Mary Beth Smith's "Girls Who Print"

Give Thanks!

2010-07-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

Did we have a party or WHAT???!!!! I can’t begin to adequately express my thanks to all the people and companies who volunteered to sponsor the first Girls Who Print LIVE mixer in Dallas last month. I’m still amazed at the support this organization has received. Here are some special people who took part in making this event such a rousing success:

Underwriter: Hats off and a huge THANK YOU to Sally Hiler and CGX for offering to underwrite the entire party! What a generous way to help GWP expand from a virtual group to a live network.

Sponsors: Our industry has a lot of generous people. Numerous companies contacted me after the get-together was announced and wanted to supply door prizes. Special thanks go to:

Brian Regan of Semper International
Danette Matthews of AlphaGraphics Corporate
Don Clampitt of Clampitt Paper Company
Kevin Krantz of LinkedIn
Lana Duncan of HP-Indigo
Matt Tanaka of Xerox
Renee Berger of Western States Envelope & Label
Sherry Perry of AlphaGraphics – Park Cities/North Dallas

Event Planners:
Dallas GWP members Cheryl Young and Laura Klebek went above and beyond to coordinate the venue, the door prizes and the graphics. Without their hard work and outstanding efforts, I might have just melted into a puddle and missed the party altogether.

............................................................................................................................

Was it a success? Absolutely!! Here are a few things that I find interesting:

(1) Attendance was completely viral – spread only through LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter.
(2) The number of Dallas members in the LinkedIn group nearly doubled following the event.
(3) I’m still receiving inquiries from the US, Canada and the UK for local live events.
(4) People really networked about jobs, referrals and projects. This is what community is about, and makes me ecstatically happy!

OK…I’ll add more later about other get-togethers. Be patient – GWP will be coming to a city near you!

LinkedIn "Girls Who Print" go LIVE - Dallas, June 29!

2010-06-21T19:55:00.000-07:00

Join the "Girls Who Print" in Dallas for their first LIVE get-together!

WHAT: Mixer
WHEN: Tuesday June 29
TIME: 4:30 - 6:30 pm
PLACE: SaltGrass Steakhouse
(Farmers Branch on LBJ)

If you're a GWP in the Dallas area, join us for appetizers, door prizes, and lots of fun shop talk. Sally Hiler and CGX are sponsoring our first-ever live mixer, and will be there in person, along with Mary Beth Smith and other Dallas members of the LinkedIn Discussion Group.

Please respond by Monday, June 28, and let us know you're coming. We're printers - we can make name tags!!

As always, Printer Dudes are welcome to join us - all it takes is nerves of steel!!

Skip the Dallas rush hour, and come enjoy our free appetizers and have a little fun instead!

Why I Can’t Have a Life Coach

2010-05-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

I don’t know what it is about commuting that makes me philosophical. I have a pretty long drive into Dallas most days, and I guess that in the absence of anything more stimulating, my brain gets snagged on things that mostly don’t matter much.

So…this morning I’m driving along, minding my own business, staying in my own lane, and politely yielding to those who feel the urge to merge when a very new, very shiny, and very small red car tentatively makes its way alongside me, and then just hangs in formation without merging. Even though I have slowed down, Little Red won’t make her move. I finally slow to a near stop, and the car finally slips in front of me and we both continue our journey. A journey that is now moving at her pace, which is S.L.O.W.

The leisurely pace (someone needs to tell me why they call it “rush hour”…) allows me a stellar vantage point from which to view the expensive rear window wrap (like a vehicle wrap, but smaller). I almost immediately deduce that she is a Women’s Life Coach. How do I know this? The elegant lettering of the fancy script that spans the window reads “Women’s Life Coach”, which I accept at face value. There is also a website address listed, which might be interesting to look at. I consult with entrepreneurs and small businesses, so I tend to notice when someone seems to be marketing themselves.

