SUMMER OF ORGANIZATION - WEEK #1

SUMMER OF

 ORGANIZATION

WEEK #1

Good morning and welcome to Week #1 of the F.O.R. You Summer of Organization series.  This week there are two things we are going to accomplish:  getting your head right and moving forward.

Organization begins in your head.  Are you spinning around trying to remember where you should be right now or what the name of that person you were supposed to follow up was and where did you write it down?  The numbers vary on how much is actually lost by disorganization but even the lowest numbers are astounding.  According to one Neat as a Pin white paper, dysfunctional systems and disorganization are the biggest expense in a company.  Great organization and systems start with you whether you are leading a company, working in a company, an entrepreneur out on your own or whatever working (and even family) situation you find yourself in. 

Where do you start?  There are piles all over your house of things that need to get done and your office looks the same.
This leads us to Task #1:

TASK #1 – Put all piles of the same stuff in the same place.

This week you will spend your time putting all the “like” things together. If you are anything like me, you have many projects, paperwork streams, and opportunities that divide your time. Each of these need to be separated.  You might also have business cards all over your briefcase, desk and in various files/folders.  At home you still haven’t mailed out last year’s Christmas cards because you couldn’t find all the addresses you needed to gather.  This week you will not get all these things solved. YOU ARE MERELY SORTING INTO LIKE PILES. 

Pull out everything that needs sorted and put into one big pile. Then turn on a good movie or a professional development DVD/CD you’ve been meaning to listen to or an audio book and get busy – sort, sort, sort.  Throw away that which is no longer needed.  I suggest using baskets, cloth bags, banker boxes or whatever works for you to keep your piles separated.  Once everything is sorted, put it in the room it belongs and keep it separated.  

For some, this will be a week-long project.  Others may finish quickly.  If you have some extra time after getting it all separated, you might want to start the dishwasher, do a load of laundry, take out the garbage and then start in on going through each pile (one at a time, maybe one per day) and figuring out the best way to store and file this particular subject matter.  If it’s finances, this might mean a banker’s box with folders or large envelopes by the month or by category. Marketing materials can be put in banker’s boxes and labeled accordingly.  All your Post-It notes and pens should be in your desk or on top of it, etcetera.  Again, the system doesn’t matter as long as it works for you!

You will be amazed at how much better you feel even by completing this task this week.  Decluttering opens your mind and makes you feel clean and new and refreshed.  I would love your feedback on this process as you go through it. It will be posted on my blog and also my Facebook page.  Please follow them and start a conversation of business leaders helping others.

Don’t forget to spend some time outside in the sunshine and love on your family this week! Those are the most important things in life anyway!

5 Ways To Improve Employee Engagement

Managers and leaders should know their people -- who they are, not just what they do. Every interaction with an employee has the potential to influence his or her engagement and inspire discretionary effort. How leaders manage their employees can substantially affect engagement levels in the workplace, in turn influencing the company's bottom line. Here are five strategies organizations can use to help build their constituency of engaged employees:
1.    Use the right employee engagement survey. When a company asks its employees for their opinions, those employees expect action to follow. But businesses often make the mistake of using employee surveys to collect data that are irrelevant or impossible to act on. Any survey data must be specific, relevant, and actionable for any team at any organizational level.
2.    Focus on engagement at the local and organizational levels. Real change occurs at the local-work group level, but it happens only when company leaders set the tone from the top. Companies realize the most benefit from engagement initiatives when leaders weave employee engagement into performance expectations for managers and enable them to execute on those expectations.
3.    Select the right managers. The best managers understand that their success and that of the organization relies on employees' achievements. But not everyone can be a great manager. Great managers care about their people's success. They seek to understand each person's strengths and provide employees with every opportunity to use their strengths in their role. Great managers empower their employees, recognize and value their contributions, and actively seek their ideas and opinions. I
4.    Coach managers and hold them accountable for their employees' engagement. Companies should coach managers to take an active role in building engagement plans with their employees, hold managers accountable, track their progress, and ensure that they continuously focus on emotionally engaging their employees.
5.    Define engagement goals in realistic, everyday terms. To bring engagement to life, leaders must make engagement goals meaningful to employees' day-to-day experiences. Describing what success looks like using powerful descriptions and emotive language helps give meaning to goals and builds commitment within a team. Make sure that managers discuss employee engagement at weekly meetings, in action-planning sessions, and in one-on-one meetings with employees to weave engagement into daily interactions and activities and to make it part of the workplace's DNA.

LAS VEGAS - DAY #3

April 10, 2014

Boy we were running slow the next day (April 2).  We had a full day of FAM trips and site inspections planned.  Travel Agents can participate in FAM (or Familiarization) Trips and site inspections to familiarize themselves with the “product” they are selling.  These are absolutely free of charge.  Today we started out on a tour bus to Las Vegas Weddings with a wonderful tour conductor. She showed us two of their wedding/event venues and gave us great advice on what our clients may want when they are looking to get married or have a vow renewal in Las Vegas.  She gave us a few trinkets, too, while on the tour.

Our next stop was the El Cortez Hotel in downtown Las Vegas.  This hotel is steeped in history with illustrious owners and a great past. One of the fun things about the El Cortez was some of the slot machines still take real coins. Nothing beats the feeling of walking around a casino with a bucket full of quarters.  Some of the rooms in this hotel are the original rooms from the '40s. 

By this time we were ready for lunch.  We walked down a few blocks to The Container Place. It is owned by the owner of Zappos.  They have refurbished old trucking containers into small shops and rent them to start-ups at a reasonable price to help them get their businesses going.  When the start-up gets to a certain level of business, they are then launched out into the “world” and another moves in.  It also has a great play place for kids and a treehouse for adults. There is a concert venue on the site, too.  I had a great pulled chicken sandwich.

