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All the things you need to know about franchise affiliation...
by: Andrew Adams
You’ve met with sales representatives of a franchise to determine whether affiliation with the system might benefit your company. But it’s a big step. Taking it requires you to make a major upfront financial investment—in franchise fees, new signage, maybe even a different color on your office walls—and it commits you to payments going forward, including monthly royalties and contributions to an advertising fund.
Then there are the low-probability but high-impact events to consider. What if the franchisor becomes embroiled in a high-cost, high-profile lawsuit? Even if the matter doesn’t directly involve you, you’re affected. For good or ill, your company’s brand identity is now linked in the minds of consumers and your business partners to that of the franchisor.
Given the high stakes of affiliation, you must enter into a franchise agreement with your eyes wide open, something federal and state regulators want to make as easy as possible. The Federal Trade Commission and some states require franchisors to provide you a wide array of information upfront—an accounting of pending and closed lawsuits against the company, for example, and details about your initial investment and ongoing fees—to help you make an informed decision about purchasing a franchise. Franchisors are also required to provide the information in a standardized format, in a document known as the uniform franchise offering circular or UFOC.
But knowing a franchise brand intimately is easier said then done. The UFOC is an imposing document that, with attachments, can run hundreds of pages. What’s more, some of the key operational information you need to conduct your due diligence—what are the franchisor’s rules on record keeping, what are its policies on signage?—might be hidden away in the company policy manual rather than in the UFOC. Since companies can change the policies in their manual at any time, these changes can impact your bottom line if they result in unforeseen costs to you.
What’s more, companies aren’t obligated to show you their policy manual because it’s an internal document. Some will let you look at it but not take it with you, making a thorough review difficult.
So, how do you cover your bases before entering into a franchise agreement? First, know the principal question you need to answer:
Does the value I receive from affiliating with the franchisor’s brand identity, advertising muscle, training program, and business process offset the economic investment I’ll make and the operational control I’ll give up?
Second, do your due diligence. You can’t answer that question without first digging into the UFOC. All UFOCs include a table of contents to help you review the document by section.
10 due diligence steps
Review the UFOC with an eye toward the issues affecting your financial investment and the amount of control you’ll relinquish. Among the issues to consider:
1. Entry and exit costs. How much will it cost to convert your office? The UFOC requires disclosure of these costs, but franchisors typically provide a broad range—in real estate, a spread as wide as $21,000 to $250,000—making it hard for you to know what your costs will be.
The reason for the range: Your costs are unique. At the very least, you’ll need to change your signs and letterhead and pay the initial franchise fee, among other things. But you may also need to add or upgrade equipment or hire additional staff.
Then there are exit costs. How much will you incur in “de-identification” and other conversion costs to leave the system? Exit costs aren’t included in the UFOC, so you have to estimate them yourself.
2. Ongoing value. You face monthly royalty payments; other regular fees, such as for referrals (independent companies can choose whether to belong to a third-party referral group—in a franchise, belonging to the referral group is part of the affiliation); and indirect costs. If the franchisor imposes mandatory training on you, for example, you might have to absorb your travel costs if the training is off-site.
For all these ongoing costs, what value will you receive? Are the referrals worth the fees? Is the training worth the cost? Will the franchisor’s affiliated businesses—perhaps it owns a financial services company—drive customers to you that you otherwise wouldn’t get? Conduct a cost-benefit analysis, examining your additional monthly costs against the additional income you expect to receive to get a picture of the value of joining the brand.
3. Earnings claims. Franchisors aren’t required to disclose how much they think you’ll earn; nor are they required to give you historical data on their franchisees’ earnings. If the franchisor doesn’t report its franchisees’ earnings in the UFOC—and most don’t—ask why it doesn’t. After all, the franchisor requires its franchisees to report their earnings, so it has the data available.
4. System growth. Is the number of franchisees growing or contracting? Is the number of company-owned operations increasing or declining? This may be the most important information you review. A declining or stagnating number of franchisees (and a growing number of company-owned offices) may suggest that the system isn’t healthy. A high number of terminations or non-renewals may also be troubling.
The UFOC requires franchisors to disclose this data for the three most recent years, but it can be hard for prospective franchisees to identify turnover rates in the system because the numbers are disclosed in aggregate for the entire franchise network. If, in a given year, a franchisor loses one franchisee in an area but gains a replacement franchisee, for example, the data would show no change for that year, suggesting a stable picture. But is the system really stable? For your purposes, it might be more important to know why that one franchisee left.
5. Franchisee input. The most valuable research you can do is to talk with existing and past franchisees, whose contact info the UFOC requires franchisors to disclose. The best question to ask them: If you had to do it all over again, would you do it?
In general, franchise agreements contain confidentiality provisions that restrict franchisees from talking about matters proprietary to the system, such as internal business processes. What you’re looking for, though, is a subjective assessment from the franchisee that the system’s value proposition is sound—that is, the benefits you get from affiliating exceed your costs to belong.
Seek input from past franchisees, too, but be aware that brokers who’ve left the system tend to be those most unhappy with it. So weigh what they say with that in mind. Also, if the franchisees have an association or if the franchisor maintains a franchise advisory council, talk to the leaders of those bodies. Very often, they’re among the most widely respected and long-standing franchisees in the system, and they bring historical knowledge that may surpass even that of some of the franchisor’s employees.
One important point: In real estate, unlike in many other industries, franchise agreements tend to come without post-expiration non-compete clauses. That’s good for franchisees because, if they opt not to renew their franchise agreement, they can convert identities and continue operations without skipping a beat. Franchise systems in many other industries don’t permit ex-franchisees that same freedom. Given this flexibility, you can expect real estate franchises to have higher turnover rates than franchises in other industries, all else being equal.
6. Litigation. The UFOC requires the franchisor to disclose all its pending and resolved lawsuits for the last seven fiscal years. Compare its number of lawsuits (those it has initiated and those against it) with its number of franchisees. There’s no rule of thumb for what constitutes a high ratio of litigation. But it’s probably safe to say that a franchisor with 1,000 franchisees and three pending lawsuits isn’t overly litigious.
Also look at how the franchisor responds to lawsuits. Does it settle quickly or does it tend to go to the mat each time? A reading of the UFOC will show you how the franchisor approached each suit because the UFOC requires the franchisor to provide a narrative for each. How the company responds can tell you something about its character and culture.
Note what the lawsuits tend to be about. Is there a pattern? As a general matter, many lawsuits are initiated by franchisors against franchisees for non-payment of royalties and fees. But look below the surface. In some cases, franchisees don’t pay their fees because they feel they aren’t getting the value they were led to believe was there. The narrative describing each suit should provide the argument for any counter-charges by the franchisee. To supplement that information, talk to former franchisees.
7. Franchisor personnel. Look at who the franchisor’s top executives are. That information, usually in the form of short biographies, is required to be in the UFOC. Pay particular attention to executives who’ve come from other industries. Some systems are historically more litigious than others. One sandwich chain, for example, is generally recognized as highly litigious. It’s helpful to know if an officer comes from such a system. If so, that officer might be quicker to resort to litigation to settle a matter than another officer. To learn about other franchises, contact a franchisee association, attorney, or accountant.
Other things to look for: 1) Nepotism. Are franchise operations managed by family members? If they are, the best people might not be in management positions. 2) Bankruptcies. Have any of the top executives been involved in bankruptcies in other systems? Contact franchisee associations, attorneys, or accountants to find out.
8. Exclusivity. How much protection do you have from encroachment into your territory? Does any exclusivity you have extend to Web site marketing and relocation referrals? You know you’ll be competing with other brokerages, franchised and independent. But could the franchisor you’re considering joining be among your competitors as well?
9. Financials. The UFOC mandates disclosure of franchisor financial statements for the previous three years. Show these to your accountant. One thing to look for: Where is the franchisor getting the bulk of its income? If it’s from initial franchise fees rather than royalties, that could signal turnover among franchisees. A more promising picture is a company whose lifeblood is royalty income. That signals income from ongoing operations.
10. Sloppiness. For franchisors, complying with UFOC requirements can be costly. These pre-disclosure documents are complicated and extensive. Signs of sloppiness—miscalculations, misspellings, internal inconsistencies—should raise concerns that the franchisor isn’t devoting proper resources to a very important task, one with legal ramifications.
Besides typos, look for inconsistencies. For instance, a franchisor might disclose the number of franchisees in as many as three different parts of the UFOC. These numbers should be the same in each case. If they’re not, what does that say about how careful the company has been in preparing the UFOC and how much in the way of resources and competence it brings to its operations in general?
The title page of the UFOC pointedly recommends that prospective franchisees review the UFOC with an adviser, such as an attorney or accountant. But take time to conduct your own careful due diligence as well. Proceeding with your eyes wide open can make the difference in how much your company benefits from a franchise affiliation.
About The Author
Andrew Adams writes for http://www.magfranchise.org where you can find out more about franchising and other topics.
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5 Great Internet Affiliate Marketing Tips
If you are deciding to venture into affiliate marketing, the great thing is that it is a considerably easy way to earn some cash online. You won’t have to build a product and stock up or arrange to deliver them. All you have to do is just promote other people’s products on your website. The greater traffic your website attracts, the more clicks on your affiliate links receive, then the more income you will get as a commission.
There are literally thousands of affiliate products and services that your website can promote. But how to choose the correct ones? How do you know which products will fit your website the most? Below are a couple of best tips that you can use and help you develop an affiliate marketing strategy.
Selecting The Correct Products
Don’t select products to endorse on your site on impulse. The product you select to endorse needs to relate to your site’s topic. You must decide on products that are the strongest fit for your website. For instance, on a website that talks about cake making, you do not want to promote web hosting there.
Only 1 Product Per Page Please
You do not want to have countless products on a web page and pollute your page with advertisements. If you over clutter your website, all you will do is make people leave your site. You have to concentrate 1 product in 1 page because you want to promote 1 product to your visitors at a time. We discover that web pages recommending 1 product sells better than web pages recommending many products.
Honesty Is The Best Policy
Build a website where your visitors can trust, Be honest and trustworthy in your website. Your visitors will view your website will more confidence and purchase, when you prove yourself to be reliable and honest.
Continuous Site Improvement
You want to be proactive in your marketing effects, always staying up to date with the latest technology and news. You cannot let your website fester by allowing it sit there, day after day, and not uploading any new content. You need to keep your visitors coming back for more, so frequently update your site with new content by following current trends.
Make Your Site Fun
Not only you need to improve your site, you also want to make your visitors wanting to return to your website. You’ll need to find ways to interest your readers and keep them engaged in your website. A couple of things you can try are free prizes, gifts, quizzes, games, tips or hints on topics that will benefit your readers.
You must give all of these tips a try, while continuing to look for exhilarating new ways to pull their customers in. Internet affiliate marketing will take work and remember that everything worthwhile does. Once you have a plan in place and have the correct products to promote, you will see the revenue flowing in very fast.
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Business Success -- Lessons Learned from Ivanka Trump
by: Michele Pariza Wacek
Let me begin by saying I was very impressed with Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump's daughter. She spoke at the Dan Kennedy/Bill Glazer Superconference and it was fascinating hearing her take on business. Here are a few nuggets I came away with:
1. You got to really want it. Ivanka is a driven woman. In fact, I would go so far to say she is succeeding despite her father and wealth. She works 3 times as hard as anyone else to prove that she is really is the best person for the job. And she has succeeded. Now you could say it was easy for her. She has connections, a name, money. However, that's exactly the reason why it's difficult for her. People assume her success is due to her family and not her ability. She could have thrown in the towel, turned into another Paris. Instead she decided to work 3 times as hard to prove to the world she is just as capable as her father at being successful at business. My point here is that everyone has obstacles. Even if you can't see them, we all have issues and blocks and obstacles. And we can choose to give in to them or to succeed despite them. And, we all feel the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Ivanka truly believes her father would fire her if she screws up. (Actually he publically said that in an interview he'd fire his kids if they messed up.) Can you imagine the public embarrassment and humiliation if that actually happened? Sure we can all look at Ivanka and think "oh, she has it so easy." But if she ends up in the middle of a colossal failure, the world will all know about it and talk about it. That's not the case with someone less well known. This is very common in business (well, in life in general) – people assume someone else's business is a piece of cake while they have to X, Y, Z to contend with. While it's true maybe that person doesn't have X, Y, Z, they do have A, B, C, which are just as difficult in their own way. So the best thing to do is rather than wasting energy on comparisons, focus on making what you have that much better.
2. What's going on with the economy is just a way to make businesses stronger. Okay, she's 28, which means she was an infant during the last big recession. However, she is learning from her father, who not only lived through that recession but nearly went bankrupt. How did her father handle it? He got up every day and did something about it. He didn't let the fact that he owed millions of dollars with no way to pay it back stop him. He got up every day and did something about it. What are you doing right now? Are you sitting there waiting for the economy to "get better" so you can start making money? Or are you going to start doing something NOW to make that money? Businesses are still making money right now. People are still buying products and services. You can make money, you just need to be smart about it.
3. Find what you love and do that. Ivanka had been offered a very prestigious job in another company after graduation, but wanted to work in the family business. Her father questioned that decision, which for a long time made her angry. However, he just wanted to make sure she was doing something she loved and not just getting a job in the family business because she thought it was expected of her. What I liked about this story was what it said about both Donald and Ivanka. Ivanka knew she loved construction and buildings, so she designed her career around doing what she loved. Her father knew how important doing what you love is, and wanted to make sure Ivanka was following in his footsteps. Not his footsteps in the family business but that she truly was doing something she loved. Are you doing what you love? Or are you doing what is "expected" of you? Think about it. Make sure you really are designing a business you love and that motivates and excites you.
About The Author
Michele PW (Michele Pariza Wacek) is your Ka-Ching! marketing strategist and owns Creative Concepts and Copywriting LLC, a copywriting and marketing agency. She helps entrepreneurs become more successful at attracting more clients, selling more products and services and boosting their business. To find out how she can help you take your business to the next level, visit her site at http://www.MichelePW.com.
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Your Home Based Business Is Not A Game!
If you have a home based business, are you sure you are doing all you can do to ensure it is a success? The unfortunate reality is that the majority of people with a home based business treat their business like a hobby rather than an actual business. This is a terrible mistake, as treating your business like a hobby will prevent you from achieving your fullest earning potential.
There are several mistakes that people make when starting a business that prevents it from becoming a full-fledged business. Namely, they fail to set their work hours, to establish goals and to expect success from their business.
Establishing a Schedule
Although it’s true that one of the benefit to starting a home based business is the fact that you can establish your own work hours, it is still important for you to set aside certain chunks of time that are meant specifically for your business. This doesn’t mean you have to work the typicaly 9 to 5 work day, but creating a work schedule that suits your lifestyle will guarantee that you are spending the time needed to get your business started.
Determining Your Business Goals
Another downfall to many home businesses is failure to establish your goals. By creating short term and long term goals, you can more effectively monitor your business and make sure you are on the right track. The fact that home based businesses are generally cheap to start can result in failure to take the business seriously. Simply because you have invested 00 rather than one hundred thousand, it does not mean you shouldn’t create goals for your business or that you shouldn’t take your investment seriously.
Expecting Success
Since home based businesses do not usually cost a whole lot to get started, it is also easy to have low expectations for its earning potential. The reality, however, is that at home businesses can generate 6 or 7 figure incomes when taken seriously.
The bottom line is that a business will only be as successful as you expect it to be. Therefore, if you only expect your business to be a minor success, that is all you will be able to achieve. Your mindset should be that your business endeavor is more than just an experiment. What you are starting is a business that will generate a substantial amount of income if you invest the time, money and energy it deserves to get off the ground
For more information on home businesses visit http://www.funcareers.com/ where they have been investigating home based business ideas for over 10 years.
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Improve Listening Skills: 3 Simple Tips To Listen Effectively For Better Communication
by: Michael Lee
There’s a big difference between listening and hearing. Hearing is just letting sound pass through your ears. Listening, on the other hand, requires you to understand what you are hearing. Unfortunately, people have grown indifferent to conversations, letting words slip by without really understanding what they mean. I think it’s time people start learning ways to improve their listening skills again, don’t you think? Having good listening skills comes with a lot of benefits. For one, it helps you handle any situation with ease. You might be surprised at what you can deduce based on the words a person uses. And another, people appreciate it when they see that you are really listening to what they have to say. Here are some of the ways to improve your listening skills.
Tip # 1 To Improve Listening Skills: Stay Focused. Don’t let your mind wander when another person is speaking to you. Keep your eyes on the person talking to prevent your concentration from drifting off. Remember that every word counts. Even when the topic is boring, pretend you’re interested. That way, you won’t be easily distracted. I sometimes find myself in situations wherein the speaker is less than lively. One particular example is of a convention I went to a few years ago. One of the speakers was an old man who was talking about past successful activities of a certain organization. I normally don’t stick around during such boring opening remarks, but I needed to be there for an article I was writing. Instead of tuning him out, I told myself that I was really interested in X organization. That way, I was able to focus all my energy into listening and understanding what he was trying to say.
Tip # 2 To Improve Listening Skills: Don’t Interrupt. Don’t interrupt a person especially when he/she is still talking. Aside from being rude, interrupting breaks the flow of the whole conversation. If you have a question, wait until that person has finished talking. You never know, but your answer might come up in the next five minutes of the conversation. Besides, it’s easier to improve your listening skills when you’re not interrupting somebody every ten seconds.
Tip # 3 To Improve Listening Skills: Stop Stereotyping. Don’t box a person into a stereotype. Doing so will only distract you from what he/she is saying. Your mind will already have created an opinion about the said person and that will greatly affect your listening skills. Not only will you be distracted from a good part of the conversation, you will also develop an unhealthy bias towards the person or his/her message. If you want to improve your listening skills, always keep an open mind. If you find it difficult not to cast stereotypes, pretend that this is the first time you’re hearing about it. When it comes down to it, trying to improve your listening skills is about respect. It’s respect for the person who is talking and respect for his/her actual message. It’s also about clear communication. You can communicate much better if you know how to listen effectively. I hope these tips have helped you get a better ear for words.
About The Author
Discover secret conversational hypnosis techniques to communicate like a pro and make people fulfill your every desire, without them knowing it! Get a FREE course that reveals 10 groundbreaking persuasion techniques and secrets at http://www.20daypersuasion.com/secrets.htm
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Communication and Communication and Communication!
I am sure that everyone will agree that effective communication is challenging and leading an organization successfully, brings along such a challenge. Many things succeed because of good communication, while many failures are blamed on communication as well. The trick of the trade is whether the communication is “effective”.
