Tweet

Golden Tennis Shoes

Written by: Chellie Campbell

Article Overview: If there’s one thing I’ve learned traveling along this life’s highways and byways, is that in all things it is best to completely be yourself. Take a stand for yourself, choose your likes and dislikes, and stand proudly in them. When you are clearly you, other people will see it and know you for who you are. This simplifies life immeasurably....

Golden Tennis Shoes

“To do good marketing, you want to attract the people you want…and repel the people you don’t want!”—Unknown

If there’s one thing I’ve learned traveling along this life’s highways and byways, is that in all things it is best to completely be yourself. Take a stand for yourself, choose your likes and dislikes, and stand proudly in them. When you are clearly you, other people will see it and know you for who you are. This simplifies life immeasurably. Your people will be drawn to you more quickly, and the other people will pass you by.
I was thinking about this as I drove to the Jonathan Club downtown Los Angeles, to speak to the Los Angeles Chapter of NAWBO (National Association of Women Business Owners). I was dressed in my usual “Give-a-speech-costume”—blouse, blazer, pants and gold tennis shoes. Mind you, I wear gold tennis shoes all the time. I have casual gold tennies that have a quilted pattern and gold beads for everyday wear, but for speeches, I wear my dressy gold tennis shoes that have rhinestones all over them. I had thought briefly of wearing “real shoes” to this event, since this was a rather corporate environment, but then I decided just to stick with my usual style.
Wouldn’t you know, my momentary hesitation manifested itself in a challenge issued to me by one of the Jonathan Club employees in the lobby. “Excuse me, miss,” he said frowning disapprovingly at my feet, “but we don’t allow tennis shoes in our club.”
Oops! Caught already. I grinned up at him and said, “I’m terribly sorry, but I am the speaker this evening and this is my costume!”
He wasn’t buying it. “Don’t you have any other shoes?” he inquired.
“No,” I shrugged, “not with me.” Oh, dear, I thought, am I going to be thrown out? Barred from the club? My eyes widened and I said, “You know, I’m sure your dress code means tennis shoes as in gym shoes. These are clearly not gym shoes—they are gold mesh, dressy shoes with diamonds on them!”
He paused for a long moment as he thought this over. It must have made sense to him, because he said, “Okay…but hurry!” He wanted me out of his jurisdiction as soon as possible, and I was happy to oblige him as I scurried upstairs to the meeting room.
The meeting was fabulous with lots of great people—no one else in tennis shoes, I noted. (They must have been tipped off to the dress code.) The reactions to my gold shoes are always very interesting. Lots of people smile and comment how they just love my shoes, how comfortable they look, etc. I know these are “my people.” And of course, some people don’t like them—one woman told me after the talk that I should look more professional if I was going to talk about a serious subject like money. I just smiled, because I think that’s one of the problems I’m trying to solve—that people are too serious about money.
So don’t judge me until you walk a mile in my gold tennis shoes.

Today’s Affirmation: “I am a powerful, fun-filled person, swinging passionately through the chandeliers of life!”

From The Wealthy Spirit: Daily Affirmations for Financial Stress Reduction (Sourcebooks, 2002)
©Copyright Chellie Campbell. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Related Articles
  Article #39 How To: Online Advertising & Pay Per Click
  How Do I Make All Those Inbound Links Relevant To Improve My Ranking Blue Wave Design Studio
  Writing Search Engine Friendly Copy For Your Website for SEO Blue Wave Design Studio
  Mobile Home Parks - How to Spot and Identify Crime
  The Gooose That Laid The Golden Eggs

Article Tags: blazer, blouse, corporate environment, dress code, dressy shoes, everyday wear, excuse, gold beads, good marketing, gym shoes, hesitation, highways and byways, jonathan club, likes and dislikes, national association of women business owners, rhinestones, speeches, tennies, tennis shoes, women business owners



