Technical Tidbits™

When I recently announced the changes I was undergoing here with the business my daughter said, “You got people!”

Yes, we got people! Once again, MICE is growing and this time I’m doing it differently! In the past, I’ve pulled back and stopped or slowed the growth. This time, I hired help!

The first change I initiated was a change with me. I needed to learn how to grow the right way this time and have someone successful mentor me, challenge me, and keep me focused.  So, I hired Louise Barnes-Johnston (@LouiseBJ on twitter) from Frontline Results as my business/life coach!

If you listened to the archives on our BlogTalk Radio show, you will know she was the one responsible for getting me started on the radio show and was my first guest!

Louise has been a refreshing, objective observer in my business and life. She’s got me eating breakfast (Bran Flakes and banana’s) and taking time out to really eat it – not wolf it down.  And when I can’t see the forest through the trees, she just reminds me of the obvious and I’m back in focus again!

It’s going on 5 weeks with her now and all I can say is WOW! But the proof shall be in the website. And wait until you see what’s coming!

The next step I took was asking Anthony Valente, CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) and CEO of Network Defense Solutions to be a teaching assistant for me on my college-based online courses.  He has agreed to that and much more!

Let me tell you, Anthony is a dynamo! He has taken over answering the students for the week which has allowed me to get caught up on some much needed work. But he hasn’t stopped there! He’s come up with some OUTSTANDING ideas that through our company partnerships, we are going to rock the security community through our teaching! But I won’t spoil the surprises coming. You’ll have to watch for our announcement.

The next step was to hire help. Louise helped me realize that I just couldn’t try to be everything to everyone as I’ve tried to do in the past. And this is a big problem if you’re an entrepreneur.  Not only do we have “shiny object” syndrome – as Louise calls it – we don’t like to let go of our baby – our business.

First, the shiny object syndrome we entrepreneurs suffer from is getting excited about new ideas before we complete what we started. Sort of like when you see a shiny object somewhere and say, “Oh! What’s that?” Then you focus your attention on the new shiny object until another one diverts your attention. Thanks to Louise, I’m no longer chasing shiny objects! Well, ok, not as frequently anyway! (GRIN)

And I’ve learned to let go.

You should be receiving your first set of newsletters again.  (If you haven’t signed up, see the link to do so at the end of this post!)

While I’m still writing the content, I’ve hired a wonderful Virtual Assistant company, TCT Business Solutions, LLC.

I met Tracey, (@TraceyTarrant on twitter) through twitter. In fact, she and Louise were one of the first people I followed and had follow me! I didn’t even know what a Virtual Assistant (VA) was until Tracey explained it to me!

The wonderful thing about signing up with Tracey’s company is that she’s based in the USA! It makes me feel good to know that she hires people in the US and that I’m keeping US people employed by hiring her company.

The other side benefits are:

1. The service is a legitimate business expense and fully deductable.
2. She hires the staff so I don’t have to worry about interviewing and finding the right person.
3. She pays the staff so I don’t need to worry about filing employers taxes, unemployment, and all that other employee related stuff.
4. The service is affordable for someone who’s growing! If I do the basic business calculations to determine if I could afford an additional employee, the numbers say, “no!” I’m not even paying myself! So, Tracey’s company allows me the luxury of help without the high overhead of an in-house staff person.
5. She is so easy to work with! I had no clue what the heck I was doing hiring her company but one phone call from Tracey and I was at ease and at home. She makes the process totally painless!

Now, I write newsletters, Tracey’s company sends them out! No more late or “never sent” newsletters!

Which also brings me to our new newsletter service! We’ve signed up with Constant Contact since there have been repeated reports that people are not getting their newsletters when we do legitimately send them out.  So, I decided to join them and get deliverability.

Next on the agenda is getting a dynamic PHP menu set up here on the website. I wanted to move the site to Joomla to end my trials and tribulations of having to update every single page to add a new menu item, but the learning curve is too time consuming for me right now.  So, I’ve moved us back to the original design.

If you can do, or know someone who does  a PHP/MySQL dynamic menu that looks like the menu on our home page: http://mice.org, please get in touch with me immediately to discuss pricing! You can contact me by clicking here.

Finally, I will again be writing regularly here on the blog.

So, look for many new and exciting things to start happening, as well as your old favorites!

And if you’re not receiving our newsletters, you can check out the available list and a sample of all but one newsletter, and sign up here: http://mice.org/lists.

You can still get the Weekly Security Digest free for one year if you sign up now! I’m going to be canceling that freebie shortly and it will be fee based soon.

That being said, I need to get busy on the course edits!

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