Marie Leslie Media Blogging, Branding & Social Media Management

How to Organize Important Documents, Part 4

Welcome to Part IV of How to Organize Important Documents. You can read Part I here , Part II here. And Part III here.

If you’ve been following the series, you’ve taken care of all your piles and pretty much now all you have left are magazine articles, newspaper clippings, recipes and hobby/craft paperwork.

Do you think you’ll ever use them?

Be honest now.

If the answer is no, just toss them and go do something fun. No guilt, no more projects that you clearly aren’t all that interested in doing hanging over your head.

Didn’t that feel good? Now, don’t clip out any more articles. Just find them online and pin them. Pinterest can be your virtual bulletin board/filing cabinet for all the really cool ideas and really delicious recipes you’re never going to do anything with.

**But if you really must go through them, here’s how.**

First, toss all the magazine articles that are more than six months old and don’t mention you or a member of your immediate family by name (you can keep those; they’re called family history. Put them in an appropriately labeled file folder and file them for future generations to marvel at). You can keep any articles less than six months old that you can get read within two weeks. They aren’t going back into your file cabinet or your to-file pile. Keep only what you know you can get to within two weeks. And remember, you will need to allot time for sleeping, eating and working during those two weeks so be realistic.

If you are a crafty person and you actually make these crafts, you have my permission to keep your favorites. Toss everything that is no longer in fashion. If those crocheted toilet paper covers really do ever come back in style, I’m sure you will find the instructions on the internet. Do not keep things just in case. Do NOT give them to your crafty friends. They already have too many of their own and don’t need to store yours so you won’t feel guilty.

Sort the keepers by subject. For example, file knitting patterns in one folder, tole painting projects in another and home improvement ideas (that could actually happen in your house) in their own folder. Every six months go through these folders and purge them.

After the crafts we’ll tackle the recipes. If you can’t pronounce the dish or the ingredients in it, toss it. Experience shows that most people won’t cook dishes with ingredients they can’t identify—or find at the grocery store. Before keeping any more, see if you can find the recipe online and either bookmark it or download it and store in a digital recipe file (Cook’n is great for this). I’m a recipe person—I really do make them—and I’ve started tearing recipes out of magazines, taking them to my desk and looking them up online. 90% of the time, I find them. If I don’t I pop it in the scanner and digitize it on the spot. It’s much easier finding what I want to cook on my computer than it is sorting through piles of paper (and this is from the Cookbook Queen—I have close to 100 cookbooks in their own special bookcase). Give yourself a timetable for these new recipes—add them to your monthly menu. If you try it and don’t like it, toss the recipe immediately so you don’t mistakenly make it again.

And last but certainly not least are papers relating to hobbies or interests. The biggest hobby paper tiger I can think of is family history, aka genealogy, though there are certainly any number of other hobbies that can generate reams of papers to be sorted and filed. I can’t tell you what to keep and what not to keep and if you’re avidly into your hobby, I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what’s really important.

You know; you just need to ditch the guilt along with the trash.

And in the last installment of this series—just in time for the end of the school year—we’ll look at what to do with all those “treasures” your kids bring home from school.

Filed Under: Steps to Success

Images of Motherhood

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. So for this week’s photography post, I am sharing a few of my favorite images of mothers, along with some of my favorite motherhood quotes.

A little girl, asked where her home was, replied, “where mother is. ~Keith L. Brooks

A mother’s reach extends beyond the generations and into the eternities. ~Unknown

An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest. ~Spanish Proverb

As a mother, my job is to take care of what is possible and trust God with the impossible. ~Ruth Bell Graham

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. ~Abraham Lincoln

Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. ~Marion C. Garretty

A mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled. ~Emily Dickinson

A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to making leaning unnecessary. ~Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The noblest calling in the world is that of mother. True motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece or who can write a book that will influence millions deserves the plaudits and admiration of mankind; but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters whose immortal souls will be exerting an influence throughout the ages long after paintings shall have faded, and books and statues shall have been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give. ~David 0. McKay

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If you are fortunate enough to spend Mother’s Day with your mother, be sure you take a photograph. Better yet, take lots of them.

