Quill & Ink Enterprise

The Realist, Optimist, and Pessimist in Email Marketing Campaigns

As a busy entrepreneur, it can be easy to get stuck in a negative mindset when it comes to email marketing campaigns. To date, you’ve put a lot of hard work into becoming a company. You created a product or service, named your business, created a logo, and designed a website. Perhaps you went through a Kickstarter, took out a loan, or found someone to invest in you. Then comes the time to create an email marketing campaign. Ugh! Does it even work anymore? Boom! You just became a pessimistic entrepreneur.

Sometimes, expressing comments of doubt or concern with email marketing are not technically pessimistic but are more of stating reality. It’s part optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. Confused? Let’s break the three terms down.

Optimistic

Being optimistic is also when you’re hopeful and confident in a situation. It can mean that you push data and statistics aside to focus on the positive outcomes. That isn’t a bad thing but can catch you off guard when things turn sour. Say you’ve been working on creating an email marketing campaign that totally falls flat. You have a small percentage of people signing up for newsletters, your open rate is low, and there is no click-through rate. If you’re a true optimist, you won’t let this ruin your day! However, being positive and doing the same email marketing campaign over and over with the same results isn’t a good business practice. You need to find a way to change course to see better results.

Pessimistic

A pessimistic person is one who tends to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen. Being a pessimist means you go out of your way to find the bad in a situation. You tried email marketing once and will never try it again. You look at what is happening in the present and think that the worst outcome is going to happen no matter what. The problem is you are looking ahead instead of living in the present.

Realistic

Lastly, a realistic person is someone who is sensible and practical. They have an idea of the expectations of a situation and know what they can achieve and what they can not achieve. When you are realistic, you are perfectly balanced of being both an optimist and a pessimist. When a situation arises, you stay present, look at the data, and go from there.

Benefits of Email Marketing

There are plenty of benefits of email marketing that are often overlooked. Many rely on social media to market their company, but email marketing is as effective as posting on Instagram. Please contact me at watkinsdigitalmarketing@gmail.com for your FREE demo to see how my services can help give you confidence in your email marketing campaigns. All I need to know is a little bit about your business and what you hope to get out of it.

I look forward to chatting with you soon!

Valid Reasons Why It’s Okay to Quit, Move On, and Pursue Your Passion

A teacher in her 30s thinking about going back to school to become a doctor, but finding the time to do so seems impossible. An engineer who has a product they would like to bring to market but has a full-time job. An English major doing data entry in a corporate office is dying to publish a book. Something is getting in the way of these people pursuing what they really want.

The fear of quitting.

It’s unfortunate that quitting has such a bad reputation attached to it. Society associates quitting with taking the easy way out or giving up. But sometimes, it is the right move to make. Rather than calling it quits, think of it as following your passion for living a better life.

I quit!

This job

There is nothing worse than making a living doing something that makes your skin crawl. It could have been something that years ago you enjoyed, but not so much anymore. First, you need to figure out what changed from when you first began your career, till now. Ask yourself, “Why haven’t I already submitted my 2-weeks notice?” It very well could be that society judges those based on their careers. Don’t let what others think keep you from going after what will make you happy.

This relationship

Some relationships aren’t meant to be. No matter how hard you try to make them work, they will fail. You don’t have to like everybody you meet or work with. What you do need to do is be tolerant of others. People have their breaking points and as horrible as this may sound, you may want to consider avoiding someone at all costs. A toxic relationship crumbles your self-confidence, passion, and drive.

This habit

A bad habit brings you down and keeps you down. You are a strong person for recognizing that a habit needs to change. This is one of the hardest things people can do in life. When you finally make the effort to change, a whole new world opens up for you. In Charles Duhigg’s book The Power Of Habit, he discusses the reason why it is hard to change something in our lives. His best advice is to try something new for 30 days. That’s it, 30 days and you will break the old and start the new.

