Ladies Who Launch

A Fancy Pants Website Could Hinder Sales

by Fashionmista aka That IT Girl, Spammy Scammers, and Katie James

Your high-concept, artful, playful website could be making you all but invisible in the search engines, nearly impossible for people to send a link to a specific product to their friend, and could negate any positive impact from social bookmarking sites like StyleHive.com. Most of the big designers use these types of sites, and I say more power to 'em. It just means that my little website will get more exposure.

To define, a fancy pants website is usually built with a lot of Flash, or another program that animates things to make them extra cool. Animated graphics, in general, are not bad. You just need to be mindful of how they are built, and how they will work. Fancy website pages sometimes look like pages, but they may not generate their own URLs. Your whole website may run off of www.mywebsite.com. Let's look the super cute shoe company, Seychelles Footwear. Go to that website and play with it. It's very fun. Luckily, it can be fun because they sell all of their shoes through stores and other websites that are much better optimized (aka appealing or readable) for the search engines.

The Link Problem
Years ago, I bought some Seychelles. I was so excited that I blogged about what I bought, and the other cute styles. I wanted to link directly to the shoes I was talking about. On the web, it's best to get to the point as quickly as possible. With Seychelles, no can do. I can only link to their home page and figure out ways to finagle some images from other websites like Zappos.com to show what I'm talking about. In fact, I'd be better off linking to Zappos.com, since my readers could fall in love with the shoe, and buy it right then.

The Search Engine Problem
Search engines love links. Links are like vegetables to them. When a search engine visits your site, it 'crawls' or 'spiders' as much of your website as it can by traveling through all the links you have placed. If you have images linked to images, and no text, or no links that go to places that are forbidden to search engines, they stop and miss out on all of the stuff you can SEE on your site. They like to read things. If you have words that are images, for example, and not actual words, the search engine just sees a file called our_mission.jpg. It has no idea that there are words there.

The Usability Problem
If products are spinning by, it's visually exciting at first, but when you go to click on something, it can be a slippery experience. Making your site as easy to use as possible is a good goal to ensure that your users are happy and seamlessly turn into customers.

The Social Bookmarking Problem
I call this Socialness. Social bookmarking is when a web page gets bookmarked on a website by a person. Other people can see what that person bookmarked, and then visit the page. StyleHive.com has a lot of highly interested users looking for fun things, and they will buy. Your products can show up there (if bookmarked , or 'hived' by someone if that product has its own web page. If every product shows up on www.yourwebsite.com, and not on www.yourwebsite.com/products/398lfoifjlsfjow or something obscure to humans but very important to how the internet works, then you could be missing out on a potentially effective bookmark that could drive highly interested people to your products. Example: Coco Ribbon sells very pretty things on their site, and they just redesigned their website. I must confess, I do miss their old one because, I think, each product had it's own URL. So, if I go to put something on StyleHive, StyleHive picks up the product image, price, and description and automatically publishes it on their site. However, with their current setup, pointing out pictures and assigning it to one page is tricky. All of their lingerie items, for example, are under this URL: http://www.cocoribbon.com/collections/lingerie, so I can't link to a direct one, which would get users there quickly, and help that product rank in the search engines. If you don't care about search engines, then this isn't a problem.

The Bottom Line
Using animation and other swirly things is fine. It's great. It can greatly enhance your website. Just ask yourself, before you fall in love with a concept, where you are using it, how it is built (discuss with your programmer your goals, as it might affect how he/she will program this aspect for you) and how it will affect your users, who ultimately, can be your biggest evangelists.

Rocket Launchers: Ladies Who Launch In The News

Our recent Atlanta LIVE Event is popping up on blog spots all over, being described as an event filled with new friends, great info and lots of positive energy.  See how Trista, founder of the Urban Turban fared with her new fashion piece.  Also, Melissa Grossman blogs about her extremely positive experience from stepping out of her comfort zone by attending, participating, displaying a booth and facilitating a breakout session at the Atlanta LIVE event.

Book Launch Café just posted an interview with our Editor in Chief, Amy Swift, coinciding with their book review of our recent book launch.  It’s a cute, fun read ... AND you can find out some interesting tidbits on Amy ... like where SHE finds inspiration and creativity in her writing.

