Archive for March, 2010
If Achievement is Life, What Did We Miss?
Posted by: | CommentsI grew up thinking that without achievement I was invisible. Life is so much more.
Achievement is just one of many ways humans have at their disposal to express themselves.
But, it couldn’t be expressed any better than Katherine Kaplan has expressed with fashion photos in her blog re post
http://www.facebook.com/l/c4ab7;english1style.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/wise-conclusions/”
She is a fashion and model consultant in London England and she has London Style.
Subscribe to her post and you will be amazed on a daily basis. She goes beyond our daily hum drum thinking.
Diet Secret Revealed-Self Discipline!
Posted by: | CommentsI am one of those people who have been weight conscious for years. It’s almost a hobby.
In my high school years I was in two sports and didn’t even think about it. In college, I put on the typical 20 pounds from over consumption and under burn. After college I started running, which I started in college and took to a new level. I was running 5 miles a day at a seven minute pace and burned off all the college excess.
Then I joined a track club and started running 60 miles a week and took off another ten pounds. I was 10 pounds under my high school weight at 165 pounds. At 5′11″ people said I was too skinny. I loved it. For runners, the only way you can get faster at a certain point is lose weight; oxygen uptake increase.
Since the track club days, I have had to face the everyman dilemma. More calories in than burned equals more weight. I have always been a gym rat, always loved to run and bike, and always loved to eat. I found that no amount of exercise in my new reality would over come my food intake. I began over several years now of trimming down my intake.
I learned when I had to get to a lower weight to qualify for a “superman” life insurance policy that if I cut out carbohydrates other than vegetables and fruit, I could lose 6 pounds in a week. Now I have learned that if I eat high protein and mostly fruits and vegetables with no flower, little sugar, and no fried foods, I can easily maintain my weight.
When I add two hours of easy exercise a day (hour walk in the morning and hour walk in the evening) I can lose 1/2 pound a day. But, if I don’t walk or give in to hunger at night before bed I can wake up in the morning a pound or two heavier. I then wipe out two or three day’s efforts.
At first, not eating something yummy before bed felt like I was starving myself. My mind and brain joined together to threaten me with death if I didn’t get some food in quickly. It’s quite a battle. Hard not to listen to them. But I had to determine that my goal was stronger than my brain’s uncanny ability to have my complete attention all the time and work on me mercilessly.
It becomes a battle of the wills, but I am in reality fighting myself. I found that after I won the first night and didn’t die, I could probably win the second night and once again be safe. I have put on 25 pounds since my high school days. I don’t think I will ever be back to that weight. Its ok. I want to do it the proverbial 10 pounds at a time.
I have begun to enjoy the battle. Forget Afghanistan, I’ve got a real war right here in my head. Who will win? I have to stick to my two hours a day of exercise. I like to do some cross training so a treadmill, a pre-cor, a bike ride all change up the dynamics and my metabolism burn. I eat protein each couple of hours to activate the digestion and make my brain think I am not starving my body. Please don’t send it any emails to let it know what I am doing.
I think I can win.
If you want to get a little more on the diet, look at my post, “How to lose 1/2 pound a day”.
Is Your Life a Continuum of Waiting for Important Replys
Posted by: | CommentsI find that everyday I am waiting for a call on something important to my life.
But in a sense, I have had a lifetime of it. Each time I am trying to tell myself that it is not life or death, but still the adrenaline rush waiting for something to change the course of your life for a month or a year is hard to beat.
I am in sales. I make proposals. Each one is important to me because it means cash flow, a new account, maybe the start of a new trend or upward curve. But then there are other important things we all wait for. Ever want to get a car, apartment, loan, house and sit on the edge of your seat for hours or days until you hear.
Ever want a job, promotion, assignment, or bonus and have to wait by the phone, mail box, or email for the answer. Were you on pins and needles, so to speak?
Ever want your team to win a game, play off, championship and bite your nails and make several trips to the bathroom while waiting for the end? Ever have kids playing in important close games and just wish it would be over with a happy ending?
Ever watch someone go through something difficult like an injury, operation, or other events and just wish it would be ok? Ever watch kids need something and have to wait for the news like school elections, report cards, grades on tests or reports?
Life is full of waiting for big consequences. It never gets easier. I try to talk myself into calmness, but I still want to know and wish that I didn’t have to wait for the answer. How about you?
