Are You Shooting Yourself In The Foot?

Have you ever been at a networking function talking to someone when during the conversation you felt very self-conscious trying to say the right thing? Were you afraid that maybe if you said the wrong thing the person might not find you likeable, and therefore not want to do business with you? If you have, I am about to tell you why you should not worry about it. Like the obnoxious song "Don't Worry - Be Happy" from years ago, I want to share with you the reason why being careful about what we say works against us in the networking environment.

Our goal in business networking should be to establish new relationships and through the process of follow-up develop them over time. As with any relationship, being honest plays a very important role in that development.

When we meet someone for the first time, we want to make a good impression. Often we put on our "party face" so that we do. This can often cause us problems that we do not expect. One problem is that when we try to appear to be something that we really do not feel inside of us, we often have a fear that we are going to be "discovered". This fear causes us to feel uncomfortable about the situation and though we may be smiling, we are really cringing inside.

Most people worry that if they just be who they are, that no one can accept them. I argue that if we do not just be ourselves, sooner or later who we really are will slip out and then we will have to deal with the consequences of being discovered. This then leads to a feeling of distrust between people.

Have you ever been in a relationship with a person of the opposite sex where you did not tell them something important early on and later had to reveal it or even worse it was revealed by accident? It leads for difficult times after that and a lot of shuffling and apologizing.

In my opinion, it is better to risk being who I am up front. To let people know exactly how I feel. People, for the most part, have a forgiving nature. They actually want to forgive. If you make a mistake and say something that can be potentially embarrassing, you can always apologize for it and be forgiven. But if you say something that is not necessarily true and are discovered later, your credibility may be permanently damaged.

If you go into a networking environment prepared to be relaxed and genuine, you will find that it is a lot more fun to be there. If you have a plan of action to really get to know people, you will be much more productive in a shorter amount of time. People will feel comfortable talking to you and you to them. In an environment of truth, more people will want to do business with you and to be around you.

Authentic enthusiasm is contagious. You will always appear to be more attractive when you are excited about what you are doing. When you are not worried about making mistakes, you will appear to be happier. Being happy about the situation will help you to smile more, and the smiling face is a natural human attractor.

So next time you attend a networking function, just be yourself. Your results will improve and you will feel better when you leave to go home. Over time, the difference will be measurable in more ways than just your income. You will find that you have more friends than you had ever imagined possible. When it comes time for the referral, your friend will remember you because friends really do refer friends.

Tools For Learning Guitar

Guitarists are insatiable learners and the world is full of great guitar learning material. First of all, there are countless tablature books which show you in the easy-to-learn guitar tablature format how to play all your favorite songs even if you can’t read sheet music. If you can read sheet music, then there is sheet music available for every popular artist and thousands of classical and lesser-known composers. There are also “method books” that teach how to play a particular style, and there are instructional guitar DVDs that show you and tell you everything a single guitarist knows how to do. There are books with CDs full of audio examples, there are DVDs that come with tablature books; the list of available guitar learning resources is endless.

Guitar lessons are still the number one way that guitarists pick up new information. In-person guitar lessons with a local guitar teacher are probably the most effective way to learn new things about the guitar. The world is full of part-time and full-time guitar teachers, who put their heart and soul into teaching their students how to be an ever-improving guitar learning machine. Guitar teachers are expensive, however, and not everyone has the money or the time to commit to in-person lessons. So while this is a truly effective method, it is not for everyone.

Over the last 5 years, online guitar lessons have become an outstanding resource for guitarists wanting to learn guitar at a convenient pace and at very low cost. In my opinion, online guitar lessons have come of age, and are now the best tool for learning guitar available to anyone anywhere. I don’t propose that online guitar lessons should supplant books, sheet music, DVDs, and in-person guitar lessons. What I would like to suggest is that online guitar lessons are more convenient, cheaper, more useable, and provide more breadth of information than any other method available.

