Over the past 2 years, I have had an opportunity to work with the most amazing professionals I have ever met. You can imagine the kind of dedicated effort it takes to build a team that you are thankful for each day.

Imagine waking up, and finding out that more was accomplished in your sleep than you ever thought possible.
Amazing!! Awake 2 minutes and already you have a feeling of accomplishment!

While you are in the shower you realize that you had made a mistake the previous day that needs to be rectified immediately. You rapidly rinse the shampoo out of your hair, race to your computer, quickly open the file, only to see that one of your team members had noted the mistake and fixed it on your behalf!
A sense of relief passes over you, your back relaxes and you settle into your chair.

2 home runs this morning, and you’ve only been awake for 10 minutes!
Now it’s time to go through today’s email. Outlook opens up and… 102 unread emails.

You feel something tugging at your gag muscle and the thought of going through all that email is almost more than you can bear. It has been 2 months since the last assistant, and that was assistant #7. Every morning there is an internal struggle between posting for another virtual assistant or socking it out and hoping that an angel will arrive on your doorstep to clean up your inbox.

Ok, perhaps that isn’t exactly how your morning goes. It does happen to be the day I have become accustomed to.
And without taking action, those mornings are what I can expect for the foreseeable future.

So in an odd medium, I ask if you might know of an email angel?
Somebody who can:
Read through my email twice a day at predetermined times
Become familiar with my world and respond to email as required
Schedule meetings (in the right time zone J)
File and organize as required
Transcribe
Be proactive in reducing email clutter
Summarize for my perusal or fill in the blanks on my behalf
Not afraid to text message
Above all, I need somebody that will protect me from getting caught up in my inbox for hours on end.

Do you know who my email angel might be? If so, PLEASE have them forward their credentials to resumes@ajones.com.

I have an incredibly difficult time understanding people who say they can’t find happiness, that happiness is elusive, or that they don’t know what they want to do with their lives.

It most often seems to me that people will hinge their happiness on the attainment of a goal. That goal could be anything from purchasing a BMW to finding the person of their dreams. When they finally attain that goal, they become disenchanted because the final acquisition isn’t as wonderful and amazing as they thought it would be.

After striving for a couple of goals and attaining them, their drive is no longer there because they can’t find the fix they are looking for. They can’t find happiness.

Could it be that the biggest secret in all of life is that happiness is not a goal, rather it is the side effect to a pursuit? No, not the famed pursuit of happiness, but the pursuit of accomplishment. In order to accomplish something, one must take action. Taking action, doing SOMETHING, has the inevitable end result of impacting your surroundings or at very least your mind. If you were to have the goal of “fixing your computer”, the intent would not be to become so frustrated and angry at the inanimate object that you could throw it out the window in exactly 23 minutes and 19 seconds from now. That frustration would be but a mere side effect of working towards your goal. Anger is an emotion just as happiness is, yet for some reason we don’t have the saying “The pursuit of anger”. We all know that anger, apathy, sadness, etc. are side-effects of how our environment impacts our mind in a given point in time; they are not something that we tend to pursue, rather, they just happen. So how can it be that happiness doesn’t just “happen” like all those other pesky emotions?

I think we would all be pleasantly surprised at just how much happiness jumps up in our lives as we strive towards accomplishing something. As we stop to smell the roses after completion, we note that the satisfaction of completion starts to diminish more quickly than we thought it would. When that rose stops smelling, when the satisfaction has dwindled to almost nothing, it is not a sign that our lives are not fulfilling; it is merely a sign that it’s time to start towards our next goal.

After all, if we don’t move forward to the “next big thing”, how can we ever expect to enjoy nostalgia?

Welcome to my inaugural blog post.

A friend of mine made a commentary about blogging quite some time ago, and it went a little like this:

“Blogging is to the internet as a blabber-mouth is to a conversation at a party.”

With that type of mental imprint, who would want to blog?
I needed an outlet for my passion and so, this blog is born.
My passion happens to be business and business automation.
And why exactly is business my passion?

Remember back to when you were a small child. There were times where you would do something that impressed your parents and you would receive praise. That small amount of praise would make your day, your week, your month! In fact, that small amount of praise would keep paying you dividends by giving you an emotional high every time you thought about it.
I get that same high when I help another business meet their goals. I suppose that makes me a junkie, but it’s a habit my clients are happy to see me support.

With a bleak economic outlook on the horizon for Canada and the US, I can’t think of a better time to bring value to the businesses that care to frequent my weekly blog. I mostly intend to write about the subjects that can infuse your company with cash and the easy wins that add to the bottom line.

My area of expertise is in computerized business automation, and as such, many of the blog posts will have a technical overture to them. My goal is to bring you useful information perfectly balanced with entertainment. (If we don’t enjoy our businesses, what the heck are we running them for?)

I look forward to your feedback!