Photo by Kevin Finneran

You may not operate in a high risk area like I do, but, in the recent past we’ve had a lot of natural disaster all over the world. Some were totally unexpected and some were made worse as a result of apathy. They should be a sobering reminder to all of us that disaster does not always pick and choose who or where.

I am certainly not an insurance agent so you will do well to check with your agent before making any adjustments or addition to your policy. Here are some of the things that you should look into to prepare your business for disaster.

• Backup, then backup that backup and backup again.
• Keep a backup in your office/home and keep at least one backup off site too. This is one reason why I use services like Mozy because the backup is not located where I am. If I experience a total loss of my home (touch wood), I can always get my data from them.
• Discuss with your insurance agent what is a good protection plan for your business.
• Develop an emergency/evacuation plan for your family and decide ahead of time what you will bring and include some key items from your business.
• When you make an inventory of your home, include an inventory of the software that you run too. Very often the software installed on your computer(s) is worth many times more than your computer(s) itself.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but definitely a good place to start.

This week we’re Sparking an Idea About Enjoying a Business-Free Holiday

Alright I’m rather late for this week’s meme. This holiday weekend thing is really throwing me off. Or is it because my husband took a day off today and is off tomorrow. His holidays always mess me up because I try to make it a ‘policy’ to be off when he is too but I can’t keep you hanging today can I

When it comes to vacation I’m the worse person to give any kind of advise or tip because… I haven’t been on vacation since I had my firstborn and she’s rapidly approaching 8! Yikes! Seriously Lynette? Uh… yeah. Alright, I don’t consider myself having had any real vacation time. To me, vacation is a week at Disney world, a month roaming Europe or going on a walkabout in Australia. Sure, I had a 3 day weekend at my in-laws (uhm is that even a vacation? LOL) or a day trip to the beach since we are so close to it. So what new idea can I possibly share?

I’ll admit - nothing earth shattering. However, this is what I can tell you, these little 2-3 days away always go off without a hitch. You see, I am preparing my business, myself and my family to be away for 1-2 months a year. My mini stay-cations are a training ground to help me see if my processes and plans put in works. So far, they have.

One of the most eye opening things I learned from my friend Alice Seba is, automation does not always mean software. In fact much of the automation I’ve put in place is non-technical and very human. Absolutely, a team is one good place to begin with but if your team doesn’t know what to do or relies on you to tell them what to do every day or every week then they aren’t going to help you that much. You’ll still be ‘working’ everyday, unable to take off.

Some people call it a system, I just call it a standing order. CJ helps the customers daily, Kit works on adding stuff for my members every week, Libby bills the clients every month and Patrick keeps developing the software every week. All this happens automatically. I don’t breathe over their necks, I don’t give instructions every week. Many are repetitive work and some like Patrick’s work aren’t. For those, I make sure I give as detailed instructions as possible at the beginning of the project, come to a common understanding and only drop in once in a while. All these work orders are considered to be done every week/day/month depending on the task, indefinitely. Until I say stop.

That alone made a huge difference. There are still more standing orders to be given out. I’m going to think of more. But you know the fact is, this isn’t for me or for a vacation. The goal is to build a business that doesn’t revolve around me so when it comes time for me to exit or step down, it can stand on it’s own and perhaps bring in more value.

Oh and one more thing - Exercise your will power to stop checking those emails. If you have set up things to run automatically the sky won’t fall on your head after 2 hours away from your business. Yeah, I was surprised too

The best thing is you don’t have to get super technical with all this either. Products like the Voyager S2 from NewerTech works just like a toaster. You plug the docking station into your computer - it has USB if you’re not familiar with all the geeky SATA plugs. Then insert your hard drive into the slot. You’ll be ready to start saving files onto the drive. You can use as many drives as you want (one at a time).

We’ve been using the external hard drive case method which is the same concept, just more physical tinkering and plugging for a long time. It really does work and the savings can be significant because hard drives are a whole lot cheaper to buy than all in one external hard drives. They are also a lot larger than USB drives ;-). The Voyager S2 starts at $59.99.

Now, I don’t claim these tools are sufficient to fire your graphic designer. Far from it. Keep your designer at all costs - I know I do mine. Keeping them real close. But sometimes when you want a quick button or graphic just to fill a space or get the task done, these can be helpful.

FreshBadge - I so love this one. One of my first finds in fact. Love the badges. I’ve noticed once in a while it gets flaky on me.

Tabs Generator - very handy for web designers.

