You can avoid the madness by doing at least some of your shopping online, and some e-tailers are making it even easier by offering special deals for “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday.” Here are just a few that might be of interest:

Calendars.com – Save up to 60% on all orders (plus free shipping in continental USA)

Everyone needs a calendar, and this site offers an extensive selection of both wall calendars and desk calendars for everyone on your shopping list – including yourself!

momAgenda Day Planners – Save 20% on all orders (plus free shipping in continental USA)

• Save an additional $10 on orders over $75 with coupon code MOM10OFF75
• Save an additional $10 on orders over $65 with coupon code MOM10OFF65

These beautiful planners were designed especially for mothers, but are great for other busy women too. Read my review of the myAgenda Day Planner here.

Mom PLR eBooks – Save 25% off all PLR (excluding sale items and monthly membership options) with coupon code BLACKFRIDAY

If you’ve ever wondered if private label rights content was a good source of information products for you to resell on your website or use in your blog, here’s your chance to find out without spending a whole lot of money.  Although the focus is on the mom niche market, many of the topics would apply equally to other audiences.

HostGator – 50% off your first invoice

HostGator provides excellent service, and if you sign up with them today, you’ll pay even less than their usual low prices.

iThemes All Access Theme Pass – Save 28% with coupon code FREESHIPPING

I was introduced to iThemes in 2009 through one of my clients who requested my assistance setting up their Flexx Blog Theme which she had purchased for her new WordPress site. I was so impressed at its flexibility and how easy it was to use that I purchased the All Access Theme Pass, and it was one of the best investments I’ve ever made for my business.

The package includes over 100 themes, including my personal favourite, Builder. With Builder, you create your own layouts, even using different layouts for different sections of your WordPress site.

PluginBuddy Developer Suite – Save 28% with coupon code FREESHIPPING

This is another tool that’s been really valuable in my website design business. The suite consists of a number of my favourite premium WordPress plug-ins including BackupBuddy, Billboard, Slideshow, LoopBuddy, and many others – not to mention any new ones that are released in the coming year.

WebDesign.com Premium Annual Membership – Save 28% with coupon code FREESHIPPING

One of the reasons WordPress is so popular is that it’s so easy to use, but if you really want to make the most of it, you need to delve beyond the basics. Since I joined WebDesign.com last year, I’ve completed a number of their courses, covering such topics as Event Management and Calendars, Designing for the Mobile Web, and How to Write Better SEO Content. Courses are offered every week, with new topics being developed continually.

What’s really great is that members have access to every course that’s ever been offered, so not only do you not have to miss out if a particular session doesn’t fit into your schedule, if there’s something you need to know for a current project, you can simply download the slides or watch the video for that topic.

These are just a handful of the great sales on right now, and of course there are thousands more. I have dealt with all of the businesses listed above and am pleased that they will pay me a commission if you buy anything through my links, but would be happy to recommend them regardless.

If you’re offering a deal on your website right now, feel free to promote it in the Comments section!

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

In honour of this special day, I’ve compiled a few resources to help you organize your desk.

Dealing with paperwork is a major component of organizing your desk, and Hellen Buttigieg, Certified Professional Organizer®, Life Coach and Gemini-Nominated HGTV host, suggests some great products to help you, whether you are a piler or a filer. Hellen actually suggested one of my own personal favourites!

Professional organizer Heather Burke of Ottawa, Ontario, offers another great tip for getting paperwork off your desk, especially if you work in a small office or home office.

While clearing your desk, you will probably come across some documents you no longer need to keep. Find out what to keep, what to recycle, what to shred, and how to choose a shredder from Geralin Thomas, a Certified Professional Organizer in Chronic Disorganization in Cary, North Carolina.

Professional organizer Clare Kumar of Toronto, Ontario, shared some workspace organization tips with Better Living host, Val Cole. Catch the video and learn about a really great contest on Clare’s Streamlife blog.

What’s your favourite desk organizing tip?

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Tips and Products for Organizing Your Desk.

