My wonderful feelings of contentment and everything being right with the world vanished and were replaced with horror and lots of tears as I realized what I had done. I was quite hysterical and my poor son tried to calm me down but I was in my own world and just wanted Dave to be here to tell me everything would be ok; Dave is good at telling me that and he is normally right. I had forgotten Dave had no car at work because I had dropped him off and the poor guy literally ran all the way to get to me and my son from work. It was about 15 minutes away and a very hot morning.

Everyone was wonderful that day, the Police did not arrest me as I had thought they might but told me that, unfortunately quite a few people have these kind of accidents. In fact once the two cars had been towed away from the scene of my accident and we were all waiting for paperwork to be filed I stood, with one of the policemen and watched a taxi driver do exactly what I had done, but he got half way across the road, thought better of it and reversed back to the line he should have stopped at. The policeman had a word with him and I am sure he must have told him how lucky he was not to have had an accident like I did and to be more careful in future.

The two policemen were wonderful and even drove myself, my son and Dave home in their police car, telling me it was the least they could do after giving me a ticket. They advised me to get a medical check up at the hospital, which I did, but apart from bruising, a headache and feeling quite shocked, I was thankfully OK.

I cried most of the rest of the day after the accident and most of the night until I fell asleep. The next morning I thought I would just stay in bed and forget the world and my woes and maybe never get up again. This feeling lasted all of 10 minutes before I realized I had appointments to cancel, emails to send and a family to look after. I have never been a quitter and I was not going to start now!

How do I feel now? I feel relieved that I did not kill myself or anyone else. I believe someone is definitely looking after me from above. I have gotten over the guilt and the worry about the ‘what ifs’. I am concentrating on the positives in my life and getting on with business; my keynote presentations, promoting my upcoming book, details to do with the business network group I run, and more importantly, being a caring mom and wife. My 4 children have had to cope so many times over the past years with the possibility of losing me, I have no idea how they stay so strong but I do know they deserve medals for staying strong and be there for me. Dave never falters he is always there for me.

The moral of my story is that we all do things we are not proud of, we all make mistakes, we all hurt people in different ways, but as long as we realize what we are doing wrong and make amends, that is the most important thing. Not the blame, hatred, spite or regret, making things better is what counts and learning from our mistakes.

When I woke up this morning, 4 days after the accident I realized my lovely feeling of contentment was still there, I had a busy day to get on with and many more exciting and busy days ahead, I can make every morning I wake up one of contentment and happiness, it’s all up to me!

1. Step 1 – Be AWARE

Be aware of your objectives. Know your short and long term goals. Write them down so you are aware of them every day, look at them to remind yourself where you are going and why.

Be aware of your target market. Know who you are marketing yourself to and who you want to sell your products or services to. Market research is essential in the early days and you should continue to research your market at least annually to ensure you are in touch with any changes or industry news that may apply to your business.

Be aware of who you are and how others perceive you. Know yourself in order to know others. When you are networking, online or face to face know that you do have excellent listening skills, if you are not sure look for a self awareness course you can complete on line.

Be aware of where you should network, why, how and what your intended outcome is. Know that networking is an ongoing and integral step in the continued success of your business.

Be  aware that you should be proactive and look for mentors, strategic alliances, network connections that benefit you. Know as much as possible about your connections which will enable you to establish a strong relationship of trust and offer you the chance to help them.

Be aware and always be YOU, be authentic and do not pretend to be someone you are not.

AWARENESS

I have shared with you one of the secrets of my success, Awareness is very much part of my Philosophy. It works for me and it will work for you.

Check back soon to learn more secrets of my success that can lead you to your success!

• Know from the beginning why you are using Facebook.
• Be consistent, with your branding, your content and be you.
• Do not rush around with open invitations for everyone in the world to connect to you as a friend on FB.
• Start slowly, connect to a few trusted friends, personal and business and watch, listen and learn.
• Be patient, learn about FB and know what it can and can’t do for you.
• If you are planning on using FB to add to your credibility, gain more exposure and grow your business you have to be loyal to your commitment to post content regularly.
• Once you have gained friends who are interested in what you are saying they will pass on the word to their friends.
• If you are here today and gone tomorrow and back again and then gone again people will not take you seriously.
• Know how to connect with your friends, make sure you treat them the same as if you were meeting face to face.
• Find out how you can help your friends on FB, why they are on FB and do not overwhelm them with your products or service offerings.
• Build your relationships of trust slowly.

Once you have faith that you have successfully completed your training period of FB you are ready to move onto the next phase.

We will talk more about that in my next posting. Please let me know if you have any specific questions or comments thanks.

