“I Love You” Healing
At a recent dinner party I had the pleasure drilling Dr. Joe Vitale about ho’oponopono, the Zero Limits method, and the power of saying “I love you” to heal you and your world. My questions were direct and the answers were revealing. You can see the entire eight minute spiritual lesson right here. Enjoy.
Interpersonal Skills for Introverts
I can’t think of too many professions where you can succeed without some sort of interpersonal skills. But, as I’m sure you’re aware, interpersonal skills don’t come naturally to some people. There are people out there—perfectly kind, warm-hearted people—who like to keep to themselves. Unfortunately, though, people in the workplace can’t read minds. So, the person who might be content eating alone and reading the paper might come off as anti-social and, worse yet, rude. But, if you’re an introvert, or you’ve broken the through the shell of an introvert, you know they mean no such thing and that they’d probably be the nicest people in the workplace if they opened their mouths. Well, believe it or not, an introverted personality doesn’t necessarily hurt your interpersonal skills. In fact, you can greatly enhance your people skills through reading and meditation.
Reading
From the first time you cracked the spine of Dr. Suess, everyone has told you reading is good. And, for the most part, you probably placed it in the same useful category as fruits and vegetables. However, reading has proven to be useful for your mental health as well as your social skills. Reading arms you with knowledge for just about any conversation. By reading, you become an expert in a variety of fields, and you’ll be able to carry engaging conversations without faltering. It’s similar to when you study hard for a test, and you breeze through it without a worry. This can be quite the confidence boaster. And anyone involved with interpersonal skill training knows that confidence is perhaps one of the most important traits to possess.
Meditation
Mediation is about as introverted as it comes. Who would think that sitting alone in silence for 20 minutes could enhance your people skills? Well, like reading, meditation is good for your physical health as well as your interpersonal skills. Naturally, meditation helps you control your thoughts, but it also increases creativity and confidence. Whether you’re a painter or a financial advisor, creativity is crucial to the work environment. Those who can think outside the box and convey those thoughts to others are those who move up the corporate ladder. Meditation helps harness your thoughts and arrange them in a productive fashion. So, again, similar to reading, this practice typically associated with introverts is one of the best ways to improve your social and communication skills.
How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business
Advice for small businesses on using social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, and how to integrate these tools into the marketing and recruiting efforts of your company.
By J.J. McCorvey | Inc. Magazine
Consider this: It wasn’t until 1997 that the Internet reached 50 million users in the United States. Facebook gained over 100 million users in the U.S. from January 2009 to January 2010, marking a 145 percent growth rate within one year, according to research by digital marketing agency iStrategy Labs. If you’re a business owner that hasn’t embraced social media networking as a major component of your success strategy, it’s due time to hop onboard.
“When you’ve got 300 million people on Facebook, that’s a huge business watering hole,” says Lon Safko, social media expert and co-author of The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, of the site’s global reach. “The profile is like an index to your company.”
While Facebook has become the most popular social media site, there are plenty of others for your company to explore. LinkedIn, for example, houses 55 million professionals seeking jobs, employees, or basic business or networking opportunities. MySpace, which allows users to tinker with music, themes, and HTML code, is targeted toward youth and teens. All of these sites have one primary thing in common: the profile.
The user profile is generally what distinguishes social networking sites from other social media platforms. It helps set the stage for building relationships with people who share the same interests, activities, or personal contacts, as opposed to primarily disseminating or digesting information feeds. This also means social networks enable companies to invite audiences to get to know its brand in a way that traditional forms of marketing or advertising can’t.
But what, exactly, are the methods that businesses should use to effectively leverage the burgeoning userbase of these sites as a tool to grow their companies? The following pages will detail what to do – and what not to do – in order to maintain a viable presence in the realm of social networking.
How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Developing a Social Networking
Strategy
Before opening an account and becoming active, it’s important to consider what each site offers and how you can benefit from their resources. “Take some time and really analyze what your existing social media strategy is,” says Safko. “Figure out which tools are best for your demographic.” Without a fully developed plan for your social networking activity, you could end up meandering throughout the sites and wasting a lot of time.
Here are a few basic questions to ask yourself when forming your social networking strategy:
1. What are the needs of my business? Hopefully, you’re not putting your company name on a social networking account just to send messages back and forth to former high school classmates, so there has to be an impetus. Figure out what your needs are. Are you short-staffed? Is your advertising budget running thin?
2. What am I using the site for? After you’ve established your needs, consider the primary goal of your social networking strategy. Do you want to recruit employees for a certain department? Do you want to market a new line of products? Do you want to connect to more people in your industry?
3. Whose attention am I trying to get? Okay, so you want to market that new line of products, for example. You still need to know your target audience for that product, and with more than 300 million users on Facebook, you’ll need to narrow your focus.
Got those answered? Good. Now, consider these questions:
1. Which sites do I want to take on? If you have enough staffing power to handle multiple social networking sites, that’s great. If not, it’s important to focus on one or two, or you could spread yourself too thin and fall victim to the “gaping void” perception, where you end up going days without activity. Your followers will notice.
2. Who’s going to manage my page? Would your social networking activity fall under a current employee’s responsibilities, or do you need to bring on new talent? If you ever find yourself without the staffing resources to manage your page, don’t stick your head in the sand, says Safko. “Find some interns,” he advises. “In most cases, they’ll do it for free.”
3. Who has access to my page? What type of trust level do you have established at your company? Will all of your employees have access to the social network account, or a select few? Take the time to assess the skills and character of those who can log into your page, or you may run into unsavory situations down the road – especially when dealing with former workers.
4. Who’s going to be the personality of my page? Does your company already have a public representative that usually handles speeches, press, etc.? It may be beneficial to rein in that person as the voice of your social networking site. “People buy from other people, not from other companies,” says Safko. “In order to solidify trust, pick someone to represent your brand.”
