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Picture this scene.

You’re busy concentrating on something in the office or perhaps having a conversation with someone, but only half concentrating as you’re dialling a phone number to make a call.  The phone rings a couple of times, it’s answered and you finish the conversation you were having with the other person, or perhaps finish your train of thinking and then realise that there is a beep and you were listening (well, only half listening) to a voicemail message.  You leave your message and hang up.

A couple of days pass and you realise that person hasn’t returned your call.  How rude.  So you shoot them an email (or DM them via Twitter) and ask them if they got your message?

Their response is they didn’t.  The person you were calling checks their phone logs or voicemail and there is no message from you.  What did actually happen?

Chances are you rang a wrong or old number but because you weren’t listening to what took place at the other end after it stopped ringing you can’t even be sure who was on the voicemail message or if it was a blanket recorded message used by Telco services.

Ever happened to you?  mmm, thought so. I believe this happens to too many people and it’s a sign of busy-ness and trying to get several things done at once. Trouble is we end up causing delays for ourselves simply because we weren’t paying attention at the time we made the original call.

So, what are you going to do on your next phone call?  Listen did you say?  Thought so.

Tags: Author's Thoughts, Business Operations by Kathie Thomas
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Recently a client has been having challenges with their Outlook file and then they sent me an image of a message they’d received because Outlook had stopped working.  The pst file was over the size limit.

I had explained previously the importance of deleting from the Sent folder, archiving regularly and generally maintaining the file but I guess it’s something that just isn’t thought about regularly and in fact, not until it crashes.

Unfortunately Outlook does have file limitations (you can’t let it go on forever) and whilst some say that 2gig is the recommended size I encourage people to consider keeping it at 1gig or less.

I restart a new pst file at the beginning of every year. Quite easy really. I rename the outlook.pst file to the year it’s for, i.e. outlook2008.pst (when Outlook is closed) and then when Outlook re-opens it will automatically recreate outlook.pst because it can’t find the other file.  You can then use the import/export function to import your contacts list and any other folders you created which need to be kept.  But don’t import the whole old file – otherwise you’re back where you were before.

This article at Microsoft will give you more information should you need to do further exploration.

Tags: Business Operations, Working Online by Kathie Thomas
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“Your Home Business” profiles home based businesses that have been in operation long-term. It came out just this week.  Published by Switzer Media & Publishing, I was approached a couple of months ago asking for an interview as I’d been in business for almost 15 years, from a homebased office. I was delighted. Any opportunity to promote the Virtual Assistant industry is always welcome.  And I love that the VA industry has allowed me to work at home now for almost 15 years (in March) so I could be present for our family as they grew up.   A decision I’m always glad I made.

Below is the front cover and my article starts on page 56.  The magazine is available around the country by various newsagents.  They also have an educational website called BizThinkTank worth visiting.

Tags: Author's Thoughts, Business Operations, Self-employed, Work From Home by Kathie Thomas
7 Comments »

Spare a thought for Winweb who are experiencing a problem with mistaken identity and a malware program that carries a similar name to their business. I’ve known Stefan Töpfer for a couple of years now. We first spoke December 2005 and I met him February 2006 when I was visiting in London. We’ve maintained a business connection ever since and you may have noticed a recent post about a business competition – it was through Stefan that my connection took place. Rather than rewrite what he says, I’ll share with you his dilemma.

Dear All,

In the past week a malware program has surfaced, which calls itself WinWeb Security (winwebsecurity.com – don’t click on any links on this website). It has, of course, nothing to do with us. If you Google ‘WinWeb Security’ you will get a picture of what is going on, that is only the public side of it. Please see my post:

http://www.sme-blog.com/comments/winwebsecuritycom-more-facts

and WinWeb’s Statement recently:

http://www.winweb.com/latest-news/winweb-winwebcom-vs-winweb-security-winwebsecuritycom

Despite the fact that we have been providing free support to anyone (1000′s) who contacted us, we have sometimes been falsely accused of being winweb security, which we are not; this is still causing real damage to our reputation, due to the name association.

I wonder if you would be willing to help us to set the record straight with your readers and maybe forward this to some of your other blogger contacts to do the same. I have provided WHOIS lookups in my posts, that should be one of the most helpful ways to show people what is what, and hopefully stop them associating us with this menace.

I’m sorry about the bulk email, but I have to react fast. If you can help – I thank you very much for your support, I of cause do understand if you do not what to get involved.

Kind regards

Stefan.

Poor Stefan and his staff. So if you have heard of Winweb please know they are not connected to winweb security.

Have you had a problem with a domain or business name that is similar to yours and has this caused problems for you? I would love to hear about them here. I think it’s important to put people straight on incorrect assumptions wherever possible. What do you think?

mistaken identity, malware, similar domain, winweb

Tags: Business Operations, Warnings by Kathie Thomas
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