Mary Higgins Consultancy

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Abbotsford-based company, Pacific Coast Compliance Consulting, recently celebrated another successful compliance audit. As Herb Gaidoschwrote in his blog post, passing a stringent transport National Safety Code (NSC) audit means building a good partnership and a huge amount of work:

“…We spent 5 months with this company preparing for this event.

On site compliance review of records, driver information and monitoring of fuelling and delivery times and log monitoring was essential…”

After all the hard work and three days of intensive audit review it is good to reflect on a job well done and take the time to blog.

2nd Annual Indie Intertube Awards 2012

In that spirit we are very happy to announce that our video production company, HigletFilms, has been nominated for THREE Indie Intertube Awards for the webseries ‘Mind My Brains, Darling!’. We are also thrilled to announce that Border Guardians of Ackernon have also been nominated for FOUR Awards: Audience Choice, Best Scifi/Fantasy, Best Set Design and Best Dressed/Best Costumes.

The ‘Mind My Brains, Darling!’ team was also involved in the Nominations Video, announcing the Best Drama Awards:

The full list of nominees is on the Indie Intertube website, and we will definitely be tuning in on Sunday to watch the Awards Show on Mingle Media TV!

Yesterday I talked about how important Valentine’s Day is to florists, and the preparations that Wendy from Mary Clark Flowers in Chillwack, BC, has been making for the last few weeks. Today I saw this posted by my friend Megan Lynch on Friendfeed (a fantastic social media community) about Florist Susan Occhino and her dispute with Amazon:

“…She says six weeks ago, when she started selling her goods through the mega online retailer, she was pleased to see sales go through the roof overnight — from about one order a day to 100.

But then Amazon pulled the rug out from under her floral joy.

“They said your account is currently under review because you’re very new, you have no feedback and we’re gonna hold the money up to 90 days,” Susan says. She claims she made over $10,000 in five days, but that so far she’s only seen $45.02 of that.

Susan needed those funds to buy more supplies for a very important holiday in the flower world — Valentine’s Day — so instead of leaving her customers in the lurch, she drained her bank account to ship what orders she could last week…”

From The Consumerist, Florist Drains Bank Account To Ship Valentine’s Day Orders After Amazon Holds Up Her Payments

 

This has a huge impact on Ms Occhino and it is not clear how the matter will be resolved. In the meantime there will be disappointed people who didn’t receive the flowers that were ordered for them today.

I’ll keep you posted on what happens with this story, and I hope your day goes well, flowers or not!

Valentine Roses at Mary Clark Flowers, Chilliwack

What day do you think is the busiest for a Florist?

Mother’s Day? Easter? Christmas?

Those are all busy times, but the single busiest day of the year is Valentine’s Day. One of my clients, Wendy, from Mary Clark Flowers, has been gearing up for weeks for the Big Day. Wendy has years of experience in floral design and knows the cyclical nature of the business. Her preparations start well in advance, almost straight after the Christmas rush, and it starts with making sure her suppliers can all accomodate the orders she will need fulfilling. Although there are perennial favourites like red roses, Wendy also likes to cater for more adventurous orders, too, and when clients know they want to create an individual statement with exotic blooms or unusual flowers, Wendy always knows where she can source the very best.

Apart from running her business at Southgate Mall, Chilliwack, BC, Wendy also teaches the Floral Design Certificate at the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV). The courses keeps her skills up to date and she is passionate about passing on her love of flowers and design on to a new generation. Learning how technology can make her life easier has been a priority, and she has incorporated new tricks into her everyday schedule that help with productivity. Learning how to organise and archive photos from her store and her teaching, and how to optimise pictures to send via email all make her life a little easier. She has already embraced blogging and is looking at moving to weekly updates.

There is even an handy Instructional: Quick Guide to Ordering the Perfect Bouquet for those people who are unsure on what ordering flowers entails. This has proved to be a very popular post, along with the ‘Christmas Countdown‘ series.

Knowing your business, your customers and the rhythms of the year is one ways you can ensure success. Preparation for the busy, and not-so-busy times is key to making sure things run smoothly. Do you know what your daily/weekly/monthly/yearly ups and downs are? Do you track them? Can you predict them? What changes do you make throughout the cycles?

