Resource for Finding Bikram Yoga Classes

Our reader Tiger Beaudoin commented on my recent post about Bikram Yoga by offering up this helpful resource – Bikram Finder. It provides Bikram hot yoga studio locations & reviews – so now you have no more excuses. (Too busy! Can't find a studio! etc.)

Tiger writes (and I heartily agree) that “90 minutes just a couple times a week can make a world of difference to one's flexibility, mental and physical.”

Thanks, Tiger!

The Big Google Adwords Experiment

Some years ago I was an early adopter who blew thousands tying to make Google Adwords and pay per click advertising work for me. Though my peers seemed to be pulling in sales galore, it never really worked for me.

It seemed that back then only high ticket items like luxury vacations, and really obscure items like Native Teak Oil for wooden boats sold well. So how was I to sell something as amorphous and non-specific as ‘creativity training’ or ‘life purpose CD’s’?

I finally gave up … but since then I’ve learned a lot which is re-inspiring me to try again.

Specifically, it looks like success with Google Adwords is all about where you point people in your ad. A few friends of mine have success directing folks to pages that offer them free bonuses for signing up for their ezines – and from there they build relationship.

That makes sense because you are obviously attracting really qualified leads by doing that. And by then building relationship with these folks, you are not necessarily getting small initial sales but possibly greater long term sales. That makes sense.

I’m also eager to try really giving lots of goodies to these Google-happy folks. The fact that they found me through a search engine as opposed to a personal referral means I have to work harder to build trust and credibility – but it also means they are looking for specific relief on certain things. So lots of quality content up front is a great idea.

This is no slam-dunk easy sale (which I’d once assumed it was.) These days we have to prove we’re full of info we eagerly share – and that are information is high quality. The novelty of the Web is gone, and Google hunters are looking for efficient answers to their queries. The opportunity here is to provide that via the pages you point folks to.

I’ll be posting here more on this three month experiment in which I’ll be promoting my Fill Your Groups Now program, my How Much Joy Facilitator’s Program, and my Get Known Now Home Study Course.

How has your experience with Google Adwords been?

My new state of calm

Maybe it’s just cause it’s a holiday week in the US, but I’m feeling a real pull at the moment to blog about ‘rest of life’ stuff here. Particularly, I’ve been experiencing a real shift in my whole way of life and it’s impacting my business in a wonderful way.

About four months ago I began meditating every day for at least 15 minutes (sometimes up to an hour.) I’ve meditated for 25 years in an on-again, off-again way – and in those ‘on-again’ times things thrived.

(Why would I stop? Well, probably because I let my human foibles get the better of me.)

So here’s what my life was like before I started meditating: crammed from when I woke up at 6AM to when I collapsed at 10PM. I always was haunted by the feeling that I had too much to do, more than I could physically accomplish EVER, and yet … it had to get done. Talk about a recipe for stress.

So I instituted regular meditation time, in which I sat quietly with a notebook and let meditative writing pour through me after going into my quiet, meditation ‘space’. I also added two more sessions of yoga per week – one vinyasa yoga which I do in a casual way with hubby and friends, and an additional Bikram yoga class (90 minutes of challenging yoga taught in a room heated to 104 degrees F.)

The result: I now find myself casually sauntering through my day with less of a frantic buzz. I give myself a reasonable number of things to do, I delegate the rest, and I conduct myself in a relaxed, chill way that has nobody stressed out – least of all, me!

And man, does this FEEL GOOD. So yeah, I might work all morning, but then I’ll take an hour to work on my piano playing, or go for a walk, or bake some pumpkin bread – or maybe all three. I spend my nights playing with my piano, or reading, or hanging with hubby instead of working. And somehow, I’m still getting the work stuff done even though I work half as many hours.

I feel so much more grounded and effective – that’s what’s really funny. I don’t have the sense that I’m ‘cheating’ or being lazy. Instead, I feel more powerful and focused in my business than ever.

Lesson learned: more is not necessarily more … less really is. I recommend some quiet time to get rebalanced.

What’s your balance between work and relaxation like?