So far, so good, right? Then the “idle mind’ thing kicks in, and I begin reflecting on Life Coaching being an occupation you never saw 20 years ago. I sort of casually toy with the whole concept of hiring someone to coach you through whatever it is you need to be coached through. And…there must be specialties. Apparently women have special coaches just for women. I never thought about that before.. I wonder just how much the market is segmented. Do Park Cities women have different coaches than Brown County women? Probably. Anyway, after more inane reflection, just as I’m beginning to nod my head and think, “Yeah…I can see how that might be a reasonable thing for someone to do”, some snarky little voice deep inside pipes up and jolts me back to reason.

I announce to the world at large, “If I’m going to pay someone to coach me, she needs to be driving a car that’s way better than mine.” Think about it – if the whole concept of being coached is to improve your life, wouldn’t you think the coach would be living a lifestyle that you aspire to? AND...she was so hesitant about merging with the traffic that it’s hard to imagine that this would be a person to cheer me on or lead me fearlessly into my future. Maybe I have this whole life coaching thing wrong, but that’s the way this Brown County girl thinks. My life coach needs to be driving a posh Saab convertible, not a compact Chevy with no air conditioning.

Anyway…flash forward to my afternoon commute. In one of those ironic twists that the traffic gods ordain, I realize that once again, there is a car next to me attempting to merge into my lane. I am completely boxed in, and can’t slow any more than I already am, and the luxury car next to me is boxed in from the front. With total disregard for safety, civility, or the basic rules of driving, she bullies her way into my lane and speeds off. As she harrumphs herself down the road, I realize that my premise has completely fallen apart. The woman in the car that is “way better” than mine, would be no more qualified to attempt to coach me than Little Red. She was clearly reckless, self centered, and probably a spendthrift, none of which I aspire to emulate.

I suppose I could be ashamed of myself for stereotyping people based on the car they drive. I suppose I could be ashamed of myself for being judgmental about life choices in general and life coaching in particular. But I’m not. I’ve simply come to the conclusion that life coaching may not be for ME! And if you’re a life coach driving a mid-range car, like maybe a Buick, we’ll probably have more fun just grabbing a burger and hanging out. We'll just coach each other and call it even, OK?

But I think I WILL look at that little website…she may need business cards, letterhead and a brochure.

Were those the days? Or are these the days?

2009-10-16T20:23:00.001-07:00

“I just wish it was like it used to be.” She finally let the words slip out of her mouth. Her usual professional demeanor was briefly replaced by a wistful expression, and then she shook the thought away, squared her shoulders and purposely attacked the thin pile of estimates for VSJs (very small jobs) that awaited her attention.

The way it “used to be” meant that your customers were willing to pay you for the way you took a personal interest in their jobs, and covered their mistakes, and drove across town at 10:00 PM on a Saturday to deliver something they forgot to pick up during business hours. The way it “used to be” - The glory days when customers called with panic in their voices, but knew you would save them from themselves when they failed to send their files on time, or found last-minutes typos because they didn’t really look at the proof you sent them – and stayed with you because they knew they could count on you to keep them looking good in print, in spite of themselves.

Those were happy times for people like us. We could price our products in a way that was profitable and allowed us to operate with full staffing, provide health insurance, pay bonuses, and take pride in being the vendor of choice for people who appreciated all the “added value” we could afford to provide.

Well, mon cher…Wake Up!!!! Those days are over!!!! Besides the nasty economic smack-down we were all dealt, our industry has come face to face with the blunt and brutal fact that people and businesses have discovered other ways to communicate that - gasp - don’t involve ink on paper.

So…let’s talk about nostalgia. It seems that my entire little hometown in Central Texas has discovered Facebook. Over the last few months, I’ve reconnected with old friends, old schoolmates, distant relatives, former colleagues, and a few people who have friended me just because we both know all the same people. Lots of ‘remember when’ going on, and it’s been a lot of fun to talk about days past, and wistfully recall the memories of being young and thin and full of energy. Remembering our State Championship football team – remember, this is Texas, where we live for high school football, and never forget we are the best! We’ve dragged out old school pictures of ourselves, scanned ‘em in, and uploaded them for all to see. We’ve complimented each other, ooh’d and aah’d over how great people looked back then, and laughed (mostly) about what age has done to us. Inevitably, though, there’s someone who writes with that wistful tone that reveals a lingering wish to go back to the way it was – to the Glory days, when we were young and fearless, certain that we were the best that had ever been…now and forever.

