Fast forward to 2011 and I am just about to graduate university, and Joel and I are engaged and have been living together for 3+ years. When discussing our life plan it really boiled down to was, what was I going to do once I graduated university. I could:

• Get a job, on the island
• Get a job, off island
• Be a business owner
• Go back to school

Many a nights were spent mulling over the options, and while just getting a job seemed to be the easiest and in some ways most appealing option, I couldn’t bring myself to take it. I literally tried to convince myself to apply to jobs, although I knew myself that wasn’t where my heart is. You know the saying, you can’t help what you love? I fully realized the power of the statement this year.

In walks The Landing. I remember when I heard it was for sale and memories of working there started flooding back to me. I then began to fantasize about owning the restaurant that I spent my teenage years working. But thats all it was, unrealistic unattainable dreams. Things became real when I started trying to plan for the future. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself to move off PEI for a “good job”, I couldn’t. I love PEI, like stop dead in my tracks, heart skips a beat kind of love. The kind of love that endures one of the worst god forsaken winters I have ever seen.  So I started looking for jobs, hoping that would quench the thirst I couldn’t seem to satisfy. More restaurant fantasies, and more job applications. It wasn’t until November 2010 that I started writing the business plan for The Landing. The plan just flowed out of me, like I had been working on parts all my life and it just came together all at once. That plan was my baby.

I became consumed in learning everything I could about restaurants. When I told Joel of my idea, he was very on-board. Wanting to be a bartender for the last few years made it an easy decision for him.Then reality started to set in. While reading books about the restaurant business, I started to see some scary numbers. I read that many people get so caught up in the fun aspects of owning a restaurant that they never face the realities. To help uncover if this idea was bad, I started talking to restaurant owners, including my old boss and the former owner of the pub. It boosted my confidence to know it can be done, it just requires a lot of hard work.

The difficulty we faced financing this venture was something I never expected.. When going to our bank to get the financing, we suddenly realized that this isn’t going to be easy. As a matter of fact, this is going to be one of the hardest things I have ever done. It was a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs and I am women enough to admit I shed my fair share of tears after being turned down again and again. I was at the point where I was about to throw in the towel when things magically came together.

So, we bought the pub and it feels very surreal. I am getting in there soon to start putting the place together. I have a lot of work cut out for me but I have an AMAZING support system from all over Canada willing to help me, including all my extended family who have volunteered their time to help Joel and I move in.

Step 1: Gauge your audience.

While the majority of people prefer to use email marketing, there are a large number of people who wish to engage with a brand in different ways, such as using Twitter. The first step is to analyze each audience. Try and understand why each particular audience chooses to use the medium use to engage with your brand.  For instance:

Email marketing: It is easy and is delivered to the customers Inbox at set intervals. If the email seems interesting, the customer can read it, if not it can easily be deleted or ignored.

Twitter: Twitter allows for two-way conversation and simplifies it by limiting everyone to 140 characters. People who use twitter wish to digest a lot of information quickly.

Facebook: People who use Facebook to engage with brands are looking to broadcast their support of the brand.

Blogs (RSS Feeds): These people are looking for larger bits of information, but want to choose when and where they digest this information.

While many brands choose one method of delivering their messages (that is, email marketing OR Facebook), spreading yourself among multiple platforms can result in greater visibility. Managing multiple channels is not much harder than managing one channel.

Step 2: Tailor your information to your audiences

Once you’ve gauged your audience, use the information discovered in step 1 to tailor your message to be delivered through each channel. For instance, Mashable‘s Facebook updates occur less frequently than their Twitter updates and often the headlines are changed slightly depending on the platform. Mashable often takes advantage Facebook’s comment system to stimulate conversation below their updates by asking questions related to the article. Companies must also keep in mind what they want the customer to do once they have been exposed to the information, then tailor the message depending on the action. For instance, if the purpose of the email newsletter is to sell widgets, than the message must be tailored for that purpose. The same rule applies to all platforms.

