Legacy development expert offers free tips in honor of Make A Difference Day

RENO, NV – Women professionals and business owners are putting their unique mark on the world by creating positive changes not only in business but also in their communities. There are more women who have created successful enterprises and built significant wealth than ever before. Many of these successful women are also making significant positive changes in their communities and the world at large by creating lasting legacies- in keeping with the purpose of Make A Difference Day on October 24.

“These incredible women leaders – who often don’t see themselves that way – have enjoyed rewarding careers, built their own businesses and experienced tremendous success, and are now looking for ways to give back to their communities in a long-term, sustainable way,” says Dolly Garlo, RN, JD, PCC who advises successful mid-career women who are considering just that, and what’s next beyond their careers. “I receive numerous calls and emails from women with amazing backgrounds, knowledge and skills who want to contribute in a more authentic and significant way, but aren’t sure where to start.”

The annual Make A Difference Day holiday is the largest national day of helping others in the United States.  Founded by USA WEEKEND Magazine in partnership with HandsOn Network 19 years ago, it is also supported by Newman’s Own, the late, great Paul Newman’s social enterprise – which is now run by his daughter, Nell Newman.  In honor of this year’s events, Garlo offers the following tips to help leaders interested in creating a bigger positive impact.

§  Demonstrate your values and interests by contributing your time and skills.  Women business owners have a huge depth of knowledge and professional skills that public benefit organizations need.  Serve on a board or advisory committee to learn more about how public benefit agencies work and help them implement effective, efficient and profitable strategies.  The benefit gained by these agencies and the individuals and community it serves are a part of your personal legacy.

§  Inventory your skills, assets and wealth today. There are three types of legacies: financial only, participation only or a mixture of the two.  Which will yours be?  Take stock today of what you want to accomplish and what you will need to build your legacy.

§  Think big, start small. Many great beneficial causes have started with little money and by very young people.  Start thinking today what steps you can take and what things you can put into place to create your legacy.  Make a plan. Talk to like minded people. Research what it will take to bring your legacy to life.  Such legacy projects are born out of passion and quickly take a life of their own.

§  Planning for the future starts today! Most people think of legacies as an end of life activity!  In fact, more and more individuals are creating lasting legacies while they are still young enough to see them grow and deliver their good work in the world.  It can be an authentic expression of genuine interests, skills you enjoy using, involving and benefitting others from a community you care about, and they are built from inception knowing you’ll step away and allow others to continue.

§  Be inclusive and involve many.  To make a very significant impact on your community, it takes a lot of cooperation and support.  Share your passion.  Invite others to support your vision and goals.  It is a great way to teach another generation about business, wealth and contribution while building your legacy and making a lasting difference in the world.

Garlo is founder of Thrive!! Inc. and a program called Creating Legacy (www.CreatingLegacy.com).  A former critical care nurse and health care attorney turned professionally trained coach, she assists small business owners and professionals with business and strategic marketing development, succession and exit-planning, and life design post-career including legacy development. Garlo brings more than 30 years of professional, writing, speaking and facilitation services – and her own legacy creating experience, establishing the Garlo Heritage Nature Preserve (http://www.senecacounty.com/parks/Garlo.htm) – to bear in helping clients make a difference now that lasts for generations. For more information also visit www.CreatingLegacyNetwork.com.

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contact:

Dolly M. Garlo, RN, JD, PCC
President, Thrive!! Inc.
Email
Mobile: 305-849-8495

I had an interesting discussion today with someone about my coaching work.  She was a friend and business owner I know, but we hadn’t talked in year – and caught up through Facebook.  That’s great fun – amid the folks friending me I sometimes can’t fully remember, every now and then you stumble on someone you really DO want to connect with. 

Anyway, prior to our actual chat, after FB and then email exchanges, we had both had the opportunity to visit each others’ websites and catch up on each other’s work.  She started at my old, original site, www.AllThrive.com, which was built to describe the focus of my practice back in the late 1990′s and crossing the ‘threshold into the new millenium’ — remember Y2K?  (I was studying strategic marketing design then with a company that at the time was called Y2Marketing – Y2M, for short – so I remember it vividly because people kept referring to the company as Y2K … they’ve since changed focus and names, but I did get great training from them in how to do direct marketing).

I really do need to get that old site updated, but it gave me the chance to explain a bit more about Creating Legacy – and how developing it has been a journey that my clients started me on. 

Creating Legacy and this blog/network site  were built as a result of so many of my clients saying they wanted to transition out of what they had been doing, to do something that really makes a difference and feels significant to them in terms of making a positive contribution.  Many of them came to me initially to help them build or develop a business.  The evolution came when, business operating smoothly with them at the helm (rather than the business running them …), they discovered they wanted to exit from it and had 20, 30 even 40 more years of life to do something with.