Convenience: Tablature books are OK, as long as they come with some audio examples. DVDs are OK, as long as they come with a book. The problem is that keeping your place in the book and your place on the CD/DVD in synch is difficult. Every time you take a break (every day basically) you lose your place and have to synch up all over again. Online guitar lessons, on the other hand, solve the problem of synching the tab, explanation, and audio/video samples. A web page is the ultimate guitar lesson format: audio, video, and text all together in one document.

Price: Books and DVDs have to be manufacturer, shipped, and inventoried. If you have ever burned a CD or made some copies at a copy shop, you know that manufacturing a product costs real money. Imagine if you had to turn around and sell your product at a profit? Shipping a book or DVD to the retailer is another expense in traditional publishing that occurs before the product is even ready to be sold. Inventory, the hidden expense, can be the largest: every month the book sits in the store, it costs the owner a percent of the price to pay for it to be kept out of the rain, and if the inventory is bought on credit, there is interest on the loan as well. All told, it is no wonder there are few places that sell guitar lesson products even in a large city.

Breadth: Guitar books generally can only have a few hundred pages; DVDs can only hold a couple of hours of video. A web site can expand to the size of a whole library full of books and DVDs. This is one aspect of the size advantage of online guitar lessons, but the more important aspect is this: getting a book published is so difficult, that many great guitarists simply never try it. Publishing a web site is so easy that many fantastic guitarists who would never previously have published their knowledge can now publish their guitar lessons online where you can find them.

As you can see, online guitar lessons have significant advantages that should make them an important part of any guitarist’s learning strategy. As the internet continues to grow, and the use of video on the internet spreads, look for online guitar lessons to one day be the recognized leader in helping guitarists improve their skills in a convenient, inexpensive way.

Parenting Your Overweight Teen and Improving Their Self Esteem

Today, approximately 15% of children between the ages of 6 and 19 are either overweight or obese (which is a 10% increase since 1970).  In fact, there are now more than 9 million youngsters who are at risk from suffering some impaired life due to high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels or Type 2 Diabetes, as well as having a negative self image of themselves, which will continue as they grow into adulthood.

There have been studies carried out that indicate a child who is obese at the age of 6, will have a 50% chance of becoming obese as an adult.  Also, if one or both of the child’s parents are overweight, then the chances increase to 80%.  These are very sobering and scary statistics for a parent whose child is overweight.

However, there is good news that, with help from the adults in their lives, these children can be helped.  They can be taught healthier behaviors, which relate to both their eating habits and improving the physical activity they do, and this will help them to lose the weight.

By helping them become more selective with the types of food that they consume, and increasing the amount of physical activity that they accomplish, it will only produce positive results.

However, it should be stressed that formal dieting, and especially giving your child a severely restricted diet, should only be attempted with medical approval and the appropriate nutritional supervision.  Many pediatricians believe the best course is to try and hold an overweight child’s weight at a steady level, and avoid losing large amounts of weight at a time, until such a time as their height is at a healthier proportion to their weight.

The following 4 steps will not only help to facilitate healthier eating habits, but will also increase the amount of physical activity that they do.

1.  Assessing the Health of Your Child and whether they are overweight

Before you make any personal or environmental changes in your teen’s life, take a few minutes to survey what your home life is like.  Do you allow them to lead a sedentary life, and are they given plenty of chances to over eat at any time?  If you do, then it is important that you bring any changes in to these areas of their life gradually.

First, look at just how many hours your teen spends either watching TV, or sitting at their computer.  A teen can spend up to 24 hours a week watching TV.  Log any time that they spend doing either, watching TV or on the computer, and try to reduce this by half.

When you have meals, does your family gather around a table, or do you eat most of your meals sitting in front of the TV or computer?  If you do, then try and make it a family rule that, in the future, all food (including snacks) will be eaten in the kitchen or in the dining room at a table.  Such a small change has been shown to significantly reduce the amount of over eating that takes place in the home.

Next, you will need to take a close look at your fridge and food cupboards.  Which foods do you have that you are most likely to eat when hunger hits you?  If the foods are high in fat, sweetened or low in nutritional value, then why not try to find healthier alternatives instead, such as fresh fruit and vegetables?

