I would like to introduce you to Wealth And Abundance Today!
Having a site like this has been a passion of mine! You see after working with several clients over the years it became more apparent that most business crave to know more. They want to be empowered working in their business regarding tools, programs, and website add-ons that will better their business. They don’t like feeling at the mercy of tech teams, webmasters, and even virtual assistant teams. This is not to be confused with wanting to do it all, they just want to know in case something happens and they need to go in and “do something” or even be able to see if they are being taken advantage of. Business owners are usually in a sense of overwhelm – on Wealth and Abundance Today we have put into action The Weekly Productivity Program – set up to have direct focus everyday on getting things done and learning/implementing something new! Increase Productivity Decrease Overwhelm and Stress!

Wealth And Abundance Today is a site where we will be reviewing different products, giving directions (in detail) on how to use certain programs, guest bloggers of great trainers and speakers along with interviews. This site is set up for ALL business owners – small businesses, network marketers, and direct sellers. The purpose is to EMPOWER, EDUCATE, TRAIN, SHARE, and have fun doing it! By setting up a site with all of this information the productivity will double if not triple – more getting done in the same time frame leads to more revenue and more free time! (that’s where the fun comes in)

We would like you to check it out, bookmark it and visit ofter. Register to be on the newsletter and receive a free report on Building Lists!

Google Calendars They are AWESOME!

I am HUGE on calendaring things! I currently use Google Calendar. It is Free. It has collaboration qualities. It will sync with Outlook (if I needed it to). It will sync with Blackberry and an iPhone well there’s an app for that! The Google Calendar allows me to create several different calendars on one account – I can share just one of the several or I can share all of them with an assistant or business partner or my husband. The calendars are color coded – one color is Clients, once color is Personal, one color is Meetings and so on (I have 6 total) this allows me at a glance to see where my time is spent in addition to see all of my commitments and make sure there is no overlapping! WONDERFUL! There is a task list you can have right on the side, you can have multiple time zones accounted for in your view and even a world clock! The calendar is VERY easy to use and I mean EASY! It will even email you a daily agenda every morning if you would like! I love FREE tools and especially ones that work! If you have any questions on how to set a calendar up, what is the best way to organize them or even more about how to use them – feel free to contact us using the “contact” page.

Who is GOOGLE pt 2, Google Alerts

First you might ask, “what is a Google alert?” This is a service that Google offers for free, it allows you to set up an account, choose topics that you would like to get alerted about when there is info on the web written about them. It is a great tool to have if you specialize in an area and want to keep up on what is going on out there about it and if you write content for a newsletter or blog! You can sign up for different variations of alerts, News, Web, Blog, Comprehensive, Videos and Groups: once you choose your variations then you niche it down even more by key words you want them to look for! It is a GREAT way to stay on top of things. The variations breakdown like this:
• News – the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top 10 results of the Google news search
• Web – the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top 20 results in a Google web search
• Blogs – the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and would appear in the top 10 results in your Google blog search
• Comprehensive – combines your results from the News, Web, and Blog on your search terms into one email alert
• Video – the latest videos that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top 10 results of a Google video search
• Groups – the latest “posts” in groups that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top 50 results from a Google group search

If you have a Google account you just activate the Google Alerts and set it up – if you do not have a Google account get one today, it is free and you don’t have to use Gmail because you sign up for one – you can register for your Google Account using your primary email addy as the registration email address. I highly recommend you try this out! When you set up your Google Alerts, be sure to do a comprehensive alert for your name and your company name – it is great to be informed of what people are saying about you… Be on the watch for next week and I will go over the new Google Buzz tool out there!

Who is GOOGLE?

In this Google series my goal is to make you more aware of tools out there you can use for free to help your visibility. Google is the King of the Internet for sure! Now you might ask why and how can Google offer all of these tools for free, even a phone number, well trust me it is not just out of the kindness of its “heart”. Google is an advertising monster! That is what it is! So by the more of us that list on it – they have more content to offer people when searching for things.

