From the Desk of Janet Barclay

I recently asked Karen Silins, President of A+ Career & Resume, LLC and the Association of Online Resume and Career Professionals (AORCP), about her typical workday, and she agreed to let me post the information on my blog.

A typical day for Karen includes the following activities:

• Reviewing and responding to emails
• Calling potential clients to discuss her company’s services (at a time which has been scheduled in advance, to eliminate telephone tag and ensure that both parties are able to be fully engaged in the conversation)
• Answering phone calls from potential clients and setting a time to speak with them
• Preparing for and then meeting with two to four clients daily in person or on the phone (typically a mix of coaching and resume clients)
• Taking care of any administrative activities that aren’t handled by her  Virtual Assistant (yours truly), such as planning website updates and marketing initiatives, or booking speaking engagements
• Writing resumes/cover letters, or other career documents for clients
• Networking with colleagues – sometimes lunch or dinner, sometimes a phone call or email, sometimes online networking such as LinkedIn.com
• Forwarding information to clients, such as links to assessments, questions to be answered, weekly assignments, resources (including book and website recommendations), appointment reminders, and any handouts being covering in the next appointment

In addition, she conducts evening seminars a few times a month.

Karen’s Tip:

With such a busy schedule, in order to make sure that nothing is overlooked, Karen takes time each night to review what she wants to accomplish the following day. She also does this each Sunday for the next week.  This helps her to formulate a plan that she can execute the next day or week. 

Do you have a time management tip to share?

Do you know what day it is?

If you have a traditional job, you’re probably thinking, "Yeah, it’s Monday. Big deal. It comes around every week about this time."

But if you’re one of the many people who work from home, today is your day! Today is the sixth annual Doing Business in Your Bathrobe Day, a time to celebrate the freedom offered by home business ownership. If you don’t believe me, go to http://www.businessinyourbathrobeday.com and see for yourself! While you’re there, you can even enter a contest for some really great prizes, including – you guessed it! – a bathrobe. I actually found out about Doing Business in Your Bathrobe Day from Red Deer College’s Virtual Assistant Program who also held a contest, which closed yesterday.

Some home-based business owners, when hearing about Doing Business in Your Bathrobe Day, laughed and said every day is Doing Business in Your Bathrobe Day! Yet others expressed concerns about creating a negative, unprofessional image. After all, there are people who teach that to be successful, you should dress the same as if you were going out to a corporate office every day. There may be some people who need to do that in order to apply themselves to their work, but I suspect that how they dress is not going to make or break the deal! Personally, I am happy to dress slightly more casually than I would if I were going out to work, but I love the fact that I can drink my morning coffee and check my emails before getting showered and dressed for the day – and that is the type of freedom that Doing Business in Your Bathrobe Day is all about!

I recently had the honour of being interviewed by Marie Mushing for the People in Connection Internet TV Show. Please take a few minutes to drop by and learn more about Organized Assistant and how a virtual assistant can help you!

Other guests include:

• Art Dyck of PrePaid Legal Services, sharing information about protecting yourself against identity theft and access to lawyers
• Sharron Orovan-Johnston, author of Take the Wheels Off Your Worry Bus and the founder of Lighten Up Week (which is this week, by the way)
• Veronica Magee, explaining what Canadian Blood Services does for the community
• Christine McCombe of The Natural Way, sharing information about natural products and therapies for health and healing, such as aromatherapy

The whole show is only about half an hour long, so you can easily fit it into your day if you watch it while you are eating your lunch or taking your coffee break. If you have to, you can even listen to it while you are working on something else!

I couldn’t let International Coaching Week go by without stopping to celebrate the business success I’ve experienced over the last couple of years, because it wouldn’t have been possible without the support and guidance of my coaches.

When I decided to leave my job and work in my business on a full-time basis, I knew I needed to speed up the growth process to bring my income to what it had been. I had a lot of good ideas, but didn’t know how to decide which ones were worth implementing or even how to go about it in some cases. The best decision I made was to team up with a business coach, who helped me to analyze my competition, identify my niche market, and strengthen my branding, among other things. I still had to do all the work, but with someone to guide me and to be accountable for, I was able to accomplish much more than I had been able to do on my own. As I’ve mentioned before, I later took part in a group coaching program based on the Law of Attraction, which further developed my awareness of my ideal client and helped me to take my business to the next level.

If you’re a new entrepreneur, you may have limited resources available, but I strongly encourage you to find a way to make the investment. Group coaching tends to be less expensive than one-on-one, and provides the added support of the other group members. Another option would be to offer your services in exchange for coaching.

Just make sure that the person you choose as your coach is someone you respect and feel comfortable with. And remember, you will have lots of homework! Like so many things in life, you will only get out of coaching as much as you put into it.

There are a number of coaches in my blogroll, whose specialties include executive, marketing, productivity, and careers. Why not pay them a visit and see what they have to offer?

If the last few weeks are any indication, 2008 is going to fly right by!

For your reading enjoyment, you may want to check out some of the things I’ve written on other blogs:

OnlineOrganizing.com - Technology as an Organizing Tool:

• Organize Your Job Search
• Norton 360: an all-in-one solution for protecting your computer
• Streamline Your Online Time with "Blog Friends"
• Password Management Made Easy
• Do Desktop Search Programs Eliminate Need To Organize Electronic Files?
  

Introvert Retreat:

• Online Communication - Perfect for Introverts!
• Maximizing Your Networking Potential
• It’s official - even Dr. Joyce Brothers says so!

You also won’t want to miss my latest article, Organizing Paperwork for Your Bookkeeper along with guest articles recently posted at OrganizedArticles.com.