Funny how that sounds just like my printing industry – once young, and innovative, and world-changing. There are many who can’t move past that – the glory of craftsmanship, imagination, and artistry coming together to allow humanity to ‘tell its story’ on a scale that was never possible. We changed the world. Knowledge became readily accessible to the masses. Books were available at an increasingly breakneck speed. The Gutenburg Bible – a milestone in history. And newspapers – what a development. Magazines and advertising. The Sears-Roebuck catalog – Christmas was never the same! Coloring books. Cereal boxes. Textbooks.
Printed music. Cookbooks. There is nothing that wasn’t completely transformed by the invention of the printing press.

But let’s face it - Printing has aged – just like me and my friends. And just like me and my friends, the industry has a choice. Will we just throw our hands up and mope about how wonderful we were, and give in to the aging process, or will we stand up, look around, and use our strengths and experience to expectantly navigate the future? It really is a choice. I choose to give my print world a nip and a tuck where needed, and happily jump at the chance to participate in the exciting new ways to keep doing what we’ve always done: Allow humankind to better tell its story. In print, online, through video and in ways that I’m sure we haven’t even dreamed up yet.

To that, I raise a glass, because I know the best is yet to come!

:) mb, who is trying to figure out how she’s going to lose some serious weight before that 40th reunion next year…

Crazy Fun!

2009-07-22T19:49:00.001-07:00

Absolutely love this site: http://www.wordle.net. Here's what I did for the GWP crowd. (Go play with it yourself - it's a blast!) Click on the image to see a larger version that you can actually read. When you go to the Wordle site, you'll be able to create your own, and edit the colors and the shape - way too much fun for a girl like me...

Sometime "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!"

:) mb

Our Times...They Are A-Changin'

2009-06-22T18:50:00.001-07:00

I was a young teen-ager when Bob Dylan released this sense-shattering song. My white-bread world in a small college town in Central Texas seemed a universe away from the turmoil and upheaval he sang about. To me, the world didn't really seem to be changing much at all.

Flash forward a few years to 1968. October 1, to be exact. Etched in my mind is the memory of climbing into bed that night, "great with child" as they used to say, and thumbing through my new edition of Reader's Digest. I was horrified and frightened as I read the articles about the violent campus activites as students protested the Vietnam "non-war". During the 9 months of my pregnancy, I had watched Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King be horribly assassinated, witnessed the out-of-control riots at the Republican convention, and listened to a steady barrage of nightly news coverage of the Vietnam debacle. I genuinely wondered if the world was ending. What hope for a good life could I give my yet unborn baby?

Well, guess what - She jumped into the fray the very next day, not afraid, not nervous - just noisy and hungry! She turned 40 last year, and is doing quite well, thank you very much, and so is her younger brother. It seems that in spite of the high profile and noise surrounding the upheaval AND my fear, the world didn't end. Hmmm...

I've lived long enough to have seen turmoil, war, conflict, riots, massacres, political dirty tricks, and shameful corporate behavior before. The first few times, I let myself buy into the cultural anxiety that accompanies the wall-to-wall media coverage that drums the negative images and actions into our brains day and night. One of the big differences now? There are more avenues for the bad news to be shoved in our faces - louder, faster, more graphic - than there ever have been. Does it make it harder to not be swayed by it? Of course, it does. I have to consciously choose every day whether or not I'm going to sell out to fear. I choose not to.

