Winging it!

December 29th, 2016 I've done a lot of soul searching on my 2017 goals. And while I don't post specific sales goals on my blog, I've worked on those as well and with the addition of my new assistant, I've been able to increase those goals. 1. I've given up on finding a calendar system that works how I want it to in my mind and have just decided to work with what I have. It takes a lot of stress and the burden of searching off of my shoulders. If a great system finds me, wonderful. If not, I can manage just fine. 2. I will continue to read books that nourish my mind (and also the fiction ones I love). I've also been listening to audio books while in my car and that's amazingly helpful. Here are some of the books on my list for this year. - The four hour work week by Timothy Ferriss - 31 Days to a Clutter Free Life by Ruth Soukup - The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz - Today Matters by John C. Maxwell (The only one I didn't get read on my ...

Here are my goals for 2016, my updates for each goal are in red.  Wednesday, December 30th 2015 Here are some of the ideas I want to implement. 1.  Instead of just setting objectives for the year and then forgetting about them, I plan to review my plans every week. I have a meeting every Monday at 9:30 am, which means I'm home later than usual, as I don't have to leave my house until 9. I have been spending that time checking my work emails, sending out quick responses and follow ups needed. I've decided, that starting next Monday, January 4th - I'm going to spend that time reviewing what I accomplished last week and what I plan/need to accomplish in the week ahead. How can I make this week more productive than last week? What worked and what didn't? I would say I did about 75/25 on this goal. Meaning, I did it 75% of the time.  2.  Having a calendar system that works without a lot of stress. I use a calendar on my phone (whatever came w...

Is it really December? I truly believe that November of 2016 was the fastest month of my entire life. It was Halloween, I literally blinked and it was Thanksgiving. Now, one blink later it's already December. The month of November was a blur. Work, networking, and my personal life were all on fast forward. December is heading in the same direction so far. The holiday parties and events are in full swing and new business is coming in as fast as every other month. I had so many goals for 2016. Some I far exceeded, some still need work, some (like this blog) I neglected at times. I'm really looking forward to the last two weeks of December when things quiet down a bit and I am able to spend some time reflecting on the year, see what worked well, what needs work, and what didn't work at all. I'll also drill down my goals for the year ahead. One of my long term goals was to bring in enough business to justify hiring an assistant. I was giving myself 3 years for that to...

I love twitter, I really do. However, sometimes 140 characters are not enough. Especially for your "about me" section. I keep mine about insurance, because that's what I do and I am very passionate about it. However, there are a lot of things I'm passionate about and they don't all fit on my page. For that reason I thought I'd post a blog that tells you more about me, my passions and interests. Here are thing things I am passionate about.... Love to read about, love to post about, love to learn about.... Fashion for women over 40. Love it. Love looking at clothes, trying on clothes, reading about fashion, looking at outfits other women are wearing. I receive so many fashion emails a day and I look at every single one. Hair. I absolutely love reading articles and tips about hair. I don't know why because I don't do much with mine and I have no desire to do hair, but something about it fascinates me. My hairdressers is constantly telling me ...

This week I want to talk about dealing with people in the business world. We all know and use different people and companies for different services. Your tax adviser, you accountant, your lawyer, your cleaning service, your realtor, your bank, your mortgage lender, your gym, your lawn service, your financial planner, and of course your insurance agent or company. The list could go on and on listing all of the people you might use regularly or occasionally to help you with decisions in your life. Sometimes these decisions are very important. Other times they're minor and can be corrected easily by finding someone new. For example, you hire a cleaning company to clean your offices. You find that they do a very poor job. You may talk to them about it and if the service doesn't improve, you replace them. No harm, No foul. However, there are occasions where someone's advice could be detrimental to your life. Most of the time when you go to someone for a service, it'...

As the season finally changes from summer to winter, because the weather is finally cooling down, I've been doing a lot of thinking about work clothes. All sorts of aspect and would really love some feedback regarding this. How does your summer wardrobe differ from your winter wardrobe when it comes to work? For me, I'm very casual in the summer. I wear sun dresses and capri's/tops pretty much for as long as it's warm enough. In the winter, I'm more on the dressed up side, I wear a lot of suits or dress slacks and blouses. I'm not sure why I differ so much between seasons. I think in the summer I am just more relaxed. Do you find that your wardrobe varies much by season or do you wear the same thing to work all year? I think this is most applicable to women, as most men wear the same thing all year. Case in point, my husband. He dresses up in his suits and ties year round. I have many friends who are professionals and their styles vary greatly. Some are...

I've had several people recently bring up a discussion of exclusive networking groups vs. non-exclusive networking groups, so I thought this would be a good topic to bring to my blog. Please note: This is just my opinion 1. Exclusive Networking Groups          Pros No competition in your industry Many exclusive groups are highly based on passing referrals (lead share)         Cons We all have specific referral partners, if you don't have chemistry with that person in your group, you're pretty much stuck.  If you don't care for someone in a specific seat in an industry, you may not want to refer them business, but feel obligated to. 2. Non-Exclusive Networking Groups           Pros You are not excluded from joining regardless of how many other people in the group are in your industry. You are able to invite anyone you know/meet to visit the group without worrying that you're stepping o...