How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Choosing Your Site
After you’ve answered those questions, you can choose which social networking site, or sites, would best fulfill the requirements of your strategy. Though many of the sites are similar in nature, they can all be categorized by the different purposes they serve. These are the basic types of social networking sites:
“Free for all” social sites: Some sites that fall under this category are Facebook, MySpace, Ning, and Friendster. Each of these sites primarily serve as a nexus of friends and associates who want to socialize. Ning, for example, has become popular for connecting classmates and helping to set up reunions. The profiles are usually personable, inviting, and can be customized with add-ons and apps.
Professional sites: Examples of these include LinkedIn, FastPitch, and Plaxo. The professional site can be utilized as an online professional contact database, or “rolodex,” but it’s also where people go to update employment information about themselves.
3. Industry-specific sites: These sites allow you to connect to people who are in your industry. I-Meet, for example, is specifically geared toward event planners, while ResearchGATE is a community for researchers in the science or technology field. Industry sites help you to narrow your search when looking for services, or people with skills in certain fields. You may even want a particular department of your company, such as IT or advertising, to open an account on one of these sites.
Dig Deeper: Embracing Social Networking in IT
How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Setting Up Your Profile
Your profile is the online representation of your brand and company, so it’s important to know what to add and what to avoid. Here are a few tips to be mindful of as you create your profile:
1. Don’t be afraid to get a little personal. Facebook profiles, for example, allow you to include things like hobbies, favorite music, etc. Including tidbits like these can make your page warmer and more personable. “Some personal information is valuable, because it may create a bond with a customer,” says Safko.
2. But not too personal. Don’t be the “TMI” poster boy or girl, (i.e. “The wife and I are on our way to have dinner – kids are with the grandparents”). Create another page that’s just yours, sans company activity.
3. Share photos and videos. Adding multimedia to your page gives flair, and offers customers an exclusive look inside your company. LinkedIn even has an add-on that allows you to post presentations and slideshows.
4. But no office party snapshots. Though the atmosphere of Facebook is still relatively laid back, you want to maintain the perception that you’re serious about your product and customers. Pictures involving Santa hats and alcohol probably shouldn’t be in your albums.
5. Set privacy settings. On most of these sites, you can control what people see on your profile, such as pictures and blog posts, and you can even limit what other people post. Depending on the nature of your company, you should consider these restrictions. Are there any embarrassing pictures of you floating around that you might not want linked to your page?
6. But don’t be a blank slate. Imagine coming across the profile of one your favorite brands, and all that’s there is a picture and headquarters location. A little disheartening, right? If and when you do enact some privacy settings, try to keep the page lively.
How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Social Network Marketing
Marketing through social networks isn’t as much about selling your product, as it is about engaging your followers. “A lot of people have started Facebook fan pages with no clue to how it can benefit them,” says Jim Tobin, president of Ignite Social Media, a social media marketing agency based in Cary, North Carolina. “You have to think above your product.” The goal of the community-based environment of social networking sites is to provide a platform for an open, honest conversation.
The companies that are most successful at converting followers into dollars are those who interact most with the users and frequently post content related to their brand. Facebook’s Fan Page is probably the best example of how you should be marketing you company through social networking sites. The page acts as an upgraded user profile for brands, companies, and organizations to be as involved as the users, and has plenty of tools to help you do so. As users become “fans” of your page, all of your activity appears in their News Feed each time they log on. There’s also a useful feature called the Insights tool, which allows you to analyze page views, the demographics of your fans, and the number of people who view (or stop viewing) your News Feed posts.
Outdoor Technology, a Los Angeles-based manufacturer of clothing and gear for skiers and snowboarders, initially sold merchandise directly to retailers. But after the company began actively using their Fan Page last September, revenue from e-commerce went from zero to $25,000 in three months, says CEO Caro Krissman. The page has now amassed over 11,000 fans. “We saw Facebook as sort of a sweet spot for where our target market is,” says Krissman. “With the ability to target users in such a focused way, we felt like there really wasn’t a better forum to go about [marketing online].”
‘Fan’ features your company should be using:
1. Comment on other users’ content or profile posts. By responding to what your followers post to your profile, you show them that you appreciate their interaction. If they know they have your attention, they’ll keep coming back.
2. Ask questions on your wall. Facebook users love to be heard. It can be surprising how many responses one question can elicit. “It starts to snowball,” says Safko. “What you’ll find is that the conversation will branch off and start another one.”
3. Posting links or threads. “One thing fan pages lets you do that Web pages don’t is encourage viral spread,” says Tobin. If you have any content that you want to circulate quickly, the fan page is the perfect tool.
4. Posting relevant events. By posting upcoming events your company may be part of or hosting, you can help drive more attendees to the function. And for those who can’t come, they get a glimpse at how active your business is within the community or industry.
Social Network Promotions
Remember, it’s called a social network, not a “business network.” Coming off as a pushy or shrewd salesperson peddling a product could scare away your Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections. Remember to be genuine and personal.
Here are the things you should do when promoting your company or product through social networking sites:
1. Make it benefit-based. Make the customer feel that they need to participate in the promotion. Is the product or feature available for a limited time? Are you offering exclusively to your followers on a particular network?
2. Talk about new or uncommon features. Even if you have a relatively popular product, there may be some things consumers don’t know about it. What are some new or different ways it can be used?
3. Include some discounts and savings. Offering discounts on products is usually a shoe-in to grab customers’ attention. Krissman, of Outdoor Technology, says he posts promotional codes that users can fill out on the company’s website and get up to 30 percent off a product. Not only does it drive more buyers to your product, but it also brings more followers to your page.
Here are the things you shouldn’t do when promoting your company or product through social networking sites:
1. Don’t continually have sales-related messages. There are other ways to promote besides selling your product. Comment or ask questions about news or topics in your industry. “They will easily ignore you or unsubscribe you if you continue to push a sale,” says Tobin.
2. Don’t set up an expectation, then cheat on it. If you announce to your followers that your purpose is to give advice, don’t turn around and start selling. “If you violate that expectation, people are going to get upset and they’re going to leave,” says Tobin. Again, make the sale subtle – how can your product help them achieve the advice you’re giving?
How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Social Network Recruiting
Social recruiting is an effective way to utilize social networks to find the best candidate for any open positions at your company. While the past few years saw the rise of job boards like Careerbuilder.com and Monster.com, the growing prominence of social networks have transformed the way businesses build their best team. Instead of relying on the “come one, come all” approach, the detailed personal information contained in profiles, such as interests and job history, allows businesses to employ social networking sites to target the specific audience or skill set they want to pull from.
