"Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave."

- Mary Tyler Moore

When did you take a chance and it turned out to be a great experience? I'd love to hear your stories!

"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."

- British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (1804 – 1881)

"A good solution applied with vigor now is better
than a perfect solution applied ten minutes later."

-George S. Patton, Jr.

Or never getting it done at all! If you're working on a project and don't ever get it completed, you've wasted your time. Just get it done the best you can now, then make improvements to it later. But get it done and out there in the world so others can benefit from your work!

As always, I'd love your comments!

"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."
- Thomas A. Edison

I'd love to have your thoughts. Comment below about not giving up, and about the new year in general.

“I dream, I test my dreams against my beliefs, I dare to take risks, and I execute my vision to make those dreams come true.”

- Walt Disney

Do you have lots of passwords you need to keep track of? Are  you constantly forgetting the password for a particular site? In my business as virtual administrator, I have to keep track of not only my own passwords, but those of my clients as well, since I work on their behalf on their accounts. Saving passwords in an Excel spreadsheet is not only cumbersome, it isn’t safe; the file could become corrupted, lost or hacked.

So I investigated a number of free online password saving services and the one I decided on, and am so glad I did, is LastPass.

Signing up and downloading the free software is easy. Then when you are on a new website where you’re filling in your ID and password, LastPass asks you if you want to save that information in your “vault.” You choose a name for the entry and other properties. Then once it’s stored, when you want to go to a site in your list you just click on that entry in your vault.

Since your vault  password is the only one you’ll need to remember, you should make it fairly long and include special characters, to decrease the chance of it getting hacked. Your vault contains the list of all other passwords you have entered, and you can make them all different (which makes them much safer from hackers) because you don’t have to remember them.

I created a bookmark in my quick access bar so I just have to click on that to launch my vault.

Although the information is stored on their servers, it’s encrypted on your computer so the LastPass people don’t have access to it, only you do.

LastPass gives you the option of auto-login (it automatically logs you in) or auto-fill (it fills in the information then you click on the Enter link). You still don’t need to enter the log-in info, it’s just an extra click. I’ve found some sites’ settings don’t allow the auto-login, but auto-fill works just fine.

It can also keep track of several log-in credentials for the same site. For example, I update my own Facebook page as well as those of my clients. LastPass lists all the entries I have stored for that site in a dropdown list and I can click on the one I want to use.

One great feature is you can organize the vault entries in folders by category that you create. I have a folder for my clients’ sites, for my company sites, personal, social media, etc. There is also always a “Favorites” folder at the top so you can easily access the sites you use most. The screenshot below shows the Social Networking section of my vault so you can see what it looks like (don’t worry, no private information is shown!).

If you need to see or change the information in any entry, you can view and edit any part of the information. Of course, you can always delete any entry as well.

And there is a great search function for finding a particular entry that narrows down the list as you enter information in the search box. You might not think you would have enough that you would need to search, but you might be surprised at how many sites you have passwords for!

Other Useful Features

• You can create different identities to keep work and personal data separate, and you can share certain sites with others.
• Form-fill lets you fill out one LastPass form that contains all the same kind of information that most shopping sites (for example) require on their forms, and next time you go to that kind of site, LastPass will fill in the form for you!
• You can even create secure notes for storing confidential text data.

If you don’t use LastPass, I strongly recommend you use some service you like to save your passwords safely. Your life can be turned upside down if someone hacks into your computer and steals all your precious log-in and other confidential data.

Leave a comment about how you do or would use LastPass, or ask me any questions you have about LastPass.

They are your A,B,C’s: Attitude, Belief and Consistency.

Taking them in reverse order:

Consistency
We get up every morning, we brush our teeth, wash, get dressed, have breakfast. We are consistent in our actions. We do it every day. In the same way we need to be consistent with our tasks associated with our business for the days that we have chosen we are going to work, be it 1 or 7 days a week.

Try this little trick: Keep 6-10 marbles (or whatever works for you) in one place and transfer 1 marble to another place every time you have carried out a positive action, i.e., seeing a customer, talking to someone about the business, etc. Do it consistently. Try to have transferred at least 6 marbles (better still 10) by the end of the day. Concentrate on each action, not on the result.

