Blogger A Day Call: Hello is Sandy there?

If there really is a Des Moines Blogger Mafia, I guess you would have to say their head moll is Sandra Renshaw. We talked yesterday evening about her business, her partnership with Panera man, and her background in traditional organizations. Sandra Renshaw in one interesting lady.

Sandy told me that she started in the corporate world doing marketing. She said she has done most marketing tasks, but her love is graphics. We discussed our experiences with organizations in distress and how they shift people from job to job. Sandy stayed when others left because she’s good at what she does and because she calmly keeps things organized even in times of stress. Those two skills that are important in downsizing companies. Still she said it was disheartening that each time a good team was together another change would pull them apart.

Finally Sandy decided to do writing, graphics, and blogging on her own. That’s how Purple Wren Communications was born. Sandy said she has always been drawn to the color purple. Spoken like a true designer I thought. Wren, of course, comes from Renshaw and Communications comes from what she’s about — a unique brand name for a unique lady’s business.

Sandy told me of a corporate blogging experience she took on in which the business asked her to blog for them. Unfortunately the company wasn’t clear on their blogging goal. We discussed how Sandy’s role was too undefined and as a result, the writing for the blog was a chore. Sandy’s advice from the experience is that a blogger needs a clear role to feel a passion for writing. She said without that, she felt she couldn’t be effective on the company’s behalf.

We talked about blogging and bloggers. We talked about bloggers as adverntures. Sandy said that it takes people who want to try something new to begin with. We both talked about the blogger description that Jon Symons had mentioned the day before. Sandy said that she’d seen something like it too. I wondered where the heck I had been.

Sandy spoke of her first blog and the beginning of the blog she has now. We had a conversation about how many bloggers get caught in the feeling that they have a lot to say, but nothing that anyone would be interested in reading. I pointed out that every writer is half ego and half self-doubt — without the ego, nothing would get written; without the self-doubt, the writer would be too busy casting the movie to care that it did. We laughed about that together.

I wonder whether we were casting the same movie . . .

B.A.D. Blogger Quote

Maybe one day down the road blogging will be different, but right now it feels like family. Everyone is so caring, so giving, and so fun to meet in person. —Sandra Renshaw

Stop by Sandy’s blog, Purple Wren Communications, and say hi!

Thanks, Sandy, you B.A.D. Blogger!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to be a B.A.D. Blogger see the. . . a B.A.D. Blogger? page in the sidebar.