Wendy Carlyle

The weather is gorgeous. I’m so glad we planned a little picnic and afternoon at the Lake today. I have a feeling that after such a horrible hot summer that this weekend is one of the very few nice weather weekends we’ll have this year. I cheated a little on the picnic – Publix had cold friend chicken on sale for just $3.99 for 8 pieces. The chicken and my homemade macaroni salad and a small seedless watermelon were GOOD EATING!

We had such a nice relaxing day – best Labor Day that I can remember!

Usually we go away for the Labor Day holiday weekends, but this year the threat of Hurricane Earl and a lot of things going on at work caused me to change my mind about that. So I’m looking for some fun things to do around here.

We have a big jazz festival going on in Franklin today and tomorrow. I’m thinking about taking the kids down there for a couple of hours. There will be concerts, but I’m concerned that the shows will last too late for the kids to be able to enjoy that. The opening act is scheduled for 5:00 but the headliner doesn’t come on until 8:30 – and that’s if it starts on time. Unfortunately, the shows are the main reason I’m interested in going. So I don’t know if we will do that or not. Still thinking about it.

Looking at a banner ad for Myrtle Beach, I found that it was sponsored by the official tourism department for South Carolina. The headline of the banner was what caught my eye, “South Carolina: Made for Vacation.”

Now, I do love South Carolina and I love North Carolina. I love Myrtle Beach for family vacations to the Atlantic, (although I think the Virginia Beach area is a little cleaner and nicer now that they got serious about being a family friendly destination).

According to this tourism site, South Carolina has these activities to offer for a girls getaway weekend:

• Beaches
• Shopping
• Outdoors
• Golfing
• Historic
• Wine / Cuisine
• Theatre
• Ghost Tours
• Spas

My girlfriend, Vicki, is a legal secretary and we worked together for almost a year right after college. Talking with her today for a bit, she told me that her law firm has been struggling in the recession, like so many other businesses. So, to save money and not have to cut anyone’s pay, their HR person decided to lay off the firm’s receptionist and have each of the legal secretaries take a half day shift to cover the phones and front desk.

I’m aghast. What a dumb idea. That puts a huge burden on all the other secretaries and now they won’t be able to get their own work done. Plus they are paying the legal secretaries a much larger salary than what they were paying the receptionist, so they just made that position cost a whole lot more.

Vicki hates sitting out front and dealing with the phones. The firm is using voip phone service, to save money, which means she has to wear a headset while answering the phones. She doesn’t like wearing a headset and she refuses to share a headset with the other secretaries. She made the firm buy each legal secretary their own headset to wear, as a matter of good hygiene. So there’s another related expense to letting the receptionist go.

Vicki was telling me a little about VOIP and how she was thinking about getting that at home. But the system used by the law firm is Business VOIP, so she would not have to use a headset at home.

One of the non profit organizations that I work with has started an email marketing program for some of their fund raising activities. I think that is a great idea, as most people now have an email address and access to the internet. So sending out emails is a quick way to get a message out to hundreds of people and it is less expensive than having materials printed or photocopied and then sent out by mail.

The only problem with sending out all these emails is that you need good email marketing software to handle the large lists and to provide templates for quick composition.

The last time I sent out emails to a long list of recipients, I had problems with my server flagging the emails as spam and limiting the number of emails that I could send at one time to less than 20. So to send out 2,000 emails, I would have to send the same template out to a list of 20 people 200 times. Let me tell you, that is very repetitive and tiring. Especially when there are email marketing solutions to handle those types of issues for you, faster and easier.

The first day of September is tomorrow and that is a big month in my family for birthdays, which means I need to get busy shopping for everyone’s gifts and getting them wrapped or mailed. I have a good idea of what to buy for each person, now it is a matter of just finding each item for a good price. I love shopping online, as you can find the best price plus use online coupons to save a little extra cash.

One website that I love has coupon codes for online purchases but also has coupons that you can print out. So it you prefer to shop locally, you can check this site before you go. I did that with Target coupons and saved enough cash to pay for the gas and back, which is better than free shipping because I got to actually go to the store and walk out with my purchases in my arms- no waiting for the mail carrier!

I love printable coupons when I know where I want to shop and I want to try on clothes or shoes before deciding to buy them. Buying the right size saves a whole lot of time and annoyance if there is any doubt about the size of an unfamiliar style or brand.

My friend, Wes Bennett, shares my love of dragonflies. He took this picture of a beautiful blue one and put it on his Facebook photos page. I just had to share it with you (he said it was OK).

At Kroger I noticed that they are having a sale on Blue Bell ice cream. You can buy three gallons for just $10, for this week only.

This is a huge savings on the very best ice cream in the store. Normally they sell one gallon for $6- $7 per gallon. So to buy 3 gallons for $10 is a savings of about $11.

I barely have room in the freezer for 3 gallon containers, but I plan on making room somehow. This is too good a deal to not take advantage of it!

Just about every small business has realized by now that they need to be online and that they need at least a basic web site. Some businesses are still having a hard time figuring out how to make that happen. They have to learn about web hosting, web design, SEO and all the fun things that the professionals do to make a functional, revenue generating, internet presence.

Once they master the basics, then the more advanced options have to be considered. For some businesses, a managed hosting arrangement is an affordable option to hiring engineering staff and housing a full IT department.

If storing a lot of computer equipment on site becomes a problem, a very practical way to free up space and increase security is colocation. By sending your servers to an off-site facility, you no longer have to worry about fire, vandalism, theft, or natural disasters that may affect your primary place of business. The servers and all your data will still be safe and available for use because they are somewhere else.