My Cool Button - pretty neat.

Quick Web Creations - not free Been quite useful to me.

Why only may? Because, a lot of the tools and methods to retrieve the content from a PDF depends on the security settings of the PDF. If you have locked down your PDF to disallow copying, many tools cannot get past that and if they did you’d still have to remember the password.

Assuming you have not locked your PDF, one of the easiest ways is to simply open the file in a PDF reader and click on Save As from the menu. This will extract a text only version of your work. If your document has a lot of fancy designs and images, you won’t be able to retrieve them using this method but if it’s mostly textual content this is probably better anyway to allow you to work from a fresh copy.

If you’d like something that resembles the final result more, you could try:

• PDFtoWord
• Koolwire
• Advanced PDF to Word Converter Free
• Zamzar

Keep in mind, you may not get an exact reproduction. In other words, don’t expect your original document. Some converters choke on the alignments and  images, overlapping them but hey, the idea is to salvage as much as you can so you can’t be too picky.

WP-Invoice - I’ve been wondering when something like this would be developed. Lately, I’ve outgrown my invoicing solution and looking elsewhere but I really don’t want to install another stand alone application on my site - too many software to keep track of. Having the invoicing solution directly on an existing website makes the whole business a lot more centralized and less technical management too. Best of all this is developed by a couple of U.S. Marine Corp Veterans whom I’ll always be partial to. Am definitely trying this one.

Event Registration - We use this at MomMasterminds to organize our MMWeetups (Meetups). Allows us to post which event is upcoming and let’s people register so we know who’s coming and what to prepare. I think it might be useful for arranging meetings too.

WordPress Advanced Ticketing System - so far, this is the only ticket system I see. It’s still quite new so I’ll reserve judgement on it.

Job Board - I’ve always told people that many plugins they use could be unnecessary because with a little bit of simple coding and thinking outside the box, you’ll be able to achieve the same thing without a plugin on WordPress. That’s the beauty of the system. Well this is not a plugin but a good tutorial that shows you how to create a job listing/board.

WP-Project - this plugin is getting old. I’ve talked to Nick the developer, at this point in time he’s not able to devote time to it. But it might be something you could check out in a sandbox to see if it suits you.

Blog Goals Monitor - very interesting indeed! Keeping a blog can be hard work and sometimes you need a little help motivating ourselves or seeing whether we are achieving our goals. This plugin helps you do just that.

Like this post? I blog a lot about WordPress at my blog too. Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter for more tech hints and specials while you’re there.

We’ve both read David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. We like to find ways to be more organized and efficient. Tools for improving our productivity intrigue us.

He has a cult-like following. His raving fans love his system. The essence of the system is to “do it, delegate it or defer it.”

The gtdagenda.com is all about using the system on the computer instead of paper. There is also integration in the system to receive email notifications each morning for calendar, next actions and/or your vision wall.

There are examples of how you can integrate it with Stephen Covey’s  7 Habits of Highly Effective People or Leo Babuta’s Zen to Done system. There are also suggestions on how to use it for school, the gym or even software development.

Sherra says…

The website gives you a snapshot of your goals, projects and tasks on one screen which can be helpful. But for me personally, it’s a little too stark. I’d like to see more customization options - as in color choices, fonts and ways I could rearrange the screen to suit my personal preferences. There is a free option as well as a basic and premium plan with a 30 day money back guarantee which is always nice.

Leigh Anne says…

Because I tend to be a very visual person and really do prefer paper I like that you can also print. I also love that there is a Vision Wall where you can upload photos of your goals and dreams. Staying focused on your goals and the steps that move you towards them can be a struggle. The GTD system and gtdagenda.com help you to do this. It breaks goal setting and achieving into manageable, bite size pieces. It is so much more than a to do list. It helps you to have a more organized life and put everything thing in its place.

If you are a GTD devotee, this is worth checking out, especially if you want a web-based system that you’ll be able to log on and access from any computer. For now, we’re sticking with old-fashioned pen and paper because it still works for us.

Interns Leigh Anne Wilkes and Sherra Humphreys have been top direct sales business leaders for 18 and 16 years respectively.

This week we’re Sparking an Idea that about Email

It all starts when you have one web site and one product. Then, when you build another site or another product (or blog) with it’s own domain you think well, maybe we need to create a new address on this new domain for customer support, for you, for the mailing list for… whatever. Then you add a new domain to your empire and you create another email address or *gasp* several addresses. Uh huh. That was me 2 years ago.

