working from home — Lauren MacEwen

Simplify your Business with Digital Tools

08/02/2012 by Joseph Baker

Online tools and apps make productivity a breeze for employees at all levels and can even make the workplace more appealing to employees. When it comes to HR, automating workflows and tasks not only frees up your precious time, it allows employees to access the information they need to know when they need it. From remote access to a quick workday question, digital employees can navigate quickly to the info they need.

Many of these tools are easy to roll out and don’t require extensive employee training, so you can add them into your routine without slowing down. Apps to consider implementing in your workplace include:

Online payroll systems – including online check stubs and direct deposits
Time management software – such as PTO request forms or project management software
Knowledge management tools – such as such as workplace command structure charts and knowledge banks or FAQs

Productivity Benefits
When employees can access their information in one place, they’re less likely to hunt and peck around the website, wasting time, or to need to ask colleagues how to do something. They know where to go for HR resources, software training and scheduling. Side benefits of adding tech tools include opening up the organization to transparency and removing location-based barriers to cooperation between colleagues on different floors or in different departments.

Working Smarter
Tools help employees work smarter by removing barriers. Collaboration is hindered when you need to call or walk upstairs to get feedback. When you can chat with a coworker or write on an internal forum, you save time. Plus, it lets you pose your question or give an answer even if the person isn’t available at that moment, giving you a kind of asynchronous communication system. If your organization relies on teamwork to push ahead, consider adding collaborative tools so that employees have more ways to engage one another. Digital resources that complement one another are easy to access and promote smarter working.

Increasing Connection
As you add tools that allow workers to access payroll, calendar and time management apps remotely, your employees may feel a closer connection to the workplace. Someone who completes a quick online form then receives immediate confirmation it was received–or, better yet, a personalized email from HR noting their time off request, within 15 minutes of receipt–will feel more cared for than the same employee who submitted a paper request and waited days. That connection allows employees who share a project vision in a digital environment to connect in person.

Innovative Intranets
Intranets should be the communication hub for your business, connecting employees to the spokes at the point of need. Tools that innovate intranets promote business needs while allowing a social component that fosters closeness and collaboration. Intranets should offer organizational structure and knowledge to ground new employees and refresh veterans; they should also be responsively designed to grow with the company, not hold up change.

Complement Existing Communication
These new tools should augment workflow and business communication; they are not meant to replace existing communication options. Maintain a culture of openness by reassuring employees that your door is still open to discuss HR concerns, or holding weekly check-ins. Tech channels just offer other options that may be more convenient.

When incorporating digital tools, ask your most tech-savvy employees for recommendations of what they’d like to see. Making them your biggest ally can help get everyone on board when it comes to using these tools.

Filed Under: Contributors, Strategy & Business, Technology Tagged With: blog, business, business development, social marketing, social media, working from home

The Future is Now, but For How Long?

03/08/2012 by Joseph Baker

Years ago I sat in a library computer lab at my university and thought, “Wow, the MySpace era is over, upended and replaced by Facebook, but how long will the victor stay on top? If MySpace could fall, surely Facebook will as well. What will Facebook do in the future to lose users in the same way?” Of course, Facebook has done very well for itself since and successfully defeated social media challengers or integrated them into its sweeping empire. That does not change the fact that technology is cyclical and someday Facebook will give rise to a new brand that will occupy that space.

This is especially important to marketers who specialize in social media and technology trends. Facebook built its empire on the sale of information and created a sharing platform irresistible to the masses. That model has changed the DNA of our interaction with the Internet and will likely continue on into the future.

Twitter is growing into a mature platform for short-form discourse and advertising. Pinterest is currently being mined for its marketing potential. Sites with a heavy social leaning are cropping up all over the place and nearly all of them present an avenue for marketing products, but marketers have to ask how long social media will continue to be a trend.

You can register your business on as many social media websites as you see fit, and you may find a way to sell products and generate traffic through one of them that is revolutionary. However, in addition to experiments in cutting edge social media, web marketers must keep in mind the foundations of the business that will always exist with the web. As marketers explore the final frontier of marketing on the web, it’s important that they maintain a foundation of solid tactics that will more than likely continue on into the future.

No matter how easily you are able to join a social media site, they remain inherently complicated as far as meeting business goals. Since they were designed as social networks that eventually incorporated a business aspect, they don’t always lend themselves to infiltration by brands.

