Why

As I’ve mentioned before I have a young child. I can’t quite tell if I hear “NO!” or “Why?” more in any given day. The easy answer is “Yes, and do it now”; or “Because I said so”, but I know that for my child to understand I need to address the question, and then point her in the direction of productivity; which puts me back into a productive mode. But I don’t want just busy work, I want to be productive – whether itis marketing my own business, or doing work for one of my clients.

I came across this article that talks about the Power of Why, and consequently why – whys are important to us. (Say that four times fast) Some interesting things are covered in marketing and why we do what we do, actually the whole site is fairly interesting – take a minute or two to check it out.

http://www.psychotactics.com/artpowerofwhy.htm

Now onto a humor break if you are a mom, or if you’ve had a mom you may very well enjoy this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VlY8STkhopc

Disneyland Thoughts

We went to Disneyland for the second time in 2 months yesterday. (One of the pluses of having out of state friends, and living 30 minutes or so from the most magical place on earth.)

I have memories of Disney that date back at least 30 years. Somehow they keep the magic alive for the newer little ones, and make it fun for the “old hands” of Disney as well.

What I was most amazed at, was how long the line pathways are. (And here’s a hint, go the week school is back in session, we didn’t wait in line for anything except the Toontown roller coaster, and the Dumbo ride the whole day). Those lines though, in busy days, are chock full of people in great expectation of the rides that they’ll be taking. Most of the time lines are longer than the actual ride.

What do we do in our businesses to keep our customers happy and eagerly awaiting other services we may offer? How else do we get out the word? Do we keep them informed along the way? “Thanks for your order, we’ll be processing and sending shortly” or “This project should take about a week” and they hear from us on day 7 that it’s almost but not quite complete?

We are obviously not Disney, and most of us aren’t in the entertainment industry, but I was struck at the evolution over the years. I used to eagerly await Disney to go on the rides. We seldom saw any characters except Mickey or Goofy once in a while. Now, you know where to go to find the characters you’d like to see, and if you don’t want to stand in line or want to ride the rides you can have non-personal time but still see them up close at the parade.

Are you available to your customers on your schedule or their schedule? If your service or business makes it too hard to reach you for personal service, you’ll lose out. That’s one of the ways that a virtual assistant can be of service, we can be a point of contact, sort through customer requests, tell your customers we remember their special days, or be their first point of contact by sending mailers, or other information to them and of course we can always take some of the other things off of your desk that will keep you from your customers.

Mom-preneurs and Moms who work from home

I thought I may have made up a new word today – mompreneurs. It described how I view what I do.

I was brought up in an entrepreneurial family. My parents always had their own business, and it was also a family affair. My brothers and I can do a perfect impersonation of our mom “your going to hurt someone with that!!!” but we can also tell you that any welt from our rubber band fights were gone within an hour or two, despite our best efforts. I’m also pleased to tell you that not once did a rubber band land in a sibling’s eye.
I sometimes laugh as I try to get my daughter to be quiet and stop singing while I’m on the phone, as I recall my 5th grade printing and handwriting, later typing, and finally using computers to do our invoicing. My parent’s clients always knew it was a family business, after all during the summer we were all present while they were working. Yet, I find myself trying to keep it quiet that I’m a work at home mom, or saying sheepishly to someone on the phone “Well, I’ll apologize in advance if you hear a bit of 3.5 year old background noise.” I wouldn’t apologize if I were the HR Manager and talking to an employee with manufacturing going on in the background. I’m choosing to enjoy working at home and lighten up about background noise (as long as it’s background and not terribly distracting).

At any rate, it doesn’t appear that I was so creative as to have thought up a new word – so with full credit I’d like to introduce you to their site. http://www.mompreneursonline.com/

Another new to me site is http://www.workitmom.com/ This thought provoking article is by the woman who created Work It, Mom! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nataly-kogan/the-mommy-stigma-well-_b_51561.html .