As you are all aware by now I have built two businesses slowly, starting with Motivational Steps in 2001 and then I founded the Small Business Community Network in 2003. Both of my businesses are connected, they compliment each other in the sense that I did not diversify to something completely different. This means my time can be spent productively working on both businesses.

My business sense is instinctive, other than completing a one year basic business internship course I have no formal training or background in the business world. I am a people person, I like finding out about people, and first and foremost I have always liked to help people. I learn by doing, I find out how other people have become successful and I take from them what works for me. Why reinvent the wheel?

I believe we are born net-workers, from the time we are born we are connecting to our family, friends, significant other, people we work with, we just do not think of it as work or as networking. The minute we are told you have to network to build your connections in order to build your business we gasp and we fight the good fight and we resist. Resistance is futile we all end up doing it in the end.

In all honestly I have never resisted, I am a social butterfly, always have been and I was born to network. My first experiences at social networking were not as successful as I would have liked, but I was building my first business and, like most people did not have a lot of spare time and felt that spending too much time online connecting might lose me work eleswhere.

The amazing thing is though, it is never too late! For me or for you! Embrace social networking now, if you are not already doing it and if you are, but you are finding you are not enjoying it or it is not reaping the rewards you expected, take a step back and slow down.

I am here to help you, I am not an expert, I am an ordinary person who enjoys social networking and have the time to pass on some tips to you, if you want them, about what worked for me. You can then take from what I offer to you and use the bits you like and throw out the bits you don’t.

Check back here soon to find out how social networking can definitely be fun, easy and lead you to the next level of success you know you want.

As I was reading the local newspaper, the Record, I noticed an article bemoaning the awful prospect of President Elect Obama not being able to continue using his beloved Blackberry. Ok, so now let us consider the facts we have before us.

However fantastic new technology is today, people are people and no product or service can ever be deemed secure, sorry but that my opinion like it or lump it. Look at past incidences, Prince Charles had his private cell phone conversations leaked and everyone in the world knew what he had said to his future wife, Camilla.

When people are in charge of the technology, as with an example recently of credit card information being stolen from outside a store, via a not so secure wireless connection, security issues happen.

The new soon to be President should consider his future safety and privacy above any love of a device or any such thing. As  President he may be the target of many enemies why give them more ammunition?

The SBCN helped me meet many people involved in business which meant I could connect with them, get to know about them, build that all important relationship and trust.  Word soon spread about the group and people would thank me  for giving back to others by organizing meetings each month, people perceived me to be a caring and helpful individual, which I am of course.

The SBCN does not ask for referrals at meetings, but they are an added bonus. On more than one occasion someone has referred me for a speaking engagement, based on my reputation as the founder of the SBCN and not because they had heard me speak at a gig.

Networking has now become more fun for me, more productive and I get to connect with entrepeneurs who inspire me and in some cases, mentor me. I gladly offer my help to anyone who is serious about building their business and introduce individuals to others who may be a fitting connection for them.

In 2007 the SBCN partnered with the Waterloo Small Business Centre and we offeerd our first Small Business Showcase: a Bridges to Better Busines event. We outgrew the venue and this past October we offered our 2nd annual Trade Show at the Waterloo Inn and this proved to be such a huge success we are already planning 2009 trade show.

Networking is fun, is beneficial and everyone should do it, obviously for different reasons!

I was just entering the world of being a business owner, albeit it a very small business. My business cards looked good, I admit I did not own a smart suit or expensive clothes, but I was just starting out. My first entrance into the networking world was by attending a local Chamber after 5 event. I did everything properly, I grabbed a glass of something, not sure what I was too nervous, a plate of nibbles and I wondered around the room doing my best to speak to everyone and hand out business cards. Quite an achievement with no hands free, let me tell you.

Was I disappointed in a big way at this first entre into the world of business networking? Yes, yes, yes. I returned home and told my husband that no one was interested in talking to me, and then I wated by the phone for days hoping someone would phone me after they look at my business card.

I had a long wait, and no one ever did call. It was that experience that helped me realise I knew very little, in fact nothing about networking so I set out on a mission to find out as much as I could about how to network efficiently.

Ok, now I had the idea networking was a doddle for me, I found it fun, exciting and loved to connect with people and my purpose in life was set. It was then I had an idea, I researched local networking groups and realised there was not really much out there for new networkers. A networking event that offered mentorship, friendly people, networking tips and educational speakers, along with being affordable.

Within a few weeks of having a stupendous idea, which was, why not form my own business networking group, I had a small committee of 3 others and myself and hey ho there we go. The Small Business Community Network group was formed.

In my next blog post I will fill you in on how the SBCN helped and still helps many people and how it helped me.