Tip: Avoid auto-posting

While auto-posting makes delivering information across multiple platforms easier, I do not recommend it. Auto-posting treats all audiences the same, which as we learned in step 1, they are not. One of the most frustrating things I see brands doing is auto-posting messages to Twitter that are longer than 140 characters. These updates usually end with a link to the full message. What brands don’t understand is that when a customer chooses to engage with your brand using (for instance) Twitter, they do not want to be re-directed to Facebook. When brands participate in this behavior it is showing the customer that they don’t really care about their wants and needs. In addition, brands must realize that there is some overlap among platforms. Many people who subscribe to your email newsletter may also ‘like’ you on Facebook. Auto-posting will result in a lot of repeating messaging which can be annoying to the customer. Let your customer feel as if by subscribing to multiple platforms, they are getting the complete brand experience, not just the same experience repeated.

Step 3: Observe, observe, observe!

Observe how each audience reacts to your brand messages. Do they share, like or re-tweet your information? If they are not, what type of messages are being shared, liked and re-tweeted? Use this information to improve your message. You can stop our brand from becoming stale by constantly learning and changing the ways you interact with your customer. Experiment & try new things cause you never know what might really resonate with a particular audience.

Step 4: Brand = You!

The best part about managing a smaller brand is that you can express your personality in your brand. I tie my brand very closely to my personality and it makes it a lot easier to manage. Many people split their brands on services like Twitter and post updates as themselves and updates as their brand.  There is no point or merit to this. Oftentimes, the brand updates end up as stale, uninspired and boring. Keep in mind that people do business with people they like so why not expose your brand to people who have already proven they like you? By keeping your friends in the loop with your brand, you can increase the chance of them recommending you or even becoming a customer.

Managing your brand takes time, effort and planning but is often a fun and rewarding experience. If you have any additional tips, please share below!

Google apps also allows you to add many useful services to your account. I have tried out many of these services. Some have been extremely useful, while others did not suit my work habits or business model. Here are the apps that I have found most useful and continue to use on a regular basis.

Tungle.me

Tungle.me is a free scheduling application that syncs with your calendar. I have mine synched with my google calendar. When someone wants to meet with me, I send them the link to my tungle.me page, they choose an available time slot (or propose multiple times) and tungle.me sends me a email to confirm the time. It has saved me so much time and hassle. This is an essential app for any busy person!

Mail Chimp

Mail Chimp is an easy way to make great looking html newsletters, simple as that. If email marketing is something you are thinking about doing, Mail Chimp can take the headache out the process. Mail Chimp also has a free version, perfect for small to medium sized businesses.

Sliderocket

Sliderocket is a slideshow application that allows you to make beautiful slideshows online. Slideshows hosted online means no more carrying around flashdrives with presentations on them. Sliderocket also integrates with Flickr, allowing you to quickly look up photos listed under the creative commons license. Sliderocket has a premium and standard service, with the standard being free to use.

Manymoon

Manymoon is a free project management app that integrates with your google account allowing you to add tasks to your google calendar, attach and edit google docs, and create projects or tasks from your email account. Manymoon is a great way to manage projects and tasks with a simple and easy-to-use interface.

Creately

Creately is a free app that allows users to create professional looking diagrams easily. Creately also allows you to collaborate on diagrams with others. Whether you need to create a layout for a website, or a complex organizational hierarchy, Creately is the best service for the job.

Please comment below if there are any apps I have missed. If you want to learn more about how to set-up Google Apps with your domain, please contact me (or better yet, tungle.me). 

While I appreciated my office at UPEI, I was never into office life. I have a hard time sitting in one place for 8+ hours, so to keep my sanity, I move around.

I move around a lot.

My day starts out on my phone, still in bed, checking any overnight emails. I move downstairs where I do housework (and any urgent work-work) until lunchtime. By the afternoon I like to get out of the house, either to my office at UPEI or somewhere else on campus. Within campus, I move around. When reading, I like the lounge chairs, but computer work I prefer at a desk.  If i get bored of that, I might move downtown and get a coffee while finishing up some work. I have created the mobile lifestyle so I can work anywhere. While I am not talking about world travels, being able to move around and still get my work done is important to my happiness. So, how did I create my mobile lifestyle? It was mostly by accident.