The Golden Horseshoe Virtual Assistants Group will be hosting their 4^th Annual Special Evening Event on Thursday, October 27^th at Alloro Restaurant in the Burlington Hotel & Conference Centre. I hope you’ll come out and join us for a three-course meal, guest speaker Sheeba Varghese and, of course, a chance to network with local virtual assistants and other professionals. Because seating is limited, pre-registration is required.

GHVA Members at 2010 Special Evening Event

Whether or not you can attend, you can promote your product or services to our members and guests by donating a door prize. All donors will be recognized on the GHVA Sponsors page for one year and will have the opportunity to submit marketing material to be distributed to all participants. Please let me know if you are interested.

I had no experience planning business events before organizing our first one in 2008. Since then, I’ve learned a few things which I’m happy to share with you today.

Date

If your group is holding the event, ask the members what dates will work for them. If you’re hoping for guests to come from great distances, avoid the winter months when weather may interfere with travel. Find out what else is taking place in your area. You probably won’t have a date all to yourself, but be aware of major events that may draw people away from yours. (Last year we made the mistake of scheduling our Special Evening Event during Small Business Week, and lost a few potential attendees to trade shows in two neighbouring cities.)

Location

If you hold your event in a hotel meeting room, you will probably have to pay for room rental on top of the cost of your food. Unless you’re planning a large group, this may force you to charge more for attendance than many people will be willing to pay. A better choice is a restaurant with a private room. I’ve had a lot of success locating suitable venues using MenusOnly.com, which covers the Hamilton and Burlington areas, and you may find a similar guide for your region.

Menu

Most restaurants that cater to groups have a special events menu where each guest can select one of three different meals. Sometimes you will have a choice of menus at different prices. Since some of your guests may have dietary restrictions, make sure that special requests can be accommodated.

Speaker

If your event is being held by an association or other organization, there may be a good speaker among your members. If not, or if you’d prefer an outside speaker, ask your members for recommendations. Some speakers are willing to waive their regular fee in exchange for the opportunity to promote their products or services to your group.

Door Prizes

If you’d like to have door prizes, contact your group members and other people in your network to request donations. Many will be happy to offer a small gift or a gift certificate for their services as a way of promoting their business. We’ve always been blessed with a great response, and have generally received enough donations that every person in attendance has gone home with something. Use a spreadsheet to keep track of the donations you’ve been offered, and mark it off when you receive them. You can use this list to follow up if something doesn’t arrive when expected, to thank your donors after the event, and to connect with them again before subsequent events.

Price

Consider whether your goal is to make money, either for your group or to support a charity, or whether you only need to break even. When calculating how much to charge for registration, figure out how much the meal will come to after taxes and gratuity are added on. Be sure to also factor in any costs for room rental, speaker fees, a meal and/or gift for your speaker, and any other expenses related to hosting or promoting the event. Even if you don’t need to generate a profit, you may want to charge a little extra to ensure you don’t lose money if you don’t sell out.

Documentation

Each year that I’ve organized the GHVA’s Special Evening Event, it takes a little less time and effort, because I already have a system in place. Set up a folder on your computer for your guest list, donor list, email templates, and any other documents you use or create while planning your event. This will make your life so much easier next time! And, if you decide to pass the reins over to someone else in the future, you’ll be able to share your system without spending hours explaining what you did.

Since event planning is not my area of expertise, please add your own suggestions in the Comments section. Maybe there’s something I missed that will make next year’s event even easier!

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Tips for Organizing a Business Event – and an Invitation to one.

I don’t have the power to make it summer all year round, but since the first week of August is Simplify Your Life Week, I’m going to share a few of the things I do to keep it simple.