Google History: Google began in 1996 as a research project by two Stanford students. They were exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web – and the web-crawler made its debut. They then created the page rank algorithm that we all strive to be at the top of even today!! Talk about a home-based business – they registered the domain Google.com in 1997 and was working out of a friends garage into 1998. Fun Fact: Google is actually from a misspelling of “googol” – which is represented by 1 and one hundred zeros following it. In 1999 the company moved into offices in Palo Alto and called their complex “googleplex” a play on the word “googolplex” which is represented by a 1 followed by googol of zeros. In 2006 bought their property for $319 million dollars! What a growth! Also in 2006 Google was added to the Merriam Webster & Oxford English dictionaries.

Check back for more on Google Tools offered to us all!

How Big is Your Bowl?

I know when I ask that question and everyone thinks of the size of their candy bowl they had for Halloween that is not what I am referring to. I am referring to your “life, experience and business” bowl! Take a plant for instance, you purchase plants to decorate your home or office with from stores like Home Depot and they are in 2 inch pots. It is recommended for it to continue to grow that you change out the pot and replant it in a slightly bigger one and then do it again for the plant to be able to grow bigger and bigger. OK, see the similarities? The plant (and fish are the same way) need a change of surroundings along with a bigger location to continue to grow. It cannot grow to its full size if you keep it cooped up in the same small habitat! Now relate this analogy to you and your business. Are you networking in the same groups you have been for years? Are you holding onto all of the “needed to be done” tasks for yourself to do? Open up your bowl size… reach out to new groups whether it be social networking on the internet with Facebook, LinkedIn and so on or meeting with a new networking group – find a 5 Minute Networking event – they are great! For those tasks that are holding you back from getting more work because you cannot keep up with what you have, hire an assistant whether it be in your office or a virtual assistant. The cost of paying an assistant will be more than covered when you have opened your bowl up for growth and more business comes in!

Winning the “Bid”

Bids, most of the companies create bids in order to secure an account. As a VA we speak with our potential clients, evaluate their needs and put together a proposal bid, not unlike most service businesses. Here are some quick tips for “winning the bid”
1) Target the correct company for you and your services. Make sure they are a perfect fit with your company and same the other way around. You do not want to be putting in a bid on a job just because and then do the job poorly.
2) If you are a “smaller” company think about working with larger service suppler companies! This allows you the opportunity to work with clients you might have never had the chance to work with before. 3) Get certified! For a lot of the smaller service based companies you can look to be certified in different service arenas. Organizations like Women’s Business Enterprise National Council www.wbenc.org offer certifications and this shows larger companies you are serious! Get out there and check out the opportunities, they are everywhere!

Delegation… Works Best When You Build a Relationship

It seems that no matter where you go in the business world one of the key elements is building a relationship. Well the same holds true for those who do work for you, you want to build a strong and personal relationship.

If this is going to be a strong support person for you they need to know about you and your business, not just the task at hand. You want a support person or staff to be invested in your business and that can only happen when you make them a part of your business. It has been proven that an “employee” or “sub-contractor” takes more pride in their work if they feel like they are a part of it. So take a bit of time to get to know your support team and let them get to know you and your business. With this small investment you will get a return worth a fortune based in higher quality of the output of work and the higher level of responsibility! Keep an eye out for next week’s next delegation tip!

Delegation… a Lost Art Part Two

Do you find yourself thinking I don’t even have the time in my day to delegate a task to someone… This is a pitfall many of us fall into. The truth is you don’t have the time NOT to delegate.

As a business owner your calendar is probably your most valuable tool. Notice I called it a TOOL – you need to use it that way. Schedule everything you have to do on the calendar that includes shopping, paying bills not just business meetings and networking! You will get a clear picture of the REAL amount of time you have in a day. Now while you are scheduling things – schedule in a block of time for delegating tasks, the beginning or end of the day is always best!

