The Secret to Becoming Rich

Napoleon Hill, the author of Think and Grow Rich, believes that a person does not have to be a genius to become rich. Any person can become wealthy if he thinks positively and has a deep desire to achieve his goal. Positive Thinking: You must see your financial dreams and know that you will be able to attain them. You must already own them. If you begin making up every rationalization under the sun why you can't succeed, pinch yourself. You have to discipline your body and mind to think positive thoughts. Teach yourself that those kind of thought patterns are unacceptable. You can obtain greatness, even if you are not the smartest, most talented, or best looking person in the world. Success is your if you'll just allow it to come into your life. Don't underestimate the power of your thoughts. Burning Desire: Hill tells a true tale of a man named Edwin Barnes who desired to become Thomas Edison's partner. Most of us would have scoffed at him had we lived back then. Edwin Barnes was a nobody. Nevertheless, he had a deep desire, a life dream, and he was determined. He went to Thomas Edison and convinced him to hire him. He did not instantly achieve his dream, but he worked hard and ultimately became Thomas Edison's partner. This was a feat everyone thought was impossible. Edwin Barnes followed these 7 steps to gain this great success: 1. Choose a definite dream. 2. Put all your energy into that dream. 3. Be willing to do menial work at first. 4. Visualize your dream. 5. Form a strategy. 6. Endure through the hard times. 7. Eliminate any way to retreat. As you focus on obtaining your goals, answer these questions: What is the exact amount of money I want? What am I willing to sacrifice for it? What exact date do I want this money by? What is my strategy? Don't forget, to successful people, there is no such thing as "defeat." What looks like defeat is no more than a great opportunity. Start creating opportunities out of failures and being successful today!

Your Greatest Asset

Your greatest asset is your own customer list. These people have already purchased something from you in the past. If you've delivered as satisfactory product, they are very likely to buy from you again. The easiest sale you'll ever make is to an already established customer of yours. They already trust you. They feel comfortable in dealing with you. You've delivered what you said you would so a certain degree of trust has already been established. Your customers are probably quite confident that you wouldn't sell them something that wasn't in their best interest. The high road to increased profits always takes the route of established customers. There's always an expense associated with finding a new customer. Regardless of the marketing method used there's always an investment required in establishing a customer whether in terms of real dollars or human capital. Once you have a customer, any subsequent sale is made without the cost of locating that customer. The cost or finding a new customer is proportionally much higher than the cost of retaining an existing customer. Keys To Success The secret of capitalizing on your customer base is to continually feed them with new products and services you know they'll want. This is no time to diversify into completely new areas. Everything that you make available to your customer list must be compatible with what made those people customers to begin with. Whatever subsequent products and services you offer must be related in some way. Think of your customers as belonging to a specific group. They're gardeners or small business owners or health enthusiasts. Whatever you offer must fit that product niche. Always be on the lookout for new things you think your customers would gladly pay for. And give customers first crack at any of these new products and services. If you can offer a discount, that's even better. By letting them in on new products and services, you're giving them priority customer status, an added value of doing business with your firm. Be careful not to overdo it. You don't want to annoy anyone, least of all your customers. Allow enough time and space between customer contacts. How much time you allow between mailings or calls depends on the nature of your business. Examples When a clothing store receives a shipment of new designs, they should first notify all previous customers who've purchased in the same price range. All the store has to do is contact these customers by phone or by mailing invitations to a special event where this new line is unveiled. Suggest to customers how additional new outfits can be created by mixing and matching and you've provided an extra service that will help retain customers. This approach would seem natural for a wholesaler who relies on distributors or retailers to act as re-sellers. By showing your new merchandise and suggesting ways to move more of it, you're providing a valuable service while keeping in touch with your customers. A self-published author of book on camping tips, should come up with natural additions to his product line to sell to buyers of his book. Things like maps of parks, local facilities, lists of "must-see sites" or specialty camping equipment, could all be add-ons made available to the author's buyers. One final note; in order to start making more sales and build your business empire – you must become an avid student of lead generation and marketing strategy – the high-payoff items necessary for you to magnetically attact new clients to skyrocket your profits.