The Path of High Expectations for Children Has Land Mines
Posted by: | CommentsSounds caustic. Even bitter. But many suffer its truth.
I was the victim of sorts of well intentioned parents that set high expectations for a capable child. I did the same to mine.When I knew my daughter was bright and wanted to achieve, I began to set the tone of expectations needed to get there. At eleven years old she thought she needed good grades to get to college and a good college education to get a good job and a good job to get all the world has to offer.
I thought the same as a child but then there was no Britney Spears and a lot of other things that said money was the way to happiness. We were so backward, when I played high school football, I never heard anyone talking about playing in college or the money available as a pro.
But the high expectations set for me when I was young planted a seed. When I mentioned recently to a forensic psychologist at a party that I thought my parents loved me more when I accomplished, he said “that may have been true”. The message inadvertently delivered to me was that I was what I achieved.
I don’t think I am alone in that. Achievement is great, but at what cost. More relevant is the question, what does the cost become for those close to us. Our bosses relish the frenzy. Wives may love the money. But what happens to the machine that got the good grades but now knows nothing about a stop button.
There is never enough. By fate, when I started thinking about this recently, I found that I had purchased a book called “Never Enough” about an investment banker who feeds on the glory of the game. The money is intoxicating. He becomes fabulously wealthy as he works hundred hour weeks and invests in global debt. His firm drives him on to achieve more and make partner, the world needs him, his family doesn’t know him.
The problem I found was that a career never moves fast enough and you start looking at who might be holding you up. By the same token you can never buy enough goodies to fill the hole. And then, of course, there are the other abuses to forget the daily grind and disappointments. Families get caught up in the expectations. They get used to things and having someone bring home the bacon or the whole pig or the whole farm. The players can be women as well as men.
When my children were young we lived in a yuppie neighborhood where families were caught up in getting more. The men were hard driving and the wives needed to have more than their neighbors. It seemed half the population was attractive single moms with young children. What happened?
I left a few of the best positions ever imagined because I felt things were moving too slow. I have seen my daughter have the same impatience. My dad was intense and goal driven. How many more generations will be infected with the drive and feeling that there is never enough. If retirement is the goal, that is a nice stop button. The goal along the way should be not to destroy everything that is worthwhile along the way.
I now have learned different lessons and have a different perspective. Maybe thankfully stripped of assets by my ex, I have found more peace with having less and having fewer expectations. I have opened my eyes to who I am outside of achievement and all the joyful things that can be experienced outside of a monetary award or recognition. I have learned to live easier with myself and my environment. I don’t think God has a report card for us other than treating each other respectfully.
I do not propose the world become soft, but I do propose there would be more balance if we understood that when we start setting out expectations for children, it rides with a big slice of judgment. It also delivers a message of you are not quite good enough living as you would like to live everyday when you could be doing and be so much more. Look at Kennedy. Where has it gotten that family? Joseph got his President. Was that a blessing?
Trump is a good example of a self made man from a powerful influencing father. I read his daughter’s book and she grew up in a family with high expectations and at 24 she is already accomplished. She knows the beauty of money and the value of achievement. She understands hard work, competition, delivering value, self discipline, and generosity. The only thing she can’t do is turn it off. She has expectations that others are not living up to and she probably has high expectations of herself that she may never quench. Her surroundings may be her evidence that she has succeeded, but in that game others always have more to signify they have achieved more. They have bested you. Not an easy concept for an over achiever to swallow. Once started, its a blood sucking vampire.
Web Designers Solve One of the 5 Important Tasks
Posted by: | CommentsA fully utilized website should both display a company’s services and bring in new traffic.
The web designers are usually excellent at creating the site and utilizing its purpose as a brochure.
The area of getting new traffic is a science they do not usually pursue.
What is required is a study of the industry to see
- which keywords prospects use to find products or services
- how competitors position themselves
- which are the high traffic keywords that describe the client’s business
Then the selected keywords have to be placed in all the right places for search engines and placed stronger than the competition. The level of intensity or concentration varies from industry to industry.
The websites have to be built according to search engine standards. Competitors in some industries build their sites to very high standards because they are paying for assistance. We run sites through a website grader that defines the weaknesses and gives each site a score.
The final important area is developing incoming links. Once again, some industries are more competitive, but in any industry, incoming links are part of the formula used by websites to compare.
To get a complete picture and the costs for a one price correction of all the necessities see OnePrice
Right and Left Brain Foods, Really!
