Neato: Organize With Wallpapers

Now this is what I call maximizing your computer without a lot of work or extra software that will gobble up your system resources. These desktop wallpapers have a dual purpose. Remind you of processes and even help you organize your day to day work files and applications.

One of the things I like to do on my desktop is to download apps, PDF reports, audios etc temporarily. I keep them on my desktop so I can see these as ‘action items’. This will really help these action items stand out and remind myself what else is outstanding.

If you’re good with the graphics, you can always create one yourself too. Let us know when you do so we can update the post to feature your work as well.

EZ Access Desktops – Grab 6 different wallpapers organized into sections.

Layered Desktop – 2 different types of wallpaper

GTD – if you’re into Getting Things Done.

Tips to Quick Start Your Content

Sometimes the most difficult step to take is the first step.

Remember back when you were looking to start a business?  Most business owners mull the concept of owning a business around for years before they actually take that first step to make it happen.

I’m an avid rock climber and even on the best of days the most difficult step is just getting off of the ground.

Writing is often the same way – the first step, getting the first few words on the paper, is the most difficult.

It doesn’t matter what you’re writing, it could be a blog post or a long copy sale letter – the step is the same.

Here are three tricks to use the next time you find yourself staring at a blank piece of paper.

1.  Use a quote.  There are notable quotes on just about every topic under the sun.  A quick search online and you’ll have thousands to pour through.  Warning – don’t let finding the perfect quote become a way to procrastinate writing your piece.  Go in with an objective and get out fast.  Use the quote as your first step and go from there.

2.  Relevant statistics and data. 
"Statistics are like bikinis.  What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."

~Aaron Levenstein

Use a statistic to kick start your content.  You can then go about to prove, disprove or simply discuss the ramifications of the statistic in your content.  Warning – like quotes you can spend days reading and jotting down relevant statistics.  Search with scrutiny and be quick about it.

3.  Share a personal story.  I’ve recently been working with a client who rather than posting basic informative articles on his site has asked to have ‘creative nonfiction’ content written.  In short, the pertinent information will be embedded into a short story.  The creative part is the story part because I’m making that up as I go however you don’t have to – you can use your real life as your story.

Remember that while the first step is the most difficult step to take, it’s also the least important. Once you have the ball rolling and the content is flowing from your imagination onto the page you can go back and clean up your article or sales piece – you can get rid of that first sentence or two if they don’t work or change your statistic, quote and so on.  The point is to get started, not to commit to those first 10-20 words.

My Debit Card Number Was Stolen; Is Yours Safe?

 Just after our Entrepreneur Days conference a few weeks ago, which was one of the best yet; I attended two events in a row, and then took the family and some of our business advisors to the Beach Retreat for a week.

 

When I got home, I realized that someone had stolen the debit card number on my business account. The culprit went shopping at several grocery stores and Home Depot in Los Angeles before I could cancel the card.

 

 

So I spent the next week figuring out what happened, contacting the affected merchants, filing police reports and working with the bank.

 

 

The crook spent almost $6,000 (that was designated to pay bills) and stole one week of my already full life. Then the decline notices started coming in on all our automatic payments.

 

Then the bank said they didn’t think they could cover the loss so we changed banks. Tomorrow I will spend the day changing all the bank info on all the online accounts and explaining what happened to all the companies that were involved.

 

Why am I telling you all this?

 

Because 1 out of 6 people are affected by white collar crime like this – credit card fraud.

 

When it happened, I called several police departments and looked for info online. Nothing I heard and found was consistent. No one knew where to start or what to do.

 

I joined LifeLock and they’ve taken some action but they don’t handle this kind of stuff after it happens.

 

So based on this month’s experience, here is my advice:

 

*Don’t travel with a debit card.

 

*Set up online banking so you can monitor your accounts often.

 

*Monitor your bank accounts often.

 

*Join LifeLock.com. (It’s $10/month per person.)

 

 

If you discover that your account or identity has been compromised, call the number on the back of your credit card immediately to cancel the card and move the money out of your bank account if you can. (With online banking, you can move it on the weekend even though the bank is closed.)

 

 

Compile a list of your credit cards, their numbers and the emergency number on the back of the card to call. File this with your important papers. If they are stolen, cancel them immediately.

 

 

Don’t carry checks with you when you travel unless you need them and make sure you always know where your checkbook is.

 

When the bank resolves this issue, they will charge you a fee of between $50 and $200.

 

This is just the beginning of what I have learned.

 

Even though I may be out a lot of money, the worst thing about this event is the time I have lost.

