Six Sigma Blogs

Negotiate Are you dying with envy when you see other ad people come up with a better offer? Yeah, you pay full price and think you did OK until they show up with the same thing, only they paid several hundred dollars less. What’s their secret? They’re not afraid to ask for an extra discount.

Next time your advertising rep pops over, do not in any instance sell yourself short or underestimate your capabilities! Even if you’re already getting a discount, ask for a bigger one. Ask, ask, ask, and if we may repeat it again, ASK!

Keep It Simple, Silly! Less is more. In the world of advertising, nothing can be farther from the truth - short and punchy ads are generally more successful than large, elaborate ones. In fact, if you trim down the size of your ads, you are also cutting costs while at the same time having a good chance of good results!

The Best Things In Advertising Are Free What’s the difference between advertising and publicity? It’s a matter of who sells who. Advertising is basically selling yourself. Publicity, on the other hand, is when somebody else is selling you, and if handled properly, can make you a rock star in the world of business if you know how to take advantage of what’s handed to you.

Think about it, my friend - you could be bigger than the Beatles in business terms if you can take advantage of what comes free to you. Got hot news? Go for a press release. Write a “how to” article of 500 words or so with a short byline (VERY important) and submit them to article directories, ezines, blog sites and the like. You can even promote your non-competitor as they promote your product. You help each other out, and again, everybody wins!

That’s right, amigo, if you play your cards right, free advertisement can aid your business in many ways. Naturally you’ll have to rely on other forms of advertising for a price, but come on, if it’s free and can benefit you, why pass it up?

Improve Your Offer Is your deal too good to pass up? If you don’t, then work on it. Don’t get me wrong - I didn’t say knock down the prices even lower, because the bottom line is still important. Sweetening the deal is all about adding value to the product by enhancing what consumers already know and teaching them more about the product without having to pay much.

Add an expiration date. Yeah, an open ended offer encourages procrastination which leads, yep, nowhere. It leads to Nowheresville, USA, but if you take advantage of the expiration date to entice a customer to buy now or pay more the day after, he or she is going to drop everything, pop over at your shop and make that purchase! Good advertising does not necessarily equal expensive and flashy advertising. To recap, it’s all about good negotiating skills, trimming down your high-falluting ads, asking for bigger discounts and making an offer not even Don Vito himself can refuse - take note of these four steps and your profits have nowhere to go but up!

Join HRU for programs that focus on emergency triage and nurses leadership. An HRU seminar is a great educational investment for your nursing staff.

Working from home has its own “up side” and “down side,” just like everything else. Other people may assume that you are jobless while others will think that you are self-employed and that your time is your own.

However, that’s not always true. Many times, you might have several bosses or have deadlines to meet, just like anyone with a “real job”. How do you get that point across to friends and family, though?

A critical way of showing this is to ensure you work to a tight and regular timeframe so that people take your work seriously. If you keep regular hours and stick to them, most people will come to respect that.

Putting up a reminder to your family members such as a sign on your door will give them the idea that you are doing some serious work and should not be interrupted.

Naturally, one of the benefits of working from your house is that you can keep flexible hours. Thus, it can be good to take a break or mix your schedule up sometimes. But this should be the exception not the rule.

One way to avoid that is to make occasional trade offs. For example, if your spouse wants to go to lunch with you, fabulous! Just make sure that they understand that that means that you’ll be working an extra hour or two that evening.

You may find that persuading others of your situation is more difficult than some people. Presenting them with your work schedule will help to convince them of your real job. Patience and steady effort will do the trick.

Explain to them in the most basic way that you can spend time with them, but it isn’t going to be on a regular basis and that you have to catch up on your work after that. Be firm in letting them understand that most of the time, your work will have to be given priority over other matters.

See various other educational articles written by this same writer regarding topics including a VoIP router as well as an ADSL router.

categories: home business,home,family,business,careers,self improvement,motivational,communication,time management,men’s issues,women,reference,networking

Facebook is a valuable social networking tool that allows us to stay in touch with friends and family. If you become addicted to it, though, it can be counterproductive. If you think you might have a Facebook addiction, ask yourself the following:

How many Facebook games do you play? These games are meant to keep you on the site. While games like Farmville and Mob Wars can be fun, they can often be addicting. This is because of their structure - the longer you play, the more you are rewarded. Also some games have a guilt aspect, where you have to log in regularly to check on and care for virtual pets or crops.

Mob Wars can be deceptive. You may be tempted to log in really quick to do another hit. Before you know it though, you’ll have spent the entire day playing and the ‘quick hit’ will turn into many more!

How often do you check your News Feed? Twice a day should be sufficient to keep up with family and friends. More than this can indicate a problem.

