I swear it must have grown that much in a week!

Often we create documents in word, but when we share them and want them to be printable documents or forms, it’s easier to change your word document to a pdf file.

Many of our clients do not have software to convert documents with, so I went online to see how difficult it would be to do for free. It’s not hard at all. If you have a lot of documents to do, buy software, but if you just need to convert now and then, the free online version works fine. There are lots of places to go, I only tried one.

Click on the image below to view my short video:

Watch the video now!

I think this is going to be very useful to us small business owners. Can you imagine to be able to sort your calls this way – and to customize voice greetings.

Small business owner often ask us about Twitter. “What do you do with it?”, they ask or they tell us they’re already “on Twitter”. Unfortunately, most of them don’t use it as a communication tool, instead they broadcast their sales message over and over and over again – until nobody listens.

This article is an interesting read and includes a few examples on how small business owners can use Twitter in real life.

Here’s the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/business/smallbusiness/23twitter.html?_r=1

2. The Best want it more. We all want to be great. But only the best of the best are willing to do what it takes to be great. The best don’t just think about their desire for greatness; they act on it. They have a high capacity for work. They do the things that others won’t do, and they spend more time doing it. When everyone else is sleeping, the best are practicing and thinking and improving.

3. The Best are always striving to get better. They are always looking for ways to learn, apply, improve, and grow. They stay humble and hungry. They are lifelong learners. They never think they have “arrived”—because they know that once they think that, they’ll start sliding back to the place from which they came.

4. The Best do ordinary things better than everyone else. For all their greatness, the best aren’t that much better than the others. They are simply a little better at a lot of things. Everyone thinks that success is complicated, but it’s really simple. In fact, the best don’t do anything different. They just do the ordinary things better.

5. The Best zoom focus. Success is all about the fundamentals, and the fundamentals are little and ordinary and often boring. It’s not just about practice, but focused practice. It’s not just about taking action, but taking zoom-focused action. It’s about practicing and perfecting the fundamentals.

6. The Best are mentally stronger. Today’s world is no longer a sprint or a marathon. It’s a series of sprints combined with a boxing match. You’re not just running; you are getting hit along the way. The best are able to respond to and overcome all of this with mental and emotional toughness. They are able to tune out the distractions and stay calm, focused, and energized when it counts.

7. The Best overcome their fear. Everyone has fears. The best of the best all have fear, but they overcome it. To beat your enemy, you must know your enemy. Average people shy away from their fears. They either ignore them or hide from them. However, the best seek them out and face them with the intent of conquering them.

8. The Best seize the moment. When the best are in the middle of their performance, they are not thinking “What if I win?” or “What if I lose?” They are not thinking “What if I make a mistake or miss the shot?” They are not interested in what the moment produces but are concerned only with what they produce in the moment. When all eyes are watching, they rise to the occasion. As a result, the best define the moment rather than letting the moment define them.

9. The Best tap into a power greater than themselves. The best are conductors, not resistors. They don’t generate their own power, but act as conduits for the greatest power source in the world. It’s not always politically correct, but you can’t talk about greatness without talking about God. It would be like talking about breathing without mentioning the importance of air.

10. The Best leave a legacy. The best live and work with a bigger purpose. They leave a legacy by making their lives about more than them. This larger purpose is what inspires them to be the best and strive for greatness over the long term. It helps them move from success to significance.

11. The Best make everyone around them better. They do this through their own pursuit of excellence and in the excellence they inspire in others. One person in pursuit of excellence raises the standards of everyone around them. And they do this in both their work and life. …The point is to strive to be your best and inspire others to be their best, because it’s in the striving where you find greatness, not in the outcome.

Excerpted from Training Camp: What the Best Do Better Than Everyone Else by Jon Gordon

Training Camp: What the Best Do Better Than Everyone Else

How do you stay on task? One of our biggest challenges in this day and age is to stay focused. There are so many distractions, especially when you work for yourself on the computer. The email notifications pop up, friends send instant messages, the phone rings, the kids come home from school or the cat is hungry.

