Office Dynamics
APRIL 28, 2016
Planning travel for others is no simple matter and administrative professionals know this better than anyone else! Each traveler has personal preferences and unique quirks that make travel planning a true art form. As an admin, you are already a pro at putting yourself in other’s shoes and predicting their needs, even before they know what they need!
Practically Perfect PA
APRIL 20, 2016
When Nicky approached me to speak about my top tips for beginners at The Assist Conference I was truly honored. I’m a huge fan of Practically Perfect PA and am loving the new look site. Despite my passion for social media I haven’t always been adept at it and was a twitter virgin until The Assist Conference 2015. It is never too late to add a new string to your bow and social media seems to be the way forward for the future Assistant.
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Small Business Labs
APRIL 4, 2016
The use of trucks as mobile commerce platforms continues expand. Just in the last week the press have reported on two interesting examples. The Forbes article Financial Planner Takes Tough-Love Money Advice On The Road reports on the first financial planning truck I've heard of. Charlotte, N.C., financial planner Marsha Barnes cruises around in a refurbished school bus dispensing financial advice.
Office Organization Success
APRIL 7, 2016
Hosting teleclasses is one of my absolute favorite list building strategies. . Apart from being easy to do, it’s a great way to interact with my audience and get to know them, and also let them get to know me. But as with anything new there’s always a learning curve involved. Over the years I’ve developed my own style for hosting teleclasses and found some shortcuts that allow me to present my content so that everything flows smoothly.
Speaker: Joe Sharpe and James Carlson
Payroll optimization can be one of the most time-consuming and complex factors of small business management. Yet, organizations that crack the code on streamlining employee compensation often discover innovative avenues for growth. With the right strategies in place, outsourcing and streamlining payroll processes can result in substantial time and resource savings.
Eco-Office Gals
APRIL 13, 2016
Since its invention in 1907, a giant environmental problem has been staring the world in the face, but we’ve done little about it. Plastic can be cheap to produce, so it is manufactured in high volumes. However, plastic is also usually discarded as litter. As a result, the bulk of the world’s trash is plastic. Maybe if plastic weren’t harmful to the environment, loaded with toxins or almost impossible to break down, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.
Virtual Moxie
APRIL 5, 2016
Kathy came to me to ask me to review her business in the hopes that I would tell her where I think she fits in the overall landscape of Virtual Assistants. She told me that if I thought she was one of the best, it would absolutely do wonders for her business, proving she was great and helping her compete for clients. I took a deep breath and shared that in my view, the fact that she wants someone to tell her she's one of the best means that she doesn't believe she is.
Administrative Professionals Pulse brings together the best content for administrative professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Practically Perfect PA
APRIL 4, 2016
What are the main aspects of your role? I provide PA support to the Director and Deputy Director of Operations and the Director of HR. I am also the Team Lead for the Corporate PA Team, so I coordinate the teams work, ensure cover is arranged for annual leave, sickness etc. and line manage the two administrators and our reception staff. What is your morning routine before you get in to the office?
Small Business Labs
APRIL 21, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute's (EPI) article Low-Wage Workers Are Older than You Think provides a good, demographic snap shot of low wage workers in the U.S. Their infographic (below) shows that surprisingly relatively few (11%) are teens and most (57%) work full-time. Alert readers will remember we covered this topic back in 2013 in our article Low Wage Workers Getting Older.
Office Organization Success
APRIL 28, 2016
If you feel like your’re constantly running on the proverbial hamster wheel when it comes to growing your business… It could be because you’re doing things in the WRONG order! Let me share a secret with you that many successful online solopreneurs already know — you have to learn how to “manage” your business before you can “market” your business.
Productivity Bits
APRIL 21, 2016
Procrastination can be defined in many ways. Some procrastinators constantly change the dates of all their tasks, in the end not doing anything at all, while others put off working on small, negligible projects in order to concentrate on big stuff, achieving great results. The former is called unstructured or passive procrastinating – and as much as the passive procrastinators deny it, it’s basically laziness.
