All businesses need to engage strategic thinking and planning in all aspects of their business, especially the marketing plan for the business. In working with custom home builders as part of my business coaching practice, I discovered only a few of them ever recognized the value of being strategic in their thinking and planning and had limited themselves to lower levels of success. Fortunately, after they opened their minds to being more strategic, their outlook changed and they started putting some tips on strategic marketing to good use. One of the most vivid and remarkable examples was one custom home builder that went from one of their worst years in business to a record setting best year in business after committing to a strategic marketing approach.

Based upon previous experience and some research, your strategic thinking business coach offers the following twelve (12) tips to home builders for more effective strategic marketing of their business.

1. Engage in strategic thinking and planning when developing your strategic marketing plan for your home building business. You may consider hiring a professional, such as a business coach, to facilitate and guide you in the preparation of your strategic marketing plan.

2. Conduct a SWOT analysis to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with your home building business.

3. Identify your most desired clients and your ideal client profile to define who it is that you really want to market to for retaining existing clients and acquiring new clients.

4. Analyze your competition. Do some basic market research by visiting other home builder web sites, talking to competitor’s employees and review their booths at trade shows, talk with our competitor’s subcontractors and vendor representatives. And monitor their advertising to see what direction they are heading.

5. Develop clearly defined and measurable goals and monitor your progress.

6. Develop a strategic integrated marketing communications plan to make sure you have planned for effective messages to your target markets.

7. Develop a market position based upon identified opportunities. Clearly define the market position and focus on providing different benefits than your competition. Develop a positioning statement for your home building business. This can be used as a tag line that will help build brand loyalty and communicate benefits and features that your target market can relate to.

8. Incorporate and use the power of referrals as one of your key strategies in your strategic marketing plan.

9. Create and live by a strong code of ethics and company core values. Demonstrate in all that you do each day in your home building business that these core values and ethics are how you conduct your business.

10. Commit to a continuous improvement philosophy in your marketing efforts. And commit to finding the “lessons learned” in the mistakes and failures and then taking action in the future based upon the “lessons learned.”

11. Commit to a “continuous marketing” mentality. Your marketing efforts need to be continuous and not a “one shot deal” or a “sometime” activity. It is al “all the time” activity.

12. Develop an effective customer contact management system with a goal of achieving Top Of Mind Awareness (TOMA) with your clients, prospects and stakeholders.

Your strategic thinking business coach encourages you to use strategic thinking and planning in the development of your strategic marketing plan for your home building business. If you would like to learn more about strategic marketing plans, how to develop one for your business and how a strategic thinking business coach can facilitate and guide you in that endeavor, please contact Glenn Ebersole through his website at www.businesscoach4u.com or by email at jgecoach@aol.com

Glenn Ebersole, Jr. is a multi-faceted professional, who is recognized as a visionary, guide and facilitator in the fields of business coaching, marketing, public relations, management, strategic planning and engineering. Glenn is the Founder and Chief Executive of two Lancaster, PA based consulting practices: The Renaissance Group, a creative marketing, public relations, strategic planning and business development consulting firm and J. G. Ebersole Associates, an independent professional engineering, marketing, and management consulting firm. He is a Certified Facilitator and serves as a business coach and a strategic planning facilitator and consultant to a diverse list of clients. Glenn is also the author of a monthly newsletter, “Glenn’s Guiding Lines - Thoughts From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach” and has published more than 250 articles on business.

To find out more about the benefits & rewards of effectively working with a strategic thinking business coach, please contact Glenn Ebersole through his web site at http://www.businesscoach4u.com or jgecoach@aol.com

Since the beginning of time, the female body has demonstrated abilities limited to our gender. From menstruation, through pregnancy and childbirth, the body of a woman has exclusive rights a number of miraculous events. During the reproductive years, a woman’s ovaries release eggs on a monthly basis for reproductive purposes. Included in this process is the release of estrogen - a female hormone responsible for the delicate operations of the woman’s body. However, when menopause occurs, the loss of estrogen can produce a number of unpleasant side effects, sometimes resulting in a woman seeking relief through a hormone pill.

Menopause - generally occurring anywhere between the ages of mid-forties to mid-fifties - is defined by the permanent cessation of a woman’s menstrual cycle. The ovaries cease to produce eggs and estrogen stops being produced. This is normally a process that happens gradually - sometimes occurring over the course of several years. In some cases, however, a needed surgical procedure will result in medically-induced menopause. Either way, it is the ending to a woman’s reproductive years and the ending of estrogen production - a hormone that, when absent, results in a bevy of symptoms. The hormone pill - or estrogen replacement therapy - supplements the body with estrogen and can minimize the symptoms of menopause.

