What the Coast Guard Taught Me About Teamwork And Building a Team That Runs Before I ever balanced a budget or built a filing system, I learned what a good team looks like in the Coast Guard. Even though I wasn’t always the best “team player”, it stuck with me, and over the years,…
It’s Not What You Think, And Can Be Prevented If someone had asked me yesterday what I believed to be the major cause of food recalls, I would have said pathogens.. My dominant trait, good or bad, is curiosity, so I dug into Gemini Notebook, uploaded all of my sources, and was quite surprised…
Life doesn’t check your calendar before it throws something at you. You catch the flu the same week you’re short staffed. A family emergency pulls you away with zero notice. This is where SOPs come in, and yes, I know that sounds like corporate jargon. Stick with me, SOPs are the best Cover Your…
Do you feel overwhelmed by your inbox? Like being in a room where everyone is talking at once? If your answer is yes, you are in good company. I used to have 46,000 unread emails sitting in mine, so trust me, I get it. A messy inbox is not just annoying. It eats your…
Last week: the philosophy. This week: what to actually do. Last week I talked about why folder structure should be standard but file names should match how you think. This week, let’s put it into practice. Build your naming convention around one question:When I search for this in six months, what’s the first word…
The system that works for you, might lose your virtual assistant completely. We all know someone, who’s desk is a complete mess. You ask them for something and without pause, they reach down and grab it out from under a small pile, or out of a drawer full of stuff, smiling. Or… you tried…
The varied, and a little wild, journey that built the foundation of becoming a virtual assistant. When people hear the name of my business, I usually tell them it came from some personal changes I made a few years ago. And that’s true. But the full story? That took closer to two decades, and…
I remember the flour recalls. Between 2016 and 2019, I kept seeing headlines that stopped me in my tracks. It snapped me right back into watching the food industry again, even though I had stepped back from it follow a different path. I started following every recall resource I could find. Because flour wasn’t…
Laziness, as we commonly define it, might not actually exist It’s easy to call someone’s actions lazy. It’s easy to call ourselves lazy. Then comes the guilt, self-chastising and other unhealthy behaviors that affect our productivity. I have gone through this myself quite often. To be absolutely transparent, it is the main reason why…