What Do You Do To Invest In Your Success?

e-clipsbog.co.uk

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all have a money tree? Well, maybe you can. But, you first have the plant the seed and water it regularly. These are the investments that you make in order to ensure your success. The question is, how many of us are willing to make that investment and the effort in so doing? I’m constantly amazed by folks who think that this all just happens magically. It’s hard work and sometimes you need to invest some funds in order to reap even greater returns. Sorry, life is like that.

So, what have you done for you lately? Have you read a self help book about your craft or attended a seminar or sat in on a webinar to help you to become better at what you have chosen to do? Are you active in the Chamber of Commerce or any kind of service group? Do you attend networking events whenever and wherever they are offered? Have you studied Social Media and Business Social Media and maybe put some of those tools to work for you? Have you taken a client to lunch or to coffee or bought them a Christmas present or is your company too cheap to pay for those and you can’t  recognize the value in spending the money yourself despite the fact that you are at least partially directly compensated on your ability to bring in new business? It’s o.k. if the company wants to pay for it but, not me. Yikes! I guess you cannot afford the extra earnings. Would that be correct?

Do you go to out to lunch at least once a week with friends? Maybe have a frosty cold adult beverage after work with your buds? Does your company pay for that? No? Then why do you? Are these activities investments in your success? My guess would be …. no.

Membership in NetWorks! Boise is $25/week and is paid quarterly. For your $25 you also get a nice lunch and today that can add up to close to half of that $25. Additionally, you will be associating with other business professionals who are talking about business and helping you to increase yours. You will walk away with an average of 25-30 new pieces of business related leads or intelligence each week (as we did again today at our meeting). When you get back to your desk, you will log into our password protected web database of every lead that this group has ever shared in a meeting.  You may be introduced to a guest speaker who will rock your world. It’s happened to me more than once. The initial sale on one of those occasions was over $350,000. Of course, those kind of numbers are unusual but they can and do happen. They have to happen to somebody. It might as well be you (smile).

Please go to the “What They Say About Networks” page on this site and see what our members think of us. Then go to my LinkedIn Profile and scroll down the page to “recommendations” to see even more. After doing that, please tell me again why $25 a week is too much to invest in your success.

I’m feeling a little “randy” today. Feels good (smile). Must be my new Pandora customized radio station playing the background. Listening to a little Led Zep right now (smile).

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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7 Topics Currently Under My “Ponderation”

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Cool. An animated “brain” scratching his …………… brain. Well, he was scratching it until I saved this post and WordPress stripped out the “dangerous animation”. This is kind of a personal entry but as the overall topic is business related, and this is the only blog I have, I’m going to allow it (smile). For that matter, our reader may be asking him or herself these same, or similar, questions. Ponderation. According to the dictionary I just invented, “Ponderation” is defined as describing both “what I am pondering” and “what is under my consideration” at any given time, hence, Ponderation. Things that weight heavily on my mind. August 8 will mark the six month point where I was promised by many that I would “get it“. Not wanting to miss that critical date, here are some things for me to ponderate on:

1. I am still not quite comfortable with FaceBook. It would probably help if I logged on more than once per week (smile). I have determined that it’s “Events” capabilities are far superior to those found on LinkedIn and I see that as a critical component moving forward. “Groups” also look to be interesting.
2. I’ve seen this said more than a few times .. “It’s not numbers. It is relationships and conversions“.  How and why do people have 1,000′s of followers, folks they follow, connections, and friends? How can relationships be developed working with numbers of this scale? Yet, there are people behind those gravatars and it is past time to reach out.
3. When I post on this blog about Social Media tools like apps for Twitter, and some tech topics, page visits rise dramatically. The really funny part about all of this is that these are areas that, by and large, I am the least accomplished in. When I post about things that I do have expertise in, nobody visits (smile). Hmmmm. What does that tell me?

