The significant challenges that we face today cannot be resolved by the same level of thinking that created them.

Hi and welcome to today's issue of Keeping in Touch. A big, warm 'hello' to all our new subscribers.

I'm going to keep the comments short today since we have two excellent articles full of good information.

Our Feature Article was presented by Elena Fawkner. It's easy to get caught up in our online efforts and completely ignore other mediums of 'advertising'. There are loads of helpful suggestions in Offline Promotion Matters Too.

Our Special Feature comes to us from Charles Burke. The Seven Simple Secrets of Naturally Lucky People gets right into the heart of luck. What is luck? Do you believe in luck? Have you ever wondered why some people seem to be lucky all the time?

Details for placing your subscriber ad is contained in the Reader's Corner.

Have a great day and keep on smiling.

Lois M. Jeary
Publisher, KIT and KIT Klassifieds
Contact Me

http://www.home4success.com

Offline Promotion Matters Too
© 2002 Elena Fawkner

With all the talk of the importance of search engine positioning, online directories, keyword metatags and publishing your own ezine, you might be forgiven for thinking that the online world is the only one that matters when it comes to promoting your online business. Only occasionally will you see something like "and don't forget about offline promotion too".

Why do I need to engage in offline promotion when I'm promoting an online business? The reason is simple. The concept of a paperless office is all very well, but your potential customers live in an offline world. To get their attention, you need to reach them where they live. Here's how:

STATIONERY

Every item of stationery that leaves your office is an opportunity to promote your website. Make sure your website address (URL) appears on every single piece of stationery including:

PROMOTIONAL ITEMS

Tangible promotional items that people see or use every day are a great way of keeping your name in front of your customers and prospective customers. Make sure your URL appears prominently and it will be a constant reminder to visit your website.

Promotional items that lend themselves well to this concept include:

PRINTED MATERIALS

Printed materials are a great way to generate (especially) repeat business when included with product orders. After all, your existing customers are already predisposed to deal with you so make sure you take the opportunity to promote your entire line of products and/or services to give them a reason to return. Here's a few ways:

=> Coupons

Coupons are great to use as incentives for future purchases. Offer a range of coupons including percentage off orders (for example, "10% off your next order of $20 or more"), free shipping or free items (for example, "buy one, get one free" type offers).

Coupons can also be used to generate new business by making them freely available around the traps. For example, if your business is educational software, make arrangements to have a supply of "30 day free trial" coupons made available at your local school.

Gift certificates are good because they allow your customer to share their discovery of your products and services with friends, family and colleagues. To be effective, especially in connection with services, a gift certificate needs to have a tangible dollar value to the recipient rather than merely offering to redeem the certificate for a particular service. This is because the referral customer probably has no conception of the dollar value of your service. The potential customer can, however, readily appreciate the value of a "$30 toward your purchase of $60 or more" gift certificate.

=> Product Sheets

Product sheets are a way for you to make your existing customer aware of what *other* products and services you offer in addition to those they have recently purchased. This need not be any more elaborate than a one page price list but it can be as extravagant as a glossy product page replete with photos if your budget permits.

=> Brochures

Brochures are an effective way to create a professional image and promote your products and services at the same time. Give them to prospective customers for a quick overview of your business and to give them a reason to visit your website for more information.

Distribute your brochure whenever you get the chance: carry them with you wherever you go and hand them out whenever you hand out your business card. Mail your brochure to current clients to inform them of additional products and services that they may be unaware you offer and to prospective clients sourced from rented mailing lists.

Also, get permission to leave a small stack of your brochures in places where potential customers are likely to congregate such as doctors' and dentists' waiting rooms, local schools etc..

Another good idea is to send your brochure to the editors of your local and regional newspapers together with a letter advising of your availability for interview as a local expert in your field.

ADVERTISING

Advertising can be as simple as placing classified ads in your local newspaper or as grand as purchasing television advertising slots. Here's a few ideas:

Place small classified ads in your local and city newspapers and include the URL of your website.