According to an annual social recruitment survey published by Jobvite, an online service that helps businesses consolidate the resources of social media sites, 80 percent of companies used or planned to use social networking to find and attract candidates in 2009, with LinkedIn being used by 95 percent of the respondents and Facebook usage growing from 36 percent in 2008 to 59 percent in 2009.
“It’s like what’s happened to the ad industry,” says Dan Finnigan, CEO of Jobvite and former general manager of Yahoo! HotJobs. “It used to be that you would buy a big ad to get the consumer’s attention, but more and more companies are relying on online advertising software that puts that ad right in front of them based on data, like the other ads they click on. Social recruiting is analogous to that.”
The Benefits of Social Network Recruiting
Here are some of the primary advantages that social recruiting affords small businesses:
1. Empowers your employees to distribute job information. These days, most, if not all of your employees probably have a profile on a social networking site. By enabling them to post information about open positions, you multiply your searching reach by the thousands.
2. Helps you put the passive job candidate in your crosshairs. Job boards are mostly used by people who are proactively looking for positions. But what about the perfect potential employee who may not be scouring Careerbuilder.com every day?
3. A low-cost method of finding high-quality candidates. When looking for job candidates, it takes time to sift through resumes of unqualified applicants, and many job boards charge fees to post openings. Social recruiting helps you zone in on the best candidates, for free.
Tools to Help You Socially Recruit
1. Custom searches. Searching only by name and location doesn’t cut it when looking for the perfect employee. LinkedIn has one of the most thorough searches of all the sites, allowing you to sift through profiles by company, industry, college, and even how many “degrees” you are from the person.
3. Updating your status message. When you or your employees update your statuses, it pops up on your friends’ home page, and sits atop the profile until it’s changed. “My company is looking for … ,” is sure to snag replies.
4. Linking to stories and external content. Both Facebook and LinkedIn enable users to post external content to their profiles. By linking to articles and blogs that contain positive news about your business, you show potential candidates that it’s not just your social network connections that adore your company.
How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business: Privacy and Legal Issues
Though social networking can certainly be a fun way to help you expand your company, there are plenty of issues surrounding privacy and legalities that you should always be aware of when searching for employees, and even after you’ve hired them. “The laws [regarding online privacy and or hiring online] generally apply the same [as existing state laws],” says Megan Erickson, an associate at Des Moines, Iowa-based Dickinson, Mackaman, Tyler & Hagan law firm and author of Erickson’s Blog on Social Networking and the Law. “But now that there are all these different kinds of social media, they combine to make it a very unique environment.”
Here are some of the most important things to keep in mind to help you steer clear of legal trouble when dealing with potential or current employees and social networking sites:
1. Don’t use fake profiles. Using a fake profile when adding employees to monitor their activity can constitute as an invasion of privacy, Erickson says. “That’s just asking for lots of trouble,” she says.
2. Add a social media section to your handbook. Including language about social media in your personnel policy is paramount, especially if you plan on integrating it heavily in your company’s operations.
3. Beware of existing federal and state laws. It may help to prep yourself on the many federal and state laws regarding anti-discrimination and privacy, Erickson says, so that if you do come across an employee’s wayward photo or disparaging status message, you’ll be knowlegeable about how to proceed with disciplinary action.
Resources
To learn more about using social networking sites:
• The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, by Lon Safko and David Brake, is a great guide for business owners and executives who want to use the power of social media to grow their companies. Visit the website, TheSocialMediaBible.com, to connect with other professionals looking to do the same.
• Megan Erickson’s blog, Erickson’s Blog on Social Networking and the Law, posts up-to-date news on legal issues surrounding social media sites.
• Mashable is a great resource for news, advice, and jobs concerning all things social media.
• John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing – The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide, also runs a marketing blog for small businesses called Duct Tape Marketing. Check out what he says about the 7 Truths of Social Media Marketing.
Some sites to consider joining for social networking:
• Facebook: The most popular social networking site, it allows you keep up with friends, colleagues, and classmates and features a stream-lined, easy-to-use interface.
• MySpace: Geared toward the younger crowd, this interactive site lets you connect with friends and tweak your profile with extras like themes and music playlists.
• LinkedIn: This site is strictly professional, and for good reason. You can keep up with colleagues, find employees, and network with others in your field.
• Bebo: Another primarily social site for friends that allows users to express themselves through media and interactive environments.
• FastPitch: This professional site serves as a great platform for growing companies to market themselves, allowing you to post events, press, and submit keywords to increase your profile’s SEO strength.
• Friendster: A social networking site for friends that promotes connections between international users and also boasts “Fan Profiles” similar to Facebook’s.
• I-Meet : A professional site where you can establish valuable contacts and potentially save money on event planning.
Michael Jordan – Becoming Legendary
Michael Jordan provides the ultimate motivation with a journey through his legacy that challenges you to look beyond your limits and rise to your potential.
How to negotiate your medical bills
How to negotiate your medical bills
See original article from WalletPop
“About 60% of doctors will give a discount,” Martinez says. Sometimes he’s able to negotiate a fee upfront working directly with the doctor or the manager of a large practice. Other times, Martinez, who specializes in sales and marketing training, barters for his family’s health care needs by offering to streamline the doctor’s business or improve the marketing section of their website in exchange for medical care. He’s even posted ads on Craigslist offering his service in exchange for specific medical care needs, such as physical therapy
But negotiating upfront is Martinez’s preferred method of cutting medical costs. The key to success, he says, is to ask for the decision maker, know what type of financial help you need and how much you can afford to pay upfront or in monthly installments — then ask for less than you can afford.
Suppose you can afford to pay $100 per month until the bill is paid off — you should offer to pay $80 per month so you have some financial wiggle room. Always remember, says Martinez, “it’s not personal, it’s business,” and conduct yourself as though you’re negotiating a business deal..