And share this post with a mother you love.

Filed Under: Photography

Do You Know Who’s Pinning You?

If you’re a Pinterest user, you know that you get notifications when other Pinterest users repin your pins, but wouldn’t it be nice to know when users were pinning things from your website?

You can.

With PinAlerts, you can track pins from your website or blog to Pinterest. And you can, by clicking on the links in the report, see who’s pinning them, which is kind of cool.

And the best part? PinAlerts is a FREE service.

I’ve been using PinAlerts for a few weeks now and am finding it really helpful in determining what really gets my readers’ attention.

You can use PinAlerts in your marketing campaign to see what is most popular with your readers. Pinterest is one of the internet’s fastest growing and most popular sites right now. So popular, in fact, that it is helping drive traffic for sales and busineses. According to MediaBistro.com, “Pinterest is now so strong that the platform is outperforming both Twitter and Facebook for click-through revenue.”

Natalie Wardel, the Social Media Director at KSL, a NBC-affiliated television station based in Utah, stated, “I use PinAlerts to learn what our viewers find interesting. I love how easy it is – I check my email every morning and have a clear look at what kind of content is popping for Pinterest users.”

“At KSL, we are curating content on Pinterest around news topics – family, health, tech, etc. – and I have been using PinAlerts to know what kind of content people are wanting to see from us. The pins that I have created after seeing the link on PinAlerts have done really well, so it helps me identify effective content.” KSL is on Pinterest athttp://pinterest.com/kslnews

PinAlerts.com was developed by Pinterest experts Janet Thaeler, Paul Wilson, and John Benson of PinnableBusiness.com. Pinnnable Business develops Pinterest marketing tools and solutions. PinAlerts is the company’s first release and is currently in beta. Check out the PinAlerts press kit for more information, and watch for future Pinterest tools by subscribing to the Pinnable Business blog.

To get your FREE PinAlerts account, sign up at http://pinalerts.com/index/add

Parts of this article were quoted from a PinAlerts.com press release.

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Filed Under: Social Media

How to Organize Important Documents, Part 3

Welcome to Part III of How to Organize Important Documents. You can read Part I here and Part II here.

At the end of Part II, I said we would talk about how to manage your current financial records, and here it is.

Organizing Current Financial Records

What do you do with all the everyday financial records—household bills, brokerage statements, IRA records, paycheck stubs and bank statements? Well, if you’re me, you see how many of them you can have sent to you electronically instead of in the mail. I pay as many bills as possible online and it’s a simple matter for me to store the statements by year in a “finance” file on my computer. When I need a receipt for an online payment, I save it as a PDF instead of printing it out. I’m pretty sure I’ve saved a small forest by now, not to mention the wear and tear on my printer and shredder.

For bills that come in the mail and need to be paid the same way, I have a 3-ring binder with slip-in page protectors that I use as storage pockets. One pocket holds stamps, one holds envelopes and another holds return address labels. The remaining pockets hold personal correspondence that needs to be addressed and business correspondence that needs to be addressed. And then there is a pocket for personal bills and one for business bills. As the bills come in the mail, the envelopes are opened, all the stuffers removed and the bill and its payment envelope go into the appropriate pocket.

On my designated bill pay day (ok, my husband’s designated bill pay day because I hate doing it), he just gets out the notebook, pulls out what he needs and pays them and the book goes back on the shelf until the next week. Once the bill is paid, it gets filed. If a document or bill will be needed for taxes at the end of the year, it either goes into a file folder marked “current taxes” in the financial drawer of my file cabinet or into a computer folder of the same name if it’s an electronic statement.

