VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

‘Inspiration

from the

Female

Voice’

Kirsty Spraggon – Writes about The emotional

intelligence of sales

i

Also in this Issue

10 Tips on How to Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way

The Problem with Will Power

Time and Energy – How do we Juggle the Urgency of it?

Women Driving Heavy Trucks in Coal Mines as a Career

Need a Flat Tummy – Pronto?

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

Welcome to the Christmas Issue of Voxy Lady Magazine

The magazine has been produced to share with you some great advice by the speakers, mentors, coaches and

entrepreneurs who are represented by Voxy Lady. We will aim to deliver to you quality articles and advice each

month. This month we feature speakers Kirsty Spraggon, Lisa McInnes-Smith, Jill Chivers, Susie Burrell and Mandy

Holloway. Also I talk to Lisa Bates who shares her story on her rather unusual career driving 200 tonne trucks in coal

mines

To sign up for our newsletter just visit the Voxy Lady website. Our newsletter will give up to date information on our

new woman speakers as well as showcases and events and will always include a copy of our online magazine link.

This year I learnt a lot from many of the speakers represented by Voxy Lady, I would particularly like to congratulate

Sally Anderson on her book “Freefall” which I read on a flight recently from New York. Freefall is one of those books

that really touched me. Sally is represented by Voxy Lady and you can check out her profile on the website.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and may 2012 bring you much joy and success.

Deb Carr, Managing Director

Voxy Lady Women’s Speaker Bureau

For information on Voxy Lady contact Deb Carr

www.voxylady.com.au

Level 7, 36 Carrington St, Sydney 2000 Australia

Phone: 02 8214 6344

info@voxylady.com.au

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

10 Quick Tips on How to Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way By Lisa McInnes-Smith

1. Be courageous. Leadership takes courage. Sometimes the most important

communication you receive is the encouragement you give to yourself.

2. Encourage others. People who feel affirmed and encouraged are more likely to

give you their best efforts. Remember that ‘put-downs perpetuate poor play’.

3. Be fun to be around. Take your responsibilities seriously but don’t take yourself

so seriously! Be quick to laugh and turn a tense moment into an opportunity to

smile. Participate at every opportunity. It makes you relatable.

4. Take risks and be willing to learn alongside your colleagues. No one improves

without making mistakes. Learn to make new mistakes.

5. Focus. Put your energy and effort into one thing at a time for rapid progress.

6. Choose to shift. Select one area and honestly evaluate where you’re at and where

you would like to be.

7. Watch your words. Every word you are speaking is either building up or tearing

down someone or something. Say the words you’d like to hear.

8. Use your words like boomerangs. Remember that what you throw out is going to

come back at you.

9. Encourage, compliment, smile and respect others.

10. Put your pin in! There is power and confidence in having positive posture.

Lisa McInnes Smith is Queen of the corporate stage and a master of audience participation. Along her incredible journey, Lisa

has presented to more than one million adults across twenty-two countries and authored seven best selling books.

Lisa is also the first person outside of the USA to ever be inducted into the international Speaker Hall of Fame - the highest

designation possible in the speaking world. This international recognition from clients and peers alike is due to her extraordinary

gift to communicate, connect and transform.

Visit us at

www.voxylady.com.au

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

The Problem with Will Power by Jill Chivers

Anyone who has ever tried to break a bad habit or

develop a new one has stumbled across this thing

called willpower. It certainly comes up quite a lot in

the “addiction” literature. And the general wisdom

seems to be – willpower is a limited and exhaustible

resource. Meaning: we mere mortals don’t have a

great deal of it and what we do have runs out pretty

darn quick?

Well, see, I struggle with that a bit. I have tonnes of

willpower. How else could I have gotten through a

masters degree by correspondence over a period of 6

years? How else have I built three businesses from

scratch? How else have I managed not to become 200

pounds, despite my love of carbohydrates? Sure

seemed like I was using willpower to achieve those

things.

But here’s what I’ve learned. Just because we have

willpower in one area of our lives doesn’t mean we

have it in all areas. And finishing a degree, succeeding

in business, and keeping my weight at a manageable

level are all areas that I have willpower in. But that

don’t mean I got it everywhere.

