And I’m reminded of the days, many years ago, when I volunteered as a Pet Adoption Counselor with the San Francisco SPCA. Looking back, I must have been training for what I do now. I had lots of enthusiasm. People often teased, “You’re selling cats!” Sure enough, many visitors went up with a crate holding a furry bundle of joy.

Our Volunteer Coordinator kept reminding us, “Don’t judge the visitors. You’re not going home with this person. The adopter who drives you crazy may be the best thing that ever happened to a dog.”

True.

And copy works the same way. We don’t judge our friends the way their dogs and cats do. And we don’t read our copy like our own customers.

I tell my own clients, “You may not like this copy. But you’re not the target market, even if you think you resemble your clients.”

Here are 3 reasons why.

1. Customers live on a different planet.

If you hang around the Internet, you develop a unique lifestyle. For instance, some of my best friends are people I’ve never met. We exchange emails and phone calls for years. My favorite web designer is an American living in Brazil.

And you hear the same promises over and over. “Bring traffic to your website.” “Attract all the clients you can handle.”

But if you’re targeting ordinary people (i.e., those who have actually met their best friends in person), many of our ho-hum phrases will seem fresh and exciting.

“Hype-free marketing? I like that,” purred an earth-dwelling prospect recently. “That’s a whole new way of looking at marketing.”

Your world may not be the Internet. Maybe you live fitness, coaching, cooking, or finance. But chances are your familiar phrases will seem fresh and exciting to your target market.

2. Customers want to be sold.

They know you’re not putting up websites and creating brochures so you’ll feel good and collect gold stars for your Permanent Records.

And if they want your service, they’re looking for reasons to say “yes.” Think of all those Madison Avenue ads with the theme, “You deserve it.” Or, “You’re worth it.” They’re giving us permission to spend our money.

As long as you’re tasteful and – drum roll – meeting their real needs, your customers will actually appreciate learning about what you offer.

Recently I was pitching my services to “Frank,” a prospective client who sells fitness services. Hesitantly, I referred him to a website I’d written for “Tom” – a financial professional who was terrified we were selling way too hard.

Frank was impressed. “This isn’t the least bit pushy. It’s so warm and friendly! Tom sounds like such a nice guy.”

We’re still talking. But when Frank sees his own fitness site, I bet he says, “Um – do you think we’re selling too hard?”

3. Customers don’t want to stop and think.

Some words and phrases slow us down. For some good examples, pick up your college textbooks and maybe a couple of academic journals. You’ll see words like “moreover,” “counterintuitive,” “although,” and more. (I know. I wrote many.)

How did you read your college textbooks? I bet you read slowly, made marginal notes and hung on tight to your yellow highlighter pen.

Alas, website visitors don’t study our copy the same way. We have to help them create highlights and move along fast.

Which gets read more:

(a) “Although you can work very hard, you may not see results for a long time.”

(b) “But you can work really hard and wait forever for results.”

Bottom Line: Expect surprises when you unveil your copy to your clients, especially if you’re new to marketing yourself and your own products. When I first wrote the title Your 21-Day Extreme Career Makeover, I cringed: Was my site becoming the virtual equivalent of a used car lot?

But my target market – professionals and senior executives – started buying. And the rest, as they say, is history

3 Reasons Why The Copy You Hate Will Bring Profits You Love is a post from: egodrivendevelopment.com

1. Barter
If you have a business you should be bartering goods
and services with other businesses. You should try to
trade for something before you buy it. Barter deals
usually require little or no money.

2. Network
Try networking your business with other businesses.
You could trade leads or mailing lists. This will cut
down on your marketing and advertising costs. You
may also try bartering goods and services with them.

3. Wholesale/Bulk
You’ll save money buying your business supplies in
bulk quantities. You could get a membership at a
wholesale warehouse or buy them through a mail
order wholesaler. Buy the supplies you are always
running out of.

4. Free Stuff
You should try visiting the thousands of freebie sites
on the internet before buying your business supplies.
You can find free software, graphics, backgrounds,
online business services etc.

5. Borrow/Rent
Have you ever purchased business equipment you
only needed for a small period of time? You could
have just borrowed the equipment from someone
else or rented the equipment from a “rent-all” store.

6. Online/Offline Auctions
You can find lower prices on business supplies and
equipment at online and offline auctions. I’m not
saying all the time, but before you go pay retail for
these items try bidding on them first.

7. Plan Ahead
Make a list of business supplies or equipment you’ll
need in the future. Keep an eye out for stores that
have big sales. Purchase the supplies when they go
on sale before you need them.

8. Used Stuff
If your business equipment and supplies don’t need
to be new, buy them used. You can find used items
at yard and garage sales, used stores, used stuff
for sale message boards and newsgroups etc.

