Online Business Archive

There are many ways to say the same thing, but the words you use make a big difference in the results you get. Here’s a short film that makes the point much better than I could. Enjoy.
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The other day a friend and myself were emailing each other and one topic that came up was whether we were morning or night people. His business requires him to get an early start. He works outside and once the sun sets the work day has to come to an end.

I’ve always been much more of a night person and find I get a lot done after most sane people are long asleep. When I thought about it more I realized it was a certain kind of work I get done late at night and wondered if there was a reason why.
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If you’ve been at all curious about signing up for Teaching Sells now is the time. Brian Clark and Tony Clark are closing the doors to new members at the end of July, a little more than a week from now.
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A few Decembers ago I was feeling the holiday spirit and decided to wish all my clients a happy holiday season. One day after Christmas and before New Year’s I sent each a short, personal email offering some season greetings. It was my first year in business so my client list wasn’t exactly huge and in less than an hour I had sent out some holiday cheer.

A funny thing happened.
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Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem.
—Saul Steinberg

Watching Major League Baseball’s All Star game last night I couldn’t help but think about all the lessons baseball teaches us that can be applied to blogging, marketing, business, and life in general. No other game (at least none I’m aware of) truly translates its teachings beyond the game.
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Legally, the registrant of a domain owns it. If you’re listed as your domain’s registrant you do own your domain. However for all practical purposes it’s the person listed as the domain’s admin who has all the control. A quick story will illustrate the point and show the danger of not being listed as your domain’s administrative contact.
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• Anything worth remarking upon.
• Remarkable is better, different, unique, opposed, original – to the nth degree.
• The further away you get from the standard, from the accepted, from the norm, from the status quo, from the ordinary, the more remarkable you are.
• You can be remarkably good and you can be remarkably bad.
• Remarkable doesn’t mean success. Success doesn’t require remarkable. But both often come hand in hand.
• Remarkable is not easy. Remarkable is not safe.
• Remarkable gathers attention to itself.
• Remarkable stands out, stands in front of, and stands apart from.
• If no one is talking about it, it isn’t remarkable.
• Remarkable is only remarkable in comparison to that which is not remarkable.
• A black and white cow is not remarkable. A purple cow is remarkable. A purple cow in a field of purple cows is not remarkable. A black and white cow in a field of purple cows is remarkable.

Are you remarkable? Is your blog remarkable? Can you become remarkable? What do you find remarkable? What does remarkable mean to you?

Last October I signed up as one of the initial members or Teaching Sells. The course has been a valuable and eye opening experience for me and I’ve learned a lot during the past few months. For awhile now Teaching Sells has been offering a one week trial for $1, which is a great bargain given the usual $97 for three months of access. However, the trial offer is coming to an end tomorrow (April 17th, 2008 at noon eastern time) so if you’ve been wondering what’s inside and thinking about joining there’s no better time than now.
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About 12 years ago I worked in a one of the large chain bookstores. Part of the job entailed working at the information desk, answering questions and directing people to where they might find a book. On one particular day shortly before Christmas a customer came in and when I looked up the book she wanted it was out of print. The customer might have gone home disappointed, however, as luck would have it that day there was a win-win-win situation that resulted in the customer, the bookstore, and myself all coming out ahead.
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Let the past and its bad habits be done with.
–Unknown

We are all creatures of habit. Most of us get up at the same time every day and go to sleep at the same time every night. We tend to do the same things the same way we did them before. As a business owner you’ve developed processes to deal with situations that occur frequently. How do you know when the processes in place aren’t working or could be improved? Do you have a process in place to reassess the way you do things?
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