Life Success Learning to Create Positive Habitual Behavior & Overcoming Negativity

The first and sometimes most important success habit that must be formed is one of positive thinking. Dwell on the positive exit that's desired and avoid thinking about anything that's not wanted. Nothing will ensure failure faster than the very thought that the failure will occur. People say that it's absolutely normal for negativity to creep into our thoughts. Be that as it may, any negative thought has to be banished immediately and replaced with a positive one. This simple, yet effective technique, practiced regularly can help you move towards success like nothing else.

Forget about the past, it's gone and there's no going back. Regardless of what's happened before, today is a new day. Holding onto the past ensures that you'll stay right where you are in life. Letting go of past failures allows you to see the potential for future success and to move towards it. Realize that any past failures, real or imagined, were purely lessons that you thought to this moment in time. Appreciate the education you received and bravely move towards success with the knowledge you've gained.

Overcome the desire to put things off until another time. For most people that procrastinate, another time never comes. Things pile up over time and there's no way to catch up, adding to frustrations and even more procrastination. Whether it's taking out the trash or calling a client, get to it right away. Only by getting straight to work and finishing tasks can success really be accomplished. Practice this non-procrastinating lifestyle and you'll soon find not only that things are being accomplished, but that you have time left at the end of the day too.

Another important aspect of success is the ability to manage time. It can be very easy to lose track of time and difficult to get back on track. Keep track of everything you do during an average day and how much time it took to do it. Go through an entire week of this. Now evaluate and see what should be adjusted or eliminated for optimal time management. Continue to develop a schedule that allows maximum time for every activity. Include all your business and personal time in this and you'll soon find a workable and even profitable schedule for yourself.

Develop the confidence to go forth and conquer. Knowing a thing can be done and believing you can do it are two entirely different things. It's vital to your success and the success of all of your endeavors that you are confident in your self. Confidence shows through everything you do and it affects your ultimate success more than you think. Carry yourself importantly, speak with authority, be secure with yourself and walk tall. Believe in yourself and your ideas and present them with passion. Do these things and others will recognize your confidence and want to be associated with you.

Success is not a matter of predestination, it depends upon the will of the seeker. With the will to succeed, it's possible to do anything you desire. It really is as simple as that, despite the general tendency to believe otherwise. Over and over again, success stories appear that portrait down and out individuals that executed their own free will to rise above. Exert your will over the situations in your life, change them to suit you and your goals and success will follow.

What is success? Is it money, power, health or spirituality? Success means different things to different people. For some, success can only be seen in the form of financial gain and power. For others, success means a happy, healthy family with only the basics of life. Regardless of how it's defined, success is possible with the proper application of some basic habits and the development of key character traits.

The Five Components of a Business Strategy

Can you define exactly what makes up a business strategy? Some people say no, but we think you can.

In fact, we believe a valid business strategy has five components:

1. Your company's current or desired core competencies
2. A description of how you will differentiate vs. competitors
3. The industry or industries in which you intend to compete
4. The initiatives you plan to implement in the areas of marketing, operations, information technology, finance and organizational development
5. A financial forecast that shows how your plans will meet stakeholder requirements over the next 3 to 5 years

Let's look at each of these components .

The first component of a valid business strategy is a clear description of your company's current or desired core competencies.

You may be thinking, "Great, but what's a 'core competency?"' While there are many definitions, here's a good one from Wikipedia:

" ACore competency is something that a firm can do well and that meets the following three conditions:

• It provides consumer benefits
• It is not easy for competitors to imitate
• It can be leveraged widely to many products and markets.

A core competency can take various forms, including technical / subject matter know how, a reliable process, and / or close relationships with customers and suppliers. It may also include product development or culture, such as employee dedication. "

For example, we could say that Southwest Airlines is a reliable airline that offers low fares. But in order to provide those benefits, it has to have certain "core competencies," important capabilities that enable it to have low fares and to be reliable. We believe that Southwest Airlines has four core competencies that it executes so well that it regularly beats all other US airlines in terms of profitability.

These core competencies are:

• The lowest operating costs per plane
• An economic point-to-point airport network
• A fanatical culture focused on customer service and cost savings
• An ability to keep planes in the air more of the time than its competitors.

Southwest airlines could not offer the benefits of low prices and reliable service if it did not master these core competencies. What key benefits do you want to offer your customers? What core competencies do you need to master to provide them?

The second component of a valid business strategy is a description of how you differentiate vs. competitors.

In our experience, differentiation is about being the best at something. This should be encapsulated in your mission statement - what are your company's aspirations and how are you going to beat the competition? We just talked about how Southwest Airlines differentiates - what are you going to offer customers that will make them choose your products or services so that you can grow your business?

It takes a lot of hard work to come up with a great answer to this question and even more work to make that difference real. It's easy for us to say that Southwest is the best low-cost airline in the US, but it's extraordinarily difficult for them to pull it off.

The third component of a valid business strategy is a description of the industry or industries in which you intend to compete.

You need to be able to define just what kind of company you are - are you a furniture manufacturer? A gift card retailer? A consulting firm, a bearings distributor, a toy importer, etc.? This step sounds easy but we find that companies are often so concerned about getting too narrow in their focus that they fail to become really clear about what they want to do. A company with a good business strategy will have thought through these issues and made the hard decisions necessary to clarify its identity. If it has, it can easily pass the litmus test of identifying the industry or industries in which it operates.

The fourth component of a business strategy is the set of initiatives you plan to implement in the areas of marketing, operations, information technology, finance and organizational development.

These are the plans that guide your company's focus and resource allocation over the next several years. If your business strategy is specific enough to be relevant, you will have detailed plans in all of these areas.

The fifth component of a business strategy is a financial plan that forecasts the results you expect to get from your plans and illustrates how they will meet stakeholder requirements over the next 3 to 5 years.

Your strategic planning process can not be separated from your annual budget process. In the vast majority of companies, if it's not in the budget, it does not exist. That's why you have to have a very senior financial person on your strategic planning team, preferably the CFO. During the planning process, your team must agree a financial plan that estimates the results of implementing your strategy. This plan needs to earn the approval of your company's management and board and should be reviewed on a regular basis to track results and make refinements.

So - those are the five components of a valid business strategy. Good luck planning your success. And succeeding because you plan.

How to Become a Supplier Or a Distributor!

A lot of people make a good earning by buying the product directly from the manufacturer and selling it to the retailer or direct market. Especially, in the internet, a lot of people run the same business without even setting up a warehouse to store the products from the manufacturer. They almost work like a broker.

This method is commonly called drop shipping. In this situation, the seller attracts prospective customers via different 'community online stores' or via their website and once the deal is closed, they ask the distributor to ship the product directly to the consumer. Thus you save a lot of money as you do not need to spend on storage, carrying or transportation, showroom and storefront employees. All you need is to promote the product online via advertisement or your website and channel the sale via you.

If you want to start an online business, this business model is fine as long as the target market is accustomed to buying these products online (all products do not have a good market online that you can rely on).

But what if you want to start the business in real world? A lot of manufacturers have the option so that you can contact prospective retailers and sell the product directly to them without having your warehouse in between. However, the profit margin is often less than what you could have earned by selling the product directly to the target market. However, the business volume always works for you.

Do you want to start a real business as a supplier or distributor with your own warehouse? Here is a step by step guide to start the business.

Ok, there are some legal issues that you must consider before you really invest into the business. You mainly need two documents - Tax ID and Vendor's License if you want to sell the products directly to the target market like a fair.

You can apply for the Tax ID at IRS (US Department of Treasury). This is important as most of the manufacturers also require Tax ID. Apart from that if you have a tax ID it would also help you in banking and you can keep your business income and personal income separate while filing for tax return. You can get the vendor's license from your state's official website.

Now, when you have got both the papers, you are ready to dive into the market. You can now directly contact the manufacturers to sell their product. A lot of manufacturers will be happy to offer you distributorship but some of them would definitely look for your previous experience. As you do not have any prior experience, you should start developing a network or retailers who would be interested in selling your product. Do not forget that your success depends on the network.

There are other places apart from the direct market where you can look for retailers. For example, there are different distributor's forums or directory of wholesale distributors and wholesale suppliers. You should participate there to get more buyers interested in your product. A lot of people also use telephone directories to find related distributors. You can enlist your business information there to get prospective clients.

The Keys of Life - How to be Happy

As a life coach for a number of years now, I have been exposed to the concepts and tools necessary for creating a happy life. This information is not just text book theory, it is real, and I am proud to say that I am making a difference in such a positive way that both my clients and my children will maintain a real advantage in their future.

So what are the messages I attend? What are the tools I employ? And what is the language I maintain for a healthy mind? There are many imaginative ideas one can institute within the household to create awareness, and these examples seem to work for us, not always immediately, but I feel certain they will play out in a positive way in the future. When one singles out each item individually, they may seem too simple to make a difference, however when combined with a full understanding of the technology they begin to make a lot more sense.