Speaker: Tim Buteyn, President of ThinkingKap Learning Solutions
Join this brand new webinar with Tim Buteyn to learn how you can master the art of remote onboarding! By the end of this session, you'll understand how to: Craft a Tailored Onboarding Checklist 📝 Develop a comprehensive, customized checklist that ensures every new hire has a smooth transition into your company, no matter where they are in the world.
Laughing all the Way to Work
APRIL 12, 2016
Do you want to get better at what you do? Share it!! You wouldn't believe how much I learn each time I give a minute-taking or travel webinar. Because I am giving the webinar I have to review the material and make sure I know my stuff. The audience will certainly know it if I don't. The same can apply in your workplace. If there is sharing of information among the admins, then we can learn from each other and we all grow.
Office Dynamics
APRIL 20, 2016
Author: OfficeNinjas. Editor’s Note: This is a revised version of an original post from the OfficeNinjas blog. You connect the dots between departments, have mastered the art of juggling competing work priorities, all while keeping the lights on and often acting as director of first impressions. We know being an Office Ninja is no easy feat—more often than not, you’re the nerve center of the business.
Practically Perfect PA
APRIL 22, 2016
Looking back on my career as an Assistant I can pinpoint a few occasions where I definitely made a great first impression. For example, there was that time I absolutely nailed a first interview and later that day I got the phone call to say the Exec didn’t need to interview anyone else and if I wanted it the job was mine. There was another time I had just started at an organisation and was invited to their awards dinner where I would be sitting on a table with five board level directors.
Small Business Labs
APRIL 12, 2016
One of the challenges online marketplaces face is sellers often do their best to move their customers off the marketplace to their own ecommerce site. They do this for two main reasons. First, they want to avoid the fees associated with selling through a 3rd party marketplace. They also want to have a direct relationship with customers. Most marketplaces try to discourage this. Etsy has decided to embrace it.
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Office Organization Success
APRIL 14, 2016
Content marketing is the *hot* new online marketing strategy! Actually, it’s not really new … using your content (i.e. articles) as a way to market your business has been around for many years (I released my first info product in 2007 called, “The Complete Article Tracking Toolkit” ). But what is new is the way you’re using your content to market your business.
Virtual Moxie
APRIL 12, 2016
Today, a happy note. We're heading toward the end of a long rebrand, including the creation of not one, but two new sites! Included in the site for VAs, a new blog--well, a different version of this blog, really. Virtual Moxie will live on there, I'm happy to report. We just need to stop adding content here and focus on what has to happen to finish the new sites.
Tips From T. Marie
APRIL 28, 2016
In light of my recent post admonishing businesses for relying on Facebook as their online presence the title of this post may sound a bit strange. For those of you who thought I was being a bit harsh about the need for a website I decided to see if I could find any reasons at all not to have one for your business. This is what I came up with: You are fine with someone else owning your business name domain and using it instead of you.
Office Dynamics
APRIL 29, 2016
In honor of Administrative Professionals Day, I want to share my thoughts on being an executive or administrative assistant. When people tell me, “Anyone can do that job,” it bothers me. It tells me that person doesn’t really know what it takes to be a great assistant. Being in the administrative profession is a career of choice. I hear it from both sides of the desk.
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Practically Perfect PA
APRIL 15, 2016
What is Screencast-O-Matic? Screencast-O-Matic is a brilliant web based tool that allows users to record and create videos of whatever is happening on their screen. What does it do? So it is a screen and webcam recorder that can record on-screen activity for short tutorials, visual presentations, and communicate while you demonstrate! The free features include: 15 minute recordings. screen and webcam recording.
