They call the book, the definitive book on how to sell and I think they are spot on. It is just that they don’t just teach you how to sell in regard to product as a professional sales person, they also teach you the philosopy of effectively selling yourselves in all walks of life. Here is one of my favorite quotes from the book,

“Deep inside you exists another person. That person has the knowledge, expertise, experience, and wisdom to guide you throughout your life. It’s the real you. We use the term real because most of us live our lives as actors, fulfilling various life roles as we have been conditioned to do so since leaving the innocence of childhood“

This book is indeed deep and even a tiny bit spiritual but it is actually very easy to read and understand. I am going to read it again because like most books that are really deep you get more each time you read through it. Here is another quote that might make that a bit more clear,

“As the child matures, the programming by parents and society continues. Now this young adult has to get admitted into a competitive university, get his first job, or possibly ask for a raise if underpaid. The sad part is that at age five, he would have known exactly what to do and would have asked fearlessly.”

Again I highly recommend you have a look at picking up a copy of this book, it is one I can honestly say is worth far more then the cost. Spend just a bit of time learning to adapt some of these principals to your life and indeed the return of investment will be huge. You can even preview and read the first 12 pages of the book at this link.

~ Cost Cutter

I mean come on!  These are very basic word processing functions.  Then I learned they were there you just needed to know how to access them.

The command to do so is, hold down alt and shift and then hit the “v” key.  This adds the features mentioned above along with some others like a code cleaner and the ability to insert special characters (like Π or €, etc).  Now do not ask me why these functions are hidden.  That makes no sense but now you know how to access them.  Give it a try I think most bloggers will enjoy the added editing power with out having to switch to code view and doing it manually.

Schoolpop is totally different here is how it works strait from the Schoolpop website,

“Simply register with Schoolpop and start shopping. You don’t need to purchase anything you wouldn’t normally buy. Just shop with hundreds of Schoolpop merchants online, in stores, or through catalogs, and you’ll automatically earn contributions for your favorite school or nonprofit.  All of our merchants are committed to helping your community by contributing a percentage of your purchases to the school or nonprofit of your choice.“

The beauty is you just buy things you would buy anyway and a percentage goes to your school of choice. To make this successful PTAs and Student Groups will need to be sure to advise the students and parents of the options but it is clear a decent sized school could do very well if each parent made even two-three purchases a year. All that and we don’t need to send our kids door to door giving people an excuse to overspend and break their diets. These guys definitely make my list of recommended sites.

Just this last week I was presented with a new idea that I really thought was excellent and the entrepreneur was clearly working hard and committed to getting the product to market. She was excited, smart and full of enthusiasm and of course wanted me to invest in her idea.

Now here is the reality the venture could be huge or a huge flop and that risk is always present so the risk is not why I turned her down. Nope it was the lack of a business plan that did it. She even had great packaging and was lined up to do trade shows and meet some perspective buyers from major retail chains. The risk is still there so I must make a risk assessment as an investor.

How I make a risk assessment

This is pretty simple I know the results if the product totally flops that is a 100% loss right? Yet what a business plan will tell me is what I can expect to see in gross sales and return of investment at various levels of success. How can an entrepreneur expect investment if they can’t even tell me the return I will get and in how long if things go right, mostly right or moderately successful. I need the numbers for all those out comes to weigh the risk reward, without that I can’t even get started.

I also may not understand the market, the supply chain, the competition and the total market cap and opportunity in a new niche.   I need it spelled out and I need to understand the marketing that the company will use to communicate its message to the world. Additionally if I am to put my money or even just partner with assistance/consulting with a company need to know their vision.  More importantly I need to know they understand their own vision. All of these things are addressed with a proper business plan. Even if you don’t want investors you need a business plan to be sure you have your own vision right, your own risk/reward ratio strait and to help you make the right decisions.

How do you do it? Easy turn to one of my heroes in business, Donald Trump for some free assistance. Trump University offers a free How to Write a Business Plan course you can sign up for and lean a ton from. I also recommend the excellent free business templates available from Score. They have templates for business plans, financial work sheets and other needs.

I have always also believed that in the day and age of the internet it is collective intelligence that helps people skip making countless mistakes in favor of learning from the mistakes and experience of others. Today by sharing information people are able to do more and learn more faster then ever before So, when I was asked to have a look at a new real estate website, Investors Lounge Online, and their brand new real estate investment forum I was happy to do so and let my readers know about it.

I found the site to be beautifully designed with excellent resources including a great articles section, advice on financing, great FAQs, advice on auctions and a ton more.  The site even offers some great real estate tools.   I think however, it is the forum with the most long term potential.  Right now it is brand new and it could really use some folks to join and get it started off with a bang.  The forum is feature rich and again the design is just excellent.  They even have translation functions into 10 languages, talk about bringing collective intelligence across the globe.  With outstanding information and resources and a forum that is sure to become an outstanding resource of its own Investors Lounge makes my list of recommended sites.

