Organized Assistant » information products

Do You Play Well with Others? A look at cooperative competition

Janet — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:17:42 +0000

In my experience, most professional organizers are very happy to share resources and expertise with their colleagues and reap many rewards from doing so. I asked my client, Julie Stobbe, about her thoughts on the subject, and was so impressed that I invited her to share them here today as my guest blogger.

Coopetition occurs when companies work together for parts of their business where they do not believe they have competitive advantage and where they believe they can share common costs. (Source: Wikipedia)

Cooperating with someone in your line of business is a great way to get to know people, brainstorm and learn ideas and help each other with areas that you are weak in. When I decided to try coopetition, I did it on a project basis. I used it to help me to market better, because marketing is not my strength. I would think about something I would like to have (product development) or something I would like to do (offer a new service) and think about someone who had mentioned that they had an interest in the same thing. I would approach them with an idea and see if they were interested in working together to develop and implement the plan. It was nice to have a partner to walk the path with and hold my hand. The payoff is having to do half the work while increasing business for both parties with the understanding that if they get busy and need help, they would approach me first, and I would do the same for them. If you develop a service with a partner, if someone gets sick, you have the other person as backup. I always selected someone who lived east of my main marketing area. This made it easy to get materials delivered over a larger area - half the work, twice the area covered. This gave us both exposure to a larger market. Here are some examples of projects I’ve worked on with people in my field and with complementary businesses:

Developing organizing tip booklets; we have 4 different topics.
Developing courses to offer to colleges, school boards and groups; we have 3 different 3 hour courses prepared.
Advertising someone else’s electronic resources (because I don’t want to develop them at this time) in exchange for services.
Advertising together so the cost of printing is shared by both companies.
Recommending specialty services to clients, such as clutter removal service, rug cleaning, and website design.
Inviting someone to attend new meetings and events with me. That way I don’t have to walk in alone, and perhaps they can make introductions too.

Although I have been fortunate and careful with whom I partner, there are always things to consider.

The person you partner with now represents your company as well as their own. Make sure you have similar business ethics or your company’s reputation maybe adversely affected.
If you are producing a product and the quality of what they produce is not up to your standards, you may be disappointed. However, you have both contributed time and money to the project so they may use it the way they want to.
One of the companies may work much harder at marketing the product or service than the other company. Make sure that you can live with it if you realize that you are marketing them but they are not marketing you.

Overall, I have gained a lot from coopetition with others. I have grown as a business person, I have learned new skills, I have made good friends I can depend on, and I have learned to be flexible. I hope my coopetition partners have found me to be reasonable, supportive and hard working. Taking a chance to work with good people is really making a sure bet. Julie Stobbe is a POC Trained Professional Organizer and the owner of Mind over Clutter in Beamsville, Ontario, Canada. You can also like Mind over Clutter on Facebook. Do you have a “coopetition” story of your own? Please share it in the Comments. If you have any questions for Julie, please feel free to post them here as well.

