Portsmouth MS students show off ideas at Invention Convention

Entrepreneur thinks inside box
Design Improvements
PORTSMOUTH — From helping the elderly to making exercise more entertaining, Portsmouth Middle School sixth graders exhibited their creations — some with not too modest sales tags — at their Invention Convention last week. Thomas Chlaupek, 11, displayed his prototype of the "Ultimate Lighting System" in which a sensor is placed under a rug beside the bed that triggers a light to shine when stepped upon.

He said he designed it for the elderly and those with Alzheimer's disease who may "get out of bed and trip on something" before finding the light switch. He priced his invention at $200 after researching sensor systems used in hospitals that trip an alarm when patients leave the bed.

A grocery cart with side carts to hold fragile items is 12-year-old Alison Hamilton's idea behind "Pimp My Cart." She said she wants to try her cart out at Clements' Market because "every time I go to the store with my mom she's always worried about the bread and chips getting smooshed."

Claire O'Connor, 11, researched the tools she needed for her "Airplane Entertainment Kit" by interviewing her little cousin who flew to California and studying what is placed in the backseat pockets of cars to entertain children. The kit includes a coloring book, blanket, DVD player and more, and is designed for "toddlers when they go on airplane rides so they don't get bored" because they'll "have everything they need in front of them."

Kyle MacDonald, 11, put his "DVD Helmet," designed for the exercise-reluctant, to the test on his 8-year-old brother who caught some passes in a football game wearing the helmet. The helmet has a small DVD player attached in front enabling his brother to watch "Remember the Titans" as he played.

"He could still see the ball and move his hands," Kyle said. "He thought it was pretty cool, too."

"We're tired of tying on our skates every day," said 11-year-old Timothy Doherty who, along with Isabel Regine, 11, thought up "Icelys" — sneakers with skate blades.

Both students are hockey players and wanted to create a skate that could get them on the ice faster. Though their shoes had removable tinfoil blades, they assured their audience that skate blades could easily fit in the same way.

"We think we're going to make millions with them," Isabel said.

Aaron Parker, 11, said he created the "Hotonator," a heated back pack, because "I get cold at the bus stop." He sewed a patch on the back of his backpack and inserted a heating pack that he said lasts up to four to six hours and works well.

Tired, sore feet were the impetus behind an invention by Liam Donovan Andrew Rossi, both 12. Their sneakers were outfitted with rubber bouncy balls split in half and placed under thick foam inserts. "When you walk your feet move inside the shoe and it massages," Liam said. "It works," Andrew added, saying that they had tested their product on Liam's mom.

Steven Vierkant, 12, wanted something that he could "play in the dark without disturbing my parents." He took a small toy car and covered it with glow-in-the-dark paint which charges in the daytime and glows for up to two hours. His original asking price was ninety-nine cents but he said he bumped it up to $2.99 "because I was thinking I could make a little money off it."

Kerri McVey, 12, and Brittany Cook, 11, designed the "Self-Watering Flower Pot" that they said nourished spider plants for two weeks with only one watering. The potted plants are placed inside a plastic container with holes punched in it that allow water poured into a larger plastic container to flow in as needed.

"It takes two weeks for the water to seep in all the way," Kerri said.

"So it waters itself," Brittany added.

Having trouble staying dedicated to practicing her violin, Katie Hobbs, 11, created a timer that starts when sat upon and beeps when the designated time is over. "Time's Up" also keeps kids honest, Katie said, because "if you get up it beeps and your parents know." She said since she's been practicing with the timer, "I'm playing a lot better than before."

"Life just got easier" is the slogan for 11-year-old Lexi Farias' "Little Helper." Her walker is equipped with tennis balls on the bottom of each leg for softer impacts and a cushion that folds down whenever a seat is needed. She said she got the idea from her best friend's grandmother, whom she thinks of as her own grandmother.

By Jill Rodrigues

Lose Ten Pounds in Ten Days
Internet Tools for New Ventures

GORILLA POLITICAL MARKETING

How To Make Money With Girlie Tools
Public Speaking Tips: How To Captivate Your Audience!

Awesome campaign strategies to clinch the youth vote!
Author: letsryan
11 comments on YouTube.com
Tags: gorilla political marketing guerilla politics midterm election campaign youth voting vote robert ryang daily show
Good Diet Foods
Secrets of Online Business Success

Top 10 Ways to Peeve Your Website Visitors

WordZe This, WordZe That
Health improvements

How did peeves become pets? Don't know. Don't really care. But all of us have our pet peeves when it comes to surfing the net for information.

