Silver CEO Cafe

“Hi, my name is Sheila, and I’m a bookaholic….”

Typically, I have a dozen books going at any one time, from the library or bookstores. (Mom used to say they should name a wing of the new library after me … since I’d financed it with all my overdue library fines.)

Anyway, I’ve just rediscovered a treasured inspiration piece that I thought was lost to me forever.

The booklet is called You2 (as in “You Squared”) and what author Price Pritchett offers is “a high-velocity formula for multiplying your personal effectiveness in quantum leaps.”

Here is the promise of this little booklet, and its sequel, The Quantum Leap Strategy…

“Are you ready for this?

Right now, in this moment, you are capable of EXPONENTIAL IMPROVEMENT in your performance. You can MULTIPLY your personal effectiveness, hit new highs, and shatter your old achievement records. The results you can have will be hard for you to imagine.

You can become you2.

You don’t have to settle for things as they are now. That can change. Dramatically. If you’re ready, life is prepared to give you a breakthrough experience. You can jump to a higher orbit of achievement … live the dream … enjoy a completely different plane of success….

You haven’t been reaching your full potential. So far, you haven’t even come close. No matter how you wish to measure success, regardless of how you define achievement, you have barely scratched the surface of what you personally can accomplish.

But maybe the time has come to change all that. Maybe you’re ready to make a quantum leap.”

Pritchett explains that only UNcommon sense will lead you to make your quantum leap. To penetrate your imaginary barriers, you must learn to….

•    Quit trying harder
•    Ignore conventional approaches
•    Rely on the unseen forces
•    Choose a different set of risks
•    Seek failure
•    Get uncomfortable
•    Make your move BEFORE you are ready

Well, I know I’m absolutely ready to make a Quantum Leap! How about you?

You can order both booklets online. Go to….

http://www.pritchettnet.com and click on “Order Handbooks” … but quite frankly, only someone like me who’d been trying to track down You2 for six years would ever have persevered through PritchettNet’s labyrinthine order process!

You’ll find it easier to call 1-800-992-5922. (They’re $7.95 and 6.95 each.)

Quotes from Quantum Leap

“Doing the RIGHT things, even imperfectly, can bring you a quantum leap. Doing the WRONG things, even if you can do them to perfection, will never deliver your dreams.”

~ Price Pritchett ~

“Most people have the wiring in their brains messed up. They’ve decided to doubt the wrong things, such as their potential, the availability of breakthrough opportunities,
and their chances for making a quantum leap. For now, if you must doubt something, doubt your limits.”

~ Price Pritchett ~

In a guest post this morning at DailyBlogTips, Skellie talked about defining your long-term blogging strategy.

Point #7 intrigued me:

7. Keep track of milestones. Your milestones sheet should be something you look to all the time. When your subscriber count reaches 100, or 500, or 1,000, write it down. When an A-lister comments on one of your posts, write it down. When a popular blog links to you, write it down.

Assembling all your best achievements into a blog timeline will help you feel enthusiastic on days when the mere thought of blogging is getting you down.

So I headed out to the cafe and whipped up a form that will make it easy for you to track your achievements.

Introducing the Silver CEO Cafe “Blog Milestone Celebrator!”

 

Get the Blog Milestone Celebrator here in Excel, so you can edit it with your own milestones. (No Excel? Here’s the PDF version.)

Then come on back and share some of your favorite milestones with the rest of us!

In a world of young whippersnappers making a killing online, Marlon Sanders is a rarity.

He’s one of us. A Boomer.

Marlon has made a name for himself by creating infoproducts that are not just theory. Instead, he gets you right into action.

I own his Design Dashboard, a fun tool for non-designers who want to create web graphics with minimal hair-pulling. The Design Dashboard is a great example of Big M’s Point-and-Click training.

To promote the pre-launch of his newest infoproduct — aptly named the InfoProduct Dashboard — Marlon has set up a contest where you have a chance at winning one of 10 copies of the new Dashboard.

Marlon is cleverly giving an extra gift to winners whose contest entry is a video posted on YouTube.

YouTube = Potential to Go Viral = Access to a Whole New Audience = More Sales

Now I don’t actually need this new product. (I’ve been self-publishing books since 1986 and eBooks since 1999.)

So why did I spend time and energy putting together this contest entry?

A couple of reasons:

1. It was an opportunity to practice producing a video FAST. Unlike my first video, which took weeks, I finished this one (from idea to storyboard to script to images to production to YouTube) in about 2 hours.)
2. The video was a way to have a bit of fun with some of my online friends.
3. By including my own blog’s address, I’ll be getting some publicity too.
4. I love to win!

Whether or not you enter Marlon’s contest, think about it as a way to promote your own product launch. And for extra buzz, offer incentives for video entries.

Okay, here’s my entry: “Marlon Must Be STOPPED!”

Looking for a free WordPress theme for your blog?

In this 3-minute video, I’ll take you on a quick tour of today’s top sources of free WordPress themes … including a few that might be new to you.

Links to the Sites Shown in the Video

WordPress Theme Viewer …

http://themes.wordpress.net/

Mashable’s roundup of 2-column themes …

http://mashable.com/2007/08/10/wordpress-2-column/

Mashable’s roundup of 3-column themes …

http://mashable.com/2007/08/03/wordpress-3-column

Themes by Steve Arun …

http://www.va4business.com/business/category/wordpress-themes/

45 Excellent Blog Designs post, at Smashing Magazine …

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/28/45-excellent-blog-designs/

Free WordPress themes by NodeThirtyThree …

http://www.freewpthemes.net/

Cory Miller & Nathan Rice’s Rockin Themes …

http://rockinthemes.com/

Cory Miller’s Internet Marketing with Blogs

http://internetmarketingwithblogs.com/

The title of Brian Clark’s new free report is: Teaching Sells. But it’s the subtitle that’s a grabber: “Forget Everything You Know About Making Money Online … And Start Making Some.”

