It’s nice and warm outside and you went to Kennyywood last weekend and want to find something different and fun to do this weekend?  Then why not join all the other frugalities and go on a bargain hunting expedition? Shopping at a yard sale can be a great way to find items that you wouldn’t be able to locate at a typical retail store like Target and the pricing is always rock bottom. This is because there is no tax and the goods are slightly used and if they don’t get sold at the sale than they will either be junked or donated to goodwill. There are always the stories of people finding rare artwork, jewelry, & silverware at a sale only to later discover that it’s worth 50 times what they purchased it for. The most famous being a Jackson Pollock purchased for $5.00 and after discovering its value was offered $9 million for the artwork. Knowing where to go in the Pittsburgh area for finding garage sales can be as easy as just hoping into your car and driving around neighborhoods early morning on Saturday and Sunday and finding the local bargains or you can save some money on gasoline and look through the Pittsburgh Post Gazette classifieds, the Pennysaver newspaper, and or you can go online to sites such as Oodle which syndicates it’s garage sale listings with a handful of other social networking websites and newspapers, as well as garage sales tracker’s Pittsburgh area garage sales section. If you are already on the road than no need to worry since there are iPhone applications for finding a local sale.  A service called EcoShop has created an app for .99 cents yard sale app that mines data from Craigslist to show you what local sales there are in your area. If you want a free app than garage sales tracker also has a free garage sale app in which you canplan  which sales in the area you want to go to that day and route accordingly. Now that you know how to find all of the sales here are some tips for holding a sale:

• Determine when to have the sale.  Summertime and Spring are naturally the best times and being an early bird pays off!  Winter is too cold but there are some indoor sales in the area just not a lot
• If you have a lot of stuff you may want to break the sale down into 2 days. Saturday and Sunday but if that’s too much than you can donate or give away everything after the first day   Arranging a charity to pick up the day after the sale will really help with clean up and make sure items just don’t get tossed in the trash.  You also get a receipt that will be helpful at tax time
• Advertising is very important utilizing the resources mentioned above as well as signage that you can pick up at any local hardware store or you can design your own sign just make sure that you put the address, arrows in the right direction, date of sale, time, and anything else that may seem enticing that you can fit onto the sign.
• Supplies such as balloons on the mail box, proper change, tables, tags for pricing, and cookies or brownies to get the children involved as well as enticing your visitors with a little something extra that another sale may not have.
• Placing the the parson in charge of the cashbox in the back of the sale makes people walk through the whole sale and increases the chance that they may buy something else as they make their way through.
• Make price tags big and place them on the top of the items.  You will be busy and the more obvious the price is, the less questions you will have to field.
• Have fun!

Rich of GarageSaleTracker.com

I must admit, I was the mess on graduation day.  I was really busy with work and had set aside the day to catch up on calls and emails and several projects that I really needed to do.  Typically when everyone else is busy and I can get busy, but on that day everyone was off and available and I was trying to work.  On another day that might have been fine, but it happened to be my son’s graduation day and I am looking at an empty nest in late August. I tried to plow through and I was stressing out because my heart was not in it.  I wasn’t able to concentrate and I kept getting less and less efficient.

It didn’t take long for my husband to notice I was upset and he had the wisdom to step in and give me permission to step away from the office and take the day off.  It sounds simple!  I make a living helping people find efficiency while aligning with their goals, values and needs but I didn’t see it.

Once I made that shift in perspective the whole weight was lifted and I moved through the rest of the day like a champ.  I had fun with my family goofing around with no agenda and enjoyed a memorable evening with family and friends.  Interestingly, when I returned to work I was refreshed and ready to go.

Lessons Learned:

1.   It is a privilege to work for myself and have flexibility and I need to step up and pay attention to that freedom and do what is important.

2.   Marry a smart man how can see what you need when you can’t!

Personal Coaches Boosting the Game Plan by Kelly Gormly

Ever since Teresa Champion graduated from Clarion University 22 years ago, she knew she wanted to own her own business. Yet, until recently, she couldn’t pin down any details or a concrete plan.

“I knew where I was sitting was not working, and I was just sitting,” says Champion, 44, of Plum. “I knew I wanted to own my own business. I just didn’t know what it would look like.”

That’s where her personal coach, Leslie McKee, came in. In March of 2009 — after honing in on Champion’s vision, and then mapping out specific steps Champion could take to make it happen — Champion opened “Do Me a Favor.” She works for many companies who hire her to play the role of temporary executive assistant, and she says things are going very well.

These days, many people don’t just want to improve themselves and get ahead: they hire someone as a personal coach to help them do it. Coaches do everything from general life and business-coaching to coaching on specific skills, like parenting, getting organized, getting healthy, fashion sense, public speaking, time management, relationships, running a household, and more. A coach can serve as a combination trainer, therapist and cheerleader, and will help clients develop a game plan and take concrete steps toward goals, experts say.