5 Ways to Get More Mileage from Your Blog

Janet — Tue, 03 May 2011 12:32:45 +0000

Whether blogging is your passion or something you feel you have to do, I'm sure you put a lot of time and effort into creating your content. No matter how good a writer you are, most people will only read what you've posted recently, but with a little creativity, you can repurpose what you've written and get it working for you! Mix and Match Have you ever missed out on an opportunity to submit an article or blog post to an online or printed publication, because you couldn't find the time to write something new? That's too bad! You've got a bunch of great material at your fingertips, and just because they asked for something original doesn't mean you have to start from scratch. Why not take selections from several related posts and combine them into a new one? You'll need to do a little editing to make it flow properly, but it'll take a lot less time than coming up with something brand new. Reuse and Recycle Your old blog posts don't have to disappear into obscurity! Some, such as event announcements, may be time-sensitive, but organizing principles don't change, so a list of tips you prepared two years ago will be equally useful today. All you need is a way to promote them once they've disappeared from your home page and your subscribers have deleted them from their inboxes or RSS readers. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that once or twice a day, I tweet a link to one of my older posts. I do this using a WordPress plug-in called Tweet Old Posts I installed after reading about it on Site Sketch 101, and it's doing a great job of bringing my earlier work to the attention of newer readers and reviving the discussions on those posts. It can be configured to exclude certain categories or even specific posts, and you can decide how often you want it to tweet as well as the time frame of posts you want it to choose from. If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog and you've been blogging for a while, I highly recommend that you try this plug-in. But even if you don't, there's no reason you can't post links to your older posts on Twitter, Facebook, or elsewhere. You can even organize the process by using a pre-scheduling tool such as TweetDeck or HootSuite. Refresh and Renew Some things do change. Maybe you wrote a really great post a few years ago, but some of the information is now out of date. There's absolutely no reason not to take that post, remove the parts that are obsolete, and replace them with something new and fresh. But instead of keeping it buried in your archives, delete the old one and publish the revised edition as a brand new post. Create a Compilation Once you've been blogging for several years, there's a good chance that you've touched on similar subjects from time to time. For example, perhaps every year you've written a post about getting organized for back to school, or getting organized for the holidays. This year, instead of scratching your head to come up with some new ideas, make it easy on yourself and make a list of your previous articles, with the titles linked to the original posts. Most readers won't have seen them the first time, and those that did aren't likely to remember and will probably enjoy reading them again. Build a Book Do you ever read your own blog and think, "This is great stuff. It's too bad I couldn't sell it!" Who says you can't? ProBlogger Darren Rowse's PDF workbook 31 Days to Build a Better Blog was based on a series of blog posts that made up a month-long challenge to his readers. Since he launched the workbook in 2009, he's sold over 19,000 copies! That's probably more than most of us can realistically aspire to, considering the size of Rowse's audience, but it proves that creating a book or e-book from blog content is a viable strategy. By the way, the price of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is going from $19.95 to $29.99 on May 10, 2011, so if it sounds like something you could use, be sure to order it before the price increase kicks in! These are just a few of the ways you can repurpose your blog content. What others can you think of?

Learn to Write Content that Works

Janet — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 13:07:46 +0000

A few weeks ago, I participated in a blogging competition sponsored by Blog Energizer. Thank you very much for your votes – I'm excited to announce that I came in second, winning a lifetime membership to Contentrix Better Content, and especially pleased that it's something that will help me make this blog an even better resource for you. Let me tell you a bit about my prize! Contentrix is an interactive program that helps you create content for your blog or website, generate traffic to your site and, most importantly, convert that traffic to sales. As a student, I receive weekly lessons, complete with homework assignments, focused on a specific aspect of content marketing, such as idea generation, copywriting fundamentals, creating winning headlines, branding your content, repurposing your material, developing information products, and lots more. Each lesson includes both a PDF and an audio file, to accommodate both visual and auditory learners, and I can interact with the course developer any time I have questions or comments. To see what type of information this course provides, you can download a free Content Marketing Copy Swipe File. I would really love to have someone take the program with me! If you're interested in joining me, you can get a trial membership for only $1.00. Photo: vistamommy

Respecting Your Clients’ Uniqueness

Janet — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 18:04:48 +0000

Years before I heard of professional organizers, I noticed that time management and organizing were easier for me than they were for some of the other people I knew, and wondered if I could teach these skills to others. After completing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator^®,(MBTI^®), I learned that I was born with personality type preferences (ISTJ) that naturally tend towards systems and order.

When I explored the subject further, I learned about the organizing profession, and discovered that many were drawn to the field because they had the same or similar personality types to mine. It made sense to me that people who are naturally organized would enjoy this type of work. It soon became apparent, however, that the kinds of systems that work for us wouldn't necessarily be effective for people for whom organization was less comfortable. They may be able to manage it for a while, but will most likely slip back into their old ways after not too long. It's like learning to write with your non-dominant hand – you can do it if you have to because of an injury, but you'll go back to doing what comes naturally as soon as you're able to. That is not to say that only people who are born with those personality type preferences can be organized – not at all! I’ve met many organizing consultants who are successful because they have a thorough understanding of what it’s like to struggle with organizational challenges, and have developed specialized strategies for overcoming those challenges which they are able to share with their clients. As a qualified MBTI^®practitioner and the author of Organizing Your Life, Your Way, I was invited to speak to a group of professional organizers about this topic last week. When one of them asked me the best way to convert clients to their way of organizing, I explained that rather than trying to make the clients fit into their systems, they need to adapt their systems to fit their clients. There is no such thing as a "one size fits all" organizing solution! If your client has difficulty using a detailed to-do list and schedule, look for alternatives. One person has created an adaption of David Allen's Getting Things Done system by using a Cambridge Wirebound Notebook with Avery removable colored write-on tabs to divide the pad into several sections representing the various projects he's using it for, e.g., job hunting, household projects, medical notes, household repairs, shopping notes, gift ideas. If he needs more room in a section, he creates another section with a write-on tab. In each section, he keeps Daily and Project logs with the following column headings: Date/time Entry: log, notes, thoughts Next to do By identifying an immediate "next to do" action, it is easier for him to jump back on the project or task when time allows, and keeping a running log with thoughts, notes and feelings enables him to pick up where he left off. It is important for him to remember his feelings and thoughts on a particular project to keep up the momentum, since that's how he makes his decisions and gets motivated. He uses colored pens and markers to keep it interesting, and to break it up. The spiral allows him to rip out and redo pages when necessary, to keep the log looking neat. Rewriting his notes helps him think things through, since he considers himself an auditory / kinetic learner who has trouble visualizing and thinking without words. This is just one example of how a traditional left-brained organizing strategy can be adapted to meet the needs of a right-brained creative individual. For more insight on this subject, order a copy of my e-book, Organizing Your Life, Your Way, or read any of the titles listed under Learning Style / Personality Type in our Bookstore for Professional Organizers.