Here are the top 10 according to many surveys:

1. Pop Ups

Pop ups come in many flavors: entry pop ups, exit pop ups, delayed, small, large, multiple, Flyin, scrolling, always on top, browser stopping, surf interrupting, must be cleared to move on, viagra, and the ever popular porn.

Except for an occasional squeeze page to get a free ebook or report, web surfers HATE pop ups.

So why do they continue to litter the Internet landscape? Simple. They work.

2. Extra Software Needed to View Site

Don't blame Canada. Blame Adobe.

Adobe made the Acrobat reader a must for viewing PDF files mainly because:

- It solved a need. Every page now printed out the same regardless of which printer or operating system was being used. It could even be made interactive for form completion.

- Adobe gave away millions of the free readers before publishers adopted the new PDF format as a standard for ebooks.

Acrobat users now demand PDF files in most instances where ebooks used to have various formats including "exe". Hackers have made downloading exe files from unknown sources an unsafe activity.

As standard as Acrobat now is, the same is not true for Flash, Shockwave, Deja Vu, and a host of other add-ons with various degrees of support.

I don't need to sit through a 2 meg Flash intro when what I want is information. Apparently, many others agree. You can add Flashblock to your FireFox browser and decide for yourself when to allow the Flash to load.

3. Dead Dead Dead Links

Nothing hacks me off faster than finding a spot on anchor text link that goes nowhere.

It's like having you mouth water over a menu special only to have the kitchen say they have run out.

4. Registration Required to Visit Site

Some sites think their bytes don't stink. They think you should register and login to see anything beyond the home page.

What they are doing is asking me to get married before the first date.

What's in it for me?

In this Internet day and age, a company and site has to build trust before a random visitor is going to cough up a name and email address.

Show me a little leg first.

5. Slowwww Pages

If I have to wait more than 4 or 5 seconds to begin viewing your site, I am gone - never to return.

If your servers are slow, find a new ISP.

If you loaded your pages with Flash, MIDI, audio, video, or other files that load with the page, dump them. Put up links instead. Let the visitor choose if they want to read or watch the video.

6. Outdated Content

One huge advantage of the web is the ability of bloggers and other Drudge wannabes to bypass traditional media and post news online instantly.

If you have not updated your website in 14 months, what does that tell me about your company. Certainly, you are less than a cutting edge solution for my problem.

7. Bad Navigation

Web designers prefer dazzle over function. Function is boring. Who wants a simple text link when a pop up Javascript navigation bar impresses the client?

I do.

So do the search engines.

Every web page needs recognizable, underlined text links on every page, preferably top and bottom.

Don't make me waste time trying to find the internal page I am really looking for.

8. No Contact Information

Poor contact information is a binary pair of bad navigation. How many sites have you been to where you cannot find a phone number, a street address, or even an email address? Plenty.

I think it's sweet that you put up an email contact form on your site, but I prefer to use my default email compose screen. Every web-based email form is different. I don't want to waste time learning to use your form when my email client works fine.

What are you hiding?

9. No Decent Site Search Tool

There is no excuse for this one. If you have a large website with dozens or hundreds of pages, give me an internal search box to find what I need.

Google and Yahoo! and many others will give you the tool - free - to put on your site. Use it.

10. Disabled "Back" Button

I don't want a website to dictate how I experience their site. I am a guest on your site. I don't need to come back to your page when I hit the back button. That's why I hit the back button in the first place. You don't have the information I am looking for.

In a similar vein, I don't like to see other right click functions like "view page source" disabled. I don't need to steal your HTML code, but if I want to, disabling right click will not stop me. I might want to see how you achieved a certain formatting effect. If I am impressed, you can bet I'll be back.

Pet peeves take many forms online. No list like this is complete, but any webmaster that can avoid these 10 major annoyances is a hero in my book.

I look forward to visiting your site.

About the Author: Charles Lamm is a retired attorney who can be reached via email at focus@clixforbrix.com. His articles are posted on his blog at: http://www.virtualjoefriday.com.

To Do To Lose Weight
6 Secrets Of One Way Inbound Links

Tap Into Your Own Talent

The Care And Feeding Of Your Future, Without The Soap Opera Drama And Trauma
Good Improvements | About Us
When I was searching for a career, my dad gave me advice I still follow today: Find what you do brilliantly, and do more of it. Over the years, I've learned that this philosophy enables you to find your niche and discover unique methods to achieve your goals.