“They hire someone essentially … to help them get some practical, realistic feedback about how they’re doing,” says Hank Walshak of Bethel Park. The coach — who calls his business Walshak Communications, Inc. — works with professional individuals and organizations to help them with their executive presentation skills.

“People reach … stages where they realize they need to do something better, though they don’t really know where they need to begin,” says Walshak. He is the vice president of public relations for the Pittsburgh Coaches Association, which lists many area coaches at www.pittsburghcoaches.org.

Nate Perry, who just graduated from Hempfield Area High School, says he would be scrambling to figure out his future if he hadn’t worked with his personal recruiting coach. Perry, 18, hired Steve Potter, who started working with Perry, a basketball player, as a sophomore. Potter — national scouting director of the National Collegiate Scouting Association — helped him research and target colleges that were likely to recruit Perry onto their teams. Potter, of Greensburg, gave Perry regular feedback about his athletic skills, and encouraged him. Now, Perry is still deciding which of the many schools that recruited him — including Youngstown State University in Ohio and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro — to attend in the fall.

Without Potter, “it would have been more hectic,” says Perry, of Hempfield. Potter “helps me a lot, to get my name out there.”

Potter says he loves identifying talented kids, and helping them work toward the next phase of life, though the ambition must come from them.

“We don’t do the work for them. We lay it out for them,” he says. “If they follow the blueprint we lay out for them, then they have been really successful.”

Dress for success

Chris Buffington of Dormont — who writes for Pittsburgh Fashion Magazine and is a manager at Charles Spiegel for Men in Squirrel Hill — is expanding on his love for advising men on how to dress well. Last week, at the Mt. Lebanon Public Library, he held a group coaching session, and he hopes to do more coaching on personal style. How someone dresses makes a big impression on people, Buffington says.

“I think that you can really have the ability to ‘wow’ somebody,” says Buffington, who says he loves watching male fashionistas-to-be blossom.

“It’s like watching someone progress and graduate,” he says. “I want to be able to help them with feeling confident. I guarantee that people will definitely notice.”

One growing area of coaching is professionals who do in-home consultations to help people, usually mothers, with parenting and family management. That is what Sue Berman, based in Squirrel Hill, does with her business, Pro Parent Coaching. Clients seek her out for coaching sessions about how they handle power struggles with their kids, how to manage their time as moms, and other issues. Berman has a background as a clinical psychologist, and coaching sessions have some similarity to psychotherapy: the clients are seeking to make changes in their lives, and to figure out where the problems are coming from. However, if coaches sense a deeper problem, they will recommend a medical or psychological evaluation, she says.

The popularity of personal coaches comes from this era of greater self-awareness and knowledge, Berman says.

“People hire coaches when they want to take steps forward from where they are,” she says. “Coaches help people set goals. … People have more information about what’s possible, so they can dream bigger.”

People who hire personal coaches tend to improve because of the personalized help and accountability, Berman says.

“You can tell your best friend how frustrated you are with parenting, but your best friend is your best friend. … They don’t have a notebook full of strategies,” she says. “It’s very much tailored to the individual.”

McKee, of Mt. Lebanon, works as both a family coach and a professional organizer, and does some other coaching projects, like Champion’s. She is working on her organizer coaching certification, in order to take her role a step further and help clients understand what is behind their chronic disorganization. Household organizing and family management go closely together, says McKee, who calls her business McKee Organizing Services. Many clients are learning how to delegate tasks with their families.

“We’re empowering mom to work as a team with the family,” says McKee. “We really study our clients. We’re really tailoring a solution to what they want.”

What is going to make 2010 different?  We are always striving to be faster, stronger and bigger, but what does that really look like.  One of the most popular resolutions is to get organized and that doesn’t always translate into MORE. Efficiency is a great goal but prioritizing might be a better one.  Knowing what is important in your time and stuff will make every day seem easier. That is a gift that only you can give yourself. So, how do you get there? What do you let go of?  Here are three strategies that may help you.
Top 10 List
What are the all the things you are involved in?  What are your roles?  List them all; pick the Top Ten and let go of the rest, even temporarily so you get caught up on the issues that are bothering you.  You may be surprised when you miss an activity that had been routine and not important, then find yourself secretly celebrating.  This is a great strategy for getting on track when you are going through a major life transition.  Step back and minimize while you get through it!
What is it that only I can do?
Another great tip that really works for entrupenuers is to really write down all the “jobs” you do and then highlight the jobs that only YOU can do.  Go one step further and mark those that you actually like to do.  For me this has really illuminated all kinds of little things that have kept me from the bigger things.  It was easy to let go by finding people to do those very specific jobs that I no longer need to attend to.  It is fun to think of the year ahead with out those items on my To Do List.
Know you  3 MIT’s Daily
MIT’s are your Most Important Things.  If you could write just 3 MIT’s down for the next day when you are leaving your desk or at the end of each day, and were able to start each day ready to accomplish just those 3 things, I suspect it would be life changing.  I know we all have HUGE To Do lists, and making a master list does help get it all down, but I am talking about having a top 3 every day that are non-negotiable!  This will take away the feeling of overwhelm and will help you know what enough looks like. Knowing this can help you stop just working and working and working until you just “hit the wall”

So- see your New Year through the lens of doing what is important and knowing what “enough” is. This will bring simplicity and order to your 2010!

