The Agony of a New Formal Headshot

I was presenting at a Milwaukee marketing association luncheon a couple of years ago when a man from the audience cornered me. "You don't look like your headshot," he accused. "Your hair is too long!" He was correct, I'd let my hair grow a few inches. What was odd was how betrayed he obviously felt.

So, I'm going to come clean with you. My hair has been grey since my late 20s. As every woman who covers (or shall we say 'enhances'?) her grey knows, new color does not stick very well. Every six weeks you start out looking far more vivid than you would like... and then at the end you're all washed out, effectively colorless. There's a spot, though, right in the middle where you look precisely the way you are supposed to look.

I hit such a spot this past Wednesday. It wasn't just perfect color, there was something in the soft spring air. My hair was wonderful. It was perhaps the Best Hair Day of my life.

Which is why Michael Persson, the professional photographer, who I'd been scheduled to do a session with, discovered his childcare was all messed up and could he come Friday instead please? Naturally.

Friday was not the best hair day of my life. It was flat and horribly straight with ratty ends, and my bangs were completely missing. But the show must go on. I put on a blue dress shirt, because blue is supposed to make people think you are trustworthy. Then, I sucked down a very large glass of Hungarian Tokaji wine and sallied forth into my new office which we'd decided to use as the photo studio.

"You should put some lipstick on!" an onlooker tried to be helpful. "I am wearing lipstick." "Well, pinch your cheeks."

As he got set up, Michael told me a story about his last portrait session where he'd shot James Taylor as the musician softly strummed on his guitar. "What did he play?" I asked. "A sort of greatest hits selection." I can't compete with that, so I just handed him a glass of Tokaji and said, "It's from 1996."

As he began to snap away, I thought about what Tyra Banks always says on America's Next Top Models, "Put your energy in your eyes! " I'm not sure how one goes about putting energy in one's eyes, but I did my best, until the onlooker said, "What are you doing?" I explained. "Don't be silly, you're wearing glasses. Just stop it, stand there and smile." Which is what I did, arming myself with trustworthy, This-Woman-Is-Good-to-Do-Business-With thoughts the whole time.

So, now I have a new headshot. Please don't expect me to look precisely like this in person, except for maybe a few days every six weeks.

Starting a New Company - First You Pull A Lot of Weeds

Two weeks ago I incorporated again, this time as Anne Holland Ventures Inc. So my much-trumpeted "year off from business" lasted a little less than five months. Didn't even make it to the halfway mark. Phooey. I choose to believe if the weather had been suitable for gardening, my break would have lasted longer, but I'm probably fooling myself.

I also choose to believe that this time around I'll learn from my experiences and not do anything that causes undue stress, insane working hours, or more than a tiny handful of employees and contractors. Cross my fingers. Cross my fingers really, really hard.

First order of business is to decide what's the business? You know what happens when you lay out a new garden bed? Turn your head for a couple of weeks and suddenly it's coated with tons of baby weeds. The tough part can be telling which are the weeds and which are the seedlings you'd wanted there. Also, I have a soft spot for weeds. Often their flowers and foliage can be just as marvelous as the plants you officially planted.

When I announced I'd be going back into business pretty much the same thing happened. Phone calls, emails, Facebook notes and LinkedIn letters began pouring in from all sorts of people who had great ideas. I was so excited my head spun. Nothing's more fun than new growth, new adventures, new horizons. What should I do???? I wanted to do *everything*.

Luckily I did the intelligent thing. I went on vacation. OK, so I felt kind of silly sitting at a bar at St Pete Beach in Florida surrounded by hard working people who really deserved their vacations. They'd probably been in cubicles with a tropical screensaver glowing at them through the winter, giving them the strength to pull through. And there I was, fresh from five months of basically lounging on my velvet sofa surrounded by heaps of gardening catalogs. Needless to say I didn't get even a little drunk. I didn't feel like I'd earned it.

Instead I thought about the request Tom Thompson, former president of Phillips Business Information, had made to his leadership team one year in the mid-90s as we gathered to make our annual growth plan presentations. "Before you tell me what you're going to launch and build," he said, "first of all tell me what you're going to abandon."

What ideas should I focus on and which should I abandon, at least for now? What's a weed to be pulled and what's a seedling to be nurtured?

I figured it out, I hope. Then spent some time contacting a lot of people to say, "Thanks but no thanks for now." Like many entrepreneurs, I'm an idea person. This means I'm going to continue to have to do a lot of weeding. Anyone can have an idea. It's execution that counts. Now I have to settle down and focus. No new ideas. No more weeds.

What am I actually doing? I'm getting sites up and press releases out in the next few weeks and you'll see then. If you'd like to be on the list of people to get pinged as I start new stuff, go ahead and sign yourself up for email and/or the RSS feed for this blog. It's going to be a fun ride.