For everything else—utility bills, credit card receipts, etc.—we only keep those for six months. Every six months, I clean out the files and we start over. Bank statements get kept for a year, as do pay stubs. Once we have a W-2, the pay stubs get shredded. Annual brokerage and IRA statements get kept permanently. Bills are sorted into file folders by type of expense. All credit card statements go in one folder together. All utility bills go in one folder together. All medical bills go into one folder together (medical records are filed individually by patient name–I don’t store medical bills and medical histories together). I do keep all of my bills and financial records together in one drawer of the file cabinet. This makes both filing and retrieval much easier. Within that section, I store the folders alphabetically.

Because I’m very lazy smart, I time my six-month purge for the month that the local shredding company has a free drop-off. I toss all my papers into a box and drop it off for them to shred. This way I don’t have to spend hours at the shredder and there’s no mess to clean up afterward.

Now that all your important papers are sorted, you can turn your attention to all those magazine articles, recipes and really great ideas you’ve clipped and saved. But this was plenty of work for one day, so I’ll cover that in my next article of the series.

How do you keep track of your bills? If you have a system that works better for you–meaning you can easily put your hands on a bill without having to hunt through all your drawers or dig through piles–I’d love to have you share it. I am always up for great new ideas, so please be sure to leave your comments and questions in the comment section below.

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Filed Under: Steps to Success

Make Beautiful Music with Beautiful Music Photography Today

It’s photography Saturday and time to get out and get creative with the camera. This week I want to focus on music photography. There are many ways to photograph the subject of music. Not only do I love to photograph people playing and people with their instruments, but I also love the beautiful craftsmanship of fine musical instruments.

playing the piano, music photography

I was originally going to blog about something else today, but last night was my daughter’s last band concert of the year and that got me in a music mood. I am a passionate supporter of school music; you can read more about school music and me here. So today’s blog post can wait for next week.

I have ~~dozens~~ hundreds of music-related photographs in my files, but here are just a few that happened to be handy. That first one up there, I took at a wedding reception. The bride wanted something special for her reception music and her very talented grandfather honored her by providing the ambiance for the evening. You don’t have to get the whole instrument or even the whole musician in to tell the story. I think getting close and focusing on the hands sometimes can really tell more of a story than a whole person.

I’ve spent a lot of time with the high-school band kids over the years and so I’ve created portraits of more than a few. I think my favorite senior portrait sessions were nearly always with the band kids. They liked to have fun, they loved featuring their instruments and they nearly always played for me.

Of course, not all my band kids were marching band members. Some had a focus on other instruments. Get creative. When you’re photographing a musician, you already have a subject who understands creativity. Try some different poses and lighting, as well as some creative aftereffects.

In the summertime, all along the 16th Street Mall in Denver, there are old pianos. Most are playable, though some are not. But you can almost always find someone sharing their talents in an impromptu recital along the mall. I really enjoy still life with instruments. I have photographed all of our instruments and a few borrowed ones as well. I’ll have to pull more out of my files to share.

As a band mom, I’ve photographed many a marching competition. This is still one of my favorite pictures.

What’s the point of having your own band kids if you can’t have a little Photoshop fun with them? This one is actually three separate images but it was a ball to both photograph and process.

Another guitar-playing senior. . . .

String instruments are not only beautiful works of art, it is art to watch a great cellist in action. This is from another wedding.

And, finally, one of my favorite musical senior portraits.

I admit, I might have an advantage as we have enough musical instruments in our house to start our own symphony (a dozen or more, at last count), but I’ll bet if you look around, you’ll be able to find some music-related photography. Whether it’s a still life of an instrument, a portrait of a musician or some great shots of the parade passing by, go out create some beautiful music photography today. I’ll be posting some additional music images on Marie Leslie Media’s Facebook page this weekend, along with more tips on how to get great music images.

Filed Under: Photography

Do You Use Your Most Important Business Skill?

listening is an important skill

Do you know what the most important business skill is? It’s not sales. It’s not marketing. It’s not copywriting. It’s not public speaking. It’s not even networking.

