Imagine a truly tiny, tiny seafood bar that for a 100 years has thrived on serving no more than 18 people at a time. This little jem of an oyster bar in San Francisco has line ups out the door that any patron will tell you are well worth waiting for.

They have no website. They don’t take reservations. They are only open  until 5:30pm 6 days a week. No WIFI, NO LCD flatscreens & NO Twitter account to speak of. If you come with out cash your also out of luck as they DON’T take plastic!

Today, I rediscovered less is more while slurping down a professionaly shucked oyster.

It’s time to re-evaluate everything.

If your ever in San Francisco make your way over to the Swan Osyter Depot on Polk Street . It’s an experience.

As some of you know, I sit on the board of the Childrens Wish charity for my region in Canada (Manitoba & Nunavut). Today, I attended a grand opening of a local business that understands integration marketing is indeed an art (pun intended)! I think we can all learn from their success and endeavor to apply integration marketing  tactics in our own businesses.

ArtLandStudio.ca is a new business that provides art classes & workshops for kids aged 2+! Their target market is a very specific niche and they obviously put some serious thought to how they would launch their new business location to the Winnipeg community. For their Grand Opening they chose to approach the Childrens Wish charity to be a part of their first day & obviously plan to support CW as their Charity of choice.

The marriage of the two organizations is integration marketing at it’s finest! ArtLandStudio with one phone call was able to tap into having Childrens Wish help promote their business, while at same time help promote the charity all day for every parent & child who attended the Grand Opening! A true win-win for both businesses. The place was packed with kids and their parents, many of which I recognized as folks connected to our charity.

Could this work for you?

Take some time to think about other organizations that would jointly benefit from your promotion, launch, event, and if you can involve a like minded charity all the better.

Often integration marketing can bring to the table something your business needs while at the same time providing value to the other organization. What an awesome way to grow!!!

Take some time to consider the art of integration marketing & you may just surprise yourself on what you can come up with…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROhAtGxsVfI[/youtube]

2. Why am I both a customer and an  Aweber affiliate? I’m a customer because I have tried almost every email newsletter/ auto-responder service on the market & Aweber is hands down the best! As for being an affiliate. Well, it’s almost the same thing as getting $500 off your next car from your dealership if you refer a friend or family member who buys a vehicle. You get a price break on what you want and need, while sending business to someone you respect so your friend can get what they want and need! Win-Win!

One huge difference though!!!

Unlike a one time price break, the Aweber affiliate program keeps paying you month after month for as long as your referred customer keeps paying! (Hint: I’ve been a paying Aweber client for over 4 years!)

Here is the bottom line:

1. As a customer I pay 19$/month
2. As an affiliate I make more than $19/ month and growing!
3. Every customer referred to Aweber actually pays you 30% month

I think at this point you see where I’m going with this! At bare minimum why not become an Aweber affiliate and try to refer at least enough business to cover your costs? Even if it’s a simple link on your site, forwarding the link on Facebook or setting up your sister with the email list she needs for her hair salon, it is money earned & thus saved! So what if it takes a year or more to get enough customers…

It’s the biggest no brainer I’ve come across in a long time!

(My affiliate links below)

Free to become An Aweber Affiliate
1$ to become an Aweber Customer

Not paying for the best email list & autoresponder service online… PRICELESS!!!

I found this video on YouTube of  bunch of other people who love Aweber as much as I do. Apparently I’m not the only one who is biased

Get Started Today For Only $1! – AWeber Communications

I want to give you a mind shift. This mind shift will only work if in some fashion you are motivated by money, and that difficult activity can specifically be linked to revenue.

Here is the mind shift or temporary magic bullet!

Take Your Annual Revenue/Sales/etc.

divided by

The # of times that activity needs to be done per year.

(example: $200,000/ 650 sales meeting= $307.69)

Would knowing that every time you had or booked a meeting meant another $300 in your pocket help motivate you?

What if  every time you made a sales call you knew, regardless of the outcome, it was money in the bank.

Regardless of what you need to do every day… the activity doesn’t have to change; only your perception does.