9. Negotiate
You should always try negotiate a lower price for
any business equipment or supplies. It doesn’t hurt
to try. Pretend you are talking to a salesman at a car
lot.

10. Search
You can always be searching for new suppliers for
your business supplies and equipment. Look for
suppliers with lower prices and better quality. Don’t
just be satisfied with a few.
—-

10 Effective Ways To Reduce Your Business Costs is a post from: egodrivendevelopment.com

Custom wheels are merely non-factory alternate wheels. They get into different finishes and designs. A lot of chrome plated, but colored finishes are really favorites too. Near client select to install modern wheels for appearing sake, only modern wheels could also better the vehicles caring.

The rewards of trading custom wheels are that it could growth your benefits by adding a different production line that you could grocery to your latest clients and it could take in Modern clients. Because a lot of buyers of custom wheels are fanciers and similar to bring care from their cars, a lot of stores get the trade more fatigues, accessories and another serve and repair act too.

Many of the custom wheel makers exchange their line from custom wheels often. While they do, they’re frequently left with older stock. Several of these custom wheels are then trade to “discount wheel warehouses”. Discount wheel warehouses are the plaza to purchase low priced custom wheels.

Trading custom wheels is a good ways for a fatigue shop is a post from: egodrivendevelopment.com

PROJECTING THE TRADE SHOW BOOTHS is a post from: egodrivendevelopment.com

PLAY CASINO FOR THE REAL MONEY is a post from: egodrivendevelopment.com

• Is it that you are bombarded with calls and emails?
• Is it that you clicked on something but don’t remember?
• Is it that you were in a different state of mind at the time and it’s changed since?
• Is it that there is too much to choose from?

Are you looking to make money but you think everything is a scam or it’s too good to be true? You have been burned before and it’s a very hard thing to get over. I know. I’ve
been there.

Or maybe you want to stuff envelopes or make crafts……

I’ve learned the hard and expensive way. I have yet to find a legitimate envelope stuffing company. If you find a craft to do they are very particular on what they receive. They are so picky that you never get paid and you are stuck with all these crafts. Data entry is another opportunity I have yet to find a real company. The only paying company was through a company my Aunt worked for that I actually got paid for data entry. Otherwise, I never got paid but lost money. You feel violated when you are scammed.

When people ask for more information, why do they ONLY want a quick overview of something?

In order to make an informed decision you need all the facts. You need to do some research:

• Check the company out with the better business bureau.
• Remember products are involved otherwise it’s not legit. Read about those products and see why they are different and if everyone can use them.
• Go to their website
• Get a brochure or PDF file with more information about them on it.
• Is it a team environment? Will they help you achieve your goals or just sign you up?
• Do they refund your money and how much time do you have?
• Do they have start-up costs? How much?
• Email, call and ask questions

When you do your homework by researching and ask questions you have the information to make an informed decision. I’ve learned that when you just want a 5 minute overview you miss a lot of details. Not everything can be summed up in 5 minutes.

I thank you for taking the time to read this over. I hope you have learned something and
I hope you use this information to find what you are looking for, freedom.

7 Points In Finding A Home Business is a post from: egodrivendevelopment.com

Many warnings were given, but unfortunately, the warnings were not taken seriously. On April 14th, 1912 Titanic received six warnings that icebergs were present in their perimeter. On the night of April 14th, Titanic struck an iceberg and ultimately sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

For other entities, what happened to the Titanic does NOT have to happen to them. Many have learned from the mistakes that Titanic had made.

There are several examples that follow and form a parallel to what happened to Titanic and how an entity can learn from Titanic’s mistakes.

1. The Titanic only had 16 lifeboats, which was not nearly enough to save everyone on the ship.

Only about 60% of the entire lifeboats’ capacity was utilized! Does your company have a disaster plan in place? Are your computers, especially your servers, being backed up on a regular basis? Many servers are now being backed up on a daily basis and sometimes on an hourly basis.

When I was working at a Helpdesk, one of our afternoon gals was named the “Backup Queen” because she took EVERY major server backup VERY seriously. The company was very lucky to have the “Backup Queen” because there were several instances where our most critical server had crashed and lost information. Fortunately, information restoration was quick and painless due to the machine being backed up on a regular basis.

We were very lucky to have someone who took the initiative to handle the server backups. Is your company that lucky? Yes, doing backups can be VERY unexciting. However, losing valuable data can be very exciting, but in a negative way.

2. The crewmen in the lookout tower, or the “crow’s nest,” were not issued binoculars to better search for icebergs.

Employees were not given the proper tools to use to do their job. Is your company using the right software for the job? Are you saving money on upgrading your operating system and software, but are losing customers? If you are losing customers, you’re NOT really saving any money at all.

The right equipment can range from the very basic, such as issuing headphones that are compatible with the phone system to customer service representatives, to ensuring that a backup generator can adequately run due to a power outage.