As an entrepreneur, you often jump at any chance to expand your business. However, your business's biggest and best asset is you. It's your expertise that makes your business unique and leads to the most efficient growth opportunities.

The owner of a jewelry store frequently updated the gems she carried but was never able to dramatically increase her sales. She thought her clientele might buy a broader line of products, so she added religious statues to her store. But ultimately, her lack of familiarity with these items caused the strategy to fail.

On her second try at expansion, she decided to delve further into her core area of specialization. She bought jewelry designed and made by local artists. It paid off. Her current customers and her new artists spread the word about her updated business, and her store became a shopping destination.

Creating product extensions within your area of expertise expands your customer roster. Increase your chance of success by focusing on what you do best -- and do more of it.

1. Tap into the innate power behind what makes your business unique. Growing your business based on your inherent strengths allows you to discover dynamic expansion possibilities. Use your intuition, and ask your employees and colleagues for help on how to rework or redesign your core product to appeal to a broader market. For the jewelry store owner, it was her expertise in gems that allowed her to sell the stones in multiple ways.

2. Shift from selling to actively listening. Become relentlessly focused on broadening the appeal of your core product by engaging your customers. What new uses have they discovered that may not have occurred to you? Ask them to be direct and truthful, and keep a log of their suggestions. Tapping into this rich vein of recommendations allows you to jump-start new growth opportunities.

3. Convert the benefits customers share into product features. Use the recommendations offered by your customers to construct new uses for your core product. Regularly reinventing your product with fresh benefits keeps your customers interested and excited. It was Arm & Hammer's customers who informed the company of alternative uses for its top-selling baking soda product. The company has now expanded its core product into numerous other uses, including cleansers, deodorizers and beauty products.

4. Gain loyalty by thanking people creatively. Thanking people for sharing their ideas deepens customer loyalty. It also increases word-of-mouth advertising for your business. A sandwich shop owner who was famous for his use of cheeses decided to name his weekly specials after customers who made distinctive recommendations. They brought their friends and families into his store to see their names and pictures up on his "Say Cheese" board.

Keep your network of customers and colleagues informed of your product enhancements. Your enthusiasm will encourage them to tell others about your business. And more important, it will inspire them to share even more product-transformation ideas with you.

P.S. A Special Message from Jim Cramer
Good news! You can get my new bestseller, Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich autographed and absolutely free when you subscribe now to my premium investing service, Action Alerts PLUS. It's a great deal!
Easy Healthy Tips
Effective Marketing on a Shoestring Budget

Reliable, Respected, Revered or Feared

$5 Million A Year, Selling ‘Ice Towels’
Personal Finances - K.I.S.S.ing Your Checking And Credit Card Accounts

What is most the most important attribute to developing your reputation? Would you prefer to be known as reliable, respected, revered or feared? Is it possible to be all of these things over time? Constructing your reputation is like solving a Rubik's Cube puzzle. It takes time, several steps and the right combination of twists and turns. It is also important to know what it should look like when you are done. When you have the goal in your mind, then you can go about solving the puzzle.

The GOAL

The goal of developing your reputation is to be true to yourself. Be consistent with your principals and your personal values. Your actions, your decisions and your interaction with others should be a reflection of the way that you live your life. If you attempt to disguise your intentions or beguile your associates, you will not be able to maintain trust or confidence. If your intentions are to help your customers, look for other individuals with similar intentions. If you are content with your own situation, then enjoy the camaraderie of your peers and help them to achieve their goals. If your intention is personal advancement or promotions, be open about searching for people who will support your efforts.

If you define and share your goals, you will either find supporters or other individuals with similar goals. At the same time, be cognizant and supportive of the goals of those around you. Be prepared to listen intently and understand the aspirations of coworkers and customers. You person who listens the most is heard loudest.

RELIABLE

First, establish a reputation for being reliable. Regardless of your position, title or tenure, the foundation of your reputation should be reliability. If you are the leader, manager, director, clerk, associate or representative, maintain a dedicated focus on being consistently reliable. It is equally important to be a reliable customer as it is to be a reliable vendor or supplier. No matter how powerful or seemingly unimportant you may perceive your responsibilities, there are other people who rely on you. Be consistently reliable for the people you report to, to the people who look up to you, the people that you support and to the people who support you.

