Stephanie LH Calahan

JANUARY 26, 2011

Productive & Organized Home Contribute to P&O! Archive Network with Steph Is This You? Work With Stephanie « Listen to Stephanie on Solace Wealth Management on Blog Talk Radio | Main | My first Twitterview with @marciahoeck - Decisive Productive Action Taken » 6 Tools to Help You Manage Large Projects with Local & Virtual Teams I created this super secret (he he - not so secret now) group on Facebook of productivity and organization consultants and it has been a great source of netwo

Central Desktop 206

Central Desktop Basecamp Google Docs Management 206

On The Job

JANUARY 27, 2011

Blogs such as The Cynical Girl (by Laurie Ruettimann) have generated some entertaining -- and informative -- discussions about what older applicants should wear to an interview. The consensus seems to be that hair dye is a no-no (only professionally-applied highlights, please) and turtlenecks only call attention to your slacking neck skin, not hide it.

Job Hunting 201

Job Hunting Interviewing Retirement Stress 201

Eco-Office Gals

JANUARY 22, 2011

Are you hoping to find an environmentally friendly employer? It may seem like a daunting task, but it is actually getting easier every day. Here are five tips that you may want to keep in mind: Brand yourself green. Environmentalism starts at home. To find a green job, you need to be green yourself – that is, if you want to land that green job once you find it.

Carbon Footprint 178

Carbon Footprint Networking Environment AT&T 178

The Small Business Blog

JANUARY 27, 2011

Talking about business success is always great and uplifting. Talking about business failure not so much, why is that? All too often failure is seen as a bad thing, not as an experience, a valuable lesson or the next important step on the ladder to success. Failure is painful, it dents our ego, but the truth is failure often teaches us more than success.

Learning 159

Learning 159

Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions

💢 Do you find yourself stuck in never-ending review cycles? Are you wondering if your Subject Matter Expert actually got that last review request? Are you having trouble trying to decipher impractical or conflicting feedback? 💢 If any of these scenarios sounds familiar, you may benefit from a crash course on managing SME relationships!

Collaborate

Stephanie LH Calahan

JANUARY 28, 2011

Productive & Organized Home Contribute to P&O! Archive Network with Steph Is This You? Work With Stephanie « 6 Tools to Help You Manage Large Projects with Local & Virtual Teams | Main | Monday Motivation - Michael Jordan on Failure » My first Twitterview with @marciahoeck - Decisive Productive Action Taken A little while back, I wrote to you about my theme for this year: decisive productive action.  One of the things I mentioned was that I was not going to let perfectionis

Twitter 167

Twitter Interviewing Phones Networking 167

Job Advice Blog

JANUARY 26, 2011

After introductions and small talk this would be the time to ask a question to start the interview on the right foot. Say it in your own words but this question sets up the interview for you: “What kind of person are you looking for and what are you looking for this new person to [.].

Interviewing 152

Interviewing UPS 152

The Small Business Blog

JANUARY 23, 2011

The top 5 tips weekly post is always full of hints and tips for small, home & micro business owners. 1. Try to cut your operational costs as quickly and savagely as possible, without it affecting your ability to provide top quality products or service. It is important to get the basics (business planning & financial reporting) right first. 2.

Customer Service 157

Customer Service Training Skills AT&T 157

Stephanie LH Calahan

JANUARY 25, 2011

Productive & Organized Home Contribute to P&O! Archive Network with Steph Is This You? Work With Stephanie « Productivity and Organization Link Lineup | Main | 6 Tools to Help You Manage Large Projects with Local & Virtual Teams » Listen to Stephanie on Solace Wealth Management on Blog Talk Radio Listen live to Stephanie answer questions about productivity & organization on the Solace Wealth Management show.  John will interview Steph for 60 minutes.

Management 167

Management 2011 Interviewing Fax 167

Make or Break Moments

JANUARY 23, 2011

This past week I did my civic duty by serving on a jury trial in Judge Cosgrove’s courtroom. I’m not here to talk about the case - but rather want to talk about the culture Judge Cosgrove has developed in her courtroom. As part of the case (a wrongful death suit in which a medical practice [.].

Medical 150

Medical 150

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Interviewing

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 24, 2011

There is so much going on in the mobile payments space it's getting very hard to keep up, much less figure out what to do.  Fortunately, there are several excellent, recent articles with good summaries of the mobile payments space.  Several of these have coverage of Starbucks' recently released mobile payments system: BusinessWeek's CEO Guide to Mobile Payments is a special section with several articles on the topic.  It covers most of the key tech

2011 145

2011 Phones Google UPS 145

The Small Business Blog

JANUARY 26, 2011

Social media sites are not longer just the realm of individuals, and those who regularly read my blog know I’m a huge advocate of the power of social media for small businesses. Many companies, from small businesses to multinational organisations, are embracing the benefits of social media marketing, and if your business isn’t you are really missing out!