The most important business skill isn’t any of these, but it is related to all of them.

The most important business skill is listening.

That’s right. Listening.

If you are not listening, really listening to what your customers and prospective customers are telling you, you are not going to last long in the business world.

The most successful business people succeed not because they are the best salespeople or the best marketers, but because they are the best at figuring out what it is their customers need and then filling that need.

And how do they figure out what that need is? By listening.

If listening, and especially active, analytical listening isn’t one of your strengths, don’t despair. You can learn to be a better listener. Here are a few tips to get you started.

Make a Decision. Decide that listening is an important skill. It sounds obvious but until you consciously decide to be a better listener, it’s not going to happen.

Be interested. When you are listening to someone, really listen to what they are saying. You need to focus all of your energy on the person you are listening to. Don’t be checking your phone messages, your email or your Twitter feed. Put it all down and listen to the speaker.

Keep an Open Mind. If you’ve already decided how this conversation is going to go, you’re not going to learn anything from it. Get rid of any preconceived notions you have about your speaker and open yourself up to the possibility of new ideas.

Observe the Body Language. Body language can give you strong non-verbal cues about what is really important to your speaker. Body movements, expressions and inflection can help you determine what the speaker is passionate about and how they feel about the subject.

Take Notes. It’s ok to take notes, even in a face-to-face conversation. No one expects you to remember everything. Taking notes will help you to remember the important points of the conversation and what is important to your speaker. It will also help you to frame appropriate questions that will help you learn more, which leads to our next point.

Ask Questions. Invite the speaker to tell you more. Allow them to give you even more detail about what’s important to them and what they need and how you can fill that need.

How have you worked to become a better listener? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Filed Under: Steps to Success

How to Organize Important Documents, Part 2

Since you followed the instructions from my last post on organizing documents, you now you have several tidy stacks of papers. You may think that you are now organized, but this is really just the beginning. We need to make these stacks disappear.

Tax Returns

First, take care of your tax returns and associated paperwork—get out a manila envelope and put each year’s tax returns & associated forms (W-2, 1099, etc.) in its own envelope and clearly label it with “tax returns” and the year. You’re going to need to keep those forever. Well, at least seven years, but the returns themselves really should be permanent.

I keep my financial records that go with the tax returns in manila envelopes as well and store those in plastic file boxes since I have to keep them seven years.

Once you’ve archived those papers, you need to move on to things that need to be filed but still accessible.

Vital Records

The first important category of papers is your vital records: birth, marriage, death certificates, citizenship documents, social security cards, wills, power of attorney, advance directives and divorce decrees fall into this category. These are called VITAL records for a reason. They are all important and must be stored safely. Ideally, a safe deposit box is the best place for these records; a fireproof safe would be the next best place. At the very least, give them their very own clearly labeled folder in your file cabinet so you can find them again.

Next would be vehicle titles and home ownership documents. These should be kept for as long as you own the vehicle or property. NEVER keep a vehicle title with the vehicle. We have a separate file folder for each vehicle and we keep the title, past registrations and all the maintenance records in the folder. Current registrations go in the car, of course. This makes it very easy when it’s time to sell your car. We do the same for our home ownership papers and keep the property tax records in the file. Home improvements and maintenance go in a separate folder as there are usually more of those.

Medical Records

For medical records, each family member (and the dog) has his or her own folder where we keep immunization records, prescription records and records from each doctor or dentist visit. It’s much simpler than trying to sort through everyone’s records to find something from one person.

Warranties

Warranties and owner’s manuals, whether for vehicles, appliances, tools or other household goods should be filed and kept as long as you own the item. For these, I have file folders by type of warranty, one folder for kitchen, one for major appliances, one for tools, one for electronics, etc.

Once you no longer own the item, you no longer need to own the owner’s manual. So throw out the user guide for that TV you gave to Goodwill five years ago, ok?

