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Do you bristle when someone refers to you as shy – or offers to “fix” your little lack-of-a-social life problem? Have someone in your life you’re conce ed about because he or she spends just a little too much time alone? Read on!
I think it’s safe to say that anyone who’s taken the time to build a “Bucket List” of things to accomplish has included at least one trip of a lifetime. Exactly what a “trip of a lifetime” looks like depends in great part on the “why” behind that particular dream. It could mean . . . * Your one chance to do all the things you want to do on one trip * A place that, for whatever reason, you’ll never be able to go again * A trip that will change your life beyond the actual journey
Whether you are feeling overextended, overcommitted and overwhelmed, or just ready to free more time for summer, the following tips can help you take the first steps toward conquering your time crunched lifestyle find more time for "off the clock" fun. "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." ~ Peter F. Drucker
Delegation is one of the most powerful tools for effective time management, and it's also the most psychologically loaded. Relying on others can bring up deep-seated issues of dependency and trust. Many people, from managers at work to adults at home with a family, often fall into the trap of ‘doing everything.' You may think that you can do the task better, or faster, than anyone else can. Or you may simply not want to impose on anyone by asking for help. You may even do everything yourself because you feel guilty if you're not busy all the time!
Whether it comes in the form of a pile of unpaid bills, a contentious argument with your spouse, a worrisome health problem, or a traffic jam, stress is a part of everyday life. While some stress is inevitable, when your body repeatedly encounters a set of physiological changes dubbed the stress response, trouble can brew. Stress may contribute to or exacerbate various health problems, including these: high blood pressure, suppression of the immune system, headaches, insomnia and depression. The good news is it is possible to dismantle negative stress cycles.
By any standard, growing a small business is a balancing act. The clearer you are about your goals and the more organized you become with your marketing and sales efforts, the greater your chance for success. I hope this checklist will serve to inspire and support your efforts. 1) Never let a day pass without engaging in at least one marketing activity. 2) Keep an “inspiration” file where you can easily drop in clippings or ideas for later reference. 3) Carry business cards with you every day, ALL day. (They don’t any good in the box!)
New beginnings come in all shapes and sizes … maybe you’ve separated from your partner, lost a loved one, lost a job or a business you put your heart into building, experienced a health crisis, relocated to a new place, or simply experienced one of life’s periodic speed bumps. We all need to reinvent parts of our lives from time to time, in fact millions of us initiate various forms of New Beginnings on an annual basis - better known as New Year Resolutions.
Viral marketing campaigns can be exciting and if effective literally explode traffic to your website or blog. Following are a few ideas for types of products and services you can use for your campaign, but the first step in any marketing campaign is to determine your goal – what is it exactly that you want to achieve with this campaign. So, assuming you’re ready to go and have your goals in place, here are six ideas to help you start your first viral marketing campaign: 1.Purchase the branding rights to an E-book. There are two type of branding rights.
Once upon a time - not so long ago - social media was a new and interesting alte ative for progressive marketing plans. Oh how times have changed! Today, establishing a social media presence is no longer an option for any business intent on building an online presence, and that includes authors seeking to build a fan base. But, just like every other component of your author business plan, to make the most of your efforts and prevent it from needlessly sucking all of your time and energy, you need to develop your social media strategies - and stick to them. BEGIN WITH YOUR OBJECTIVES
The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery even when on a detour. No matter how well we plan, from time to time life presents us with an unexpected detour. There are even times, despite the most thoughtful and considerate planning, that you may find yourself right back where you started. When this happens, there’s a simple formula for turning things around … remember, it’s not what happens to you, it’s what you do about it. Rather than a cause for despair, such times provide an opportunity for renewed determination, re-commitment and maybe a slight detour.
The other day I came across a blog post about the term “Lifestyle” business. The writer asked readers to comment on whether they felt having their business referred to as “Lifestyle” would be an insult. I must admit I was stunned at the level of emotion displayed in the responses, with the comments split pretty evenly between pro/con. It seems there are a lot of people out there who feel pretty strongly that the “lifestyle” business concept is little more than a way of avoiding “real work.” Think they’re the minority?
