I contacted Anne Ganey last week to see whether she was still accepting applications into this program. She is and so I highly encourage women in the Mankato area to apply. The knowledge you will gain about yourself and others is priceless and truly a life-long investment.

ALL WOMEN ARE INVITED TO APPLY
This is a gender-specific leadership development program that takes a cohort of women through nine
months of capacity building, mentoring and support. It focuses on the unique challenges women face in becoming leaders in our workplaces and community.
Women may apply or be nominated.

PLEASE APPLY IF YOU:
• Are willing to invest in your own development.
• Desire to advance in your career.
• Plan to participate in the community.
• Want to connect with leaders.
• Believe you have leadership potential.
Or, consider nominating someone with these characteristics. Many women with leadership potential don’t act on it until they are asked to by someone else.”

PROGRAM GOALS
• Increase leadership skills and capacity in women in the Greater Mankato area.
• Prepare women to meet the common challenges women leaders confront.
• Prepare women to take leadership positions in business and corporations, on boards of directors, in elected office, foundations and entrepreneur businesses.
• Increase the number of women in local leadership roles, with a focus on corporate and/or business leadership.
• Engage women in effective civic engagement and participation.
• Create and sustain a support system for women leaders.

PROGRAM THEMES
• Skill Development
• Redefining Power
• Balance
• Ethical Leadership
• Reflection

Click HERE for more information.

I received a brochure yesterday from the USPS. They are promoting their “if it fits, it ships anywhere in the country for a low flat rate – and your shipments arrive in just 2-3 days” program.
You can get a free Flat Rate Box Shipping Kit here. Even if you don’t want a kit, go to the site anyway; Al is pretty funny to watch.

Holly

The W.E.B. meeting last night was great. Ms. Stoffel gave a great presentation on technology for efficient leaders. It was an interactive presentation, which made it even more enjoyable. The techies in our group were quick to chime in with their knowledge. More and more companies are opting to move their business to the “CLOUD”, which is great for me since I’ve built my business around cloud computing. Do not be afraid of the CLOUD!

This morning I met with Tom Riley who is the director of business development at Greater Mankato Growth. I know Tom because he used to be a VP at Midwest Wireless. I talked to him about some ideas that I have and asked him for some direction. He gave me some good advice, which I’m planning to follow-up on next week. There may or may not be more to share on that in the near future.

After I met with Tom, I met my good friend Karen for lunch at Pho Saigon. The food was excellent and we had a great conversation.

This afternoon I completed an autoresponder campaign for Coach Mary and a few other small tasks. Soon, I’ll be wrapping it up for the week. I need to get home and find the kids’ gloves because T-Ball starts tomorrow morning in Eagle Lake. Batter Up!!

I wish you all a great weekend!
Holly

Yesterday afternoon I received a message from a marketing consultant in the Minneapolis area. I’ve worked on various projects with her in the past. Today, she needed help with a PowerPoint presentation – one of my favorite admin things to work on. My schedule was flexible this morning and I knew she had a deadline so we both hopped on Skype, collaborated about the project, and an hour later, I sent it back to her for final review. After that, we spoke on the phone about the final changes, I converted the presentation to a .pdf and voila! The project was done and she was on time with her presentation, which by the way she is presenting at this very moment. I hope she gets the client!
Now, I have a few other things to work for other clients and this afternoon, I pick up my daughter for an orthodontist appointment in Mankato. Then I take her home and then drive back to Mankato to network with the W.E.B. group (Women Executives in Business). Tonight’s presentation is “Technology Tools for Efficient Leaders”. I’m a technology addict so I can hardly wait!

Later!
Holly

This morning, I got Parker off to school and then I took Liza in to the doctor for a check-up. After a clean bill of health, I took her to school too.
Now, I’m sitting in my office space in North Mankato ready for work. Dawn of Creative Ad Solutions was kind enough to offer me a space in part of her building in lower North Mankato. It’s nice to get out of my home office space once in awhile. I’m lucky because all I need to do to pack up my office is grab my laptop, a few files, my cell phone, my magic jack phone (saves on cell minutes), and my password book.
Now it’s time to get started on Coach Mary’s Aweber account. I need to set up an account for her, create a web form, and post the html code to her WordPress website. Then I need to set up a campaign for the her teleclass, which is coming up on May 18.

Later!
Holly

I had good intentions of keeping this blog up-to-date as I have so much information to share. So, why did I only post once in April? Because I have fallen for Twitter. After the first few weeks of Twitter (in January) I was ready to give up. Now, I have 200 followers and new people are following me each day. And it’s kind of fun. I’ve connected with several other virtual assistants and we share tips and tricks with each other and share them with the rest of the Twitter community.

Not sure what Twitter is? Here is a short definition according to Wikipedia:
“Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website”

So, while I’m always telling my clients to keep up with their blog, I haven’t been. In other words, do what I say and not what I do .

I am now on a “Tweet” schedule, so hopefully, I’ll have more time to blog so if you’re not a Twitter fanatic, you can still follow me here. If you are on Twitter, my Twitter name is hollyanthony – feel free to follow. I’ll be posting more on Twitter in the future.

Twitter is an investment of time and it’s not a good tool for everyone. For instance, if your target market is local, it doesn’t make much sense to have a  Twitter account. However, if you’re a global company, it might make a lot of sense. It also depends on your industry.

Thoughts? I’d love to read ‘em.

Holly

I know I’ve blogged about Google Analytics in the past but I wanted to tell you about the report I received from GA this week. It was interesting because there was international activity on my site in April. The countries where my visitors originated from are: India, Switzerland, Canada, Iran, Taiwan, and the U.K.

Another thing that surprised me on the report is the fact that there were visits from people who are using dial-up. And there were some hits from people who browse from their PlayStation 3 console – wow!

I also figured out how to get the report emailed to me each week so that I don’t have to log into my account to view the report. What a time saver!

If you or your virtual assistant aren’t monitoring your site traffic yet, you can sign up for GA here.

I just joined Greater Mankato Growth f/k/a  the Mankato Chamber of Commerce. I’ve been working with Jake Krier who is in charge of membership development for Greater Mankato Growth. If you know Jake, you know he’s a swell guy and he’s truly knowledgeable about GMG membership. He’s been a tremendous help in making sure I got my paperwork done and making me aware of the benefits of membership as well as the upcoming Chamber events.

My member home page: Anthony Office Solutions, LLC

Speaking of events, I’ll be wondering around the Business Showcase next Tuesday afternoon and I’ll also be at United Prairie Bank for the business after hours in May.

Will I see you there?
If you want to set up an introduction at an event, email me at holly@hollyanthony.net

Holly