New Year's Resolutions: Weight Loss Management

Lose Weight The Intelligent Way

By Laney Lockhart

 

While conducting a training session on Goal-Setting last week, one of the things that I asked the participants to do was write down a personal goal that they would like to accomplish in the upcoming year.

Do you want to guess what the number one goal was at the completion of the exercise? That's right, lose weight!

Without prompting or prior discussion, seventy-five percent of the participants indicated that their goal was to lose twenty to thirty-five pounds this year.

This appears to be a common goal shared by many people and for obvious reasons. The benefits associated with maintaining your weight at the proper level are numerous. The improved health benefits and enhanced self-esteem alone are enough to make this a very desirable goal.

If you're tired of being overweight and struggling constantly to shed those unwanted pounds then it's about time you made up your mind to take action and do something about it.

Numerous studies have indicated that while dieting and taking certain drugs may be effective in the short term, these approaches often fail to help people maintain the weight reduction over the long haul.

Let's face it, if all we had to do to lose weight was take a pill then there would be millions of skinny people running around. When you take a look at the cold, hard facts, there is no magic cure that will help you lose weight and keep it off. Effective weight loss requires a lifestyle change, which means you must develop new habits.

Following the simple steps outlined below will help you reduce your weight intelligently in a steady and controlled manner.

o Record your weight
o Set a short-term goal
o Identify your recommended daily caloric intake
o Write down everything that you eat and drink and record the calories
o Gradually adjust what you eat until your caloric intake falls within range
o Consume nutritional items from the basic food groups
o Monitor your weight at least once a week
o Eat smaller meals more frequently throughout the day
o Don't eat late at night
o Increase your activity level
Developing and maintaining good eating habits are the keys to effective weight loss management. Making intelligent choices will enable you to achieve sustainable results that will pay big dividends in the form of improved health and positive self-image.
 

http://www.exceptionallifecoaching.com
 

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laney_Lockhart

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5 Success Tips from Award-Winning Entrepreneurs

Every entrepreneur faces challenges, and many of them will tell you it's how you handle those challenges that will determine success or failure as a business owner.
Here, five tips for success from business owners who know what growing and winning are all about.

1. Put your networking skills to work. "Find people you can learn from," says Nelson, founder and inventor of the Good Nite Lite, who first created his product to solve his son's difficulties falling asleep. "What you may not need from them today, you may need tomorrow."

2. Don't be swayed by naysayers. When Rhodes was pushed by bankers and experts to start manufacturing her hand-blown glass candleholders in China to save money, the experiment backfired. "We lost a fortune," says Rhodes, founder of Glassybaby, which donates a percentage of revenue to programs that help cancer patients. "I listened to people who didn't understand Glassybaby. It's all about the story and there was nowhere to fit 'Made in China' in my story."

3. Keep taking risks. "Our personal motto is: 'Fail cheap, fail quick,'" Nelson says. "Don't be afraid to try."

4. Hire your weaknesses. "Remember as an entrepreneur, you're probably a big-picture person and the details aren't as important, but they will be and it'll come back to haunt you," Rhodes warns. "If you're not good at [something], make sure you have someone beside you that is, as you grow."

5. Don't be afraid to share your idea. "There's always the opportunity where they may not be able to help you, but somebody else will," Nelson says.

BY Teri Evans

 

 

 

Seven Ways Solopreneurs Can Grow a Home Business

Home-based businesses with a sole owner can only grow so much, right? Wrong.

 

With a little creativity you can keep expanding your home business, without hiring employees or renting an office. Here are seven tips for increasing revenue at your home business while keeping it a one-person show:

1. Use technology. From scheduling newsletters and social-media dispatches to issuing blog-post notifications via email, automate as much as possible. Collaboration tools such as Citrix Systems software can also help you readily pass off or work in the same document with colleagues and consultants without having to send giant email attachments or deal with a courier service. Additionally, video conferencing or call forwarding technology can do wonders for helping your little company appear much bigger -- and more professional.

2. Outsource. These days, freelance marketplaces such as Elance and vWorker.com make it easy -- and relatively inexpensive -- to find contractors for a wide variety of roles, from accountants to virtual secretaries. There's no law that says you have to make official, full-time hires to grow. Increasingly, I'm encountering high-revenue, fast-growing companies that have few, if any, official staffers and are driving growth entirely through contract labor.

