The new golfer and in fact the beginning and even the intermediate golfers out there all have tons of questions.  Golf from a techniques, etiquette and equipment stand point is perhaps one of the most complex and often intimidating social activities in the world.  There are millions of golfers out there and many new folks joining the ranks everyday including countless business professionals that almost have to play golf as part of doing business.

This is a great example of carving a niche in a market that appears at first glance to be highly saturated.

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That said, if you want to know more there is some basic text information a that link above and additionally you can opt into a notification list there. Do so and we will tell you more about just what the heck this ZonDez thing is all about as it becomes available.

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I just found one called Asian World of Martial arts and they offer great deals on a lot of martial arts products such as Sparring Gear and other cool stuff like striking targets, weapons and uniforms. I really found their pricing to be very good and their site is very easy to navigate and quickly find what you are looking for.

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Recently my company Franklin Spirko Media which offers Internet Marketing services exhibited at the Fort Worth Entrepreneur Expo. Overall we had a great show and got a lot of great leads and met a bunch of really cool people. Mostly people looking to build a business or people already doing it. There is something special and magical about thousands of entrepreneurs getting together. There is excitement, enthusiasm and optimism at a level that only people who are willing to take risks and work hard to turn ideas into reality.

Of course at any trade show there are always people you can only call parasites. They wander the isles pitching their wares to people who all PAID a fee and took the time to set up booths. Now when people visit our booth I do want to hear what they do and what their company is about but I don’t want them selling to me especially in a way that makes it clear they have absolutely no real interest in what our company does. At this latest trade show there were three “professions” that had plenty of representatives that really wore out their welcome. They were….

“Business Coaches” - This has become a generic over used term that covers a variety of positions that are simply “business consulting” in various packages. I know quite a few people that do this that are pretty damn good but I also have been “pitched” to by perhaps over 100 so called “coaches” that I would not want advice on how to find the highway from let alone running my business! At this show I piled up a total of 5 Business Coach Business cards that went directly into our booth trash can. Typical approach - Coach - “What does your company do?” Us - “Well we provide Internet Marketing services that help companies get leads and business online, we try…(cut off in mid sentence). Coach - “That sounds like a great business what I do is bla bla bla bla”

They practically verbally puke all over you with crap clichés like - “Everyone needs a coach”, “Even Michael Jordan needed a coach”, “Most people know what to do they just need someone to help keep them doing it”. Shut Up! Shut Up! Shut the hell up! First Mike’s coach KNEW HOW to play basketball, every does not NEED a coach and for God sakes if you need to be accountable get a job and let a boss keep you accountable because you are not cut out to run a business.

To all business coaches let me say paying a fee to buy a franchise and have two weeks of training does not qualify you to tell me how to run my company. It certainly is not a license to harass vendors that have paid for booth space at a trade show.

Network Marketers - Oh for the love of god please stop telling me about your “next trillion” or what ever other nonsense you are spouting. I don’t want to come to your meetings, I don’t want to bother my family about your crappy vitamins and I sure don’t want some guy that can’t even scrape up the money to have a booth at the show as my “mentor”. - There were also quite a few Network Marketing people there who did have booths, they did not wonder around bothering others, to those folks good luck building your pyramids full of dream big clones but do try to encourage your MLM brethren to have a bit more sense.

Bandwidth Sales People - By bandwidth I am talking about people that sell “data” and “voice” services like T1s or perhaps Business DSL. I also added to my trash can a nice stack of cards from these people that seemed to be at this show in unusual force! What a bunch of jerks these guys were and as soon as they saw “President” on my card they were on point like a dog on a whole covey of quail.

Not even the fake interest that “business coaches” pretended to have. Strait to “so how man phones are at your office” and “who provides your bandwidth” followed by “we should meet to see how we can help each other”. Again I wanted to shot SHUT UP!, just shut the hell up.

Now, exactly how do you propose we “help each other” there bud. You didn’t even bother to read the name of my company on my shirt before you started burning verbal calories, you have no idea what the heck it is that we do and you source of leads is apparently bothering people who are currently trying to promote their own companies. Additionally please bandwidth is a commodity today I can shop vendors up to DS3 and higher online and get pricing and proposals in no time and never deal with someone shoving a business card in my face.

To be fair I have to say I have done probably well over 200 different trade shows in my career and all of them have “parasites” and they are not always the three I mentioned above. I have had my fill of other professions at shows most are “agents”, “advisers” or “consultants” of various forms.

What I would like to hear from readers is what shows have you participated in and what were the various parasites that harassed you at them?

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I remember back when a company I was a sales manager for introduced a new high end product that required extensive training. Most training the managers simply did with our reps in the field. With this release though the product was announced in January and orders were to be taken by February 1st. There was no time for me to travel into my 13 different states and train every rep and the company wanted to control the training very tightly because it was such a new product and a new industry we were going after.

The solution was to fly more then 130 sales reps to Chicago and train them at one time. This was expensive in the form of over 100 hotel rooms, 100 airline tickets, rental cars, expensed dinners and reserving conference rooms for several days.

It would have probably saved my company over 100,000 dollars to have done remote training for this launch and a company like Resource Bridge to do that training. Just something to think about as you or your company does planning for training vendors, partners, clients or customers.

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The music on the video is as follows,

Southern Cross - Jimmy Buffett’s Version

Born Country - by Alabama

It’s 5 O’clock Somewhere  - by Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett

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My Desire First - I am rooting for the NY Giants and I really hope they pull of the big upset.  I would love to see Eli Manning get a Super Bowl ring much faster then Payton did and I just want the Patriots to loose, I am just tired of seeing them in the big game.

