The Women’s Business Alliance Power Sabbatical is your opportunity to take – For Yourself! – 2 ½ days + 2 nights to:

–Rejuvenate mentally and physically. Unplug, get away from it all in a serene gorgeous setting. Be catered to and taken care of (what a concept for us women!), including dining on gourmet healthy food prepared by Marconi’s amazing chef. Take advantage of gorgeous natural surroundings by starting your morning and ending your day with a solo or group power walk or hike. Breathe the fresh air. Enjoy the stars at night and the peace and quiet (no ambient light or noise pollution here!) Even use your free time to take a swim in Tomales Bay (wet suit optional!), visit the quaint town of Marshall, kayak, or horseback ride on the beach.

Recharge your ambition. Launch – or re-launch – your dream in a powerful way. Recharge your business and your goals. Or finally give yourself the space, resources and support to give the business you’ve been struggling with the power to lift off. Get clarity on your ambitious goals. Figure out what’s working and what’s not. Redefine your targets. Get unstuck. Fire up your ambition. Keep yourself on target to do meaningful, challenging work that pays you what you’re worth. Stop settling. Stop selling yourself short. Get your ambition mojo back – you know what I mean: that feeling that you can’t wait to bounce out of bed each morning (no matter how tired you might be) because work feels like play. Keep your commitment to yourself to make the contribution you were born to make – and surround yourself with supportive peers to help you achieve the goals you have stars in your eyes for.

This is an opportunity to restore your sanity and recharge your business by retreating to a stunning, peaceful conference center in an historic park setting and interacting with innovators like yourself. I’ll be leading the charge and together we will make sure that You — and Your most precious ambitious goals — are the agenda. And of course, a huge part of recharging your business and dreams is making sure that you, yourself, get plenty of downtime – space and time and the serenity to unplug and think and be taken care of.

Break isolation. Stamp out your fear and resistance by interacting with ambitious, creative innovators – women just like yourself who struggle with the same fears and doubts as you, even as they are fighting the big fight to hold on to their big dreams. Get your brain cells firing and reignite your passion for what you do or want to do though 2 ½ days of custom-tailored small-group coaching and brainstorming with me plus 20 other women peers. The ideas will be flying around the room. And You and Your goals are the agenda.

Where:
The perfect venue is the gorgeous setting at the Marconi Conference Center overlooking Tomales Bay in beautiful West Marin County, San Francisco Bay Area. Marconi Conference Center is approximately a 90-minute drive from San Francisco International Airport, Oakland International Airport.

When:
September 16-18, 2010

So register now as there is not a greater feeling in the world than coming together with supportive, talented, thirsty-for-knowledge, open-minded, fired-up, ambitious women, such as Debra Condren, author of Ambition Is Not A Dirty Word,  to link arms and help each other make our ambitious dreams a reality.

News is breaking all around you.

When you’re the local angle to a national story, or you can comment on the hot topic of the day, TV producers, daily and weekly newspaper reporters, and bloggers will practically be begging to talk to you.

But too many people who want publicity don’t bother picking up the phone or emailing. They think the media are too busy. Or they don’t know what to say.

What a mistake! This is the very best time to pitch.

What if somebody gave you step-by-step directions on exactly how to piggyback your story idea onto breaking news? Publicist Michelle Tennant, who got one of her clients booked on “Dr. Phil” the very day the client signed the PR contract, will explain the exact details of what she does when she pitches a client during a breaking news event. She’ll even show you the word-for-word email pitches she sent to the media–pitches that resulted in major publicity for her clients.

Michelle will be the special guest during a webinar hosted by Joan Stewart, aka The Publicity Hound, at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, July 21. Michelle will teach you how to use very simple email subject lines, include three important elements in every pitch, and the exact number of times to follow up.

She’ll also tell you about a free media resource website she uses, thus saving her thousands of dollars on media directories.

The countdown has begun . . . are you going to meet the deadline? Last week I shared on Facebook with you the exciting new Stay-on-Track program recently launched by Ariane — and today I am writing this blog posting to make sure you understand what it is that she is offering . . FOR F.REE!
 