That something might involve different work or starting a new business – but the difference this go around is that they want it to be on their terms, meaningful, fulfilling, fun-even, and have some significance.  If they’re going to work diligently (some even more so than in prior careers) they want it to be good work, even great work – not just hard work.  Yes, productive; yes, profitable – they’d been around the block enough times to know that anything not run in a business-like fashion doesn’t run for too long.  And maybe even pay them a salary if need be – but whether a for profit structure or a nonprofit structure, it needed to be a social enterprise.  Something that made sense and not just money.

Somehow they find even more life energy to bring to the project that way. From a coaching perspective, it always seemed to me that’s how one’s work in the world really should be.  So my clients sort of led me toward the concepts behind Creating Legacy.  In a way, with and because of them I’ve been developing it all from there.  It’s not about what you leave at the end of life, it’s what you consciously build during it …

As I told her, I still do the business development/succession planning/exit planning and career transition work, too – depending on where the person is when they come to me.  But so often that has led into an “and what I really want to do is …” conversation.  That can go in so many different directions about what they decide to do or build next, or they choose to add on to an existing business from a social responsibility perspective, before they step away. 

It’s been really fun and fulfilling work for me, I think that with our generation, there is so much more of that coming.  Not to mention from Gen X and Gen Y – who already have the concepts of working with the world’s ecosystems and making thing sustainable well ingrained in their thinking.

Which is good – the world needs more of it!  And I’m just happy as can be working with people to help them build it.

Sharon Conley, MD was a practicing medical oncologist at Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, FL in need of a change. She had a successful clinical practice that included directing the transplant program in her hospital and conducting clinical research trials. But she was tired, a bit weary of the health care delivery system, and frustrated that she could not do more for the cancer patients she treated.

Dr. Conley envisioned work on a larger scale to comfort and improve the experience of hospitalized patients. Hers had often complained that they could not directly access their prescribed pain medications in enough time to alleviate their often excruciating pain. In her numerous years of medical practice, Dr. Conley developed many ideas of ways to improve the bedside care of hospital patients – to make their experience safer and more satisfying. To address this particular concern, she designed and secured a provisional patent on a device she called the MOD®, short for “Medication on Demand,” to allow hospital patients the ability to self-administer their own pain medications instead of having to call already too-busy nurses to have each dose delivered.

She dreamed of seeing her medical device, the first-ever oral PCA (patient controlled analgesia) device, serving patients in hospitals all over the world.

A physician colleague recommended that Dr. Conley talk to a Professional Coach with whom she herself had been working. So, not sure what would happen, she contacted Dolly Garlo, a former nurse and attorney, now a trained International Coach Federation certified coach, with a business called Thrive!! (www.allthrive.com). Together they began to explore the possibilities of accomplishing the seemingly insurmountable task of bringing the MOD® device to market. “Persistence and consistency, Sharon,” she would hear repeatedly. “Just put one foot in front of the other and let’s see where you go next.”

Since that start, Dr. Conley figured a way, one step at a time, to close her medical practice and leave her physician partnership, while finishing the patent for her device and exploring the world of business – which she discovered happily, was not the mystery she thought it was.

She took business seminars specifically devoted to topics like raising venture capital, working through the maze of medical device manufacturing and mastering applicable government regulations. She created bridges to stay connected to her former medical colleagues, took on clinical research consulting projects to maintain interim financial income while restructuring her finances, and learned to network with anyone having a focus related to the MOD®. She produced a prototype device and was granted a National Institutes of Health grant to pursue a clinical trial of the MOD® at Halifax Medical Center, successfully completed in 2006.

In the clinical trial of Dr. Conley’s MOD® device, 95% of patients reported satisfaction with pain management and ease of use and 84% of nurses reported saving valuable nursing time. Impressive initial results called for a coach-encouraged celebration to maintain momentum with an increasingly busy to-do list. And there have been many such celebrations with each milestone she completed.

Dr. Conley used her great skills at sizing up people and working with multi-disciplinary professionals to assemble a crackerjack business team – a COO with significant business start up experience and a fabulous CFO, not to mention teams of legal, accounting, design and software engineering, nursing, pharmacy and other healthcare professionals – always including her trusted coach to help keep her moving forward. As a result, her company, AVANCEN, LLC: Improving Patient Care at the Bedside (www.avancen.com) was born.

And after developing a sound working business plan and raising close to $3 million of private funds the first MOD® devices rolled off the manufacturing line. An ever-evolving business and marketing campaign is being systematically implemented to bring them to hospitals throughout the US, and ultimately the EU, Asia and even Saudi Arabia.  Non-exclusive distribution agreements have been put in place with other vendors who serve the healthcare market from a different perspective.

