Still going -

Day 22 – Dave came to breakfast! It was his birthday after all. Our server Kendra got my laugh today when she said, ‘They talk about different stuff when you’re not here!’

Day 23 – Dinner at the inlaws – just us. How nice! Donut stopover at Mom’s and the Tony show was on.

Day 24 – Mike’s campaign launch at Liam’s. Laughs with mom Sadie … she was trying to figure out whether to have white or red wine, and I suggested since she already had a ginger ale and a water that she should have white so she wasn’t hung over the next day by mixing. :)

Day 25 – Dinner at Dan and Steph’s. Heavens. Well, Tony got a little full … ahem … and rolled around on the floor with Gracie and Tyson. We have pictures. Yikes. A week’s worth of laughs this day, for sure.

Day 26 – Boondock Saints two. Again. You look like you might have seen one up close. :)

Day 27 – Dinner out with Mom (big dinner week!), and plenty of laughs as she related her conversation with Richard, an old friend of Dad’s. 

Day 28 – much late night fun with Martine, who is probably going to slap me next time she sees me because I am not a big fan of the lobster roll. Ah whaddaya do?

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Wow third week in of 31 days of laughter. We really do laugh a lot in our household. That makes me happy!

Day 15 – Sunday morning breakfast with Mom and the sibs. Discussing a family friend who is on an executive committee for my ball tournament, and is also getting into broadcasting with my sister Lynne at Rogers. Sister Lynne gives him some great advice and tells him to bring the idea back to my committee. I say, ‘I’m going to tell him that’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard … who gave you that idea?’ hehe. Lynne laughed so hard she almost spit out her coffee!

Day 16 – Father in law has surgery to replace battery in his pacemaker. We go over for dinner to see how he is feeling. Neighbour walks in with a AA and hands it to him and says, ‘I brought you a battery so you can replace it yourself next time!’ Good one, Glen!

Day 17 – Oh did we laugh tonight – dinner and Mom’s and Lynne was telling us a story about a child she met at work who had a wish fulfilled by the Children’s Wish Foundation – he went to Walt Disney World and got the royal treatment (which was great) and she was listing all the things he got to do, and instead of saying Chip and Dale tucked him into bed, she said Chippendale’s … oops! No, it was definitely Chip and Dale!

Day 18 – Called our pest control company when we woke up to a scratching noise in the furnace … we soon realized it was our pet hamster, Carl, who had escaped from his cage and toured in previously uncharted territory. Had to call the company back and cancel the appointment when Carl surfaced in a bedroom vent! Man!

Day 19 – Driving Owen to Ultimate Camp for 8 am and Tony sees a guy standing beside his SUV with his arms in the air in front of him and announces, ‘What the ..? Is that guy a mime?’ and we get a little closer and realize he is actually fixing the line on the end of his fishing rod … not a mime at all!

Day 20 – Had the Blanchfield Road Blanchfields over for drinks and Tony was definitely on his game … telling the story of going to Helen’s Place and talking to Helen’s sister, all the while thinking it was Helen, and wondering why she didn’t seem to recognize him … and then Helen came out of the kitchen, and he figured it out!

Day 21 – still laughing at Kelly walking through our front door at 11:30 at night … just to locate her family! And a great phone call with Natalie too – she told me a story about some annoying locals who sat too close to them on their recent trip to Martha’s Vineyard, and then proceeded to complain that it wasn’t as great a vacation as Spain was (the names have been changed to protect the identity of the annoying tourists!)

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Continuing on our fun quest to identify one great laugh each day for a month, here are some more for you!

Day 8 – Family Ball Tournament – cleanup day … retelling stories of the weekend while we cleaned up the site … Paul almost taking out Danny’s drumset is still one of my favourite memories this year. :)

Day 9 – Stress Free Monday here at our house – tough day at work so laughs were welcome -  watched Yes Man with the boys after dinner. Every girl deserves to go to a ball!