Lately, I have been in several meetings with clients who wish to request for training, training and training. I always try to spend some time to understand their organizations and pitfalls as much as possible before accepting the deals. I do this is because sometimes training is not always the sole answer. In another angle, understanding the inside of the organization(s) will be a good support for the effective training.
The main issue of most organizations, - as we all know is- “effective communication” Especially in all growing companies or in companies that grew very big.
I think, in Thailand, the communication problems are also from cultural issues.
Many people like to say “your silence” will win the argument!
This is reminded and re-enforced especially when any couples or any group of people have different conflicting opinions and start to argue. In Thailand, whoever keeps silence, that person is viewed as calm and mature. Many Thai senior management members I have seen adopt the silent character in managing people and start NOT to communicate especially in difficult sensitive situations within the organization.
However, many times, I think, many people are just too lazy to talk, uninterested to listen, tired to stay focused on a problem and too bored to understand others, because we think it is not that necessary. In consequence, a symptom of “no communication” culture created within a community or an organization. This happens from a format of lover, family to company operations.
Now back to an organizational operation. I like to share with you some short procedure of effective organizational communication. Simply follow through the “5T’s” as follows:
Topic, Time, Talk, Tap, Trace
I will discuss more in details with short case studies / examples in future articles, but this time, I just wish to touch lightly on the followings:
1. Topic: Many times, many mangers don’t know what “topic”, what issue and what subject that they really need an official communication. Most of the times, I can see and hear only: “this is the new policy, new rule, new instruction, just issue a memo and done”.
2. Time: Many mangers do not give enough “time” or spend no time at all for communication. Effectiveness of communication depends on time investment we are willing to put in. Many managers often say: “I am busy; please make this staff meeting short”. This behavior is really a bad sign and I have seen so much of this.
3. Talk: Please find the right “talker”, the right communicator or the right translators. I have seen many good managers but it does not mean that they have good communicating skill. The way they deliver messages is not inspiring, not attractive, not caring. They usually make more than half of the staff in the meeting room fall asleep! I am certain that many people do have lots of funny example or stories of this.
4. Tap: The manager must be able to tap on important issues during a meeting or during any communication process, as some issue raised might cause failures, or are critical enough to cause failure in people management or organizational management. So, managers must have a tapping skill in communication mode.
5. Trace: Tracing thought either (good or bad), especially after you tap on the issues raised and ensure it is followed up, monitored and then well communicated again.
To me, the most significant “T” are the first three T(s)!. If managers are not capable to know what issues need communication, and having an attitude of “I am busy, please make the meeting short”, plus, the manager is emotionless in delivering any message, then there is no need to think about effectiveness of the last two T(s).
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What Creates Confidence?
by: Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
The Encarta World English Dictionary defines "confidence" as "a belief or self-assurance in your ability to succeed."
We all know people who appear to be very confident professionally, yet when it comes to personal relationships, appear to be very insecure.
Personal confidence is totally different than professional confidence in that personal confidence is about who you are and professional confidence is about what you do.
PERSONAL CONFIDENCE
What creates personal confidence? How does one become confident in who they are?
If you grew up with parents who valued their own inner qualities and were role models for inner confidence, and valued your inner qualities and supported you in being who you are, it is likely that you feel personally confident.
But must of us did not grow up that way. Most of us grew up with parents or other caregivers who not only lacked personal confidence, but who may have blamed and shamed us, undermining our sense of self.
However, no matter how much we may have been de-valued as children, it is never too late to learn to value ourselves now. The secret in gaining personal confidence is to get to know your true Self - your soul essence - who you really are.
Your true Self is your essential inner qualities that you were born with, such as your ability to love, to be kind and caring, to be compassionate and empathic, and to listen well. It is about your basic goodness. It is also about your creativity, your unique talents, your particular forms of intelligence, your sense of humor, your smile, your laugh - all that is uniquely you.
If you were not valued for your true Self, then it is likely that you are not seeing or valuing your essence qualities. In fact, you might have decided a long time ago that you are not good enough - that you are somehow inadequate as a person. It is this false belief that creates feelings of inadequacy and a lack of personal confidence.
Right now, imagine that you can see yourself, not from the eyes of your programmed ego wounded self, but from the eyes of your higher self - the eyes of love. Visualize yourself as a very small child and look inside at who that child is. What do you see? Is there anything about you as a small child that makes you unlovable? What are the wonderful qualities that are inherent in you as a child? If this child were your actual child, how would you feel about him or her?
Throughout the day today, practice noticing and valuing your inner qualities. If you do something kind, say to your inner child, "I really value your kindness." If you are creative or funny, express appreciation for these qualities. Day by day, as you consistently value your intrinsic qualities, you will find yourself gaining in personal confidence. When you learn to appreciate rather than judge who you are you will feel personally confident.
PROFESSIONAL CONFIDENCE
Professional confidence comes with time and practice. The more you learn and practice a particular skill, the better you become at it and the more confidence you have regarding this skill. With enough time and practice, anyone can become confident in their ability to perform.
Some people attempt to define themselves by their performance, believing that what they DO defines who they ARE. When this is the case, they will continue to lack personal confidence, no matter how successful they are professionally. When you attach your worth to your external success, then you have to continually succeed to be worthy, which creates much inner stress. If you find yourself constantly judging yourself to get yourself to perform, you might want to notice that it is this self-judgment that erodes your personal confidence.
Confidence as an adult does not come from others approval. Valuing both who you are and what you do is what creates a deep level of inner confidence.
About The Author
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Are you are ready to heal your pain and discover your joy? Learn Inner Bonding now! Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding Course, and visit our website at www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!
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What are Conspiracy Theories?
Conspiracy theories have been of interest to psychologists, sociologists and folklore experts since the 1960s. The assassination of President Kennedy attracted a deluge of speculation around his death. There are still questions today surrounding the real culprits behind the assassination.
Conspiracy theories are thought to be a human condition. When events have a significant impact on our lives, we try and make sense of those events in a spiritual, political, moral or scientific way. Events that seem to be inexplicable inspire us to look harder for the reason behind them until we are satisfied. Many psychologists believe that a person who believes in one conspiracy theory will also believe in other conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theories are often linked with paranoia. Paranoia is said to be an animal's ability to spot danger. Such an ability is valuable in order to read other's hidden intentions and to be able to predict future behavior. If there were a malfunction in this ability, then the result might be that the animal sees danger everywhere. This may be the case with a conspiracy theorist, who may simply have a malfunction in his evolutionary psychology.
Conspiracy theories exhibit several features. The features a theory has build up over time, as theories are expanded on and more people add their own opinions to them. Conspiracy theories can involve just about anybody, and as the arguments and counter arguments grow, so does the conspiracy. Theories about such events as the Kennedy assassination are known the world over. They have been made into films and books, and the actual culprit may have been swamped and lost under the weight of such theories.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-conspiracy-theories.htm
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Conspiracy Theory
by: John Hill
Successful entrepreneurs don’t make it on their own. Inevitably they may have had sponsors and partners in their business to provide much needed financial support & key business resources, supportive spouses or family and, by no means least, loyal employees who have shared their dream and vision of success and helped them to develop and deliver their product or service.
Collaboration is an often overlooked, largely misunderstood and very critical component that can directly influence the level and expedience of success within a project or new venture. It is more of a science and art rather than a process and can leave even the most hardened business person feeling scared and vulnerable when it comes to potentially sharing ideas with others, in many cases with people they may know little about but who possess some critical skills and resources that could help springboard their progress to another level.
This is where I see a lot of you reaching for the ‘Non-Disclosure’ or ‘Confidentiality’ agreements that are commonly used and are recognised by most professional business institutes as a means to protect your unique ideas. It is not my intention here to disregard or criticise this practice but to merely give you an insightful view into the impact of such practice and what alternatives you may be able to consider.
When going into a collaborative opportunity it can be a good test of how unique your product or service really is. If you need to immediately reach for a legal protection then are you by default already proclaiming that your product or service is easily copied and lacks specific unique attributes that are either protected by design patent or you are entering into this collaborative relationship too early and need to ensure your patent registrations are in a good commercial status before going further.
I am not saying that Non Disclosure or Confidentiality agreements do not have their place as indeed they do, particularly when you want help in developing early ideas pre-patent or copyright, however even in these scenarios the use of such agreements can immediately undermine the whole basis and potential benefits you are expecting to get from such a collaborative opportunity.
Let me present a different perspective. If you lack trust or cannot be confident in collaborating with another then what sort of foundation does the relationship really have – not a particularly good one from the start? Many celebrity marriages may have a ‘pre-nuptial’ agreement which many may say pre-supposes the marriage may fail and therefore the material gains of either party need to be protected, the same is true for non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements as they immediately acknowledge a potential lack of trust in the ensuing relationship.
Where there is a lack of trust the collaborative partners will not be able to give 100% to the relationship. You may think that this is a minor criticism of accepted business ‘best-practice’ but I can assure you that when you start to analyse and understand how some of the most successful entrepreneurs, those that are at the top of their game, those that you would describe as ‘Serial Entrepreneurs’ operate; you will discover that a large proportion do not depend nor agree with the use of non-disclosure legalities.
For collaboration to be at its most effective it needs to:
1. Be given freely – although you may both/all gain financially, one should not be ‘buying’ collaboration from another.
2. Be based around a Win/Win scenario – ensure you know what you want to get out of the arrangement and then do whatever it takes to meet the needs of your collaborative partner(s).
3. Be flexible – your needs and those of your collaborators can change. Check in on your desired outcomes together regularly.
4. Be aware of costs – in particular financial costs you may impose on yourself or another, emotional costs, time and effort. Ensure you are all investing ‘ecologically’ and are happy with what you are getting from the experience.
5. Allow space for disagreements – be open to anthers point of view. Often they may see things differently to you and have a different relationship with the project. Nurture this within the collaboration and pick collaboration partners who have a different background and experience from yours.
About The Author
John Hill is the co-Director and founder of http://www.advance-entrepreneur.com. A website that provides unique aspects on Entrepreneurship. & suitable for both aspiring and established entrepreneurs.
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Diabetes Management: The Drug Company Conspiracy
by: Julia Hanf
Turn on the TV or open a magazine and you will find endless advertisements for drugs from pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical companies have huge advertising budgets because they are in a billion dollar industry. Treatments for diabetes have played a large role in pharmaceutical revenues. These corporate America drug companies have created helpful treatments for diabetes, but at what cost?
The cost is that diabetics have become dependent upon these drug treatments. Plus, they are only treatments and not a cure for diabetes. This leaves many diabetics to wonder why drug companies don’t spend time searching for a cure instead of just promoting treatments. The money these drug companies reel in every day is more than enough to fund studies to find a cure for diabetes.
Many drug companies don’t push money into diabetes cure research because if a cure or a way to prevent diabetes is found then their lucrative drugs will become obsolete. This is a greedy mentality that is not in the best interests of people will diabetes. Unfortunately, drug companies have the upper hand because diabetes is a disease which we do not choose and have to manage with their treatments.
In addition, many drug companies tout new treatments each year that are in fact a revised version of past treatment options. They bring new drugs to the market in hopes of earning a quick dollar, or millions of dollars, when in fact it is a new spin on an old treatment. This can be frustrating, misleading, and expensive for diabetes sufferers.
Drug companies also focus on diabetic aids such as blood glucose monitors, insulin pumps, and insulin pens. Theses products are often recommended in addition to prescription medication. Drug companies push these products because it means even more money in their pocket. Plus, these products will be used throughout your life so it means a constant supply of profit for drug companies.
The sad fact is that drug companies don’t have our best interests at heart. They see dollar signs instead of human faces. Many bigwigs at the drug companies will continue to capitalize on the increase in the diabetes epidemic. More diabetes sufferers leads to a bigger market which puts more money in their pockets.
People with diabetes need to stand up against these drug corporations. We need to remove the stronghold they have upon us. One way to achieve this goal is to change our lifestyle to help prevent diabetes. For example, Type 2 diabetes is often due to or amplified by being overweight. As diabetics we can engage in diabetes prevention by selecting healthy food options, exercising, and reducing weight. These are actions that we can take without paying a drug company. We can also look to dietary supplements for their benefits on blood sugar.
About The Author
Article by Julia Hanf author of 'How to Play the Diabetes Diet Game and Win'. Visit http://www.yourdiabetescure.com/adtrackz/go.php?c=articlej and find out what you can do to start defeating your diabetes.
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A Five-Step Action Plan for Building Wealth
By William R. Patterson
No matter where you are starting from, you can begin to turn your life around or dramatically improve your financial situation using THE BARON SOLUTION™ 5-Step Action Plan for Building Wealth. It is important to learn disciplined strategies of sound money management, investing, and business administration. The more you learn about these areas, the more confident you will be in selecting advisors, making investments, and handling your business and financial affairs. You can easily move forward on your journey to financial success by taking these five simple actions:
Step One - Pay Down Your Debt.
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It is extremely difficult to build wealth when you are paying 20-30% interest on credit cards. You should begin consolidating your debts and negotiating with creditors to lower your interest rates when possible. For some, credit counseling, debt management plans, or debt negation plans may make sense, but be careful because there are some unscrupulous services out there. You can use the Resources section of BaronSeries.com to obtain your free credit report and find the fastest and cheapest way to pay-down your debt.
Step Two - Begin Building a Cash Reserve.
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Calculate your monthly expenses and strive to stash away at least six-months worth of savings for emergencies and to take advantage of investment opportunities that present themselves. This calls for a lot discipline, but as the old African proverb says “Save your money, and one day it will save you.” Through the free Resources section of BaronSeries.com, you will be able to find many of the highest interest rate checking, savings, and money market accounts in the country to help you fight inflation.
Step Three - Develop a Long Term Investment Portfolio.
By taking advantage of the power of compounding, you can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, by the time you retire. Use the free BaronSeries.com investment calculators to find out how much money you will need to invest in order to reach your financial goals as well as how long your savings will last. Keep in mind, you should never invest money that you cannot afford to lose, or invest in things you do not understand or feel totally comfortable with.
Step Four - Create a Cash Flow Portfolio.
It is important to learn to generate income from your investments rather than your physical labor. This will enable you become financially free long before retirement. Rental real estate, business and insurance income streams, and royalties from intellectual property such books, music, inventions, etc., are great way to go. Mastering these areas may take quite a bit of work up front, but are well worth it on the back-end. When it comes to cash flow strategies, think “outside of the box.”If a particular strategy won’t work in your area, than think nationally or internationally and establish local partnerships.
Step Five - Start Your Own Business.
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It has become essential for individuals to not only diversify their investments, but also their sources of income. Since wages increase at about 3.4% and expenses rise at a much faster pace, the average person today is working harder and getting poorer. Every person has a great untapped business idea that can generate millions of dollars if properly executed. You just need to leverage THE BARON SOLUTION Four Keys for Building a Successful Business: a proven business model, experienced management, access to capital, and strategic partnerships.
Remember, becoming wealthy is not difficult; it just takes time and focus. Unfortunately, most people do not focus on becoming wealthy, until they do not have much time. Know that you can always change the condition of your life financially; you just have to be willing to think differently, more creatively, and strategically.
William R. Patterson is an award-winning lecturer and co-author of the national best-selling business and personal finance book, The Baron Son. He is Chairman and CEO of The Warcoffer Capital Group, LLC, a financial holding company. His ethical guidebook to wealth, power, and success, The Baron Son, has been translated around the world and featured in the Forbes Book Club
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Three Ways To Make Cash Working From Home
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#1 Affiliate Marketing
I think joining an affiliate program is the best method for the majority of people who want to make money from home. It allows you to make money without dealing with customers and without making a product or selling a service.
All you have to do is become an affiliate for a product like Clickbank’s The Day Off Diet and send targeted potential customers to the salesletter!
I recommend building your own website which “pre-sells” the diet instead of just sending traffic directly there, this will increase your conversions (sales) and help you get more traffic in the long run because your site can rank in the search engines.
What do I mean by targeted traffic? You need to send people who are actually interested in whatever it is you are trying to sell. In this case a diet product. If they are not interested in starting a new diet then it will be impossible to make a sale!
#2 Real Estate
You may think that this is not the best time to get into real estate flipping because of the recession but in a way I think that makes this a great time to get in.
Why is that? Because there’s so many great deals out there now for investors. You can actually make a ton of money in real estate right now if you know the ins and outs.
Buying the Real Estate Power Investor program is really the key to becoming a successful real estate flipper. This program will tell you everything you need to know about starting a successful real estate flipping business you can run from your own home. It’s possible to make over a million dollars a year in real estate, that’s what Charrissa Cawley does.
#3 Picking Stocks
Unless you have a large amount of capital to start out with, it’s very unlikely you will be able to make a living trading stocks but if you do get really good at it you can most likely supplement your other income.
If you do have ,000 or more to start out with than I think it’s reasonably realistic that you can make a living just as a stock trader. Of course to become a successful trader you will have to learn a lot, I recommend joining the TIM ALERTS members only community started by Timothy Sykes because you will learn so much there.
You will probably want to start off trading with smaller amounts of money until you figure out what you are doing.
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Think Rich, Get Rich: Is it really that simple? / Money with Meaning: Living Your Life “On Purpose”
T. Harv Eker
Think Rich, Get Rich: Is it really that simple?
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Each time I am on stage or working directly with my students in my mastermind groups, I tell them, "Don't just take my word for anything." And I mean it. Not everything is always right or wrong, and experience is always the best teacher. Anything we learn has to put it to the test for ourselves. However, I will say that what I've learned has worked for me, and it's worked for thousands. I am sure, especially during this economic challenge, that you have seen "financial gurus" promising you secrets on how to change your financial situation instantly. What makes me any different than the others? Why should anybody listen to me? It's not like I had some special gift that got me to where I am today. Like some of the best things in life, the turning point in my financial destiny came to me completely out of my control. See, after yet another failed business venture, I was forced to move back into my parents' basement. A visiting friend of my father's-a very rich friend-took pity on this 20-something still living with his folks and gave me advice that literally changed my life.
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Money with Meaning: Living Your Life “On Purpose”
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Why are you here? Why are you on the planet right now? Many people believe we each come into this life with a purpose, a reason for living. Considering that every element in nature has a specific purpose for existing, and we are an integral part of nature, it stands to reason that we have a purpose too.
Eastern philosophies submit that each of us has a job to do, a duty in life, and that the only way to find peace and fulfillment is to carry out your duty or "dharma" as it's called. The philosophy states that to truly be happy you must learn to live in service, to live based on what you can give rather than only on what you can get; to live based "on purpose" rather than only "on outcome".