Atlanta Incubator Britt Menzies, founder of Stinky Kids, has a number of her products featured in FoxNews.com’s IMag Holiday Gift Buying Guide.  StinkyKids is included with some famous name brand items like Webkinz, American Girls and Legos.   

Stella Grizont, our own Director of Strategic Development, was recently interviewed on Good News Broadcast for their Getting Your Money’s Worth segment.  She talks about the cultural movement of women launching businesses at a faster rate than their male counterparts, and the whole mompreneur phenomenon.  Go to the link below, scroll down to bottom right of page, click on Ladies Who Launch segment, dated 10/16/07.
 
DC Incubator Megan Cosby just received a large feature in the Washington Post’s Express, following the recent Ladies Who Launch D.C. LIVE Event. In the article, Megan, a D.C. business development lawyer, describes how she wanted to become more involved – and vocal in politics, but not through the traditional route of lobbying or legislating.  It was through her Incubator group that she realized she could create the discussion of ideas through a blog.  PolichicksOnline is her blog which is known as "the It girl's guide to politics (just enough to get by at a cocktail party)".  The article is called "Getting Ahead: Girl Power Hours."

Portland Incubator Lea McWhorter, founder of Sophisticated Beads, initially set out to help others with her jewelry designs by giving back.  Unconventional to most business standards, she didn’t consider the prospect of really “making money.”  Read more about Lea’s inspiration, her journey to her business development, and the positive experiences she has had through LWL.  Check out her fantastic recent article in the Clackamas Review Newspaper.  

NYC Incubator Jamie Lazar, inventor and founder of zakkerz, has a fantastic feature in the “Style File” section of the December InStyle issue.   A zakkerz is a magnetic strip for temporarily hemming pants. Perfect solution for your favorite pair of long pants that are too long to wear with flats or sneakers ... until you attach a zakkerz to each leg.

NYC Incubator Jenny Hwa, designer and founder of Loyale, has her pieces hitting the press left and right! Her Costilla Jacket (which was also won in auction by co-founder Victoria at the NYC Live Event) is featured in the November issue of Nylon magazine.  Her Tularosa dress is featured in Nov. Travel + Leisure and was worn by Kris Carr, author of Crazy Sexy Cancer on a taped segment for Oprah which aired on October 22nd, 2007.   http://loyaleclothing.com/press.htm Both pieces are featured on her website – check them out!

Portland Incubator Mindee Doney and co-founder Julie Pickens of Little Busy Bodies, LLC, were just interviewed on KOIN, a CBS affiliate in Portland, Oregon for their new Boogie Wipes.  After having little luck in using saline spray and bulb syringes to clean out their kids’ noses -- and with so many cold medications being pulled from the shelves, Mindee and Julie consulted a chemist and invented Boogie Wipes.

NYC Incubator Rachel Dooley, designer and founder of Gemma Redux, just had her designs featured in Daily Candy this week!   (Sign-in is required;membership is free.)

NYC Incubator Jennifer Cassetta, founder of Health And The City , just had another great interview about her business, this week in the NYPost.com.  In the background she is training martial arts students, while the interview focuses on her business offerings and the current and ongoing request from HBO to change her name. Go Jennifer!   

Incubator Jen Gorman’s Wifeville.com "Gold Medal Wife" undies were featured in the latest episode of "Keeping up with the Kardashians" on E!  Reality star Kim Kardashian gave her mother - Kris Jenner - the undies on the show! After all, Kris Jenner is married to Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner! She is a GOLD MEDAL WIFE!

Thanks to LWL HARDWARE handbags has new business partners and a promising future.

Thank you Ladies Who Launch!

I never knew just by being a LWL member that we would be here today with new business partners, a new website and huge opportunity to build our brand nationwide. I attended a LWL Live event in Seattle which in a roundabout way put me in touch with another LWL member in New York who put me in touch with our new business partners in San Francisco. What happened after that was pure serendipity! Three people I didn't know 'from Adam' took the chance on my start-up and invested a good portion of money to produce and market our line of HARDWARE handbags.

Thanks to our SF partners we just shipped our first big production run to our distribution facility, launched our new website and are now hitting the press through their connections in the fashion and beauty markets.