I’ll tell you this. I did NOT succeed with my own year

without clothes shopping by using willpower. No way!

Willpower, I’ve learned, is something to be relied

upon only in areas of my life that I’m already strong

in. And I knew that I wasn’t strong when it came to

my shopping habits when I started my own “year”. In

fact, I knew I was weak. I know it’s unpopular these

days to use words like weak – we prefer to use terms

like development area and area for improvement. But

it was a weakness. In December 2009, I knew I had a

weakness – shopping. And I knew that willpower was

not going to be the thing that kept me on the straight

and narrow and allow me to succeed.

Relying on willpower to keep you from shopping is

setting yourself up to fail. So, it begs the question:

what do you do, and use, instead?

Here’s my top five willpower-free techniques, custom

built for over and compulsive shoppers:

1. Stay out of the stores. This idea is the simplest of

the 5 strategies and could be categorised as Simple

Avoidance. Nothing wrong with avoidance, and lots

right with it. Why? Because avoidance works. You

can’t fall in love with a gorgeous shaped jacket that’s

50% off if you never see it, can you? We don’t buy

things we don’t see, so instead of relying on

willpower when you are standing in front of

something gorgeous that you just love – avoid that

scenario altogether. Walk on by. Don’t go in. The

simplest solutions are often the best and you can’t

get any simpler, or more effective than this.

Remember that staying out of the stores extends to

those virtual stores as well. Un-bookmark your

favourite online stores, and unsubscribe from those

online catalogues.

2. Chunk it down. This non-willpower strategy is that

you don’t bite off too huge a piece and attempt to

chew it all at once. In our year-long program, I often

suggest to members that they chunk down their

challenges into one-month challenges, or even 7-day

challenges. You can almost anything for 7 days, even

things you think are just too hard to do. Our brains

are amazingly receptive to these chunked-down

suggestions – our unconscious mind (which is often

the engine driving the train) are a bit like 5 year olds:

they’ll believe anything we tell them. So, if you tell

your brain that “it’s just for 7 days”, it’ll go with it.

Then when you get to the end of those 7-days, you

recommit to that same, chunked-down, bite-size

challenge. See how much easier that is to do?

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

5. Keep going. Perfection is neither expected nor

possible, and often we are hardest on ourselves. If

you are slaying your own shopping dragon, then don’t

set yourself up to fail by expecting perfection. There’s

no such thing as the perfect journey anyway, so stop

looking for it. If you have a set back then try this:

pause, learn what you can from the experience,

recommit to your goals, draw a line under it (close the

file), and move on. There’s no sense sifting through

the ashes once you’ve taken the learning’s out. The

goal is progress, not perfection. So, all you need to do

is keep moving in the direction of your goal. For

today, that is all that is required, and all that is

possible.

What these techniques add up to setting yourself a

structure that acts as a foundation for success. Put

the framework in place first, and then rely on that

framework as you journey on. A strong foundation

will hold up a lot better under pressure than

willpower.

Jill is on a crusade. She completed her own Year Without

Clothes Shopping and now helps other women break the bind

that unconscious shopping has on them. Her 12 month online

Shop Your Wardrobe Course encourages women to stop

spending their lives and inspires them to live their lives instead.

To book Jill for your next conference or find out how she can

help you contact info@voxylady.com.au or phone Deb Carr on

8214 6341

3. Take action – just do it and don’t think about it.

There’s no way to get around this non-willpower

strategy: sometimes you just have to do it. Just

unsubscribe from that online catalogue – don’t

agonise over it. Just walk past that store – don’t look

in the window. Just put it back on the shelf and walk

out – don’t negotiate with yourself. What I’ve found

important about this technique is not engaging in any

dialogue about it – hence “just do it”. If you engage in

discussion, then you’re calling on willpower, and

these are the non-willpower approaches, remember?

This strategy is based on action where there is no

discussion – you just do the thing. Keep walking, put it

down, unsubscribe.

4. Prepare in advance. I’m a big believer in

preparation. A stitch in time saves nine, and all that.

What’s great about this strategy is you prepare before

willpower even comes into the equation. You sidestep

the need for willpower by setting yourself up to

succeed in advance. How? By anticipating where you

might be tripped up, and putting in place a plan about

how you’ll deal with it when that moment arrives.