The brilliant futurist, Buckminster Fuller said, "The purpose of our lives is to add value to the people of this generation and those that follow." In short, to leave this world a better place than it was when you arrived. It could be in terms of adding convenience, education, entertainment, enlightenment, health, beauty, joy, humour, technology, or any other way you personally can serve other people or the planet.
Although many people believe they have a purpose, they often have a difficult time discovering their own reason for living. Because purpose holds such a spiritual sense, people tend to believe their purpose will somehow be handed down from the heavens. They wait and wait for some "burning bush" to tell them what to do. It's true, a few "tuned-in" people do receive some type of message; some unmistakable calling. But the answer for most of us is that we actually have to "choose" our purpose. We are the ones who decide how we are best suited to serve.
Our choice, however, is not random. We each have unique abilities, inherent talents and strengths. We each have different interests and activities that bring us joy. We each have different experiences and issues from which we've learned, and we all have a different way in which we can best serve others. It is through these factors you "choose" your purpose.
Can your purpose change? Yes. More likely, however, is that your overall purpose remains the same, while the vehicle you use to provide your service may change on an ongoing basis. If your purpose is to teach, for example, you may teach your own children, teach in a school, become an author or a speaker or even be a consultant. Regardless of your vehicle, your dharma is to "teach".
It takes courage to choose a purpose and even more courage to live your life based on it! Once you have purpose, you will have two essential elements for a truly happy life - money and meaning! In this way, you will become ‘rich’ in every sense of the word.
EXERCISE:
List your unique abilities, talents, strengths, interests and joys. From here choose an overall purpose for your life. Clarify it by writing it down. Then choose an initial vehicle with which you can serve people that is in alignment with your purpose. Begin today to live your life based on purpose.
Declarations:
I am here for a reason.
I have important work to do.
I live my life on purpose.
About T. Harv Eker
Using the principles he teaches, T. Harv Eker went from zero to millionaire in only 2 1/2 years! He combines a unique brand of 'street-smarts with heart'. T. Harv Eker is the founder and president of Peak Potentials Training, the fastest growing personal development company in North America. Eker's high-energy, 'cut-to-the-chase' style keeps his audience spellbound. T. Harv Eker's motto is "talk is cheap" and his unique ability is getting people to take "action" in the real world to produce real success. Eker is the author of the best-selling books, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind and SpeedWealth. He has also developed several highly-acclaimed courses such as The Millionaire Mind Intensive, Life Directions, Wizard Training and Train the Trainer. He is also the producer and trainer of the world-famous Enlightened Warrior Training. To learn more about Harv and his courses visit: his website
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Goblins in Thongs: The 5 Rules of Creativity Explained
By Will Kalif
Rule1: "The rule of Fusion" This is where the title of this article becomes clear. Addition is the rule of adding two things together. This is a fundamental skill of creativity. Taking one thing and adding it to another to come up with a totally new thing, idea, concept, or thought. Often times these additions might at first seem extremely incongruous but it is through these incongruities that the most creative ideas emerge. Aren't we all so glad that somebody used this rule on peanut butter and chocolate? Don't dismiss even the craziest addition. It may lead to other, better, ideas. Which is what the second rule of creativity is about.
Rule 2: "The logical progression" Every single thing came from an earlier thing. No thought, idea, product, story, painting ever was brought into existence from nothing. It derived from something earlier. This brings up an interesting bit of trivia about Picasso. A Woman, meeting him in a restaurant asked him to draw something for her and she said that she would pay him anything. He quickly drew out a sketch on a napkin and said "That will be six thousand dollars please." She was shocked at this and retorted: "But it only took you five minutes to draw it!" To which he replied: "No Madame, it took me forty years and five minutes to draw it!" Picasso was proving the point that he didn't just draw it out of nothing. He drew it out of the progression of artistic ability and skill he developed over 40 years of learning. Think about something and then try to peek back into where it originated from then try to extrapolate this into what could be next for it. You will be surprised where this takes you.
Rule 3: "The rule of scattershot" Edison is famous for his quote that inventing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. What he meant was that you have to just try a whole bunch of things, no matter how crazy it might seem because sooner or later something special will come out of it. The trick here is to be observant enough to know what is working. This is a famous technique used in Brainstorming where you just come up with as many things as possible regardless of their initial apparent relevance or worth. It does lubricate creativity and generate lots of good stuff.
Rule 4: "The rule of discipline" While creativity has the bad reputation of being something for dreamy types who lounge under a tree waiting for an apple to fall it is just not true. Creativity follows the "opportunity comes to the prepared" rule in that if you want to be creative you have to do and learn. From this you will grow in your creativity. If you want to be a more creative painter you have to paint - a lot. Through this practice your mind will generate creative thoughts. The same is true for any pursuit. The more you do it the more prepared you will be to receive creative inspiration and more importantly the more prepared you will be to realize them.
Rule 5: "Transferrance" Every invention, thought, idea, product, or other thing was created for a purpose but every one of these things can be applied in other ways. A hammer is much more than just a tool for pounding nails. If you are working on a creative problem look at other similar or even dissimilar solutions to problems and see how you can apply these solutions to your problem. This brings us right back to the goblins. Some goblin saw the success of thongs on human beaches and thought "maybe this will work on goblin beaches."
It is true that creativity is a bit of a mystery but these five rules help you to understand what creativity really is and how you can harness it and develop your creativity to a fuller potential.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For more interesting insights into being a creative webmaster visit the authors site The Creative Webmaster – Forging the Iron of Creativity on the Anvil of a Website.
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How to Create Abundance within: Powerful tools to Discover Your Inner Genius
By Iyabo Asani
Your Inner Genius is the intersection of five key components of you:
1. Your left brain: All the knowledge and reasoning you have accumulated experientially and academically. This includes your organizational skills and analytical skills.
2. Your right brain: Your creative, imaginative and holistic side.
One side of the brain is not more valuable than the other side of the brain although you probably have a tendency towards one side of your brain. It is important to note that the goal here is to have whole brain synergy. When you have both parts of your brain working in cooperation and concert you produce wonderful results.
If you are a left brained analytical person, make sure you take time on a regular basis to be creative and to appreciate music. If you are a right brained person, you may want to read more and listen to audio recordings more often. Activate your analytical side.
We all tend to be a little too rigid. The left brainers think the right brainers are airey fairey and are not smart and the right brainers can be rather condescending to detailed analysis and sequential thinking. However, both parts are in all of us and we honor our Inner Genius when we support both sides of our brain and when we are more aware of which side we are leaning towards.
3. Your emotional heart: This is the center of your feelings. Your emotions are a guidance system. They are not who you are. We tend to identify the sum total of who we are by our emotional expression. We say, "he is an angry man." However, anger is an indicative emotion. Our negative emotions are there to let us know that whatever we have experienced is not positive and does not help us. However, many of us hold on to negative emotions and identify ourselves with those emotions. Our positive emotions are to us as sunlight is to plants and flowers. Our positive state is our natural setting. We are meant to be happy and to feel good. When we feel good, our bodies are healthier and others are happier around us.
Listening to your emotions and factoring how you feel and how you want to feel in designing the life that you want is a powerful tool.
4. Your Somatic body: This is your physical being and chakra system. Your body is also intuitive. It speaks to you. You feel a lot of feelings in your body but you may not be aware of it. The Chakra system is an Ancient Sanskrit tradition that addresses the flow of energy in the body. Each of the seven chakras speak to where emotions can lodge in your body energetically. As you understand the seven chakras, you will understand the wonderful hidden messages that your body is communicating to you.
Each of your chakras corresponds to critical components of our lives that we may often overlook.
This is not an in depth study of the Chakras. However, regardless of your spiritual background, it is important to study the body and how it holds energy. Prolonged stress, fear and negative thinking have a negative impact on the corresponding Chakra. Allowing negative emotions to flow through the body and discharge is important to your emotional health.
5. Your God connection: This is your spiritual and non-physical consciousness. This is sacred. Regardless of your religious background, we can agree to this mysterious connection that we all have with Source, Universe, The Divine, God, Divine Intelligence and whatever name you may choose. Inviting the sacred into your daily life and tapping into that Universal Intelligence has to be a part of your daily life to design the life that you want.
Now that you are aware of these various components of you, be aware that together, they want to communicate with you and help you create a life that is filled with goodness and wonderful things. As you gain awareness of all these parts of you, and deliberately engage them, you are living and creating from your Inner Genius.
As you are aware of these five components of your Inner Genius, you create a higher vibration which enhances your ability to attract what you want.
As you meld your right brain and your left brain and seek whole brain strategies, check in often with your emotions, listen to your body speaking to you and factor in the Source component of your life, you will have amazing courage and abilities.
This article is part of a 40 page report by Iyabo Asani on How to Reinvent Yourself at Midlife and Maintain Your Sanity. If you would like a copy of the full report, please visit my site.
Article Tags: Inner Genius, Negative Emotions
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Iyabo Asani is a life and business coach and she helps smart boomer women create abundance by discovering their Inner Genius and reinventing their lives. She practiced law for twenty years. Burnt out and frustrated, she could no longer put legal band aids on peoples problems. She hired a life coach to help her and I discovered that she could no longer live out of alignment with her values and life purpose. She now enjoys empowering others to attract abundance. She continues to help others discover their life purpose and live life on their terms.
She can be found at her site at http://www.CoachIyabo.com
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Why Invest In Home Fitness Exercise Equipment
By : David Cowley
Wanting to work out and exercise on a regular basis is a good idea and a noble goal for anyone; more than just your appearance, exercise is good for your health overall. There are some good reasons why you might want to join a gym, such as for classes or personal training sessions. But there are many reasons why you might consider investing in home fitness exercise equipment.
For one thing, weather can be a factor in many areas. Snow covered roads, heavy rain, and even unbearable heat can keep you from wanting to head out to the gym. But if you have your own home fitness exercise equipment there's no excuse regardless of the weather. Also, it's very easy after a long day at the office to get home and decide that you don't want to go back out again, but when you have your own home fitness exercise equipment, again, there's no excuse not to use it. All you need to do is walk to the bedroom or basement or wherever you have it set up in order to get your workout.
Many people that haven't worked out in a while or for whatever other reason may be very self-conscious when it comes to a gym or club. Thinking that others are staring at you or that you're going to embarrass yourself if you do something wrong or aren't familiar with the equipment. With your own home fitness exercise equipment there's no need to worry about what anyone else thinks or if they're even looking at you in the first place.
Another factor you may want to consider is you have to dress appropriately when working out in a public gym. With a home fitness center you can determine what the appropriate dress is. If you think going bare footed and in a ragged tee-shirt and shorts is appropriate then who is going to tell you different? I do recommend that you wear shoes when doing any type of treadmill exercise. Always keep safety in mind when doing any time of physical activity.
Your schedule might have a lot to do with why you would prefer to have your own home fitness exercise equipment. If you go to the gym right after work, this might be when everyone else shows up as well. It's hard enough to set aside time to exercise, but when you need to spend another half hour just waiting for equipment or feel pressured to let others work in with you, your entire evening can be spent just for even the smallest exercise routine. When you have your own home fitness exercise equipment, you don't need to deal with waiting in that line or for others to finish their routine.
And when you have your own home fitness exercise equipment, you can pick and choose what's going to be right for you. Maybe you decide that you want to try boxing; you can easily purchase a punching bag, something that's not always available at a gym. Many pieces of home fitness exercise equipment have a variety of routines you can use it for and areas of your body they'll work.
Joining a gym is great for some people, but for most, investing in home fitness exercise equipment can be a wise choice. And remember, you only need to purchase your equipment once and be done with it, as opposed to gym membership fees that last a lifetime!
Author Resource:- David Cowley has created numerous articles on Home Exercise Equipment. He has also created a Web Site dedicated to Home Exercise Equipment.
Visit http://www.exercise-team.com
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Virtues for Fitness Success
by: Joe Kozma
If you want your fitness endeavor to be successful the following virtues must be practiced 1.) Desire 2.)Commitment 3.) Goal orientedness 4.) Intensity 5.) Persistence and Perseverance.
Desire is a force of the will which leads people to seek to change their present reality. It is a powerful thing when a person who has long desired to change their body, finally becomes so fed up, that in their mind there is no alternative but to begin taking the steps to create change. In short, a person has to want to change, and to truly create radical physical change takes total commitment.
Commitment is a dirty word to many in our culture today, but with respect to creating physical change total commitment is necessary. What is total commitment; it is being willing to do whatever it takes to achieve your goal, no matter what. Re-creating your body necessitates a 24/7 commitment. Your food intake must be strictly regulated every meal and snack, every day. You cannot miss workouts just because you are not feeling one hundred percent that day. You cannot miss workouts because you had a bad day or your boss or your spouse is angry with you. Success necessitates that a person overcomes all adversity and sticks to the workout program and eating plan no matter what, without any excuses.
Goal orientedness is having, at the very least, a mental picture of how you want the outcome of your training to be. I strongly advise each and every client of mine to obtain a picture which represents how they want to look. I require that it be a person of similar physical structure who has optimized their physical condition. Constantly meditating on that image keeps a goal visually present and helps immeasurably in fueling the desire to go on to total success
Intensity, if you want to get results from your training, you must train with sufficient intensity. What does this mean? It means pitty-pat workouts will not do the job. I, as a personal trainer have seen people who are wasting time in the gym with low intensity workouts. They go through workouts which do not create results for months, even years, but results will never come unless they put in the sweat and elbow grease it takes to reshape a body. Proper intensity is training as hard as you are capable during the entire length of the workout. Workouts without deep muscle burn will not create change. In my opinion, if you feel no need to grunt and groan at all in your workouts, you are training without sufficient intensity. Sweating is good thing; it is the body's response to vigorous exercise. No sweat in this trainer's book equals insufficient intensity.
Persistence and perseverance. Do you want to succeed? Dogged determination to create results must be practiced for a successful training program. What is persistence? It is doing what needs to be done to create physical change each and every scheduled training day without exception. Intense weight training sessions done as scheduled without calling off and never missing your cardio sessions, this will create change Perseverance is gutting it out, sticking to the program even when your mind tells you that you are wasting your time. There will be times when you think that you are not changing quickly enough and it is at these times that you will be tempted to throw in the towel and quit. Perseverance causes a person to do the work necessary for a long enough period of time to attain one's goals.
About The Author
Fort Lauderdale Personal Trainer Joe Kozma is a master trainer who has been practicing for over twenty years. Joe is a former national bodybuilding champion and college football player. Joe's fitness and weight loss service provides body makeovers, body sculpting strength gain, and more. See his clients at his Fort Lauderdale Fitness website at http://www.joekozma.com
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Warm-Up for the Spine – Three Easy Methods to Warm-Up the Spine for Activity
by: John Paul Catanzaro
It is estimated that up to 80% of the population has experienced or will experience at least one bout of low back pain in their life.(7) So, it would be wise to warm-up the spine thoroughly prior to physical activity, but how? In this article, I will share with you 3 simple methods that you can use with your clients to prepare their spines for exercise.
Foam Roll
In the book, The Development of Muscular Bulk & Power, Anthony Ditillo recommends simply laying on a flat bench with your arms behind your head and eyes closed for 15 minutes prior to a workout. During this time, he advises utilizing visualization of the upcoming workout to encourage a positive state and enhance performance.(3) By the way, this book was originally published in 1971 and much of the information still holds true today it is an excellent read! Charles Poliquin, a highly successful strength coach, takes this a step further by having his athletes lay on a 6-inch foam roll also for 15 minutes before their workout to help decompress the spine by opening up the intervertebral spaces. Apparently, laying on the foam roll – referred to as a spine roller by physiotherapists – lengthwise along the spine will help restore normal spinal curvatures since gravity acts downwards, straightening the spine at the apex of excessive curvatures (generally reducing kyphosis.)(4) Since this method allows for optimal nerve conduction, Poliquin claims that it will increase strength by up to 3%.(6)
I have found that a greater effect is achieved if the base of the skull (i.e. suboccipital area) is placed at the edge of the roll causing slight cervical extension. This seems to pull the spine allowing a greater decompressive effect. Try it both ways and see if you can feel the difference.
For small individuals, use a childs swim noodle you know, the one they float on when swimming which can be purchased for a few dollars at any Wal-Mart store. Larger individuals should invest in a 6- inch foam roll; you can purchase one from Fitter International (visit www.fitter1.com or call 1-800-FITTER1).
Camel/Cat Exercise
The camel and mad cat are 2 classic exercises which stretch the abdominals and back respectively and are prescribed in many rehabilitation programs. Dr. Stuart McGill, a spinal biomechanist and professor at the University of Waterloo, recommends this series of exercises to floss the nervous system and reduce viscosity. Perform 5- 6 cycles and do not press the end range (make sure to involve the cervical spine.) McGIll stresses that this method is not a stretch, but rather gentle motion. By getting nerves to move, they can create their own space; its not enough to just stretch them! Also, it is a good idea to avoid these exercises first thing in the morning. Wait at least one hour after awakening. That is the critical period since your tissue is superhydrated at that point resulting in an 18% loss of strength in the spine and risk of injury is heightened!(5)
Pelvic Rocks on a Swiss ball
Pelvic rocks are actually an extension of the camel/cat exercise described above; however, they are not limited to just one plane of movement. Rehabilitation specialist, Paul Chek, recommends this series of exercises as a method to pump fresh fluid through the spinal discs to nourish the tissues.(1) Pelvic rocks involve forward & backward, side-to- side, and circular movements on the Swiss ball.(2) The goal with this (and any other active warm-up for that matter) is to gradually increase speed and range of motion. Basically, cue further and faster to your clients as they progress. If practiced enough, they may even improve their dancing skills!
There you have it three easy methods to warm-up the spine for activity. Keep in mind that I have not touched upon any stretches.
Visit http://www.strengthwarmup.com/index.cfm?t=DVD.Articles for an in-depth discussion on stretching). However, if you are currently experiencing some form of low back pain, then you should practice all these exercises on a regular basis. For preventative measures and to possibly increase strength, perform at least one of the methods before your workout. Really, how hard is it to lay on a foam roll for a few minutes? Your spine will thank you.
Note: John Paul has a DVD available with demonstrations of all the warm-up techniques and drills mentioned in this article. Visit http://www.StrengthWarmUp.com for more info.
