Awesome and Inspirational Series for Entrpreneurs

My good friend Laura Cardone is a brilliant business coach. Her depth and insight is remarkable! She is truly a woman who I adore and admire because she is passionate about what she does, she has worked very hard at her craft to become the very best at what she does, and she is such an all-around class act!

She has developed a series of Daily messages and messages every other week that are uplifting and motivational for entrepreneurs. Subscribe here

The Freebie is a series of short, yet powerful audio articles to help you feed your spirit and your bottom line! They’re designed for conscious business owners and busy professionals who are passionate about creating a successful business and a balanced and fulfilling life.

There are absolutely no limits to what you can be, do or create!

The Daily Messages are part of a paid subscription and a personal success system for business owners and “enlightened” leaders. Part 1 is a downloadable planning guide with step-by-step videos. It’s designed to help business owners create a life and business plan. It’s unique for 3 reasons.

1. It’s holistic; we can’t truly succeed if we’re sacrificing our happiness in one area in order to achieve goals in another.
2. It’s designed to help people uncover and align with their personal keys to success, hence “profits with purpose”. They learn how to set the right goals for them and then use the principles required to align with their desired outcome.
3. It merges principles from business, science and spirit to help people grow personally and professionally.

The other two parts of the system help you stay on track, and dissolve obstacles via the daily messages (Monday through Friday) and a monthly podcast. Also you can submit questions to be featured in an upcoming podcast or discovery message.

Check her out! You will not regret investing in yourself.

Internet Marketing Without Breaking the Bank

Tom Antion is an Internet Marketing genius. He is one of the original internet marketers. He gets results and most importantly shows you how you can avoid costly mistakes that most “professionals” would tell you to make!

He along with some other top internet marketers teaches a series of Internet Marketing courses and they begin at only $15 per month. There are a ton of other benefits to joining as well. It is well worth the investment if you want to get your at home business off right!

He also has a TON of FREE resources for internet marketing. Check it out at his Internet Marketing website and check out the freebies.

New Year, New Outlook: Lee Milteer

At Wednesday night’s meeting of the National Association of Women Business Owner’s we had a phenomenal speaker Lee Milteer. Not only is she a walking talking success story, she is a wonderful woman! I find it amazing that someone who grew up in a town with population 50 could go from Farmer’s Daughter to millionaire because she WANTED and believed in something passionately enough. I was blown away.

She does have a great freebie on her website, but you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen her speak! She’s amazing. You will walk away and say “wow I feel so much better- time to get to work!”

She talks about interrupting those negative thoughts and feelings that just set us up to be counterproductive and replacing them with positive thoughts and feelings about ourselves. She said doing this every day for 21 days and a new habit is formed. You can break those depressed and down cycles that we call go through.

As a mom who is juggling EVERYTHING and just trying to stay afloat, it was just something that is such an important message.

Lee doesn’t just speak to women in business she actually coaches celebrities, corporations, and other coaches. Check her out. If you ever have the chance to see her you do not want to miss it!

Make a Serious Statement and Increase Your Business

If you are looking for a job, if you want to get ahead at your current job, or if you are just hoping to keep the job that you have, you have to check out Sandy Dumont. She is THE Image Architect. THE Image Expert from head to toe on polished and professional dressing.

When you visit her website you can subscribe to her newsletter for a free eBook and get started on your Image Education. Check out the products and services that she offers. What she does goes way beyond Cosmo or the fashion magazines. She teaches professionals how to create an image that makes an IMPACT!

Weekly Savings Tip- Become a VA!

Amaing, of all the advice! You can view the tip here Good advice!

Your Business Your Way

I was intrigued by this article in the Chicago Tribune.

For years women have been breaking through that glass ceiling and defending their rights to have it all—rewarding careers, a happy family, and a productive personal and social life. It’s the pursuit of having it “all” that I believe women is so stressful for women. It’s an impossible expectation. Something must be sacrificed. Even with the increasing involvement of the role of Fathers over the years, it’s impossible for women to have it “all”!

When my husband and I found out that we were finally able to have a child we were happy, of course, but we knew that the choice of me not returning to a traditional workplace was one that we were willing to make for the sake of our family. We were so fortunate and blessed that I was able to find a form of income that allowed me to be more flexible with my schedule and the schedule of my child.

It does not surprise me that more and more mothers are choosing to do this. It’s unfortunate that they are doing it because they feel that their salaries are inadequate. Let’s fact it, the business world is rough and competition is everywhere. But so is the world and elements that can hurt family life are everywhere. If you choose to work at home to be with your family ENJOY it. Enjoy the blessings of your smiling children and their beautiful laughter. Enjoy the knowledge that you are contributing to the family income in your own way.

The rewards of being able to work from home are about being able to have a business and doing it “your way”.

Get Ready to Hit the Ground Running!

So in a previous post I made a suggestion that you subscribe to a daily meditation by email. After publishing that on my blog I had someone send me one by email and I’ve been reading it in the morning while my daughter eats her breakfast.

I do find that my day is more productive. Some of the posts are cute, some are profound. They all help me stop and think and take a time out and focus inward and align my goals and my intent for the day. Suddenly the huge list of “to-do’s” seems doable!

