When Dreams Come True

The first line of the email said it all: "As you know, starting this orchestra has been a dream of mine for over 10 years!" It was from a friend and coaching client of mine, Frank Nowell, personally inviting me to his debut concert as conductor and artistic director of the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado. Frank's efforts are worth mentioning for a number of reasons:

1. He spent many years with compartmentalized interests and skills--a day job at Lucent and Avaya as manager of technical writers and a weekend gig as a professional musician, playing with baroque chamber groups with his harpsichord. I knew him for many years at Avaya and had no clue as to the depth of his musical talents--university organist at Princeton, masters in choral conducting from University of Colorado, harpsichordist at the Boulder Bach Festival, artistic director of the Handel Festival in Denver. And likewise, his musical buddies had no idea of his talent in managing people and words and technical documents.
2. After leaving Avaya a few years ago, he decided to pursue his musical career full-time. Over the course of the last two years, I've had the delight of seeing Frank's dream unfold, including the shaping of an idea for a professional baroque chamber orchestra into reality. His journey has taught me that with the right support and commitment, dreams can come true.
3. Who Frank is as a person has influenced who has joined the orchestra and what they are creating together. Early in one of our coaching sessions, Frank described himself as "the musician's musician," someone who works side-by-side with the musicians, as a collaborator and partner. True to form, his debut will be conductor-less. The group will be led with Frank and his harpsichord in the middle of the musicians and a charismatic violinist from San Francisco , Cynthia Miller Freivogel, in the violin section.
4. Innovation can come from anywhere, even in music written hundreds of years ago. Frank's passion is exposing audiences to the "adventurous spirit of improvisation." He talks about "releasing the dance of baroque music." He sees the possibility of much more interaction with the audience and envisions full engagement instead of passive listening. The relationship with the audience comes about because of the music and it doesn't end when the concert is over. He encourages the audience to talk with the musicians afterwards to continue the dialogue. In other words, this is not your average symphony gala crowd.
5. Like attracts like. Frank has attracted musicians from around the country, excited about playing period instruments to create a rich experience for audiences. Musicians where this is not just another gig, but a musical event they can throw themselves. Think passion on stage. Think memorable. Think magical.

If you're in the Denver area and would like to be a part of the debut concert, see details below. If you're not in the Denver area, tell your friends in Denver. More than attending a concert, it's about being part of one man's dream and experiencing magic.

Details on debut of Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado:

• Saturday, November 5 at 7:30 pm at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, 1401 East Dry Creek Road in Centennial
• Sunday, November 6 at 7:30 pm at St. Paul Lutheran Church, 1600 Grant Street in downtown Denver

The program includes:

Corelli, Concerto Grosso in F Major
Lully, Passacaille from “Armide”
Handel, Concerto Grosso in D Major
Geminiani, La Follia
Vivaldi, Concerto for Flute, Two Violins, and Continuo
Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 4

Tickets available at the door--$18 general admission, $15 students and seniors. For more information, call 303-889-1012.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Last night, I facilitated a panel discussion of coaches and consultants on the topic of building successful businesses. If you've never had a chance to ask a group of regular business people what they've done that's worked, I can tell you it's a real kick.

The event was billed as learning from "giants." One of the panelists before the event expressed some embarrassment that she would be considered a giant. What I discovered is that all five panelists had themselves stood on the shoulders of giants to get to where they are today. This ranged from adapting business models from millionaire entrepreneurs to participating in Mastermind groups based on Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich book to hiring great mentors. Success is created with the help of others, not by oneself.

This was a seemingly disparate group of entrepreneurs--they had different niches and varying backgrounds in large corporations or small businesses or long-time freelancers. Some were introverted and some clearly extroverted. One recently had a baby and another was old enough to have grandchildren. Two had no professional coach training but were clearly in demand as coaches. What was fascinating were the similarities between all five:

• All have a background in marketing and really enjoy the marketing part of their business. Even more interesting was that even though all five knew the "right" things to do intellectually, they implemented key marketing concepts at different times and some not at all. For example, one panelist is a great networker but she has no regular way of connecting with her audience--no database, no ezine, no blog, no autoresponders. She relies on people who have met her years ago to contact her for her services. And they do.
• All are great at noticing and tracking what is working and what isn't. Who is buying from them and who is not. What clients are coming to them for. They don't waste time doing the same things with poor results. They are willing to try out new stuff.
• All tap into lots of sources for knowledge and wisdom. Free teleclasses, books, magazine articles, their own spirituality, mentors. These people learn not just from their own experience but that of others. They are avid learners. In fact, the panelists started comparing notes on different topics during the discussion.
• As one of the audience members noted, the panelists have a vibrancy to them when they are talking about their businesses. They clearly enjoy being in business for themselves. Even though the journey may have had its rough moments, my guess is that they enjoyed the journey as much as the destinations.
• Their businesses are a tapestry of their skills and interests. The panelists offer a variety of services, suited to their background, expertise and passion. One loves to play with words and helps clients with resumes in addition to facilitating groups on creativity. Another is a natural storyteller and speaker as well as a teacher and coach to real-estate agents.
• All speak first about the results they provide the client, before saying how they do it or what type of business they run. They understand that clients buy results, not methods or credentials.
• All are passionate about being business people first. They have financial goals. They count their accountant as a critical part of their team.