Longevity

Social media groups are inherently driven by popularity, yet the most successful products experience the fastest rate of growth when they are still new and undiscovered by the masses. While it’s understandable to want a presence on the new, cool site the unfortunate rules of middle school still apply: by the time everyone has it, it is no longer exclusive and desirable. Social media marketing isn’t going anywhere next year, or the year after that. But someday there will be something new, and when that day comes we will have to fall back on a foundation of strategy that is typified by plain old good content.

All this to say that it is very important to stay abreast of new technologies when developing new ways to create brand identity on the Internet. It is equally important to maintain best practices for the innovations that got us to this point and continue to propel us toward the marketing future. Maintaining a solid newsletter, engaging the customer, and some campaign management software will go a long way when the frills of social networks begin to fall away and its successor rises from the ashes.

So yes, get on the social networks that make sense for your brand, but also remember the basics that got us to this point, because sooner or later we may have to rely on them again.

Filed Under: Guest Bloggers, Social Media, Strategy & Business, Success Tagged With: blog, branding, business, business development, marketing, ROI, search engine optimization, SMM, social marketing, social media, web marketing, working from home, world wide web

Women are bad Entrepreneurs? Speak for yourself! Part 2

10/16/2010 by Lauren MacEwen

Continuation from Women are bad Entrepreneurs? Speak for yourself! Part 1

Women in Business I asked Smith College Alumnae to share their thoughts about the article by Penelope Trunk in Techcrunch that claims that women are bad at startup’s because of kids. The post is inflammatory to say the least. Here is a continuation of what Smith women had to say about the post.

Cynthia Neil says, “Ms. Trunk has made her own decision for her own reasons. She could have written an excellent article written simply from that premise. Instead she has generalized her decision to all women of a certain age who aren’t running startups — a mistake, in my view. I’d like to know what she means about the biological clock exploding at 35 — are you not supposed to have kids after that? There are women having their first children well after that date (including myself, and including many of the lawyers I know). Not everyone is dating the right person at 25, or 27 — I certainly wasn’t.

And only 1 year of marriage sans children? Girl needs to get a life — or may value her husband primarily as a sperm donor, which is too bad, because although men are definitely different from women I usually enjoy being around my husband, and we certainly enjoyed life together before our child arrived (which was four years into our marriage).

I also find it amusing that she thinks she’s “a magnet for high-powered women with stay-at-home husbands”, but it’s really the women running the household too, because the men just don’t pay enough attention. AND they’re running startups as well. Really? Methinks perhaps she’s a magnet for control freaks who fail to see the value of their spouses… not necessarily for high-powered women.

I’m sure she makes good points about the nature of startups — that they demand 100-hour weeks, that they are like having a child, that it’s very difficult to have a personal life of any magnitude while you are involved in a startup. That’s fine. The startup as a specific kind of business may not be what women with young children need. My mother runs a business out of her home — granted, she’s not in that age range and doesn’t have small children at home, but she COULD be in that situation and she’d still be fine doing what she’s doing. It’s a very flexible situation and she’s making a great deal of money. It’s not a “startup” in the sense that Penelope uses the word, or really in any sense — she’s been running it in one form or another since I went to college — but it would be a feasible business for a new/young mother.

I think it’s doable for young women with the right kind of knowhow and dedication to run their own new business while they get their personal lives going. They will need to remain more flexible than Ms. Trunk has.

I also wish that Ms. Trunk hadn’t generalized her experience to the entire female population. What about the women who met their mate when they were in college? Or the ones who don’t until they’re 35? She has a very narrow definition of the female personal/career path. She’s right that our personal choices affect our career choices — duh, it’s your career, so it’s personal too. But to generalize all of those choices to all of her readers is silly. Why not write it as “this is my decision and why I’m making it”?”

Kennie Desine wrote, “[The post] reminded me of a pivotal law suit, decades ago, charging Sears (it may have been Sears & Roebuck at the time) with discrimination against a female employee who vied with male employees for a significant departmental promotion. Sears stated that women didn’t perform well in management, as they were more interested in “makinig friends” on the job, while men approached management as if it were a jungle. The finding was against the female Plaintiff.”

