One thing that you should know is that everybody has a talent. Just like I have one, you have one too. My talent is music. I can write music and I can also sing to it. I know it is my talent because it is what I do best and love doing. Some of you really have a hard time trying to discover your talents and you do that by fitting yourselves into other peoples talents, you try to do what other people do, simply because you believe it is what you were meant to do and not what you can do.

Your beliefs mislead you. It is very easy to discover your talent. There must be something that you love doing, that gives you peace that you hardly get when you do other things and finally you are good at it, and you don’t have to put too much energy into it, you just sharpen it a little bit and you end up doing it better than everybody else.


Lets take an example of Tiger Woods, I am sure that all of you have watched him playing golf. He is so at peace and has no tension at all while hitting that ball. If there is something similar that you experience in your life then your talent is right in front of your eyes. Upgrade what you do best from grade six to grade nine, and if you are able to do it then that is your talent and you don’t have to live your life convincing yourself that you have no talent.


My talent as I said is singing, I love music. You should drink, eat and dream what you love, like I do music. I have gone through ups and downs with my music career but I have not given up yet. You will be able to read the whole story and what I have gone through, you will be surprised what those who have made it in music have to go through before they get where they are.


My book about music is known as MORE THAN A MILE. The title signifies how somebody thinks that getting what he /she wants is as easy as walking for just a mile but on the way the person comes to discover that its not only one mile it’s a long way that one cannot even see the end from a far.

Written by Wallace Ngige (jnr)
A piece from the book (Wallace Diary) which is written by Wallace Ngige (jnr)

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What does it truly mean to know your objective and do just that? First off, you must clearly define your objective, or your goals. This means you must know what it is, where it will come from, when you are going to accomplish it, and the steps that will lead you to that end.



Let’s use the ant as an example. An ants objective is to gather food for the entire colony. That is objective number one. Objective number two is to protect the colony. There isn’t much lolly gagging around. To an ant, getting food is primary until threatened. Then protection is primary. It is about survival.

Let’s relate this to running a successful business or becoming an entrepreneur. Your first objective is to gather food, or income, or raise. Nothing else should step in the way of that. Make it a priority. Set apart your “income producing” time. Get that time done before moving on to anything else. In Network Marketing or a Home Based Business, it is very easy to be distracted by other things. While working from home, there are kids to play with, wife or husband to help out, things to clean or build, babies crying and activities that do not add to the “income producing” ones. Do not let these get in the way. Set your priorities and tackle them in order of importance.



Get clear on your objective. Operate as you are already there and as though it is happening. This comes about through visualizing your goals. Once already at the end goal or the final destination, it is easier to see the steps you must take to arrive there. You can begin to work backwards and figure things out that might not be otherwise anticipated.



And always, always, always be a master of one. In other words, don’t be a jack of all trades and a master of none. When you start a business, project, or job, finish that one first or make that one the most successful first before you attempt to look elsewhere. I have known people who have started three Home Based Businesses all at once! Guess which ones failed? All of them failed! There is power behind concentrated and channeled focus. When directed to one objective, success happens!



So let us be more and think more like the ant. Even though it is pure instinct and the nature of the ant, I have not doubt that the ant is thinking “food, food, food, food” the entire time it is looking for it. It definitely isn’t thinking about the sexy queen ant it met the other day. It is extremely focused on the objective, and thus, extremely successful!

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VANCOUVER, COQUITLAM, VICTORIA, AND OKANAGAN, BC…



“The five years has really gone by fast, but that’s what happens when you enjoy what you do and the people you do it with,” said Miller, a Delta resident. “The best part about this job is you’re always learning something.”

A Delta resident and mother of three grown children, Miller worked for CDI Corporate Education and holds a bookkeeping certificate from CompuCollege.


“We took over ownership of DirectBuy of Vancouver about a year ago. Trust me, in that scenario, you want as many experienced folks on board as you can have. Joan is a pro’s pro and we hope to have her as part of our DirectBuy family for years to come,” said Jade Allen, owner of DirectBuy of Vancouver.


Since 1971, DirectBuy franchises have offered members the opportunity to enjoy enormous savings on home furnishings, home improvement items, entertainment and outdoor products and accessories by buying wholesale, directly from the manufacturer. With four convenient locations in the greater Vancouver area (Victoria, Vancouver, Coquitlam, and Kelowna), consumers can enjoy a comfortable, country-club setting, where they finally have the financial control of buying direct.


For more information on a DirectBuy membership, visit www.DirectBuyBC.ca.


About DirectBuy

Since 1971, DirectBuy has helped hundreds of thousands of families enjoy a better quality of life, enabling them to buy directly from more than 500 manufacturers and their authorized suppliers. Buying direct makes members’ hard-earned money to go much further, while having the selection and choice not available at any retail store. DirectBuy has been serving the greater Vancouver area since 1997. Access to confidential prices, local suppliers, and unparalleled selection helps make members' dream projects a reality. It's a comfortable setting, where you finally have the financial control of buying direct. The four DirectBuy showrooms serving the greater Vancouver area are part of more than 160 franchise locations throughout North America.


Consumers interested in becoming members may obtain a Visitor’s Pass to attend an Open House by contacting DirectBuy at 604-552-5255, or visiting www.DirectBuyBC.ca.


Locations of the four DirectBuy showrooms serving the greater Vancouver area are: DirectBuy of Vancouver, 2659 Lillooet St., Vancouver, British Columbia V5M 4P7; DirectBuy of Greater Vancouver, 91 Golden Drive Unit #1, Coquitlam, British Columbia V3K 6R2; DirectBuy of Central Okanagan, #5 2260 Hunter Rd., Kelowna, British Columbia V1X 7J8; and DirectBuy of Greater Victoria, 350B Bay Street, Victoria, British Columbia V8T 1P7.


To learn more about the superior value and benefits of a DirectBuy membership, visit www.directbuycares.com.

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MA…
Replace your windows. If the windows in your home are 15 years old or more, chances are they are not very efficient. At least 30 percent of heat in your home is lost through the windows. Even if your home was built in the 80’s, it’s time to replace the windows. There are certainly more energy efficient windows on the market than those available 20-plus years ago.

Replace your doors. Amazingly enough, many people will replace all their windows and save creaky old doors. The same rule that applies to windows, applies to doors that are 15 years old. Consider replacing your main front door and back door; the doors to the basement, and the door between your home and the garage.

Inspect and install insulation. Have all your visible insulation inspected to make sure it is installed correctly and that there is enough. And if you have an old home that doesn't have any insulation between the inner and outer wall, by all means hire an insulation company and have some installed soon!

Check your heating system. It’s imperative to have your heating system checked annually. Contact a local company to service your burner and consider an upgrade if it is an old system. The technician who performs the service can make recommendations.

Replace all your thermostats. Replace all your thermostats with digital, programmable units and set them to lower the temperature at night or when you are not home during the day. This will help to save on energy bills.

Add Energy Efficient window treatments. You can easily increase the R-value, or insulation value of your home by installing energy efficient window treatments throughout your house. From insulated and thermal shades to blinds, draperies and more, the right window treatments can prevent heat loss in during the winter as well as help block the heat from entering your home during the summer.


Add a pellet stove. With the price of oil these days, consider a pellet stove or other alternative heating source. A pellet or wood stove is much more efficient at generating heat than an open fireplace.


“Just one 275 gallon tank of oil can cost up to $1,300. On average, homeowners with oil heat fill their tanks at least six times during the winter. The costs for electric and gas have also increased significantly. That being said, the fall is the time to incorporate measures to reduce those energy bills,” explained Doug Masters, founder of Masters Touch.


He continued, “The changes you invest in now should see you through at least the next 20 years and the cost of upgrading will be offset by rising energy costs.”

The Masters Touch
Masters Touch is a full service design/build and remodeling contractor. With a team of more than 50, including architects, interior designers and project managers all working together, Masters Touch can handle all of a client's home building or improvement projects and provide expert guidance to DIY folks. The company was recently named #249 in the “2008 Top

500 Contractors List” in Qualified Remodeler magazine.


Masters Touch was founded by Doug Masters in 1997. From high-end design and build projects; kitchen and bath renovations; exterior painting, roofing and siding projects to flooring, interior painting and decorating projects, Masters Touch caters to homeowners throughout the Metrowest area.

Masters Touch is a Showcase Priority Dealer for Hunter Douglas and offers professional design and installation service. The one-stop interior design and home improvement shop also offers Marvin and Harvey windows; six lines of custom and semi-custom cabinetry; over 150 types of granite and Corian countertops; paint; carpet; hardwood and tile flooring; home theater design and installation and much more.

The company offers written warrantees on all their work. Masters Touch is located on Route 109 in Medfield, MA. For more information contact 508-359-5900, e-mail info@masterstouchweb.com or visit masterstouchweb.com.