All of the above

Seems a little rash to quit everything at once. But they all come together in some shape or form. If you have a toxic relationship with your boss, then quit your job. In doing so you also break ties with people who aren’t worth keeping in your life. Quitting isn’t giving up or being lazy. It’s a tough decision to make, but as soon as you find your valid reason to quit, don’t let anyone change your mind about it. Everyone has quit at one point in their life or wishes that they had. The first step is to recognize your feelings, then work out a strategy to withdraw from the situation.

If you’re in the midst of pursuing your passion of starting a business or service and are in need of some web content help, let me know! Contact me today and get a free demo of how I can help you with your website landing page, blog posts, email newsletter, or product descriptions.

5 Ways To Regain Confidence To Be The Best At What You Do

Confidence is the belief in one’s ability to succeed. Unfortunately, all it takes is one bad experience for confidence to fly out the window. A bad breakup or losing a job are types of experiences that make you feel cheated, betrayed, and embarrassed. All feelings that hurt your confidence so that the next time you are faced with the same scenario, you’ll question which actions to take even though you already know the answer. Keep reading to see how these 5 ways will help you to regain confidence, boost your self-esteem, and bring you back to the successful you.

Meditate

It’s easy to get upset when someone points out a flaw or criticizes you. But if you take the time to meditate each day, you’ll learn how to respond to those situations appropriately, all while keeping a sense of high self-esteem. Meditation doesn’t mean that you need to sit under a tree seeking enlightenment. Meditation can be anything you want it to be. Find a time of day when you can be in a place specifically for quieting your mind and focusing only on the breath. If you make this a habit, you’ll not only regain your self-esteem but also become a more relaxed and stress-free person.

Talk about it

There is nothing more healthy than talking about your feelings. Even if you are an introvert or a private person, opening up about how you feel to a friend or family member can set things straight. So a coworker pointed out a flaw they noticed in your work. Explain to someone why that comment hurt you. Or if they are the one responsible for the comment, confront them. Talking through the details to see how you got to where you are can make you see things in a different light. Perhaps a coworker’s comment wasn’t meant to hurt you, but more so to improve your performance so that you can be successful.

Take a risk

Not enough people take risks anymore. A risk can be whatever you want it to be. Take being a writer for instance. You risk your confidence when you decide to share your writing with others. Not everyone is going to like your style or what you write about. But that is a risk you are going to have to take. You’ll never strengthen your self-esteem if you hold back from foreign situations that have the potential to show what a strong individual you are.

Be wary of pride

Pride plays a huge role when it comes to loss of confidence. Say you lose a job because your boss says you aren’t stepping up enough. You can look them in the face and think of all the times that you worked late or took on other projects that they never recognized you for. Always thinking that you have to be right crushes you when something goes south. Keep your pride in check so that when it is in question, it won’t hurt as much.

Learn from bad experiences

Bad experiences won’t ruin your confidence unless you let it. As a virtual assistant or writer, you will hear feedback about your performance or work that you won’t like. That’s why you should always take criticism with a grain of salt. Your entrepreneur has their own writing style or way of doing things and that’s something you have to learn to respect. They give you feedback so that you can do better, not to put you down. An entrepreneur needs you just as much as you need them. Even if you think you lost your confidence long before now, you can regain it, but you have to actively try to.

If you enjoyed this post, I would much appreciate it if you share it on social media. Thanks!

How Taking A Personality Test Can Make For A More Productive Team

As a virtual assistant, you put yourself out there meeting people all over the web. You could be the best at what you do, but sometimes things don’t work out between you and your entrepreneur. That’s why taking a personality test could save you a lot of heartache. Read on to see why you’ll be more productive by using a personality test to assess whether or not you’ll work well with an entrepreneur.

Less conflict

You want to work with someone that you can relate to. If your personality doesn’t mesh well with your entrepreneur’s personality, the likelihood of getting into an argument is higher. Knowing that both you and your entrepreneur have the same mentality eliminates pointless arguments. Not only is that good for your entrepreneur’s business, but it makes being a virtual assistant much more enjoyable.