Even if some people respect you, revere you or fear you, you will have no value to anyone if you are not reliable. Do not forget this basic foundation in the search for power or prestige. You may be respected for your capability, but what good is it if you can not be counted on as a reliable individual? This is based on your ability to perform consistently and to be supportive of others.

RESPECTED

You do not have to be the president or a brain surgeon to be respected. Take a look at the positions and the people that you respect most in your life. Then look to see what these people have in common. School teachers and police officers are respected for their individual sacrifice and dedication to their profession in the service of others. Respect can be earned by great achievements through consistent effort, self-sacrifice and being someone that other people can count on, being reliable. A leader or a coach does not earn respect for the position, but rather by what they do with the authority and responsibility of the position. A coworker may earn respect by diligence, effort or self-sacrifice. Winning the lottery may achieve instant wealth, but it does not earn instant respect.

What can you do to earn respect? You might be respected for your talent, for your character or for your perseverance. Respect may be earned by the way that you use your experience, knowledge or previous achievements. If you want to be respected and do not know how to begin, start by being reliable.

REVERED or FEARED

For centuries there has been a debate regarding the benefits of being revered or being feared. One dimensional leaders often choose one of these attributes for their reputation and dedicate their ambitions toward a single goal, to be revered or to be feared. Machiavelli described the importance of being feared, and many dictators who embraced this approach were eventually rewarded with revolution. On the other hand, individuals who take extreme measures to be liked or revered may run the risk of being taken advantage of, and thereby losing much more than respect.

In the balance of leadership, individuals are more likely to make perform or make sacrifice for something and somebody that they believe in. When performance and sacrifice is demanded through fear, the output is reluctant and can not be sustained. From a personal perspective, are you more likely to repeat a task and improve your personal performance when doing something that you enjoy, or for someone that you want to please? Are you more or less likely to expend extra effort consistently for a job or a person that you resent?

Good decisions are made when clear purpose and goals are established and shared. The predominance of fear impairs good decisions, or even worse, may precipitate a culture that lacks any decisions for fear of being ostracized. Avoiding a decision is the same as making a decision to allow unmanaged consequences.

It is possible to be both revered and feared. By virtue of being respected as a reliable individual, you will become both revered and feared. Some individuals will appreciate consistency, predictability, direction and reliability. By the same token, if you are consistent with your own personal goals and values, you may be feared by other individuals. If your values are self-serving, you will be revered by a small group of like-minded individuals and feared by many. If your values are self-sacrificing toward the greater good, then you will find yourself revered by many and feared by the self-serving. In any case, consistency of purpose and character will create circumstances that cultivate opportunities to be revered, feared or both. This depth of character is far superior to a hollow one dimensional approach of choosing to be only revered or feared.

What does all this mean? Stop worrying about your reputation and concentrate on doing those things that reputations are built on. Listen intently to others. Be willing to make sacrifices for others. Be consistently reliable, and be true to yourself. Do your job with the same principles and passions that you live your life, and your reputation will take care of itself. By coincidence, if you can achieve this dedicated diligence to your values, you will discover an inverse relationship that your reputation will grow as your care less about it.

Words of Wisdom

"Conscience and reputation are two things. Conscience is due to yourself, reputation to your neighbor." - Saint Augustine

"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." - Henry Ford

"Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of - for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear." - Socrates

"There are two modes of establishing our reputation: to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the former, because it will invariably be accompanied by the latter." - Charles Caleb Colton

About the Author: John Mehrmann is an author, speaker and industry expert with Executive Blueprints Inc. http://www.ExecutiveBlueprints.com

Advanced Diet's Tips
Moonjar Moneybox Success Story

Online Business Ethics

Masters of their Domains
Public Speaking Tips: How To Captivate Your Audience!

Very simple: Be a source of integrity. Don't be phony, people will know and not come to visit your site again. Even worse, they will post a bad review somewhere on the web and others will not even come to see for themselves. If you don't know about something, don't pretend that you do.

Respect your customers, or prospective customers, and offer them something of value. Give good information that will draw your customers' attention and this will help to build trust. It also gives them a reason to stay or come back again for more. Follow-up with your customers, but don't be a pest. Basically, don't spam, don't steal, and don't lie.

