I recently mentioned that Fight the Bull can help you check the accessibility of your written communication. Did you know you can use Microsoft Word to do something similar? In Word, turn on Readability statistics. (You should only need to do this once.) Go to Tools Select Options Click the Spelling & Grammar tab. Check […]

Linda Morton, a PR consultant, offers today’s guest post. While in public relations, Linda designed newspapers, advertisements and a full range of branding and marketing publications. She also had an academic career — she taught publication design for 15 years and researched publication design, publishing articles and presenting research papers on the topic. I’m pleased

Regular readers may recall my Soapopular customer service saga. I sent that blog post to the PR team. I received a reply almost immediately. A few weeks later, I received a letter of apology and a case of Soapopular (great stuff, so far). The company also offered to check stock so that I could be

Becoming a great consultant means mastering the skill of interacting with other people. After all, you’ll need to manage your client relationships. And many of those client relationships will be affected by email and documents. Enter Fight the Bull, a handy tool that lets you check text for jargon. I put the first paragraph of

As part of my "Review my site" group project, I received this advice from Tony of Support Analytics. The blog page could be organized more efficiently so that readers could see the different subjects easier. I agree with Tony. This site has grown so quickly that it’s no longer just a few articles on how

Over at Get Rich Slowly, JD has some last minute tax tips. I’m in Canada and self-employed, so I still have lots of time to finish my return. However, you might be interested in: tax write-off list more tax write-offs how to start a sole proprietorship finance for consultants Happy filing!

Recently, I was at the book launch for Diane Hayne’s new Wildife Rescue Series book. The party was held at Workspace, a shared work environment in a funky part of downtown Vancouver. A shared workspace, like, um, Workspace, is a great option for people who want to work from home — without being at home.

A few of you are wondering why I just posted about tutoring rates. What does that have to do with consulting? Why would a consultant care about tutoring? Well, as I mentioned toward the end of the post, many consultants tutor as a way of generating a side income. Some do tutoring, others instruct night

Tutoring rate ranges vary from city to city. Establishing your tutoring rate can seem somewhat daunting if you’ve never had to set a rate before. Check out how to set consulting fees as a more formal guide to establishing a rate. In the meantime, here are some ways to figure out what to charge for

After my post on choosing a CRM, Tony asked what I use to manage my contacts. To be honest, I’m not using a formal CRM system. I actually use a combination of Outlook, Excel and Campaign Monitor (an online subscription tool). I use those tools, even though I’ve worked with really expensive CRM packages and