So why is it that human animals are so unhappy? Why do we hear that 1 in 4 Australians are clinically depressed? This article would be too long if I were to cover all the reasons, but I will attempt to address a number of them.

1. We compare upwards.

There are so many things around us that make our life "easier" and provide us with more leisure time: .... DVD players, washing machines, fancy cars, play stations etc .. As we have more leisure time, these materialistic things help us fill our days, they make us "look good" and possibly temporarily happy, and more importantly provide us with the things that someone else does not have.

So what happens to the people who do not have some or all of these items? Children want what others have and feel that these things will make them and their lives more interesting and fun. We all want things. We do not need them, we just want them. We want them because our friends appear happier, and we want to be a part of that. So we compare upwards and we look to what we do not have that create a par. It's this vacuum that gives us a feeling of not being complete and we think we are not able to be happy. How often do we compare downwards? How often do we stop and say, "I am so happy to be free and can play with my children at the park", "I am so happy that I am alive and have food on the table". "I am so happy to be healthy and am not in hospital recovering from cancer."

I am consistently reminding my children to not only appreciate what they have, but to create a list on a daily basis of all the things they appreciate. The appreciation list can be as simple as "I appreciate getting a call from my friend earlier today". We need to balance out our comparison mechanism. It is becoming so increasingly difficult with society becoming more affluent, and the media controlling what we are told to think. We really have to start working hard at this. We have to start playing the game of life, so that it starts to work in our favor because as I look around at the number of overweight, depressed people and the state of this planet, we are losing the battle.

What else do I do to make my children aware? For many years I have been telling my kids to mute the ads on television. The marketing people who create these advertisements are a lot smarter than we are. They cleverly use positive associations to sell their products with no regard for what or how it is effecting our comparison state. They use anchors and leverage us into softening our brains.

I have signs around the house and try to create a balance. Small posters that say things like "A week of need not want", "A month of NOW!", "Do not complain about it, change it or fix it", "A situation needs to be either deal with or accepted" "Why make it a problem? There are no problems in the NOW." These signs inspire discussion and subliminal alterations to my children's assessment of life.

2. We have an obscured concept of what success is.

Many people in the western world think that success is a house, car, money, and possessions. You do not have to look far at the statistics to discover that the financially wealthy are not necessarily happier than those with less financial means and are more challenged financially. Who was it that stated:
"Today, we have more experts but more problems, more medicine but less wellness.
Bottom line, happiness has little to do with money. It is our state of mind. I remember when I was in my teens thinking that if I had enough money just for my bus transport I would be so happy. Then I got older and all of a sudden, it was not enough, I wanted a car etc. You know what I mean. Look around you, see how much STUFF you have, is it made up of a NEED or a WANT. Do you remember how happy you were when you only had a few boxes in your life, no baggage. Then you start to fill it up with stuff. Did it make you happier? Ladies and Gentleman, this is not success. It is empty and lacks value. And it never ends. This path will continuously be fed by trying to get somewhere, and humans do not realize that there is nowhere to get. We are creating dreams about "some day, one day". When I finally get my BMW then I will go camping with my family. When I just get $ x, then I will start a family, When I finally drop 7kilo I will be happier with my weight. The time is NOW, right now. This moment. Do not wait, do it now. Go on that trip, get involved with needy children, do that thing you have always said you would like to do. Help the less privileged. Just remember if you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head, and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy. Success is finding YOUR OWN passion, discovering what you want to do with your life and going for it 200%. Not doing what others tell you. Start today. Learn about yourself, then create the most amazing possibilities for yourself.
Life is beautiful and the universe if perfect in every way. All you have to do is allow yourself see how beautiful things are, how wonderful you are, and start to become part of what is already perfect.

3. Communication:

You do not have go go back many years to see how communication has changed. Think back to the days when you would walk along the street, take public transport and people would say "Gday" "Lovely day" etc. On face value it does not mean very much, but this is the game of life we ​​are not playing any more. We prefer to sit opposite a computer, answer emails, play computers games, swim in our pools at home, watch TV etc, left to communicate with our own "little voice". In fact with 50,000 thousand thoughts we have on a daily basis, it seems that we are spending more and more time "ALONE". Now that would be OK if our internal communication was open to new ideas, with a potential to create thought- provoking new concepts and important issues in life. However, the internal chatter is so limited, and has become so molded by our clever governments and advertising geniuses, that we do not have a chance. That's because we are only working from a position of what we know we know and what we know we do not know. It has left no room for all the things we do not know we do not know. We can only get access to those blind spots in our life if we have other people expose them. We can only get it by being present to our voices. We can only get it from others. If you were to engage in a conversation with that old lady on a bus, imagine what pearls of wisdom you may get from her. Or that gem from that person we chatted to while waiting at the checkout at the supermarket. We have been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet our neighbor. We have acquired outer space but not inner space. We need to get back to basics and start talking. We will all begin to discover that pretty much all people in the universe want the same things and generally think similar thoughts. We all want to be happy. 

I am continuously chatting to people, smiling as I walk past people, and I let my children see that, we discuss it continuously and make points of interest to what goes on. Continuing talking about the concepts of how people are trying to "look good and trying to avoid looking bad", and all about "life". Remember your children are not getting an education about "life" from school where they spend most of their days. Do not forget that you DID NOT GET ANY EDUCATION AT SCHOOL ABOUT LIFE. So get learning, get educated and start educating the children. It will help them with their health, relationships and conventional education.

I encourage you to consider that life is beautiful, and note that we have learned to make a living but not a life and we have added years to our lives, but not life to our years.

What I do:

Among other things, I provide face to face life coaching in Melbourne Australia. I am continuously making a difference in people's lives. I know that 5 minutes before I die I wont be thinking about the house or car I did or did not have, but I will be smiling at the thought of the numerous people whose lives have been effected positively by my input. It is the most rewarding life I could lead and I could ever pursue.

jonathan@lourie.org

Ways Young People Can Win With Money

Learning about money while you are still young is an awesome idea. Let me give you a few ideas that young people can use to really win in their financial lives.

Being realistic is key. And winning with money is realistic! This means you should use common sense, investigate investments, the markets, and the opportunities you are interested in. Read the fine print. If you were to take on debt, ask yourself if it would be worth it, or if the debt would be like an anchor. Again, be realistic. Look at the real consequences of the actions you could take. Good actions should be turned into habits.

Consider entrepreneurship. Write down business ideas. Learn the skills you need to succeed. See if your business idea is feasible by testing your product or service. If it is, type up a business plan, and get to work. Make the phone calls and do the web searches necessary to find the information you need.

Join a club or society for young entrepreneurs. Earn a business degree. The more you can learn about business, the better off you are. Being around and networking with other goal oriented, ambitious entrepreneurial types is a boon to your success. Being around the total risk averse and the complacent is not a boon to success.

Work hard at your job and / or at your business. Make a good name for yourself. If a job does not work out, do not trash your goal of being rich. Just keep plugging away and learn from your mistakes. Sales or customer service would be a good starting point if your first job is not running your own business.

While (and if) you live with your parents, sock away as much money as you can. W. Clement Stone once said, "If you can not save money, the seeds of greatness are not in you."

Learn about investments, by taking an investments class at your high school or college (taking a few more classes is better). Economics is good thing to study too. Finance and economics are tough courses but are very worthwhile. Read extracurricular books and read about your interests.

Winning with money is not always easy. Self discipline, sacrifice, frugality, hard work, managing risk, reading books, and holding on to your long term vision are essential to your success.

eBay Money Making Guide

Want a quick and easy eBay money making guide? Here you go, a simple and short one that'll show you how to make money on eBay quickly and effectively.

A lot of people assume that if they just visit eBay, drop a few auctions on there, and leave, they'll start making BIG money. This simply can not be further from the truth.

If you want to have really good success on eBay then it takes planning and research. The # 1 thing about eBay is the products, and the price that you get for the products you're selling.

In other words, if you're looking at starting a substantial eBay business with all the extra "junk" in your house, then you probably will not achieve success. A real eBay business sells a LOT of the same product over, and over, because they've found a niche that they can supply products to.

Do you see what I'm saying?

The key to selling on eBay is finding a group of people that want to buy the same kind of product, and giving it to all of them over and over again.

So how do you go about doing that?

Well the easiest way to do that is to think about it yourself. What would you buy on eBay? What's a good group of people buying a lot of? What kind of niche do you think you know well? What products would solve their problems? These questions really spark some interesting directions in your mind and will give you plenty ideas of products that you can sell and begin profiting from on eBay.

