Tuesday August 28th, 2007: Issue #833
It seems really strange sitting here and writing Kickstart again after over two weeks off. Normally, with my trusty laptop and universally available wireless Internet connectivity, vacations are just a means of moving my business from one part of the world to another. But this time it was different.
In case you didn’t know, the Avis family has just spent the last couple of weeks in Sorrento, Italy. We had a really great time seeing all the sights: Pompeii, Herculaneum, Capri, the Amalfi Coast, the Emerald Grotto - we even climbed to the top of Mount Vesuvius and peered into the volcanic crater!
Our hotel was excellent - one of only 3 5-star hotels in the Sorrento area - and we have all eaten more wonderful Italian food than we ought to have done (the diet starts today!).
But for me there was one big drawback - which turned out to be a blessing. Getting an Internet connection was extortionate! The hotel charged over $30 (25 Euros) per hour. I’m used to American hotels who almost all give free Internet access - or at worst charge about $10 per day - so $30 per hour was eye-watering!
The result was that I was too mean to pay that much and so forced myself to ‘withdraw’ from the Internet apart from one hour mid-vacation to check for any urgent emails.
At first I got very twitchy. It was like part of me was missing. But after a week I actually started to relax and enjoy my holiday without thinking about websites, blogs and marketing.
So THAT is what a vacation is all about! It’s been so long that I’d forgotten!
The result now, of course, is that my home computer took four-and-a-half hours yesterday just to download all my emails and I haven’t even started sorting the important stuff from the out-and-out junk.
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Incidentally, in case you’re wondering, I do know that today is Tuesday and not normally a Kickstart day, but I was exhausted yesterday and couldn’t face thinking - let alone writing! Today’s is a kind of warm up for me and tomorrow we’ll get back to normal service.
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So what’s been going on? I’m now way out of the loop of all the new stuff that must have been launched in the last couple of weeks. What’s big, what’s hot, what’s getting people talking? I tried to sample a few forums last night, but there is too much background noise to be able to easily find the important stuff.
If you’d like to drop me an email with a summary of what I’ve missed online in the last 2 weeks I’d be very grateful.
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My suitcase will be out again in a few weeks time when I head on up to Coventry for Robert Puddy’s BritPack UK Internet Marketing Seminar on Oct 5th 6th & 7th.
I’ve been absent from seminars this year - I went to a lot last year - due to time constraints. But Robert’s one is not to be missed. He always puts on an excellent weekend and manages to get really interesting speakers who actually walk the walk and know what they are talking about.
Robert’s seminars cater for people of all levels, so whether your are a complete beginner or someone who is already comfortable with Internet marketing, you will benefit from attending. Even more than the quality speakers though, you’ll find that Robert puts great store in providing opportunities for people to network. And THAT is the real secret to Internet marketing success. It is a simple formula: the more people you can get to know in this business, the better you will do.
If you are in the UK in early October, do yourself a favour and book yourself a place at the BritPack Seminar. Who knows - we might even end up doing a JV together as a result!
http://www.urlnex.us/BritPackSeminar/
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A day or two before we headed off to Italy a big box arrived at the door. Our poor old postman was groaning under the weight.
It turned out to be the ‘7 Figure Code’ DVDs and manuals that I’d ordered from Mike Filsaime some weeks ago. 16 DVDs and 2 big thick manuals to be exact.
I did take some of the DVDs away with me in the hope that I’d be able to watch them on the journey or in the hotel, but it didn’t work out and I have still not started the course. After waiting all that time for the delivery it seems almost rude to have put them all to one side! 
I will start studying the 7-Figure Code this week and I’ll give you my honest review and opinion as I do so.
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An Inspirational Thought
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It’s not how much you accomplish in life that really counts, but how much you give to others. It’s not how high you build your dreams that make a difference, but how high your faith can climb. It’s not how many goals you reach, but how many lives you touch. It’s not whom you know that matters, but you you are inside.
Believe in the impossible, hold tight to the incredible, and live each day to its fullest potential. You can make a difference in your world.
- Rebecca Barlow Jordon
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Who do you know who would love Kickstart Today?
Don’t keep it to yourself - send them to
http://www.kickstartdaily.com today!
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The Quote of the Day
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William F. Buckley said:
“I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it, and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my backside all afternoon.”
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Today’s Power Thought
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Sitting on top of our bodies is a tool that is so incredibly powerful and so amazingly complex that scientists truly have no idea of its actual potential.
Your necktop computer is so extraordinary that the best scientific thinking at the moments suggest that it has more connections than there are atoms in the entire universe - a thousand times over! And each one of those connections is a potential memory, idea, thought or experience.
Just think about our unlimited ability to think … it makes you think, doesn’t it!
So why is it that even with all this virtually infinite mental ability, most of us are incapable of carrying a single idea in our heads long enough to bring it to completion?
Even worse, how come many of us have trouble carrying that single thought long enough to even write it down? I know that I often have great thought is the shower, but by the time I’ve dried and dressed all that is left is the nagging feeling that I HAD an idea, but I can’t for the life of me think what it was!
A lot of it comes down to training. Our ancient ancestors relied far more on their ability to remember things - schools taught pupils to remember vast tracts and list of historic items. And long before that, society was largely based on oral traditions and group memories. The story-tellers of old carried whole libraries of knowledge in their heads - seemingly without effort.
Our society is based much more on written tradition, so we have largely lost the ability to remember because the need has passed. Schools now teach based on short term memory rather than long term and we have all suffered as a result.
There is a very useful and interesting book called ‘Write it Down, Make it Happen’ by Henriette Anne Klauser that talks about the almost magic way in which writing things down imprints them on your brain so that they become almost contractual obligations with yourself. I’ve written about similar things in Kickstart many times. But the need to record information as it happens goes even deeper than that.
Turning ideas into reality is one thing - but even more fundamental is the need to capture the idea in the first place.
Ideas seem to float in the ‘ether’ of the Universe. They wander around and occasionally float into the path of your brain. But because of their ephemeral nature, they are just as likely to float right on out again unless you actively try to capture them and make them physical.
Just as Schroedinger’s Cat didn’t exist until it was observed, ideas and thoughts really don’t exist until they are captured, stored and recorded.
These days there is very little excuse - notepads are cheap, cellphones nearly all have voice recording capabilities, PDA’s are commonplace. We have the means to record our gems at our disposal, so let’s use them!
Try it for a few days and you will be amazed at how much you record or write down. Stuff that you’ll look back on and wonder how on earth you came up with it!
A couple of years ago I had lunch with a massively successful man - a guy known for his great ideas. I proudly showed him my Palm Pilot and took copious electronic notes as we spoke.
Then he said, “THIS is MY Palm Pilot…”
He pulled out an old envelope from his back pocket that was covered in tiny writing.
Last time we met, he had moved up in the world - he was now using a well-worn 6×4 notebook that was almost completely full.
It works for him … it works for me … and it will work for you.
Don’t let any more of YOUR best ideas float right on back into the ether for someone else to capture.
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Fascinating Facts
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The Bald Eagle isn’t. It has white feathers on its head and neck. The name ‘Bald’ came from the old English word ‘balde’ which meant ‘white’.