketing. For more information, visit Ivy World Wide.

With Networlding we emphasize that there are “Givers,” “Takers” and “Exchangers.” We advocate that there is a big difference between each of these three. Of course we all know about “The Takers.” They are usually the subject of most talks by top networking experts.

Instead, I focus on how “The Giver” is different from “The Exchanger.” An example is a good friend of mine who is the poster child of “The Giver.” She gives and gives and gives but then, at the end of each year, she often ends up with little in exchange. Why? Because she did not ask for anything in return. And, because she is so busy giving, she doesn’t have time to really realize the benefits of an exchange.

Exchangers take time qualifying others as to  how they can create a more mutually beneficial exchange of support. In Networlding I reference our “Seven Levels of Support” that help people understand what they have to give and what they can request in exchange. In an exchange, just as Ivy Worldwide has made explicit and part of how they implement their online campaigns, the upfront knowledge and agreement as to what a good exchange would be results in a mutually beneficial outcome that can ripple(just like an good networking initiative) beyond all participants most hopeful expectations. The “Network Effect” created then cannot be compared to transactional campaigns that have only a goal for immediate gratification and a limited vision.

7.    How do you use networking to support the success of others? When you use the word “connector” that’s what I am. I connect people. I sent out emails today to three people I met on Friday connecting them to others I believe can help them. I even talk with the people I am connecting to make sure I know how they want to connect. It is not about me but about what I can do for others.

8.    What are your top values? – That’s a hard question for me to answer. I have hired a life coach myself to help me identify what they are; I think I know what they are but I want to really get some clarity in understanding. I want to help others but what ultimately I want out of my life? What is the piece that drives me?

9.    What attributes do you bring to the job as a leader that are related to the skill of networking? – eg.1. creativity, 2. innovation, 3. team building. – I try to find creative ways to build my network. I created a mastermind group to that end. I just got a testimonial from one member who is part of the group, who at first did not know if she would get something out of the group. She said she has learned so much and has made life-time relationships.

10.    What public figure has raised in your eyes the standard of performance of networking? I would say that two people here that I know would be, first, the president of our chamber in Gilbert and the vice president of one of our local hospitals.

11.    What is your number one strategy for success? Mine is just sticking with what goal you have set. This is from the  Disney movie “Finding Nemo” which is funny but in that movie there is a little blue fish called Dori. She says at some point to Nemo’s dad, ”Just keep swimming.” There will always be roadblocks but you need to “just keep swimming.”

12.    What role does social responsibility play in your life as a “Linkable Leader”? – I guess we each have a responsibility if we are going to be a connector that we understand that role. I went to a meeting at the chamber for a committee I am on and we were talking about why people don’t renew their memberships. They go to one event and if they don’t get a client they give up. They need to understand that you are going to events to open relationship possibilities and from that come clients.

13.    What is something you have not done as a leader you would still like to do? The one thing I would like to do is write a book. I have shared that with you and I do believe that it is one thing that is part of being a leader is giving back. I would also like to speak more.

14.    Please name the best networker you know and why. Besides you (Melissa Giovagnoli), there is Kathy, the president of the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce.

I. Chapter One – November 11, 2011.  Reminiscing about our beginning days in the Innovation Center that opened the year before on October 10, 2010…  What did we set out to accomplish?  What were our motivations?  What resistance did we encounter?  Who encouraged us?  What people were instrumental to our early success?  What role did networlding play? What was it about the Innovation Center concept that truly caught people’s interest and passion?  How did we leverage outside ideas and our blogosphere community to help enhance our vision and accelerate our progress?

II. Chapter Two – A day in the life of the center as it is “today” (11-11-11) – The user experience.  What are the key differentiating attributes of the user experience?  How are people using the Center?  What value are they generating/receiving?  What makes the Center so successful?  How has this changed over the last year?

III. Chapter Three – Opening Day October 10, 2010.  What did the beginning structure look like the day it opened?  Did we have all 30 kiosks in there?  What was our business and revenue model?  What initial mistakes did we make? What fortuitous events helped make it happen?  What was the initial public reaction?  What near-disasters did we finesse?

IV. Chapter Four – The first week.  What happened during that first week of the center being opened?  What did we learn?  What did we commit to fix?  How did it change our assumptions or operating models?  What would we have done differently from the beginning of only we’d known…

V. Chapter Five – The early months.  What happened within the first 90 days?  What were our first 3 major initiatives?  How were they germinated?   how did we get them to the stage of moving to engagement with design engineers from a couple of the companies in the center (check out www.inventright.com or www.edisonnation.com for examples of companies).  Who were our first corporate sponsors?  What made them decide to participate?

VI. Chapter Six – Crisis!  What unexpected event happened ~ 4-6 months later that nearly caused the Center to collapse?  (A little dramatic effect that occurs in every good story…)  How did we rescue it?  What help did we get from an entirely unexpected source?  What sacrifices were we forced to make that turned out to pay huge dividends later?  What seemingly unrelated sub-plot first mentioned in the prologue and carried along at a low level of intensity in Chapters I-V suddenly emerges as an unexpected, vital component of our success?

VII. Chapter Seven – The Center – 2nd Generation.  How did the Center emerge better, stronger and with more innovative impact as a result of the events in Chapter Five?  How did we know that the Center was now completely out of danger and would be an extraordinary success?

VIII. Chapter Eight – Events in the Center.  What kinds of things went on during that first year – especially those that could only have taken place in the unique environment of the Center?

IX. Chapter Nine – Impact of the Center.  What tangible, measurable results has the Center produced in its first year?  What additional kinds of activities are there underway that will yield even greater impacts an dividends.  Where did we create unexpected value?  What didn’t we expect that happened?

