My friend Rick Salmeron recently shared this video with me.  I am grateful for the reminder that the only road to success is through repeated failure. 

Influence. It’s the secret that sets the leaders apart from the doers. It’s the ingredient that turns ideas into action. It’s that je ne sais quoi that separates the tastemakers from the followers. And it’s the reason why you may not be making the difference you could be.

Do you want to create a sea change but find yourself stuck in the shallow end? Do you have a big vision but keep falling down on execution? Getting heard requires more than high ideals, good ideas or even cold hard cash. It requires influence. Here’s the good news. Influence can be learned. This I know from experience. When I started the trek from eco-activist to ecopreneur and author, I had to start from scratch. I had no platform, no environmentally-based education, no sustainability-specific experience, no green credentials and no real contacts to speak of. Or so I thought. Only after spending the past four years studying the most successful leaders in the world did I come to realize that I had everything I needed to make a unique contribution. And so do you. 

Here are six simple steps that I’ve observed for gaining the influence to get your green plan off the ground. But “simple” doesn’t always mean easy. Then again, who ever said that changing the world would be?

After five years of studying sustainability, I've reached a singular conclusion.  The best way for any of us to change the world is to devote ourselves to bettering a little piece of it.  But in 2005, trying to pinpoint my piece proved more challenging than expected.  Was it may neighborhood? Was it my friends?  Was it my school or was it my church?  No, it turned out to be none of the above.  That little piece of the world I needed to change was me.  Only after addressing that did everything else fall into place.  Since embarking on this journey, I've made green friends, started a green business, built a green home and written a green book.  But one thing was still missing: a way to bring it all together.  Enter EcoTuesday.  Now I'm taking the most important step of all: forging a green community.
 
Having done volunteer work in one capacity or another since college, I've always found myself contributing the same skills.  Call it volunteer coordinator, newcomer's committee, welcome wagon, you name it.  While the title would vary, my role remained the same: the "hostess with the mostest."  Today I'm thrilled that I get to channel this natural inclination for connecting people into a community where (finally) my interests converge: green business, entrepreneurship, PR, networking, speaking, and of course socializing.  Fortunately, building communities in the 21st century is easier than ever before.  With EcoTuesday, we have an instant set of tools to pull people together.  I'm excited to have the means to introduce my friends and a place to mingle on a monthly basis.  I'm already imagining the synergy when I introduce the alternative energy consultant and the geothermal entrepreneur to the green builder!  This is just one of the many chains I look forward to creating amongst like minds.
 
If your'e in Dallas and you have even the slightest interest in hanging with a group of green-minded people, we'd love for you to join us.  Here's a link to our local page on the national EcoTuesday website.  Beginning on January 26, we'll meet every fourth Tuesday at 7:00 PM at Times Ten Cellars in the Lakewood neighborhood in Dallas.  Come help us grow the Dallas chapter into something special!