Hi

This is the spot to share business, marketing and personal development ideas and discussions.
This forum is created in good faith with the intention to help you and for you to help each other.

Although I have available for you a huge collection of fantastic ideas, tools and strategies from some of the world's best in their field (http://www.tkbetterbusiness.com/), they are by no means exhaustive.

I'll tell you a little story that got me off my butt and to where I am today. I hope it will help you to get to where you want to be.

I met an amazing man about 15 years ago. It was just after my ex wife left me for another man. I was not in a good state. I was sitting in a bar in the city one lunchtime, watching people walk by.
An older guy at the next table started talking to me. I wondered what he wanted. Did he have some motive?
We ended up having a fairly in-depth conversation, in which he told me that he had had a successful business in the East and lost everything but the shirt on his back. He now spent his nights in a hostel. He was financially ruined.
The amazing thing was that he was still happy. He was just having a different experience. He would start again once the legalities were sorted out, was still very positive and had a great smile on his face.
It was beyond my comprehension at that time, how someone could lose everything they had and still be happy. I now understand.
After years of personal development work, courses, books and all the rest, I believe I’m near where that man was. Happy and in control.
Happiness or sadness are attitudes. We choose them, usually based on our conditioning.
We choose how we see things. We can see positive in everything if we want to.
We can make every experience we have in our lives a positive one. It’s up to us.
What’s even better is that when we see things in a positive light and have positive thoughts, we tend to attract positive things and people. That’s a fact.
You may think of this as a load of hogwash, but I can tell you that I’ve personally proved it countless times. Sure, things don’t always go as planned in my life. I have a few failures. Years ago they may have stopped me in my tracks. Not now. I now look at them as lessons, learn from them and get on with it.

All this didn’t just happen for me. It took a low point in my life and a realization that there were a few things I had to change. I did have issues. I overcame the ones I could, accepted the ones I couldn’t change and I’m now enjoying a great life.
I have the ranch I always wanted and more horses than I had imagined. I have great relationships with my family and friends. My business is growing stronger all the time and allows me the freedom to work when I want and where I want. Life is great.

There are only 24 hours in every day. We can sell 8 or 10 hours of that time to the boss for a few bucks an hour. Alternatively we can use leverage. This can be in the way of technology or having other people do some work for us.
Unless our work is our passion, I believe we should aim to spend as little time as possible to make as much money as we can. That way we have more time to do the things we love and more resources to help ourselves and other people.

This is no dress rehearsal. We only get one go and I want to help as many people as I can to have the best life possible – financially and emotionally.

I have the tools. I’ve been using them and still do. Here they are for you to use as well.
http://www.tkbetterbusiness.com/

It’s been a great journey and worth every step.

If you have any great ideas, tools or strategies to share, please tell us about them and I will add any appropriate resources to the website.

I look forward to hearing from you

Have a great day

Regards

Tom Kress
http://www.tkbetterbusiness.com/


Feed Shark

Are you in Business? Then get the most out of your advertising Dollar.
Believe it or not, most businesses who use different forms of advertising and marketing have no idea how effective their various efforts are. They spend a lot of money putting up large ads or sending out direct mail, but they don’t know which of their efforts are effective and which ones are totally wasted.
Advertising agencies such as newspapers and yellow pages like to sell you big advertising space. That’s how they make their money. They don’t much care how effective it is for you and unless you get feedback from your customers, you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t.
Both direct mail and ads can be much more effective if written well. Think about your ad copy. Have a powerful headline. State benefits, not features. Test direct mail on a small scale first. If the response is good, go big. If not, use a different letter. Try different ones, test and use the best one as your control. That will then be the one to beat.
Think about your target market. It’s often pointless and wasteful to send letters to general lists. Find a targeted list of prospects who are likely to want your product or service. Maybe do a JV with a business that has a list of people who are likely to want your product.
You can save a great deal of money by asking your customers how they found you, work out which marketing strategies are working and throwing away the stuff that isn’t.
Keep a folder with all your advertising and marketing and with it some statistics and you can save a fortune.
Once you have a customer, make sure you keep them. Devise ways to collect phone numbers, addresses and email addresses and keep marketing to them. It is many times simpler and cheaper to get an existing customer to come back again than to find a new one, so once you have a customer, do your best to keep them.
Give great service, offer that little extra, stand out from the crowd. Your customers will appreciate you for it.
Think about the customer’s lifetime value. Even if you don’t make much on the first sale, if you keep them coming back, they will fatten your bank account for a long time to come.
All the best

Regards

Tom Kress
http://www.tkbetterbusiness.com