Many successful Internet entrepreneurs say we need to start limiting the distractions and focus on finishing a particular task, instead of trying to multi-task. For the longest time we were told multitasking is key — but not any more. And research supports it.

Tim Ferris, who wrote The 4-hour Work Week, says that our urge to constantly check email is an addiction. He also says that multitasking lowers your IQ more than smoking marijuana it’s actually been proven in a scientific study! Pretty scary!
The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

I knew I needed to change from a buzzing bee to a focused, sharp internet entrepreneur. During my work day I never ever reached the end of my to-do list. Every day I was left with a sense of failure, because I didn’t get enough accomplished. When I spoke to other entrepreneurs, this seems to be a very common problem.

Obviously, there are several issues to look at. The first one is probably the list. What’s on the to-do list — and how important are those things? Many times I cram everything into my list, hoping that a task on the list will magically be finished, preferably by someone else or by itself. Wishful thinking, indeed.
Another question is how do we measure success in our work? We’ll return to this discussion later.

I started by paying more attention to my actual work habits. When I was working on a task, I constantly stopped to check email, answer the phone, or somehow managed to get off task. Especially when it is a task I hated doing such as bookkeeping. I’d gladly get up from my desk to feed a hungry cat, and trust me, in our house we have three, so there is always a hungry cat to feed. And while I was in the kitchen, I needed to unload the dishwasher or mop the floor. This was definitely something I can improve.

I also watched one of Eben Pagan’s videos where he talked about time management and how to divide the work day in segments and how to limit distractions. According to Eben, you should work in two-hour blocks throughout the day. It is a focused burst of work during two hours when you turn off your email notifier, cell phone and any other distraction and just concentrate on the task at hand. Sounds easy, but it does require focused attention.

This idea follows the Simpleology formula pretty well. Simpleology is Mark Joyner’s system for how to keep yourself moving towards your goals. You set your long-term and short- term goals, and plan your day according to those. You can also choose to use a timer to keep yourself on task. You work for 50 minutes and then take a five minute break. Simpleology is an online based tool and Simpleology 101 is free. So check it out for yourself if you’re interested at  www.simpleology.com

I don’t remember where I read about changing your mindset. It was a point that really hit home with me. You need to start thinking as a business owner and entrepreneur instead of a writer, programmer, graphic designer — or whatever your other job was. As an employee you can think as a graphic designer and concentrate on graphic design, but when you start your own business, you have to change how you think. No longer can you concentrate on just design; instead you need to wear all the other hats for your business as well. Sometimes those hats are more important than the old one you’re really comfortable wearing. Without sales or clients, there’s never any business going on. You are the one who is responsible for bringing in the clients to your business. For a lot of entrepreneurs this is a big change.

Eben Pagan says that a lot of small business owners have a hard time focusing and knowing what needs to get done. We prefer to wear our comfortable old hat — the one that fits well and we look so good in. So the video producer spends all his or her time working on video production, and not enough time on marketing and sales for example.

I know that this was true for my business. I love working on the content creation part — writing, graphic design, video production and I don’t work as much on the other parts of my business.

Eben suggests that we spend;
Customers – 40 % of our time. Getting new customers and affiliates, generate traffic getting, build relationships

Conversion – 20% of our time. All activities after the visitors come to your website

Content – 10% of our time. Writing articles, press releases, blog posts, creating videos, products

Management – 30% of time. Manage your time, people and business.

I spent more then 50% of the day in content creation and that is not the way to increase sales or expand your business. All this made me realize that it was time for me to change my mindset and start thinking as a business owner and not a content producer.