Help Others Get Organized, Virtually

Janet — Mon, 17 May 2010 18:55:27 +0000

Over the years, my role shifted from professional organizer/career consultant, to professional organizer/virtual assistant, to virtual assistant/professional organizer, before I finally decided to focus on being a virtual assistant to professional organizers. Some of the benefits I now enjoy include less driving, more flexibility in my schedule, and access to a much broader client base.

When I was a professional organizer/virtual assistant, it occurred to me that virtual organizing would be an excellent fit for my business. I supported two or three clients via email and instant messenger, but I just couldn't figure out how to develop the idea into a service that I was comfortable promoting. Since then, the concept of virtual organizing has become much more common, and we're even starting to see programs designed to help you develop an online business model. With her husband in the military, Carmen Coker began offering virtual organizing services as a way to deal with the challenge of having to re-establish her clientele every time she relocated. She now helps her clients get organized by providing information products, teleclasses, and one-on-one consultations via the phone and web, so frequent moves no longer pose a major threat to her business. Realizing that other professional organizers could profit from her experience and from networking with other virtual organizers, Carmen has established the International Association of Virtual Organizers (IAVO). IAVO members have access to a number of benefits, including teleseminars, a monthly newsletter focused on the virtual organizing industry, and a private forum. Virtual organizers can take advantage of many of the same perks as virtual assistants, such as greater flexibility, an increased number of potential clients, spending less time and money on travel expenses, and not having to invest as much in a working wardrobe. In addition, I can see that becoming established as a virtual organizer would be a great advantage if at some point you become unable to, or no longer wish to, perform the physical work involved with hands-on organizing. For more information about virtual organizing, visit the IAVO website and request a free copy of the 7 Secrets to Virtual Organizing Success. If you can make it, Carmen is also offering a free teleseminar on Wednesday, May 19 called 3 Simple, Low-Cost Virtual Organizing Products and Services that Will Boost Your Biz – Fast! Have you tried organizing virtually? What do you like or dislike about it?

How to be a Better Business Writer

Janet — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:28:39 +0000

As a business owner and manager, I'm sure that not a day goes by where you don't have to write an email, a blog post, a proposal, or some other type of business document. Since everything you write is a reflection of you and your business, you need to make sure that your vocabulary and writing style are suited to your reader and that your spelling and grammar are flawless.