Next week we’ll cover what to do with your current financial records–the ones that you need to keep track of month to month and week to week.

How do you manage your paper? What do you most need help with? Please share your questions, comments and feedback in the comment section below.

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Filed Under: Steps to Success

Three Ways to Find Blog Topics

It’s nine o’clock on Sunday night and you need a blog post for Monday morning.

You stare intently at the computer screen, fingers poised over the keyboard—and nothing comes out.

You can’t think of a single thing to write about, but you have to write something.

What do you do when your creative well runs dry?

Here are three ways to prime the pump and come up with blog topics.

Use a Favorite Quote

Whatever your niche is, whatever your business focus, there’s a quote somewhere–probably dozens of them—that relate to your topics of interest. Sites like Quote Garden, Brainy Quote, ThinkExist.com all have search features for quotes.

Even better, create your own quote database in Excel or Word, where you can paste in quotes that catch your attention or inspire you in some way. Then, when you need a quote for something, or you need an idea to write about, you’ll already have some you like to choose from.

Revisit an Old Post

Go back six months, a year, or even two if you’ve had your blog that long. Pick a post, read it, think about what you’ve learned or what’s changed since you wrote it and write an update. It doesn’t have to link directly back to that original post, just give a quick update on the topic. Remember, you don’t need to write a novel. Blog posts under 500 words often get more notice than something two or three times that length.

Review Your Week

Make a quick review of your week. What went right? What went wrong? Did you learn anything? Did you read something that sparked an idea? Did you meet someone who inspired you in some way? Pick one highlight—or lowlight—of your week and share it with your readers. If it was a lowlight, what went wrong and what could you do differently? What did you learn from it? If it was a highlight, shout it from the rooftops. Tell us why it was a highlight and how it improved things. You don’t have to share in all the gory details; just give us enough to help us learn from your week, too.

What do you do when you’re out of ideas? Please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section below.

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Filed Under: Steps to Success

Feeding the Creative Soul with Tulips

Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul. ~The Quran

It’s finally spring. Really, truly completely spring.

I can tell because the tulips are blooming.

Tulips are my favorite flower. I had some planted along the front walk in my last house, but we’re just starting landscaping and planting tulips didn’t get to be at the top of my priority list last fall.

So, I had to go out and hunt for tulips. And I found them. In all their glorious rainbow colors.

They were in the middle of a shopping mall.

Other than Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, we didn’t visit any stores.

I was there for the tulips (and a caramel pecan apple).

I was in seventh heaven.

They had beds of tulips on every corner and more surrounding the square where just a short time ago, hubby and the kids went ice skating.

The creative possibilities were endless but my memory card wasn’t.

Definitely a tulip lover’s paradise.

I think this one is my favorite.

I haven’t had my fill yet. Just last evening, I drove by the library and found a beautiful bed of long-stem red tulips. Maybe I need to go to the library today.

I bet you’d like a few tips on getting really awesome flower shots.

Get close. Flowers don’t bite.

If it’s a big bed, be sure to get some great over-all shots. But mostly, get in close. If you have a macro lens (I don’t at the moment) or a macro setting on your camera, this is just what it is designed for. Oh, and get eye level with the tulips. If you shoot everything from a standing position, it’s pretty boring. If I can get down on my belly in the middle of a shopping center (yes, I did–it’s my hubby’s job to make sure no one trips over me or runs over me), you can do it, too.

Backlighting is good.

On this particular day, it was cloudy so the light is soft and that makes for nice images, but when the sun is out, try and get some with the sun either coming in from the side or from the back. This really highlights the flower’s texture.

Look at the background.

Move around and try to find an angle that isn’t distracting. Bright white glare from a sidewalk, building or parked car can ruin an otherwise beautiful photograph. And no, the answer to that is not to “fix it in Photoshop.” Most of the time just moving an inch or two either way will change the background. Flowers often look best against a dark background, whether it is a deep blue sky or the foliage of other plants.