If you are anything like me, you’re a visual-experience-oriented person — who sometimes struggles with online information, especially when it’s packed full of IMPORTANT career-boosting information. I get overwhelmed to say the least, and panic at the thought that my money will be wasted because I might miss some of the crucial information provided by the speakers. Will I remember what I needed to take away from the session, will I understand what they were trying to portray to me?
 
With the Stay-on-Track program, it’s like Ariane read my mind and said… “I will prepare the Telesummit for you in CD and transcript form — AND I’ll also give you the Stay-on-Track program to make sure you succeed!” She WANTS you to get all the fruit off the tree… and she makes that possible for F.R.E.E if you purchase the Home-study program on or before midnight (Eastern Time), on April 15th!
 
The Stay-on-Track Program is a simple system to organize, prioritize, and create YOUR action plan as you hear the Telesummit presenters — so you’re immediately able to feed your energy and the wealth of information into creating and developing your first project!
 
No more feeling like you are flapping in the wind… the Stay-on-Track Program allows you to be grounded in your creative process and utilize all the valuable information from the Telesummit Home-study Program!

I was recently a guest panelist on The smARTist Telesummit with Ariane Goodwin.  It was truly an inspiring experience.

My presentation was titled, Facebook for Artists, Beyond Beginners which included a 17 pages of illustrated handouts with easy, step-by-step instructions.

There was no way I could possible cover all the materials and tools that Facebook provides in 60 minutes.

After the presentation I was sent a list of email for artists with their questions concerning Facebook and I tried to answer them to the best of my knowledge.

Here are some of the questions and answers:

Q: What about the changes in the privacy policy?  Should we be concerned? 
A: We should all be concerned about our privacy anywhere online.  If you are really concerned about your privacy and the changes on Facebook, I read this fantastic article and follower their suggestions for not only myself, but for my clients as well.  http://tinyurl.com/yz2bbn3

Q: Is it ok to have 2 Facebooks, one for person and one for business or is this too confusing for other? 
A: Yes, it absolutely ok to have 2 Facebooks.  First of all, you need to have a personal profile.  From there you can create your fan/business page.  This is what I do and I suggest to my clients.  When posting anything business related, post from your fan/business page.  If you are conversing with a friend or family member, do it from your personal profile page.  That way, the 2 don’t get confused.

Q: I have found my RSS feed url on Wordpress.  Now, how and where do I enter it into the “notes” section of my Fan Page to get the blog to feed into that space?  Hate to be a pain, but I’m still struggling with this.  I’ve searched the FB help extensively already for an answer.  (Much thanks in advance for your help!)  — okay, now I’ve got it coming in, but it’s coming in to my personal page not my fan page.  Yikes! 
A: To do this, you need to stop importing the blog to your personal page.  When you go into your business page, go to edit page and you will see a list there.  On that list you will then see “Notes”.  Click on edit.  You can then import your blog into your fan page.

And these are just a few.  If you are confused by Facebook, I can help you to keep it straight with the teleseminar “11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook“.  This teleseminar was hosted by Joan Stewart in June of 2009 and includes a 28 page handout.  You can order it as an MP3, transcript or as a CD.

Every year, Joan Stewart, a.k.a., The Publicity Hound gives out a free ebook. It is from her newsletter “best of”.

This year, its ” The Best of The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week-2009“

What is so unique about this gift is that you can re-gift it as many times as you would like. Here are just a few of the ways in which you can either use the ebook

• The lazy way to create fun video–even if you don’t have a technical bone in your body
• How to create your own holiday, or your own day, week or month of the year
• 9 attention-grabbing phrases to use at your blog
• 5 great social media marketing ideas when the idea well is dry
• The Number 1 press release writing mistake that will doom you every time

This is the ebook the just keeps giving and giving.

I currently use Ping.fm to post to several of my social networking sites. Ping.fm is a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social networks a snap! It is just that, a snap.

I have also set up many of my clients to use this service as it is like one-stop shopping. It is fast and easy to use. Set up is a breeze.

You can post from anywhere to anywhere. You can use your phone, IM and from email as well.

