More Athena Angels

On Sat 12th, I led the 2nd Athena Angels training walk and again it was great fun. We had a couple of little blips when dear old TfL engineering put an end to the original plan but we managed to find an alternative route. In fact the planned route was lengthened when everyone felt able to walk further.

I try and involve the members where possible so we had one decision making moment when we got to the end of the river Roding section and again as to whether we did a pavement walk back or retraced our steps so we could walk more in greenery. The greenery won out, such a wise decision.

Here are the happy bunch just about to enter Wanstead Park.

Ladies, thanks so much for your company on Saturday. Already I'm starting to see the progress and I know you feel it too. Lou has already indicated that she may upgrade to 20 miles, way to go Lou.  You can also see how much people are enjoying meeting new Athena members and networking with them. I'm glad that things seem to be developing as hoped with us all getting loads of wins in terms of fitness, the fact we are doing something for a great cause and the networking and business building and that great bonding and belonging. I look forward to welcoming more women out on the walks.

Being female, we like our stops and it's also a great incentive so it was lovely to be able to support the 'tea hut' in the park and sit on the steps having a rest and putting the world to rights as we enjoyed coffee, tea etc and in many cases, home made cakes. One of the conversations I was part of was, was very enlightening on the subject of networking. We all do a fair amount of this and it's always good to swap stories and experiences, this can save time and effort.

So far there do not seem to have been any aches and pains. I did a stretching session after our 'loo stop', another vital inclusion so we could all try out what we should be doing when we get home after the walk. Lou followed up my suggestion of a hot bath after all the stretches and enjoyed a glass of port in the bath, just as I did. Important to reward ourselves. I'm sure we'll all continue to share important findings like this as we bond further as a group.

Next walk 27th March, wonder where we'll go and who'll be with us then?

Persistence has many benefits

I'm a great believer in one to one meetings and invest time in these regularly also encouraging my fellow Athena members and visitors to do likewise. But why?

Well at networking meetings and other events, there is often not the time to really get to grips with people's business in detail. In a one to one meeting over a coffee, lunch or drink, you get a chance to get to know the person's business; what kind of clients they are looking for; how you can help them and they of course,  can find out the same about you. We women also have the edge here of getting to know the person behind the business too so we get a real holistic picture and through this we, I believe, excel at building that relationship.

From this point, we may use services, hopefully will tell others and in some cases may have discovered a potential partner in some aspects of our business. Don't however always expect that it will all fall into place immediately.

In November attending a Cappucino Connections for the Athena City group I met Sasha Kader from Sakr Design Ltd and we hit it off really well. We both wanted to meet again but Christmas was getting in the way and we committed to a January date. Then in mid December I met Sasha again at another Athena event and we talked further. At this stage she was no longer a stranger and I felt I was truly starting to build this relationship so when we met for our one to one in January, I was there to really get clear about her business and had in mind being able to tell others about her and find her clients.  In this meeting we had no people distractions, no sound distractions and as she spoke I realised the breadth of her offering and her expertise and it became clear that not only was I now able to tell others about her but she was also a very serious contender as someone that could deliver the integrated service that I was looking for for MediaCoach

Today, Alan Stevens and I met with Sasha and are delighted to be working with her to develop the next stage of business.


The moral, well,  always invest the time and it will pay off. Will keep you posted as to how things develop. I know it's going to be a great experience.

Athena Networking is the best

Today I attended the Chingford Athena meeting which brings it to a total of 4 Athena meetings this month. It's not my usual practice but it's been a real privilege to visit all the groups in my area this month to do the Business Support Topic (BST) and on the back of that launch our Athena Walking Initiative.

I've been talking about 'Bonding and Belonging' and the importance of both of those and then taking the opportunity to remind members how we can make it all happen and grow our business on that back of it. It's all been very well accepted which is great and I can honestly say that all our groups, that's those in West Essex and the City, are really good at bonding and belonging. On my visits, it's been great to see some familiar faces and to meet new ones too. I now need to do the follow up, that will be one of my targets for next week.

The BST has been a great springboard for launching Athena Angels which is our Athena walking team and we're going to do the Maggie's Night Hike in Sept this year.  The response has been fantastic so thank you to all those who have registered their interest, I'll be in touch very soon. Having trained a team of 16 wonderful women in 2006 to do the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Walk, I'm so excited about sharing all my tips and techniques, introducing all these lovely ladies to so many great walks and seeing them experience all the great benefits of training in a team. I know we'll have a ball.

Here are my team on day one of the Breakthrough Walk.

So watch this space for updates of our progress. First step is to find out what everyone is capable of so far!

What, no blog posts?

What have I been doing since September 11th?

A quick trip through my diary reminds me of :

• A very sociable weekend catching up with friends
• a hectic but wonderful couple of days coaching NHS staff in the Chelmsford area as part of a Leadership Course they are doing. They were all fantastic people and I get to see them twice again as part of this initiative.
• some one to one clients on career and life management issues and also stress management
• the discovery of a suspected Achilles problem and research to find out what I could do about that
• a cancelled EEG walk as a result of my discovery above
• networking
• webinar planning with MediaCoach
• paperwork

Yes, it has been busy and I believe that because of that the creativity was not there for me to write.
Sun is shining this morning and it's stunning. I'm holding off my return to walking until tomorrow for my Friday group and then we'll give it an air before the walking trip to France next week. More about that later.

No such thing as a banal tweet

I was recently asked to write about 'How Twitter can boost your networking and bring you new clients' for a newsletter I write for regularly. I've been on Twitter for more than a year now and am loving it - it's by far my favourite social networking tool and I have been giving talks to my local Athena groups about it and how to use it to your benefit.

Of course the comments that people make are interesting especially those who to date have not tried it but have picked up, usually through the media, info regarding the fact that it's all about what you had for lunch! I love the turn around that often comes when I explain what you can write in 140 characters and how it can promote and leverage your business as well as increase your networking.

One of the things I mentioned in the article was that 'I might even comment, as I did yesterday, on the blackberries on one of my favourite walks. That tweet got about 10 responses, with people sending recipes, saying I’d inspired them to go out and commenting on the importance of getting out in the fresh air.'

That tweet is still getting comments and the discussion has gone on over the weekend. Now that's exactly the kind of tweet some might label as 'banal' but it's my experience that tweets like this are the ones that really heighten your profile because they are the tweets that people relate to, the ones that show people you may be like-minded, the ones through which people get a feel for you and as they build the relationship, they want to do business with you at all.

Yes, people go to my blog and website when I tweet, yes, they ask for help and assistance but this tweet is the one that's got the most responses ever.

As Joel Comm, the man who wrote Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time would say tweets like this are ‘a little bit of human interaction’