If you purchase display advertising in the Yellow Pages, be sure to include your URL.

One page flyers advertising your product or service and including your URL can be printed cheaply and left on car windshields or distributed via letterbox drops in your local area.

Your local TV guide can be a good place to advertise cheaply if your product or service is of particular interest to a local geographic target audience. Again, be sure to include your URL.

Radio advertising can be an excellent buy for many small businesses. Call the sales department of several radio stations that target your demographic. Be sure to ask about rates for different times of day and package deals.

You're not going to be able to afford the high price advertising exposure that's offered by the likes of ABC or NBC but you may be surprised at how affordable advertising on your local cable channel can be. Contact the sales department of your cable provider for details. This type of advertising is particularly effective if your product or services is oriented toward a specific geographic target market.

Mailing lists of various sizes are available for rent or purchase for direct mailing your offer to prospective customers.

Press releases can act as a form of de facto advertising. Send your press release to the editors of print periodicals.

Any local community offers ample opportunity for networking. Each networking function you attend is an opportunity to publicize your business and your website. Consider the following:

Last but not least, getting the word out should be a daily habit.

Every time you answer your business phone be sure to give the caller your website address so they can find out more information about you and your business. Make sure your website address is included in the message recorded on your answering machine.

Include a small insert promoting your business and your website in every piece of mail that leaves your home or office.

Finally, perhaps the most effective and under-appreciated tool of them all ­ word of mouth. Talk about your business and your website at every opportunity and encourage your customers, friends, family and colleagues to do the same. You would be surprised at just how many businesses out there owe their success to little more than word of mouth referrals.

Successfully promoting an online business requires a sound understanding and methodical application of the principles of online marketing and promotion.

But to focus on online methods to the exclusion of offline does only half the job. Give due attention to offline methods of promotion in conjunction with your online promotional efforts to ensure the widest possible coverage of ALL of your potential markets.

Elena Fawkner is editor of A Home-Based Business Online ... practical business ideas, opportunities and solutions for the work-from-home entrepreneur.
http://www.ahbbo.com

Shelley Lowery did a magnificent job of putting this trio of ebooks together. You'll refer to these books over and over while creating your 'masterpiece'.

Web Design Mastery is a complete Internet marketer's copy and paste reference guide. This ebook is a step by step guide to designing a professional website.

Advanced Web Design offers a step by guide to designing a web page template, step by step tutorial to assist you in dicing and manipulating images, step by step tutorial to creating image rollover effects, a solid understanding of how to use and implement tables and codes that can be used to spice up your web page as well as a tutorial to assist you in developing an opt-in list, publication and form.

Webmaster Reference Charts is full of details for HTML, CSS, Color and Symbols as well as suggestions for Troubleshooting.

All of us have bad luck and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck - who keeps right on going - is the man who is there when the good luck comes - and is ready to receive it.
- Robert Collier

You never achieve real success unless you like what you are doing.
- Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955 American Author & Achievement Expert

The success combination in business is: Do what you do better ... and: Do more of what you do ...
- David Joseph Schwartz

The Seven Simple Secrets of Naturally Lucky People
by Charles Burke

We've all seen people who are just naturally lucky.

They're the ones who manage to sail through life with more unexplainable "lucky breaks" and fewer disappointments than most people get. Success just seems to come easier for them.

Where most folks have to struggle just to get ahead, lucky people regularly have opportunities just plop down in their laps. Of course, they work hard, but that doesn't fully explain the special treatment that life seems to reserve for them.

It almost appears that they were born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths. Or born under a luckier star than most mere mortals.

Well, cheer up; neither stars nor spoons are at work here. All they have is seven simple secrets.

These secrets are easy little things that you can begin applying in your own life. And when you do, things will start to change for you. Your career will begin to blossom in unexpected ways. And one day you'll realize that now everyone has started calling you naturally lucky, too.

Ready to command more luck in your life? Here are the seven simple secrets of naturally lucky people.

Secret #1. Lucky people don't believe in luck

I recently interviewed ten unusually successful business people for a book I was writing about the role luck plays in the lives of successes.

