I came across the article recently and wanted to share…

Smart Women Know Who To Ask

Have you ever had a Big Idea that you were over the moon about only to have your hopes dashed because you shared it with someone who you trusted and they told you (typically in a very flat tone) “that will never work.” I’ve had this unfortunate experience happen to me on more than one occasion over the last two decades as an entrepreneur. It’s painful isn’t it? You get all excited about the possibility of living your passionate life and someone pops the air in your dream balloon!

Women are the most creative beings on earth and I want to make sure when you have these awesome, amazing, wonderful ideas, you ask the “right” person before you give up on your Big Ideas, Dreams and Goals. By the way, I don’t think people intentionally want to hurt your feelings when you share a great idea. I think it’s because few people are visionary– they aren’t looking through the same lens on life as you are. Many people see the world as black and white. Entrepreneurs have a lot of gray in their thinking. Entrepreneurs are unusual. We are not ordinary people. We think differently.

When I first decided to birth my Women’s Success Circles, I was very excited. I could hardly sleep at night as I was up thinking about all of the ideas and possibilities of how I could support women using this concept. I was at an event one evening with my husband and I decided to share my Big Idea with a woman there and she flat out took the wind out of my sails when I told her about it. She laughed and said, (and I quote) “That will never work. Women will never pay for that.” Can you imagine the embarrassment I felt? Thankfully on the way home as I licked my wounds, my husband Greg reminded me that not everyone will like my ideas but that doesn’t mean they won’t work. He said a lot more than that but I only have room for so much!

When you’ve got a really Big Idea and you feel like you’re going to burst at the seams if you don’t share it with someone, ask yourself a couple of questions:

1. Is this person where I want to be in terms of how I define success and achievement? I’ve found that people who’ve achieved success are willing to listen patiently to ideas and ask very wise questions to help you flush out your idea more fully. Having mentors and coaches in my life who’ve achieved the success I desire has been a key ingredient to the growth in my business. People who’ve had success in their lives are typically more open to possibility.

2. Is this person a positive, nutritious person? Is the person you are about to speak with, someone who you admire for their positive outlook on life? Do they inspire and motivate you?
I have a “core” group of people in my life who I turn to when I have a Big Idea, Dream or Goal that I’d like to accomplish. These people are successful, positive, creative, and most of all, they inspire me to be great.

I invite you to think about the people you are surrounding yourself with when you are brainstorming your next Big Idea. It can make the difference between achieving your goals or giving up too soon when success may be just around the corner.

One last thought: As coincidence would have it, I ran across a quote the morning after I wrote this article and it feels like the “perfect” ending: “The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the “curiosity” level.” From the rejection slip for “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

Anything is possible. Everything is waiting for you.

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Joy Chudacoff, ICF, PCC, is the founder of Smart Women Smart Solutions®, a Professional Certified Coach to 1000’s of women, Motivational Speaker, and Entrepreneur. She publishes a weekly buzz generating ezine, Reflections On Life and Business for Women Entrepreneurs. If you’re ready take your coaching business to the next level, get your FREE Tips, FREE Report and FREE MP3 now at Smart Women Smart Solutions Coaching

You know what I’m talking about….those voices in your head that are constantly nattering at you and if you are currently saying to yourself, “I don’t have any voices in my head.” All I have to say to you is “Got ya!” because you were just having a conversation with yourself.

Everyday, especially as women business owners we often struggle with what we want to do, what is consider “right” in they eyes of everyone else and what we “have to” do. Sometimes we put this pressure on ourselves, instead of making a request for some assistance, or simply saying “no” we agree to take on something or do something that truly we don’t want to do.

It’s time stop the craziness and tell that Demon to simply “shut it’s trap!” I know, I know easier said than done but try incorporating some of these steps to conquer that inner demon once and for all!

Give up and Give in

Acknowledging that no matter what things will never perfect and even if they could be know that if you did achieve the impossible idea of “perfect” you’d no longer have any reason to strive.  So when I say give up, let go of the idea of being perfect and give in to the increbibness that is already surrounding you and who you are.   In your business you have a skill set that no one else can provide, you have insights and knowledge to that no one else can offer.  You are uniquely positioned to be an expert in what you do, you simply need to put your focus on getting that message out.  So enjoy!

Halt the Negative Talk

Definitely easier said than done, but any time you catch yourself in a negative thought stop, acknowledge and reinforce that thought with something positive.  No it doesn’t have to be directly related to the issue that you’re chastizing yourself about, but something positive.  It can help to switch the mind from it’s current thought process to a new more positive view point.