3. Titanic had a total of 16 watertight compartments. Initially, it sounded fine, but unfortunately, each compartment did not hold water on its own. Every compartment was similar to an ice cube tray. When one compartment overflowed, water flowed into the next compartment. Each compartment did not completely seal off water on its own.

Does your company have a good disaster recovery plan in place? If a flood or a fire struck the premises, would you be able to resume business operations in a matter of days or would it take a matter of months?

Is your information that you have on site being sent off site so you CAN have another place to access your valuable information?

4. The Titanic was going at full speed at night in iceberg-infested waters.

Are your machines at your business running at 100% capacity on a continuous basis? How much is downtime costing you when those machines need to be fixed? Are you REALLY saving money by not buying more machinery? Does the cost of more machinery outweigh the cost of your present machines’ downtime?

5. The Titanic did not heed to the many iceberg warnings.

Titanic received six iceberg warnings on the day it sank! Is your sales force, customer service department and/or helpdesk REALLY listening to your customers? Sam Walton, the founder of Wal Mart, said that the most important person to an organization can be the one who greets that customers. Too many companies don’t even realize just how MUCH each person represents their company!

There is WAY too much competition in the marketplace NOT to heed warnings. Industries like telecom, automobile, office supplies, soft drinks, and restaurant industries, just to name a few, had better take warnings seriously. Some companies might not get the luxury of six warnings that the Titanic got. Sometimes, only one warning can break a company. That’s why companies that DO encourage, and take seriously, customer feedback are invaluable and can be a gold mine.

6. The Titanic only had white flare guns to signal for help.

Red is the standard color for a flare gun used to signal for help. When the Titanic was sinking, white flare guns were shot off from the ship. One or two ships many miles away say the white flares, but did not interpret the white flares as warning messages.

Does your entity use the proper means of communication? Is it ensured that all of the parties involved completely understand what the other parties are saying? Many groups within an organization speak entirely different languages. Sales, technology and management translations may as similar to translating three different foreign languages.

7. Bruce Ismay, the president of White Star, pressured Captain Smith into unrealistic and dangerous goals.

Ismay wanted the Titanic to arrive in New York on Tuesday, April 16th. In order to meet this goal, the ship would have to travel at full speed a majority of the time. The coercion from Ismay turned out to be dangerous due to the ship’s demise.

Ismay’s level was similar to a CEO’s level. Is your company’s CEO and the rest of the management staff setting realistic goals? Are your managers providing bilateral communication? Feedback is vital to any company’s survival because many managers are not involved in day-to-day activities.

8. The two wireless operators’ priorities were not focused on the ship’s priorities.

Many of the aristocrats in first class passage had paid both operators bonuses to wire messages to New York. One of the Titanic’s operators told another ship to “shut up” after being given another iceberg warning. It was a powerful rebuke that may have cost thousands of lives.

Is your customer service department doing all it can to retain and acquire it customers? A polite and knowledgeable customer service representative can save the company thousands of dollars and maybe more! I have had the fortunate experience of dealing with many great customer service representatives. I have told many of the rep’s supervisors that I really appreciated their help as well and that they are lucky to have such great rep’s on their team.

9. The Titanic’s steel construction was never tested in cold temperature.

The steel that made up ocean liners in the early 20th Century was brittle to begin with. Unfortunately, the steel was never stress-tested to determine what stress levels the structure could endure.

Is adequate testing being done on your company’s products? Are your prototypes up to the challenges of customers’ demands? Are an automobile company’s crash tests being utilized to the fullest extent?

Titanic Precautions is a post from: egodrivendevelopment.com

Okay back to the question. Can every Tom, Dick and Harry start a home business?
I know you may have a different view from mine. But let me first tell you that just like a candle lights up a room, this article was written with the intention of providing some light on home business.

So my answer is that “YES” every one can start a home business. It does not matter where you are from or your level of education. Every Tom, Dick and Harry can start a home business.

BUT, not every Tom, Dick and Harry will maintain and grow a home business. This is where many people fail.

What do you need to maintain a home business? You will need to have qualities for home business oriented people.
Below are some of these qualities that will help you to maintain and grow your home business:

1-Home business people are careful about money.
They always know how much money they have. They know the value and cost of things so they can recognize a real bargain. That is why they can maintain their home business.

2-Most home business entrepreneurs earned money when they were teenagers— babysitting, mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, sacking groceries etc. They got their patience from here that helps then grow their home business.

3- home business people are competitive by nature.
Many were active in sports and other competitions in high school and college. Others were competitive in wanting to make good grades, earn the respect of their parents and teachers and achieve their goals. This quality is very important in a home business.

4- Home business owner believe in the old adage, “the early bird gets the worm.” They sleep and eat enough to maintain their energy levels but they don’t usually linger over non-productive tasks. This helps them focus important energy on growing their home business.