Don’t wait to be tripped up – you’re not in a

resourceful state then, and so whatever action you

take may not be the best for you. If you know that

shopping after work is your downfall – “I’ve had a

stressful day, I’ll just pop in HERE for a little look-see”

– then plan around that: schedule something else for

immediately after work. If it’s receiving a catalogue in

the mail that triggers you – cancel the subscription. If

what trips you up is having a coffee with a girlfriend

on Saturday at your favourite shopping place where

you can oh-so-easily just stroll into the stores, change

where you meet. Think ahead, be honest about your

trigger and trip-up points. Prepare for them. Don’t fall

into the same hole, especially not when you know

where it is.

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

Time and Energy – How do we Juggle the

Urgency of it? Mandy Holloway

Leaders everywhere are busy dealing with the urgent matters and situations other people demand of them – everyone wants things done yesterday. Along with these demands leaders are inundated with a surge of information – email, social media, research papers, television, newspapers, radio or even conversations. Increasing stakeholder expectations bear down on these same leaders from all parts of their lives – family, community and business. The bottom line – leaders face constant, often opposing and always ever increasing tension – should they focus on the long term or the short term; internal stakeholder needs or external stakeholder needs; the engagement and retention of people working in the business or the return to shareholders? It feels like we are always juggling. In this paper we explore a very real and critical juggling act faced by all leaders – time and energy – where do I find the time and how do I create the energy to do all the “stuff” I need to do? In our leadership program we refer to two well renowned frameworks and challenge people to explore both the time and the energy they bring to everything they do and face in all the roles they undertake in life so they can be the kind of leader they really want to be in each of these roles. We refer to the age old time management matrix used in Dr Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People that is both simple, yet remains highly relevant given the current 24/7 world we live in. I was one of 1,500 people who got up close with him at his one-day conference in Sydney in early 2009. He spent substantial time talking about where leaders are spending their time. He referred us back to this well-researched matrix, disclosing that most business people express their frustration at not being able to move out of Quadrant 1.

He went on to disclose that most business leaders

spend 67 per cent of their time in Quadrants 1 and 3;

attending to the urgent matters. Their frustration is

then compounded when they realise that at the end

of a project or intense period of effort to meet a

deadline for a client/customer/project they move

straight out of Quadrant 1 and into Quadrant 4

allowing themselves time to play with trivia in order

to re-charge their batteries. They do this instead of

moving into Quadrant 2 to replenish their energy and

plan for the future.

The other well renowned framework we refer to

comes from the HBR article entitled “Manage your

energy not your time “and brings a focus on energy

expenditure and energy recovery. It depicts four main

wellsprings of energy in human beings:

The Human Spirit: brings the energy of meaning

and purpose

The Mind: brings focus to your energy

The Emotions: creates the quality of your

energy

The Body: brings physical energy.

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

The essence of this framework is that time is a finite

resource while energy is a whole different matter! It

challenges business people to think about how we do

not take time away to re-charge and replenish our

energy reserves – instead we just keep expending it

and wonder why we burn out.

What a fascinating juggling act we have created as

business leaders; and for many it is steeped in

tradition, beliefs, fears, habits and values.

Putting energy in as opposed to giving up time

I have just finished reading a book called Chasing

Daylight - written by Eugene O'Kelly just before he

died in September 2005. At the age of 53 he was

diagnosed with inoperable and incurable brain cancer

and given 3 months to live.

When diagnosed he was in his prime - CEO of KPMG,

father to two beautiful daughters and married to a

loving wife. The lessons he shares about living

consciously are amazing and he challenges each of us

to consider putting energy in rather than giving up

time. He puts what I have been talking about in our

programs so eloquently that I want to share it.

He refers to how he needed a new way of thinking

about and looking at the world and at his own

suddenly shockingly abbreviated stay in it. He also

refers to the challenges he had been facing in the firm

to change the culture and bring about a better work

life balance. Sound familiar......many leaders within so

many organizations and firms are still pursuing the

same ambition of creating such change.

