I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person. –  Og Mandino – HT Steve Chandler

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I responded to a couple of comments to my previous post with the following which I rather liked so I am giving it the light of day:

Society establishes laws and constraints for good reasons but it is in the interests of those who abuse them from positions of privilege to paint those who abuse them from positions of disadvantage as an unruly, undifferentiated and unthinking mob!

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I was privileged to take part this weekend in one the most uplifting and inspiring events I have ever been to. Founded by Clare and David Hieatt, The Do Lectures bring together an amazing group of people from all walks of life to live for four days at Fforest, a glamping site in West Wales, with great talks, great conversations, and great food. [The photo above is our speaking venue!]

There were so many inspiring people, but for me meeting Maggie Doyne, who runs a school for orphans in Nepal was the highlight. I gave Maggie a lift down to Wales from her train and did the usual thing of being sociable and asking what she did. I kind of took it in but had only scraped the surface. When she did her presentation to the audience of 170 people there was hardly a dry eye in the house as we all took in what she does day in day out and the energy and commitment she shows to reduce other people’s suffering.

Other special moments included sorting the world out with Sir Tim Berners-Lee sitting around the campfire – which is a bit like passing the time of day with Gutenberg –  and getting to spend time with David Allen whose book Getting Things Done has made such a difference to my life. And then there was Ed Stafford who had just become the first person to walk the entire length of the Amazon …. and Steve Edge … and Jay Rogers … and …

Thanks to everyone at Do – I’ll not forget this weekend in a long time.

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As I woke this morning I found myself wondering what it would be like if, rather than this being Saturday, I was waking up to “just another day” What if instead of having the definition and shape of weeks months and years we had “just another day”. What if we started at number one and counted? How would I feel if I was waking up to number 18240? (I tried to work out leap years and gave up!) Would I behave any differently?

Just a thought ….

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Walk into any business on a rainy day and for the most part, they’re empty. Everyone is relaxed. You get great service and lots of attention. No one seems to be really busy which seems to me like a perfect time to cold call. The owner is in. Business is slow. They don’t really have anything to do but talk to you. Chances are you’ll be the only sales person that walks in the door today. Why not?

This dawned on me early in my sales career. When you’re out there every day competing for the attention of a buyer or business owner, you look for ways to stand out. I realized that all my counterparts were in their little cubicles doing paperwork, making phone calls and setting appointments for tomorrow when it wasn’t going to be raining.

So, I grabbed an umbrella and hit the road. It was amazing. Very rarely did I walk into a business that I didn’t get to speak to a decision maker. I mean, think about it. I just completely set myself apart from everyone. I’m the one that will get out in the rain, get my feet wet and work a little harder for the business. This speaks volumes to someone you’re trying to do business with. Who wants to give their money to someone who only wants to work when everything is nice and sunny? Get it?

I went to a business networking meeting this morning and attendance was pretty bad. This is a weekly meeting that people pay to go to so they can get referrals to make more money. But it was raining. It was raining HARD. Apparently, that was enough to keep at least 50% of the regular attendees from venturing out. It just looked like another opportunity to me.

Do you know what a rainmaker is? Dictionary.com says a rainmaker is “One who is known for achieving excellent results in a profession or field, such as business or politics”. Is that you? What do you do when it rains? Are you one of those people who would have skipped the meeting? Do you sit in your office and try to get people on the phone? Are you doing your expense report? Stop.

Try it just once. You’ll be surprised at the results. Be a rainmaker. Next time it rains, put on your best suit. Give yourself a little pep talk, grab your umbrella and hit the streets. Take plenty of business cards and be ready. I bet you make a little money.

Michelle C. Ritter is a the owner of http://www.e-worc.com , a web design and sales consulting company where she works with many types of product and service based industries in developing sales and marketing plans and effective online programs. She specializes in cross-industry communication and teaches a series of seminars for MTI Business Solutions http://www.mobiletechwebsite.com that focus on teaching others to enjoy success in sales by learning how to speak in the language of the buyer.

Author: Michelle Ritter
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Digital Camera Times

You are poised to start the race. You and all the other runners are crouched over the starting line. The starter raises his pistol into the air and begins his cadence, “Ready, set, ….

A good, strong start is essential in almost every thing we do, including being a rainmaker.

So how do you get off to a fast start rainmaking? How do you begin?