Got aging parents? Read this.

And now for something completely different ...

I realize that I usually write here about matters of marketing and getting known, but recently I've gotten to know a coach who has a major contribution to make around end of life issues. So I wanted to share her work in a fre.e call with you.

Whether you’ve got aging parents, or an actively dying or seriously ill family member or friend … or you yourself are grappling with these issues … sooner or later you will need to approach the reality of death.

And yet – who is ever prepared for such a final moment? Death is the one thing none of us ever want to confront. Yet, the confronting of it often leads to a life more fully lived, and a death that is memorable, moving and spiritually complete.

End of life coach Bettina Desrochers is here to help you ease into the experience in a conscious way. So the death happens with grace, dignity, and a powerful sense of completion.

In this one-hour teleclass conversation, Bettina will share insights gained from the 1000+ deaths she has attended both as a coach, hospice owner and bedside attendant. Bettina will give you perspective into

- What a ‘conscious’ end of life requires

- How you can assure a peaceful, emotionally complete end for your loved ones

- How and when to get children involved

- How to manage deaths amidst difficult family dynamics

- Important end of life rituals that provide closure and comfort

Bettina will also touch on how and when to begin preparing for your aging parent’s death … and what to do first.

Register for this one-hour teleclass

Thanks for taking a moment to consider this -- hope you can join us!

Come Out into the Light, Please

We’ve just completed week two of my beta program, the Get Known Now Total Support Program, and my co-leader in this endeavor, Pam Slim, has written a great post about it.

The essence is that ‘Yes, you ARE good enough’ to … quit your job, set up your dream business, attract national publicity and big audience and rock the world.

How do we know? We’re both experts on the little mind games we all use to trip ourselves up on the long walk towards fame and fortune. Read Pam’s post, inspired by our first class which focused on ‘coming out of hiding’ … and get juiced.

It’s great.

Are you prey to the Power Point Monster?

If you ever do presentations or speak, you’ve bumped into the Power Point Monster. It’s that insatiable urge to create an enormous, distracting, technical mess up on the screen that’s so complicated no one can follow your speech. It’s the urge to put every single word coming out of your mouth into a styled bullet point on a slide. It’s the urge to overwhelm your audience with charts, graphs and graphics.

And it sucks.

And it’s the reason that much of the speaking I’ve done for the last five years has been entirely Power Point-free. However, lately I’ve been playing with the monster and loading a weekly presentation that’s part of my beta coaching group that began last week.

Interesting thing—I’m finding a right way and a wrong way to do it. Guy Kawasaki, guru extraordinaire, says that Power Points should never be more than ten frames long, and they shouldn’t simply repeat everything you say.

To that I’d add that they need to be used mainly for the graphics that you can’t really make your point without. For instance, I’ve used them in speeches to show web pages that are both good and bad examples of platform building. In my class, I inserted fun pictures here and there just to give some levity to what I was talking about, and make the presentation a little less formal.

How do you use Power Point in your work – and what are your PPT pet peeves?

Has Your Business Got a Mantra?

Recently I got to hear web business guru Guy Kawasaki speak at the ICF conference in St. Louis – and I couldn’t wait to hash apart one of his insights here. In a talk about what it takes to be innovative, he mentioned ‘making a mantra’. I love this.

The basic idea is to summarize what your point of difference is in the market with not just a brand that’s catchy or a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) that spells out the difference … but a mantra. As in a recite-worthy, short phrase that becomes your key motive and philosophy in life.

Example:
Wendy’s would be ‘healthy fast food’.
Fed Ex’s would be ‘peace of mind’.
Ebay’s would be ‘democratic commerce.’

This is not a phrase you share with the public, but a key benefit you and your team live for, design around, strive to achieve and keep in front of you all the time. So it’s not just what you TELL the world you’re about … but that beneficial difference that you live every day.

Herein lies the difference between your average small business and one that rocks the world. Those who are motivated from within by a driving passion for what they can do for others are those who naturally rise to the top of their particular niche.

I invite you to start thinking about your mantra today. Mine is morphing as we speak, and I’ll report on it soon here. What’s yours?

