For those of you that don’t already know, we are suckers for animals.  Friends to anything that walks, crawls, slithers or flies.  And because of that we try to help those that can’t speak for themselves.

When we were in Dubai and in Jordan we participated in animal welfare and adoption programs and adopted 2 cats off the streets.

This is Ravi our one eyed lunatic…

And Little Man (who is not so little anymore)

And this is Burtie- my furkid and trusty Canadian sidekick for over 11 years now…

But here in India we are constantly shocked by the amount of dogs on the streets.  While many of them look well fed, there are many that are not.  They may even be injured, have missing limbs or other maladies.

Which is why we carry a supply of dog treats and rawhide bones with us at all times.  While we know it’s not enough, it’s at least something to brighten the day of a street dog.

There is one family of dogs that has been living in and around a construction site beside our apartment complex.  When we first moved in Mom looked tired and haggard with 5 puppies following her every move.  We found them to be friendly and extremely sweet.

Over the next few months we made a point of dropping food off to them everyday and making sure they got their shots, flea and worm treatments and even told the family watching the construction site to tell us if they ever needed anything for the puppies.

We ended up taking one of them into our home after he was hit by a car.  While his leg wasn’t broken it was in bad shape but after 2 and a half months with us he was ready to be adopted into a family.

During that time 2 of the others got homes as well.

But 4 weeks ago, we realized one of the puppies wasn’t around anymore.  She had been hit by a car as well and needed medical help right away.

Her recovery was faster than her brother’s and was just about ready to find a loving home as well.  We took her in for a final check up on her injuries and got her the next round of vaccinations.

2 days later she started acting strangely.   4 days later she passed away.

She was a wonderful dog and made our lives better everyday. And quite possibly one of the sweetest creatures ever to be put on this earth.

It amazed me at how quickly something so wonderful could be gone and it forced me to remember that your life doesn’t start after you find success.  The best times aren’t when you have all the money in the world or the nice car that you dreamed of.  It isn’t about the gourmet kitchen, the designer wardrobe, the exotic vacation or the expensive bottle of wine.

It is about enjoying the little things that make up everyday of your life – both good and bad.  And taking time to be thankful for every second that you get to spend with someone you love very much.

So take just a couple minutes today to tell the people and pets that brighten your day what they mean to you.

Make it a fantastic day- for you and for someone you love!

Cheers!

Erica

I could talk at length about the importance of making life easier and faster – but we’ll save that for a future post…

Today is about an announcement!  A HUGE announcement!  One that gives me chills when I think about how easy and cheap personal branding and team building is going to be.  This is automation at it’s finest but at rock bottom prices…

In the coming weeks GoTo Webinar and GoTo Meeting are going to find themselves facing a new competitor in their market.

Talk Fusion announced that in the beginning of September they are going to launch Video Broadcasting (Webinar style presentations) and Video Conferencing (think Skype’s one on one video chat but instead of 1:1 it can be viewed and used on multiple computers all at the same time).

And they are doing all of this with HD quality and for an extremely low price point.

Right now, if you want to use GoToMeeting/ Webinar you pay $99 a month for a room that can hold up to 100 people. With Talk Fusion’s new Video Broadcasting you have all the same features – whiteboarding, screen and file sharing, recording, etc. but you can have an UNLIMITED number of people on your meeting!

That and all the other amazing video products for just $20 a month!

And the opportunity to earn an additional stream of income when you help others use the same cutting edge tools.

But you don’t have to take my word for it- in fact, here is a small part of a Talk Fusion Team Call that the Founder and CEO Bob Reina spoke on last week…

This is an extremely powerful opportunity to not only save yourself some money but earn some as well!  While at the same time get access to 8 unbelievable video products that are the perfect vehicle to drive your personal brand and relationships building efforts.

Here is where you can get more info on Talk Fusion

Got questions?  There is a way to contact me directly from the link above or catch me on any of the social networking sites I have listed at the top of this page.

It’s time for you to have the tools you need at a price you and your entire team can afford!

Cheers!

Erica

Messing with the html coding, php files, css and javascript in my blog is not something I am willing to do.  It’s just too techie and frustrating.