Step One: Get a blog. Today!

A blog can be the shortest distance between Point A, where you are now, and Point B, where you want and need to be. By starting a blog, you can cause all the pieces of your rainmaking puzzle to fall into place. And start building a very successful career right now.

For those of you who are not 100% sure what a blog is, let me give you the short answer. A blog is an easy to start, easy to maintain, web site that easily enables you write daily “posts” or short articles, on any topic you choose.

I use Blogger.com to host my blog because I am probably the most technically inept person you could ever know. Blogger makes it so easy you can have your site up and running in 10 minutes. Even if all you can do on a computer is send an email.

Step Two: Write at least two or three paragraphs a day on your blog. Every day.

What can 2 – 3 paragraphs a day do for you? Plenty.

Write these paragraphs every day, including Sundays and holidays, your birthday, your grandmother’s birthday, and even the day your favorite cat loses the last of her nine lives. If you will do this every day, these measly 2-3 paragraphs will accumulate surprisingly fast and you will soon have enough raw material to morph into publishable articles, seminar and workshop outlines, booklets and someday …. even a full-length book.

In other words, your humble little blog will produce the information products that will attract potential clients to you.

The beauty of blogging for a rainmaker is twofold. First, search engines love blogs, because they are frequently updated with fresh, new content. As a result, soon people who are interested in your topic will be finding your site.

And second, it will become a place to catch all those fleeting, but brilliant thoughts you have each day. And yes, you do have some brilliant thoughts, you just haven’t been conscious of how brilliant they are. But until now, you have not been recording them before they “fleet” right out of your brain.

Now I have a sneaky secret to tell you. After you get in the discipline of writing at least 2-3 paragraphs a day, somedays you will find yourself with more to write. Go ahead, it’s not against the rules. That’s why I said, “at least.”

As your blog produces information pieces in many different formats (articles, booklets, ebooks, etc) use them to promote yourself and your business or practice.

Within a year, that humble blog will be generating all kinds of new clients. Just keep writing.

It’s a small step you can take right now. Today. But the rewards for this small step are enormous.

So get started, you can do it.

” ……Go”

freelance copywriter, writing web content, copywriting tips

COPYRIGHT(C)2006, Charles Brown. All rights reserved.

Charles Brown writes about personal branding, search engine optimization, email marketing, social networking and many more ways to market yourself or your business online. Visit him at Web Marketing Coach and be sure to download one of his free ebooks or subscribe to his newsletter.