Even if he’s checking a family member into the hospital, Martinez will ask for the person in charge, such as the finance manager or revenue manager, and strike a deal as part of the check-in procedure. He’ll work out a discount, as well as a payment plan before his family member is admitted. course, not every medical practice or hospital is willing to negotiate. In that case, Martinez will seek medical care elsewhere.
Mark Rukavina, executive director of The Access Project, a nonprofit that educates people on how to negotiate medical bills and insurance claims, says the most important thing to do is communicate with the medical provider. “Don’t ignore bills, hoping they’ll be resolved at some point in the future, whether you are insured or uninsured,” says Rukavina. Instead, ask for a discount. Insurance companies get discounts of 30% to 40% or more, and you can fight for the same discount. But, like Martinez, Rukavina cautions that you shouldn’t agree to terms you can’t afford. If you don’t pay according to terms, all your time spent negotiating could be for nothing.
If you are uninsured, you’re likely being billed at a much higher rate than any insurance company. “You have a lot of wiggle room” when negotiating, Rukavina explains. You can call the Access Project for help, but its model is one of self-advocacy. They’ll help you find the information you need in order to advocate for yourself.
If you’re not comfortable negotiating or have a hard time sorting through complex medical bills on your own, you can turn to paid medical advocates, which typically charge a percentage of what they save you. Medical Cost Advocates charges 35% of the amount saved. Health Advocate charges 25% to negotiate bills. It also works on an hourly basis (charging $120 per hour) to help people with specific needs, such as finding a specialist or disease management assistance. The company will contract directly with major employers that pay $1 to $5 per employee for guidance on navigating the health insurance maze. Health Advocate’s “Healthcare Survival Guide” offers some tips on cutting medical costs that you can download for free.
There are also medical bill experts who will negotiate your bills for you. After seeing a client’s medical bills and determining how much time it will take to negotiate the bill lower, Judy Medeiros-Mitchell, who’s based in New York City, sets a flat fee upfront. She has negotiated bills as high as $50,000 for $500.
Medeiros-Mitchell also advises people on how to negotiate medical bills themselves for free if she thinks it’s a relatively simple bill to deal with and they want to try. She explains that most of the battle is in knowing how to find the right person to speak with. And if you offer to pay cash upfront, the practice won’t need to do any paperwork, which can work to your advantage. Another key to negotiating successfully is to know what the provider will get paid after the insurance company takes its discount.
To figure out that information, visit Healthcare Blue Book, a website developed for the uninsured and underinsured that provides the data they need to negotiate prices. At the end of May, a new website developed by Alex Fair called FairCareMD is expected to launch that will help you find a doctor willing to negotiate in your area.
Lita Epstein has written more than 25 books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Social Security and Medicare and The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Medicare Part D.
The Optimist Creed: Promise Yourself
The Optimist Creed was authored in 1912 by Chistian D. Larson, appearing in his book Your Forces and How to Use Them. It was adopted as Optimist International’s creed in 1922. Many have found inspiration in The Optimist Creed. In hospitals, the creed has been used to help patients recover from illness. In locker rooms, coaches have used it to motivate their players.
Please print this page of The Optimist’s Creed to read daily. Use it as a powerful tool to become the most brilliant magnet for magnificence and joy in your life. Please share it with your friends.
Promise Yourself
To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature you meet.
To give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds.
To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.
30 Habits that Will Change your Life
Developing good habits is the basic of personal development and growth. Everything we do is the result of a habit that was previously taught to us. Unfortunately, not all the habits that we have are good, that’s why we are constantly trying to improve.
The following is a list of 30 practical habits that can make a huge difference in your life.
You should treat this list as a reference, and implement just one habit per month. This way you will have the time to fully absorb each of them, while still seeing significant improvements each month.
Health habits
1. Exercise 30 minutes every day. Especially if you don’t do much movement while working, it’s essential that you get some daily exercise. 30 minutes every day are the minimum recommended for optimal health.
2. Eat breakfast every day. Breakfast is the more important meal of the day, yet so many people skip it. Personally, I like to eat a couple of toasts in the morning along with a fruit beverage.
3. Sleep 8 hours. Sleep deprivation is never a good idea. You may think that you are gaining time by sleeping less, when in reality you are only gaining stress and tiredness. 8 hours are a good number of hours for most people, along with an optional 20 minutes nap after lunch.
4. Avoid snacking between meals. Snacking between meals is the best way to gain weight. If you are hungry, eat something concrete. Otherwise don’t. Update: for clarification, I mean don’t eat junk food between meals, but eating real food it’s ok.
5. Eat five portions of fruits and vegetables every day. Our body and brain loves getting vegetables and fruit, so I highly recommend eating as much of them as possible. Five portions is the dose that’s usually recommended by many health associations.
6. Eat fish. Fish is rich of omega 3 and other healthy elements. At least one meal per week of fish should be enough for getting all these nutrients.
7. Drink one glass of water when you wake up. When you wake up, your body is dehydrated and needs liquid. Make the habit of drinking one glass of water after you wake up in the morning. Also, drink more during the day.
8. Avoid soda. Soda is often one of the most unhealthy beverage you can find. Limit your consumption of soda as much as possible and you’re body will be grateful for that.
9. Keep your body clean. I don’t advise spending your day in front of the mirror, but a minimum of personal care does never hurt.
10. If you smoke, stop it. There’s no reason to smoke anymore, and quitting is easy.
11. If you drink, stop it. Same as above. Don’t think that alcohol will solve your problems. It never does. The only exception is one glass of wine per day during meals.
12. Take the stairs. This is just a hack that forces you to do a minimum of exercise. Instead of taking the elevator, take the stairs.
Productivity habits
1. Use an inbox system. Make the habit of keeping track of all the ideas and things that comes to mind. You can use a notebook to do this, and then sync everything on your computer.
2. Prioritize. If you have a list of things to do, where do you start? One way is to prioritize your list. If you are in doubt, ask yourself: “If I could only accomplish one thing today, what would it be?”
3. Plan, but not too much. Planning is important, and you should decide in advance what you are going to do today or this week. However, planning for more than a few weeks is usually inefficient, so I would not worry too much about that.