His experience in wanting to change the culture of the

firm and wanting to deal with his much reduced life

span lead him to explore this concept with greater

richness and depth than ever before.

Eugene explains that commitment in the business

world had come to be equated with time (something

of which he had so little now) - it is measured by the

hours you are prepared to work and ultimately by

how much time you take away from your family. He

claimed that if you gave away huge amounts of your

time then it followed that you had exhibited

commitment. If you did not give so much time then it

also followed that your level of commitment was

judged as inadequate and you might be labelled as

lacking in loyalty and drive.

His deeper explorations lead him to realise that

commitment was not about time, it was not about

reliability and it was not about predictability. He

concluded that commitment was about depth, it was

about effort and it was especially about passion.

He concluded so eloquently that commitment is best

measured not by the time one is willing to give up

but more accurately by the energy you are prepared

to put in - by how present you are prepared to be.

He talks about the ‘Perfect Moments’ he missed in his

working and personal life because he was too busy

focussing on time – where he needed to spend it and

what he was doing next with it. He forgot to be

present and he forgot to be conscious of what was

happening around him and for him.

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

I know we experienced something similar in our

family with the recent death of our family dog – I

shared this in a BLOG entitled “don’t take things for

granted “because his passing taught us all not to take

things for granted. His excitement when we got

home, his warm snugly coat, his beautiful brown eyes,

his love of walking and playing. It got me to thinking

about how this relates to our business life and what

we take for granted each day:

• Customer relationships

• High performing team members

• Our boss will take care of our careers

• Colleagues’ support

• People understand our intent

And I am sure you can add things to create your

highly personal list – like my husband knows I love

him and my children know I am so proud of them

every day!

And my challenge to business people and to myself

has always been why does it take something so bad to

happen – like being told you have 3 months to live -

for change to be initiated? Why do we have to wait

for such an imperative before we are prepared to be

courageous and stop accepting the status quo?

Eugene acknowledged at the end of his book that had

he chosen to role model better work life balance

himself as opposed to bringing in a consultant to tell

them what to do to change the culture then maybe

he could have initiated far more change throughout

the business. What a powerful insight for courageous

leaders to learn from and leverage from – what are

you doing as a leader in your business to juggle time

and energy – so you are not taking too much time

away from those you love and that you are putting

energy into those things and people who are critically

important to you and your life’s purpose.

Mandy Holloway draws on personal experience, in-depth

business understanding, real business application and passion to

inspire others to be Courageous Leaders. This passion translates

into the commitment to model courage both personally and

professionally inviting others to develop confidence and

conviction to do the same.

Mandy’s continuing personal leadership journey from emerging

leader to partner at KPMG and for the last 9 years inspiring

courageous business leaders, while juggling the roles of wife and

mother, means she shares many stories and experiences with

her readers to bring leadership alive with the reality of what

people are facing every day.

"'Come to the edge,' He said. They said, 'We are afraid.'

'Come to the edge,' He said. They came. He pushed them...and they flew."

Guillaume Apollinaire

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

Talk About Breaking Through The Glass Ceiling –

How About Breaking Through The Coal Mines? By Deb Carr Recently I met an interesting woman when I was

travelling on the XPT train to Taree by the name of

Lisa Bates. We both were slightly frustrated as this

train had broken down and in my case a 5 hour trip

turned into nearly 10! However, I always try and see

the bright side, and if this had not happened maybe

Lisa Bates and I would not have started to have our

conversation.

Lisa had just flown in from a midnight flight from NZ

and the poor woman was now stuck on the XPT with

me! Being the inquisitive person I am, coming from a

recruitment background, I asked Lisa what she did for

a living. “I drive the big 200 tonne trucks” she replied.

WOW, I usually meet the high flying corporate

women earning the six figure plus salaries and here

was a woman who was really doing something in a

male dominated arena.

I asked Lisa how she got into a career driving those

monsters. “I was working KFC in a place called Huntly,

NZ, and my brother worked in the mines driving the

trucks. He said to me, ‘Why don’t you do it?’ and I

thought it was a good idea, so I applied”, she said.

This is when I asked Lisa if she would mind me

interviewing her for the Voxy Lady Magazine. With

Lisa’s agreement I have transcribed our conversation.