Try to check once in the morning, so you can see what happened while you were asleep, and then once again in the evening for updates from that day. This should have you covered for all updates, and should be sufficiently frequent.

You are too involved in other people’s business if you leave the News Feed open and scrolling to catch each update. Get out and lead your own life.

Don’t overshare every detail of your life in updates, though. If you are posting multiple updates per day, and telling folks everything you do, you’ll likely be boring people as well as wasting time. Limit your posts to things that are actually noteworthy.

A good way to use Facebook in a healthy manner is to focus on your real life, and then share the real life on Facebook. Plan something enjoyable and interesting every day, and post about this. You’ll have a rich life, and your friends and family will be glad to see you are doing so well.

In addition to internet, this writer additionally frequently blogs about marking machines and laser diode modules.

categories: facebook,networking,hobbies,entertainment,social networking,websites,internet,online,internet surfing,friends,web marketing,society,time management,internet marketing

Success can only be found in doing what makes you happy. If you are happy, then you are more passionate. Passion, especially in business, is contagious. If you can make your customers passionate about you then your business will be more successful. 7 Keys to Success shows you the steps to identify what success means to you.

7 Keys to Success contains the tools to identify your definition of success. Too often, people begin an endeavor only to make money. When that endeavor fails, they try another, then another, then another. They wonder why success eludes them. Success only comes through passion about the endeavor.

Living an unhappy or unfulfilled life has caused the downfall of many “successful” people. Outwardly, they were extremely successful. They have a large amount of money and a beautiful family. Then the illusion of success comes tumbling down. Their spouse leaves them, they file bankruptcy, or their children end up in rehab. Success cannot be found through money. The only road to lasting success is through a town called happiness.

Many people end up unhappy because they are living another person’s dream. Maybe their father found success in real estate investing. Dad expects his son to follow in his footsteps; however, the sons heart lies in being a doctor, firefighter, janitor, etc. The son does what his father wants. He becomes a successful real estate investor in his own right; however, he is never truly happy.

Success does not bring happiness. It is possible to achieve success without being happy, in the short term. Sustained success only comes through doing what truly makes you happy. As you achieve more success, more is demanded of your time, resources, and family. It is very difficult to spend that amount of effort without enjoying the endeavor.

7 Keys to Success assists you in identifying your personal definition of success. Once you have defined your personal success definition, you are able to choose endeavors that will assist you in achieving success. Once you can visualize success, you can turn it into reality.

7 Keys to Success states “If you think about it, nothing at all that now exists within our experience of physical reality did not first exist in the mind of the person who made it or brought it into being. In all cases, everything is created twice: the physical creation follows the mental creation.”

After all, you cannot achieve your dream if you do not have one. Before you can achieve your dreams, you have to be able to visualize your dream. You need to be able to turn it around in your mind, smell it, feel it, and even taste it.

Identifying your personal success and visualization are only the first two steps. 7 Keys to Success begins with these steps then adds:

1. Completely dedicate yourself to achieving success - achieving success can take time. “Get Rich Quick” only works on TV. Success requires perseverance and the dedication to laugh in the face of setbacks or even failure.

2. Keep an open mind - commitment is just the first step. Once committed, universal forces will begin to assist you. Our sub-conscious mind starts attracting the resources, ideas, and contacts necessary to achieve success.

3. Dedication - dedication is refusing to quit in the face of setbacks or failure. Dedication assists you in continuing firmly and steadily.

4. Flexibility - correctly evaluating how close to success you are, choosing actions that are not working, and replacing these actions with more successful ones, is crucial to achieving success.

7 Keys to Success will provide you the tools to define success for you, opening your mind, cultivating dedication to see you through tough times, and changing your efforts as needed. No matter what success means to you, 7 Keys to Success provides the tools necessary to achieve success.

Success is not about having a large amount of money. If it were, we would never have millionaires (or their children) on drugs, in rehab, driving drunk, or committing suicide. Success is about whatever makes YOU happy.

Money may have prompted you to begin making money online. Increased income does give you the freedom to chase your dreams. Income by itself should not be your only goal. Money online rarely brings happiness. Happiness comes through identifying your personal definition of success.

Money does not bring success. Every day, newspapers run stories about millionaires or their kids smoking marijuana, crack, sniffing cocaine, driving drunk, or doing many other less than intelligent activities. True success is only found by doing what makes you happy.

Many a mid-life crisis has been caused by following another person’s dream. Consider events that brought you to your current career. Why did you get into this career? Were you passionate about it? Was it just to have a job? Was it because someone said you should? If you are not truly passionate about the work, you are probably unhappy. Unhappiness does not go away. It only festers.

