Virtual Receptionist Ruby Wins Awards
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Ruby Receptionists. These folks do a kick butt job of providing top notch front line customer service as your virtual receptionist.
I recently found out that Ruby won several cool awards. First, they’re on the list of Portland Business Journal’s 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies for 2010. Second, Oregon Business Magazine named Ruby as one of the “100 Best Companies To Work For.” And finally, Ruby was also named as one of the “Best Green Companies To Work For.”
Here’s my take: awards are cool. But actions speak louder than …
Cake in the Mail – from Ruby
I got a cake in the mail today. Life doesn’t get more awesome than that.
It’s from my awesome virtual receptionist: Ruby.
When I first signed up with Ruby, they sent me a cool mug. When I went back to them, I actually wondered if I’d get another mug. 
Seriously, the mugs are cool.
But they outdid themselves by sending a cake. Not just a plain cake with a computer-printed card inside. It’s a custom cake with a handwritten Ruby note card. Impressive.
Here’s the coolest part: They’re in …
Back With Ruby, Virtual Receptionist
My law firm gets a couple dozen (or more!) phone calls every day. Last year I had a virtual receptionist service help me by answering the phones. I wrote about the service, Ruby Receptionists, two different times.
I hired an in-office assistant last fall, and I stopped using Ruby. I thought me and my assistant could just handle the phones ourselves.
Wrong.
From February 1st to February 24, fourteen unique callers got our voicemail and didn’t leave a message. That probably means we lost at least 10 potential clients. A third of them would most likely have retained me for their …
3 Launchy Tricks – Evernote, Google Voice, RTM
If you want to control your computer from your keyboard, check out Launchy. It’s a free keystroke launcher. Here are three ways to supercharge Launchy.
Evernote
I use Evernote for all my note-taking needs. I constantly need to pull up a note that I’ve previously written. With Launchy and Evernote’s Windows scripting, this is now a piece of cake.
To pull up all of your notes that contain a particular string, you execute a command like this:
C:\Program Files\Evernote\Evernote3\ENscript.exe /showNotes QUERY
We can plug that into Launchy as a Runner command:
Now you …
My Custom Business Management System
Business have data to manage, documents to produce, and customers to invoice. Law firms are no different.
I run my own traffic defense law firm. It’s a high-volume practice area, which means I have lots of clients at any given time. There are lots of client contracts and invoices going out and coming back from clients.
In April, I wrote that I wanted to integrate my main systems. It’s done now, and this post explains everything.
What I use
I use a number of separate systems. They all do their job very well.
Remember the Milk (to do lists) – API…
Simplicity – Why I Deleted My Plaxo Account
How many social networks are you a member of? Personally, I’m on way too many to count.
Do we really need them all? Probably not.
Here’s a quick simplicity challenge for you: pick one social networking site and delete your account.
I just deleted my Plaxo account (here’s how to delete yours). I chose to delete Plaxo because:
1. I rarely logged in. In fact, I only logged in to accept someone’s connection request.
2. I got fed up with all the connection request emails and emails telling me that the requests were …
Amazing Motivation Handbook!
Do you have trouble with motivation? Is it hard to get motivated? What about keeping yourself motivated?
I suck at motivation. I go through spurts where I’m able to get lots done, but then I have dry spells. When I’m not motivated, I just can’t seem to get anything done.
But now I have an awesome tool to light a motivational fire for myself. It’s The Essential Motivation Handbook.
The Essential Motivation Handbook is a new ebook by Leo Babauta and Eric Hamm. If …
How to Alienate Your Vocal Supporters
Update – 4-27-09 – This was apparently a major misunderstanding. Check out my new post: EchoSign Customer Service To The Rescue!
It’s simple: just focus too much on big businesses.
I love EchoSign for e-signing documents. My clients love it too, so that makes me love it even more. I even wrote about EchoSign over at my law firm website. And the EchoSign folks picked up the article on their blog.
But I’m not feeling the love from EchoSign right now. They let me down.
I’ve been a loyal EchoSign user since I discovered their service last summer. I’ve …
My Short Email Experiment
Email is a necessary part of my law practice, but it takes up a lot of time. I decided that one way to cut that time is to cut the length of my emails.
My email signature now contains this line at the end:
Why is this email 5 sentences or less? http://five.sentenc.es/
My goal is to limit every email to no more than five sentences. The results have been mixed.
The limit is hard. It’s been difficult to limit every email to five sentences. Some emails just need more than that. Or maybe I should pick up the phone and call the …
Law Firm Productivity with Remember the Milk
As lawyers we have tons of tasks and deadlines to keep tabs on. We have to do something today for Client A, be sure we don’t miss Client B’s hearing tomorrow, and remember that Client C still hasn’t returned a call. Fortunately, Remember the Milk can track everything for us.
I’ve developed a pretty solid way of using Remember the Milk (RTM) to track all of my tasks. My system has been working great for several months, and I’m pretty happy with it. Here’s my attempt to illustrate the system I use to be productive.
A list …
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About Andrew Flusche
Lawyer, bicyclist, husband.
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