 Recently, we had the chance to sit down with Lola Whittle. Lola is the Director over at Renaissance Bayview helping emerging entrepreneurs realize their dreams in the Bayview. She is also a small business owner.
OK, OK – full disclosure – she is a great friend, as well.
What is your favorite part of a typical day?
Early mornings. It’s when I’m at my best. I particularly enjoy getting up and taking my dog for a long walk at Candlestick Park. Our neighborhood is so beautiful. I particularly love walking the paths along the water. After that, I am charged and ready for the world.
Which part of your job would you gladly give up?
Internal and external politics.
What is the best advice you have ever received?
“Don’t beat yourself down when you make a mistake – it definitely wasn’t your first and guaranteed not to be your last.”
What keeps you up at night?
YOU MIKE – Just joking “Juggling all the balls and not wanting a single one to drop. There are so many things to be done, so many people to respond to, and so many issues to resolve. My life is full with love, family and friends, but fitting it all in is sometimes difficult. With that said, after living life to the fullest (dining out after work with my special guy, catching a movie mid-week with my son, or taking time to read a favorite book), often times, I end up late still working.
What is your great extravagance?
Traveling to foreign countries, dining at the finest restaurants and surprising the special people in my life with incredible gifts.
What skill would you most like to improve?
Public speaking.
What is your most treasured possession?
My integrity.
What talent would you most like to have?
Motivational Speaker.
If you could have a drink with anyone (living or dead), who would it be?
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama
What is upcoming at Renaissance Bayview?
- Contractor/Production, Distribution & Repair (C/PDR) Program
- Food Program (catering, manufacturing, retail, wholesale, etc.)
- Prison Re-Entry Program
- Developing Green and Sustainable Business Practices for our clients
Lola M. Whittle, Director
Renaissance Bayview
3801 Third Street, Suite 616
San Francisco CA 94124
Tel. 415-647-3728, ext. 401,
Fax. 415-647-1542
www.rencenter.org
We recently had a chance to talk to Chip about business and entrepreneurship. Part of our on going discussions with real life entrepreneurs sharing advice and best practices . . .
 Joie de Vivre Hotels is California’s largest boutique hotel collection. Founded in 1987 in San Francisco by Chip Conley, Joie de Vivre has built a reputation for creating some of the most innovative hospitality services and products and designing one-of-a-kind properties in the U.S. – from boutique hotels to Japanese communal baths to exciting restaurants and lounges.
What is your favorite part of a typical day? I love the early morning right before dawn. A great time for meditating, writing, or going for a nice walk or run with my dog, Sugar Ray.
Which part of your job would you gladly give up? The part that is most frustrating is dealing with a variety of hotel owners or investors (as we don’t own all our hotels) during a difficult economy as each of them wants to know they’re the most important.
What is the best advice you have ever received? Have “blissipline” in life – be discipline in following your bliss.
What keeps you up at night? A bad interaction with someone in business or personal life in the evening will send my mind racing.
How has parenthood changed your life? I became the foster parent for a 15-year old boy when I was 33. He’s now 33 and has three kids: 15, 13, and 5 and my “grandkids” stay with me all the time. The best thing about this is that it gets me out of my tendency to be self-absorbed on my own problems or aspirations. It’s nice to focus on the kids and their dreams.
What is your greatest extravagance? Building a Japanese-style writing cottage in my backyard right now since I plan to be spending more and more of my time writing.
If you had to do something other than Joie de Vivre, what would it be? Next choice (which I’m doing more and more of) is writing and speaking, but I’m not going to count that since I’m already doing it. I guess my next choice would be something in the spiritual realm…being a preacher at the pulpit helping people transform the relationship with spirit.
How many times have you been thrown in the pool? I guess you’re talking as part of our Celebrity Pool Toss fundraiser which I started to raise money for Tenderloin kids at our Phoenix Hotel. We’ve raised over $4 million and I’ve been thrown in three times in the past 17 years.