Related Forum Posts
Getting links from the giants - Hi Kevin - it's simple - what do you have to offer them? What kind of compelling reason can you give them to link to you? According to my Google Webmaster Central Tools I have a total of 15,937 links to my site. 4,523 of them go to my homepage while the remaining 11,414 go to various pages on my site. My last sitemap indicated that I have 34,789 pages of content on my website so, excluding the homepage, I have about one link for every three pages of content. I think it’s important to also note that I don’t do any link buying and never tell people what anchor text to use when they link to me. I always suggest that they use whatever text they feel best describes the page they are linking to on my site (if everyone links to you with the same anchor text you can get penalized from Google). Having great content is one way to build links but usually you also need to take an active approach to marketing yourself. Can you build a section on your shoe site along the lines of "The Tennis Player's Ultimate Guide To Buying Shoes" where you talk about all the different considerations someone needs to make before buying shoes - and then at the end recommend Nike? In return Nike links to the site because it's a 3rd party endorsement of their products. Many big companies have News sections on their sites and always love showing off good news - you just need to find a way to give them something worth showing off!
Re: Social Media Marketing - Corporate Vs. Small Business - Hi Jeff, A technique that I consider to be "Social Media Marketing" would be when a brand creates a profile on Facebook and then begins adding people they found in related groups as "friends". For instance, Prince Tennis requested to become friends with me because they saw that I had joined a Facebook group supporting their products. By adding me and other consumers as friends on their Facebook profile, Prince Tennis is able to market directly to its target audience. I've also seen record labels do the same for their music artists.
Re: Which would you start: a Blog or Online Community? - It is a difficult decision to make. Lets start it this way - What are you more interested in? Money? or Friends? or Both? If its purely Money, then Blog might be an appropriate answer. But consider this - It will be people (visitors) that will bring traffic to your blog and then Money will follow. This will be possible after a time and during this time it will be your friends who will be the starters. If you are looking for friends only, then its true that not many will be interested in knowing how you have beaten them in the game or the other way round. So it will be preferable to have a Forum where they can share ideas with you and others. But you can share your insider knowledge with them and invite comments from your Blog. You can also put up information on what others (including your friends) don't know about Tennis. The blog you create can provide News, Inside Information and also Techniques that can be used by the new entrants in the world of Tennis.
Are You a Businessgirl or a Businesswoman? - One thing that has irked me off and on for 30 years is the tendency of people - both men [i:2wryyhvf]and [/i:2wryyhvf]women, to refer to women, whatever their age, as 'girls' rather than women. College basketball announcers, coachers and players do it, as do the fans. These are 'girls' who are between the ages of 18 - 21, that's women in my book. Tennis players and announcers do it. John McEnroe called 'em girls and just when I was getting annoyed at him for being a bit of a male chauvanist, they interviewed player Lindsay Davenport - 30 years old, and she referred to 'em as girls as well. The Bond "girls" were girls up until the 90s, I admit, doing nothing more than providing someone for Bond to bed and rescue, but in the last few installments the "girl" has been more of a power player...nevertheless she's still a 'girl'. And of course there was the TV series The Golden Girls - which I liked by the way, but which featured mature women calling themselves girls And now here it is in the 2000s, and we get this: The Girl's Guide To Starting Your Own Business, by Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio. Their photos are on the cover - presumably the photo is of them and not models - and they are definitely women, not girls. And what "girly" chapter titles do they give us? "The Scary Stuff" (financial matters) and a chapter on ACTING Like an Adult. (Caps mine). So popular was this book, apparently, that they've now come out with a sequel: The Girl's Guide to Being a Boss (Without Being A Bitch): Valuable Lessons, Smart Suggestions, and true stories for succeeding as the CHICK-IN-CHARGE. (My caps) and once again I was tempted to take the book and throw it across the room. Let's indulge in [i:2wryyhvf]all [/i:2wryyhvf]the cliches, shall we? So I'd like to hear from other businesswomen out there. Do you find yourself referred to as a girl? Do you mind it? Do you like the culture that still propagates that mindset?
Re: Does a New Company need a "Big" PR firm? - [quote="OmnivoreInk":dmj1i0sv]I've started work with a brand new company that is going to do loss mitigation. My boss intends to hire a "big" PR firm - ie one that costs a lot of money - because he wants press releases sent out to the New York Times, the LA Times - all the major papers around the country - and he think they'll be more likely to print them if they come from a "big" firm as opposed to a one-person PR firm. I think it doesn't matter where the press release comes from as long as its well written. What are the opinions here?[/quote:dmj1i0sv] I think the most important factor is whether your press release will reach the most number of your target audience or not. It won't matter if the press release is well written if no one has the opportunity to read it. I also believe that credibility comes with having your press release in an established source like The New York Times, LA Times, etc... For instance, if you enjoyed playing tennis, who would you trust more? The advice from a recreational tennis player who has his own column in [i:dmj1i0sv]Tennis Magazine[/i:dmj1i0sv] [u:dmj1i0sv]or[/u:dmj1i0sv] the recreational tennis player who has his own blog? I don't know about you, but I'd listen to the guy on [i:dmj1i0sv]Tennis Magazine[/i:dmj1i0sv] over the blog owner at least 9 out of 10 times.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Adjusting Your World

Track Your Time for Increased Productivity

Angel Investors Where Are You?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.