Well, I could go on and on about what I learned. Instead, if you are interested in being an entrepreneur or already are one, I invite you to call up your favorite small business owner, whether it's the woman who runs the dry cleaner or your local dentist or a well-regarded financial planner. Take them out to lunch and have a long chat. You'll be surprised at what you learn.

Seeing the Landscape Clearly

I was on a conference call on Friday evening with a board for a non-profit professional association that I am a part of. Not how any of us wanted to spend our Friday evening but everyone knew that we had been stuck as a group for some time. This was the only time we could all meet. Stuckness seemed to manifest in the larger association as decreasing membership, low attendance at meetings, and lack of energy between meetings, even with a concerted effort by the board to focus on great programs for the members. Stuckness showed up on the board as confusion, frustration, and lack of a clear direction. We brought in two facilitators--colleagues trained in working with groups.

What happened in two hours amazed everyone. The first fifteen minutes of the call was marked by the facilitators trying to make a connection to the group. Long silences, reluctant agreements, and "deadness" interspersed with "Are you still there?" I was surprised at how I wasn't willing to jump into the conversation.

By the end of the call, there was a visceral feeling of connection to all the participants on the call as well as the facilitators. I felt better about this group than I had in months. I sensed that no one wanted to be the first to hang up. We had covered much ground.

In thinking about what made the difference on this call, here's what I noticed:

• The facilitators asked us to dream together of what we could create for this non-profit. This sparked a new energy to begin again. Even when we felt we had failed together in the past. This dream became the "new land" that we wanted to inhabit together.

• Just as important in articulating the dream as a group was voicing our fears and skepticism. We stumbled on "ghosts" that had been hanging over the group--events in the past that colored our interactions in the present. One ghost was a reminder of how past boards for this non-profit had been successful. One ghost was a reminder of how we had each denied being stuck, no one wanting to call out the elephant in the room. Yet another ghost pointed to our disappointment and frustration in being ineffective, not enough to get the job done.

• The facilitators normalized our experiences by recounting how similar associations they had been a part of had struggled with the same issues of dwindling membership and low attendance. Having gone through this, they could see a natural ebb and flow to these groups. What we were experiencing was not out of the ordinary.

• The more we told the truth of our experiences on the board, the more connected and supportive we could be with each other. With each truth-telling, another piece of the landscape could be filled in. The fog began to lift and we could see the shape of the hills and valleys.

There is a difference between seeing the landscape clearly and wallowing in it. What groups need when they are stuck is to see the landscape clearly. I suspect there was a fear in this group that if we saw the whole picture, it might just scare us all off the board. What happened is that it brought us all back to wanting to be on the board. How ironic and how wonderful.

Preview of Coming Attraction

I write an article once a month and send it as part of my ezine. The article lets me expand on a topic that might feel a bit too long in a blog posting. I haven't written this month's article yet, but I already know what I'm going to write about.

It involves elongated bowls, Home Depot, and brand names like Plebe-Complete and Memoirs. Okay, here's the tip off. One of the advertisements for a leading brand read: "Wow! Over two dozen golf balls in a single flush!" That's verbatim.

So if you don't want to miss out, go to my website, www.carolrossandassociates.com, and sign up to get my monthly article in the left menu bar section.

When Clouds Lift

Last week, we had our first big snow storm of the season. Not at my house, but 10 miles away, in the foothills of Boulder, Colorado. At my house, we had two days of rain. Something about updrafts and mountains that made it just a bit warmer to avoid the white stuff. Never mind that the weatherman predicted broken tree branches and downed power lines.

After two days of steady downpour (a rarity in this part of the country), I was surprised and delighted one morning when the clouds lifted. I could see the foothills on my drive home from taking the kids to school. Before me was the sun casting a golden light onto hills known as the Flatirons, the snow looking like powdered sugar gone wild. It took my breath away. I had only been focusing on how miserable it felt to be wet and damp. Unbeknownst to me, just a few miles away, a beautiful landscape was being created.