2.  Do Not Shame your Child into Losing Weight

Neither adults nor children can be shamed into losing weight, and an overweight teen will know that they weigh too much.  But what a teen does not know, is how they can achieve a normal weight, as well as increase their self esteem.  Teens like to know that their parents love them unconditionally, whether they are fat, thin or normal.

For any parent, mastering the fine art of loving our children just the way they are, while helping them to achieve a healthier body can be difficult.  Any parent must learn to “give time” and believe that the lessons we teach them will one day come to fruition.

This means that we can teach our youngsters to visualize that healthy plate (one which is half salad or vegetables, a quarter of starches and the remainder are made up of protein such as fish, meat, poultry or soy).  But you also know that at some point, they will sneak either sweets or cookies into the home, and upset the balance that you have achieved.

A parent can persist in teaching their teens to see their plate before any food is put on it. This is helpful, as it creates a sense of portion control that is helpful when the parent is not around to monitor what food they are actually having.  This portion control can also be practiced not just at home, but when visiting a restaurant as well.

3.  Take up some type of Physical Activity as a Family

The recommended amount of physical activity to be done by an adult is 30 minutes, and 60 minutes for children, which should be done several times a week.  However, if you are looking to lose weight, then more physical activity may be necessary.

A great way of breaking the pattern of the lives that many families lead is to arrange activities that involve plenty of movement for the whole family together.  Not only do these types of activities burn calories, they can also serve as a setting for parent and child communication.  It is especially important in a child’s teen years, when such opportunities for a parent to interact with their teen are at a premium.

Also, there is little or no financial cost involved in going for a walk or having a bike ride, and many communities now have either indoor or outdoor swimming pools which do not cost to much to use.  Just taking the family dog for a walk in the evening not only makes the dog happy, but will help to increase the family’s metabolism.

4. How to encourage the right sort of behavior in your teen

The best way to help an overweight or obese teen is through your own behavior.  Too often, teens will do as an adult does, rather than what we tell them.

No parent can ask their child to turn off the TV when we are actually watching it in another room, or to stop using the computer when they are spending hours themselves surfing the net.  Nor should they restrict the portions of food they eat, when they, themselves, do not watch what they are eating.  Why would any child want to drink water or munch on fruit or vegetables, when they see the adults around them drinking sugar laden soda or having a bag of potato chips?

When looking to lead a healthier kind of life style, it should be done one day at a time, and the end result will be well worth the effort.

Learning the Ropes of Forex trading and Getting Ahead of the Game Early On

In the world of cut-throat business, it pays to know your way around. And in the world of forex trading it pays to know the market, the players and the stakes. In forex trading, you need to know what you’re looking at – the value of the currency you’re trading, the factors that affect the value of your currency, the trading strategies and the market trends.

Fundamental to forex trading is research. But as we are talking about big bucks here, a good forex trading course would be helpful.

Why Go for a Trading Course

A Forex trading course teaches you how to predict or chart the movements of the market as well as the perfect time to buy and sell a commodity. It familiarizes you with the basic terminologies and the process of trading.

Because forex trading is done in real time and decisions are done on the spot, a trader should be emotionally equipped and prepared to handle the demands, challenges and the stress of the market. And these, one can learn in a forex trading education.

What To Look For in Forex Trading Courses

The Basics. A god forex trading education should include in its program the basics on margins, types of orders and leveraging as these are essential in the forex market transactions. It should teach the basic terminologies, the types of analyses being used, the software and tools and other such important things as charting and leverage. These are essential as the trader learns when to cut back and minimize his losses as well as gain profit.

Analysis. It should also teach you how to analyze common mistakes and at the same time, the ways to avoid such mistakes. Basic to a forex trading course is a detailed discussion on doing technical and fundamental analysis and tools.

Values. More than the theories and the basics involved, a good forex trading education should teach you proper money management and the development of a proper trading disposition and psychology. As the stakes are upped, a trader may become too emotionally involved. It is important that a forex trading course develops the appropriate values needed in money trading, such as discipline, patience and commitment.