My Prediction Second - The Patriots are just to damn good to loose to a team like NY that have proven to be vulnerable very to many things over this season.  Even if Eli and his team play the way they did in the playoffs (almost perfect) I still don’t believe they can win.   Over all I pick the Patriots by 14-20 points.

The Sad Fact - This game I must say will be a lot like I predict the 2008 Presidential Race will be.  Looks like McCain will face Clinton or Obama.  In that race I won’t be voting for McCain just against the other side.  That is how I can describe this Super Bowl.  I am not in typical Super Bowl excitement mode this year.  Usually I care who wins, this year I only care who looses.   I am more excited about the football pregame season starting in August then I am about the Super Bowl at the moment.  Who knows if my prediction is wrong perhaps that will change.

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• Starting Weight - 262
• Feburary 1st Weight - 244
• Total weight loss in Month one - 18 Pounds

So what have I been doing different?  Not much so far just the following…

• Light vs. heavy beer
• Salads and soups for most lunches (Campbles Healthy Choice is great)
• No big portions of bread, potatoes, rice or other starches
• No candy, sugar, etc
• I have been drinking fruit smoothies for breakfast about 3-5 days a week
• Dinner has been what ever I want other then the exceptions mentioned above

So thus far I am ahead of the game yet the first month is always easiest, which is why I did not start exercising yet.  That starts today from Feb 1 -Feb 14 I will do 10 minutes once a day on my Elliptical Trainer then from Feb 15 - Feb 28 I will do 10 minutes twice a day and I am adding some basic supliments.  I will report in on March 1 with results and may comment on Neil’s treachery during the month of February.

All I know so far is pants I had custom fit for a meeting I had in November with Trump University will now fall completely off if I don’t have a belt on.  I must say that feels pretty good.

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Now would be the time to buy it as well because Trump U is pulling out all the stops to make this book a hit and push it up the Amazon Charts.  Check out this offer,

Buy Asset Protection 101 and You also Get

• 3  J.J. Childers E-Books-valued at $19.95 each, these 3 e-books provide you with even more information about protecting your business and wealth, saving on taxes, and enjoying a stress-free retirement.
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• The Top 50 Most Overlooked Tax Deductions-this gift alone could save you thousands of dollars when April comes around again!
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By the way there are still more bonuses!  To learn more visit the Asset Protection Special Offer at Trump University.  I am not sure how long they will be running this offer but if I were you I would act now.  I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of this book from Josef Katz and I can tell you I have already put some of these concepts into practice and have my attorney working on more of it for me.

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Anyway check it out all you need is cPanel based hosting with Fantastico included, then follow this video to a 30 second WordPress install then get to it and start blogging.

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The picture above is the view of my “back yard” in my second home up in Arkansas. For the past three years my niece and her husband were living in Hot Springs Arkansas and were renting the place from me. This was nice because effectively they were paying for my house for me!

That said while we visited often it was not like having a true vacation home. While we owned it, it was their home and we were guests when we stayed there. While they were on vacation for a week last year Dorothy and I stayed there and being there with the place to ourselves was just awesome. Hence now that my niece and her husband have moved back to Arlington Texas, I am not looking for another tenant and we will be taking many trips up to Hot Springs this year.

I am excited and since the payment is very low I have chosen just to have the place to myself.

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My two dogs are getting older as well (stay with me we will get to the marketing niche) and both probably have 3-4 years left at best so while it kills me to think of loosing them I have thought about our next dogs.  So anyway I checked into Dogs that hunt squirrels and found that get this there are two main squirrel dogs, curs and feists.

In researching both I found the Squirrel Dog Forum and joined to learn and talk to people that owned these dogs.  Now get this I am member number 13,145!   So that is almost 14,000 people in the niche of “hunting squirrels with dogs”.  Just think about that the next time you think everything in niche marketing has been done already.

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So with January 1, 2008 I am cutting back and loosing some weight.  Neil Franklin has been foolish enough to place a bet with me on this.  If on May 31st 2008 I weigh 210 or less he will be paying me 200 dollars and if I weight 211 or more I am on the hook to pay him.

I will post my new weight on the first of each month and my monthly and total weight loss.  I will post an updated picture on March 1st and then one at the end.  Neil is scewed, his money is mine.  Yet win or loose by shedding close  to or more then 52 pound this year, I will be the real winner.  Most people think weight loss is hard all I will be doing is eating less in January, let’s see how that works out.

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Yet those pennies may be worth a lot more money then you might think. Try about 2 cents piece if they are older then 1982 and if they were melted into a copper lump. For more information read this post on Investing in Copper Pennies from the Building Wealth Blog.

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Memberships to the website are very low and we offer hours and hours of training on subjects that will help you build any business online and get great ranking for your websites. Opt in to our free membership on the MarketingICE website and we will give you instant access to 12 free videos. They range from very simple techniques to quite complex techniques to give you an idea of our full offering.

Our training offers you information on how to do a better job with skills like,

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To learn more visit our SEO Training Website and sign up for our free instant access trial

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SEO Watch today though reports on an interview with Grad Conn of Microsoft talking about some pretty cool technology Microsoft is using in the area of Health Related Searches.  Now I sure would like to see more things like this from Microsoft.  Any way check out the article and why do you think Microsoft with massive resources can’t seem to get it right online?

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Up until now they have displayed perhaps 4 links and now as you can see they are displaying as many as 8. To make sure this is possible it is necessary to properly tag and optimize your individual pages. A step often missed by non SEO focused hasty webmasters.

Google has also been tweaking things so that Sitelinks will appear for many more websites, and with more descriptive names. These improvements should help visitors and again is yet another reason for good site optimization.

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