1. Only buy what you need. This saves both money and storage space. If you’ll only need something once, or even once in a while, consider renting it instead.
2. Clean out your wallet. Do you really need all those credit cards? One for business and one for personal use should be ample. Now that the major departments stores accept Visa and MasterCard, there’s really no sense having separate cards for each store. Same with rewards cards. Keep the ones for the stores you shop at regularly, and trash the rest.
3. Use an online bookmarking service like Delicious. You’ll be able to access your bookmarks no matter what browser or computer you’re using, including your mobile phone, and you can tag them with whatever keywords make sense to you, making it easy to find information when you need it again.
4. Use a password manager like Roboform. It allows you to generate unique, random passwords for each of your online accounts, and stores them securely so you don’t have to write them on a sheet of paper or remember them all.
5. Keep your inbox under control by unsubscribing from newsletters you don’t read. Better yet, use a separate email account for subscriptions and only check it when you’ve got the time and the desire to read.
6. No matter what season it is, remember to take time to get away from your day-to-day activities, even if it’s only for a few hours.

In the comments, please share what YOU do to keep it simple. If you don’t, what’s stopping you?

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on 6 Easy Ways to Simplify Your Life.

Today I’d like to share a few more collaborative blog posts in which I’ve been a participant:

• 7 Expert Tips on Getting Blog Traffic
• 39 Tips on Generating Ideas for a Blog Post
• Blogging to Build Your Business
• 118 Ways To Use Social Media In Business
• Paper You Should Probably Get Rid of – But You Keep Anyway

I think we’ll be seeing more and more of these opportunities, so do keep your eyes open for queries related to your areas of interest and/or expertise.

I’m also thrilled that someone blogged about me (and I didn’t even ask them to)!

• International Virtual Assistants Day

If you’ve had any exposure online (other than your own website, blog, or social media profile), feel free to brag about it here!

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Collaborative Blogging.

It’s been a while since I had a guest blogger here, so for a change of pace, I’d like to welcome James Adams, who has some helpful tips for cleaning and organizing your office before the lazy days of summer kick in!

Let’s face it; we are not the cleanest people on the planet. Most of us have piles of things lying around our home or office and never think twice about it. Eventually, it builds into a mass so large that we have to grudgingly clear it out just to make it through the day.

No one enjoys cleaning, but having a clean working area in your home office will help you get things done faster and more efficiently. While you may claim to know where everything is when there are a pile of papers on your desk, you can’t deny the fact that a more organized workspace would make things easier. Thankfully, cleaning your home office doesn’t have to be hard or time consuming. Follow these 5 easy steps to getting a cleaner workspace.

Step 1: Organize

One of the first things that needs to be done is to organize what you have in your workspace and put everything in the right place. Take the time to create files and folders for your paperwork and label them so that you know exactly where they are the next time you need them. You can even scan your documents so that you have digital versions of them in order to trash papers.

Step 2: Clean

After you get everything off of your desk, disinfect your entire workplace. Think about all of the times you’ve eaten at your desk or had a cold. While you might not feel it right now, a dirty desk can cause you to fall ill or even attract pests and insects. Keep this from happening and have the peace of mind that your working area is clean and germ free.

Step 3: Replace

Things age after time and they need to be replaced. Maybe you have a stapler you have had for years that is on its last leg. While you might not want to spend the money, a broken office item does you no good. Things like pens, pencils, and paper clips will only add to the clutter so throw away anything that does not work and get a new one in place of it.

Step 4: Keep

Sometimes we think we need something when we do not, but there are times where we do need them for safety’s sake. Things like passports and warranties will come in handy when the time comes, so make sure you put them in the proper location. Most of these files are important enough to warrant a special spot anyways, so don’t just let them sit on your desk.

Step 5: Throw Away

This may be the hardest step for many of us. For some reason, we end up keeping things that we really do not need at all. Things like receipts and bills simply pile up and add to the clutter. If you have any sensitive information, just shred the paper and be done with it. There is no reason for you to keep scraps of paper that make it harder to find what you are looking for.

By following these five simple steps, you will be able to work more efficiently and have more time to enjoy the rest of the day. Do not spend any more time shuffling through a cluttered desk, clean it up and start working towards creating a more efficient work environment.