Here's a quick 3 step process to begin:

1) Make an eBay account

2) Find the products you want to sell

3) Put up all your auctions and start to watch the sales trickle in

BOTS Companion of a Modern Revenue Manager

Bots have become an important part of human life both, at the personal and professional front and their involvement is climbing new peaks with every passing day. They surround us in our daily life in the form of Artificial Intelligence, Search Engines, and Software. Part of it has also paved way for smarter and efficient revenue management for hotels fueling the debt that if humans should be irrevocably replaced with bots for this complex round the clock function. Although the practice may be at a nascent stage to draw concluding, it has certainly made a mark in the real of the hospitality industry and has become an indispensable part of any hotel revenue management.

Artificial Intelligence powered robots can analyze and synthesize large chunks of hotel data collected at various touch points in a fraction of seconds to present meaningful insights about the booking pattern, demand, guest behavior which is impossible to be grouped or processed by any amount of human workforce with the same efficiency as bots. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the Artificial Intelligence has sort of revolutionized the hospitality industry across the globe, enabling every business to improve on multiple fronts like hotel pricing, price optimization, revenue management, guest experience management, booking management, demand and even capacity optimization of properties.

Furthermore, these bots are also capable of analyzing trends and trace upcoming events in the town to estimate the rise in demand, providing enough room for revenue managers to tweak the pricing and availability instead of fire fighting the situation at the last minute.

Leading hotels have already started betting big on AI powered bots and poised to explore new ways to make bots a part of their business operations. One significant advantage bots have over humans is that they can work tirelessly 24X7 with the same precision. Hotel industry requires attention 24X7 and is one of the most dynamic industries with continuous fluctuations in trends, demand, and prices. That is where these robust machines have huge value to add to the revenue management realm. These invisible machines can not only quickly determine the best rates at a particular time for your property, (room rate optimization) but also advise the revenue managers on which segment to target and the kind of promotional offers to be run to maximize the revenue.

Another major area where hotels continue to hustle is direct bookings. Hotels have been continuously trying to improve booking numbers on their own website since OTA missions are touching skies, eating up a major revenue share of hotels. Hotels would be surprised to know that even in this area, bots can improve their game and help increase the number of bookings by a decent percentage. With advanced learning capabilities and rigorous analysis of visitor's purchasing behavior, AI powered bots can refine the visitor experience and personalize every visitor's journey to their needs and interests. This increments visitor engagement and reduces the cycle time of purchase leading to conversion on the hotel website itself.

This again brings us to the joke that wherever revenue managers can be gradually replaced by bots completely risking their roles and jobs in the industry altogether. The answer is obviously NO since these micro machines can only process and analyze only a set number of parameters in their decision and often neglect external market implications that may not be considered by such bots but are easily identifiable only by human revenue managers and this acumen is gained by experience.

Therefore, the ideal mix should be machine results mediated and supervised by human revenue managers. For eg, Pricing is one area which could have been automated with a reasonable amount of diligence and control of the revenue manager. Similarly, online reputation management can also be monitored with technology; however, a personalized approach will take you a long way. The key is to automate the processes that require minimum human intervention and involve human where necessary. This will help revenue managers to don more hats at the same time like exploring more avenues to maximize per guest audience and focus on other revenue increasing strategies.

Thus, witnessing the scenarios discussed above, we can conclude that the status of the bots is of a companion to revenue managers instead of a successor who will complement them at every step with razor fast information and analysis of the market and competition, enabling revenue managers to take informed decisions in no time and help them optimize revenues and drive the hotel towards new millions of success.

A Guide to Hiring an SEO Provider

If your business has any online components (such as a website), then SEO is critical to the ongoing success of your business. You may have the most expensive website in your industry, but without web traffic (visitors) to that website, it is essentially useless. It is not just traffic that you need, but targeted traffic. A good quality SEO service can provide relevant, consistent web traffic to your website (s). This guide will allow you, as a non-expert, to distinguish between good and bad SEO providers. There are many of both kinds, this guide should help you to find the good ones.

SEO needs to be implemented in a way that is effective in achieving your SEO goals and providing that all important meaningful presence on the World Wide Web.

Quality SEO is a critical investment when it comes to developing successful expansion and growth strategies.

Ineffective SEO implementation, renders your SEO efforts wholly ineffective and a waste of your money.

6 things you need to know and understand before hiring an SEO provider:

1) Hiring an SEO provider should be seen as an investment in your business. You should not view it as a business expense, but rather a business strategy and an effective way of enhancing your business presence within your business sector. Try not to begin your search with the intent of "buying some SEO". Hiring an SEO provider should have viewed rather as hiring an employee that understands and cares about your business and its online objectives.

2) The first page of Google (or any search engine) is everything. Few people ever go to the second page of the search results anymore. Google is so good at being a search engine that people blindly trust Google's ability to deliver the most relevant results on the first page. Think about how often you click through to the second page. This means that if your business is not on the first page, it's almost as good as now. The top positions on page one get the most clicks, which decrease as you progress downwards on the page.

3) The 'big' keywords are not everything. It is better to be on the first page for a fewer smaller keywords, than try to rank for larger keywords and not be on the first page at all. For example, an accountancy business in Preston may not rank for the highly competitive keyword 'accountant' (unless they have a lot of SEO budget and time to wait for rankings); but the same business could conceivably rank highly for the keyword 'chartered accountant Preston'. A good SEO provider should research the keywords that your business could literally rank on page one for and also keywords that have enough search volume to be worthwhile for your business to try ranking for.

4) SEO is all about beating your competition. There is no guarantee from the search engines to say you will be on the first page of Google if you do certain things. Put simply, SEO works like this:

The search engines have their conventions; websites that conform by giving the search engines what they want, will find them making achieving search engine rankings. The only thing standing between you and the top spots in the search rankings is your competition. Not your actual business competitors, but your online competitors. The websites that currently have the top spots in the search engines for your desired keywords are your online competition, and you need to beat them out of those top spots. Some keywords will be easy to rank for, others will be more difficult. It is only your online competition that dictates which will be the case for each individual keyword. A good SEO provider will research the competition for each of your keywords. Then, after the most effective keywords for your business sector have been identified that they should be implemented in accordance with point number three above.

5) On-page and Off-page SEO.

Search engine optimization is a complex and ever-evolving science, but in order to intelligently interview a prospective SEO provider you need to understand that there are two main types of SEO.

On-page SEO relates to the factors on your website that affect your SEO (keywords, usability, page headings, outbound links, internal links, etc.).

Off-page SEO are the factors that relate directly to matters outside of your website that affect the SEO of the website, such as back links, citations, social sharing, etc.

SEO providers can work on your off-page SEO fairly easily, but if you are not willing to change on-page SEO, according to their recommendations, you can not blame them for lack of results. A good SEO provider will review your website and report back about your on-page SEO, and how it can be improved. You should have your web designer make the adjustments. (Remember he is the expert in this field)

6) An increase in search engine ranking is not necessarily an increase in leads and sales. All your SEO provider can do is get your website, videos, Google Places, articles, blog posts, etc. further up the search engine results. They can not guarantee an increase in sales or leads, because that factor is determined by your own sales funnel. It is not the SEO provider's job to make sure that the extra web traffic you receive will convert to more leads or sales. Your website needs to convert those visitors with good marketing, which is an issue for your marketing consultant to deal with.

The key differences between 'good' and 'bad' SEO providers:

Good SEO Providers
Good SEO providers know and understand the points mentioned above. You can judge this by their answers to the questions provided later in my next article.
Good SEO providers want to build a solid foundation and a proper SEO plan for your business, with an extensive initial keyword and market (competitor) research. They will often insist upon it, even if the prospect client does not see the need. Sometimes a good SEO provider will refuse to work with a client that does not want the important groundwork to be done, because they know that without it they will not be likely to provide the client with the results that they want. A good SEO provider will want to provide their client with results as their first priority. Often a client will say "but I've already done the keyword research myself". Many potential clients sit down for 5 or 10 minutes to write out all the keywords that they think are relevant to their business, and then think that they have now done all the keyword research that is needed. Real keyword research is a lengthy, investigative process.

Good SEO providers use responsible SEO methods, such as paying more attention to on-page SEO, securing quality back links, improving citations, helping social sharing, including a good user experience, etc.

Bad SEO Providers
Bad SEO providers will want to take their clients' money as their first priority. They will not conduct proper keyword and market research, but will say, for example, "what are your three keywords and your URL that you want to rank for". If this happens (as it often does) you can be sure they are simply plugging your website into software to get irrelevant back links all over the internet, using spam blog comments, link farms and other means. In many cases this approach is ineffective because the URL, or domain, may not match the client's desired keywords. This can also damage the reputation and, ironically, the long-term SEO and credibility of the website.
Bad SEO providers use bad quality SEO methods (Sometimes referred to as Black-hat methods), Utilizing these methods can have an extremely detrimental effect on how your website is perceived by search engines. This in turn may result in your website being (Sand boxed). Needless to say this is extremely undesirable, as damage such as this is extremely difficult to reverse.