Just as in an offline business, there are ethics and standards that should be followed. If you are starting an online business, you've probably spent some time online already and can see that there are hundreds of thousands of businesses trying to sell their products and information and services to you. Study how they do it. Spend some time visiting the websites of your competitors, much like you would when preparing a business plan for an offline business. Look for and evaluate the following characteristics to determine the integrity of the business as a whole:

What are they selling?

When you first come to their index page, can you quickly and easily figure out what they are selling? Is it a real product, an information product, a membership or a service? Do they offer something of real value right off the bat for free such as informative content or a related ebook? If you cannot determine within the first 30 seconds what they are selling or why they are in business, chances are that they are just a hodgepodge of links put together to make the owner affiliate revenue. However, if you do see something of value, stay a bit longer and evaluate further.

Can you contact them directly?

Look on the main page. Contact information could be in the top nav bar, on the side nav bar or at the bottom of the page. Also, look for a direct link such as Contact Us. Click this link and see where it takes you. Do they provide a physical address, a contact name or email, and a phone number? These three things are a must for a legitimate business. If an owner is not confident in his business enough to put an address and contact phone number on his site, he must be hiding something. The final test is to send an email to the company and see who responds and how long it takes to get a response. Most one-person web businesses should be able to answer your email within 1-2 business days.

Is the content valuable and correct?

One of my biggest pet peeves is spelling and grammar. If the owner has done his research and knows what he is talking about, this should show in the quality of the information on his site. A professional image depends on attention to details. Presentation is everything. If you are going to put out information, it has to be presented in an organized fashion with no mistakes. When I see more than one misspelled word or grammar mistake on a website or page, I move on. If the owner has not proofread his own material or verified the information on his site is correct and presented professionally, I won't be trusting that his products are much higher in quality.

Is there a free trial or guarantee on the products and services being offered?

Those businesses that have developed a quality product or service and are confident in it will not hesitate to put a guarantee on it. They will stand behind it 100%. Even better are those companies that let you try the product or service for free. This way you can test it out to see if it is indeed what you need and meets the quality standards of a legitimate business.

How do they advertise?

Look at the other links on the website. Visit some of them to see the quality of partners associated with the first business. Do the links take you somewhere valuable and helpful? Is the business partnered with other legitimate businesses? Also, how did you find out about the website in the first place and what in their ad drew you in? Did the ad lie to you? Make sure that when you advertise that you don't misrepresent what you are offering. In addition, don't be a spammer. Make sure to develop a double opt-in email list that you can use to send valuable follow up information to your customers. This will help to build loyalty as well as word of mouth referrals.

Visit forums and pay-per-click sites to see the companies who are advertising the same products and services that you are to find out what promotion methods they are using. Use them as a starting point and try to set your standards of quality and honesty a step above when developing your ads.

The bottom line is, there is good karma and bad. Even though we all know those people in life whose bad karma hasn't caught up with them yet, don't join the crowd. Be a leader, be a source of integrity, and provide a quality product or service that you can stand behind. In the long run, this will help you build a profitable, long-standing business rather than a fly-by-night get rich quick scheme.

About the Author: Ruth Harris is a real entrepreneur who has helped many others start and promote their online business. Visit http://www.iprofit.viral-business.com to get over 170 best-selling eBooks and software titles with Master Resell Rights and ready made profit-pulling minisites all for one low price.

Alkaline Diet
Marketing to Moms

Youtube Marketing Tutorial from Intelicoast Website Design

Great Idea: Moonshine As A Business
Speaking improvements

http://www.intelicoast.biz/show_content1.php?link=get_a_quoteThis is our tips and tricks tutorial for Youtube Marketing. This does not cover everything of course. It is just an intro for newer youtube marketers. http://intelicoast.comGET FREE CONSULTATION NOW!Best Website Design and Web DevelopmentSEE OUR PORTFOLIOhttp://www.intelicoast.biz/show_content1.php?link=portfoliohttp://bruceka...
Author: Intelicoast
4 comments on YouTube.com
Tags: help channel youtube custom marketing traffic generation views best website design web development ranking
Good Diet's Foods
Employees Favor Minimum-Wage Hike - small business - employers - labor market

Basic Business Survival Skills That Businesses Ignore

New Rules for Retirement Plans
Looking for a Guaranteed Investment? I've Got it For You!

Couple of quick items I thought you’d find interesting.

First Interesting Item: The Wall Street Journal ran a great story the other day on the follies of MBA-powered mismanagement.