Life is like a road. There are long and short roads; smooth and bumpy roads; crooked and straight roads. There will be roads that lead to fame and fortune on one hand, or isolation and poverty on the other. There are as many roads to happiness as there are roads to sadness.
Building self-confidence is one thing, getting your confidence back after a personal or professional calamity is a substantially different situation. FORGIVE YOURSELF Whatever experience or situation that caused you to lose your confidence needn’t have been your fault for you to be carrying around a load of embarrassment or guilt. It’s natural to feel that somehow you should have known, or been able to prevent the occurrence.
1. “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.” – Mark Twain 2. “There is no satisfaction that can compare with looking back across the years and finding you’ve grown in self-control, judgment, generosity, and unselfishness.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox 3. “People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.” – Thomas Szasz 4. “If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found.” – Anonymous
Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. Similar to a map, you need to define the following details: origin, destination, vehicle, backpack, landmarks, and route. Origin: Who you are
An article directory is a website that hosts hundreds of articles on various topics. When your articles are published in directories, people interested in your subject matter will have the opportunity to read them, and if they find the material useful they will then be able to visit your website in search of more information. 5 Benefits of Using Article Directories • Article directories tend to be established businesses, so they do very well with ranking because the search engines love businesses that have been around for a long time.
To make your dreams come true, visualize your goals as already complete in full color and in the most vivid details you can muster, and then allow yourself to f-e-e-l (fuel your emotions) it and you will “attract” your goals to you … or so the advice goes from self-help experts.
So you've done it . . . written your first eBook. Now you have to decide how much to charge for it. Charge too little and people will think it's of little value and they won't purchase it, or even if they do buy your book, you’ll have to sell thousands of copies to break even after all your hard work. Price it too high and you’ll end up having to steadily lower the price to get sales. Every customer has his or her personal price they would be willing to pay for your eBook. Do you know what your customer’s ideal price is? How many would not pay more than $10, $20 or $50 for it?
PLR refers to Private Label Rights, or the license that enables the holder of a product to alter or modify the contents of that product and even substitute his/her name as the author. There are pros and cons to using PLR content, but there is definitely a place for it in your business plan, if it's used correctly. PLR products are an affordable alte ative to actually creating your own goods. While there are many different types of PLR products, let’s take a look at PLR articles in particular since this is a product with endless potential.
Goals and dreams have the power to keep you young at heart well beyond your 50’s. Unfortunately very few people get much further than stating their goals and too often become trapped in the reality between their plan and the boundaries of their comfort zone. According to Psychology Today 45% of all Americans make at least one resolution a year. And nearly half of them break it within six months. For many of us the failure rate is within the first month. The good news is there are three specific steps you can take to greatly improve your chances of realizing your dreams and goals.
Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. GA is reportedly the most widely used website statistics service in the world today. Most online marketers currently use Google Analytics for basic stats to track the performance of their site. In fact, if you’re like most users, you very rarely venture far from the comfort of the reports shown on the dashboard.
Repeat traffic is the bread and butter of an online business. It’s one thing to get a visitor to your website; it’s another for them to stick around a while, and an even bigger deal for them to return. Why? Not every visitor to your website or blog will join your mailing list on the first visit. In fact consumers are more reluctant than ever about handing over their email address, especially to an unfamiliar company. Following are 11 Tips every website or blog developer can do to attract visitors and create the best possible experience for visitors to your site.
Every day of our lives we are faced with choices. It’s entirely up to each of us whether we choose a pessimist’s view and end up living a self-defeated life, or to take the optimistic route and create a challenging and fulfilling life. Optimism has been linked to positive mood and good morale; to academic, athletic, military, occupational and political success; to popularity; to good health and even to long life and freedom from trauma. OPTIMISTS EXPECT THE BEST
(Following is one of 101 Stories of Uncommon Women in History, told in honor of Woman’s History Month. Harriet Tubman, 1820–1913 "There's two things I got a right to and these are Death and Liberty. If I could not have one, I would have the other." ~ Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Bucktown, Maryland in 1820. Harriet began working at the age of 5 and by the age of 12, she was working as a field hand, plowing and hauling wood.