Author: Charles Brown
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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In life and negotiation there is always someone who has the advantage. There are those who appreciate value and seek to achieve greatness and there are those who take what is left and accept what they believe they deserve.
In the world of negotiation there are some primary archetypes; the Wise well connected Sages, the wiley old foxes, the predators and thugs, who usurp the lions share through sheer tyranny and force, the obstinate “petit tyrant”, the big deal wannabee, the systemic bureaucrat with all the rules and no idea, and then there are the unfortunate and clearly oblivious “prey”, the victims of “circumstance”.
In the overall scheme of things we need to consider the following summation; negotiation is a contest for the best deal and there is always someone who has an advantage.
The, have more, over have less, equation exists only in respect of the trading principles in negotiation, because negotiation is simply a controlled process with variables.
What is often a bit paradoxical is that although one party may walk away with the lions share, a great relationship should have formed if the “winning” party behaved like a good negotiator should.
Whether it is wealth or a carefully fashioned reputation for astuteness and resolve, winners use all their leverage in all of their negotiations while remaining gracious and calm.
Some corporate giants nurture and refine their adversarial culture and focus on a brutal albeit cunningly applied, “take no prisoners” approach towards negotiation. Many retailing giants carry things to great extremes to refine and create advantage, to the extent that they have purpose built negotiation centres crafted and fitted expressly to be uncomfortable for the counterparty. These rooms are specially built (covertly of course) to make it physically and psychologically uncomfortable for counterparties to deal with them while a deal that suits these “petty bullies” best is pursued. These are the joys awaiting those poor unsuspecting victims in pursuit of a win-win deal, a little bit of give (by us) and take (for them). This initial bit of “nuisance” is clearly proposed as being “for the greater good”. Sadly many believe that this makes it easier to achieve the much hoped for “foot in the door” with an implied prospect of good deal “later”. Or . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . perhaps not? Like tomorrow, “later” never comes!
The Business world is tough and we often find ourselves in front of seemingly cruel, overpowering organizations, and, on the face of things, powerful people, as we go about trying to succeed and do well, or sometimes just endure things through to the end of a bad period in our businesses.
Most of us have experienced this at some stage in our own life. As children, most of us had to deal with that overdeveloped, mature kid with a five o’clock shadow and bad-ass reputation that seemed to make him scarier than he was. The ladies among you will remember a similar person. All of you I am sure know what I mean; some kids were too scared to function and capitulated and there were those others as well, those that weren’t affected. Quantum science has an explanation for this but that is another discussion.
In day to day business, we may come across the table of someone from a giant conglomerate with gangs of obsessive legal specialists and a basement full of anxious accountants – each one programmed like a Doberman attack dog to rubbish our best offer and bully more concessions from us, just to “allow us to do that deal”. Often, we don’t really notice what we are dealing with but know that it is very powerful and very costly.
It often feels like we are held hostage to a system of “cooperation” and concession, of obfuscation and Machiavellian ego-mania, of legal and compliance requirements, and often we have little indication of what the true rules and real requirements are.
Well, – it’s time to change the rules.
Most training programs try to seduce you with the latest tactics, leaving people oblivious to the core principles, principles that beat tactics and tricks – hands down every time.
Unplugged delivers a negotiation management approach that balances the power and provides you with real advantages. From everyday political struggles to when we go face to face with, the conglomerate machine, that “monster under the bed” of the global marketplace. Learn why all goals really are achievable and why outcomes are not a good thing to focus a negotiation on.
No academic case studies, case studies are exercises that academics apply 20-20 hindsight to. No irritating role play exercises, no hallucinating hypothetical fall back position. No facile “tricks” on how to compromise, no useless nonsense like the “win-win” method. No academic Harvard Negotiation Project gobbledygook either. No popular tactical hypothesis and academic tactics.
In the Unplugged world of real negotiating, from the critical “raison d’être” to your goals and agenda, you will need to know how to script, prepare and design your approach. Begin to measure the compromise factors. Prepare your team to design, create and “effect” the plan, and carry out the negotiation.
Once the negotiation is “over” we show you how to debrief correctly and get ready for the next one.
The Unplugged Negotiation simulator is probably the most realistic negotiation scenario design and development tool available to date. There are principles, rules, and formulas that direct negotiation. It is these core components that make up the Unplugged system. The trick and tactics, testosterone bully, ego-fuelled approach is as pointless as the politically correct win-win approach.
All you need to know about how to become a Superior Negotiator is covered, starting with the Unplugged “first principles” of Negotiation, through to our “repatterning” model.

The more antibiotics are given to the animals we eat, explains Joel Salatin, the less responsive we become to antibiotics when we need them for medical reasons, “You’ve been drugging yourself at dinner every day”.

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In this exclusive interview, social media expert Euan Semple breaks social media down into easy to understand terms and explains not only why every business should at least have a look at social media but also how they can make a start without the need of employing expensive agencies and IT professionals. Euan explains how most companies are starting to feel pressured to jump head first into social media because everyone is talking about it, although it would be imperative for most businesses to at least investigate social media, throwing too much at it isnt necessarily going to help. Euan also acknowledges that social media can be perceived as being a tool for the younger generation, but that generation is now starting to work within your organisation and with them they will bring the tools which theyre used to using on a day to day basis. This doesnt mean you need to ban social networking sites like Face Book and myspace in your office, it means you need to encourage these staff to use these tools in a manor that can benefit your business and you need to trust them to do this. Euan justifies this by pointing out that they may be more likely to ask their existing peers within that network if they encounter a problem rather than going through the usual time consuming channels. This example is not just limited to the more junior employees; encouraging staff to participate in social media can speed up trouble shooting and enable any solutions found to be shared. Whilst at the BBC, Euan pioneered the use of weblogs, wikis and online forums to enable staff to work more collaboratively across the organisation. Euan also worked on the bbcs award winning leadership programme, gaining experience in how to engage and inspire people with the possibilities of social computing as a business tool. He is now independent advisor on social computing for business, and a well known writer, thinker and public speaker. His unique experience enables him to provide inspiration on this wired-up world of work and strategies for how business can prepare themselves for the challenges and opportunities presented by new technologies