Be Do Have People

Zig Ziglar’s Vision for Day Planning

Dee — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:41:26 +0000

Finally I got around to checking out a little about Zig Zigler …. So many people have told me about him. I thought I would share this because at the end of the day, if we forget or lose our vision, we stop moving forwards and achieving life-progress.

Here’s Zig Zigler’s diary selection of inspirations to help you manage your days and time by having one eye to your future….

Click on Zig’s face and be touched…

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Multi-Tasking Time Management Myth

Dee — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:56:17 +0000

It’s always the same when I continue to push my own multi-tasking boundaries, adapting to new demands and environments, I add a new task to my list and forget to take into account an existing task. Couple this added responsibility to my daily routine with a new piece of ‘efficient’ technology and boom! There I blow!

Take my recent mess up. I went to a meeting with my new blackberry, having set up all my tones for its various functions. I had a few minutes to kill before my meeting started and had to figure out silencing my phone ringing, but “why stop there?” I have a new management tool that needs investigating and personalising…

My accountant was early and before I could finish checking I had set everything correctly, I decided I would check later… fatal.

Fatal in particular to my constantly evolving professional training schedule. Three training sessions missed now, because I switched off my tone and vibrate alarm for my meeting schedule on my new phone! Sigh…

This lack of checking at completion of tasks has always been problematic for me. Hey, I have borderline A.D.H.D. which means I am easily distracted and get bored with menial, uncreative tasks. Administration of any aspect of my business is something I have to really focus on! Nevertheless, I still seem able to kid myself that I do a really good job of it… I don’t. In fact, if I am perfectly honest with myself AND you, I’m probably average.

I suspect I am not alone in kidding myself that I am great at multi-tasking. After all, isn’t that what we women pride ourselves on? But I was really relieved to hear on the radio and stumble across a reference online to a piece of research which says that we mere mortal humans are actually potentially really bad at it, particularly if we believe we are effective at multi-tasking.

My way of coping with my attention deficit, is to keep a diary, a digital weekly schedule and I use this great digital memo tool It was recommended to me by a highly successful woman entrepreneur with kids – a species I particularly respect for their incredible time-management skills.

I have all my scheduled adminstrative tasks in here. What’s great about that is that when I one day get to the point of hiring a personal assistant, I will be able to share all of this work its glorious technicolour notes function with them and let it all go… to move onto higher administration! : )

I learned that it takes approximately 21 minutes to return to a main task and have fully functional focus there after any distraction… I jsut wish I had the heart to kick Moby, my office colleague out of my work space, because he does regularly dictate my schedule… (he’s getting old), but the truth there… he is a distraction which keeps me happy. It’s being at home working with him that makes all the plate-spinning and frustration at my own imperfection worthwhile…

Speaking of which, time for walkies… let’s see if I can squash in a video whilst out there! : )

What’s your office distraction you need to eliminate?

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MLM Myths #2 This Business Is NOT About Selling

Dee — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 13:57:59 +0000

Hahahahaha! That’s really funny..! It’s one of the lines of one the network marketing and MLM business guru’s. I remember my eyes jerking from the road to my CD player in my dashboard when I heard it on a training recording. (It was a rude awakening… everything that had been said until then made perfect sense to me…)

Anyone telling this porky pie is in SERIOUS denial…

MLM companies know that most people hate the thought of selling anything, and the reasons why this is so, is because their consultants are not taught how to market effectively and professionally and everyone knows from direct experience that we all HATE the hard sell…

So, let’s use our head for just a moment…

What is a business? Any business?
A business is an environment where goods, services or information are exchanged for money. Yes?

Let’s be clear here, there is nothing inherently dishonorable about this business process. There is nothing terrible or shameful about accepting money for quality products or services that people want. Do you resent giving the staff at the till money in the supermarket for your groceries? How about the garage owner, when they get you back on the road?