If you’ve been feeling that the glory days of Internet Marketing are over, or that you’ve started too late, the ideas in Teaching Sells will set your brain spinning.

Here’s a quick quote:

The truth is, it’s still way early. Much earlier than you might think.

There’s never been a better time in history to be a person who can clearly communicate ideas. Right here and now, and certainly going forward.

Brian is best known for his popular CopyBlogger blog, where he has become one of the most well-respected copywriting teachers of this generation.

But what few people know is that beginning in 2001, Brian “built a company that had no employees, no true physical presence, and no offline advertising into a multi-million dollar selling machine.”

In other words, he makes most of his income by selling content, not giving it away.

What’s more, Brian makes a strong case that we have a “mind-boggling” array of opportunities for wealth, by creating interactive, multimedia learning environments.

Teaching Sells is a riveting read.

Yet only a handful of readers are likely to take action on the report’s recommendations. For those who do, I predict that a year from now, many of them will point to today as a crucial turning point in their online success.

Okay, this post belongs in the category: “I Never Thought It Would Happen to Me.” Or maybe: “Old Enough to Know Better.”

You see, last week I moved this blog from its original hosting service to one of my long-time favorite hosts, Dotable.

Being the smarty-pants that I am, I didn’t bother to back up the blog. (You can see where this is going, can’t you?)

So, yes, I lost everything. My excuse for not bothering with a backup was that this is a brand-new blog, with only a couple of posts.

But to my horror, I lost not just the posts, but also:

• All the categories
• The category descriptions
• My “About” page
• All changes and additions to the two sidebars
• Widget activations

The good news: I still had all my themes and plug-ins available. A light went on! I suddenly understood how a blog (or any Content Management System) is different from a static website (created with a tool like DreamWeaver or FrontPage). Actually, I’ve come to think of a blog as like a house. (WordPress experts are welcome to chime in and correct my assumptions.)

You know that a house has a frame or structure. Inside that structure, the house is partitioned into rooms. And — once you move in — the rooms contain all of your stuff.

So imagine that the structure of the blog (theme, plug-ins, widgets) is like the physical structure of a house (foundation, walls, mechanical systems and so on). The database of the blog is like the rooms, ready to store your stuff. For instance, there’s a room for categories; another for tags; another for posts stored by month, and so on. The content of the blog (posts and pages) is all the stuff (furniture and accessories) that we add to the empty house.

Fortunately, moving all the stuff back into my house (er, blog) didn’t take as long as I expected. Here’s why:

1. Dotable’s techies kindly set up a new, empty database for me. (This is exactly the kind of over-delivery that Dotable does so well.)
2. I scribbled a quick checklist of what I needed to do. (If you like, I’ll tidy it up and post it here next week.)
3. I had subscribed to my own blog (using FeedBurner) so I was able to capture my introductory post. This was really helpful, since the post had lots of links in it. (The second post was time-sensitive, so I didn’t bother with it.)
4. I hadn’t used any notes to create my About page, so thought I’d have to start from scratch. Then, just for the heck of it, I Googled silverceocafe +sheila. Yahoo! (Whoops, I mean “Goo-goo!”) Google had a copy of the page in their cache. I was even able to capture the code.
   Of course, my capture came with the word Sheila highlighted, so I had to clean that up in the code.
5. I also retrieved my Category names in this way, but still have to re-create the category descriptions.
6. While I was at it, I took the opportunity to upgrade the blog to WordPress 2.3. Rather than go through the complicated “normal” upgrade procedure, I used the WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin.  (I LOVE this plug-in. Be careful with it, though, as it’s very powerful. And definitely back up your blog before using it.)

Good Things to Come Out of This Experience

• I now understand the difference between blog structure and content (and that both need to be backed up).
• I’ve got a checklist for new blog set-up. (More efficient than the seat-of-the-pants method.)
• “Back Up Blogs” is now an item on our Weekly System Checklist

Not sure how to start? See this excellent video at Tubetorial, with step by step guidance on how to back up your blog using the WordPress Backup Plugin.

And if you’d like me to post my WordPress Blog Setup Checklist, just let me know….

Remember this? “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This … has been one of them.”

If you’re a (shall we say) “seasoned” Boomer like me, you do remember this TV hit of 1958-1963. Likewise, online: There are 8 million ways to build an infopreneuring empire. This … is one of them.

But first, a quick definition. An infopreneur is simply an entrepreneur who makes money publishing or marketing information. Although infopreneurs existed long before the Internet — remember Charles Atlas’ “98-pound weakling” program? — the web makes infopublishing affordable and fast.

If you are dreaming of a way to package some of what you know into an eBook or multi-media product, and sell it online … then you’re an infopreneur and you’ve come to the right place.

I’m Sheila Lindsay Martin and I’ve made hundreds of thousands of dollars online in the last few years. My mission is to get you up to speed FAST … by offering advice and resources that will shorten your learning curve. But first, let’s consider some cold, harsh facts:

1. The vast majority of people who dream of earning a big income online FAIL.

2. Most of those who fail don’t lack information about how to build an online business. In fact, they’re drowning in it.

3. Way too much info is MISLEADING or out of date.

4. The handful of people who do succeed online, excel at figuring out how to sort the good advice from the bad.

5. Most importantly, successful infopreneurs take fast, MASSIVE ACTION.

If you’re still reading, I’m guessing that you’re ready to take action on your infopreneurial dreams. You’re ready to step out from the crowd of 8 million wannabees and tell your story. So join the crowd at the Silver CEO Cafe and let’s get started!