Better communication

A personality test also helps to reveal the best way that you communicate. Take that knowledge and find an entrepreneur that communicates the same way. There are a lot of ways to communicate when you work remotely in addition to phone calls and emails. Online messaging apps like Slack, HipChat, Skype, and Zoom are free to use and make working virtually easier. Using the wrong type of communication can get confusing and cause issues. With less back and forth, you’ll be able to complete tasks on time.

Trust

Working with someone online requires a lot of trust. There are plenty of horror stories of people getting hacked, spammed, or lied to on the web. When your personality clicks right away with an entrepreneur, they’ll trust you to handle more tasks. They’ll also be able to trust you with more private matters like managing email accounts, calendars, or even handling purchases with their credit card.

Learn the same way

When learning about an entrepreneur’s business, you want to be able to catch on right away. Training will go smoothly when you work with someone who has a similar personality as yourself. For example, it helps to start out knowing that you are working with an entrepreneur who asks a lot of questions just like you do. This way, you’ll both have realistic expectations and tolerance for one another’s learning capacity and speed.

Get the right entrepreneur

You may think you know everything about your personality but take a personality test anyways to get a more in-depth analysis about yourself. Use this assessment to figure out how much of an introvert or extrovert you are. The web is full of fun quizzes that show what food you relate most to, or what animal you were in a past life. Instead, take a real personality test like the DISC assessment or Myers-Briggs. There are free versions of these tests, but they may not show the most in-depth analysis. Take a test anyway to get a general idea about aspects of your personality you may never have thought about. When you have a better idea of how you work, you can pick and choose an entrepreneur that you know you’ll have a successful relationship with.

If you liked this post I would appreciate it very much if you shared it on social media!

Thank you!

5 Bad Habits Every Virtual Assistant Needs To Ditch

Even though you don’t want to admit it, as a virtual assistant you are guilty of bad habits. The key is to figure out what they are so that you can get rid of them, and get rid of them for good. It can be tricky to pinpoint what your bad habits are. As a VA, you may think that something you do contributes to your success, yet it is actually holding you back. Or sometimes the only thing holding you back from being victorious in life is you.

Conquer anything in life by giving up these 5 bad habits.

Quit feeling sorry for yourself

Stop feeling like life is cruel and figure out how to work through issues you may be going through. Having a pity party because you haven’t met you quarterly goal is a waste of time. To become successful, you need to be tough and driven by failure. Hike up your pants, learn from your mistakes, and get back into the market.

Perfection doesn’t exist

That may sound pessimistic, but give up on that idea and it will surprise you on how much you can get done. Assistants take on tasks that are crucial to finish on time. Take writing a blog post or content for a newsletter. Going back and rereading it to make sure it is perfect hurts productivity. It causes you to keep changing the content over and over. Finish it, edit it, and send it off to your entrepreneur. Most likely, they will approve it and send you over the next project.

Saying “Yes” when you should be saying “No”

Saying “Yes” to every project that your entrepreneur sends your way can make or break your career as a virtual assistant. Take managing a website. If you have no idea how to do so, you lose credibility. Your entrepreneur may think twice about what you are capable of and will have trouble letting go of tasks. Be upfront and honest with them about what you are an expert at. They’ll appreciate it even if it feels like you are letting them down.

Forcing yourself to get along with everyone

Don’t feel like you have to work with someone just because they are paying you well. You’re not always going to get along with everyone and that’s okay. If you and a client don’t seem to be seeing eye to eye, then that’s when it is time to move on. Remember to be polite about it. As the saying goes, there is plenty of fish in the sea. Every day entrepreneurs are looking for someone to take over tasks interfering with running their business. You won’t have an issue finding someone who you’ll get along with.

You can’t control life

Things will happen and sometimes there isn’t a darn thing you can do about it. You’ll have sick days, appointments, tech issues, or issues in your personal life. It is what it is. Accept that you can’t control those things and focus on what you can control. Stress is a big one here. Step away from the computer, close your eyes, and take deep breaths. Things will work out, they always do. Take these tips into consideration and success will come your way.

If you enjoyed this article, I would very much appreciate it if you shared it on social media. Thanks!