Feeling Refreshed - What's your Goal?

First day back today from a great holiday in Tenerife. Way too many emails to deal with but I'm feeling very refreshed.

Relaxing by the pool is the perfect time to clear your mind and think of new ideas and get focused.

One of mine is to keep on top of my goal setting. People in the UK aren't generally known as good goal setters. We don't really set goals; we tend to set New Year's Resolutions. The problem with New Year's Resolutions is that you don't really keep an eye on your progress and it's only when you come to the end of the year that you realise, in most cases, that your resolution didn't happen.

Goal setting is a much better idea. Bruce King, one of the UK's leading sales and personal growth specialists, has just published a 4 point guide on Goal Setting:

Goal Setting
You attended a seminar or read a book about goal setting and you were all fired up. You established some exciting and challenging goals and even set a date by when you would achieve them. Everything was going to get so much better from then on. And the days went by and the weeks went by and the months went by - and those goals simply slipped from your mind.

Has that ever happened to you? Regrettably it happens to most people - unless they keep to a formal routine and keep those goals at the forefront of their conscious and subconscious minds, linked together by really strong neuronal pathways. The simplest and most effective way to do this is:

1: Write your goals down in a GOAL BOOK. Collect pictures and photographs which illustrate what your life will be like when you have achieved those goals and paste them in. Read it every day.

2: Keep a daily journal and record everything you did that day that moved you towards achieving your goals and everything else that came to mind that that you could do to make them happen even faster.

3: Carry out a Visualization exercise at least once a day and preferably twice a day for at least twenty minutes. Use my Visualization CD to keep you on track with this. (See Products page)

4: Repeat your affirmations to achieve those goals, out loud and with enthusiasm, at least twenty five times, twice a day.
And the days, and the weeks and the months will go by and one day you will wake up and find all that you had dreamed of is yours.

Your can find out more about Bruce King on his website -  

http://www.bruceking.co.uk/development/achievers/indexnew.asp

If anyone is interested in Goal Setting and would like to know more on the subject, please give me a call on 0845 363 1173.

Fight back Against the Spammers

Spam affects all of us. Everyday as part of our daily task of going through our emails we have to remove and delete Spam from our inboxes.

Well now we can fight back with help from Spam Poison. http://www.spampoison.com/

If you have a website just add a small line of code to your website and whenever a Spammer's robot scans your web page it will be sucked into a Spam Poison page.

These links will redirect email harvesting bots to trap sites that will feed it with an almost infinite loop of dynamically generated fake email addresses, mostly on known spammer owned domains! This will render their harvested lists practically useless and of no commercial value.

Add the Spam Poison code to your website today and let's fight back against the Spammers!

http://www.spampoison.com

BEWARE! Domain Name SCAM!!

Please READ this carefully.

I received this letter in the post yesterday from an outfit called Domain Renewal Group. They were originally called the Domain Registry of America (DRoA). Please click the image to see large version.

The letter is very clever in the way it's written. It makes the reader assume that their domain name is due for renewal with this company. Most domain names need to be renewed every 2 years and to the less versed on these things it is quite easy to forget who you registered your domain name with. So the assumption is this letter is an invoice which must be paid.

It is not an invoice. It's an attempt by DRoA to get you to pay them for a domain name that they don't even control! Many people and businesses fall for this trap. Make sure you are NOT one of them!

Please click the image above and familiarise yourself with the look of the letter.

If you receive one of these in the post, ignore it
and call the person who looks after your domain name and website.

If you have any doubts please get in touch and I will be happy to advise you.

The Power of Positive Thinking

"If your mind can conceive and believe, then it can achieve" - Napolean Hill

I've always been a positive thinker; I'm a glass half full guy and have always set myself goals. I truly believe that you get what you focus on in life.

I've been a huge fan of Tony Robbins since the late 80's and have attended 2 of his "Awaken the Giant Within" seminars and walked across hot coals; and no, I didn't burn my feet! There's usually a positive thinking book somewhere near me and I have 2 shelves full of them in my office.

I discovered some great videos on YouTube earlier this week and have listed some of them below. Watch one each day; it's a great way to start your day.

Earl Nightingale - The Strangest Secret
Episode 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajIRxdeCRZM
Episode 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es7UjzlSRcU
Episode 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuPdzHd8idk

Jim Rohn - How to have your Best Year ever
Episode 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfA-qNWLBHo
Episode 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2AyudSJl_s
Episode 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWOJt1kCYP0

Zig Ziglar - Setting Goals
Episode 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-VJ_lauCw
Episode 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiQV0oTyd98
Episode 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su2UuP3aqZg

Jim Rohn - Attitude makes The Difference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRMogDrHnMQ

Tony Robbins
Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpc-t-Uwv1I
The Hour TV Show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etArvM1WUE4
Shift Your Focus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxckAUEOhJU
Create the Energy, Vitality and Health You Deserve!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byRSHkcG7Ig

Invited to be Industry Expert for .Net Magazine

From March 2009 .net magazine has invited me to be one of their Industry Experts each month in the Big Question section if their magazing and website. Click the image below:

I appear for the first time in this month's issue - 188. I'm really pleased to have been asked to write in the feature.

Second Life - a whole new world

www.secondlife.com for those who don't know is a free online virtual world imagined and created by its Residents. From the moment you enter Second Life (SL), you'll discover a fast-growing digital world filled with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity.

As I explained in my earlier Blog; we are researching the popular web platform to see if there are ways for us to engage with our current customers and potential new customers.

We've had a busy few weeks on SL. We now have a virtual office and we've even got a Red Bull vending machine! LOL! Yes I know it sounds a little bit "out there" but you'll have to come in and experience it for yourself to understand!
Lots of other plans but can't go into more detail at this stage.

Come and have an explore around this amazing world - my name in Second Life is Dickie Antfarm. Feel free to hook up and I'll be happy to show you around.

If anyone reading this is an expert in SL, then please do get in touch. It's always good to pick up tips and recommendations.

Search Engine Submission Made Easy

It's all well and good having a nice website designed but you also need to make sure the major search engines know that your website is there and that it gets listed so you can drive extra traffic to your site.

The easiest way to do this is to manually submit the website. Each search engine has it's own submission process. It's best to go to the submission page of each site and read the guidelines listed there.

I have listed the different search engines below with a link to their submission pages:

Google: http://www.google.co.uk/addurl/?continue=/addurl
Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/uk/free/request
MSN: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

Don't worry about AOL, they now use Google as their search engine.

There are also a couple of directories which you should submit your website to:

Open Directory Project: http://www.dmoz.org/add.html
Yahoo! Directory: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/directory/suggest/suggest-06.html

Google is without doubt the search engine used by the majority of people so make sure you spend some time going through the Google site and check out their tools and other resources such as Google AdWords. Go to http://www.google.co.uk/options/ to find out more.

Finding your way around the search engines might seem slightly daunting to begin with, but it will definitely be worth your investment in time and before long that extra traffic will arrive.