Permanence of Paper

Historically, most of society’s writings and visual images have been recorded on paper. However, paper is an organic material and is subject to deterioration caused by chemical, physical and biological agents. While documents on paper several hundreds of years old have endured, most paper manufactured in the last two hundred years has a limited storage life due primarily to acidity induced as part of paper manufacturing processes used during that time period. Exposure to acidic air pollutants also contributes to paper degradation. Chemically this degradation is a result of acid hydrolysis of the cellulose polymers which are themselves responsible for the intrinsic strength found in paper sheets. The hydrolysis reaction are also autocatalytic since they produce additional acid products which themselves further increase paper acidity and accelerate degradation occurring. Since untreated paper is too absorbent for the application of inks, hydrophobic fillers also called sizings are added to paper surfaces as part of the manufacturing process which can also have an impact on paper permanence. Sizing impacts absorption of liquids to prevent feathering of inks and dyes and to provide a crisp image. Paper made before the 19th century was often made by hand from linen and cotton rag materials which are excellent sources of high cellulose, long fibers. Gelatin, from animal hides, was used to size such papers and because the resulting papers were neutral to only slightly alkaline they had very good storage properties. The paper machine appeared at the end of the 18th century, and as the demand for paper outpaced sources of available gelatin, cotton rags and linen, wood fiber took the place of cotton and linen. However, wood has shorter fibers and lower cellulose content along with lignin so that chemical methods had to be developed to free fibers from wood and other plant matter to supply the increasing amounts of paper furnish needed. Mechanical action [“beating”] to soften and bleaching to whiten these new materials yielded pulps that could be laid down by machine as a sheet with subsequent drying to form paper. Gelatin was replaced in the early 1800s with rosin which was mainly abietic acid isolated from pine resin. Alum (papermaker’s alum or aluminum sulfate) was used to precipitate the rosin onto paper forming an alum/rosin sizing. Aluminum sulfate reacts with water - and produces sulfuric acid – and production of paper on the paper machine demanded additional alum, so papermakers often used the salt in excess. The industrial revolution added outside factors such as air pollution and acidic oxides of nitrogen or sulfur and ozone to the environment. Early bleaching processes using chlorine and hypochlorites, strong oxidizers, also degraded the cellulose and reduced its strength. All of these led to diminution of paper properties. Fortunately, bleaching processes have totally significantly over the past few decades and the chlorination and hypochlorite steps are no longer used resulting in less damage is done to resulting fiber. The strength of paper results from a combination of factors. The most important is the condition of cellulose, in particular chain length. Cellulose is made up of repeating units of glucose monomers and the number of glucose units present provides a measure of degree of polymerization (DP). In native cellulose from wood DP is about 10,000. Depending on the nature of the pulping and bleaching, the DP of processed cellulose falls to a range of 600 – 1100. After this reduction the paper fibers are still quite strong, but fiber strength is highly dependent upon retaining this DP and acids break cellulose bonds randomly often cutting the cellulose polymer in central regions. These attacks drastically reduce the DP of cellulose and quickly weaken the fibers. Alkalis also attack cellulose, but by a different mechanism, in which only end units are removed (end peeling) so that alkaline degradation has much less effect on reducing DP (Bristow and Kolseth, 1986) Some low quality papers such as groundwood for newsprint also contain high amounts of lignin. Lignin contains phenolic entities sensitive to light which develop chromophores or conjugated double bonds in the chemical structure which can absorb light in the visible range. This makes paper containing high amounts of lignin very prone to discoloration or yellowing. While there is no doubt that lignin in paper contributes to its discoloration, there is little evidence to show that paper containing lignin loses strength faster than paper of similar quality without lignin (Luner, 1988). However, standard specifications for durable paper allow no more than 1% lignin, for papers used in archives, libraries, and other permanent records. In addition to the acid nature inherent in paper and the exposure to acidic air pollutants, it is now known that exposure of stable or acid free paper to acidic books and papers – as in a library or archive – will lead to deterioration of such seemingly stable documents stored within the same collections (Smith, 1999). Other threats to permanence include those from water and fire damage, theft, and vandalism or biological agents. These are problems while not inherently present with paper materials have been addressed in depth by the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NDCC, 1999). Because of its importance to society, the permanence of paper is addressed in a significant and growing literature much of which has been generated by the community of archivists and librarians.

