Until early 2009, I had not been doing a whole lot of website building/maintenance work. But as the year progressed, I found myself spending more and more time taking care of various websites and ezines, some of them requiring me to go into HTML and CSS codes. I had been using a free HTML editor called Nvu for a while. But at some point, I’ve decided it would make sense to invest in a more powerful HTML editor to be more effective.

Naturally, I first thought I was going to buy the favorite tool among professional webmasters: Dreamweaver. Well, very long story short, that purchase did not happen, and instead, I bought Microsoft Expression Web, a successor of Front Page.

To be honest, I was not expecting much from Expression Web, mainly due to the not-so-great experience I had with Front Page years ago. Also the retail price ($250 less than Dreamweaver) told me I probably should be prepared for a little inconveniences. BUT, to my pleasant surprise, I found Expression Web to be a wonderful helper!

I’m still learning to become more proficient in CSS, but Expression Web’s CSS tools are very intuitive and easy to use. If HTML codes are not used properly or missing, Expression Web warns you with a short comment explaining what is wrong. I know “live view” is considered to be a fantastic feature with the latest version of Dreamweaver, but Expression Web’s preview feature works just fine to preview the page. Oh, and I found Expression Web loads faster than Dreamweaver, which I love.

If you are looking for an economical alternative to Dreamweaver, I highly recommend checking out Expression Web.

The fabulous Heather and Stacy that I know from my VA alma mater AssistU started this project called 30 Days of Thanks. The idea of doing my gratitude journal on my blog instantly resonated with me, so I’m playing along here. Read more about 30 Days of Thanks here, and why don’t you join us!

Day 29

I had a blog withdrawal for the last several days, LOL. Oh well, things happen, and I know sometimes it’s good to go with the flow.

Just yesterday, I received some touching comments from a few of my clients, both verbally and via email, thanking me for the work I do for them. Yes, on the same day! And of course, that put a huge smile on my face. Thank you all, for making my day in a big way.

“Thank you” is such a beautiful phrase. I do not do things just to get an appreciation, but still, a little thank you’s can give people such a wonderful feeling, and I think it’s so important.

I’m grateful for people who appreciate others. They make a huge difference in others’ lives.

The fabulous Heather and Stacy that I know from my VA alma mater AssistU started this project called 30 Days of Thanks. The idea of doing my gratitude journal on my blog instantly resonated with me, so I’m playing along here. Read more about 30 Days of Thanks here, and why don’t you join us!

Day 28

I am not crazy about cold weather, but I still love this season! Here in Southern California, it of course does not really get cold even during the winter, but even when I was living in the areas where the temperature drops below freezing during December, the cheerful and somewhat rushed atmosphere always made me excited.

And more than me, I think my husband loves this season. He gets busy bringing out the lights and shopping for the boys. (No, I’m the lazy one when it comes to holidays, LOL.)

I know he loves doing those things because he simply wants to see our boys’ faces light up. And I love seeing my husband happy.

I’m thankful for this lovely season.

The fabulous Heather and Stacy that I know from my VA alma mater AssistU started this project called 30 Days of Thanks. The idea of doing my gratitude journal on my blog instantly resonated with me, so I’m playing along here. Read more about 30 Days of Thanks here, and why don’t you join us!

Day 27

It’s already December, I know. But since I started my 30 Days of Thanks a bit late, I have decided to continue blogging my Thanks until *my* Day 30. Besides, I’m having too much fun to stop now.

Today, I’m very grateful for the laughter we have in our family. Yes, we laugh a lot, and I just love that.

When I get a little grumpy or sad, it’s my boys’ pure, silly laughter that brighten up my day. They have the power to make me realize how silly it is to worry about small things in life. Their laughter is contagious!

My husband and I must have done something right to have such happy kiddos.

The fabulous Heather and Stacy that I know from my VA alma mater AssistU started this project called 30 Days of Thanks. The idea of doing my gratitude journal on my blog instantly resonated with me, so I’m playing along here. Read more about 30 Days of Thanks here, and why don’t you join us!

Day 25

Today, I’m thankful to AssistU and my VA friends that I came to know through them.

There is no way I could have started and kept building my VA practice without AssistU’s Virtual Training Program. It’s really hard to explain how it helped me since it was a process, not just studying materials. It’s just an amazing, empowering program, all backed up by wonderful support by EVERYBODY at AssistU.

AssistU also has a VA community where I got to know many fabulous VAs who graduated from or currently learning at AssistU. The support and encouragement I get from them is just phenomenal.

Everybody at AssistU… you all help me move forward all the time. Without you, I wouldn’t be here.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find that many people I follow (via social networking or their newsletters) or talk to tend to discuss the same topic within a period of several weeks. About a couple of months ago, I felt everybody was talking about time management, and then, a month ago, every newsletter I received seemed to be focusing on stepping out of your comfort zone. Am I seeing that famous laws of attraction in action?