Ensure you get the specialist SEO who knows how to highlight the attributes of your company and can draw attention to your products and your services in a way that really makes your business stand-out on the worldwide web.

Ways to Make Money Online

Many people are interested in making money online, but they are having second thoughts because of many scammers out there, and the legitimacy of various offers. Also they are concerned about possible amount of money that can be made online, and is it worth of time spent in front of PC. These fears are justified, but also there is a lot of legitimate ways of making money online, and there is a piles of cash waiting you to just pick it up.

One of the easiest and the smartest ways to start your online venture is affiliate marketing, and advertising affiliate products. To achieve success in this, you'll need to make blogs, websites, write newsletters, etc., and use all these mediums to serve ads and advertisements to potential buyers. Yes, it's true that this can be easy, and all you need to do is make some coding on your websites, and join various affiliate programs, and fortune is on it's way to you. But of course, all this will happen if you put a real effort in that, and all the fortune you'll make will be measured by the work you invest. Almost everyone can make a few bucks online, but only those who put enough time and effort will make much more then doing a regular nine to five day job. Many people try this, but they quit before they even by domain name and those basic stuff.

It's the easiest way, but affiliate marketing is not the only way to make money online. Selling various products through online shops can be a very lucrative way of online earnings, and easily can replace your job earnings within weeks. Buy different products on wholesales, and sell them on your website for a regular price, that's the way a lot of work at home mums are making their online income, selling children's products to other mums. Advertising these products just by contributing on mums forums, and just by being their selves. Think about it, and you'll be how easy that can be. So to speak, that's how the eBay got started! You just need to think out of the box, and look around your self, there is a lot of possibilities, and a lot of niches where you can make money online.

So, not to speak to much, conclusion is that there is a lot of money to be made working online, but only if you have enough determination, and willingness to put some effort in it.

The harder you work, the luckier you get.

Making Money Online With a Forex Trading System

In this article I will discuss making money online, Forex trading, and software related to Forex trading. Both good and bad. As well as cover some other things. Although there are a lot of systems out there, more importantly scams, there's not quite as many as there are online get rich quick schemes and ponzi schemes in general. There are still hundreds if not thousands of scams that directly refer to Forex Currency Trading. These scams come in various formats but often get the record set straight on them quickly, however a few others somehow escape the negative publicity and go for years and hit unsuspecting profit seekers where it hurts the most daily. The problem with Forex is that so much seems too good to be true, and a lot of stuff is, but it's also true that many people have made millions and some are not really all that smart at it. You can profit from the right robot.

The first thing I would like to discuss is the topic of sales pages, that common pitch page that a lot of products use and you often think it's gone too far or it must be a scam just by looking at it. But when you think real hard about it, over half the time this is not actually the case ... These sales pages are so long and packed with information since they are commonly advertised on the web and it is more or less business strategy, as opposed to anything reflecting the product. Certain sellers force you to use pitch pages, they need a specific landing page and it makes things much easier for sales transactions.

So rather than guide you through a structured web site with more details through various sections; they often use this pitch page and they generally pack it with information and a ton of hard selling. This has proven to be the trend and it's gotten harder and harder for some EAs to market their software without these types of pitch pages. It is often the case with digital products and or / stuff you can order online. When it comes to these make-money-online and Forex sites they often have a lot of flash to them and obviously many things to draw customers in. In reality it's not much different from any other form of advertising, most certainly not the likes of gambling, and so forth. They need to have some sort of appeal and be competitive. My conclusion is that even if it looks like it could be a scam, do your homework anyway and it may not be. It just depends. Some things are signs, but in my opinion web design and hard selling are not direct signs of a scam. Although in the Forex Market something to hope for would be charts and proof.

With regards to the surveys and other things, it amounts to filling out spam for pennies pretty much, data entry is the same and much more annoying than even the most desperate realize. It also makes you look bad if you tell your friends. You still have to spend time to make any real money, not prizes, and some also require a credit card number on file, and they text you and stuff too. Let's be honest, it sucks. It's bottom of the barrel work that just is not worth it. It's for the ultra-lazy. The kind of human being who for example might get scammed by a Forex system. Not a serious adult who is looking to profit from investment and extend their savings, along with make more money in general.

I once tried a clicking service just to see if I actually could make money, on the popular moneytec forum it was this highly recommended thing by a bunch of lazy work at home users, but I bought into it at the time, and, no joke I signed up and they told me it would be easy and they would make it easy to visit 1000 sites or whatever they have you visit for 15 cents. So I clicked a link and it just starting loading every 2 seconds, it was awfully slow, I waited 15 minutes and that was only like 25 sites, i got a virus after, and i closed it fast. I abandoned the 15 cents for it and thought instantly that these poor souls who do this are a whole helluva lot more desperate than I am. I do not belong in these sort of slums of the internet. This is the first time I have ever written about it. During that several years ago before I started trading Forex I also wrote a few surveys and never got paid once. I have marketed online to some success but mainly my success has been through Forex Trading. That's why I do not need to work a real job and can sit around doing stuff like this all day. Publishing is very important to me. Once something you write online get indexed by a major search engine like Google, chances are that it will be there for a very long time. I find that important anyway ...

There are other ways you can make money online without Forex Trading, though sadly it is often below the barrel work; boring data entry, filling out surveys for pennies, to name a couple of the more common ones. If you're into making web sites you may also advertise on one of your sites or a network of sites, and for that you need fresh content and you need to get traffic, which is way harder than one might think. You can sell products as an affiliate, although you need to find your niche and work very hard at it, it becomes a time consuming job for some people and no matter what you're likely to going to need to invest in something no matter what you do. Whether it's Forex, Web Design, Advertising or whatever it is or a combination of things, most importantly it takes time and ability to adapt your passion. Although you still have much more freedom, affiliate marketing online is very crowded and has been for years. You can also use a revenue-share article and / or video submission service in hopes of being one of the few who can actually earn a living at it. Though that is not for everyone. If you've got four young children and only have an extra hour or two a day to pull in some extra income you most likely do not have time to play a Martha Stewart like figure. Most people do not.

Forex Trading on the other hand is more convenient in the sense that it is an extremely profitable investment opportunity given the right expert adviser, to advise your trade and supply signals, generally to guide you. That is option one. You need a broker. It's way easier than you think and in the Forex industry not as big of a word as you might think, easy to get and you do not gotta meet them in person or anything. It's an online thing.

There are many options to trade Forex, one of the most common would be the use of automated Forex platforms and Forex robots, all automated Forex trading in general. There is nothing wrong with it. This is where expert advisers come in, EAs for short. These are the Forex experts as I mentioned above who supply your trades and information to you. They pretty much tell you what to do. Some are much better than others. Some are not out to supply signals at all and simply selling their software to make profit from that end. Proper automated Forex software oftens runs on the metatrader 4 Forex trading platform, or at least the more popular ones do. Your EA software is like plug-in software for it. I'd actually be wrong to say all EAs use it, but many of the ones I have experience with use the Metatrader 4 Platform and I prefer it.

The other way to trade Forex is to study the market, find all the relevant information you need, take a very long time of a few months to several years to learn something, only to have it blow up as you were still too inexperienced to do something with your strategy when the market changed. Strategy is a very important element of online Forex trading but not just having a strategy, it's about having enough strategies and being able to adapt properly with the market. This is why a lot of people fail without popular EAs, because the EA is usually a well-trained trader and your common trader can not provide himself with signals even half as good and a lot less consistently. The well known EAs are usually like 15 year traders and so forth who studied the market like a school subject and make extra money on the side by selling there signals too you, or software which grants them.

A lot of Forex EAs today simply do not have that sort strategy or ability to adapt with the market ... So not making them scams, but just not prepared for the long haul in general. I have a lot of experience with failed systems and systems that worked for just a little while. I have others that work to this day but I am always seeking new ones. I can review several including one I use now however that has already been done a few times over.

If you're looking for the cross between really learning Forex and just really having to learn complicated signals and software I'd suggest Forex Fap Turbo. The downside of this is you often need to buy extra stuff to learn it and some of it is useless. All of this for pretty decent software but it takes way more time and skill and not something I was happy with. I requested and received my refund for the software and some other software related to it, as it was just not for me and the only people i heard reviewing and bragging about it were a lot more educated before they tried it than I was. I was not ready then, am not ready now. Although it's a well reviewed Forex system and not a scam, I've provided a lot of help, but there are too many of the same, some are forex advertisements so that's not a lot of help. It also brings up a lot of the Fap Turbo related software that is not even the direct software and you gotta buy it separately. So it's a lot of hassle even more than some typical investments that are not related to Forex.

