Blog Under Construction

Sorry for the inconvenience, but this blog is currently under construction. I am in the midst of switching everything over to my new Wordpress blog and right now am learning the design aspect of the platform so blog entries will be nil for a small amount of time. Hope to be back up and running soon! Thanks for you patience!! ~Cortni www.essentialexcellence.com

My Favorite Free Blackberry Apps

I just recently purchased a Blackberry Pearl and I've had fun downloading all sorts of fun apps onto it. I haven't yet paid for a single app because I'm still having fun with all my free ones! So here's a list of my favorites if you're looking for a few free apps for your own Blackberry!

Google Mobile You can get to your Google calendar, post a blog to your blogger website, view your photos, catch up on your RSS feeds on Google reader, access your online Google docs, and more! And then there's the option of performing a Google search by voice! One stop shopping with this app!

Google Maps Google Maps is an excellent application. Search for local business, get directions, use GPS, view satellite images, and more. I like that it will find your current location via GPS and give you directions from there- even showing you where you are on the map in real time. It even gives street views if available!

Amaze GPS My Pearl came with GPS and a program to use it, however you have to actually sign up for the service and pay an additional $10 a month to use it (as if the full blackberry data plan isn't expensive enough). You can download Amaze GPS and get GPS capabilities for free!; I love how if I decide to take an alternate route, it will recalculate the route for me and tell me how to get where I'm going. This is a must have if you get lost a lot in unfamiliar places like I do!

Bible Reader I used to have a Pocket PC and loved that I could put a Bible on there and be able to read it no matter where I was so I was excited when I found one for my blackberry! Olive Tree Bible reader has many free versions to download as well as some they charge a minimal fee for. They also have Christian books you can download into the reader. I love the search feature that helps you locate a verse or subject you are thinking of, even if you don't know the specific reference.

Facebook This one is a must have if you are addicted to Facebook like I am! Your blackberry will alert you on your home screen with a little FB icon telling you when someone has left you a message, made a comment on one of your photos, added you as a friend, and more! Plus the newest version will integrate with your blackberry address book and pull your friends profile pics into your address book so you will automatically have caller ID pictures for all your Facebook friends! And uploading pictures from your phone to your FB account is a snap because there will be a "Send to Facebook" option right in your camera menu!

Slacker Radio While this is a list of my favorite free blackberry apps, I think Slacker Radio is one of my top favorites. With this app you can listen to online radio for free, with minimal commercials. You can skip past songs you don't like and request to hear more of the ones you do. And you can even create customized stations based on your preferences. Plus you can listen to slacker radio on your desktop and sync your favorites to your phone. There are a few limits to the free version however, like a limited number of skipped songs, but it's still an amazing app for free! I've heard Pandora is a pretty good one too, but I haven't tried that one yet.

Grid Magic This app was formerly called MiniExcel, which is exactly what it is. It is like a tiny Excel program on your blackberry. I personally use it to keep track of my Weight Watcher points, but you can keep track of pretty much anything on it! You can download the community version (non-commercial) of Grid Magic for free.

Opera Mini There are just some websites that don't show up well in a Blackberry browser and even if they do, sometimes it's hard to find exactly what you want because the mobile site is so different from the regular site. With the mini Opera browser, you will see a smaller view of the original website, with a box that you can move around that will enable you to zoom into a specific portion of the page, which is really helpful when you know exactly where on a page you want to go, specifically if it happens to be at the bottom!

Radio Companion Listen to over 1000 actual radio stations around the world and see the playlists for tons of other ones. You can add your favorite radio stations in your current city or the cities you used to live in or the cities you love and you can listen to their radio stations or simply see what is playing on the station at this moment, as well as the last 5 songs played. Not only will it tell what song, it will tell you the artist and the album (along with an album picture) and give you a link to go buy the song if you want. It's a great way to listen to radio stations on your phone or simply find out the details about what just played on a radio station you are listening to somewhere else.

Are there any really cool ones that I missed?? Let me know!! Hope you enjoy these!!

