It’s not easy being geek. Check the bottom of my purse or laptop bag and you’ll find a tangled ball of headphone cords, peripheral cables, dongles and thumb drives (those last two sound more exciting than they are, believe me). Answering my phone is always a colossal event, as I have to pry it from the grips of the mess, and by the time I’ve determined which of the plastic-metal boxes is my phone, it’s usually gone to voice mail. Sigh.
That’s why when I stumbled across Cocoon Innovations and their amazing Grid-It system, I was intrigued. Actually, I was jump-up-and-down excited because I was heading to BlogHer and KNEW that I couldn’t afford to be digitally disorganized as I made my way through the convention halls.
The Grid-It system consists of a board wrapped with a basketweave of rubberized elastic bands that intersect in varying widths, so that some of the spaces between them are large enough to hold a camera, and some are small enough to hold a pen. Cocoon Innovations was kind enough to send me their new iPad Sling to wear at the conference (thank you, CI!), and not only did it do WONDERS for my back because of it’s over-the-shoulder design, but the Grid-It board that came with it kept my lip gloss handy, as well as my cell phone and Flip video camera (a geek chic triumvirate if there ever was one!)
Cocoon Innovations makes all kinds of corralling gear for geeks— cases for laptops, gaming devices, phones, camera bags and more, most of which come with a Grid-It, which can also be purchased separately.
Cocoon Innovations was kind enough to give me an iPad Sling to wear at BlogHer, but I was not compensated for this post in any other way. I also would never write a positive review just cause I got free stuff. That would be icky.
The BlogHer conference was a blast, and I hopped from party to party, collecting business cards like a mad woman and tweeting up a storm. I might have even made some great joint venture deals— hard to remember with all that wine and swag flowing! Now that it’s over, I’ve got sore feet, stacks of business cards and days worth of unanswered emails. The party is definitely over!
The idea of following up with everyone I met and catching up on the work that I missed is making my brain throb. I am definitely experiencing Conference Crash. Here are the helpful tools and apps that I’m going to use to make my post-BlogHer recovery a little less painful.
Trapped inside each card in that stack you collected is a friendship, an opportunity, some great information, your next client or your next sale. And trapped they’ll stay if you don’t have a way to swiftly get them all into your contact management system, a daunting and time consuming task. Consider yourself rescued by Neat Receipts. This diminutive yet powerful scanner reads and extracts key information from your cards, documents and receipts so you can export it into your own system or database. Scan those scribbled notes you took at the keynote, hand-outs and flyers, and receipts you need to track for your next expense report— using Neat Receipts is like hiring a personal assistant to do all your typing for you, and it won’t even ask you for a raise.
Where can you store that business plan you wrote on the back of a napkin, the Exhibitor Hall contact list, that audio interview you recorded with the keynote speaker, and that photo of the Chardonnay label you sipped at the sponsor party? Evernote is like one big giant notebook you can tuck just about anything into. If you can see it or think of it, Evernote can help you store, organize and retrieve it. Web clippings, lists, documents, scans, audio files and more, all can be tagged and organized so you know you’ll be able to find it when you need it. Stuff it full of stuff from all corners of your digital life, and it will never be as heavy as your conference bag.
Stacks of unanswered emails are the worst side effect of Conference Crash. There’s urgent stuff— bills, work tasks, and emails from “real” people—sandwiched in between the department store coupons and mass newsletters. OtherInbox helps you get to that stuff first, and fast. It’s like having someone sort through your email, leaving all the important stuff in your inbox, then organizing and filing the rest for you to peruse when you’re done playing catch-up. Use the Organizer to teach OtherInbox about which emails are important to you and which can be tucked away to read later. Now, your inbox is a little less overwhelming and you can find your mom’s cat photos that much quicker (unless you tell OtherInbox to file her emails away— mums the word).
You met so many lovely people in 48 hours, but let’s face it, you want to network with some of the big fish first. How can you know whether that woman you met in the bathroom is a hobby bloggess, or a social media maven with legions who hang on her every word? Klout can help you determine the overall online influence of anyone. Just enter their twitter handle and you’ll get a thorough evaluation of things like their “Amplification Probability” (how likely their tweets are retweeted, or spark conversation), and their “Network Score” (how influential their followers are). Now you can make an informed decision about who to include in your first line of response— you’ll get to the rest, but first get to the ones with the most Klout— er, clout.
A hand-written “nice to meet you” note for everyone you encountered at BlogHer would be the ultimate smooth move— what better way to stand out from the pack? But writing all those letters is a one-way ticket to carpel tunnel, not to mention that most of your contacts didn’t give you their mailing address, and the postage bill would be sizeable. Send a card without the hassle with Cocodot, the eco-chic e-greeting company. Select from thousands of beautiful templates, then customize fonts and colors ‘til your heart’s content. Send a card to one or many, and each arrives in your recipient’s inbox in a digital envelope, which opens to reveal your beautiful card. The experience of opening one is so visceral it’s almost like the real thing. Upload your blog logo or company name for an even more personalized touch, or add a picture of yourself to the card to jog a new contact’s memory about what you look like.