I have also tried automoney and several other Forex robots and automated Forex platforms. I have found that many of these automated Forex systems are a dime a dozen and send you through far too many loops to get the desired results. If they do not eat your entire investment ... Some systems do not have stops and you have to do too much often, others are slow, and sometimes the EA is simply just not your sort of teacher and you get lost sometimes. ..Some EAs will simply sniff you out and then screw you over in the end. This is why it's important to watch for signs of proof either by service trial or physical proof before making your purchase of expensive Forex software.

I have also used Forex Assassin, the eToro Forex trading platform and Forex Harvester but nothing really significant has come up from any of those systems for me.

Some Forex marketers, EAs and employees in general and so forth are so wicked that they monitor new "Forex" related domain registration and somehow get your email address and solicit you ... So you have to be aware that in the Forex market as far as Forex expert advisers go, there is a lot of them competing to get your money. You are sincerely seeking the ones who are also looking to have a solid reputation and actually provide you with profitable trades, your EAs # 1 objective should be successfully trading Forex and not selling their software. This is another thing that makes the simple "pitch page" easy for EAs with very little maintenance, on that end of things. The software should be and often is a side venture for Forex experts who can actually profit from their knowledge of the market and have the means to market themselves ... Can anyone create automated software and sell it? Probably not, I think it's a bit of a stretch but then again it depends if you even get software, or whatever, most systems that are fully developed and have good features but do not work - were more than likely meant to work at some point.

I have read up on quite a few of the most popular Forex review sites like Forex Peace Army and many other well known ones, and to me they all pretty much point towards the same complicated software and their voters are already experts investing 10s of thousands already and they barely feel some of their losses. They switch around a lot; nothing turns out to be solid in the end. The reviews on sites like that most likely got started through advertising. Too many people get to review their own systems on Forex sites like that, etc. You never know who the reviewer is. Searching for automated Forex software reviews is almost impossible nowdays since they all say pretty much the same thing and are mostly positive ...

I have read up on many "free Forex signal" reports on the web and I also participate actively on various Forex forums and other Forex related sites. I often find with these particular Forex signals at least my impression is that you get someone looking to be a mentor of some sort for you, they are usually shady and turn out to be lacking when you need them the most. These guys are usually empty handed. They are trying to freelance or whatever so that they can supply systems and build a name for themselves, but the problem is that these are the guys who after so many followers do create a commercial system and then extremely end up failing, their the failed EA newbies to some extent and you want an EA who is an accomplished Forex expert.

One should consider it much better and safer to use an established system that is known to work, and not the work of an aspiring EA, or even worse, somebody who does not have those credentials at all and are just trying to stuff their ego . I have not enjoyed the free Forex signals and find it more like looting through them then finding anything that productive, not much is there or else all the Forex signals would have to be free and would be for everyone, all the best Forex signals would be free. At least that is my concept. I do not want a rookie EA telling me what to do, since the trend in the Forex market nowdays is most definitely for more popular and well established EAs to sell systems, mostly automated software. That is one thing I do not understand, who these people are that clog up the forums with nonsense and think they can compete in the market with actual successful Forex EAs who really know how to trade.

How much you want to trade really depends on you. If you're a Forex starter you need to have a good EA for starters, and while I can not hand pick one for you, I can provide at least one review since I have spent time on the subject, in this article off- site to an excellent EA which i have tried and complies with several of my standards. I feel it is an excellent resource for people like me at least who gets lost on the big stuff. There are many fish in the sea.

Writing Your Affiliate Home Business Plan

Here's a typical scenario: You are deciding to start a home business and suddenly everyone you know has his nose in your business, literally. What do you tell them? And how do you answer your own questions? What should you expect from the company in terms of stability, longevity, vitality, trust, income, and so forth? First the bad news: there are no guarantees. Then the good news: there is plenty of information from which to draw your own conclusions. The internet is huge, and any good company will offer free marketing tools and training.

But back to the WHY of that business plan. You're going to be starting small, slow and boy! is there a lot to learn. What's the point of actually sitting down and writing a business plan? You're not Bill Gates, this is not Microsoft, just you in your home office a few hours a week, slowly building an online business presence, not really understanding what the heck you'll be doing.

Relax and breathe. Unlike Mt. Rushmore, your plan will not be designed to withstand the weathering of the ages. You can expect it will change and bend with the flow of your real experiences, which will be totally yours, not identical to anyone else's.

What writing your plan will do is cause you to pause, think, dream, study and focus. The written document, whether it is one page or twelve, will give your business a framework to work within. The internet is vast and seemingly endless. It is easy to lose focus and drift away on a different whim or idea every day. Understanding where you are today, what tools you have to work with, what your goals are, and how you can best achieve them and measure your success, will help you stay on target and not waste what few hours you may be investing in your business at start-up.

Whenever you feel lost or confused, you can return to what you have written. When you analyze your situation and decide to make a change, rewrite that part of the plan. Understand that it's a living document, intended to grow with you and your business. Your business plan is your friend.

Getting Started with the Business Plan

First you need to study the company and its management. You need to read and learn about the products, the compensation plan and the network structure. See you next month. Just kidding.

Plan on doing SOME reading each and every work day for the next few months, if not indefinitely. Keep up with the company forum entries every day; read something in the training reports every day. Your education will continue. Plan for it.

When you are ready, open up a Notepad window and answer these questions:

What service / products does your business provide and what needs does it fill?

Who are the potential customers for your product or service and why will they purchase it from you?

How will you reach your potential customers?

Where will you get the financial resources to start your business?

Ok. Maybe your company offers many products and services. What do you want to focus on? I suggest that, at first, you focus on one or two products and / or the affiliate opportunity. In other words, keep is simple. Once you get the hang of what you're doing, you will KNOW when it's time to expand. Do only what you are comfortable with, every step of the way. This is YOUR business, it's your right and privilege to decide on your approach.

Internet marketing hinges on building trust. How will you do this?

Reaching customers means marketing. Your decision, once again. And again, the options should be in your company's training materials.

So we're talking developing a reading / study schedule. Here's a possible list, once you've read enough to make your own decisions to answer the above questions, start writing. Your writing can be lists of words and phrases, free-form brainstorming, outlines, mind maps, whatever works for you. Just write it down, and do not forget to save often. If your home office is affiliated by cats or small children, they have the tendency to press on random keyboard keys. Documents do occasionally just disappear. Saving avoids total disaster.

1. Study the products.
2. Read the training materials.
3. Read about decisions, bonuses, etc.
4. Study the marketing aids and strategies
5. Find out what free tools are available.
6. Visit the forums on a regular basis. Read everything about getting started.
7. Ask questions.

Your final written business plan will have at least four parts:

Introduction / background: history of the company and its founder, internet marketing trends, why THIS company and why NOW, and so on.

Goals: I suggest you think of what you would like to be learning in two years, but mainly focus on goals for your first year. Realistic goals can be planned based on info on the company website, in newsletters, searches on the forums, and focused questions to other affiliates.

Marketing plan: based on your answers to the first 3 questions above and your study of marketing aids and tools.

Action plans: the specifics of what you will do on a monthly, weekly, and / or daily basis for the next year.

I can not tell you what your answers should be, because you have to decide how much money you have to invest. Only you can decide how many hours per day, week or month you can invest in your business. What products you feel most comfortable marketing, and who you decide to target as your customer base, are all decisions only you can make. If you get stuck and do not understand a question, do not know where to find information, or do not know how to ASK a question, contact your sponsor or someone in your upline. If they can not help you, they should be able to send you to someonewho can.

You should NEVER feel alone. Work should be FUN! ...

Learn How To Make Money Online

Do you really need to learn how to make money online? I've read about Get-Rich-Quick schemes, so why in the world should I slow down my money making effort? The word 'learning' itself indicates hard work, time spent away from your usual day activities, lesser sleep and usually, there is no fun factor to it. Learn how to make money online? Nah!

Did I realize that I had to learn how to make money online? No I did not. At least not when I first started. I chose to make money online quickly. Guess what I did? I bought a Get-Rich-Quick program! Did it feel good knowing that you are on your way to earning big bucks fast? Definitely! Did it work? Unfortunately not! I did not even come close to the vicinity of success. What did you learn from all this? I need to learn how to make money online! Period.

I consider myself lucky that I only bought one get-rich-quick program. Why? Because there are others who fall for one after another. Along the way I did purchase an affiliate program, which to my horror simply ditches you the moment your payment came through. I could not even get the package to work and I could not reach them at all! I cannot begin to tell you how angry and frustrated I was. I paid $97 for nothing! It may not seem like a lot of money to you, but to me it was an expensive mistake. Never came across my mind that I could actually fall victim to a make money online scam. Always thought of myself as a careful person but I guess with scammers getting more intelligent these days, no one is spared. If it's any comfort at all, to myself at least, I am glad that these mistakes I made happened within a short period of time. It's better to make a mistake early, realize it early, learn from it and move on before investing too much time and money. Looking at it positively, I ended up learning how to make money online!