I’ll digress for a moment and say that if you have a problem with this concept, I would respectfully suggest that you possibly have a little work to do on your mindset about money. This is REALLY important – money issues will hold you back in your business if you leave them unaddressed.

The home truth is, all business is about selling. There is nothing wrong with that.

But consider this.

People hate to be sold. They do however, like to buy stuff.

Now, if MLM and Network Marketing companies were even remotely interested in the success of their consultants, they would be teaching effective sales techniques. Mostly new independent consultants are taught to “share” their products and opportunities with everyone they know, using the ‘six foot rule’. This sets distributors up to fail from the start.

The first and most critical thing to understand about great salesmanship, is that it is NOT about convincing. It is not about talking people into buying your ‘life changing’ product or ‘ground floor’ business opportunity. Frankly, they could not care less about either of these things.
People want to know one thing only. Pay attention here…

This is the only thing you should be concerned about, and it involves putting yourself in your prospects shoes.

WIIFM – What’s In It For Me?

That’s right. Your prospect is only concerned with how your product, service or information can help them in their life to solve their problem, meet their need, or get what what they want. It’s that simple and that complex.

An effective salesperson will listen to what their prospects want in the first instance. If what your prospect is looking for does not match what you have to offer, waste no more time or energy; move on immediately. To try and persuade someone that you have what they want, even though it is transparently clear that you don’t, is disrespectful, demeaning to both of you, unprofessional and a complete and utter waste of your time and theirs.

You will go NOWHERE in your business engaging ‘hard sell’ sales strategies like this. Great salesmanship is about developing an intelligent and appropriate response to feedback from your prospect.

If you do feel that what you have to offer is a great match for what your prospect is looking for, then you supply them with all of the accurate and relevant information they need to arrive at their decision on their own. Remember, you are not selling a commodity in this environment. Your prospect cannot ‘try before they buy’. They must be very certain in their own mind that they want to proceed.

If someone is reviewing your network marketing business opportunity, they are going to need to be given the time and space to complete a thorough due diligence before they make any financial commitment. This is absolutely reasonable. If they have been given a ‘push’ by you to sign up in your business, believe me when I say that the chances of them forging ahead in their own business are slim to none. If they do sign up, they could be gone within weeks.

Now all of these techniques are dependent on your having a highly targeted marketing system in place in the first instance. Your marketing filtering system should be one which qualifies your prospects before you even speak with them. So your time is not wasted by “tyre kickers” who are ‘just curious’.
In the Internet age, learning how to market online will be the key to creating this type of automated filtering and sifting system.

Being told that there is ‘no selling’ involved in a business opportunity should raise alarm bells in your mind. If you are told this by a potential sponsor, be aware that you will most likely receive sales training that will equip you nicely to do business…in 1980.

Don’t be fooled by this MLM myth. Learn the difference between the MLM hard-sell or mastery of effective marketing of a valid business proposition.

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MLM Myths #1 “The Business Is So Easy, Anyone Can Do It”

Dee — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:45:26 +0000

Sorry to burst your bubble from the off here, but let’s be realistic, I am not going insult your intelligence. The truth is: A business so easy that anyone can do it, simply does not exist.

Think about it, everyone working the 9-5 slog would be doing this instead, if that were the case.

If you have been involved with MLM or Network Marketing before, no doubt this was almost certainly one of the first things your would-be sponsor said to you. (By the way, usually this person is quite new to the industry themselves – tend not to hang around too long before they discover that they too have been mislead, or they have maxed out their credit card – whichever comes first).

My last MLM sponsor signed me up, only to tell me afterwards that she was moving to another opportunity. As far as I can tell, she is back to that MLM company which I signed up for; she has after all, invested at least half a decade in making it work and she cannot just let all that go so easily. Strangely enough, she also has a 9-5 job, so you make of that what you will!

