Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
If you are as obsessed with strategy as I am and you’re thinking about starting a business, you’ve probably taken a long walk through the business book section - and stacked your Kindle with all kinds of texts on finance, business planning and leadership. And all those books are great, but these books, well these books are the ones that are going to fill your gut with the sense of passion you need to get through the ups and downs of building a business.
1. On Writing Well by William Zinger
Here’s the thing that I am best at in the world: writing. I don’t tire of it. I find solace in it. And I never wonder if I’m any good at it. My main contribution every day at the business is not strategy, it’s writing. Writing emails. Writing proposals. Writing scripts. Writing presentations. Writing pitch decks. Writing speeches. Writing concepts. My words are my business INSIDE my business. So keeping fresh on how to do it well? It’s key. If you’re in a creative role or you will be serving as the voice of the business - you have no choice. You gotta write well.
2. The Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes
Workaholics know another workaholic when they see them. Or in the case of Ms. Rhimes, you know it because the badass has three shows on the air right now - making her some kind of super human. But as I’ve written before, you truly have to enjoy your life if you have any intention of enjoying your business. Think of this book as a guide to celebrating and protecting the balance in your life.
3. Nora Ephron: Everything is Copy by Liz Dance
If writing well (#1) is my bible, then this idea is my constitution. The laws to live by in order to get through the hard parts. Every time there is a moment of overwhelming stress, I think of Nora’s words and remember that this is how life works: It must be hard, so we have something to write about later. In this book, you get an inner look at the wonderful Nora Ephron’s point of view.
4. Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
Pixar wasn’t built in a day. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that the film studio that produces some of the most perfect cinema in the history of the medium ever had an ugly period, but as you’ll discover, there are plenty of “ugly” moments in even the most beautiful business. While your cakes might be picture perfect on the day of the wedding or your artisanal lotions might be absolutely delightful once they hit shelves - there is usually a lot of really uncomfortable not-so-greatness that leads up to that moment. This book has taught me to embrace the ugly/messy/figuring it out stages of my business.
5. How to be a Person in the World by Heather Havrilesky
So much of growing your business is putting yourself out there to be judged and chosen (or not) by customers. And that process can really make you feel like a sales robot. Very little of this book actually covers the details of how to deal with being a sales person, but it does deal with the nagging self-doubt that most of us feel from time to time. Or all the time. Remember that we are all people. And we are all trying to figure it out.
So what non-business book changed your view of your business or your journey?
This whole thing started with a mission: support female led films on opening weekend whenever possible.* If you want to read more about why, you can read that post here.
This is late. But it’s better than never. And honestly, can you blame me? It’s been a rough couple of weeks for women at the box office. As in, they are hardly present. Normally, I wouldn’t put movies on this list that are only starring one woman in a principle role, as I’d look for at least two or one other major contribution on the crew, but this month was so paltry, I had to break my own rules.
Since I started doing this a little over a year ago, this is the worst its been. I hope it is never this bad again. Because if there was ever a case for why 7 or 8 movies would be released every weekend and there isn’t even ONE every week for a month that has a woman in a leadership role, then I would like to know what the excuse should be.
OCTOBER 7:
The Girl on the Train (Starring Emily Blunt)
A divorcee becomes entangled in a missing persons investigation that promises to send shockwaves throughout her life.
OCTOBER 14:
Certain Women (Written and Directed by Kelly Reichard and starring Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern)
The lives of three women intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail.
Aquarius (Starring Sonia Braga)
Clara, a 65-year-old widow and retired music critic, vows to live in her apartment until she dies after a developer buys all of the units around her.
OCTOBER 21:
The Whole Truth (Directed by Courtney Hunt and Starring Renée Zellweger)
A defense attorney works to get his teenage client acquitted of murdering his wealthy father.
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One additional note before I go: I am not able to tell you if these movies are objectively good or feminist friendly, as I have not seen all of them. The point of this list is to give you a place to start. The truth is that we don’t have a lot to choose from, but part of the battle is giving you the information. Information is power. However, shared knowledge is also key. So if you see one of these films or have seen an early screening, please let us know if you recommend it or not in the comments.
When I started my business, I had a simple goal for achieving work/life balance: I was going to make sure I took time out to blog every week. (On this here, blog, no less.) It would be a way to ensure that I didn’t lose sight of myself. It was a promise to stay focused on things that made me happy so I didn’t only focus on things that made me money. I’ve failed.
When you start a company, people give you this look. I call it the “good luck, kid” look. It’s part pride, part fear, part hope and part skepticism. The funny thing is that their face is the physical manifestation of your insides. You are feeling all those things. Do they really feel that way or is it a projection? Is that that why you see what you see on their face?
