Author Archive: Lisa Hendrickson

Lisa Hendrickson is the owner of Call That Girl. She is an Outlook Expert and Microsoft 365 Consultant.

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Networking Wednesdays!

| July 8, 2009 | 0 Comments

Today is my first day of blogging EVER!!

 Please bear with me.

I am a senior marketing major at the University of St. Thomas, and recently began an internship here at Call That Girl!, a locally owned and operated computer repair company.  My internship is focusing on marketing, and I am doing things that are teaching me skills that will be very important to my professional career.  I am currently in the middle of a LinkedIn project designed to bring CTG revenue.  My boss, Lisa Hendrickson, is a LinkedIn specialist and runs corporate training seminars and one-on-one sessions with VIPs business owners, sales representatives, and others interested in utilizing this great marketing tool.

My job was to first “scrub,” or go through a database of LinkedIn contacts and select who would most likely benefit from a corporate training.  Candidates included but were not limited to: directors, channel managers, business developers, and sales people.  The database of about 1,800 people was scrubbed a total of four different times before a finalized list was created for the corporate sect. 

After the database was scrubbed, an email was created to go out to the potential clients.  I wrote the preliminary verbiage and one of Lisa’s colleagues, Connie Anderson, helped out a great deal and made some necessary changes to make the email very professional and more appealing.  Lisa and I tweaked a few things and the first emails were sent out to the corporate folks last Wednesday, July 1, 2009.  Thirty-two emails were sent on July 1st, 50 were sent on July 6th, and I sent out 50 more today, July 8. 

So far we have not received any responses.  That is ok because this is not the type of thing that someone will usually respond to the day they receive it.  There is plenty of time for them to think about it and decide it would be valuable to them.  These emails also have value because they mention CTG, which will also hopefully bring in revenue when contacts see this and decide to become clients.  All of the corporate emails are to be sent out hopefully by next week! After this, I will take my scrubbed database and tailor the email to VIPs such as CEO’s, owners, founders, and we will start the process again.  It is very exciting to have this project well underway because I am looking forward to tackling the next project.

I am anxious to begin working on our senior center project, which is the next thing we will be undertaking.  A project planning day is needed to knock out exactly what we will be doing to market to senior centers in the area.  We already have some of the groundwork laid, but there is a ton of research to do and that is primarily what I will be doing for the next couple of weeks.  I need to figure out which senior centers to market to, and how we will do that effectively.  Thank you and please keep reading!!!

My favorite prank phone calls. I’m not a call girl!

| July 8, 2009 | 0 Comments

I get prank phone calls on occasion, lately I’m getting more of them. I know, I know! It’s the name of my business..but I’m not changing it for a few randoms that are searching for call girls in Eden Prairie on Google at 12:30 at night. (yep, that’s what my stats says).

Yesterday while driving home from work, I was on Penn Ave getting on to 394 eastbound and I got a call…here are the details.

Me: “Call That Girl this is Lisa”

Dude: “Do you really send hot girls out to fix computers”

Me: Silent

Me: decides to look at my rearview window to see who is behind me, more often than not..I get calls from people behind me while I’m driving (many become clients!). I see a young kid smiling and on his cell phone.

Me: “Are you behind me right now?”

Kid in SUV: “Yes”

Me: “Do I look hot to you?”

Kid in SUV: “I can’t see you”

Me: “I get calls like this from folks driving behind me all the time, I do computer repair”

Kid in SUV: “oh ok”

Click.

Me: Laughing at the kid.

Last night at 12:30 am, I get a missed call. I know it’s a call girl type call, so I leave it. Then they called back, I didn’t get that one. They called back again and I picked up.

Me: “hello”

763-639-2641 “what other kinds of services do you have”

Me:”You know what, I fix computers and I really don’t appreciate you calling me at this hour, and I’m tracing this call!!”

click.

I’m posting his number for the world to see because if he has the audacity to call me at 12:30 at night 3x in a row, his phone number should be posted. Idiot.

More bloggin’…

Nice…I totally spaced off Monday and Tuesday. But that’s a good thing I guess, I’m busy and loving it! As of yesterday I had my week almost booked up. I have a wee bit of room for a couple of emergencies, but other than that…life is good at Call That Girl Land.

This week I trained the interns on how to run projects. They just finished up their first rounds of projects and moved them to the next level. Many of them are working on great proposals or marketing plans and project training was in order. Mostly because of the ways I run projects, I felt I had to teach them how I work so they have some foundation to work with. Then we had LinkedIn training, phase I. As I am a LinkedIn maniac, it only seems appropriate that they all learn LinkedIn from me and have great profiles and connections. Most of them are graduating in 2010 and I am excited to have them all for another year!

I’m meeting with Arend Geurink of InHouse Productions to start working on a viral video. I met him via LinkedIn at a happy hour and am thrilled to have him assist me and the interns on this project!

Other than that…busy with this and that! Client load this week was awesome and business is growing. A Girl can’t be happier.

Lisa

Monday is now Funday at Call That Girl!

| July 6, 2009 | 0 Comments

Hello all! My name is Hassan Shouman, I am the lead marketing intern at Call That Girl, here to help you transform your Monday… into “Funday”! At the start of every week I will give an update on my current projects, give some insight into what we do here, and provide you with some useless entertainment to keep your outlook on the week as optimistic as possible.