Get creative.

Try some interesting crops, positioning or grouping of flowers. Every flower image doesn’t have to be the whole flower and stem. Many times a smaller view is more interesting and more powerful.

Remember the rule of thirds.

Don’t put your flower in the center of every picture. Bo-ring. You don’t know about the rule of thirds? Read this post about photography and the rule of thirds.

Filed Under: Photography

What Middle School Band Teaches Us About Business Success

Last night I went to my local school district’s annual honor band concert. My youngest daughter is a musician and earned the honor of second-chair flute this year. All of my children are musicians, but she has a passion that well exceeds the other three combined. But that’s another article–you can read it here.

Since we had a musician in the band, she needed to arrive early. This gave me quite a bit of time to observe the band and to see them interact with each other and with their director. And while I watched them prepare and rehearse and perform, I realized that there is much to be learned from the band.

Studying music has many well-documented benefits, including improving creativity and helping students increase both mathematic and language abilities.

But beyond that, there are many lessons musicians must learn that can help us in the business world as well. Here are just a few that stood out to me last night.

Be a Team Player

Have you ever played in a band or orchestra? It is most defnitely a team activity. In order to create music that will be pleasing, the band members need to collaborate and work together. Just one musician deciding to go off and do his own thing can make the whole thing fall apart. There is a time and a place for individuality in both business and band music, but it needs to be appropriate. If you’ve decided to work with a team, be a part of the team. Work together and support one another so you can all be successful. Know your role and do your part. If you are the leader, be the leader. If you aren’t the leader, don’t undermine his or her authority by deciding to do your own thing. Have you ever watched a band try to play with an inexperienced director, one who didn’t know how to bring the band together? have you ever played in a band where the musicians didn’t follow the director’s cues? It’s not a pleasant experience for either musician or listener.

Be aware of what those around are doing, but focus on what you are doing and don’t worry about your bandmates’ performance.

It is important both in band and in business to be aware of what your colleagues and competitors are doing. But if you get too hung up or too worried about what they are doing, your own performance is going to suffer. I have seen many entrepreneurs drive their business into the ground because they were so worried about staying ahead of the competition and one-upping their competitors that they stopped focusing on what they did best.

Practice Makes Perfect

The band never sounds as good on the first run-through as it does after a few practice sessions. It’s the same with your business. Do you want to be known as the authority? Then work to become one. Know your field of expertise. Study and keep up with the latest developments and trends. Don’t rest on your laurels or think you know all there is to know. That is the short road to business failure.

You’re Only as Good as Your Next Challenge

In a band, musicians are ordered by “chair.” It’s actually a very literal term. You sit in your section of the band in order of skill, from the best to the worst (I’m sure there’s some PC term for the kid who sits last chair, but you can find it on your own). The best is First Chair. You can move up from your assigned chair by challenging the person who sits in the next chair up the line from you. A challenge involves the challenger selecting a piece of music for you both to play individually and to be judged by the band director. If you’re better prepared than the other guy, you win the challenge. It’s the same in business. Those who succeed in business are those who are constantly focused on being prepared for their next challenge because they know it’s coming. Don’t be caught by surprise.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

We all need a little help now and then. Some pieces of music are more challenging than others. A good music teacher can push you and inspire you and help you figure out the rough parts to truly hone your skill. There are very few self-taught, world-class musicians around. There are also very few self-taught, world-class entrepreneurs around. The best ones, in both music and business, recognize the importance of teachers, mentors and coaches. A great coach or mentor will push you and inspire you and help you figure out the rough parts to help you succeed in business.

And just like in the band, when we’ve learned our lessons and applied them, the result is a beautiful and inspiring thing.

What lessons have you learned from life that you have been able to apply to your business? Please share them in the comment section below.

Filed Under: Life Lessons, Steps to Success