When you’re in university, your backpack is your life. When getting ready for class I would always feel like a pack animal; like a camel getting saddled up for a 3-day trek.  Eventually I took a good hard look at my backpack and thought “what do I really need in here”. Out went my text books (we never use them in class anyway). The binder I had used for the first three years of university was next to go. Now, my trusty clipboard. While it was hard to part with, my clipboard only brought chaos to my life. Sheets of loose leaf paper, disorganized and never dated were shoved in the sleeve. Getting rid of my clipboard was the best thing that ever happened to me. I realized, my whole system didn’t suite me at all. Instead, I replaced all of those books, papers and binders with a small, but powerful laptop. I started using my laptop to take my class notes (initially using Microsoft Onenote, which is great for class notes). While I have been using Google Docs for a while, I started using it both as a word processor and online collaborator and also a way to transport my documents and carry them with me at all times so I can work from any computer, anywhere. Many people call this shift moving into the cloud, whatever its called it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I felt like a cloud. All of those books and papers and stuff was weighing my life down and now I felt free and light as a feather. Creating a mobile lifestyle is about being productive, eliminating the unnecessary and being comfortable when you work.

Through my  own experience I have created a list of how to live a mobile life:

My mobile life

1. Recognize and embrace your natural work pattern. If you are most productive from 1pm – 10pm, then coordinate your workday accordingly. Don’t try to fit yourself into a box that isn’t the right size, you will just be unproductive and distracted.
2. Get a laptop (or better yet, a netbook) or even a smart phone.
3. Go paperless (or at least, mostly paperless). Use a notebook application like Evernote and start keeping online notes.
4. Know what distracts you & conquer those distractions instead of avoid them. Use white noise tools on your computer or your phone to help block distractions and turn the noisy coffee shop into your office for an hour.
5. Move onto the cloud and store your documents on Google Docs or similar service.
6. Be able to work from a light backpack. Only take what you need.
7. Create a system that works for you. Look at your own needs and wants and your current lifestyle and tailor your mobile lifestyle to meet those needs.

My Messy Moleskine by Adulau

I always have a notebook with me. It would only make sense that I would also need an online notebook. I have tried many different kinds and now its time to weigh them side by side.

As mentioned in my previous post, I use QuickNote Firefox Plugin for taking notes while I researched. While QuickNote is great for taking that you will need to see while your browsing, it isn’t very good for much else than that. It has very limited features and can only store a max of 4 notes.

For the past couple weeks I have been trying to find a good web-based Notebook that had the features I was looking for but also wasn’t too clunky.

[I should also mention that all of these were tested on Chrome. I made the switch from Firefox to Chrome and I am seeing how it compares. So far? It is really fast =]

Let’s talk about some of the ones I have tried:

Onenote:

While I know Onenote isn’t web-based, I wanted to mention it in the beginning because this is one of the first Notebook programs I  used and I was very happy with it. I loved that you could push windows+n and a note would pop-up. Very useful program with a very intuitive design and layout. I used Onenote as my school notebook, writing my notes directly into one-note. It was great for economics because making quick diagrams was a snap.

Google Notebook:

I was excited when I first heard about Google Notebook. Unfortunately I never heard about it until after they stopped development for it. I really like the layout of it cause it is very google docs-esque which is great for people who use Google Docs all the time (me).

You can still use Google Note book, but you can’t download the browser application. What is the point of a web-based notebook application if you can’t have a browser plug-in?

Evernote:

Stylish notebook program with syncing browser app and desktop application. Evernote has a tonne of features including text recognition in photos making them searchable. You can even take pictures with your phone and send them directly to Evernote.  While Evernote is free, it only allows you 40 mb of data monthly. Premium users have access to 500 mb of data.

Zoho Notebook:

Zoho Notebook is much like Google Notebook except it has an available browser plug-in. Esthetically, its pretty bland looking. However, if you are already a Zoho user, than using the notebook would be very handy.