I had a friend come to one of my networking groups today, only to tell us that she's changing positions at work and will no longer be networking in her new position. Her logic was that she's been doing this for almost 18 months, spent a lot of money doing her various networking activities and she's only just started to see the results coming in. Ugghh... So frustrating because if she could only hang in there, I think she'd see the pay off. However, I'm not in her financial shoes, so I can't make her decisions. Here's the thing about networking. You can't give up! I hear about people giving up all the time. We live in a world of instant gratification and that's just not how networking works. Building relationships takes time. Be yourself, get to know people and build those relationships. I also believe you need to stay in a networking group for longer than a couple of months. I don't understand why people change their networking groups e...

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2016 I blew it. I went almost a full month without posting in my blog. I did jump on here and jot down some ideas, however I didn't have the time to write a full post. I've decided to combine some of those posts into one blog called, "As summer is finally winding down." We had a fabulous family vacation at the lake. Family, friends, good times, and great memories. The countdown for next year has already begun. With all of my big vacationing behind me for the year, I'm re-energized and on the road to re-focusing on work. I've had to speak at a couple different groups while home, in between all of my traveling and I managed to do them well. Sometimes I think it's easier to focus on getting something done when your time is limited. Now I have a speech coming up at the end of this month with endless time to prepare.... All I need is an idea of what to speak about. (Your ideas are welcome!!) While I had several months of travel a...

Lately I've been really missing my Dad. Everyday it was nagging at me like a minor headache. Maybe it was because I was away for Father's Day and didn't get to see him. I finally told my husband last week, "we need to go see my Dad." His response, "we'll be spending a week with him in a couple weeks on our family vacation." My response, "that's too far away." Since there is very little that my husband won't do for me, we drove down to visit. They only live about 3 hours south of us, so it's not too far. We spent quality time with my Dad, Stepmom, Brothers, sister in law, nephews, and my sons who also came down. It was a totally fantastic weekend! Much needed time with everyone and completely stress free! Now in less than 2 week's we'll all be together again for our family vacation, needless to say we are all super excited for that. I think sometimes you just have to listen to that inner voice that tells you when you...

I had a customer a few years back who was driving down I95. It wasn't rush hour, thankfully. His exit was coming up so he started to merge to the right lanes. He kept looking in his mirrors, turning his head and checking as he got over. However, there was a car in his blind spot that he didn't see and he slammed right into it. He hit the car hard, going at a pretty fast speed and spun the car into a guard rail. Fortunately no one was hurt. Unfortunately, the car he hit was totaled. And more unfortunately, the car was a Jaguar. In his case, he had property damage limits of $100,000, and the insurance company wrote a check out for $92,000 to the other driver. The state minimum limits of liability in Virginia are $20,000. Do you know how many people are driving around with $20,000 of coverage for property damage? If you live in the DC Metro area, you know that most of the cars on the road around you are worth more than $20,000. This is the case in most areas these days. So ...

Sunday, July 10th, 2016 I thought a good topic to post today would be "Getting back into the swing of things after vacation(s). It felt like I was pretty much on vacation for most of the month of June. I went to Paris with my daughter for 10 days, and then after being back to work for 4 days, I went to the Bahama's with my husband for a week to celebrate our anniversary. I've been back to work a full week now and finally feel all caught up as far as office work goes. I didn't work at all while in Paris, but I took my computer on my second trip so that I could issue policies and work on quotes when time permitted. I have found that the time away was good for me because it gave me time to think about the processes I use and the way things should work. Things that I think about all the time, but don't really have the time to dwell on and follow through. One example, I really thought about how I find myself doing too many things at once and how I want/need to cha...

June 30, 2016 Why I vacation I grew up in two families. My Mom, step-Dad and sisters & my Dad, step-Mom and brothers. Because of this I grew up going on many vacations. With my Mom, I went to Ocean City Maryland every summer for a week. On top of that we did many trips to visit family, and also, trips to Kings Dominion and other amusement parks. With my Dad, we did a 2-3 week vacation every summer driving to different destinations, stopping at various places over night along the way and then a week at the planned destination - such as Florida or Tennessee and ultimately on our way home, a week at White Lake, NC.  Add to that, the fact that going to my Dad's for the summer felt like a vacation because he had a pool in the backyard.  Fast forward to me being an adult. Vacations to me are just a normal part of life. I had my first son when I was 18, my 4th child when I was 26. My kids have also grown up going on vacations. They have gone to White Lak...

Thursday, June 23rd, 2016 The weather in Paris. I have to admit, we were bummed initially because the weather forecast was showing rain our entire stay. However, it turned out to be a blessing. The weather was perfect. We were only rained on once while we were out, at the end of one of our days, we were on the way to the metro, and we had umbrellas. The other times it rained, we were either sleeping or inside of a museum. However, because of the rain and clouds, the days were cool in the mid-sixties and absolutely perfect for sight-seeing. We didn't have to worry sweating, getting sunburned or that gross feeling of being just being too hot. There wasn't one aspect of our trip that God wasn't smiling down on us. Here are some pictures that show the sky in the background  - it sure looks ominous. However, you can see from the ground being dry - it wasn't raining. Looking over the Seine River [; Place De La Concorde  Looking out over Paris from Sacre Cou...