References
1. Chek, P. Bigger Balls, Better Backs. New Zealand Fitness, Issue #22.
2. Chek, P. Swiss Ball Training. Paul Chek Seminars. La Jolla, CA.1996. (pages 15-16) http://www.chekinstitute.com/cgi-bin/at.cgi?a=258592&e=/products_specific.cfm?product=306
3. Ditillo, A. The Development of Muscular Bulk & Power. Ironman Magazine, 1971. Reprinted in 1999 by Wm F. Hinbern, Farmington, MI. (page 23)
4. Luoma, TC. TC Talks. Muscle Media 2000. Golden, CO. Dec., 1996, No. 55.
5. McGill, S. Low Back Injury: Improving Prevention Strategies and Rehabilitation Approaches Seminar. Toronto, ON. May 12, 2001.
6. Poliquin, C. Preparing for the Ultimate Workout. Testosterone, Issue #81. Dec. 3, 1999. http://testosterone.net/html/81ultim.html
7. Shiple, BJ. Treating Low-Back Pain: Exercise Knowns and Unknowns. The Physician and Sportsmedicine. 25(8), Aug. 1997. http://www.physsportsmed.com/issues/1997/08aug/shiple.htm
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Goal Setting Lesson- It Is High Time to Strive To a Better Self
Finley StewSomeone who does not have deep-seated reason for setting her or his goal, chances of success will be shrunken significantly. In fact, a goal setting lesson plan produces a way for self growth. If you wish to develop yourself then a goal setting lesson is substantive. You can make sure to attain your goals, if you can attain the plan in the approved manner. Goal setting lesson programme is really a great skill.
You have to split a problematic goal into smaller shares when you will set goals. Each one will be more feasible without trouble than the entire. You should keep in your mind that accomplishment of goals is the key to success. It might be in personal development, business, education or career. So, you should study this point for your success.
You will see many another successful individuals who discover the courage for taking action. They construct a project in place to assist them keep on concentrated on reaching their goals. You must alter the system if you feel that you desire to uprise to your life's significant. Self-made people are familiar with that and it is very hard to overcome weakness without getting a good goal setter. Sometimes, you might obtain without setting goals. There is a less possibility to be successful for you. In Reality, success arrives about when you are acting for your own well being. When you do it for others, it will make sure that you damage your own success.
It is sure that success comes up to failure and normally from common failure. Commonly, success is not guaranteed for all the time. When you initiate your own business, you might not get good clients although you attempted with all your will to reach the goal.
After that you are reducing a great amount of money. Immediately, you are considering to terminate this business and to move into a new business. Most successful business men revise and re prioritize their goals.
You are not waited to motivate others to help you accomplish them when your personal goal setting is highly narrow. You have to dream big as goals arrives first and what are goals if not dreams with a concluding. Dreams are often pretty nonrepresentational. Doing repeat them into a significant thought and realizable goals, you can deny yourself of the capability to practice the dream. You need to point up on one goal at a time and should start with the most persistent or the most significant goal. You can make it crystal clear focusing on that task. You can close your eyes and sense what it will be like when it is accomplished.
A goal setting lesson plan is just setting goals they could be attained over a period of time and plans announce nothing when you are impotent to set a sensible time frame for a goal to happen to validity. It is not a bad idea to construct plans for all your wishes and set goals for them. You might not get success in absence of an accurate date for completion. Now you have recognized that goals are visualized to encourage a certain behavior that will lead to success without doubt.
Article Tags: Goal Setting Lesson, Goal Setting, Setting Lesson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
But that is just the start, more on goals settings visit us at http://www.goalssettings.com/ now.
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Setting Goals for a Healthy Life
by: Gerald Fitz
Setting goals is a great way to make a positive change in your life. If you want to succeed at reaching your goals you may want to try these simple ideas.
Think about it. Imagine your goal every day. If you want to lose 100 pounds then you need to imagine yourself doing it. Imagine yourself at your goal weight. Imagine all the great and healthy foods you can eat to get there. Imagine yourself exercising and moving more, to increase your calorie burn. Don’t just think about it when you set the goal, but keep it foremost in your mind. Your thoughts are one of your most powerful tools in your effort to reach your goal. Using positive affirmations can also condition your brain to better health. Saying things such as, “I am fit, strong and healthy” and “I love the extra energy I get from exercising” in front of the mirror every morning and night will help program your brain and make those things a reality.
Write it down. If you don’t write your goal down you are only wishing. If it is written down one time, that is a good start. If you write it down 10 times a day, and doodle it in the margins of your papers it will be reinforced and become a driving force and make reaching your goal easier.
Tell your friends and family about your goal, and they will encourage you in the attainment of it. If you keep it all to yourself, you have no accountability and won’t feel compelled to fulfill it. It is easy to think, “I need to exercise every day” but there is a different dynamic when your best friend or family member is asking, “Did you exercise today?”
Give yourself a reward for making progress. If your goal is to lose 20 pounds, celebrate when you lose the first five. It is motivation and encouragement to do more. It is also positive reinforcement for continuing on in your plan of action to making this goal a reality.
Give yourself a break! You don’t have to be perfect at reaching your goal. If you are making progress towards it, slip up, but then get right back on track then things are going in the right direction. Contrast that to making progress toward your goal, slipping up and then giving up because you weren’t perfect. In the first instance you are right back on track. In the second your goal will never b e attained because you quit. Allowing yourself to be human and make mistakes makes reaching your goal possible. No one can be perfect all the time or keep to their plans of action at all times.
Be patient! Goals take awhile to reach. It isn’t going to happen overnight. Setting mini goals on the road to your larger goal will help make it seem more possible. Starting small is a great idea. If you plan to drink more water, you can slowly add it in and stop drinking sodas and juice and over time you will have changed that habit. Same goes with exercise. Start with today. Exercise one time today. Then slowly add days until you are working out the number of days you desire. Setting mini goals is a great way to advance on the dream in a realistic manner and seeing all the successes you have had can be a great motivator.
Use all the tools at your disposal! Join a gym. Join a team. Have a walking buddy. Pre-cook your healthy meals and have them ready to heat and eat. Take a multi-vitamin to be sure you are getting in all the nutrients your body needs. Read motivational literature. Talk to your friends and set up rewards for milestones. Work with a dietician. Get a personal trainer. Take essential oils. Bulk up on protein and add whey supplements to add muscle mass. Drink green tea to boost your metabolism. Get plenty of sleep. Drink plenty of water.
Taking it a step at a time and doing many little things can help you to reach your goal.
About The Author
For more info on delicious whey protein and multivitamins, visit http://www.mytopform.com
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Smart Goal Setting And Goal Setting Systems
What is smart goal setting? Is it any different than simply setting goals? Is smart goal setting part of goal setting systems? How can goal setting systems help you? A lot of questions and a lot of answers! In this article, you will find the answers to your most pressing questions, about goal setting systems and working smart with goals.
As you read this article, you will find the answers to these goal setting questions:
* What Is Smart Goal Setting?
* What Is Are Goal Setting Systems?
* Are Goal Setting Systems Essential?
* What Makes A Good Goal Setting System?
* What Is Smart Goal Setting?
Working smart is a personal work ethic, and philosophy. Some people believe to achieve more, you have to put in more hours, others believe that by working smarter, you get to have more productivity in a shorter period of time.
I like the smart part! And I am sure, you do too. The problem is that a lot of people don't set smart goals. Often, you will see this happen with New Year resolutions, and at other times. These are goals, which don't have a system to make them work.
* What Is Are Goal Setting Systems?
If you need water to come into the home, you need a system. If you want to build a house, you need a system of planning and execution. And here is where systems become important.
Goal setting systems are exactly that. A framework, that works with all your goals. You can apply it to create projects big or small.
With a good goal setting systems, they allow you to easily go through tasks. To realize the tasks that needs to be performed. Goal setting systems also help you to find opportunities, and potential obstacles well in advance.
* Are Goal Setting Systems Essential?
Many managers and professional people will use one of the simplest systems. Today I need to do, etc. A To Do list!
Creating a list is a system; however, it is not a big system. It allows you to take thoughts out of your head, and put it to paper. But, try creating a business by simply writing down To Do's. It can be a hard task!
* What Makes A Good Goal Setting System?
I have seen many goal setting systems that have a great functioning goal setting system; however, they often forget the KISS principle. A good goal setting system should work for big or small projects.
Any system for goal setting is going to be better than not having one at all. For people serious about taking control of their lives, and living a much better life, doing what they really want, a goal setting system becomes essential.
Visit the link, to find my goal setting system. To get my free top 10 goal setting ideas for adults, click this link. Find my goal setting system, that gives you all the worksheets you need to start setting goals www.howtogoalset.info
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Bodybuilding and Steroids: What you Should Know
by: Emile Jarreau
Everyone loves a shortcut. Anything that can help us shave time, money, and resources to allow us to get a job done more quickly is often a welcome thing indeed. Unfortunately, shortcuts don't always work out like we had planned in life and one of these areas is in improving our bodies through bodybuilding.
Many people want to improve their physique by gaining muscle and losing fat through the activity of bodybuilding which can be extremely effective at accomplishing both of these tasks. For some, the results they achieve simply don't come fast enough and they resort to taking steroids to speed up the process.
Steroids work on a cellular level to help greatly increase the size and often the strength of the muscles in your body. They have proven to be effective at this task through many years of clinical and personal research. While steroids can help you achieve your size and strength goals through bodybuilding, they carry with them some severely negative side effects that make using them a horrible decision for anyone.
First of all, because men are often involved in bodybuilding more than women, they are also more likely to be afflicted with the side effects of using these horrible drugs. One of the first and most profound side effects that can occur in men is that of infertility. Men can experience a huge diminished number of healthy sperm which may lead them to complete infertility over time. In addition, using steroids can actually cause man to start developing feminine features including large breasts and increased female hormones throughout the body. These side effects can truly scar some users for life.
Interestingly enough, steroid use reacts similarly in women by causing them to develop masculine features. They can experience increased production of testosterone which can lead to abnormal hair growth all over their bodies and a deepening of their voice as they begin to adopt more and more manly traits. Even more disturbing than these physical side effects for men and women are the internal ones that can be caused by taking steroids.
One of the more disturbing and harmful effects of steroid use is that of developing heart disease. Studies indicate that long-term steroid use has been directly related to heart disease and often of eventual heart attacks. The list of bodybuilders who has been stricken with some form of heart ailment is long and indeed growing. Aside from heart disease, some studies are showing possible evidence that steroid use can be linked with an increased risk of certain types of cancers as well.
So while steroids can be effective at achieving the goal of building muscle, they carry with them a huge price. The negatives of steroid use clearly outweigh the positives and it is important that you pay close attention to what the side effects are before you decide to do something that could ruin your life such as using steroids. The purpose of bodybuilding is to create a stronger and more visually pleasing body. Lying stiff in a coffin is probably not the result you are looking for, but is exactly the result you may get if you decide to use steroids.
About The Author
Emile Jarreau has been involved in Fitness and Bodybuilding for over 32 years. For more information regarding fat loss go to http://www.MrFatLoss.com
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Organic Foods Equal Improved Health
By Nicholas Tan
Organic food is food that is free from all genetically modified organisms, produced without artificial pesticides and fertilizers and derived from an animal reared without the routine use of antibiotics, growth promoters or other drugs. Once only available in small stores or farmers' markets, organic foods are becoming much more widely available.Organic foods have been shown to improve your immune system, help you sleep better, shed the excess weight more easily, and improve your blood work just to name a few.
Organic food can boast intense, realistic flavors, and a higher vitamin and mineral content. And though logically it makes sense to consume a diet based on organic foods, some worry about the cost. But with careful planning and preparation, going organic is actually quite affordable. And, the peace of mind knowing you and your family are consuming foods that haven’t been treated with pesticides or genetically altered is worth the extra money spent. The pesticides used by conventional farmers can have many negative influences on your health, including neurotoxicity, disruption of your endocrine system, carcinogenicity and immune system suppression.
Pesticide exposure may also affect male reproductive function and has been linked to miscarriages in women. Additionally, conventional produce tends to have fewer nutrients than organic produce. On average, conventional produce has only 83 percent of the nutrients of organic produce. Studies have found significantly higher levels of nutrients such as vitamin C, iron, magnesium and phosphorus, and significantly less nitrates (a toxin) in organic crops. So it’s a smart idea to buy and eat organic produce and free-range organic foods as much as possible for maximum health benefits.
In addition, the knowledge that you’re supporting the organic foods industry that is dedicated to protecting the environment by steering clear of harmful pesticides and chemicals that can result in the loss of topsoil, toxic runoff and resulting water pollution, soil contamination and poisoning and the death of insects, birds, critters and beneficial soil organisms should help you feel even better.
Article Tags: Organic Foods, Organic Produce
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Raw Food: Organic Products and Raw Food Diet
Fortunately for those of us newly interested in eating organic and raw foods, there are lots of products out there. Natural and organic foods used to be found only in natural food stores, and those could be few and far between. While not as ubiquitous as McDonald’s, there ARE many more stand-alone stores. And the grocery chains are catching on too, with more organic selections than ever before. If you don’t see them in your grocery store, just ask. You’re probably not the only person in your neighborhood who’d like to see more of these options.
Many grocery stores now feature sprouts and other living foods in the produce aisle. Of course, if they don’t, there’s nothing easier to grow for yourself than sprouts!
There are also tons of sites on the Web where you can order raw and living foods. Just do a search on raw foods and you’ll come up with a lot of different places to order the foods you’d like to buy. Many of these sites are also full of useful information, to help you learn about eating raw foods, and help educate you on the specific food values.
What else? Experiment with what you like. Take the time to learn a little about what the different nutrients in foods do for you. A few examples:
Cabbage – High in Vitamin C; important for healthy cell function
Shitake mushrooms – contain essential fatty acids and antioxidants to support a healthy immune system
Kale – Rich in fiber and helps reduce calorie intake with less hunger. We like that!
Barley – Loaded with niacin, fiber and iron and is important for healthy blood sugar.
Pumpkin – So rich in fiber and vitamins; helps reduce appetite by filling the stomach with indigestible fibers
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Are Nature's Sunshine Products Organic?
By Andrew EwanAndrew
Ewan, Nature's Sunshine's General Manager in the UK and Ireland has says," the 21st Century has seen an ever increasing trend of people wanting to take responsibility for their own good health and well-being and many are turning to natural supplementation to help maintain a healthy body.
Often we are spoilt for choice when we start looking for the right supplements. We can choose from the high street shops, the local chemist, even newspaper adverts with promises of unbelievably low cost products.
You may ask yourself 'why are they so cheap?' Maybe the reason is that some companies use either cheaper synthetic ingredients or ingredients that may have been exposed to a cocktail of chemical pesticides and fertilizers.
Nature's Sunshine guarantee to provide you with only the finest, purest, most effective natural ingredients which have been grown in certified organic farms or harvested from the wild (wild crafted). And the ingredients are tested hundreds of times in our own state-of-the-art award winning manufacturing facility to ensure their potency, purity and efficacy. Nature's Sunshine will never compromise on quality, and that is a promise."
Nature's Sunshine pharmacist Clell Fowles says,"Even though Nature's Sunshine uses organically sourced ingredients, it is impossible to label the products with an organic certification because most of our products contain organic wild-crafted ingredients. Allow me to explain.. 'Organic' is a term utilised to describe a growing condition. To be certified organic you (as the grower)have to pay to have someone come out and inspect your farm and look at your records to make sure that you are not using any banned fertilizers, pesticides etc. Whilst we regularly buy ingredients from organic farms, we also use ingredients that are not grown on farm but are wild-crafted, that is they are picked in areas where they grow naturally in organic conditions.
Nature's Sunshine test all their raw ingredients whether they are from organic farms or collected from the wild to make sure that they pass our specifrications, which includes not having any presence of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. If they contain any of these artificial chemicals then they will not pass our quality control tests. Many people refere to Nature's Sunshine products as 'Organic Plus' because we do not take the farmer's word that the ingredients are organicall produced. We actually proved their organic status in our laboratories. Interestingly, to emphasise the importance of quality control, I would like to mention that we have had many batches of certified organic material come in that has not passed our specifications because it was too dirty and grew bacteria or they had not been picked at the most potent time etc. So not only do we source our ingredients from organic sources, we also test to prove their purity and their efficacy."
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Natural Therapies for Back Pain: Massage Therapy, Acupuncture, Yoga And Herbs
by: Caroline Colby
Back pain can cause you immense pain. Other than drug medications, there are many natural therapy methods for your pain. Take a proactive approach to your pain and you will then be able to live life to its fullest.
Here are some facts to reveal how common back pain is. Back pain in the U. S. currently accounts for approximately 50-60% of pain complaints for workers. It is surprising to note that it does not matter what type of job you hold. Whether you are a factory worker to a professional, you are equally susceptible to back pain as your colleague.
Back pain not only afflicts the working population in general, but there are other causes for pain as well. Degenerative diseases like osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis tends to affect more of the female population. Spinal cord injuries resulting from accidents are another leading cause to back pain.
Natural therapies for back pain tend to focus on holistic principles. This means the integration of the physical, psychological and spiritual components of life toward treatment. Some researchers say that your social, economic and cultural background can indicate whether you are more likely to experience back pain in the future or not.
Neuromuscular Therapy is a new type of natural therapy for back pain. There are many clinics that provide massage therapy in the U.S.Deep body massages can aid you by massaging away pain from nerves that are swollen within muscle tissue, and improve the flexibility of your body. Massage therapy also helps you to relax and that helps in back pain relief.
Another beneficial natural therapy for back pain that people have found advantageous is acupuncture. Acupuncture is a 2,000-year-old Chinese treatment, which stimulates the nerve pathways through the spinal cord and to the brain, with the use of needles. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a painful therapy at all. The use of the needles stimulates the nerve pathways to release hormones, so your brain do not experience pain as much. Also, the body stimulates release of other hormones to aid in healing.
A good exercise for reducing back pain is yoga. The practice of yoga grew out of eastern therapies of medicine and religion beliefs. Hatha and sivananda yoga are beneficial because they are gentle in the physical training, and the two various styles of yoga use relaxation techniques through proper breathing and meditation states. Through relaxation and meditation, muscles relax and external stressors are eliminated. This benefits your body because the overactive electrical impulses that make your muscles tense are reduced.
Lastly, a natural therapy for back pain is with the use of herbs. Herbs are non-addictive and in most circumstances, do not result in major side effects. One popular herb is boswellia because it does not produce inflammation. When boswellia is used it will reduce stiffness because blood supply is increased in the back.
Ginger is useful too in your fight on back pain. It stops pain-causing hormones from being released. Also, ginger can be used on a long-term basis. Over the counter back pain products that contain menthol and camphor are also particularly helpful.