Some of the more common symptoms of menopause include hot flashes, night sweats, memory loss, mood swings, and loss of sexual desire. Not every woman experiences every symptom. And when symptoms are experienced the severity with which they are experienced varies from woman to woman. For some women, their symptoms are difficult to endure and interfere greatly with daily life. In this instance, a doctor may suggest a daily hormone pill to help balance the body.

However, the hormone pill continues to receive mixed reviews as an answer to symptoms of menopause. Researchers continue to debate the safety of the hormone pill and the possibility of it compromising cardiovascular function. Most doctors will ask women to try a variety of natural therapies before turning to a hormone pill. Studies show that women, who eat natural, whole foods, exercise regularly, and live an overall healthy lifestyle, will find themselves far less affected by menopause symptoms. In many cases, a change in lifestyle will result in a relief of symptoms, making the hormone pill unnecessary.

For easy to understand, in depth information about hormone pill visit our ezGuide 2 Hormones.

At one time you would have had to trawl round the local libraries, or even seek permission to visit university libraries for your research. Now however, you have the power of the internet and there is little you cannot find online. So complete the research you have to do then finish writing your ebook. Check your spelling regularly as you write, and keep saving your work. There is nothing worse than accidentally hitting the wrong key, or even more common these days, clicking the mouse on the wrong button and deleting all your work.

Once you have finished writing, have your book proof read by somebody. It is best if the proof reader understands the subject since they can more easily spot errors, but if not then it is still useful to have someone look for glaring errors in grammar and use of words, such as confusing ‘their’ and ‘there’ which is one of the most common errors in internet writing.

Finally complete a contents page, if relevant, then convert the format to that you intend to sell the ebook in. PDF is generally best since Mac users cannot use Word files, plain text is useless since you cannot format it, and html is plain silly unless you are marketing the product as website content that can be loaded directly into the customer’s html editor. Stick to PDF.

When you sell the book, offer it with a link to a free PDF reader such as Acrobat, and if you have written it reasonable well and accurately, you should make money and give yourself the confidence to write many more. Ebooks are the most common product sold by beginners on the internet so get going and get your business off the ground. There’s nothing like having your own product to sell, and, if you can manage it, fit a few affiliate links in it and improve your chances of making money.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide’

Download it free here: Internet Article Marketing

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

This morning when I opened my calendar, everything looked different. Surely someone’s been playing with my computer. I could swear I had appointments booked and paying clients taking every available spot for the next two months. I must be having a bad dream. Pinch myself. Nope. It’s true - I’ve hit the dreaded dry spell!

Entrepreneurs talk about it all the time as part of the game, but being in it is an entirely different thing. If you are like most business owners, you haven’t yet managed to balance the feast and famine phenomenon. The question is, “What do you do when the famine hits?”

First of all, BREATH!!! Preferably without hyperventilating. Don’t panic. Don’t throw in the towel. Don’t check the employment ads. Do remind yourself why you started your business. Do remind yourself of all the successes you’ve enjoyed and will once again enjoy. Do remind yourself if you are just starting up, that it takes time to build an active business. Do park your negative self-talk and replace it with positive affirmations, like “Today I am one step closer to experiencing the wild success that I’ve dreamed about!”

When things are looking a bit slow, do the following:

-Go to your database and call all the people you’ve been meaning to stay in touch with. Arrange to meet and exchange ideas or just have a coffee and find out how you can help them with their objectives.

-Apply a referral selling process. In No More Cold Calling™, The Breakthrough System That Will Leave Your Competition in the Dust, Joanne Black puts forward a practical approach to building your business through referrals. This simple system can propel your business through the roof without wasting business development time.

-Attend to the business planning that you may have been procrastinating about. Revisit your business and marketing plans. It will likely re-energize you.

-Find a coach. Whether hired or a business buddy, it’s very helpful to have a thinking partner, someone to share with and encourage you to keep your eye on preparing for the next delectable feast.

-Learn something new. Take the opportunity to read the last business book you bought and put on your nightstand or attend a training program that’s been on your to do list.

Most of all, remember dry spells are temporary and keeping perspective is critical to your success. The objective is clearly to have fewer dry spells and more feasts. However, dry spells are inevitable for most entrepreneurs. If you find you are stuck in dry spell, do get some guidance from someone who can provide insight for you and be prepared to explore difficult possibilities. As Jim Collins says in “Good to Great,” Confront the brutal facts, yet never lose faith.”

Joan Paul is a Certified Executive Coach and Sales Strategist. Her company, J. Paul Training Inc., provides customized training, strategy development and is the distributor of No More Cold Calling, TM, The Breakthrough System That Will Leave Your Competition in the Dust, and The Sales Activator®, an international sales management system. Joan can be reached at (403) 607-1979 or through her website http://www.jpaultraining.com

After identifying which type of commercial property you should invest in, you probably wonder where you should consider investing. To answer this question you need to ask yourself what your investment objectives are. They could be to:

• Maximize leverage: you want to be able to borrow as much money as possible. If this is the case then most if not all properties in California will not meet your objective. Properties in California often offer 4 to 6 percents cap rate. This would require 40-65% down payment. So to maximize leverage you will need to invest outside of California where the cap rates are in the 7-9% ranges.
  

• Receive strong positive cash flow: most if not all of commercial properties that offer high cash flow are outside of California. These properties in turn allow you to maximize leverage, i.e. borrow up to 75% of the purchase price.
  

• Realize strong appreciation potential: if you invest in a right property at a good location (refer to the article “What location Means in Commercial Real Estate”) and right time, the biggest return often comes from appreciation. It’s hard to predict the potential for appreciation for a certain area. The fact the area has strong or weak appreciation in the past does not necessarily mean it will have similar appreciation in the future. However, if you choose to invest in a newer NNN-leased property on a main road in a growing or stable area with strict zoning, i.e. limited supplies of properties then your property has a better chance to appreciate in value.

To achieve your investment objectives there is a very good chance you will invest outside of California. If so, you want to choose properties in

• More well-known metro areas that most people have an idea where these cities are.

• Growing cities.

These 2 factors will ensure your commercial property is in high demand so it’s easy to sell later and has low vacancy rate. You definitely don’t want to invest in a tiny little city located in a middle of nowhere or declining areas where it is easy to buy but hard to sell.

This article is not intended to list all the areas in the country where you should consider investing. Rather it is meant to high light a few major metro areas that you should consider; However if you have ruled out or have not considered these two metro areas, you probably don’t know what you are missing!

1. Atlanta Metro Area, GA: This is a clean and modern area which has taken off since the Summer Olympics in 1996. Atlanta metro is one of the fastest growing markets in the country where the cost of doing business is 97% of the national market. It has well-developed transportation network. The Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta airport is the world busiest airport. It’s not an accident that UPS chose Atlanta as the main sorting center for all of its domestic next day air packages. All of UPS air packages have to be flown here for sorting before flying to their final destinations. The Atlanta Hartfield-Jackson airport is rarely shut down due to bad weather so UPS planes can fly in and depart day or night 365 days a year. Atlanta has been able to attract various companies due to well-developed infrastructure and low business costs: Home Depot, Coca Cola, CNN, Delta Airlines, UPS, Walmart, Bell South, AT&T, IBM, and Kroger. This is the place where Center of Disease Control (CDC) and the world largest Georgia Aquarium are located. The median cost of a home is around $180K in Atlanta compared to about $770K in Santa Clara. As a result, the population in this area has experienced tremendous growth. The North East suburbs, e.g. Duluth, Lawrenceville are more prosperous where population has increased 20-30% from 2000 to 2005. The current cap rate for Atlanta metro is around 7-8.5% which offers high cash flow and maximizes leverage while offers strong potential for appreciation. The leases in this area are also very favorable to landlord: NNN leases with tenants also paying for property management fees.

2. Dallas/Fort Worth Metropolitan Area, TX: this is the fourth largest metro and one of the fastest growing markets in the US. It is home of 19 Fortune 500 companies: Southwest Airlines, Texas instruments, EDS, JCPenney, Kimberly Clark, ExxonMobil to name a few. The area offers an excellent transportation network, affordable housing (median cost of a home is around $150K range), and unparalleled lifestyle at reasonable cost (Cost of Living Index is 89 compared with about 170 for San Francisco which means earning 89 cents there is equivalent to $1.70 in San Francisco). Dallas Fort Worth International Airport handled 57 million passengers in 2004 and ranked the world’s third busiest airport. The rise of telecommunications and hi-tech industry in 1990s led to unprecedented growth for this area. It is forecasted this region will add another 500,000 jobs by 2010. Dallas Northern suburb is a high income, fast growing and new area. This consists of small cities such as Coppell, Keller, Denton, Flower Mound, and Colleyville with very high median household income, e.g. $80-110K/year. This area has strict zoning so there are limited supplies of commercial properties available. Commercial properties available for sale in the Dallas metro are in general fairly new and good quality. The cap rate for this region is around 7-7.5% which is very decent compared to California.

It’s important to invest in the right property and the right area to meet your investment objectives. You should work with a company who specializes in commercial real estate who can advise you on where to invest. When investing outside California, you will need to hire a property manager to take care of the tenants and the property for you. In the coming issue, you will learn about issues you should know about property management.

Disclaimer: information in this article is deemed reliable but not guaranteed to be correct. There is no implied or expressed guarantee regarding results of your investment should you take the advice from this article.

David V. Tran is the CEO eFunding Inc., a commercial real estate brokerage, commercial loan broker, property management, self-directed IRA investment, TIC and syndication company in San Jose, CA. His website is http://www.efundingcom.com He may be contacted at (408) 288-5500. eFunding does business in all 50 states. He is selected as Pensco Trust’s (a major self-directed IRA custodian) Preferred Professional. David is well-known for his 3 FREE real estate investment seminars:

1. How to invest in commercial real estate for retirement income NOW.
2. How to maximize cash flow with 1031 tax-deferred exchange.
3. TIC/Syndication: strategy for small investors and self-directed IRA investors to acquire high-valued properties.

   You are welcome to share this report, unedited and in its entirety, with anyone you like. You may not remove this text. © 2007 eFunding, Inc.

A great way to explore chords and at the same time learn to use them is to learn them together in usable guitar progressions like II-V-I. Let’s concentrate on the key of C!

What is a II-V-I progression?

Is is a chord progression with three chords built on the roots of the second, fifth and first note of a key.

The three roman numerals correspond to the digits 2, 5 and 1. In it’s most basic form the numbers indicate the root of a triad. For example, the roman number I in C-major means a triad built from the note C. This triad consists of the notes C, E and G.

The Roman numeral II in the key of C-major indicates that you are to play a triad built from the notes in the C-major scale beginning with the second note. The notes will be D, F and A.

The Roman numeral V indicates a triad built from the fifth step on the C-scale. The fifth note in the C-scale is G so the triad will include the notes G, B and D.

Our first guitar chords will be the most commonly used II-V-I chords in the key of C. The first chord is of course Dm. This is the way it is normally played:

Dm: 0/4 2/3 3/2 1/1

What does this notation mean?

This is a type of guitar tablature notation with numbers showing what fret to press down and on which string. 2/3 for example means, press down the second fret on string three.

The V chord G7 we will play this way:

G7: 3/6 2/5 0/4 0/3 0/2 1/1

The remaining chord in this progression is C-major. It is played this way:

C: 3/5 2/4 3/0 1/2 0/1

If we write this progression with ordinary chord notation it will look like this:

Dm / / / G7 / / / C / / /

I will now take this lesson up one level. We will only use four strings at a time. I suggest that you use your right hand fingers as you pluck the strings.

I also recommend that you play the lowest string in a chord with your thumb and the other notes with your index, middle finger and ring finger. Remember, it is only a suggestion!

We will now spice the guitar chords in the previous progression by first changing Dm to Dm7:

Dm7: 0/4 2/3 1/2 1/1

The G7 chord we will change to G9:

G9: 3/6 2/3 0/2 1/1

Finally we will change the C-major chord to Cmaj7:

Cmaj7: 3/5 0/3 0/2 0/1

The resulting guitar chord progression looks like this:

Dm7 / / / G9 / / / C / / /

As you can see as you play the notes on your guitar the minor changes on the first three strings results in a smooth transition between the chords.

This is one way to make the chords in guitar progressions work well together.

Peter Edvinsson at Capotasto Music invites you to download your free sheet music, guitar tabs, ebooks, music lessons and read his music blog at http://www.capotastomusic.com

If you are going to use it, you have to learn how to use PPC advertising properly. It can be a great tool for your online business, or it can ruin you. It has done both to many whose aspiration was to make money on the internet. Some succeeded and a few were ruined.

So PPC advertising is not just a bed of roses, there are a few thorns there as well, and it is important that you understand how to avoid these thorns. First choose your PPC company. Many like the way that Yahoo operate their Search Marketing system, where you pay in advance and know exactly where you are. With Yahoo you cannot get bankrupt as you can with Google.

Google Adwords charge your credit card in arrears. So you use the adverts and unless you are careful with the budgets you set, you card can be charged for a lot more that you budgeted for. Adwords provide you with the opportunity to set a daily or monthly limit to the cost of your campaign. The problem arises with many people when they set a reasonable limit to one campaign then run others with the same limit. Google applies each limit you set on each campaign separately, so that you can be faced with a massive bill at the end of each billing period.

