VIP

Support Systems: Both Personal and Business

The moving plans continue.  I've gotten a lot done, though none of it includes packing.  I have lists, I have plans, I have a support system.

OK, I knew I had a support system but I didn't know just how large it was.  When I started talking to my friends and the lovely women in my spiritual and my book groups, I discovered just how much support I truly have. It was heartwarming.

This got me to thinking about what kind of support system my business has.  That, of course, led very quickly to the obvious: What kind of support system does your business have? 

I think this is such and important topic, I'm going to start a series of blog posts around it.

Some of the topics I'll be covering are:

• Do you have a support system in place? 
• What does a healthy support system look like? 
• How do you start to build your support system or improve the one you have? 
• What does your support system plan look like--specifically?
• Do you have a plan that continues to build on that support system?

Now you know what I'm up to this week--looking at my business support system and how I can help all of us build one that helps protect us in times of stress and distress.

This is an area where I truly need your input to help me craft a series that meets your needs rather than what I imagine you can use.

Independence

Tomorrow is Independence Day in the U.S.  This is when we celebrate the anniversary of going from being a colony to an independent nation made up of many smaller states.  We declared our freedom from England. 

We didn't just tell England we wanted to be free--we had to work for that independence.  The way we worked for it was to physically fight British troops.  We won that fight and began the process of learning what freedom and independence were going to cost us.

What does independence mean to you?  Is it a public display of fireworks, do you go see a parade and have a picnic, or do you actually think about what it's like to have independence?  It's been so long since we gained our freedom that few of us can fully appreciate what that meant back in the late 1700s. 

As a child I thought it meant we didn't have to pay taxes on tea and we had a president instead of a king or queen.  As an adult it means so much more.  There is a depth of feeling about freedom and independence that I couldn't have imagined as a little girl.  Back then freedom meant getting to decide my own bedtime, how late I could watch television, and not having to go to school anymore.  It meant turning 18.

Today I get to have all of that and so much more.  I'm free to choose where and how I live, how I get the money I need to pay my bills, who I choose to invite into my circle of friends, how I spend my time, and just about every other aspect of my life. 

I was also free to step out on my own and start a business where I didn't know what my income would be from one month to the next.  I was free to learn how to succeed or fail based on my marketing ability.  Yes, I said "marketing" rather than "skills."  I already had the skills I needed to get started in my business.  What I needed was to be able to find people who needed those skills and wanted to pay me to provide them.

Whether you already own your own business or are thinking about starting one, this is one of the more important things to remember.  If you're not good at marketing, be prepared to find someone who is.  You can choose how much to invest in both money and time but you have to know what resources are best for you. 

I'd love to give you a half hour of my time to get you started on your journey to find the marketing help you need.  My company might be able to provide some services you want or could use but   what I offer is just one option on a very large menu of opportunities.  There is so much more out there for you to explore and I want to help you discover what will be best for you.

Utilize the resources that support your independence.  You're free to make that choice.

Business Expansion!!!

Great news!  I have a business partner.  Actually, Staci and I have been working together for months but we've been so busy there hasn't been time to even tell you about it. 

To celebrate a new partner, we have decided to change the name of the business (after all, Virtual Cynthia really doesn't work for two people) so we had that discussion this morning and we've decided to become Virtual Internet Professionals.  We'll be the VIPs working with our VIP clients. 

As time goes by you'll learn more about Staci and the fabulous knowledge she has to share (I'm actually going to encourage her to have her own blog) but for now, just know that she can run rings around me in the tech world and she's pretty amazing in the administrative world as well.

Look for more posts to follow--I attended a conference a couple of weeks ago and as I assimilate the info, I'll be sharing it with you!  I learned some fabulous things and I know you'll want to take advantage of how they can help your business soar to the top.

Until next time....

How My Mind Works

I was marveling at how my thoughts (and actions) take me from one place to somewhere completely different but absolutely perfect for me at the very time I "should" be there.  It always amazes me how these things manage to happen.  Did you ever see a television show called Connections?  It started with one thing and led us, item by item, person by person, from something totally unlikely to a discovery, an invention, something that changed the way we view the world.  I wish I could come up with a good example but what has stuck in my mind was the process and how similar it was to how my mind seems to work.