Debbie: Where are you working now?

Lisa: I’m in the Mudgee Coal Mines, driving the 143

tonne, in NZ I drove the 200 tonne. I’m going into the

200 tonne soon

Debbie: Are you one of the boys?

Lisa: Yes, they treat us like one of their own, they

never treat us differently.

Debbie: What sort of hours do you work?

Lisa: 12.5 hour day shifts and 10.5 hour night shifts.

We work on a 7 week roster, we work 15 days per

month, so half a year.

Debbie: What’s a typical day for you then?

Lisa: 6.30 a.m. start the day with a meeting, then at

6.45 we go to the trucks and take the coal to the

stockpile for the 12.5 hours.

Debbie: How many gears has the truck?

Lisa: 6 gears and it’s an automatic

Debbie: Have you ever had a scary moment driving

these big machines?

Lisa: Yes, in New Zealand once my truck flipped, I

didn’t get hurt nor did the truck get damaged but I

was terrified, I thought the truck would flip back

Debbie: So do you make good money?

Lisa: I do, over six figures plus bonus

Debbie: So how long do you think you will drive these

trucks for?

Lisa: The rest of my life

Debbie: What’s the youngest woman driver in your

company?

Lisa: 22

Debbie: Would you recommend a career driving big

trucks for women?

Lisa: Oh hell yeah! Especially for females - if you want

a go at it just do it!

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

The emotional intelligence of sales by Kirsty

Spraggon

Closing the sale & traditional selling techniques are a

thing of the past. The way to success in the future is

through understanding how to connect and ‘open

relationships’ for life through using your emotional

intelligence.

Starting out in sales some 17 years ago, I realise now

that the content on which we were training our sales

forces back then has changed very little.

Most sessions still revolve around typical traditional

selling techniques such as:

• How to qualify the buyer

• Have an agenda

• Scripts & Dialogues

• Handling Objections

• 25 No’s gets you a yes

• and of course How to close the sale

Now none of this has much to do with genuine

human connection and relationship building.

It astounds me that research on Emotional

Intelligence has been around for over a decade and

yet in my 17 years in sales I never once attended a

session on this.

In Daniel Goleman’s book ‘emotional intelligence’ he

quotes statistics that show us the IQ is responsible for

determining about 20% of our chances for success.

The other 80% is determined by our social and

interpersonal skills & our emotional intelligence. This

is things like our ability to problem solve, get along

with people, to understand others and build empathy

& rapport.

There is no greater skill in life than to be able to build

great relationships for life and business.

IQ determines 20% of our chances for success the

other 80% is determined by our social skills,

interpersonal skills & emotional intelligence and it is

so valuable in sales. So where do we learn how to

build relationship?

There was no course on my high school curriculum for relationship building. I was lucky enough to have parents who were great role models in this regard. My father was also in real estate and when I was

about 16, I remember going out with him for a days

‘work experience’. I thought this was going to be a

drag, admin, paperwork, computers...but I was in

shock. We spent the whole day having coffees, we

went from house, to house throughout my whole

neighbourhood. It seems he knew everybody.

However when I started in sales it’s like it’s almost

trained out of you and everything that came naturally

to me seemed to be the opposite to the training. I

forcing myself to try and remember every word of a

script. I would right down religiously WORD FOR

WORD every close and script I could. I couldn’t seem

to remember them and nothing felt right. I just

couldn’t say them.

I remember being in a training session where we were

told to stop wasting so much time on what he called

‘Nescafe appointments’ where people weren’t

qualified to buy now so why were we wasting our

time on coffee’s, however when I looked at my

current client list I noticed something. Out of the 10

clients I had at that moment 8 of them I had meet at a

Nescafe appointment’ 9-18 months prior and that

was the first time I thought ‘maybe this guy’s got it

wrong and I’m onto something’. It seemed my way

was working.

At times I began to wonder was I just getting lucky?

but when I made it into the top one percent of

individuals in RE/MAX’s global network of 121,000

sales people worldwide I realised I didn’t just get

lucky and I was able to breakdown the process of how

I did what I did and replicated the success again. I

believe the key was ‘opening relationships’.

