Talk About Focus!

Phew! Got back late yesterday from a weekend with our daughter and three grandchildren...

Hello again.

Talk about focused effort - and calm under pressure. I thought we could work quite hard, I thought I was pretty good under pressure, but seeing my daughter not just coping but managing superbly makes me realise just how easy my life is most of the time. And it made me appreciate it, too.

If you still have children at home, or you work as a teacher or child carer, or you spend a lot of time with your grandchildren, you will understand. But how quickly we forget!

I've had my two children, and 'inherited' two more almost exactly ten years younger, and wouldn't have missed being a parent - but I wouldn't choose to do it again, either...

And life is about choices. Not every decision we make turns out to be a wise one, but it was still ours to make. Without exception, we make the best choice we can at any given time, given the circumstances, what we believe and how much we know, so it follows that we make better choices when we know more and can think more clearly.

Sometimes that requires a bit of distance, or a crisis or crossroads in our life. Often, it requires more courage than we think we have, but we all have more courage than we know. When the pain of being where we are exceeds the (often exaggerated) pain of making a change, we make the change. And usually find the pain is nothing like we expected.

But to make a real go of a new venture, it does us no harm at all to be reminded just what real focus and calm under pressure is. Find yourself a young mum and prepare to be amazed!

Roy Everitt, Writing For Results

At Least Something Works!

Hello again.

Frustrating isn't quite the word when you've gone to the trouble of directing people to a website, only to find you can't update the content to give them what you've promised.

The mysteries of Internet Explorer and/or Google conspired to prevent me updating this page yesterday, but I'm here now.

And the plan was to tell you how the death of email marketing has been greatly exaggerated. To point out that any other advertising medium that could deliver a twenty-four percent response would be lauded to the hills. And any that subsequently delivered over sixty percent of those responders to the advertised event would be hailed as revolutionary.

It wasn't lauded (except by me) and there's nothing very revolutionary about email marketing. I guess it depends on three things:

1. How targeted the original list is
2. How good the offer is
3. How well we write the emails

So we can probably say we got three out of three for our last campaign. Fifty attendees from a list of about three hundred people (and from just under eighty opt-ins) has to be good.

So when I finished congratulating myself for that success I could only think I should be doing this kind of thing for a living!

Then I remembered I was, decided to tell a few people about it, and hit the brick wall that either Microsoft or Google temporarily threw up in my path.

Still, I'm here now, I've told you about it and I can only ask one question: how would a twenty-four percent response to your next campaign help YOUR business?

Roy Everitt, Writing for Amazing Results

What's the Big Idea?

Hello again

A question for you: Are you an 'ideas' person?

Me, too.

I find ideas passing through my mind at the most inopportune moments. You know the times I mean: when you're in the bath, when you're driving, when someone or something else demands your attention.

Keeping a notebook handy isn't always an option. A voice recorder is sometimes a better idea. Telling the person we're with can help us remember. I never did tie a knot in my hankie...

So, at these moments, we can sometimes be forgiven for not committing the idea to any kind of lasting medium, and so, sadly, forgetting what it was.

Because the problem with passing ideas is that they so often seem to be just that - passing into our brains on one side and straight out of our brains on the other.

Which is all the more reason why we should all remember to take notes on the occasions when we can. When it's easy, convenient and not impolite to do so. I know that, you know that, we all know that.

So why do we so often forget to do it?

Because it's such a good idea?

That would explain why the brilliant idea I had for today's blog entry is apparently lost forever!

Roy Everitt, Writing For Results

PS. Despite that mishap, today has been a very productive day, with a report written, our next major product a few steps nearer completion, another small project ready to send to the customer and a proposal in the air for yet another joint venture.

It keeps us busy...

And it's all such good fun!