by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Dec 18, 2012 | Entrepreneur, Life Thoughts
Feeling like you live in a shadow but dream of success requires that you don’t merely step out of your comfort zone, but you LEAP, JUMP, SCREAM or otherwise take some real concrete actions to ensure your aspirations become realities. Sitting on the sidelines with an “oh poor me” will NOT take you to the mountain top.
You must decide what is it that you truly want! Something definitive and tangible.
If you have been floating within mediocrity, feeling just reasonably comfortable but suddenly realize there is more. YOU WANT MORE! Well, what are you willing to do for it? What will you commit to?
There can be some harsh revelations during the eye opening beginning. Learning what you did wrong, to teach yourself what you can do right.
What you can do better!
Some of us may not want to admit mistakes or past errors, but until you see the failures, it is more difficult to plan your successes.
You may see other industry colleagues thriving, flourishing, while you are only treading water. You know your legs are tiring from the constancy of monotony.
Your recognition needs to act as a positive upsurge, your motivator. Create your strategy; your plan to achieve your goals.
Envision your end result and work backwards with a detailed outline of how you will make it all happen. Record timelines, players, procedures, activities and any other structures or elements that will drive you toward your end result.
- Make a vision board
- Partner with your task force
- Seek a mentor
- Create a daily schedule/To Dos
- Write out your processes
- Enlist “industry experts
- Enhance your skill-set
- Measure or track your successes/failures
- Have a deadline
It is your playing field and if you want that touchdown you must write the playbook to score.
Now get in the game.
Learn the action steps, the stakeholders and commit to creating the life you want and deserve.
”Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans.” –Peter F. Drucker
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Dec 2, 2012 | Life Thoughts, Small Business
Smart entrepreneurs plan because they recognize that it will increase their probabilities for achievement. Important issues are less likely to fall through the cracks with formal outlines, processes and action steps. It’s a valuable tool that can make a substantial difference in the success or failure of a business or personal dreams.
Business development is about creating your dream of self-employment and spinning it into reality. A business plan is the document you produce when you take have an idea for a marketable endeavor and work through all the dynamics that will have an influence on the startup, operation, and management of the business.
Formulating your plan will help reduce time-wasting indecision and increase the likelihood of success. Without knowing where you’re going, it’s not really possible to plan, or make inroads toward goal achievement. Take a moment and look around, thinking about all of the things in your present environment, from the chair you sit on, the pen you use, the computer, your car or even the food you eat; they all began with a plan, a blueprint.
Dumb Little Man: ”A mansion will not come out as grand and as breathtaking as it is unless there’s a good plan behind its construction. Same goes with the great and amazing things you want to obtain in your life. Plan, and plan well. Make sure your plan is feasible, doable, and effective. Also, it pays to think and plot an alternative plan or a plan B, in case your initial plan does not work.”
Managing our own lives and businesses is hard enough but without written goals and action steps, we are just going through the motions, yearning for success and growth. It is important to visualize what we want and expect. It is from this starting point that enables us to map out our plan to facilitate action and forward movement.
There are many options to formulating your plan of action, from spreadsheets, mindmaps, flowcharts or just a word document, but whichever tool you choose should be one you will faithfully utilize and implement otherwise, it will be an exercise in futility and there aren’t enough hours in the day to justify wasted time, energy or effort. Your plan can outline all of your goals, action steps, timelines and a To Do list to help drive your dreams to the finish line. c into a reality but instituting a thought out functional strategy will.
How will you launch your inspirations from a concept to a tangible outcome?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Nov 12, 2012 | Guest Blogger
For those of you who don’t know me, I own a tiny Canadian food manufacturing company. We make all natural and organic as well as fair trade certified food products for general consumption, specializing in Fresh Pepper Sauces.
So, when Suzie asked for something that would be useful information for business people to improve their business skills, etc. I thought, what better way to improve one’s business than to improve their lives. So, I sat down to write such an article.
Here’s what I wrote…
How to Increase your Bottom Line and in so doing Rescue the Economy by Changing your Eating Habits
A loud refrain during the latest Presidential election was all about creating jobs in order to help the economy. Both sides trumpeted how it was going to happen. But nobody really presented a solution that seemed workable at the John Q Public level.
As an outsider looking in, it seems pretty obvious to me that the easiest way to fix the economy is to improve the productivity of those employers who are already feeding the economy, lower their bottom lines and they’ll quite naturally invest further in their company feeding the coming economic boom.
Follow my train of thinking here.
75% of business owners are single proprietorships. That means that you as a single business owner, really are the economy. The better your business does, the better you do.
So, how do you do better?
Well, for starters, if you aren’t already there, get healthy. And I don’t mean go out there and start an exercise regime, although, exercise is a very valuable part of it, I mean start eating right.
According to the most naturally holistic meal programs going, the best thing you can do for your body is to eat the best quality food you can afford. That means, eliminating all chemicals whose traces may be left in your food and eating a balanced meal, eliminating GMO ingredients and irradiation by eating foods you’ve grown yourself or which are monitored such as organic certified food in balanced meals.
What’s a balanced meal? well, according to Livestrong.com Five servings of fruits and vegetables, 2 proteins and 50% of what you eat should be carbohydrates. Ideally you’d want to turn as many of your red meat dishes a week into another protein; fish, chicken, pork, eggs, cheese, beans, nuts, etc. So you’d take a bowl/plate about the size of what you’d eat. 50% of should be rice or pasta or bread. 1/4 of it should be fruits and vegetables and 1/4 of it should be proteins.
