Welcome, June! I think.

And May? Don't let the door hit you, K? Thx bai.

May was not as much fun as my horoscope had claimed it would be, and contained all sorts of land mines of unexpected expenses.

And at first glance, June's horoscope kind of blows. And yet, I'm planning to hit June flat out and have fun.

I'm going to lapse just a little bit into business talk here. One of the critical pieces of the real estate business is prospecting for business. I was trained by more than one old school real estate company, and their "formula for success" hadn't changed since the first time I heard it in the 80s: make three hours of calls every day without fail, asking everyone you speak to whether they know anyone interested in buying, selling or investing in real estate in the next thirty days. It was scripted, and we were supposed to memorize it and just turn ourselves into prospecting machines, closing our doors and picking up our phones and dialing for dollars Monday through Friday, three hours a day. Bleh.

And I was very turned off, and started thinking that if this is what you have to do to survive, I'm a goner. I just can't call people I know, let alone total strangers, and put them on the spot begging them for business. And I don't give a damn what the bigtime trainers say, no matter how you disguise it, that is what you are doing. I know my sphere, and I know damn good and well that after one or two such conversations my calls are going to voicemail. "Oh crap, it's Catherine calling me again on some lame pretense so she can pump me for business." Embarrassing. They don't do it to me, so I am not going to do it to them. It's that simple. Now, if I have entirely professional non-friend contacts who made regular prospecting calls to me, I'd have no problem calling THEM in return, because that is how they operate and fair's fair here. It's not that prospecting calls are BAD, it's just that if I had to sit down and do them three hours a day 5 days a week I'd freaking kill myself in a month. I'm a face to face person. I use the phone for conveying business information and asking questions. I am not in love with the phone, and I can't spend hours on it at a stretch.

And then I found a couple of authors and trainers who had the same reaction to old school sales techniques that I have. I adore Jennifer and Sell with Soul, she totally changed my mindset from "I have to go against my own nature and master hard sell techniques and turn myself into a robot if I'm going to succeed," to thinking that maybe I can grow a decent business without doing anything I find truly repugnant.

And (again while browsing for content for my Kindle) I found Less Blah Blah - More Ah Ha. How social savvy real estate agents become trusted, preferred, referred -- and rewarded. and it's loaded with current and as Jennifer says, "Soulful" advice about how to just get out there and be nice and useful.

And it led to today's Ah-ha! Moment.

I'm on a parallel mission for June. There is the big business development push, and I am also about 10 lousy pounds and some serious toning from wearing a lot of nice stuff hanging in my closet at this very moment. I'd rejoined the gym and had been going semi-regularly (okay, not so regularly) in the late afternoons, if I didn't have anything else I had to get done, or yanno, felt like parking my ass on the couch. If I had the energy and ambition I'd come home, change, and head for the gym after 4, when it was practically empty. I worked out and came home without talking to a soul.

Today I woke up and decided to switch things up and went to the gym in the morning. I ran into former neighbors and chatted, and now have a good reason to follow up with several people on the street - the same gym that is quiet and fairly empty at 4 is a different place at 7:30, with chattier people and an obvious crew of regulars. I received more greetings and smiles than I ever had in the late afternoon, and I'm now going to make myself part of that morning crew, and walked out with people to call about real life stuff - not to harass about "Do you know anybody buying or selling?" but for other real estate issues we have in common in the neighborhood. And I was like, "Wow! That's how networking works when it's not forced and scripted!"

The socialization of the corporate cube rat is an ongoing process.