Fast forward to today when I have five people on payroll, a new office, plans for expansion and an actual business with actual revenue. Now, people ask a different question: “how’s business?” And I give them a look that I call, “Can you tell I’m silently drowning in the confusingly endless ocean that is running a small business?” face. You feel this because things are going well. But invariably, if things are going well - that also means that things are very, very busy.
Which brings me to not writing. The other day in between the madness of finishing one project and trying to get to a meeting and make sure I got to the bank and achieved one of the other 100 things on my list, I realized that I was feeling unhappy. The amount of stress, people management and planning that had become my day to day life was overwhelming me. And all I wanted to do was sit down and do nothing.
This is because people management is not why I started my business.
Project coordination is not why I started my business.
Financial planning is not why I started my business.
But all these things were now my job. And since my job is so tightly interwoven with how I see myself and think about my place in the world, I suddenly felt totally out of place inside my own company. I can tell you first hand: that’s a bizarre feeling. For a few weeks, I’ve charged ahead, acknowledging that sometimes having a business that does what you love means you gotta do a lot more business than the thing that you love to make it survive.
However, that can only last so long before a total identity crisis sets in.
I’ve known a lot of overachievers in my life. In business. In corporate careers. In college. We all have this really big thing in common: we equate achievement with our personal value. If we’re not doing well, our value to the world plummets. When we’re killing it, well, our value to our employers and our friends and our partners is at its peak. Actions are everything. Proving to yourself and others that you can take on a challenge is the drug. And you want to experience the high.
In running my business, I’ve realized that no matter how much money you are making, no matter how happy your clients are, no matter how talented your team is becoming and no matter how successful you have become - exhaustion kills the joy. Without proper rest, nutrition, time off and just general balance, you will completely kill any and all of the high.
I won’t say I don’t love Mighteor. Or production. Or what we are doing as a team. Or the projects we are working on. I do. I love this business and all the people that make it a thing.
But, I am so tired.
And that’s confusing. Because identity is something we all struggle with, but for someone like me, pushing myself into what I do for my work is how I always manage those ups and downs. Now my work IS the ups and downs.
This weekend, I’m going to take my first real days off that I’ve had in 2.5 months. I’ve worked every weekend for 8 weeks straight. And to make myself step away, I had to book a damn flight and buy concert tickets. Otherwise, it was never gonna happen. But I also hope to reconnect with the part of myself that finds happiness and hope outside of the business.
Who knows, maybe I’ll even start a journal again.
Because the thing about identities is that we can always change them.
Nobody likes to have to sit down and listen in on a meeting that could go on for hours on end, especially when they could be doing something more productive with their time. If you are the person who has the lead the meeting, it can be really intimidating to try and keep everybody interested in what you have to say. Thankfully, there are a few things that you can keep in mind in order to hook people in and have them participating from beginning to end. In this article, we will discuss five specific ways in which you can increase the engagement of the participants in your IT video conferences.
1. Start Out with an Interesting Entrance
Think about the most interesting conferences you have ever attended, whether in person or over the internet. How did the person holding the discussion get you interested in what he or she had to say? Most of the time, they start with interesting anecdotes, funny jokes, or interesting images or clips that they found from other places. Try something like this for your next meeting to keep your participants guessing, long enough for them to listen to the rest of what you want to talk to them about.
2. Make Use of Body Language to Get Your Point Across
As they say: actions speak louder than words, so be mindful of how you project yourself. If you keep your arms crossed over your chest, then that can signal that you are a proud person who will not listen to what anybody else has to say. On the other hand, if you keep your arms open, then that can show your audience that you are friendly and are willing to take in other people’s suggestions. Slouching may indicate that you are a lazy person, while keeping your back straight indicates that you are confident. Again, your audience may not be able to see your whole body, but the way you carry yourself can be projected even if only your upper half is visible to other people, so make sure to stay aware of how you’re sitting or standing.
3. Use Facial Expressions Whenever It Is Appropriate
Even if you are saying what you think are the right words, your facial expressions will make or break whether your audience will understand what you have to say, especially if you are trying to discuss business matters over video conferences for IT with services like BlueJeans. If you tend to frown, then people will be afraid to speak up. If you smile a lot, they will be more likely to trust you. Just do not over do the smiling to the point of forcing it, though, as they might end up feeling scared of you instead.
4. Display Visuals to Make the Meeting More Interesting
Visuals have been proven to help people retain information so much better than pure text or audio. According to an article by Jacqueline Whitmore on Entrepreneur, you can take advantage of this by creating handouts in PDF form and distribute them via email in order to give your audience a guide of what you are trying to talk about. You can also create a simple presentation that uses images that help get your point across.
