Frumpy Mother In A Tarago

I have been attending a LOT of courses and workshops in the past six months. So many in fact, that’s it’s time to retract back into my Purple House like a pinctada into it’s shell and see if I can produce something other than grit or sand.

My most recent foray into the world of business, marketing, networking and global change was a full-day workshop on marketing and branding, held by Marnie LeFevre. A bit of a marketing genius, Marnie has recently decided to spend a great deal of her energy and time on empowering women to become smarter, braver and richer so that they can change the world.

Now the workshop I attended was pretty confronting and I have to admit that I broke down twice in the morning. There were quite a few economically independent, intelligent and highly employed women at this workshop and hearing them talk about balancing their commitments and their families made me feel isolated and lonely.

But I had to push myself past this, as I knew I could learn so much if I shove those old scabs back under their bandages.

I was given the tools for personal branding, logo design, relationship to money, hourly rates, target market, personal presentation, brand essence, the golden circle of sales, blogging and database building.

Pretty full-on, huh?!?

There is so much information in my scone that I feel a bit surreal today. So much to process and to action. What surprises me the most is that today, I am not feeling a sense of overwhelm – which would be my normal response. I honestly feel like I have been gifted some extremely important information that will help me change my own life.

Including how I look.

You see, part of the workshop entailed a partner exercise, where a complete stranger within the group was given nine questions to answer about their opposite. The lady I was partnered with – Renae – was happily married with three children living on five acres near Kalamunda. I thought that she was childless, perhaps married living in an apartment in Scarborough.

Yep – I got it badly wrong.

Except I did guess correctly that she loved cats!

But how did she do with my profile? Well slap your gawkers on this list and try not to cry for me. You see, the whole point of the exercise was to show just how important what we LOOK like, represents our ‘brand’. Who we are trying to convey we are professionally and personally comes across in how we do our hair & makeup, the shoes we choose to wear and what clothes we are clad in.

It turns out that I present myself as an exhausted, overweight, middled-aged mother.

Fuck!!!!!!

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