Day 10 - Family Dinner at Mom’s – Spencer went indoor skydiving and we watched his video – we all laughed pretty hard at Chicken Man – we still can’t figure out what the guy was doing, but he kept coming out with his arms bent like wings, and he looked like he was about to do the chicken dance! It was so great to hear all the kids laughing at him each time he came out!

Day 11 – out to dinner with my boys at Fiamma in Barrhaven. Don’t know how it came up in conversation but watching Owen do his impression of the Ab Circle Pro was truly hilarious!

Day 12 – waiting for Owen during his guitar lesson, got a hilarious text from Tony … sorry, unfortunately can’t repost here, but suffice it to say the people at Shoppers Drug Mart were wondering what was soooo funny!

Day 13 – cut out the centre of the lid for Carl the hamster’s new play area so we could be sure he was getting lots of air, and quickly realized we gave him a super easy escape route! One plastic lid, ruined – and now the big box is a supervised play area only!

Day 14 – Saturday. Aaahhh. Nice night for a bike ride. Owen and I visited Mom (geez, we spend a lot of time together!) and there is nothing more precious than watching him tell a story and see my Mom laugh her head off. He’s a great storyteller – he gets right up off his chair and starts, ‘No seriously, this is the way it went…’ and then he goes into his story. Precious for sure! What a kid.

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Found this great idea from my colleague Anastacia Brice about paying attention to how much laughter is in my life (I know there is a lot!).  Of course we all know how great laughter is for the soul, but it’s also good for your blood pressure, your stress level, and so many other things.

The rules are simple: make a point of laughing every day for 31 days – and share it with those around you if you like!

I am going to share my daily laugh (well, one of them …!) here on my blog.

To learn more about how to incorporate more laughter into your life, and to take part in this fun little challenge, visit:  http://www.31daysoflaughter.com/

Tee hee! Looking forward to sharing!

Day 1 – sitting at Mom’s, having a couple of drinks, trading innocent insults with Tony, and all of a sudden Owen stands up, hands flapping, and hollers, “you’re tearing this family apart!”  OMG too funny!

Day 2 – watching Blue Collar Comedy Show movie – Jeff Foxworthy is giving redneck definitions of words: INITIATE (use it in a sentence): My sister ate two hamburgers … in-i-ti-ate some potato chips. :)

Day 3 – one of my clients and I were discussing how many people I know who have died in the last year and a half (four in the last couple of weeks, actually … that’s not the funny part, obviously). He asked, ‘Is it safe to know you at all?’ I actually laughed out loud. I don’t think he was joking, but it was my best laugh of the day (as I prepared to take the following day off for a very sad memorial service).

Day 4 – more laughs today than I expected, given the sad occasion … but had a good one with Sean for sure … purposely driving the wrong way down a one way street to get a parking spot … with a whole bunch of cops watching us!

Day 5 – watching GrownUps … Steve Buscemi was sooo funny in the body cast!

Day 6 – Family Ball Tournament – how can I choose just one laugh? hmmm … okay, then Carina and Brad Quinn singing Jesse’s Girl at our karaoke. :)

Day 7 – Family Ball Tournament – again, so many laughs … watching Terry Helem get down on his knees to pitch to Tommy Doyle in our alumni game (and Tommy hit it!)

Next week we’ll do it again!

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So the other night I was watching television and I turned to my cable company’s ‘on demand’ channel to watch a movie. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they have made another upgrade to their service (which they do fairly often, actually). They have reinstated a service that they removed with the last upgrade … the timeline of the movie. For several months now we have not been able to see how much time was left in a movie when we rented it. A small thing, but really frustrating. When you are used to something being there and it gets taken away, it can be irritating. So now we have it back! High fives all around in my house.

Little Things

This reminded me of working with my clients, and how it’s important to continue to offer them the little things they grow accustomed to through working with you. It made me think about the little things that I could be doing for them, to let them know that they are still very important to me.

When you start working with a client and your relationship is in the honeymoon phase, you may go that little extra mile and do something special for them – whether it’s providing an extra report or staying five more minutes on the phone with them. As time moves on, and the relationship is not so new, sometimes it’s possible to take them for granted more often, and maybe you let those little extras slip. Maybe you are now only giving those little extras to your new clients.

