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What was I thinking?

Have you ever made a decision that you thought, at the time, was fabulous and then find out it was more than you bargained for?  No, I’m probably the only one who’s ever done that. I’m kidding of course; we all do this; I think it’s called living.  Here’s my most recent story.

For any of you who have been following, I started with a great company who promised “easy” money using the internet. To be fair, if you have the internet skills, this company would probably work. My challenge was that I don’t have all the internet skills to be successful. And we all know what that means – it cost me money and not just a little money.

Fortunately, I came to this revelation sooner rather than later and gave up my internet millions (earning them and, more importantly, spending them). It’s hard to admit making a mistake. We like to believe we are intelligent and can make wise choices. What I continue to learn is this – we become wise through our mistakes and our willingness to admit them, accept them, move past them. I’ve already accepted this one and here’s my admission to the world that I made another boo-boo. Now, I’m ready to move past this and use what I learned to make my real business, my Let’s Do Tea business, better than it was before.

That’s really the important thing. Realize and know that you learned something through the experience and, for heaven sakes, use that knowledge to make your life, and the world, better.

Enough of philosophy, it’s time for tea. Will you join me in a cup?

I’ve been thinking about the best way to organize my office and my customer files. I’ve tried several different approaches and so far, haven’t found the one that lets me serve my customers the way I want to serve them.

Components of good customer service include:

  • Quality product
  • Contact
  • Personalization
  • Integrity
  • A little something extra.

Of course I have a quality product. I wouldn’t be selling it if it wasn’t a great product. For this post, let me talk tea and Let’s Do Tea.

Contact with present and future customers is vitally important. Now the questions begin. How is the best way to contact my customers? How often do I contact them? What information do I provide them to keep them satisfied? Some I’ve figured out for my Let’s Do Tea business; some I’m still working on.  If you were my customer, what would you suggest?

In today’s world, personalization of any service is one of the keys to making it stand out in a crowd. To personalize my service I want to know more than my customer’s name and contact information. I want to know about their lifestyles and food preferences. Then I can target any new tea launches to those customers who may enjoy them the most. How would you track or log this information so it’s available when you need it?

Integrity. What can I say here? Every day I strive to be a person of integrity – to do those things I’ve said I will do when I say I will do them. And, if for some legitimate reason I can’t, I let my customer know as soon as possible. I have not experienced this as a customer very often so it’s important to model this behavior. Integrity also means that I say “No” when I really can’t do something or really don’t want to do a thing – living in truth to myself.

A little something extra. Ahhh, here’s the part I love. What makes me tick is unexpected, spontaneous generosity and random acts of kindness. Most will understand random acts of kindness. Unexpected, spontaneous generosity is a little more difficult to grasp, but is very similar to random acts of kindness. An example of unexpected, spontaneous generosity would be paying for the food of the car behind you in a drive-thru line. It’s an unexpected, spontaneous act performed by a generous spirit. And the look on the other driver’s face is always priceless!

If you have suggestions in any of these areas – contact, personalization, integrity, a little something extra – that will help me get better organized, I’d appreciate your input and comments.

Wishing you an organized day, sprinkled with unexpected, spontaneous generosity.

Do I hear music?

Are you a singer?

I’m a singer. If there’s a song playing that I know, I can’t seem to keep myself from singing – out loud – no matter where I am. Fortunately I do have a rather pleasant singing voice, not professional, but pleasant. Some people can work with music in the background. Unless it’s instrumental and a song I don’t know all the words to, I find background music distracting. All I want to do is sing. I find I can’t sing and be a creative genius at the same time.

And I seem to know thousands of songs, some from as far back as the 1940s. Friends have asked me how I do this, remember all the words to so many songs. I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a gift. If so, and I like to think of it that way, it’s a gift I’m grateful to have. Song writers seem to have a way of expressing exactly how I feel sometimes when I can’t find the right words.

Music is such an important part of my life that I can’t even begin to imagine a world without music. I love most kinds. My personal collection contains Sinatra and Gregorian chants, Latin rhythms and 1970s/80s rock ‘n roll, chamber music and new age pieces. Oh, there’s even some country and a little rap in there too. Some is just for listening. Lots of it is for dancing and, if there are English words, for singing.

Hey. Do I hear music? Gotta run. There’s a song to be sung! Have a musical day.

Keeping in touch

How have your relationships changed over the past 10 years? For that matter, how have they changed over the past 5 or even 2 years? How do you keep in touch with your family and friends in our new high tech world?