I am also not willing to shell out $50 or more a month to use a 3rd party Lead Capture Page System that I can’t control myself.  (I have seen too many people lose everything because a site shut down or changed it’s policies on what content is allowed- Look at Squidoo.  It’s just too risky to leave my capture pages in the hands of someone else.)

But you are in luck!  Because today I am going to show you a dead simple way to make a well converting capture page that you can tuck away inside your blog in just a few minutes.

• First you need a self hosted wordpress blog
• And this Squeeze Page Creator Plugin

This easy to use plugin is the power behind this tutorial.

With the Squeeze Page Plugin, there are 4 sales page templates to choose from:

• Column sales page
• Standard long form sales page
• Squeeze page
• Power Squeeze Page (This is an advanced technique.  You have the option to drop in your javascript or css and make a completely custom page.)

Here is a sample column squeeze page that I created with this plugin.

In this video I am going to show you how easy this is to set up…

Gone are the days when you need expensive capture page systems.

You can make your own in minutes using these two plugins:

Page Mash
Squeeze Page Creator

Got questions or comments?  I’d love to hear them.  Just drop them below in the replies section.

Cheers!
Erica

Just one more reason I love my job!

Our only complaint about the entire trip was that it wasn’t long enough.  What an amazing place.  That and the fact that I didn’t have 2 stomachs to eat all the food they wanted us to have.

Here are some of my favorite shots from the trip.

Orange County Resort - Coorg Karnataka, India

Where are we - exactly?

The bathroom in our Private Pool Villa

Looks a bit chilly for a swim KJ!

Our self portrait after arriving and being blessed

One of the many gorgeous flowers around the plantation

Erica on our private veranda

Rain rain go away

Can you tell we're happy to be out of the city?

Kenny eating his desert before his lunch!

Kenny looks small beside that palm!

Birds of Paradise everywhere!

Some of the plantation locals. They were extremely vocal with their greeting

Outside the Peppercorn restaurant where we had dinner the night before

On the deck of the Peppercorn restaurant. That is our villa behind us over the lake.

No idea what kind of flower this is but it was too gorgeous not to take a picture of

One of the thousands of Anthuriums they grow right at the plantation.

The Scarlet Anthurium

Another one of the locals. He was still cock-a-doodle-dooing after our bird watching trek. Very glad he wasn't hanging out beside my room!

Kenny ready for our jungle walk in his very 'hot' leach proof socks

I can't believe no one wears these to the Oscars!

Another beauty

There were butterflies everywhere and it's not even butterfly season.

These trees were inside the coffee plantation. The vines you see growing up them are all pepper plants.

Our trusty guides for our jungle walk

Kenny and I in the middle of the coffee plantation

Kenny looking super relaxed while we waited for our guide to climb a tree and search for elephants

No elephants but it's still a great excuse for a stroll in the India jungle

The leach proof socks make us look rugged don't they?

The Carvery River. It is just a trickle of a stream in the summer months

A dragonfly friend we found along the way

Yes- there were lots of spiders in the jungle. This species can grow to the size of my hand and spin a web 1.5 meters wide

Kenny happy to feel the sunshine on his pale face

Me taking a quick breather while we waited for the guides

Another resident of the jungle

Erica peeking out from behind one of the hundreds of thousands of coffee bean plants they have at the plantation

Back to the resort safe and sound- no elephant sightings but it was still an amazing walk in the jungle

A gorgeous caterpillar

You can feed the fish and take a little tour around the lake from this boat. And you can see our house (for our stay) in the background

Who wants to go for a ride? Wait. Where's the motor for this thing? A pole- forget it!

Kenny and some of the registration staff at Orange County

Packed but not ready to go home!

Here’s that video in case you aren’t already on my notification list and you missed it…

But today I wanted to take you behind the scenes to show you what the Max BlogPress folks have packed away back there…

If you want more subscribers – and WHO DOESN’T?  Grab this plugin.

But if you are reading this before July 31st- hurry up!  They have taken 30% off the price but only for the launch.

As you make your way around this site, you’ll see this plugin in action…

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below and get on my list so I can send you updates when I find other cool plugins or do training and updates on the ones I currently use.

Cheers!

Erica

Today we have the chance to turn up the heat on our email marketing campaigns…

It’s very simple- video email marketing.

Gone are the days of boring text based messages that look exactly like the next one. This is your chance to shine, stand out from the crowd and build your brand faster.

