Secret OWL Society

Less to Organize

Organizing can take the place of spending time on things more important - like business and relationships - because when you're organizing a lot of stuff, you feel like you're getting something done...but you're kidding yourself.
Having less to organize means you're ready to take care of business more quickly.
If you can't get the same work done sitting in a coffee shop somewhere any where in the world as you can get done sitting at your home office, then how free of an entrepreneur are you?

An Owlish Find

Pic from: http://electricblogarella.com/olivebox-glossybox-blissmo-boxed-gifts-mailed-to-your-house/

Pic from: http://foxtrotpress.com/2012/10/olive-box/

When you commit to an idea for something, you start seeing resources for it and examples of it every where. I stumbled on My Olive Box in the Make it Yourself magazine and I didn't even have to wait till I saw the website to know that I want to sign up.

It's a subscription for "Hand-picked paper & lifestyle products delivered monthly to your door."

Check them out at www.myolivebox.com

This Girl Means Business Issue 11 is Live!

Click on the magazine and start reading!

Treat your network like gold

One of the most important lessons I've learned about what makes life work (especially if you are an entrepreneur), is the importance of making contacts and staying in touch.
But what does doing that look like in day-to-day reality?
I found that just collecting people's business cards was not helping me build relationships with my new contacts. I knew I needed to find a solution because the one thing that I kept hearing super successful business people say is that their list of contacts was their most valuable asset.
And then I found "base."
In short, I love this program/app because when I enter the info on a contact I can...

1) Tag the contact under a label I create: OWL member, Simply Clean client, France Contact, etc. This means that by clicking on a tag, all the contacts with that specific tab pop up. This is helpful when I want to do something like send all my OWL members an email to the next workshop.

2) Make a note for the contact. I do this mainly to make sure I remember how I know/met the person.

3) Schedule an action for the contact. I love this because when the day comes that I need to do something regarding a specific contact, I get an email reminding me of what I planned to do.

I learned from master networker Harvey MacKay that we should be adding people to our list of contacts every day and finding a creative way to stay in touch. The first step to doing this is setting yourself up so that at the end of the day or week, you can take all those scribbled notes and business cards and input them into a rolodex that helps you manage your business and life in a productive, efficient way.

Designing a successful life comes down to the relationships you build with the people that become a part of your network. So treat those names, phone numbers, and emails like gold.

Just help one

When I started the OWL blog a couple years ago, it was initially to help one person. I had been doing my weekly goal setting with a friend and she really wanted a friend of hers to join us, but this other person was never able to come to our little meetings. So I thought, "I'll put what we learn on a blog so that people who cannot physically join us can still be a part of what we're doing and learning!"

And now...because I decided that I would help one person, this project came to life.

And that's the secret to starting and sticking with anything. And I've heard Seth Godin say this too in an interview. If we're not willing to help one person, just ONE person, then how we say we want to help, serve, reach hundreds or thousands?

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all." - Dale Carnegie