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Business cards may be very limited but they are one of the most important tools that a millionaire uses to get to his clients. A business card is a very easy thing to have but the question is why don’t all of us have business cards?

A business card gives you an identity of who you are and your position in the company that you work for. I have had a business card do magic for me and its time that it does the magic for you. My first business card was made out of a dream. I always liked music and I always said that one day I would build a build so big that people would wonder what it was. This building was going to be my entertainment company.


This card had my names on it and it described me as the founder, president and C.E.O of the company. The only thing that was missing was the company. The card motivated me and gave me an identity. It made me realize that I was meant to become that, all I had to do was bring up the company so that I could now be the head of it.


All this was happening when I was in college. We used to hold tournaments where people would compete for the best looking lady and best looking guy. Our campus was so small that the tournament had to be held somewhere else and not in the school campus. We got this newsletter that explained where the tournament was going to be held and there was my chance.
It was going to be held in one of the big hotels in the country and it was my time to meet some big and important business men since I knew for sure that that was where they stayed, the tournament was important to me because I would use it as a bridge to cross me to the next level, the level of big business men. I had about four cards in my pocket and I needed at least thirty cards so that I could distribute them when we got to the hotel. I had about five hours to get my cards ready. I went ahead and prepared more cards that had the title of my company. The cards described me as the president, chairman and C.E.O of the company which was yet to exist. I just had cards that barely explained anything. When we got to the tournament I had at least thirty-six cards. Those were enough to get me going.


When the tournament started, I found a way of sneaking out of the hall to go and stand beside the door of the restaurant where all the V.I.Ps used to eat; I just had to make sure that I gave out all the cards. I know you are wondering why I was giving out cards that described a company that never existed! The company existed in my mind and the cards were motivating me to bring it to life.
I had given out thirty five cards and had only one to go. I saw this guy that came out of the elevator and as he was heading into the restaurant I just gave him the card and started walking away. After walking for about a minute, the guy called me and asked me what my company dealt with and this was my response, “my company is a component of college students and all we do is look for business opportunities and then implement them.” He looked a bit surprised but the card made him book an appointment the following day.


The next day I met with the guy and this was what he said to me “hello Wallace, three years ago I gave somebody a business card just like you gave me one and now I run businesses all over the world. I am going to give you a business plan and I will teach you how to make a lot of money that you will be driving nice cars to school that will look ten times better than your teacher’s”. That was what the business card that explained a non-existing company did for me…………………….

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This is my first quest when I started blogging about a year ago. Can I really make money by just ramblings about anything? I’ve got so many question circling around my head. Questions like how did AdSense works, is Yahoo part of Google, are those John Chow’s cars? What the hell is blog? How to setup a blog? These are questions that came out from my head when I looked at John Chow’s monthly income report.

This is a question that most of the people wanted to know about. Let’s get back to the question, is it possible to make money blogging? Well, the answers are yes and no, and it is all depend on what your blog is all about. If you want to make big money blogging, you’ve got to be different in all aspects. More specifically:


Blog aspects..







* Good SEO Optimized (On & Off Page)





* A lot of subscribers





* Highly Page Viewed





* Huge UV





* Content is King







Self aspects..







* Patient (HUGE)





* Braveness





* Interest





* Creativity







These are essential and compulsory things-to-have to attract advertisers to buy your services which include space for advertising, pay per post or link selling. I made myself some money by blogging, you can check them here: September Online Income, the highest so far is: April Online Income


Sometimes, “self aspects” is much more important than SEO. John Chow’s blog is not “SEO’ly” good (though he managed to land on the first page of Google SERP way back ago). He ranked on the 5th page for “make money online” key phrase, but still he managed to get thousands of subscribers (mine is on the 18th which is technically more worse) from his braveness to be different. For those who didn’t know what Chow did, you can always check out his blog.


Being not so good in SERP doesn’t mean that he can’t get a lot of money from blogging. Instead he managed to get approximately 30,000USD monthly for just sitting in front of his computer typing things that he prefer. And this result does not come in a night, he started his blog in December 2005. With simple calculation :) that is 3 long years time. I mention John Chow a lot in this post, he inspired me and I learned a lot from his blog.


So, if you ask me, is it possible to make money blogging? It depends on how much longer can you wait :)

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A buddy of mine recently gave me a list of sites he often submits articles to for traffic generation and to build reputation. (thanks Chris) I had some of my evil minions blow out the list a bit and add Alexis rankings to them to help me decide which ones I wanted to focus on first.

I'm not a big fan of spam postings, so my first tactic will be to choose 5 or so roll with first. I'll probably choose 3 with big traffic, and then burrow through the list to see which ones would probably react best to my types of articles. Then it's testing, testing, testing.


I am going to set up a weekly or biweekly rotation with the same article and just start running through the list. I'll keep the best as a control and proceed from there until I find the ones that seem to "click."


Since I have already paid to have the legwork done, I thought I would pass the list and rankings to you folks so you don't have to go through the tiresome process of finding and ranking hundreds of submissions sites.


What you need to know about this list:
The rankings listed are from Alexa. The number next to it represents the traffic rank. The lower the number the better. Traffic rank is a combination of of it's reach (number of users as a percentage of all users on the internet during that period) and page views (how many pages people view on their site on average). I have been using Alexa for a long time for both online and offline research, and their numbers are pretty sound.


So here you go: The Top Ten Article Submission Sites.
For the complete list of Article and PR Sites listed in this post, download the .pdf at Evil Genius TV




1. Ezinearticles.com 268



2. articlesbase.com 2,297



3. buzzle.com 2,890



4. searchwarp.com 8,118



5. Selfgrowth.com 19,352



6. Articlealley.com 25,405



7. articlesphere.com 28,641



8. Articleclick.com 31,556



9. goarticles.com 33,298



10. promotionworld.com 34,260

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A PR submission site differs from an Article submission site in that you are not submitting an article. Duh. I know it sounds retarded, but soooo many people screw it up and end up just wasting their time and effort.

An example of an article might be: "Top 10 Tricks for Covering Genital Herpes."


In contrast, in a Press Release, you are submitting some sort of an announcement that you feel is newsworthy in hopes that it will get picked up somewhere and shared. Web 2.0 has kind of blurred the lines between everything, so the distinction is a bit more fuzzy than it used to be.


A complimentary Press Release might be: "Zolcor announces Weenie Paste -Subhead -Cure Embarrasing Herpes Breakout in just 10 days."


The next step would be to proceed to tell people about your revolutionary product, how it works, and where to get it. Got it? So below is the list of Top 10 PR Submission sites I had created. I have already paid to have the legwork done, so I thought I would pass the list and rankings to you folks so you don't have to go through the tiresome process of finding and ranking hundreds of submissions sites.


What you need to know about this list: The rankings listed are from Alexa. The number next to it represents the traffic rank. The lower the number the better. Traffic rank is a combination of of it's reach (number of users as a percentage of all users on the internet during that period) and page views (how many pages people view on their site on average). I have been using Alexa for a long time for both online and offline research, and their numbers are pretty sound.

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There is a huge debate on the "best" way to decide what product/service to create and a LOT of people including the gurus not eating their own dog food. I know. I've seen it first hand. Basically in comes down to two different models. The first I'll call the reactive model. This is when you poll the market to find out what customers are actually willing to buy at the moment and give it to them, whatever it is. The second is the proactive model. (not to be confused with Jessica Simpson who IS a Proactive model...and her skin has never looked better) In this model you build a product that you "think" the market would want, and then find people to buy it from you.

The current guru wisdom states that you should follow the reactive model. This is by definition, opportunity seeking. After all, that is what people are looking for, so selling it to them becomes much easier. And this does make sense to an extent. Kern's niche marketing is a perfect example of this.

However, most people ..especially those just starting out... instinctively follow the proactive model. They figure out what they are good at, build some information product based on what they know, and then proceed to spend a buttload of money on guru courses that teach them how to bring their masses to their door.

Ok. I admit there are strengths and weaknesses to both models. And there really is a place for each. What I would like to do in this article is dissect each in a little more detail and highlight what is good or bad in each.

The Reactive Model
As I said earlier, this is by definition, opportunity seeking. And even though that term has gotten a bad rap lately, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's actually a pretty smart strategy. So how does it work? Well, you poll a potential audience. If you don't have your own list you can do this a number of ways. One quick and dirty approach is to use Google Adwords or Hexatrack to find out what people are searching for. Just brainstorm a bunch of niches where there might be hungry buyers and start looking for ones with high traffic. Google Adwords will tell you how often phrases are searched for how much competition for that keyword, Hexatrack will tell you how much you can expect to pay for a click. Even if you aren't spending money yet, these methods will show you how much demand there is for a particular solution you can provide to a particular problem.