During this time you will focus on tasks you can hand out to others to complete type up an instruction email, include all attachments and don’t forget to include a date you expect this task to be completed – send it and consider that task completed! Your support team will get it done! It is important to make time work for you not you rush around trying to keep up with time!

Moving Ahead in the New Year!

The new year has arrived and the first official Monday is tomorrow! Are you ready to make a difference in your life and business this year? Not that you have not made a difference every year but a new bigger difference this year!

The roll over of the annual calendar allows us all to make changes, updates, new commitments and face the past challenges head on.

This is the time to find ways to Move Past and Move Ahead of it all. If you have not sat down and made a list of what worked last year, what did not work last year, what changes you would like to see happen this year, what people you would like to connect with this year – it is not too late!

Take a moment to review your logo, your website message (your tag line and the direction the message is being delivered), your meta tags, your keywords – be sure your branding is in line with where you want your business to be going! Sometimes we start out with our branding in once place and after a few years (or maybe even a few months) the direction or mission has slightly changed but your branding has not been updated. Updating your branding to be sure the most current direction of your company is being relayed is vital to your growth! You want to continually connect with your target market right? Stay up to date!

There are several Virtual Assistants that specialize in niches like this – they can assist business owners who might not have enough time to go through all of the changes. There are VA’s that assist in keeping your SEO up to date and continually adding to your key words and meta tags so you stay on top! Last but not least there are Marketing Strategists that can help you from point A to point Z in putting it all together!

Remember there are Virtual Assistants and Strategists out here to help you… if you are interested in getting a couple of referrals, please contact me and I would be happy to make a connection!

The Power of the Unsubscribe Button! {advice from a bystander}

Do you find yourself getting too many email newsletters, updates and blasts from people out there? Do you sit wondering “why did I sign up for this?” or “Oh this is not what I thought it was?” or even “I did not give this person the right to email me!” ? With so many business out there focusing on internet marketing and building lists it s no wonder that you end up a a few of them.

It is likely some are very valuable to you and some are not. Some you just joined the “list” to get the free offer that was available, he he he.

The question is what do you do now with all of these coming into your email account? First of all STOP using your main email account to sign up for promotions – create a free Gmail account or Yahoo account to accept those. I prefer Gmail because of all of the filters and automatic actions you can have it do ~ if you would like more specific strategy information on using a dummy account contact me and I can give you more…

BUT what I want to focus on are emails that you feel “you get too many from this certain person”, you “feel they are too focused on just selling their products and not contributing” or you “feel you never asked to be on their list”. It is very easy to report them as spammers yes, and for some that fall into these three categories it might be warranted but when you think about it they are just trying to make it. By reporting someone as a spammer you really mess them up… their email management account can be shut down and worse yet they can loose their entire database. Is it worth doing that to someone just because they are bugging you? I say no.. it is just as easy to push the unsubscribe button! Some people will email back “Please Remove Me” but understand if the one in control of that account does not remove you correctly you can be imported again and back to getting emails.

As someone who manages several client’s email management accounts on several different platforms it is much appreciated when you just choose to unsubscribe. You might think, well they can see my name and that I unsubscribed – Yes They Can, oh well – they have to understand you do not want their information any longer, it is your choice. In reality if you are just trashing their blasts any ways you are not a true customer and their count is not accurate. Also if you take control and push the unsubscribe button you are blocking them from just importing your name in later down the road – you would have to personally sign up again to get their info!

Unsubscribing can be helpful to the marketer or the leader that is doing the blasting…when you unsubscribe use the comments area to let them know why you are unsubscribing. If you think they are pushing for a sale too much, sending out nonsense, you no longer belong/participate with that organization company or if you have a suggestion to make their marketing better don’t you think they would want to know? I would!

So when you are bothered by your overloaded inbox – think of cleaning out your “subscriptions” and unsubscribing to a few things, but be proactive and helpful at the same time!

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