Email isn’t new and when it comes to making headlines in marketing newsletters and at industry events, email's not typically at the top of the list. According to a recent study conducted by Social Media Research firm ExactTarget, even without the glitz and glamour, the facts remain: More than 93% of online consumers are SUBSCRIBERS and have provided their email address to at least one company or brand. 88% of US online consumers check email daily and 94% use email at least once a week. BUILDING TRUST
Most bloggers start off strong, full of enthusiasm and more article ideas than they know what to do with. Then at some point reality rears its ugly head and they realize how much time and planning it’s going to take to grow a top-notch blog. Next thing you know you’re feeling like you’ve run out of steam, exhausted and dreading that looming deadline for your next article post. Factor in exte al pressures such as family, money and a job, and the result can be a full blown case of blogger burnout.
Most people view time management as little more than a list of rules that involves the scheduling of appointments, goal setting, planning, creating things to do lists and prioritizing. Taking a broader perspective, personal time management involves everything you do; with the ultimate desired outcome of creating a balanced life-style. To put it another way, personal time management is about achieving rewarding results, not about being busy. Following are the six specific areas of focus in personal time management:
Autoresponders are remarkable, versatile programs that do so much more than just automatically answer your email. Here are ten ideas that will help you to creatively and productively use your autoresponder to transform the casual visitor into a profitable customer. 1. Publish a newsletter for subscribers: Keep your readers informed about your services and products while building your reputation as a credible expert in your particular business.
Please allow me to first clarify that I am not involved in network marketing, so the intent of this article is not to pitch you on a business opportunity. I did however spend nearly a decade working for one of the largest direct sales companies in the world, so I’m very familiar with the business model.
The most important story you will ever tell about yourself is the story you tell to yourself. ~Jim Loeh, The Power of Story Whether you realize it or not, you are a master storyteller. You tell stories that explain where you’ve been and where you’re going, who you are and who you are becoming … you have stories about your day at work, about you as a father or mother, about the jerk who cut you off in traffic, how you lost your keys or found a $20 bill.
If you’re new to the wonderful world of web business, or haven't yet developed a email marketing strategy, it may help to explain that email marketing is using email to distribute your marketing messages. An autoresponder is a software or service that allows you to automate most, if not all of that process. There are many reasons to take advantage of autoresponders, following are the basics: • Turn anonymous website visitors into subscribers • Build relationships with your subscribers • Promote your products or services to targeted subscribers
1. “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.” – Mark Twain 2. “There is no satisfaction that can compare with looking back across the years and finding you’ve grown in self-control, judgment, generosity, and unselfishness.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox 3. “People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.” – Thomas Szasz 4. “If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found.” – Anonymous
Statistically, at least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. As the owner of a blog or website, why this matters to you is the higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the potential for traffic to be directed to your site. That's what search engine optimization is all about.
When was the last time you took an honest look at the life you’re in today? Does your life represent a path you’ve chosen for yourself? Is it based on your dreams and created by decisions you’ve made about how you want to live each day? Or did you simply happen into your current life as a result of circumstances. Maybe you’re living a good life, not all that you dreamed it would be, but it’s okay. After all a lot of other people have it tougher, right? There Are Two Ways to Live Your Life
How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses If you've not yet heard of Eric Ries, it may be because it wasn't that long ago he was just another Silicon Valley software engineer with a list of failed to modestly-successfully start-ups on his resume. Today Eric is at the forefront of a global movement that is often boiled down to the mantra “Build, Measure, Learn.”
Networking and learning to talk to people you don’t know is an essential skill for most business people, but especially for entrepreneurs. There is a strong correlation between the entrepreneur as a person and his or her business that requires they get out into the world to create and maintain business relationships.
In a perfect world, each area of your life would balance out neatly. You’d work from 9 to 5 each day, take an hour-long lunch, and then come home and spend uninterrupted quality time with your family, and of course there would be plenty of time to exercise and indulge in hobbies or favorite sports. Sounds pretty good alright, but the reality is we often find ourselves coming up short on the life balance scale, and when we’re hit by one of life’s inevitable obstacles or unexpected detours it can quickly throw an already strained lifestyle into a state of stress and overwhelm.
As most new authors realize all too soon, working out how to sell your eBook in a highly competitive market, may well be even more intimidating than the book writing itself. Of course the Internet contains a seemingly endless array of free information, not to mention a surplus of “must do” advice. The problem is a lot of time can be wasted attempting to work your way through that information, determining what’s relevant and what’s not, and then creating some sort of organized system to use it all.
