Life is all about making connections

THE first thing that strikes you about Deb Bell is her red hair, but it's her sheer energy that leaves the lasting impression.
"I generate my energy from connecting people and ideas. As a 'playful' personality style, I gain energy from being with people and am energised by ideas, projects and providing solutions."
"Connect" is a word that often comes up when talking to Deb. As a business coach, professional speaker and facilitator, her career is all about making connections and effectively channelling her energy.
"I spin plates, rather than juggle balls - it takes less concentration and energy."
For Deb, making the change from juggling to spinning is about finding out what motivates you and what your personality is best suited to.
She recommends reading Allison Mooney's Pressing the Right Buttons.
"Learn your own personality profile and those of your family and work colleagues. Create a passion for learning about yourself and others."
This includes discovering your "wealth profile" - a concept explained in Roger Hamilton's Wealth Dynamics. She says this helps identify your strengths and weaknesses and enables you to work within your profile and to gain energy from that.
"I am a star/supporter."
This means Deb relies on the strength of her personality and can deliver under pressure, but she is also a great networker, with plenty of energy and enthusiasm.
Some of that energy also comes from her diet and she is a strong advocate of fresh fruit and vegetables, whole foods and water.
"Be trim, taut and terrific by eating raw and unprocessed foods and getting regular exercise. When you look good, you feel good and when you feel good your productivity is higher and you attract positive people and business opportunities."
To date, those business opportunities have included working as a primary school teacher, a business development manager, an assistant manager for Countrywide Bank, a financial adviser with AMP, a business coach with New Zealand Trade & Enterprise and work-based trainer.
But Deb is not just active in the business community. She is known to many for her work as the Area 5 assistant governor for Rotary in Rotorua, as the Rotorua/Taupo Young Enterprise co-ordinator and through her involvement in charity events such as the Ronald McDonald Family Retreat Supper Club, raising funds towards the running costs of the Ngongotaha retreat for families of ill children.
She sees such involvements as beneficial for both sides.
Business skills such as professionalism, applying leverage across a number of projects and forming relationships with integrity and authenticity are things she sees herself bringing to her community activities.
Those activities, in turn, help develop her skills and networks.
"Community and voluntary organisations develop business and social networks and networking skills because they create opportunities for people to connect on both a personal and professional level.
"Relationships are key to business development, because you do business with people rather than with businesses. The more relationships you have the more opportunity for business and service."
As somebody who spurs others on to success, be it in the business sector or the wider community, Deb sees the ability to form relationships by putting people first as vital to being successful.
Vision is another common quality she identifies in successful people - the ability to imagine improvement, completion or innovation before they happen.
And last, but not least, she says all successful people have persistence.
"They persevere and complete the tasks required. Most people succeed because they are determined to."