First off, I would like to start by giving you a little more background info into who I am. I currently am a senior at the University of St. Thomas, pursuing a double major in Marketing and Entrepreneurship. I have been involved in a few different business clubs at UST, and also DECA in High School. When I am not expanding my intellectual horizens I play baseball on a local amateur mens baseball teams called the Twin City Saints. Check out my linkedin for a more in depth look into my life 🙂

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/hassan-shouman/11/673/2b7

When I started my internship with Call That Girl in the beginning of March, the marketing department consisted of Lisa and I, sitting in a small cubicle like office “pitching” ideas back and fourth. Now as our business is growing faster and faster we had added a team of outstanding people from around the cities, who work on the numerous ongoing marketing projects. Right now my project is to work with the business development manager at our partner,”Reboot Electronics”, on building different promotional materials to help market Call That Girl to their customers. I am extremely excited about this partnership because it is not only exanding ur clientele greatly, it is also giving Call That Girl a unique opportunity to be the premier Software and IT assistance service for every Reboot customer!

Now as I promised here is my entertainment for the day!
Random computer fact of the day: While it took the radio 38 years, and the television a short 13 years, it took the World Wide Web only 4 years to reach 50 million users.

Thats all for now, thanks for reading my first blog ever!

Should you downgrade to XP from Vista?

| July 2, 2009 | 0 Comments

Vista? Should I downgrade to XP?
Many of my clients have purchased new laptops that has Vista preloaded on it. Many of you have software that is not up to speed with Vista. Should you downgrade or try to get your software up to speed?

Here are my thoughts…
I have been using Vista since January 2007. Yes, Vista is buggy and does things that really bother me. I am also a technician and can fix my own problems (and enjoy trying to fix those problems:). You the customer…can usually only get so far until you decide it’s not worth using Vista.

First thing you may want to consider is making a list of problems are you experiencing since the upgrade to Vista. Some problems are just “configuration issues” that I can assist with. Some problems are seriously the Vista operating system and you may need to go back to XP if your work depends on it.

Second thing is check to make sure that your software is Vista ready. Even though it installs (usually you will get an error during installation that tells you if it’s not Vista ready) it may need to be updated on the company website. Check with the software company website and verify. You also may need what is called “a patch” to make it work on Vista. You can also google the issue and see if others on the net are experiencing the same issues.

Third thing is Call That Girl (612-865-4475) for a phone consultation. I do offer short conversations for free to give you an idea if you should consider staying on Vista or downgrading back to XP. If a home visit is required, we can discuss that. I can also assist via the phone if need be.

Final note: When people tell me “oh Vista, I have heard bad things about that…” I say to them, “Well, if XP was perfect, I wouldn’t have a job right now”

There is a ring of truth to that:)

Please post comments or questions about Vista! thanks and…
Have a good Thursday!
Lisa

Techtastic Tuesday with John

| June 30, 2009 | 0 Comments

Hey everybody! Here’s the start of a long line of postings from the fantastic intern team at the one and only, Call That Girl! For all you loyal bloggers, this will be something new to look forward to to distract yourself from work for another five minutes each day. Each of us interns will blog a certain day every week, mine happens to be Tuesday, so keep a look out to find out what we’re up to every week. Things may or may not get a little crazy…

With that said, now would be an excellent time for an introduction. My name is John Krull and I am a rising Senior at the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, MN. I am majoring in Business Management; Marketing. I enjoy playing the drums, I’m addicted to fast food and I can’t get enough of Neil Young.

Currently, I am masterminding a plan to take over the internet advertising game with Call That Girl! It is crucial for our growth and livelyhood that we get our name out there for everyone to see and what better medium than the internet. I am doing some investigating into possible outlets (websites, blogs and maybe even printed periodicals) where Call That Girl would get its name out in the best possible manner. As always, the best advertising is word of mouth, so if you have had a good experience with Call That Girl, be sure to tell your friends. It will make us feel good and you as well knowing that you did something to help out your favorite tech support company!

That’s all for now. Tune in next Tuesday for another update on what’s going behind the scenes with me at Call That Girl!

Happy Monday!

| June 29, 2009 | 0 Comments

Hello everyone! I just got back from Waterloo, WI and don’t have any good tips or tricks today, but thought I would give a quick recap of my weekend and how refreshed I feel today!

I left on Friday afternoon, dropped off puppy with the folks down in Rochester and headed to Winona and took Hwy 61 through LaCrosse to I-90. What a beautiful drive, the day was so sunny, shiny and cool….great day to be on the road.

When I got to Waterloo, it was late and we rested with some refreshments out on the deck and then went to bed around 1:00am. I woke up at 10:30 am! I can’t believe I slept in so late, but apparently when you are on vacation…it’s ok!

On Saturday we laid by the pool all day, had more refreshments, got sunburned and then napped. Around 7:00 we went to a small town Lake Mills and hit a carnival, then went to Waterloo for some small town bar excitement. I was surprised to see you could still smoke in the bars there. It’s been years since I have been in a smokey bar…felt like I went back a few years.

Sunday we had coffee and I hit the road. Nope, not the most activity driven weekend, but it was so nice to just relax and I never popped open my laptop and only checked my blackberry on occasion.  

That is the first vacation I have taken since last fall and boy did I need it…a growing girl needs her beauty rest:)

I hope you all had a great weekend!

Lisa