Diamonds to You

Hi everyone—I’m happy to tell you that we have all prior issues of the newsletter available on my website. So, help yourself and feel free to share them with others.

I’ve been doing a lot of public speaking lately—something I really love doing—and thought I’d share one of my talks with you in the form of a very informal and incomplete article. As you know, public speaking (especially the way I do it) is pretty free-form, so my notes are only the outline for my talk.

In this case I actually used a Power Point Presentation! Surprise! You all know that I normally resist that level of formality, preferring instead to be highly interactive with my audience. I chose to us the visual media because I assumed that a portion of my audience (KASE/KIN Entrepreneur Academy Conference) would be people for whom English was a second language. Thus, I thought it would be easier for them to understand me if they had both the oral and visual.

The title of my talk was “So You Want to be A CEO: Basics in Entrepreneurship: Launching a Startup.” The notes I wrote for myself are available here. I added more substance and anecdotal examples as I was speaking, but I think the flavor of my hour talk is in these notes.

A flagrant commercial: I am available to speak to associations, corporations, and other groups on a very wide range of people and management topics.

Two favorite talks I give to women’s groups are, “Are You Too Good For Your Own Good?” and, “Be A Star Instead of a Star Polisher.” These focus on helping women overcome some of the more traditional barriers and behaviors that stand in their way to becoming strong, assertive, sure of themselves, articulate, direct and to the point.

WIC Management Consultants

A few months ago, I invited a group of management consultants to come together for lunch. The luncheon was so successful that we decided to meet regularly and invite other women who are management consultants to join us. We’ve met three times, at one of my favorite restaurants—The Afghani House on the El Camino in Sunnyvale.

We are now about 30 high-powered and very interesting women who are coming together for a long lunch once every other month. Our format is deliberately informal, because our primary goal is to get to know each other, work with the synergy we create as well as to help and learn from each other.

Although the starting group came from the organization Women in Consulting (WIC), our group is not restricted to those women alone. So, if you are interested in getting to know this dynamite group of women, please contact me.

California Writers Club

I recently joined the South Bay Chapter of the California Writers Club after having attended their weekend conference in Salinas: East of Eden. The people I met at the conference were so outgoing and friendly I felt I wanted to become part of them.

I’m also hoping to expand my writing beyond the professional writing I’ve done for years and into some novels and short stories. I’ll keep you informed of my progress—but don’t expect anything soon. Novels are a lot of hard work and I’m learning how to plan the plot, character development, theme, action, etc. I’ve actually started a loose leaf book full of notes in these areas.

Resources

My technical support guy is Pete Wilkinson (408-255-4408). I’ve been using Pete for years and he never lets me down. Pete has the ability to speak and understand non-techie talk, as well as techie talk. Thus he is great for people like me who need someone to handle a lot of their small stuff—such as software and hardware problems, websites, and fights with yahoo, aol, and others. Pete is honest and decent as well as technically competent.

I also ought to tell you that this newsletter is being produced by Gabriela Martinez of Texto (408-395-8943). Gabriela combines common sense and years of practical experience with an artistic touch. She is absolutely wonderful to work with—and we’ve become friends as well.

So, how can I help you?

My clients are so good to me! Here’s something another client said about me:

ArLyne’s instinctive ability to very quickly understand the crux of the issues that management has either overlooked or not acknowledged has set her apart from the majority of consultants with whom I have worked over the last 20 years.
    – George Cameron, SamTrans Chief Administrative Officer

Recent Publications

• “Finding Value in Team Building,” by Lin Grensing-Pophal, in the August issue of the SHRM’s online consultant forum.

• “Mentors Who Make a Difference,” by Lin Grensing-Pophal, in the August issue of the SHRM’s online consultant forum.

• Other articles and articles in which I have been quoted recently can be found by a Google search.

My two published books are available at www.productivepublications.com:

• Training Your Board of Directors: A Manual for the CEOs, Board Members, Administrators and Executives of Corporations, Associations, Non-Profit and Religious Organizations
• The “Please” and “Thank You” of Fundraising for Non-Profits: Fifteen Essential Ingredients for Success

Let me be your Aufin—your advisor to Kings.

ArLyne Diamond, Ph.D
ArLyne@DiamondAssociates.net