15 DVD Get Altitude Set & 6 Audio Cd Print Persuasion

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According to www.resolutionsnewyear.com the most popular New Year’s Resolutions are:

1. Spend more time with family and friends
2. Become fit
3. Cut down the extra fat
4. Quit Smoking
5. Quit Alcohol
6. Get out of debt
7. Learn something new
8. Become more organized
9. Help others
10. Enjoy life more

I did quit smoking over 10 years ago, so I have already taken care of that one. It was difficult, but satisfying in a strange way. Once you’ve been through that, you know you should be able to change anything about yourself. I’d say that the first three days were really difficult, the first three weeks rather annoying. My brain wouldn’t think about much else but cigarettes, but after three weeks, things changed almost overnight. Suddenly I noticed that I wasn’t thinking about it anymore and the thoughts slowly disappeared over time. In the end, it was well worth all the trouble, and now I view it as one of my greatest accomplishments.

As small business owners, I think most of us spend too much time working, thinking or even worrying about work. The website www.resolutionsnewyear.com says that 50% of Americans want to spend more time with family and friends, and entrepreneurs are no different.

I’m definitely going to make an effort to divide my time between work and family better in 2009. Someone suggested to make special family days; such as pizza night on Fridays. In our family we have also made a plan to “take back weekends” for family time in 2009. This past year a lot of work has been forced in on weekends for different reasons, and this is something we want to change.

Loosing weight or working on getting in shape, is another common one. If we can work on making our bodies stronger, we’ll accomplish more all around.

Steve Pavlina often uses the 30-days of change to implement a new routine. As you know, it is said that it takes 30 days to change and make something into a routine. So if you want to start eating healthy for example, make a commitment to stick to it for 30 days straight. All you have to do is to go through your month, and by the end of the month it should almost be a habit for you.

Most of the time we put too much pressure on ourselves to make a drastic change overnight, and when we slip, we give up the whole idea. I think by committing to a 30-day change, you don’t have to commit to a lifetime change, just a month trial period. So you can try eating vegetarian for 30 days and see if it works for you. No strings attached.
It’s a great way to get into healthier habits.

Many of us struggle with debt, often credit card debt. This time of year it’s could be a good idea to make a plan for how to get out of debt. Can you spend less and use the money to start to pay down your debt? Everything has to happen in small steps, there is no easy way to get out of debt, but the longer we wait to make a plan and start taking action, the longer it will take.

I found it interesting that Learn Something New came up as number 7 on the list. Trying something new can be exciting, and who said it had to be work-related? You could learn how to knit or crochet, or take cooking classes.
Entrepreneurs are life-long learners. Most of us can always learn more about marketing techniques, how to present, how to analyze a budget, how to interview job applicants and much more.

“Becoming more organized is one of those things that I keep repeating every year about this time. I think I’m hoping for a magic solution, one that doesn’t involve any significant change or effort from my part.
This year I’m going to organize my workday differently. I will try to clean off my desk at the end of the day, and make a plan for the whole week on Mondays. I’ll also try to limit how many times a day I check my inbox and do that later in the day. This is going to be difficult for me, because I like checking email in the morning and respond. For me, it would be better to get my most important tasks out of the way first thing.
I have been following the Simpleology system to keep me on track this year. It’s free and can help you see what you should focus on during your day.

Help others and Enjoy life more. I will work on finding good tips to post on do your own marketing to help other small business owners save money by doing more of their own marketing.
What are you planning on doing in 2009 to enjoy life more?

Making goals, plans and objectives are only the first step, and probably the easiest one. The hard part is sticking to the plan and implementing changes and strategies throughout the year. This might be why so many people keep making the same old New Year’s resolution year after year. It’s easy to wish for something, it’s much more difficult to make it happen.

My suggestion is to keep your goals and your plan realistic. It is better to make goals and be successful in reaching them, instead of giving up after two months. If you have had a problem in the past, maybe the 30-day approach could work for you.

The other reason we don’t reach our goals, is that we make a plan and we don’t check our progress. In order to know your exact progress, your plan needs to be clearly defined in steps or phases “ otherwise you’ll only know when you have reached the finish line. I believe this is one of the hardest things to achieve when you’re making a strategic plan. But if you can outline a step-by-step path for your business, you can also track your progress and adjust as you go along.