 

We were just about to announce a few new big projects for our Protégés and this has set us back a whole week.

 

But that doesn’t matter because even though we have been delayed, we haven’t been discouraged or disabled.

 

So don’t let setbacks keep you from reaching your goals. Life is too short.

 

And always keep track of your debit cards!

 

 

 

So many books, so little time to waste …

 

Rhea!

 

Profit Purpose & Beyond 2008

Pleased as punch to announce the speaker lineup for Profit, Purpose & Beyond 2008 AND to tell you that this year, you can grab a Silver Seat for f’ree!  Yea!

This event is exclusively for leaders in the direct selling, network marketing and multi-level marketing industries. Here’s the lineup:

Profit, Purpose and Beyond includes some of the most prominent speakers, coaches and experts in the world. You won’t believe who will be sharing their innovative strategies for business and life success specifically targeted to the direct selling marketplace.

• Margie Aliprandi, President of My Mind Makeover

• Jane Deuber, Leadership Expert and co-founder of the DSWA

• Leesa Barnes, President of Marketing Fit

• Michael Oliver President and Founder of Natural Selling Sales Training

• Sandy Grason, best-selling author of Journalution

• Scott Stratten, President of Un-Marketing

• Jillian Middleton, founder of Savvy Sponsoring Strategies

• Michael Port and Elizabeth Marshall, co-authors of The Contrarian Effect

• Keith Ferrazzi, best-selling author of Never Eat Alone

• Sarah Robinson, Direct Selling Business Strategist and Founder of Profit, Purpose and Beyond

Profit Purpose and Beyond will take place October 13 through October 24, 2008 (excluding the weekend). One speaker will take center stage each day at 1pm EST.

Grab your seat here: www.profitpurposeandbeyond.com

Can’t wait to “see” you there!!

Love & Success:)
Sarah

Affiliate Marketing – Tips for Finding Products for Recommendation

Last week we talked about why I sing the praises of affiliate marketing as an income source for your online business. Now that you see how easy it can be to add it to your business, let’s talk about finding the right products to promote.

First and foremost, I want to stress that you shouldn’t jump on board every single affiliate program you come across that fits your niche. Not only is it not wise to promote nilly-willy, but it also can damage your credibility as an expert if you send out an email to your list every week with a new product recommendation. They will begin to wonder just how much you really care about their needs versus just wanting to make a buck.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here are 5 Tips to Help You Choose Affiliate Products for Your Business.

1. Look for products that will help those in your target market.
Let’s say your website targets parents of toddlers. You’ve created an autoresponder list where moms and dads of toddler aged children can sign up to receive tips to help them potty train their boys and girls. Therefore look for products that deal with potty training.

2. Find products that take your readers by the hand or better yet, do the work for them.
People don’t like guesswork and in fact, they don’t usually like work at all. Whatever you can do to make it easy for your readers to achieve a goal or accomplish a task will go a long way.

3. When choosing a product, do your homework.
Find out as much about the product as you can. This may seem obvious, but the more you know regarding the product or service you are recommending, the easier it is to sell it and the better your chances of making a sale. It also helps ensure you send your readers to reputable products sold by reputable companies.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask for a sample product or review copy – or just buy the product.
Many product owners are happy to let you take a look at their material in exchange for a testimonial or review of the product. However, consider that buying the product yourself gives you a more complete picture of the customer experience – from order fulfillment, customer service and follow-up. If you get it free, you don’t see those aspects.

5. Check out the affiliate program.
This is a whole other post in it’s own, but if you find a product you’d like to promote, sign up for the affiliate program and find that you get no help what-so-ever when it comes to promotional tools, it’s probably not a good sign. Examine the program. If a product owner is serious about making money on his or her product, it will show in how they present their program. Also, do Google searches to see if there are any complaints by affiliates regarding non-payment or other potential issues.

Learn to be a Real Estate Virtual Assistant!

If you want to learn how to invest in real estate, one of the easiest ways to do it is by working for someone else.

Real estate investors and agents often need someone to help them with the details and paperwork. As more and more offline businesses are downsizing, serving a company as a Virtual Assistant from home is a win/win situation for both you and the company!

The company or investor doesn’t have to pay overhead to have you onsite so having a VA reduces his expenses. That means, it saves him money.

And as long as you can accomplish all your tasks on time, you have the freedom to work your job around your busy life.

Since I think this is just one more way that folks can work successfully from home, I have asked Alan Brymer to teach a course.

He is the only real estate expert I know who teaches this.

