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View Article  The price of discourtesy
I found a new barber today and was very pleased. He did a better job than the previous one and at a much better price. Until a week before Christmas I had no intention of looking for a new barber.   more »
View Article  BlogHarbor move
Enough research! Today I upgraded to a paid BlogHarbor/Blogware account and downgraded my Typepad account to a basic site to be a mirror of the BlogHarbor one..   more »
View Article  Blogware move needs mirror
I realised after reading a blog a week or so ago by - I think - Kathleen Gilroy that one of the implications of moving a blog to a new platform is that you can lose search engine rankings if you are changing urls, as you do if you accept the 'default' url provided by the new blog hosting service.   more »
View Article  Blogware trial going well
In my continuing search for the blogging platform which will provide excellent functionality and be easy to manage without my having to learn programming skills that I do not have the inclination or time to learn, I've now trialled the Blogware blogging platform with a couple of different distributors/resellers, Lockergnome and BlogHarbor.   more »
View Article  The Home Business Guy is Here
This is my first blog using the BlogHarbor facility for testing Blogware.   more »
View Article  Make your tax dollars work for you
Home based business owners, in my experience, love to know about a bargain for goods or services they need. One place you can get a bargain - in fact get help for free - is from government websites.   more »
View Article  Typepad and RSS button

Had a response from Typepad support which goes some way to solving the problem of what happens when you click on the RSS or XML buttons.

My concern was that when I left clicked (as I do for RSS/XML buttons on other blogs) I got a Windows Explorer File Download window asking did I want to save the file and just giving me the file name, not the RSS feed url.

   more »
View Article  A nice invitation

Delighted to have an invitation to be a guest blogger over at Andy Wibbels' EasyBakeWeblogs.

A lot of my keenness to blog and knowledge of blogging, RSS etc comes from doing Andy's course. He's a great teacher and has great enthusiasm for whatever he does.

I accepted his invitation and posted there a couple of days ago about my adventures in seeking a blogging platform that will work for me - Blogging platform junkie 'fesses up

   more »
View Article  Best business books

For any business person wanting to plan their reading for the new year, the Forbes Business Books of the Year list is a useful resource. It is a mixed sort of list and was compiled partly on the number of Google hits!

Nice to see that Seth Godin's 'Free Prize Inside: the Next Big Marketing Idea' made the list - number 10. Whenever I check out what Seth is writing I get an insight or an inspiration, or both.

View Article  Live your dream!
In a teleclass with fellow coaches this morning with a great mentor of mine, Richard Reardon, we looked at how to create the motivation to achieve your dreams.   more »
View Article  Blogging platform journey

I've just taken up an invitation to be an author on Andy Wibbels' Easy Bake Weblogs blog, which I happily accepted as a privilege and honour.

My first post there is about my search for a blogging platform that would work for me as an elegant and functionally rich  business blog platform and would be very configurable and manageable for me as a non-technical person.

See Blogging platform junkie 'fesses up

View Article  Moving away from or toward
Earlier this year, in a seminar with Chris Howard, master of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), I finally "got" a really important distinction, which is about whether you are more motivated by "moving away" goals and values or "moving toward" goals and values.   more »
View Article  Typepad blues

Typepad is so good in many ways. I just wonder whether they ever do any usability testing with non-geek types.

The klutzy stuff on the left sidebar, where the RSS and XML buttons are, is an example of what happens when technical people do not provide exhaustive testing of a product so that it can operate seamlessly.

   more »
View Article  News on commercial email

For anyone into marketing online, there will surely be some heartburn on learning the latest news from the USA about the CAN-SPAM Act and how it is proposed to be interpreted by the FTC.

