How Do You Know You’re Close To A Breakthrough?

I’ve mentioned Derek Franklin before – he’s one of those select people that I follow closely because he has a very interesting and different take on life, and he produces high quality, valuable products (e.g. The Copywriter’s Brain).

Today, Derek came out with a very interesting short video called “How Do I Know When I’m Close To A Breakthrough?“

It may only be five or so minutes long, but his message is really important.

I don’t want to spoil it for you – I’d rather you click through to his site and watch it there – but you’ll find it inspirational, and look out for one of Derek’s favourite, Chinese quotations.

And while you’re there, sign up for his newsletter – you won’t be inundated with tons of emails promoting the latest crap, because that’s not Derek’s style, but what you will receive will be occasional snippets of information, videos such as this one, and maybe promotions for his own (always excellent and affordable) products, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll actively be looking forward to his next email (and how many people can you really say that about).

As an added bonus, you’ll also receive a couple of really cool gifts too.

So, go and check out his video now – it may just be the nudge you need to help you achieve your goals.

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How To Get Lots Of Money For Anything Fast & Stuart Lichtman’s SACP Super Achiever Coaching Program

Some time ago now, we came across an ebook called “How To Get Lots Of Money For Anything Fast“, by Stuart Lichtman.

The sales page for this book is certainly impressive, to the point of being barely credible, but we gave it a try anyway.

The book itself is large, but that’s because Stuart is meticulous in the detail he provides – he’s a very process-oriented guy.

Now, I have to confess that, although I began reading the book, after 60 or so pages, life happened – i.e. I got distracted (which is not too hard, for me), and I simply never got around to finishing the book.

Fast forward a few months (or maybe more – it’s hard to tell given how fast the days seem to speed by now) and we had occasion to dig into the book a little more, and I think it was because we were on his mailing list (because we’d bought his book), that we found out about something called the Mini SACP.

Now, this is a hands-off version of his main coaching program, which goes by the name Super Achiever Coaching Program (or SACP, for short)

The SACP is fairly expensive, but it does include a ton of personal telecoaching calls, additional coaching, and a lot more, but it’s not for everybody.

So, Stuart has distilled the essence of his highly successful SACP into a series of multimedia learning modules (i.e. you get videos, audios and ebooks), so that you can basically follow the SACP, but without the benefit of the hands-on coaching.

We decided to give this a go, as we were currently into a variety of “metaphysical” and self-development stuff (e.g. ZOX Pro, pendulums, Law Of Attraction), and this seemed like it was both a close fit and a step towards where we wanted to be.

Like good students, we started watching the videos, reading the book (and the ton of additional bonus books that are included), and once again, we got a bit bogged down.

The material is certainly comprehensive, but the various components were just not gelling together for us.

But help was at hand.

Stuart was running an introductory teleseminar for his SACP16 (i.e. it would be the 16th time he’d run his SACP), which would explain what it is, how the program works, etc.

We signed up for it – it was free, after all – and after a lengthy presentation (you can see the slides on his SACP website), we decided that, expensive though it is, personal coaching might be the only way to really understand and benefit from his Cybernetic Transposition system, as he calls it.

We’re now into Week 5 of this program, and there is a lot to it – a lot of processes, a lot of new terms to take in, and a lot of homework to do.

The claim he makes on his site that 95% of his students achieve their seemingly impossible objective on their very first try is dependent on them doing the majority of this assigned homework.

We are slightly behind, to be honest, but we think we’re keeping up with the most important stuff.

So, why is this post in the What I Learned Today category?

Well, one of the problems I face, which if I haven’t already written about this, I will do (one day), is that I suffer from what may be a mild form of NLD, or similar, and that means I can’t visualise anything. In fact, it may be worse than that, as I find it hard to generate any sensations in my mind, whether it’s visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, gustatory or olfactory.

And a lot of many of these types of program do require some form of visualisation, although the term should be applied more loosely to include any of the five senses.

Now, without wanting to give too much away, and because I’m not qualified to teach people about CT anyway, one of the key concepts Stuarts introduces is what he calls dialoguing with your unconscious.

This is fundamental to the entire SACP, and my obvious concern was that I wouldn’t be able to do it for the reasons outlined above.

This fear, which Stuart would call a blocker, delayed my starting this process, but today, I finally put it into action when working through one of this week’s assignments, and although it feels very strange and uncomfortable, I found that I can actually dialogue with my unconscious.