The problem is, his course is for real estate investors and agents. NO ONE has a course on how to BE a real estate VA.

So he and I are creating one!

You’ll get the advantage of being the first people to take the first real estate VA class and you can do it from home!

The class is online so all you have to do is watch the videos, listen in on the phone and ask your questions to get all the answers you need.

And if you love real estate like I do and would love to learn it by doing it for and with someone else, consider taking Alan’s Real Estate VA training. It starts this Thursday, Sept. 25th.

Here’s where to register:

http://www.EducatingforSuccess.com/reva/

 

So many books, so little time…
Rhea!

who loves bringing you Real Education

 

 

 

 

Learn to be a Real Estate Virtual Assistant!

If you want to learn how to invest in real estate, one of the easiest ways to do it is by working for someone else.

Real estate investors and agents often need someone to help them with the details and paperwork. As more and more offline businesses are downsizing, serving a company as a Virtual Assistant from home is a win/win situation for both you and the company!

The company or investor doesn’t have to pay overhead to have you onsite so having a VA reduces his expenses. That means, it saves him money.

And as long as you can accomplish all your tasks on time, you have the freedom to work your job around your busy life.

Since I think this is just one more way that folks can work successfully from home, I have asked Alan Brymer to teach a course.

He is the only real estate expert I know who teaches this.

The problem is, his course is for real estate investors and agents. NO ONE has a course on how to BE a real estate VA.

So he and I are creating one!

You’ll get the advantage of being the first people to take the first real estate VA class and you can do it from home!

 The class is online so all you have to do is watch the videos, listen in on the phone and ask your questions to get all the answers you need.
And if you love real estate like I do and would love to learn it by doing it for and with someone else, consider taking Alan’s Real Estate VA training. It starts on Thursday, Sept. 25th.

There’s nothing else like it out there!

Here’s where to register:

http://www.EducatingforSuccess.com/reva/

So many books, so little time…
Rhea!

who loves bringing you Real Education

 

Overwhelmed by content – time yourself

Whenever I have a bulk of content looming over me, say a month’s worth of blog posts or a couple of free reports I want to give away next month, the best way to get it done is to set a time limit for each piece.

For example, let’s say you need to get a month’s worth of blog posts written today.  Perhaps your schedule is to post twice a week so that’s 8-10 blog posts to write.  Ideally you don’t want to spend the entire day writing.  1 hour per blog post and your day is gone.

What about 30 minutes per post – think that’s doable?  That would mean your content is complete in 4-5 hours.  Not too bad.  I recommend challenging yourself even more and setting a time limit of 5 minutes per post.

Gasp!  Sounds ridiculous, right?

Here’s how to get it done:

Step One:  Spend ten to fifteen minutes outlining your posts.  Give each post a title and pose it as a question to answer.   For example, this post could have been titled -How do I write a blog post in 5 minutes?  Under your question write three points you’re going to make to answer.  Spend no more than 2 minutes per post – you’re just jotting down main points here.

Step Two:  Gather your supplies.  You’ll need a timer.  I use my Timex running watch because I can set the alarm to go off every five minutes and it repeats without me having to touch it.  You’ll need your outlines either in front of you on a piece of paper or on separate documents on your computer.  If you’re writing in a notebook then you’ll need a pen and paper and if you’re writing straight to your computer then turn it on.

Step Three:  Push start on the timer.  Look at your first title and start writing, start answering that question.  Don’t self edit, don’t spell check and don’t delete or scribble things out.  Just write. Write until you’re done or your timer alarm is sounding.  Chances are, if you’re writing as the thoughts are coming to you, not editing, and not staring out the window at the pigeons fighting on the fence, you’ve written at least 500 words.

Step Four:  Repeat the process with each blog post until you’ve made it through your list of topics.

Assuming you started with 10 topics and giving yourself 10 extra minutes to warm up your coffee or stretch, you’ve now spent an hour writing your monthly blog posts but you’re not done yet.  Your next step is to clean them up.  If you’ve written straight to your computer you can now go through and run spell-check.  Read each sentence and paragraph to make sure they make sense and back up your main theme.  Write a sentence or two to wrap up the article and move onto the next one.  This process should take no more than 10 minutes per article – preferably less.

If you wrote to a notebook first then the act of typing the content will clean up the majority of your spelling and grammar issues.

Why write in a rush?  When we don’t leave room for editing and doubt and simply write with the intention of getting our thoughts down on paper our writing is typically better.  It’s conversational, shows our personality, and doesn’t get bogged down with pretense.