You’re probably thinking, it can’t be that bad. You can after all redirect all those different addresses into one. Yes, you are correct but the issue I had was not because I had to log in to different accounts to check the emails. It was the difficulty in keeping them straight when replying to people and most of all, when people ask for an email address, I didn’t know which I should give! Should I give them the real private one? Or the one for this site or maybe that site is more appropriate for this interview. That’s not all, whenever a new email list was created, I struggled to figure out which address would be the most appropriate “From” address for the list.

I decided I had enough. So I spent a whole month consolidating, trimming and re-structuring my email addresses. While I was at it, I also set up a central contact and help center for all products/services. You can call it a help desk I suppose, although I don’t run any help desk software.

The first thing I did was decide which addresses I wanted to keep. Once they were decided, the addresses were assigned a specific purpose. For example, one is strictly private, for personal stuff, staff and clients only. No exceptions. Then another was for mailing lists. Then I have one ‘public’ address and there’s another for support for all products, services, websites.

Just doing this cut down my email confusion considerably but that wasn’t the only thing I did. I hired someone to check, manage and respond to all the other addresses but one. Now, whenever someone asks me for an email address, during an interview or setting up an email list, I use the public one. The contact for all web sites, products and services go directly to the help desk at TechBasedSupport.com. There is no confusion. No setting up new email addresses no matter how many new products or websites I create. It’s all centralized.

If you happen to be a MomMasterminds member, I have a resource in the learning center there that shows step-by-step exactly how I set it all up and give you suggestions to centralize your emails too.

I’m so, so, much happier now and can’t imagine why I hadn’t done it before. At any point in time I know exactly where customers are sent to. This makes it a lot easier when you’re updating pages and giving instructions to people how to get support. It’s all the same and you don’t confuse yourself. Doing this also freed me up to focus on important stuff rather than checking emails.

Jigsaw is at heart, a business directory. It lists key people in different positions throughout an organization. You can search for contacts by geographical area, company or industry. You can also list yourself.

I can see how it can be useful, apart from the more obvious - sales leads generation, it could be used for sourcing or maybe to pitch an idea or simply initiate contact.

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Congratulations! I’ll pass your information along. We’ll be in touch to for your mailing address. Thank you everyone for participating. If you didn’t win, you might want to hang around here. I am working on a really good software giveaway that is very practical and something every service provider could use. That’s all I’m going to say at the moment.

Now all of that no longer frustrates me. I’m a long time Delicious user. My bookmarks are with me all the time, as long as I have Internet connection OR my phone. I’ve never had to consider other online bookmarking software but I have been looking at Xmarks lately. The one feature I like about it, if you have the plugin installed on your browser, when you search it will also tell you how many if anyone bookmarked the site. That’s a good way to zero in on search results without clicking them one by one.

Perhaps what’s nicest about it is the ability to sync bookmarks across computers. That way you will always have the complete set. You can also sync passwords. Although nice option, I’m not so sure I want to put my passwords on a third party server. The password sync is turned off by default. If you’d like to experience having your bookmarks accessible anytime, anywhere and just about any mobile device, maybe Xmarks could be your answer.

If the tech stuff is not your cup of tea, when you get access to the Hot Seminar series, you also get to listen in or grab the recording of 7 other interviews with successful business owners. Here are the other Internet based businesses that will be discuss at length:

• eBay Seller
• Affiliate Manager
• Pro Blogger / Freelance Writer
• Virtual Assistant
• Information Marketer
• Coach
• Content Marketer/Blogger/Podcaster

See you there!

When things like these happen, one of the first places to look is the device manager. It didn’t give me any warnings but after a few reboots it started to give me a yellow warning that the mouse isn’t working properly - well dOh! Now what?

Uninstall the mouse - you heard me right. Uninstall the mouse, reboot the computer. Windows will always try to re-install it on reboot. Sure enough it did and I have my mouse back

Next time your keyboard or mouse quits, try that as a first step.

This week we’re Sparking an Idea to Finishing What You’ve Started

This is terrible. It seems like every Thursday, I’m airing more and more of my dirty laundry through Spark and Idea Thursday. I know you know I’m not perfect right so why pretend right?

I’m a great starter. Wonderful ideas, lots of energy… only in the beginning, which makes for an awful finisher. So how in the world do I even get anything done? Well, I’m still learning and putting the finishing touches to this scheme of forcing myself to finish a project. These have so far worked nicely for me.