Tish Gier wrote, “Trunk is an a$%&*#@ who is reporting her own anecdotal experience and someone should smack her right in the head. The issue is very complicated–and 20-30 something men are often prejudice against 40-something women(who are often in the “entrepreneurial phase” of their lives) because they see women only as either those who are marriagabel and those who are not. Yes, women have biological clocks, but when those clocks slow down, or if they decide (for many a good reason) not to have children, and they want to develop something, it’s men’s own biological clocks that cause us to be left out.” (@tishgrier, read her blog)

Annie Pedersen writes, “The author has a point. In my business, I see married couples with children and both spouses work. Many times the mother is the parent making the doctor’s appointments, driving the soccer taxi, and making dinner. There are plenty of exceptions, too; however, where the father takes over those tasks. Anecdotely, it appears the parent with the lower paying job seems to be the one who takes on more of the home-based work.” (read Annie’s other post on finding success here, email her, or visit her website)

Filed Under: Success, TEQ Tagged With: blog, business development, entrepreneuer, guest blogger, TEQ, web marketing, work, working from home, writing

Project Junkie Pt. 3: Brilliant! now what?

09/24/2010 by Lauren MacEwen

Once I get through first four questions on the Project Junkie Checklist I move on to the next phase of the check list:

5. Is it worth my time? meaning, will it turn into something useful and productive?

6. Is it really as brilliant as I think? I come up with some GREAT ideas that often are not quite as great as I initially thought. So after my excitement, I try to take a step back and look to see if my idea of belly button gardening is really as amazing as it was when I first thought it up.

7. Is it something that needs prioritizing? sometimes we really do have brilliant ideas, but we need to evaluate where they stand in relation to all our other brilliant ideas. Is this something that will require a lot of time, energy and focus? If so, is it so important that you need to do it now or can it be put on the back burner while you finish some other things first?

Often when we have brilliant ideas they occupy all our mental energy. So after the initial burst of excitement over your brilliance is done, step back and evaluate all facets of this new project. Make sure that you are not spreading your mental energy too thin. All of your projects will benefit if you can focus on each of them individually.

So give yourself some room to develop your brilliance and your brilliant ideas and give each of your projects the focus and attention they deserve.

Filed Under: Success, TEQ Tagged With: business development, business plan, entrepreneuer, making money, TEQ, work, working from home

Project Junkie pt. 2: Productivity Checklist

09/23/2010 by Lauren MacEwen

Matt Mansfield wrote a great post about being a project junkie. He admitted his project addiction and bravely took credit for it and all the professional chaos it can cause. It is my turn.

I too am a project junkie. I get excited about things and then just dive in feet first. But as a business owner you cannot always do that. You have to be smart about your projects.

Since I am in Project Junkie recovery, every time I start feeling that excitement about the next best thing, the newest and most exciting project on the horizon, I take a moment and got through a productivity check list:

1. Will it make me money now?
2. Can I afford to not make money now?
3. Have I taken care of my clients first?
4. Have I taken care of my existing business responsibilities?

Once I have answered these questions, I am ready for the next part of my checklist. (See Project Junkie Part 3 posting on Thursday Sept. 23, 2010 …aka. tomorrow).

Filed Under: Success, TEQ, Uncategorized Tagged With: blog, business development, entrepreneuer, guest blogger, ROI, TEQ, work, working from home

Project Junkie Detox – Adding Focus Without a Lobotomy

09/22/2010 by Guest Blogger

I gotta’ admit, I’m a project Junkie.

I love thinking up new ideas. I love starting things. I seem to be wired to follow each new opportunity like a magpie spotting a sparkly new thing and each time it happens, I am filled with renewed energy and excitement.

Being a project junkie is addictive; that’s why it contains the word, “Junkie”.

New projects are fun. New projects are cool. New projects make me shiver inside and I am drawn to explore and learn. New projects bring out my passion!

New projects can be distractions and keep you from ever finishing your current project, but they can also lead to really great opportunities.

How can you tell which new project will end well and which will never end?

Here’s a story:

My partner and I started a business about one-and-a-half years ago. We had lots of ideas; we had lots of opportunities. To many.

We flitted around from idea to idea, many of which had no common core. We were business coaches. We wrote ebooks. We created web sites. We coached individuals.

Our partnership was great because we drove each other to get projects done; but none of those projects led to anything. Most were abandoned before they were given a chance to thrive. Many were not even completed because our drive for success was predicated upon speed, a real rush for project junkies – got to move on to the next thing soon!

We were project junkies and we had it bad.

Last June, we decided to change what we were doing. He was going to focus on his projects and me on mine. We are still friends and partners, but we realized that, before we can be successful together, we needed to learn the one thing that project junkies avoid like the plague.