Consider all the options available now. Wasn’t it just yesterday when email was the greatest thing? I use it often. It’s quicker than a letter; short message or long, I can compose on the fly and send it on its way. And I get my reply as quickly. Would a phone call do? Perhaps. A phone call is more intrusive, though, and for me, it’s more noise in my already noisy environment. Email will sit quietly and wait to be retrieved, savored and stored or trashed, and responded to.

Though it has its place, email is so yesterday. Today it’s text messages and social media. I still can’t get into the whole texting thing, no children here. Social media – that I love. Twitter is my personal favorite. I love it because it’s quick, short, to the point, then move on. Not everyone’s style. Most of my family and friends are Facebook fans. So I joined Facebook. Then I linked all my Tweets from Twitter to show up here. No need to do extra typing. I’ve reconnected with friends from years ago through Facebook. Interesting to see how we’ve changed and how we haven’t.

What I love about Facebook is the Chat feature. My family and friends are all over the country and around the world. Chat allows me to catch up with them when we’re both online and share a few exchanges about what’s happening right now – like a snapshot of life. I’m growing through these snapshots. I chat several times a week with my brother on a schedule that suits us both better than phone calls. I’m becoming reacquainted with my cousins through Chat and I’m getting to know a couple of cousins and a niece and nephew I’ve rarely seen during their lives.

I’m sure things will continue to change and improve. One thing will not – relationships take time and effort. Find the best way for you to keep in touch or reconnect with family and friends and use it regularly. I believe, like me, you will be amazed at how enriching it can be.

Wishing you a fabulous “hump” day…may your week be all downhill from here!

On June 9th my husband and I will be celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. Wow, 30 years. Sometimes it seems longer, but most of the time it seems barely anytime has passed at all since we were making those wedding plans. And I love to plan parties and celebrations.

For our 25th anniversary, we had a big party, with dancing of course, and lots of our friends in attendance. We took a group of some of our closest out to dinner with us in limos and had delicious food, fine wine and great laughs. It’s interesting to realize we didn’t know any of these people when we got married. Our married journey together brought us to them.

And our journey has been like most others. We’ve had our share of good times and bad. I choose to remember mostly the good ones. We’ve been to Hawaii twice – once we took my parents along; it was my daddy’s favorite vacation. (Unfortunately, we’ve lost both our dads now.) We’ve spent weekends traveling to pick apples and oranges in season and visit massive gardens around historical homes. We’ve learned to grow beautiful roses and worked a small garden. We designed and had our current home built and would love to build another one someday. Although we have no children, we have two nieces and two nephews we love dearly. My husband has learned, over the years, the joy and amusement of owning cats.

We have much to celebrate. Once, when I expressed my concern over “how it looked” to have a big celebration for our anniversary, my hairdresser made an interesting observation. (Hairdressers, barbers, bartenders…they hear it all!) She said that not enough people make a big deal about celebrating anniversaries. In fact, perhaps more money deserved to be spent on anniversaries than weddings. After all, anyone can get married; it doesn’t take much to do that. Staying married is another thing entirely. That requires lots of work and dedication and really should be celebrated. A lasting marriage is so rare these days it deserves special recognition.

I like that.

May you discover something in your life today, no matter how small, that deserves a grand celebration.

Time to Dance

My husband and I began ballroom dancing about 15 years ago.  At that point we had barely ever danced any “real” steps.  Growing up in the 1970s we did the usual rarely-touching couple dances, except for slow songs that required almost full body contact. Fun for certain at the time – still some of my favorite music, a chance for free expression, and great times with friends.

After all our years of ballroom dancing, it’s difficult to “let myself go” and dance that way now. I’m OK with that. I find I enjoy the mental challenge of dancing with a partner while in physical contact. I relish the woman’s part of “not knowing” what’s coming next and of being the picture to the man’s frame. I love executing all those “showy” steps and being the center of attention when they go especially well. And I am among the most fortunate of women – my husband loves dancing and we are well matched in style and skill level. We are fun to watch when we dance together or so I’ve been often told.

We don’t compete with our dancing. That would take all the fun out of dancing for us. We do, however, enjoy exhibition dancing – translate loosely as showing off. Sometimes we perform together as a couple, sometimes with our professional instructors. Most of the time we focus on solo routines where one couple performs at a time. On occasion, though, we participate in formation dancing where there are several couples performing a set pattern of steps all at the same time.