4. Wake up early. Waking up early in the morning is a great way to gain extra time. I personally like to wake up at 5 am, so that by 9 am I have already accomplished what otherwise would have taken me many days..
5. Check your email only twice per day. Email can easily become an addiction, but it’s usually unnecessary to check it every 10 minutes. Make an effort and check your email only once or twice per day, see if the world will still rotate as before after you try this.
6. Eliminate unimportant tasks. Being busy all day does not mean you are doing important stuff. Eliminate every activity that’s not important, and focus on what really matters.
7. Clean off your desk and room. Having a clear room and desk is important to maintain focus and creativity.
8. Automate. There are a lot of tasks that you need to perform every day or every week. Try to automate them as much as possible.
9. Set strict deadlines. When you do something, decide in advance when you’re going to stop. There’s a rule that states that you will fulfill all the time you have available for completing a task, so make an habit of setting strict deadlines for maximizing your productivity.
10. Take one day off per week. Instead of working every day, take one day off per week (for example sunday) where you are not going to turn on your computer. Use that time for doing recreational activities like going for a walk.
Personal Development habits
1. Read 1 book per week. Reading is a good way to keep your brain active. With just 30 minutes per day you should be able to read one book per week, or more than 50 books per year.
2. Solve puzzles. Quizzes, word games, etc. are all good ways to exercise your brain.
3. Think positively. You are what you think, all the time.
4. Make fast decisions. Instead of thinking for one hour wherever you are going to do something, make your decisions as fast as possible (usually less than 1 minute).
5. Wait before buying. Waiting 48 hours before buying anything is a tremendous money saver, try it.
6. Meditate 30 minutes per day. A great way to gain clearness and peace is through meditation. 30 minutes are not a lot, but enough to get you started with meditation.
Career habits
1. Start a blog. Blogging is one of the best way to put your word out. It doesn’t have to be around a specific topic, even a personal blog will do.
2. Build a portfolio. If your job is creating stuff, building a portfolio is a great way to show what you are capable of. You can also contribute stuff for free if that applies to your work.
What do you think? What are the habits that changed your life?
Neuro Marketing – Everything we buy has an Emotion Reason
Everything we buy has an emotional explanation. When we buy something, our subconscious level is as active as our conscious one, because deep inside, everyone feels the need to fulfill certain human needs. The easiest of which is avoiding fear/pain/boredom or to gain excitement/pleasure/certainty.
The majority of us, when we buy something, are trying to fill an emotional void. We are attempting to get closer to happiness and to a life free of problems. This is why we buy what we want as much as, or even more than, what we need, to get rid of the pain or to feel happy. There may be exceptions to this — it’s doubtful that you feel an emotional connection to your laundry detergent or toilet paper — but any items that require a decision-making process definitely fall into the “emotional connection” category.
Below we discuss the 6 basic human needs that control the pleasure/pain buttons. Our advice as marketing/business experts is that when you are trying to sell a product or service, link it to one of these, and you will get the person to connect emotionally with your offering.
1. First necessity: Certainty
If you can prove to people that your product or service will bring certainty to their lives, they will buy it. It can be the certainty of love, security, health, self-respect, financial freedom, or peace, you name it, just know your potential clients’ desires.
2. Second necessity: Variety
While there is a small group of folks that we would classify as “creatures of habit,” most people need variety to feel alive. The same, over and over again, bores them. We travel, read, meet people, and try new foods, among other things, in search for variety. Some people hate routine, so present your product or service as a routine breaker.
3. Third necessity: Significance
Significance is a great buying motivator; however, this word has a very subjective meaning. People have different views and experiences in regards to what is significant for them. You have to clearly identify what matters to your potential clients in order to present the significance your product or service may have for them.
4. Fourth necessity: Connection
Connection is vital in a person’s life. We have the need to feel deeply connected to our family, friends, community, society, and country. How can your product or service enhance that connection?
5. Fifth necessity: Growth
Life is about growth. People need to grow every day in order to feel alive, successful and prosperous. One can grow emotionally, professionally, spiritually, financially, etc. If your product or service supports a person’s growth in any area, there is a big chance they will buy it.
6. Sixth necessity: Contribution
Everyone has a purpose in life. Everyone was born to fulfill a mission, and this is why everyone needs to know that his or her life matters. Human beings have the need to make a difference and to contribute to the wellness of the world in some way.
Your product or service will connect deeply with your customers if it offers them an opportunity to tap into their emotions.
4 Ways to Improve People Skills
How advantageous is it to increase your people skills? People skills can be defined by a broad collection of attitudes, thought processes, and levels of awareness, which allow you to relate well to others. In business, having great people skills is tremendously important.
People skills closely relate to business topics such as business leadership, negotiation skills, and sales techniques. The world of business is full of relationships, and learning to form good relationships with the help of people skills will only serve to your benefit. Read the following four tips to help improve the way you relate to others.
Active Listening
It is highly important for others to be heard. Active listening is the process of presenting occasional and one-line summaries of what the speaker is saying. The process lets the speaker know you are listening and you understand their message. Active listening is advantageous for both parties. Imagine being a new employee taking directions from a boss. Anxiety or nervousness may influence the new worker’s ability to listen to directions, yet participating in active listening would prompt the worker to concentrate on the boss’ message, reinforcing the worker’s memory and letting the boss know the worker clearly understands.
Smiling is Okay
How serious are you about business? Could it be detrimental to be too serious? It can be possible to be successful and jovial at the same time. Many people who find themselves in a business leadership position struggle with implementing humor because humor has the reputation of being antithetical to business. Proponents of enhancing people skills would suggest that smiling is okay. Of course, it is expected to maintain professionalism at all times during the course of the business day, yet a professional can be successful and enjoy humor. Sometimes, success is facilitated by humor due to a businessperson’s charismatic personality.
Empathize
When we have a remote sense of what others are experiencing, we are sympathizing, but we are empathizing when we can truly relate to the experience of others. It is a great advancement in increasing your people skills when you can learn to put your self in another’s position or see things from their perspective. Oftentimes, people may not relate or cannot remedy a situation because they do not attempt to place themselves in the other person’s position. Empathizing increases awareness and can benefit business by helping people relate and inspiring workers to see various perspectives.