Cortni

www.essentialexcellence.com

Twitter in Real Life Terms

The number one question I hear from non (and inexperienced) Twitter-users is “What exactly is Twitter?” Usually when people start explaining the logistics of Twitter, they are met with blank faces because speaking “Twitter” can seem like a different language. There’s nothing else out there quite like Twitter, so it’s hard to compare it something similar, but I enjoy trying to find new and different concepts and putting them into perspectives that people can understand so let me share with you what I personally think Twitter is like to perhaps help you understand the concept a little better. Twitter Terms I view Twitter like a big party. When you sign up for a Twitter account, you are going to a big party. When you first get to the party, you are so overwhelmed by all the people that you’re lost and don’t know what to do. Feel a little familiar to your first day on Twitter? Finally you find someone you know- a friend! So you go over to them and start talking to and listening to them. When you follow someone on Twitter, it is like deciding to listen to what that person says at the party. Specifically, it is akin to practicing selective listening. There may be thousands of people at that party, but if you are only listening to 5, you will only hear 5 speak. You’ll be able to hear what they are saying if you are paying attention, whether or not they are talking directly to you. It’s up to you who you choose to listen to- it may be your friends, people you admire, people who are in the same line of work you are, or people who could potentially be a client or a customer. The beauty is that you can always unfollow people, so if the things they say are offensive or boring or excessive, you can simply stop listening! Now when you choose to follow someone on Twitter, it doesn’t mean they will automatically follow you back, meaning you can be listening to them talk, but they can’t hear you unless you talk to them directly. As a general rule of thumb, people will often follow you in return when you follow them, but that’s not always the case. Engaging in Twitter conversations is like walking into the party room that contains all the people you are following (as well as everyone who is following you). From here, you can jump right into a conversation that someone else is having, make a comment about what someone else said, offer a suggestion to someone’s problem or answer someone’s question. The key is not to try to jump into a conversation that happened 2 hours ago, because chances are its over and they’ve moved past it. Posting a tweet is like walking into the party and saying something. Everyone who has chosen to follow you (or listen to you in the party scenario) will be able to hear what you just said. Your close friends and people you know well will probably actually pay attention and might answer back and complete strangers may ignore you unless you have something extremely interesting to say or unless you are talking directly to them. A reply message, or an @ post is where you are replying to someone. This is where you post a tweet that begins with @(insert Twitter name here). This is like you walking up to your friend at the party and telling him or her something. Everyone who is listening to you can hear what you are saying, but you are speaking directly to your friend. A direct message is a post that is only seen by the person you direct it to. This is like walking up to your friend and whispering a secret into their ear and no one else but your friend knows what you said. What to Tweet The life of every party is usually the one that has the most interesting things to say. So it is on Twitter. If you have interesting things to say and helpful information, people will a) think you’re smart and b) probably want to talk to you, or at least continue listening to you. The specific things you would want to tweet about in order to build your business depends a lot on what you do and what your goal or purpose for using Twitter is. If you are stuck here, consider hiring someone to help you come up with a Twitter action plan tailored specifically to you and your business (Shameless plug here, sorry!) :) What not to Tweet Trying to sell yourself and your business on Twitter is like walking up to random strangers at the party and giving them a flyer and telling them all about what you do. If you were to do this, people would avoid you like the plague. Instead, you build rapport with people by having conversations with them and *when appropriate* mention what you do. If someone is truly interested in doing business with you, they would take you aside to a quiet part of the room to talk business. In Twitter, a developing business relationship is best done via Direct Messages and/or e-mail. If someone doesn’t show interest in doing business with you when you mention what you do, don’t try to sell them on it! Also, be wary of posting a lot of promotional tweets. If there were a guy at the party just standing in the middle of the room yelling about his business every hour or so, I’d stop listening to him (in real life I’d leave, but it’s a bit easier on Twitter). Yes, on Twitter I would un-follow. There is nothing more annoying than people who can only talk about themselves and their business. There is so much more to learn about Twitter and I’m not going to pretend I’ve covered even a fraction of that. Hopefully I shared Twitter in a new light that can help you understand just a little bit better and enables you to get some positive use out of it. If you have any additional questions, e-mail me (Cortni@essentialexcellence.com) or hit me up on Twitter (@CortniMarrazzo) and I will do my best to answer :)