What advice would you offer a young entrepreneur? Beyond being “blissiplined”, surround yourself with smart, ambitious, team-oriented people who love the culture of the organization you’re creating. And, more specifically, start by focusing a niche of customers that you can serve better than anyone else.
 It’s not always easy transitioning to a home office. So we offer these Tips for Working at Home to help you get started.
Boost Focus and Productivity by Reducing Communication Distractions
During the course of a given day, think about how many different ways you might be distracted from the tasks you have in front of you – a notification pops up in the corner of your screen letting you know you have a new email, your phone vibrates to let you know you received a new message on Twitter, the phone rings… and the list goes on and on. Let’s face facts – we live in distraction oriented culture, where we’re encouraged to be in near-constant contact with the outside world.
While staying in touch is great in theory, being constantly available to the outside world can be an ongoing source of distractions and interruptions. In my work with clients, many of them say that dealing with these distractions has become a major part of daily life, and is taking a toll on their productivity. Here are some strategies for stemming the tide of interruptions and getting back on track towards being more efficient:
Prioritize your key tasks. Before you start your work each day, take a few moments to write down what your priority tasks are going to be that day. Set aside time on your calendar to work on those tasks, and make those times “communication free zones” – meaning that you won’t check email, answer calls, or instant-message during those times, unless doing so relates specifically to the project you’re working on. Setting aside this space to work on your projects will help you stay focused and get closer to your goal of finishing a given task.
Beware of “helpful” notifications. Pretty much every system we use to communicate, whether it’s instant message, email, social media, voice mail, text messaging, etc., has a way to notify us when we’ve received a new message or communication request. Ask yourself, are these notifications serving you, or are they an interruption? For most of us, the latter is the case. Instead of allowing these tech tools distract you, set specific times during the day when you will check for new messages, email, etc., and turn off the notifications. You could check your various inboxes twice a day, every few hours, or every hour, depending on the volume of communication you receive. Very, very few messages are so urgent that they can’t wait an hour or two for you to return the communication.
Don’t get sucked into the social media vortex. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace… these are all great tools, and can be a lot of fun. They can also generate a voluminous amount of messages that require your attention and time. If you’re using these tools for purely personal use, limit your use of them to outside business hours, and set some parameters about how much time you’d like to spend on them. If social media is a part of your business, make sure to set aside time on your calendar during your work day to process your new messages and friend requests. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that managing these sites is something that can be done in the ever-elusive “spare time” – keeping current with your profiles has to become part of your scheduled tasks.
These are some of my favorite ways to reduce communication-related distractions – what are some of yours?
Joshua Zerkel, CPO® is a the founder of Custom Living Solutions, a San Francisco-based productivity and organizing consulting firm, specializing in helping busy people save time, space and money by getting organized at home and at work. For more FREE organizing ideas, visit www.customlivingsolutions.com or call 415-830-6345.
© 2009 Joshua Zerkel and Custom Living Solutions. All Rights Reserved.
 4 Tips for Easier Emailing
Do you feel like email has taken over your life? Well, you’re not alone – in a recent study by Information Week, over three-quarters of the people surveyed said that email is essential to their lives – and an additional 15% say they’d rather lose their spouse than give up email! It’s important to remember that email is a tool that we can control – one that is meant to improve communication and make our lives easier. To that end, here are four top tips to wrangle that inbox:
- Smarten up your subject line. Put as much descriptive information in the subject line as possible, and your recipient will know what your message is about without having to even open your email. For instance, “Rescheduling Meeting: Orig. 6/1/07 3PM - New 6/1/07 5PM” is a lot better than “Meeting time changed” – the more descriptive, the better.
- Don’t use your inbox as a filing cabinet. Instead, create descriptive folders in your email program – by topic, client, vendor, etc. As you’re finished reading your messages, file them accordingly.