No Negativity
‘No negativity’ sounds cliche and obvious, yet maintaining a positive mindset is something to be conscious about each business day. Some business people repeat mantras or slogans throughout the day to help them maintain their positivity. Negativity has a bad influence on many business aspects such as negotiation skills, strategic selling, and people skills. It is important to distinguish negativity from being critical. The latter is needed in order to make business decisions, yet negativity is never ‘needed’ in business. Keeping a positive mindset improves morale and inspires others to seek you for input and advice.
Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media
Marketing via Facebook, Twitter Yields Results for Some, Others Say It’s Overrated; ‘Hype Right Now Exceeds the Reality’
Last year, Jackie Siddall described in a blog post how a message she received on Twitter prompted her to buy a folding kayak for around $1,900.
The vessel was one of about just 600 sold in 2009 by Folbot Inc., a small retailer in Charleston, S.C. “You can’t buy that exposure,” says the firm’s co-owner, David AvRutick, who claims the incident speaks to the value of using social media for marketing.
But Mr. AvRutick’s experience may be the exception, rather than the norm. In its short lifetime, social media—services like Facebook and Twitter—have become popular marketing tools for small firms due to the low cost and easy-to-use format. Some entrepreneurs say they’re highly effective, but new evidence suggests otherwise.
“The hype right now exceeds the reality,” says Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business.
Last year, social-media adoption by businesses with fewer than 100 employees doubled to 24% from 12%, says a survey released in January of 2,000 U.S. entrepreneurs from the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business and Network Solutions LLC, a Web-services provider in Herndon, Va.
Meanwhile, a separate survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners from the same sponsors found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What’s more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives.
“It could harm you if you end up inadvertently saying something stupid, offensive or even grammatically incorrect,” says Mr. Chiagouris.
A business owner’s time and energy spent on social-media marketing—Folbot’s Mr. AvRutick says he dedicates about an hour a day—could also go to waste. Fifty percent of the latter survey’s respondents say it requires more effort than expected.
To gain positive results, entrepreneurs need to regularly interact with consumers through these sites and not simply create static profiles, says Jacob Morgan, co-owner of Chess Media Group Corp., a consulting firm in San Francisco that specializes in social media.
Some small businesses opt to hire outside firms to handle their social-media marketing or advise them on the best ways to use it, but such services can cost hundreds of dollars a month.
For Chris Lindland, owner of Cordarounds.com, an online clothing retailer in San Francisco, converting consumers into customers using social media has required a “patient investment.”
“My business has been visited millions of times, but I haven’t made millions of sales,” says Mr. Lindland, whose four-person staff spends up to 90 minutes a day managing Cordarounds’s accounts on Twitter and Facebook. “People have told me they finally got around to buying from my business after reading about it on social media two years ago.”
Some entrepreneurs say they’ve found early indicators that their social-media efforts are paying off.
“The people coming from social media have been buying,” says Stephen Bailey, who oversees social-media and other marketing initiatives for John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd., a footwear and accessories retailer in Vancouver with about 100 employees.
As evidence, Mr. Bailey points to a 40% increase in online sales in 2009—the first full year the company engaged consistently in social-media marketing—compared with 2008 when it was just getting started. He says he can draw a correlation between those figures and social media by looking at traffic to the company’s Web site from Twitter using Hootsuite, a free Twitter-management service from Invoke Media Inc. Other free services that track Web traffic from social-media sites include Google Analytics, CoTweet and Lodgy.
“The second we started using social media, it became one of the biggest drivers of traffic outside of search engines,” says Mr. Bailey, adding that his research shows these visitors spend as much time on Fluevog.com as those who come from other online destinations. The company doesn’t invest in paid advertising on social media, he adds.
Other business owners are soliciting customer feedback and monitoring what’s being said about their firms to determine the impact of sites like Facebook and Twitter on consumers’ buying decisions.
Mr. AvRutick says he regularly searches Twitter for tweets that mention kayaking and then sends messages to the people who wrote them. He connected with Ms. Siddall, the blogger who credited Twitter for exposing her to Folbot, after she posted a tweet that mentioned she wanted a kayak.
Ms. Siddall, a 37-year-old senior designer for Idea Couture Inc., a creative-marketing agency in Toronto, says she was unaware that folding kayaks even existed until she heard from Mr. AvRutick. She spent the next few months researching different brands, which included perusing a networking forum on Folbot’s Web site about kayaking.
Ms. Siddall says she later asked Mr. AvRutick via Twitter if he would send her some photos of her folding kayak being made, and he provided about 20. After it arrived, she says she decided to write a blog post about the whole experience.
“I didn’t find the same level of information or communication online from the other brands,” she says.
Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com
Three Best Ways to Catch an Employee Thief
Three Best Ways to Catch an Employee Thief |Wall Street Journal|By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN
If your small business can’t afford external auditors, security cameras or other resources for spotting employee fraud, consider doing some detective work of your own. The effort could save your firm from a significant financial loss or worse—failure.
After all, a single heist could be fatal for a small business, says Richard Hollinger, a professor of criminology at the University of Florida. Small firms typically don’t have
Getty Images
Employee fraud can take place right under a business owner’s nose. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, an anti-fraud trade group in Austin, Texas, such activities occur on average for as long as two years before the victim organization catches on.
The phone keeps ringing. Some corrupt workers will instruct friends to repeatedly call a business and ask if the owner is on site until the answer is no, says Mark R. Doyle, chief executive of Jack L. Hayes International Inc., a provider of workplace crime-prevention services in Wesley Chapel, Fla. Once they hear those “magic” words, the friend knows it’s safe to come by and swipe merchandise under the rogue employee’s watch, he explains.
The math doesn’t add up. Two years ago, ReShonda Young noticed a subordinate at her father’s transportation company, Alpha Express LLC, had turned in a weekly time sheet with more hours than he could’ve possibly worked. That prompted Ms. Young, a manager at the Waterloo, Iowa, company, to investigate further and she discovered that the employee had been stretching his hours for months, initially to a less-noticeable extent. “I guess it got to be a little easy,” she says. Now all supervisors must review and sign workers’ time cards before they can be processed, says Ms. Young.