3. Watch for opportunities. Entrepreneurs' prime advantage over big companies is the ability to be nimble and shift gears quickly if a new opportunity emerges that might lead to more business. That's what home-based franchisor Patricia Beckman did when she saw a need for a standardized virtual-assistant chain. Now her VA business, Cybertary, has 25 franchisees and is growing.

4. Treat your business like a business. Don't neglect the back-office end of your business. For instance, consider using an online invoice system such as FreshBooks or Intuit's Bill Manager. Being able to systematically track your payments and expenses will not only save you time, it's also more professional in the eyes of customers or clients. Keep regular business hours so clients can rely on you.

5. Invest for growth. Yes, being home based can help reduce overhead, but you still need to put money into the business to keep it thriving. After all, you've got to spend money to make money, remember? And that's true no matter where your business is based.

6. Don't forget your plan. Know your goals for the business and keep your focus on the steps you need to take to achieve those goals. Beckman recommends keeping your business plan nearby and referring to it often. And as plans change, update it.

7. Get out there. Some solopreneurs use being home-based as an excuse to never meet with clients in person. That's a mistake. Get out of that home-office cave -- you can build stronger bonds with clients in face-to-face meetings. Attend networking events to keep growing your rolodex and gain exposure to new ideas.

How have you kept your home-based business growing? Leave a comment and tell us your strategy.
Read more stories about: Growth strategies, Home business, Home-based business, Home-based businesses, Solopreneur

 

BY Carol Tice
 

 

 

 

How to Break Through Fear and Self-Doubt

   

Fear and self-doubt plague all of us. To the degree you can overcome your insecurities, you will experience freedom to be yourself and reach your full potential as an entrepreneur. The most important thing to understand is that everyone experiences these scary emotions to some degree, regardless of how confident and self-assured people may seem.

After I made a recent presentation at Google's New York office, an audience member asked me, "How do you become so self-assured and confident?" I responded: "How do you know I am self-confident? The truth is you don't know what I am experiencing inside, only I know that. You have the impression that I am self-assured and confident, but you don't know that for sure."

We continued to talk about the importance of confidence versus fear, and I left the presentation alarmed over how big this issue is. Because I have witnessed so many individuals who stop themselves from ever getting started because of that tormenting self-doubt, I decided to write down the things I do to handle it. Follow these five tips when fear and insecurity strike:

1. Don't forget that it's normal. When you are fearful or insecure, remind yourself that you're simply feeling what most other people experience. You are probably doing something that is new for you or that you are excited about. Fear is a normal feeling, and I would be more concerned if you didn't experience it.

2. Fill your calendar. The busier I stay, the more confident I am. Never allow too much white space on your calendar and you will not experience fear. I tell people, "If you want to meet the devil, just have too much free time on your hands." Doubt loves the person with lots of time for thinking about himself and stirring up negative feelings.

3. Embrace fear. For me, fear has become the indicator of the things I actually need to and must do--and that have had the greatest payoff. Do what you are scared to do and watch your confidence grow. I am not suggesting you need to take physical risks, but that you should make the call you are most scared of. Regardless of the results, you will walk away inspired that you did it rather than thinking less of yourself for not taking action.

4. Go beyond your comfort zones. Very successful people don't seek comfort; they seek success and are willing to do what is most uncomfortable. But most of the world is seeking comfort and familiarity, which are traps that cause you to settle for the mediocre. If you want to get to the next level of your business, you've got to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

5. Take '10X' Actions. Albert Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge, but I will take massive action over either. I am not the smartest guy or the most creative, but I assure you that if I operate at activity levels 10 times my competition, I will dominate. I never use the word "action" in the singular because I have never found one action to be effective enough that it didn't require a follow up. Multiply whatever you think is required by 10 and become a machine of action. If you do that, I assure you that your fear will subside.
Grant Cardone
 

  

 

Can Tweet Button Drive More Traffic To Your Website

Since Twitter changed the face of communications, business owners have increasingly wondered: If I tweet it, will they come?

In the big screen adaptation of William Patrick Kinsella’s short story, Shoeless Joe, the main protagonist -- an Iowa farmer played by Kevin Costner -- hears a voice in his head that says, “If you build it, he will come.” While Costner’s character went on to build an iconic baseball field that eventually drew thousands of fictional visitors, you and your business can’t afford to take the same risk. If you build and manage a website, you have to promote it, and according to a new study, adding Twitter’s free ‘Tweet Button’ to your web pages drives traffic to your site and has the potential to lift your sales.