We have one of those performances tonight. We and four other couples will be performing our first paso doble routine. This is the dance where the man represents the matador in the bull ring and the woman represents, no, not the bull, but the cape. Our rehearsal yesterday went well and our shapes are looking good.

And, now, it’s almost time to dance. Wishing you a day of joyful movement…

Over 100 loose leaf teas

The day is warm and sunny; there’s a gentle breeze through the trees. It’s mid-afternoon and you’re feeling a little energy lull. Here’s the solution.

Let’s Do Tea! If you are a true tea lover, you know that really great tea must be made from whole loose leaves. These whole leaves provide so much more flavor than traditional tea bags. And they contain the maximum amount of antioxidants. If you’re going to drink tea, you might as well get all the “good stuff” out of it you can.

Let’s Do Tea offers over 100 blends of loose leaf teas – from blacks to greens, whites to rooibos, herbals to fruit and herbal blends. If you like tea, you’re sure to find at least one here that you’ll love. There’s also a selection of tea pots, tea cups and tea prep accessories. You can order all of these online.

I found this interesting bit of tea trivia: What’s your cup of tea? If you are a green tea drinker, you’re a connoisseur of the finer things in life. You know what you’re talking about and are a specialist – a visionary – in your field.

I expect lots of you are green tea drinkers. I am. Well, it must be tea time somewhere. Won’t you share a cup with me?

Notes from the Universe

Notes from the Universe…hmmm…I wonder what that’s all about?

I found this wonderful site through one of my business acquaintances, now my friend. If you’ve heard about this site, you may have heard it referred to as TUT. I think it stands for Totally Unique Thoughts. If you haven’t been here yet, click here now.

“Notes from the Universe” works like this. You fill out a very short survey about your dreams, your goals, a couple of other items. You can change and update these as your dreams change and grow. Then, each day you receive an email from the Universe. It contains words of encouragement, hope, affirmation based on the answers you provide in your survey. You receive a daily reminder about what a special and unique part you play in the universe and how you are exactly where you’re supposed to be and how wonderful that is.

Most important is a daily reminder that thoughts become things so take care and focus energy only on positive ones. I have found this daily reminder most helpful.

May you know today that you are unique, special and filling your important place in the universe.

Passion is the key

I’ve often heard people say:

  1. Find something you’re passionate about and make that your job.
  2. Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
  3. Do what you love and the money will follow.

Really? I haven’t believed that quite enough in my life. Like many people, I have chosen jobs based primarily on income potential. The next question is “Where is it located?”.  And “Can I honestly endorse this product or service and do I “like” the people I’ll be working with?”. These criteria have lead me to satisfactory positions and directly out of a few I misjudged at the beginning. But have I had passion for my work?

To some degree, yes. One of my true passions is education. And I seem to be a teacher at heart. No matter what I do, I often hear people say, “Are you a teacher here?” or “Where do you teach this?” I’m still learning, though, that to be a great teacher, you must also be a great student. Still working on that some days. My latest venture gives me the chance to become a better student and to offer people, especially women, a really sound financial education. It is my passion for educating other women that drives me forward in this my venture, though my start has taken longer than I had hoped.

Passion is truly the key. Enthusiasm is important, but can be fickle – strong and effervescent sometimes, an effort at others. Passion, however, is a sustaining fire, even burning on low, that will carry me even when enthusiasm escapes me and I am physically tired. Passion demands forward movement, no matter how small the step. And each step brings goals closer.

Wishing you a day of passionate happiness….

What are white papers?

I’m seeing lots of mentions of white papers in different articles I’m reading. Although I know the terminology, I’m not specifically clear on what makes a white paper a white paper. Previously I’ve only heard of white papers in reference to proposals for contracting work, generally with the US government. Obviously, there’s more to them than this. Or at least they have more uses.

So here’s what I think I’ve figured out so far. An article can be a white paper, but all articles are not necessarily white papers. White papers do not sell a product and are not a sales pitch in any way. The main purpose of a white paper is to offer a solution to a problem. How much information to provide for this solution is still a little vague to me. Is this a “valued added” feature I’m offering to my customers and potential customers? Is it used to demonstrate that my solution is unique and worth a look? How long is a “good” white paper? So much I still have to learn…

If you can offer any help in this area, I would be grateful.  Go out and make this an awesome day!

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