And this past 2 weeks, the same thing happened around the topic of outsourcing. What a great topic for us Virtual Assistants.

Many experts agree that, to grow your business, you need to hire help at some point. Some people go even further to say, “outsourcing is the only way to take your business to the next level.” And who doesn’t want to grow his/her business? But the reality is that the majority of solopreneurs out there are still trying to take care of every aspect of their business by themselves.

Why?

After speaking with many solopreneurs since I started my VA practice, I noticed many of them have a fear around outsourcing their work. Fear, you ask? Yes, here are the main ones I identified:

• fear of letting things go
• fear of running out of the things to delegate
• fear of hiring somebody you do not know
• fear of creating work (to find somebody, to manage him/her, to come up with a delegation list and to set up a procedure for others handle tasks for you)
• fear of incurring extra *monetary* expenses

This may sound funny, but some of my current clients have provided the answers to getting over most of the fears above while talking to me here and there in the past. I just love my clients! So, I’d love to share some here, hoping to help you look at things differently.

When you are hanging on to all the little tasks that you don’t even enjoy, you get stressed out. I felt so liberated when I gave xxx (insert a task name) to you! Now I don’t need to think about that.

Many people do not realize that there are so many things they can delegate to their assistants. Mika, you should probably do up a list so that people would know.

I noticed many people do not even know where to go find an assistant (or any kind of help for that matter). They should just ask around.

Partnering up with an assistant is an investment. People should put aside some extra time at the beginning to find help and to build a right relationship. Soon, they will find they have more time to take care of better things.

If you don’t want to spend too much time creating a system for your busines, you can ask your assistant to help you create one.

People are so concerned about expenses these days, and they don’t even realize how much you can do for your business by hiring an assistant.

I intentionally did not look at the fees until I finished asking all other questions during the interview process. Fees sure can be one of the important factors when hiring somebody, but should not be the biggest determining factor. Otherwise, you may miss an opportunity to work with a perfect assistant who could eventually save you lots of time and money by working with you.

I know that an assistant with a lower hourly rate cannot necessarily take care of the things as quickly as somebody with a higher rate. Also, you may end up having to spend so much time explaining task details to an assistant A, while assistant B would understand your needs without having to be told everything step-by-step. So, going with an assistant only because his/her rate is reasonable does not make sense to me at all.

Speaking of hourly rates, one of my fab clients recently taught me about “Efficiency Wages”, a term used to describe a theory in economics. I’m not referring it here to convince you to hire an expensive assistant, but to encourage you to look at other important factors before making a judgment solely based on the fees. Most of the outsourcing nightmare stories I hear seem to have something to do with hiring an assistant without having a deep-level conversation before starting to work together.

Remember, you will be building your business with a help from your assistant(s). Make sure you’ll partner up with somebody who is just right for you! (See this post by Melanie Benson Strick… It’s so true!)

Partnering up with an assistant should be a fun experience, not a torture. If you decide to explore the world of working with an assistant, look at it as an exciting adventure! Like many things in life, it may be scary to do it for the first time, but once you’ve done it, you’ll notice it’s not scary at all.

If you are interested in learning a bit more, hop over to the newsletter signup form on the top-right corner on this page to receive a free report “Tips for Finding and Working with a Virtual Assistant”.

Genbook is an online appointment tool that my VAs seem to like. I have been using it for months, and after trying out some other similar tools, it’s still my favorite! It’s very user friendly, and comes with some handy functions.

Here are some features that you can find with its free version:

• Online Bookings
• Unlimited Staff and Services
• Book Now Button
• Automatic Appointment Confirmation/Reminder Emails
• Free Online Scheduling Page

It’s great that you can let your customers to book their own appointments, easily & quickly.

I have experienced some problems with email confirmation feature and also would love to see a report function, but for a free tool, Genbook offers so much.

They also offers two paid service levels that come with more features.

Genbook recently added a handy weekly view. It’s so nice to see that they keep improving the usability.

I have to confess. When I first heard about 1 Shopping Cart, my first reaction was, “What’s the big deal? Isn’t that just one of the software tools that create those virtual shopping carts that Amazon uses? Unless you sell something online, who would need it?” Boy, was I wrong.

1 Shopping Cart (“1SC”), being offered under various brands like Easy Web Automation, Marketers Choice, and many others, is one powerful online marketing tool. Enabling you to easily create online shopping carts is just a part of the whole package. The other things you can do with 1SC include:

• publish eZines.
• send out autoresponders, not only with eZine signups, but with product orders, information requests, or whatever you want to use to trigger the series of email communication. And you can do more than one!
• set up autoresponders to segment people by product order.
• create and manage affiliate programs.
• test the effectiveness of your online ads.
• set up coupons and bundle offers.
• offer your e-products.
• …and more!