Business websites that include Twitter’s Tweet Button receive seven times the number of social media mentions than sites that don’t display such social sharing hooks, according to a new report from BrightEdge, a San Mateo, Calif.-based enterprise-level search-engine optimization firm, which tallied the responses of four million tweets.

The report says the evidence points to social sharing buttons -- like the ‘Tweet’ button at the top of this article -- are a means of driving traffic to your website. In its most recent Social-Share Analysis: Tracking Social Adoption and Trends (link opens a PDF file), BrightEdge says 53.6 percent of the largest 10,000 sites on the Web displayed social links or buttons on their homepage in August — a figure that’s up slightly from a 52.8 percent just a month earlier. The company takes the “glass half-empty” approach to these statistics, saying far too many brands are not taking full advantage of social sharing tools like Twitter’s Tweet and Follow button, especially since the tools are free and easy to install.

How easy you ask? Check out https://twitter.com/about/resources/tweetbutton to see how simple it is to create and place a Twitter button on your business Web page. Just choose a button, customize it, recommend up to two Twitter accounts for users to follow after they share content from your site, preview your button and get your code. Simply copy and paste the code into the HTML for your website, and that’s it.

In case you missed it, last month I offered some additional tips for tapping into the social tendencies of website visitors. In an Entrepreneur Magazine article (see Get People Talking: Tap into the social nature of your website’s visitors to boost relationships with customers and your company’s reach), I alluded to three additional social sharing tools that are available for free to business. The first, Facebook’s Comment Box plug-in, enables your website visitors to post the comments they make on your website to their Facebook News Feed.


Disqus, which we use to power the comments here on Entrepreneur.com, is integrated with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. And Intense Debate notifies your commenters when they get a response, allowing them to continue the debate/discussion easily through email. Besides email, these commenters can also send a tweet and share their opinion with friends on Facebook.

Entrepreneur Magazine

 

A 24-Hour Social Media Marketing Plan for Your Startup

A 24-Hour Social Media Marketing Plan for Your Startup

It's easy to waste time on Facebook and Twitter. Consider this game plan for new business owners in a hurry. BY Jonathan Blum | June 7, 2011| 7 inShare.40 It only takes one day--24 hours--to roll out a social media marketing strategy that can boost your bottom line. That is, if you know how to spend your time.

The big three--LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter-- along with secondary social media sites like Foursquare, Groupon and ShareSquare, all offer once-unimaginable marketing tools. Real-time customer preference data, worldwide dissemination of company information and even the means to mass-distribute coupons … it's all available at our fingertips. Heck, these days you can even use barcodes to sell your products and services.

While marketing socially can be a road to opportunity, it can also lead to wasted business resources. "Social media is what's happening; it's game-changing stuff," says Erika Brown, executive vice president of corporate strategy for Frost & Sullivan, an international consulting agency with a practice in social media. "But, it's far too easy for the inexperienced to spin their wheels and spend money and time on things they don't understand how to use effectively and measure properly." To keep you from entering the social media time vortex, here's a step-by-step, hour-by-hour guide to designing, building and rolling out your own web 2.0 marketing plan.

Checklist: Before You Start Dedicate the time. A full day means a full day. Social media can be easy to use, filled with fascinating concepts and even fun--but it takes time. Plan on a full 24 hours to get your social marketing system running. It's probably best to invest roughly two hours a day over a two-week period. Get to know your computer and smartphone. If you're just getting the hang of this online, smartphone, web software thing, selling with these tools is not for you--not yet, anyway.

First, you should be comfortable with logging into online software, installing mobile apps and accessing the web in complex environments. Know your brand, customers and potential customers. Social media marketing is moot unless you can clearly communicate what you do. It's important to know who buys from you and who might potentially buy from you. Ready? Begin!