Working with a mentor or coach

Sometimes, it’s not so easy for us to see where those open loops are. We may have thought we finished something only to find out that we haven’t. Depending on the coach you hire, with my mentor, I would pick a site then ask them for guidance what they thought of it, beginning with the sales page, then the mailing list etc. Not all coaches go into a deep level like that mind you.  And you certainly can do it with a staff member, VA or partner. But I’ve found getting my mentor’s opinion on projects is invaluable because she sees things I don’t. She’s also super marketing savvy and a brilliant entrepreneur.

Using checklists

This is a tactic I’ve learned from Jimmy D. Brown whom I greatly respect. He’s like the epitome of organization. This man has volumes of checklists how to do stuff from the simplest to the most complex. He runs his business on a proven system. Everything is a series of steps and lists - like well executed computer program. Sadly, I have yet to build a huge database of checklists like him but am definitely working on it. I’ve also released a checklist to my newsletter subscribers once, for setting up a email mailing list because I got tired of forgetting to prepare certain things and finding all kinds of unfinished tasks in my lists. If you’d like to have it, visit the following page to download the “Email List Setup Checklist”. I also build my checklists in the form of mind maps.

Outsourcing

Wow, I never imagined that delegating my work could also make me more accountable. It’s true. They keep me on the ball. Every time a contractor comes back with a task, I know I need to get on it or I would have spent that money in vain - talk about motivation. Like mentors, they also point out areas where a message doesn’t quite make sense or an email is not working right or places where I said I would give a subscriber something but didn’t.

Joint Ventures

This is my personal favorite, maybe because it’s because of joint ventures, I managed to turn my business around. Partners keep each other going. Partnership also has risks of course. Some don’t work out. But overall, I like joining forces with other marketers.

What I would like to do

Setup a set of tasks - some of them, an assistant can be responsible to carry out quarterly or bi-annually. These tasks would include things like, reviewing all e-courses for freshness, check links if they are still working, reviewing what new up sell or promos could go into the emails. Changing out signatures and P/S’s. Run through the site for forms that aren’t working or links to old or non-existent sites. I would probably put in place some script to help find 404 pages and links as well to quickly move the process along. Maybe throw in some tasks to check affiliate links for validity or which old programs are no longer active.

What are your ideas to help you finish what you started?

A Good Office Chair - he spends a lot of time over that desk / computer so might as well be comfortable.

Stock up his office supplies - men hate shopping even for business. Come to think of it, so do I. It would be a great gesture to surprise him with a cabinet full or paper, pens, ink, toner and while you’re at it maybe tidy up that table of his

Laptop bags - depending on how much he carries his laptop around. I bet those who carry their laptops regularly, the bag could be in need of replacement.

A cordless presenter/laser pointer - if Dad does a lot of presentations, this is a must have to help him stay within the time limit, advance slides in a presentation and highlight key notes. This Logitech one looks interesting.

The Livescribe Smartpen - you read my post last week about this pen. It’s great. The 1GB version starts at $149.99 and is plenty to begin with.

NeatDesk Desktop Scanner - no more pack rat Dad!

Software or Online Services - Evernote makes a great gift too to give Dad a virtual space to save all those tidbits of information he finds. You also almost always won’t go wrong with software that he’s been wanting to have. They can get expensive though. One software I highly recommend for any desktop is DirectAccess to help Dad type less, easily launch software and automate a ton of small tasks he might do every day.

Business learning courses or training programs - this too can get expensive but at the same time, there are many affordable learning products out there too. For example, if he’s been wanting to learn how to setup his own blog, give him the Blogging Starter Pack.

Tablet or fancy schmancy mouse - the Bamboo tablet starts at $99 or go for a fancy, comfortable top of the line mouse for his computer.

Help - Purchase a few hours from a Virtual Assistant as a gift.

Bonus idea, computer wallpaper or screen saver - Well this you can do in addition to what you’re already giving him. Make a collage with your family photos with some handwritten notes specifically for dad then secretly change out his computer wall paper. $0 makes it a fabulous idea.

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To enter for the giveaway, leave us a comment and let us know which package you would like.  We’ll choose two winners randomly after 12:00om EST on Tuesday, June 23rd.

• Make sure you use a legitamate email address as that is how we’ll contact you.
• Only one entry per household please.

We’ll announce our winner’s after they’ve been notified!

Sparkplugging was not paid to offer this giveaway.