OK - what does this have to do with Girls Who Print? Well, all the bad news is affecting our industry, too. I've been hearing from women and men for the last few weeks who have either been laid off, or are waiting for it to happen. Eveyone says the same thing: "It's tough out there"...And so, I'm reminded of the 1960s, when we were overwhelmed with change and turmoil, and genuinely afraid for the future. Yes, the times, they ARE a'changin'...and we have to change with them. Because it's highly unlikely that the world is ending - it's just changing.

Maybe you need to do your work differently to make it accommodate the changes in your company. Maybe you're faced with taking a job that's NOT what you love to do. I know we've certainly had to tighten our belt at home to offset my husband's (Guy Who Sells...) inability to work during a serious illness.

The thing is, though...we DO it. We change, we adjust, we modify. We bob and weave as needed to get through the rough spots. Because they WILL end...and before we know it, we'll be 40 years older again. And still wondering how we listened to Bob Dylan's scratchy vocals!

Yikes - another 40 years? I'm not sure I can pull off the whole "blonde - it's the new gray" thing that long!

Keep changing - you have what it takes!

mb, who is making plans for her 100th birthday, OK????!!!

Some of my GWP Idols...

2009-06-14T18:18:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing that Girls Who Print have in common, it's being a "fixer"! Most of us don't get to wear a cape to work, or power bands, but each one of us knows that Wonder Woman secretly struts around in our shoes every day.

WW finds lost files, patches broken equipment, rescues good jobs gone bad, captures estimating mistakes and generally keeps everything going when other people throw their hands up and walk away.

Here are a few of my favorite GWP Idols who have displayed the traits of a WW:

Donna Maderer - Boston, MA
Met Donna during my first week in the business back in Boston in the mid 1990s. She reigned over the pressroom at the old HQ location on Boylston Street with an iron fist in a burlap glove - velvet just wasn't her style! An artist by temperament and training, she brought a keen eye for detail to every job that crossed her desk, and pulled no punches with screw-ups. People whispered her name with great respect and trembled at the thought of bringing down her wrath. We became great friends the first day I trained under her, and I never worked with anyone I appreciated more. After several years in the pressroom, she took her sense of order to Human Resources, and used her talents there. She's still a GWP, but spends more and more of her time working on her paintings. Donna, I salute you!

Cathy Lambrecht - Dallas, TX
I had the pleasure of working with Cathy for two years in Dallas. In fact, she was the person who first inspired the nickname "Wonder Woman". No matter how tight deadlines became, Cathy always answered the phone with a smile in her voice. I've never seen a CSR take more pride in her work than Cathy, and I've always wondered how she could be going 6 directions at once, yet when a customer walked in, she was all smiles and assistance. Cathy, I salute you!

Nancy Del Monaco - New York, NY
Nancy and I first met at a regional sales meeting in Baltimore. We got into a discussion over the movie "Erin Brakovich" when she insisted that no one really lived like that, and I assured her that in Central Texas where I grew up, that there were plenty of people who lived exactly like that. We've been great friends ever since, and she has impressed me over and over again with her committment to make miracles happen for her customers in the information packaging side of the business. She recently won a prestigious award, which she will let me tell you all about soon. Nancy, I salute you!

Do you know any women who consistently prove to you why they belong in our great industry? Drop me a line and let's salute them! Comment here, or go to my "Girls Who Print" discussion group on LinkedIn.

OK, Wonder Woman - Go fix something!

:) mb

The Only Grown-Up in the Room

2009-06-08T20:04:00.000-07:00

Do you ever feel like you're the only grown-up in the room? My world is fairly calm this week, but there are days when it gets so hectic that it seems like everyone becomes 12 years old again. I've looked at customers or colleagues sometimes, and the only thing I really wanted to say was, "I raised my kids, and I don't really have any interest in raising YOU."

So far, I haven't followed through with that little fantasy. Somehow, I usually manage to find a way to calm someone, encourage someone, or even jolt them back to reality with a little 'drill sergeant' routine.