The Greatest Lie Ever Told: Everyone is Your Prospect!

Outdated network marketing ideologies (some people call them lies), have made failure a common destination for most network marketers in our industry. The "everyone is your prospect" (and other tired theories), end up making you feel frustrated and incompetent, not to mention it sets you up for failure. Why? Because you go out and try to "sell" your product or your business opportunity to everybody you come in contact contact with and then feel like a loser when people repeatedly tell you they're not interested! Here's the reality: not everyone is a prospect for your business opportunity or product despite what you've been taught. Shocker huh? Although your upline and in some cases, your company has drilled it into your head that everyone is a prospect for what you're marketing, you must keep in mind you're in business and not everyone wants what you're selling. You must know that it's to your company's benefit for you to think that you have a huge market with wide-open arms just ready for your product. That's probably how they sold you on the opportunity - right? Take for example the three foot rule. The three foot rule is an offshoot of the "everyone is your prospect" theory. This is where you find a catchy phrase to start a conversation with anyone and everyone who's unlucky enough to venture within three feet of you. The goal is to "work" your opportunity into the conversation. Don't you feel phony when you do this? Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with making small talk with strangers when you're out and about, but if your only reason for doing so is to get an "opening" to pitch your business, then its contrived. Besides, most people can sense when you're insincere and fake. Who do you think you're fooling? Now, think about it. What kind of role-modeling are you showing for your potential prospect anyway? After you pitch them your opportunity, the first thing that comes into their mind is: will I have to go up to strange people in public places to recruit for my business too? I don't want to do that... this is not for me. You are making your potential prospects even more resistant to your proposition with your actions and you don't even know it. But maybe you do, because the three foot rule and the other "lies" you've been practicing and believing in have not been working. It's a reality that you feel awkward prospecting this way, but your upline says it's one of the "techniques" we use. Your family hates taking you out in public places, like restaurants and stores, because they know you're going to launch into your network marketing spiel at any given moment. They're embarrassed and ashamed you work your business this way. You're like a lion on the prowl in the Serengeti! The more you conduct yourself this way, the more you feel a lost of your dignity. You feel like a schmuck, like the creepy guy that sits alone in the back of a movie theatre watching a children's flick and talking to himself. Despite what you've been told, not everyone is your prospect. That can never be! Some people are happy working a job. Some people are so fearful and distrustful of business people that they could never muster up the courage to become one of them. Some people don't like risk. Some people just aren't qualified to be their own boss. By now, if you've done the three foot rule for any length of time, you know that it is not a good use of your time. In fact you are getting frustrated and angry that you have to resort to such tactics, but you feel you are obligated to use any wacky prospecting technique your upline comes up with. If your upline told you to dress up as a clown complete with the big red nose and rainbow curly wig and go door to door prospecting, you'd do it because your upline told you it worked. You want to be teachable and trainable, so you do anything they tell you to do, much to your displeasure. Around about now you are ready to quit. You've had enough of the "everyone is your prospect" lie and other lies. The reason you are not having much success is because... You are not going after your target market! Your job is not to convince, bribe or convert anyone into having a business. Your job is to talk to people who are on the same page as you. In other words you want people who are actively seeking out a solution to their problem and you want them coming to you first. When people seek you out, you are seen as an expert. When it's the other way around you are seen as a pest and a desperate one at that. Why would you want to waste valuable time trying to convince uninterested people of your opportunity or to try your product? The reality is that if you keep believing the "lies" or the ineffective marketing techniques your upline is telling you to do, you will not have much success if any success at all. If you want to have massive success you must go after your target market. I promise you that you will drastically reduce your chances of failure in this industry by doing so.