I currently have it set up to “feed” to FriendFeed, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Delicious. I would caution you though that, depending on how many feeds you have set up on the other sites, you can end up with multiple postings. So, in other words, if you are using FriendFeed with Ping or Twitter, it could show up on the status updates on Facebook multiple times and it looks very strange.

The application that Ping.fm has recently added though, and I like very much, is you can now add your Facebook fan page to the feed. In the past, when you posted from Ping, it would only feed to your Facebook profile.

I like to use and also suggest free and easy tools in which both myself and my clients can use and this is at the top of the list.

Last week I was a guest on a teleseminar hosted by Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound. The subject was “11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook“

I must confess, I was extremely nervous as it was my first time as a guest on a teleseminar. I did do my homework though and I was extremely confident in my knowledge of the ways in which to use Facebook to promote your business.

Joan is more than competent at hosting a teleseminar. She leads you along very easily and keeps the pace up so one gets all the information as promised when one signs up for these events.

We received excellent feedback and in turn I have generated new clients and followers on Facebook. I have also created a “fan page” on Facebook as a result.

So, for those of you who are still confused about using Facebook and all the possibilities that are available to you, don’t hesitate. You are leaving gold on the side of the road!

I’ll be attending the Stompernet convention this coming March in Atlanta, a gathering of several hundred members of the world’s largest Internet marketing membership site.

“Some of the brightest minds in online marketing will be attending and presenting. For three full days, I’ll be learning what’s new in social networking, video, seach engine optimization, product creation, and dozens of other topics that will help me help you. I’ll look forward to sharing with you what I’ve learned and applying the knowledge to your upcoming projects.”

I don’t like to travel much by air, but for this I was ready to go. When one of my clients, Joan Stewart, a.k.a, The Publicity Hound invited be to attend as her guest, how could I say “no”. Couldn’t do it, no way, no how.

So although, I do have to get on a plane, it will be worth it.

Last evening my husband and I went to a concert in Santa Monica, CA. It was a small venue, actually it was a restaurant with a small stage, quite nice though.

The restaurant was packed so we sat at the bar overlooking the chefs at work. It was entertaining in itself.

Prior to the concert, we met up with Mitch Chang of Kala Koa Entertainment. I have been assisting him with creating a stronger online presence. It has been great fun getting to know him. You can also find him on YouTube.

To be honest, I had been feeling pretty cocky about my VA services and how I was so helpful to him. Again, to be honest, I was not.

Mitch pointed out some things to me that I hadn’t even thought of. He put this question to me:
“How can I be of more assistance if I know so little about Slack Key and it’s origins?” That stopped me in my tracks. He was absolutely correct.

It’s all well and good to get caught up in your own “stuff”, but the bottom line is as a VA we need to constantly be learning what our client’s needs are. We can’t know their needs, if we don’t understand just exactly it is that will help them to achieve their goals.

One of the many things that I have learned over the last few years is the importance of blogging.

I have not been the most diligent in this department, but I do try to do it whenever I think of it. I know that may not sound very professional, but it’s sometimes the best I can do.

Now, I would like to share a success story to the importance of blogging.

The other day I received and email from a potential client who was interested in my services as a virtual assistant. I responded to his inquiry and we set up a time to chat.

At the appointed time, he called and we did chat and he did in fact hire me.

I then asked him how he found me and he told me that he had Google Alerts set up for Virtual Assistants and my latest blog posting showed up. He then went to my website, read all about me and contacted me.

I have become a successful VA, partially due to the quality of work that I do, but also because I have another wonderful client and mentor, Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound. She has been instrumental in my success.

I also get a daily alert from The Blog Squad as well and I read and learn from what they teach as well.

I have clients that I have been hounding for some time to blog. Blog, blog, blog. The common response is “I don’t have time.”

I argue that it only takes 15 minutes to post a blog entry and that it doesn’t have to be a tome. It could be something they read or that they are promoting. I can’t seem to get the message across the importance of it. It’s not overnight success, it just takes diligence.

Set up a reminder to yourself to blog at least once a week. Once you get in the habit, increase it to twice a week and so one. It is a trickle-down effect and eventually you will have success as well.