As she was making this uncharted journey, Dr. Conley was encouraged to stay in touch with the “heart” of her activities — the reasons she was making these big changes. So she went to clown camp to perfect her Dr. FeelGood character – a sort of Groucho Marx in a white lab coat with a magic wand and jelly beans in a jar as feel good pills – her own Patch Adams approach to medical practice. Dr. FeelGood, certainly her alter ego, is one with whom she is encouraged to stay in touch, along with the pursuit of rigorous self-care to maintain the energy for her ambitious projects.

While attending a magic show as chosen way to fulfill that coaching request, Dr. Conley met Gerry, her “Irish Angel,” who has become one of her many mentors. Gerry is also an entrepreneur, with considerable business success and he has introduced her to others in Ireland who may someday play a role in AVANCEN’s mission.  There have been many more  such “chance” meetings of the right people in all areas of her projects, just as she needed them.

Magic indeed. These are but examples of the series of serendipitous events that have occurred since Dr. Conley committed to work with a coach to bring her large dream to life – a dream that will leave an incredible legacy in the medical world.

“One of the wonderful benefits of coaching,” adds Dr. Conley, “is the ability to have somebody to talk to on a regular basis who can help you reflect and discover what your your real talents and passions are all about. Then your coach can help you find the courage and patience within yourself to develop those dreams into reality so you can live life to its fullest.”

Written by: Dolly M. Garlo, RN, JD, PCC & Sharon Conley, PhD, MD

Fortune magazine recently interviewed Eric Schmidt, Google’s Chairman and CEO, in a series asking CEO’s to reveal the ”best advice I ever got”.  Mr. Schmidt’s comment?  “Hire a coach.”

At first, he rejected the idea thinking of coaching in a remedial sense – to help correct something that was wrong.  He soon learned, however, that a coach’s role is to help you be better, perform better.

Using a typical sports analogy, more specifically, Mr. Schmidt said this:  “The coach doesn’t have to play the sport as well as you do. They have to watch you and get you to be your best. In the business context a coach is not a repetitious coach. A coach is somebody who looks at something with another set of eyes, describes it to you in [his] words, and discusses how to approach the problem.”  Here’s what else he had to say:

From my perspective as a trained and certified executive and business development coach, nobody needs a coach, again in the remedial sense, but anyone who is “coachable” can benefit greatly from working with one.

So what does it mean to be coachable?

Someone highly coachable
• can be relied upon to be on time for all calls and appointments
• is willing and able to incorporate the benefits of coaching in their life and business
• is fully willing to do the work and let the coach do the coaching
• will keep their word without struggling or sabotaging
• is willing to “try on” new concepts or different ways of doing things
• speaks straight and tells the whole truth to the coach with both respect and compassion
• can immediately share if they are not getting what they need or expect from the coach, and discuss what they want and need from the relationship
• is willing to stop or change the self-defeating behaviors that limit success (such as blaming, justification, complaining or problem-identification without contribution of possible solutions)
• recognize that coaching is an investment in this coaching program and intend to get as much as possible from the experience
• sees coaching as a worthwhile activity to improve effectiveness in life and business
• can share the credit for success with the coach and others

Choose a qualified coach – one with experience and coach-specific training, and preferably one certified by an independent professional body that requires adherence to a code of professional ethics.  Then, if you have, or are willing to develop these “coachability” traits, get ready to skyrocket your success at whatever you choose to work on with a coach.

I started my own Creating Legacy journey when, as a nurse and attorney practicing health care law, studying to become a professional coach, and developing my company Thrive!!, I began some of the hardest work I’d ever done. I worked with my sister, also a high achiever and busy physician and mother of three, to help our parents begin their departure from this earth.

The Garlo Girls: first generation daughters of Polish and Lithuanian immigrant physicians, we were no strangers to valuing hard work and to the ideas of accomplishment, escaping adversity to create a better life, and passing along something meaningful to future generations. How to truly honor what we were taught and the gifts we had received from them — and deal with the myriad of issues including aging, illness, treatment and end of life decisions, navigating the healthcare systems, understanding and implementing an estate plan , and on and on — was a bigger job that we anticipated. Especially while trying to navigate our own careers and participate in our own families and communities.

Coming from little to nothing, our parents escaped Communist and Nazi occupations and arrived in the U.S. in 1948 with a few suitcases and our brother, a four year old. They were unsure and fearful, though elated by the opportunity this move provided, and that their children would not have to go through the adversity they had experienced. Through work, study, saving and investment, the family was able to acquire some 300 acres of farmland over a 30 year period. As our father’s last illness took him away from being able to tend the land, his refuge from the possibility of another war, we were faced with the question of what to do with this property. More importantly, we wanted to figure out how to keep the meaning of that land alive.