It’s a great reminder of how nice it feels to get those little things back if they have gone by the wayside. And I plan to implement my own advice too – the little extras are what make me a proactive Virtual Assistant for my clients, and a great mentor for my students.

Think about what you can do for your clients to make them feel just a bit more special – send them a card, schedule a phone call with them as a strategy session, put together a new report for them – there are all kinds of things you can do to make them feel special and to let them know that you value them.

Sometimes the little things can even count more than the big ones! Try it, I guarantee you’ll get a good reaction and you will make your client’s day too!

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For many small business owners and solopreneurs, working with a Virtual Assistant (VA) is becoming more common. Do you have a VA yet? If you do, congratulations on making a great business move! If not, what are you waiting for?

When you run your own business, it can be easy to fall into the trap of ‘doing it all’ yourself. But remember that by outsourcing those tasks that you don’t do well, or that you don’t want to do, you will be freeing up your time to do the things that you are an expert at doing.

Actually there are only 2 things you should be doing in your business : you should be working with clients (the thing you are an expert at!), or you should be doing specific marketing tasks to grow or manage your business (meeting and getting to know prospective clients!). All the rest should be outsourced to appropriate people.

In my networking circles, I am always talking about the merits of finding a VA who is a good fit for you … but up until last month I didn’t follow my own advice! I just hired my own VA last month and am already realizing how much more organized I am … how much more time I actually have to ‘be’ in my business.

It is amazing when you get those little things off your plate that you really shouldn’t be doing anyway, how much more organized you can be and how you can actually save money by spending money – by freeing up your time to do client work, networking or marketing.

So if you haven’t started working with a VA yet, what are you waiting for? I can honestly say I wish I did this a long time ago (and you will too!)

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Building your mailing list is one of the most important things that you need to do in order to have a successful online business.

Your list is the key to selling your services or products, because it is a list of people who has already expressed an interest in what you have to offer.

It is easy to set up a mailing list, but then you have to promote it in order to grow it. It is not enough to just put an opt in box on your website and wait. There are so many ways that you can promote it, but here are three that are sure to get you some success:

1. Provide them with an incentive. If you have an opt in box on your website and you are not getting very many new leads signed up for your newsletter, it’s probably because people (in general) want free stuff in exchange for giving you their email address. If you write a report about something you know about that is interesting or important to them, that is an incentive for them to sign up for your list. At the same time, they are opting in for your newsletter, so once you have them on board, you will be able to market to them. A free offering has to be valuable to them, but it doesn’t have to be so detailed that they don’t need your services anymore. For instance: 3 Easy Ways to Build Your Mailing List could easily be turned into a free report! I could format it nicely, call it a report or an ebook, and then ask people to opt in for it. Be sure to use your social networks to direct people to your free report and you will see your mailing list start to grow.

2. Put your opt in box everywhere! If you only have your opt in box on one page of your website, then you are not giving it enough real estate. Your opt in should be on every page of your site, in a conspicuous spot – like the top right or the top left, so no one can miss it. You never know which page of your website someone is going to land on in a Google search, so it is important to put the opportunity in front of them on all of your pages. You should also have your opt in box on your social network profiles. If you have a profile on Facebook or one of the other countless social networking sites, be sure to add your opt in code to your profile page. You never know where your ideal client is going to find you! By giving your opt in box the real estate it deserves, it will work harder for you every day!