Our vision at HARDWARE Handbags, is focused on making more durable, more eco-friendly, cruelty-free bags that help industrious women Get A Handle On Sustainable Style. You can check us out here:

www.hardwarehandbags.com

While we aren't where we ultimately hope to be, we believe that the use of ultra-durable, cruelty-free synthetic and recycled materials are a start. Additionally, we are proud to make our bags in a small factory in Seattle, Washington, giving us oversight of the product and confidence our bags are made in an environment where workers are treated fairly.

Our bags will look good for a long time. And if life demands it, they can even handle a turn in the washing machine (though we prefer gentler methods first), making it a great choice for moms. Our signature feature is our recycled stainless steel handles. We hear from our early fans that our handles' look, flexibility and light weight body really make it stand out.

Also, to celebrate our launch (and thank LWL members) we'll be giving $30 off all orders through an unadvertised Friends and Family offer (code: HH3) through November 30th, which you should feel free to share with your friends and family as well. Click on the offer here for more info.

Thank you Ladies Who Launch, for literally taking my business to a new frontier!

Sincerely,

Lori Naon

HARDWARE handbags

10 Tips for a Sane and Stylish Holiday Season

10 Tips for a Sane and Stylish Holiday Season

by Marianne Merritt Talbot, Modern Venus Ltd., Lifestyle Coaching that Empowers Women to Live Bigger

It’s mid-November . . . time for the full slide into the Thanksgiving and December holidays! The holiday season challenges us both professionally and personally.  On the personal front, it tends to be the busiest social season of the year.  On the professional side, now is time to really hunker down at your desk in order to meet end-of-year billable hour requirements, and prepare for lurking year-end reviews (why do they have to do them before the holidays, anyway?), raises, promotions, etc.   Is it possible for anyone to not feel occasionally overwhelmed and cranky?

Following are a few tips I share with my clients on how to handle the holidays with sanity and style.  The trick to successfully and enjoyably maneuvering through holiday madness largely boils down to eliminating doing anything you absolutely don’t have to do, avoiding big projects, giving back to others, and adding a little sparkle to your everyday routine.

1. Start a “Holiday Master File.”  In it, place the lists of people you intend to buy presents for, gift ideas ripped from catalogues and magazines, holiday invitations, recipes for your own holiday soirees, receipts, etc.  Keeping one centralized file can keep paperwork in check and will make you feel more organized.

2. Sparkle—go buy yourself some sequined items (sweaters, scarves, etc.) and wear them every day.  Yes, even to the office (to make them office-appropriate, layer a blazer over a sequined sweater or a scarf over a suit).  Yes, wear them even to the grocery store or doing chores (doesn’t that seem so decadent?).   I often have my clients buy sequined items and I suggest they wear them on days they feel particularly non-sparkly.  Notice how this makes you feel better.

3. Start buying presents now.  The lines at stores are not yet too long and your energy level is not yet stretched to its limit.  Make lists of whom you have to buy for, and budget what you want to spend.  Starting the process now will save you stress when December hits and you have even less time to think about these details.  And buy in bulk.  For example, pick up several bottles of your favorite olive oil or champagne and keep a bunch with ribbons and labels at easy reach, so you are never caught off-guard without a present!

4. Philanthropy, Part I:  When you are feeling particularly cranky or tired, do an Act of Anonymous Good.   Leave some chocolates on the desk for a coworker who is having a hard time this season, buy some food and self-care products (face and body wipes, toothpaste/toothbrush, etc.) for a homeless woman in your neighborhood, buy 5 dozen roses at your local bodega and drop them off at a nursing home to be distributed among the residents.   Notice how this lofts you and really connects you to what the holidays are all about.

5.  Create an “Elegance is Refusal List” (described in September's Modern Venus newsletter), where you put on it anything that drains your energy around the holidays.  It can be decorating your home, baking holiday cookies, writing out endless cards, feeling obligated to go to every holiday party and to throw your annual bash, etc.  Write it all down and then start eliminating what you can.  Perhaps you’d rather send out Valentine’s Day cards (like Julia Child did with her husband); perhaps you want to do an “undress the tree” party in January versus having a pre-holiday Christmas gathering; deciding to forgo baking cookies; choosing just to go to parties you know your favorite people will be attending.  Be creative but at least eliminate what you can.