Do you communicate effectively with your customers?

IAWTV Awards, live from Las Vegas tonight

The inaugural IAWTV Awards will be broadcast live on YouTube from the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas tonight. This is a significant step forward for web television and web TV, and I am looking forward both to finding out who the winners are tonight, and what staging the Awards at CES will bring to the community afterwards. It will be interesting to see what the media outside the web TV space – the tech bloggers and the like – make of the Awards, too.

Our video production company, HigletFilms, does not have any nominations this year, but we will be tuning in to watch the show on the IAWTV YouTube channel. If you want to know more about web TV, webseries and new media, this event should give you a real taste of where the industry is at the moment. Best of luck to all the nominees!

Where are you focusing on? Picture by P Higgins

What are your goals for 2012? Get rich? Get fit? Retire young? Do you even have any goals? Setting goals in the New Year can be effective, but simply thinking about them is not going to get you any where. NOT setting goals for the year, or month, or any discrete unit of time means you will never get what you want.

Is Social Media for you and your business?

This is a hard question to answer because there are many factors to consider, not least whether you, or a trusted member of your staff, is comfortable using the tools needed to run your Social Media campaign. If you check your email only weekly, never update your Facebook account (or don’t have one at all) then adopting new practices are going to be more challenging. But it can be done.

Are you sure it's safe? Picture by M Higgins

Catching the wave

Knowing where to start is often the stumbling block to any new enterprise. You are interested in a new technology/product/line/idea, find out enough to start getting excited and then begin to founder as you struggle to fit it into what you are already doing. Your days are busy enough without adding another Big Thing To Be Done, and so your enthusiasm wanes and the wave passes you by.

Try something new

Do one new thing this week and see what it does for you. Check your email more (or less). Join Twitter or Google +, and start following some interesting people*. Add some new people on Facebook. Write down what the results are in real terms – did you get more email, more leads, more interaction? Did it take up some valuable time that could have been spent doing something else? Did you enjoy it overall? The only way you’ll know if something is going to work is to try it, monitor it and then work out what your experiment told you. Anything else is just spitting in the wind.

Sitting still is not an option. Photo by M Higgins

* I’m on Twitter, Facebook, Google + and pretty much everywhere else. If you just want businessy/social media-type interactions then add my ‘officially official’ accounts:

Google +
Twitter: @MaryHConsult
Facebook: Mary R Higgins

If you want a fuller picture of me then try my long-standing, less filtered version that has lots of writing/video/creative/fun stuff added in.

Google +
Twitter: @worldofhiglet
Facebook: Worldofhiglet

Over the last few weeks I’ve been working with Herb Gaidosch on a new website for his growing business, Pacific Coast Compliance Consultancy. Herb has a wealth of experience in the trucking industry and has been using his expertise to help save trucking companies from closure. Working with Herb has been a pleasure. He is very focussed and has clear ideas about what he wants to achieve. He is also very computer savvy and keen to learn about how he can use tools like WordPress, Facebook and LinkedIn help his business.

Congratulations on launching your new website, Herb, and I look forward to working with you in the future!

Angela Aro as Petrina from 'Border Guardians of Ackernon', at VCON 36

What an exciting weekend! For the second year running we attended VCON, Vancouver’s premier science fiction and fantasy convention, but this time not only did we have a stall on Artist’s Alley, we ran three panels AND started filming for a new documentary about webseries we are producing with Wolf’s Head Productions. Border Guardians of Ackernon was well represented with Paul Best and Angela Aro in attendance. Angela won first place in the ‘Media’ category of the Cosplay Masquerade with her stunning ‘Petrina’ costume, so congratulations to Angela and Laura Olsen, costume designer.

