What will happen with your loans, debts and credit cards after you die or get serious illness? What will happen to your company shares? Do you have the best pension deal or you are loosing money? Do you want to invest, but don’t know where?

I met Joe O’Regan, owner of Oregan Financial, today and was really impressed. We went through my private and my companies finances and came up with ideas how to improve things (e.g. get life insurance). Consultation itself is for free, so I advise it to anyone wandering about their finances. It’s great way to think where you can save money. Oregan doesn’t try to sell right away and gives you a really good advice. They are using BestAdvice.ie site for latest insurance, pension etc. deals. I found it really great website, but you have to have membership to access information.

So what should you do next? You should go to Oregan Financial website and get a free consultation about your finances.

“The Irish Internet Association (IIA) is the professional body for those conducting business via the internet from Ireland. It has been and remains one of the driving forces behind the adoption of the medium. Established in 1997, the IIA provides leadership to enterprises and society conducting business in Ireland.”

Last year we joined different associations and networking groups but couldn’t meet our target audience through them. I believe IIA is the right choice for us, see post about joining at IIA blog.

First things first – Happy New Year to everyone who haven’t received greetings from me yet.

While going through a lot of other blogs, I decided that I should write small post about my 2008 year.

I fell in love… with my company. It was very neutral at first. I didn’t thought the company will need me that much. I left my job in AIB on April and started our relationship.

It has it’s bad sides – pile of papers when you want to free your desk or a lot of reports, when you just want to rest. I should tell big thanks to people who helped me through and showed me the way to be what I am.

It has some good sides too and money is not the biggest of it. I got passion to go forward and to achieve things I always wanted to. People I meet is so interesting and doing business with them is fun. I’m boss to myself now. It gives freedom and constraints. I can do what I want and there is a lot of things I can do. And then there is so much thing that should have been done, but I don’t know about them. Learning about them is the most important thing I have achieved.

I should say that I was too optimistic at start. I never thought about how hard it is just to tell people, what I’m doing. And how it is to rewrite business plan again and again. An introvert person like me going and talking to other people I don’t know? How to get over “I hate calling people”?

I believe that next year will be better because there is less things I don’t know. And thought there is economic crisis, try and stop our company from growing! \(^^)/

I know Christmas is 22 days away, but I’m already getting into Christmas parties. I love them, because I can talk and talk, and talk… till I loose my voice. Without free wine you also get to know news in business, you get new contacts, potential clients and at the end of the day you get to communicate with real people (not computers).

DLREB Women Enterprising network is event that happens once a month. Quite often it happens together with other groups like Trading Post, Brite or Link! All members get access to internal networking portal, get chance to network and introduce themselves to others.

The good thing about Christmas parties – there is always some prizes to be won. I won Dinner for two in Beacon hotel + Bottle of wine. I will be enjoying networking events even more now. And I met great people – ones I did knew like my mentor and organisers, ones I didn’t knew but could talk about great stuff and one’s that would be interested in my business and could bring me some revenue. I’m happy about all of them. Because contacts in business is everything you need.

Cheers! Going for another Enterprise seminar early tomorrow… have to get some sleep.

Today I finally got my head around stamps and seals. I’m really happy about it now.

Every company has to have company seal. We didn’t got ours because we registered our company ourselves. And nobody told us that we have to have one.

Now after one year of company registration, we wanted to get company stamp. One of our contractors needed it. I read article over Irish Business Women forum, which said that company seal is the same as company stamp. I called my legal adviser and he provided us with official company who creates seal. So on Monday I got seal. And of course it wasn’t stamp. So I still couldn’t put stamp on the contract.

I called my accountant and he was very surprised that we didn’t get seal at the company registration. I said that now I need stamp for sure. He led me to Vista Print company and there was about 50 different stamp kinds. I remember from Latvia that all the stamps where red and round. I couldn’t find any like that on the site.