00:00 - 02:00 Create a simple Web page We know, this is supposed to be a social media guide, so what's a static web page doing here? The fact is, no matter what social media webs you spin, your business still needs a single, easy-to-find web space that defines your brand message, matches that brand to basic search terms customers might use to find you and provides clear and accurate contact information. Tools to use: Do not bother with pricey web designers or developers. Basic website tools like those from Google Apps, Windows Live and Intuit Websites offer powerful low- or no-cost web services that work perfectly well. Timesaving tip: In the age of Facebook and Twitter you don't need a complex, multipage website filled with dynamic content. A single-page site that scrolls down can be just the virtual brochure you need. Leave the heavy lifting to social media.

02:00 - 06:00 Connect with your customers on LinkedIn LinkedIn may not have the social media hip factor of Facebook, Groupon or Foursquare, but it does have one thing those services don't: all the information on your best customers laid right out where you can find it. Tools to use: LinkedIn is a very powerful tool, but it has a lot of extraneous features (e.g., LinkedIn Answers). All you need is a solid personal profile touting your experience, why someone would want to do business with you and about a half-dozen recommendations. Then, qualify your contacts into legit sales leads by ranking them in terms of how much business they do--or are likely to do--with you. Next, one at a time starting at the top of the list, request a connection with each and every qualified lead. Sure, it will take some time to rank your connections, not to mention for them to respond, but you have a full four hours for this, so fear not. Timesaving tip: Do not create a separate company presence on LinkedIn. That's what your website and Facebook page are for. Your LinkedIn presence is about you. So get a professional head shot taken for your profile.

06:00 - 12:00 Professionalize your Facebook image Overall, Facebook is miserable for running your business. It's not secure and it basically forces your employees to fool around. What it is fabulous for, though, is posting an up-to-the-minute log of what you and your business are doing. Tools to use: You will need a personal Facebook profile and a business page. Once you set up a personal profile, creating a business page is a breeze. Just click on the "Ads and Pages" link on the left-hand side of your personal page and click the "+ Create Page" button.

When creating your company profile, don't be shy about recycling your branding info from LinkedIn and your website. Then add fresh links, posts, images and branding information right away. Go back to your personal page and pull off any unprofessional photos or info that may hurt the image of your brand. Slowly what will emerge is a coherent, up-to-date personal and professional image of you and your company. Timesaving tip: Think of Facebook as good latté--keep it light, sweet and short. Remember, it's called Facebook, not Crankybook or Boringbook. Keep your posts upbeat, useful and informative. For Entrepreneur's best Facebook practices, visit entrepreneur.com/FBbestpractices

12:00 - 14:00 Go real-time With Twitter With a solid website to show users who you are, the means to connect to your best customers on LinkedIn and a platform to post your latest work on Facebook, you are ready to add in the fast-twitch marketing muscle of Twitter. Tools to use: Start with a personal, rather than a company, Twitter feed. The goal here is to follow your customers, tweet about what's relevant to your business, retweet content that's interesting to your customers and offer short, concise thoughts--140 characters or less--on your market. Remember, it's about getting your finger on the pulse of your current customers and offering useful information to potential customers. A few tweets a day is more than enough. Timesaving tip: Go mobile. Twitter is great, but it's not worth sitting at a computer tweeting all day. Get Twitter's mobile client and tweet directly from your phone. Note: Though it might seem like a timesaver, don't set your preferences to automatically place Twitter content on Facebook and LinkedIn--they're unique tools and each requires its own messaging.

14:00 - 18:00 Tinker with some cool stuff Before you go live, take a few hours to test-drive some of social media's cutting-edge tools. Here are a few to be aware of. Foursquare: For retail and sales, a well-thought-out, geo-targeted presence on Foursquare makes sense. The goal is to reward loyal customers with preferential treatment and discounts. Groupon: The king of social discounting, this tool lets you offer a deep discount on a single day for a single product to drive awareness and business. But be careful, your operation may be flooded with deadbeats who have no intention of ever returning to pay full price. ShareSquare: Truly the cutting-edge of social media, ShareSquare uses customizable barcodes that can be loaded with company information and placed into business cards, pamphlets or other printed materials, where customers then use their smartphone cameras to capture the encoded info and automatically connect to everything from company images to sweepstakes. It sounds crazy, but it works.