Your Toll Free Number Could Be Turning Customers Away

When I launched my company, Championship Communication, ten years ago, a veteran entrepreneur advised me, "Get your toll free number right away." He argued that I would attract more clients and keep ongoing clients happy if they could call me at no charge. "But," I asked, "isn't that quite expensive?" "No, Bill, it's surprisingly reasonable, and it will be well worth the moderate cost because of your increase in customers." Following his advice, I got an 800 number and displayed it on my stationery, Web site, business card, and E-mail signature. For a decade, I mentioned that number when I was leaving a voice mail message for an out of town contact I had called and missed. Then not long ago, I started rethinking whether my toll free number was gaining business for me. Discussing this with a professional speaker colleague, I was surprised to hear him say, "People who want you to have a toll free number, so they can save three or four dollars when they call you, are unlikely to be able-or willing-to pay the professional fees your experience merits. If they are so cost conscious that they don't think they could afford to call you, then how will they change that mind set to invest in your services?" His idea startled me. At the same time, his logic seemed sound. Over the next few months, I started looking at my monthly telephone bill to see who was using my 800 number to reach me. The answer: mostly friends and relatives. Even worse, one company I had never heard about printed my toll free number as the contact number for its customer service department. I spent some agonizing times assuring callers I had nothing to do with that company. Also, I reasoned, in the era when many calls originate from people using cell phones, the savings an 800 number once promised are likely to be obsolete. With most providers, cell phone minutes used are cell phone minutes, period. Then I thought back to my twenty-three years in management. Like every manager, I fielded numerous calls from sales people who wanted to talk with me about their product or service. How did I decide which calls to return from someone whose name meant nothing to me? Simple - I eliminated the calls from strangers with toll free numbers. I knew I was in for a sales pitch, and with my packed schedule taking time for those calls would not demonstrate wise time management. Remembering that, I wondered how many people had filtered me out of their calls-to-return list since 1996 because of my 800 prefix. However, I didn't want to trust my intuition alone. So I surveyed twenty-five professional speakers I had become acquainted with through our state and national associations. Included in my survey: the speakers with the most book sales, highest fees, packed calendars, and greatest reputations. Most I reached by E-mail, and with the rest I simply checked their Web sites. The results astonished me. Out of the twenty-five, only eight have toll free numbers. The seventeen others were prospering nicely with ordinary phone lines. The most significant indicator: a speaker with a $20,000 keynote fee publishes his office and cell phones, but no toll free number. So I took the logical next steps. I called the phone company and cancelled my toll free number. I notified my friends and relatives who had been using the number that it was no longer active. The tech professional who makes requested changes in my Web site eliminated the number from those pages, and even from the "landing pages" accessed through Google. And I eliminated the number from my formal E-mail signature. Do I fret because the toll free number remains on my business card and stationery? Not really, certainly not enough to order a fresh batch of both. I'll change those eventually. Meanwhile, from what I have learned I will not be missing out with top-tier prospects. I recommend that you evaluate whether my findings match your professional niche. If your toll free number attracts mostly friends, relatives, and marketers who want you to spend money on them, it's time to switch to a traditional phone number. You'll save substantial dollars annually, and more importantly you will attract the caliber of callers you want to do business with.