My quick look at what's happening suggests that for anyone with a big, existing mailing list, there is a need to review, rapidly, what is being done and tighten up procedures to make sure they are "sue-proofed".

   more »
View Article  Typepad vs Blogware

Still not entirely satisfied with the usability - for me - of Typepad as my blogging tool/platform of choice, I've been having a look at Blogware. In fact, I've signed up for a 30 day trial and started a blog there, with the title, Home Business Tips. It's very basic at present, partly because I'm still figuring out how to configure the site, how to add my RSS feed etc.

   more »
View Article  Share good connections
In home based or other small business we often lack the buying power of big organisations. So it's a good move to share with other home based bizoids any information we get about where good deals are to be done.   more »
View Article  Form an R&D; team
One of the several challenges of being a home based business person, especially if you are "flying solo", is the lack of other people - professional peers - to "bounce ideas off".   more »
View Article  a challenging view

Along with many other people, I've learnt a lot from Dr Wayne Dyer, personal development guide, author of many books and tapes, including such inspiring works as The Power of Intention (see sidebar for link). Chris Knight, the master of ezines, has set up and manages as a labour of love, the Dr Wayne Dyer fans' discussion board, Inspires You. Today he has posted a  challenging commentary by Dr Dyer on war and peace and specifically about the war in Iraq. And there are already a number of comments, including mine.

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View Article  Answer your own phone
If you are in home business and are serious about it, you need to be serious about who answers your phone and how they do that.   more »
View Article  sharks in the water

Two days ago, walking on the beach and about to go in for a swim, I saw a rescue helicopter circling offshore.

The lifeguards said there was a school of sharks and the chopper was trying to shoo them away.

It would be nice to have the equivalent of that chopper with all the sharks on the internet!

   more »
View Article  Intellectuals on the move

Several years ago, when I realised I needed to get serious about sales - not having had a sales background but realising I needed to lift my game, or perhaps to learn the game for the first time - I started taking a bunch of courses, listening to tapes, reading about sales.

One of the things I noticed was that a lot of people who presented themselves as expert salespeople explained and sometimes emphasised that they did not have a "college education" but that that hadn't stopped them being great salespeople.

Well, d'uh.

   more »
View Article  Saturday thoughts

I went to the mall this morning to buy some  new t-shirts and shorts, as the ones I had were getting a bit daggy. What were all these people doing at the mall? Where had they come from?

Sometimes, in home based business, Saturday is just another working day.  I usually do my odd bit of shopping for clothes and such on a weekday, when it is quieter.

   more »
View Article  blogging and business

There are lots of viewpoints about blogging and business.

There are those (the "fire your web developer" school) for whom blogging represents a liberation from the thrall of web designers. I would not go so far at this stage, but there is a story there.

There are others who suggest you should just have fun blogging and not stress over whether you will one day make any money from blogging.

   more »
View Article  the intellectual life and Catch 22

"The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates (Plato, Dialogues)

When I read about home based business, either in the books I buy or scan at the bookstore, or in magazines or online, I seem to find an overwhelming amount of advice about practical matters, like how to set up your office, how to get your business card designed, how to find a good accountant.

But if our inner life is important to us, and our intellectual growth, reading a series of 'how-to' books on home based business might be a limiting and counter-productive approach to being successful at this caper we have taken on.

   more »
View Article  blogging and home based business

I’m currently on a bit of a campaign to encourage people in home based business to get into blogging.

Blogging is great for this, in terms of the pre-arranged technology (free or low cost), the ability to blog about whatever you are interested in, and the extraordinary diversity of blogs, bloggers and blogging communities.

   more »
View Article  it's never about price

Went to a local Business Excellence breakfast meeting this morning.

Brettchamberlain The speaker, Brett Chamberlain, was billed as an expert in marketing and sales. My first thought on seeing the program was - can I bear yet another talk on marketing? Looking more closely at Brett's background, I thought, hmmmm, I'll give it a go.

I'm glad I did. Great content, excellent presentation from this former Army officer, turned business consultant, turned keynote public speaker.

So what specifically did I get? For one thing, I got some excellent clues from Brett about marketing and sales. For another, in the "out of a hat" prize giving which is a regular feature of these events, I won a copy of Brett's book - "thinking business". Serendipitous, as this blog is "thinking home business".

And there were two items in particular that were my 'aha!s' for the day.

   more »
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