My Top 10 Favorite Social Media Apps

zoegriffin.co.uk

O.K., I lied. I think there are about 16 here (smile). About a month ago I did a post entitled “10 Tools That Make My Life Worth Living”.  A lot more cool toys have surfaced since that time so here is my updated list (in alphabetic order):

GizaPage: Think of GizaPage has your own personal webpage that directs others to all of your social media sites including Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, or any other place that you might have a profile or some sort of presence. So, instead of providing all these addresses you just say www.craigmjamieson.gizapage.com. That’s it. Simple and easy. Someone I spoke to told me that I could also do that on FriendFeed, and you can, but for this purpose, I like the GizaPage format better. I also discovered another interesting function of GizaPage while I was just trying some things out. When you log onto my Twitter tab, it takes you to an app called TweeTree. I have never heard of it but it looks a lot like a standard Twitter page. But, get this, it is also calling up the actual link content that you include in your tweets. For example, a couple of my recent tweets were for new blog postings. These are generated automatically by TwitterFeed along with a link to the post. TweetTree not only shows the tweet, it also shows the post itself including the Jing videos. Sweeet!!!

HootSuite: HootSuite is a lot like TweetLater in that you can schedule tweets to go out on a delayed schedule. It’s is also like TweetDeck in that you can use it to monitor your Twitter activity. And, it has some other cool tools. I am hoplessly in love with it’s FireFox toolbar button called the “Hootlet”. When reading a page you’d like to share, click on the Hootlet button and a tweet is created, the url is shortened, and you can send the tweet now or schedule it for later. And do all of this while never leaving the page you are reading. They should really call this thing HootSweeeet (smile).

Jing Video Capture Software

I just learned this morning about a program called Jing. People were buzzing on Twitter about how cool it was. Well, it is. You can screen capture images, however, I already have been using the Vista “snipping tool” tool and Aviary for that. Might switch (smile). What caught my attention was “video capture”. Hmmm. Does this mean that I can make a video of what I do on my screen? This would be great for instructional videos. What you will find below is my first, and very lame, attempt (smile).

I am impressed that it is simple to use but there are limitations:

1. In order to post to YouTube you do need to go with the paid version upgrade.
2. The free version of Screencast.com that comes with Jing is limited to 2gb of storage and I think the same in bandwidth. I’m not sure what the bandwidth means but the storage limitation should not be that much of an issue.
3. Videos are limited to 5 minutes in length. I figure a 5 minute video is about 15mb. This means about 600 videos or 10 hours of them if my calculations are correct. Even I can’t talk that much. Well, o.k., maybe (smile). Interesting thought, though, since I am pulling this off Screencast and onto VodPod, maybe I can delete it from Screencast and will not have to deal with the potential storage issue? Hmmm.
4. Naturally, since this is a WordPress.com account, there are always issues in trying to figure out how to get things like this to a post. In this particular example, it means: create video using Jing; save to Screencast.com; go to Screencast.com and call up your new video; use the VodPod FireFox toolbar “share video” button to capture the video; and finally use VodPod to post the video to your blog. This sounds worse than it actually is.

Update: I just received a link via twitter from Dirk Frazier who is the PM over at Screencast.com. This appears to be a simpler way to “Embed Jing into A WordPress.com Blog”. Still involves VodPod as this is the workaround tool. Thanks, Dirk!

Overall, I’m gonna’ give this sucka’ two thumbs up (smile). Hope you enjoy the video. Please be kind. I used my shirt pocket as a microphone holder (smile).

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

more about “2009-07-17_1857“, posted with vodpod

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Ultra Clean Smoke Out – July 15, 2009

Well, if they say that a picture is worth 1,ooo words, here are several thousand for you to enjoy! NetWorks! Boise members are identified where featured. I’m a lousy photographer and this is my first attempt at a slide show so ….  please be gentle. I know, “Craig, don’t quit the day job” (smile)

If you missed this, you missed out! Probably over 400 folks enyoying BBQ and excellent networking. This is event is held the 3rd Wednesday of each month over at Ultra Clean in Meridian. It was announced today that starting next month a 1/2 educational seminar will be offered beginning at 11:00 AM and prior to the event which begins at 11:30 AM and runs to 2:00 PM. Oh yeah, and it’s even FREE. Can’t beat that!

And, since NetWorks! Boise is all about networking, this event is integrated into our regular schedule. I might add that Ultra Clean is also a member of our group. Shameless plug (smile).

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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