Posted by: | CommentsDoes it seem impossible?*
The left brain or rational and language side lives on Beta Waves. The right side which is the emotional and creative side lives on Alpha waves. There are foods and supplements that support each.
When the beta side or the alpha waves get too intense or high in speed they get cut off from the other side that would give balance. When they get too low, they need stimulating to function properly.
In balanced states, the body gets into a zone for athletics, thinking, connecting, perception, feeling, and communicating. If you have had a few times when something went unbelievably, it was because you were in a zone. Now maybe you realize how often you are not in it.
Meditating is the easiest way to get into the zone. Athletes have practices that get them into the zone before games or competitions. The motor skills perform better when the beta waves are calm and relaxed. You often hear of coaches trying to keep their players relaxed.
There are foods that support each, as I mentioned.
Dopamine is the chemical energy of beta waves and foods that support dopamine are broccoli, carrots, egg whites, salmon, pomegranate juice, spinach, and unsalted almonds. Tea also boosts dopamine including green tea, oolong tea, white tea, and rooibos tea. Other foods herbs and spices that assist are flaxseed, garlic, green tea, mustard seed, onion, stevia, and yarrow.
You will note that flaxseed is also rich in the Omega’s.
The foods that support alpha waves are avocado, cucumber, zucchini, lettuce, nuts, milk products (milk, cream, ice cream, sour cream) whole eggs, luncheon meats and sausages, liver, beef, and olive oil salad dressings. Yes you notice all the fats, but they are necessary to deliver choline to the brain. A good supplement is choline bitartrate.
If you followed my lose ½ pound a day diet, you will see that the diet is rich in these supportive foods and it is easy to create dishes that have several. For example most of my meals start with cooking in olive oil to which I add garlic, onion, broccoli, zucchini, meat and spaghetti sauce. I also eat a few hard boiled eggs a day, an avocado, a table spoon of flaxseed and several fruits.
You can get full, healthy, support brain function, and lose weight at the same time.
*Note This information is from my favorite Brain Book “Heal Your Mind and Rewire Your Brain by Patt Lind-Kyle. You should not go another month without reading it.
The Edge
Posted by: | CommentsGaining market share has several advantages:
- Credibility
- Marketing Power
- Sustainability
- Horizontal and Vertical Growth Opportunities
- Reducing Effectiveness of Competition
Our Mission
Create online superiority that leads to bricks and mortar leadership
Goal for our clients:
Appear higher in page ranking for desired services than the competition
Strategy
- Create a website that has all the fundamentals desired by search engines
- Define business in high traffic keywords
- Support keywords in content to be the most competitive for those keywords
- Create Retention and Conversion features to please search engines and increase customers
- Develop incoming links for more traffic and develop Authority required by search engines
Fundamentals Desired by Search Engines
We run sites through a website grader that evaluates 50 points deemed important by search engines. Each of the over 2 million sites analyzed has a 0% to 100% grade. Most top competitors score over 85% and our goal is to get all sites above 90%.
Define Busines in High Traffic Keywords
Every industry has categories and those categories have niches. Each of those niches has leaders at the top of search engine pages. No one can be on top of all the niches so we select the most important aspects of your business and build the high traffic keywords for those niches. For example in Fulfillment there is Order, Product, Literature, Ecommerce, Warehousing, Transportation, and Packaging fulfillment to name a few. Then there are the niches Third Party Logistics, Global Logistics, Cold Storage, and Freight to name a few more.
Support Keywords in Content to be the most competitive
Search engines don’t allow you just to name how many businesses you are in to gain page ranking. For high page ranking you have to support those businesses on your landing page and in your content. You have to support it better than the competition for the niches you select. This starts with your title, meta tags, headlines, body content, page titles, page content, and alt tags. This practice separates most webdesigners and SEO practictioners.
Create Retention and Conversion Features
Bounce is the enemy of websites. It means someone spent less than 30 seconds on your site and decided they didn’t see what they were looking for, didn’t understand how to use the site, or didn’t think it was better than other sites they had seen. The purpose of Retention and Conversion elements is to tell people quickly what you do, who you are, how to use the site to find what they want and convert them on the first visit to leave an email, call, ask for a quote, or purchase.
