Vision Of Success

After one week, I finally finished Harry Potter.

I find J K Rowling to be an amazing writer. Not too many writers could spend thousands of pages of text developing characters and taking them from year to year - and hold the attention of millions of readers. The fact that she’s gotten so many people to read that haven’t picked up a book in ages is brilliant.

I won’t reveal any of the details here - in case you haven’t finished the book yourself. But instead, let me list 5 things you can take from J K Rowling, and use in building your own business.

1. Stay true to your passion. No matter how many people told her to give up, she kept writing.

2. Never let “no” get to you. When book publishers told her no, she moved to the next one.

3. Set your goals before you begin. She knew her book would be a best seller long before she wrote it. She set her goals, and she achieved them along the way.

4. Adjust your goals as you achieve them, and establish new ones. Did Rowling ever expect her book to be this big? Maybe not at the beginning. But as she sold her first million, I’m sure she adjusted it to a much bigger goal. You can’t achieve if you don’t set it in your sights.

5.  Enjoy the rewards. Never get too busy that you can’t take time out to enjoy what you’ve achieved. Strive to move onto bigger and better things, and take a few moments to enjoy the road.

Time to head off and discuss the magic with my daughter…

Lori

Did Harry Potter come to your house over the weekend?

We were one of the many who headed out Friday night to a Harry Potter party at our local Barnes & Nobel. At 10, Andrew and I, our daughter and one of her friends joined about 1500 people in a magical party. There was costume contests, fortune telling, oragami, and a jelly bean contest. Then at the magical hour of midnight, the books went on sale. Because we had visited the store earlier that morning and received a reserved ticket, we were out the door by 12:08.

Harry Potter is one of the most amazing stories of our time. It’s about believing in your passion - JK Rowling wrote her book and believed it would be a best seller while she was still trying to afford a cup of coffee. And it’s about good quality marketing - how else can you sell  10 million copies of your book in less than 24 hours of time?

And yes, my daughter had her book read in less than 24 hours. Now she’s waiting for me to finish so we can have a nice book chat!

Lori

Lori Osterberg has been selected as a finalist for the 2007 Outstanding Women In Business Award! The Denver Business Journal, Wells Fargo Bank, Ernst & Young, and the National Association of Women Business Owners sponsor this annual event, and recognize award winners for excelling professionally through innovation, perseverance and leadership. The award winners will be announced at an awards luncheon on August 15, 2007.

I recently read a detailed article about linking, and how Google is currently using links to rate and rank websites.

Google has always looked favorably at sites with links pointing back into the site. The theory is if a bunch of other sites find enough value in you to link to you, you must be a valuable resource, and therefore deserve a high ranking.

Of course the SEO world took all of this to heart, and began linking like crazy for their customers. In some cases you can even buy a link on a high ranking site, thus increasing your value fairly rapidly.

But now that all may be changing again. Google realizes that this “buying” was going on, and is now back out changing its algorithms to pinpoint exactly who you’re linking up with, and what value that means to both sites’ readers.

So if a wedding planner is linked to a reception site, it’s a high value link.

But if a wedding planner is linked to a financial planner, the relevance isn’t as high, and therefore the link isn’t as valuable.

So just like a site needs good quality content to grow, it also needs good quality links to grow. What’s the value of your links?

Lori

 http://www.visionbusinessconcepts.com/do-it-yourself-strategy.htm

If you are like most small business owners, chances are you use QuickBooks for your accounting program.

I love QuickBooks, and use it all the time. I print off my invoices, and mail them to my customers. But I just found BlinkSale that allows you to create customized invoices, and email them to your customers. Pretty cool - I love technology!

Ikea is sponsoring a contest for small business owners - their Small Businesses, Big Dreams video contest. It gives you and your community a chance to win.

Deadline is July 26th - so head over now to find out more.

Lori

Have you seen the phenomenal videos from BlendTec - where they blend just about everything? I’ve written on this company before - they have found huge success by creating videos of their blenders blending just about everything. Their strategy is if they can prove their blenders can blend anything, they will stand up in your kitchen. And the best part about it is they have a huge influx of traffic into their site by creating these simple videos inhouse, and releasing them free to YouTube - then sitting back and let word-of-mouth take over.

What kind of videos can you produce to cause the same effect?

Now it’s time to see if the IPhone can be blended.

Watch and find out.

We’re finally back from our trip to California/Mexico. As a 20th anniversary celebration, we decided to spend two weeks enjoying the beach, and seeing the sights of Baja Mexico.

Part of our trip was spent on the beaches of San Diego. Our daughter Fallon was with us, and she loves the beach more than anything. So we spent a few days with chairs, a bucket and a shovel. We made lots of sandcastles, and collected a lot of shells. It’s always nice to sit back and watch the waves and do absolutely nothing.

Then we boarded the Carnival Elation, and set sail for Cabo and Ensenada. The ship had so many activities, and even though it was so cold outside we never made it into the pool, we were never bored. Fallon kept us running from event to event, and we enjoyed everything we could.

In  Cabo San Lucas, we took a tour and got to see a ton of the city. We did a tour by land and sea, and got to see Cabo from two distinct vantage points. We traveled all over Cabo, and saw everything from a glass blowing factory to a cactus garden center. And we must say, the guac at Cabo Wabo is fantastic!

Ensenada gave us the chance to check out the famous Blow Hole - and gave us the experience of running down the dock for the boat with 5 minutes to spare before it pulled back out to sea. If you’re ever on a tour where the bus blows a tire, it gives you something to talk about! But the Blow Hole was an amazing site to see - and we’ve now made it our mission to see the other two Blow Holes that exist in the world.

And now we’re back, recharged and ready to go again. I love summers - a time for relaxing and having fun, and for recharging and re-energizing your business.

Time to plan the next vacation…

Lori