I think the winner is pretty clear! Ever note has the most features and is actually pretty nice to look at. Plus, its free! How do you take notes? Let me know in the comments. Also, if anyone knows of another awesome notebook application, please let me know cause I am game to try it out!

Needless to say, I have found several internet tools that I have fallen in love with. Some I use every single day. These tools are listed in the order of frequency of use.

1. SimplyNoise.com – This is a free, white noise generator and I use it every single day. For the longest time I had trouble studying when it wasn’t dead quiet. One day I happened to come across SimplyNoise and now I can study/read/concentrate anywhere. When in public I put my headphones in and use SimplyNoise on a low setting to tune the world out (I prefer brown noise). Now studying in the “loud” section of the library is no big deal.
2. Online-Stopwatch.com – Online stopwatch is exactly what it sounds like – an online stopwatch. I use it to time the potatoes in the oven, to time my fussy green teas and to time my power naps I take while studying (paired with SimplyNoise, it is my power nap power duo!).
3. Google Docs – I use google docs more than any other word processor. When working on large papers I like to use google docs to write my drafts. Using google docs has made my thumb drive purposeless. I can now carry all my important documents around with me without… carrying them around with me. Going from computer to computer (which I do, I am a computer hopper) to write my documents is so easy with google docs. Just log in and everything is there. Collaborating has never been easier as google docs makes it easy to complete group projects. Just like how Gmail is awesome with searching, google docs is awesome with searching through old documents (Gmail should really be on this list, but it kind of goes without saying).
4. Ninjavideo.net – As mentioned previously, I use NinjaVideo to watch television shows that I have missed. I hate downloading tv shows, so I always choose watching through Ninjavideo. It works great!
5. Grooveshark.com – I have a laptop, so I hate the thoughts of using my precious memory on storing music. So… I don’t. I might have one or two albums on my laptop. Instead, I use Grooveshark to listen to music. It’s fast, has a giant library and lets me listen without storing!
6. QuickNote for Firefox – I use Quicknote when researching online. Having a note taking application in the same window (built into a web browser) while reading long PDFs is incredibly useful when researching. See a quote or a block of text that you might want to use? Just copy and paste it to quick note.  Then, I keep QuickNote up while I open google docs and write my research paper. See how handy it could be? QuickNote automatically saves your work so there is no fear of losing everything.
7. Scribd – I use Scribd to publish any documents that I want the world to see because Scribd documents are well indexed by search engines. I uploaded my resume to Scribd and was able to embed it directly into my WordPress! This means a perfectly formatted resume for all to see!

So there it is: my 7 most used internet tools that I use almost everyday.

I think group work skills are essential for anyone entering the work force. Knowing when to step up to the leadership role is just as important as knowing when to step down and cooperate with your teammates as a equal member. In essence, every group member is responsible for being in tune with the group dynamics. However, every group that I have been involved with has had different dynamics so people need to realized that being a successful leader in one group does not mean you will be a successful leader in another group.

A group I was involved in recently had issues with appointing a clear leader. No one stepped up to the leadership role, but no one stepped down from the role either. It created a very ineffective working environment. We had no clear path for our project. Not only was our path fuzzy but our meetings were basically pointless and mostly consisted of the members stating opinions and having irrelevant discussions. We were not moving forward.

So, what do you do in these situations?

Be honest, and frank, because its the only way you are going to help the situation. I talked to my group and told them that it is apparent that we don’t have a group leader, which could be why we are having such a hard time making progress. They all agreed. Things are moving faster with the group members allowing a leader to arise. We seem to be on track! Lets hope this continues.

Don’t do that. It’s blatantly obvious and overused and your interviewer will not appreciate the answer.

My advice is to attack the question like any other question in your interview, with honesty. Tell them your real weakness, don’t make one up.

My biggest weakness is that I have a very creative, multi-tasking brain that can sometimes cause issues with organization .  However, I carry around agendas and note pads to write down notes and ideas. I also use white noise to block distractions.

Basically, follow up your weakness with a clear plan on how you are dealing with it.

Your employers know that everyone has a weakness. They’re not looking for someone who has none, but rather how you deal with hard questions. The best answer comes with honesty, but also optimism.