Be sure to seek the advice of your healthcare practitioner the next time you pay him a visit. Discuss the various options of massage therapy, yoga or acupuncture as complementary therapies. Many healthcare practitioners are more open to these options than ever before. Who knows? One of these therapies may just be what you are looking for in terms of pain relief.
About The Author
Caroline Colby writes on massage therapy. She believes that this form of therapy helps improve blood circulation and is effective for cases of arthritis, back pain, headaches and other common health ailments. For more articles and resources, please visit http://www.massage-therapy-central.com.
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Keeping the Body Balanced Through Chakra Balancing
What is Chakra Balancing? – Modern science has had many benefits, of course, but there have also been negative ones. One of these has been that the survival and significance of the spiritual being within the physical being has been ignored in people’s minds.
The Hindu thought of life, however, has kept the flame of spiritual-healing burning amidst the advancements in science and technology.
In truth, our bodies are made up of seven primary and many thousands of secondary Chakras. Chakra is a Sanskrit word for Wheel of Light, and the theory is that these Chakras rotate and continuously send off vibrations in a healthy human being.
And so, an imbalance in the movement of these charkas results in imbalance of the overall healthy functioning of the body. Chakra Balancing then is the key to a healthy body, mind, and soul.
Chakras are Entry Gates of the Aura and the centers of activity that receives, assimilates and expresses life-force energy. Located along the central line of the body from the base of the spine to the top of the head the seven main Chakras absorb and transmit energies to and from the universe, nature, celestial entities, and even from people.
Why do the chakras become distorted?
If one or more of the chakras are blocked, the energy will not flow properly through them. Ultimately, this will mean that there will be an imbalance among the chakras that means there will be problems in every area of life.
The harmonious functioning of Chakras can be distorted due to a number of factors, like ill health, stress, unhealthy diet, exposure to toxicity, lack of exercise, inability to express emotions, beliefs incongruent with Truth, disconnection from a higher power, childhood traumas, cultural conditioning, emotional injuries, etc.
Chakra Healing – The Key to Health and Happiness
It is a very widely held but utopian belief that chakras always function completely in harmony. Therefore, humans have always tried to correct this erroneous belief and seek to strike a fine balance between the chakras. Chakra balancing loosely incorporates the idea of self-healing.
Our shapes, glandular processes, continuing physical ailments and negative thoughts and behaviors can easily be changed through Chakra balance. Balancing allows these limitations to be overcome, and those who constantly work towards achieving harmonious Chakra functioning will attain as a bi-product a healthy mind, body and soul.
Chakra balance can have very good effects:
* Overall happiness and inner peace
* Individual strength and physical health
* Consciousness and being in touch with ones body
* Contentment in sexuality without being overcome by lust
* Being aware of your feelings in an ethereal sense
* Enhanced capacity to attract and express love in ones life
* Having increased maturity and spiritual growth
* Spiritual healing through higher patterns of consciousness, awareness, and acceptance
* Having a heart that is kind and affectionate
* Tremendous confidence levels, but short of being over-confident
* Realization of the True Self
What do you need to be successful with a chakra balance?
With Chakra balance comes many new processes and thoughts. There are many ways in which to find balance of one’s Chakras including:
* Using medicinal therapies such as Reiki
* Practicing yoga (along with breathing exercises) and meditation
* Physical exercise
* Using color or light therapy
* Use of crystals and gems
* Balancing the chakras by using pendulums or hands
* Using aromatherapy
*Utilizing touch therapy
* Positive Thinking
* Using sound frequencies that are binaural
* Affirmations and hypnosis
Our body is a reservoir of energy, in which the spent energy is released and disposed of by the body organs, and replenished, with new supplies of energies.
Chakra balancing ensures that this energy is gained and utilized by the body optimally, and all vital organs and body cells get their fair share of this energy.
Achieving a balance of the Chakras brings back the natural state vibration on the correct frequency. One of the outgrowths of modern science has been the advent of more prejudice in the minds of mankind about the significance of spirituality and survival within the physical being.
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The Law of Attraction and Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
IBS affects as much as 20% of people in USA and Europe. IBS symptoms are pains in the abdomen associated with altered bowel pattern and bloating. In addition there can be rectal symptoms such as irritation and urgency. Sometimes non-colonic symptoms can develop.
Treatments of IBS fall into four categories. Patient education, medication, dietary modification and behavioural and psychological therapies are the four categories. Experts now agree that psychological and behavioural therapies are more likely to be effective that the other three.
You attract into your life whatever you think about according to the Law of Attraction. This generalisation in simple terms means that your thoughts determine your destiny. An enormous momentum was built up after a documentary film, “The Secrets”, was shown on Oprah. The Law of Attraction is used effectively for personal growth, financial success and achievements.
The question is: Does the Law of Attraction work in Medicine? A study done in 2004 on 314 elderly subjects and 196 young people associated with rumination and negative thoughts concluded that negative thoughts may be detrimental to health independently of effects. In Reikii, spiritual and personal development and all processes of healing is associated with removing negative Ki (Life Forces) from a person’s energy field, and removing negative feelings and thoughts that have created it.
Job loss, relationship break ups etc may lead to negative thoughts and self esteem. These people can feel worthless, insignificant, unsure and easily defeated. A person with high self-esteem has positive thoughts and their level of success is determined by these thoughts.
In Irritable Bowel Syndrome, does the Law of Attraction apply? What information is given to a person when first diagnosed with IBS? There are some common ones. We do not know why you have IBS.There is no one treatment that works for everyone. Your gut is normal. There is no cure. Stress plays an important role in IBS. You have to live with it. Most IBS sufferers complain that they do not get the support they need from health professionals.
All these facts are negative. Is it not likely that they can lead to negative thoughts in the minds of IBS patients and produce negative effects? Treatments that focus on the mind are now recommended by experts. These include psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Moss-Morris at the University of Southampton, UK said, “Patients who have ongoing IBS symptoms might benefit from a simple, early intervention of CGT, a means of changing thought processes from negative to positive that has been shown to be helpful.” Dr .J. Lackner at the State University of New York reported that after four brief sessions of CBT and a self-study manual given to patients, there was improvement in 73% of his IBS patients.
When a new treatment come on the market, an IBS patient will expectantly try it and may gain benefits. This benefit may not last long because of the negative underbelly (There is no cure.) in the subconscious mind. Soon the benefits may wear off.
There are cases of refractory Irritable Bowel Syndrome patients after having gut directed hypnotherapy enjoying normal lives, having foods that previously cause severe IBS symptoms. In refractory IBS nothing works anymore. Negative thoughts are plucked out of the subconscious mind during hypnotherapy and replaced by positive ones. The Law of Attraction is at work here. Ingrained negative thoughts created negative effects in refractory IBS. After hypnotherapy, positive thoughts produced positive effects.
If you believe in the Law of Attraction, how can you use it to change the course of your IBS? Keep the positives in the forefront of your mind. Make them your reality and eventually your thoughts and feelings. In IBS there are many positives. There is no abnormality in your gut. IBS does not lead on to other serious illnesses. If stress is a trigger, you can control it. You can improve your IBS by getting a better balance in your life. You can lead a full life even though you have IBS. Whatever IBS treatment you are on, keep your dreams and aspirations positive.
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Investing
Real Estate Investing Web Sites - 8 Golden Rules
by: Simon Macharia
If you are looking for a reliable web site for your real estate investing business, you must choose the best web sites that will make real estate investing stress-free and fun. Here are a few basic must-do rules for selecting a good real estate investing web site.
1) It must be database-driven It must be able to collect information into a database and allow you to manipulate it any way you want, such as sending email, importing and exporting data and so on. Preferably, when someone submits information on the web site, you should receive an email and that information should be logged into a database.
2) It must be interactive The ability to interact with visitors is a crucial, essential element of a modern web site, also extremely necessary in your real estate investing business. You must be able to gather the information you want from motivated sellers, house buyers, or any other visitors that you target in your real estate business. Your motivated sellers must be able to leave testimonials, a crucial element in real estate investing. The web site must be simple enough for them to submit their information on the web site rather than make a phone call thereby you receive a fully pre-screened and pre-negotiated deals. The ability to interact freely on social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook Myspace and others is a basic necessity. Even if you do not use these services, your friends (buyers and real estate investors alike) will share them with their friends in the same media resulting to a quick sale. Most real estate investors today share their properties on these media.
3) It must be easy to use You do not need to be a computer geek to run a real estate investing web site. Preferably, the web site should be controlled from a virtual back office (admin panel). The front end should completely free of maintenance.
4) It must be adaptable Your web site must adapt to any real estate investing needs your business takes You should be able to create new pages, add content easily, and create any forms to collect any type of information you want.
5) It must offer numerous designs You don’t want your web site to look like everyone else’s web site. The real estate investing web site you buy should offer a big selection of designs to choose from and the capability to customize the designs to suit your real estate investing needs. You should be able to keep your brand such as logo or even a custom look if you need to. Preferably, you should not have to pay extra to choose any design you want.
6) It should offer automation capability Your real estate investing web site must allow you to create unlimited follow-up auto responders to handle email campaigns for your motivated sellers, buyers lists or any other lists you manage on your web site. For example, if you wanted to send out a Thank You message to a motivated seller after they submit their information, all you need to do is to automate an instant message that says something like Thank you for your enquiry. We will contact you within 24 hours or something like that. Similarly, you should be able to create automated reminders to remind you of any important events on your real estate investing business. Your busy schedule should not get in the way of important follow-ups so crucial to successful real estate investing.
7) It must be affordable Sadly, most real estate investing products are just too expensive. If they do not hit you with a big upfront invoice, they get you stuck with monthly fees. This should not be the case. The web site must allow you to install it and run it from any web hosting account. Be especially careful with companies that only charge a monthly fee (like $30) with no "setup fee". In reality they offer a template hosting service branded real estate investing web sites that must run on their server. You sign up with them, pay a monthly fee, but they own your web site. The minute you stop paying the monthly fee, your web site will stop working or be deleted altogether along with your business. Do not fall into this trap. If at all possible, the web site should be a one-time purchase with no strings attached.
8) It must offer free lifetime support and upgrades When you buy your real estate investing web site, you must get free lifetime support and upgrades. If a web site offers every little thing as a module for an extra fee, run the other way. These are just a few tips to look out for when shopping for a real estate investing web site. There are many other little things but if you follow these rules, you should be happy with the web site you get.
About The Author
Simon Macharia is a real estate investor that also offers web 2.0 database-driven web sites for real estate investing at http://RealEstateInvestingWebSites.Net
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Real Estate Investing in 2009 And Beyond
When you think of real estate investing, a number of things may come to mind. You may think of real estate investing as real estate portfolios and real estate retirement plans, or you might focus on short sales, bulk reo investing and virtual real estate investing. You may also wonder what type of role these things can play in your life as a real estate investor in different types of economy.
There is a lot to learn about real estate investing. To get the most out of real estate investing education, be familiar with basic information ahead of time. Whether your target is short sales, bulk reo sales, virtual real estate or improving real estate investor abilities, you need to know some real estate investing basics. Check out these three real estate investing tenets that many experts do not fully know:
1. You will always end up with a positive yield when you invest in real estate investing education. Each real estate deal can represent thousands of dollars in potential wealth. The knowledge of how to get that wealth is the key to your success. Learning about real estate increases your odds of success when you do a real estate deal. A small investment in your education can yield big results when you implement your learning.
2. Any economy allows for success in real estate investing. Often people think that you can only be a success in real estate when the economy is good. In fact a bad economy is not a bad economy for real estate investors. You will likely find properties that you can buy at deep discounts. Additionally, you may find deals that would not exist in a booming economy. Real estate investing often is what turns the tide for poor economies. Short sales, bulk reo sales and virtual real estate all can thrive when the economy is not. You can save yourself and others from major financial woes if you know how to do these deals.
3. You do not need lots of your own cash to be a successful real estate investor. You can make a success of real estate investing no matter how much or little money you have. There are lots of deals that you can use other people’s money to do. Private lenders will let you use their money if they know that you are a good investment. A good investment will know as much as they can about real estate investing. This will help you show people that you are a good investment if they have the money to help you with real estate investing but they do not know how to use it.
Real estate investing is a good way to generate a great deal of wealth. You can create an income in any economy. By using a base of knowledge of real estate investing, short sales, bulk reo sales and virtual real estate you can create success for yourself. Real estate investing basic knowledge will help you succeed as a real estate investor.
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Does Caning Help In Your Kids Learning To Be More Disciplined?
by:Ms.Umasairam
Many of us still abide by the old maxim ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’. Sparing the rod does not necessarily always spoil the child. Let me share with you how and why….
If we recall, most often we would have caned our children, when they have been stubborn or have refused to listen to us. Our strong desire is to have well disciplined children who listen to us all the time and abide by what we say. “Unfulfilled desire is the root cause of our anger”. When they falter we flare up. While threatening to cane may be an effective way to deter their wrong behavior, caning children is just an outlet to our pent up emotions.
Punishment is the not the only way to discipline our kids. We have to reason it out with them. We have to express our love for them. We have to show them that we care for them and that we are genuinely concerned about their future. Genuine love is the unconditional love that comes from the heart, which need not be extraordinary. Let us genuinely love our kids and be loved, without getting sick and tired of it.
Despite all this, if we still have to resort to punishment, we have to take the effort to distinguish between the ‘Person’ and the ‘ Issue or the behavior’. Let us make it very clear to our children that we are condemning their action and not them.
Studies show that, children who are often caned become more rebellious. They are the ones who have more emotional and behavioral problems. So, Caning would mean falling off the frying pan, into the fire.
Read on to know why?
It was about 11 pm when my phone rang. Just as I wondered who it could be, I heard someone sob at the other end. I wondered why she had called me then, that too sobbing. I knew that she was really heartbroken.
She had often told me about the fights that go on between her parents. The fights were stormy with her mom slapping the dad and threatening to divorce. I thought that, it must have been one of those days, where the fight had gone beyond control and that she needed a shoulder to cry on… I was wrong… It was not a fight between her parents.
She always felt that she was not liked or loved by anyone, both at school and at home. Her mother evinced her rage evoked by the fights on the hapless child. The agony was so traumatizing that she would do anything to escape from the treacherous world.
Between stifled sobs, she told me that she was leaving home. I was shocked and asked her why. Even at that point in time, it did not strike me that she was in trouble and that too, all alone. Her mom had locked her up after caning her for procrastinating to clean up the dinner table. In her wild rage and pent up emotions, the little girl was mangled and doused with left over soup and dumped into the dog’s kennel. She successfully broke open the lock and thought of calling me before leaving the house.
I tried talking her out, for an hour, but she refused to budge. I knew why. The tormented heart was torn during the turbulent situations and it had overruled the mind. I admonished her about the wretched world, out in the dark. When she was impervious to my pleas, I started worrying. I was afraid that my effort to forbid the child would go into smoke if I did not handle the situation carefully.
I could feel the pain that the tender heart was going through. The sobs made my heart melt. I was helpless and wanted God to show me the way to dissuade the child from getting out of the house. Although I was successful in making the 12 year old stay at home that night ……….. Now, the sixteen year old is a school dropout, a chain smoker and head of gangsters. As expected, her mom and dad are divorced and she is left, out in the streets, with no one to care for or condemn her behavior.
I was so traumatized by this whole event and thought that I should pour out my heart to you all, so that you will not be responsible for making a tender heart sob or spoil the future of someone, who could have otherwise blossomed…
So, let us resist caning or use it sparingly to get the best results. Here is an analogy: Our children are like the crop and their wrong behavior is like the pest. Caring is like providing the fertiliser and manure required for the healthy growth of the crop. Caning is like a pesticide. When we use too much of the pesticide, the pests become resistant to it. Then we may have to provide even a stronger dose (severe punishment by law) of it to keep them under control.
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Educational Toys Make Learning Fun and Easy
By Gen Wright
These giant tinker toy like building kits support educational classroom goals through exciting and enticing activities and differentiated instruction that addresses multiple intelligences. You'll find dozens of learning activities created by teachers for teachers in the Toobeez activities books.
Kinesthetic Language Arts Activities
In your language arts classroom, the Toobeez educational toys for children are a quick way to set the stage for dramatic learning. Act out literature for greater understanding. Role play scenes and then record the dialogue to build writing skills. Have students create a new invention with Toobeez and then produce an instruction pamphlet for their unique device, including clear instructions. With the Toobeez Language Arts Activities Book, you will find ten innovative activities to improve reading comprehension, grammar, and creative expression. There is no end to the cooperative learning possibilities.
Hands-On Mathematics Activities
Bring another dimension to your math instruction with Toobeez construction toys for the mathematics classroom. Difficult, abstract concepts are easier to master when you build graphs, angles, and shapes using Toobeez learning toys.
As Kim Cooke of Walter Bickett Elementary School in Monroe, NC, explains, “One of my passions is gaining a better understanding on how the brain learns, and your activity books included up to date brain strategies. The books were very teacher-friendly and I was able to instantly incorporate the activities into my presentations and lessons. I have contacted 3 other principals and 18 other Teachers in my school system about your products.â€
Students will understand the relevance of mathematics as they build and test their Toobeez structures. Ten engaging and open ended activities from the Toobeez Mathematics Activities Book will have students eager to learn more about mathematics.
Educational Toys for Toddlers and Preschooler
Young children learn best through play. Give kids a good start by choosing the right educational learning toys for toddlers and preschoolers. Because these multipurpose toys can be used in a variety of educational and fun ways, Toobeez make the perfect day care toy or toy for teachers of young children.
Toobeez encourage young children to explore their world in an educational and rewarding way. Build a tunnel, teach basic shapes, and create puppet theaters for kids.
Learning Toys
With these educational toys for kids, classroom activities transform into an opportunity for collaboration and genuine discovery.
Pete Smithson from Central Middle School, Orlando, FL, is impressed with the flexibility of these building toys: “The open ended nature of the product allows us to use your products within our entire school. We use them in our staff development days, core subjects, field day, and even our after school activities. What a great program.â€
As teachers and educators, you know the value of character education. Toobeez brings learners together to complete authentic tasks.
Toobeez encourage perseverance, trust, responsibility and cooperation through activities that complement linguistic, logical spatial or kinesthetic learning styles.
The workbooks also include discussion questions and activity variations to differentiate for learning styles and strengths!
Your students will build amazing things with Toobeezâ€"including their self-esteem.
