How do you measure success?

That’s a question all business owners should be asking themselves.

Is it the awards you win? The money you make? The people you help?

Sure it can be all of those things, but sometimes it’s the smaller things that make you feel like a true success. Sometimes it’s as simple as making someone proud.

My brother is taking a college course and he was asked to interview a successful entrepreneur. He chose me. It might be because he knew it would be easy to ask me, but I believe he feels I am a success.

I was extremely touched that he chose to ask me. I answered his interview questions. I’ve done a couple of similar interviews in the past, but for some reason, having this request come from one of my little brothers (he’s not so little, I guess, he’s 21) meant a lot to me.

Sometimes when I’m knee deep in client work, changing diapers and trying not to burn dinner, I don’t feel like that much of a success.

I won the Janet Jordan Achievement Award last year which was a HUGE honor, and that gave me my first real feeling of ’success’. I’ve had a couple other moments like that in the past year, but being asked to answer some simple interview questions by my brother gives me almost the same feeling I had on the day I found out I won.

Thanks BJ.

How do you measure success?

2 Comments »

Do I have your attention, ladies?

Since I started my business, I pay a lot of attention to people that market to me. I read sales letters and listen to telemarketers to learn what points trigger me to buy in to a product or service. Since I’ve started to provide copywriting as a service offered by Mann Made Time, I pay much closer attention to advertisers and other, presumably very highly paid, copywriters.

I received a letter in the mail yesterday. It was an obvious piece of junk mail, but I wanted to open it. I totally dissected the experience and I’m filing this puppy away in my idea file.

First thing that made me open the pretty blue envelope was that it was a pretty blue envelope. It had the the name of a well known magazine on it, a company I trust. (Brand recognition.) It also said ‘Gift Certificate Enclosed’ on the outside of the envelope.

I opened the letter and, indeed, there is a gift certificate for 4 free issues of this weekly publication. The gift certificate was tucked inside a nice little folder that feels nice in the hand, and when I opened it to remove the gift certificate, it said:

“Enjoy your weekly rejuvenation ritual, FREE for 4 weeks.”

Buzzwords: rejuvenation and FREE.

They almost had me there. But then I read the letter. The letter is just ridiculous.

It starts with a headline that states:

“Enjoy a 4 FREE Issue Mini-Subscription to (name of magazine), and Feel Your Stress Melt Away….”

The writer goes on to tell me that I deserve more time to myself and she wants to treat me to the relaxation remedy I really need, which coincidentally is this magazine. Once a week for 4 weeks.

Did you know that just 4 issues will make me feel like a new person? And since they’re FREE I can enjoy such luxury without guilt?

I can have intimate moments with George Clooney and Patrick Dempsey over my coffee in the morning. While I’m cooking dinner, I can be treated to photo spreads and celebrity tidbits.

For an afternoon of “pure bliss” I can catch up with my old friends Reese and Drew.

Seriously?

The letter is closed by saying for best results I should read all of my 4 free issues before I decide to make this publication a part of my regular routine. My heart and soul will reap the benefits.

I would scan this letter and let you see for yourself how ridiculous it is, but I’m not sure if that’s legal.

And although it is ridiculous, it is effective. I’m considering mailing in the reply card and cashing in my 4 free issues. What the heck? I can see how they’re playing off of my stress…my need to escape! And I’m falling for it.

Darn McDreamy…that’s where they got me.

3 Comments »

I was over at VANA yesterday and came across a post that’s worth its weight in gold! Well, that doesn’t really make sense does it? How do you weigh a message board post? Anyway…it’s great information. If you are a member of VANetworking.com, you probably already read it, and if you’re a virtual assistant and not a member, you should scoot over there and register!

One must give credit where credit is due, and this thread was posted by the fabulous VA, Karri Flatla.

Check out this article at PC World.com, and then feast your eyes on PC World’s 15 Best Downloads of the Year.

I’ve already replaced my virus scanner with Avast! (featured on the list) and I also downloaded the coolest program ever that I never knew existed - CCleaner. Seems popular. The creator of the program claims it’s been downloaded 100 million times. (100 million and one now thanks to moi :)) In my very nontechnical assessment, from what I can tell, it searches your system for…well for lack of a better word…crap that is slowing down your computer. I let it run and it cleared out something like 385MB of stuff that had been gumming up my poor ‘puter.

Get yourself a cup of coffee and check out the list. There are some great free goodies there.

Enjoy and thanks Karri!

No Comments yet »

After reading my posts from this week, I realized I did some complaining. It’s time to lighten things up!

So, in all honesty, I’m not really sure what a ‘meme’ is, but I’ve been tagged by Patty Dost, so I am going to be a good sport.

I must tag seven people. For those seven, here are the rules:

1. Link to the person’s blog who tagged you. (That would be me)
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself.
4. Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.

I am a very..er..quirky person, so it’s not hard to come up with weird things about myself:

1. I don’t like my food to touch. I’m not extreme about it, but if I have something really wet on my plate (coleslaw, cranberry sauce, etc.) I don’t want anything else on my plate touching it.

2. I can cross my eyes two ways - in towards my nose or out towards my ears.

3. I have an irrational fear of spiders and mice.

4. I name my cars. Marty was my first car, a Chev Celebrity. My next car, a brown Oldsmobile, was Mr. Brown. Then came Wendall….and on and on

5. When I order coffee from a drive-thru, I get it ‘double cupped’ (and keep the spare cup for next time) so my hands don’t get too hot.

6. I don’t buy food at bake sales, cause I don’t know what kind of kitchen the food was prepared in.

7. I don’t mind needles. I actually enjoy them in a weird, twisted way. Especially dentist needles.

The seven people I choose to tag are:

1. Victoria Santiago
2. Mark Hodder
3. Connie McVicker
4. Maureen Kerr
5. Yvonne Weld
6. Cristina Favreau
7. Kylie Short

OK everyone! Now it’s your turn!!!

TGIF

1 Comment »

I love writing. Love it. Love it, love it, love it. I’m proud to admit (sort of) that every thought I put down on paper is fresh content. Squeezed right from my own brain. This topic has been hashed and rehashed over and over in the virtual assistance world.  Tales of website plagiarism. One VA copying and pasting content right from another VA’s site. It happens ALL the time. Why? Why would someone want to have all of someone else’s ideas passed off as their own? Are these people just lazy? Don’t know any better? Think it’s flattering? Well it’s not.

Maybe these content stealers (How d’ya like that word? Brings me back to grade 3…) don’t think they’ll be caught. Maybe they don’t know about CopyScape. Maybe these people don’t realize that anyone can go to www.CopyScape.com and type in their url to find out if anyone has copied their content.

Well, the other day I typed in MannMadeTime.com at CopyScape and low and behold there was a match. Someone has copied and pasted, almost word for word, an article I wrote some time ago and have posted on my website.I’ve contacted this VA twice now, and have not received a response.  I was hoping I wouldn’t have to get nasty about it, but looks like I’m going to have to make a phone call or something.

My point is - check CopyScape regularly to see if you’ve been plagiarized.

And if you’re a plagiarizer - stop it. If you aren’t a good writer, hire someone to write your content. Don’t steal it from somebody else. You might be surprised at how inexpensive it is to hire someone to revamp or create from scratch, your web content. And once you’ve been labeled a plagiarizer among your peers (if you’re a VA, you should know VAs talk to each other…trust me) you might find out rather quickly that it doesn’t pay to take content that came from someone else’s head.

I’m done now.

Wow, I seem to be ranting a lot this week. Sorry ’bout that.

2 Comments »