Stop Wasting Time Watching Videos at a Snails Pace!

Enounce Lets You Control the Speed!

I was recently introduced to a truly helpful piece of software that has HUGE BENEFITS, and is saving me a lot of very valuable time.

Video has become a popular medium for everything from from distance learning to corporate training to YouTube, and most of the video is in Adobe Flash format.

MySpeed from Enounce lets you change the playback speed of Flash video without any loss of audio quality. (No chipmunk sound.)

It’s like speed-reading for video! Speed up to save time and zip through Flash-based videos online. Lectures, seminars, training, speeches and online ads can all be sped up to 5 times faster with perfect clarity.

Slow down to learn or take notes; view as slow as 3 times slower than original speed for foreign language learning, complex technical, medical, financial or legal material. Everything is easier to digest, comprehend, remember and take notes when you set a playback speed that’s right for you!

This is a great piece of software that will save you time. Click Here to Order a Free Trial!

It’s been several months now since I’ve updated my blog.  But it hasn’t been from lack of interest.  Only a short delay due to important family duties (e.g. marriages, births, birthdays, deaths, vacations, school ending, school beginning…..you know the drill), along with undertaking a few new business obligations.

It’s interesting to me that my two previous blog posts from the beginning of the summer were on the topic of organization and getting things done. Then, as if by fate, summer arrived and was filled with so many significant and even unexpected events that my best laid plans were altered, almost instantaneously.

It started with an unexpected death in the family, the last minute hustle to relocate one of our kids to a college 1,000 miles away, the organization and planning of an entire  wedding, building and launching over 20 websites and finally, a short vacation.  Whew, I’m exhausted!

But now I’m back. Summer is over and I’m ready to get rolling again. These past few months have also brought about many insights that I’m anxious to share with my readers. So many in fact, that it will take several blogs to cover them all. I’ll not attempt to address them in sequential order, but rather in order of my own personal priority.

So here we go. Ready for the first one? By the way, I’m planning to stick strictly to the business related insights, rather than delving into the personal stuff, although I learned a number of personal lessons as well.

Okay, lesson # 1. Keep pushing ahead, despite setbacks. This is obviously easier said than done, but here’s the lesson.  It became glaringly apparent to me that had I not had a written business plan, who knows where I would have landed after the events of this summer. Without a written plan its way too easy for me to get off course.

Think about it.  How many new opportunities (bright shiny things) come your way every day?  And how often are you tempted to follow along with a plan you know nothing about, just because the sales pitch is really compelling? For me it’s not a daily occurrence…. it’s an hourly occurrence!

And without a written plan of my own, that I have completely bought into, I’d stand a better than average chance of instantly losing my sense of direction.

I could belabor this point with example after example and antidote after antidote.  But you know what I’d say before I say it.

The point is this. If you don’t have a plan that is written out in significant detail and engrained in your brain, your odds of completing the plan could be reduced to rubble by the first big wave that attempts to knock you off balance and test your resolve.

And if that wave is big enough, once it hits you, you may be have a very hard time remembering all the great ideas you once had in mind. So my best advice, from a voice of experience, is to write out your business and your personal plan.

Decide what you want, now! Make it practical, and achievable within reason.  Its okay to stretch a little.  Then write it down and commit to it. The waves of distraction are inevitable, and you may have no control over it.  But the commitment to your plan is all well within your control, you just have to remember what all it entails!

Here’s a resource for you if you have an interest in a guide on how to go about it.  But you don’t have to take my word for it.  Look at the quality of these reviews!

I’m amazed at how difficult and confusing it can be when it comes to retaining and organizing large amounts of new information.

I consume information by the volumes each and every day through the news, the internet, magazine articles and books. But I typically don’t use this information for anything other than for my own edification or entertainment.

Now don’t misunderstand me. I always make mental notes on this stuff, but I rarely make any written notes.  And unless I’m unusually impressed by something, most of the information I take in from these mediums are largely forgotten in only a few days.

But now I’m taking a very different approach to retention and organization.

All this leads me to realize that only the things I really, really care about (or more to the point, the things I write down and review over and over again) tend to be retained long term. While the rest is subject to the strength (or weakness) of my short term memory.

So if you are having the same difficulty as me, here is a tool that I am using now, and have actually used in the past with great success.

It’s a book written back in 2001, and a National Bestseller by author David Allen, simply entitled, Getting Things Done.

It’s not terribly lengthy (just a little over 250 pages), but it has a ton of helpful information about how to go about organizing and retaining new information.

So if you’re in the market for an inexpensive tool (it costs around $11.00) to help you manage your daily activities, this book can help tremendously.  It’s helped a lot of other people too, as evidenced by the number of customer reviews (593 at the time of this writing).

You can learn more by clicking on the book cover (above), or by checking with your favorite bookseller.  Otherwise you can send me a comment asking for more information, and I’ll be happy to tell you everything I know about David’s techniques.

There is no affiliate link here, and no commissions to be paid in the event you were to buy the book from either of these links.  I’m simply linking you to the sales page for Amazon.com.

I hope this is helpful.

Good luck!

What is it that is driving people to start an internet marketing business? There are three really compelling attractions that stand out:

1) unlimited earning potential;

2) boundless creative freedom, and;

3) very few barriers to entry.

Not to say there aren’t other attractions, but these were a few of the top attractions for me, and apparently for a lot of other internet marketers as well.

It seems most of us are fascinated by the idea of being our own boss, building our own business, using our own ingenuity, and earning as much (or as little) as we’re really worth, rather than being subject to the dictum of corporate policy.

But for many, the economic barriers and the extraordinary financial risk make owning a business completely out of reach.

But regardless of financial status, education, background, ethnicity or the nature of our previous craft or profession, the Internet Marketing business has done a marvelous job of opening up a new world of opportunity to people from all walks of life.

For me, Internet Marketing had all the elements of the perfect business.  I came from a background in commercial real estate, and I could see many parallels with developing a portfolio of websites. So with just a few weeks of research under my belt I jumped into the business with both feet. I abandoned many of my other interests, and dedicated myself to learning how to build an online business.

But there’s a lot to know and to understand about the business. And the more I learned, the more I realized how much more there was to learn.

And while I’m thinking about it, God bless my precious family for their patience and their trust in my judgment and leadership to take such a big step in this waning economy. Where would I be without them and their support?

After just a few months of studying keyword research, web design, SEO, HTML and the psychology of buying, I began to see how incredibly broad, intricate and dynamic the internet marketing business really was. Everyday I was introduced to a new idea, a new “money making” strategy, a new piece of software that would change the way I do business, and a new formula for making a zillion dollars overnight!

But after I chased a few of those illusive rabbits, I came to appreciate that success was going to be directly tied to how well I planned my time and how well I focused my attention on a specific strategy, rather than chasing all those rabbits. It’s that discipline thing that keeps coming up again and again.

I also came to appreciate that I would save myself thousands of dollars and very likely multiple thousands of man-hours, if I followed a plan that wasn’t over my head (and one that I could afford).  A plan to help me focus on the things that were important to my professional growth, while helping me to avoid the costly pitfalls and distractions of the business. So I’ve set out to take the next big step in my internet business journey. Building that plan.

To my way of thinking, as my business grows things will inevitably occur that will make my life more complex, and it can happen very quickly. And when it does, we can all use a “plan” to help us stay on track and make better decisions.

In future blogs I’ll be outlining my progress and with my own personal journey into my internet marketing business, so stay tuned.