Article Tags: Educational Toys, Language Arts
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Candace Lindemann holds a Masters Degree in Education from Harvard. As former teacher and full time mom, she enjoys sharing new experiences with her baby and creating informational articles about educational toys.
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Stress Management: Managing Stress in a Busy World
Krystal Kuehn, MA, LPC, LLP, NCC
Stressis not what happens to us. It’s our response to what happens. And response is something we can choose. ~Maureen Killoran
Did you ever have so much to do that you didn’t know where to begin? So you just stared at what appeared to be a mountain before you, and you felt totally overwhelmed. Trying to take on too much at once can make you feel like you can’t handle any of it. It causes anxiety, distress and confusion. You lose your focus because your energies are scattered. And you feel pulled in every direction. Slowing down isn’t an option because then you would just get further behind and that would only cause more stress.
What exactly is stress? The most widely accepted definition of stress is attributed to Richard S. Lazarus. He describes stress as a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that “demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.” So if you feel like you are trying to manage more than you can handle, it is very likely that you are experiencing stress.
According to researchers, stressful life events increase the likelihood of developing stress-related illnesses. This is all dependent on how well we cope with stressors in our lives. Mild headaches or sleep loss and more serious problems like ulcers and migraines could all indicate problems in managing and coping with stress. Stress not only affects our bodies, it also affects our minds and the way we think. Stress affects our performance as well. Sometimes stress can be good. When it is balanced and manageable it can help to challenge us, and keep us motivated and productive. However, stress that is excessive and not properly managed can interfere with our physical, emotional and social functioning.
Fortunately, there are effective ways that excessive stress can be reduced in our lives. Sometimes there is something we can directly do about the problem that can change the situation or environment. Other times we might not be able to do anything to change the situation, but we can change our feelings and perception of it. And when we can’t do either we must endure the stress as we learn to accept what we cannot control. Stress does not have to control your life because it can be managed.
If you find yourself facing a mountain that you can’t seem to see beyond, it’s time to shift your focus and direct your attention to how you can best manage the stress you are facing. Is there something you can do to change the situation? How else can you perceive the stressor and change your feelings about it? Are you willing to accept what is beyond your control and move on?
Everyone has their own level of stress tolerance and different ways of managing stress. In order to manage stress effectively you must figure out how to reduce stress to a level within your means to handle. In doing so, you will find that the mountains before you are not as insurmountable as you may have originally believed. You will be able to face obstacles in your way. And you will be able to get past the barriers erected by stress.
Copyright © 2007 All Rights Reserved. BeHappy4Life.com written by Krystal Kuehn
, NewDayCounseling.org
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Krystal Kuehn, MA, LPC, LLP, NCC is a licensed professional counselor, author, teacher, and musician. She is cofounder of New Day Counseling, providers of individual, family therapy and stress management counseling and BeHappy4Life.com, an award-winning, self-help and personal growth site.
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Without Personal Time Management Skills You Are Leaving Life On The Table
We only have this limited period of time on this planet so we should strive to do as much as we can with what we get. Each day is limited to just 24 hours and each one is precious. Everyone should endeavor to make the most of each day because we are restricted to just 365 of them each year. These are the only years we get so we should try to ensure they are the best years we could possibly have.
Time is not flexible and you have a limit to how much you get. You lifespan is limited and you can’t have more so it isn’t like other things in life where you can make more money or have more food. You could stop a clock but life keeps on ticking by since time waits for no man. Time restricts what it is possible to achieve in a lifetime.
Accepting that our time has a limit should make us more aware that we need to get more satisfaction from every single minute available to us. The phrase time management is a term we associate with business efficiency but we can all learn time management skills and use the techniques in our daily lives to achieve more or what we want from life.
There are limits to what is possible but we all have hopes and dreams of things we want to achieve. Spend more of your time enjoying life with your family or more time travelling the world. Anything you enjoy doing will be easier if you can free up more of your time and that should help you enjoy your life more.
Understanding what tasks used up all your time allows you to plan a better way to use your time in the future. Detailed records are not important but knowing where all the time went helps to plan for a better organized day tomorrow.
If you visualize yourself in the future looking back at your life and what you did this week. The TV programs you watched will seem like a total waste of your life? Will you wish you had spent those two hours playing with your kids or going out with your partner for a meal?
Everybody wastes some of their valuable time each and every day. We all do things that are simply there to use up time each day. There must be better things to do than that. You want those hours back? Tough, they are gone forever. Spend a few moments every day thinking about your personal time management and decide if what you are doing is what you really want to do. Instead of letting life drift by, plan your day to make the most of the time available.
Time is not flexible and you have a limit to how much you get. You lifespan is limited and you can’t have more so it isn’t like other things in life where you can make more money or have more food. You could stop a clock but life keeps on ticking by since time waits for no man. Time restricts what it is possible to achieve in a lifetime.
Accepting that our time has a limit should make us more aware that we need to get more satisfaction from every single minute available to us. The phrase time management is a term we associate with business efficiency but we can all learn time management skills and use the techniques in our daily lives to achieve more or what we want from life.
There are limits to what is possible but we all have hopes and dreams of things we want to achieve. Spend more of your time enjoying life with your family or more time travelling the world. Anything you enjoy doing will be easier if you can free up more of your time and that should help you enjoy your life more.
Understanding what tasks used up all your time allows you to plan a better way to use your time in the future. Detailed records are not important but knowing where all the time went helps to plan for a better organized day tomorrow.
If you visualize yourself in the future looking back at your life and what you did this week. The TV programs you watched will seem like a total waste of your life? Will you wish you had spent those two hours playing with your kids or going out with your partner for a meal?
Everybody wastes some of their valuable time each and every day. We all do things that are simply there to use up time each day. There must be better things to do than that. You want those hours back? Tough, they are gone forever. Spend a few moments every day thinking about your personal time management and decide if what you are doing is what you really want to do. Instead of letting life drift by, plan your day to make the most of the time available.
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Ways to Be Successful in Marketing Your Business
by: Kristie Lorette
1. Define your market. Your product or service can’t be everything to everyone. Whatever product or service you’re selling, there is a specific group of people, businesses, or organizations you should be focusing on for your marketing efforts. Narrowing your marketing efforts allows you to spend your marketing dollars wisely and helps you define the business you’re in. For example, if you’re a web designer, you may be able to design a website for any type of business. Your marketing budget, however, does not allow you to reach everyone, so in order to spend your money wisely, you focus on marketing to financial service firms. Since you specialize in financial service firm website design, when a financial service firm is looking for a website designer for their next online project, they’ll know right away who to call–you!
2. Create a marketing plan. It may seem like a daunting task, but if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. When you write out a marketing plan, it helps you to put a plan in place. This plan further helps you to consistently market to your target audience. If you hold a seminar or send out a marketing email sporadically, the likliehood of your marketing efforts paying off are slim to none. Marketing success comes from consistently and constantly getting in front of the right people and then converting these people into your customers.
3. Give it time. Rome was not built in a day and neither is a successful marketing program. Consistency and repetition pay off when it comes to marketing. Many businesses make the mistake of sending out emails and direct mail pieces for a couple of weeks and when they don’t get the response they’re expecting, they throw up their hands in disgust and deem marketing a waste of time. To truly determine if your marketing efforts are successful, you have to give it six months to a year of consistent marketing before you can say if your marketing method is successful or not.
Make the right decision in your marketing efforts and use your marketing budget wisely. It’s the right way to achieve your marketing goals and increase business. While no one marketing method works for every business, if you stick to these three marketing methods, you’ll do what is right for your business.
About The Author
Kristie Lorette is a freelance writer that specializes in helping businesses and entrepreneurs create copy that sizzles, motivates, and sells. She is also the editor of The Inky Dot, a bi-monthly e-newsletter that offers tips, tricks, and advice on writing and marketing tips for businesses. You can learn more about Kristie and subscribe to The Inky Dot at www.studiokwriting.com
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Creative Marketing Ideas for Your Business
Increased competition and the recent economic downturn have combined to make effective marketing increasingly difficult. The advent of guerilla marketing tactics, as well as many other unconventional techniques can intimidate even the most adroit marketing professional. The “fighting fire with fire” adage is cliched, but true nonetheless. If you’re looking to distinguish your product or service from the seemingly infinite number of competitors in the marketplace today, you have to use increasingly unorthodox approaches to marketing.
One of the most effective ways of selling your product or service is getting it past the media gatekeepers. One way this can be accomplished is through extreme thinking. Peruse the Guinness Book of World Records and try to find something in it that is related to your service or product. Next, you can attempt to break this record in some type of public forum. Such a bold move will certainly garner attention and, as long as you avoid making a spectacle of yourself, attract positive publicity from at least a few media hounds that gather to witness the event. Another strategy would be to sponsor a local event or sports team. The coverage the event or team draws will provide your company name with publicity.
Along the same vain, you may want to support a local charity or philanthropic group that in some way applies to what you are trying to sell. If you don’t have the capital to make a straight donation to such a cause, try giving out a percentage of your monthly sales as part of a promotion. Ideally, this will give customers added incentive to buy your producdt. You can then advertise your generosity by placing information about the charity on your product if possible.
Another way to get your product known is to send out a bi-monthly or monthly form of literature to serve as advertisement for your business. Given the continuing trend toward visual communication, you can try sending out a photo book instead of the traditional flyer or newsletter. Promoting your business through photo books could be a very effective way of displaying your products as well as separating yourself from the crowded marketplace. Online photo book sites like MemoryEscape.com allow you to upload images, select distinctive templates and backgrounds, and choose a personalized cover – all in a matter of minutes. A retailer, for example, may include photos of their newest products, and even add some copy mentioning promotions or coupons. If your business provides a service rather than a product.g. hair salon, photography studio, etc), a photo book is a great way of informing your customers of updates while providing them with visual images that stand out from the rest. If you find yourself struggling to come up with ideas, MemoryEscape.com has an entire page devoted to ways one can use photo books to promote one’s business.
With the advent of social networking sites, it behooves the savvy business owner to encourage open dialogue between the company and its customers. Your website can serve as an optimal forum for such dialogue. By creating an area specifically designed for customer feedback, you can show your commitment to your customers and learn new ways in which you can improve your business. This should be a type of forum where customers can ask you questions as well as interact with one another.
While new forms of marketing continue to emerge and others are replaced, one technique that will never become obsolte is giving away free products/services to customers. Such items range can range from pens to hats – virtually any free merchandise will work as long as your company name and information are printed on it. It is vital, however, to make sure the item will be useful to your customer. Also, try to make the object something relevant to your company. For example, it you own a hair salon, give away combs, brushes, or samples of hair styling products.
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How To Make Money Online By Sharing Videos
by: Joel Teo
Making money online by sharing videos on the Internet may seem too good to be possible, but it does work. There are several websites, including some very popular ones, that will pay you to upload videos and allow them to be played on websites. Some of these websites demand exclusive videos that you personally own, but some of these websites allow videos that have been posted elsewhere. If you have a lot of videos stored, or you can take a lot of interesting video, then this may be a great way for you to make money online.
The reason that a lot of these sites pay you to share videos is to draw more traffic to the sites that are full of ads. When you share videos on certain websites, the revenue that is generated by the traffic clicking on the ads is divided between you and the website, or you and the advertiser. You make money by sharing your videos, and the site gets interesting content that will help draw traffic to the site and the ads. Some of the more common programs that pay you to upload videos and share them are Flixya, YouTube, Metacafe, Associated Content, and VuMe.
Some of these sites require you to register for a Google Adsense account, but they also offer a personalized URL for your use in sharing videos and ads. It is important to understand any restrictions on the photo uploads, because some of the websites require you to submit only exclusive videos, unlike Flixya, which allows videos to be shared from any source that is available to you, and allows the same videos to be posted anywhere on the web. This means that you can post these videos on more than one site, which can help increase your income from making money online by sharing videos.
When sharing videos online to make money, it is important that you understand the regulations of the websites and the advertisers. Know whether video postings must be exclusive to that site. Some sites require a Google Adsense account, so make sure you know about this requirement as well. Make sure that your shared videos are appropriate for the audience as well. Do not post any graphic or obscene videos, as this may get you banned and cost you money. Also remember to continue to market your web page to increase traffic, because more traffic means more ads clicked, which means more income for you.
Flixya.com is another website that will pay users to upload videos. The payment method works similar to most other paid-to-upload sites; they split the advertising with you. So, the more popular your videos are, the greater potential you have to earn money.
Your submissions to Flixya are nonexclusive, as well, so you can post the same videos on YouTube, Associated Content, VuMe, and Metacafe.
Before you get started, you are going to need to open a Google Adsense account. Flixya pays you by rotating your Adsense publisher ID with their's 50/50. Half the times ads are displayed on your page, you earn the revenue. I am going to assume that everyone already know what Adsense is and how to sign up for an account, but just incase you don't, I will briefly explain it. It's really simple, just go to the Google Adsense website and follow the instructions for creating a publisher account. Google will ask you to submit a URL for the site you will be displaying ads on, just use your Flixya URL.
The next step, of course, is to start uploading videos. One of the great things about Flixya, is that you don't have to submit original content. You can use any video from sites like YouTube and MySpace. A lot of other sites that pay for videos require that you only submit original content, which makes it difficult to not only submit a large quantity of videos, but to also ensure your videos will be popular. The fact that Flixya allows you to share any video makes it easy to contribute content that will be well liked and get lots of views.
Copyright © 2007 Joel Teo. All rights reserved.
About The Author
Joel Teo writes on various financial topics including Las Vegas Real Estate. Learn more about Las Vegas Real Estate Investing at http://www.realestateinvestment101.info
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4 Dynamic Ways to Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking
by: David Wilkins
Whether you're standing before an audience of businesspeople or your classmates, the effect is the same. All of your preparation flies out the window, your knees knock together and you must force yourself to take the stage. Public speaking is a terrifying experience for most people, but it need not be. Most people would rather have a root canal performed than speak in front of a group of people. However, performing well in this environment is not as difficult as it sounds. In fact, it can be an enjoyable experience once you get past your fear of public speaking.
To succeed in the corporate world and to some extent your own personal world, overcoming your fear of public speaking is essential. Which poses the questions: How do you get past this seemingly insurmountable obstacle? How do you bury that fear deep in your heart and not let it overwhelm your defenses? How do you survive such a ghastly ordeal?
1. It’s Not as Bad as It Seems
The very first thing you need to understand is that it is not as bad as it seems. You are focusing on the bad things, the things that might happen or could happen that would make you seem foolish or unprepared, that would make your audience laugh in derision, rather than in good humor. Such fears are natural, but baseless. The audience is not there to laugh at you; they have no desire to pick apart your performance looking for absurdities. They have come to hear you speak. They believe you have valuable information to impart and they want to know what you have to say. They obviously place a great deal of value on your opinion and expertise; else, they would have found somewhere else to go.
2. Everyone Experiences a Fear of Public Speaking
Everyone experiences a fear of public speaking, no matter how experienced a speaker they might be. This is important to understand – everyone feels the same fear, the same trepidation. Everyone gets the same butterflies in their stomach and experiences the same sweat-slicked palms; even those with years of experience under their belts still succumb to the fear of public speaking. So what does this tell you? It tells you two things: first, the fear you feel is natural and nothing of which to be ashamed. Second, it tells you that you are not alone and if you work through it, you can reap tremendous rewards.
3. You are the Expert – You were Chosen to Speak for a Reason
Perhaps you have the most in-depth understanding of a particular product's features. Perhaps you are responsible for developing and implementing new techniques with wide-ranging ramifications. Maybe you are the only person who understands your company's new product/service and must explain how it works to potential investors or even to company sales reps. Regardless of the reason, you are the expert – it was no mere accident you were chosen to speak at this event. You have important, vital, unique information to impart, which brings enormous value to your audience. This is your chance to share your information, so that alone should help you resolve your fear for public speaking.
4. Understand the Value You Bring to the Table
Once you understand the value you bring to the table, the rest of the process is very simple. While overcoming that fear of public speaking might seem impossible, you can use numerous techniques to help you move past it. For instance, meditation-style breathing techniques, used before you take the stage, will help slow your racing heart and stem the flood of adrenaline surging through your body.
Remember that the audience is likely not going to notice your sweating palms or your nervousness; in many ways, fear of public speaking is simply all in your mind. Having a positive mindset and the right outlook on the event will help you move past this fear. Remember, you are the expert here, take that to heart, and all else will fall into place and you can confidently deliver your engaging speech.
About The Author
David Wilkins has put together a complementary 20 page report full of simple and effective ways to reduce your fear of public speaking, which will help you quickly deal with and solve any anxiety issues. To download it instantly visit: http://www.publicspeakingmentor.com/banishfearreport.html
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Rules for Happy Harmonious Relationships
by: Garry Jacobs
Complaining aggravates the behavior it seeks to cure. Lose the ability to complain.
The less you react, the less cause and provocation you will have for reaction.
Disengage yourself from every conflict as soon as possible.
Give your partner the benefit of the doubt, always, at all times.
A touch of patience dissolves disharmonies. Genuine patience comes from knowing oneself.
Avoid cynical humor, teasing and sarcasm in the guise of being funny. They are like acid rain that poisons the flowers in a luxuriant rain forest.
Never attribute ulterior motives to your partner, even when you feel justified.
The capacity to completely forget a problem is the way to overcome it forever. Let go of the grievances of the past without trace.
Whenever you are very sure you are right, take your partner's point of view. You will always discover a truth in it that should be honored.
Being right and having your way are the triumph for ego, which destroys relationships. Be generous, considerate, loving and self-giving
The more you try to improve yourself and the less you try to change your partner, the better your relationship will become.
Acknowledge your partner's feelings and perceptions, without judgment or criticism.
Undivided personal attention fosters intense affection.
Taking 100% responsibility for making the relationship better without expecting anything of your partner is the best way to evoke your partner's fullest cooperation.
Learn to cherish the differences between you and your partner.
No act is too small or insignificant to serve as a means for expressing affection.
Don't take anything for granted. Give full credit to your partner where it is due, even for the smallest happy occurrence.
Silent Will is more effective than the spoken word. When you intensely want something from your partner, will for it silently rather than asking in words.
Listen to your partner's silences. Respond with understanding, acceptance and affection.
Gratitude is a spiritual emotion that brings more of what we feel grateful for.
About The Author
He has been working in Pondicherry, India since 1973, where he is Vice-President of MSS Research, the social science research division of The Mother's Service Society, engaged in research on issues related to peace and development, including strategies to for economic growth, employment, agriculture, knowledge dissemination, education, technology transfer and credit. He was a member of the Indian Planning Commission’s Task Force on Vision 2020 and editor of its report.