Small Business Labs
APRIL 18, 2016
One of the most interesting trends we follow is the paradox of place. The paradox is place and location have become both more and less important. Place is less important because high fidelity connective technologies allow people to communicate with anyone, anywhere. This is why telecommuting is growing (although not as fast as many predicted), work forces have become more distributed and mobile work much more common. It's even enabled a small but growing number of people to roa
Professional Assistant Blog
APRIL 11, 2016
1 Tbsp. Butter. 4 Large Red Bell Peppers. 1 Large Sweet Onion, chopped. 3-4 Cloves Garlic, minced. 4 oz. Dry White Wine. 1 1/2 cups Heavy Cream. Salt and White Pepper to taste. Optional: Cayenne Pepper to taste. Preparation: Roast the red peppers over a grill or stove burner until black on all sides. Place into a plastic bag and let them sweat for 15-20 minutes.
Clutter Coach
APRIL 12, 2016
by I had the pleasure of hearing the charming and witty Karen Salmansohn speak the other night at the Ladies Who Launch monthly meeting. She's promoting her new book, The Bounce Back Book , about "how to thrive in the face of adversity, setbacks, losses, failures, illness, rejection – you name it." Karen has a clever way with words.
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Tips From T. Marie
APRIL 11, 2016
Last Thursday, WordFence revealed on their blog that the Mossack Fonseca data breach that resulted in the Panama Papers was possibly initiated via an outdated WordPress slider plugin. They have since done an update regarding the breach as it relates to WordPress. I’m sure many people are shocked that Mossack Fonseca wasn’t only running an old, vulnerable version of a slider plugin for WordPress but that they also were running a 3 year old version of Drupal as well.
Office Dynamics
APRIL 23, 2016
We are having a ball with you this month as you have engaged in the #AdminBlogathon daily with some really incredible comments, questions, challenges and connection points. We are more than thrilled with this event and hope that you have been as well. Are you finding useful skills throughout the posts that you can apply at work? We appreciate you and we are really excited to kick off Administrative Professionals Week on Monday.
Practically Perfect PA
APRIL 26, 2016
Next up in our series of blog posts on core soft skills I am going to look at diplomacy and tact for assistants. Assistants have to possess a number of soft or interpersonal skills. Some are essential, some are nice-to-haves and others can be handy but not always necessary. Diplomacy (or at the very least tact) is an absolute must have. . In my mind diplomacy is ‘the art of dealing with people in a sensitive and tactful way.’ It is the ability to communicate with people using an appr
Small Business Labs
APRIL 19, 2016
The Harvard Business Review's The On-Demand Economy Is Growing, and Not Just for the Young and Wealthy covers research showing the on-demand economy is attracting more than 22.4 million consumers annually and $57.6 billion in spending. More interesting is the data on who these consumers are. Consumer use of on-demand services is widespread and has entered the mainstream.
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!
Professional Assistant Blog
APRIL 10, 2016
After reading more reviews of the top bread machines, I was more than convinced that I should buy one of these appliances. For starters, I was tired of the taste of store-bought bread, and I wanted to control the ingredients that I use in my bread. I also wanted to save some money because bread has become quite expensive, especially gluten-free products.
Clutter Coach
APRIL 9, 2016
by. Does paper management seem overwhelming? All those decisions to make! Here’s a way to get some control before you’re ready to make the decisions. I wrote about this concept several years ago. I discovered it in the excellent book ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life by Judith Kolberg and Kathleen Nadeau. In the book and in my post , the ripening drawer is used for miscellaneous items that aren’t quite junk but that don’t have a place to go, such as battery covers t
Tips From T. Marie
APRIL 4, 2016
Are you an author, coach, restaurant, or other small business? Listen up. I need to tell you something. Stop Using Facebook as Your Website! I’ve written about it before. The dangers of using Facebook as your business website. Sadly instead of seeing a decrease in the number of businesses taking part in the practice, here we are a year later, with more small businesses than ever believing they can get away with using Facebook as their business website.
Office Dynamics
APRIL 25, 2016
Mobile has become the way in the daily operations of both our personal and business lives. It is increasingly important to know how to work productively from anywhere, anytime. It’s all in the apps. Mobility is changing how we work and live; blending personal and professional lives, apps and tools needed to work well across different devices, and employees expect—and are expected—to work from anywhere.
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.
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