Bloomsday- Spokane's annual 12K race

I'm a firm believer in the importance of exercise and being healthy and even though it's not always my first priority, I always try to be active and take care of myself. Especially since I sit at a desk for most of the day doing what I do (unless it's nice outside, in which case I'll be sitting on my back deck!) So this past weekend I decided to participate in our city's annual Bloomsday race, which is 7.5 miles long! I'm not much of a runner although I do enjoy jogging for short periods of time, so I knew I couldn't run this thing (without proper training that is) but I elected to walk it with a group of friends. We arrived downtown at about 8:30 and stood around for an hour and half until our color group got to start. It was chilly and cloudy, but luckily not raining. At 10:00am we got to start and while we jogged a bit during the first part of the race, my friend and I could barely walk by mile 5 because our feet were in so much pain!! But we hobbled through and made it to the finish line in about 2 hours total. Of course after we officially finished we had to walk another half mile or so to get our race T-Shirts. Participating in this race was a fun experience. This event is such a part of the community I live in and this was my first time participating after living here for 3 years. I really felt like I was officially a Spokane resident. The race started downtown and even though downtown Spokane can't really compare to the downtown Seattle I'm used it when it comes to size, it still has it's own character that I like (plus there's less traffic!!). And while a race in Seattle will often have a view of the Sound, at least we had a view of the Spokane River. The race took us through some beautiful areas of the city that I had never seen before. I really appreciate the beauty of the Pacific Northwest and I thank God that I get to live here. (We even saw coyotes during our run!) So here I am the Monday after and although my feet still hurt a little, I'm feeling proud that I was actually able to jog/walk over 8 miles yesterday and participate in a big part of the Spokane, WA culture. And I'm glad I made it through alive! :) For more of my race pictures, view my Bloomsday facebook album. ~Cortni Marrazzo essentialexcellence.com

Facebook!

So today I set up my blog feed on my business facebook page. I signed up for facebook for the SOLE purpose of creating a business page and promoting my business, however, I got sucked into the personal use of it- oops :) Anyhow, my business page has been somewhat neglected so now I'm trying to update it. Actually I'll be teaching a social media for business workshop next week and I thought that if I'm going to teach others how to create a business facebook page and how to use it effectively, I should probably try using mine a little more ;) I'm trying to find all the fun and productive things I can do with my facebook business page so I can help others figure it out too. Some people have a hard time understanding how they can use social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) for their businesses and that makes complete sense if they are not familiar with social networking as a whole! Lucky for me, social networking is a part of my generation and add to that the fact that I'm a pretty quick learner and am pretty good at teaching others, I've found a great new service that I can offer my clients and help them get social networking to work for them! I hope I can help people learn even more about social networking from reading my blog! Have a great day!! ~Cortni www.essentialexcellence.com

Quickbooks and my favorite new Blackberry app!

I've spent my entire work day today learning Quickbooks so I could finally organize my business finances. I got a killer deal on Quickbooks Pro from Amazon.com ($30) so I decided I need to actually set it up because I've been delaying it. Well after learning and inputting and re-inputting all day, all my accounts match and are up to date, which is nice. But I've gotten nothing else done today :( But now I know how to use Quickbooks pretty well!! :) One of the things I wanted to do today was write a blog post listing my favorite free Blackberry apps. I just got a new Blackberry Pearl last month and I LOVE it! I just downloaded a new app last week though that I REALLY love! I wanted a weather app on my phone that would tell me what the weather is like outside and what the forecast is without having to open a browser and going to a weather site. After searching, I found Weather Bug and I LOVE it! The best thing about this app is that it displays the current temperature in your city right on the app icon so when it's on your home screen all you have to do is look at your phone to see what temperature it is outside! I'm kind of addicted to thermometers and finding out the weather so this is a nice feature for me. Plus I live in a city where the weather can change dramatically in just one day (case in point it was 80 degrees on Tuesday and snowing yesterday). So a follow up blog post with my other favorite FREE blackberry apps (because I haven't yet paid for a single app) will be coming soon. For now, I hope you enjoy the Weather Bug! :)

Spring is Here!

Today it is in the high 70s and I'm loving it! Usually Spring comes every year and tends to drop it's nicest weather during the week when I've always been stuck in an office. But this is my first Spring working at home and now Spring means I get to enjoy the weather WHILE I work! My office has moved to my back patio and I couldn't be happier! Laptop+wireless internet+sunshine= my job! I LOVE it!! Check out this pic of my Spring office :)

The Neglecting of My Blog...

