As September dawns are you feeling blue about the end of summer and if you are a parent or grandparent, the school holidays or do you feel rejuvenated by the thought that you can finally speak to people and concentrate on your business rather than just marking time?

For those of us who have been lucky enough to have a break away from home, we may already have settled back into our routine, or for others waiting until the world re-emerges, from the August slump.

I love spending time with my family, I am lucky enough to have family living abroad.  I enjoy the thought of getting away from it all, but I tend to do a lot of thinking about what I want to do next strategically.  I even took my logos on holiday to decide on my final choice and considered doing a poll of all the passengers on my flight!

I also enjoy the fact I don’t have to get up quite so early when I return to the UK, although I am always at my desk by 8.30 am!

While I’m not keen on the darker mornings and the evenings I look forward to September, as I see it as a time for renewed vigour.  For me this means putting into practice what I have been learning during the quieter summer months.   This year I learnt more about Social Media marketing by doing some blog rewrites for a client and another client took the opportunity to start teaching me the accountancy software Sage, for my own use.  Now all I need to do is put all this into practice.

If you are feeling  invigorated and want to concentrate on growing your business then contact  JH Admin to assist you with your admin needs. 

So you've been business networking. What do you do with the business cards you collect?  Have you sorted them into an orderly fashion and filed them electronically or even better spoken to the person or people and set up a meeting?  

Perhaps this is one of the jobs you save for later but time to sort them never comes because you are too busy running your business. Rather than keep them in your drawer, or a pile on your desk what do you actually want to do with them.

When you collect the cards what are you intending to do with them? Are you intending to use them for networking in the future - do you want to use their services or are you going to use them for marketing purposes?  

Sophie, one of my client's had attended various networking events and had over 60 business cards from different sources.  When we met she asked me to sort them firstly into excel spreadsheets and then upload them to Insightly (her CRM - Customer Relationship Management software of choice). Once completed I uploaded them to Mailchimp (an email marketing platform), so that Sophie could tailor her marketing to the specific groups.   

For a small amount Sophie was able to maximise her time and target her marketing more appropriately. 

Imagine you’ve worked hard all year and you are looking forward to your 2 weeks away, with your loved ones or on your own.  Will you be spending your time relaxing and enjoying your time away with your favourite drink, alcoholic or non-alcoholic or will you be worrying about whether you are missing out on business?

Mine’s a frappe with ice cream!

For peace of mind why not consider using a Virtual Assistant. Virtual Assistants can look after your business while you are away.  They can answer your calls, book appointments in for your return and monitor your email account. 

No time to plan your holiday some Virtual Assistants will do this for you, or maybe able to tap into other resources for you.

Imagine coming back feeling rested and refreshed ready for your return to work, knowing that everything has been dealt with and you can just pick up your work.

image courtesy of www.freeimages.co.uk