Julie And Julia DVD

Julie And Julia Movie – How It Applies To Business And Life

We watched the movie Julie and Julia last night and thought it was an excellent movie with a great message about following your passion.

Both Julie and Julia were at a crossroads in their life…they were not happy with what they were doing and were searching for something that would bring them joy and purpose in life.

This time of year is the perfect time to reflect on your own life and what you are, and are not happy about. Do you love going to work every day? If not, work to change it. Find something that you LOVE to do and start doing it. Once you do, find a way to monetize it!

I see two clear messages from this movie:

Do what you love to do. Don’t go through life doing something that does not make you anything less than 100% happy

You never know what can happen. Do you think Julie knew her simple blog would end up as a major motion picture with book deals etc? NO! It goes to show you that anything can happen if you love what you do and you work hard

If you have not already seen this movie, I highly recommend it. Don’t forget to think about how it could apply to your own situation.

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25 Days Of FREE Christmas MP3 Songs At Amazon!

CMAS2Our friends over at Amazon.com are showing their Christmas spirit by offering a FREE Christmas mp3 download every day for 25 days. You can’t beat free! Check it out here:

Free Christmas Music At Amazon

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Great Content Is Not Enough!

Your Content Must Also Be Easy To Consume…

The other day, I received an email about a 45 minute video someone posted online which I wanted to see. Great, right? Not so much.

As I sat down to watch the video, my phone rang, I got busy, and to top it off, the video played slow. There was no way to download the video and it was not created with chapters or sections to make it easier for the viewer.

They Lost Me!

People are busy and now more than ever, it is critically important to make sure that you are easy to do business with and your content is EASY TO CONSUME.

 

Videos

Some ideas for making online video easier to consume:

1. Offer a download option so viewers can save to their own computer and watch on their own time.
2. If you have a long video, break it up into shorter segments and files so that is loads faster and allows the viewer to come back to it easier
3. Create chapters or markers in your video
4. Make it interesting to watch. Add background music and graphics, calls to action, notations, and things like that.

Blogs

It is also important to make your blog easy to consume and read. Some things you can do are:

1. Make sure that your blog design is neat, organized, and not cluttered

2. Don’t have distracting flash, graphics, or colors on your blog that take away from your message

3. Make sure people can easily reach you – Prominently list your social media links, email, RSS feed, etc.

4. Make it easy for people to share your blog with others. I highly recommend the "Share This" plug-in which is displayed at the end of all of my posts. Try it out and see how easy it is to share this blog post.

These days, having great content is not enough, you must be easy to do business with and your content must be easy to consume.

What do you think?

Photo Credit, Jaxed

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Change Happens Instantly But Destination Takes Time

planeRecently, I have received a few emails from people who are down on their luck and wanting advice on turning their life around.  I thought I would   turn my answer to that question into a blog post so it helps others as well.

First of all, realize that you CAN turn your life around right now. Change happens in an INSTANT. What most people fail to realize is that you need to make the changes and then give it some TIME.

Imagine you are flying on an airplane from Seattle to Florida (west coast to east coast) and just as you are about to get to Florida you want to go back so you the pilot turns the plane around and starts flying back. You wouldn’t expect to snap your fingers and automatically be back in Seattle would you? It’s going to take you 6 hours to get back but you WILL get back. Using this analogy most people turn around and head back and give up when they aren’t back in Seattle in 30 minutes! Give it some time!

In life, many people want instant results. That just isn’t how it works. You can change your DIRECTION in an instant but you have to give yourself time to get to your new destination before you decide to quit. Here are two tips for changing something in your life right now:

1.       Make a decision RIGHT NOW to change something in your life that you are fed up with. Change it RIGHT NOW. Change your direction right now but give yourself some time to get to your new destination.

2.       Surround yourself with motivated, positive, uplifting people. This will work wonders in your life. I won’t do business with anyone who is not positive because it’s just not worth it. This goes for social media as well. Find like minded positive people on Twitter and communicate with them. Unfollow those that are negative.

I will talk more change in future blog posts. Please share your experiences of change in the comments on the blog!

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5 Twitter Success Tips

1. Engage, Interact, & Communicate

Twitter is not meant to be a one-way medium. The true value of social media is the “back and forth” communication between people, sharing of ideas, and helping others. Don’t just post a bunch of “one way tweets”, make sure to spend time each day reading and responding to other people’s tweets as well. I sometimes call it “mining for gold”. There is lots of great stuff you will find on Twitter and when you do find something great, make sure and retweet it!

 

2. Don’t SPAM or pitch stuff

This sounds simple but many people STILL do it! Twitter is about relationships and communication, not selling. Don’t get me wrong, Twitter is a GREAT place to build a brand and sell lots of products, but that happens as a by-product of building relationships, communicating, and not using Twitter as your personal SPAM toilet.

 

3. Don’t judge a Twitterer by their number of followers

I know that some people see a Twitter user who only has a few followers and thinks that person may not be successful. Number of followers does not equate at all with level of success. There are people with tens of thousands of followers who are not successful and there are those with 3 followers that make millions of dollars. Obviously the reverse can also be true. The point is, don’t make the mistake of assuming that someone with only a few followers has no value because it’s just not true. By the way, I have a good friend who has been on Twitter for about a year now and he has less than 500 followers and what most people don’t know is that he runs a $34 MILLION dollar business.

 

4. Don’t send auto DM’s

This one’s going to be a little controversial but that is ok. Many people send auto direct messages when someone friends them up and it’s just not something that I recommend. As people’s DM’s grow by the hundreds, fake, automated, general DM’s have almost no value anyway so why waste anyone’s time? If you really want to knock someone’s socks off, send a real DM. Oh, and don’t fool yourself, people can always tell when a DM is real versus automated!

5. Have fun!

Share links, ideas, and conversation with others. Be genuinely interested in what’s going on with other people, CARE, and have fun!

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