Nearly every one of them stated plainly they don't believe in luck.

In the next breath, however, they told about unending streams of "serendipitous" or "synchronistic" events that routinely happen in their daily lives.

I believe they don't like the word "luck" because it implies there's no way to control it. They've learned that there is.

If you prefer to call it serendipity or synchronicity rather than lucky, that's okay. The message here is not which term to use. It's about what you can do to get these kinds of things happening for you. When they do happen, you can call them anything you want.

I've chosen to use the word "luck" because when I say it, people have a fair idea of what I mean.

I try to avoid radical new terms when we've already got a perfectly good word.

If someone walked up to you and said, "I help people learn to cause pleasant improbabilities to occur more frequently," you'd probably look around for the exit.

On the other hand, when I use the word "luck," you and I are in the same ball park, concept-wise.

It's okay if our definitions differ slightly. This happens to us all the time anyway. Ever seen a husband and a wife agree on what "shopping" means? Or "one hour"?

Most of the time, even though there are differences, we're close enough for useful communication.

And that's what we're doing here. As you read, you'll gradually find that my definition of luck includes a steering wheel and an accelerator pedal.

Secret #2. "Bad" stuff happens to them too

There are several ways to have good luck.

The most common (and the most useful) is to find opportunities in problems.

A friend of mine says: "There's always a miracle in a mess."

Let's say you and I are neighbors, and our whole city has a common problem. Maybe it's infestation with insects. Or it could be a serious pollution problem from a nearby plant.

While almost everyone is griping and complaining about the problem, you might decide: "Hey, if I can solve this problem, it will help my neighbors, and it can also make a profit for me."

Your neighbors only saw the problem, but you looked deeper and found an opportunity.

All great fortunes have been built upon solving great problems. From the huge railroad empires of the 19th century, to the communications networks of the 20th, and now the software giants of the 21st, they have all solved problems for people.

Was Andrew Carnegie "lucky" that he foresaw a huge need for steel in the 1800s? Some say he was.

But I say he simply knew how to recognize a widespread need and turn it into a giant opportunity.

The same is true of Bill Gates. Many people criticize Gates for his business practices, but whatever else you believe (either way) about the man, you have to admit, he saw an opportunity before most others did, and he acted.

That's probably the most common and the most controllable way to generate your own luck.

Secret #3. More people quit than lose

If you knew ahead of time without a doubt that your success was guaranteed, how much would you go out and do?

Would it make any difference in the kind of things you would attempt? How much higher would you direct your aim?

Well, a funny thing happened to me a few years back. I was sitting and feeling sorry for myself one day because of all the failures that I had been through.

Then it suddenly occurred to me that one particular case hadn't been a real failure. I admitted to myself (reluctantly) that I had simply quit too soon. I had quit before I'd really had a chance to fail.

Then I thought of another non-failure.

Then another.

And before long, I was buried under an avalanche of similar cases. In fact, I couldn't think of a single time when I had actually kept on trying long enough to fail. In other words, I had never experienced failure in my entire lifetime.

Only quitting.

A realization like that will realign your reality.

After that, it's hard to consider yourself a failure because you've never failed. Who knows what you might really be, down inside?

I began to wonder: what would have happened if I had stuck with even a few of those situations just a little longer? What if I hadn't been quite so ready to quit?

More to the point, what about today and tomorrow? What if I stopped being so ready to throw in the towel and surrender too soon? Would I start seeing the number of clear successes in my life begin to grow?

The more I played with that idea, the better it sounded.

I'd like to report to you that my life instantly and dramatically changed that day, but it didn't.

Oh, it did BEGIN changing, but it wasn't the dramatic turnabout that you read of in books or see in movies.

Instead, each time I'd find myself in a discouraging situation, I'd start thinking of all those times I had just simply quit trying too soon. And gradually, over time, I began developing a new mental toughness that didn't take temporary setbacks quite so seriously.

I started finding a new resourcefulness within myself. My "keeping-on" average began to go up, and my "failure" average started declining.