At the end of the day if you’re able to write 10 articles in about 2.5 hours, writing and editing time combined, it’s worth the time savings right?  Give it a try – you may be surprised to find you not only saved yourself several hours but your writing just improved too.

Take Time Off

 

When you work as an entrepreneur, it’s waaaay too easy to work yourself to death and never take time off.

 

Stephen Covey demonstrates how to schedule Time Off into your life in a very practical way.

 

He has a participant from an audience come onto the stage and put little rocks into a container of water. Then he says to add the big rocks which won’t fit. But when the person takes everything out and starts over putting the big rocks in first, they all fit in neatly.

 

So that’s what I’ve learned to do with my time.

 

At the end of December, I look at the whole year and mark off the dates of really big events like my conferences, the few conferences I attend regularly, family birthdays and anniversaries. That way we don’t miss anything.

 

I can also set up the birthday cards for the year to be sent online a week before using www.SendCardsFromHome.com

 

That way, when events try to sneak onto the calendar, I can easily decide whether we can work it in or not based on what else is happening that month.

 

If you don’t learn to control your schedule, it will control you.

 

So the first things I block out are two weeks of vacation in the spring and fall and one annual Beach Retreat in Destin, Florida.

 

And guess what?

 

We just got back from the beach retreat and boy was it marvelous!

We weren’t even affected by Hurricane Ike!

 

We rented a house right on the beach with a pool, 7 bedrooms and Internet access so we didn’t miss anything.

 

My daughter-in-law Carol cooked for us and everyone had simple jobs so the housekeeping wasn’t a chore.

 

I took the girls to get their nails done one morning and took most of the folks out on a boat for the day. Some of the guys went fishing a few times and everyone did what they wanted. We even had company.

 

A few of my advisory team members were there so we discussed strategies for our upcoming projects.

 

Overall, we all had a blast!

 

If you use vacations as a reward, they motivate you to keep going. It’s more than painful to work all the time and never have the time or money to go somewhere special to enjoy life.

 

So I use vacations to motivate me to create good habits so I can achieve my self-imposed goals.

 

Here’s how you can do the same:

 

In December, look at the spring and fall months that have the fewest activities in them with your family and choose one in each season to have a vacation. You may have to start with a long weekend instead.

 

Then contact anyone who could possibly have an event of any kind occur during that week to find out what they are planning and to let them know you won’t be available.

 

Then mark the calendar, shop online to book a place to go and tell your team members that you will be unavailable that week.

 

Then when circumstances and opportunities come up that will prevent you from going that week, just say, “Sorry. I have an appointment with myself and my team and/or family.”

 

Then go and have fun. And don’t worry about what you’re missing. Just be thankful that you are taking time off.

 

If you have your annual business meeting while you’re there, you can also write that off on your taxes.

 

Being an entrepreneur can wear you out because there aren’t a lot of personal perks beside free time and unlimited income. So if you figure out how to build quality Off Time into your life, your great vacations will motivate you to keep going.

 

Plus, it’s just fun to spend a week at the beach… or the mountains!

 

So many books, so little time…

 

Rhea!

who would love to live at the beach

 

Life Happens

The past month and a half have been quite the ferris wheel for me.  Some good things (helping my son navigate Big School) and some hard things (my aunt passed away suddenly). 

I’ve checked in with my Direct Selling clients and apparently life is happening all over the place to everyone.  That is the beauty and the challenge of this industry.  We get to be available, but how do we keep it from overtaking us?  What do we learn that we can apply to our business and our lives? 

I’ve been pondering these very same questions.  For some reason, these questions  have driven back to some of my favorite books for sorting out the meaning of this things called life and to look for answers.  Though you may not believe these books will have anything to do with improving your direct sales business, I can promise you, if you read one or all of them, you won’t be able to stop the positive change. 

Here are five of my favorite old friends:

1. The Alchemist by Paul Coelho.  A short, but profound parable about following your heart’s desire, no matter the obstacles.

2. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.  Even if you don’t think you are an artist (you are, by the way), your business and your life will change in unimaginable ways under Julia’s expert guidance.

3. Steering By Starlight by Martha Beck.  I have a personal bias for Martha’s transformational abilities.  She trained me to be a coach.  If you don’t want to see your life, your business, your world in profoundly different way, don’t pick up this book.

What about you?  What books have changed your life?  Please share.  I am always looking for more.

In the meantime, enjoy the ebb and flow of living – and relish the freedom you are creating to be present for each and every moment:)

Love & Success!
Sarah

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