Experience. A good forex trading course should provide real life experience through apprenticeship. There is no better teacher than experience, they say, and as forex trading is as real as it can get, forex courses should offer avenues where the student can practice trading. Some courses have live conference rooms or boards where the trader can learn to trade in real time or, in some cases, in a simulated environment. These experiences should also have a one-on-one feedback and forums for discussion and exchange of information and lessons.

For those who’d like to get a good grasp of the market and the rules of the game, there are online sites offering courses and workshops on forex trading. These sites offer courses on risk and money management, trading strategies, technical analysis, market trends and networking. There are also tutorials on the latest softwares and tools being used. There are also online sites that offer lifetime membership and support. Some online schools allow their students to retake the course for updates on the newest trends and strategies. You can try www.trainingacademy.com, www.realtimeforex.com, www.go-forex.net, www.forexmentor.com and www.fxcm.com.

Innovations

With the advent of the Internet, there’s already online forex trading, a system that allows corporations and players in the game to do business virtually. With online forex trading, one can check and monitor the value of the currencies, and even trade directly on the internet. It offers trading of almost 15 currencies, and with the growing number of online traders, it spells more possibilities and more earnings.

Of course, nothing beats the real thing. And a successful forex trader’s skill and knowledge is developed with continued experience. A forex trading education may or may benefit you, but it sure can spell a difference. With the forex market’s volatile environment and fast-paced transactions, one must be fully-equipped with the appropriate tools, knowledge, skill and disposition. The key here is to know the market. Of course, don’t forget to read up on the market, learn how to compare the currency values and generally become a better money manager.

8 Tips to Help You Become a Networking Guru!

Effective business networking is the bringing together of like minded individuals who, through relationship building, become walking, talking advertisements for one another.

Keep in mind that networking is about being bona fide, building trust, and seeing how your relationship can genuinely help others.
1. Always figure out before you even walk into a room, what your specific goals are in attending each networking meeting.  This helps you to pick groups or associations that will help you get what you are looking for.

2. Ask open-ended questions during your networking conversations, questions that ask who, what, where, when, and how. Try to avoid questions that require a simple yes or no response. By using this line of questioning you can open us the discussion and show listeners that you are interested.

3. Become a walking resource centre. When you become known as a strong resource, others remember to turn to you for suggestions, ideas, names of other people, etc. This keeps you at their "top of mind".

4. Make sure you have your "elevator speech" prepared and know it like the back of your hand. An elevator speech is the commonly known as the response you would give in the amount of time it would take to reach the tenth floor in an elevator. Always rehearse your spiel and be genuine, so that you don't sound automated when you relay it to someone who asks what you do.

5. Always know what is going on in current affairs, if you don't feel comfortable just rolling into a spiel when you first meet someone, have a back up topic to break the ice until you do.

6. Never just throw your business card at someone the minute you meet them, you must get to know the person and their business as well as explaining your business before you even contemplate a business card exchange.  Some people will find you rude, pushy and unprofessional which will in turn reflect badly on your business.

7. Always phone or email your new contacts and let them know that you enjoyed meeting them.  If possible mention things that you discussed on a more personal note (i.e. I hope you enjoyed that movie you were going to see that night.) people will come to know you as someone who listens, remembers them and they will form a trust with you.

8. The most important thing to remember is to follow through quickly and efficiently on referrals you are given. When people give you referrals, your actions are a reflection on them. Respect and honor their trust and your referrals will grow exponentially.

7 Step Plan To Get Going With Networking

Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, feel like you have the gift of gab or just don’t know how to make small talk, networking know-how is very important for your business success. There is a notion in business that I believe most of us subscribe to that says “all things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those they know, like and trust.” And the key to this is obviously being able to develop relationships.

Think of networking as the cultivation of mutually beneficial, win-win relationships. In order to be win-win, there must be GIVE and take (notice the emphasis on give). Networking shouldn’t be viewed as “events” where you go to sell your business. When effective networking is taking place, the parties involved actively share ideas, information, resources, etc.