Now assuming you build a product to solve a particular need, you are golden from there right? Well not really. Here is the rub. First, by the time people get to a point of searching for a particular solution to a problem, they are pretty far down the buying curve in the "evaluate alternatives" stage. And that's good right? Well not necessarily. It also means that they are actively searching for OPTIONS. The will look at what you have, they will look at what your competition has, and if they are similar, let the price war begin!

Secondly, if you are really trying to build a business, you will soon discover that marketing a product that you are not really into will just about kill you. It usually took me about 2 months to truly hate something. The level of involvement required to build a product, never mind keeping up with current trends, and overcoming daily obstacles will REALY make this feel like WORK really fast.

The good
• built in demand. less time and money to convince audience
The bad
• You will always have competition and margins will be low.
• If you are interested in building a business, doing crap you don't like is not a long term strategy

The proactive model
People follow this model for two reasons. First, because they are brand new and it just comes as instinct. I would guess that the reasoning is that they already know a bit about something, so the easiest way to get productive is to just build what you know.

The second reason is far more interesting to me from a strategic viewpoint. In this case, you know your market exceptionally well, and have a way to educate them early in buying process. Remember how I said that in the reactive model, you are finding the buyers late in the decision making lifecycle? Well in the proactive model, you can grab them right at the begging. Rich Schefren is brilliant at this. He does this by periodically releasing new reports. Rich's unique gift is that he can synthesize a LOT of information and make connections that other people don't make. So what he does is research current trends, puts them together, and creates a report that makes you realize that you have a need or pain point that you never did before. By doing do, he puts you in square one of the decision process ..recognition of need. Because he was the one who made you realize, he is also the one who framed the need. And you can bet that the way that he framed it, he is the ONLY possible solution to that need. In addition, there is no competition at this point. Blamo! Say hello to decreased price sensitivity, and higher margins.

Now there is a HUGE risk associated with this model. It assumes that you know your market better than they know themselves...literally!. You need to know their problems so well that you can determine problems that they don't realize they even have yet. The other caveat is that you need some way to educate the market both of their need and why they should listen to you. You will either need a big list, lots of traffic partners, or be willing to spend some serious time writing articles, posting blogs, and in general building your buzz and credibility.

The good
• better long term strategic fit
• allows you to "create" a need or want, thus no competition and higher margins

The bad
• you really need to know market well
• it will cost a lot more to educate and convince the market

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I get probably fifty emails every day about some new-fangled way to make millions literally overnight. For just $50 to $600 a month (or worse, just a one-time payment of $6500!), you too could have these secrets! Puh-lease! These guys are just scamming people and it's about to make me sick. There is no fast track way to millions. Sure, if you get lucky with the new Tickle-Me Elmo you might hit it big real fast, but the honest to God truth is that it takes more than fifteen minutes a day and it sure takes more than one night to make it big. It just does. Google doesn’t even crawl that fast.

The latest scoundrel about blew my mind. A fifteen page sales letter, fancy car pictures, and the man was posing by his fifty-foot catamaran. Overnight, supposedly, he made nearly half a million dollars. The check came in the mail the day before his home was to go into foreclosure, and minutes before the repo guy was coming for his car. Sound believable? Not to me.

The thing is, every “guru” has a rags to riches story to tell and they are all starting to sound the same. Some poor schmoe who has no internet knowledge whatsoever, turns on his computer, and poof! he’s a millionaire. The next day he’s buying a big new home and is posing for his sales letter to tell everyone else how he made his fortune.

The truth is that these gurus are full of bunk. There are real ways to make money out there, but they do not give you ten websites for free, and they do not have some magic program where you just press a button and whammo, you’re rolling in the cabbages. Doesn’t happen and never will.

If you want to make money online, you have to do it right and not fall for the scammers. Otherwise, you’ll just spend a lot of money and end up right where you started, looking for a real, legit solution. And why waste that kind of time?

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I don’t know what to think any more. For a while, it seemed that everyone was making a million online and now it seems that everyone is trying to sell everyone on how to make a million online, but no one is getting results anymore.


This trend began to happen when eBay stopped allowing ebooks on their auction website. Why? Ebooks are mostly crap. Plus, they can be copied and turned into extra versions of crap. Basically, no new information has been presented in an ebook for the past five years. It’s all been re-hashed and re-worked to the point of insanity. eBay was so sick of having crap (mind you, hundreds of thousands of ebooks were on their site) that they took everything down. Now, the only way to sell an ebook on eBay is to burn it to a CD and ship it to your customer. No more instant information.

But that’s the thing with instant anything. The quality is much lower than it would be if you had to wait. Take dinner for example (just go with me here…). Would you rather have a frozen dinner that cooks in two minutes in your microwave, or would you rather have a creamy, scalloped potato and roasted rosemary and garlic chicken stove-top feast?


I choose the chicken and potatoes, because I had them for dinner tonight, but also because of that word, quality. While the microwave meal was “nearly” instant, the quality ends there. Why put that in your body when the feast, though it sounds extravagant, only takes twenty minutes more?


That’s what went wrong online too, and eBay knew it. And I’m glad they made this change because it gives real online courses with real information to share a chance, once more. Instant information is only worth what you get out of it in that instant. But information that is bound in a book that has been published, or a course that has been taught to real students, is like the chicken and potatoes and is worth the wait.

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’m the kind of person that likes to check people out on Rip Off Report before I’ll buy from them. Usually, you can tell from the sales letter whether that “guru” is worth anything by the sweeping claims that they make. Make a million over-night, okay that’s a sales pitch that won’t amount to anything. Make a million using my simple one-button program, obviously that’s a sales pitch that will just waste your time and money. The more grand the claims, the more the scale tips on the scam-o-meter.

And what about those ads that promise you one (or ten!) free websites? All you have to do is sign up for their monthly contract, press one button, and wham, ten web businesses just waiting for management. You know that’s a scam, right?


You know this, you feel it in your gut too. It might sound nice, but you’re past the point of an easy fool.


First of all, anyone that can pump out ten websites for each customer is either a genius that spends their life making websites 24 hours a day or has a program that can create simple cookie-cutter websites at the press of a button. A cookie-cutter website, if you don’t already know, is basically a website that looks like all the others, like a cookie cut from a mold.


From a strictly professional standpoint, whether these sites even look good doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that they are all the same that really hurts. To Google, you know the top dog who ranks websites professionally, websites that look alike are a very bad thing indeed. And hundreds (let alone thousands) of websites that look alike is just a death sentence, a pure waste of money.


Why bother with “money making” opportunities when you know they sound a little too good to be true?


If you’re anything like me, you want to make a living online because of the freedom that can grant. Sure, the money has the potential to be great, but spending only a few hours doing something for your successful online business is sure a heck of a lot easier than 8 hours a day at someone else’s business—for the rest of your life.


So, my thing is this: stop spending your money and stop wasting your time. Take the course that will change your life for the better. It won’t make you a millionaire overnight, but it sure will give you the tools to make your business happen, realistically, and grant you the freedom you’re looking for. And there’s nothing sales-pitchy about it.

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Making a memorable personal impression with a variety of people is critical to gaining attention for your new business. If you are persistent and persuasive these contacts will turn into customers. And your new customers will provide cash (hopefully) to propel your business from the survival phase into the growth phase.

Once you are enjoying a steady stream of income you can consider new promotional tools, which if used effectively, can boost your sales dramatically. But you should proceed with caution because direct response marketing can consume a significant amount of your money in a very short time period. The key is to wait to use these tools until you are clear about whom you really want to sell, why they buy and what you want to say to them.

Experiment in your networking and publicity with different stories about your company and its products and services. Try out different groups of prospects with slightly different selling stories. Note carefully what seems to gain attention and stir interest and what seems to be ignored. At this point you not be investing a lot of money to find out what works.

Once you are confident that you understand what approach can achieve the success of the AIDA formula -- Gain attention, create interest, stimulate desire and ask for action -- then you will want to do more of it as quickly as you can. Direct response marketing and advertising can produce impressive results quickly.

Direct Response Marketing

Direct response marketing refers to techniques where you go directly to customers, asking them send you money and orders through the mail or over a telephone order line. You don't need a factory or store, just an attractive product, some money and some knowledge.

There are a number of ways to use direct response marketing:


* Build sales leads. By responding, people qualify themselves as good prospects for your product or service.

* Boost store traffic. A personal invitation to visit will attract buyers to your store.

* Get new business from old customers. Direct response marketing reminds them that you exist.

* Keep current customers. Let your customers know you appreciate them -- drop them a note regularly.

* Introduce new products. Going directly to a potential buyer first can tell you whether you should proceed with other marketing.