Warren Freyburg – @freyburg: videographer, journalist, geek – has posted a video of the webseries panel at VCON – (thank you for posting it so quickly, Warren):

The panel, from left to right, was:

Vanessa Driveness (Associate Producer/Costume Designer/Marketing & PR Manger, Standard Action)
Joanna Gaskell (Writer/Creator/Actor, Standard Action)
Mary Higgins (Writer/Creator/Actor, Mind My Brains, Darling! & Marketing, Border Guardians of Ackernon)
Josephine Hoy (Producer, Glitch)
Ralph Fontaine (Assistant Director/Producer, Causality)
Anna Julia (Assistant Director/Producer, Causality)
Paul Best (Writer/Director, Border Guardians of Ackernon)
Angela Aro (Actor, Border Guardians of Ackernon)

Thanks to the whole panel who really showed the passion, creativity and professionalism that abounds in the webseries world. And thanks also to the audience, who asked some probing questions. One big surprise was the number of people who watched webseries – a very encouraging response from the audience.

This weekend we are in Seattle for Geek Girl Con, where we will be filming more for our webseries documentary and enjoying some serious geek time. On Saturday I will be taking part in the ‘Women in Webseries’ panel and I’m very happy to announce that Jane Espenson will be joining the panel to talk about her new webseries, Husbands. More on that soon!

Gerber Daisy from Mary Clark Flowers, Chilliwack

Recently my father-in-law become seriously ill. We put our webseries, Mind My Brains, Darling, on hiatus and my husband, Paul, flew back to England and while I tried to sort out travel arrangements for the rest of the family. Sadly, Paul’s father died last week. I flew into England on Thursday and the funeral service was yesterday. We have been very moved and comforted by the messages of support we have had from people all over the Internet, thank you all for your care and concern.

I have been working with Paul Best and Laura Olsen from the webseries Border Guardians of Ackernon: The University. They released Episode 1: Family on July 19th and Episode 3 is out today on blip.tv. During what has been a very stressful time, Paul and Laura have been incredibly supportive while we concentrated on family matters. Working with people who are understanding makes such a huge difference.

Border Guardians of Ackernon poster

Make sure you check out the Ackernon.com website and watch all the episodes. This week’s fight scene is epic and you will not want to miss the lead up to the finale!

Other Clients
Wendy from Mary Clark Flowers in Chilliwack has also been very supportive and we will be announcing some news soon that is very exciting. I also have a new client, Herb Gaidosch, from Pacific Coast Compliance Consulting. We will be launching a new website for his business soon and I will be updating on progress here.

New poster for ‘Border Guardians of Ackernon’

This weekend Paul Best and Laura Olsen will be in Las Vegas to accept the Silver Ace Award at the Las Vegas Film Festival for the 2010 DVD release of ‘Border Guardians of Ackernon: This Ain’t Kansas’. This is the second award the DVD has won, having won the Accolade Award for Merit in 2010.

A street scene from ‘Border Guardians of Ackernon’

Following the success of the DVD release, they decided to film more of their epic story in the form of a webseries, and ‘Border Guardians of Ackernon: The University’ will be be released weekly startingJuly 19th. We have been working hard on the Ackernon.com website and you will find a huge amount about the series, the people behind it and the production. There is also a competition where you can win a signed copy of their award-winning DVD. The Season 1 trailer is below:

Set in Ackernon, a mythical kingdom protected by magical wards, this fantasy webseries follows the lives, loves and battles of Mistress Galiene and her students at the University as they defend against Ackernon’s ancient foe The Pert, and struggle with new threats to the kingdom. The story is epic and is classic fantasy filled with strong characters, a richly-imagined empire and breath-taking fight scenes.

Tavern fight from ‘Border Guardians of Ackernon’

Find out more:

Website: Ackernon.com

On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Ackernonweb

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/ackernon

On Blip.tv: http://blip.tv/ackernon

Production shot from the set of Border Guardians of Ackernon

Last week it was announced that ‘Border Guardians of Ackernon: This Ain’t Kansas’ had received its second award. This TV pilot was released in 2010 and forms part of the new Ackernon fantasy webseries that is currently in production.

They won the Silver Ace Award from the Las Vegas Film Festival, one of 4 winners in the TV pilot category. The award ceremony will be held in Las Vegas in July and promises to be an exciting affair. Last year they also won the Accolade Award for Merit, a prestigious award for craft and creativity.

Congratulations to the whole team on winning the awards. The webseries will be completed this summer and is scheduled for release in July. Looking at the pictures from the set, it promises to be an action-packed affair!