It’s hazy and murky, for the most past, but Stuart has another process or two designed to deal with that – and they work too.

So, we’re a long way from finishing this SACP course, and my seemingly impossible Objective, which I’m not allowed to mention at this stage, is due some time around mid-February, so I guess I’ll have to report back then and let you know whether I did indeed accomplish it or not.

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Disabling That Annoying Windows Automatic Restart Nag Screen

While I appreciate that Microsoft is trying to make sure our computers are safe and secure by encouraging people to use their automatic update features, it does have one hugely annoying and potentially dangerous aspect: automatic restart.

After some updates which it downloads and installs for you, it will then pop-up a message to say that you need to restart your computer for the updates to take effect, and you have two choice – restart now or restart later:

There are two problems with this.

The first is relatively minor, but it’s all too easy to click on the Restart Now button when you meant to click on the Restart Later button.

I know – RTFS (if you’ve come across the popular term RTFM then you’ll be able to work out what this means), but as this nag pops up when you’re probably focused on doing something else (e.g. work, playing games), then it’s still too easy to do.

The second is much more dangerous – you may have wandered off from your computer for a while (e.g. to eat, sleep, or other natural functions), and are not there to respond to the nag.

Now, if you’ve gone off and not saved the latest changes to your Word document, then shame on you – I’ve no sympathy.

But what if, like me, you run data back-ups every day (as indeed you should do)? Then having Windows restart your machine in the middle of that back-up job is plain inconvenient and inconsiderate, because you have to start it all over again.

I choose to back-up my Outlook Express files overnight because this particular job takes about two and a half hours, and with it being the quietest time of the day from a business perspective (we offer 24 x 7 phone support to our customers), then it’s the obvious time to do this necessary housekeeping.

Or supposing you’ve started, or scheduled, a massive download, and then you find that Windows has kindly rebooted your machine for you right when it got to 99% complete?

P*ssed off wouldn’t even begin to describe how you’d feel!

So, fed up with the nag screen, I went on a hunt for a solution, and found two things that may be of interest to you.

Firstly, I found a video, although it appears as though it’s aimed at Windows Vista users only:

Secondly, I found a very helpful post on Technize.com, that provides instructions that work for both Windows XP and Windows Vista, with both termporary and permanent methods for solving the problem.

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When Is A Fluid Ounce Not Always A Fluid Ounce?

When I moved to the US from England in 2005, I learned that a US gallon is smaller than a UK (or Imperial) gallon: the UK gallon is 160 fluid ounces, whereas the US gallon is only 128 fluid ounces.

And that’s because there are only 16 fluid ounces in a US pint, compared to the 20 that are in an Imperial pint.

But what I hadn’t realised, until today, when I was working on one of our new websites, is that a US fluid ounce is actually equivalent to 1.0408423 Imperial fluid ounces.

I’d always assumed that a fluid ounce is a fluid ounce, but apparently this isn’t the case.

So now you know!

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Cool Image Magnification Script

While working on one of our many websites a day or two ago, I found a really cool image magnification effect that I’d not seen before.

Eager to track it down, my first port of call was my favourite site for this type of script, Dynamic Drive, and lo and behold, I found it instantly.

It’s called jQuery Image Magnify v1.1, and it’s dead easy to install (and it works on IE, Firefox and Opera).

Give it a try – you’ll love it!

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Dog Blood Types

I’d never really thought about this matter until one of our customers asked us a question about it, but did you know that there are different canine blood groups?

According to Wikipedia, there are as many as 13 dog blood types, and of these, eight of the so-called Dog Erythrocyte Antigen (DEA) types are internationally-recognised as standard canine blood types.

And, just like humans, some dogs’ blood type can be considered a universal donor type (that would be DEA 1.1. Negative, in techno-speak).

Conversely, others that are known as DEA 1.1 Positive (which represents just over one third of the canine population) are universal recipients, which means that they can receive transfusions from any canine blood type without risk of adverse reactions.

My brief research took me further, and at a bit of a tangent, as I found that there are even different diets for different blood types, which is an interesting concept I may pursue, if and when I get the time.

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Some Companies’ Idea Of Customer Service Sucks!

I really don’t understand how some companies stay in business!

Let me explain …

We recently experienced one of the coldest nights of the year – 12 degrees (and that’s Fahrenheit)!

Needless to say, some of our pipes froze, and in the morning, we found that we had no water.