Your intent when using direct response marketing is not to just attract prospective buyers, but to get them to buy -- right now, right here!

Ways to go direct to the customer

There are a number of ways used to produce interest and orders directly from customers:


* Sampling. When you offer the first half-hour of consultation free, you are providing a sample. Of course, sampling is done extensively by marketers of consumer products such as food.

* Price incentives. You cannot compete day to day by cutting your prices below your competition. But you can effectively attract customers by offering special pricing deals. For example, an annual sales, offering something free along with your product, or grouping several products together at a price lower than they would sell separately.

* Giveaways. A whole industry exists to provide you with personalized giveaways -- the advertising specialty business. To be effective your giveaway should be something useful and something that relates to the nature of your business.

* Flyers and brochures. These sales promotion pieces represent the most commonly used form of direct response marketing for small businesses, for example passing out flyers for your home cleaning service.

* Trade shows. There are thousands of gatherings of buyers and sellers each year. In a typical two-day trade show your company's story can be seen by more than one thousand potential customers. Beware:Trade shows can be very expensive. You must have a very clear idea of what you hope to achieve.

* Seminars and demonstrations. When you are selling a service it is difficult to deliver a sample once person at a time. An alternative is to attract 50 to 100 people at one time by offering them a free or low-cost seminar demonstrating what your service will do for them.

* Direct mail and telemarketing. These two techniques are sufficiently involved to deserve their own discussion.


Direct Mail

There are three main types of direct mail marketing:


1. Offers and catalogs sent through the mail

2. Offer made over the telephone

3. Offers through magazine and newspaper ads


For most new businesses, catalogs are far too expensive to produce and mail. Selling over the phone is getting harder to do each year. This technique often works better with business prospects than with consumers. The most common direct mail techniques for small businesses are direct mail packages and newspaper and magazine ads.

The New Generation of Direct Mail

Traditionally, direct mail has involved mailing out massive numbers of envelopes to broadly defined groups of customers, hoping that one or two in a hundred will buy. Small business cannot afford such extravagance. instead small businesses today use very focused communications materials sent a very select list of prospects.

Personal computers allow great flexibility in composing direct mail selling materials and professional creation and management of mailing lists. This automation allows a one person business to create and prepare to mail 200 to 300 pieces of direct mail in just one day.

There are two keys to successful direct mail marketing, particularly when you are on a tight budget:


1. An offer that is simple but persuasive and asks for action that will be convenient to take;

2. A mailing list that provides as specifically as possible just the kind of people you want to buy from you.


Finding the right mailing list

Even the most creative mailing piece can go to waste if it mailed to people who don't care about your product or service.

Before you start to look for a list you need to have done your market research to discover who are your target customers. The more specifically you can describe them, the more accurately you can find a mailing list that matches them.

There are thousands of lists of names available to rent. They usually come in the form of pressure-sensitive labels and their cost is quoted as $/M which is dollars per thousand names. One of the most comprehensive listings of mailing lists is the SRDS Direct Mail Lists, Rates and Data, available in larger libraries.

We like to develop our own mailing lists, although it takes longer than buying someone else's list. We do this by offering a 20-page booklet we have written through press releases and small classified ads. Everyone who buys has their name and address recorded in a computer program known as a database. We have our computer hooked up to a small label printed to create our own mailing labels whenever we want them.

Successful Direct Mail Ads

There is probably no area of marketing that has been researched more completely than direct mail. This is particularly true of direct mail ads. Some of the keys that the experts site are:


* Use a friendly, but catchy headline at the top

* Keep copy short and be sure to list a lot of benefits

* Make a promise with ad, such as: "learn Spanish in 15 days"

* Put a time limit on your ad, such as: "order today, quantities are limited"

* Ask the reader to take some action, for example: "call today to place your order"


Most larger libraries have several books on the fine points of direct mail advertising.

Particularly study the chapters that describe how to estimate the cost of a mailing and its likely return.

Telemarketing

You already know how to use the phone to transmit information, but do you know how to use it to make money? There are several key results you can attain with telemarketing:


* Qualify prospects without expensive in-person sales calls

* Obtain sales appointments

* Measure the response of your customers immediately

* Communicate more personally than you can through the mail

* Provide highly personalized response to the customers needs


Just as when you are preparing to take part in a play, professional telemarketers create a "script" of what they want to say and rehearse it before they start to make calls. Before you start to write down what you want to communicate decide which primary goal you want to achieve:


* To get a sales appointment

* To get a response to a survey

* To get the prospect to request more information

* To get an order on the spot


Once you have gotten customers, telemarketing can be very valuable in obtaining repeat sales, making your customers feel more special, announcing "specials" and getting feed back on new product ideas.

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Being passionate is all about enjoying the moment in an extraordinary way. It’s when you do something and have a feeling that rarely comes around or a feeling that is rarely felt. You would do just about anything to experience the feeling.


Most of us go through all sorts of things in life, some are there to lift us up and some are there to let us down in an extraordinary manner. Some make us bitter and some make us feel like we don’t want to live again. Life is made of challenges and without them we cannot harden and learn to deal with it. Life takes us through experiences that we never even thought would come our way.

Once in a while we go through a moment that rarely comes around and the moment is a moment of happiness. Most of us are not happy with what we do or what life takes us through. Most of us do what we do because we are forced by circumstances. Life is not supposed to be like that. We are supposed to love our life so that we can be able to love everything that comes our way. The worst day you can ever have is the day that you have not laughed and most of us have those.


If you can’t be happy with what you don’t have now, do you really think that you can be happy with more. You have to be happy with what you have now; you have to be happy with your life so that it can move forward positively. When we are not passionate about what we do we all end up hating ourselves and seeing ourselves as failures. It’s all in the mind you think like a failure and then you become one but you think like a winner and then you end up becoming a winner.


Being passionate about life doesn’t mean that you should be comfortable with where you are. We are not born to be average, we are born to be victorious and being victorious is the best gift that you can ever give to God, becoming what he made you to be is the best gift that you can ever give him
We all have our ups and downs but try taking the downs as the bridge that will cross you to the ups. Everything that happens in our life happens so that it can elevate us to the next level. Never think that bad things happen to you because you were a mistake. Nobody in this world was a mistake. Be passionate with your life, love what you do. Love your friend and your enemy too. Make all that surrounds you feels comfortable around you and vice versa.


We all have our responsibilities in this world; we all have a reason for being here. If you have not yet found your reason try being positive in life. Try doing everything as if it’s your last day. Whenever you do good things you do them to yourself because they always come back to you. Love your life and respect it, it will love you too and bring all the goodness to you.
Written by
Wallace Ngige (jnr)

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In everything that we do, there is some little amount of fear that we all have. This fear tries to show us that we won’t make it or something will probably go wrong on the way. This amount of fear is normal but there is always a way that we can control it.

In business most ideas that are born sound absurd in some way, they make the people who come up with them look as if they are going crazy but the fact is, if the idea doesn’t not sound absurd then there is no hope for it. There is a probability that the consumers will not go for it or there is a probability that almost everybody in the world knows about it and that makes it not that interesting and amazing.


The great entrepreneurs go for those drowning ideas, the ones that only he knows how he will go about it and make it all happen for him. Big business opportunities swing on little hinges meaning that good ideas may seem to have a lot of obstacles and challenges. You might have an idea that everyone is discouraging you on but you have your way to make it happen. That is what you should evaluate and go for.


A good idea is full of challenges and there is a high possibility that not anybody will support you simply because they have never heard of it. This is the good time to keep your secrets and ideas to yourself, when you go telling everybody about your ideas, all that you will find is opposition.


Treasure your ideas and make them work, it feels very good to bring up something that everybody else thought was drowning. Prove them wrong and prove yourself right. Great ideas experience the greatest number of obstacles. Think of Edison when he discovered electricity, he called people to dig up roads and pull buildings apart so that he could put his special wires. People were not unhappy with gas but most of them asked him how he felt after having lost ten thousand times but his reply was that him having failed ten thousand times had brought him ten thousand times closer to discovering electricity, he knew ten thousand things that he was not supposed to do.


What I am trying to say is no matter how many times you try something and it fails, there is always a way that you can do it and make it happen for you. So many challenges might come your way, so many people might discourage you and tell you how hard it is but you are the idea carrier and nobody can do it better than you should always know that.


It’s very easy to give up when you are almost done, most people give up when they are one step away from the victory, don’t be one of them. Work your way to the end. If you have a feeling that your idea will work then there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. That is the greatest feeling one can ever have. Ideas are born out of the need to change something. Make sure that all your ideas come to life so that you can change all that you were meant to.

