I woke up at 5:30 this morning to get to an introductory meeting of BNI, a networking group. With these types of groups, business people get together once a week or so to share names of prospects and help expand the word-of-mouth marketing reach of the members of the group.

Because I spend many of my days in sweats (or pajamas) by myself in my home office, I am not going to join because I don’t think I have enough to add. (After all, how many times can I pass of my cat as a prospect for life insurance?) But just because I go for days sometimes without seeing other people doesn’t mean I don’t know some amazing folks.

Here’s a brief look at some people and services you may need some day. I’ve known all these people for a long time, and I am recommending them because I know how much they care about what they do and how much care they put into their jobs.

Let me introduce…

1. My favorite Artist
   David Castle and I “met” via this blog, and I drool over his work. I haven’t purchased any of his big stuff, but I do regularly order his notecards for thank you notes. They’re the only non-recycled cards I buy, but I love them too much.
2. A prince of a Printer
   Have you ever done a workshop and needed spiral-bound workbooks, plus the resources on CDs? That’s what Omnipress does. They’re one of my clients, and I’m always so impressed with the way they respect their customers. If you call them, tell Chris Uschan I said hi. And don’t tell him I called them a printer. They’re much more than that.
3. An awesome Virtual Assistant
   I met Dawn Riley on Twitter, and she provides virtual assistance for any number of necessary but annoying tasks. She’s the extra hand you need, there when you need her.
4. A kick-rear Group Collaboration Solution
   The brains behind Pelotonics is Troy Malone, a very dear colleague I’ve been working with in one capacity or another since 2001. Pelotonics is project management for the rest of us — a simple, intuitive, web-based solution that organizes people and tasks in a project. They give you two projects for free forever in their basic plan.
5. A superlative Speechwriter
   The amazing Charlie Fern and I were co-managing editors of our college paper together. Charlie runs her own communications firm and worked for a while as Former First Lady Laura Bush’s speechwriter. Yeah, cool, ain’t it?
6. A lovable San Diego Bankruptcy Attorney
   Ok, so he’s my boyfriend, but D.J. Rausa of Rausa & Mason really takes his job of helping people overcome their debt problems seriously. I’ll call him up to see how his day is going, and he’ll say, “Great! I saved a house today.” I love that helping people is what makes him happy.
7. The coolest Parenting Resources
   I started out working with DrGreene.com to help them with a rewrite of their website. You have absolutely no idea how many thousands of articles this site holds. You can find everything from real-time results of the top baby names to advice on choosing a multivitamin for your family. Dr. Alan Greene and his wife, Cheryl, are generous, kind, sincere people who live to make the world a safer place for all of us.
8. The nicest New Yorker for New York City Group Tours
   Melinda Marinoff from NYC Group Tours is another client, and we’ve never actually met. She really, really, really loves New York, and she wants to show you why. She told me one story about the first tour group to come to the city after the 9/11 tragedy. Melinda took exquisite care of the group of older sightseers from the Midwest (I may have my details wrong here), and even Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined in to welcome them to their city. If I ever get to vacation in NYC, I’d call Melinda.
9. The hippest San Diego Dog Wrangler
   I can’t call Sondra Lagnado a dog walker…. she’s way more than that. She started Your Buddy & Me about the time I moved to the neighborhood. Sondra entertains your pets. She takes them to the many dog beaches in our area. She lets them run with her as she rides her bike. And when a cute guy walks up with a cute dog, she always notices the cute dog first — even if the dog’s really not that cute.
10. A most excellent Environmental Administration Specialist
    That’s not actually the title I should give my friend Jennifer Jones, owner of Cleanup Fund Reimbursement Services. Jennifer started her own company to help people involved in cleanup fund settlements deal with the red tape and administrative mess that they have to keep track of. She’s the only company of her kind, and she knows what she’s doing.
11. The guy you need to call if you ever need Online Voting
    Many of my clients have appeared on this list because I know how honest they are and how much they want to please their customers. Michael Tuteur is the CEO of Votenet Solutions, Inc. I interviewed lots and lots of Votenet customers for some of our projects, and I’m amazed by how much people love them. Plus, when you purchase one of their products, they’ll plant trees. Love the green stuff!

Dang… I know there are many more people who belong on this list, but I have to end somewhere.

PLEASE add your own… who’s your favorite web designer? Coffee shop owner? Housekeeper? Accountant? Share the love, people!

Earlier this week, Lance Armstrong ripped into a UK reporter during a press conference. During a radio interview last year, Paul Kimmage, a sports reporter who wrote a book about doping in cycling, called Armstrong a cancer. “For two years, this sport has been in remission. And now, the cancer’s back.”

During the press conference, Kimmage asked Armstrong a question about other cyclists who had been accused of doping and remarked that Kimmage had requested but had not been granted an interview.

Armstrong, who says his return to professional cycling relates to his desire to raise awareness about cancer, told Kimmage, “I’m here to fight this disease. You are not worth the chair that you’re sitting on with a statement like that with a disease that touches everybody around the world.”

Although it seems there’s lots of strife between Kimmage and the professional cycling community, writers — and indeed anyone in the public eye — can learn a lesson from this exchange. We as writers may come up with an idea, a comparison, a simple descriptive term. When we’re sitting alone in our house, writing thousands of words a week, we’re not mulling the ramifications of each and every word. We can easily, easily forget how words hurt, how quickly they can make an impression, how much they may weigh once the world hears them.

Sometimes we simply flick them off our fingers in a flurry and don’t stop to examine potential consequences. Other times we craft them carefully, knowing that they’ll attract some attention, creating the perfect sound bite that others will pick up. I can imagine Kimmage was pretty proud of himself when he put together that comparison: in his mind, he thought it clever, controversial, quotable and true.