When we go mountain climbing, if we would continually look at the summit we would soon trip up and fall. We need to concentrate on every step at a time, one after the other and as surely as the sun goes down we will reach our summit.

Belief
You need to have an absolute and genuine belief in your business, its products and services and what you can give your customers.

Attitude
Attitude is possibly the most important of these three but useless on its own. It’s no good having the best attitude in the world if you’re sitting on your own in a closed room not talking to anyone.

Attitude, whether it’s positive or negative, is when your face and body language are totally transparent and what you’re feeling comes through.

I love to go to the theater, there’s nothing like seeing a live performance of a great show. You can tell when the performers are loving every minute of it and giving it their all. Their attitude really shines through like a beacon and makes the audience’s enjoyment total. Conversely, if the performers are just “phoning it in,” the audience knows that too. It’s the same way in your business dealings. The first second that a prospective customer or business colleague sees you, maybe even before you see him or her, your attitude comes through. The other person senses it, even if only subconsciously, and will react accordingly.

So when we get up in the morning and do our consistency things, let’s get a really big warm smile from within, feeling good about ourselves, and keep that all day. When we go about our business we need to keep our good attitude with us. It’s easier to ride a horse in the direction that it’s going. In other words, if you keep a positive attitude, it will make everything else easier to deal with.

So those are my three all important ingredients that determine one’s success or failure at anything in life.

What else do you consider to be a key to success? Leave a comment below.

“Life is a field of opportunity open to planting seed, cultivating, and harvesting. We need to live it big.”

If you have read Yes! Energy or followed Loral (or if you haven’t!), I’d love to hear your comments.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an affiliate in Loral’s program. But I don’t recommend this book because I’m an affiliate; I’m an affiliate because I believe in Loral’s teachings.

Breakthrough Ideas

The #1 way to grow your business is collaboration; being laser focused on it helped Eric grow his business.

Think how much you can earn in a month, and what is your potential to achieve that, now double it.

Show Up Powerfully and Play Big

In other words, make a decision not to shrink from what you think is the right thing to do because you’re afraid of not fitting in, being accepted, or because of conflicting commitments. Your driving force should be – I’m going to do what I know is right. He gave an example of when he shared an idea with his friend’s daughter even though at first he thought it wasn’t his place to say anything, but he ended up really connecting with the daughter and helping her.

Improving Sales

If you’re giving a sales presentation research the people you’re meeting with on Facebook or LinkedIn to see what their interests are and mention it to them. You’ll be able to get a human reaction from them and gain rapport.

The best way to elevate sales results is to practice. The close is the part of presentation where you ask for commitment. If you practice your sales close five times a day, how good would you be after a year?

#1 Closing tip: Get the prospect to want what you offer before your close – put a great presentation together.

Humans respond to direct commands. Write down your close word for word – include why they should take action now, and clearly communicate it.

Eric’s classic closing line: “Whether you buy my program or not, you pay.”

Make practicing a game, and make improving your business and life a game.

Focus on Revenue Producing Activities

To create revenue now:

• See more people
• Go back to everyone you’ve presented to and ask them to buy
• Go back to everyone who has bought and ask them to buy again
• Extend or improve your product line
• Hire a sales person (or people)
• Offer a product on the Internet
• Represent someone else’s product
• Ask for referrals from people who have bought
• Have a sale
• Offer a discount
• Add more value to your product offering (for example, bonuses, extended warranty or service time)
• Create an irresistible offer

Eric’s Definition of Sales

• Selling = service
• Sell from honesty, integrity and compassion
• Selling is about leading
• Selling is about moving people to action

Eric recommends saying the following 10 times a day for the next 30 days to get in the all-important confident mindset:

• Whatever I do works
• People love to send me referrals
• I love to sell
• I love scripts
• I am a leader
• People love to buy from me

As always, I’d love to hear your comments!

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.

-Lucille Ball

I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, but you can choose to be happy or not, or to give up or not. You have the power in you to just decide you’re not going to let discouraging situations get the better of you.

I’d love to hear your comments on this!