Money problems surface. Financial pressures are a key motivator of occupational fraud, the ACFE reports. For this reason, business owners should take note of any excessive complaining by a worker about money burdens. And if such a person’s lifestyle suddenly improves dramatically, this could signal he or she has their hand in the company’s cookie jar.
Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com
Watch Sarah Needleman video
How to Manage Multiple Business Locations
How to Manage Multiple Business Locations | Inc |By Darren Dahl | Mar 4, 2010
Thomas Friedman was onto something when he wrote his book, The World is Flat. Companies increasingly feel the need to expand their reach into new markets—both domestically and internationally—from a very early age.
One direct result of this expansion is that you may now be forced to manage multiple locations and oversee employees in distant offices—a fact that can cause quite a few challenges and headaches, says Eric Bloom, president of Manager Mechanics, a management-training firm based in Ashland, Massachusetts.
“No matter how widespread your organization becomes, you need to work hard to retain team cohesion and the philosophy that everyone is on the same team regardless of where they work,” he says.
Dig Deeper: Why You Should Expand
Managing Multiple Locations: 6 Challenges
1. Out-of-site-out-of-mind syndrome. When things get busy at your primary location, it can be hard to give your employees based at other locations the time they deserve.
2. Loss of spontaneous communications. Because you do not see your employees in the hallway or at meetings, there is very little natural or unplanned communication.
3. Attenuated logistics. Anything that cannot be sent electronically, must be mailed, which causes time delays and increased effort.
4. Complicated work assignments. It is harder to perform certain types of jobs or collaborate on them when employees are based in remote locations
5. Lack of team cohesiveness. Your team members will not know each other as well. This can easily lead to an “us-versus-them” mentality.
6. Concerns over general supervision. If you have a remote office that clients visit, it’s virtually impossible to see if your employees are arriving on time, working appropriate business hours or wearing proper business attire.
To tackle these and other challenges, then, organizational leaders need to focus on three key areas: systems, technology, and communication.
Managing Multiple Locations: Put Systems in Place
The old adage is that systems run businesses, and people run systems. “You must have systems in place to be able to standardize the quality of your communications, products and results,” says Bert Martinez, founder of Bert Martinez Communications, a business training and communications company with multiple locations. “Systems will allow you to duplicate offices and grow faster with reduce training times and supervision.”
The key is to establish clear responsibilities, boundaries, and authority, says Ann Latham, president of Uncommon Clarity, an organizational-behavior consulting firm in Easthampton, Massachusetts. “Vague responsibilities create the proverbial cracks into which everything drops,” she says. Muddy boundaries create disasters ranging from personnel problems to legal ones while insufficient authority can become a source of delay and demotivation. “An employee with everything needed to exercise good judgment except either the authority or sense of responsibility to do so is worth little,” says Lantham.
The point, then, is to make each employee’s responsibilities clear through an organizational structure combined with a system that measures each and every employee, and holds everyone accountable for delivering on their work responsibilities regardless of where they are based.
Dig Deeper: Building Systems to Manage Your Business
Managing Multiple Locations: Adopt New Technology
With the advent of the Internet, and the prolific surge in the number of collaborative tools that have spawned from it, technology has become an integral part of the backbone for any far-flung organization, says Bloom, particularly because it can help your organization cut down on business travel expenses.
While many organizations rely on custom-built software platforms and intranets as collaborative platforms, some of the most commonly-used tools by small businesses in particular are also either free, cheap or available as a software-as-a-service, which means you can access these tools over the web for a monthly fee. Some of the best and cost-effective options include:
• Google Documents, Gmail and Calendar for internal training and communication.
• Basecamp: An popular project management tool.
• Facebook : The now ubiquitous social networking tool is just as useful for business as it is for personal applications.
• Skype: The surge in VOIP technology and software means that you can communicate with remote employees cheaply and effectively.
• Salesforce.com: One of the most popular tools around, Salesforce.com allows remote sales team to collaborate in real-time on maintaining your company’s sales pipeline.
A new wrinkle in terms of technology is that many firms have begun to equip all of their employees with smart phones such as the iPhone as a way to enable them to access any web-based technology regardless of where they are, including many new applications.
Dig Deeper: The Latest Small Business Technology News
Managing Multiple Locations: Focus on Communication
Systems are a must, technology is important tool however, none of these will work with out real communication, says Martinez. “Communication is the key to collaboration with your offices, coworkers, and clients,” he says. If you neglect this aspect of running your business, you do so at your own risk, particularly in a business with multiple locations. That’s why Martinez also makes having his employees have time face-to-face a priority by having his offices take turns hosting each other once a year to enable communication between people on all levels.
Other tips for fostering communication between your employees based in the office and elsewhere include:
1. Establish full team weekly staff meetings via phone or webinar to get your whole group together.
2. If possible, have web cams so your team members can see each other.
3. Make each physical site responsible for a specific type of work, rather then assign random tasks associated with a central project.
4. When doable, have the CEO or management members personally visit each remote site on a scheduled basis, every month, for instance.
5. Establish weekly phone-based staff meetings individually with each remote group so that each physical location will get time with top management.
6. If possible, get your whole group together once or twice a year for staff meetings, brainstorming and team building.
Dig Deeper: How to Improve Your Communications Skills
Managing Multiple Locations: The Global Workforce
Managing multiple locations across the U.S. is hard enough. But when you add a new sales office or manufacturing plant overseas, says Bloom, you can actually run into a host of new challenges associated with cross-cultural communication that include:
1. Time zones. There is limited or no overlap in the standard workday.
2. Language. Even if everyone has a common language, English for example, differences in accents, language fluency, and the use of slang expressions can make communication extremely difficult, particularly on conference calls and speakerphones.
3. Social norms. Cultural differences from country to country can accidentally cause tension, embarrassment, and miscommunication.
3. Holiday schedules. Scheduled meetings, reporting deadlines, cash flows and standard business processes can be derailed or delayed based on local holiday schedules.
