by Jo | Feb 1, 2017 | BLOG, eBook, Productivity |
This year is set to be one of the most productive years yet for me and my business. Late last year I decided to start moving my business forward which I’d been neglecting slightly due to the amount of client work I’d been tasked with. I have been so lucky these past 5 years that my business has grown from strength to strength. But one downside of this is I struggle to find the time to work on my business.
Challenge
I was given a challenge last year by one of my great clients, Phil from Positive Sparks, on the podcast we do together each month. He knew that I had been wanting to publish an eBook and I’d told him about my plans to update my eBook Marketing eCourse and publish this as a Kindle eBook. I’d been meaning to get round to it for ages… but it was just something I kept putting to the back of the queue behind everything else. Phil pushed me to do it because he made me accountable to the podcast audience! In September I decided that I had to get this done before the end of the year.
I tasked my great graphic designer Ryan to design me a cover and my wonderful writer James to go over it and make some improvements to my writing (basically editing it). It all came together just after Christmas and it went up on Amazon Kindle as a pre-order ready for the New Year. It was published on the 9th January and has been fairly high up in some of the Kindle store categories since then. I already have 5 reviews, all 5 star!
The eBook is aimed at newly self-published authors who want to get a head start in marketing their books. Having worked with many many self-published authors over the last 5 years I understood that they needed most help in this area, so doing the eCourse was my way of helping them out for free. Now I’ve published the book I hope that it will help a lot more authors get on with their marketing.
Themes
But back to the productivity. I came across Mike Vardy before Christmas, he runs The Productivityist… I took his online course through Todoist (my new project management tool of choice) and found that I really liked some of the ways he worked. I also learnt some great new things I can do with Todoist to make my days more productive. I spent a good few weeks following Mike and really taking on some of his ways of working. The one thing which has helped me enormously is to theme my months. You can read a recent article from Mike here about his year in preview and how monthly themes work.
I themed January as ‘My eBook’ – that meant I chose to spend my free business time on my newly published eBook. That covered things like marketing it, getting reviews for it and generally finding ways in which I can get the word out there. I have had a fair amount of success, but I feel that just having that month concentrating on one goal really helped me get things done.
In fact January was a great month for me, I earn’t the most I’ve ever done in one month (in 5 years), got my eBook published and I have also been #1 of #811 on The Executive Secretary Top 250 Social Media Power List for two consecutive weeks! Not only that, I also helped #MicroBizMattersDay trend on Twitter (with my VA helpers) for pretty much the whole event on the 13th. I felt I needed a treat, so I bought myself a Fitbit, it’s very rare that I buy something just for me.
So back to monthly themes… my theme for February is going to be the eCourse (and also to create my new home office). I am going to use the eBook to get the eCourse updated, there is no point in having an out of date incentive on my website! As for the office, I have a lovely mezzanine area in my house which is currently where the cat hides from the dogs and does most of his living. This is the second warmest room in my house in winter, so I am going to totally redesign it and create a fab workspace with a reading nook (for the cat mainly, but for me too!). I will be taking photos when I get started so I can share the transformation.
I already have a theme for March, but that’s some news I’ll share with you later on.
Tools
My Facebook group has also been growing and we’ve even had some app/tool founders popping in offering our members a chance to try out their new apps/tools. The monthly podcast I do with Phil has also been great, and the last one we did in January I was really excited about my latest app Blinkist. I paid for this app, which I hardly ever do, so you can see how much I like it. Blinkist has over 1500 non-fiction books available to read, but in short bursts (blinks)… so you get the entire book in something you can read in about 15 minutes. I have been devouring books most nights and learnt so much, my library of books to read gets bigger every day! You must check it out if you want to read but don’t have time to.
Productivity is my theme for the whole year… what’s yours?
by Jo | Nov 9, 2016 | BLOG, Tips |
Those of you who know me will know that I absolutely love online tools and applications. I use them every single day and they’ve become a crucial part of my success when it comes to productivity and efficiency.
Now many of you may be thinking, I don’t use many online tools or applications, what’s Jo talking about?
But I guarantee you all use more than you might think.
That’s because you’ll have taken for granted many of the tools/apps you use on a daily basis, but without them your working life would be considerably different.
If you use an online email service, such as Gmail, for managing your emails and Facebook for elements of your online marketing efforts, you’re absolutely taking advantage of online tools and apps.
Monthly Online Apps/Tools Podcast
In fact, my huge fondness of online apps and tools is the subject of a monthly podcast with the lovely Phil Byrne, strategic director at Positive Sparks.
Each month, Phil and I discuss our top/favourite online tools and apps for the month.