Developing Incoming Links for Traffic and Developing Authority
Search engines want to promote sites that are popular. It justifies their selection. There are many ways to develop traffic:
- Improving Website Fundamentals
- Traditional advertising
- Sales teams
- Pay Per Click online advertising
- Social Media
- Blogging
- Article Writing
- Directories
- Exchanging Links with Other Sites
- Sponsor Sites that list Your Site
So the three most important strategies are:
- Build a fundamentally sound website
- Create a keyword strategy
- Develop incoming links
Your Website Grade (These available upon request)
Your Website Traffic
Your Sites Proclaimed Niches
Our Solutions
- Build a fundamentally sound website
- Create a keyword strategy
- Modify landing page to support it
- Create retention and conversion elements
- Add pages that are necessary to support strategy
These added pages are to improve retention and conversion like FAQs, Blog, RSS feed, Why Us, not product or service pages unless we deem they are needed
Costs for:
Our Solutions (as mentioned right above) $350
Installation of Our Solutions:
Landing Page estimate for small site $350
Each page thereafter $142
Creating Incoming Links by:
- Blogging
- Social Media
- Directories
- Exchanging Links
- Sponsor Sites
100 links $595
Or 35 links a month $344 a month
Bios:
Internet Marketing Inc.(IMI) is a global internet marketing company with accounts like the U.S. Army, Ritz Carlton, Hilton, Oceania Cruises, Front Runner Sports, and Lincoln Properties. It creates new websites starting at $20,000 and Incoming link campaigns starting at $3,000 a month for large budgets and traffic campaigns. As an affiliate for IMI, I can create your strategies and market campaigns
EliteWebsiteSeo specializes in the Fulfillment, Auto parts, Jet Travel, and Natural Food industries and does the same for smaller budgets. As the owner of this firm, I modify existing sites starting at $350 plus installation and run incoming linking building campaigns.
What is Happiness?
Posted by: | Comments
- Image by ronsho © via Flickr
We often think it is having a million dollars, meeting Mr. or Mrs Right, having a big new home, or something like winning the lottery. We often think when I have.. I will be happy. But we can have serious happiness everyday.
Giving a needy person a $1. Nodding or smiling at people you don’t know, holding open doors, giving people the right of way and driving so as not to endanger others. Living within our means and not buying something you want but can’t afford. Not owing people money. Staying in touch with people that are important to you. Maintaining your health, weight, and some physical conditioning. Making it a daily practice to plan things that make your day.
Treating others well is at the top of the lists. After a while, the respect for yourself and others starts to find its way back. People you know respect and treat you well. People appreciate you and tell you they love you. That alone can make you happy. You feel good about yourself and regard yourself as a good citizen and human. Feel your swelling pride.
Make progress in a lot of things. Do things you enjoy like exercise, going to the beach, going out to dinner, having a great dessert, reading a book, going to a game or movie. These things are affordable and often more important than money.
Money does a lot of things for us, but in the long run it doesn’t really give us self respect nor make us good people. In fact, we see everyday that people with money and fame are quite self destructive. So that tells us that stability starts with things within our power and close to home. Self respect and respect for ourselves as humans is built on smaller practices that don’t get written up in newspapers.
Consider how we judge politicians. One who cheats in any fashion loses public trust and is banished. Regardless of your party, you have to appreciate how the Obamas have worked all their lives for solid values of study, achievement, community service and family.
Self respect for ourselves and others gets respect and frequently success in things that are important to us. People trust us and are willing to give us what we want; often its money for our services. There is something about someone that is trustworthy that is sensed much more instinctively than words can express. Nothing like a con telling you to trust them.
Being trustworthy and truly respecting others might make the mate of your dreams have faith. People recognize good qualities. Being unselfish comes back a thousand times. It is often said that if you want to be rich give away as much as you can. It’s a matter of faith in the universe. Having faith means believing that good things happen and anyone can make good things happen for themselves. That builds confidence. Confidence usually comes from people who trust themselves, others, and how the universe works.
Happiness can be found in things much smaller than a big payoff.
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Overcoming Fear
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- Image by cotinis via Flickr
In the early years we often like to test ourselves with feats of daring. Are we like our super heroes who can do the impossible? Can we live without fear?
We learn, as I have in many attempts to eliminate fear, that it is a natural healthy built in response. It is in every species on earth. We can only learn to manage the feeling when it arises.
