Carla Bobka, relationship person.
My life is all about relationships, and there is little that means more to me. Not just family and friends, but business relationships, too. In fact, I have a knack for those.
With more than 15 years in professional relationship management, I’ve realized supporting those relationships is not intuitive to everyone. It is intuitive to me. The blogging platform is a way to pass along what I know, lessons learned and insight to those who might find it useful or are just curious. SocialPie is how I help business owners grow their relationships to grow their business. Relationships aren’t rocket science, but they do take attention. This is a spot for me to dump thoughts on of the skills I’ve learned and some of my instincts, making room for more to show up.
Most of my career, I entered new business relationships to fix a long-standing problem. “Send Carla, see what she can do.” I fix things and set up a system so it stays fixed for a pretty long time. That builds trust, even when we start out in a very distrustful environment. When you make the customer successful, the customer will give you a chance to be successful, too.
Have a goal > Develop a strategy > Work the process > Measure the results.
I started SocialPie to help businesses use all these new digital platforms to connect to their customers. Platforms like email marketing, Facebook and blogging are relationship tools; so is the phone. They help connect people and ideas and allow for 2-way communication. There are hundreds to wade through, and SocialPie helps clients narrow their focus to maximize their effort. So far I haven’t met a company that can’t make use of any of them. Nothing gives me more of a rush than seeing a client “get it.” Those light-bulb moments are priceless.
Random Personal stuff:
Married: to Superman-seriously, read the Say Thanks post about the cookies and you will see what I mean.
Kids: yes, 
Favorite Band: Steely Dan (esp. Deacon Blues)
Last meal: biscuits w/ sausage gravy, lots of pepper
Starter and Finale of the day: coffee (illy, not DD; black, since I was 3); vino
Greatest sport: football
Greatest game: golf, and Mexican Train Dominos
Grad School: Villanova Executive MBA, the hardest 21 months ever, and brought some of the best relationships ever. Money well spent.
Character trait that gets me in trouble: failure to state the obvious, ’cause its obvious.
Dog/Cat: dog
Dream job: professional party giver; it’s genetic
#1 by Jim Seith on June 18th, 2010
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Hi Carla,
This is strictly Jim not AARP. I have a dormant Facebook page and I’ve added a business page. I finally have time to begin to get active–plus I sold some photos recently–pure luck since I have no idea how they found me–and want to get better at marketing all of this.
I also have a new site with Photoshelter and I like their way of walking me thru SEO and the ability to integrate the page with WordPress (jimseith.com) so I may migrate from my Smugmug hosted site (jimseithphotography.com) to them in the next couple of months–wordpress learning curve a bit daunting.
So I can obviously use some help, but just as obviously don’t have massive money to pay all I need. Can we talk about some “over the shoulder” type help and costs?
Thanks, hope you are well. We have the 2 year old and his new brother in the house now for 4 months. New brother born 5 May, all heading back to Africa 1 July. Wonderful having them here, however……….do wish they were simply going down the street so I could be a less than 24 hour a day grandpa, but still have Little Man around for weekends, etc.
Jim
#2 by Carla Bobka on June 21st, 2010
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Hi Jim,
Great to hear from you; the grandkids news sounds like heaven. It will be tough to watch them go on July 1.
With regard to your photo site integration, you probably need some straight consulting help. Just walk throughs on how-to-do rather than having another pair of hands do it for you. Many of my clients are in similar situations – they simply need guidance provided through a series of conversations. SocialPie offers that through consulting engagements. We do 30 minute sessions, so you can “absorb and implement,” then repeat. Local clients do face-to-face sessions, for those at a distance we use DimDim over the web. They are offered in packages of total number of sessions. Four sessions run $250; we invoice in advance via PayPal. Send me and email if you’d like to talk about timing.