Last Call on the Cheapest Way to Snag My Private Coaching

By the way, I have only got three spots left before I hit the magic number (20) in my Get Known Now beta coaching group. The final beta version of this coaching group -- which I've been working on perfecting for the last two years -- starts the day after tomorrow.

Until today, I was only offering entry to a select group of my best customers, but I've decided to open it up to my favorite blog readers (you guys) ... so you could jump in, if you're interested. It's by far the most reasonable way you can get my coaching -- and the price will be going up when it's re-released in 2007.

This group is for you if you have a business on the Web to promote -- but you may not have a clear enough vision of it to really dig in and get started. Or perhaps you're stuck in a tired old niche or brand that's no longer serving you.

In this 3 month program, taught via web, phone, email and worksheets PLUS private coaching with me, you're going to lock in on your perfect audience, niche, determine your passionate offer, brand, USP and more. This is ALL the critical infrastructure stuff that gets forgotten ... and that really determines the success of your business.

I will not rest until you, fair friend, have a business you are totally passionate about -- and it's ready to be packaged on the Web in a way that's compelling.

Learn more or feel free to give me a call. I'm in my office at 518 963 8927.

PS. What's 'beta' mean? It means I'm doing a final test on this program, so I'm looking for lots of feedback as we go.

PPSS. That's the end of an uncharacteristically 'out there' sales pitch to you folks. Won't do it again for a long time, I promise.

The magic art of seeding posts

Just so you can get more fully into the Social media loop, and take advantage of all those now abundant opportunities to put your stuff in front of all kinds of surfers, here’s a great overview of that.

Earlier this week I ran a post on an excellent article I found on successful blog launches. Yet, their comments on seeding your posts to bring in traffic from social book marking sites was so great, I decided to pull it out and run it right here. (You really need to read this launch article if you haven’t – it rocks!)

Here’s what they wrote:

Hundreds of thousands of content hungry readers are using social bookmarking sites every day, and many track specific keywords. By seeding your best articles, and by using a mixture of both popular and specific keywords as tags, you can bring a new crop of readers to your site on a weekly basis. The best way to select the tags for your article is to think of social bookmarking sites as a form of search engine. By including both broad keywords and narrower keywords you are certain to get a blend of both low quality/high volume readers (AdSense baby!) and high quality/low volume readers (links). The following is a list of the top 10 bookmarking sites which you should submit your top articles to:

1. Digg: Mammoth traffic; tech-focused; savvy users

2. Delicious: Pretty big traffic; somewhat tech/design-focused; a lot of bloggers browse Delicious for “things to link to”

3. Netscape: Pretty big traffic; a mix of topics; less savvy users

4. Stumbleupon: Medium traffic; weird stuff/literary articles; normal users.

5. Yahoo MyWeb: Medium traffic; general interest; normal users

6. Reddit: Lower traffic; politics/random stuff; normal users.

7. Furl: Lower traffic; tech-focused/some random stuff; normal users

8. Newsvine: Lower traffic; politics and news; normal users.

9. Lookmarks: Low traffic; gets spammed a lot; less savvy users

10. Blinklist: Low traffic; gets spammed a lot; less savvy users

Anyone have others to add to the list? Or more seeding ideas of your own? Has this worked for you?

Pay Per View Webinars – a New Service

How about a way to deliver webinars that is truly a one-stop shop? Thanks to a company called VMDirect, you can set up your webinar and charge through their system on a pay-per-view basis. That’s new.

And I like it (not sure about the PayPal interface as some customers find that a turn off) …. The overall service they provide looks excellent.

Check out their service by clicking on the flag connected to your country. And then watch what they have to say in this neat little video presentation. I was impressed.

(And thanks Terry Viney for providing the link for us.)

Great Tips on Successful Blog Launches

Here’s an extremely well done post – really a major article – called " 21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch "

This is the best collection of blog launch tips I’ve seen and I believe if you really work it the way this indicates, you’re going to have some excellent traffic on your hands!

Way to go, guys – do check it out.