I’m often asked whether one way is easier than the

other. In the short-term it may appear that just

closing a sale with someone who has an immediate

need is more effective than investing extra time and

energy in building rapport and opening a relationship.

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

You may even feel that you would be better off

financially just prospecting for those clients ready to

use or buy your service or product today compared

with nurturing relationships and dealing with those

people who don’t have an immediate need.

However, did you realise that you could be missing

out on 90% of your potential market?

This is because you would be limiting yourself to

dealing only with the very small percentage of the

market ready and willing to work with you today.

Yet industry research strongly suggests that

depending on your particular sales industry there is

usually a 9-18 month incubation period from the first

point of contact until the time when a new client

actually purchases your product or service. 9-18

months. That means you would be missing out on a

lot of business by only working with the ‘right here,

right now’ prospects. Not only would you be making

things a lot harder for yourself in the long run, but

you would also be doing yourself out of all the extra

repeat and referral business that would otherwise

come your way effortlessly through clients feeling so

well taken care of and appreciated.

If you choose to focus on closing sales you’ll be

forever on the ‘one-off treadmill’: even years down

the track you won’t be able to slow down or relax

because you will have to be out there day after day

working really hard to chase down the next piece of

business.

Whereas, if you open relationships and invest the

extra time building meaningful foundations from the

outset you will find your business grows and takes on

a life of its own in no time. Just like seeds scattered in

the wind taking root and blossoming, referrals and

repeat business will just start flowing in.

In the tough times this way of being in business takes

on particular significance because you have a whole

army of business ambassadors out there for you,

advocating your service above any other because you

go out of your way to look after them so well, even

when there is no deal being made at the time.

Contrast this to if your business is run on the hand-to-

mouth principle of closing a sale.

This approach makes you totally dependent on new

clients and extremely vulnerable to market forces

outside of your control. If economic conditions

change or a new competitor enters the market you

may well suddenly see your customer pool shrink or

even disappear.

The only sure way to ride out economic ups and

downs is to have planned ahead and built a stable

database of loyal, repeat and referral clients because

at the end of the day even if there are fewer

customers out there, there are always some

customers. It’s your job to make sure that you are

the person of choice in such times of increased

pressure and competition.

It is so important to prioritise meeting people as an

activity. A prospecting activity. I think many of us

undervalue this, I know I did. Society teaches us it has

to be hard to make money and we should expect to

work our fingers to the bone – not true.

I remember feeling guilty at one point that I was so

successful with such minimal effort. I used to believe

that success had to be hard.

I have learned to consider my coffee meetings and

networking events as me being ‘hard at work’ and

include this in my weekly schedule as prospecting

time. You don’t have to be an extrovert to network,

you just need to find the people you like being with

and attract more of them into your personal and

professional life. What kind of business do you want?

Because of this I love my work and my days are filled

with catch-ups, networking events, coffee meetings,

taking a genuine interest in people’s lives and

chatting away having a wonderful time and they call

this work?

Now I realise that you can make the journey to

success as difficult or as much fun as you choose it to

be.

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

I have learned that it really pays to ask yourself this:

CLOSED= trapped in a cycle of forever chasing new

business without being able to take any time off to

actually enjoy your success

or

OPEN = repeat and referral-based business spreading

like wildfire by word of mouth and business actually

coming to find you - in good times and bad

Now to build relationships we must meet people. I

dislike the word ‘network’ it sounds sound so

strategic but I believe it is nothing more than focused

socialising - and I love to socialise.

Networking isn’t something we do once a week it is

something we create. A ‘network’ by definition is ‘an

interconnected system’ it’s about more than just

dollars...yes we need sales but we also need a

community to draw on for advise, wisdom &

emotional support, to teach us, to share experience

with, to collaborate and leverage from. Creating a

pseudo family around yourself.

I call this my family tree. Unlike our real family that

we don’t get to choose this one you get to create. So

who is on your tree? Who are your roots? Your

support networks, the people you go out on a limb for

& vice versa. Are you watering your tree by giving and

nourishing it by taking time to nurture your

relationships and understand their world. Is your tree

more of a shrub or possibly dying rather than

flourishing. What can you do to water and fertilise it

this week?