Our next stop was The 4 Queens.  This hotel also has a great history of renowned actors/actresses who have visited. Many on our tour ran over to Binions where they have a display of $1 million in cash that you can get your picture taken next to. 

Last, but definitely not least, was my favorite stop of the day.  We toured The Golden Nugget. This four star hotel is a resort right in the heart of Downtown Las Vegas.  It boasted fabulous dining and great family fun.  There is a shark tank that you can swim up to or take a waterslide through the middle of it.  Even though it was very windy and chilly, there were many children and a few adults still having a lot of fun on the slides. 

We were exhausted by this time and more than happy to board our shuttle back to Bally’s.  Once we returned, we took a nap, grabbed some dinner, got a little work done and went back to sleep.  Our friends drove over and arrived in the middle of the night.

Travel Tip:  It is cheaper to eat and drink and also to buy souvenirs (or a nice sweatshirt when you’re cold) in Downtown Las Vegas.

Travel Tip:  Fremont Street is something you should experience one evening when visiting Las Vegas.

To get onto our weekly Deals and Steals travel emailing, sign up about halfway down the page at this link: http://www.ytbtravel.com/Home.aspx?wa=travelserviceforyou.

If you’d like us to check prices on a specific trip you are planning to take, please email to travel@services-foryou.com.  

LAS VEGAS - DAY #2

April 9, 2014

Day #2 - April 1 - Stacy and I had a chance to get a bit more acclimated.  We wanted to get our F.O.R. You work completed so we set alarms and woke up to do so.  It turns out that the hotels in Las Vegas do not offer free internet.  We both tried to get our phones’ hot spots to work and they wouldn’t even connect. The bandwidth was way too slow in the room.  Well, it was time to grab our computers and explore our hotel for a place where we could get a meal and get some work done.

The Paris was a beautiful hotel/casino that looks like you are wandering through the streets of actual Paris with décor and painting to create this ambiance.  We found a small diner called Cafe Belle Madeleine where the sandwiches were delicious and the prices reasonable.  They didn’t have internet so after a meal we wandered out to the casino floor.  Stacy put $5 in a quarter machine and won $250 within 10 minutes of playing.  We cashed out and went back to our room to get ready for a free FAM show.

Travel agents are often invited to see shows for free so we can experience them and tell our clients who are booking trips through us all about them.  On Tuesday we went to the Flamingo Hotel and saw The Legends show. We sat right up next to the stage.  It was a great show that was very entertaining, with a Michael Jackson that knew all the moves and a very entertaining Marilyn Monroe.  The woman who played Tina Turner did an awesome job. 

After the show, Stacy and I decided to head somewhere to find a drink and/or dinner.  We checked out Margaritaville and walked through the new LINQ nightclub.  We ended up at Toby Keith’s Bar and Grill since we both love country music.  We ordered our first drinks and noticed they were very strong.  Next we ordered appetizers and a second drink.  I highly recommend trying the Mason Dixon and Mac and Cheese Balls. They were both very delicious!  We decided to stay and listen to the band that was playing that night (and just in case Toby showed up, which he didn’t).  Well, we met so many people there in the bar from all across the United States and the drinks and music and dancing were so much fun that we stayed until they closed it down at 2am.  Leo, the bartender, was awesome also as he charged up our phones for us and only used them to take a few pictures.

Tomorrow we will pay for closing down the bar but we had an amazing time.  I only launched Stacy out of her wheelchair once on the way back to Ballys.

Travel Tip:  The internet in Las Vegas sometimes costs money and is often not fast enough to do your work.

Travel Tip:  FAMs are a great way to become familiar with “product” as a travel agent.  

LAS VEGAS - DAY #1

April 8, 2014

This week I'm going to share my travel business with anyone who wants to listen.  First, though, I want to go back and give you a little insight into who I am and how I got involved in YTB.

On November 16, 2013, I decided to join the network marketing group YTB.  I swore I would never be in network marketing because I am not a salesperson and refuse to carry around product.  I run a company that I founded and it's going well. I work a lot of hours and love my job. I really didn't need one more thing to do.  Well, I had been exposed to YTB before by a person who I now call a very close friend.  We learned on the trip to the Bay Area that November weekend that we have a lot in common and I so respect the person she is and the fact that she is amazing!  Why did I join YTB, though?  Well, originally I joined YTB because I was already booking travel for my clients and was leaving money on the table every month in the form of travel commissions for doing something we were already doing at F.O.R. You anyway.  I also love to travel and the perks are awesome when you travel as a travel agent. 

YTB has an annual regional conference and this year it was held in Las Vegas.  Stacy Sandoval and I left for Las Vegas on Monday, March 31.  Allegiant flies out of Fresno to Las Vegas every Monday for only $33-$37.  There are a few things you should know about Allegiant Air.  The first thing is it’s a big airplane, not like the SkyWest little bitty plane that flies out of Fresno.  They also have a weight limit of 40 pounds for your checked luggage and the only free carry-on you are allowed is one item, such as your purse.  Ouch, I had a hard time staying under the weight limit.  Pay for your checked luggage online before your flight date to save a ton of money.  The flight was great and we even had a Fresno friend sitting behind us on their way to Las Vegas to celebrate her husband’s retirement. 

We spent a wonderful day with friends who live in Las Vegas and then headed to check into our hotel.  We stayed at Bally’s.  It was a great location right in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip.  We were able to get a refrigerator and a coffee pot by asking for them.  I was not, however, able to secure free internet.  The internet fees in Las Vegas are atrocious and the internet/phone service at Bally’s was a challenge the entire week.

Travel Tip:  Always be nice.  It will get you a lot further than being mean to others.

Travel Tip:  If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.