On the Internet, there are many tips to learn to make money online, learn how to make money online guides, secret to making money online and the list goes on. No harm reading. You could even pick up some very useful information. There are plenty of ways to learn how to make money online. The difficult part is choosing which suits you best, especially when you are new to Internet Marketing. You can find many techniques to learn how to make money online but what is more important here is to understand the whole process. I am a living example of someone who plunges into Internet Marketing without understanding the process. I thought I have read enough to understand how to make money online. It was only later did I realize that I did not understand enough.

So how crucial is it to learn how to make money online? I say, and I believe many other Internet Marketers will agree, that it is very crucial indeed. Remember this. When you purchase an ebook to learn how to make money online, you are learning about how this particular 'guru' made her/his money, her/his way. While it worked well for her/him, it may not work for you. You'll complain about it for a while and as these products usually come with money-back guarantee, you end up asking for refund. And then what? Next? Bought a few more, spent a few hundred dollars or even thousands, digesting each and every one of these ebooks and then try to deduce what works, what does not, how to start and where to start. You have invested lots of time and money, are you certain that you have made the best deductions on how to make money online? You can confidently answer 'yes' if you have made the money online again and again. After all, you are looking for a long-term income and not just some quick unsustainable income. Right?

For those who are just starting out, there are many credible ebooks available to learn how to make money online. Implementing the techniques taught is what I find most newbies are handicapped with. It does not get any easier when you are doing it alone. Some people are naturals. I fall into the category of the majority; people who need help and guidance. I took my first 'real' step to learn how to make money online by enrolling in an online 'university'. Finally, I patted myself on the back for taking that first 'real' step. I have chosen to educate myself to learn how to make money online. I am not a millionaire... yet (hey! I'm allowed to dream you know) but I am no longer far from the vicinity of success. I am success!

Recognizing Navigational Tools For the Future of Education

I have to laugh when I think of the times I watched the television program, "Flash Gordon," as he putted through outer space in his make-believe space ship, talking on his make-believe wireless radio, and dressed in his make-believe space suit. Well, I'm not laughing anymore. Today we have shuttled astronauts into outer space, have men living in a Space Station, have space suites that take your temperature and gauge your heart rate, and wireless communication devices that send pictures to Planet Earth. Far fetched from reality? Not anymore. As we speak, the future is starring us in the face, waiting to see how we will promote her in the next 5-10 years.

How did science-fiction become reality over the past 50 years? Let's consider one aspect of innovation: the learning environment - post secondary education. Why post secondary education, you may ask? As post secondary education population increases, programs to accommodate students will develop into curriculum that affords students the freedom to create and design systems they toy with on a daily basis. Are there risks involved in this adaptation process? There are risks involved when change occurs, and leadership should be aware of how to diplomatically confront the risk areas that could slow down progress. Some of the risks that could be encountered due to change are:

o Systems risks

o Subsystem risks

o People

o Financial/economic risks

o Societal/Cultural risks

If communication between systems, subsystems, people, and cultures within the organizational environment has established a strong communication system, risks factors will be at a minimum as long as the creative teams are honest and upfront about their reservations to change.

Let's look into the future through 'futureoculers' and see how the universe of learning can be brought into the present. I want to introduce to you five (5) key trends that I believe affect the current learning environment, can create change, and renovate the perspective of learners and educators for students of the future. These trends could be the key in creating a new perspective in post secondary education for an institution. The key trends are:

o Competitive classroom learning environments - campus on-site/online/distant

o Increase in technological tools

o Teaching/learning environments-more hands on

o Global expansion capability-internal and external

o Student input in the creative learning process

Navigational Systems

Before the five (5) key trends are defined, there needs to be an acknowledgement of how the trends will be supported and regulated through a changing environment. According to de Kluyver, and Pearce, II, having the right systems and processes/subsystems enhances organizational effectiveness and facilitates coping with change. Misaligned systems and processes can be a powerful drag on an organization's ability to adapt. Therefore, check what effect, if any, current systems and processes are likely to have on a company's ability to implement a particular strategy is well advised. Support systems such as a company's planning, budgeting, accounting, information and reward and incentive systems can be critical to successful strategy implementation. Although they do not by themselves define a sustainable competitive advantage, superior support systems help a company adapt more quickly and effectively to changing requirements. A well-designed planning system ensures that planning is an orderly process, gets the right amount of attention by the right executives, and has a balanced external and internal focus. Budgeting and accounting systems are valuable in providing accurate historical data, setting benchmarks and targets, and defining measures of performance. A state-of-the-art information system supports all other corporate systems, and it facilitates analysis as well as internal and external communications. Finally, a properly designed reward and incentive system is key to creating energy through motivation and commitment. A process (or subsystem) is a systematic way of doing things. Processes can be formal or informal; they define organization roles and relationships, and they can facilitate or obstruct change. Some processes or subsystems look beyond immediate issues of implementation to an explicit focus on developing a stronger capacity for adapting to change. Processes/subsystems aimed at creating a learning organization and at fostering continuous improvement are good examples. As an example, processes or subsystems are functional and maintain the operation of the system; the system may be Student Services and the subsystem may be the Financial Aid office or Admissions. Subsystems can be more in depth in relation to office operations, which involves employee positions and their culture; financial advisors, academic advisors, guidance counselors. These operations are functions performed on the human level and could have a positive or negative impact in the development of key trends. If employees are valued and rewarded for their dedication and service, the outcome will be responsible, committed employees for the success of their subsystem.

The Navigator

Every navigator needs a map, a plan, a driver to give direction to for a successful trip. In this case, the driver is several elements:

o Service integrity, reputation

o Affordability with an open door concept

Hughes and Beatty relate drivers as Strategic drivers; those relatively few determinants of sustainable competitive advantage for a particular organization in a particular industry or competitive environment (also called factors of competitive success, key success factors, key value propositions). The reason for identifying a relatively small number of strategic drivers for an organization is primarily to ensure that people become focused about what pattern of inherently limited investments will give the greatest strategic leverage and competitive advantage. Drivers can change over time, or the relative emphasis on those drivers can change, as an organization satisfies its key driver. In the case of post secondary education, drivers help measure success rates in the area of course completion ratio, student retention, and transfer acceptance into a university and/or the successful employment of students. Because change is so rampant in education, it is wise for leadership to anticipate change and develop a spirit of foresight to keep up with global trends.

Drivers can help identify the integrity of internal and external functions of systems and subsystems, as mentioned previously, by identifying entity types that feed the drivers' success. They are:

o Clientele Industry - external Market - feeder high schools, cultural and socio-economic demographic and geographic populations

- Competitors - local and online educational systems

- Nature of Industry - promote a learning community

- Governmental influences - licensed curriculum programs supported by local, state, and federal funds

- Economic and social influences - job market, employers, outreach programs

o College Planning and Environment - internal

- Capacity - Open door environment

- Products and services - high demand curriculum programs that meet, local, state, and federal high demand employment needs

- Market position - Promote on and off-campus activities that attract clientele

- Customers - traditional and non-traditional credit and non-credit students

- Systems, processes, and structures - trained staff and state-of-the art technical systems

- Leadership - integrity-driven, compassionate leadership teams

- Organizational culture - promote on-campus activities promoting a proactive environment for students

According to Hughes and Beatty, these functions can assimilate into the Vision, Mission, and Values statements to define the key strategic drivers for developing successful environments.

Navigating Towards a Destination

With the recognition of systems, subsystems, and drivers, we can see our destination in the distance and their value in building a foundation to support the five key trends. The five (5) key trends will help define strategic thinking in a global perspective; the understanding of futuristic thinking that encompasses: risk taking, imagination, creativity, communication among leadership, and a perspective of how the future can fit into today's agenda. The five (5) key trends are:

1. Competitive Classroom Learning Environments - campus on-site/online/distant

One of the major attractions in education today is to accommodate a student at every level: academically, financially, and socially. These three environments are the mainstream of why one school is selected over another school. Today there is a change in tide. Students who once competed for seats in post secondary schools are becoming a valued asset as post secondary schools compete between each other for students. High schools are no longer the only feeder into colleges. Today, students are coming from home schools, career schools, charter schools, high risk schools, private schools, religious schools, work environments, and ATB tested environments. So, how can the educational system attract students and keep them motivated in an interactive learning environment they can grow in? Wacker and Taylor writes that the story of every great enterprise begins with the delivery of a promise, and every product a great enterprise makes is nothing but an artifact of the truth of that promise. So what great enterprise can be created to attract new students? By creating learning/teaching environments, post secondary schools can prepare students to meet the demands of everyday life and their life in the community. Schools can consider incorporating a learning model to enable professors and/or community leaders/entrepreneurs to team teach in the classroom/online environment. Team Teaching will contribute valuable views into the learning environment, as well as, give students the working community's real-time perspective. In an excerpt from "The University at the Millennium: The Glion Declaration" (1998) quoted by Frank H.T. Rhodes, President Emeritus of Cornell University, for the Louisiana State Board of Regents report, Dr. Rhodes wrote that universities are learning communities, created and supported because of the need of students to learn, the benefit to scholars of intellectual community, and the importance to society of new knowledge, educated leaders, informed citizens, expert professional skills and training, and individual certification and accreditation. Those functions remain distinctive, essential contributions to society; they form the basis of an unwritten social compact, by which, in exchange for the effective and responsible provision of those services, the public supports the university, contributes to its finance, accepts its professional judgment and scholarly certification, and grants it a unique degree of institutional autonomy and scholarly freedom. To experience education is learning, to exercise knowledge is freedom, and to combine them is wisdom.