6. Straighten up.  Nothing frazzles you like clutter all over your house or office, does it?   Now may not be the time to renovate your closets, go through all your papers that are cluttering your desk, etc.  A little trick:  Go to the Container Store or other shop and buy some multi-use storage containers.  Put everything that is cluttering your house (yes, everything that is sitting on your desk, shelves, etc. that doesn’t yet have a home) into those boxes, close the lids, and either stick ‘em in closets or cover them with pretty cloths, candles and holiday cards (perhaps fashioning it into a holiday shrine!).   Come the cold days of January you can open the boxes and then embark on finding them proper places.  Right now, just get it out of your eyesight!

7. Go to bed.  Specifically, retire one hour early on all those evenings you can.  Cozy up during this extra time with a good book and cup of tea.  Or just go to sleep.  Now that the clocks have been set back, our bodies are trying to adjust to this shift.   It becomes harder to get out of bed when the sun isn’t even up yet and to leave the office when the sun already set.  Be gentle with your body and nurture her through not only the change in time and season, but also the physical and emotional energy it takes to get us from today through New Year’s!

8. Go for a walk.   Eating and drinking too much food and/or wine can make us feel (and sometimes look) like Jabba the Hut.  Go for a brisk walk at least once a day to keep everything circulating properly.

9. Schedule your beauty appointments now.   Salons during the holidays book up fast.  Pull out your calendar and book all your pampering and maintenance appointments in advance.

10. Philanthropy, Part II: plan your charitable giving and volunteering. ‘Tis the season to give back to others who have less than you, and I guarantee you will be elevated by this experience more than you can imagine.   Check out local churches or food kitchens for what you can do to serve them, budget what you can give to your favorite causes (they count on you in particular during the holidays!), or even volunteer to help out friends or family, like volunteering to baby-sit for a girlfriend who has 3 kids and could really use a date with her husband because she’s going crazy, too.

Keeping Nickels: End Of The Year Checklist

The end of the year is upon us, and it is time to get organized with your accounting records. If you talk to your CPA, he/she would highly recommend getting on a robust accounting system for your business. Leave the Excel spreadsheets alone!

This is not an exhaustive list, but an outline of what you need to prepare for the end of the year

Enter final transactions for the year   

• Review tax form (1040-Schedule C) from prior year and compare to this year's expenses
• Enter ALL cash receipts for business expenses (taxis, business meals,subway, train)
• Reconcile all your accounts and enter any missing transactions
• Work on reducing receivables (Follow up with clients/customers to get paid)
• Write-off bad debt if necessary, but work on getting paid first
• Make SEP IRA  or 401K contributions and donations to charity to reduce taxable income
• Make all asset depreciation entries (only applicable for equipment that you had put on a depreciation schedule)

Organize: Make Life Easier on Your CPA and Understand What Happened During The Year

• Organize receipts and statements for expenses that will be itemized on your Schedule C/1040
• Review your budget and compare actual to budget which will help develop 2008 budget
• Inquire from your CPA as to what reports and documentation is needed for tax preparation
• Ask if year-end reports should be on a cash basis or accrual basis
• Print out a copy of general ledger
• Back up the Quickbooks file in case of any data loss
• Send a copy of your Income Statement and Balance Sheet to your accountant at the end year to get an idea what your taxes will be in March 15 (quarterly tax payment) and/or April (personal income tax deadline

Employee/Independent Contractors

• Order 1099-MISC forms (Independent Contractors)  and W-2 forms (Payroll Employees) early. The forms are much cheaper if buy at Staples then via Quickbooks.
• Get Independent Contractors and Employees current mailing address, SSN and the total payments made to them for the year.

Nichelle Stephens writes about Bookkeeping and Small Business tips on Keeping Nickels.

 

High Rankings on Search Engines With A Blog Post Title

by Fashionmista aka That IT Girl, Spammy Scammers, and Katie James

EXTRA! EXTRA! BLOG POST TITLES MUST BE SEO JUICY!!
Citizen journalists and industry experts who hope to monetize their blogs have a new challenge as writers/editors with regards to blog post titles. In the old days of print journalism, copywriters worried about how many characters (spaces included) would fit into a space for a great headline that would sell papers and keep readers. Headlines were clever ink prints on a page. On the Internet, however, they are links, cannot be touched with anything but a mouse, and they can make or break your popularity in the search engines. Why? Search engines love them, and people love them. Search engines can reward a blog post title with high rankings, and a person needs to click it to contribute to the traffic to your website or blog.