We needed to focus.

And focus we did. Each of us rededicated our energy to our own sites and businesses. We defined for ourselves and the world what it was that we do; one focused and clear project. Mine?

I want to help people get things done online because it’s better than doing those things offline.
Wow. One thing. One project.

But as I focused and focused on that one thing, a really cool thing started to happen.
Lots of little projects started coming my way – guest postings and speaking at conferences and courses to create.

Yes, lots of projects and THEY ALL FOCUSED ON THE SAME THING:

Helping people get things done online because it’s better than doing those things offline.

My project junkie is happy because I get to do many projects and take advantages of new opportunities. My business-side is happy because all of those projects fall under my main project and contribute to building my brand – what people know I stand for and what they can find when they look for me.

Yes, focus was the answer and I did not have to cut out my passion to make it work.

Matt Mansfield blogs at www.leverage-the-web.com

At his core, he loves teaching both individuals and businesses how to get things done online.

Visit Matt on his Site: www.leverage-the-web.com
Follow Matt on Twitter: @LeverageTheWeb
or find him on LinkedIn

Filed Under: Success Tagged With: business development, making money, social media, TEQ, working from home

Grow your buiness slowly: Patience is a Virtue

09/11/2010 by Lauren MacEwen

How virtuous do I need to be?

When you are growing your business, you receive tons of advice. One of my favorite pieces of advice is “Be patient”. I know that if I am working hard and putting my efforts into developing my business that it will grow. The more people I interact with the more connections I will make and the more opportunities will come my way. I get it.

However, when they tell you that patience is a virtue my immediate response is:

How virtuous do I need to be?

Intellectually we can all know that apparent over night successes are not actually overnight. They are the result of a lot of hard work. Often when we see someone who starts a business and then 3 months later they are making hundreds of thousands of dollars, it is natural to compare our 8 months or a year or 2 years of business and wonder why we didn’t experience this level of success. What did I do wrong? The answer could be really simple. You did nothing wrong.

When you see someone’s overnight success, what you don’t see is all the other businesses that came before that. The months and years that they put into other ventures that were not as successful. Internalizing that previous experience allowed them to be successful now. But their history plays as important a role as the significance of their current venture.

It is hard not to get impatient, but sometimes we have to take the advice we give others. Learn from our mistakes. Learn from our successes. Take the time to focus your energies and do what you need to do. Know that nothing happens over night, it only seems that way when you are on the outside looking in.

When you ask yourself “How virtuous do you need to be?” Only as long as it takes to be the next overnight success.

Filed Under: On the DL (down-low) Tagged With: business development, e-commerce, entrepreneuer, making money, ROI, social media, working from home

How badly do you want to succeed?

09/10/2010 by Lauren MacEwen

How badly do you want to succeed?

Many of us are entrepreneurs, self starters, business owners, self-employed, freelancers, independent contract, enterprisers, linchpins, and go getters.

Some of us have business degrees. Some have MBA’s. Some of us have worked in an industry for 20 years and are finally making our own path. Some of us have never worked for someone else. Some of us have been idea generators our whole life. Some of us just have a talent.

All of us have drive.

All of us want to succeed.

Whether you came to your venture through twists and turns in your career, through layoffs, through frustration with the daily grind, through inspiration, through a desire to be your own boss, or through the natural development of your professional career, you are here. You are a leader. You are a thinker. You are a driver. Now what?

There are days that I wake up and feel like I am not making the kind of progress I want to see in my business. There are days that I feel like what I am doing is not good enough, or it is not the right thing, or there isn’t enough time in the day/week/month, or if I only had ________ fill in the blank.

We all have days like that. We all question our efforts. We all have times when we feel defeated. When you wake up and feel the weight of your venture pressing on your shoulders, take a minute. Take an hour. Take a little time, get a cup of coffee, sit down and relax. Ok, done? Now get the hell up and tell yourself to get over it!

You will never progress forward if you indulge in self-defeat. A friend once told me that all feelings are valid. Take a moment to experience them and then let them go. That last part is really important, LET THEM GO!!

We all have failures. Warning cliché coming: You learn more from failure than you do from success.

Of course, who wants to spend all their time learning?

We all have frustrations. We all make decisions that are not right, or not the best, or not ideal. That is ok. Keep moving.

