First Word

     I’ve recently seen articles addressing hybrid work environments. Over the years, I have had positions where I worked at home a few days a week and in the office. The last 15 years I have worked remotely (very successfully).             First, let’s address the reasons for remote/hybrid work – the pandemic. I want to share a story about illness in the workplace. I worked for an organization where I was continuously exposed to other sick employees and bad air filtration. We used to call these “sick” buildings. Older buildings where the air is recirculated also meant germs got easily shared among employees. When I worked in this sick building I was ill nearly all winter long. Years later when I began working exclusively from my home office, the illnesses ceased. Now I am rarely sick.             Many positive reasons exist...

#1 Pandora – All music is piped in through Pandora. I work listening to music in the background all day. I have my favorite channels. My New Age channel is all instrumental music for when I’m writing (words colliding with words doesn’t work for my word-addled brain). No Internet means I must resort to (egads) CDs or my iPod. (Notice my priorities here <grin>. #2 Email – I monitor email in the background behind my working screen. It’s how I stay proactive and responsive. My responsiveness has helped make 3L Publishing’s reputation. Now I have to use my iPhone, but I completely hate typing long missives on that tiny pad. #3 Web – How do I do all my research for all of the books? On the Web, of course, who goes to libraries anymore? Who has time? I can sit right at my desk and do all the research I want. #4 Social Media – I try to post to the social media at least once and sometimes twice a day. No Internet and I go back to that tiny iPhone type pad again. Didn’t I just compl...

Did you know some marketing tools exist that cost either very little or nothing at all. Most small business owners in particular will whine they don't have a marketing budget (which I think is fool hearty no matter how much whining about lack of funds you insert into that conversation). What some of these folks don't know or don't take advantage of are the services that either don't cost much money or cost nothing at all. If you own a small business, at a minimum there is absolutely no reason you should use what is sometimes free to market or promote your business. Here are some of those inexpensive tools you should be using. Now your time is not free, but that is a whole other discussion. Blogger.com -- this blog is customized to blogger. It doesn't cost me a dime to have a blogspot . Other blog services such as Typepad cost a little extra and do have more bells and whistles such as built-in analytics; however, if you tie your blogspot site to google/analytics, ...