Los Angeles moms, I’m starting an awesome monthly event that I want you to be a part of! Come hang with me and other amazing women as we talk life, family, career… and how to keep them all afloat! I’ll be hosting the first “Mompod” on May 21st, 10:00-11:30AM at the Treehouse Social Club, a hip-and-cool indoor playplace in Beverly Hills, so you can bring tykes and they’ll be plenty busy while we talk shop. $15 gets you admission plus 1 child, and bring extra kids for $7 each. This month, I’ll be talking about my biggest TIME MANAGEMENT secrets— spend 90 minutes with me at the Mompod and I’ll help you earn even MORE time back with everything you learn!
Space is limited, so email me if you’d like to join us, and I’ll reserve a spot for you.
Mompods are my first order of business as a new leadership member with First Tuesday, a national organization of phenomenal women. DEFINITELY check out their website for more information— this is an amazing group to join, whether you’re new in town, want to do some professional networking, or want to find fun ways to “give back”. I’m proud to be working with them!
These days, so much of your life is password-protected. Just about every website worth visiting requires you to “Log In,” leaving you to try and remember dozens of case-sensitive codes. Either that, or every password is the name of your childhood dog, Swifty, and you’re one hack away from digital destruction. Our identities are wrapped up in these bits of information, so much so that just the other day my husband referred to me affectionately as “Carleyknob” (my Gmail username). Poor guy, his brain is buckling under the pressure.
Enter Passpack, one of the best password managers I’ve ever seen, for a bunch of reasons. It’s web-based (so you can access it anywhere, unlike those scribbled post-its you stick to your monitor), extremely secure, and it does all the work for you. I’ll walk you through a couple of it’s amazing features, and you will DEFINITELY want to sign up and start using it!
Last weekend, I fixed a batch of my famous balsamic BBQ chicken wings, toasted a big ol’ loaf of garlic bread and watched the Oscars with some friends. The kids ran around and played while the grown-ups ogled the gowns and watched the acceptance speeches.
I marveled at what it must feel like to be up there on that stage, in front of millions, accepting an award. And how gracious everyone is about accepting the Oscar on behalf of all the people in their lives who made it possible for them to achieve. My mind wandered to where I was in my business this time last year, how far I’ve come, and how many people have helped me along the way.
Now that the Perfect Moms Finish Last launch is over, the class is sold out, and the first class has started, I wanted to give a shout-out to all the fabulous people on my team who have supported me and helped me bring my products and services to you.
(sniff) I promised myself I wouldn’t cry! (sniff!)
Rebecca Buscemi, professional and fun-to-work-with virtual assistant who set up the entire PMFL Blog for both the interview series and the course. (Twitter: rbuscemi)
Sawyer Hollenshead, my blog builder and all-around secret weapon. There’s nothing he can’t do with Wordpress, and he’s quick and professional to work with.
Lana Goldenberg, marketing strategist and my social media guru, she’s a whole lotta smarts in the sweetest package. She ran a Facebook Ads campaign that helped my “I Heart Organizing Giveaway” rock! (Twitter: lanagold)
The lovely Sarah Burns, all-knowing virtual assistant and fantastic blogger, who helped me architect my product launch and handled all the minutia of the I Heart Organizing Giveaway. (Twitter: SarahBHawaii)
Josh Schuyler at Every Angle Media, fearless audio engineer who put together all 20 PMFL interviews: He took dropped calls, interrupted interviews and some baa-aad sound quality and made it all sound amazing.
Jacqui Malouf, fabulous foodie, fellow Cannuck, great actress and even better friend— that’s her beautiful voice introducing me on all the PMFL interviews.
Nicole Dionne from Primal Scream Music who was kind enough to gift me the fabulous piece of music you hear on all the PMFL interviews (I begged her to let me have it!)
and
Amy Swift, Whitney Roberts & my SMARTY inner circle of support. You guys helped me take all the junk in my head and turn it into something amazing. If you hate networking and roll your eyes at most business coaches, you should check out SMARTY.
I’m excited to let you know that I will be the guest expert on a call with Momnificent’s Lori Radun on Wednesday, March 3rd at 10:30am PT/ 1:30pm ET. The call is part of her monthly Mom’s Club teleseminar series, which is full of fantastic resources to fuel your personal and professional growth as a mom.
Wednesday’s call is all about LEVERAGE. Because when you’re short on time (that’s all of us) and low on energy (helloooo!), you need to yield big results with little effort. Knowing how to leverage everything from your smartphone to your family members will help you maximize your two most precious resources— time and energy.
In our hour-long gab session, we’ll discuss how to automate, delegate and delete the things in life that drain you, making room for you to be more present with your children and work and have a more joyful life. We’ll tackle the negative mindsets and beliefs that keep people from getting the support they need, and how to overcome them. And we’ll talk about how doing less actually makes you more productive, and the myth of multi-tasking.
