Our featured guest will be Shama Kabani–president of The Marketing Zen Group, a full service digital marketing firm that serves clients around the world.  She has been dubbed the “master millennial of the universe” and “an online marketing shaman” by Fast Company, and was listed as one of Business Week Magazine’s ’Top 25 Under 25′ entrepreneurs in North America.   

Register here: THE NEW FACEBOOK -GREATEST WEB TOOL!

Social media has the capabilities to take your business to new places, but you have to understand how social media interacts with your existing marketing plan. You might be posting to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube many times each day, but do you know eactly how this is benefitting your business? Are you sure that you’re using these powerful social media tools smartly and effectively?

Check out our next live Teleclass on Wednesday, July 28th at 8 PM EST entitled “Step Up Marketing Using Social Media” with social media expert Tia Singh and learn how to take advantage of this amazing technology. Tia has used social media to take her business from the ground up, and will teach you the tips that have made her a success. By the end of the call, you’ll be equipped with 3 social media steps you can implement immediately in your business! Click here to register for our next call.

– Oscar Wilde

We’ve opened our conference offer to everyone in our database.  For three more days you can purchase 2 Audio Recordings and get 1 Free.   Offer ends May 31 at midnight and coupon code is Conference2010.
 
We have over 50 Audio Recordings to choose from and many may apply towards your continuing education credits.  Click here to see our audio library. 

Keeping Track of CEU’s? 
Depending on your services and scope of work, A Red Bench Audio Recordings may apply towards your continuing education units.  With each audio purchase you receive a certificate of attendance upon passing the class quiz.  Calls are 75 minutes long and may count as 1 CEU.  

My booth neighbors were Sandy Jenney of Organize with Sandy  and Linda Easton of Extraordinary Organizing .  That’s us pictured to the right.  Here is what I LOVE about conference…there are so many people doing amazing things!  These women are both doing amazing things and are pioneers in their own rights.  Sandy is very successful with her organizing business, Organize with Sandy blog, Chat with Sandy blog, product reviews, selling products, and more.   She recently had the opportunity to interview Peter Walsh on her blog, click here to watch the interview.  Sandy is a woman who is in the know and stays on top of products and trends. 

Linda Easton is also doing some amazing things.  Of course she runs her organizing business but she has also created her own line of workbooks, and she has started an organizing home party business.   To learn more about Linda and opportunities to becoming one of her consultants click here to visit her web-site.  

The take-away here is that when you look at Professional Organizers there are many different business models that are available.  In both the cases I described above and what I observe from many successful Professional Organizers is that they have multiple streams of income, they are doing something unique, and they have a passion for what they are doing.  Marrying what you love and what you have fun doing with what you are already good at, time and time again shows up as the secret to success.  Can you add a twist to your services?  Something new and different that might bring a little excitement to your business?  We’d love to hear what you’re doing. 

Angela

This year’s conference was bitter sweet for me, okay, much more sweet than bitter, but bitter non-the-less.  It was sad because my business partner Christa Wagner could not make it this year.  Oh how I wish she could have been there.  But it was exciting because this year I was going to be on the oh so famous Ask the Organizer Panel.  This was a true treat as I was on the panel with five amazing women!  New organizers and veterans alike asked some fantastic questions with many coming up about social media.  Yes, social media was definitely a hot topic this year. 

The Expo Hall had a mini face lift this year with the addition of the Market Place.  This was exciting as A Red Bench was able to participate in this new venue.

There is so much to talk about I will be posting several blogs over the next few days with my conference highlights.  Including highlights from the Ask the Organizer Panel, the Expo Hall, Opening Keynote with Tim Sanders, and more on trends I observed at conference including Social Media.  So keep checking there’s more to come soon!

Angela

Of the 16 categories, however, it was not technology that posted the biggest rise but, rather, financial institutions, with a 12% growth, compared to half of that for tech. Only beer and fast food, with increases of 10% and 1% respectively, showed positive, with the other 12 sectors dropping. It’s worth comparing the list with Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2010.  

The report–its methodology is explained here–has a lot to say about social media and how it affects a company’s brand–especially for those in the tech sector. The BrandZ list didn’t feature Facebook in the top 100, but it slipped in at 20th in the tech rankings. The site, however, featured large in the report, and is seen as a crucial tool in how the big firms will increase their reach using social networking sites. 

Its advice to budding Jobses, Brin/Pages, and Zuckerbergs is to forget about philanthropy (not something, whisper, that either Apple or Facebook is known for) and embrace responsibility, to see mobiles as the new billboards–RIP Don Draper–and that successful brands are built from the top down.

How does this relate to your small business?  If your branding was as strong as your organizing skills, you could drastically increase your revenue.   Once you create a powerful, compelling brand, business comes to you instead of the other way around.  To create a compelling brand purchase audio recording with fellow organizer and brand expert, Krista Green, called Get Noticed, Be Remembered.  You’ll learn how to communicate your values, personality, talents and unique skills to create your own personal brand and influence the way others perceive you.  Brand is not only for the fortune 500 company, perception is everything.

Effective March 1st, I went back to my marketing roots joining Nature’s Path Foods, an organic food company located in Vancouver, BC.  I joined their team as the Brand Manager for their “in the bowl” products.   That means granola and granola bars, toaster pastries, waffles, snacks, cookies, etc.  You can find their products at natural food stores, organic stores and many grocers like Safeway, Giant Eagle and Walmart.  I have had a deep passion for marketing and branding, which has helped me tremendously in my own business.  At the same time I feel I will be able to utilize my organizing skills to a much greater degree at Nature’s Path.    They’ve already asked me to organize the electronic documents, do a email organizing seminar and organize the product warehouse. 

I have enjoyed being a professional organizer for almost six years and have loved working with my clients and colleagues.  What does this mean for A Red Bench?   I will continue to have my partnership, with Angela Ploetz and look forward to bring my new learning’s to the business.  I absolutely love A Red Bench; it’s an amazing business model and I truly love my business partner.   We’ve had to adjust the Live Teleclass times to work within my schedule, but it’s working out and we are very excited about what tomorrow will bring.   I do plan to attend NAPO 2011: Angela said I can’t leave her alone at the booth again and I missed my conference roommates.  I look forward to seeing you there. 

Being an organizer is a special gift.   Thank you so much for all your support  and friendship over the years!

To set up a paper filing system in your home or office, we recommend FreedomFiler.  Its the best paper organizing system we’ve found and we’ve used it with hundreds of clients. 

For more help Conquering Paper Clutter, attend our next teleclass on February 17th.  As a follow-up to our January call called Helping Clients Manage The Paper Crisis (available to download on our website,) we want to have a more specific class on paper that tends to cover the desktop, the dining table and kitchen counter.  We call this action paper and there are so many different ways to help your clients deal with their action paper.  Join us on our continuing education call, where we will we will take you through a step by step process to create action files that will Conquer Your Clients Paper Clutter forever.

The bulletin board has photos, inspirational quotes and things I treasure.  Some are things people have given more and others are clippings from magazines or something I found interesting.

 I use the magnetic wipe board to write the week’s top priorities and then create my daily To Do list from there.  So far so good - I crossed everything off my list last week.  I know its a challenge to stay on top of the never ending To Do list, but perhaps you can install something similar in your home or office.