This is how your ‘work from home business’ all begins:

You will be shown the product range and even be encouraged to buy a selection of them. You will be told that these products are “revolutionary”, “life changing” and “so powerful that everyone will be knocking down your door to get their hands on them”. (So, perhaps they are good, but how’s your garage or spare room looking right now?)

You will be told that even with absolutely no previous experience of any type in business, it is possible for virtually anyone to build a residual income by “sharing” these products with anyone and everyone you come into daily contact with. Network marketing business is “THAT easy!”

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, more of MLM style “marketing strategies” in MLM Myth #2.

There are many reasons why people are attracted to the MLM or Network Marketing Business. These might be some of the very same reasons that you are looking into it right now:

The prospect of making money from home

Sacking your boss

Choosing when, where and how much you work

No more office politics

An end to nightmarish daily commuting

More time with family or loved ones

More time doing the things you love

Achieving financial security or even freedom

Don’t get me wrong, these are all great reasons for wanting to pursue internet or network marketing as a business opportunity. Unfortunately, these benefits are almost always combined with marketing strategies which lead prospects to believe that the business is aseasy as telling people.

MLM marketing tends to focus on the income claims of the top earners . The truth: these top industry producers usually represent about ONLY the top 1% of the total number of active consultants in the company.

And so now you are to believe that: firstly, not only is the business easy, secondly: you need no previous experience, and thirdly: only need to do the minimum amount of work to realistically generate a six figure income at lightening speed. Hmm…

Now, the trouble is, what this style of marketing does, is attract the wrong type of people to the industry in the first place. People who are looking to “get rich quick”. People who have a “lottery mentality”. People who expect that the money will come flooding into their bank account by magic thinking.

People who think that any legitimate business can be built this way should not even be considering self employment. The simple home truth of the matter is that in some ways, this business is even tougher than a “brick and mortar” business.

Just think about it for a moment.

Let’s imagine that you have opened a shop in a busy part of town. You lease a building, put up signs, bring in stock and then advertise your new business.

If you have done your market research well first, you will have positioned your business in a place where your niche market is likely to be walking past your shop every day, and there is a pretty good chance that at some point, they will walk in your front door to see what you have to offer.

Not so in a home based business. There is just you, your phone, and often a cupboard chock full of your ‘life changing’ new products. If you have been given a replicated web-page, you might feel particularly blessed, until you try to advertise on Google and they throw you out!

Still… You have no boss to answer to.

No deadlines to stress over (except perhaps those imposed by your bank or lending institution).

No daily routine to work to.

No need to even get dressed if you don’t feel like it.

It may sound like work freedom. But it takes a particular type of drive and discipline to build a business out of nothing under these circumstances.

My experience has been that people who have had previous business experience in either brick and mortar or MLM have a far greater understanding of the consistent and focused effort that is required to build a business. People who have been career employees tend to find the learning curve far steeper.

So if you are looking at a “business opportunity” and it all sounds too good to be true, keep looking. Because if it sounds too good to be true… it is… Not least because how can you trust a sponsor who deceives you? (Albeit they may well be deceiving themselves too if they are still new to the business).

Want to know more about the under-belly of the internet marketing industry? Check out the Coffee House Letter here

There’ll be more on this subject of MLM myths in the future…

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Smoking Out Sploggers From The Labyrinth Automatically

Dee — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:53:33 +0000

You will forgive me if today’s blog might be a bit of combination of info and rant. HOW I HATE LOSING TIME WITH TECHNICAL HURDLES.

On a positive note, this blog is also a commitment to myself that when I figure out the uploading of Screencast / Camtasia, I will start to get to grips with doing some practical ‘How-To’ videos for some of the more technical aspects of blog maintenance.

It started hours ago now, with my investigating how to cut out the annoying amount of inappropriate links or outright spamming from appendage-treatment-specialists, who are sending out their bots to worm their way into my blogtestines and make my blog health suffer from their infestation. Make no mistake about it, spammers are parasites on the underbelly of the blogosphere and I am getting tired of wasting my time deleting their spammage.