Learning To Compete In A Very Competitive Industry: Travel

Over the years, many of us have heard about the opportunities available in wholesale travel. As a consumer, we can recognize that if these wholesale travel packages are legitimate, then we will have access to vacation packages that would make the average traveler drool over their possibilities in travel destinations. When we slide the shoe to the other foot and consider wholesale travel as a business opportunity, we question whether we have the knowledge or fortitude to succeed in this type of business. Read on as we examine wholesale travel from the perspective of the consumer and the online businessperson seeking new opportunities in profit. Beware of The Discount Travel Scams While the wholesale travel industry is a legitimate industry offering legitimate travel packages, there are a few people out there offering deals that are less than favorable to consumers. The most common travel scam is the kind used to sell timeshare packages in real estate. The real estate agent will give you a free three-day package to an attractive destination, IF your yearly salary meets certain minimums AND you agree to sit down and listen to a sales pitch for timeshare properties. Now, there is nothing wrong with timeshares per se, but the methods that some unscrupulous agents employ to sell timeshares are shameful to say the least. Timeshare supported vacations are well known for their hard-sell approach to the sales process. As a result, when most people speak of discount travel or wholesale travel, the first thought that comes to the mind of most consumers is the timeshare sales pitch. As a result, consumers generally have a poor opinion of discount travel or wholesale travel, based only on their fears of timeshare selling scams. Be Aware Of Travel Restrictions With Some Packages There are three types of restrictions that may accompany some discount travel packages: * Expiration Dates: Many packages come with defined expiration dates that make them difficult-to-use by the stated due-date. Not all of us can gear up to take our vacation within the next 90 days. So, be certain to read the fine print of any offer that is made available to you. * Blackout Dates: Blackout dates were made famous by David Spade's representation of Capital One Credit Cards. Some travel rewards carry blackout dates to limit the expense of those rewards. They don't want you using your travel rewards over the Thanksgiving weekend, since that is the busiest travel weekend of the year, and prices are generally higher for that peak period. Travel rewards aside, some travel packages employ blackout dates as well. Check the fine print to make sure that any blackout dates offered with a package do not interfere with how you want to use the travel package. * Non-Transferable Vouchers: In theory, if you buy a hotel room and an airline ticket to Jamaica for the weekend and if something were to happen in your life that prevented you from using your purchased services, you could give the tickets and reservations to your best friend, so your money would not be wasted. Some travel vouchers may prevent you from transferring your vacation to another party. As always, read the fine print to know what restrictions might limit your vacation plans. In a lot of cases, even if these restrictions exist, they will not interfere with your vacation plans. But, it is far better to be aware of a limitation before you buy your vacation, than it is to find out about those restrictions when you are ready to plan your trip. How Do Service Providers Profit From Vacation Packages? Where the value of discount travel or wholesale travel packages distracts many people, is this underlying question of how companies can offer these types of packages. The consumer is confused by the whole concept of free vacations, so we will look into the profit motive here. When people are looking at an offer of a free vacation that consists of three days in a hotel room, many people are dumbfounded that such a thing could exist. If we use Las Vegas hotels and Orlando Florida hotels as examples, it is a much easier concept to understand. When a Las Vegas hotel offers a free three-day stay, they do so with the expectation that you may spend several hundred or thousand dollars in their casino. If you did not take the free stay in their hotel room, you may have taken your vacation in Las Vegas anyhow, but stayed in one of their competitor's hotel rooms. If that were to happen, then their competitor would have won your money in their casino instead. Hotels in vacation spots such as Orlando Florida may be receiving rewards from Walt Disney World to ensure that you spend your vacation at Walt Disney World, instead of Six Flags Over Texas. The hotel will receive money from Walt Disney World for your stay, and you will eat several meals and use several services at the hotel that gave you the hotel room for free. Free services frequently provide the lubrication that helps a local economy soar, so many businesses will offer rewards to the hotel chains to offer free hotel rooms to visitors. Do keep in mind that if you do get a free hotel room, there will still be a small cost to you in terms of the taxes excised on that hotel room stay. State laws mandate that all visitors pay taxes on their hotel rooms, and even though your stay might be free, you will still be required to pay the taxes on the room. How The Airline Industry Profits From Discount Air Travel When an airplane flies from New York City to Los Angeles, they always have a specific number of seats on that flight. Even if only twenty people paid for that flight, they airline would be required to make the journey, with all of its empty seats in tow. So, airlines have constructed a very unique business model to make sure their empty seats are filled. When you buy a seat directly from the airline company, you will most always pay full price for the seat. If you buy your airline seat from a travel company, you can often find discounts on those seats. Very literally, airline companies calculate how many seats they will sell on their own for each flight, and then they wholesale the remaining seats to travel agencies and other travel companies, to ensure that they will fill most or all of their seats. The travel industry will buy seats on the airplane for as much as 90% off the retail cost of a flight. Then they will turn around and sell those flights to their customers at a markup. The actual discount rate will vary by the company making the offer, since only the biggest wholesale travel companies will get the deepest discounts, and the travel agencies usually buy seats from these airline seat wholesalers. Can The Little Guy Compete In A Market Saturated by Big Players? Simply put, yes. A friend of mine at Dreams By Vasrue has built his own little travel empire selling wholesale travel packages. In a recent month, he was able to generate $18,000 in profits – these were profits, not total sales. With a saturated market filled by big names such as Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz and many others, you would think it impossible to compete in such a crowded marketplace. But, you must remember that these big travel websites are operating as the travel agency, buying travel services at wholesale and marking up their prices to make a significant profit. This leaves the little guys lots of opportunity to reach the buying public in ways that the big websites cannot do themselves. The big websites are not in the business of offering true wholesale travel, because they are like travel agencies selling retail travel to consumers. The Lesson In This Story The lesson in this story is that the Internet is offering lots of entrepreneurs a way to stand up and compete with the largest corporations on the planet in a multitude of industries. As an online businessperson, you should always be looking for that new opportunity that could make you very wealthy. When you take the time to learn the internal workings of any industry, you will uncover opportunities to compete successfully and prosperously with the biggest names in your own industries.