The reptilian brain only has a few functions. One of them is to warn us when we see, hear, smell, or sense something that might be harmful. The Thalmus receives the sensory information and sends it to the frontal cortex for calm evaluation. The frontal cortex sends back a message validating the alarm or assuring the cortex that the situation can be handled.
The Thalmus takes in the new information and mixes it with memories to create its own reality. Its reality therefore would be different from other people’s reality.
If the Thalmus decides that regardless of what the frontal cortex says, it remembers this as being life threatening, it may cause the messages to the body to result in “freezing motionless” unable to react or “running” for its life.
If in earlier situations the frontal cortex had warned that the situation could be handled, the Thalmus took its word for it and the human organism handled the situation, the Thalmus might have developed more confidence for the next adventure.
The brain and then the motor skills function much better in a relaxed mode. Even if the situation is tense many professional athletes talk about being in the zone. The zone is where everything fast is in slow motion. A boxer can see the combinations developing. A basketball player sees a much bigger hoop. A tennis player sees the ball from the moment it leaves the racquet of the opposing player and he hits it easily.
After many attempts to scare myself in skiing and other events, I thought the only thing I was really afraid of was skydiving. So I talked two friends into tackling it with me. Turns out I was scarred to death when I looked out the airplane and saw little cars 2,500 feet below. We jumped alone in those days. When I stepped out onto the wing of the airplane and realized when I was ordered to let go, that I would neither be in the plane nor have an open shute. It was the most scarred I have been in my life. It did teach me that you cannot eliminate fear.
James Bond has confidence in his fighting skills, evaluation skills, and innovative abilities to think he can get out of any dangerous situation and his brains perfectly coordinate his actions where others would certainly fail. That is why we idolize him. In the audience, we know we would be too scarred to operate perfectly. He does not get a message from his brain “You’re going to die!” His brain gives him adrenalin pumped approval to take his best shot. “You can do it!”
A quarterback or any player in the super bowl has to fight the over pumped adrenaline of fear of failure or making a mistake. That is why in big moments they always say the guy with the experience has the best chance. The pressure is fear of failure. The experienced brain has learned that in these moments, you have to act as though it’s a sunny day in the park and not think of negative consequences.
Any soldier or law enforcement officer, fireman, and even court room attorney can build on an already developed sense of security in fearful situations and elevate their skills to meet new challenges. Each new challenge met gives the brains more confidence that situations are best handled by staying rationale and not going into alarm mode.
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Retail Stores and Websites Need Location
Posted by: | CommentsThe old real estate axiom is Location, Location, Location.
In a recession, pre-recession planning may have proven more pivotal.
A firm’s reliable customers have probably cut back on spending and there is a need for new ones to keep revenues above fixed operating expenses. When revenues drop below that line, it is only a matter of how long savings last before the owner throws in the towel.
Bricks and mortar retailers depend on repeat business and growing with new customers. Organizations make a commitment to where they have to be located and therefore what they will pay for rent. They want to be close to their target market and not let other competitors get a geographical advantage on them. They do not want to be cut off from their market because a competitor with the relatively same goods is more convenient.
The same happens in the online business. A firm often does not know if they are competing online with a strictly online business or a bricks and mortar business with an online strategy. What does stand out is the commitment to having the best geographical location. Whoever is ahead of you in page ranking, is more convenient for the person looking for your services.
People who know your business can find your site. You may be driving people through traditional advertising, email campaigns, or sales calls, but there are probably even more prospects looking for your business who you can’t reach with traditional advertising; using TV and radio could be an exception.
There are companies trying to dominate the new customer business by having the best location. To achieve this they have certainly accomplished the following tasks.
- They have a good keyword strategy that puts them in the niches in which they want to be found.
- They usually have built websites search engines respect and/or
- they have so many incoming links and/or
- spend so much on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising that their site rises to the top because they bend the search engine algorithm.
That search engine algorithm will give the advantage in a low competition industry or niche to the best SEO’d sites. In a highly competitive industry or niche they will give the advantage to the site with the best construction and/or the most incoming links generating the most traffic.
Incoming links can be created by PPC driving traffic, or incoming links from sponsoring sites attracting traffic, or even social media, publishing, and directories driving traffic.
The most practical expenditure of resources is to Optimize the site organically and then create traffic, even if it costs, until the site is high in page rankings and then reduce the spend.
In a recession, the stores and the websites with the best locations probably are increasing their margins by getting more free traffic. Profit becomes leverage in either world.
