Just over a month ago I joined the board of my child’s private school. Before I even had a chance to settle in, I was immediately thrown into the chaos of a school that is way behind in fund raising and over two months behind in paying their teachers. So we got down to work and began figuring out how to raise the funds. After three weeks of this we were no further ahead, at that point we took the course of enough thinking “LET’S GET MOVING”. We compiled a list of the wealthy philanthropists in our community and set out to work. Our expectation was to get at least $10,000 from 15-20 donors, are assumption being that they are very wealthy and have millions of dollars, $10,000 to them is like 10 cents to us, furthermore we were asking them to give from their charity money not their personal funds. Well things didn’t go as expected, though the donors were very generous, the donations were more in the range of $1,000, $2,500 and $5,000. Though we did show sincere appreciation, in the back of our minds there was some frustration and indignation at the fact that these philanthropist would not step up to the plate in a massive way to help a school in need, especially when the people involved are part of their community.

After a week of feeling this frustration, I decided that it was time to try and get some perspective. I don’t function when I am in a negative mode and really needed to change my outlook.

So I asked the power question. Read the rest of this entry »

Like many of you, I am constantly looking for ways to improve the traffic and profitability of my various sites. In my search for information I come across many different products, people and approaches. Recently I got on a list where I receive information from an “Internet Marketing Master” (<-These are their words not mine), Mike Filsaime. His main marketing approach/product is something he calls ‘Butterfly Marketing’. The idea is that you create a powerful marketing campaign that has a massive urgency to it, like “All this, for this great price, limited quantity, for the next 24 hours”. You get caught up in the hype and urgency of the pitch, that you find yourself almost reflexively buying the product, regardless of your need for it. Read the rest of this entry »

You want to improve and grow. You decide that you want to work on something and you begin to focus on it relentlessly. You try to cultivate the habit, but for some reason it is difficult to move forward. Maybe instead of going forward you need to go the other way????

At first glance this seems like an odd statement ‘If I want to be good at something do the opposite’, but often the place to focus on is just that.

Lets look at a few examples.

Say you want to become a good public speaker. Read the rest of this entry »

- Sir. When you sat in the emergency exit row, you agreed to do anything necessary to help in the event of an emergency.

Sometimes you feel like you are being stepped on when helping others, but if done in the right place, at the right time, with proper intentions, you can end up being a hero.