- Filter your messages to save a step. Once you’ve set up some folders, you can then tell your email program to automatically put messages from specific senders or with specific subject lines into the folders where they belong. For instance, if you’re receiving dozens of newsletters, create a “Newsletters” folder, and have your email program filter those emails right into the folder, bypassing your inbox entirely. In your email program, search the help for “rules” or “filters” for more instructions.
- Beware the 4000-message inbox. Instead of letting emails “pile up” in your inbox indefinitely, set a limit for how many messages you want to have sit in there at any given time – I recommend no more than 25 or so (once you have more than that, it’s hard to actually see what’s in there). Once your messages start growing past the limit that you set, schedule some time to process your email.
Joshua Zerkel, CPO® is a the founder of Custom Living Solutions, a San Francisco-based productivity and organizing consulting firm, specializing in helping busy people save time, space and money by getting organized at home and at work. For more FREE organizing ideas, visit www.customlivingsolutions.com or call 415-830-6345.
© 2009 Joshua Zerkel and Custom Living Solutions. All Rights Reserved.
My friends get pretty jealous about me having an office in my home, saying it must be cool to be able to sit around in my sweats and do all sorts of errands during the day. Well, while there are definite perks to working from home – spending nothing on gas (a big benefit in $4/gallon San Francisco) and eating a healthy lunch that I prepare – it’s important to remember the work part in the work-from-home equation. For most of us with home offices, it’s key to our success to find ways to put the “office” back in “home office.”
Reduce distractions. Here’s a scenario: even though you hate doing laundry, as soon as you sit down to start your workday, suddenly your laundry jumps to the top of your must-do list. You get out of your chair, collect your laundry, sort it, put it in the machine, and before you know it, you’ve lost 20 minutes that was supposed to be spent on an important project. Sound familiar? Most of us have distractions in our homes that can divert our attention from the work that we have in front of us. For us work-at-homers, it’s super-important to combat these distractions. True, we can’t make them go away, but look for ways to shift your focus back to your work. For instance, putting all non-work-related items out view of your desk, closing the door to your office, and turning off the ringer on your home phone during the day have all proven helpful to people I’ve worked with.
Set the scene. Is your home office set up to help you do your best work? If it isn’t, take some time to get the space organized, comfortable, and conducive for how you like to work. For instance, if you have trouble getting started each day because you can’t find your papers, take an afternoon and set up a paper management system. Are your frequently-used supplies all the way on the other side of the room? Move them closer so you spend less time getting up and interrupting your workflow. Does the space itself reflect your personal aesthetic? How things look and feel can play a big part in how much (or how little) we like our workspace, and when we like our space, we do better work. Spend some time “dressing up” your work area or desk with items that reflect who you are and the things you like.
Dress for work, not for home. Even though it might seem working in your home office in pajamas or sweats is a good idea (you’re already wearing them, right?), doing so doesn’t lend itself to enhancing your productivity or helping you do your best work. Your pajamas may be silk and your sweats designer, but chances are you’d never see a client or go to an office wearing these decidedly not-work garments. Dressing up helps us shift our mind into another state – in this case, dressing for work helps make the mental shift into work mode. I’ve seen people work much better when they dress as if they may be called off to a client site at any moment. For example, a client says when she puts on her shoes, she knows it’s time for her to go to work (even though her office is just down the hall from her bedroom). What outfit can you change into to signal work time?
Find the things that you can do, whether it’s putting on a dress shirt or closing your office door, to create a physical or mental “workspace” that is distinct from your home. When you do, you’ll find yourself being much more productive and enjoy your work more.
Joshua Zerkel, CPO® is a the founder of Custom Living Solutions, a San Francisco-based productivity and organizing consulting firm, specializing in helping busy people save time, space and money by getting organized at home and at work. For more FREE organizing ideas, visit www.customlivingsolutions.com or call 415-830-6345.
© 2009 Joshua Zerkel and Custom Living Solutions. All Rights Reserved.
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Recently, we had the chance to sit down with Lola Whittle. Lola is the Director over at Renaissance Bayview helping emerging entrepreneurs realize their dreams in the Bayview. She is also a small business owner.