Today I continue my Improve Management Skills Month series with a few ways to ensure that your writing is the best that it possibly can be. Before you send out any important correspondence, read it over carefully, checking in particular for the following. Is your spelling accurate? Don't rely on your spellchecker to catch your typing errors! If your misspelled word just happens to be a valid dictionary word, your spellchecker won't catch it. Furthermore, spellcheckers often don't recognize certain words such as place names, and one of my former government co-workers created a letter template with a return address of "Hailstone, Ontario" because the spellchecker told her that was the correct spelling for "Hamilton." For quick checks, you can use an online dictionary site such as Dictionary.com. I like Merriam-Webster Online because I was able to add it to my search engine list in Firefox so I can simply type in a word to check the spelling without having to first navigate to the website. Sometimes though, you'll need to refer to a proper dictionary, and it's a worthwhile investment to have an up-to-date edition on hand. Not a week goes by that I don't refer to my Oxford Canadian Dictionary. Is your grammar correct? Software is even less reliable when it comes to checking grammar, so you really need to be on your toes to avoid errors. Daily Writing Tips has an online Grammar Test you can take to see whether your grammar skills are up to snuff. Warning: it's not as easy as it looks! Fortunately, the site also includes an archive of writing tips which includes punctuation, word usage, and much more. Is your document readable? Your writing should be easy for people to read, or they won't bother. One way to do this is to avoid using overly long sentences and words that they may not understand, such as industry jargon and acronyms. There's an interesting article on Wikipedia that explains the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests and how they relate to different types of writing. Is your writing style appropriate? Writing for the web is not like writing for print publications, because readers approach it very differently. People may not take the time to read dense blocks of text in a printed document, but they are even less likely to do so on a web page. The Longman Guide to Style and Writing on the Internet is an excellent resource for writing and formatting effective web documents. Are you confident that your document says exactly what you want it to say? Keep in mind that once you've sent off that proposal or ezine, it's too late to make changes. Sure, you can send off a message saying "I meant to say..." but what is that going to do for your professional image? Is it worth missing out on an opportunity because your potential client thinks you are careless or don't have a good eye for detail, or because he or she doesn't understand what you're trying to say? If you're interested in improving your business writing skills, you need to download Bad Language's free ebook, 30 Days to Better Business Writing. It's an amazing 116-page self-study guide that you can complete in just one month. Even if you have excellent language skills, it's very easy to overlook your mistakes because your brain already knows what you're trying to say, so that's what it sees on the page or screen. For your really important documents, it's well worth it to have someone else review your writing before you send it out, whether it's a colleague, a family member, or a virtual assistant.

Learn About Organizing for Personality Types

Janet — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:48:14 +0000

Do your organizing systems work well for some clients, but not others? Organizing strategies are more likely to be effective when they take your client's personality type into account. You can therefore do your clients a great service by familiarizing yourself with the various personality types, the challenges they face in terms of organizing, and the solutions most likely to be helpful.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is one of the most reputable personality assessments available. Based on the psychological theory of Carl Jung, it has been in use since 1942, and has been updated many times to keep up with changes in language and society. As a qualified MBTI consultant, I'm pleased to offer you a number of options for learning about this fascinating and important subject. If you live in Ontario, or will be visiting the area on Wednesday, March 24, you can catch my popular "Organizing Your Life, Your Way" presentation at the Southwestern Ontario Chapter meeting of Professional Organizers in Canada. Attendees will have the option of ordering my Organizing Your Life, Your Way e-book for a reduced price of $20.00 (including tax) instead of the regular price of $24.95 plus tax. For location and other details about this event, visit the POC website. If you're unable to attend, you can order a copy of my e-book right here.

If you're an auditory learner, you might appreciate a digital copy of a seminar I presented last year on The Power of Personality Type. Although the audience was virtual assistants rather than professional organizers, the principles of personality type are the same, and you're bound to find it informative. For $19.95, you will receive:

A 45-minute audio recording of the teleclass
A 28-page PDF of the accompanying PowerPoint presentation
7 pages of bonus notes, including Organizing Profiles for the 16 personality types and a reading resource list

This is the first time this presentation has been offered as a standalone product.

You can save $10.00 by ordering a bundle which includes the Organizing Your Life, Your Way e-book AND The Power of Personality Type!

Learning about personality type and the way it influences our relationship with time and space was one of the reasons I decided to become a professional organizer in the first place, and I'm sure you will find it fascinating too.

Grow Your Sales Team, Grow Your Income

Janet — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:26:16 +0000

I've blogged previously about the benefits of creating information products, whether they're related to organizing or to one of your other interests, but even if you've developed a product, unless you have a very popular website, you may have found that you're not bringing in nearly as much income as you'd hoped. Why not increase your earning potential by hiring a sales force?