This 5 minute video will show you 10 ways you can use Video Email to boost your online business.

Don’t let boring text email messages hold your business and brand building back.

If you are interested in video email, all the features it comes with and how it can benefit your business check out what we are using for our video email campaigns…

VIDEO EMAIL MARKETING

Make it a great day!

Erica

I am using Talk Fusion for my video autoresponders and the form on the right side is what I am going to teach you to make today.

My apologies – this video is a little slow loading…

Here is the code you are going to need to make this work…

<img src=”http://your-url-goes-in-here.com” alt=”" />

NOTE: Talk Fusion’s Form Creator adds about 10 pixels of space on each side of your image when you add it to your form.  So if your sidebar is 300 pixels wide then you need to make sure that you use an image that is about 280 pixels wide.  That way it will sit properly in your sidebar.

Here is the link to get to Gimp.  That is the free image editor I mentioned in the video.

So, start making some snazzy new opt in forms and grab more leads for your Talk Fusion Autoresponder Campaigns!

If you’re not using Video Email Autoresponders, all I can say is Why Not?  Here is a post about 10 Ways to Boost Your Business Using Video Email.

Make it a great day!
Erica

So, today I thought I would show you a really fast way to take a text file and turn that into a stunning video in less than 5 minutes…

Here are the step by step instructions:

1. Create your text file
2. Save your text file (.doc with no spaces for Mac users/ .txt file with spaces for PC users)
3. Fire up PowerPoint
4. Create a new presentation
5. Insert – Slides from file
6. Choose the file you want to import
7. When they load edit the slides so they are “title slides”
8. Add any backgrounds, themes, animations, images, etc that you want to your presentation.
9. Slideshow – View Show
10. Start up your Screen Capture software
11. Record and save

That’s it!

So, get to it…  Start making really cool text based videos for your business.

Got questions?  Leave them for me by clicking the “Ask Erica” button on the right.

Got comments?  I’d love to hear them!  Drop them below.

Make it a great day!

Erica

Growing up she used to make almost everything my sister and I wore.  It was fantastic to have something that was totally mine and completely unique.  No one else at school had clothes nearly as nice as mine.

So when I got older I begged her to show me how to sew.

This was her reply to my plea…
“I would love to teach you and I can show you everything I know but first, I want you rip out this seam out for me.”

She handed me a tiny little tool (her favorite seam ripper) and the largest piece of material I had ever seen. It was a huge quilted baby blanket (a gift for my cousin-to-be’s baby shower that weekend) and the lining had gotten caught and twisted underneath it.

As she pointed out the mistake and told me to be careful, Mom must have noticed the disheartened expression on my face.  She walked off to help my sister with some homework and said, “If you’re not willing to use the seam ripper, then you will never really learn to sew.”

I made a disgruntled shoulder shrug and sat there for a minute pouting to no one.  When I realized she wasn’t coming back to help me and she was serious, I went to work. (Child labor laws are in place because of this kind of thing right??)

2 hours later, dragging the blanket (now in 2 pieces) behind me, I strolled into the kitchen to proudly show her my work.

“Well done! Let’s go finish this blanket and make you a new skirt for the baby shower.”

Mom knew that in order for me to create something great, I needed to know that it was OK to make mistakes but that I would have to find a way to correct them.

The same goes for your business and life in general.

If you want to create something unique and wonderful, you need to be willing to fail, have the patience to figure out what went wrong and have the desire to get it right when you try again.

Be willing to use your own seam ripper or you will never know what amazing things you can create.

And just as a little side note:
Whenever I am home for a visit, my Mom and I spend the majority of our time in her sewing room, eating whatever junk food she has laying around (there is never a shortage of it!) and making new creations together.   So I guess that little seam ripper did more than teach me some important life lessons, it gave my Mom and I another wonderful excuse to spend time together.
This is making me miss her… got to go and call home…

Make it a great day!
Erica

Michael, a fellow internet marketer and friend of mine,  shared this on his blog and I was so inspired by it, that I turned it into a video for you to enjoy and share with the people that you believe in…

Don’t be afraid to Dream Big- you deserve it!

If you know someone that could use a bit of encouragement or needs to know how much you believe in them, share this with them.

Make it a great day!

Erica Jones