First of all: What is the blog post title and where do you find it? Read about the title tag with pictures here first.

In the Search Engine Age, however, writers have at least two new challenges:
1. Get the article to even rank highly in search engines, aka being #1 on Google or at least on the first page of search results. Search engines place a lot of ranking value on the page title. On a website, you can usually easily set your page title. On a blog, usually your blog post title doubles as the page title. While considering your blog post as a potential high ranking web page, the search engines pay close attention to what words you use in your blog post title. In the case of this blog post, it is titled: "High Rankings on Search Engines Using Your Blog Post Title"

Example: Let's say you article is all about "essie nail polish" and how their new colors are based on candy. If your blog post title is: "Yummy Nails"  but the content in that blog post is all about how essie nail polish was inspired by candy, and how your nails can look like pastel pieces of rock candy, then you have just shot yourself in the foot for ranking for the following words: essie, nail polish, candy, color. None of them are in your blog post title, as cute as it is. The search engines would most likely give you higher rankings with "Essie's New Rock Candy Color Nail Polish." You can get more clever with it, but the goal is to at least have essie and nail polish and color in your post title, because those terms may be what people are searching for.

How do you know what keywords people are searching for? You use Yahoo's free tool, Overture, or you pay for the keyword research tool Keyword Discovery. Everyone uses Overture, so it can be slow at times. But otherwise gives reliable results.

2. Grab the reader as they scan the list of blue titles in search engines to see which ones they want to click. Your titles need to be quick, short and to the point. This can be tough, if you're trying to get keywords in there. Sometimes you may need to take the SEO hit if you want your feed readers to click, rather than a search engine ranking. Read this to see how your ranking title looks in a search engine.

To follow my own advice, I dropped my usual "Design/Tech Stuff" from this article, because you know what? It's a waste of words and space. I'm trying to rank highly for "ranking high on search engines" with this post, so I needed to get those terms into my title, and close to the front of the title for people to see quickly. I checked Overture before writing the article, and saw that that phrase has about 900 searches, so I'm good for at least some click overflow. I'm not going to get 900 clicks, or even 300 because I need more links pointing to this exact post, and I need more links coming from this article, and maybe a picture. And, there are a bazillion established articles that are already beating me for this highly competitive term, so competition is tough. I'm aiming for related keyword phrases that people will find this post on, which lets me write a more targeted post around their exact term.

The point is: be cute in your blog post titles, but make sure your keywords are in there!! You may need to curb your creativity a little.  :)

Design/Tech Stuff :: Widgets - What They are and Why You Want Them

by Fashionmista aka That IT Girl, Spammy Scammers, and Katie James

Widgets are free and happy little design elements to add to your blog. They come from trusted websites you use already, and are created to make your blog or website look good, and to market that website. You can usually create one in 10 minutes. Granted, you need an account at the website that offers the widget, and you'll need to fill it with stuff, but to actually get the code to put onto your website, you'll need 10 minutes.

What is a widget and why do you want one?
A widget is a chunk of code that you can embed into your website and usually displays a slide show of images, or other arrangements of images you have selected. You get the code from the website offering you the widget. Let's look at a Flickr widget, for example. You upload pictures into your Flickr account. You "tag" them with words that have to do with your pictures, like "Paris vacation" or "birthday party" or "friends." You go to the Tool area in Flickr, and create a badge (some websites call widgets a badge...I know, it's hard to keep up). You tell it you want a badge, or widget, of all the pictures you tagged "paris." Then it will create this small slide show of pictures that pop out at your users, who can then click on it to see all of your wonderful photos.

Here's a free widget from my Flickr account of my Paris pictures:

www.flickr.com

This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from KT Flicker tagged with paris. Make your own badge here.

This widget is generating my photos using a program called Javascript. You don't need to know anything about Javascript to use this widget. Just know that not all blogging programs will accept it. Most will, but if you run into weird trouble with it not showing up, it could be that the coding language is not supported by your blog or website.

You can also use widgets for ecommerce, like if you had a store in Etsy.com, or just for fun with StyleHive. And, if you have affiliate accounts with websites, like Amazon where you make a commission of whatever anyones buys from Amazon once they click on a link from your special Amazon affiliates link (here's a write-up of the Affiliate program from an LWLer), those websites might also offer widgets to you. Amazon rolled out some cool ones, like this slide show that I made just now:

Are there drawbacks to using widgets?
Sometimes setting up the widget can be buggy. Amazon's navigation, at times, is not the easiest, so it's very easy for me to click on the wrong link to get my code, which causes me to lose all of my work. What work? Selecting which books I want to appear in the slide show, for example. That's it. So I just need to re-invest the brain power to remember which books I wanted to add.