As busy professionals ourselves and living far away from the family farm, figuring out what to do involved a maze of new issues, advisors, land use and tax matters and paperwork. I often thought how nice it would be to have one advisor or set of resources that could have helped us through the myriad of family, property, financial, health care, legal and personal life, not to mention emotional and other issues and decisions …

“The farm” had always been a refuge of sorts, where no hunting was permitted to allow all manner of land and water flora and fauna to prosper there. While we focused on how to keep that meaning and purposes alive, as serendipity would have it we discovered the possibility of donating the land to create the county’s first park. In keeping with the spirit of the place, we negotiated, thoughtfully crafted agreements and created the Garlo Heritage Nature Preserve. Portions were subsequently named and dedicated by the park commissioners to all the family members who had been involved. See www.senecacounty.com/parks/Garlo.htm.

I had no idea how important that decision would be or how valuable, not only to us as we struggled to determine just how to properly manage this large piece of property, but also to scores of people who came after us. Since its formation in 1999, the county park commissioners have done a superb job of honoring the family’s values for the property, and have built it into a natural resource that people in the surrounding area use and likewise honor. Scout troops learn camping skills, build accessible trails and plant trees. School groups learn about nature first-hand. Volunteer groups maintain the nature preserve. Horse-lovers ride the equestrian trails. Handicap-accessible boardwalks and strategically placed benches allow the elderly and others whom might not get there commune with the peace and quiet of nature in the wooded countryside. All enjoy their year-round outdoor experiences there. The most recent addition has been a Montessori nature day pre-school program conducted at the preserve.

All these results occurred because of the efforts of others to whom this valuable land resource has been passed on. What started as an idea, became a set of activities coupled with a carefully structured contribution and estate plan, and resulted in a sustainable operation. Without fully realizing what we were doing at the time, the farm has become a living legacy that we can enjoy and feel good about, knowing that others can also enjoy this resource for generations.

The “Garlo Girls” and next generation of family continue to visit the nature preserve and marvel at the developments there. We also continue to be deeply moved at the seemingly magical evolution of a dream in ways that honor our family’s love of nature and preservation and continues to pleasantly surprise.

Written by: Dolly M. Garlo, RN, JD, PCC

When her ideas started bubbling up, and could no longer be contained by indulging in occasional daydreams, Dr. Sharon Conley was an accomplished M.D., specializing in medical oncology – cancer care – with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry.  She headed up the transplant program at her hospital and was active in the day-to-day clinical practice of medicine.  Meaning, she had lots of really sick patients in the hospital to care for, a busy office practice, and a professional partnership to help operate.  She was busy.  And she was restless. And troubled.

She was troubled because her sick patients, who frequently had a lot of pain associated with their conditions, were uncomfortable much of the time they were in the hospital.  And she was restless because she knew there had to be better ways to help them be more comfortable in that setting – when they were there for care intended to make things better.  She was also restless because the ideas she had for how to address that goal, were just that: intangible imaginings.

Eventually this got the better of her and she took action – the first step in the creation process of turning nothing (those ephemeral ideas) into something.  She captured one of her ideas and wrote it down.  That action turned into some drawings, and it all turned into a provisional patent application.  And then a call to my office.

In our initial consultation call, Dr. Conley told me she had a product she wanted to bring to market, and explained that she had a number of ideas for how to make patient care at the bedside a better experience … for the patients.  As a nurse, listening to a doctor talk of something other than diagnosis and treatment – specifically compassionate care – I was intrigued.  She explained about a device she had invented that would allow patients to directly access their physician prescribed pain relieving medicines when they were due on their own, at the bedside, without having to call a nurse and wait for a single dose to be delivered.  She wanted to manufacture it and make it available to as many patients in as many health care settings as possible.  As a professional coach focused on business development and personal fulfillment, I was eager to help her do it.

A great idea and a lofty goal combined to make an incredible legacy story.  Read the rest of it, here.

What has developed from there is a sophisticated business system, utilizing the most applicable legal structures, and incorporating an amazing team of people all inspired to rally around the project.  She didn’t know from the start what she could do, she just believed in the possibilities and was willing to take action – and seek help for doing it.  As a result, Dr. Conley developed into a physician entrepreneur pursuing a socially noble purpose.  See more about her company and its first product, the MOD device, by clicking here: AVANCEN: Improving Patient Care At The Bedside.

Legacy ideas come in all forms and sizes.  Will you be a mother of invention for one of yours?