Читать книгу The Net Result - Book 3 - Lucille Jr. Orr - Страница 5

Founder & President

I can’t believe it’s Christmas Eve, 2011 already; it only seems like last year that I was organising the national awards for the Australian Executive Women’s Network, not twenty years ago! I’m listening to “Carols by Candle Light” on television while I write to you and feeling very nostalgic.

One of the most wonderful women I’ve ever met is our editor Nancy Robinson Flannery and this year on the 1^st September, 2011 she died after suffering for many years with terrible back pain. I will never forget the day I met her at the launch of Fabian Dattner’s book. We were at a luncheon in Adelaide and I spoke to Fabian’s publisher about printing our first “Net Result” book for us. I was told it would take about two years to publish our book after we had written the manuscript.

I came back to the large, round table for ten and sighed and then in a loud voice called out, “Looks like I’m going to have to become a Publisher now!” Nancy was sitting on the other side of the table and invited me to join her with my coffee and sweets. That day turned out to be one of the best in my life. A new beginning, as Nancy offered to assist us. She is one of Australia’s most successful authors, editors and publishers; Nancy was now my Mentor!

Right then we decided to publish the first “Net Result” book together with the help of my staff at the Australian Executive Women’s Network. Gosh it was so long ago, there wasn’t any type-setting equipment in those days. We had to lay out the printed text on large broad-sheets of paper for the printer to photograph them and then typeset and print them.

This was the beginning of the most exciting period for the AEWN. We had already completed five years of Public Speaking Competitions and SA Executive Woman of the Year Awards and I was keen to publish these wonderful women’s stories in a book and present it to the AEWN members when we presented the final SA Award, prior to launching our inaugural National Australian Executive Woman of the Year Award the following year.

We did it! The book was published in time and I remember over 500 businessmen and businesswomen attending the book launch in our AEWN headquarters in Adelaide, prior to the Award Presentation Night that followed a short time later.

It’s amazing how setting goals works and with Nancy’s help we had no problem. Looking back I realise as I write this foreword tonight, I’m about the same age now, as Nancy was when we first met. I’m 66 years young and she must have been in her early sixties.

Attending Nancy’s funeral this year and listening to her daughter talking about the Preface Nancy wrote in our first “Net Result” book made me go home and get the books out again and read the fabulous stories written by our Award Winning women back in the nineties.

I’ll never forget the coffee meeting I had one evening when I was searching for a publishing sponsor for my real estate book, “AWARE – Australian Women and Real Estate”. Sitting in the Café waiting for the manager of a Finance Company to come back to the table with our coffees, I got talking to one of his young female staff who had joined us that evening. It just happened I had books with me, the pink, “Net Result” books and the Japanese book we had published in Japan, in the mid-nineties, featuring Australian and Japanese businesswomen.

I pulled the books out of my briefcase and the young woman gave a delighted scream, “Oh, I love those books,” she said. “The women in those pink books are my Mentors. The “Net Result” books were what we studied in our Career Classes at High School.” She looked so happy to meet me. I guess I was one of her Mentors from the books.

It gave me a thrill to, because I know schools, colleges, universities and business centres Australia wide had purchased the books and it really pleased me to hear first-hand what a wonderful benefit they had been to these students.

As life and business has changed so dramatically with the use of the Internet and Social Media I decided it was time to hop on board this year and create some e-books too! I had already published my paperback book titled AWARE- Australian Women and Real Estate (A business in a book) and my wonderful son, Steve Orr turned the manuscript into an e-book.

When I found the e-book on my iPhone I discovered there was a bookshelf that held nine books, so immediately I decided I had to have nine e-books online by 2012. By October 2011 I had already updated two of my other best-selling books, “How to Ask for What You Want and GET IT!” and “Networking Games” this book I wrote with John Rich following our meeting at Business Club Australia, during the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Plus I wrote another new e-book titled, “Succeed without University Degrees, Mentors or Money” in September 2011.

To celebrate Nancy Flannery’s life, I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than thanking her for her fabulous contribution to the growth of our Australian Executive Women’s Network than to re-write the first two pink books and turn them into three “Net Result” e-books. I want these books to help thousands of young women, not only in Australia but world-wide, who aspire to climb corporate ladders or start their own small businesses in future. These stories will be a wonderful recipe to follow when they begin their careers.

Nancy Flannery I salute! She will always have a special place in my heart and she will never be forgotten by me or the fellow AEWN members. I lift my wine glass tonight in her honour and to bless all the women who joined AEWN and who competed in our Public Speaking Competitions and our Awards. May they all be remembered by those who have learnt from them; how to be successful in life and business.