2. Teaching/learning environments-more hands on

As post secondary educators relinquish hands-on-chalk-board teaching styles and establish group teaching models, students will develop a greater understanding of the theme of the class environment as well as the professor in developing an understanding of the class cultures' stance in learning. Educators are discovering that inclusive learning styles are revamping the teaching model and becoming a positive influence in retention, better grades, camaraderie among students, and a greater respect for the professor. As professors learn to develop relationships with students, interaction will transpire, lecturing will be condensed into a time frame and interactive learning between students and professor will enhance the classroom environment.

3. Global expansion capability-internal and external

Students are surrounded by virtual global environments or are impacted by global elements: the clothes they wear are made overseas, the games they play on their electronic toys are created overseas, the war games they play are created to identify with global war games, etc. The only draw back to this scenario is a truly global learning experience. What they are seeing is not what they are getting; a real time global experience. James Morrison writes that in order to meet unprecedented demand for access, colleges and universities need to expand their use of IT tools via online learning, which will enable them to teach more students without building more classrooms. Moreover, in order for professors to prepare their pupils for success in the global economy, they need to ensure that students can access, analyze, process, and communicate information; use information technology tools; work with people from different cultural backgrounds; and engage in continuous, self-directed learning. Christopher Hayter writes that post secondary schools need to be 'Globally Focused' for the 21st century that includes a global marketplace and be internationally focused. This means ensuring that skills needed to compete in a global marketplace are taught and that the mastery of such skills by students is internationally benchmarked. It may also mean a new emphasis on learning languages and understanding other cultures and the business practices of other countries.

More and more businesses are expanding into the global marketplace, opening corporate offices in foreign countries and hiring and training employees from those countries. Are our college graduates being trained to assimilate into cultures and work side-by-side with employees who may not be able to relate to them? Developing curriculums accommodating social and cultural entities will propel a student into higher realms of learning and create change in the individual student as well as support their career for their future.

4. Student input in the creative learning process

Professors are the gatekeepers in education. However, as Baby Boomer Professors begin to exit the educational workforce and head down the path of retirement, younger generation professors will take their place bringing with them innovative teaching methods that can expand the learning process. Are post secondary educators equipped to prepare for the onslaught of younger generation educators needed to be trained for this mega shift in the workforce? Most important, will those professors caught between Boomers and Xer's be willing to adapt to change in the education industry to accommodate incoming generations? I believe younger generations will impact even the technological industry and challenge change that will equip them for their future. Previous generation students slowly adapted to technological advances. The good news is change can occur, and educators can utilize life experiences from students familiar with technology tools and create fascinating learning environments.

5. Increase in Technological tools

In an Executive Summary written for the National Governors Association in a report called "Innovation America - A Compact for Post Secondary Education," the report reads that while post secondary education in the United States has already achieved key successes in the innovation economy, the public post secondary education system overall risks falling behind its counterparts in many other nations around the world-places where there have been massive efforts to link post secondary education to the specific innovation needs of industries and regions. According to this report, American post secondary education is losing ground in the race to produce innovative and imaginative realms in education. Can this trend be counteracted? With the cooperation of post secondary educational institutions within each community, leadership can create co-op learning environments that can be supported through e-learning and online teaching that can provide virtual reality technology to enhance real-time learning environments. Through Business Development operations currently established in post secondary institutions, a shared technology program can be created that will afford students access to ongoing virtual business environment settings and prepare students with knowledge and insight into a specific industry. As students prepare to transfer, graduate, or seek employment after completing a certification program, virtual experience in the job market can help a student assimilate education and work experience to their advantage. This concept could challenge Human Resource departments to create new mandates in accepting virtual-experienced college graduates as they enter the workforce.

Reaching the Destination

As Flash Gordan lands his Spacecraft on unclaimed territory, you imagine yourself slowly turning the handle to the spaceship with your spaceship gloves, opening the door with explosive anticipation. Your heart racing, sweat running down your brow, and your eyes at half mask waiting to see a new world; a world filled with beauty and potential when suddenly, the television shuts off and your Mom is standing in front of you telling you to get up and go clean your room and stop daydreaming! Ah, Mom, you say to yourself, you just destroyed my imaginary planet! Oh, by the way, did I mention that this was you as a child growing up and using your imagination?

Now that I've created a visual world of potential for you can you see the power within to see the future from the present and help others visualize the potential benefits of change in their lives and the lives of others in an organization? T. Irene Sanders states that thinking in pictures helps us link our intuitive sense of events in the world with our intellectual understanding. Now, more than ever, we need to integrate the techniques of imagination and the skill of intuition with our analytic competencies to help us see and understand the complexities that vex us daily. Visualization is the key to insight and foresight-and the next revolution in strategic thinking and planning.

Can you SEE the systems, subsystems, drivers, and the five (5) trends with a visual perspective in a post secondary educational environment? This is the nature of Strategic Thinking, which can or is taking place in your organization; a cognitive process required for the collection, interpretation, generation, and evaluation of information and ideas that shape an organization's sustainable competitive advantage. The need to stay abreast of progress, technology, and global opportunities will be the change in drivers that will validate the creative elements needed to stay attuned in a global perspective. The author's intention of introducing Flash Gordan into the paper was to create a visual image and demonstrate imagination fulfillment to a present day reality. Is there anything out there that cannot be done if it is fine tuned and prepared for a service of excellence? What are the risks involved by not exercising strategic thinking in the elements mentioned in this article?

Education is not about the present it's about the future. The five (5) trends are only a beginning adventure into an unknown space. Do you remember when you were in college and wished things were done differently, be more exciting, more adventurous? Consider the age groups becoming proficient in technology. Will post secondary educators be prepared to teach/instruct future students? Educators must invite strategic thinking into the system and take the risks needed to build post secondary education back into the global futuristic race of achievement. In an article written by Arthur Hauptman entitled "Strategies for Improving Student Success in Post secondary Education" (07), he concluded his report listing four elements:

1. While there is a growing rhetorical commitment to student success, the reality is that policies often do not mirror the rhetoric. Whether intentional or not, policies in many states are at best benign and often antithetical to improving student success.

2. Policy focus in most states has been to lower tuitions or the provision of student financial aid. This ignores the importance of ensuring adequate supply of seats to accommodate all students as well as providing a proper set of incentives that encourage institutions to recruit, enroll, and graduate the students who are most at-risk.

3. Some progress has been made in developing contemporary practices that have great potential for providing the right incentives in place of redress this traditional imbalance. But much more needs to be done in this regard.

4. Efforts to create incentives for students to be better prepared and for institutions to enroll and graduate more at-risk students have the potential for greatly improving rates of retention and degree completion.

Can the five trends be a stepping stone in rebuilding or strengthening the weakest link in the system? The evidence of deficiency is public, and that's a good start. Educators have the choice to rebuild and prepare for the advancement of our future; our students. I encourage you to take the five (5) trends and see how they can accommodate your institute of higher learning.

Top 10 Car Drawing Books For Beginner Artists

1. How to Draw Cars Like a Pro, 2nd Edition

In this long-awaited follow-up to the best-selling first edition of How to Draw Cars Like a Pro, renamed car designer Thom Taylor goes back to the drawing board to update his classic with all-new illustrations and to expand on such topics as the use of computers in design today. Taylor begins with advice on selecting the proper tools and equipment, then moves on to perspective and proportion, sketching and cartooning, various media, and light, shadow, reflection, color, and even interiors. Written to help enthusiasts at all artistic levels, his book also features more than 200 examples from many of today's top artists in the automated field. Updated to include computerized illustration techniques.