Written by
Wallace Ngige (jnr)

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Today young entrepreneurs have come a long way from delivering newspapers, walking dogs, babysitting or running lemonade stands. In fact children as small as 12 have started to run full fledged manufacturing businesses and services. Research shows that an increasing number of youngsters these days want to start and run their own business.

So why does a person want to become a young entrepreneur? Well, this article talks about these very idea so read on to know more.

Most often than not it is the thrill of the accomplishment that drives a person to start their own business. This gets precedence over fame and money.

It is exhilarating for a young entrepreneur to see his or her plan grow into something big and successful.

Added to this is the advantage of the freedom that is experienced. There is a sense of fulfillment that a young entrepreneur enjoys more than profits and money. This sort of a fulfillment is often referred to as psychic income.

Security is another thing that motivates youngsters to start their own business. A survey shows that youngsters love the feeling of being financially secure and independent. It is a big thing not to depend on parents for allowance.

In fact one study shows that young people would prefer to start their own business than spend time and energy working in mindless summer jobs. In fact starting young means a person can acquire business and financial skills and is more than ready when he or she enters the actual world of business.

A young entrepreneur also has the added advantage of knowing the tricks of money management. In fact when a person starts at a younger age, he or she has a greater appreciation for money. Youngsters who start a venture at an early stage in fact have sharper business acumen and they are also more than ready to meet the real world because they have already experienced failure in some way.

Starting a business at a young age has another benefit, like all other walks of life a person is more open to learning and absorbing knowledge at a younger age. The mind is like a fresh sponge that absorbs all the information and puts it into good use.

A young entrepreneur will definitely have a head start over his or her peers. With a vast experience under their belt these people will be better equipped to run a successful business when they are adults.

No matter how young you are, if you think you can start a successful business out of something you should go ahead and take the plunge. At this stage no business is big enough to incur great losses nor do they need a lot of capital to be set up.

The expenditures are also low. So if you think you have a certain skill or a creative aspect that can be utilized you should give serious thought to becoming a young entrepreneur yourself. It will definitely be a great preparation guide to meet the tribulations of the real business world later.

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If you've done your research, you've probably found that many so-called "home based business opportunities" are in the network marketing industry and essentially involve some form of direct selling. There are, however, many businesses that revolve around multi-level marketing models, and those are quite different primarily due to the compensation structure (how you get paid). By finding a business that enables you to leverage the benefits of both network marketing AND direct sales, you will find that your ability to build substantial income streams from your home office in a relatively short period of time is much better.


So how is it that someone can leave the traditional business world, have the luxury of working from home, and earn a six or seven figure income, and not have to worry about the hustle and bustle of traffic, office politics and managing employees?

A Brief History On Network Marketing

For thousands of years, successful business people goods and services at the lowest price possible and sold them at the highest price for maximum profit. In the old days, haggling over price was expected in the negotiation process and the transaction culminated in a handshake deal which left both parties, give or take, mutually satisfied. This simple process of transferring goods and services was most lucrative for the small minority of entrepreneurs who knew the secret to success: network marketing!

Although the concept has been around from the very beginning of trade, the network marketing industry as a recognized industry has only been around for a few decades, and the explosive growth this industry has been experiencing has been phenomenal for both the companies and the entrepreneurs (distributors). So what is network marketing?

Network Marketing Defined

Very simply, network marketing leverages the concept of developing a network of like-minded individuals who, together, market various goods and services to others. The power of a network is actually scientifically proven to have a compounding effect on various factors of success. This is primarily due to the two primary components of any network: the node and the link.

For example, in a telecommunications network, the basic "network" is comprised of nodes and links that work together to transfer communication around the globe. The larger nodes tend to have more traffic, which is primarily due to the fact that they have more links connecting them to other nodes.

Another example: The human mind is an interrelationship of knowledge structures, which is essentially a network of nodes and links. When you think about money, perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is an image of a $100 bill and maybe the second thought is what that $100 can buy you, let's say a dinner for two. "Money" is one node, the image of that $100 bill is another node, the dinner for two is yet another node, and they are all interconnected by links (associations). If you know more about money than you do about dinners, then your "money" node is probably larger than your "dinner" node and therefore you're most likely going to have more associations with money than with dinner!

To bring this concept back to network marketing, if you create links with other like-minded people (ideally, other serious entrepreneurs who want to build successful million-dollar enterprises), then your income will grow in proportion to the number of links you have. Furthermore, your income will also be significantly impacted by the number and size of nodes that you're linked to (that is, the caliber of entrepreneurs you're working with). It is this very fundamental worldly and scientific concept that this industry is build on.

So how does direct sales fit into the picture?

Direct Sales Defined

The direct sales industry is a bit more direct (no pun intended). Quite simply, direct sales is the process of selling goods and services directly to the end consumer. Your favorite brand of soda is probably not distributed via direct sales because it is first sold by the manufacturer to the wholesaler, from the wholesaler to the retailer, and then from the retailer to the consumer. But if you were to come up with your own brand of soda and then use distributors to sell your product directly to consumers, then you'd be leveraging direct sales. You'll notice that many companies use this model all over the world.

"One-Two Punch!" A Powerful Combo

If you are a boxer, and your left hand is network marketing and your right hand is direct sales, which hand do you think your trainer would instruct you to use more often in the boxing ring? Whichever is your stronger hand? No, both! Why? Because it's the most efficient and productive combination for success.

You see, there are a few companies in North America that have built their organizations from the ground up on top-tier products and have embraced a distribution model that takes the best of network marketing and direct sales and blended the benefits of both into a win-win business opportunity for professional business owners.

Top-Tier Business Opportunities Blend

(1) Excellent products that have strong demand in their respective marketplaces

(2) A powerful compensation plan that rewards entrepreneurs very well for their efforts

(3) A duplicable system that helps the entrepreneur eliminate 90-95% of the variables that cause most startup businesses to fail

(4) Training and support via a community of other successful entrepreneurs who are willing to share their secrets to success in the business. I've underlined that last part for a very good reason: this is the critical variable that is hardest to find. But if you do find it, hold on because you are going to enjoy the ride!

To wrap up, network marketing is the basis for explosive growth in your business. Direct sales is the mechanism by which you will earn the most income, primarily due to the fact that there is no middle tier in the distribution chain to suck out a large chunk of the profit margins. Find a company that can provide you with the benefits of both models and you will find the most efficient vehicle for building up to a millionaire status within 2-5 years.

Final Thought

Do your due diligence before selecting a home business. You want to find a reputable company that has top-tier products that are standalone (can be placed for sale on a brick-and-mortar store shelf), has an excellent compensation plan, offers a supportive community to help you build your business, and has industry leaders building their businesses with this organization (this shows you that the best of the best are there, which means you probably are selecting a very good organization to work with).

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My two favorite definitions of "entrepreneur" are from a 19th-century French economist and a present-day American capitalist.

"The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield." - Jean-Baptiste Say. "An entrepreneur solves problems for a profit." - T. Harv Eker.


Entrepreneurs are the producers of the world. They create something from nothing. They take ideas and dreams, and they bring them to reality. They are the innovators and the risk takers. They are the ones who make our lives better, and a lot more fun.

Mindset and action
What differentiates an entrepreneur from a non-entrepreneur is mindset and action. It's the mindset that you know you are absolutely and solely responsible for the results that you produce.

My friend Dan Sullivan talks about this in terms of two economies: The results economy and the time and effort economy. The time and effort economy is where you get paid for the hours that you put in, and the results economy is where you get paid for your results.
However, as an entrepreneur, you cannot confuse activity with accomplishment.

There are people out there who work really, really hard but do not make any money. And there are some people out there who don't work hard at all and are very wealthy.

And a lot of that is just having the right capabilities, the right resources, and the right understanding.

Entrepreneurs who achieve the greatest level of success are not necessarily the hardest workers; they are the smartest workers. They are the ones who believe, for one thing, that when it comes to selling, the best prospect to be in front of you is someone who is pre-interested, pre-motivated, pre-qualified, and pre-disposed to doing business with you.

Are you a treadmill or a ladder? There are two types of business owners: Treadmill entrepreneurs and ladder entrepreneurs. Treadmill entrepreneurs work extremely hard. They are constantly running, but ultimately they end up exhausted and not really getting anywhere. Ladder entrepreneurs are those who use that same effort to get themselves up to a new, higher level in business.

Dr. Ed Hallowell, the author of "CrazyBusy," shares his research about ADD/ADHD (attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and how most overworked entrepreneurs exhibit the symptoms of these conditions. And just as with those who truly have ADHD and go untreated, the "untreated" entrepreneurs go about running their businesses and lives like they are driving around with square wheels.

This is much harder than it really needs to be. Once a treadmill entrepreneur can round those wheels out, his/her life starts working better. It runs smoother, and you get much farther with less effort.