I chose to go into Virtual Assistance and Human Resources Consulting because of my daughter; I provide awesome virtual assistance and HR consulting because of my experience in the corporate world before my daughter. If you’re a solo, mom, entre, or any other kind of preneur and you need someone to help you with your marketing, employee or administrative tasks that are taking way too much of your customer or revenue building time, send me an email and let’s talk about how we can take the frustration out of administration for your venture.

And dads and single entrepreneurs no worries, I’ll find some great networking and article sites for you soon – or drop me a line on your favorites and I’ll include them soon.

Another Google Gadget that I like

So, there are a lot of things that I like to keep track of online. I keep track of publicity and how often a few clients get mentioned (as well as a couple of friends and colleagues), there are a few political items that I am passionate about,  I also write blogs for a couple of other people/businesses.  So I like to try to see what other people are saying, doing, writing about etc.  Google offers a great alert system, you simply log in http://www.google.com/alerts and type in the words you want to keep track of.  As in most searches if you’re using a proper name you’ll want to put it in quotes, for instance “Total Resource Connection” will get items about us,  – Total Resource Connection  – will get many more results because it will pick up any of the three words.

Organizing yourself

Seriously! Who knew there were so many ways to get yourself organized? If you do a google search for “Organizing tools” there are more than 17,300,000 sites that show up. I am always on the hunt for that ONE magical idea, program or process that will suddenly make everything fall into line. At the end of the day though, what is needed is time to put things in their place, and to move, one by one the items off of my desk.

Sometimes I think I need my own virtual assistant to take care of the little details for me that I take care of for my clients. Think about it, if you could get one or two items off of your desk that take up the most time, but are the least rewarding what would they be?

For a couple of clients, it’s me answering their phone. Even though, I’m sometimes on the phone and have to return a phone call, I guarantee a return phone call within an hour. We all have those special clients. They are definitely worth having, but they require a little too much hand holding. I can take those clients and be a buffer – they still feel like they are getting special treatment, but my clients have freedom to not have to address every little thing with them.

Other clients have me screen their email. I forward on what needs to be addressed personally, respond to some with the appropriate answer, and to others respond to expect more follow up shortly. Of course there are some private issues that are better handled by the client personally, those go to a private inbox, separate from the main business email account.
There are many ways we can help you get more organized or add more time to you day. Check us out at www.totalresourceconnection.com for more information.

Blogging 101

I don’t know about you, but it seems like every where I turn, or at every click online, I’m being marketed to, both subtly and very in my face. It almost seems like you can’t visit websites without being forced to give an email address and your name to just look at what might be an interesting article.

Blogs seem to be different. You can build on a blog, it isn’t like email that can be directly filed into my deleted folder, or get lost in my junk file. It’s more of a conversation, by cross linking, and commenting on other sites, you build your own network based on what interests you and what you would like to focus on in your interests and your business.

As I look at blogs though, and somewhat voyeuristically see conversations; I’m reminded of my daughter who sees something shiny and drifts far away from whatever conversation, song or activity she was just involved. Yet the benefits are real if you can engage your reader.

What are the actual benefits to blogging?

According to a recent article in entrepreneur.com, “a blog allows your business to engage with current and potential customers in a direct, informal, no-pressure way. You can communicate the strengths of your product or service, the expertise of your top executives and the breadth of your company’s experience in ways that traditional marketing and advertising don’t allow. This can help engender a better understanding of your company as well as inspire customer loyalty.

Because of its collaborative nature, a blog can help you gain insight into customers’ needs and interests. You can then use this information to develop new products or services or fine-tune existing ones.

A blog can make your company appear more “alive” and approachable. A website promoting your products or services is an essential marketing tool. But a blog, in effect, gives your company a personal voice, which also can help boost customer loyalty.

Blogs cost little, if any, money. Some public blogging sites are free; others charge only nominal fees. Also, blogs are often extremely easy to set up and update, with virtually no training required.”

If you don’t have the time , creativity, or desire to create your own blog, but you’d like the exposure, consider outsourcing it. Many Virtual Assistants (including us) offer this as a service.