In 2008, according to MessageLabs Intelligence report, phishing attempts are pretty popular in social networks. Sometimes, these people would try to gain access to your own social network accounts to post comments and messages on your friends’ pages that contain spam links.

At other times you may get a fake invite to join a bogus social network group. In these groups, the scammers link to blogs and sites that redirect you to their final destination where they deliver the payload or trick you to fill out personal information to be sold to marketing companies or used in other unsavory ways.

Just be careful out there, but you’re always more than welcome to follow me - spam free

The app is free and can be obtained from the iPhone Apps Store.

I think that’s so cool. It’ s stuff like these that I simply love helping clients with (Nationwide is NOT my client). It’s not always easy to see the way how to marry your product or service with technology. I give Nationwide 7 out of 10 points for creating the app.

Why only a 7? Well, because the iPhone is not the only phone out there. True, many will make the case that it is popular, they have a huge following and you go where your customers are or want to be. Still, I imagine I’d feel really bummed out if I were a Nationwide customer - I own a Windows Mobile phone and have no plans of switching in the near future. Then, there are Blackberry users too who have a huge following and is very popular. Admittedly I didn’t spend much time to find out if they are developing apps for other mobile platforms. Maybe they are and I haven’t seen it.

So while the idea is great and they are piggy backing on the whole iPhone Apps cool factor, it can also be a slippery slide tech slope. On the other hand, I think they are heading in the right direction, which is in line with my thinking all along that businesses now have to think beyond just web sites and social networks but actually integrating into customers’ lives and making it easier at the same time.

Now, to see how well it works and how well the rest of the company responds or embraces this. Technology is only a helper. Ultimately, Nationwide still has to deliver their ‘goods’.

This week we’re Sparking an Idea that about Goal Setting

Getting real here. I’m not the type to set small goals. Mine tend to be lofty, sky high, grandiose - hey after all, you’re talking to a Sagittarius. You know, the archer and all that stuff.

I wouldn’t say it hasn’t served me well. Big lofty, grand plans works well for my style. I look at my goals as a big long process out of which many smaller steps need to happen first. Like a journey.

Mindmap courtesy Wikipedia

When I was 15, my mom sent me to an expensive 3 day seminar that taught me how to plan, learn and achieve my goals using mind mapping techniques. I can’t recall if the seminar produced results right away - poor mom BUT I can safely tell her that she had spent her money well. That’s the way I do my goal setting and planning now. Not exactly the way that was taught, I’ve adapted and combined it with yet another popular system you may have heard of - Getting Things Done.

To help me implement and visualize my goals, believe it or not, the humble pencil (or pen or marker) and index card works the best for me but that may be changing rapidly. You see, while cards, maps and charts are awesome, I’ve been spoiled by the Internet. I can’t search them. Not having the best memory around, search is like the ultimate tool for me. How nice if I can go back and search my mind maps.

A few months ago, I invested in a Pulse Smartpen also known as the Livescribe pen and just like that. Just like that, now all my maps can be digitized, cataloged aaannnndddd… searched! Yes!

There’s more of course. It can record audios and ‘link’ them to your notes. You can even share the maps and audios live online. Great tool to outline an idea, explain tasks or communicate your goals to remote staff. Check out some of the stuff others have shared (you can make it private).

Some have even gone as far as creating their own ‘Pen casts’ like a podcast + drawing + writing. That’s pretty neat and think I’ll create some Pen-casts to experiment in upcoming information products or membership sites.

There are some annoying things with the pen though. For example, I cannot delete pages once it’s uploaded to the computer. I also wished it allowed me to add more information to archived notebooks. Overall I really like it.

My kids love it too. They call it “The pen that talks” and love the piano feature - uhuh, you can play a simple piano on it. All you have to do is draw the piano and start playing.

It depends what I’m buying. When purchasing any computer related - monitor, computer, laptop or any accessories I usually decline because the moment my computer leaves the store it’s already obsolete.

Photo by Thomas Hawk

These things are cheaper to buy again new vs the hassle of having it sent somewhere to be repaired. Some of the warranty companies know this and have opted to allow you to replace the unit instead of repairing.

That may not be such a bad deal yet… seriously, after a year maybe two of your computer you’re probably beginning to gripe how slow it is or how you wish it has this or that. I’m not one to keep up with the Joneses. In fact I have not bought a new car in over 10 years and my home is a modest one built in the 60’s. When it comes to tech though, after a year or more, if the thing breaks I’m a little happy for the excuse to upgrade.

Do you feel the same way?