[If you don’t see a blue swirl like mark in the header that means I changed it since this post.]

I honestly have been using it for one main reason and that is a feature it has that I have yet to find another theme that had it built in. That feature is the ability to not display some of the pages in the navigation of the blog.

What I mean is like this, say I want a nice page that says “Thank You for Subscribing to my Blog” after an email opt in. Right now if I use the “Pages Feature” in Word Press and publish it then it shows up in my page navigation. Now I really don’t want a link that says “Thank You for Subscribing to my Blog” across the top of my blog do I? It wouldn’t make sense to a visitor if they clicked on it.

Also perhaps in a given post I want to promote a product and have a sales page for it. May be I just want to create that page in Word Press rather then with software and then upload it. May be it is a “landing page” to be used with PPC or for any one of many reasons I just want a page that is not displayed in the navigation of my site for every visitor. With Word Press I just can’t do it.

So when I found Mandigo despite not really liking the look of it (compared to some other themes) I compromised and used it because it has a tab called “Theme Options” where you can hide or show pages.

Now I have found a much better solution! It is called Page Links Manager, and it is a simple to install plug in that ads a tab to the “Manage” Tab in word press. This plugin takes blogging with word press to a new level creating what ammounts to a real website content management system. With it all you do is deselect the pages you don’t want to display and they don’t show up in the navigation. I put a simple sample page on this blog to show you what I mean, you can see that page here, Page Link Manager Example.

Here is a screen shot of the control panel as you can see it is very easy to use. There are also some folders in the download zip that are for MACOS, just ignore those and upload only the simple .php file and activate and after that it could not be any easier. Great plug in and very big Kudos to the author.

What about buying for men though? Most of us are not that worried about getting something for Valentines day but hey if we are going to be getting something give us something cool. So with Valentines bearing down and that thought on my mind when I was asked to take a look at a cool gift site called Vat 19 I was more then willing to do it.

One item that really caught my eye is this electronics charging valet station. The electronics Charging Station neatly hides cords while charging up to three devices at a time. The 5-plug surge protector is concealed and the small shelf and drawer store other items such as your keys and wallet.  Overall a cool and functional gift that I know most men and probably many women would really like.  Though guys if you get one for your lady, don’t skip the flowers, trust me.

When I figure out how to do this in Word Press I will post instructions but it may be next week.  If you can figure this out and you blog about it I will post about your blog rather then just telling my readers how to do it.  If you come up with a way to modify Word Press just comment about it below and link to your post on it.  I will then do a full post linking to your post and telling my readers where they can learn how.

Otherwise it will be next week before I have time to get to it.

That said there is still a ton of power in using “old media” like television advertising so when I was asked to have look at a website that produces and promotes TV Commericals and Infomercials I was happy to do it. The company is called Hawthorn Direct aka, DRTV.

What I really like about Hawthorn Direct is the fact that they are very good at integrating your marketing efforts and tracking the exact results from each campaign.   Nothing is more important in marketing and advertising then knowing your exact ROI for every effort, so for that reason Hawthorn Direct makes my list of recommended sites for business owners.

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The site is called Money Magic and I found that it provides excellent advice for both investors and consumers alike. They even have information for international mortgages that was something that I haven’t seen on may mortgage sites.

So what the heck is the real meaning of this?  The simple way of putting this is the U.S. economy is in a definite decline on the “service” side of the economy.   This is bad because so much of our economy (66%) is service based.

So what’s next?  It’s possible the services side of the economy could rebound some in February, like the manufacturing side did in January after its’ own slide in December.   The benefit of the Federal Reserve’s two big interest rate cuts in the latter part of January could also help spur the service sector back into growth mode later this year.

The key to understand here is this is another shot across the bow of the coming war that is a imminent recession that sooner of late will happen.  My advice yet again is to make sure you are not fully exposed in stocks right now.  We had a few good years but a slide is coming have a heart to heart with your advisers and put some of your investments into something safer for the next few years.

Unfortunately these guys seem to only be available in California but if you live there I would have a look at their website.  They are so confident that they can help you they offer a money back guarantee and that is one of the reasons they make my list of recommend sites.   The reality is traffic tickets are one of the legal issues most of us have to deal with sooner or later (I have had to), so I am glad their are companies out there like this to help consumers.

So please comment below, have you ever used a service like this to handle a ticket?  How did it work?  Have you ever beaten or gotten a ticket reduced on your own?  If so how?