Write it Down

The positive that is!  Take time everyday to write out, yes write it out! Don’t just think about it.  Your mind to make the changes it needs to  make needs to have concrete evidence that you’re on a positive road and writing it down helps to solidify that path!

Take Time For Yourself

Yes, this title is bigger than the others.  This is so incredibly important and it makes no difference if you are a business owner or not.  You MUST no matter what take time for yourself, get away from your work, your life, your spouse, your kids.  Even if it’s only 15 minutes a day, take that time to simply acknowledge yourself, what you’ve done and do something for yourself no matter how small.

My me time? In the evening before I finally go to sleep I always, always take time to read for my benefit.  Sometimes it’s great fiction and sometimes it’s business related, but it’s because I choose to.

Share your secret.  What do you do to a halt those inner demons and keep yourself on a positive track?  I’d love to hear so please leave me comment and share your story!

I recently had a conversation with one of my clients and she mentioned to me that her husband has now admitted that he really does need an assistant to help him with his business. She believes he needs two assistants for the simple reason that some of the tasks fall in the general administrative role and the other tasks are are more technical and quite specialized to the type of work that he does, I agree with her knowing the situation.

I told her that I know you can find the types of VA’s that your husband needs, and she responded with a very surprised, “Really?”. Questioning the idea that it would even be possible.

This got me to thinking, that if my client and her husband are in this situation, it’s likely there are other enterpreneurs and business owners having the same issue.

So How Do You Hire A Virtual Assistant?

And more importantly how to hire the right virtual assistant?  While I’d like to say, it ‘s just a matter of putting out the request and that great virtual assistant will show up on your virtual doorstep it doesn’t happen that way.

Finding the right person to join your team, is like trying to find that last  missing puzzle piece.  Well okay maybe not quite, but to find the right virtual assistant to join your team does take planning, dedication and focus.  If your desired outcome is to have someone join your team that is excited about your projects, wants to see you succeed and is passionate about helping you increase your revenue, keep on track and make your working life easier then you can’t go about it haphazardly!

What’s exciting for me, is this conversation with my client gave me the idea to create a great step by step product that will walk you through the process of finding just the ideal Virtual Assistant for your business because they do exsist you just need to know how to find them.  In the meantime, while I’m developing the product (and BTW if you want to know when it’s released be sure to sign up on right to get my updates!) here are a few tips to help you in your process right now…

• Take time to plan. Yes, you know you need to hire a virtual assistant.  Stop.  Sit Back and spend 30 minutes to an hour thinking and more importantly writing down exactly what you’d like to see your Virtual Assistant do.
• Ask Around. Referrals are often the best way to find a Virtual Assistant.  If no one in your immediate networking is using a Virtual Assistant, then ask your extended referral network on Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter.  It’s possible someone that you follow or have connected with can offer suggestions.
• Don’t rush. Just because you know you need a Virtual Assistant don’t jump at the first one that comes knocking.  Take the time to have a conversation with them, get to know them, check out their blog, do a Google search on them, see what they’ve been doing on line and if for any reason it doesn’t seem like the right fit then move on.
• Post an RFP. There are many great sites out there than allow you to post an RFP (Request for Proposals) for exactly what you are looking for, but be prepared for some additional work or even now responses at at all if you are too detailed or not detailed enought the Virtual Assistants may choose not to respond.  Some sites to consider: International Association of Virtual Assistants, Virtual Assistantville, Virtual Assistant Forums,  VA Networking, and International Association of Online Business Managers

While this is no where near exhaustive of the steps necessary to make your first hire a success it does give you an idea of what to start looking for when you do choose to have some one join your team.

I’d love to hear from you what do you find you struggle with most when it comes to bringing someone new on to your team?

’til next time,

Renee

This past weekend I had the great opportunity to attend a friend of mine’s workshop called eBook Jumpstart, it’s facilitated by Peggy Richardson of Wizard of eBooks and well worth your time to attend if you are thinking of getting your own eBooks and info products out on the web.

Attending this event I quickly learned was how many people weren’t yet aware of a powerful Google Tool called Alerts.  So this got me to thinking that though it’s something I access and use everyday, maybe some of my readers as well as my clients we’re yet aware of this great tool.

It’s a pretty simple concept in it’s idea, but extremely powerful and limitless in it’s use. The basic concept is this, you tell Google Alerts what you’d like it to search the web for (a great one to start with is your name), be sure to put quotations around your topic so that Google Alerts only search for that combination, see the example below

I have quotations around my name so that only instances of Renee Shupe will appear in the email that I receive.  The Type, How Often, Email Length and Deliver To are all customizable options.