Of course, I don't mean you should literally go out and hire sales personnel, but you can certainly expand your reach by allowing others to promote your products on their websites in exchange for a percentage of the profits. Don't be afraid to share! Would you rather have 75% of $1000 in sales, or 100% of $100 in sales? Practice Pay Solutions and E-Junkie are two of the online services that you can use both for selling products on your own website and for managing an affiliate program. When someone becomes an affiliate, they receive their own linking code which will identify them when a purchase originates from their website. The system will keep track of everything; you just need to pay out the commission each month, or at whatever interval you choose. Here are three things you can do to make it easier for your affiliates to generate sales on your behalf: 1. Create individual links for each product that you offer. If you offer a number of different products, and the affiliate can only link to your homepage, it's going to be much more difficult for them to promote a specific product. If bloggers can't easily send their readers to the appropriate order page, they might not feel it's worth it to blog about your product. 2. Offer an attractive commission. Affiliates are more likely to make an effort to actively promote your product if they feel it's worth their while. With digital products where you don't have high overhead costs, it's not uncommon to offer commissions in the area of 50%. If you're only offering 10%, there's a good chance that your affiliates will not be willing to do anything other than just slapping up a link somewhere and hoping it gets noticed. If you don't feel that you can afford to pay a higher commission rate, consider increasing the price of your product to increase your profit margin – just make sure that you don't charge more than your product is worth! 3. Offer a number of tools to help your affiliates promote your products. Different affiliates will want to display your product links in different ways. While some will be happy with a simple text link, many will want a 125x125 pixel graphic which they can place in the sidebar of their blog, and others might prefer a small, medium, or large banner ad. Successful affiliate managers go the extra mile to provide all of these options, as well as pre-written articles, blog posts, email campaigns, and even tweets. Keep in mind that I have only recently set up an affiliate program for my own information products, so I'm still learning myself. This is just my perspective, as someone who has been participating in various affiliate programs for a number of years now.

He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed. William James

Thinking Outside the Boxes

Janet — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:58:07 +0000

As I've mentioned previously, there are many benefits to having multiple sources of income. Creating information products and joining one or more affiliate programs are two ways that many successful organizers supplement what they earn in their billable hours. But have you considered tapping into your knowledge from outside the realm of organizing? Stacey and Jane have!

Stacey Larocque is a home staging professional and mother of two. When it was time to wean her toddler son from breastfeeding, she was frustrated by the lack of helpful information available, and ended up developing her own method. After successfully implementing her system with her son and later with her daughter, she decided to help other parents in the same situation, and earn a little extra cash, by selling her solution online. Stacey hired Organized Assistant to take her written content and format it as an e-book, complete with appropriate clipart and an attractive cover. We then created a simple one-page website to promote and sell her e-book, It's a Bye Bye Boobie Party! Jane Woolsey is a Certified Professional Organizer, Past President of Professional Organizers in Canada, and an avid dog lover. Last year the Founder of An Organized Vision and her friend Paul had a different type of vision, where they would share information about alternative and traditional medical treatments for dogs through a blog called Our Dog Blog where they would answer questions submitted by readers. They hired Organized Assistant to design a customized WordPress theme, to research relevant affiliate programs and set up the blog in a way that would allow them to receive and respond to reader questions easily. They are not charging for their expertise, but hope to generate some passive income through affiliate marketing and pay-per-click advertising. I don't think either Stacey or Jane expects to get rich from their ventures, but they've both discovered the income potential of their passions and have done something about it. These are projects in which I've been personally involved, but I'm sure that many other organizers have set up equally innovative side businesses. If you'd like to generate some income from your own interests, How to Make Extra Cash From Your Hobbies: Three Easy Steps is a great post on Dumb Little Man that will help you brainstorm some ideas. If you've already started such an enterprise, feel free to promote it in the comments!

Make Your Dreams (and Someone Else’s) Come True

Janet — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:08:07 +0000

Now that it's December, many of us are looking ahead to the new year, and starting to set goals to grow our businesses, buy a new home, improve our relationships with others, or make other positive life changes. At the same time, we're trying to come up with clutter-free gifts for our clients and loved ones. I have a suggestion that may help you achieve both at the same time!

Don Giberson is a Master Law of Attraction Trainer and Coach, and the President and founder of DreamCrafters. I've known him for several years, and as well as him being one of my clients, I've participated in some of his programs, and can honestly say that they've helped me grow my business to where it is today. Don has created a Mastering Life and Business Library which consists of all the recordings and handouts from all 13 of his programs – that's over 62 hours of audio and more than 460 pages of notes, checklists and worksheets to help you create the kind of life you want. Don normally sells his Mastering Life and Business Library for $297.00 (although the total value is over $2000), but for a limited time, he's offering it for the low price of $97.00. This special offer includes a second Mastering Life and Business Library that would make a wonderful gift. When you make your purchase, you'll receive an attractive gift certificate which you can print out and give to your recipient, along with a brochure outlining all of the programs that are included in the Mastering Life and Business Library. This would be a great way to enhance someone's life, as well as your own, without creating any clutter! For more information about the Mastering Life and Business Library and this special offer, visit http://www.dreamcrafters.ca/dreamlibraryoffernew.