Will Adams - Online » best practices for new marketers

Very Cool Tools For Your Home Business

Will — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:18:59 +0000

There are some very cool tools that have been released recently which may help your business run a little smoother and save time for you too. Take a look at these to see if they’ll work for you.

This one is waaay cool. Saluto will find all the processes that slow your computer down when you boot up. It then lists them for you and allows you to pause or delay their startup. Saved me about thiry seconds or so of boot time:-)

How about a service that’ll call your phone to remind you to get up, go to meet Aunt Elanor, or anything else? Go to Wakerupper.com … love the name!

Here’s aa good way to send text messages to a group of people quickly and easily. It’s not free (there is a trial) but it sure beats doing it from most phones. Tatango.com

I told you about Dropbox and its 2GB of online storage in an earlier post. Humyo gives you 10GB for free. Don’t forget – if you don’t have three backups you don’t have any. 10GB is usually plenty as long as you don’t overload it with music and video.

This site is going to become huge as time goes on. It’s smart.fm. Need to brush up on your Spanish lingo? Don’t want to spend hundreds on Rosetta Stone Software? Their Spanish program is based on the Japanese 2000. The Japanese 2000 is a list of the 2000 most commonly used words in everyday Japanese. But the site will teach you other languages too. Some geography, some anatomy. Smart.fm uses the concept of the learning curve and has you go over things you’re learning before they hit the forgetting curve. A very cool site.

Livecage began three years ago as an idea to combine video hosting, conferencing, pay on demand streaming and a social network, in one. Livecage successfully combines all of those services in one convenient site. They empower users to upload their content with no size restrictions and maintain the integrity of our site by promising that Livecage accounts will always be free.

Livecage allows any member free video and audio streaming. Their free online video conferencing enables up to 10 users to communicate from all over the world and up to 5 users for audio conferencing. They encourage organizations to use Livecage’s live broadcasting to deliver company messages, conferences, school events, broadcasts, video blogs or podcasts. Anyone can become a Livecage community member for free by simply clicking on the Sign UP page and creating an account.

Try these sites out. You may fall in like with one or more of them

More About Self-Control

Will — Tue, 18 May 2010 20:30:33 +0000

Dealing with the trials of daily life demands patience from a man. With self-control, his reserve is built up for the crisis’s that inevitably occur. When we practice self-control, the mental, physical, or moral energy we use everyday, is all stored for us and changed into strength. It can never accept a full cash payment for anything because it would be unfair to the poor and the weak.

It is only by small, progressively more powerful steps can we break the mold of our past self. We’re told it takes twenty-one days to break out from a habit. Rarely does it happen all at once. It takes development and growth. But at any moment we can begin to make or break any habit.

If we really want to grow our character, it is comforting to know that many men through the ages have pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and have achieved their dreams.

Self-control is developed the same way we develop a strong muscle from a weak one. Using small exercises day after day. Let’s do exercises every day to strengthen our discipline or morals. Let’s do something we don’t really want to do so that when we need our strength, we can spring into instant action.

Try some of these simple exercises to develop our self-control:

* Put down a book you’re reading at the most exciting part of the story.
*Jump out of bed without hitting the snooze button two or three times.
*If you’re able to walk home instead of taking the car.
*Talk to someone you don’t particularly like and attempt a pleasant conversation.

You will achieve self-control in big things only by self-control in little things. It’s important to get to know yourself to discover where your strengths and weaknesses are. Figure out what it is within you that keeps you from reaching your best results. Know that and you know where to start your journey toward self-control. Are you selfish, vain, cowardly, morbid, lazy, worried, unfocused, have a hot temper, or the most dangerous of all – Do you suffer from a lack of purpose?

You must discover your weaknesses, then live in the now each and every day. Focus on one day at a time. It’s useless to regret the past. useless to worry about the future. Live your day as if it were your only day – the only day to do your very best – the only day to master your worst traits.

When you work on your weaknesses moment to moment, then every moment will be a victory for the master or the slave in you. What’s it going to be Bucky? The answer lies within you.

Self-Control, Continued

Will — Mon, 17 May 2010 20:22:43 +0000

Continuing from where I left off last time…

Self-control is the underlying element of success in the most spectacular events in history and in the smallest parts of our daily lives. The process is exactly the same in kind and quality – it only varies by degree. Any person can achieve self-control IF they are willing to pay the price.

Only man has the ability to control himself. All other creatures rely on instinct. Their thinking is rudimentary at best. Their logic is the logic of their own DNA. Dogs and cats all do what dogs and cats are made to do and not more. Humans have the gift of free will. The ability to choose their actions. They are the sole creatures on the planet with the power to have a moral conundrum or a moral conquest.

Every step of progress in the world has been about “control”. It has been about abandoning superstitions and myths in favor of understanding. At every step forward, we gain mastery of a “fact”. It was once thought that man would never be able to fly, much less fly to the moon, but the processes were uncovered and now flight is commonplace.