That made me wonder if that isn't the way the world just naturally works and we spend much of our time trying to make things linear when they are frequently totally non-linear.

The last hour is a perfect example of the whole process.  This didn't start an hour ago.  It started, well, actually, it started several years ago when I was introduced to "formal" bartering by friends of mine in Spokane, Washington.  This was, I would guess, at least five--possibly as much as seven years ago.  I got three people to sign up and the company very nicely gave me $300 in trade to use as I wished.  How nice of them is that? 

That really has almost nothing to do with this story except that I hadn't used those $300 and then I moved to the Seattle area and didn't really think about it any more.  Yesterday I got a phone call from Patrick at Tradia telling me they were looking for a new employee to take care of the folks in the Spokane area and he wanted to let me know that there would be no sign-up fee for the time being and for everyone I signed up I would get $150 in spendable barter funds.  Well, what a deal but I'm now about 350 miles from Spokane.  Not to worry, there are things I can use all over the United States--in fact, all over the world. 

I'll shorten this whole process up or I could be here for hours just writing away about this.  So, the talk with Patrick makes me think that I still have that $300 hanging around and it's about time I used that so I could make room for more money in my account (it's a mental game I play with myself, not anything literal) so I went looking for a bed and breakfast (might as well splurge since it's just sitting there waiting to be spent).  No B&B in my area that appealed to me.  Next I thought to look for a seamstress/tailor to make a pair of slacks I've been wanting and perhaps even a pattern to go with them so I could replicate them later. 

As I was scrolling down the categories, "Coaching--Career" and "Coaching--Life" caught my eye.  I had the world's best coach (you've heard all about Deanna Davis in earlier posts) but she had retired from coaching months ago and it was time for me to find another one.  I clicked on that category and discovered there were about 10 coaches willing to use barter funds to do coaching with them.  One appealed to me and I called and left a message with her.  She called me back today.  Her name is Wendy. 

That made me think about the derivation of Wendy.  I learned, not long ago, that Wendy had never been used as a name, in fact, had never been a word, until it was created for the play Peter Pan and Wendy.  Of course I had to mention that to Wendy.  I knew she must have heard this before but I still find it a fun thing to know and talk about and who better?  Yes, she was aware of where it had come from but she didn't know when it had come into existence. 

We both went to the Internet and I came up with the Peter Pan and Wendy site where it not only said that the first time the play had been performed was in 1904, but that there was a commemorative centenary book.  That, of course, led me to Amazon.com where I found the book and discovered it was reasonably priced.   I'm a fan of interesting books like this, especially ones so richly illustrated, so this will soon be on my bookshelf.

What started with barter funds, went to coaching, and ended up purchasing a book about Peter Pan and Wendy. 

What does this have to do with anything?  Perhaps absolutely nothing, but it caused me to think that perhaps, rather than thinking of these little journeys as purely accidental, perhaps they are ways God/the Universe/Spirit (you choose your name) leads each of us to where we want to go--more than that--where we are meant to go.  Rather than thinking of it as a bizarre behavior and one I should try to eradicate from my life so I can think more logically and get more done, perhaps I might want to consider that getting from one point to another in totally logical and linear ways might keep me from experiencing the luscious, juicy parts of life.

So, take this, leave it, whatever is your desire, but at least think about how things may be far less accidental than we sometimes view them.  Perhaps I am exactly where I am supposed to be right this very minute in order to get the very thing I need most in my life right now.  And perhaps that isn't the case but since it hurts no one to think the more positive and uplifting thought, I choose to believe that is the case--for me--for today.

Until next time...

Law of Attraction, Part 2

Have you been hearing the buzz about the Law of Attraction?  If you haven't, chances are you've been living in a cave.  It's the hottest topic in the non-traditional business communities and it's rapidly finding its way into the most traditional boardrooms in the country.

On the off chance you haven't heard about this, there's one very painless way to learn about it.  It's a movie called The Secret.  You don't even have to buy the DVD to watch it.  If you have a relatively fast Internet connection, you can "rent" it for $4.95 and watch it online.  If you decide you want to purchase the DVD after that you can even deduct the cost of the rental from the purchase price.  You can read more about this very well-made movie here.  That movie will lead you to a ton of other teachers.  I'll probably be talking more about this as well and I'm sure I'll tuck my favorite resources in here as well.