Initial superficial investigations revealed no obvious leaks, so we rang our usual plumber, whom we found back in April and who has turned out to be one of the best trademen I have ever come across – he goes out of his way to be helpful, and his approach to customer service mirrors what we try to achieve with our own pet health business.

Anyway, Bill came out on the next day – a Saturday – to take a look, and much as we feared, it wasn’t anything Bill could fix as it was Read more…

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Supercharged SEO – 100% Automated SEO Strategies

Since launching our main business website in February 2007, we’ve had to learn a lot about Internet marketing, including what is now popularly known as SEO (i.e. Search Engine Optimisation), which is nothing more than trying to make sure that your site is easily found in the search engines.

Getting good rankings on the search engines used to be easy – ten or more years ago – but there has been a world-wide explosion of people trying to make money online since then, and it’s now no mean feat to get your site listed on the first page of Google’s results.

So, we’ve spent a fair amount of time and money over the past two years or so reading up on SEO techniques, buying ebooks and training courses, and most of them have been fairly so-so, including some that cost thousands of dollars.

Always keen to learn (or maybe always a sucker for more), we recently found a product called Supercharged SEO that promised 100% automated SEO strategies, which, given what we thought we knew about this subject, seemed a bit on the hypey side.

But, the price was only $17, which is practically nothing these days, and so we bought it, not expecting too much.

So, was it worth the money, and did we learn anything new about SEO?

Actually, it was probably the best SEO product we’ve ever bought!

What you get are three well-made videos, with a total duration of about one and a quarter hours, together with supporting PDFs that include copies of each slide from the videos, a list of resources referenced, as well as a few WordPress plug-ins and other code that are part of the strategies he reveals.

These strategies, once you put them in place, truly are 100% automated, as he promises, because once you set the framework up for any given site, the rest just happens all by itself.

You do need to be aware that these strategies are focused on WordPress blogs (and ones that you host yourself, rather than ones hosted by WordPress themselves). To be fair, he does state this on the videos, and he also says that many of the techniques will work on other types of sites too, but for some of these, you may be left to work it out for yourself.

Having said that, it’s a minor issue, given how popular WordPress is, especially as more and more people are using this platform in place of the regular HTML mini-site / sales page.

I would also say that it’s probably not for the absolute beginner, as some experience and understanding of SEO and blogs would be advantageous. Again though, his explanations and supporting materials are really good, so I doubt you’d have any problems implementing any of these strategies.

So, in conclusion, even if you think you know SEO already, as we did, I highly recommend Supercharged SEO, and I’d be very surprised if you didn’t manage to give your sites the set-it-and-forget-it supercharge that he promises.

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Redirection 101

I’ve used PHP redirects to cloak things like affiliate links for a long time now, and I’m therefore a bit rusty on the other techniques (e.g. JavaScript and Meta Refresh).

So, when a guy I’m collaborating with on a project or two asked me how to cloak his affiliate links, I started by setting up a sample PHP script for him, but then when I tried to remember exactly how to use the other non-PHP methods, I ran into a wall of amnesia.

As always in this situation, I turned to Google, and happened upon a brilliant website where you enter the URL you want to redirect to, and it instantly gives you copy-and-paste code you can use in all three formats (i.e. JavaScript, Meta Refresh and PHP).

It’s quick, simple, and means you need to know or understand practically no code at all.

The site is called My Redirect Code, and I highly recommend it.

(BTW, my friend has written an excellent short report called Unlimited Profit Streams that’s well worth a read, and it’s only $7 USD. If you can’t make that back after reading and applying what he teaches, then I suspect Internet Marketing isn’t for you.)

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Straight In At The Deep End Of The Server Pool

Well, we took the plunge a few days ago and signed up for our very first VPS hosting account, after spending a day or two researching suitable candidates.

Our requirements were quite specific, for reasons that are not relevant here, and the sign-up process and post-sales set-up were not without their problems.

However, I should make it clear that none of these were the company’s fault – it was more to do with our lack of understanding about VPS.

You see, I have a fair bit of experience in managing websites using the standard cPanel, as offered by what’s probably our favourite hosting company, Host Gator, but VPS is a whole new world, as we recently discovered – the learning curve appears to be steep.

Firstly, the O/S we chose, ubuntu 8.04, only comes with a thing called Virtuozzo Power Panel, which is fine for one of the reasons we wanted this server, but it apparently meant Read more…

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