So I haven't posted anything to this blog in over a month. I'm not sure that I even have any regular readers, which is understandable considering I haven't been posting anything!! The reason I haven't been posting is because I've been contemplating switching over to another blogging platform since I can't have this blog posted directly on my site due to my host server (Microsoft Office Live Small Business). I can currently put my blog in a frame within my site, but it constantly opens a new Blogger window and I can't link directly to a specific post within my site that way. Alas, I will start blogging more and when I do switch to a new hosting site (or when Office Live Small Business allows blogs on their sites) I will transfer old entries over if I need to. I will start to post more interesting content from now on :)

How to Have a Champagne Valentines Day on a Recession Budget

So Valentines Day is coming up. The day of love and another chance to spend extra money that you don’t have. Sound familiar? It doesn’t have to be. Valentines day is supposed to be about spending time with the one you love and that shouldn’t have to cost a lot of money. Here are some tips that can help you save money on your Valentines Day plans this year.

Celebrate on a different day

This will save you the most money if you can get your significant other to agree to do this. Since the holiday is supposed to be about expressing and sharing your love, it shouldn’t depend on the particular day. By going to dinner the day before or the day after, you can often avoid paying for the higher-priced menus some restaurants bring out for special holidays. Not to mention you will avoid the crowds since half the world will be going out for dinner on Valentines Day (and it will be easier to find a babysitter)

Also, chocolate and other Valentines Day candy is usually half off the day after the holiday and really, what woman wouldn’t want twice as much chocolate??

Find dining discounts online

There are so many restaurant discounts online that can save you 50% or more on your meal. There are many different ways to find them too. If you have an entertainment book you can find some great discounts in there. Many restaurants have coupons available right on their own websites. Or you can simply do an online search of “[your city] restaurant coupons”. You may also find that some restaurants offer a special discount on certain weeknights or at certain times. Dining coupons often have a restriction that they can’t be used on holidays, which is why celebrating on a different day is also helpful.

Eat out earlier

Restaurants’ lunch prices are usually significantly lower than their dinner prices, which means you can get the same food for a lot less money if you are willing to eat a little earlier. Some restaurants serve lunch until 4pm so you can do an early dinner and save money (while also avoiding crowds). Lunch portions tend to be slightly smaller than dinner portions, but they are still usually pretty good sized. I personally don’t usually finish an entire restaurant meal anyway and it just ends up going bad in my fridge.

Eat dinner in and go out for dessert

Dinner for 2 can get quite expensive, but dessert for 2 can easily be had for under $20. Try making a candlelit dinner at home and then venturing out for dessert afterwards. The Melting Pot has a very affordable chocolate fondue dessert option that is fun and delicious. You can also get ice cream or go to any typical restaurant and only order dessert. Since it’s so much cheaper than dinner, you could even order 3 desserts and share them all!

Do something different

Always go to dinner and a movie on Valentines Day? Try something different this year- something that you’ve never done, or at least never done together. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it can be something simple like indoor miniature golf, bowling or ice skating! The point is to do something new and be together. A new activity is a lot more memorable than the same old routine. Even if you try ice skating and you fall, it should create some laughs that will last a while. (Use the same ideas mentioned above for saving money on dining to find discounts for these kinds of things too.)

Look for the small things

Small tokens of love can go a long way. Almost any wife/mom would LOVE it if their husbands would offer to clean the house and let them relax for an evening. Something like that wouldn’t cost any money, but would be GREATLY appreciated- maybe even more so than dinner and flowers. Maybe offer to give your wife a massage or draw her a bath with candles. The key is to find what your partner loves and try to give them that. It doesn’t have to cost a lot because it really is the thought that counts.

Celebrating Valentines Day, or any other holiday or special occasion for that matter, doesn’t have to break the bank. Sincerely showing someone how much you love them will go so much farther than spending a lot of money on one evening.

Essential Excellence featured in How's Business Newsletter

We got a blurb in the How's Business Newsletter. Check it out here: http://www.spokanehowsbusiness.com/newsletter/currentStory.asp I'm excited about all the media mentions we've been getting. Time to get working on those press releases! Essential Excellence www.essentialexcellence.com

Essential Excellence on MSNBC!!