If you don't even want to do that much to learn what this law is all about, here's the really short version (my short version).  What you focus on, good or bad, is attracted to you.   I could go on for hours but I really want to get to the reason I wanted to write this particular post.

I've known about the Law of Attraction for ages.  I even thought I was paying attention to its principles for the most part.  I could never figure out why my life wasn't a smashing success with all the focus I put on getting ahead.  Again, another story for another time.   In fact, I posted about this very thing here.

About a year ago I made an active decision to stop playing around with my Virtual Assistance business and go all out to make it a full-time career.  I started by getting a personal and business coach.  I've written about Deanna Davis before.  I was very fortunate.  She is no longer coaching because the other business ventures she's involved in have taken off so quickly she doesn't have time to coach any more.

The a dear friend of mine sent me a book about the Law of Attraction called Ask and It Is Given.  I read that and figured out why I wasn't successful yet.  I then started putting into practice what I learned there.

Just to give me a little extra time to build my business, the Universe kindly got me fired.  That was pretty scary but it was absolutely perfect, of course.

I was still kind of clunking along on the whole Law of Attraction thing.  It was working rather nicely for me but not quite as much as I had hoped for.  I was making exactly enough to pay my bills each month.  Hey, that's not awful considering it takes most people well over a year to build a suffiently large enough practice to support themselves but I had really been hoping for something more akin to "doing very well" than to "doing just fine."

I continued to read and watch DVDs and go to events and then, a little over a month ago, something clicked and I got it.  I wish I could tell you exactly what it was or how I did it but it seems to have been a lot of little things.  Here's how I know it actually worked for me.

I was sitting in my office one day nearly two months ago when the phone rang.  It was a marketing consultant in Los Angeles who had found my phone number while searching for more information on Deanna Davis--that coach I was telling you about earlier.  She wrote a book I reviewed very favorably in a post right here.  The post led him to my web site and that led him to me.

What he said that was so amazingly Law of Attraction was something like this.  "I know I hate doing the administrative tasks of running a business but I truly want to have my own business.  I'm not big enough to hire someone full-time but I need help.  When I saw your website I knew you could help me."  He became my client immediately and we've been working together ever since.  In fact, last month I earned three times what I did the month before and his business was responsible for half of that increase.

That, alone, would have been enough to erase any shred of doubt I might still have about the whole Law of Attraction thing but that's not the end of it.  This same client said he thought he might need another senior VA-type person because his business was growing so quickly he needed more help.  He knew I had other clients and didn't want to ask more than I could give.

On top of that, I received a response to an email I sent four months ago.  I was writing to her to comment on one of those "small world" things that had happened and included her, a woman I have never met.  Her response included a comment that she wanted to talk with me about working together!  Oh my goodness!  I'm getting more business than I can handle.

What does that mean?  That means I get to find people to help me do the work!  I get to provide income to other people!   Now that's Law of Attraction!

I'll keep you posted on how this goes and more resources in case you're interested.

Until next time...

Are We Losing a Free Internet?

Have you heard the bit about how the telco/cable companies want Congress to give them the keys to the Internet so they can decide who gets top billing on which sites load fastest? 

OK, this might not be what it's about at all.  I couldn't begin to tell you because I don't have the hours and hours it would take to study the issue and figure out just exactly what's going on. 

What I DO know is that I really don't want the telephone or cable companies having any more of a hand in what happens to MY Internet than they already have and that may actually be more than I want them to have.  There may be tons of good reasons for them to have control.  There may be tons of good reasons for them not to have control.  In the final analysis, I don't care about how many good reasons there are one way or the other.  I care that the Internet is supposed to be a place where I get to have as much of a chance to be noticed as anyone else and that the playing field is totally level. 

Sure the big companies can have very flashy sites and mine is pretty basic but no one gets to tell me what I can put on my site.  Oh, I can feel the cranky comments coming already--do I really like porn?  do I really want children to be able to access instructions on bomb building? do I really like sites promoting sexual exploitation?  No, of course I don't.  What I DO like is the right to boycott those sites for myself rather than have someone else choose which sites I can and can't see. 