He was elected a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science in 1995, elected to the Board of Trustees in 2005 and is also Chairman of the Academy’s Standing Committee on Peace and Development.
He is also Executive Director, International Center for Peace & Development, Napa, California (www.icpd.ord), the successor organization to the International Commission on Peace & Food (ICPF), which conducts research on strategies to promote global peace and development. From 1989 to 1994, He was Member-Secretary of ICPF, convener of ICPF’s working groups on Employment and on Transition in Eastern Europe, coordinator of the ICPF research team that evolved a strategy to generate 100 million new jobs in India, and editor of the Commission’s report to the UN entitled UNCOMMON OPPORTUNITIES: Agenda for Peace and Equitable Development.
Jacobs is author of several books on business management and development.
He has a BA in psychology from the University of California.
http://www.romanceeternal.org/
4 Simple Secrets for NetMarketing Success
by: J.L. Campbell
Starting an internet based business when you have zero marketing experience is, to say the least, bewildering. I speak from personal experience as I started out with no specialized knowledge. I gradually weaved my way through what seemed like hundreds of sites selling just about everything and tried to resist buying every white elephant that was offered.
In the interim, I purchased my first package which turned out to be of little practical use. While I was doing that, I somehow went off in another direction and bought another “package deal”, hardly stopping to think that I did not have the requisite skill and knowledge to make this programme work either.
To cut a direct path through the dense forest, I’ll tell you now that I spent much more that I originally intended. Thankfully, I learnt a few lessons along the way.
1. Stay Focused
It is easy to become swamped and distracted trying to run several programmes at the same time, on zero experience. Leave diversification to the pros until you have garnered some experience and at least have some sales/profit (whichever you prefer) from your first venture. Needless to say, you will find yourself floundering around aimlessly, watching your money burn, having done no research before making a purchase. If you feel a burning urge to buy anyway, read the material again, do some research, sleep on it and then make a decision. Twenty-four hours delay won’t kill you and remember, one venture at a time.
2. Allow some “Opportunities” to pass you by
As God is my witness, I believe I became a member of at least fifty programmes that promised me anything from “massive profits” to “dramatic sales explosion, traffic, profit, great downlines”….you get the idea. Unless you have twenty-four dedicated hours to spend on your e-business each day, you cannot market all these web sites; and without the ability to create traffic to each site (and you get one for just about every programme you join), you are back where you started. …And, by the way, did I mention the sea of email from other members? That’s right, I didn’t get beyond the hype at the top of the sales page either. So then, limit yourself to a manageable number of traffic generation ventures. Better to pay for leads or hits even if on a tight budget than to try to do the impossible. Allow some opportunities to pass you by. If they are too good to be true, they are!
3. Free Information….A hidden gold mine
I have hundreds of pages of free information (yes, I have printed them out, this works for me) received when I bought something or subscribed to an ezine. I have two words of advice…Use them! They are valuable, even if you have to wade through tons of information for a few golden nuggets. If your business is to grow, you have to be learning constantly. If all else fails, you can always rebrand the books, give them away to your subscribers or make some money from them by reselling the information. I read somewhere that a great percentage of ebooks remain unread by those who receive them. What a shame! Do your best to use that information, it is there to help you get ahead.
4. Keep at it, Rome was not built in a day
If you (1) stay focused on one or two manageable ventures, (2) channel your marketing energies wisely (pay where you can and forget the freebies), (3) read the complimentary material you get and (4) develop some stick-to-itiveness, you will eventually begin to see rewards from your investment. You may never make millions, but you will at least derive a steady income from your efforts.
Any questions or comments about this article, feel free to contact me at articles@ebizentrepreneur.com
About The Author
E-biz Home Business Resource is hosted online by J.L. Campbell and is a valuable, creative tool used by people starting an online business as well as the experienced entrepreneur. Get your *FR*EE* subscription today at ebiz-netrepreneur@getresponse.com or visit http://www.ebiz-netrepreneur.net to embark on your e-business voyage to success.
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When Self-Growth becomes Self-Sabotage
by: Marie-Pier Charron
Many of us invest quality time and energy into our personal development. We buy inspiring books, sometimes with the workbooks or journals that complement them. We discuss psychology with our friends – or we look for friends with whom we can have open discussions on the subject. There is activity in our mind – at times a little bit of confusion. We encounter so many different lines of thoughts, so many tools, so many exploratory exercises we can do. It’s as if we were in the middle of a dense, majestic forest…
Then, maybe it happened to you, you reach a point where you don’t feel satiated anymore after reading the hot new self-improvement book…The workshop just feels like another workshop… Philosophical discussions feel more like empty calories…It’s not that your head is full: it’s more that you are hungry. You are hungry, because you have tasted - sometimes chewed – the wisdom you have read or heard, but you haven’t digested and integrated it. Don’t we benefit from relaxing and taking a break after a good meal?
I think none of us have ever seen, written in the back of a book, “You don’t need to read me – all the wisdom is within you”. No publisher would be so open-minded (or masochist)… Besides, we are the ones who have to figure out for ourselves how we can best use the resources available to us – how we can use them to connect to our own inner wisdom, inspirations, intuitions. Other people’s insights are guiding lights. We don’t need a zillion guiding lights, in fact we get lost if we are surrounded by too many of them – they point in too many different directions. Their role is simply to show us possibilities, which we can consider… and once we have chosen something to be our truth, we close the book, we turn the light off, and we get in touch with our own inner guidance.
One simple concept can drastically change our life. It can be, “Love yourself ”, it can be, “Be all that you can be”, or “Fear is an illusion”... But none of these makes real sense, no concept will truly transform our life, if it’s not integrated in every cell of our body, if it doesn’t feel as tangible as if it came from us in the first place. We keep reading and listening to “teachers”, and “experts”; but who’s the best expert, when it comes to you, or when it comes to me?
I believe nothing in self-growth has to be hard and complex. You can sit in silence, you can look inside yourself with wide open eyes, and you will “see”, or feel, the precise wisdom you need at that exact moment. It’s not always exactly what we want to hear – in fact, often it’s not, so we refuse to accept it – but sometimes that’s what self-growth is about, that’s what we really need to bring ourselves to the next level. That being said, it’s easier sometimes to face a book, or another person, than it is to truly face and accept ourselves. And let’s acknowledge the fact that we often prefer complicated answers, and techniques.
“Self-sabotage” is a strong word… What I tried to convey with the provoking title is that, at some point, the energy we dedicate to self-growth resources may better serve us (in terms of self-growth) if we invest it elsewhere: in introspection… in basic down-to-earth actions… in meditations… or maybe in fun things…
Sometimes we have an endless to-do list that causes us major stress, and instead of simply doing what must be done, we will read a book on relaxation, do yoga, or else… Sometimes we are a little gloomy, we just need to loosen up, laugh, and have fun… but we will attend a workshop on a subject we think will provide us answers. Not that it won’t! Obviously, none of this is “bad” – sometimes it may even be the most constructive things to do… but what I’m highlight here is that sometimes, it’s may not. Finally, I guess my point is: “self-growth can be everything, you have access within yourself to all the wisdom there is, and you are magnificent beyond what you can imagine”.
About The Author
Marie-Pier Charron is founder of Implosions, and editor of a monthly newsletter filled with practical tips and empowering strategies. To get your own free subscription, visit her at http://www.implosions.net
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Selling Tips: How to Serve Your Customers by Selling to Them
The used car salesmen in white shoes and belt with a loud plaid jacket has become an archetype of selling. As a result, you may -- like me -- have tended to keep sales in the closet, depending on the admiration of your network and the kindness of strangers to bring in revenue. Do you do your best to provide value without asking for reciprocity? Do you write newsletters, blog, offer complimentary introductory session or other benefits to prospective clients but back away from selling to them? How thoughtful. How generous. How unhealthy. Yes, unhealthy. Because when you don't invite your customers to reciprocate, when you don't issue clear, open, and regular invitations to buy, you consign your business to a kind of financial anorexia. The person suffering from anorexia has a distorted body image, and can languish and even die from starvation, while being convinced that they are fat. What's more, they are convinced that being fat is a fate worse than death (literally). FINANCIAL ANOREXIA Do you have a distorted image of what it would mean to profit from serving others? Would it be okay with you if people saw your business thriving? Or do you cling to the notion that somehow starvation is a more artistic or enlightened path? Heaven forefend that your clients or customers would think you are in business for the money!
And of course, you aren't in business for the money any more than a healthy adult lives to eat. Yet, your business needs money just as certainly as you need food, and the more up front, clear, and effective you are at selling, the healthier your business and your relationships with your customers.
Sounds good in principle, but how do you sell effectively without pressuring your customers and alienating your audience? Keep reading.
SELLING TO SERVE
Your customers and clients -- like you -- have a lot more on their minds than whether or not your work can help them. They could be crying out for what you offer, but distracted by slings and arrows of everyday fortune: leaky plumbing, aging parents, boomerang kids -- the list goes on and on.
In order to help them, you'll need to open your mind to selling. How do you keep selling from co-opting your values and your vision? The answer is to build service into sales and vice versa.
TIPS FOR SELLING THAT SERVES
Begin with the end in mind. Stephen Covey had this one exactly right. (If you haven't read his classic 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, it's well worth your time.) Before you sell anything to anyone, remember why you are going to do it.
This first key is the most important. If it is missing, you will run out of steam before you even begin the sales process.
Remember the archetype of the white-shoed car salesman*? It runs deep, and unless you consciously establish the service foundation for selling every time you write copy or tell someone about your work, you risk getting blind-sided by shame. And guess what? As soon as shame starts to burble up in you, your customers pick up on it. Yuck!
Walk a mile in their shoes. What do your "just-right" customers need to know in order to make a decision? What could get in the way? What are the stakes if they fail to act?
How many couples would not be together today if one partner hadn't been willing to hang in there when the other hesitated? If the course of true love doesn't run smooth, why would the course of deciding to buy something that's a good fit?
When you stand in your just-right customer's shoes for a while, you'll see what steppingstones they might need in order to buy something that will truly serve them.
Are those steppingstones for everyone? Of course not. Is that a problem? No, and to find out why not, keep reading.
Dance with no as well as yes. When you are clear about who you are serving and how, open your heart even wider so that people who don't need what you offer or who are not ready to buy, are free to decline. Rather than arming yourself against someone's decision not to buy, open yourself to it.
Imagine a prospective client or customer considering and then deciding against your offer. Watch them closely in your mind's eye without pretending to know what they are thinking. Just watch.
When you let go of what you think that they think about you, what do you see? Do you notice that they are simply taking care of themselves as best they know how? Good. Now notice how your heart eases as you unhook your self-esteem from their choices.
This heart's ease completes the circuit from intention to serve to decision to sell to blessing all of your prospects whether or not they decide to buy. Selling becomes a conversation in which you advocate for those folks who want and can benefit from your work so that they can notice, consider, and decide.
*By the way, I love my car salesman, DJ Dougherty at Peninsula Subaru here on the Kitsap Peninsula. Why? Because he served me in every step of the sales process. Two and a half years after buying "Blanche" from him, I still tell everyone I know about how happy I am with my car and with the process of buying it. How would it be if your customers told their friends about you because they loved the way you sold to them?
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Read more selling tips and articles on price setting on Molly Gordon's website and cast a fresh eye at your pricing strategies.
Article Tags: Selling Tips
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Molly Gordon, MCC, is a leading figure in business coaching, writer, workshop leader, a frequent presenter at live and virtual events worldwide, and an acknowledged specialist on small business marketing. Read Molly's articles on to find out what makes good customer service, and how to serve your customers without burnout, and, while on the site, don't forget to join 12,000 readers of her Authentic Promotion® ezine and receive a free 31-page guide on effective self promotion.
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What is Spirituality
by: Vincent Laurie
What is spirituality? The definition for "Spirit" is; the part of the human being associated with the mind, will and feelings. Think about this word for a minute. We often use the word as encouragement toward another for example, "lifting ones spirit". We want to relate this word to a peace within. The word spirituality does not mean to be religious or self-righteous. Spirituality is used as a tool for those who accept its belief. Spirituality defines us as who we are in the mind, what our will (choice) is and how we feel because of our choices.
From the time I was thirteen until I reached twenty-one; I was living a life of unmanageability. I was partying with my friends and doing everything there was to do that was not beneficial to me such as drinking, hanging out with the wrong crowd and using drugs occasionally to take my mind off the hurt I was feeling inside. I was damaged. Damaged so much that I could not see any other way but the way I was living in order to cope with my inner self. Through this spiritually sick period, I knew there was a God but didn’t care to understand him. I was very resentful, bitter and angry.
Deeply wounded, I turned away from the very thought of a spiritual anything. My wounds were so deep that it consumed me and my life became dark and meaningless. I had struggled with being sexually abused as a child, verbally abused and neglected by my parents, my parents hating each other, having a child of my own, being a single parent, getting out of an abusive unhealthy and unstable relationship , losing loved ones to tragedy, etc. Every day I escaped my pain by blaming, escaping and not resolving. The reason for me doing the things I did was always someone else’s fault (so I thought at the time). When I felt my lowest, I called God’s name. As soon as I felt better, I started my patterns all over again. This cycle repeated for years and all the while my spirit was infected and I didn’t recognize it. I did not understand what spirituality was. It was difficult for me to think of anything else but what I was going through and all the while God was watching me. But, I needed to be defeated before I was willing to accept it. The more I tried to cope the more defeated I became and the more lost I ended up feeling.
Spirituality is powerful, preserving the capability to lean and rely on something greater than ourselves to help us in times of trouble or affliction. Each one of us has a spirit inside. Our minds induce our will to make choices. If our minds are corrupted with self- destruction, confusion, sadness, rejection, fear, isolation, abandonment, insecurities, low self worth etc. our mind then influences us to have the desire to make wrong choices. When we choose to do wrong things then our feelings begin to thrust like a motor, where we are then left feeling worse then we started off. Leaving us feeling depressed, angry, bitter, resentful, oppressed, tired, unmotivated with no ambition or drive to want better for ourselves.
In order to weigh our emotional level, the question we must ask ourselves is, "how is our mind, will and feelings?" In order to begin an emotional recovery we must be willing to admit that our spirit has been broken. Since we now recognize that we have a spirit, we must now realize that our spirit has been afflicted some way or somehow. In times of distress or turmoil our spirit begins to grieve, leaving us feeling sad, low, depressed even angry, bitter or resentful. Our mind begins to flourish with negative thoughts, telling us how bad our situation or circumstances are. Our mind is a vessel for corrupted thinking. The mind plays tricks on us to the point where we begin to believe that our situation is going to get worse and not better. Before we know it, we begin a pattern of behavior that becomes destructive to our spirit or our “inner peace”. If this thinking continues, eventually our emotions will affect the body physically with illness, discomfort or heaviness. Destructive behavior will then lead to affecting other’s that are around us leaving them to feel confused, angry, bitter or upset. This type of thinking is a lie and this lie begins to weigh deep on our spiritual peace, damaging our spirit to the point where we begin to lose hope and want to give up.
After years of going through the motions of trying to escape from my own problems, I became so out of control where I didn’t even know how to think anymore. The only thing I knew was that I was tired of being tired and wanted so badly for my “mess” to go away. In order for it to go away, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was the one who created it. No one would speak to me because they were afraid of my responses. I became very isolated because I was unwilling to process my pain. When I became isolated, I started to realize that everyone around me is affected badly by my behavior and my actions. If this was so, then I realized that something must be wrong with me. If everyone responded to me the same then there must have been something really wrong with me. The more I meditated on this thought the more depressed I had become. I began to lose hope and wanted to give up. I wanted to go to sleep and not wake up. Not only was I causing myself pain on top of the pain I was feeling but the people around me were feeling it too. Nothing to me was worse than feeling alone. I didn’t think anyone could understand me. No matter how hard I tried to blend in, I had always felt different. I felt like my life was under a microscope and in order to deal with it, I chose to be alone and further distanced myself from my family and close friends. I was angry all the time and most of all afraid of what my family thought about me. I thought that their expectations of me were too high and instead of trying to meet them, I defied everything they wanted for me and opposed to anything that they suggested. I became cold and numb after a while, repressing all of my inner turmoil so that I could function throughout the day. When I was alone at night, my thoughts ravaged me to the point where I needed to escape all over again. I went through bouts of crying and screaming. Some days I would sleep for twelve hours or more and when my eyes opened I struggled to get out of the bed. I had no energy or motivation to do anything.
What most do not recognize is that when we get to the point where we want to give up, we still have the choice to either allow our circumstances to consume us or take action by not allowing our circumstance to get the best of us? Choice is vital when we are feeling spiritually broken because we can either regain our spiritual sanity or obtain spiritual insanity. Either choice is our responsibility and when it comes down to that choice no one is to blame but us. Regardless of the situation or circumstance that may have affected our spirit, we still have the choice to make it better or make it worse for ourselves.
How do we deal with our circumstances so that our spirit maintains its sanity and peace? Go to http://www.thebooksociety.net for the full version of this amazing e-book titled "How You Can Change Society and the World We Live IN." Thank you from members@thebooksociety.net This ebook includes: How a women struggled and found help from http://www.thebooksociety.net
About The Author
Vincent Laurie is Christian that wants to spread the word of spirituality to society to improve the lives of others. After many years of struggle and confusion and lost faith. I have finally come to the conclusion that without spirituality we are dead. Our lives must maintain a spiritual awakening and we need help from each other to accomplish this. The spirit needs to be feed just like our bodies and we can't do it alone. That is why I created thebooksociety.net for members to voice there options and share with others valuable ebooks to promote a healthy and happy life. We have done much research and collect data to promote the best e-books. Our goal is to promote the world!
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Bob Proctor's Six Minutes to Success Review
By: Robert QuadraAbout the Author
The People Behind Six Minutes to Success
Six Minutes to Success is an idea conceived by one of Bob Proctor's business associates Lanny Morton. Lanny is a success story having built a million dollar business on eBay selling baseball bats. He attributes his success to the teachings of a few mentors, Bob Proctor being his main inspiration. Today Bob Proctor and Lanny Morton are business partners with the Six Minutes to Success program and other Joint Venture products. Bob Proctor is a very well known self-improvement and motivational speaker with many programs and courses that have helped thousands of people over the years. He is also one of the stars featured in the movie, The Secret.
What is Six Minutes to Success?
This program is a series of 2 -3 minute videos from Bob Proctor that deliver a daily message Monday through Friday on success principles. The messages take you through various phases of thought processes that help you find your purpose, vision, goals and practical applications for their achievement. After each video Bob gives you an exercise to complete that takes the remainder of time to give you your 6 Minutes to Success.