Author: Thom Taylor

2. How To Draw Cars Fast and Easy

How To Draw Cars Fast and Easy is a 134 page car drawing guide in downloadable e-book format, jam-packed from cover to cover with all the tips and techniques previously known by only a small hand of professional designers. This program contains all the information you'll ever need to draw perfect looking cars quickly and easily that will amaze your friends.

Author: Tim Rugendyke

3. How To Design Cars Like a Pro

This book describes how car design and technology work through the eyes of the most talented and powerful car designers in the world. The interviews give a deep understanding of why we see what we see on the highways of the world. Author Tony Lewin has been a highly regarded magazine editor on the world stage for so long that some of the top young guns revealing all in this book were hanging on his words just a few years ago.

Author: Tony Lewin

4. How to Draw & Paint Cars

This book is not about learning how to draw and paint fashionable cars, super cars, tarted up street or 'cool' cars as referred to by some motoring journalists, it is about drawing and painting all types of cars. The author has endeavored to distill experience from many years creating images on this subject into a book that will help and encourage those keen to draw and paint cars, both for pleasure or as a career. The author takes you through the history of the car from it's conception in 1885 to current models with sketches and paintings created in a variety of mediums, with examples and step by step guides. Readers are encouraged to develop their skills, whether raw beginners or accomplished artists. The road to success will not be easy, but, through this book you will learn all the techniques short cuts accumulated over decades by an accomplished commercial artist. Whether for business or pleasure this book is THE handbook for automotive art. With 185 illustrations and step by step guides this is a must have for any budding auto artist.

Author: Tony Gardiner

5. How to Draw Cars the Hot Wheels Way

This book provides excellent how-to-draw detail that is appealing and easy to follow for Hot Wheels (tm) and drawing enthusiasts from ages 10 to adult. Detailed drawing techniques with descriptive captions allow readers to create their own automated designs. Illustrations emphasize how to draw fantasy, custom, concept, and hot rod cars. Author Scott Robertson uses original Mattel art throughout the book. With real Mattel artwork featured in detail, the bo0ok has great appeal for collectors, even if they are not aspiring artists. Because Hot Wheels (tm) diecast cars are modeled after both real and fantasy vehicles, the techniques and interest to readers is the same as for real-life car enthusiasts. Officially licensed by Mattel.

Author: Scott Robertson

6. H-Point: The Fundamentals of Car Design & Packaging

The ultimate reference guide for car designers and automotive engineers! H-Point was written by the pioneer of the Vehicle Architecture course at Art Center College of Design, Stuart Macey along with the Director of Advanced Mobility Research, Geoff Wardle. Currently used as the educational handout for the transportation design students at Art Center, it will now be available to aspiring car creators everywhere, clearly organizing the packaging standards that apply to car and truck design; along with insightful graphic explanations, this book demystifies the automotive design process and allows designers access to an illustrious careers worth of knowledge.

Author: Stuart Macey

7. How to Design Cars Like a Pro

This comprehensive new edition of How to Design Cars Like a Pro provides an in-depth look at modern automotive design. Interviews with leading automotive designers from Ford, BMW, GM Jaguar, Nissan and others, analyzes of past and present trends, studies of individual models and concepts, and much more combine to reveal the fascinating mix of art and science that goes into creating automobiles. This book is a must-have for professional designers, as well as for automotive enthusiasts.

Author: Tony Lewin

8. DRIVE: vehicle sketches and renderings

DRIVE features Scott Robertson's very latest vehicle designs intended for the video game space communicated through skillfully drawn sketches and renderings.

DRIVE builds upon the success of his prior two vehicle design books, Start Your Engines and Lift Off. Featuring four chapters, each representing a different aesthetic theme, Aerospace, Military, Pro Sports and Salvage, conceptual sports cars, big-rigs and off -road vehicle designs are beautifully represented through traditional and digital media sketches, and renderings.

Author: Scott Robertson

9. How to Illustrate and Design Concept Cars

Beginners will find an easy-to-follow introduction to the topic, while more experienced designers can find new inspirations by reading about the author's workflow process. A very interesting book for everyone who loves drawing and rendering cars.

Author: Adrian dewey

10. Start Your Engines: Surface Vehicle Sketches & Renderings from the Drawthrough Collection (Air Vehicle Sketches)

Start Your Engines compiles works from Scott Robertson's vast archives of ground vehicle drawings and renderings, and features the following chapters: Cars, Bicycles, Snowcraft Mechanimals and selected work from the conceptual design of vehicles for the video games Field Commander and Spy Hunter 2. The Cars chapter reviews about half of this book and features original designs both futuristic and retrospective.

Author: Scott Robertson

Getting Your Interior Design and Decorating Started Right

Principles Are Principles Forever

Interior design and decorating is one of the oldest of all the arts . Properly understood, it can be very exciting and rewarding to engage in. All you have to do is apply the correct and appropriate formulas, then adapt them to your budget.

It is very important and necessary to find out what you really need and want. Follow a few age-old foundational principles in order to acquire the success that you're driving for. A few easily understood principles will enable you to work out combinations and arrangements that will be appropriate and therefore satisfying to you, no matter what type of room you are planning.

Make It Easy On Yourself

When designing or decorating a room or a whole house, you can help yourself a great deal if you make a careful analysis of yourself and your family before you begin. Take time to consider, reflect, and examine specifics of what you like, what you want, what you do, what you hope to do someday, etc.

Write everything down on paper. Be guided by this analysis in your choice of furniture, arrangements, color schemes, and accessories. Describe in words not only what you want it to look like, but what you want it to feel like as well. For me, a "look" without the appropriate feeling and ambiance is nothing.

Make The Right Decisions The First Time

The best way to do it right, once, the first time, is to have a plan. We begin our plan by making a diagram or sketch of the space, including the windows, doors, and archways, paying careful attention that it's all drawn to scale. It is critical that your room has a floor plan drawn to scale. Usually this means that 1/4 inch will equal 1 foot. If you want it larger, then draw it so 1/2 inch equals 1 foot. This means that 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch will represent an actual 12 inches or 1 foot of real space. You must do the same thing with your furniture, plants, and sculptures - anything that takes up square space space on your floor. If you choose to skip past this initial step, you'll definitely have a wrong perception of reality! Once all of your pieces are sketched to scale, carefully cut each one out, making sure each one is clearly labeled.

You must do everything to scale with your sketches. These paper depictions enable you to move representations of your furniture and other items around effortlessly within your environment on top of the floor plan. As you do so, keep in mind where and how the traffic will flow through the space, accommodating for this functional necessity. With patience and some time, you'll reveal various solutions that will come to your mind that you would never have thought of otherwise. Pre-planning allows you to have much more fun and freedom of expression.

Doing floor plans is the professional way to start. Amateurs skip this. Even if they call themselves decorators or designers, this is one of many fundamental reasons that they are amateurs. If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail ... whether you know it or not.

Eliminating "Paralysis of Analysis"

The preliminary analysis of your home interior design and decorating problems should include answers to several definite questions. Think of this as the Sherlock Holmes phase. You want to ask yourself the right questions, to get the right answers. That way, you can get the right results. Your answers to the right questions will have a determination impact on the various phases of your plan. Thinking things through will save you time, money, and energy, as well as preventing possible and probable disappointments with your results.

Some Words of Caution

Do not decorate or design in haste, and then later repent at leisure! Even if you have the money to carry out your whole design and decorating program, do not be rushed into buying anything which will compromise the effect you want.

Do not be discouraged if you have to operate on a budget. Decide what you can comfortably spend in the beginning, and put most of it into basic pieces that will be a permanent investment in your satisfaction and comfort. Then, spread the rest of it out over "pickshifts" which will do until they can be replaced. These pieces will be temporary until you can afford something better. Sometimes they turn out to be so charming and so useful that you will not want to give them up. You can allocate them to other areas of your environment.

As you work your plan, you may find that parts of it need altering as you go because you've found that they can be improved. However, make sure the contemplated improvements fit into the original plan or concept. Remember, it's not only about the look. It's the look and the feel, or ambiance, that you are after.

Do not be tempted for the sake of a bargain, or any other reason, to spend time or money on a single piece or article which will not add to the effectiveness of your preconceived design or decorative scheme, as you have outlined it from the beginning. Also, remember: Proper, prior planning prevents poor performance!

It's vital that you realize that you can spend a great deal of money or a comparatively smaller, realistic sum, and get very pleased results if you have a plan and knowledge.

An Important Closing Comment

Once you work things out on paper, be sure that you have included your floor plans and the written documentation of both your questions and your answers. The rest of the steps must continue to translate that information into action. Always look at the colors and designs in the environment where they are going to be used, and under the lighting conditions there, both natural and artificial. Color is how you light it! Therefore, never guess how textures, colors, designs, or fabrics, etc., will go with each other. Always make your final decisions within the final environment they will be staying in.