Using Google Alerts automatically updates you on any terms you choose and you can have an infinite amount of alerts set up.  The value in this gives you the opportunity to not only see what is being said about you, your business but others in your industry and niche, fantastic for competitive intelligence!

Don’t be limited to names and companies, think of niche terms, industry jargon, products, others in your industry that you’d like to know what’s going on with them.  It ‘s really whatever your imagination chooses, but ultimately it’s a vital application to have in your toolbox for your business.

You can find Peggy on Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn as well at her website www.WizardofEbooks.com

So I had a wonderful opportunity to take sometime out of my busy schedule to connect with a great group of women at the Nanaimo Women Business Network. I was their guest speaker this past week, and it was great to connect with such a cool bunch of women. It’s interesting how events or imposed deadlines such as this event motivate you into action and that’s exactly what this event did for me.

If gave me the opportunity to finish a white paper I had wanted to write for quite awhile and now it’s available and I’d love for you to take some time to read it. It’s all about how our success is directly tied to how we choose to delegate and leverage our time. No matter what for anyone who is a solo professional or micro business owner, you need to build connections to help in your success.

This paper walks you through the reasons why you might not be delegating and what you can do change that…

So if you’d like to learn more, click here or on the graphic and you can sign up to receive your free report right away!

Everyday we manage mulitple responsiblities, some of us excel at taking care of the details and thrive in such an environment. While others struggle trying to keep track of the details and truthfully dread having to do any kind of follow up.

As an Online Business Manager and Virtual Assistant I often find myself in the position of managing many aspects of my clients business, especially coordinating and following up with other freelancers and outsourcers that my client has on their virtual team.

That’s the fantastic thing of being an Online Business Manager I can directly support my clients in getting more things done, but taking care of all of the administrative aspects of their business and let my client focus on what they do best and what brings in the revenue for them.

So when I step into the role of managing my clients virtual teams I often try and follow these tips to keep things on track focused on the projects at hand.

Tip #1 – Establish Objectives

Whenever a new team member is brought on board or we are about to start a new project I take time to ensure that everyone understands their role and their work within the project scope.  Sometimes this is just a quick email to the team or if it’s more elaborate I might organize a team meeting or individual meetings to cover objectives and roles.

Tip #2 – Bring Everyone Together

Yes, we might all be individual contractors but we’re all working on a common goal for the client.  If everyone knows they are part of team working on a common objective and deliverables I find that everyone feels better about their work and they are often more collaborative with everyone on the team.

Tip #3 – Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

When you are working with team members virtually everyone needs to know the importance of communication.  Part of my keys jobs is ensuring that everyone is on board and in loop.  Whether it’s a quick email or gathering a team conference call.  This is probably one of the most important tasks that any Online Business Manager, Virtual Assistant or Project Manager needs to do and if this is something you struggle with consider hiring  someone to manage this process for you.

Tip #4 – Manage the workload

It’s important to stay on top of what tasks are completed, near completion or maybe slipping through the cracks and stepping in to help the outsourcer with their workload and refer back to Tip #3

Tip # 4 – Assign Shorter Assisgnments

Think of this if you give someone a task or project that will take 6 weeks to complete and if it goes off track you might not know for 4 weeks or so and that makes it difficult to make up for lost time.  So instead, think of any longer term projects and break it down into shorter manageable chunks, then you can keep track of the work and know the work is being completed.

Tip #5 – Provide Systems For The Team to Connect

Technology is making it easier and easier for teams connect and stay in touch.  There are many great collaboration applications available now that allow for teams and clients to connect.  Services like Basecamp, DeskAway, My ClientSpot all offer ways for teams and clients to manage tasks, projects and communication with one another.

As many of you know I’m a fan of Hootsuite, I love the flexibility, customization, and the ability to embed columns from Hootsuite on a website or blog.  I came across some great videos that talk about some of the great features of the Hootsuite service.  Once aspect that I absolutely love is if you are a Chrome Fan you can set up Hootsuite as an application striaight to your desktop (if you’d like a step by step video on how to do this then leave a comment and I’ll create one.

Otherwise here’s a view videos to give you some ideas on how you can use Hootsuite to manager many aspects of your social networking.

Overview of HootSuite

Posting Directly from HootSuite to WordPress!

This is a feature I haven’t had much time to try out yet, but since I use WordPress for both my sites and many of my clients I love this idea….