4. Technical connectivity. Not all countries have high-speed connectivity at all locations.
5. Labor laws. Laws regarding hiring, employee termination, hours worked, layoffs, sexual harassment differ from country to country.
6. Business-related laws, ethics, and practices. Business is conducted very differently from country to country.
7. Personal-privacy laws. In European Union member states, the laws regarding the personal use, storage, and transport of personal information are quite stringent compared with those in the U.S.
Dig Deeper: Building the Best Virtual Workforce
Managing Multiple Locations: Adapting to Different Cultures
Bloom suggests tackling these challenges by considering the following tips:
1. Find one key contact in each country that is very knowledgeable in local customs, business practices, and laws.
2. Learn to pronounce people’s names correctly.
3. Gain a basic understanding of country politics and current events.
4. Know the names of your managers and leaders in those countries and pronounce their names correctly.
5. Find ways to take advantage of the time zone differences.
6. Be respectful of the differences between people and cultures.
The bottom line in managing multiple locations, says Martinez, is to help make everyone in your company feel motivated and part of the team, regardless of where they do their work. “When your people feel good and that they matter, they will perform better,” he says.
Dig Deeper: How to Be a Lead Teams in Emerging Markets
Managing Multiple Locations: Additional Resources
Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World, by Charles Grantham, James P. Ware and Cory Williamson (AMACOM, 2007.) This book will show you how to get your company to embrace new technology, understand the ever-changing workforce, and rethink the way you structure work environments to deal with the global economy.
Competing in a Flat World: Building Enterprises for a Borderless World, by Victor K. Fung, William K. Fung and Yoram (Jerry) Wind (Wharton School Publishing, 2007.) A book filled with solid tips to create a flexible organization capable of competing anywhere.
The Facility Management Handbook, by David G. Cotts Kathy O. Roper and Richard P. Payant (AMACOM, 2009.)
A great reference guide for understanding and implementing best practices for the modern workplace.
Tips for Effective Communication
Effective communication is essential to ones career growth. It includes both conveying messages clearly and receiving messages clearly from others. Communications skills help you when presenting a weekly report to your team, completing a sales call to a possible client, emailing your boss, or chatting with coworkers. Although each situation requires a unique approach, there are some general communication tips that apply to all types of audiences.
Tip #1: Know the topic you are discussing. If you are giving a speech to a large group of people, be sure you are familiar with the subject. Or if you are sending an email to your boss, be sure to understand what you are asking or discussing. Your audience can easily pick up on a lack of knowledge and will not value your communication if detected.
Tip #2: Know the audience. There is a big difference speaking to a work friend in the break room and discussing a deal with a customer. You want to adapt to the situation and match your communication to the level that is needed. Not to say you should change who you are but understand that what you know and do not know about the audience. Are they knowledgeable on the topic? Do they have cultural differences? What are their expectations from you? How much do they know about you? These are the types of questions you want to ask yourself before deciding on a communication technique.
Tip #3: Use the right communication channel. These include face to face, telephone, video conference, and written (email, letter, memo, etc). If you are discussing a confidential topic, you would want to be sure you use a method that reaches only a qualified audience. If you are reporting on a long, in depth subject, a phone call might not allow proper interaction. Maybe graphs or displays would work better in a face to face meeting.
Tip #4: Be to the point, positive, and polite. Do not ramble on about unnecessary information or personal references when they are not needed because the audience will become distracted. Reflect the news, even if bad news, in a positive light. If you begin speaking negatively, people tend to get their back up or become worried about the topic. They will then pay less attention to whatever else you have to discuss. And, always remember your manners, they go a long way. An audience will become more receptive if they are treated well and feel respected. Being rude will create an instant barrier that is tough to get through.
Tip #5: Listen. Communication is not just about you talking, it is receiving information and feedback from others. Whether you ask a question and the audience is answering, you send an email and the recipient I responding, or you are getting the opinion of others in a team meeting, be sure to listen fully. If you do not comprehend what they say, ask questions or for them to repeat it. Listening will help you clearly understand your audience so that they will clearly understand you.
Communication skills can be learned overtime through your experiences or you can take part in a communication skills training. Many businesses or organizations offer training to their employees or members so that they can present themselves effectively.
Creating a Memorable Tradeshow Or Event
Are you in charge of an event or tradeshow? Want your attendees to have more fun and provide you with great testimonies? Of course you do well the fastest way to learn anything or generate lasting memories is by creating Intense Emotional Associations (IEAs) with your event. So here are a few ideas that will create a lot of fun emotions and lasting memories try it with your next event or tradeshow.
Nowadays videos are all the rage and most people don’t mind posing for a video bite here and there. Assign a staff or two to take short videos, 1 minute or less, of the attendees and presenters having fun at the event. While they’re in this Intense Emotional Association (IEA) ask them to give a recommendation (sometimes referred to as a shout out or a sound bite) or testimony about the event, a workshop or a presenter, then ask if they would like a copy emailed to them, you know they all will.
By taking advantage of smartphones like G1, iphone, Blackberry, etc., you could upload the videos instantly and then blast emails to the individuals in the videos or even to all the attendees, if possible, if not, make it a priority right after the event. Twitvid.com is a great way to distribute your videos via twitter, however Youtube still the most popular either one is accessible via any smartphone.
The videos will be seen and as always shared with coworkers, attendees, family and friends so now your event grows virally, also these videos can be used for future marketing of events and can be placed on your website as well.
Podcasting your video, well not really, you can however strip or separate the audio from your video and boom! You now can upload the audio to all major podcast distributors like iTunes and it’s free.
Transcribe your video into articles, yep you heard me. Articles are a great way to increase awareness and buzz about your event or tradeshow. Some editing may be required but either way you have an article for almost no time. In some cases a video and the transcription could be on the same page.
Now you have successfully created lasting memories for everyone about your event, congratulations you’re a hero!
Items you might need: A smartphone with good video quality or a video camera, I use and recommend the Flip HD camera they’re inexpensive and very easy to use and have all the software built right in the camera. High-speed internet access and a site to upload your videos like Twitvid.com, Youtube.com or Kyte.com. A note pad for collecting emails.