Well, I thought it was a great story, anyway. No one else seemed to pay much attention… probably because it doesn’t fit into the average person’s belief system that a Master’s in Business Administration is good for anything.

Seems that Harvard lost $350-million bucks in a hedge fund… run by guys with Harvard MBAs.

Let that idea roll around in your head for a moment.

If you have a stake in believing that MBAs rule, then it’s just an annoying news item. Move along. Nothing to see here.

However, if — like me — you enjoy these tidbits of proof that MBA actually stands for Massive Bullshit Acquisition, then the irony is truly delicious.

I’ve always maintained it is harder to teach people with too much education how to run small biz and entrepreneur shops, because the nonsense is piled so deep and thick in their skulls. An MBA is often a red flag that trouble lies ahead… like getting in a car with someone behind the wheel who learned how to drive solely from books.

A lot of the people who come to me for private consultation have MBAs. They can wax prolific on all sorts of business theory… but when it comes down to actually making sales, they’re like a babe in the woods. Helpless, clueless, and desperately trying to bluff their way through whatever disaster they’ve created.

Okay, there’s probably some worth in getting advanced degrees in biz. If you’re looking to nail down a soul-devouring gig in middle management at some faceless corporation, for example, it’s definitely the way to go.

And it will, at the very least, force you to read some books. I guess that’s a good thing, too.

But a vast number of the most frightingly successful entrepreneurs and small biz owners I know have zero college under their belt. Many dropped out of high school.

And yet you would consider them intellectually “inferior” at your peril. They’re usually smarter than the most “officially” educated guy in the room, and possess infinitely more real-world “pedal to the metal” savvy. The world of small biz doesn’t do so well using theory and grand concepts like “branding”. Entrepreneurs generally do better by breaking rules, and employing old-time classic salesmanship to deliver targeted product via killer pitches to hot markets.

All my mentors were self-educated. That generally means they were obsessive about reading. If rumor of any good book in any MBA program leaked out, they were on it. And because they filtered all incoming data through the real-world crucible of making sales happen, I would bet on their comprehension level being higher than any student’s.

But they never relied solely on books. Often, they would stop reading the latest bidniz best-seller half-way through, having quickly picked up the essential knowledge they could use. Books are tools.

It’s how the info works in the laboratory of everyday selling that counts.

I’m a broken record on this, because it’s important: Whatever happens to the economy (and things are, admittedly, getting scary)… whatever happens in your market (including the sudden threat of increased competition)… and whatever happens in your life in general… the one key survival skill will always and forever be raw, classic salesmanship.

Learn how to sell. Learn how to identify your best prospects, how to find them, how to nurture their innate desire for what you offer… and, most importantly, learn how to needle their emotional sweet spot to get them to act. To buy, to try your stuff out, and to allow you into their complex, fuzzy-focused lives as a “go to guy” provider of goods, services and content.

And remember — if the dudes teaching the MBA courses really knew their stuff, do you think they’d be grinding it out in academia?

The School of Hard Knocks remains the best university out there.

Second Interesting Item: Last night, I had dinner with a friend who also happens to be the top real estate broker in Northern Nevada.

Nevada, you may or may not know, went from being one of the top ten hottest real estate markets in the country… to being one of the top five worst. And we did it in a matter of shell-shocked months.

Most real estate-related businesses around here are in full panic mode, laying people off, closing up shop, fighting off bankruptcy, wringing their hands and hiding under the covers.

Ask your average agent how things are going, and he’s liable to burst into tears (and ask to borrow twenty bucks for lunch).

My friend, however, is doing just fine. He’s not matching his record-setting pace from the recent boom years, but he’s not far off, either.

And how, you ask, is he able to survive and thrive while others struggle and fail?

The answer is very simple, it turns out.

He ignores all the strategies other agents and brokers rely on.

And, instead, he uses old-time classic salesmanship to help his clients sell when no one else is selling, and buy when no one seems to be buying. Any good salesman would immediately recognize his skill-set as bonding, smart message-to-market targeting, and (most notably) working within the rules of the real world.

No theory. No tricks. No special magic at all.

Most agents simply do not know how to sell. They violate the most basic principles… like forgetting that it’s not all about them, but rather all about the prospect.

You never “sell” a house to anyone. You create the opportunity for a prospect to sell himself. And you do this by completely understanding his needs and desires, and genuinely matching him up with the right house. However you need to define it.