Please tell me if you disagree with my experience, but this past week of my life I have seen added value at work! Yes, added value may be cliche and even an over used term, but when it is genuine it is a game changer!!! Too often I hear companies, sales people and professionals try and over deliver or add value in the same way. If I offer you the same ‘added value’ service as everyone else does, then it no longer achieves it’s purpose! Most likely, it makes me come across the exact same as my competitors, and in a competitive world that just doesn’t cut the mustard!

This week I gave away expert Internet Marketing advice to businesses who expected to be sold something. This week was a game changer, and it was all because of ‘added value’!

How do you add value in a way that differentiates you from your competition?

Your answer could be your personal game changer!

Thank you! AKA thanks, tks or thankyou!!!!

Today, I received my 100th blog comment and two emails from various people thanking me for my help and gosh darn it feels good! What can I say, “I like to help!”

In retrospect, I think I only thanked two people today who helped me… Should have been more!!!!

So a big thanks to all of you who take the time to not only read my infrequent blogging, but a special appreciation to readers who take the time to comment, ask questions or even challenge my point of view!

I’m here to help, so please don’t be a stranger and drop me a line anytime!

How can I help you?

Change like many other things can only be percieved in three ways; bad, neutral or good! But everyone, including myself, seems to often focus in and allow the end emotional result to take over!

Today, I allowed myself to focus on the end emotion as opposed to controlling the end emotion by zeroing in my attention on how I was perceiving the changes!

Maybe you do the same sometimes. Let my mistake the last couple of days be your personal reminder to focus more on how you percieve change.

What we perceive we tend to believe…

If we focus our attention on the good, even if we can only find a sliver of positivity in the change we are experiencing, then we control an exponential amount of the resulting emotion.

Perception is reality!

1. Accountability to oneself, for most people, is useless unless you can create concrete consequences and reward systems that you force yourself to adhere to. (e.g. Very few people will truly punish themselves for not working out, not finishing a report at work or reward themselves for not smoking) Only a select few extremely strong willed individuals can and will apply harsh consequences & positive rewards to their self accountability.

 2. Accountability to others is the tenant of almost every success (e.g. I am accountable to Mr. Smith, my spouse or organization, therefore when I mess up I will feel the wrath. When I succeed, I am emotionally or financially rewarded and am personally satisfied!) More things just seem to get done when someone is held accountable for their action(s) or inaction. 

Rather than go on, and on… I think you get the point.  

Here are a couple of  questions I am personally answering this week, and as well posing to those people in my life who are accountable to me. If you are feeling brave consider answering them yourself. 

• Who are you accountable to and what for?
• What are you not doing that you should be, and are not being held accountable?
• How can you use accountability to your greatest advantage?

Lastly, I have always and continue to believe that positive rewards work far better than negative punishment. But sometimes, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do!

First thing I am going to say is that I have used and highly recommend Go To Meeting, but there are some key things people should know about this service even before they sign up for a free trial. These apply whether you use a MAC or PC. 

Here are the warnings: 

(1)   DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT, sign up for GotoMeeting  if you plan to use your work PC to conduct online meetings, unless you have cleared this with your company IT department or boss. Most companies are OK if you ask… but ask first. If you are self employed or are the boss, then disregard big kahuna. 

(2)   When you are conducting an online meeting DOUBLE & TRIPLE check before you share your screen. I know, this sounds obvious but I have heard some pretty funny stories of a Go To Meeting starting and participants are shocked by seeing something they shouldn’t.   

(3)   Lastly, as GoToMeeting now not only include screen and file sharing, but as well full audio with VOIP, make sure you have a quality microphone or headset. Nothing ruins a presentation or meeting more than a terrible sounding speaking voice. The last online presentation I attended was terrible, not because of the web service, but because the presenter had a cheap microphone. If you don’t have a microphone, just call in to the phone number GotoMeeting provides and it will be crystal clear. 

That’s it folks! Now you know, and I can sleep soundly :>) Oh, and for those of you that haven’t had the pleasure of trying it, I have a few connections and was able to get you a free month trial and $10 off at the link below.