5. Do Not Rely Too Heavily on Slides or Handouts
While these visual aids can definitely help audiences better understand your topic, you might be shooting yourself in the foot if you rely on them too heavily. Make sure that you give digital handouts only when you really have to. Better yet, give them out through email at the end of the presentation so that they have something that they can take home and remember your presentation’s main points by. If you are going to be using a presentation during your conference, make sure that it only contains keywords or images to keep them hooked. If you put a wall of text on each slide, then they will end up zoning out and just reading whatever you copied and pasted onto the presentation.
There are many more ways in which you can get people’s attention, but you are more or less sure to get people awake and listening with these five tips. Try to think of more ways to keep your meetings lively instead of lifeless. According to an article by Shirley Gatson on LinkedIn, At the end of each meeting, you can even conduct a short survey to ask for your participant’s opinions on how it went, as well as ask them for suggestions to make the next one better than the last. With enough practice and determination, you will never have to witness a crowd of people who look more like zombies than your fellow co-workers ever again. Good luck on your next IT video conference!
This whole thing started with a mission: support female led films on opening weekend whenever possible.* If you want to read more about why, you can read that post here.
The fall can be a depressing time for movies. With the summer blockbusters now wrapped and the award hungry titles waiting for the winter, there is usually a shortage of compelling stories to pick from. However, it’s a full month for female directors who both write and direct their films. It’s practically a cinematic prozac.
SEPTEMBER 2:
White Girl (Written and Directed by Elizabeth Wood. Starring Morgan Saylor)
Summer, New York City. A college girl falls hard for a guy she just met. After a night of partying goes wrong, she goes to wild extremes to get him back.
SEPTEMBER 9:
Ithaca (Directed by and Starring Meg Ryan)
During the summer of 1942, a 14-year-old looks after his widowed mother and two siblings while working as a bicycle messenger.
SEPTEMBER 16:
Bridget Jones’s Baby (Directed by Sharon Maguire, Written by Helen Fielding and Starring Renee Zellweger)
The continuing adventures of British publishing executive Bridget Jones as she enters her 40s. This time, she’s pregnant!
Miss Stevens (Written and directed by Julia Hart)
A comedy focused on a teacher who chaperones a group of high schoolers to a state drama competition.
Wild Oats (Written by Claudia Myers and Starring Jessica Lange, Demi Moore and Shirley MacLaine)
Everything changes for EVA when she receives a life insurance check accidentally made out for $5,000,000 instead of the expected $50.000. She and her best friend take the money and head out for the adventure of a lifetime.
SEPTEMBER 23:
Girl Asleep (Directed by Rosemary Myers and Starring Bethany Whitmore)
The world is closing in on Greta Driscoll. On the cusp of turning fifteen she can’t bear to leave her childhood, it contains all the things that give her comfort.
The Dressmaker (Written and Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse and Starring Kate Winslet)
In 1950s Australia, beautiful, talented dressmaker Tilly returns to her tiny hometown to right wrongs from her past. As she tries to reconcile with her mother, she starts to fall in love while transforming the fashion of the town.
My Blind Brother (Written and Directed by Sophie Goodhart)
Robbie, a blind athlete, is loved and adored as a local sports hero, and his brother, Bill, has never received the same adoration, which leads to a rivalry that boils over when they both fall for the same girl.
SEPTEMBER 30:
Queen of Katwe (Directed by Mira Nair and Starring Lupita Nyong’o)
A young girl from Uganda trains to become a world chess champion.
American Honey (Written and Directed by Andrea Arnold)
A teenage girl with nothing to lose joins a traveling magazine sales crew, and gets caught up in a whirlwind of hard partying, law bending and young love as she criss-crosses the Midwest with a band of misfits.
Generation Startup (Directed by Cheryl Miller Houser and Cynthia Wade)
Generation Startup takes us to the front lines of entrepreneurship in America, capturing the struggles and triumphs of six recent college graduates who put everything on the line to build startups in Detroit. Shot over 17 months, it’s an honest, in-the-trenches look at what it takes to launch a startup. Directed by Academy Award winner Cynthia Wade and award-winning filmmaker Cheryl Miller Houser, the film celebrates risk-taking, urban revitalization, and diversity while delivering a vital call-to-action-with entrepreneurship at a record low, the country’s economic future is at stake.
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One additional note before I go: I am not able to tell you if these movies are objectively good or feminist friendly, as I have not seen all of them. The point of this list is to give you a place to start. The truth is that we don’t have a lot to choose from, but part of the battle is giving you the information. Information is power. However, shared knowledge is also key. So if you see one of these films or have seen an early screening, please let us know if you recommend it or not in the comments.
