Lauren Bacon and Emira Mears Present

The Boss of You

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Celebrating Success

June 30th, 2007 by Emira · 5 Comments

We’re hard at work on a near final round of book edits (next dead­line mid July, final dead­line mid August!) and as I worked on the lat­ter half of the book yes­ter­day I hit the “Cel­e­brate Your Suc­cess” sec­tion. Now, Lau­ren and I like to joke a fair bit amongst our­selves and peers that our weak­est point as busi­ness own­ers is our inabil­ity to cel­e­brate our achieve­ments. We have a nasty habit of attain­ing goals and then breez­ing right on through to the next thing on the to-do list with­out even stop­ping to breathe, let alone tak­ing time to con­grat­u­late our­selves, maybe knock off early for a cock­tail or heck take a mid after­noon cel­e­bra­tory soy-latte break. Back to the book. The for­mat of our book is one that uses a lot of exam­ples from our own busi­ness expe­ri­ence as well as exam­ples from a host of super-smart busi­ness ladies we’ve inter­viewed. As I thumbed through my stack of inter­view tran­scripts I real­ized I had noth­ing — zero, zip, nada — to use as exam­ples of cel­e­brat­ing suc­cess, though trust me with this stack of busi­ness gals there’s no short­age of successes.

One woman we spoke to did men­tion that she thought there may be a bit of a gen­der thing going on here, that women are not as apt to toot their own horns as it were as our male coun­ter­parts. And, while gen­der abso­lutisms aren’t typ­i­cally my thing (says the author of a women’s busi­ness book), I kinda think she might be right. So come on dar­ling read­ers, prove us wrong. Let me know what you do to cel­e­brate get­ting that big con­tract you were hop­ing for, or break­ing last month’s sales record, get­ting a write up in a national mag­a­zine, or what­ever kinds of things make you say a lit­tle “yippee!” on the inside as a busi­ness lady. We may just use your inspir­ing cel­e­bra­tory hints in the book.…

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Tags: The Boss of You: The Book · Thoughts

5 responses so far ↓

  • 1 rappy // Jun 30, 2007 at 1:39 pm

    Last year I did a sub­stan­tial amount of trans­la­tion for a local pro­duc­tion of a tele­vi­sion series (a pretty famous one, at that). The trans­la­tion was for inter­nal pur­poses — I wasn’t trans­lat­ing sub-titles — and as such, other than a pay­cheque I wasn’t really expect­ing much else.

    Very shortly before the sea­son was sched­uled to air, I was sent the show’s credit reel to trans­late, and was rather amazed to find my own name on it, as the show’s translator.

    Now, every time I hap­pen to see an episode (which is quite rare), I get a ter­rific lit­tle thrill out of see­ing my name at the end of the show. It’s also a lot more con­crete to say that I trans­lated the show, because I have more than just my resume to prove that it’s true.

  • 2 Megan M. // Jun 30, 2007 at 7:36 pm

    When great projects come through — and often when they get fin­ished, too! — we tend to go out for sushi. Sushi is very cel­e­bra­tory. Yum!

  • 3 scotchneat // Jul 1, 2007 at 5:29 pm

    Along with cel­e­bra­tion, it’s impor­tant to do the PR work, par­tic­u­larly if you are a boss, but not an owner.

    After a big project, noth­ing makes me hap­pier than to get the word out about the con­tri­bu­tions of every­one involved–to the right people.

    As for cel­e­bra­tions of a cel­e­bra­tory nature, one of the best I attended was a Vegas night com­plete with really good prizes (gift cards, satel­lite radio kits and so on). Sev­eral peo­ple started plan­ning it months before project com­ple­tion, so it felt like more than a check­box on the project plan.

  • 4 michelle // Jul 2, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    this is a great point, ladies. so glad you bring it up. each time i land a big con­tract (when i’m not busy rush­ing off to the next item on my to-do list), i go out for a big fat juicy steak with my honey. in fact, i think i’m over­due for one now… ;)

  • 5 Emira // Jul 2, 2007 at 9:01 pm

    Thanks for your thoughts on this ladies (and please keep’em coming).

    Rappy, so other than get­ting a wee tin­gle of excite­ment when you see your name on tv (and yes, that is kinda awe­some) how did you cel­e­brate your fame?

    Scotch­neat, can you elab­o­rate on the idea of spread­ing the word about the con­tri­bu­tions of team mem­bers? Do you mean for­mally, ie/ press releases etc. more informally.

    Megan, great to hear from you! I hope you’re well.

    Michelle, con­grats on what­ever has lead you down the path of the juicy steak din­ner. Have a lovely

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