Success does not bring happiness. It is possible to achieve success without being happy, in the short term. Sustained success only comes through doing what truly makes you happy. As you achieve more success, more is demanded of your time, resources, and family. It is very difficult to spend that amount of effort without enjoying the endeavor.

7 Keys to Success will help you decide what success looks like…to you. Once you know what success looks like for you, you can pick activities and resources to achieve your success.

7 Keys to Success states “If you think about it, nothing at all that now exists within our experience of physical reality did not first exist in the mind of the person who made it or brought it into being. In all cases, everything is created twice: the physical creation follows the mental creation.”

Before you can achieve your personal level of success, you must see it in your mind’s eye. You must cultivate a detailed vision of success. You should be able to imagine what success will smell, taste, and feel like.

Identifying your dreams is just the first step. That is why we are offering and recommending 7 Keys to Success. 7 Keys to Success starts with identifying your dreams then shows you how to:

1. Commit to achieving success - contrary to popular demand, very few people reach success overnight. Success can be reached on the other side of a few setbacks or even failures.

2. Keep an open mind - commitment is just the first step. Once committed, universal forces will begin to assist you. Our sub-conscious mind starts attracting the resources, ideas, and contacts necessary to achieve success.

3. Dedication - dedication allows you to laugh at failures and setbacks that can rob you of success. Dedication provides the energy to continue towards success.

4. Flexibility - you must be flexible enough to evaluate your current efforts, identify things that are not working, and adapt your efforts accordingly.

7 Keys to Success provides the tools to identify what you mean by “success”, begin the journey to success, evaluate your success, change your approach as needed, and persist through challenging times. 7 Keys to Success gives you the tools; however, you must still provide the necessary “elbow grease”.

In this lesson of the GTD Thirty Day Challenge we are going to talk about how to set up a tickler file, or specifically, how I set up my tickler file.

David Allen seems to be big on using 43 folders for his tickler file. These folders would be made up of 12 monthly folders and 31 daily folders. Let’s say it is now January and I’d have all my daily folders behind the January folder. When a day ends, that day’s folder goes behind the next month or February’s folder. Looking at the 19th, I’d have the folders 1-18 behind the February folder at this point.

Now, how do you use it? Today, I had a bill I learned I had to pay on February 3. I don’t want to forget it, so I would put it behind my February 3 tab. When that day rolls around, I check my tickler file and it prompts me to pay the bill.

If you asked me, I think using 43 folders for my tickler file is not the best way to set up a tickler file. First, it’s hard to remember to check the tickler each day. You’ll be asking yourself, “how do I remind myself to check the tickler file?” Secondly, it’s very bulky and not very portable. Third, when you move the folders for each day to the next month you have to take items in that months folder and put them in the right day.

If you use GTD though, a tickler file is essential to set up because there are things in the future that you need to remember. The folder type of tickler is perfect if you have a lot of physical type items you use as reminders. For most people, their work doesn’t create the kind of physical items that really justify a folder tickler file and I suggest setting up a tickler file differently to address the problems above.

How To Set Up A Tickler File

Step one is to create a plastic folder that I carry in my briefcase labelled “Waiting For” and all the things I need to remember on future dates go in there.

Next, I created a folder in my email account called “Yahoo Reminders”. You’ll see this folder if you look at the image of my email folder structure in How To Set Up Your GTD Email. I then set up a filter for all Yahoo Reminders to go into this specific folder and not in my inbox for processing.

Finally, I use my Yahoo! calendar, to enter any item I need to remember and make it an “all day event” with an email reminder scheduled to be sent to me 2 days prior to when I need to do it. As a back up, I also have it text to me as well.

So, let’s take the above scenario again. I got a bill today that I need to remember on the 3rd of February. I go to my Yahoo! calendar and enter an all day event “Pay important bill” with a reminder scheduled for two days prior. I then take the bill and put it in my “Waiting For” folder in my briefcase.

On the 1st day of February, I get a Yahoo reminder that reminds me about the bill that needs to be paid on the third and it goes directly into my Yahoo reminder folder in my email account. In addition, a text goes out as well giving me a backup on my blackberry in case I can’t get to my Yahoo reminder’s folder in my email account. I review my blackberry text messages every day and review my reminders folder too as well if I have access to it.

This system works fantastic for me. It’s extremely portable, it reminds me automatically and I don’t have to rethink the items in my tickler when I move the tabs. If you are not using email reminders to help you remember stuff, you have no idea how this can effect your productivity. Even if you use 43 folders, I recommend email reminders 100% to be a part of your GTD system.

Once I learned how to set up a tickler file in this fashion, it improved my effectiveness at remember everything to a complete level.