Wikipedia definition of SPAM: Some individuals or companies have abused the TrackBack feature to insert spam links on some blogs. This is similar to comment spam but avoids some of the safeguards designed to stop the latter practice. “As a result, TrackBack spam filters similar to those implemented against comment spam now exist in many weblog publishing systems. Many blogs have stopped using trackbacks because dealing with spam became too much of a burden.”

(Hmm… But trackbacks are also useful for link love … What to do?… Thinks….)

Today I also had four apparently very complimentary comments, the first of which, I naively believed to be genuine positive feedback from a reader. After the second, third and fourth linked to the same website, each with a different and no doubt spurious made up name and differing I.P. addresses, I smelt a rat. I did some research and these I.P. concerns were well founded; links to rubbish sites being hidden by pathetic attempts to hide the fact they were from the same Spamster. I got angry then at being taken for a mug by this same self-seeking, black-hat wearing splogger.

Needless to say, this ‘Splogger’ has had all of his empty, obsequeous blatherings about my wonderful blog now deleted and I am adding to the list of my ‘to do’s to delete all the other comments on my blog, where the email address came back as non-existent, when I personally mailed my commenters.

Reader, I suggest you do a regular clean up on your blog too, because naff links from these so-called ‘sploggers’, will undermine your Google quality score. The good news, is that fortunately those wonderful anorak fans of WordPress out there have created some pretty cool plugins to keep you clear of any nasty infections…

When I set up this blog, I installed Akismet. Obviously, this is offering me some protection, but I am still unable to recognise black-hatted spam-bots when I encounter them here, as my mere human radar does not extend that far.

I went looking for some new protection and downloaded: si-captcha-for-wordpress from the WordPress Directory and Trackback Validation.

The download into my labyrinthine filing is the easy part, of course; it’s the upload and install to my WordPress blog that is tricky. I just cannot remember the ‘flingfile’ route back to the light from the depths of the deep cyber-universe accessible by the myriad of rabbit holes!

Now, I have done this before with help, but am a determined person and by now seasoned enough blogger to know that any ‘how-to’ video answers are likely to either be non-existent or too techy in their explanations, as they are often done by bloggers who assume a certain level of expertise.

Guys, this blogger has A.D.H.D. She DOESN’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT… Knowing this, I determined to take another route, to show anyone following behind a possible route out of this hideous labyrinthe. I downloaded more screen-capture software – CamStudioTech14 – as my old favourite, Jing have now restricted usage for freeloaders like me!

“I am going to make a video presentation for us non-techy wannabe propellor-heads”, I thought. ( “Hmmm… Good luck with that!”, said my infinite doubt!) Before I knew it another work hour down the drain!

Then, having got to the point of tearing my hair out, I went back to my business partners for their SEO training support. Fortunately, they have worked with some of the best SEO technicians around, including Ferny and Ray at SEO Networker (That’s them wrestling with other tricky manoevres in their black-belt exam!) As it happens, I had been promising myself to hear all of their series of recording and boy am I glad I did! Within 24 hours, the transformation is already amazing… I feel like I can breathe again and stop scratching!

Today’s blog then is about TREATING THE DISEASE instead of the symptoms for better time managment… I will still get around to mastering Camtasia sometime in the not too distant future and shoot some problem-solver videos for e-how.com, YouTube, Tube Mogul and you guys… but thanks to Ferny and Ray, all that download-upload malarky is now automated by a plug in they recommend. They also know some great ways to innoculate your blog against the curse of Splogeritis.

Learn more about what SEO automation can do for you from two of the industry wizards; Check out the dynamic duo that is SEO Networker from this link .

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WordPress Blogs Just Continue To Deliver

Dee — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:45:27 +0000

We bloggers love our WordPress blogs! Me, I’m already planning another blog site and going a little crazy that I haven’t got more time or resources to manage a bunch of sites yet!

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