For many of us, 2008 wasn’t the best year, so it’s more important than ever to analyze what worked and what needs to change in order for 2009 to become a profitable year.
And while you’re working on your plans, I hope you’ll get to spend some quality time with family and friends to enjoy the holidays!

Often one of the most difficult tasks small business owners face is to explain what they do in an interesting way. I don’t mean to say “I am a veterinarian”, that is not hard to do, but for marketing it is not enough. It’s not a statement people will necessarily remember, or something that will make them ask questions.

When someone asks you “what do you do?”, do they really want to know your profession or are they trying to start a conversation with you? Many times it’s just an invitation to a conversation. When you are a business owner you need to take every opportunity to spread the word about your business to others. The best marketing is often word of mouth, but for that to work, you need to be interesting.

Many business owners we meet say that my business is not much to talk about, it’s not very interesting. I sell antique coins on Ebay, for example. Not everyone is interested in antique coins, but there must be some interesting facts about antique coins, and if not, there definitely are some interesting facts about Ebay.
There is a transaction happening on Ebay every four seconds, or something crazy like that. I don’t know how many people visit Ebay every day, but there is a bunch.

You want to focus on how your business is different from all the others in your field. What makes your Ebay store different than all the others?
Saying that I am an accountant, dentist, and carpenter or in real estate only tells half the story. What is it that makes your business different than your competitors? What’s the benefit for your customers? You need to find a way to make people interesting in hearing more about what you do. I know that many of us don’t think our business is that interesting to talk about with everyone. Not everyone has an interest in my type of business. But in most cases, you can find a way to make it interesting to everyone. Remember, we’re only doing an elevator pitch here not an hour long lecture.

The book “Duct Tape Marketing” talks about a core marketing message, not an elevator pitch. The book says that if you’re an invoicing service for small business owners, you could use something like: “I help small businesses getting paid faster”. ..and continue with a few more details about how you do it. The statement “I help small businesses get paid faster” will often be followed by a question. “How do you do that?” or “What do you mean?” When you get a question like that back, you know that you’re on to something.

The animal hospital might have a better wellness plan for pets, keeping them healthy and thereby reducing costs for pet owners – not to mention keeping the pets happy. The carpenter might specialize in a certain type of carpentry.

The first thing to do is really to think about what makes your business stand out in a crowd. In many cases, it’s not at all what you do it”s more related to how you do it, or why you do it. Maybe your customer service is what makes people return to you. You always take care of them and always over-deliver.
Maybe your product comes with a guarantee. Satisfaction or your money back!

Don’t think that you need a slogan, you don’t. You just need to express what’s unique about your business in a way that peaks interest and makes others ask questions. Find some interesting little facts, or something most people don’t know and mix that with the benefit of working with your company.

It’s not always that easy to come up with the perfect way to do this. The book “Duct Tape Marketing” suggests talking to existing clients, but if you’re just starting out, you might not have any yet. You might want to discuss it with people you work with, or friends and family. Brainstorm a little bit, and see what you can come up with. Remember, you’re not looking for a slogan, just for an interesting way to express your uniqueness.

Write your elevator pitch down on paper. Put it on a sticky note on your computer monitor. Rehearse it so it sounds natural. Live with it for a while, and make sure it fits.
You need to keep this marketing message in mind when you have a logo designed, business cards made or write copy for your website. All your marketing and promotional materials need to fall in line with your marketing message.

Don’t worry, if you don’t have the perfect elevator pitch, it will at least be a lot better than not having one at all. And the time you’ve spent on thinking about what makes your business stand out, will pay off in many ways. You now know how to focus on the benefits for your clients, not on what you do. Of course you need an elevator pitch or a marketing message.

So next time you walk into a party and someone asks you; what do you do? you’ll know exactly what to say and maybe that will start a natural flow of Word of Mouth marketing coming your way.

Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide