Ebook Sample Content Preview:

Well, 3 days went by and there sat my poor, green, lidless can at my driveway’s mouth and a replacement never arrived. Feeling empathy for this green plastic waif, I returned it to the side of it’s brother that had a lid. I called my cheerful Customer Service voice again, and reiterated the plight of my poor lidless can and after a chuckle she assured me a complete unit would be forthcoming. I found it necessary to make use of my lidless friend, and put it out the next pickup day filled to the brim. Fortunately, it wasn’t windy and all the contents remained inside it. That was 2 weeks ago, and life being what it is other more important tasks have occupied me until this morning when facing another pickup day I thought of my lidless friend.

Once more I picked up the phone and called my trash pickup company, and this time I listened to a litany of choices of buttons I could punch and chose my cheerful Customer Service button again. I was transferred, listened to a brief melody when there was a “click” and I expected my cheerful voice to chirp “hello”. The next thing I heard was another click, silence, and then the dreaded dial tone that means you’ve been disconnected. Not being one of the “fainthearted”, I simply redialed my number. Again there was the litany of button choices, my choice and the music, and just when I began to feel that all was right with the world I heard - “click”, “dial tone” and nothing.

This was not the morning for the phone to be playing games with me, so I made one more determined effort and REDIALED! “NASA, we have lift-off !” I once more heard the litany of button choices, but this time I outfoxed that monotonous voice and punched “0”. I asked for the Manager of Customer Service, I was given her name and was transferred. What greeted my eager ear was, “You’ve reached the voicemail of......, please leave your name and number and she’ll return your call.”

So here we sit - my lidless, green can and I facing another pick-up day. This eager-to-serve plastic green waif must bravely face another dutiful day half-clothed.

You must admit that is an amusing story, and one that far too many of us have lived through, but what a sad commentary it is about our business community. Doesn’t it make you wonder if our language has changed so drastically that what we interpret “Customer Service” to mean - is not what today’s business owners mean. It makes me wonder when the marriage of Customer and Service broke-up, leaving us all the lonely ones.

Entrepreneurs and business owners take note! If you’re going to have a number for your customers to access your Customer Service, please follow these rules.

Have the phone manned by an employee that can hear thunder and see lightening.

Give that employee training in helping the caller and not shuffling the problem to another desk.

Have an overseer, who can also hear thunder and see lightening, check that all incoming complaints were handled appropriately.

After learning how to find your customers and what they want; after getting them committed to doing business with YOU; and after wooing them to keep them as your customers - WHY WOULD YOU LET “SERVICE” DIVORCE “CUSTOMER?”

If your customers aren’t getting the service they require from you - your competitor will be only too happy to help them!

Ebook Sample Content Preview:

Most businesses would fail if they ran like we manage our household incomes sometimes. This is not a natural thing for people to want to do. It falls into that ‘I will if I really have no choice’ kind of categories.

However, worth mentioning is that we spend most of our waking hours at work, earning the cash we need to get by and cover our living expenses. Then, we do not take the time to plan what to do with it. We just respond, spend and move on, spiraling, circling around, aimlessly and oblivious mostly about the state of our financial affairs.

This is obviously not true for some of us, for whom planning and organizing comes naturally and budgeting is like second nature and breathing, we just do not think about it, get it done and then barely spare it a second thought. Both these types of approaches can hurt us in the long run.

Our society has also become so fast-paced and focused on success, that we sometimes lose sight of the future perspective, enjoying life and what we do have. We cannot really focus on our own financials for lots of “excuses”, sorry reasons we provide like: trouble slowing down, taking a step back and evaluating our financial situations or not knowing how to set up a family budget.

One of the first hints or tips we provide is advocating fiscal awareness. This means evaluating openly, freely and honestly where things are at today for your finances and household.

The whole purpose and goal of creating or setting up a family budget is to enlighten and alleviate money pressures. Utilizing a tool that can assist you in getting back onto the road to financial freedom, fiscal responsibility and financial, budgetary health, positive cash flow, with money to spare would be the ideal work-tool to grasp and grab! As the previous pages have shown the process in itself is not altogether that difficult.

You can certainly see how this real-time, ‘dollar and expenditure tracker’ can assist you to be agile and respond to market, family and monetary pressure, changes and crises. Continue to revise and update your budget as your needs, family and circumstances change.

Money is such a daily necessity and ever-present in our comings and goings. There is no escaping it. It is everywhere and needed anywhere and all over. We have different currencies, structures, procedures and all around the world, but in the end, it is the currency that makes the world go round, fueling the global economy.

Seen from that perspective, we often feel that taking control of our own finances and expenditures will not have much of an impact, as we are all at the mercy of the wheels and gear of a churning economical machine, with government and banking rules, regulations, trade and principles, ethics and decision-making that affects our quality of life. However, this is simply not the case!

Good money management skills in the household is crucial, not only for survival and good financial state of affairs, it teaches our children how we think handling money should be taken care of. They watch us so closely.

We model certain behaviors, spending patterns, discipline or maybe throwing all caution to the wind with credit card spending, debt and reminder notices all over the house, creditors calling, afraid to walk to the mailbox to remove the bills, and more.

What chance do our children have to end up entangled in that spiraling and vicious circle we spoke about earlier? Money in, money out? How do we get to the point where family budgeting is a learning tool to help us teach our kids to work better with their funds? Whether through allowances, mutual savings goals, their own account or more, as parents we have an opportunity to instill some solid financial skills early on in life that will assist them later, as they work toward their independence and family budgets of their own!

Ebook Sample Content Preview:

This method of traffic generation can be quite time-consuming and can negatively affect your search engine optimization if you don’t do it correctly. Basically, it’s very important to have quality, incoming links from other sites related to yours.

A lot of people have this hare-brained idea that linking to every site they can find and submitting to every link directory known to man will help their ranking. Well, it won’t! And you have to be careful not to link to sites that are black-listed/banned by search engines. It’s a case of the them.

The good news is that it's getting easier and easier to link properly! Software like SEO Elite and Arelis are helpful in finding and securing quality reciprocal links. There are also online services like Link Metro that will help you find worthwhile link partners. Then, of course, you can always do it manually if your budget’s small.

Your Own Ezine

With a weekly/biweekly/monthly ezine, you can promote your sites under your signature or in little ads/sidebars within your ezine. Of course, you wouldn’t want to jam your site info down your reader’s throat! Most often, I see ezine publishers’ site URL’s listed under their name at the end of the ezine. If I’m interested, I click on the URL. Have you ever clicked on a site URL provided within an ezine?