Not this year!  I will vote in the Republican primary and my vote will matter and so will the votes of others in my state.  My guy is Ron Paul and I will stick by him if he has any chance at all by the time we vote, if not I may have to go with Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee as my second pick.  I have not forgotten the sell outs of John McCain on things like McCain - Feingold and McCain - Kennedy I hope my fellow Republicans don’t either.

Yet this post is not about who I am voting for or who you vote for just I want to ask, why is it only in a year like this that my primary election matters?  Do you think the primary elections would be better if we had say 4 blocks, 25% of the country in each one and all of it done in 60 days?

I do and further more I would rotate each election which “block” went first.  Seems like a much better way to me, what do you think.

This site is called, NetHandiCap.com and they offer  really cool software product that keeps track of players statistics and handicaps etc.  It is designed to be used by anyone from say people that own a Golf Course and run tournaments to amateur golfers that small run individual clubs competitions and play where and as they choose.   The platform is browser based meaning it does not hog up your PCs memory or resources and can be access from any PC with an internet connection.  Add to this the fact that it is fully customizable and very affordable and at least for the golfers out there NetHandiCap.com makes my list of recommended sites.

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While I found the article interesting and quite accurate I do feel they sort of glossed over a key reason for gold going up recently and a reason that gold will continue to go up for quite a while. Here was the only mention of this factor in the article,

“Demand for the metal is also strong in Asia, for jewelery and as a store of value.”

That was the only mention of this factor in the entire article and I find this very much missing the boat. Why? Well, because with China and India what we have is more then 2 Billion (with a big B) people who are rapidly growing their middle class and both societies have a tremendous appetite for gold jewelry. I recently read a report on of the foremost expert on gold and mining operations who stated that we currently have “at least a 10% shortfall on the production vs. demand for gold most of which is attributed to the rising demand in India and China for gold jewelry.”

In other words those 2 billion people are buying gold faster then it can be extracted from the ground. The big issue with that is it has never happened before. The demand for gold has always been based on how rare it is and that has always created a demand yet until now anyone could always buy as much as they could afford. Today we have unmeetable demand and the demand is growing faster then the production and again this is the first time in modern history that such a condition has existed in the gold market.

I highly advise any investor (small or large) to have a serious heart to heart conversation with your financial advisers about putting at least 10-20% of your holdings into gold, gold funds, etc. The increased demand and declining dollar together make gold a real winning opportunity at least in my opinion right now.

What I really like about using a service like this is the completely honest feed back that it provides and how that data can be used to improve your service.  While you are your location you view it via “rose colored glasses” and you have no real idea how the service is when you aren’t there (when the cats away…) and these services put you directly in touch with the reality on the ground.

I just got done reading a new book called Asset Protection 101 from Donald Trump’s Trump university and I have to say I learned a lot of new ways to protect the wealth I and my family have worked so hard for. In fact basically I just learned how to be a millionaire in reality and at the same time appear penniless on paper.

Of course I got wealthy in the first place by being a bit of a tight wad and knowing how to spot a good deal. So check out this deal from Trump University, buy a copy of Asset Protection 101 today and you also will get the following bonuses

• 3 J.J. Childers E-Books-valued at $19.95 each, these 3 e-books provide you with even more information about protecting your wealth, saving on taxes, and enjoying a stress-free retirement.
• 5 Special Reports-over 100 pages of extra material to help you build your wealth structure (worth $150!).
• The Top 50 Most Overlooked Tax Deductions-this gift alone could save you thousands of dollars when April comes around again!
• J.J.’s Asset Protection Worksheet-the master’s tool to show you where you may be vulnerable to lawsuits and how you can minimize your tax burden.
• Asset Video - addressing specific asset protection issues, which you can view on your computer
• 20% off the registration fee for Trump University’s Wealth Preservation: Asset Protection Retreat featuring instructor J.J. Childers.

There is also an awesome 1 hour free teleseminar. Now for a 20 dollar book those are some great bonuses. I don’t normally tell my readers to go spend money but in this case it will be a Andrew Jackson that is well used. For more information visit the Trump University Site for the special offer on Asset Protection 101.

To do it right though one thing you will definitely need though is ecommerce software or what is commonly referred to as an online shopping cart.  I was recently asked to check out a site called AmeriCommerce which provides the tools to do this.  I found there software is very easy to integrate and quite robust at the starting price of only 39 Dollars a month and if you need help with integration or even some help with web design they can provide that as well.

I like this platform for a few reasons

• Easy integrations with Google Check Out and PayPal
• Very stable platform that is simple but also robust for power applications as well
• It is search engine friendly
• Offers a ton of features
• Tracks your ROI (return of investment)
• Allows you to set up affiliates programs
• And a ton more

So check out AmeriCommerce if you need a good shopping cart program and the best news is they offer a 14 day free trial with every program so you can be sure of their quality of service before spending any money, for that they make my list of recommended sites.