Today I am reading Little Shifts by Suzanna Beth Stinnett. It is a short inspirational book about how you can create change with every single choice, every day, all day long. The premise of the book is that life changes happen, with our without your participation. Little Shifts prevents you from feeling overwhelmed in our rapidly changing world, with advice on:

- How to make little shifts in your attitude and beliefs right away
- How to perform radical acts at any time, such as: stopping, breathing, connecting, asking and using intuition
- How to create brighter possibilities ahead by imagining your world just the way you want it
- How to carve out space for these changes in your home and you schedule

Since many of us reading this review are women and especially women running their own companies, we know that we understand that the human machine can be more productive with some innovative changes in the expectations of the work place and home lives. Since change begins by recognizing desire, this little pocket book has some great exercises to inspire you to recognize all the shifts you can create to help you from feeling so overwhelmed in our hectic everyday lives.

A very pleasant and quick book to read. You can pull it off the shelf to feel inspired.

Have a prosperous and inspiring week.

Tricia Ryan

Principal
The Marketing Chefs

Rose Reisman is a savvy entrepreneur whose strength lies in recognizing the ever-changing needs of the marketplace. She began by self-publishing a general cookbook in 1988, but in 1993, she realized the need to change her own lifestyle was definitely part of something much bigger. Her hunch hit the mark. Her 1993 cookbook, Rose Reisman Brings Home Light Cooking sold over 400,000 copies to a more health-conscious society. It was at this time that Rose Reisman began donating proceeds from all of her book sales to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF). To date, she has written more than 16 books and has raised over $1 million for breast cancer research. Over the past few years, Rose Reisman further diversified and now runs two distinct companies, both geared at sharing her passion for the art of living a balanced lifestyle.

Media Appearances:
Rose Reisman has served as the host of weekly TV series on the Life Network-Lighten Up with Rose Reisman (1998-2000), and Free for the Asking (1997-1998).
She is a regular guest on CityLine with Marilyn Dennis (CityTV) and has made numerous appearances on national TV and radio shows such as Today (NBC), Balance: Television for Living Well with Dr. Marla Shapiro (CTV), and Canada AM.

Rose meets with Tricia Ryan to discuss the challenges and opportunities of being an entrepreneur. From cook book author to media guru and now serving meals to thousands of Torontonians searching for healthy good tasting food on the run. Learn what inspired Rose and resources that she used to augment her success.

Crowdsourcing Your Marketing!

Welcome to this week's book review. As many of you know, I’m passionate about marketing, online or offline. One of the ways that I keep up is constant learning. So, instead of being really clever and witty or even funny in my blog, I would like to share with you things I have picked up along the way that have inspired me and given me a moment of inspiration.

Flying home this weekend from my podcast training program in Chico, California (yes a fun and inspiring place to go to learn), I read the book “WE Are Smarter Than ME - How To Unleash The Power of Crowds In Your Business" by Barry Libert and Jon Spector and Thousands of Contributors www.wearsmarter.org. The book is fun and a very quick read. It reviews social marketing. The numbers are impressive…

 MySpace is growing at 2 million new registrants per week with over 200 million members, is well on its way to half a billion,
 There is a new blog created every second of every day (we are one);
 Over a million avatars (an image used to represent somebody in cyberspace) live in a virtual community called Second Life.

As a small business owner why might you care about social networks? Collaboration of a crowd is now creating a multimedia bandwidth and a medium of communication never thought possible before. Word of mouth and viral marketing has never been more powerful. The new potent “we” is far smarter than any singular “me”. Business people are just beginning to comprehend the consequences.

The new business model of using social networks has been coined as open sourcing or crowdsourcing. You might perceive that open sourcing of information belongs to large corporations like IBM or P&G, but I remind you of a recent experience where I was trying diligently to purchase silicon ties to truss a turkey on line. I was all over the Internet going from site to site to find a Canadian retailer. I actually ended up at a Home Shopping Internet site and found the precious cooking tool. As I was about to press the BUY button, I noticed the consumer evaluations. I quickly scanned them and found the silicon ties had performed poorly for many of the previous buyers. In a nano second, I decided not to buy. There you go, the power of crowdsourcing. Important to note these were not even people I knew and trusted.

I remind you that you must keep this example in mind, it can happen to you as any size of business owner. The power of telling ten friends has now multiplied virally. Women in particular are very good at this viral Internet crowdsourcing tool. Look at the emails we send each other for charities – Breast Cancer Think Pink and or for good luck. I know on any given day I have at least a couple in my email box.

Check out the book. It is a good read. I will follow up with more findings in the next issue.

To great marketing ideas and in friendship,

Tricia
The Marketing Chefs

These Wednesday Minutes have been created as food for thought. Today, The Marketing Chefs discuss the need to be noticed. Remember intrusiveness runs counter to relevance. If you can however, achieve both you have a winner.

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