Our industry is so incredibly deadline-driven that it's easy to get "sucked into the gears" when jobs are late, paperwork isn't finished, or equipment breaks down. Most of the time, I'm able to notice that the stress is building, and make it a point to 'breathe in, breathe out". Most of the time.

But if you ever approach me with panic in your voice for the 14th time in 3 hours, and my eyes narrow ever so slightly before I speak, you might want to rethink your question...

:) mb, who is breathing quite calmly, thank you very much...

What do you know today...?

2009-06-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

Well, as of Friday evening, after exactly one week online, the Girls Who Print discussion group on LinkedIn had gathered 81 members. I'm completely amazed (and gratified) by the reach of social media in connecting people. Candidly, I'm seeing the interaction on the discussion boards that I had anticipated for this blog! Clearly, there's tremendous exposure on the other LinkedIn discussions, because after announcing GWP on several of them, I've quickly hit the point where there are more people I don't know joining than people I know. Now I'm trying to pinpoint the difference between a discussion group and a blog. So...I've been looking at other blogs out there - very interesting pastime, which could easily become a black hole!

Anyone who has ever worked for me knows to expect the question "What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?" from me without warning! I believe wholeheartedly that if you stop learning, you've stopped - period. Afer studying other blogs and discussion groups, what I know today that I didn't know yesterday is that the discussion group is more about your being able to make quick observations with each other, and the blog is more about my being able to create more in-depth observations and topics.

Maybe everyone else already knew that, but it took me a little longer! So...instead of encouraging all of you to gather and comment here, I'm going to use this as my own forum, and not worry too much about whether anyone participates here. You have a much bigger pool of knowledge and wisdom to draw on from my discussion group than you do here.

Doesn't mean your comments and thoughts aren't welcome here - they certainly are! However, I know today (as opposed to one week ago before i created the discussion group) that people are more likely to engage in a more 'real time' environment with broad reach like LinkedIn than with a fairly static environment with limited reach like this.

I love learning new things!

mb

Girls Who Print now talk on LinkedIn!

2009-06-04T08:45:00.000-07:00

If you've never joined LinkedIn, you don't know what you're missing! It's probably the most effective tool I've ever encountered for keeping all your business connections on the radar. No more trying to keep up with changing email addresses or phone numbers. Someone has described it as "Facebook for people with jobs", which I think fits pretty well!

I have benefitted so much from participating in the discussion groups, that I've now created one for Girls Who Print. In less than a week, we have over 60 members, not only from all over the US, but Europe as well.

If you don't have a LinkedIn account, you're missing out. Go to http://www.linkedin.com/ and create your profile - It's free, and opens the business world up to you in ways you would never imagine! Once you're online, connect with me (Mary Beth Smith - AlphaGraphics) and I'll send you an invite to the new discussion group - Not only are the posts great, we also have news articles and a job board. If you're looking for a job, or if you're looking to hire, you can post at no charge in the Jobs section!

Come see me on LinkedIn, and get in on the conversation with the rest of the Girls Who Print! Who knows - you might just decide to start your own group!

Looking for other "Girls Who Print"

2009-03-16T07:54:00.000-07:00

I don't remember exactly when I laughingly coined the term "Girls Who Print", but it seems to have become a catch-phrase around the company. We are a woman-owned printing company, and with most of us being in the vaguely defined "mid-life" age group, (yes, Sherry, this means you, too!) when we call ourselves "Girls Who Print", it is clearly tongue-in-cheek. However, people seem to respond to the idea, and we find ourselves using the phrase frequently.

A customer asks us to do the impossible - We respond with, "Of course! We are Girls Who Print!", and they seems to relax and let us go about doing our job.

So...to make this post pretty brief, I'd really like to hear from other "Girls Who Print" so we can laugh together about our industry, learn from each other, and just have a spot on the web to take a quick break now and then. Tell us what you love about printing, as well as what drives you up the wall!

That's it for now...
:) mb
my company: http://www.dallas054.alphagraphics.com/
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/printwithmarybethsmith