Social Media 154

Social Media Budget Facebook Twitter 154

Andrea Kalli

JANUARY 24, 2011

Ideas for Using Social Media Pre-Marketing: Here are Three Ways to Build Value Before You Market. If there is one part of social media marketing that is particularly daunting, it is the product or service launch. Be it a company blog or a full-featured website, promoting something that is brand new is one of the most challenging tasks for any marketing team, particularly in an online world where a negative post, unwanted opinion, or snarky comment is just a click of a button away.

Social Media 143

Social Media Promotion Purchasing Facebook 143

Ian's Messy Desk

JANUARY 28, 2011

This is not an original piece; the list is posted around the Internet in numerous places. If you are unfamiliar with Myers-Briggs you can read the basics here. If you want to know what your type is, you can take a quick on-line Myers-Briggs test at Human Metrics. Incidently, I am ISFP—Introverted, Sensing, Feeling, Perceiving. ISTJ: God, help me to relax about insignificant details beginning tomorrow at 11:41:23 a.m.

AT&T 132

AT&T UPS 132

Advertiser: Aggregage

New vaccine mandates and testing policies will affect employers with more than 100 workers. Get Paycor’s free, customizable vaccination policy template to communicate critical details and new requirements to your employees. Get Paycor’s Template today!

Policies

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 25, 2011

Commodity prices have been on a tear over the last 6 months.  A United Nations index that tracks 55 food commodities is at a record high (see chart on right).  It's not just food.  2010 saw a wide range of commodity prices shoot up.  Cotton was up 91%.  Pallidium, used in autos and other manufactured products, was up 96%.  Increases in copper (up 35%) and steel (up 32%) were relatively modest, but both are expected to increase again this

2007 141

2007 2012 2010 UPS 141

The Small Business Blog

JANUARY 25, 2011

Customer service is one of the few great advantages that a small business has over a larger competitor. Although they are unlikely to be able to compete on price, they have the potential to provide a far more personalised and caring customer care experience. All that they need to do this better than the competition are the right tools and well trained staff.

Customer Service 149

Customer Service Expenses Purchasing Collaborate 149

Office Dynamics

JANUARY 25, 2011

A Winter’s Walk. By Nancy Fraze. I’m trying to get back to a regular routine of walking during my morning and afternoon breaks. On my morning walk yesterday I noticed that the winter has stripped the trees of their bright leaves and foliage. Everything looks so bare and empty! Not many people braved the weather. I was walking alone. It was uncomfortably cold.

Confidence 126

Confidence Environment 126

Ian's Messy Desk

JANUARY 26, 2011

I can overuse a good cliché as much as the next person; and perhaps more so. However, there are a few I dislike and refuse to speak. “Think outside the box&# is one such bad cliché. I cringe whenever I hear people say they “think outside the box&#. In my experience, most people who use that expression have little or no creativity. Genuinely creative people do not refer to “outside the box thinking&#.

Clothes 130

Clothes AT&T Learning 130

Speaker: Tim Buteyn

Let's set the scene: you’ve identified a critical performance gap in your organization and need to close that gap. A colleague suggests training, but you suspect there’s something going on that training can’t address. How can you determine if training is the right solution before you commit your budget and resources to a new training program? In this webinar, you will learn how to determine if training is the right solution using the Behavior Engineering Model.

Training

Eat Your Career

JANUARY 27, 2011

This post is part of my Bad Career Advice series in which I expose outdated, clichéd, and counterproductive advice for exactly what it is. So, there’s this race, right? A nice guy versus a jerk. Who’s gonna win? According to popular belief, the jerk takes the prize every time. Nice guys just can’t compete. Apparently, all that goodness just slows them down.

Assertiveness 125

Assertiveness AT&T Google Facebook 125

The Small Business Blog

JANUARY 23, 2011

This week the WinWeb Pitch of the Week winner is Mariono Pastor, the owner of Via U! , an affordable online photography studio that aims to help small businesses increase their sales. Via U! Photography offers a financially viable for small businesses looking to sell products online through advertising photography. Via U! Photography makes professional advertising photography accessible to even the smallest of business, around the world.