This reminds me that in our own lives, it may feel like a steady downpour will go on forever. At some point, the clouds do lift to unveil something new and wonderful, right in our own backyard.

Overheard on the Way to School

I drive my kids to school most mornings. It's a time to reconnect with the kids, where there are no Nintendo DS games or friends calling on the phone to distract us. Sometimes, my older son is eating a granola bar as a quick breakfast. The conversation ranges from logistics (who will pick them up in the afternoon) to homework (did it get done) to whether we all got enough sleep the night before (NOT). If I'm lucky, my 10-year old will have some interesting questions about how the world works. If I'm really lucky, my 12-year old will say more than two words.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked the kids what they wanted to be for Halloween. I have a series of pictures from each Halloween since they were pre-schoolers. They sit on the front steps to the house in their costumes, next to the carved pumpkins, right before the sun sets in the late afternoon. When they were younger, they favored traditional roles--fireman, construction worker, policeman, cowboy, witch (a bit of a stretch for my younger son but he played it beautifully). I broke down one year and got a Pokemon character costume for my older son--a nod to the then current world of a seven-year old. The next year turned into other characters like Ninjas.

So this year, I was surprised by the response on what to be for Halloween. It came out of the mouth of my older son, tired of the homework that a 7th grader gets. He replied, "How about Student on Strike?" The back seat was chortling with laughter. I pictured my kids on the strike line wearing sandwich boards with messages registering their complaints on the school system. Actually, it's alot more pleasant than thinking about teachers on strike doing the same thing.

This got the wheels turning for the younger one.

"Do you know what's cheap?"

He has reached the age where teenage vernacular is creeping into his vocabulary. I knew he wasn't referring to a low cost item.

"No, what's cheap?"

"When kids go around the neighborhood once and then change costumes and go around again."

"Kids really do that?"

"Yeah, Johnny next door did that last year."

There is a scam artist in every community, even in our own neighborhood. I was secretly admiring my next door neighbor's kid for having the gumption to go around the neighborhood twice, in the cold dark night, just for some extra candy. Seems like he could have conned his parents out of much more in the comfort of his own home.

I'll be watching for Johnny this year, coming around in a second costume. And chuckling when I see him a second time.

Procrastination and Trusting the Process

It's been awhile since I posted. And there's been a zillion times when I thought, "Oh, that would be a good topic to blog about." And I never managed to log into the blogging software to sit and write. Procrastination. Ugh.

I dug underneath to understand why I've been procrastinating. After all, when I started blogging "in private" before my blog was officially available, I had no trouble writing. And one of my initial intentions for blogging was to use it as an outlet for creative self-expression. So why would I procrastinate on something that I wanted to do and can do so easily?

While it has been a busy week for my work, I still managed to run or bike for 20 minutes about 5 times this week. Enough time to blog. I still managed to read the Wall Street Journal and postings from an on-line group of coaches most days. Enough time to blog. I even managed to get a nap in yesterday afternoon. Enough time to blog. Oh, this is getting really ugly.

The dirty truth is procrastination was keeping me from being less than brilliant. Let me explain. I found out a few weeks ago that if I wrote a blog posting in a Word document first and then did a cut and paste into the blogging software, strange formatting characters pop up when it's posted. And I found out last month that if I start to write directly into the blogging software on-line, one wrong click of the mouse meant I published before I was ready. I started to feel pressure to write something brilliant without alot of room for revision. The truth is, I rarely edit my stuff after I write it. Even when I write longer articles. It just comes out. I had stopped trusting the process and starting believing that I needed a safety net from looking less than brilliant.

I hear a voice inside my head right now. "Honey, you can just give that up."

I'm going back to trusting the process. Which means blogging when the idea hits me or soon after if I'm in the middle of something. And knowing that sometimes, I'll start on a topic and go absolutely nowhere with the idea. Other than I noticed something in my daily life. And that's okay. Oh, that brings up another concern that I had. What if I want to write about something that doesn't exactly fit in the theme of this blog--Ordinary Life, Extraordinary Living. If I wrote about networking as a business owner, would that fit?

Many people have told me that they enjoy this blog. As a reader, I'd love for you to hold me accountable to posting new entries on a regular basis. It's good for me and it's good for you. I know that. If you haven't seen anything new in awhile, send me a quick email and ask me what I've been thinking about lately. Chances are, you'll catch me in mid-thought about something that's worth sharing.

One last thought, I had this crazy idea that if I posted alot of stuff on one day, I would have used up my allotment of good writing and good topics for the week. So I was parceling out the posts, every few days. What I know is the more I write, the more I have to write about. It truly is an overflowing fountain. Thanks for reading. Writing this post has taught me alot.