And once you set up the system correctly to meet your needs, many process can be automated. For example, if somebody purchases your eBook from your website, the payment will be processed, the eBook link will be automatically sent to the customer, you will have upsell/cross-sell opportunities, s/he will be added to your customer database and to your eZine subscriber list if customer opts in, and s/he will be categorized based on the purchased product, making the future marketing effort easier. Throughout the process, you don’t even have to lift a finger.

Of course, to set up 1SC so that everything flows well, you need to know how. 1SC has great video tutorials included in the subscription (It’s web-based, so there is no software to download.), and there are some third party training programs available as well. If you are interested, I recommend starting with Christina Hills’ (aka “ShoppingCart Queen”) Shopping Cart Membership Club. She offers the first 3 months of membership for $1, and once you become a member, you an access to her basic video tutorials and participate in her monthly call to learn more in-depth techniques. Every time I attend her monthly call, I get at least 3 A-HAs. I am also taking a video training course on 1SC offered by Internet Monster Tamers School right now. This course was created for virtual assistants by Meredith Eisenberg, my fellow AssistU VA. I had a chance to meet Meredith about half a year ago in L.A. and was very impressed by her knowledge in Internet Marketing. So, when I heard she was going to offer a Shopping Card class, I checked out her free class videos first, and then decided to take the class right away. I believe this would be a great class for me to make sure that I am comfortable with all the aspects of 1SC.

If you are a VA wondering if you should learn 1SC, I recommend checking out above two resources. Again, Christina Hills’ Club is only $1 for 3 months, and Internet Monster Tamer’s School offers a few free lesson videos, so it’s worth checking them out.

And if you are a small business owner who are getting serious about online marketing, 1SC could be the great help to streamline and grow your business. If you have any questions on it, just holler!

(This article was originally published in my May 2009 Making Things Happen eNewsletter. To receive this complimentary eNewsletter directly in your inbox, please sign up in the sign-up box on the top-right corner of this page.)

“Work/Life Balance” has been a buzz word especially in the corporate world for quite some time now. I myself have worked at a few companies that claimed they were strongly supporting that idea. But you know what? Most people I worked with at those companies were far from keeping their work/life balance.

As a solopreneur, you should have a control over how you work, how you structure your day, and how to prioritize things. But, in reality, many small solopreneurs claim they do not have a whole lot of control over keeping their work/life balance.

Let’s take a moment, breathe (really, inhale and exhale deeply right now as you read this), and think what could happen if you lose your life balance.

Burnt out… Stressed out… Fatigued… And it will eventually affect your health, mood, personal life, business. You do not want to to there, do you?

I understand that keeping a good balance is probably “easier said than done” to many, but there are still many simple things you can do every day to prevent yourself from losing your balance and take a bad fall one day. Here are some ideas that I hope would help:

1. What matters most in your life? Keep your priorities straight all the time.While taking care of urgent (or what seems urgent) things, we tend to forget our real priorities. Many of you might have seen Dr. Steven Covey’s Time Matrix™ with 4 quadrants, each area representing different urgency and importance. It’s such a powerful way to help you carefully think how you spend your precious time. Being aware of these quadrants and using a Franklin Planner help me keep my priorities straight every day. There are many other books and tools that you can use on this subject, but whatever tool you decide to use, the secret is, to turn what you learn into your daily habit.
2. Automate and systematize your work as much as you can.My programmer friend once told me that the goal of great programming is to reduce the number of necessary keystrokes by the users as much as possible. I agree. Don’t you love it when you see the city and state fields automatically filled out by the system as soon as you enter your zip code in an online order form? Little things like that can saves time and labor. Now, look at the documents, etc. that you handle on a routine basis. Can you spend a little time now to format them better, add macros, etc. so that your future work would be less manual? How about your work procedures? Is there any room for systemization? A little work now could reduce a lot of unnecessary stress in the future, big time.
3. Ask for help. Most exerts agree that you can’t achieve much by taking care of everything by yourself. There is simply too much to know and too much to do! Find a virtual assistant and delegate as much as possible. Or hire somebody to take care of something that does not jazz you in your private life (like cleaning the house). Even getting a little help from your family members can sometimes make a big difference in our stress level. That way, you can focus your energy on what you love to do and become more effective. Very often, that well covers the cost to hire helpers.
4. Move that body. Body and mind are closely connected. Need I say more? For me, even a 5-minute per day stretching makes a difference. Find your favorite and easy-to-do exercise. Make it fun!
5. Do something that make you relax and smile. Taking a leisurely walk. Singing from the top of your lung in a hot shower. Watching your favorite sitcom. Talking to your pet. Doing these simple things can be a very quick and powerful way to regain your balance. Sometimes, you just have to shut down that computer and walk away!Now, what do *you* do to keep your life balanced

Please share your story by emailing me.

(This article was originally published in my May 2009 Making Things Happen eNewsletter. To receive this complimentary eNewsletter directly in your inbox, please sign up in the sign-up box on the top-right corner of this page.)