So the question is: Do you feel like you are running on square wheels? Moving forward, but it sure takes a heck of a lot of effort!

Get off the treadmill
There are solid procedures you can follow in order to get off the treadmill and onto the ladder, finding true success.

Here are three strategies you must implement in your business.
1. Measure and track results
Everything measured improves. And everything measured and reported improves exponentially. This is a universal law that applies to business and personal growth, that when you actively track "data"that you want to improve, you will make it better with that consistent focus.

But when you get more serious and make yourself accountable to others, your results improve even more. For instance, someone who really wants to quit smoking will tell others he is quitting. The peer pressure and support helps to motivate and monitor him.

An entrepreneur can use this law to his advantage by tracking the results he wants to improve, and finding someone to "report" to. This includes revenue, expenses, profit margins, referrals, testimonials, complaints, and "lifestyle" results like days off, family time, and personal income.

Sit down and ask yourself what areas of your business (or personal) life you would like to see improvement in. What "data" can you measure and track on a regular basis that gives you a snapshot of how you are doing in these areas?
Whom can you "report" to on a consistent basis to hold yourself accountable?

2. Master new knowledge
No matter how hard you try, you cannot build a million-dollar company with $100,000 skills.
This is the trap that many treadmill entrepreneurs fall into. Many blame the industry, the economy, or where they live as reasons their company is not succeeding. In most cases, though, it's not outside factors that are keeping them down, but inside ones.

When I was struggling in my 20s with my cleaning company, I believed it was not possible to be really successful in this business. I was living off credit cards and going to stockbroker school at night because I wanted to go into another business where I could make more money.

Then, a friend from high school invited me to go jet-skiing with a rich friend of his. My main goal was not to spend the day jet-skiing but to hang around someone who could teach me something about building success in a better industry than cleaning.

This guy had made millions in real estate, and I knew he could point me in the right direction. I told him about my carpet cleaning business and that it wasn't doing well and I wanted to do something else and I wondered if he had any suggestions. He asked if there was anyone else in the carpet cleaning business who was making money. I said there were a couple of companies in the Phoenix area that do over $1 million a year; to me, that was a lot of money. But that these companies had been around a long time and were established and much bigger than I was.

I told him there was a lot of competition and all customers cared about was price, and that I worked hard, was trained and IICRC-certified, and did everything right, but I was broke and tired. So I must just be in the wrong business. His reply was one of those defining moments that changed my life.

He said: "If there are other people in the industry who are making money and you are not, there is nothing wrong with the business. There is something wrong with you." Not exactly what I wanted to hear. He explained that I didn't own a business; I owned a job, and that if I changed to a new industry I'd spend a few years learning the technical side, and then I'd continue to repeat the same bad business habits that caused me to be failing in the cleaning industry.

The answer was to learn fundamental business knowledge to make my cleaning business work, and then I could take those fundamental skills to any industry I wanted to and create success. I felt it in my gut when I heard that advice, so I knew it was hitting on the truth.

I made a decision that I was not going to get out of my carpet cleaning business until I figured how to make it work. I put a challenge to myself that I would figure it out. I had a lot of goals and dreams, but I lacked the skills to get me there. I didn't even understand what skills exactly I needed to be looking for. I set out on a quest to transform my company, to learn what I needed to learn. And through books, seminars and advice from other successful people, I became a student of business success.

Getting off the treadmill starts with a mindset shift. My belief system was wrong. I believed that circumstances outside of me were limiting my business success, and that I was a victim of those circumstances. Once I changed my mindset from the problem being outside of me to inside of me and took complete responsibility, my situation changed dramatically. I worked to master the skills to climb up to the next level, and the next, and am still climbing. Ask yourself: Which skills, resources, or talents would your business need to become two, three, or four times its current size or income? Where can you acquire that knowledge?

3. Multiply your effort
Many business owners get stuck on the treadmill because they are dead-set on being in control of everything, or even worse, being entirely a one-man (or woman) show. That's a certain recipe for a life-draining job. The mindset shift is from being "in control" to being "in charge." That shift from treadmill to ladder; from working harder to working smarter; comes down to boosting productivity and leverage. Productivity is maximum results with the least amount of time. Leverage is maximum results with the least amount of effort.

Business survival or business success?
"Work" has two different meanings.
It either means hard effort: "I have to work." Or, it has a flow to it: "This just works." The word changes based on how you want to look at it. Business isn't any different. It can be hard, or it can flow, depending on how you decide to look at it. Many business owners are in business just to survive, instead of to succeed. The treadmills run on negative, fear-based energy, and the ladders are propelled by positive, goal-based energy. Once you make that shift, you have the power to take your business from ground level to as high as you want it to go.

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Here it is: the absolutely guaranteed secret of success in business...

Identify what people want and provide it to them efficiently.

Honestly. It really is that simple.

This, of course, begs the question, “If it really is that simple, why it is that there are so few successful people?”

So the real issue is not so much how to succeed in business as how not to succeed. There are three basic methods of failing to succeed in business.

Method One is to fail to identify accurately what people want. Most failed businesses make the mistake of trying to sell what the entrepreneur thinks the customer wants rather than what the customer actually wants. This is an easy mistake to make, given that customers are often unclear, not least in their own minds, what they really want. The lack of clarity may deceive the entrepreneur into thinking that he can exploit the uncertainty by clever marketing. This is a classic error because, although clever selling may be deceptively successful in the short term, it cannot build a viable business if what is being sold is essentially unwanted.

Method Two is to fail to deliver what it wanted in an efficient way. This covers both relative inefficiency – where one is simply not as efficient as one’s competitors – and absolute inefficiency – where one is so inefficient that one cannot even turn a profit even if one has no competitors! Inefficiency can take many forms – inefficient marketing, inefficient financing, inefficient strategy, inefficient cost control, inefficient management, inefficient operations, inefficient pricing, inefficient administration, etc – any one of which can destroy a company with a sound business idea to serve an accurately identified customer want.

Method Three, however, is by far the most common.

It is, quite simply, not to try – or, at least, not to try properly.

The vast majority of people do not try at all. This is not necessarily to their discredit. They define success by standards other than financial. They have other priorities – perhaps their families, or a hobby, or a political or a charitable cause – and money is only a means to an end to them. They may well be right.

Yet there are others who do try, but try so half-heartedly that they would have been better off not trying at all.

Although commitment does not guarantee success, it is a necessary precondition. Anyone setting out to succeed in business must understand that it demands focus – at least in the key phases. It demands that one works when others are idle, and that one invests when others are spending. One must accept that enterprise is risk – and risk means being prepared to sacrifice.

All sorts of people have found success in business. Private enterprise is the only true meritocracy. Yes, it helps to be intelligent or good-looking or socially skilled or born into money or well-connected, but there are people who have succeeded without any of those advantages – and people who failed despite having them all.

Many multi-millionaires are people from a poor background with little education and little in the way of social sparkle. Some are plodders. What they had was a commitment to their businesses, based on a commitment to succeed.

While it is true that many with a similar commitment still fail – either because they make mistakes or because the ball bounces the wrong way or, most commonly, through a combination of both – it is unlikely that one will ever succeed without it.

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Parents are always concerned whether the toys they purchase anytime are safe for their children. There's even more concern during the holiday season when kids see all the latest toys advertised everywhere they look. One Internet-based retailer, Kids Idol Music, has always provided safe, educational toys for children. Kids Idol Music is the leading re-seller of personalized products for children, with thousands of sales around the world.

Kids Idol has personalized music and video products for children. They market personalized music CD albums and personalized videos. The Kids Idol product line includes personalized music CD's -- CDs where your child's name is actually sung into the audio and video -- and are available for all ages. They range from a Barney Personalized Music CD, a Disney Princess Personalized CD, a Mickey Mouse Personalized Music CD, Veggie Tales Personalized Music CD, and a Wiggles Personalized Music CD.

Kids Idol is also the place to find the Dora The Explorer Personalized Video. It also has a great line of non-licensed, character-personalized music including, a beautiful personalized lullaby album and personalized Christian music.

In 2008, Kids Idol introduced the "You Can Do Anything" personalized DVD. The personalized video contains the child's name in 8 original songs more than 105 times.

"When my daughter Allie heard her name in the song, she couldn't believe it. She had the biggest smile on her face!" says customer Patty Cox. "It was a great value for what I paid and the on-line transaction was really easy." Patty adds that the personalized DVD has a permanent home inside the family minivan. She plays it for her daughter whenever they are out for a drive.

Michael Cappetta is the founder and developer of Kids Idol. "I love getting e-mails from my customers telling me how much they love the product and, more importantly, the child loves the product. It makes my day."