5- Successful home business people are risk-takers who trust their hunches and act on them. Taking risks can be small first steps, like placing your first ad in a mail-order publication. Without this quality, you may not even be able to start a home business, let alone growing a home business.

6-They have a “head for home business.
“They are always thinking of new ideas and new ways to make money or increase their home business. They are not afraid to put these ideas to use.
7-Home business entrepreneurs are usually loners rather than joiners.
That’s one reason why the home business, mail-order business is so appealing to many entrepreneurs. They prefer a solitary work environment (home business)

8- Successful home business are usually honourable people.
They do business based on a handshake or a promise. They tend to form strong associations with others who share this work ethic.

9- Home business people do set aside time for leisure activities and family. Their principal form of relaxation is their work, but they do realize the importance of downtime and spend time with their family.

10- Home business people don’t retire. They may sell or change their business, thinking they will retire, but they always jump back in with a new project or get a new idea that they just can’t ignore.

11-Successful home business is professionals. Whether working from their bedroom, the kitchen table or a modern, well-appointed home office, they operate just as they would if they were in an expensive office building in a major city. When they are working, they don’t let outside influences distract them.

In general, successful home business is people who have high energy; feel self-confident, set long-term goals, and view money and financial security as a measure of accomplishment and piece of mind. They persist in problem solving, take risks, learn from failures (their own and from others), take the initiative, accept personal responsibility and use all available resources to achieve their success. Successful home business people compete with themselves and believe that success or failure lies within their personal control or influence

Well, I hope this article will benefit who ever wants to start a home business.
Just keep in mind that every one can start a home business, but what differentiates between the successful home business owners and the failures are as out lined above. Take care.

Can any Tom,Dick and Harry Start A Home Business? is a post from: egodrivendevelopment.com

Why Do I Need Contracts?

A contract gives you a sound legal base for your business, and some guarantee that you’re going to get paid for your work without you having to ask the customer for payment in advance. In the event of a dispute, the contract lays down what the agreement was so that you can point to it and say what was agreed. If you ever end up having to go to court (let’s hope you won’t), the contract is what the judge’s decision will be based on.

Without a contract, you leave yourself vulnerable and open to exploitation. Someone could claim that the terms they agreed with you were different to what you say they were, or that they never signed up for anything at all and so they won’t pay. It’s especially common to see big businesses mistreat small ones, thinking that they won’t have the knowledge or the money to do anything about it. Essentially, contracts take away your customers’ ability to hold non-payment over your head, and give you the ability to hold it over theirs instead.

Written and Verbal Contracts.

It is important to point out the distinction in the law between a verbal (spoken) contract and a proper, written one. A verbal contract is binding in theory, but in practice can be very hard to prove. A written contract, on the other hand, is rock-solid proof of what you’re saying.

You might think that you’re never going to get into a dispute with your customers, but it’s all too common to find yourself in a little disagreement. They will often want to get you to do some ’small’ amount of extra work to finish the job or make it better, not realising that doing so would completely obliterate your profit margin.

For this reason, you should be very wary of doing anything with nothing but a verbal contract. On the other hand, if you were incautious or too trusting and only got a verbal contract, it could still go some way towards helping you, especially if there were witnesses.

Won’t It Be Expensive?

Written contracts don’t necessarily need to be formal contracts, which are drawn up by a lawyer with ‘contract’ written at the top and signed by both parties. These kinds of contracts are the most effective, but can be expensive to have produced, not to mention intimidating to customers.

The most common kind of written contract, oddly enough, is a simple letter. If you send a customer a letter (or, indeed, an email) laying out your agreement before you start work, and they write back to agree to it, that is enough to qualify as a written contract, with most of the protections it affords.

If you are doing high-value work for some clients, though, it could be worth the time and trouble of having your lawyer write a formal contract, or at least of doing it yourself and getting a lawyer to look it over. Formal contracts will give you more protection if the worst happens, and there’s nothing to stop you from making it a one-off expense only by re-using the same contract for multiple customers.

Contracts for Small Purchases: the Terms and Conditions.

Obviously it would be silly to expect everyone who buys some $10 thing from you to sign a contract, or write back indicating their agreement to your terms. In this situation, you should have a statement of the ‘terms and conditions’ that your customer is agreeing to by buying from you, and they should have to tick some kind of box indicating their agreement before you send anything.

Luckily, it isn’t usually so necessary to be paranoid about contract law with small purchases anyway, since customers will be paying you first and receiving the goods or services afterwards, not the other way around. If you plan to offer any kind of payment plan or other long-term agreement, of course, this should always be backed up with a signed contract.

Contracts For Your Customers, Ink It On Paper is a post from: egodrivendevelopment.com

THE TRUCK TAIL LIGHTS FROM CARID is a post from: egodrivendevelopment.com