Sunday, September 23, 2007

Women's Mentoring Workshop Friday September 28

"To the world, you may just be somebody. But to somebody, you may just might be the world." Unknown


My good friend Anna Campbell, leader of Women Business Owners is hosting "Mentors Needed, Mentors Found" online event this coming Friday, September 28, 2007 and I am speaking.

Here's the info on my workshop:

Topic: How to Investigate, Initiate and Evaluate a High-performance Mentoring Program for Your Company or Organization presented by Heidi Richards, Founder & CEO of The WECAI Network.

Time: 8am-9am PST ~ 11am-12pm EST

Description: In this session Heidi will give an overview of the following: How to determine if your organization is ready for a mentoring program, How to implement a successful mentoring program, The dos and don’ts of setting up your mentoring program, What to expect from your mentoring program, How to measure the success of the program, Heidi will also share case studies, best practices and stories of successful mentor/mentee relationships.

The program is free and open to the public.

Also presenting:

Yvonne Reeves-Chong with SeedTime & Harvest
Felicia J. Slattery with Communication Transformation
Dr. Teena Cahill with Wisdom and Beyond LLC
Amy Garner with Noevir
Barbara Theodosiou with Mommy Mentors

For more information and to attend, visit: Women Business Owners Mentor Program .

Hope to see you there!

Heidi

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Email Time Management!

“Staying connected to email has become a lifestyle more than a choice these days… take back your right to choose and free yourself to do other important tasks.” Heidi Richards


Last post I wrote about being addicted to your inbox. You know you are addicted if you have to check your e-mail several times during the day and it’s not for business!

Did you know you can set your e-mail to check itself?

I just found out that with many email programs including Outlook Express you can set your email program to check at whatever interval you set it for – you can check every five minutes, every 30 mintues, every hour or twice a day (I highly recommend the latter – which is much more efficient – and you will be amazed at how much more you can accomplish in a days time.

Here’s how you do it with Outlook Express: open OE and go to Tools, Options and choose the General tab. Look for the Send/Receive Messages section.

Choose "Check for new messages every (blank) minutes." Check that box and then choose how often you want your e-mail to be checked. Also, directly right below that option, there is an option that if your computer isn't connected to the Internet at the selected time you chose to check email, you may choose to have your computer not connect you, connect only when working offline or connect even when you are working offline.

If you use a program other than Outlook Express to manage your email, do a little research to find out if this option is available to you.

This is a more efficient way to stay “connected” to your inbox without being dependent on it.

Wishing you a great day... and more!

Heidi

Heidi Richards, Founder & Chief Visionary The WECAI Network - “Helping Women Do Business on and off the WEB™”
Our blogs: WE Magazine for Women and VirtualWomansDay

To download a Complimentary Copy of our latest eBook “GET IT WRITE,” visit - http://wecai.org/wwps/html/getitwrite.html

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Are you Addicted to Your Inbox?

“I don't believe in email. I'm an old-fashioned girl. I prefer calling and hanging up.”
Sarah Jessica Parker

This is so frustrating! I have been trying to check my email for the past 2 hours with absolutely no luck! It appears that my inbox cannot connect with the server hosting my email. And I am about to go bonkers. You see, I have tons of work to get done today (yesterday was a holiday in the US) just to catch up with the week.

I have emails to check, emails to send, blog posts to write and more.

Today I realized that I'm an addict! And email junkie! Seldom a day goes by when I don't check email first thing when I get to work and again last thing before I leave the office for the day. In fact, since I started blogging I even open up email at home and check it! I'm addicted to my inbox!

Once I realized that I could not check email today, at least not right now, I thought, there's gotta be other things I can do besides check my email. So here I am writing a blog post about it, and hoping (praying really) that I will be reconnected soon.

It also got me thinking, just how productive can I be if I'm always online attached at the fingertips to my inbox?

After all, I have articles I can write, my magazine needs to be be proofread, bills could be paid (now there's a thought more painful than not being able to check my email), and I have lots of files to go through and clean out.

Is there a cure? Is there an Email Addicts Anonymous group I could join? And the real question is, do I really want to?

Oh, well since I am going through withdrawal I might as well get busy and start on some of those other items on my "to do list." Maybe I should take Sarah Jessica Parker's advice and use the phone!

Well, at least one of the items on my list is now done for the day :D!

Heidi

Monday, September 3, 2007

Goal Setting is NOT the Same as Goal Achieving!

“Most people overestimate what they can do in a year, and underestimate what they can do in a decade.” Marlena Corcoran of Athena Mentor http://www.athena-mentor.com/


Anyone can set a goal. Heck, that's easy! All you have to do is write down what it is you want to accomplish and voila'! Goal(s) set!

But there is so much more. Yes, it's true a lot of people don't even set goals so how will they ever achieve them. And others believe that if you set the intention, the universe will somehow provide.

Being a realist I believe you have to set the intention and then work out the steps to achieve them.

And you also have to have accountability.

It is not enough to set the goals and work out the steps. You gotta follow them... and it is much easier to do so, when you have someone there cheering you on... or at least holding your feet to the fire.

I belong to several social networking sites, like HER Mastermind Network on RYZE. We have a day dedicated to sharing our goals for the week with the forum. I love doing that because not only are my goals now in black and white, they are written permanently into a conversation thread that others read. And often comment on - a great way to find out when others are paying attention!

And we also have a day called "goal review day." I have to admit that on a couple of ocassions I did not post on goal review day. Mostly because most of the goals I had set on Monday were not even touched by Friday. But it is a great reminder of earlier intentions. And ocassionally I realize that those goals were not the most important things to work on that particular week.

By the way, if you haven't joined a group like RYZE, I highly encourage it. You can check out HER Mastermind Network at:
http://HERMastermind-network.ryze.com

When you sign up, you receive a free copy of Motivation to WIN -The Winners Sourcebook to Achieve Your Goals and Get What You Want Out of Life.

Check it out today!

Heidi

Heidi Richards, Founder & Chief Visionary The WECAI Network™- “Helping Women Do Business on and off the WEB™”
To download a Complimentary Copy of our latest eBook “GET IT WRITE,” visit - http://wecai.org/wwps/html/getitwrite.html

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Looking for Book Recommendations from Women

“Reach out your hand if your cup be empty, If your cup is full may it be again, Let it be known there is a fountain, That was not made by the hands of men…” Robert Hunter and the Grateful Dead Band


I am writing an article and wanted to include a list of Greatest Business Books - it will be called 100 Business Books Women Recommend and I need your help!

Please share your recommendations for the best business books you have read. They do not have to be current books, they can be books written years ago.

For instance, I am a big fan of the eMyth and eMyth revisited so they will likely end up on the list.

If you want to say why they are your favorite, that's okay too, but not necessary. The title and author would be enough for my purposes. However, others reading this may wish to know why, so feel free to share your "whys." After the list is compiled, I will post it here. When we get 100 we will post 100 more.

Happy Saturday... and then some.

Heidi

Founder & CEO, The WECAI Network™
To download a Complimentary Copy of our latest eBook “GET IT WRITE,”
visit - http://wecai.org/wwps/html/getitwrite.html