This article has been contributed by James Adams who blogs and is an editor with CartridgeSave, supplying the Dell ink.

Photo courtesy of Dave Dugdale of RentVine.

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on 5 Tips for Spring Cleaning Your Home Office.

Early versions of Windows included a simple personal information manager called Cardfile, which functioned as an electronic Rolodex. Just like a traditional Rolodex, most people used it to organize their business contacts, but some used it for other types of information they needed to have at their fingertips. Although Cardfile was discontinued when Windows 95 came out, avid users were able to transfer the program and their data to new computers easily.

Unfortunately, Cardfile is not compatible with Windows Vista or Windows 7. Although some might see this as an opportunity to try something shiny and new, not everyone wants to do that. After using Cardfile extensively for over 15 years, a couple of my clients weren’t too keen on investing time learning how to use a new program or entering all their data into it. They were therefore delighted when I discovered AZZ Cardfile, a simple program that does everything Windows Cardfile did, as well as allowing you to insert images, use different font styles, sizes, and colors, and much more.

Here’s how to convert and transfer your data from your Windows XP or earlier system to your new one:

1. Download AZZ Cardfile installation file to a USB key.
2. Install AZZ Cardfile on your old computer.
3. Open AZZ Cardfile and import the .crd file(s).
4. Copy the AZZ Cardfile files to the USB key.
5. Install AZZ Cardfile on your new computer.
6. Copy the AZZ Cardfile files to the new computer.

You know what they say,

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Photo: Seth Sawyers

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on A Simple Information Organizer.

I’ve blogged quite a bit about organizing and productivity, and I invite you to review the archives for tips that will be relevant to your current situation.

In honour of Get Organized Month, I also encourage you to learn from some of the professional organizers I support through my business, Organized Assistant®, who also blog about organizing:

• Geralin Thomas – Cary, North Carolina
• Jane Woolsey – Toronto, Ontario
• Hellen Buttigieg – Oakville, Ontario
• Heather Burke – Ottawa, Ontario
• Tina Blazer – Toronto, Ontario

In addition, I’d like to introduce you to a few women who have been recognized as Professional Organizers Blog Carnival Star Bloggers by participating in ten or more editions of the monthly Blog Carnival on my other blog, Your Organizing Business.

• Angela Esnouf – Melbourne, Australia
• Lelah Baker-Rabe – Los Angeles, California
• Ellen Delap – Houston, Texas
• Jeri Dansky – Half Moon Bay, California
• Elaine Shannon – Rothesay, New Brunswick
• Julie Bestry – Chattanooga, Tennessee

If all this great organizing advice has you overwhelmed and you need a hand implementing it, contact an organizer near you! If no one listed above is in your area, please note that some of these organizers provide virtual organizing services. You’ll find even more people who can help you by searching one or more of these websites:

• POC – Professional Organizers in Canada
• NAPO – National Association of Professional Organizers
• BCPO – The Board of Certification for Professional Organizers
• ICD – Institute for Challenging Disorganization
• AAPO – Australasian Association of Professional Organisers
• APDO UK – Association of Professional Declutterers and Organisers UK
• POAA – Professional Organiser Association Africa
• BooND – Büroorganisation Büroordnung Netzwerk Deutschland Germany
• JALO – Japan Association of Life Organizers
• NBPO – Nederlandse Beroepsvereniging van Professional Organizers

I’m just wondering – what part of getting organized is most challenging for you?

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Time to Get Organized!.

For the chocolate lover: Devil Brownies. Yes, they really are “deliciously evil.”

For young people of all ages: A personally autographed copy of one of Kathy Stinson’s books, including her latest release, Highway of Heroes

For the job seeker: Best Canadian Resumes and Best Canadian Cover Letters

For the recently employed: Clearing the 90 Day Hurdle

For the person who needs to get organized: Organizing Outside the Box, Organized To Last: 5 Simple Steps To Staying Organized, or a set of Organizing Tips Booklets

In addition to the above wrappable gifts, many of our clients offer digital products and gift certificates that might be just right for someone on your list. If someone you know needs a resume writer or career coach, a professional organizer for their home or office, or help starting an organizing business, please feel free to ask me for an introduction!