I recently had a request to help take an overloaded eMail inbox and make it manageable.  This is such a common request amoung business owners and even when I was working in the corporate world and working along side senior executives.  It’s a challenge to keep up on the constant inundation of eMail everyday.  So here’s my offering for helping you make steps to get it under control and if you’d like some help with this task and any other administrative support give me a shout!

Tip #1 – Turn off the alerts already! Most email programs alert you when a new email has arrived, whether it’s by making a sound or popping up a window on your computer screen, you can turn off such options by accessing the Tools, Preferences or Options section of your email program.  Exclusive user of Gmail?  Simply do not download any of the notification add-ons or extensions.  When you don’t know the email is arriving it is easier to schedule time into your day to look at it only a few times each day.

Tip #2 – Turn off the program. So you’ve turned off the alerts but now you’re guilty of constantly jumping between what you are doing and your email program.  Then shut it down!  Only open your eMail program when you need to check your email.

Tip #3 – Unsubscribe! It seems at some point or another you’ve signed up to receive a newsletter or blog updates by email that you thought you’d want to read, but instead these emails are either getting relegated to a folder to read later and then often don’t ever get read.  If this is the case, then unsubscribe!  If you haven’t read a weekly newsletter from someone in the last month, then unsubscribe!  Take a look maybe they have a blog you can subscribe to in your RSS Feed reader and you can manage it that way (BTW, RSS Feed Readers will be another topic on how to purge and manage).  Either way, reducing the number of newsletter, ezines or Blog Posts by email will shrink the size of your inbox for messages that you receive and yes, you’ll feel better!

Tip #4 – Start Fresh. For some this might be considered a cheating way to do it, but it helps and it works.  Choose an arbitrary date, say two weeks from the day you’re reading this.  Create an archive folder in your email program and then archive everything that is more than two weeks older.  Mark the folder as read and presto, chango!  You’ve already purged a huge number of emails from your inbox.  Going forward, be sure to take some time each week to filter, archive, unsubscribe and delete any emails that you no longer need.

Tip #5 – Schedule it. It’s been briefly mentioned in Tip #2, but now it’s time to do it.  Actually schedule time in your day to review your email and inbox.  When we didn’t have email we waited for the regular mail to arrive and then took time to open the mail and review what we received.  Look at email the same way, choose a time each day.  Best to make it around the same time each day to review your email and that is the only time you look at your email.  If this scares you that you won’t respond to something in time, set up an automatic reply that will respond to every email stating that you check your email at designated times and will respond to them at that time.  If it is an emergency mention in the alert email to have them call you. Problem solved!

Tip #6 – Act on it! If you have followed the previous steps so far, your inbox should be well on it’s way to being managed.  Now it’s time to do something about it!  When you’re reviewing your email at your designated time during the day, rather than just file an email for later, do something with it.  Can you respond to it right now?  Then do it!  Did you just receive another newsletter that you don’t read? Then unsubscribe and trash it! Did you receive something that you don’t need to do anything with, but still need to keep the information on hand? Then file it!  Right now!  Don’t save it for later, do something with it as soon as you read it!

Further inspiration:

Here’s a few posts I found while doing some research for this post that I thought you might also find interesting and useful.

• The Holy Grail:  How to Outsource the Inbox and Never Check Email Again – By Tim Ferriss author of The Four Hour Work Week
• 15 Tips for Managing Email Obesity – By Lorie Marreo of The Clutter Diet

Okay, I have to admit I’ve been stubborn and no it has nothing to do with me being a redhead, well okay maybe a little (sheesh…).  You see, this is a fault of mine, if I’m not the first to discover it or at least be an early adopter in among my peers then I sometimes shun whatever the new service, idea or application may be.  Now I’m also the first to admit when I’m just being plain stubborn about something and this is one of those times.

Recently, I was working on a project with a group of other virtual assistants and one of the ways for us to share details was to have a mutual online RoboForm account.  I’m someone who is pretty good at remembering passwords and and I’ve got my ways of keeping track.  Well, while using RoboForm I found out easy and handy it is to use!

So if you’re anything like me try it out and you won’t be concerned about remembering a password (expect for one) ever again!

Concerned that you won’t be able to access them anywhere but on your system, no worries they have Roboform Online which allows you to synchronize to an online version which you can then use no matter where you are.  Or you can synchronize it to a USB stick if you prefer.  They have quite a few options and I have yet to explore all of the features, but just the saving of passwords is enough for me right now!

Do you have a can’t live without app?  If so, I’d love to hear about it!

’til next time