A couple of Friday mornings a month I make the trip to the closest Central Market. It is about twice as far as my regular super market and there are things you just can’t buy here. Things like Pork N’ Beans for example. But I love this place. The selections of fresh vegetables, cheeses, meats, seafood, and specialty items abound. I primarily go here as it is the only place I can buy Bison meat, which we have grown to prefer over beef. However, I always find many more things than are on my list.

On this particular Friday morning the only thing I need from the produce department is mushrooms. However, while getting my plastic bag for the mushrooms I see fresh okra out of the corner of my eyes. WooHoo!!! It is way past fresh okra season so this is a pleasant surprise.

While I am putting okra in my plastic bag my mind is immediately busy deciding what we are having with it for dinner. I had left the house mulling over the “what to have for dinner” question and I was coming up totally blank. Oh wow, fresh okra! I need blackeyed peas. The freezer case of fresh frozen beans hand none. But there were cream peas. Okay, we’ll give these a try. Make meatloaf and cornbread and you will have a great meal.

It has been cold and rainy for two days and this will fit the bill.

So how many of us use an instant inspiration? Do we think through how to use something we find unexpectedly; or do we just jump off and do something in haste because it is new and different. Inspiration is a great tool. It is what you do with it that matters.

Oh and by the way, the meal was really good and perfect for a cold, rainy, dreary night.

What do you do with inspiration?

It is 5:30AM on Saturday morning. An alarm is going off somewhere in my dreams. Oh right, the alarm is actually going off across the room where my phone is plugged in. Why is my alarm going off at 5:30AM on Saturday morning? I have not had enough sleep! Oh right, early start today at Women of Faith. I’m up, Nikki is up. We are moving. Dress, pack, check bags with hotel, breakfast, checkout and we’re off.

We arrived just at the American Airline Center was opening. At the door we entered these guys were there with their signs, cheering us on.

We are in, cleared security, what is in store for today?

I am still on a bit of overload from Friday. No coffee before we left the hotel so my brain is a bit fuzzy. But the first thing I must accomplish is to meet Patsy Clairmont. So off to the line. Whew, I’m only about 15 people back so I should be good. My good friend Steve Anderson is a good friend of Patsy’s. He said I should take the opportunity to meet her and say hi. Mission accomplished. Patsy and I got to have a very brief introduction and conversation.

Now to my seat. Even though I have had breakfast there are so many smells and temptations between the line and my seat. But I make it to my seat with only a bottle of water. I have always believed that when you resist fattening temptation, some amount of weight should be released from your body, but not so. The entire day was great, but these are the memorable moments stuck in my head from the day.

• Brenda Warner showing us her God given talent at the opening of her talk. She stood in the middle of the stage and effortlessly did the splits in a long dress with heals on. The she easily got up.
• Patsy Clairmont telling us about “Change Can Be Good” using the story of her son’s (Marty) story of a devastating illness and the recovery process. Remember, planning and discussing change may take a long time, but when change occurs it is immediate.
• Learning what a Blessing Ring is from the ladies on our row. Here is a link with some info about How to Make a Blessing Ring.

• Mary Graham recognizing several of the group leaders. I am in awe of a lady (Debbie) with stage 4 cancer who brought 75 ladies.

Sandi Patty – first she sang “Over the Rainbow”. It is the most beautiful version and voice I have heard sing it. I saw someone else say it is there favorite Disney song. I have to agree. It is a song of so much hope. After Sandi Patty tells her story she begins singing “We Shall Behold Him“. During the song she begins signing. How beautiful. Then she motions toward the area of the arena where a team is signing to deaf people. A young lady runs onto the stage and joins Sandi Patty. I have never seen anyone sign with as much feeling as Lisa Smith did in conjunction with Sandi Patty. They were each singing this beautiful song in their way.

I cried then, I cried when I found the following video that was taken and posted on YouTube.com. I have watched it again 2 more times and I still cry. This has been one of the most emotional experiences of my life. I heard someone refer to Lisa Smith as a disabled person. I’m sorry, I don’t see disabled. Whatever disability this young lady has is far exceeded by her abilities.

And just one more thing for my Saturday experience. We arrive back at the hotel to retrieve our luggage and drive home. Mary Graham was talking to some other people. So it was my great pleasure to get to meet her and say hi. We have corresponded in the past on Twitter. It is always great to make a face-to-face connection with someone that you have met online.

Thank you BookSneeze and Women of Faith and all of those that shared with us for a wonderful experience.

It was so easy to agree to blog about this event in order to win 2 free tickets from BookSneeze. However, it may be difficult to verbalize all that I experienced during the past two days.