X. Chapter Ten – What’s Next?  Having spent the first nine chapters in reflection mode, now we pivot and look to the future.  Sister Centers are now in various stages of opening in San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, London, Prague and Milan.  Interest has been expressed from unexpected sources – DARPA, DOE and other leading-edge US government agencies want to develop a similar concept to help drive early-stage innovation on government projects.  NASA wants to build a Center dedicated to establishing a manned base on Mars.  The World Bank and Gates Foundation want to fund the establishment of local Innovation Centers across Africa to help foster self-help solutions to the daunting problems of Aids, energy, food and tribal feuding — from the same people that these challenges affect the most.

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So, beginning with Chapter One, what ten companies do you think should be part of the center?  Would you choose any of the companies from this list of the twenty-five most innovative companies identified most recently by Business Week? Who would be your ten and why? Please comment and get your colleagues to comment. We’ll let the majority rule and off we go! Check out Business Week’s 50 Most Innovative Company list for 2009 to help with your choices.

Fortune 500 Series: FedEx delivers success through social media …
By Jennifer Leggio

Blogger, Jennifer Leggio showcases The FedEx Citizenship blog that provides insights from their employees into FedEx global citizenship programs and the The FedEx Cares Week blog is an internal blog that chronicles the annual global philanthropy event by having team members share their stories about the community service projects. …

Hill and Knowlton’s New Blogging Code of Conduct

Hill and Knowlton publish their blogging “Code of Conduct.” This is a nice model for other organizations to use.

The Top Six Reasons Companies are Still Scared of Social Media

This article showcases the reasons why companies are afraid of social media. Whereas they are typical reasons that make sense, the article is good at aggregating the most common reasons. The hurdles for companies are getting lowered by organizations like SAS who take on the risk, trusting and encouraging their employees to blog and prove that it is still better to be “out there” than to hide behind corporate walls.

My Take

I spoke with a couple of social media experts this week and found that, once again, myopia is still alive, well and living in peoples’ minds still. By this I mean that many see social networking as their ticket to great success. They think that because there are so are confused how to make social networking work that there is a huge market out there and that they can just put a shingle out that states they are social media experts overnight. Recently someone shared they had a construction worker friend who is now teaching LinkedIn.

I’ve been teaching people social networking for more than a decade and up until last year many still didn’t understand the basics of business networking. Now there are five times the number of experts on the subject than there were even three months ago. What a strange time this is! It will be interesting to see how all this shakes out in the next couple of years. I remember when I use to hold networking events and there was an over abundance of bankers; then came the plethora of coaches. Now everyone is a social networking and new media expert. Hmmmmm.

I have been working with executives on LinkedIn since its beginning and have found, again and again, that people need help figuring out how to leverage its power for their job search. With the statistic floating out there that 86% of the way people get jobs is through networking a tool like LinkedIn that has over 40 million professionals on it with the average age between 40-42, one would have to pay attention to this tool. But what’s the 20% focus you should have to yielf an 80% return. That’s where you start.

First, make sure your profile is as strong as it can be. It should have key words that hiring professionals would use. One of the best ways to figure out what these words would be is to do a key word search by clicking on the “People” page of LinkedIn (top left-hand corner in the navigational bar on the site). Search for keywords you would think would be used in searching for your job but also think out of the box. For example, since leadership is something that many employers search for in a candidate, if you are seeking a management position, put a keyword search in that includes some variation of that keyword. I just searched on the keywords “leader” and “marketing” with the title of Sr. VP of Marketing. I found 16,356 people referenced with those closest in my network listed first. I then reviewed a number of the profiles to see how they were constructed. There were hundreds of great models to emulate.

Second, explore the Company pages of LinkedIn to further compare your profile with others at the targeted companies you have chosen and to identify the right “Tipping Point” of connections you can make into those organizations. Again, let’s take the terms marketing and leader at the Sr. VP level. This time I search through organizations like Intuit, a top software company out of San Francisco. I found they currently have the following number of employees on LinkedIn:

* San Francisco Bay Area (500+)
* Greater San Diego Area (500+)
* Tucson, Arizona Area (500+)
* Greater Los Angeles Area (500+)
* Dallas/Fort Worth Area (500+)
* Reno, Nevada Area (278)

I was able to get a great snapshot of the organization. I found this company has thousands of active employees on LinkedIn. This means that I should be able to gather deep wisdom about what that company wants in an employee and, further, to connect with enough people who can help me network my way into the organization.

Third, get yourself a support group with whom you can share your job search experiences. I always say the best group to start is your own. This could look like a weekly call with others who are in a job search mode or a face-to-face meeting where you keep sharing your search techniques. My clients are constantly telling me how tough it is to face the daily loneliness they feel during a job search. But you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out and connect.

There are so many strategies you can use to accelerate your job search. I’ll over more in upcoming weeks. The important thing is that you do have a process and you do have a support network who will help you with direction and connection. So many of my clients find that they are able to learn and master networking when they have a sound framework that is tailored to their unique backgrounds. Finally, the best news about learning how to network better and to use all the new low-cost no-cost, online tools is that networking is something they can always use in their new positions to grow their careers. In other words, networking is a skill you never want to have get rusty. It can always be useful.

Bonus Point: If you who purchase the program I created that contains the comprehensive tools–the combination of the networking process and LinkedIn strategies and basic and advanced usage training (all for the low price of $79) you will receive a free coaching session with me to even further tailor your job search. However, this offer is good for only a limited time, so if you are interested, visit http://budurl.com/6figurejobsearch.

Career Coaching Experience

Helped over 4000 people on their LinkedIn Profiles
18+ Years of Experience
Specializing in Senior Managers and C-Level Professionals
6 Figure Jobs – partnership as “The Networking Coach” for more than six years