Wishing you a prosperous New Year 2011

As I reflect on the year 2010, I am grateful for the many blessings in my business and in my life.

May 2011 be a prosperous and happy year for all -- clients, peers, friends, family, and those I've yet to encounter. 

Call-Em-All.com

I've recently found and used  a great user-friendly, inexpensive web based tool. It is "Call-em-all.com." What happened the last time you had to quickly contact 50 people with an important message and e-mail was not practical? Your first reaction may be "I've never had to do that."

How about these situations:

• It's 7:30 am Saturday morning and a water main has just broken, flooded the soccer field and it is up to you to notify players and parents that the game has been cancelled.
• You are an apartment complex manager and need to notify renters that electric power will be out tomorrow morning - and half of your tenants do not have Internet access.
• Your kids' elementary school has to notify parents of a campus emergency.
• Your tax preparation business needs to notify clients that now is the time to make appointments.
• Your support group meets twice a month and has much better attendance when members are notified the evening before the next get-together.

Call-em-all's service provides both audio and text phone messages. The user inputs names and numbers one time into their own database on the site, then chooses the names and/or groups to be called. The stored numbers can be accessed as long as you have the service.

Last spring I was tasked with calling members for our support group. Working in my own business I did not have the two hours usually required to make these calls. At about $0.09 per call minute per person, I was able to "call" the whole list in about ten minutes. If a live person does not answer, the system is programmed to leave messages on voice mail.

So, I'd suggest you keep this option in mind for communications challenges.