Figuring out how much to eat is going to depend on each person, if you really want to go to the extreme, you can hire a dietician to help you create a specific diet or you can go all loosey goosey and just eat when hungry, as I do.
Avoid fat, high fructose corn syrup and salt, and eat chilli peppers; as hot as you can stand.
Why chilli peppers? Well, in 2000, the University of Laval published findings that 200 calories were burned per day through the simple practice of ingesting chili peppers. These studies have since been replicated by an American University and a Japanese one. Eating chillies lowers your caloric load. Seems a no-brainer to me.
However you do it, know, that the healthier you eat, the less you will weigh. And personally eliminating the obesity epidemic will go a long way to contributing to your financial bottom line.
Here’s how.
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| Peppermaster Hummus Dip |
It is a proven fact that the more overweight, or obese a person, the less productive they are and the more medical intervention they require. The numbers of chronic diseases increase with excess weight; Type II Diabetes, heart disease, cancers, and other problems. Interestingly, obesity has also been implicated in creating a higher risk for accident in the workplace. All of these things combine to create a financially detrimental atmosphere. Insurance premiums are higher, direct health costs are higher since chronic conditions tend to cost the patient not their insurance plans and overall productivity is lower through lower output as well as higher use of sick leave. So, it behooves the small business owner to get healthier and improve their bottom line.
Interestingly, though, you can actually improve your bottom line by instigating a company-wide health and diet plan, as a business expense. Since the larger your workforce, the higher your insurance premiums — and I mean that in the size of the waistlines. You can shrink your waistlines and shrink your insurance premiums. You can also lower the direct costs related to the health problems as well; because as you get healthier, you require fewer prescriptions or direct health care costs.
So you see, if you get healthier, lose a little weight, the whole economy benefits.
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Tina Brooks, VP Marketing, co-owner Brooks Pepperfire Foods
Tina is a retired Financial Advisor, currently working in sales and marketing with her husband and Peppermaster, Greg Brooks. When not working with their food manufacturing company, Tina runs a successful private Tarot reading practice from a tiny specialty food shop in Rigaud, Quebec, Canada.
You can find Tina posting as @Pepperfire on Twitter and on Facebook.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Nov 8, 2012 | Virtual Assistant
I am so glad you asked.
The life and times of a Virtual Assistant (VA) offers a very diverse day of managing numerous tasks and projects. While some VAs have chosen to work with only one specific niche market, I prefer to partner with different types of entrepreneurs, ensuring a sundry of daily operations: keeping it fresh, challenging and exciting.
The Holiday Inn Express ad campaign, “Stay Smart” depicts people doing extraordinary feats after being a hotel guest. While I haven’t averted a nuclear disaster or wrestled with a great white shark, I have been given the great opportunity to enrich my mind on a myriad of topics and industries that I never would have otherwise stopped to read or study.
I am sincerely grateful and honored for each and every client that has partnered with Ace Concierge. As noted in a prior post, I am living my passion of giving back to others – this isn’t just a job or paycheck. I thrive on helping my client base with their time management, productivity, work life balance and stress reduction, all in the form of remotely managing their projects and daily business operations.
Whether creating a document, searching for social media content or proofreading blog posts and websites, I have had the great fortune to improve or enhance my knowledge on many subjects and honestly some are absolutely fascinating!! Some of the topics I have read/researched are:
- Tissue engineering
- Biotechnology
- Regenerative medicine
- Organizational development
- Intellectual property rights
- Personal Injury Insurance
- Graphic illustration
- Leadership
- IV therapies
- Juicing
- Raw foods
- Start-up planning
- Business growth planning
- Venture capital
- Angel investing
- Cosmetic surgery
- Social media
The list continues to expand on a daily basis and I love every second that I am asked to read, write, report, post or edit. Being a Virtual Assistant IS like staying at the Holiday Inn Express. Never stop reading and expanding your mind – I know I won’t.
What have you learned lately?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Sep 11, 2012 | Delegation, Time Management, Virtual Assistant
As an entrepreneur, your success depends on you, your time and your efforts. Yes, you have heard me say this before, but when we choose to manage every task or project that comes across our desk, we become less efficient, effective as well as stressed out because things are not getting done. Our high priority tasks fall by the way side while we end up doing busy work or more mundane tasks that are essentially a waste of our valuable time.
The actions you take today determine the outcomes of tomorrow.
Delegating the non-income producers is a sure fire way to strike up your productivity and output, generating a spark in your bottom-line. Your virtual assistant can be a tremendous asset to you and your company. Starting with a strong foundation and understanding is key your mutual success.
When partnering with a virtual assistant:
- Know your core genius and delegate other low payoff activities, leveraging your valuable time on essential business functions
- Share your long term and short term company goals as well as those for your VA partnership
- Provide a clear outline of project details, expectations and deadlines
- Define your most desired and effective means of communication
- Utilize your virtual assistant as a brainstorming partner, your own personal sounding board
- Understand that a virtual assistant is not an employee but a business colleague, a collaborator, helping to ensure your business goals are met
- Don’t be afraid to ask about other service solutions just because your need is not listed on their website
- Be prepared to use a variety of web-based tools that will help streamline your communications, social media and project management
- Develop a rapport and positive working relationship with open communications and accountability
- Provide feedback on all projects
Your turn!! What do you feel is most important when working with a virtual assistant?