Lightning used to be a scary, terrible thing for people. One day we realized it as electricity. Next we found out how to use electricity to improve life. Now we only think about it when it’s interrupted. The millions of inventions using electricity are evidence of man’s own power to master a mighty force. But the greatest of all control is “Self Control”.

At every moment of our life, we are either using self control or we’re not. We’re either the “master” of ourselves or a slave to something else. If we surrender to our weaknesses, wallow in self-pity or any “woe is me” kind of thinking, dwell on the past or our any of our failures, we become weaker – unable to create the catalyst of our own new genesis.

When we consciously and on purpose control our thoughts and actions, day by day we become the master of our lives. When we overcome the opposing forces within us we begin to build our new self from the ashes of our indiscretion. When this happens, we truly are masters – Kings – of our lives.

Alexander the Great conquered the whole known world, but he did not conquer himself. He was a slave to his passions instead of a master of them.

Have you ever envied the possessions of other people and wished you had them for yourself? Sometimes we feel this in an abstract way with no real thoughts of getting them, like when we see the Hope Diamond, or the self-satisfaction of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or another successful person. But sometimes, we get agrivated at the seemingly inequitable distribution of the good things in life. Then fall into a hopeless acceptance of our “lot in life”.

Why do we envy the success of other people when we could emulate the process that gave them their success? Remember Charles Atlas, the renowned body-builder from the 1950′s? He was a puny guy who had sand kicked in his face as a young man. He vowed that would never happen again and through self-education and control, he learned the step by step, day by day process to superb development of his body. Then he shared that secret with the world. Those people with self-control who followed his advice get the same success as Charles Atlas.

We may sometimes envy the power and spiritual strength of a Paul, without understanding that it was his self-control that transformed the weak Paul of Tarsus into the legend we know today.

We tend to ignore the thousands of cases of people who overcame great obstacles – mental, moral, physical, financial, or spiritual – and started from a beginning far weaker and poorer than our own.

Anyone can achieve self-control simply by deciding to do it. Don’t expect that it will be easy. The dues must be paid in small ways day in and day out. The analogy of the installment plan works well as an example. Nobody is so poor that he cannot begin to pay for what he wants. Every small investment in himself adds up and compounds for him in a reserve fund for his time of need.

Watch for the next installment of Self-Control soon.

A Case Study – Why You Should Create A Brand For Your Home-Based Business

Will — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 05:08:55 +0000

WOW! When this post first appeared in February, I had no idea how prophetic a few of my paragraphs were, or how close to home they would hit.

Prophetic Paragraph #1

“Let’s say you are a distributor for company ‘X’. … Then one day, you get an email telling you the company is changing it’s distribution method (read: company is going out of business). … You try to log in to your back office, but they’ve already shut it down.”

Prophetic Paragraph #2

“ My primary opportunity, (name withheld), is blended into the mix of other companies and activities I’m involved in. If any one company closes down, my list and records are still intact. My own multiple income strategy only suffers a fender bender – not a total loss. Plug another opportunity into the open space, let my friends on the list know about it, and keep on moving ahead.”

Yep, it happened right here in River City. One company decided to use a different marketing model and move ahead without its associates or me.

Don’t get me wrong here. Their business decision is just that…their decision. They have every right and, I might say, the obligation to do whatever it takes for their company to survive and thrive. If the original model wasn’t working, then it must be adjusted and changed for the better, or their company and their investment of time and money would be lost. (They have done their very best to do right by the associates. Something not many people would have done. Way to go guys..you know who you are.)

It’s very easy to use a company system. The replicated sites, the contact info, pre-made ads, and all the rest of it will provide the illusion of being in business. This system can work when things are going well. BUT if things go wrong with the company… oh-oh…You could be out of business too. You might not be able to recover. The work to get back to where you had been might be overwhelming.

There is more work to set up your own system. The work is not that hard, but there is more of it. The good news is that once you have a good personal marketing system in place, it’s relatively easy to manage. For myself, doing business any other way is not an option. It doesn’t make sense to do all the work and have it at risk due to no fault of your own.

But I’ve digressed. My point is that the personal marketing plan I am using “brands” my own company and me personally. The various other companies I promote fall under my own company’s umbrella. When I got the bad news, my initial disappointment soon gave way to the excitement of discovering another company that fits really well into my business plan. A few hours of scrubbing the websites and I was finished with the one and up and running with the other.

Incidents like this occur in our industry. Companies do change directions and/or go out of business all the time. Branding yourself helps you be prepared for the bumps in the road that will always be there. Branding yourself instead of your opportunity pays off because when something not-so-good happens, you can shift gears easily and stay on track and still cross the finish line as a winner.

I urge you to consider how your are marketing your home-based business. If you’re not branding yourself before your opportunity, I’d recommend that you consider adjusting course. Change to a better business model. You’ll be very glad you did.

Writing from home tonight - Bettendorf, Iowa