Cappetta started Kids Idol with a single, freestanding kiosk inside a major shopping mall in Cleveland, Ohio at the age of 17. It has grown to a cross-platform Internet and retail based business.

"Sales are consistently strong throughout the year. When you have a solid product, and provide exceptional customer service, people return to buy other products, and eventually spread the word."

Cappetta has been featured on WKYC-TV, the NBC network affiliate in Cleveland, and in various print media for his founding and success of Kids Idol.

Kids Idol Music is based just outside Cleveland in Chagrin Falls, Ohio and now has mall kiosks around the country. For more information, visit www.kidsidolmusic.com.

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What can you do to get a little extra money into your pocket without quitting your day job? Maybe plugging into the Internet and researching the vast and endless opportunities available for Assembly workers, is the perfect alternative to answering that very question. One of the best aspects of this secondary income - generating opportunity, is that you can decide for yourself what areas that you are skilled or interested in that can lend themselves to the additional funds you may currently be pursuing.

Like sewing? Then maybe quilting or doll making is the right thing for you to consider. What about beading? You could utilize your talents for giving that extra - added touch to clothing, picture frames, key chains or even jewelry. If you love to work with wood, you could enhance this medium with a joy of painting. Want to create a Country Home appeal? Why not think about making candles or fragrant soaps? Gift Baskets are used for all sorts of occasions from Baby Showers to House Warming presents. Is this something you could help create?

Once you know what you want to assemble you can begin to locate a company that will work in union with your specialized skills and talents. All this can be done in the comfort of your own home and can fit around your schedule. That way you can meet all of your other demands and current responsibilities as well. Thereby creating the beginning infrastructure of your own home based business.

One word of caution: to those who are not aware of how many of these companies work, often you will be required to send in a fee to receive a sample item of what it is that you will be assembling, so make sure to narrow down your field of interest to avoid spending money on things that you are not skilled at or willing to learn. Also make sure that the company is legit. If you know the city and state that they are located in, it is always a good idea to check with the Better Business Bureau and the Internet to see if there have been any complaints relating to their workers and/or paying practices.

Always try to reach a customer service representative to get a feel of how they operate relating to any questions or concerns you may want to address before you join their business opportunity. You don't want you spend your money and time on a company that really does not have your best interest at heart. By doing this first you'll have a better knowledge of what you can expect to run into if and when you may need to contact them for any reason in the future. You can learn a lot about a company by calling their Customer Service Reps.

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I am not a big fan of multi level marketing so I was especially curious when I heard of the EZ Wealth Solution program. EZ Wealth Solution uses the 1up and 2up system that most cash gifting opportunities use. From what I was told by my sponsor, EZ Wealth Solution is very much unlike your typical cash leverage opportunity. Being that EZ Wealth Solution was offering a free tour of the program; I took my sponsor up on his offer and decided to take a comprehensive review of the EZ Wealth Solution program.

EZ Wealth Solution is a “Get Paid Today” program so it does not utilize the pyramid structure that is synonymous with network marketing programs. They also use the pay it forward system which allows your sponsor to pay your way into level one, a $47 dollar value. I like the pay it forward system because it gave me the opportunity to get into the program without any outer pocket cost, except for the $10 reseller rights package.The reseller right gives you resell rights to 100 products that you can market and keep all the profits. EZ Wealth Solution has 5 levels which give you the option to decide at which level you would like to join. I started at level one which my sponsor paid for me.

After reviewing the EZ Wealth opportunity the major difference I found between EZ Wealth and other cash leveraging programs is that it’s not really a cash gifting program.The products offered are legitimate products of value that you can actually put to good use or sell to internet marketers. Each level has different products, the higher package you purchase, the more quality products you will receive.

While reviewing the compensation plan I began to understand the power of 1up system which is used in the first level and the 2 up system which is used in each additional level. Everything is explained thoroughly by several videos that cover every aspect of the program in stages. If you ever get confused, you can rewind the video to view it again. Overall the videos were informative and easy to understand.

In closing I’d like to say that my review of the EZ Wealth Solution program is a definite thumb up. I also recommend reading “The Painful Truth”, also referred to as the “Coffee House Letter’. It is a letter explaining the fall of network marketing and why internet prelaunches make it hard to maintain your mlm downlines. I hope I was able to shed some light on this program, but the only way you will know for sure is the take the free tour yourself.

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f you are an Internet marketer or you make money online, you know there is a new program, service, or website coming out almost every single hour boasting about how you can make millions of dollars without working for even a second. Now, most of the time (sorry to burst your bubble) this are schemes or scams. If you make money online you're going to have to do at least some work, even if the program is automated, you are still going to have to set it up, or read the e-book it comes with, or advertise, or "watch" the program (computers make mistakes). But, don't be getting all disappointed on me yet, there are ways to make money online that are legit, in fact I can name 50 ways right now off the top of my head. What I'm going to do is make a list below of three products I have either had really good luck with or that I know are legit and do work. Some of these are generators, some are systems, some are just plain old programs, but they do work, so pay attention!

Fortune Makers Biz -
This most definitely is a money system, but its one that works, or so I hear anyway. People all over the place are raving about how well this program works and how easy it is. It's absolutely incredible. With this program there are no e-books, no software, no pills, potions or lotions. It is what it says it is. A money making system. Another great thing about this system is there are two optional upgrades you can choose from, both are awesome, but of course one is better than the other! So what exactly are they selling on this site? It's a luxury resort membership club backed by a full service travel agency that offers high end luxury travel at private member-only rates, as well as access to owner based timeshare resort properties. Hopefully by now most of us know what popular and what unpopular things to sell online are. Travel equals money maker!

The Rich Jerk -
This guy really is a... jerk and that's putting it nicely. However, he does have a program that works. And if you can get over his arrogance and lack of manners, you too could be making the money everyone else is with his system. It's easy, as he says. He hardest part is the selling but, if you know how to sell, if you have a great product to sell, and you know what to say, you can be a great salesperson! This system comes with a free website, plus some advice from RJ himself about how to get people to buy the things your selling on the free site. Pretty simple stuff, price isn't bad either, check it out for yourself and see what I mean!

My Great Empire -
This is a site related to the GDI system, now I have never personally tried the GDI system but, I know of friends who have and it has worked for them, so don't count this site out just yet. Go take a look at it and at least sign up for the free information. Building a massive action driven GDI team beneath you has never been easier. Not only will you notice a much higher opt in ratio, but an increased GDI sign up ratio as well. Every opt in you get through your MyGreatEmpire affiliate link, will receive approximately 12 followup emails in a period of 30 days. This is a website made for users that want to receive opt-in leads with the system.

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You just have to know where to look, who to talk to and what processes to use. Now if you look on the Internet right now for money systems or money generators, chances are you will see about 20 million results. But which is the best? Which is the worst? Do these things really work? First and foremost an important part of joining any business, service, company or system, is to look up reviews on the site. This can easily be done by going to your favorite search engine and looking for the site at hand and ending that link with the word "reviews." Now remember when looking up a site be sure to add the http:// and the extension as well. Now some of the sites I'm going to list below aren't "systems" so to speak but, they are ways to generate income online, or even better yet residual income, which is something all of us are shooting for!

My Great Empire -
This is a site related to the GDI system, now I have never personally tried the GDI system but, I know of friends who have and it has worked for them, so don't count this site out just yet. Go take a look at it and at least sign up for the free information. Building a massive action driven GDI team beneath you has never been easier. Not only will you notice a much higher opt in ratio, but an increased GDI sign up ratio as well. Every opt in you get through your MyGreatEmpire affiliate link, will receive approximately 12 followup emails in a period of 30 days. This is a website made for users that want to receive opt-in leads with the system.

Cash Making Power Sites -
Another great money maker, this site is a program you can purchase and you will in turn receive some really great information about the top 5 sites you can earn money from, easily and quickly. This is another very legit site, and I have actually tried this one and it has worked for me quite well. Now this might either be a pro or a con for you personally, for me it was a pro, but the more I learn and the more I read, the more I earn each month. The first month it was just a few hundred bucks, but now I'm on month 2 and the highest I earned was a little over $1500. Another great thing about this system is its automated, and who doesn't love automated sites! I know I do!

Instant Cash Generators -
This site is a little contradicting, it says you can earn "instant" cash. This isn't really the case, but its pretty darn close to instant. This is a more of a "advice" type site. You buy their program and they teach you all kinds of different ways to earn money such as flipping websites, selling domain names, profit from outsourcing, creating niche websites, getting traffic to your sites and much more. These advice reports come in articles, emails, videos, etc. Nice little site I found a few weeks ago, haven't made the jump yet but, I have heard really good things about it, so go check it out!