When you get first exposed to this program, Bob Proctor offers you a free test drive for 7 days. If you decide to continue with the program, you are charged $39 a month. Bob encourages you to remain with the program for 1 year and guarantees that if you apply what you learn in these daily 6 minutes, that you will see a significant change to the better in your personal and financial life. He says in his first series of free videos, "Because I know that this will change your life, you do not have to believe. I have the belief for you, and you will develop your own convincing belief."
Is Six Minutes to Success Worth The Money?
This answer depends on your individual needs and purpose in life. If you are not happy with your current situation, the free look is definitely worth a try. I subscribe to Bob and Lanny's Six Minutes to Success and do not have any negative critique after five months. At this point, I think there is value in a success program structured in daily video snippets and exercises. When you consider that you will form a habit of watching and listening to success principles for 5 days of every week for 12 months, your mind will have to form success habits. Each exercise is action oriented and it becomes inevitable that for the committed person to their own success, Six Minutes to Success should indeed help a person realize their financial and personal goals in life.
About the Author
Success in life requires that you form proper mindset and success habits. Six Minutes to Success gives a great program to form success habits. Visit my blog for more on Six minutes to Success and ideas on personal and financial abundance.
http://robertquadra.com/about
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The Truth About Success
Success is generally defined as a favorable or satisfactory outcome or result. Whatever you do in your life, you get results. Whether or not those results are the ones you desired, is basically whether you succeeded or failed in your endeavors. Success is often defined as the gaining of wealth, fame, rank and so on. However, in the most general terms, success is the the continuous realization of the outcomes or results you desire.
On the physical level, success is often seen as specific material accomplishments—a particular type of car, home, status, or income level. However, once the car, home or other material possessions are obtained, there is no further growth in understanding, wisdom, or consciousness. Those who operate on this material level of success generally become consumed with maintaining those possessions that represent their success.
When success is understood on a spiritual level, it is seen as a progressive realization of a worthwhile purpose. You continue to grow and develop in all aspects. On a spiritual level, success is the continuous unfolding of your purpose and destiny.
True success is the progressive, continuous effort of attaining your goals and realizing your vision. This guides you to your worthwhile purpose in life.
Success Must Be In Your Mind First
Success starts in your own mind. Constantly have a concept and vision in your mind of what success means to you.
“You become what you think about most of the time.”
—Earl Nightingale
Be Constant In Your Efforts
Never take a break from your success journey. Do not stop for rest and reward too soon. When you stop at the first sign of success, you become stagnant, lazy, and begin to decline. As your efforts begin to produce rewards and results, work even harder. Success and achievement come only through continuous work. The only place that success comes before work is in the dictionary.
Get Away From The Crowd At The Bottom
One of the most difficult steps you will face on your success journey is getting away from the crowd at the bottom. There are many unsuccessful, mediocre people who have failed to recognize, or act on their true potential. If you constantly associate with them, your success journey will be short-lived. You must clear the deck to make room for new associations which will complement and enhance your success efforts.
Once you break away from the mediocre crowd, accept the temporary state of loneliness and prepare for your success.
Be Willing To Change Your Life Completely
You must be willing to change your life completely. Make your life congruent with, consistent with, and harmonic with your desired success. Is there anything about the way you think or feel about yourself that will frustrate your success efforts? If so, handle it immediately. Do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to become the person that you must be, to accomplish your goals and realize your vision.
Every day, in every way
I’m getting better and better
Visit our website: www.lifeskillinstitute.org
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How To Build A Website
Matthew Coers
There are three steps to building your site: Purchase a “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) HTML editor such as Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage. Create the web pages using your editing program FTP the files to your web-server. HTML Editors The top HTML editors for beginners are: Adobe GoLive ($399.99 on Amazon) Macromedia Dreamweaver ($389 on Amazon) Microsoft FrontPage ($170.99 on Amazon) All of these editing programs allow beginners to develop web pages using templates and WYSIWYG ease similar to programs like Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. You simply create or select a pre-made template for your website, type your content into the page on your screen, and hit the save button. All three of these programs ship with instructions that are designed to help even the most novice web user to create a relatively professional looking website.
The only thing you need to take into consideration is to make sure that if you are using Microsoft FrontPage, that you go with a web-hosting company that supports FrontPage extensions. Most do, so you probably won’t have a problem finding one. Create Web Pages Exactly how you create your site will depend on the specific editor you use, however the process of all editors is remarkably similar. Select or create a template for your site. If you have graphic design skills, you may choose to create something from scratch. Most beginners just use one of the many pre-developed templates that come with their editing program. You can also purchase templates from third party vendors. Create the pages for your site and type the text directly into the pages.
The content will appear on the screen similar to the way it will appear in the final website. Insert any graphics you will use for your site. In general, you should keep these to a minimum because each graphic you put into your page increases the download time. Also, you don’t want too many animated gifs or flashy stuff on the page - they make the page appear unprofessional. Test the site as you go. All editors contain a preview capability that will let you see the page in a web browser exactly as your visitors will see it. It is also a good idea to test your pages using multiple browsers since there is some variance as to how different browsers interpret HTML code.
You should design your site to work effectively with the top three browsers. The top three browsers on the internet today are: Microsoft Explorer (Download) Firefox (Download) Netscape (Download) The most important thing in building web pages is to start doing it. You may revise your site a number of times before you ever actually post it online. That’s ok, but recognize that it does take time to build a site – especially your first time out. It’s part of the learning curve and necessary to making sure you have thoroughly thought out each aspect of your site’s navigation and content. FTP Files to Your Website If you have not yet selected a web hosting company, then you may want to read our article, "Finding A Quality (And Affordable) Web Host".
This article will guide you through the process of finding a web host that satisfies your needs without costing you a fortune. When you purchased your web hosting service, your web host gave you FTP credentials consisting of the FTP site, user name and password for your account. You will use this information to put the pages you create online. GoLive, Dreamweaver and FrontPage all come with embedded FTP programs, so you can just enter your FTP credentials into their client and follow your program’s instructions to publish your pages.
There are times, however, when you may want to FTP files to your FTP server without using your development environment’s embedded FTP functionality. Therefore it’s a good idea to go ahead and set up a separate client for uploading things like images, pdfs, or other linked objects. Go online and download a free FTP program. Several free FTP clients you may choose to use: Leach FTP (Download) WSFTP (Download) Microsoft Explorer – Type the FTP location into the browser and then enter your credentials into the popup box. Install the program and then enter your FTP information into the connection screen. Once you have successfully connected to your FTP site, posting your web site is as easy as copying the files from your home computer to your website.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mr. Coers specializes in helping entrepreneurs build effective web businesses. His website, www.profitchoice.com contains useful articles and "how-to" guides to help organizations build their brands and sell more effectively.
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Affordable Web Hosting is great for the beginner website
In today’s world, the online real estate of websites has expanded exponentially. Web sites exists on virtually any topic imaginable, and the requirement to start up a site is not having a lot of money. With so many cheap web hosting providers out there, almost anyone can afford to start up a website, whether it be for personal or business reasons. Many may wonder if a cheap provider can give you what you need, and in this very competitive industry you definately can get what you need and then some.
A free domain name may be one of the offerings given by the provider to sweeten the deal. They will promote their cheap domain hosting services because they provide hosting packages for a good price while giving you the domain extra for free. This is a great deal for someone starting out or wanting a personal site, as the price is as good as can be. You will not find a free domain name with all providers, as some will choose to offer you a lesser price on the domain purchase, sometimes as low as two dollars. A potential problem with the free domain name providers offering hosting as a package is that if you choose to discontinue their hosting package, they will not renew your domain name for you and you will have to pay their full rate for renewals.
If your looking at the web hosting packages themselves, even the ones providing affordable web hosting will give you more than enough bandwidth and disk space than most customers will need. Knowing this, you only then will need to decide on the launguage support you need for your hosting. Depending on the applications you intend on hosting and the language they are written in, you will decide if PHP or ASP is the proper language you need. For those looking for barebones hosting where they do not require database or programming languages to run them, then you will likely want to opt for the cheaper Linux Shared hosting package to host your static HTML files.
Upon making your final selection, you will want to pick hosting that exceeds your bandwidth and disk space requirements, and supports running the files you plan to use. Since most providers with cheap hosting solutions can accomodate this, you would only need to purchase the higher costing solutions for special configurations.
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Benefits of Developing a Website
How can one actually determine how beneficial is a website for a certain business that is about to start? Well there are a lot of websites being administered at these times and they are available for different purposes. Through the internet, one can easily apply certain marketing principles and strategies to keep up with the competitive world right now.
One would be able to get access to creating a website and go through web development after a certain time for update of information. Another reason may pertain to individuals who are interested in gaining more profit to their business engages in web development to have their website changed for a certain time so it could be more useful in other terms. The web development process would include the changes on the website itself, optimization, design, layout and many more aspects to consider.Click here for the #1 Wordpress Theme Generator. Instantly create great looking and professional Wordpress Themes.
Web development through the years has been vast for all internet users. It was then before when the internet was only used as a huge database for information that serves as an alternative instead of going to national libraries just to seek information. Today {through websites and the features that are being added to it, the usefulness of internet has paved way to new technology and made it more entertaining, intriguing and fascinating to the users and the website viewers. Since most of us use the internet, this is what we call the big library of information and have everything researched through this.}
Aside from media, live interaction, marketing and promotion as well, web development specifically provides people to communicate with other people and have unlimited access to different resources that are available online.
You’re probably wondering how can a web be developed accordingly. To be more familiar with web development, a web developer should have knowledge of the following programming languages such as Flash, CMS and HTML. These are several examples of the languages being used for web development and they definitely are helpful in building websites.
So let’s say you will be seeking for help regarding a web development for a certain website that you own which may have been created before but is unfinished, who will you need to finish the job for you? Web development is either being assigned to individuals who are called web designers or web developers as well. These people provide their time in researching and applying the principles and their programming skills for the web development project that they will be working on.Learn more about the #1 Wordpress Theme Generator.
If you are searching for a web developer to finish the job for you, put in mind that you need to evaluate on how well-versed is this individual in this type of job before hiring the person, it’s better to make sure that he is familiar with what is needed for your web development project to work so he can start over to where the project has ended.
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Viral Marketing - The Power of Viral Marketing
Gary David
Viral marketing is a marketing strategy that relies on individuals rather than traditional campaigns to pass along a message to others. It usually refers to marketing on the internet. Viral marketing is so named because of the tendency for messages to use "hosts" to spread themselves rapidly, like a biological virus. The term "viral marketing" first became prominent when used to describe a marketing campaign for the e-mail service hotmail. When the company launched, every outgoing message contained an advertisement for hotmail and a link to its website at the bottom of the e-mail. As people e-mailed their friends and colleagues, they were also advertising the service. Recipients could simply click on the link and sign themselves up, and as they e-mailed friends from their new account, the message spread within existing social networks and was passed along with little effort from the company. This example demonstrates all the key elements of viral marketing. Instead, it takes advantage of existing resources by making everyone who uses the product an involuntary spokesperson. It exploits common behaviors, such as sending an e-mail. Viral marketing uses communications networks that are already in place.
It also includes using legitimate techniques like viral opt-in email, viral ebooks and reports, viral ecourses, and many more. Let's discuss some great examples of viral marketing. One of the the master of viral ebook marketing, has created an internet business empire using free and paid-for viral ebooks and e-reports. He creates ebooks and e-reports and then allows his affiliates and customers the ability to brand them with their own website and affiliate links. He also offers offers a monthly membership where he creates a great new ebook product each month. He then allows his members to brand the website links with their own affiliate program links. Creating viral ebooks and e-reports and distributing them to your affiliates and website visitors is one of the most effective ways to create viral traffic explosion on your website.
It is also a marketing campaign that will result in the multiplication of your branding and product/service sales. As it continues, it grows, and grows with your links or message and name being spread all over the internet. The more links back to you (or referrals sent out), the easier you will be found. Instead of "viral marketing" you may also say "online promotion that relies on your message being passed from person to person" without your direct involvement. Viral marketing is the internet term for what has been called "peer-to-peer," "word-of-mouth," "network marketing, "tell-a-friend", "refer-a-friend", "send-this-link" etc. First rule of viral marketing is to make sure you have the best quality, best value products to sell. If your products are good, your visitors will be encouraged to recommend it to their friends, who of course, in turn will feel confident to recommend it to their friends, etc. And the pyramid is slowly starting to build up. If your product is good and carries valuable information, you may not need to stimulate your visitors by offering any kind of reward. In most cases, however, your army of 'word of mouth' messengers will work harder and growth will follow a steeper curve, if there is a reward system implemented. Give away products or services and encourage you visitors to recommend you on to others.
Viral marketing is widely used because it can work wonders to a certain business. As long as the business owner knows that there is a unique substance to his product or service, then it is all up to the customers to talk the talk and work the work. Marketing, there are also some pitfalls that you should avoid so you can reap the advantages of viral marketing to the fullest. In viral marketing, you have to be at the right place at the right time. Your marketing will deteriorate if you do not research on your niche and the moves to target that niche.
Article Tags: Viral Marketing, Viral Ebooks
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Go from newbie to experienced marketer in the shortest time possible. Learn how to plan and discover your own unique selling point. The Newbie Fast Track Guide shows how to step up as an affiliate marketer, adsense advertiser, list builder, ebook seller, article marketer and many more. Have an access also to our monthly resale rights and PLR products that you can rebrand with sales page ready to promote.
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10 outstanding social networking websites
Social networking sites have changed the way of interacting with friends, businesses, family and other people and have also changed the method of generating income online which makes it very special.You can target new friends, old friends, family members and even new customers on the top ten best social networking sites.It is also possible for you to make new relationships and let your audience know about your offering.If you have never looked into social networking then it is time that you did.Get the perfect start from here, if you were wondering for the help for social networking.The top ten social networking sites and their offers are as follows.
1 – MySpace – If you are interested in meeting people online and interacting with them, this site can be helpful as this is the major general social networking website. By using Google Secret Loophole, you can connect with various people and make new relationships. Are you the one of the millions using MySpace?
2-Facebook- Another general social networking website, which is same as MySpace, is Facebook.Facebook is different and unique in many ways but to get good results you can be a member in both the sites.
3-YouTube- This social networking site gives you an opportunity to create a channel of self-uploaded video which you can share with other people.YouTube is an excellent way of forming relationships with the help of viral video marketing.
4-LinkedIn- LinkedIn social networking site gives you an opportunity to connect with your business professionals and other personnel.Incase you are looking forward to meet people related to your business this can be the best tool.
5- Twitter- Exploiting micro-blogging through twitter is considered by many people as it permits you to share micro-updates among the people who are interested in your profile.
6- Classmates- On such social networking sites you can meet your old friends or schoolmates and resume your friendship again.
7 – Xanga – This social networking site enables you to come in contact with people who have3 same interest throughout the globe through blogs, photos, videos and lot more.
8 – Squidoo – Squidoo is becoming popular really fast, allowing people to create their own personal websites called lenses about any topic under the sun.
9- MSN Groups – This MSN division allows people to network with other in many different ways to make a community and interact with each other.
10 – AOL Hometown- This website is produced by AOL and is same as MSN group.Being a community based sub division of AOL, this enable to come in contact with people throughout the world.
Except this ten there are other sites too.You can brand yourself all over the world by learning the terms of services for above mentioned as well as other social networking websites.Not just from a social standpoint but also from an internet marketing and business standpoint.Make use of best social networking sites that can serve you with your needs.
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Why Viral Website Promotion Is Critical To Your Website
Creativity is one virtue a site must possess to to be competitive in the Internet based business. Online competition can be fierce and therefor every method of internet marketing must be utilized.
While there are so hordes of different website platforms that need a high level of expertise to operate, there are still some internet ventures that might bge able to setup your website to receive more and more traffic. Viral Marketing is such an online marketing tool|Viral marketing is such a website marketing service. Viral marketing is not a computer virus. It was named that way because the viral marketing can spread that fast.
In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product.
Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates when they help in spreading their viral marketing. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketing gets from one person in determining the amount or number of incentive they can be attributed with. Your online business interest could be to set up your wordpress blog to give free doFollow backlinks or even if you are interested in knowing tips on how to do stuff, you should definately look into incorporating viral marketing in your online promotion strategies.
The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic that are potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.
Viral Marketing could be a sneaky way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along. They are also very low cost that not investing in it could be downright a business suicide. Many big companies have tried viral marketing and have had many success stories with it. A classic example is Microsoft’s Hotmail.
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Paid Traffic vs Free Traffic Through Social Media
With the increasing popularity of social media sites, the use of social traffic to drive visitors to sites, blogs or online stores is also gaining attention. Before the explosion of social media websites, such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, many online marketers focused on paid traffic in order to significantly boost the number of people visiting their websites. There really is nothing wrong with paid traffic strategies. These strategies can be very effective. However, they can be quite expensive. If you want your paid campaign to have an impact in your business, you may have to spend hundreds of dollars a day.
But with the social traffic solution, you will make use of social media sites that are free. It’s easy because all you need to do is spend some time participating in these websites. Create good quality materials so you can make use and maximize your traffic-enhancing strategies. Remember that not just because you have profiles and about a million friends on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and all other media sites, it still does not guarantee an increase in your web traffic. You need to know how to make your profile attractive to the people who matter, the ones that belong to your target market.
Another advantage of social traffic over paid traffic is the influence that you can gain in social media. As an influencer, you can affect people’s decisions on what to buy or what service to get. In order for your paid traffic to make a purchase from your site, you need to be able to infuence them to get it through huge discounts and a lot of other freebies. But with web traffic coming from social media sites, people learn about you through viral marketing or word of mouth. This means that Web users who go to your site are already partially convinced that your product or service is good because someone from their social media network recommended you.
There is no doubt that paid traffic solutions can effectively encourage people to go to your site. However, this marketing campaign is only good if you have money to pay. Once your funds run low and have no budget for PPC and banner ads, your traffic may follow suit. The effect of social traffic is a bit different. The efforts that you put in today may not have immediate effects on your traffic now, but it can definitely explode your online presence in the weeks or months to come. As long as you participate in social media communities and keep your profile on those sites, you will experience and increase in your web traffic.
Nathan Holland is the owner of AttractableMarketing.com.
He teaches how to generate free leads and drive targeted traffic to your website through social networking.
For Free Videos on increasing your website traffic through Social Networking, visit http://attractablemarketing.org
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