I heartily recommend that you check out Brian Kim’s free M.I.T.’s when signing up for his newsletter.

He also writes some books “The Hidden Secret in Think and Grow Rich” and “How to Finally Find What You Love To Do and Get Paid for It”

If they are as good as his M.I.T.’s are, they will be well worth the investment!

A New President, A New Country

I think that no matter your political opinions, you can agree that the inauguration speech today was profound. With Obama’s Inaugural oath, a historical event, it is now our responsibility to take up our own mantle of accountability to get up and get out and get to work!

In the spirit of getting to work, I’m kicking off a blog series all about marketing products that work. You’ll want to subscribe to this blog because I’ll have a whole host of freebies and great tips on improving your business bottom line.

Check out tomorrow’s post as we look at a great FREE morning meditation by email service.

Writing a Compelling Newsletter

Write about what you know about. I don’t mean you should write about your dog or cat or children (unless that’s your business). Okay, maybe one article can be devoted to your dog or cat or children—it is your newsletter after all!  Rather, write about your business, your passion, and what’s going on with you. If you’re like the rest of us and you can’t possibly see how to find the time to write the articles necessary to fill an entire newsletter, research the facts, download the stock art, or embed the links, consider hiring a Virtual Assistant. Consider a Virtual Assistant your Jack-of-all-trades in the virtual world. Virtual Assistants specialize in—well—dabbling!

Here are some tips for getting and keeping your readership:

1)      Tie in to current events- Elections, Holidays, Celebrities in the news—

2)      Branding is key! Develop your logo, slogans, and identity of everything that you do. Develop everything right down to the key colors that you use.  Your readers will begin to notice and recognize the brand. People don’t just buy products—they buy brands.

3)      Subscribe to other newsletters to see what else is out there. You’ll be surprised what can inspire you.

4)      Power your blog- link back to your blog in at least one of your articles. You took the time to design a newsletter and to put together a distribution list so you might as well build a blog following, right! Add an interesting photo and continue the story in your blog. Need a story idea? Get your VA to research it.

5)      Get Artwork- there are plenty of great stock art sites out there that are very inexpensive. Punch up every article with an interesting photo, graphic, or illustration. If you have a graphic artist on staff or plenty of your own professional photos, all the better!

6)      Pay close attention to colors and fonts. A good rule is to use no more than three fonts and no more than three colors (excluding artwork) on one newsletter at one time. Otherwise the look gets too disjointed.

7)      Get a third opinion, and a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth—well you get the picture. You will want some honest feedback from people who care about you and want you to succeed before you send your message out to the world. Is your newsletter professional looking? Does your message come across? Is it amateurish? It’s so hard to be objective about your own work sometimes. Don’t take it personal just make it better! Also, don’t forget to get a good proofreader!

 

Maggie Ruch is a Virtual Assistant who offers affordable options for growing businesses. Check out her website at www.assistspeakers.com where you can get her free eBook “5 Tips for Finding the PERFECT Virtual Assistant”.

Using Your Inbox as a To-Do List

I keep very few emails in my Inbox. By using Outlook features effectively, you don’t have to feel overwhelmed by emails, tasks, and appointments. If you find that you are constantly over run by emails, perhaps it’s time for some virtual help with a Virtual Assistant. Virtual Assistants can be trained to answer incoming emails in your “voice” through a series of auto-responders tailored to answering the specific needs of your clients. If there are sensitivity issues you can always forward emails to your assistant and set up a “customer service” account just like any corporation would have. (Do you think Bill Gates really answers his own emails?) By having a Virtual Assistant answering emails, you can actually establish an image of credibility to a small business.

Here are some tips I use for managing emails:

1)      Import Outlook Calendar from all media devices and sync up so that all appointments are accurate and so that I have access at any machine.

2)      When emails come in glance over them to see what is junk and what is valid email that needs to be read and responded to.

3)      Immediately delete it if it’s junk.

4)      Respond to and handle tasks that can be taken care of immediately.

5)      After an email has been completed, I move into the appropriate subfolder (I have a series of folders for every client and several personal folders and drag emails that have been completed but that I do not want to delete into) You never know when you will need to refer to an old email.

6)      If it’s something that requires follow up, I set a reminder for the time of day that is best for me (I refer to my outlook calendar to see what time of day this might be) or I set an appointment in my Outlook Calendar. A pop up comes up in Outlook and will not go away until I have completed the task. I can reschedule it for another day when I think I will have more time or snooze the task and address it later.

7)      On days that are quiet and I have extra time to catch up, I go through and complete the tasks that are still undone in my inbox. (Once per week or so I go through and look at every email to see if there are any that I have actually completed that are still in the inbox.)

Some great programs for managing emails at a distance are Gotomypc or Logmein. You can also use Mailstreet for syncing multiple users and multiple email accounts at once.

Maggie Ruch is a Virtual Assistant who offers affordable options for growing businesses. Check out her website at www.assistspeakers.com where you can get her free eBook “5 Tips for Finding the PERFECT Virtual Assistant”.