Getting stuck is all about perspective.  Often by the time clients call for our help they really have had several failures and their veiw of their problem is blown out of proportion.  They are seeing everything from an extreme point of view.  They are CATASROPHIZING!

• They have decided that I am PERFECT and will think they are terrible.
• They have decided that their space is the worst space I have ever seen.
• Sometimes they see it as impossible or hopeless
• They think that they or the people in their lives will be traumatized by letting go of certain items.

But often what is trally happening is that i have seen spaces that are in worse shape and all I am really looking at is the person, not the stuff.  I am trying to understand how they want to live in the space and what might be getting in their way.  Often letting go brings energy and a sense of empowerment and control to everyone involved.

Be careful if you tend to think in worse case scenarios.  This highly emotive thinking can get in the way of clear decision making and making decisions is the key to processing the things that are in your life.  Building your decision making muscles and confidence will help you keep a healthy perspective as you face challenges.

Later is not a date on the calendar!  If you are a procrastinator, it may help to compare any task/project to an airplane trip.  Break it into these five parts; preparing for take off, take off, travel, circling and landing.  You may consistently get “stuck” in one of these areas need awareness and some simple strategies to help you finish your trip!

Preparing for Take Off
In this stage you want to make sure you are clear on where you are going and all the steps involved.  You prioritize and plot out checkpoints along the way.  Many procrastinator get stuck right here on the runway with ALL OR NOTHING THINKING.  This comes into play when the task perceived as large or complex. For example; if cleaning your desk will take four hours, that doesn’t mean you have to wait until a four hour block of time opens up.  Break down the task or just tackle it in smaller fifteen minute chunks of time.  You remain organized because you continue to a little each day to stay on course.  In this way you are spending your time working on IMPORTANT TASKS before they become URGENT.    Using the adrenaline that urgency produces can sharpens focus and concentration, but is not healthy.

ADD clients are often prolific thinkers who are creative, who struggle with focus, impulse control, prioritization and time among other things. The key to change is awareness and setting up distraction free, reminder rich environments. Because these clients have so many ideas they are prone to be big starters and poor finishers. We often see these clients being “productive procrastinators”. They are busy with low priority tasks, for example they will be pruning the hedges instead of working on their presentation that is due the next day! Helping clients prioritize is the first step to helping them be more effective day to day. Part of prioritizing is making manageable lists. Agree on a “do-able number” to ensure success and then “A/B” that list. Assign an “A” to the most important items and a “B” to the rest to make sure they are focused on what is most important daily. Commit to what is important by slotting tasks on a calendar. This sounds simple but this exercise cements the task in your client’s mind which is important when they struggle with focus and time. When competing goals are screened out now it is time to engineer the environment to reduce distraction and keep them on track with reminders. Set “mini deadlines” and add rewards to keep them moving toward their goals by delaying gratification until completion.

Awareness of the “triggers” that throw them off track is important and then strategies to overcome. For example if email distracts your client then set timers for that activity so they don’t get lost in that “now” moment. Transitioning is once your ADD client is hyper-focusing on a task is very difficult so setting a timer that requires them to actually move away from the current task begins that transition for them so it is easier to get on to the next task. One important thing to be aware of is “productive procrastination”. This is when our clients are constantly busy but not doing what is most important.

Yesterday I pulled out of my driveway and scraped my car against the corner of my neighbors house. This of course resulted in a srapes along three panels of my car and the corner of my neighbors house FELL OFF! My husband was in the drivway and helped me sort of re-attached some loose trim and talked to the home owner. Finally we both drove off to our appointment and I hear a THUD. I look in my rear veiw mirror only to see all of my husbands papers, drawings and measurements for a closet install scattered all over the road behind me. Apparently he had put these on the roof when he stopped to help! From there it seemed like my bad day was building. I felt like everything little challenge yesterday was overwhelming. Normal things like even deciding what to have for dinner were a struggle.

Looking back, I was building a bad day. If I had changed my perspective, I may not have had categorized the string of events that followed as part of my “bad day” and I may have handled them with a more positive attitude. Shift in thinking are so powerful. Often when people are disorganized, they have “strings of events” that turn south. Try not to wallow in it. Stop and make a mental shift and see how you can get on with a good day!