But he probably crafted the analogy alone, at his desk, with no audience for feedback. We forget the power of words and the swiftness of their delivery. And sometimes we hurt people with our carelessness.

I’ve been guilty. One time in particular, I wrote an in-depth feature about local campus haunts. I sat for an hour or so in each and wrote snarky, snappy prose about the atmospheres where we spent our time. My article earned me the nickname “Poison-Pen Beth” from local business owners. I didn’t connect how my clever words might have an effect on their livelihoods. (Note: I really don’t think it had any real impact at all on patrons, but my words hurt the hard-working business owners nonetheless.)

In writing, just like in life, it’s good to remember that what you do may have an impact on others. It’d be pretty wonderful if we lived our lives in pursuit of making other lives better, not more miserable.

I try not to bring too much Twitter to my blog because I haven’t seen that much crossover yet. People who follow me on Twitter tend to stay on Twitter. People who read my blog tend to simply be blog readers.

But I think the two worlds are meeting more and more, and I think we’re ready for a Twitter tale.

A couple three weeks ago, I was griping about my SanDisk MP3 player on Twitter, and, long story short (but spelled out here in detail in a guest post I wrote for Chris Brogan), within 10 hours of my original note on Twitter, a new SanDisk player was on its way to me at no charge.

WooHoo!

The fact that Chris Brogan asked me to tell my SanDisk story on his site was HUGE… the man has 40k-plus followers on Twitter (I have 857 as of this morning, but it’s constantly growing), and I recognized this story as an opportunity to spread my name around a little more.

So, over the weekend, I saw Ann Handley from MarketingProfs was Twittering away. MarketingProfs is HUGE, and one of my blog posts was once featured in one of their newsletters, bringing me hundreds of hits and even a couple of new clients. Ann has thousands of followers as well, but she and I had interacted a couple of times when she helped spread the word about my Virtual Food Drive.

Ann and Chris Brogan interact on Twitter, so I dropped Ann a little note via direct message. “Ann, did you catch my SanDisk story on Chris Brogan’s blog? I thought you might be interested for one of your newsletters….”

I sent off the direct message, and as soon as I hit send, guilt crept in. It was a weekend. Ann just had minor surgery a few days ago, and that threw her for a loop. She had to send her dogs away while she recovered. What a bummer.  She was in the midst of a cool interview with David Meerman Scott, a well-known author and another cool dude who helped spread the word about the food drive.

And here I was, bugging her with an ill-timed, 140-word pitch to get a little free publicity. What an insensitive creep.

Twitter has changed the way I interact with and think about entrepreneurs, authors, celebrities, thought leaders and just plain old ordinary folks like me. All of a sudden, the faces behind the companies are interacting, telling us about their morning coffee preferences, their kids’ big days at school, their unexpected trips to the emergency room. Twitter is humanizing the internet and creating people from pixels.

I didn’t send a pitch to info(@)marketingprofs(dot)com. I wrote to Ann, whose insights into business and her personal life I’ve really come to enjoy. And although Ann has thousands of followers, perhaps she recognizes my name, not just as another PR person with an agenda, but as someone who works hard and cares much and is real just like she is.

Through Twitter, I’ve learned how frustrated Lance Armstrong is with all the random drug tests, how Soleil Moon Frye (aka Punky Brewster) loves being a mom and how Demi Moore feels a little humbled when she’s dressed up to go to a fundraiser and hubby Ashton Kutcher discovers and plucks her wild nose hair.

I’ve connected with runners all over the country and have followed their tweets as they finished their first or their fifth marathons. I found two women who are dealing with close family members with cancer, just as I am. I’ve watched two people start new jobs and have given support to others who are searching. I follow countless fantastic writers, some with published books, others with great ideas they haven’t yet put to paper. And they relate when I write about my runs, my writing, my attempts to grow my business.

I’ve also connected with people who can help my business, but perhaps all those stories require another post.

We’re all people here, and we’re all getting to know each other. If you step into the Twitter fray, be sure to look me up.

Mom turns 64 tomorrow. A year ago, I wrote a post to honor her on her birthday. I did it, in part, to celebrate that she seemed to have beaten the thyroid cancer that had plagued her for three years.

This summer, we received a call from a distinctly un-personable surgeon that mom’s cancer had come back, and there was nothing they could do. He said she probably had two years. The time frame was dependent on her receiving radiation, which she completed this fall. At times we thought the radiation itself would take her from us. She was sick every day and still has lasting effects. These days, we define a good day as one that doesn’t begin with the tossing of cookies.

Last week Mom had her first PET scan since the radiation. Mom could still feel tightness in her neck, and she was convinced that the radiation hadn’t worked and that the tumor was getting larger.

Mom. Was. Wrong.

The most-alarming tumor (and the only one that was treated with radiation) has shrunk more than 50 percent. The other tumors in her body — the ones that the surgeon said would take their course in the next two years — were either reduced or not changed. Mom’s oncologist encouraged her to enter a local clinical trial because there is hope. Lots of hope.

We’re taking this news to mean that the surgeon’s clock no longer applies. The cancer is not advancing. In fact, it has retreated in some areas. We’re taking this as a sign that we should all go on living each day, breathing in and out with hope and thinking wonderful thoughts of plans for tomorrow or even next week.

So, this post is another wish for my mom….. that she has the happiest of birthdays surrounded by her daughters, her grandsons, her husband and hope for the future. And I look forward to writing another happy birthday post for her 65th.