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High-Energy Women Create A Powerful Experience
By: Tina Berres Filipski, Editor/Publisher, Associate VP For Business Media
Issue: 2009sep
Almost everybody over a certain age has, at one time or another, commented on how quickly life seems to fly by. It goes something like this: Gee, it’s Christmas again? It seems like we just celebrated that.
I’ve heard several explanations for this phenomenon, but interestingly the best one was from an 18-year-old valedictorian at her commencement speech. She explained that, as we age, we tend to do things the same way over and over again. We are less likely to seek out new experiences, new challenges and less likely to be learning on an ongoing basis. This rote activity puts our brains on cruise control and, thus, we speed through the days without really noticing them. Then, when we stop to think about it, we wonder where the time has gone. Sound familiar?
So I figured one way to slow down the days and keep the ol’ neurons firing in my brain was to learn something new on a regular basis. The recent PPAI Women’s Leadership Conference in historic and leafy Savannah, Georgia, was just the ticket. If you are a woman and have not yet been to this conference, you are missing out on an incredibly worthwhile experience. This year’s event was the fifth annual WLC and PPAI hosted nearly 150 women of all ages, at all levels of experience from supplier, distributor, business services and rep companies across North America.
We began with a trolley tour of Savannah, segued to a reception and humorous opening session called Gone With The Women and kicked off the next morning’s program with a new award sponsored by this magazine. Carol Aastad, MAS, recently retired from Geiger, was honored with the first PPB Woman of Achievement Award and was presented with a stunning custom-designed trophy from R.S. Owens. I hope you had a chance to read about Carol in last month’s issue, but if not see her story online by clicking on the August 2009 issue at www.ppbmag.com.
While the numerous workshops offered a broad variety of topics to help women leverage their skills for success, I heard a common message throughout most sessions that emphasized self-confidence, empowerment and the importance of a positive attitude.
You see, women tend to think we can do it all (and most of the time we can, thank you) but I learned it’s okay to ask for help when we need to. We don’t have to do everything ourselves!
The key to building self-confidence, said one speaker, is to monitor self-talk, especially the negative stuff, and not to take other people’s comments personally. To bolster a positive attitude, we learned we should expect good things to happen, do something every week that brings us joy and be grateful because it nourishes the spirit.
By the end of the week, I was grateful for the opportunity to come to this conference and to the many exceptional women I got to know. I think we were all feeling that way. On the last morning, Margie Price, MAS, one of the members of the organizing committee, told me she wished that every woman in the industry could attend. “I want more women to experience what we experienced here,” she said.
While I wanted to reconnect with longtime industry friends, such as Margie, Nancy Larick, Lauren Fox, Kendra Kirks McDougal and Laura Forbes among many others, I also wanted to seek out those I didn’t know.
What better way to really get to know someone than to pack into a car and drive 30 minutes down to Tybee Island to see the lighthouse, which is what five of us did on a free afternoon. The longer we were together, the more we learned about how much we have in common. That afternoon we laughed a lot and built friendships that I hope will last a very long time. And that was just the first day.
The whole week was like that—a chance to meet women whose names I knew but had never met. One of those was Melinda Gleghorn of Victorinox Swiss Army, Inc., who said relationship building with her peers and creating rapport with clients was the most valuable thing she learned. Asked what the conference experience meant to her, she responded, “It affirmed my capacity for greatness.”
I also got to know women I may never have met otherwise such as Mary Ellen Jackson, who owns Atlantic Stitches, a distributorship in Bermuda. She told me her main takeaway was what she learned through networking. “Talking distributor to distributor or distributor to vendor builds those relationships. I’ll go home knowing the changes I want to make in my business.”
On the final day of the conference, I took this group shot and was almost overwhelmed by the sight of all those beaming, beautiful, happy faces looking back at me.
When it was finally time to say goodbye, I think most of us were feeling reconnected, recharged, reenergized and raring to go out and tackle just about anything life has to offer.
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