Wednesday, June 22, 2016 Hello all. I'm back from Paris and we had a wonderful and safe journey! My daughter, me, and my son at Sacre Coeur Because my daughter is so fascinated with history, we had pre-planned and read tons of information on the history of each site we were planning to visit. It was a truly educational experience as each place that we went, we knew beforehand so much of the history and background. It was more awing somehow to really look at a monument or even just a spot in a park and know what had transpired there, right at that very place you were standing. Concorde, trying to decide where the guillotine was based on drawings. If you haven't been to Paris, it is a must see place. So beautiful that you can't even begin to get the full grasp of it's beauty through pictures. Because of it's beautiful architecture even the apartment buildings look as if they're a work of art. If you don't have a fear of heights, Paris i...

Thursday, June 9th, 2016 I survived the final week of work prior to vacation. I tried to follow my survival guide the best that I could. I even went to bed last night at 8 pm, so that I could be at my office at 6 am and have a good nights sleep beforehand. It worked! I was able to get everything tied up, put away, or handed off for someone to handle while I'm away - because this vacation will be strictly vacation - no work! So this post is sporadic thoughts I wanted to mention, forgive me if it doesn't flow. My daughter, son & I are flying to Paris tomorrow. My son is actually going for work, but will be spending a little time with us before he heads to his work apartment. He's also staying in Europe for another month after we leave, to do some traveling. I won't be around to post anything for the next 12 days, but I will do my best to post the week after we get back. If you're interested in seeing posts about my trip, you can follow me on; Twitter at ...

Friday, June 3rd, 2016 Well, for the first time this year, I've gone more than a week without a blog post. May was unexpectedly a crazy month for me. Business is great and keeping me busy. My unexpected trip to Oklahoma and our planned long weekend visiting family in West Virginia for Memorial weekend added to the hectic days. June came in with a bang - beginning on a short week. Yesterday was my final Leadership Prince William class and our graduation. That means that I had two full days of not working this week between the holiday and LPW. I also have had networking meetings to attend on two of the days I did work. So you can see how this has led to me not having time to write in my blog. And then there are our travel plans... We've still been working on those, however at the moment we're watching Paris closely as they're having a lot of rain and flooding at the moment. It's hard to gauge how the weather will be in 10-20 days. Our friends in Paris are telling ...

Sunday, May 22nd, 2016 I am thankful to be home and sort of happy/sad to have all the rain. On the one hand, we had all sorts of plans if the weekend had been sunny and I'm sad we didn't get to do them. On the other hand, it has been sort of nice to not be on the go this weekend after spending the week in Oklahoma for my cousin's funeral. Here's how I spent this rainy weekend at home. Spent some time being cozy with my hubby. Yes, I spent some time working... I had to catch up on a few things that I put off due to my trip. Worked on our itinerary for Paris. My daughter and I will be leaving in no time on our 10 day trip to Paris and we are slowly but surely hammering out our plans for what we want to do while there as well as what we're going to wear. Worked on details of our anniversary beach trip that we're going on later in June with friends. We booked this long ago, but it's been on the back burner of my thoughts due to my Paris trip.  I got a...

Saturday, May 21st, 2016 Here's where I currently am when it comes to my organizational apps. I've started using Workflowy with zealous and love it. I refer to it so often, I don't know how I ever lived without it. It's so easy to organize & find everything. Every thought, every note I write down, from the measurement of windows in my home to Marketing notes. I still use the computer to enter most of my notes, but access them from my phone quite often. Journey  is the app I use to take pictures of myself so that I can remember what I wore each week. I love this app and forget maybe once every 2 weeks to take a picture and on those occasions I type it in. I love that I can see what I wore so quickly and I look at it most mornings when I'm deciding what to wear. Cozi  family calendar and lists. I will say that purchasing the upgraded "gold" version wasn't worth the money for me. I tried the upgrade so that I could have the full calendar...

Life is short This past week we had two deaths in our life. Our neighbor that we've been good friends with since we moved here almost 8 years ago, died suddenly at 63 years old. Then literally the next morning, my cousin who was just 44 passed in her sleep. I grew up living across the street from my cousin and we were only 3 years apart in age.  What I've felt since these past 4 days is a deep sense of regret. Regrets that I didn't talk to both of them more often. Regrets that I didn't go to Oklahoma and see my cousin who hasn't been back here in 10 years. She most likely couldn't afford it, I could easily have afforded to visit her.    As I look forward in my life, I know this one thing. I want to have as few regrets going forward as possible. Note to those reading this:  Don't wait for deaths to make yourself stop and take note of your life.  What things are important to you that you're not doing?  What things are not important...