A good network should fill in the gaps where you

yourself are perhaps not quite as strong and enhance

and support your business.

Financial benefits aside, there were many valuable

reasons for me being part of a networking group. I

was educated by the various different businesses on

things such as: tax accounting; financial planning;

marketing and so on – areas which were not my

natural strengths so this learning proved invaluable to

me.

I made lifelong friends with people I met through

networking event’s and we all became in effect a

sales team for one another’s businesses, like ‘raving

fans’ spreading word-of-mouth referrals for each

other.

Remember to dip your toe in enough different

organisations to find groups that work best for you.

The idea is to find people you are comfortable with

and enjoy being around. You should also feel

confident enough to recommend them and you want

to build close reciprocal relationships with them.

Just like personal relationships; we need to spend

time together and get to know each other. If we

didn’t spend any time with our friends or we only

spoke to them on email or the phone we wouldn’t get

to know them very well. Clients are no different we

need to invite them into our world and spend time

together outside of business to truly connect

Through using your EQ ‘empathy, understanding &

rapport’ we slowly get to know each other and you

will slowly be rewarded with trust, loyalty and

lifetime relationships.

Kirsty Spraggon - speaker, coach and author, is known for her

expertise in building relationships who assists you to increase

your sales, networks and connections for life & business success.

You can book Kirsty for your next conference through Voxy Lady

Women’s Speaker Bureau.

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

The Fluid Strip Soup Ingredients 2 leeks, white end chopped finely 3 zucchinis, sliced 2 cups salt reduced chicken or vegetable stock 4-5 cups water 2 garlic gloves, finely chopped 1 small onion, finely chopped

1 cup low fat milk Olive oil Method 1. Sauté onion and garlic in a small amount of olive oil. Add leek, zucchini and cook until soft. 2. Add water and stock to mix and bring to the boil, then turn heat down and add milk. Once heated through, transfer to a food processor and blend and serve.

Susie Burrell is one of Australia’s leading dietitians with degrees in both nutrition and psychology.

Susie has worked in the area of nutrition for more than 10 years across a range of areas including as a paediatric dietitian at The Children’s Hospital Westmead, and as a sports dietitian to a number of elite level teams including the St George Illawarra Dragons, South African Blue Bulls, Sydney University Rugby and is currently the consultant sports dietitian to the Parramatta Eels. To book Susie contact Debbie Carr dcarr@voxylady.com.au

Need a flat tummy pronto? By Susie Burrell

Feeling bloated and heavy is an unfortunate side effect of eating out and overindulging on high fat, high salt Christmas canapés but the good news is that there are a few little tricks that can help you to get rid of the bloat quickly and easily should you need to over the next few weeks.

1. Eat the right vegetables - vegetables high in potassium including leeks, onions, celery and garlic help to shift fluid so make up a strip soup (see below) and use this to flush out your system. 2. Get some special tea - try dandelion or licorice

tea which also acts as powerful diuretics. 3. Swap to liquids – protein shakes, vege juices and soups with move through your digestive tract quickly

which will help to keep your tummy flat. 4. Walk – moving as much as possible will help to move food through your digestive tract. 5. Go low salt – check labels and aim for <300mg sodium per serve and avoid all Asian foods including Miso and sushi which are all very high in salt. The healthiest Christmas gifts There is no better way to set yourself and those

closest to you for a year filled with health and fitness than a healthy Christmas gift. Here are some ideas – Golf lessons – great for the more inactive amongst us. Magazine subscription – Men’s Health, Shape, Prevention and Whole Living are all magazines that offer great health advice. PT sessions – a great way to kick start an exercise

program as we move into the New Year. Pedometer – we all need one to be kept mindful of how much we are moving each day

VOXY LADY MAGAZINE December 9,

2011

About Voxy Lady Women’s Speaker Bureau

Our expert women speakers come from all areas of business, politics, finance, women leaders, marketing, sales, communication,

customer service, inspiration, motivation, networking, team building, health, fitness, family, networkers, time management,

business owners, entrepreneurs, authors, indigenous and corporate speakers. In 2011 Voxy Lady was chosen as a finalist in the

2011 Stevie Awards in the category "Women Helping Women".

www.voxylady.com.au