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144

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 27, 2011

We've been getting a lot of questions on NFC, so we thought we would do a quick overview post.  NFC stands for "near field communications" and refers to a type of very short range radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.  It's getting a lot of recent attention because Google, Apple and others are planning on using NFC in their mobile payments product lines.   Basically, NFC turns a cellphone into an electronic wallet and payments device.

Google 124

Google UPS 124

On The Job

JANUARY 25, 2011

Would you hire an ex-convict? Would you work with one? There's a story today in The New York Times about how some states are helping ex-cons find jobs in the hopes it will keep them from returning to prison. It's no secret that finding a job these days can be difficult, but can you imagine what it's like if you have a criminal record? That's certainly something you have to worry about if you get into trouble with the law.

Legal 124

Legal Gossip Facebook Promotion 124

Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions

We’ve all been there. You’ve been given a pile of dry content and asked to create a compelling eLearning course. You’re determined to create something more engaging than the same old course that learners quickly click through, but how do you take this “boring” content and create something relevant and engaging? Many instructional designers will say, “Boring in means boring out.

Policies

Complete Organizing Solutions

JANUARY 22, 2011

Sunday morning I woke and finished packing my bag. Anything we had that could be used at the HOM we left. Extra shoes, flip-flops, bug spray, hand sanitizer, towels and clothes. The pile kept getting larger and larger. It was nice to get to know some of the staff living at the HOM and now when any of us return we can see what they need specifically and bring it.

Clothes 123

Clothes AT&T Travel Learning 123

Ian's Messy Desk

JANUARY 22, 2011

I had some problems with the SQL database that contains the posts, etc. for this blog. With some other changes made to my hosting, before Christmas, I had not set the backup. Consequently, I’ve lost about four weeks worth of posts. That’s not quite as bad as it sounds. I am subscribed to my own content by e-mail and that gets archived daily.

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Small Business Labs

JANUARY 24, 2011

The article Social Media Breeds Edvertorial in Women's Wear Daily doesn't really break new ground in terms of the shift towards social media and content marketing.  But the fact that Women's Wear Daily has such an article shows that social media has reached the mainstream. I really enjoy the opening paragraph: "Bold color may have been the new black on spring runways, but when it comes to the influx of designers creating branded content on the Web, editorial is the new adve

Social Media 121

Social Media 121

Office Dynamics

JANUARY 24, 2011

A New Addition to the Office Dynamics Family. Today I am writing you with happy news as I return to the office from my recent maternity leave. Nathan Daniel Freeman arrived on December 20, 2010. I consider him part of the Office Dynamics family; after all he spent last nine months in the office mom. Nathan had a special chance to meet Dave Burge on his way home from the hospital and enjoyed that opportunity very much.

2011 118

2011 2010 118

Speaker: Chester Santos – Author, International Keynote Speaker, Executive Coach, Corporate Trainer, Memory Expert, U.S. Memory Champion

In October, scientists discovered that 75% of patients who experienced brain fog had a lower quality of life at work than those who did not. At best, brain fog makes you slower and less efficient. At worst, your performance and cognitive functions are impaired, resulting in memory, management, and task completion problems. In this entertaining and interactive presentation, Chester Santos, "The International Man of Memory," will assist you in developing life-changing skills that will greatly enha

Networking

Loosely Speaking

JANUARY 28, 2011

Besides operating my business, Loose Ends, another professional activity I head up, along with my colleague Tara Fort is Arizona Virtual Associates (AZVAs). It’s a virtual water cooler for entrepreneurs, self-employed business support service providers, small business owners, and in particular, Virtual Assistants. AZVAs activities include: our monthly podcast (resuming in February), and accompanying newsletter, occasional face-to-face networking and educational events, a discussion listse

Resume 109

Resume Networking Facebook Email 109

Customers Rock!

JANUARY 27, 2011

I was recently contacted by the team running the Net Promoter Conference in Miami Beach next week, February 3 and 4. If you are a customer experience or other customer-centric professional, this is one event you should consider attending. I was fortunate enough to be able to interview Richard Owen, CEO of Satmetrix (who I have interviewed previously on Customers Rock!

Interviewing 102

Interviewing Promotion Management 102

Step It Up VA Coaching

JANUARY 27, 2011

by Donna Toothaker. You’ve got an idea for a new project and you are very excited! The thoughts are flowing and you’ve filled several pages with notes about a new product, service, package that you want to launch. Your desk is covered with notes, messages, and things that need doing…NOW! Just how do you keep this big new project of yours off the back-burner, and NOT be overwhelmed?

Basecamp 100

Basecamp Goals Project Management Filing 100