First Impressions and Thoughts:

• 20,000 women in the same building? Really? This is a really big concept to get your head around.
• Did you know that 20,000 women can actually sing together and sound beautiful as if they had practiced many times?
• This turned out to be some of the best “people watching” I have experienced.
• The Women of Faith organization is a class act through and through and prepared for everything.
• So glad I decided that a taxi to/from the event was a better idea than parking and walking in this heat and being in the traffic gridlock.
• How do I manage getting to/from the restroom without stopping at the food vendors with high calorie goodies?

The seating on Friday morning and afternoon is open. My step-daughter Nikki chose some great seats for us on the 1st row of the Plaza level. No seats in front of us, lots of leg room and great view. We sat there a long time with no one around us. A group of ladies finally arrived and asked if these seats were saved or if they could sit there. We said we had been saving the seats for them. One of the ladies in the group said we needed to be surrounded by brown sugar sisters. Well, she was right. We had a great time visiting and sitting with these ladies. I find it is always fun to meet new people and this was no exception. One of the sessions on Friday afternoon was a Q&A facilitated by Mary Graham with Patsy Clairmont and Andy Andrews. Patsy and Andy both have great senses of humor so they were entertaining from the beginning. But they both were so thoughtful and giving with their answers. This was my favorite session Friday.

Friday evening it was time to find our ticketed seats and settle in for more awesomeness. Our seats placed us next to Angela and her husband Kennedy. Angela was another blogger-winner of BookSneeze tickets to the event. And yes, her second ticket went to her husband. He was one of the few men among a sea of women. I think he took this opportunity to spend time with his wife in Dallas leaving their 7 children with family in Houston. Seems like a pretty smart move to me. After initial introductions and settling in, Angela asked what I do. I told her I was a consultant and described what I do. She asked if my work was local or involved travel. I told her I often travel and at one time traveled almost every week. Kennedy asked “Your husband lets you do that?” Poor man, he had not idea what he had done. My very quick response was “He doesn’t have any say in the matter.” I wish I had a picture of the look on his face. I felt sorry that I had answered so abruptly as I certainly didn’t want to offend him.

I explained that I was very lucky in that my husband has no problem with my career choice. This is a lesson to everyone that good marriages come in many different forms. His wife quickly pointed out to him that many of the ladies that would be presenting and singing at this event were married, some with children still at home and that they traveled many weekends a year. I think it took him awhile to get a grasp on that. Friday evening was great. More great words of wisdom and fabulous music.

It is 10pm. Past my bedtime and Nikki and I need to find a cab. Back at the hotel my mind is still wide awake. I need to go to sleep now! Tomorrow starts really early. What will the day hold?

A few weeks ago an email appeared in my inbox. It was from BookSneeze. BookSneeze is a program of Thomas Nelson Publishing which provides free books that they publish to bloggers for free. It was an invitation to register for 2 tickets to a Women of Faith event. I rarely register for anything as I never win or it is some type of come on. However, I know a good deal about this organization and I knew it wasn’t a come on. But there was still the issue of never winning anything.

I have always wanted to attend this event, but in the past my travel schedule has usually interfered with the ability to do so. So I looked at the email for a couple of minutes, checked the schedule for the dates of the Dallas event. I had nothing scheduled, so I went for it.

Low and behold, the email has arrived saying I am a winner. WooHoo!!!

So you may be asking, who gets the other ticket. My step-daughter Nikki has always been the person in my plan for this. I don’t know anyone that will enjoy this more. Her life is very busy with her church, family and work. She rarely takes an opportunity to indulge herself. She has scheduled that Friday off, I have reserved us a room in a nice hotel close to the event and we are going to spend too glorious days with a whole bunch of wonderful people.

Part of the deal for winning the tickets is to blog about the experience. That is a small price to pay for such an opportunity. So watch for my posts during and after the event. Nikki and I are excited about time together and attending this event. Here is a video that shows what Women of Faith is about.

There are events around the country. Check them out and join in the adventure.

When I do a presentation on change I like to compare change we choose to change inflicted upon us.  If you choose to go buy yourself a new cell phone, it is likely that there will be no complaining.  You will embrace the new technology and learn to do new things.  In my presentation I talk about the resistance that many companies face when implementing change.  My example here is implementing a new agency management system.  The agency staff is busy doing what they do best, sell and service insurance, so many see having to learn and begin to use a new system as a big headache.  There are even obstacles encountered when a vendor makes a major change in a process within their system.  I had a narrow vision which limited me to thinking of only two types of change.  But in the last year my vision of the types of change has been widened.

A presentation by Brady Polansky last year at the Nebraska Big I Tech Day reflected on change we didn’t choose, but accepted readily.  Brady used the evolution of how we buy and listen to music as his example of how people have migrated from records and record players to MP3 and iPods with a few stops in between.  There were many steps in this process, but we just seemed to accept each new source and device with relative ease.  This was an aspect of change I hadn’t considered.

