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Mary Wu, Social Media Consultant

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Monthly Archives: June 2014

Starting out

Naperville North High School

Naperville North High School (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every year Naperville North High School does a report about their senior class. This year the number one college location for the 2014 Huskies is College of DuPage (a local two-year community college). The number one major … undecided.

It seems like a wonderful plan for many students. We’re lucky to live in a country with so many options for our young (and not so young) people. Before you send a high school graduate off to wherever they’re going next, how can a parent best help them?

Anita2This brings us to our fifth (and final) introduction for National Small Businesses. One way to help guide high school students is to contact an educational consultant such as Anita Gajula at College Prep Mentoring. Anita can work with students and their parents to find their way through the confusion that is the collection decision and application process.

(And really, anyone that can get more than two words out of my son deserves some recognition.)

(Click on the video below, you’ll be “Happy” you did).

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Starting Over

Recently I was reading about how President George H.W. Bush (41st President of the United States) celebrated his 90th birthday by skydiving.* You can watch the video at this link. While I’m pretty sure that I would never actually jump out of a perfectly fine airplane, I have to give kudos to President Bush for following his passion.

For the fourth in my small business series, I’d like to introduce you to Felicity. Sometimes it might be hard to pinpoint your passions. You might have so many that it’s hard to narrow down (and not all of us have the means that someone in the Texas oil business has to chase all our dreams). But for those of you rethinking your future goals and desires, or for those looking toward a promotion or career change, you can contact Felicity Solomon at Savvy Services.felicity2

Whether you’re thinking of a new career opportunity or trying to realize your dreams, a life coach would be a great person to have on your team. (After all, our 41st President couldn’t have jumped out of a plane without an entire team to help him).

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*He announced the jump on his Twitter feed. The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 year old age group.

 

Little Bits at a Time

Michelle croppedStarting a Virtual Assistant business was, for me, a rather pleasant accident. I was taking courses at the local community college to update my skills while I was thinking about re-entering the job market. There was a course under Office Technologies titled Virtual Assistant, and since it was an online course I knew I could work the course work around my schedule. Fast forward 16 weeks and I had done a basic business and marketing plan for my course. Once I decided that would be my next course of action, it was easy to move forward.

As I did last year at this time, I’m celebrating National Small Business Week by doing a 5 part series of small business owners that I have had the pleasure of working with.

Today we’ll meet Michelle Smith at Z & B Consulting.

Michelle is known as an “idea person” who works to help companies create awareness, strengthen relationships and ensure success. She is the creator of the “Marketing Morsels”, “Magnify Your Marketing,” and “Maximize Your Marketing”, a 3-pronged strategic approach to business success. She also publishes a newsletter, which you can subscribe to on the landing page of her website.

That’s what she does for a living. But what she really does is create connections. Michelle is a walking business directory of local small business in the western and southern suburbs of Chicago. She’s great at getting to know people, and she absolutely walks her talk.

I will often tell potential clients that if they have a project that I can’t help them with, I am usually able to find someone who can. As a person that has many connections (and makes a point of getting to know all the local virtual assistants and some not so local VAs), I can make that statement with almost complete confidence. As a friend and colleague of Michelle Smith, I can absolutely make that statement with complete confidence. We make a pretty strong team, and typically we can find someone that can solve most any small business problem.