According to Psychotherapy Networker Magazine, there are “10,000 coaches of various types are working in the USA alone. There are many theories on why coaching has grown to become such a popular tool for millions around the globe. The self-help field has always been a booming business. Combine the popularity of self-help with the Internet, which provides easy access to experts in every industry, and it’s easy to see why coaching is such a popular and growing field. And coaching touches almost every industry imaginable. Here are just a few of the common coaching approaches:
How many of us succeed the first time we try something? I’m guessing probably not many. But how often do we talk about what we learn from failure, how we would do things differently, and what others could do to avoid making the same mistakes as us? I would guess not often. The fact is most people will do just about anything to avoid talking about the “F” word. We’re afraid of it. We avoid it. We penalize it.
Every day is an opportunity to learn something or discover something or someplace. Be curious, play, go out on a limb, walk a different way to work, try a new food at dinner and keep learning and growing. ~Sandra Magsamen If you ask someone what they learned today, most people will focus immediately on work or responsibilities of the day, dismissing anything else as mere trivia and having little or no impact on their lives.
Do you ever find yourself thinking “I will be happy if… someday when (fill in the blank) then I will be completely happy …” If so, you could be stuck in a perpetual state of searching for happiness; as if happiness is running away from you all the time and that can leave you feeling that happiness is really just an elusive fantasy. Webster’s definition of happiness: State of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.
One of the most daunting challenges facing any new author today is coming to terms with what it takes to get their book into the hands of readers. The problem is, despite all that has been said and written about the challenges associated with publishing and selling books, there remains a vast gray area about the role of marketing - how to market, who to market to, and how much time to spend marketing. The reality is that writing a book is only the first step, and often turns out to be the easiest part of the process.
Sometimes through change and adversity we find our life’s purpose – the eye sheds a tear to find its focus. ~Robert Brault No matter how well we plan, from time to time life will present us with unexpected change, or an outright detour. While these challenges may initially throw us off balance, rather than a reason for frustration or despair, such times provide an opportunity for renewed determination and growth.
Definition of clutter: Anything you own, possess, or do that does not ENHANCE your life on a regular basis. Most of us have a little clutter here or there, and well yes, some of us have more than a little. The most obvious toll lack of organization takes is the added stress on one’s life. While reducing stress, increasing productivity and saving time and money, are some of the best motivators I know for getting and staying organized; there’s another good reason … and that’s about more than just effectively organizing your stuff.
I read an article recently that stated according to research, despite unemployment and any number of economic and social indicators to the contrary, 80% of the population holds “unrealistic, optimistic beliefs” about their own future. It really got me to thinking about the two sides of hope. On the one hand there is great power in hope because it brings light into dark sad places, gives us something to hang on to and the strength to press on for a better future.
How many times have you taken a pile of work home over the weekend, fully intending to get it all done, and then you didn’t have enough time to complete even half of the work. And then what happens? Instead of learning from this experience and taking home less work the next time, you do the same thing all over again… and again.
I recently read an article that stated, according to research, despite unemployment and any number of economic and social indicators to the contrary, 80% of the population holds “unrealistic, optimistic beliefs” about their own future. It really got me to thinking about the two sides of hope. On the one hand, there is great power in hope because it brings light into dark, sad places, gives us something to hang on to, and the strength to press on for a better future.
Why is it do you suppose that two people can be faced with the same crisis and while one becomes hopelessly mired in a web of negativity and feelings of helplessness, the other is able to overcome adversity and bounce back stronger than ever? Challenges and disappointments are inevitable in life. Most of us will encounter relationship problems, health issues, financial stresses, work worries, or bereavement. Even great wealth can’t shield us from trauma and tragedy — but resilience can strengthen our ability to face any crisis and turn adversity into an opportunity for growth.
Each of us at some point in our lives will experience hardship or difficult times. It can be something as simple (but nonetheless hurtful) as someone saying something negative about you, a personal rejection or someone showing harsh resentment toward you. A few of us will experience life changing hardship such as the sudden loss of a loved one, a serious illness or injury. In such situations, it may be difficult to stay positive let alone find the joy in life.