Also, you are pulling data from another website, so that can cause your load time to run more slowly, especially if you have many widgets on your site. Like all things, though, companies providing the widgets will improve with time as they invest more in their ability to serve you faster.

And finally, a widget can sometimes not fit very well into your website design. So if you are going to build a website, keep in mind that you want room for these sorts of things. Certain designs, like my blogger template of the moment, look clunky with some widgets. I'm widget-happy, so I will continue to use them until I give blog a major make-over. Come visit if you want to see some more widget examples and ways I've used the widgets.

Happy Widgeting!

Rocket Launchers: Ladies Who Launch In The News

Writer and BlogHer founder Jory Des Jardins speaks about her experience as a panel member at a San Francisco LWL event.  This is a really enlightening read as it is written from a guest point of view who is stepping into the LWL realm.   When she was asked about her experience in transitioning to the entrepreneurial realm and making her vision happen, she says, “I brooded and complained once a quarter about not being utilized fully [prior to embarking on her dreams].  Be warned: expect to be utilized on the entrepreneurial journey, OVER-utilized, in fact.”  How true that is!  http://www.jorydesjardins.com/pause/

Check out a recent clip from The View from the Bay in San Francisco, ABC7 News, where our LWL Live San Francisco is captured. The video includes a fashion show of Incubator member’s designs and products, as well as an interview with guest speaker Mariel Hemmingway. Love it!  http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=audrey&id=5727868

LA Incubator Christine Saunders, Designer and founder of The Spiraled Stem Floral Design, was recently published in Event Solutions Magazine.  In the article she talks about environmentally-friendly floral designs and is quoted on upcoming trends for fall events.  Six images of her designs are included in the article.  http://www.event-solutions.com/magazine/september_2007/the_flowers_of_fall

NYC Incubator Desiree Naccarato, founder of Perceptions Image Management, was just featured in the quarterly newsletter of the Association of Image Consultants International.   In the article, “My Experience on “The Isaac Show,” Desiree shares how she was selected to be a “style expert” in a taped shopping segment for the Style Channel, a division of E! Entertainment Television.  How did this opportunity come about – through Ladies Who Launch!  It’s a real fun read.  You’ll see how Desiree was given a mystery clothing piece (which happened to be a black corset) and stylishly integrated it into a look for a "Polished Professional".  http://view.exacttarget.com/?j=fe621573746400797d1c&m=ff00167276640c&ls=fe0111757c66047c75177276&jb=ffcf14 (Scroll down to the fourth article after the editor’s note.)

Boston Incubator Lynn Toomey is making waves in the business world!  She was just selected as one of three finalists in Mount Wachusett Community College’s 3rd Annual Business Plan Competition. The final presentation is coming up on November 19th and we wish her the best!   In addition, Lynn was a featured writer in Real Women Press where she talks about “Women Who Launch Business,” http://www.realwomenpress.com/RWP10-2007.pdf (page 12).  Check her out in Thestreet.com, “Artfully Entrepreneurial,” http://www.thestreet.com/newsanalysis/sbmanagement/10386755.html ,  and the Worcester Business Journal, “Group for Women Raises Eyebrows,” http://wbjournal.com/j/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2694&Itemid=139       

Jennifer Cassetta's Incubator Moment

Jennifer Cassetta is the founder/instructor/coach of Health and the City. 

Jennifer’s Incubator Moment follows last week’s news about her article in the Wall Street Journal.

I just wanted to share this story with you because it just shows how powerful this (Incubator) network of women can be. The Wall Street Journal Blog wrote an article about my business and you can find it at: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/. In short, I am having a trademark dispute with HBO because the name of my company, Health and the City, is too close to the show's name.

I didn't have money for a lawyer but I did get the name of a person who writes for the WSJ through a member of LWL (thanks Sabina) because I donated my services to an event, etc.

The bottom line is you never know what good can come out of things.  I just got an email from a lawyer who offered his services pro bono to help me fight HBO. YAY!!