I subscribe to SpeakerNetNews, and while I’m by no means a seasoned speaker like my clients, I do want to keep on top of the happenings in the industry. I also need to pick up tips for the speaking engagements I have on the horizon. In one issue I saw a question posed by a speaker, Annie Jennings, and I emailed her off-list with a possible solution. While I unfortunately didn’t solve her problem, She did send me a prompt, courteous reply.
Yesterday when I retrieved my snail mail, I got a nice packet from Annie Jennings PR with some promotional flyers, a business card, a handwritten note from her and a free audio CD on how to build a platform. What a nice gesture.
I have to say I loved the CD and I definitely plan to put my new knowledge to use. I recommend checking out her site. She has a newsletter, and also has a number of public relations resources for free or purchase.
I can not stress enough the importance of public relations. To me, it’s not about inflating your resume and being dishonest, it’s leveraging your talents and experience to gain you more exposure. It’s all about being the “expert” in your field, and as I expand my business, that is my goal–not just to be a “good” VA, but to be “the best.”
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”–Albert Einstein
I am frequently reminded of this quote. So often, people think that if they just get better organized or become more efficient, they’ll achieve greater success. In reality, that only helps a tiny bit. Entrepreneurs still continue to do the things they always did–their own writing if they are a numbers person, their own financial books if they can barely balance their personal checking account.
When businesspeople continue this practice, it really is insanity. The way to really take your business forward is to let go. Don’t be afraid to delegate. Change the way your business operates and you may just achieve the results you are looking for.
I embrace this theory. I have a neighbor who has a cleaning service. I pay her and her partner to clean my house. Am I capable of cleaning my own house? Absolutely. Do I enjoy it? No. Can they do it faster and better than I can? Yes. Is my time per hour billed at a higher rate than theirs? Yes. To me, it’s a no brainer. As my own business grows, I plan to hire a VA that specializes in bookkeeping. That’s not one of my strengths. My time is better spent elsewhere.
An entrepreneur is truly a one-person company. In medium to large size businesses, you have a multitude of departments–from marketing and advertising to sales and accounting. An entrepreneur doesn’t have that luxury. But even outsourcing one task can free up your time to devote to the more profitable aspects of your business.
Don’t continue to do everything yourself. You are an expert in your field, give your routine tasks to someone who is an expert in that and watch your business grow.
I was watching NBC News tonight and was alarmed at a segment about the potential hazards of drinking water on airplanes. The EPA says that some of the planes they tested had potentially unsafe drinking water containing coliform bacteria.
I don’t know about you, but the next time I fly, I’m either bringing my own bottled water or ordering a drink from a can with no ice!
Last night I needed some downtime, so i turned on Super Nanny, I think it was called. This reality show also reinforced some valuable tidbits not just related to child-rearing. For those of you that missed the show last night, here’s the premise…A Mom and Dad and their 3 closely-spaced daughters; one was 4.5 and twin 3 year olds. These children were totally out of control. Not listening to their parents, beating each other up and tantrums galore. The Mom and Dad seemed like nice, caring people, but they just didn’t know how to handle the kids. After observing, the nanny gave the girls’ parents tools to help them curb the behavior of the girls. One of them was a schedule.
The mom stayed home and had no rhyme or reason to the day. Most of the time, they had ‘free play” and since they didn’t know how to use that time well, they would get bored, and the behavior would start to deteriorate. With the help of the nanny, they created a specific schedule breaking down the entire day and what activities were supposed to take place at which time. The schedule included a group craft activity from 4-5 p.m. where mom gave them her undivided attention and helped them. It gave the girls something to look forward to each day, and with the schedule, the girls knew what was expected of them.
This got me thinking of how important schedules are and how much more we can accomplish with them. Break out your day and set time allotments of when you will work on what type of tasks. If you always feel sluggish at 2:00 p.m., schedule your favorite work task at that time. Have something to look forward to. With your new schedule, see how much more focused you are when you know what you are supposed to be doing when, see how much more productive you are, and avoid operating in crisis mode.
Speaking of which, my blogging/checking email/checking RFPs time block is coming to an end. More later.
On my IVAA newsgroup, one of my fellow VAs gave us the link for a website where you can go, type in your URL and it will give you back any web pages it found with identical wording to yours. Just for kicks, I went on it and guess what? I got a search result. It appears that someone found my press release from November and used a lot of wording from it, then linked to my website and lifted some more of my wording. The “offender” was a newspaper reporter, and I wouldn’t have minded at all if she mentioned me in her article, but apparently she used my content as background material and quoted other VAs in the article. I ended up sending her a friendly email, letting her know that while I was flattered she liked my copy well enough to use it, I would have appreciated being given the credit.
Has this happened to anyone else? Want to check your own website? Visit Copyscape’s website
Welcome to the new and improved Hidden Helper.com. This new web site will have frequently changing content and much easier for me to update (I’m not a web designer!).
I’m very excited to see that the first press release announcing my co-authored book, Write It Right: The Ground Rules for Self-Editing Like the Pros has been posted. My co-author is Dawn Josephson of Cameo Publications. This is Dawn’s second book, my first. Our goal in writing this book has been to help other people learn how to go through an effective editing process themselves to produce better written work. It will be released next month. More on the book later.