So be careful of your budgets when using Adwords, and if you do you have one of the best advertising programs on the planet, second only to free search engine exposure in the organic listings. There are ways to use PPC advertising to its best advantage, and for that you need your own website. There are a number of reasons for this, so let’s have a look at them.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide’

Download it free here: Internet Article Marketing

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Many parents, faced with inadequate schooling for their children or a child’s particular educational needs that a district can not effectively handle, choose instead to home school their child. Home schooling - when done appropriately and responsibly - can be enormously effective in educating children in particular situations. However, qualified home school teaching is paramount to achieving results.

Parents choose the option of home schooling for a variety of reasons. In some cases, the quality of education is lacking in their area school district, classrooms are overcrowded, or particular educational needs can not be met by existing programs. While private schooling may sometimes be an option, in many cases it is cost-prohibitive. In other cases, learning or physical disabilities hinder students regardless of what traditional school environment they attend. In all of these cases, home schooling can provide an efficient and successful alternative to traditional learning environments.

Those providing home school teaching - most often the parent of the child being home schooled - must make a commitment to keeping the student on par with the curriculum being offered through the public school system. Each particular state offers their own guidelines regarding home school teaching requirements. Those interested in home school teaching should possess a strong desire to have a positive impact on their student’s education; the rest will come with experience. Home school curriculum in line with state guidelines can be found online and will lead instructors step-by-step through the process.

Parents who choose home schooling are often intimidated by the teaching process. What they will soon discover is that home school teaching is ultimately the communication of information in a way that works for each particular student. For example, if your child learns best through sound, you may find that you do well with the use of DVD instruction in your home school teaching. Other students need a more hands-on approach. If you listen and observe the needs of your child you will often find a way to customize your home school teaching.

Home school teaching can bring learning into focus for a variety of students. Released from the social, emotional, and educational obstacles sometimes found in traditional school environments, students are left with a clear path to learning. Approached responsibly, the home school process can instill confidence and a lifelong love of learning.

For easy to understand, in depth information about home school teaching visit our ezGuide 2 Home School.

If your business is affiliate marketing, Google does not allow any more than one advert to the same URL. What that means is that you have to direct visitors to your advert towards a page on your website. Otherwise Google will not accept it. Other PPC sites might do so, but none have the same importance as Adwords. With Google Adwords you have the opportunity to provide two URLs. The first is that which is seen, which should be your home page, and the second, which is not visible, is that which the prospect is sent to when they click on your advert.

You must arrange that to be a page which not only offers the product you are advertising, but also an opt-in form for your list. Never let a visitor leave your site without the opportunity to sign up for your list. There are many ways in which can seduce this email address, but your main objective is the sale. For that reason your PPC link should lead anybody that clicks on it straight to what you are advertising. This can take one of two forms.

If the product you are selling is your own, then it should be your sales page. It could be a squeeze page that offers the product you offer with the opportunity of an upgrade if they sign the form so that you can email it to them. It could be a straight sales page, but wherever possible, you should have an up-sell or back-sell on the product.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide’

Download it free here: Internet Article Marketing

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

We sometimes feel that we are endlessly chasing our tails in an effort to get things done. And, do we ever get things done? Others seem to manage, why can’t we?

Everyone gets 24 hours a day- but why do others seemingly get an extra few hours in their same day? The answer is time management- an important part to running a successful business- as well as a personal life.

The truth is, even geniuses can have problems with managing time- making them less efficient than people who are more experienced in the time management. To help improve your time saving, your first step should be to keep notes. They are powerful tools that let you keep track of what you are doing- no more wasting your time wondering what you were supposed to do, or should do. Things such as portable organizers will help out a great deal.

If you think a problem is too big to handle, divide it into sections and tackle it to the best of your ability. While some may buckle under the pressure, you can continue by working on ‘parts’ of the larger problem.

Prioritizing is the most important- manage your tasks at hand through a priority system. The tasks that are more important get done first- as simple as that. This will make sure you don’t waste time on menial things.

Lastly, convincing others to help you in your tasks can reduce time of the task drastically. Following the previous steps along with this one, and you should be able to manage your time with the best of them.

Eric Hartwell oversees “The World’s Best Homepage” intended to be a user-generated resource where YOUR opinion counts. Anybody can contribute and all are welcomed. Visit us to read, comment upon or share opinions on time management and visit our associated site articles for free.