Might I feel differently about this if I had a teenager living in my house?  Maybe but I still think I'd rather figure out ways to monitor and/or discuss Internet content with a teen rather than have big business dictate what I see or when I see it.

Now that I've gone on and on (as I am wont to do), check out this post and then the whole blog letting us know what is going on so that if we really do want to spend hours and hours figuring out what's up we can.  Personally, I would just rather go for the broad brush strokes and tell Congress to keep big business out of MY Internet. 

Until next time...

Do Something Nice for Yourself!

This past Saturday I did something very nice for myself--I quit smoking!  Yep, I really did.  I realize most of you didn't even know I was a smoker--that's because I didn't exactly brag about it.

Have you ever noticed that when we have a habit we know is not good for us and go to the doctor, s/he invariably says something like, "You know, smoking (fill in your particular blank) really isn't good for you.  You really should do something about that."  My reaction has always been to really want to say, "No, really?  I had no idea!"  Come on, we all know what we do that isn't good for us.  It's not like we haven't been paying attention to the news or movies or even the laws (in the case of smoking at any rate) all our lives.  We know what our bad habits are. 

How did I quit, you ask?  Or, if you're a former smoker you may actually be asking something more like, "Wait a minute.  You quit smoking less than a week ago and you can post about it without resorting to foul language?"  The answer to both of those questions is actually the same.  I quit using hypnosis.  Really, hypnosis. 

I had quit with hypnosis many years ago and started smoking again (don't even ask--if you've been a smoker you probably understand).  Anyway, it was painless and I was amazed at how easy it was.  In fact, how easy it was to quit may have had something to do with why I started again.  I figured I could quit just as easily, again.  I was, of course, wrong.  The next time I tried to quit I had moved away from Phoenix (home of my hypnotist) and when I went to another one it was totally unsuccessful.  I ended up quitting cold turkey.  It wasn't pretty.  In fact, I told a good friend that this had to be the last time I quit because I didn't think I could do it again.  Well, as you've already surmised, I did, indeed, start again. 

Not long ago I spoke with Valerie Dawson about potentially working with her as her VA.  She and another VA turned out to be the ideal match but I discovered Valerie was a hypnotist and she specialized in losing weight and quitting smoking.  It had never occurred to me before that hypnosis could be performed over the telephone so I asked her if it was possible.  Sure, she said, no problem.  We made an appointment and I got hypnotized. 

Why choose a hypnotist who was all the way across the country from me?  Simple.  Valerie offers a guarantee.  If you don't quit smoking the first time she hypnotizes you, she'll do it again.  In fact, she'll keep doing it until it works.  I was very impressed with that offer and, in fact, for me it did take two sessions but I am so thrilled with how well it is going after the second one that I can't even imagine quitting any other way.

To by honest, I don't know if Valerie works with other issues or not but you could sure check with her.  If she doesn't work with your issue, she may well know someone who does.  If you want to discuss how to quit smoking or lose weight, check out her website and see what she has to say.  I think you'll be very impressed--I was!

Until next time...

Candles as Gifts

I recently received a gift from one of my clients.  It was a candle from Zena Moon.  Of course I had to go check out their web site because I was so impressed with the obvious quality of the candle.

When I got there I discovered a veritable gold mine of gift-giving opportunities.  There are candles and gifts appropriate for just about any occasion, both personal and professional. 

So, for the people you want to share a gift of appreciation with, by all means check out Zena Moon.

Until next time...

Chocolate Myracles

I promised I would tell you when Chocolate Myracles opened their web store and then promptly got so busy I didn't do it.  Darn!

Well, they're up and running and if you happen to adore chocolate for yourself, this is a great place to get some of the very best truffles I've ever tasted! 

Don't forget corporate gifts, either.  Julia (the master chocolatier) will be happy to include a gift card with your order. 

Until next time...

Joy With Children

I debated whether to put this in the Resources category or Coffee Break.  I mean, really, does something about kids have a place in Resources?  Then it dawned on me how many VIPs have children and what could be more appropriate than a resource on how to interact with our children (or grandchildren) in positive ways.

So, here you go.  If you want to improve how you relate to the children in your life, go visit Joy With Children.  Connie Allen has a great newsletter and terrific information on her site.

You won't be disappointed.

Until next time...