Most agents get all caught up in self-defeating conversations about “no one’s buying”, “the market’s in the tank”, “we’re in a recession” and all sorts of other nonsense. The glass is half empty, and leaking.

A great salesman assesses the situation, adjusts, and stays frosty.

And they get real. People are still buying and selling, even in the most dire market conditions. Sure, they’re harder to find, but they’re there. The housing industry is a fluid, moving parade of action. And there is always a way around a problem. Always. The reality of the solution may not thrill you, but there are endless choices and alternative paths.

The world may or may not be headed for some kind of economic Armeggedon. We may weather the coming crises just fine, or we may all be living in caves in a few years.

But however the reality plays out, one stark fact remains: Those who survive and thrive will be the ones with the most real-world experience, and the best salesmanship skills.

It has ever been thus.

Stay frosty…

[Via - John Carlton] 

Organic Diet's Recipes
Don’t Let Selling Internationally Scare You

Bill Clinton Ordered Custom Lovesong From Me

How To Tell Your Prospects What They Need To Know
Design Improvements

[Via Uncommon Business Ideas Blog]

Brian Alex Story

http://www.customlovesongs.com

Alex, 38, grew up in Peabody, the son of a musician who loved jazz and classical piano. His mother plays piano, too. ''She sounds like Edith Bunker when she sings," he says.

At Peabody High, Alex sang and played guitar with a group called Obsession. When he graduated, he joined various bands, even playing and singing gospel for a while, then joined Entrain, a jam band based on Martha's Vineyard. But island living got old, and a few years ago he left the group, moved to Watertown, and started his business, Custom Love Songs. He advertises in publications such as Wedding Style, Avenue, and the upscale Robb Report, a magazine that focuses on luxury lifestyles.

''Finding it hard to put your love into words? Ever think of putting it to music?" This was the ad that caught the eye of a wealthy Saudi Arabian man. He wanted a song that would include a marriage proposal to his girlfriend. The result was ''Reemi," which chronicles the love the man has for a woman he first spotted in a cafe. ''In a cafe we had met though not a word was spoken yet, I had seen your eyes and could not get you off my mind," the song begins. (''Yes, she accepted his proposal," Alex says.)

Then there was the anniversary song. Neil Auricchio from Princeton, N.J., wanted the perfect evening for his fifth wedding anniversary. ''I said, how can I possibly show my love for her? I could get her this or that, but it just doesn't cut it. I thought maybe one in 10 million people would do a song," says Auricchio, a real estate consultant and investor.

There was one problem: He can't sing. Nor can he write songs. Enter Brian Alex. The two spent hours on the phone, working out the details. Alex sent a rough cut; Auricchio liked it but wanted more of a Smokey Robinson-type ending. Finally, ''The Most Beautiful Gift" was finished.

The couple was going to spend the weekend at a hotel in Richmond. Their anniversary dinner was in a private room filled with roses. At the end of the meal, the husband popped a CD in a player. The song came on, detailing their romance. It included a prayer for his wife; the two are born-again Christians. ''Lord, I just want to thank you right now for giving me the most beautiful gift any man could ever hope for."

After the song played -- several times -- Auricchio took his teary wife up to a suite filled with 100 lit candles and rose petals scattered throughout. There were chocolates on the bed and champagne by the Jacuzzi. And there was Brian Alex himself, singing the song.

''I cried off and on for three days," says Lisa Auricchio. ''Brian was like a stethoscope to my husband's heart. I was able to hear what was inside him, things I probably never would have heard. A car or a diamond would pale in comparison to this."

Weight Lose Secrets
Increase PageRank Fast with Quality Backlinks

Clutterbusters Story - How To Make Money Organizing Other People

Naples woman’s invention tells good eggs from the bad
Get rid of acne! Participate now for a year supply of skin products.

Getting fired from a job could be the start of something great.

In January 2001, Betsy Fein of Maryland was laid off from her job as a human resources director. Instead of going back to the rat race, she decided to drop out of the corporate world for good and pursue her dream of becoming her own boss. Betsy said: “I wanted to have the flexibility and freedom of owning my own business, having more time for my kids, and the excitement of starting something new.”

Her decision paid off. Today, she is the President of Clutterbusters http://www.clutterbusters.net, one of the leading and fast-growing professional organizing companies in the country.

