negotiation | Breaking Even Communications

This Week In Business: Lack Of Sleep Edition

by Nicole Ouellette | Apr 16, 2010 | This Week In Business

It’s been an interesting week here at Breaking Even Communications and in my life in general.

I’ve had a hard time sleeping, which is uncharacteristic of me. Most of what’s on my mind was thoughts of my grandfather. It was confirmed yesterday that he has liver cancer. He is one of my favorite people in the world, and one of my role models as far as being a good person.

I used to think that there would be times in my life that would be easier and times that would be harder. The older I get though, the more I realize that most times in life will be sort of mixed, and there is importance and even satisfaction in just moving forward. So onward for Pepere, and myself…

Here’s what’s been going on businesswise this week:

Matt and my workshop went really well…and we’re already planning another.

Besides running out of time and not having a good system to answer people’s questions, things went smoothly last Saturday. We have been asked about follow-up workshops, not only by people who came but by people who heard about it.

We decided to use our common website to post information about upcoming workshops and how-tos about the topics we didn’t get to. If you want to check it out: http://www.downeastlearning.com. We’re planning one in May about making websites search engine friendly. Stay tuned!

I gave a talk about blogging at my local library.

Last night, I gave a talk with a fellow local blogger at the Jessup Memorial Library. Four people showed up, which was a lower turnout than I was hoping.

Four Great Ways Ways I Saved And Wasted Money In 2009

by Nicole Ouellette | Dec 10, 2009 | Personal Finance Tips

Daniel Scocco, author of Daily Blog Tips, is running a group writing project on his blog called 2009 in Review. I thought it was a fun idea so here are my best and worst ways I saved money in 2009.

Here are some of the best lessons I learned in saving money over the past year:

Asking for something if I need or want it.

When I moved into my house, I couldn’t help but notice my neighbors left a cool looking bookcase outside in the rain.

Maybe they were putting it outside while they moved furniture around or were giving it to someone else. Really though, I didn’t ask at first because I was worried I’d look like some cheap vulture.

I hopped onto the Ikea website to look at pricing some options. The cost was $69 for a Billy Bookcase… and $250 to ship it. Even my cheap local options still involved similar costs and the hassle of transport and assembly. Was my pride really going to get in the way of saving $100 or more?