The Magic Move to Being in Business

Lots of entrepreneurs that I speak to spend a lot of time "being busy." They're attending meetings, answering emails and a ton of activity that fills up their schedule. They have great ideas in the middle of it all, but are so overwhelmed they fall into "productivity paralysis" and are just plain perplexed about how to really get to that next level. There's a magic move to being productive and profitable in business that no one is talking about. Before we get to the "Magic Move," we have to first acknowledge that as an Entrepreneur you should always be striving to work on your business rather than just in your business. You open up the energy around this by setting up systems. This approach allows you to be set up for growth and actually implement all those fabulous ideas you have. For example, if you're an acupuncturist instead of only treating patients all day you can explore ways to treat and reach more people at once-leveraging your time and your income. Strong systems in your business operations will create that space. I have entrepreneurs I coach who either set up or strengthen their systems as a must. For the sake of this article, we accept that as a given. Now, step into the magic move-the one that has you in joy with everything you're doing, rather than just trying to catch your breath and stay one step ahead (or filing you your time with "stuff" because you secretly feel lost about what to do next). Often, I've found that even when you have the tightest of systems, you can find yourself feeling like something is missing. Your energy is a bit blah and you don't feel jazzed to create. Even though the systems are crankin', you feel stuck. Just about every time I hear this from an entrepreneur, I know the magic move is missing; there isn't anywhere in the systems that allows for time to just be. Incorporating this move makes all the difference in the world and it's the one that is most resisted (including myself at times). Interesting, right? Let's get clear about exactly what I mean by "time to just be." I'm not talking about time to watch TV or be with family and friends-although this is important and should be part of your systems, too. I'm talking about time to really connect to that part of yourself which is a direct connection to divine, inspired action. These are the ideas, solutions, and "how tos" that cannot be conceived of, created, or tapped into when you are busy "doing" and "going 24-7." And it's the powerful, magic move that no one in business is talking about. Frankly, I believe it's because they're scared to. Traditional business doesn't operate from a place of stillness. The battle cry is, "if you're not in motion, you're losing money!" Meanwhile, money is being left on the table everywhere because folks are rushing by and too busy to see it. Even all the latest buzz about the Law of Attraction is filled with insistence to, "use this tool, this exercise, this strategy." Be sure to understand, these are very helpful, but the point of them is often lost; to bring us to that deep place of knowing that comes from being able to be. Every time I've coached a client around this magic move more money has appeared. I have one client who just created $4,500 in a half day. The inspiration to pursue this means would never have appeared had she just still been going, going, going. It works. Call To Action: Start by scheduling some "be" time. Just take it and see what happens. Write down anything that comes to you. Let it go and then return to it a week later. Mark what that experience is like (you might be surprised what happened in the week between!).
About The Author
Heather Dominick, Solo-Entrepreneur Expert, has over 10 years of teaching and coaching experience. Heather’s primary focus is in coaching entrepreneurs to identify sources for increasing business profit and making successful business changes. To sign up to receive your free business building e-course visit http://www.energyrichcoach.com