I count that one realization among the most important in my life. Not because it solved a problem, but because it identified one.

Once I could see that the problem wasn't even what I thought it was, I was then able to work on doing something else instead.

And you know what? My luck began improving.

Secret #4. Betting on losing hands makes losers

Successful poker players don't play every hand they're dealt.

If you keep count, the hands they fold far outnumber the hands they hold.

That's because a good card player knows the odds for every possible card combination. They know whether a flush beats a full house and which is more likely to occur.

And they only bet their money on likelihoods.

They love to play with amateurs because amateurs play for "the juice," the emotional charge they get from throwing money out on the table, whether they win or lose.

Good players don't bet on risk, they bet on probability.

Lucky people are very similar. They know longshots when they see them, and they may bet, but it's a calculated bet.

Lucky people are some of the most tenacious people on earth when it's appropriate.

But they're also some of the quickest quitters when the odds don't favor them. In fact, they'll usually opt out of most situations before they even begin because they have learned to recognize and rank opportunities.

What makes a good opportunity? First, does it solve a WIDESPREAD problem? Second, do the people with the problem have enough money to pay for solving that problem? Third, is it easy to reach the people with the problem? Fourth, is the solution a really good one?

If they don't find all four factors, a lucky person will walk away because they know it's a losing hand, no matter how much they personally love the idea.

So if a lucky person sees he's holding a losing hand, he quits quickly and cuts his losses.

Secret #5. Most good luck comes through other people

Good luck almost never happens in a vacuum.

Several years back I read a book by Max Gunther titled "The Luck Factor."

Most of the details in that book have dimmed, but I've never forgotten the core idea: Most lucky breaks are brought to you by other people.

Few people find significant amounts of money on the street or buried in the backyard. Perhaps even fewer win lotteries.

Instead, luck comes more often in the form of opportunities.

You're with a group of ladies (or guys) who are sitting around complaining about how it's hard to find respectable men (women) to date. Everybody is really getting into the problem.

The person next to you leans over and whispers, "Don't you wish everyone would just quit whining?"

But instead of complaining about all those complaints, a little lightbulb clicks on in your head. You realize a good computerized screening service for romantic introductions would fill a real need here.

You don't say anything, but weeks later, when you announce the new service, and you're flooded with calls from singles all over the city wanting safer introductions, all your friends whisper, "She's so lucky. Where did she get that great idea?"

You know where the idea came from, but you're not telling.

A great deal of "good luck" is manually created out of discomfort often someone else's.

Secret #6. Good luck favors those who have prepared

Let's say you're appearing in an amateur play in a little theater in your neighborhood.

A big-name producer from Hollywood is visiting a sick relative, hears about the play, and for a bit of distraction decides to attend.

She sees a spark of something special in your performance, asks to meet you, and offers you a screen test.

Okay, freeze the frame for a second.

Are you prepared for this big break?

Have you done all the study and the practice and the foundation work it takes to be a professional? Will you have the technique and the skills necessary to do the job?

Or are you going to try and fake your way through it?

If you're prepared, you're likely to do well. This means a giant step toward your dreams.

And if you're not prepared... well, good luck with your day job.

Secret #7. You can attract good things, too

All this talk about finding opportunities in "bad" events and developing your skills is important, but there's a more sunny side to luck as well.

Internet entrepreneur Joe Vitale terms it his "Magic Escalator through Life," and award-winning author John Harricharan has titled it "The Power Pause."

I interviewed both of these men recently, as well as eight other fascinating people, about how they manage to stay so consistently successful.

Every single one of them has techniques for keeping their mind tuned to the things they want. And they attend to this "mind tuning" every day. They're not casual about this. Oh no, they put regular effort into it. Their successes and their luck are not accidents.

If you're tempted to greet this with a dismissive, "Oh yeah, I've read those positive thinking books," then you need to think again.

Yanik Silver, an up-and-coming star on the Internet tells how he starts every single morning with a 15-minute session in which he goes over his "values and goals."