Of course there's hundreds if not thousands more to check out, but these are definitely my top three for being honest, legit and having good reviews. Another nice thing about the last two sites is once you pay, you get immediate access in the members area. The first site I listed, doesn't have a members area but you will be sent emails with tons of information! I haven't signed up with GDI as said earlier but, I did sign up for the free information and I gotta say the guy who owns that site K.Braun should be charging people like me for information like that because it's incredibly valuable to both you and me.

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A recent conversation with a friend reminded me just how important marketing can be. As business owners we often approach things from the standpoint of trying to create things for our market. This is the wrong approach to take.

Instead of creating we need to find out what our customers want and provide that for them. In talking with my friend we both agreed that services like Facebook and Twitter are pretty stupid.

Here is the thing though. It does not matter what he and I think, or even what you think. If our customers and clients demand something, we need to be there to deliver it.

My clients demand LinkedIn. They also demand that I have a blog. You need to stop thinking like you and start thinking like your customers. Just because I think something is worthless has no meaning or merit to it. LukasCoaching.com does not receive over 10,000 hits per month simply because I created a website. It receives those hits because of all the other things I do to support it.

There is one big caveat here. If you do any of these things, you have to do them well. Do not start doing it and stop after 3 weeks. If a customer sees your most recent blog as December, 2007 you are in big trouble. You just lost them.

Do it right or not at all. Almost every time without fail, I will update a status and get an email from someone that wants to do business with me. Give it a try; it may work for you too.

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I recently posted this question openly on LinkedIn. While the responses varied, the overwhelming majority of business folks who answered said the downturn in the economy was the biggest problem holding their company back from being great.

Mary answered simply "UM...the economy! :P".

A few nights ago my family and I were leaving a friend's home around 7 pm. As we drove down the interstate our 2-year old daughter said "Mommy; Target." Sure enough, there along the interstate was the side of Target. What is interesting about this story is that at two years old our daughter cannot read. Even more interesting is the fact that the word "Target" could not even be seen from the road; only the graphical part of their bull's eye.

My first reaction was to ask my wife how much time she honestly spends there each day. Then I wondered what it would look like if kids recognized other businesses as much as my daughter recognized Target.

Our economy is changing, I do not deny that. Ask Best Buy how much they are hurting and they will quickly tell you that big-screen TVs are at an all-time high for sales. As much as we want to blame our problems on the economy, as business owners, the problem often falls on us.

How have you adapted your business to the changing economy? The businesses I coach with have not noticed a downturn in business simply because the economy has changed. Many of them have actually noticed an increase in their business.

You must continually be adapting to the changing market. If not, you are being left behind. Target has done a great job of branding itself to its market. My guess is "the economy" is not hurting their business model. How could you benefit from adapting to the marketplace rather than complaining about it?

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How would you want your furniture or storage equipments to be if you were running your own little industry? As strong as they come to withstand the pressure of time and the amount of machinery that they would hold, I'm sure. But that's not all that you need to take care of if you are into the manufacture of highly delicate technological equipments in the likes of silicon chips and disc drives; for now you would have to tackle such probable issues as contamination and static charges. The solution lies in the form of ESD (electrostatic dissipation) furniture that is specially designed to attune to the safety requirements of cleanrooms and thereby ensure the manufacturing of high quality products without any problems.

Running an industry would require you to make a sizeable investment of your capital on the right cleanroom furniture, failing which, consequences that are hazardous to both your business and the production process are most likely show up someday. It therefore, becomes quite impertinent that you make the right decision and choose your chairs, tables, and benches with precaution. ESD benches, almost immediately, sum up as an impromptu solution as they are designed to dissipate electrostatic charge to the ground and eliminate the risk there itself. Owing to this noble characteristic, this category of benches is used in a lot of industries like computers, biomedicine, pharmaceuticals and aerospace.

As a vital member of the industrial work benches category, ESD benches are ergonomically designed and built to sustain heavy machinery with much ease due to their heavy duty frames. These benches even come with height adjustment abilities to ensure ease of use while running various machineries during the manufacturing process. Look out for bench accessories, such as steel drawers, laminate drawers, adjustable uprights, riser shelves, leg extensions and casters that would go on to increase the efficiency and performance of the benches.

When it comes to ensuring the safety and the long run of cleanrooms, an extra investment on the purchase of quality work benches go a long way in ensuring good business as well. Since the workers and the equipment themselves are the major sources of contaminants, there is no better way than to utilise ESD benches to keep such unwanted hazards at bay. A piece of good news for people who are on the verge of being convinced in the efficiency of such benches is the room for customisation that has been made available by the makers of industrial work benches. Now, you can choose benches with footrests towards the front or the rear, the height and dimension of the benches, and so on.

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If you run a firm of your own you must have been through the difficult maze of maintaining the accounts. The accounting work is very complicated yet is very crucial; therefore you can not afford to be careless about it. Since, the whole process can be really taxing, it could be very helpful, if you sought some accounting help for completing the accounting work, it can take off a lot of burden of your shoulders.

There are various professional organizations that provide efficient and affordable accounting help. These organizations hire trained professionals who are very good at maintaining the accounts and other related data. These professionals help to complete the bookkeeping and accounting tasks on time as well as tracking the related data.

The organizations providing accounting help also tend to assist in processing the non-operational information which is absolutely necessary for any business. The professionals at these organizations ensure the proper preparation of data sheets. They maintain the accounting data sought by the managers of a firm as well as shareholders. They also prepare the data to be presented to the creditors, the banks and the government, that can be easily shared between them. The professionals working in these organizations help to form the right organizational structure of the accounts department. The information related to your firm's accounts is kept securely and confidentially. Also you are given a privilege to monitor the information on a periodic basis. These organizations also install the latest software in your firm's premises that can help you to monitor your accounting records.

Taking Accounting help from these organizations has many benefits. It helps to reduce the large manpower. It also minimizes the loss of time and efforts needed to maintain accounts sheets as well as other crucial data. Also if an error occurs due to lack of time, the professionals help by covering it properly and completely. The professionals working in these organizations use wonderful accounting software that helps to finish the projects timely and easily. The professionals working for these organizations will update your financial records on a regular basis. This will help you to know about your company's status in the market from time to time.

You do not have to worry about the fee as it is easily affordable. Usually such organizations will demand a minimal amount for their services. The fee is much less than the monetary losses which otherwise you have to incur on hiring an extra in-house staff.

There are so many organizations to choose from. A simple search on the internet can help you come across a large number of companies. These companies will offer you a variety of deals to help you with your accounting tasks. Once you will choose the right company for your tasks, the accounting help provided by that company will help to ease out the complex process of accounting. It will help you gain a complete control over your non-operational services.

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United First Financial is a company that provides a program to help the typical homeowner. The average person that is paying a mortgage payment that is too high with an even higher interest rate.

They are a company that has a goal to help the American homeowner reach their financial goals of getting out of debt. The company has a plan that will enable the homeowner to reduce interest and will pay their home off at a much faster pace. They do this by utilizing banking strategies, which have been used for years.

The way it works in a brief summary is a qualified homeowner will use a Money Merge Account System that can pay off their 30-year mortgage within 1/3 to ½ the time of a traditional 30-year mortgage. And they do without the customer having to change their spending habits and they do it without increasing the monthly mortgage payment.

Sound too good to be true? Most of us know that when we are paying a monthly mortgage payment, we are paying mainly the interest and will be doing so for the first half of the term, and we end up paying so much more than our purchase price.

But this company is providing a way to change that. The Money Merge Account was developed by a team of financial experts with years of experience in the mortgage industry. Their plan is to reduce the principal on the mortgage, therefore reducing the interest on the loan. The 30-year mortgage can then be paid off in as little as 8 to 11 years.

There are 5 steps to becoming mortgage free with United First Financial. They are listed below:

1. Complete and turn in your Money Merge Account work sheet

2. Activate your new Money Merge Account

3. Set up your Paycheck transfer: You will deposit you paycheck in your regular account. When it is cleared, you will then have it transferred to your new Money Merge Account, which is a managed line of credit. Due to the line of credit being connected to your home, the money being transferred from your checking decreases your mortgage balance, which is the whole basis of this plan.

4. Use your Money Merge Account to pay your bills: Your account will now be used to pay your bills. You will have checks, debit cards and ATMs. The amount that you have left after your bills are paid will remain again the balance of your mortgage until it is needed. This keeps your mortgage balance as low as possible. Again this reduces your interest charges.

5. Use the Money Merge system to increase your savings and pay your mortgage off as quickly as possible

In summary, United First Financial believes that when repaying a mortgage, it is not the rate that really matters; it is the total amount of interest that you are paying over the term of your loan. They are helping you to reposition your income and your unused money that normally sits in your checking account, to be used to reduce your interest paid.
There is not any information as to any fees in setting this up or becoming an agent with this company.

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