Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male
and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer each year, male reindeer
drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to
mid-December.

Female reindeer retain their antlers till after they give birth in the spring. Therefore, according to EVERY historical rendition depicting Santa’s reindeer, EVERY single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen, had to be a girl .

We should have known… . . . ONLY women would be able to drag a fat man in a red velvet suit all around the world in one night without getting lost!

A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL

How easy do you make it for your prospective clients to contact you?  Do you have a contact form on your website with direct email ?  Are all your telephone numbers visible? If you are on Social Media do you have all the widgets in place connecting through? For a lot of us this seems standard practice but I have recently visited a fair few websites that don’t make it easy for me to contact them.  Their telephone number is hiding in the bottom left hand corner of the page, an email address will be displayed but doesn’t link through and although they talk about following them on Twitter and Facebook again the URL doesn’t link me up.  How frustrating is that?

Surprising isn’t it that so many companies have websites but omit the most crucial information.

Check your website and make sure that the following are in place:-

• Telephone number is displayed clearly – best position top right hand corner, in my opinion, it’s where I always look first.
• Have a separate tab on your site “Contact” which will have a pre-set email form where they can send you a message direct
• If you don’t have this and only show your email address then make sure that is hyper linked
• Ensure your Social Media Links actually link to the relevant sites

As I say, it might be common place for a lot of us but there are a lot of sites out there that just don’t want to be contacted – amazing!  Why make it impossible for your prospective clients to contact you?  What will they do?  They’ll move on to the next provider they find on Google search.  Now that is a missed opportunity.

Debra Ellis wrote about this recently too.  Note:  If you are not already registered on The Social Customer you will need to sign up to read the report – well worth it.

Take a moment now and check your website is working for you.

I received this as an email today and had to share it and rather than forward to hundreds of people I decided to make it a blog post.

——————————————————

What would you do?…. You make the choice. Don’t look for a punch line, there isn’t one. Read it anyway. My question is: Would you have made the same choice?

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves children with learning disabilities, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question:

‘When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does, is done with perfection.

Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do.

Where is the natural order of things in my son?’

The audience was stilled by the query.

The father continued. ‘I believe that when a child like Shay, who was mentally and physically disabled, comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.’

Then he told the following story:

Shay and I had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, ‘Do you think they’ll let me play?’ I knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but as a father I also understood that if my son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.

I approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, ‘We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.’

Shay struggled over to the team’s bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. I watched with a small tear in my eye and warmth in my heart. The boys saw my joy at my son being accepted.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but were still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I waved to him from the stands.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat. At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball.

However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact.

The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed.  The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.

The game would now be over.

The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game. Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman’s head, out of reach of all team mates.  Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, ‘Shay, run to first! Run to first!’

Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.  Everyone yelled, ‘Run to second, run to second!’

Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base.  By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball. The smallest guy on their team was the one who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team.

He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman’s head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.  All were screaming, ‘Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay’

Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, ‘Run to third!’’Shay, run to third!’

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators,were on their feet screaming, ‘Shay, run home! Run home!’ Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team.

‘That day’, said the father softly, with tears now rolling down his face, ‘the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world’.

Shay didn’t make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making me so happy and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!

AND NOW A LITTLE FOOTNOTE TO THIS STORY.

We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages about life choices,people hesitate.  The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace,but public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces.

If you’re thinking about forwarding this message, chances are that you’re probably sorting out the people in your address book who aren’t the ‘appropriate’ ones to receive this type of message. Well, the person who sent you this believes that we all can make a difference.

We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize the ‘natural order of things.’ So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a choice: Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up those opportunities and leave the world a little bit colder in the process?

A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it’s least fortunate amongst them.

You now have two choices:

1. Delete
2. Forward

In this case – please share on your social networks.

May your day, be a Shay Day.

I recently went back home to Kenya for a two week holiday, really excited to be returning to my original home after twelve years. It was a chance to be reunited with my son and also the perfect opportunity to take some time to relax in the sun.  Take a look at this photo – this is the view that I woke up to every morning – ah bliss! It has been twenty six years since I left Mombasa and the coast is still as beautiful as I remembered it – with sunrises and sunsets that are out of this world. 

 The run up to going away on holiday, though, was predictably hectic as anyone running a small business will appreciate. I needed to make sure that all my clients were looked after whilst I was away and thanks to my excellent secretary I knew my “typing clients” would be in safe hands. 

Included in my packing was my trusty Blackberry, and although I had been given strict instructions from Paul (my husband), that it had to be kept out of sight most of the day, I was still able to check e-mails from time to time. I was also able to flag those that needed action on my return and skip through others to be viewed at a later date.

It was while I was skipping through my e-mails that I started to ponder – ‘Why is it that we find it so difficult to “turn off”?’  Why is it, when we work so hard to have a holiday or break from work that we still insist on checking our e-mails?  Has it become second nature, a habit, an addiction even? 

If you have read “The 4-Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferris you will understand exactly where I am coming from.  It was whilst I was relaxing and gazing out to sea that I began to think about work and how everything was going. I thought about how I should develop my business so that I could look after my existing clients as well as seek new clients while simultaneously ensuring that I continue to strive for the perfect work/life balance.  Now don’t get me wrong – this doesn’t mean that I’m planning to laze on the beach each and every day (what a thought!) but it does mean I considered ways that Paul and I could travel more; something we both enjoy.

This led me on to thinking about my business in broader terms and how it has grown over the past two and a half years – and where I would like it to go in the future.  Joanna Martin described in her recent newsletter that “For some businesses, the changing of the seasons may mean you need to re-evaluate your product or service”.   Hmm…surely I was in the perfect place to be able to do this whilst relaxing on holiday? 

So I took some time to re-evaluate the services I provide already and asked myself did all of them work?  What services could I remove?  Maybe I should think about the ones that were taking up a lot of my time for little income? And what services could I introduce that could be beneficial to both my clients and myself? Quite quickly I was able to see what areas needed pruning or adjusting – and once I had made those decisions my mind was free to contemplate new areas.  By dusting off the elements that were clouding my judgement I was then able to see a way forward – so watch out for some new services that will be coming up! 

So my point is this: have you taken any time recently to reflect on your business? If not, perhaps you too need to take some time out. It doesn’t matter whether it is a two week holiday somewhere exotic or just a long weekend. The important thing is to step away from your business long enough to take an independent view from a new perspective.  My advice is to do this before more time slips through your fingers, because time taken to reflect on where you have come from, and where you are going, is never time wasted.

And you never know, you might well be very surprised at what you see – and what you can learn.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!