There is an interesting discussion going on over at WordWise about crafting e-mail subject lines to help your messages get read. The two best suggestions were to write the subject after you have written the message and to focus on what is in it for the reader (here are the sales numbers you requested.

The biggest faux pas is to use phrases like “you have won” because they trigger spam filters. I learned this particular lesson the hard way. I ran a recycling contest that was won by the local miliary base. I sent an email with the subject line “Congratulations, you have won!” to the base recycling manager. The email got caught in a spam filter and the army base found out that they had won when they read it in the newspaper (oops!). I have been a lot more careful since then.

Has an email subject line that you have written ever backfired?

Do you ever feel like you need eight arms to get through your to do list? One way to improve your quality of life is to consider outsourcing some of your work. Here is a list of people you could consider hiring

1. Virtual Assistant

2. Copywriter

3. SEO Expert

4. Bookeeper

5. Housekeeper

One of the reasons that people feel uncomfortable with outsourcing is because they worry about the expense or the loss of control. Often, the people you hire can work faster because they are not distracted by other things. For instance, a client of mine had me make 25 phone calls — I did them in about a half hour. At my hourly rate of $40 the whole task only cost her $20 (A bargain!)

What are some things you would like to outsource?

Kristie T. over at Webmomz blogged from the Office Depot Success Strategies event in Chicago yesterday. I have to admit I did “tune in” a few times during the day to read her notes. The final session was a panel of women who took part in the Make Mine A Million program. The panel talked about the things that hold women back from having successful businesses. In her post, Kristie asks a very important question. What is success for you? Is it making a million dollars? For me, right now, success is not really about money or material things, but more about quality of life. I want to see my daughter grow up but I also want to always be learning new things and making enough money so that I don’t have to worry about money.

What is success to you?

Well, it is the 20th of March and I haven’t done anything about taking part in the 30 day Secret challenge I mentioned in the last post. I suppose I have a few too many irons in the fire at the moment. Scott, the nametag guy, had an interesting post on his blog yesterday about how the part of the Secret they don’t tell you about is the hard work it takes to make things happen. He mentions successful people and the effort they put into making their dreams happen.

I think that at its core, the Secret is about focus. You get what you pay attention to. That means that if you have big goals, you focus on them and tend to work toward them. If you focus on your problems, you are feeding them with energy and they seem to get worse.

Right now (on paper) my focuses are:

1. Home and Family – creating a clam, peaceful and happy home for my family (I *never* thought that this would end up on my list and I am mostly talking about having a clean house, healthy meals and time to play).

2. Getting my business together (finding a way to earn a living from home). I need to focus in on what exactly I want to do, I have too many different things I’m working on at the same time.

3. To be healthy so I can accomplish #1 and #2. I am training for a century bike ride to raise money and to get in shape. The hills and altitude in New Mexico are kicking my butt, but I think I will get there.

What are you focusing on right now?

The Secret is being spread.  Basically, the Secret is the Law of Attraction — you get what you pay attention to. I have been working on raising money for Team in Training that way — I found a check for $500 that I thought I had lost. So.. it might work.  To try to do even better… I am taking part in Andy Wibbels 30 day Challenge. He is the skeptic and is having conference calls at the beginning and end of the 30 day period to see how everyone did. It is free and you can sign up here
http://andywibbels.com/the-secret-movie-30-day-challenge/

I’m riding a century ride to raise money for Team in Training. My personal goal is raise $5,000. Thanks to the generosity of my friends and family, I have raised around $1,400 so far. To try to raise even more money, I’m experimenting with a little bit of Internet Marketing.

Check out these ways that you can donate and help me raise money for cancer research.

My online fundraising page — you can donate directly here.

Send Out A Smile This is a cool site… you can send greeting cards (regular mail) from your computer. For each $25 annual account (you can send 10 cards –including postage!) I get $10 for Team in Training. You can even send a card or two for free to check it out.

Would You Pay Me To Ride My Bike 100 Miles? This site has ads for all sorts of cool stuff. Squidoo will donate half of the commissions from the sales to my TNT campaign.

I will keep you updated on how all of this goes. Check them out!

Sharon over at the e-soup blog wrote a very thought provoking post about limiting work to a 4 hour workday. I completely feel her pain in that I find it way too easy to set sail on the information highway surfing from blog to blog… suddenly hours are gone and I’m wondering why the laundry didn’t get done.  Of course, I don’t think a 4 hour workday is really practical for me at this juncture because I have a 20 hour a week job and I’m trying to get my business of the ground in addition, but I am going to try some of Sharon’s tips (mainly planning my days better) so that I can spend more fun, quality time with my family (which is the main point to my working from home…)

I just received my orientation materials for AssistU. AssistU is the creme of the crop training program for Virtual Assistants. Classes start next Wednesday. Of course, we already have things to do to get ready for the classes. I think the toughest part for me is going to be just doing what they tell me and having faith in the program.

There is a lot to learn… I will keep you updated in my progress.

I have to confess I have officially broken all of my New Year’s Resolutions. What is it about New Year’s that makes people commit to “rehab” type resolutions? You know, this year I will eat no sugar or I won’t let my daughter watch any TV.  The problem with these types of goals is that once you have “broken” the resolution, you done, you just give up.

A better course of action is just to get back on track again.  If you make a mistake and recover, you won’t have to make the same resolution next year.
Success Today has some very nice goal setting forms that take general goal “ideas” and help you break them down into concrete action steps.  The forms are designed so that you can print them out on business cards and refer to them constantly.  Although I’m afraid I would lose the little cards, I think the thought process behind them is great. I plan on putting the different steps on Stikkets – the online equivalent of a little card.

So, have you given up?  Are you ready to get back on track?