The previously mentioned article that first appeared on entrepreneur.com has now been picked up my MSNBC, the Washington Post and Fox Business! Check out the links!!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28735902/

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/personal-finance/on-topic/small-business/real-world-cost-cutting-practices/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/19/AR2009011902970.html

http://biz.yahoo.com/entrepreneur/090113/199476_id.html?.v=1

YAY!!!

www.essentialexcellence.com

I'm in an article on entrepreneur.com!

About a month ago I was interviewed for an article about saving money on business expenses. The article recently posted and there is a section about Essential Excellence and my saving money tactics! Check out the article at http://www.entrepreneur.com/management/operations/article199476.html.

Website Remodel

So I decided that my website needed an updated layout- mostly because I had more pages to add and it wouldn't have worked well with my previous layout. Anyhow, redesigning the template wasn't too difficult, but there was one issue that kept coming up weird when I tried to preview the design in a browser. I use Dreamweaver and it's frustrating when the site looks one way in the design screen and different in a browser. It's even more frustrating when it looks right in one browser (like Firefox) and is wrong in another (Internet Explorer). As frustrating as it is, I can usually find a fix for it, which helps me if/when it happens in the future. Also, I was able to upload a recent Powerpoint presentation I created and put it on my front page. It took me a bit to figure it out, but I was able to find a great website that will host it for me and give me the code to embed it in my site. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out :)

A new baby boy and some sun

Some friends of ours just had their first baby on Thursday- a little boy. It was exciting to go see the baby in the hospital- I couldn't believe how tiny he was! The baby actually came about 3 weeks early, so his nursery wasn't even ready for him! So another friend and I decided to paint and decorate their nursery as a surprise to the mom. Even though we were working on the room all day, it was actually a lot of fun! I felt like I was on an HGTV show. Here's what the nursery looked like when we were finished. And on another note, we finally had some sun the other day after many cloudy and snowy days. It was really funny because my dog took advantage of the little bit of sun coming through the window and decided to take a nap in it. The funny thing is that she never sleeps on the floor- only in her bed. But apparently she really needed some sun. Hope to see some more sun in the future! :)

My first presentation and my co-worker

Yesterday I got an e-mail informing me that I was selected to give a 5 minute presentation about my business at a home based business class I was scheduled to attend. Last time I was at the class, which was about a month ago, I decided that I needed to put together a brochure in case I got selected in the future. Well I didn't and here I was now scrambling to put something together. It's a good thing I work well under pressure. I was able to put together a Powerpoint presentation (which is one of my specialties) for the meeting within a couple hours. I gave the presentation and it went pretty well- I thought. Plus the nice thing is that I have it already done for future presentations. I am also going record a narration onto it and post it on my site so others can see it. My next step for marketing materials is to make a brochure. I wanted to introduce my co-worker, even though she doesn't so much work as she does sleep all day and occasionally whine at me to let her up on my lap. She is my beagle Abby. Sometimes she has doggie dreams and she woofs and moves her paws in her sleep. It's pretty funny! She keeps me entertained :) Here are a couple of pictures of her "work day" yesterday:

First workday of 2009

I'm back from Christmas break and I'm excited about getting back to work! I got a new desk for my office this past weekend and I'm so glad I actually have a decent workspace and some storage! And I got the desk off of craigslist for a great deal! Here's a peek at my home office and new desk: Also, I have discovered a wonderful way to keep myself from getting distracted and keeps me in my office- temperature. Let me explain. I have a small heater in my office that keeps it nice and warm in here. I shut the door and keep all the heat trapped in. Meanwhile, I turned the heat off in the rest of the house because there is no need to pay to heat rooms I won't be in. So right now it is 83 degrees in my office and 55 degrees in the rest of the house. Let's just say that my bathroom and snack breaks and QUICK! Meanwhile it's about 30 degrees outside and it's been snowing all morning. Boy I'm glad I work at home!!

Welcome to the Essential Excellence blog

This blog will give a glimpse into the life of a virtual assistant (me, Cortni Marrazzo) as well as give updates on the growth and development of Essential Excellence- my virtual assistance company. www.essentialexcellence.com