Online Executive and Admin Assistant Training

October 06, 2009 at 03:52 PM | (0) Comments

Being stranded at an airport just stinks… canceled flight, no connections and you can find yourself stranded pretty quick.

I’ve experienced this personally a couple of times but usually, I deal with such occurrences when my boss calls as they’re trying to get back home and are stuck in some far off airport due to a canceled or delayed flight. My course of action in such instances is to get the travel agent on the phone to scour for other flights and hotel rooms as a back up… but I could never point my boss in the right direction to the best place for them to ride out the delay short of sending them to a hotel.

Until now.

Given that my boss has an AMEX Platinum card, they can get access to just about any airport lounge so when @nmarasco pointed me to a wiki online that lists and rates a ton of airport lounges, I knew I was going to use this resource in short order.

And soon enough, my boss was delayed and I pulled this little resource out of my assistant tool kit to lead them to the best rated lounge of that airport. Needless to say, I looked like a superstar and they’re still talking about that lounge two weeks later.

So, if your boss is either an air traveling warrior with “frequent flier” status for each major airline or is an AMEX platinum card holder, you now have a quick and easy resource in your assistant tool kit to come in and save the day. Remember, having the right tool for the job makes all the difference.

Flickr Creative Commons image by mk30

All Posts, Off Topic,

Off Topic: Just some bicycle riding…

October 05, 2009 at 04:43 PM | (0) Comments

If you’ve got 5 minutes of “down time” (if not, bookmark it for later), the below video is for you… simply amazing:

All Posts, Tricks of the Trade,

How to change bad habits and make good ones stick

October 02, 2009 at 03:40 PM | (0) Comments

Habits can be both good AND bad.

smoking = bad habit; exercising = good habit; biting nails = bad habit; eating lots of greens = good habit… and the list goes on.

I’m not writing this post to try and get you to quit all of your bad habits and start a bunch of good habits; nope, I’m not that guy who throws stones at glass houses. The goal of this post is to point you to a habit changing cheat sheet which lists 29 ways to change a habit or form a new one IF you want to either stop a bad habit or start a good one.

I wish I had that list when I changed one of my habits not too long ago… you see, I bit my nails. I know, gross and UN-attractive but I couldn’t help myself… was doing it for years and years. It was something that I wanted to stop for a while but it took some time before I finally rid myself of that BAD habit. Don’t really know how exactly I did it but I do know that I “fell off the wagon” a couple of times until finally kicking it for good.

This list from Leo over at ZenHabits would have helped me through that process. At least now I’m better prepared for next time… and there will be a next time, I’m sure.

If you’re wondering what this has to do with executive assisting or admin assisting, you can create GOOD habits in your job that will close the cracks so nothing slips through AND makes you look like a superstar… things like: always calling to confirm appointments for the following day or always writing down the tasks given to you no matter how trivial or simple they are or making sure you update contact information right when it changes for anyone in your boss’s contact list… you get the idea.

Flickr Creative Commons image by miscpix

All Posts, Technology,

Simple “easy to remember” & SECURE Passwords

September 30, 2009 at 05:12 PM | (11) Comments

Today I woke up to one of the worst things that could happen in this day and age… a truly terrible occurence that I wouldn’t wish on my worst nightmare—well, I probably wouldn’t care it if happened to my worst nightmare but close—... ready for it?

My personal Gmail account was hacked & hijacked!

It was one of those really nasty hacks where a worm emailed everyone I have ever emailed during the entire time I’ve had this email account. The subject read: “Dear Friends” which made it super sneaky in that most of my friends opened the email. Luckily, it was a sales email and nothing “Trojan Horse” about it that would infect their accounts too.

The body of the email talked about how I had just bought a TV at a great price from this website in China, that the link in the email actually took you to, so you too could buy a great, cheap TV! Most of my friends caught that the writing of the email wasn’t how I write but some fell for it.

I got emails back asking if I had changed jobs or “What kind of TV did you get?”... as I said, a very sneaky email hack attack indeed.

Anyway, that brings us to an article that I want to point you to from Slate.com that details how to create really solid, hard to hack passwords for all of your email, social media and Internet accounts. We’ve all got numerous accounts floating around on the web, it’s time to really protect them. It’s a great article and I used the technique it teaches to create a new and improved password for my “on life support” email account.

So, if you want to learn how to make super-easy-to-remember and solid-as-a-rock-passwords, check the article out. I sure feel better after using this system to change my password; come on hacker hijackers, I’m ready for ya!