Every morning - no exceptions.

Stacey Hall and Jan Brogniez go even further. They teach their clients to attract what they've labeled "Your Perfect Customers."

In every case, they start with their thinking. What they put into their mind has a direct one-to-one relationship to what appears in their life.

The hardest part of Secret #7? Taking responsibility for the bad stuff in your life.

If you've got uncomfortable situations right now, you'll never have the power to change them until you accept the fact that you created that mess ... exactly as it is right now.

Admit to yourself that you created your own problems, down to the last tiny detail, and only then will you take command of the power to change those problems.

Fortunately, it's not as impossible as it sounds at first.

Your mind is like a bucket. If the bucket is filled with muddy water, all you have to do is start a steady flow of clear, fresh water into the bucket.

Soon, the bucket (or your mind) is filled with clear, fresh contents.

Steady daily input of clear, fresh thoughts will change the things that appear in your life, without the need for major renovation. It just happens. You work on the inside, and the outside takes care of itself.

This means you don't fight the old thoughts. You give them minimum energy. You don't resist, you don't struggle. Instead, you put your attention as much as possible on the good things you want to appear in your life.

The lucky things you spend your time thinking about just start happening for you, and one day you wake up and realize, "Hey, I'm a pretty lucky person now. When did that happen?"

Does this mean you won't ever have to make any hard decisions, or deal with any stressful people?

No, but you'll find yourself handling difficult decisions and fussy people more easily because you'll have a clearer vision of what lies on the other side, after you've gotten past them. They just won't loom so large in your path any more.

So these are the seven secrets that naturally lucky people use to keep their life moving forward:

* They don't believe in (or wait around for) random luck. They take charge of generating their own luck.

* They look for the opportunity that's always embedded in life's inconveniences.

* They don't quit when they're holding a potentially winning hand.

* They drop a losing hand as quickly as possible. And they know the difference.

* They polish their people skills constantly because most opportunities are brought to us by others.

* They develop a wide range of professional skills so they're prepared for any opportunity to knock.

* They fill their mind with thoughts of what they want, because they know they get what they fill their mind with, WHATEVER that is.

Other than these seven simple things, however, naturally lucky people don't do anything special at all.

Charles Burke is the author of "Command More Luck," a book offering powerful suggestions for getting more cooperation from life, luck, and your own mind. Whether you call it synchronicity, serendipity, or just plain old luck, you CAN become more "naturally lucky."
Command More Luck

Not the normal garden variety, these are Internet Worms. And far more dangerous than those slimy things that crawl around the flowers. A worm is a self-replicating virus that does not alter files. Instead, it sets up its tent in your memory, and begins to duplicate itself. Worms use parts of an operating system that are automatic and usually invisible to the user. It is common for worms to be noticed only when their uncontrolled replication consumes system resources, slowing or halting other tasks.

If your system is running slower and slower, maybe you have a worm. How would you find out? Run a virus scan. Norton, McAfee, or InoculateIT should do the trick. But my best recommendation by far is to download 'AVG' for free at
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Hi Lois,

Thanks for the Glen Palo's article!!

It made me feel really glad I have resisted all the "get rich while you sleep" B.S., and focused on a solid, product based MLM, which I am slowly building one friendship at the time.

Hi Kit,

I enjoyed the article by Cathy Kessler. That subject is a particular pet peeve of mine too. I see so many spelling errors, and words used in the wrong context I wonder what kind of education these people had as a child. Now, I realize spelling and grammar came easy to me, but if you want to be professional you need to find some way to proofread your work before sending it out for everyone to see. I find the best way is to get someone else to review it for you.

Just my 2 cents.....

Peg Bastin

Legal Stuff ...

We accept no responsibility whatsoever for the content, profitability or legality of any published articles or advertisements contained within KIT.

And, although all of the articles have been selected for their content, the publishing of such articles within this newsletter does NOT constitute a recommendation of the products or services mentioned or advertised within those articles.

Be responsible! Always do your own Due Diligence before responding to any offer.