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Ideas for Your Christmas Shopping List.

For many small business owners, things slow down during the summer due to vacations and other factors, but start up again in full gear in September. If you don’t have good systems in place before you get busy, you’ll find it hard to stay on top of things, as you’ll basically be operating in survival mode, dealing only with immediate concerns. Now is the best time to get yourself and your business organized so you’re ready when fall arrives.

The specific actions you need to take will depend on the nature of your business, your personal work style, and your current situation, but the following four steps will help guide you through the organizing process.

Step 1: Self-Assessment

Identify the problems you hope to solve by getting organized. Are you constantly running late? Do you typically reach the end of the day before you reach the end of your to-do list? Do you waste too much time looking for paperwork in your office or information on your computer?

As you recognize your challenges, try to determine why you have these problems and to think of possible solutions.

If you don’t seem to have enough space in your office, ask yourself if your office is too small, or if you simply have too much stuff! Perhaps you need some proper tools such as a filing cabinet or some type of desk organizer.

Sometimes it’s your own personality traits that stand in your way. Many people who struggle with perfectionism will spend hours fine-tuning a task that is already technically complete and would be considered “good enough” by others.

If you find yourself spending countless hours on work that is outside your area of expertise, weigh the value of taking a course to enhance your skills, or even hiring a professional to handle it for you, so that you have more time to focus on what you’re good at and really enjoy doing.

Albert Einstein once said

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

If you don’t look at new approaches in your business, you’ll never get ahead of where you are now.

Your self-assessment doesn’t just involve what isn’t working. You also need to identify what has worked for you in the past , so you can do more of it, or adapt it to fit your current situation.

Step 2: Planning

It’s not realistic to try and make too many changes at once, so decide what changes are most needed and focus on those.

Research your options. Find out what products and systems are available that might suit your needs and how much they cost.

If you need help getting organized, consider hiring a professional organizer.

Plan what you are going to do, and when you will do it. Schedule it in your calendar.

Purchase any supplies you will need in advance – don’t leave it until the last minute in case they’re not available and you have to delay your organizing project.

Step 3: Implementation

On the date or dates that you’ve set aside, get to work on your organizing project. Treat this appointment the same as if you were working with a very important client – no phone calls, no visitors, and no checking email.

If it’s difficult for you to sit and focus on a task for long stretches of time, set a timer for 1 hour, 30 minutes, or even 15 minutes – whatever is realistic for you – then take a short break.

Regardless of what you are organizing, the process mainly consists of:

• Sorting objects into categories – things you need to access on a regular basis, things you need for archive/storage only, things you can sell, things you can give away, things you should throw out, etc.
• Organizing the things you’re keeping so they are easy to find and access when needed
• Placing those things in suitable containers such as file folders, binders, or boxes, appropriately labelled, so they stay in their new homes

Step 4: Maintenance

The most important thing to remember is that getting organized is only the beginning. It takes effort and commitment and proper systems to stay organized.

You will need to review your system periodically to make sure it is still working for you, and adapt it as needed.

The above post contains the highlights of a presentation I gave yesterday for the People in Connection Burlington Network Group, and to thank you for reading my blog, I am sharing with you a special offer that I made to that group. From now until Labour Day, you can save 40% off all of my products by entering the coupon code PIC2010.

If you’re in the Golden Horseshoe area, you can pick up some additional tips for getting organized and ready for the fall business season at the following upcoming events:

Monday, August 9 – 12:30-2:30: Oakville

Wednesday, August 11 – 8:00-9:30: Hamilton (with guest speaker Julie Stobbe of Mind over Clutter)

Wednesday, August 11 – 11:30-1:00: St. Catharines

Please visit From the Desk of Janet Barclay to read and comment on Getting Your Business Organized for the Fall.