Across The Desk With Elizabeth Plouffe

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 / Ballsy. The experimental mindset and the permission to fail. To understand that trying new things for your business is essential for moving forward and that the metrics don't have to be tied to your bottom line. Maybe the experiment builds a better team. Maybe it opens up new product ideas. Maybe the next time someone suggests an experiment you pucker just a little less and in fewer places. I'd say that's a success wouldn't you?

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 personal evaluation junkie. This week on Wise Words, I go back to a golden oldie with Judy George's Intuitive Businesswoman.

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 best ways to stop wasting money !

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 conversations, give honest feedback and encourage debate and idea generation. Yeah! Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan deliver a book on leadership and how it impacts an organization's success or failure on project execution. We're talking a few thousand dollars to a few billion per project. Either you have what it takes or need to learn it quickly if you want your organization to succeed. With this book in your tool kit, I think you've got a better chance of less butt-covering, more authentic engagement and an even greater chance of becoming a better leader.

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, what plane are your hands in and staring someone down when you thought you were just paying attention. All of these can add up to more sneaky shit than you realized ...

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 Gibbons is an author, speaker, and consultant. His “beat” is helping business leaders use science and philosophy to make better strategic decisions, implement change, innovate, change culture, and create workplaces where talent flourishes. His most recent book, The Science of Organizational Change has been hailed as “the most important book on change in fifteen years.” Between writing projects, he consults, coaches, and speaks with businesses such as Microsoft, Google, HSBC, KPMG, and Comcast.

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. That’s her public Behind the scenes, she’s been dealt a series of difficult blows that magnify the collision between home and work. Her struggles have earned her the moniker, Resiliency Ninja. In her latest book, Married My Mom, Birthed a Dog: How to Be Resilient When Life Sucks! Allison makes people feel less alone in their struggles and gives them tools to ensure that tough times don’t have to dictate their level of success.

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 become more agile at the team and organization level. She has also developed solutions to drive adoption for IT and knowledge management projects using online communications, instruction design, and employee engagement approaches. Outside of her professional work, Katy is active in both the agile and change communities, and is a founding member of the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Association of Change Management Professionals.

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 Sustainability (CBIS) at Harvard School of Public Health, and founder of the largest community of Organizational Change Practitioners on Linked In (50,000+ members)

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 differently in some cases. Today we talk about stepping over the line and forcing someone to be the loser in a situation isn't the best way to do business. It might work out short term (*cough Trump cough*) but it will catch up with you. Your reputation will begin to precede you and people will start to get that twist in their stomach when dealing with you. Like it or not, your shady side isn't as well hidden as you'd like to think. Relationships are not quick deal. They require time and effort and nurturing. You need to have a long term plan in your head ALL THE TIME so that when tempted to be not so awesome, you remem

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, was the head of the CBC and brought us reno and decorating gurus Mike Holmes and Sarah Richardson. Her resume is awesome but not as awesome as how much she will share from her personal and professional experience to help other women become great leaders. I've tried read a few female leadership based books (Sheryl Sandberg, Arlene Dickinson) and they were awful. I know if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything so I'll stop there. It was refreshing and revitalizing to read from an accomplished, successful female leader who didn't hold her personal life up as the hardship story that begat he

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 shudder. We have no idea what that word might trigger in someone. We have no idea how much of a game changer it could be. Today's chat is about my boobs. Indirectly anyway. And no, I don't hate them. In fact, there isn't a single thing I hate about myself. Not one. I'm not a narcissist. I'm just a decent human being who believes that hate is reserved for a level of society to which I do not belong. I hope you'll take a listen and take hate out of your vocabulary. And even take it a step further to take it out of other people's as well. Once you listen, I hope you'll understand where I'm going with this. PS - 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 to waste. Now I network smarter and make opportunities happen out of that. One of the things I've learned is the strength behind routinely evaluating the networking that you are doing. If you've been going to a group for a while and not got a stitch of business, that should be telling you something: either your message is off or the group isn't right for you. Regardless - it's time to make a decision. Continue going or find new opportunities. My business is important to me so I went seeking new opportunities. It was through this decision that today's podcast came to be. I hope it encourages you to make the most o

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. Sounds boring to some but to me it was music to my ears. I broke a fibbing habit by age 24 that most people probably weren't aware of and have spent the rest of my days making sure that those 3 words are what I'm known for. If you think lying won't bite you in the ass at some point, you need to stop kidding yourself. And if you are over the age of 18, you need to grow up. Liars suck. I have stopped being friends and won't do business with people who prove to be liars. Even fibbers and story stretchers go on the shit list. My advice? Take a listen and see if your honesty habits need a tune up. If so, AWESOME! Get off yo

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 talked about sales. The experience you don't realize you have and the experience you don't realize the person in front of you has had. Both are very important to your bottom line. We touched on that tricky limbic brain and how the wrong messaging or rushing the sales cycle can trigger that fight or flight response faster than you can say used car salesman. If you're in a position where selling is your hairshirt, then this might be the podcast for you. Sympathy will always sit between shit and syphilis in the dictionary, but we've all been there and are happy to give a little to the fellow entrepreneurs making their

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 stumbled upon the FEA when looking for local business building groups for women. I started to learn about FEA because of my own group Ballsy and wanted to learn all I could to make it successful. Carrie Green offers workshops, webinars, online resources and community forums. It was the opportunity to take the goal setting workshop if you bought She Means Business that gave me the experience the FEA truly provides. Take a listen and learn how She Means Business might just be the book you need to kick your fears over, your business in to high gear and your life in to reality you've dreamed of.

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't know about until we start looking. While we might think it's the present day business gurus like Tony and Simon and Gary who have cornered the market on success, they're actually standing on the shoulders of giants like Peter F. Drucker. Haven't heard of him? You need to. This week on WWW, I'm sharing the wise words from Druckers' famous book, "Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Practices and Principles." If you plan to be an entrepreneur and haven't read it yet, get it. I wish I had when I started and am so glad I have now. Knowledge is power peeps ;) And we all need more of that.

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 they do right now.

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 away from other things you could be offering. I guarantee you that event organizers are interested in getting free help. But the difference? How you treat the experience. If you decide to reach out and create an opportunity, make the most of it. Be willing to go the extra mile if needed. Somebody else cancelled? Pick up the slack. Don't have your own business cards? Make sure you collect from everyone you meet and then connect on LinkedIn with a personal message that includes how you met. Make sure that you keep your social media posts professional and to a minimum. Check in at the location, a quick "it's great to b