18:00 - 24:00 Test. Adapt. Update. Repeat. You're in the home stretch. You have a static, search engine-friendly website to help customers find you both on- and offline. You have a qualified community of current and likely customers via LinkedIn. You can socialize with customers on your cleaned-up Facebook personal page, while maintaining an up-to-the-minute running résumé of your work on your Facebook business page. You have the means to track your customers and attract potential ones via Twitter. And you are targeting your message geographically using discounts or other new technologies with Foursquare, Groupon or ShareSquare. Now comes the critical part: learning to keep things manageable. Considering the power and potential of even one of these tools, it's easy to get distracted by the sheer vastness of it all. You will see people with 1,500 Facebook friends, 15,000 Twitter followers and 500-plus LinkedIn connections. Don't sweat it. You only need to serve a few new customers. Start with your best leads on LinkedIn and look at your established connections. They also have connections, so search them for potential clients. Poke around on Facebook, Twitter and the other platforms to see if your connections there have pages and feeds. If your business offers a solution for them, start following them on Twitter or even make a friend request on Facebook. If it feels like a match, ask for a formal connection on LinkedIn. Be sure to support your first pitch with solid tweets, an excellent image on Facebook and the proper incentives on other platforms. If you do this, your customers should be happy to connect you.

Most important, move slowly and limit your time invested. Spend no more than two hours for each new customer, which keeps your virtual marketing platform from being hyperactive (and you won't be accused of spamming your connections). Scale rarely translates into money in social media. Keep your virtual marketing platform lean and up to date, and it will help make you money in the real world.

A version of this article was originally published in the June 2011 print edition of Entrepreneur's StartUps with the headline: Get Social. Jump to CommentsDid you find this story helpful? YesNo Thanks for making Entrepreneur better for everyone. Please tell us why? Too general Not interesting I didn't learn anything new Information is out of date Not well presented Not what I was looking for Jonathan BlumJonathan Blum is a freelance writer and the principal of Blumsday LLC, a Web-based

 

 

 

7 Leadership Lessons From Stephen Covey

The death of the ‘7 Habits’ author reminds us of what a profound leadership authority he will remain for generations to come.

In 1989, Stephen Covey’s profound book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” had the business world raving. Since that time, new generations have entered the workforce.
Do relative newcomers to business know the name Stephen Covey? Are they introduced to his international bestseller in college? Yes, Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink, and brothers Chip and Dan Heath have come along with profound business and leadership messages. But Covey’s teachings should not be put on the back burner.

Covey, 79, passed away yesterday, July 16. He left quite a legacy.
I dusted off my tattered copy of “The 7 Habits” and realized I was overdue for a refresher course.
For the folks who were reading Dr. Seuss in 1989, here are seven takeaways:
   
Habit No. 1: Be proactive. “Self-awareness enables us to stand apart and examine even the way we ‘see’ ourselves — our self-paradigm, the most fundamental paradigm of effectiveness. It affects not only our attitude and behaviors, but also how we see other people. It becomes our map of the basic nature of mankind.”

Habit No. 2 Begin with the end in mind. “This habit is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things.” In other words, visualize what you want as if it already happened and the universe will begin to work wonders.

Habit No. 3: Put first things first. This habit is about personal and time management. Covey writes: “Management, remember, is clearly different from leadership. Leadership is primarily a high-powered, right brain activity. It’s more of an art; it’s based on a philosophy. You have to ask the ultimate questions of life when you’re dealing with personal leadership issues. But once you have dealt with those issues, once you have resolved them, you then have to manage yourself effectively to create a life congruent with your answers.”

Habit No. 4: Think win/win. According to Covey, “This is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win/win means agreements are mutually beneficial, mutually satisfying… Most people think in terms of dichotomies: strong or weak, hardball or softball win or lose. But that kind of thinking is fundamentally flawed.”

Habit No. 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. “We have such a tendency to rush in, to fix things up with good advice. But we often fail to take time to diagnose, to really, deeply understand the problem first… This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication.”

Habit No. 6: Synergize. On synergistic communication, Covey writes: “You begin with the belief that parties involved will gain more insight, and that the excitement of that mutual learning and insight will create a momentum toward more and more insights, learning, and growth.” Another gem: “Synergy is almost as if a group collectively agrees to subordinate old scripts and to write a new one.”

Habit No. 7: Sharpen the saw. “It’s renewing the four dimensions of your nature—physical, spiritual, mental, and social/emotional.” Covey writes about continuous self-improvement. Commit, learn, and do.

Thank you, Stephen Covey, for influencing so many people around the world.

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