Our latest podcast (link at the bottom of this post) focuses on some apps you might not have heard of.
For example, we discuss RSS tool Feedly, which I started using when Google Alerts was pulled, and has now become my go-to app for content curation. I won’t give too much away as I want you to listen to the podcast (obviously), but I will say that Feedly has transformed how I curate content for both myself and clients.
I also talk about an app that I signed up to ages ago, but never got round to using. It’s called Zapier and it’s an app integration platform that is similar to If This Then That in nature, which I’ve talked about in a past blog post.
I’ve so far created several ‘zaps’ as they’re known and it’s turning out to be a really useful tool. It integrates with loads of other apps that I already use and has bags of potential.
Phil also talks about YouCanBook.me and Niume, an intriguing content sharing system that I previously hadn’t heard of, but sounds like it could be a great collaboration tool.
Join my Facebook Group!
I try to share my penchant for online apps and tools with as many people as possible whenever I can because I know how many benefits some of them can bring. That’s why I recently created a Facebook group in which people can talk about just that.
It’s called Online Productivity Tools & Applications and it’s open to anyone. There are only a few rules, the main one being that no spam is allowed. Other than that people are free to post links to their favourite apps or online tools that they use and discuss the numerous benefits they afford.
I’d love for you to become part of the group because I really do think it provides a lot of value. Even if you learn about one new tool or app a month it will have been worth it.
You can find our favourite apps/tools for October podcast here. Be sure to subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss out on any in the future.
And here are the links to the apps we talk about:
by Jo | Feb 4, 2016 | BLOG, VA, WordPress |
So here I am, it’s 2016 and already February and I feel that I should write a blog post. I am a little out of practice but I do have so much to tell you that I really need to get this written before something else stops me from doing so.
Top on my list is, I have a new website, and new branding… My old company name has disappeared along with 2015, and I can’t say I’m missing it. I wanted something simple which I can use for years to come, my name isn’t going to change anytime soon, well no plans for it to anyway. What do you think?
The lovely Gaynor at The Smart Station did my new logo and banners, and I’m really pleased with how they’ve turned out. I met Gaynor at #MicroBizMattersDay in January, which is the next piece of news I want to share…
My very first non-virtual event as a virtual assistant was #MicroBizMattersDay on Friday 8th January. I left for London the day before, and had a really great couple of days in London. It was certainly not what I was used to, I was in the thick of people, traffic, noise and general UK chaos, nothing like my rural life here in France, but I enjoyed it.
The day was a massive success and I feel privileged to have been part of the whole thing, even if I did try and hide in the corner of The Green Room. This year I didn’t take part in the live streaming (which suited me fine), but I did get nabbed by Ed Goodman of The Cambridge Business Lounge while he was whizzing around the place on Periscope. Tina Fotherby of Famous Publicity also caught me on camera a couple of times too. I also did a quick interview with Nick Peters of Share Radio, certainly not used to all the attention!
You may have heard of some of these business celebs, I didn’t really get a chance to speak to many of them as they were busy doing interviews… Tim Campbell MBE (winner of The Apprentice), Emma Jones MBE (Enterprise Nation), Charlie Mullins OBE, Chris Percival, Penny Power OBE and the rapper Sway.
I did meet some great people on the day, difficult to name them all… Tina and Tony did a fabulous job of organising the day, and I am really made up that they have invited me back next year when the day will be held on Friday 13 January 2017. You can watch all of the live streaming from the day, behind the scenes footage and some radio interviews on the #MicroBizMattersDay website.
It’s been a really busy time for me, in December I was asked to format two books, Shadow Tag and The End Game for New York Times Bestselling Authors, Raymond Khoury and Steve Berry. I was really pleased they came to me, and hope to work with them more in the future.
One of my favourite client’s *they’re all my favourites* Positive Sparks are now doing a weekly podcast, and after the event in London I took part in one with Phil talking about #MicroBizMattersDay and also my favourite apps of 2015. This will be a monthly thing for me, so do subscribe if you’d like keep up to date!
As well as taking on a number of new clients in January, and being snowed under with work… I did have a little time to do some dating (I know, not work related, but some of you like to keep up with me on a more personal level), and pleased to say I am now officially in a couple. So you can see, not a lot of time for blogging! 🙂
So it’s February, my new website is live, a few tweaks here and there, but pretty much finished. I have a few big website projects coming up this month, and lots of exciting things to look forward to in the months to come.
If you are in contact with me by email, then please do update your records with my new email address which you can see at the very top of this page.
…And do check out #MicroBizMattersDay if you’re a small business owner, next year we have so many exciting things happening, with live streaming from around the world… I can’t wait!