3. Take part in a joint venture. A joint venture (JV) is a project two or more people undertake for the success of their own goals. One JV idea is an Amazon book launch, which uses a marketing strategy to have a lot of people buy a new book from Amazon on the same day, pushing the book up the bestseller list. To do this, people ‘JV’ with as many people as they can, so that the joint venture partners (JVPs) will promote the book launch to their lists and encourage them to buy the book that day. In exchange, the JVPs provide a bonus gift for the launch that anyone who buys the book will receive. This means that by providing a bonus gift, I can potentially grow my list because of the amount of traffic going to the book launch – if they pick up my bonus gift, I now have them on my list (without even looking for them!) It’s a joint venture because everyone benefits: the book launch person gets their bestseller status, the JVPs get more prospects on their lists, and the people who purchase the book get all kinds of amazing bonus gifts without spending an extra dime. It’s win-win-win, and a great strategy to build your list (give away that free product you made in #2 above and get involved in a JV!)

There are many more ways you can build your list quickly, but these three ways are guaranteed winners! See what they can do for you!

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Whew. Where have I been the last few weeks? Just when I thought I was getting organized, I went and dreamed up a new idea.

Your VA Mentor is here! I have put together a training and mentor program for new Virtual Assistants, to help them get set up for success.

I am extremely proud of the course materials I have been putting together over the last few weeks (truthfully they have been coming together in bits and pieces over the last several years … it is so great to be able to pull them together and polish them!), and I know that my students are going to get some amazing information in this course – not to mention the bonuses I have planned for them!

You can get more information about the program itself (and me!) at my website: www.yourvamentor.com.

I feel very fortunate to have a very successful VA business, and I am happy that I can share my knowledge of the VA industry with people who are just starting out. I am excited to share my tips and tools and guide them through the process of getting set up in a professional manner so they can sign those clients!

My business has boomed in the last year and I now take new clients only by referral. I have hired team members to help me get it all done. I have developed systems and procedures for everything I do so that I can be sure that my clients are getting the best support they deserve, and so that my team feels confident as they work on new projects.

I am looking forward to sharing my strategies and how I built my business with my Your VA  Mentor students. The first class starts tomorrow night (Wed May 19) and registration is still open until noon tomorrow. You can choose to pay all at once or choose our convenient payment plan. Another session will be scheduled soon, but act fast, because the early bird price will not be available much longer!

(If you are an established VA, ask us about our affiliate program … you can earn great commissions for referring people to us!)

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I came across an article today that made me feel good! It was a study by MoneySense that concluded that Ottawa-Gatineau is the best place to live in Canada.

Ottawa, OntarioSeeing as I live in Osgoode, which is in the greater Ottawa area, I take this as a great compliment! (mind you I’d rather live in Osgoode, in the country than in the city, but I get it!)

Last year apparently we came in second though I could not figure out who was first last year. Apparently we scored 73.5 out of a possible 105 points. That’s pretty cool.

Anyway, I’m very proud to live in Ottawa. The statistics are certainly an interesting read.  Check out your city and see where you placed!

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In a recent conversation with my business coaches, I was talking about the fact that I keep my clients’ needs at the top of my list. I have regular calls and emails with them, I ensure that we have a list of things that we are working on each week, and I let them know what’s going on all the time as we navigate their Internet marketing and social media needs.

This sounds good, but I was, in fact, lamenting that although I do all of these things for my clients, I do not do pay enough attention to them for my own business.  Do you know what they said?

Stop Putting Yourself At The Bottom Of Your List!

They were right. The fact is that I constantly tell my clients how important it is to keep their service offerings current, their clients and their ‘tribe’ informed and in touch, and their networking contacts fresh. I tell them these things because they are TRUE! But I always let this area of my own business lapse. I focus on it for a while and then I get too busy and let it go again. Instead of keeping on top of it, I am always playing catch up.

I have decided that it’s time to take my own advice, and so as you know I am building my very first team of subcontractors, after working alone for about 13 years. I have decided that my business is just as important as my clients’ businesses. We are not apples and oranges (now you get it!). We all deserve the same attention.

The fact is, my client load right now is full. I have a waiting list for work in June and July. So really the attention needs to turn to my own business in order for me to be able to grow, and for me to be able to grow with my clients too!

Look for an exciting announcement from me early next week about a new program I am launching. It’s going to be great, and finally I am looking after my own business the way it deserves! (and thanks to my wonderful team members, it will get the TLC that I show my clients!)

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