Feeling overwhelmed? Embracing that will not get your to-do list done. Pick something and start doing it.

Get focused. Get motivated. Get inspired.

I watched a wonderful motivational speech by Eric Thomas. In it he said:

“When you get to the point when you want to be successful as badly as you want to breathe, then you will be successful.”

… I am breathing. Time for step 2.

Filed Under: Build it and they still may not come Tagged With: business development, entrepreneuer, ROI, social marketing, social media, social networking, web marketing, working from home

To-Do/To-Don’t: Tackling the To-do list

09/03/2010 by Lauren MacEwen

Lately I have been feeling overwhelmed with all the projects I am giving myself. I say giving myself because they are not anything that I am being hired to do. These are things that I need to do for my business development, for myself, or to just organize my mind. I tend to over commit. For instance, I am reading about 6 book right now and taking two classes. One class is for web design and the other is Spanish. Do I really need to be reading all these books? No, probably not. But I enjoy it. I have my books organized by situation. I have my bathtub books. My waiting for people book. My business book and my brain candy fun fiction. I have books in different parts of the house, so if I am waiting I can read something different upstairs than downstairs. Of course this means that it takes me a lot longer to finish any one book, but I enjoy the variations in stimulation.

As much fun as this is with my literature, this does not work so well in business. In business we would call that spreading yourself too thin. This is when you have to prioritize, reorganize, outsource, insource and drop.

First: Prioritize

Figure out what is the most pressing. What do you NEED to get done. The best way to do that is do what makes you money first. Always take care of your clients before anything else. Then move onto your business development. What needs to be done to grow your business or meet your professional goals?

Second: Reorganize

So now you know what needs to be done, it is time to organize it effectively. For instance, I have a big project that I need to get started on. It will be very important to my business development. However, I have a bit of project block. Every time I try to sit down and work on the project I find myself doing other things on my to-to list instead. My mind is being pulled in too many directions. So here is where I reorganize. I have tried to focus and not think about these other things, but it is not working. So I make a decision to just get them done and out of my head. So I decided to work ahead, banking blog posts so I would have a bunch ready to publish. That way I could stop worrying about what my next blog would be, I can write something new or post one that I have already written. By doing this I am freeing my mind to work on the big project that I truly need to focus on.

So what is keeping you from doing what needs to be done?

Third: Outsource

Sometimes we thwart our own efforts by trying to do too much. Just because you can do something does not mean that you should. You have to look at what you need to do yourself and what you can give to someone else. Do you have to do your own proofreading? Web design? Accounting?

I find myself doing things that I am not great at because I have convinced myself that it is better to do it myself. WRONG! If someone else is better at it, let them do it. A lot of times spending $25 having someone proof your writing, or inputting those 10 invoices you have, will save you hours of time. If they cost $35/hr, but it only takes them an hour to do what would have taken you 5, then you are saving yourself money. More importantly you are saving yourself time.

What if you can’t afford to pay anyone? Try trading services. What are you really good at? What do you need done. There are a lot of people out there that need service and are willing to barter. This will not only free you up to do what you are best at, but can help you develop some really great business relationships.

Fourth: Insource

I have had people helping me that honestly did an ok job, but took forever to get it done. I would find myself emailing or calling to find out when it was done. They would tell me I would have it by 10 and then I would get it by 4. For me, this caused me more stress than it relieved. I would base my day around receiving certain projects and then have my day disrupted because I did not get it when promised. Do not be afraid to fire your vendors. Outsourcing will relieve a lot of your stress and free up time, but if it is not then maybe it is better to do it yourself.

Evaluate your business relationships and make sure that they are actually helping.

Fifth: Drop

A lot of times we commit ourselves to projects that really do not need to be done. Do you really have to go through all of your files and create a whole new filing system? Do you really have to answer every email the second it comes to your inbox? It is important to look at your work load and evaluate what you have to do. I get ideas and then I add them to my to-do list. Sure they seem great at the time, and maybe if I did reorganize my entire filing system it would be easier to navigate. But with everything else I have to do, is it really necessary? Is it going to grow my business? Is it going to make me money? It is going to give me better peace of mind? or free up so much time that I have substantially increased my efficiency? No! then get rid of it!

If you are feeling overwhelmed than take a moment and figure out what is a to-do or a to-don’t.

Filed Under: On the DL (down-low) Tagged With: blog, Blogging, business development, e-commerce, making money, social media, working from home, writing