I talked with accountant again and he said that company stamp isn’t legal thing as anyone can order it with the same details. It should be rectangular and have to have companies name and address (optional reg.no.). So I ordered the simplest one and maybe this week I will be able to put stamp on that contract. Companies stamps however are requested by banks and some other legal institutions.

I’m wondering – is it only me who got confused over things or there really isn’t enough information out there?

Update: due to my blog coming up everytime someone searches for “company seal” I added picture for better clarification on how does company seal look like.

Yesterday Inspired IT Awards took place in the Mansion House. Our company was invited as we got short-listed for “SME Project of the Year Award”. Venue was completely terrific with star-light on ceilings, colorful lights all over place and professional staff. We got complimentary wine and amazing food.

Thought we didn’t win award, I’m happy to be short-listed. Inspired IT Award 2008 went to AIB for Olympus programme.

Here is some pictures:

I’m all exited over tomorrows Inspired IT Awards Gala Dinner 2008. It is very official black tie evening till late at night. I really hope I will get some award and I’m happy that we got short-listed. I went shopping today and bought the best coat in my life. I haven’t been shopping for ages as I’m always so busy with business stuff. Awards was a good excuse to buy something.

Wish me luck tomorrow and I will post some photos of evening later.

When I first entered “Start your own business” course provided by Enterprise Board, I was surprised about the person lecturing. She was marketing specialist for over 10 years, but she told us that she went through psychology course to understand marketing better. I was wandering – why would I need that in marketing?

Over the course I noticed a lot of psychological things around her. For example, she always wore something that made her to come out in crowd – mini red skirts, red shoes with high heels. She was always friendly and positive and challenging in a most of lectures. I learned a lot and let me share few of those things.

Today I received call at the door and received free candies, popcorn and sticker from Qo2 radio. The Principle of Reciprocity in business. This principle basically defines the human need and tendency to want to give something back when something is received. In this case they gave you sweets and (constant reminder) sticker for you to listen to the radio. Both guys who gave me that were so positive that it made me smile and laugh with them. So would I try to switch on Qo2 radio after this – probably, if I had a radio.

So in business people often give something maybe not so expensive to others, because they know – you will feel obligated to give them something back. Especially they love to give some constant reminders – stickers, small funny candy box you don’t want to throw out or very well thought-through advertisement paper.

It’s funny if you search for reciprocity in Google, you get a lot of bible stuff coming out. So people knew the principle even in ancient times.

Two other principles which even I sometimes use is reverse psychology and “good and bad cop”. People often think that Reverse psychology don’t work on adults and it is childish act that normal people won’t do. Well, they do. Very often you say reverse things to clients to get the right thing coming up. You lead them the way you want and make them believe that they came up with solution. Does it sound very tricky? It is business and you have to fight for the things you want.

“Good and bad cop” is thing that I often do with my husband. If some client doesn’t like me, I ask my husband to call him and be a “good cop”. And vice versa.

Those few tricks aren’t very much advertised to people. Because if they knew them, they won’t fall for them. But they fall anyway.

So I’m happy to announce my project NextAction.ie is released to it’s second 1.1 version. I worked quite late yesterday to get that ready. Thanks to my really amazing team!

What’s new:
- Calendar. Which means you can review tasks in past and in future.
- Closed tasks. You can review tasks that has been already done.
- Someday Maybelist. My favorite. I can put task in Someday Maybe and don’t worry about it any more
- Specify Date. I can put task for some date in future
- There is even more contexts (before there were only 4 of them and I always put everything in “errands”)
- Design is improved for IE, Safari and FF
- Timezone in Preferences. Doesn’t need much of explanation
- UserName implemented (previous use of only e-mails didn’t make people happy)
- Added Terms of Service and Privacy Policy at last
- Tasks can be Deleted (in case it is not important any more)

And best of all – you can try it for FREE! Please try it and give me your comments.

Cheers! Have to go and buy some red wine and get drunk.