Ok, so you know that you should be networking because it is one of the most cost-effective lead generation activities when used wisely, appropriately and professionally. But, maybe that seems easier said than done. Here’s a seven step plan to really get going with networking for your business.

1. Check out several groups to find the best chemistry and perceived value. Most groups will allow you to come and visit at least a couple of times before you have to join. Go and ask around to find out why others have joined and what value they get out of belonging.

Resist the urge to just go join the Chamber of Commerce simply because everyone tells you that’s what you need to do. If that’s not where your target group can be found, then you might just be wasting a considerable amount of time (and money).

I’m not telling you not to join the Chamber. Just be clear about what you’d like to get out of this or any other group. If it’s to find prospective clients or referral sources, then you need to be networking where those resources can be found.

2. When you find a group or two, join and go to all the meetings you can. Don’t go just once or twice expecting things to happen and then if they don’t quit. Building mutually beneficial, win-win relationships will take some time.

The contacts you make need to constantly see your face and hear your message. Continual contact with others over time will open up opportunities for you to go deeper and learn more about each others thoughts, ideas and capabilities in regards to your respective businesses.

Know, like, and trust generally only happens over time. Being regular and persistent will pay off.

3. Get involved - be visible. Do as much as you can to make yourself more visible within the organization. Volunteer to help with meetings, be on committees, or become a leader or board member.

Being involved does a couple of things for you and your business. First, you’ll get more opportunities to establish connections and get to know some of the contacts you’ve made even better. Secondly, the higher the visibility you have in the group, the less you’ll have to work to make new connections. Instead, as new people come into the group, they will likely seek you out because they view you as a leader within the organization.

4. Keep your circles of contacts informed. Don’t just assume that running in to someone once a month (or even once a week) will cause them to start doing business with you or sending it your way. You need to let them know what’s going on when you’re not at that particular group in order to inform and educate them.

Send them invitations to your events or open houses. Send them email or letters to share big news or success stories, especially anything of relevance to them or those in their networks of contacts. If you believe that you have valuable ideas, information and resources to share with others, then doesn’t this just make sense?

5. Work at GIVING referrals and sharing valuable information. That’s right, you need to be willing to GIVE before you get. That means you need to get to know other members and what makes a good prospect for them. What kinds of information might you have access to that could be useful to them?

You may initially think you don’t have much of value to share with others (besides your business and what you provide). Part of the key to getting good at giving is to not make assumptions. For example, don’t assume that some basic resource (e.g., a web site) that you’re aware of is familiar to someone you might be talking to just because they are the “expert” in that field. Be willing to ask if they know about the resource and ready to share if they don’t.

Want to get better at actually giving referrals? Here’s a simple question to ask someone you’re connecting with. “How am I going to know when I meet a really good prospect for you?”

Just the fact that you are willing to explore giving will elevate your know, like and trust factor.

6. Focus on Quality, not Quantity, Quantity, Quantity. It’s not necessarily about the number of connections you make, but about the quality of the ones you do make. Are they mutually beneficial, win-win relationships?

Quality connections will be identifiable because all involved parties will be actively sharing ideas, information, and resources. Yes, it is true that you need to spend some time and effort getting to know the other person(s) and what’s important to them. But, you also need to be clear and actively thinking about what information or resources you want and need.

Staying in touch with and following up with a smaller number of quality relationships will generally be much more productive than trying to follow up with a larger number of superficial contacts.

7. Be persistent, but be patient. The goal of a networking event shouldn’t necessarily be to come away with prospects every time you go out, but to come away with great connections. Networking usually takes time to get the relationships developed and nurtured.

Don’t approach networking as a scary proposition or a necessary evil for being in business. Take the pressure off yourself and really focus on how you might be able to connect with someone you meet. Focus on them first and look for ways to be useful to them. As you become known as a connector you’ll eventually be ready to reap what you sow.