News Releases 101 Who cares? Why do they/should they care? What do they want and need to know? If you can answer these three questions before you begin to write a news release, you've got a good start. Now all you have to do is make your release stand out from the avalanche of approximately 300 that editors in the Seattle market receive every day. How can you increase the odds that your release wi...

Networking Your Home Business within Circles of Influence When you need an auto mechanic or an air conditioning repairman, where do you turn for help? Sure, some people turn to the yellow pages. But most will turn to friends and family and ask if they know of anyone who can do the work. The best place for your business to be positioned is to be the business on the tips of the tongues of the peop...

Networking on the Net Networking is one of the most effective ways to find clients for any consulting or professional services business. But if you limit your networking to only what you can do in person, you’ll be missing out on a huge number of possibilities.   Networking is more than entering a room full of people and exchanging business cards. It’s creating a pool of contacts with whom you c...

Networking Scares Me! When I started my business, if I knew then what I know now I either would not have started it or I would have become profitable much faster! Everyone who has their own business needs to learn an incredible amount. Perhaps the most important business tenet is so simple – you make money when you sell stuff. To sell stuff, you market. To market effectively, it’s important to s...

Negotiating Right: Get What You Deserve If magazine publishing worked like any other business, writers would fix their rates, and magazines would run around trying to hire the best writer in the lowest possible cost. Sadly, that’s not the case. In this bizarre business, writers trying to compete with each other not only have to prove their worth once, but again and again, and each time they want ...

Nature Journaling: Combining Art and Writing Bored with life? For a breath of freshness in your mundane existence, try your hand at nature journaling. A proper nature journal consists of a sketchpad and your written observations of the wonders of creation. Let the beautiful and amazing natural world inspire and lift you as you draw and write. So what exactly is a nature journal? Simply put, it i...

Nature as a Source of Inspiration for Writing Child Stories Nature can be a rich source of inspiration for writing a child book. Here are 7 ways that you can tap into nature to uncover material for your children’s stories and unleash your creativity. #1: Flora, Fauna and… This is obvious, but you can use animals, or even plants, mountains, stones, rivers, etc. as characters in your story. They ...

Motivate Your Market Force IntroWant me to tell you something on how you can motivate your market force in 2005. I will do so today. Tell you ideas that will power your marketing and promotions with force, if only you will appreciate their simplicity and common sense. Tell me. A critical question: How simple, motivational and forceful are your communications and marketthrust? Is it all creativi...

Motivation – The Driving Force In All Of Us What is it that makes you get out of bed in the morning, stumble to the shower and get dressed for work? The answer is motivation. This is what keeps us going through life, coping with all the daily stresses, pain and suffering. We are constantly motivated to make our lives better by doing whatever we can to make improvements. That’s fine for adults, b...