To learn more and to register for this teleclass, please visit http://www.tinyurl.com/marchmmc. Momnificent! will send you a reminder with the phone number and access code you will need to join me on this teleclass.
If you’ve been following the Perfect Moms Finish Last Interview Series, you’ve heard me talk about Perfect Mom Disorder, the affliction that plagues most moms I know. We’re all obsessed with doing everything “the right way” and we obsess over even the tiniest decisions, afraid to make a mistake, afraid to let our guards down that we don’t have it all under control.
In this video, I reveal how PMD rears it’s ugly head in my life, and how I almost had a nervous breakdown producing the interview series I designed to help battle it! I’m sharing stuff I’ve never shared before about how difficult motherhood was for me in the beginning, why I started Mothercraft, and how all roads have lead me to write the Perfect Moms Finish Last 6-Week Course.
If any of this resonates with you, and you’re feeling a little PMD, you’ll want to register for the preview call I’ll be hosting on February 25th at 10a PT/1p ET. I’ll be unveiling the entire syllabus for all six weeks, and registration will open immediately after.
Plus, I’ll be announcing the grand prize for the “I Heart Organizing Giveaway”, and you must be registered for the call to be entered to win the grand prize!
What’s your Perfect Mom Disorder Story? Please send it to me, I’d love to hear how you overcome your PMD (or at least give it a try!).
Mompreneur, you wear 42 different hats in your all-consuming business. You do everything from fulfillment to customer support, from marketing to PR, from business development to office supplies. (Argh— how can I be out of magenta ink AGAIN?!)
To the untrained eye, you’re lookin’ mighty busy. But is all that “busyness” showing up in your bottom line? Because, let’s face it, if your business isn’t making money, you’re nothing but a frustrated, drained, deflated mom with a really expensive hobby. Not pretty. In this new world of ever-emerging business models and social media platforms-du-jour, it can be tough to figure out where to place your time and attention. We need to build profitable, sustainable businesses that work— they grow, they thrive, and they GIVE us energy, not suck us dry.
This past year, I’ve asked myself all kinds of tough questions about what all my busyness has amounted to. Sometimes I was on track, and other times, it didn’t amount to a hill of beans. I simply REFUSE to be hit-or-miss like that— my time and energy is limited, and I want to have enough left over to bake cookies and chase my kids around the dining room table, or it’s just not worth it.
If you’re feeling like you’re chasing your tail, if you’re having trouble focusing, if you’re on the brink of packing it all in, join me for my very first Mompreneurs Coaching Circle. It’s all about creating a business that works for you (not the other way around!) and having the accountability you need to stay focused and grow, baby, grow. Yes, in this economy. Yes, even if you only have 3 hours a day to focus on your business.
There are only 4 spots left… is one of them yours? Once this group is full, it will be closed for 6 months, so this chance won’t come by again until the spring of 2010. Where will your business be by then? Hopefully, not in the trash bin with the empty ink cartridges. Again, not pretty.
For more information, and to sign your busy self up, click here. I can’t wait to meet you, and turn your “busyness” into one lean, mean, money-making, mom-owned business.
Lara Galloway is a firehose of amazing information for mompreneurs. A sweet firehose, with a comforting southern accent and a passion for helping moms build a “sustainable” (as in, you still want to be in business next year!) business makes a mom and her family truly happy.
Lara was kind enough to have me in her WoMEN Teleseminar Series (What Mom Entrepreneurs Need) to talk about my favorite subject— how to get stuff DONE! Check us out as we explore how to develop Ninja Mom Skills— get faster, more efficient, and more stealth about how you manage your time and meet your personal and professional goals.
Batching tasks is the art of doing a bunch of similar things all at once to save time… something all us busy moms can relate to when we’re constantly being interrupted and can never finish anything we start! Time is our most precious resource, so the more we can save by doing things more efficiently, the better! I figured out that I’d lose 30 hours this year to a particular task if I didn’t make a change… you’ll have to watch the video to see what it was!
This video refers to a tip I gave this past week on The Juicebox, a weekly email I write to help overwhelmed moms simplify their lives. Here, I address the friendly backlash I got from many of you Juiceboxers who balked at the idea of only checking your email 2X/day. Lay off the Crackberry, people!
Carley Knobloch did a parent education presentation at our school. Our parents related well to Carley and the topic. She encouraged self-reflection and shared her experience as a mother. Her advice as a Life Coach encouraged parents to work on their parenting skills and to continue to be life long learners. We would love to have her back in the future for teacher training and more parent education workshops. Sincerely, — Sylvia Rath, Director, Little Village Nursery School
The Grid-It system consists of a board wrapped with a basketweave of rubberized elastic bands that intersect in varying widths, so that some of the spaces between them are large enough to hold a camera, and some are small enough to hold a pen. Cocoon Innovations was kind enough to send me their new iPad Sling to wear at the conference (thank you, CI!), and not only did it do WONDERS for my back because of it’s over-the-shoulder design, but the Grid-It board that came with it kept my lip gloss handy, as well as my cell phone and Flip video camera (a geek chic triumvirate if there ever was one!)