Let us also consider what happens when there is a sudden change in circumstances.  In my case it was an accident my husband had while we were on vacation.  The details are in my post “Where Has Pat Been?“.  In a case like this you give little thought to the immediate effects of change.  You are concerned with what has to be done to get the situation in hand, make necessary arrangements, and dealing with the issues at hand.  However, there is the longer term effects of change that must be considered and managed.  Most of don’t actually understand or appreciate what all another individual does each day.  Since I travel a great deal and Gene is retired, he takes care of many of the errands in our life.  Things such as picking up the mail at our PO box, taking and picking up the dry cleaning, fueling both vehicles, etc.  He also takes care of the yard, garbage, and other household chores.  None of the chores have gone away.  It was necessary that I figure out how I would manage to take care of him, these chores and my work.  To say that some days this has been overwhelming would be an understatement.  Being in the midst of such change has made me think about how this relates to the workplace and how to manage equally sudden changes.

I once worked with an agency in which the principle owner and father of two of the producers became ill and was gone in a few short months.  While the two sons were great producers, they were struggling with how to manage the agency.  They were having issues with receivables, timely marketing of renewals, staff using the system correctly and in general how to run the agency.  As the elder brother said “I had no idea what Dad did every day and all the detail involved in running this place”.  It was refreshing how once they understand what needed to be done, they just “stepped up to the plate” and got on board.  They actually got on board quicker than their staff did.  But the staff soon saw that these men were serious and either needed to join the party or be replaced.  They were able to recover in this short period of time as they didn’t wait a long time to realize they had a problem and get help.

Consider what would happen in your office if a key owner, manager or employee was suddenly not able to work.  I have seen many occasions where everyone pulls together in the short run and everything is handled very well.  But what happens if this is a situation that goes on for a period of time?  It would be a rare insurance agency that could lose a staff member for any length of time and be able to absorb their work without overload on remaining staff.  I find many agencies that I work with that struggle when an account manager who handles a large book of commercial lines business is out for only a day.  So what would they do if it were for several months?

There are many types of change as illustrated here.  Is your agency prepared for them?  Do you have a plan for these types of changes?  Share your tips and your questions.

In a few presentations on the subject of change I have made a point that change is easier if it is for something we want to do than something our employer wants us to do. I use the example of how easy it is to change when we want a new cell phone. If we choose to change to a new cell phone you don’t hear a lot of grumbling. We tend to embrace the learning process and in a short period we know almost everything there is to know. We are telling everyone that will listen all we know and how wonderful our new phone is.

In reality not everyone adapts well to change even when they have elected the change. I find adapting to change is a mindset. Adapting to change involves learning and planning. I recently bought a MacBook Pro. I was up and running quickly. I just knew I could teach myself all I needed to know. I mean really, my business is about helping insurance agencies understand and maximize the use of their technology.

So I decided that I would commit time each week to going to Apple School and learn from the pros. It has really paid off. I was stumbling around trying to figure out how mail, ical and the address book could interact since they are separate. Well the answer is that they actually work together in a number of awesome ways.

I’ve spent time in a class on Pages which is Apple‘s word processing program. I need more time here to be as comfortable as I am in Microsoft Word but I think it will come very quickly. Monday I am taking a Keynote class. According to Michael Hyatt‘s various posts on this subject, Keynote is far superior to PowerPoint. So I am excited about moving on with Keynote.

So what do you do to accomplish change? I am always looking for pointers.

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I was taught long ago that without integrity my knowledge means little. Of late, roads that I have taken have caused a number of people to question my integrity. So I think it is time to address these issues.

As a consultant I work with insurance agencies on best practices and maximizing their technology that they have or may be considering. It is important that I keep up with what is happening with a number of systems. If you have been paying attention you have seen that I have attended the Brokerage Builder User’s Group meeting, the Vertafore Industry Forum, the AMSUG Power User’s Conference and two Nexsure User Group conferences this year. I have also been involved in looking at the new Impowersoft product Aspire, I have helped an agencies evaluate Microsoft Dynamics CRM, etfile, CSR24 and been approached by a couple of other vendors about working with them on their products. I also attend numerous other industry events where vendors exhibit their products.

Based on my relationship with each of these vendors I may or may not have signed a non-disclosure agreement. But having or not having a non-disclosure is not of significance to me. I handle the information I am privileged to acquire from interacting with each of these groups and their customers confidentially. I will not divulge to one vendor information about another vendor or the functionalities of their product information that is not public information.

I have added a disclosures section on my website on my About page I have added a section for Disclosures and Relationships. I want to be as transparent as possible. Being an independent consultant means just that. However, to be the most effective for my client, I need a lot of knowledge. To acquire a lot of knowledge you must be involved.

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