Making the Leap to Entrepreneurship

Betsy always had an eye for home organizing, a skill that has been in-demand among her friends. Hence, it was no surprise that she decided to explore the viability of a home organizing business when she decided to become an entrepreneur. She said: “I originally became interested in this profession because I saw a desperate need for this type of service in both my own personal life as well as with friends and family.“

One of her first steps was to check out the demand and size of the professional organizing market in Maryland. “I did some basic research, but mostly it was a gut instinct that told me that this business was going to explode. Even today, there is very little research available on this industry,” Betsy said.

“I researched the profession and saw that there were relatively few organizers in my area, and I felt that the business was sure to grow rapidly given the fact that people have less and less time nowadays to do anything, and most people want to spend their leisure time with family, not clearing clutter,” according to Betsy.

Assured of the need for the service and number of competitors, Betsy opened Clutterbusters in March 2002 and started offering her home organizing services.

Challenges of Starting a Business

Betsy proved that a highly successful business could start on a shoestring budget. Using her personal funds, Betsy said: “I started with $5,000, and told myself, when it’s gone, there goes the business. I came close to throwing in the towel a few times. My husband urged me to keep going.”

Betsy faced a number of challenges during her startup face, the most critical of which was finding affordable, dependable, quality vendors and suppliers. “Of course, you are creating a business from scratch,” Betsy said, “so there are marketing challenges, accounting issues, computer/software issues, management and hiring, personnel, human resources, payroll, etc.”

She had problems in setting a price and doing cost estimates. For one of her first clients, she gave a cost estimate assuming that the project would be done in 2 hours only to complete the project in 10 hours.

In order to better compete when she was starting out, Betsy charged a lower price compared to her competitors. When the business reached a steady footing, she raised her prices to the level charged by other professional organizing companies. However, she found it hard to tell her her clients her new higher fees, forcing her to drop her prices again.

Findings Clients

To get clients for her new business, she advertised in the local papers and magazines such as Washington Women, Washington Families and Washington Parent. That first ad campaign was successful! In her first week alone, she got about 10 calls as a result of the ads.

Today, the Web has become an important marketing tool for her business. “I would invest in anything Internet related, including pay per click, designing the best quality website money can buy, website optimization (SEO), etc.,” Betsy shared.

From a one-person business, Betsy now employs other professional organizers – a strategy that helped her increase her volume and improve her services. Her husband Rick has also joined the business and is now the CEO of Clutterbusters.

However, the quality of her company’s service is her most important marketing tool. Her high standards for quality and focus on customer satisfaction make Clutterbusters stand out from its competition.

[Via WomenHomeBusiness.Com]

My Daily Diets Tips
Reunion.Com - the un-glamorous social network that makes money

Ready To Assemble Furniture, No Tools Needed

2007 Mothers of Invention Challenge
What Is Advaita Or Oneness

www.inmodern.net

Everything can be upgraded, even the incredibly easy to assemble furniture that we covered last year. The Simple Furniture Company launched its latest brand last week, and it's an upmarket version of Real Simple Furniture. InModern's design is sleeker and more sculptural, with upgraded prices to match (USD 249 for an RSF desk; USD 400 for an InModern desk).

Design aside, the premise remains the same: no tools needed to assemble or disassemble the furniture. The pieces are made of real wood, not particle board, and the wood comes from certified environmentally responsible forestry. Everything is manufactured and assembled in the United States.

We still like the idea of eco-friendly, real simple furniture, and we look forward to hearing from entrepreneurs setting up their own local versions. Come to think of it, click-and-go furniture would be an ideal match for EvolvingVox, the 'temporary ownership network' that furnishes student dorm rooms. Perfect for temporary use, since flat-packable furniture significantly reduces storage space when items aren't in use.

Source - http://www.springwise.com/

Eat Healthy Every Day
Bill Clinton Ordered Custom Lovesong From Me

Ejemplo de utilizaci??n de una PDiP en un Aula Interactiva

Collection Letter Secrets to Getting Paid
Distance Education Helps You Get Ahead.

En este v??deo puedes ver la motivaci??n de los alumnos de Primaria en una clase, utilizando la Pizarra Interactiva Port??til InterWrite
Author: manuelvuelta
0 comments on YouTube.com
Tags: interwrite pizarra interactiva t??ctil electromagn??tica educaci??n digital electr??nica tablet PC bluetooth pizarr??n
Daily Lose Weight Tips
The Multimillion-Dollar Super Bowl Gamble