Savoring

I love the fall season. The last of the sunny, warm days becomes more precious. The trees drop their gold before becoming barren. I admire the vibrant row of red geranium flowers in my front yard one more time before digging them up and bringing them inside for the winter. I'm posting a musing that I wrote in the summer of 2004 that speaks to savoring the riches in our lives.


I love my life. It’s Wednesday afternoon in June and I’m sitting on my patio. The skies are clear blue with a few cottony clouds in the western sky to remind me that the sky is not painted on. Every minute or so, there’s a slight breeze—the kind that makes the aspen leaves whisper and wakes me up to the fact that I am outside, not inside in my home office in the basement. The temperature is cool enough to be comfortable in a short sleeve shirt and silk pants. It is warm enough to not have to notice what I’m wearing outside. It’s a lovely afternoon.

My husband has taken our sons to the neighborhood pool. I’m alone with my laptop. Mike, the boy next door, just called looking for my sons. Okay, so I’m not completely alone.

I have all afternoon to write about whatever I want. And there is chocolate in the house. Good chocolate, not the kind that kids get as birthday party favors, but the rich stuff—Godiva. It’s the bounty from Father’s Day that my husband has so generously shared with the rest of the family. He has every right to hoard it all to himself. After all, my sons give him chocolate as a gift because they know he enjoys it. But he’s too nice of a father and husband to accept the riches without sharing them.

My older son had given his father a box of four Godiva truffles. He was proud that he had bought it with his own money. We agreed that when my husband opened the box up, each of us would get one truffle. Last night, when I came home from a meeting in the evening, the rest of the family had already indulged in their individual truffle. I could see the satisfaction on their faces. My 9-year old son encouraged me to finish off the box that held the last truffle. He listed the flavors of the other truffles that were now readily digesting inside sweetened stomachs—dark chocolate with lemon filling, dark chocolate with nuts, milk chocolate with more milk chocolate. I was curious as to what mine would be. All I knew was that it would be good. I poured myself a glass of milk and sat down next to the box with the lone truffle. I took a small bite. My tongue felt the creaminess of the inside melt and transform into a nutty taste. Milk chocolate with hazelnut. Bingo. I had hit jackpot.

My 11-year old son looked at me and with the wisdom of a yoga guru said, “Eat it slowly.” I knew what he meant. It occurred to me that we should eat all of our food slowly to savor the flavors. But it was especially important to take in all the smells and tastes of rich, refined chocolate. And then he added seriously, “That cost $1.75.” He smiled knowing that he had spent his money well. It was rich in more ways than one.

What would happen if we stopped to savor all parts of our lives, not just the special occasion chocolates?

More on Grace

I received an email from someone who read my post on Grace. There is one line from the email that keeps going through my mind:

"Grace is God's presence (wisdom, truth and love) poured over you in this time and place."

What a lovely way to think about how one can be at peace with the imperfections in life.

Sometimes when I'm coaching, I will ask a client how a situation that is clearly irritating, frustrating, and upsetting is perfect instead of imperfect. This always seems to startle the individual--that something that seems so imperfect can be perfect. And when the client is able to see perfection in imperfection there is a release of tension, a sigh of relief, a relaxation of the body. They have found peace.

Where Are You, Rico?

I blogged last month about my experience with great customer service provided by a man named Rico. Here’s the other side of the coin—what happens when a customer is treated poorly. Unfortunately, I think this side of the coin is a lot more familiar to most of us.

My husband and I were discussing where to get take-out for dinner. He mentioned a couple of possibilities, minutes from where we live, and then interjected, “Well, I’ve got a blood feud going with Chang’s so we won’t be going there.”

Hmmmm….tell me more.

“Remember that garlic chicken last week that tasted strange? Well, I took it back to the restaurant the next day to get a refund. I felt like the woman gave me a hard time, saying I should have brought it back the same day. I told her to smell it to understand what I was talking about. She told me of course it would smell funny because it was the next day.”

I could see that this incident was not going to be easily forgotten by my husband.

“I told this woman that over the last 8 years, we’ve spent hundreds of dollars on take out food there. All I wanted was a refund or credit for the single dish in 8 years that had gone bad. In fact, it was because we had had so many great meals from them that I thought they would want to know about this bad dish.”

Obviously, this was not the restaurant employee’s view. She offered to give half credit for the dish and only after my husband insisted, did she give him credit for a full order of garlic chicken. My husband made a declaration that is every business’s nightmare:

“I will never go back to that place.”

In the employee’s desire to save a few bucks and be right, she had lost a customer for life.

How many more people will my husband tell this story to? How many more people will I tell this story to?