The Refresh Orlando Heirs

We live in a post-industrial age where information is the coin of the realm. Knowledge is the most valuable asset that a business owns. For most businesses, that knowledge exists primarily in the heads of the people who work there. For entrepreneurs and sole practitioners, what’s in their head usually is the business. That’s both limiting and dangerous.

Let’s take the example of a successful management consultant. Drawing on her knowledge and experience, she’s able to hire herself out at a substantial hourly rate. The trouble is, every time she wants to make some money she has to trade away some of her time.

What happens when she goes on vacation and is no longer putting in time? Her income goes on vacation too. What happens when she’s sleeping, or when she gets sick, or when she wants to retire? As soon as she stops putting in time, she stops getting money.

Even if she could work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, there is still a limit to how much money she can make simply because she can’t create more time. When you trade time for money, you put an automatic cap on your income potential.

Something else also starts happening to our consultant. The more successful she is, the more her services are in demand, the harder she works. Did you go into business to work long, hard hours for limited reward? I didn’t think so.

Information products create passive streams of revenue, that is, money that flows to you whether you’re working at your desk, lazing on the beach, or snoozing on the couch. How? You create the products once and then sell them over and over again. You make an initial investment of time and money and then reap the benefits in multiples. You can’t do that with time; you can’t sell the same hour twice.

– What Exactly is an Information Product? Quite simply, an information product is any chunk of knowledge that has been recorded in some fashion - whether that be in a print format, an audio format, or a video format - so that it can now be passed on to others.

There are dozens of ways to package and sell information. Some of the most common products are:

• Print books and e-books

• Booklets and special reports

• Manuals and workbooks

• Audio cassettes, CDs, or downloadable audio files

• Videotapes and DVDs

• Teleclasses

• Subscription-based web sites

The key is that you’re taking something intangible - the knowledge in your head - and turning it into something that others can enjoy and use even when you’re not around.

I have sometimes heard information products referred to as “artifacts.” This term, borrowed from the field of archaeology, captures the idea that an information product is something you leave behind for future generations.

Every process you employ to serve your clients, every piece of information you glean from media sources, every past experience you carry with you, every original thought you conjure up is a piece of information that can be recorded and shared. What’s stopping you?

About The Author

© 2003 Juiced Consulting.

Juiced Consulting helps business owners package what they know into information products - such as books, audiotapes and teleclasses - that they can sell to generate new business revenue. For a free newsletter and other resources, visit www.juicedconsulting.com; jtribe@juicedconsulting.com

What?

There is a fascinating story about the “Broken Windows Theory” in a New Yorker magazine article by Malcolm Gladwell (see gladwell.com, June 3, 1996, article titled The Tipping Point). Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo parked a car on a street in Palo Alto, Calif., where it sat untouched for a week. After a week, as a part of the experiment, Zimbardo smashed one of the car’s windows with a sledgehammer. Within a few hours the car was stripped by vandals. Later, Gladwell wrote a book on the topic, also titled The Tipping Point. In the book, he expands on this idea by relating a similar theory developed by criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. Wilson and Kelling applied the same theory to crime-ridden, declining neighborhoods and communities. Wilson, Kelling, Zimbardo and Gladwell all conclude that chaos is contagious. Here’s an excerpt from Gladwell’s book:

“If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes.”

There are many applications for this theory. As a person who wants to stay focused, organized and productive, it teaches you to pay close attention to small bits and piles of clutter so they won’t become big piles of clutter. Like chaos, clutter is contagious.

So What?

It may not seem like a big deal to toss that piece of paper in a stack on the corner of your desk. But stacks turn into piles and piles turn into highly distracting, energy-draining, stress-producing clutter. When things are a mess, you are less likely to care if a few more items are tossed in the piles. If things are in order, you are more likely to keep them that way. In terms of clutter, you do need to sweat the small stuff. And it’s such an easy step if you want to live an organized, clutter-free life.

Now What?

Here is a simple, two-step solution to help minimize or eliminate clutter:

1. Have a designated place to put things.

2. Form the habit of putting things away where they belong…in their place.

The steps work well together. People often do not put things away because they do not know where they belong. In this situation, it is usually easier just to toss it somewhere close by. And tossing things somewhere close by creates clutter. The best first step if you want to get rid of clutter is to designate a place to put things…a permanent home. Draw a sketch of all your desk drawers, file cabinets and other storage places. Decide where everything should go and start forming the habit of putting things away when you are not using them.

Have a place for everything and put everything in its place.

Chris Crouch, president and founder of DME Training and Consulting, is the developer of the GO System. The GO System is a structured training course designed to improve focus, organization and productivity in the workplace and is taught by corporate trainers and professional organizers all over the country. Chris is also author of Getting Organized: Learning How to Focus, Organize and Prioritize and other books that provide practical and easy-to-learn ideas on personal achievement, success and productivity.

Visit http://www.thegosystem.com to learn more about the GO System, to inquire about having Chris speak to your group or organization, to sign up for Chris’ free newsletter providing tips on having a more joyful and productive life, and for additional ideas on improving focus, organization and productive.

To learn about becoming a Certified GO System Trainer, visit http://www.gosystemcertification.com.

Spam is one of the curses of the Internet age. But if the clogging of mail boxes with useless emails was bad enough, unsolicited emails aimed at tricking you into giving your valuable passwords, banking and PIN numbers is the most dangerous variety of email that you will ever encounter. This kind of email is known as “phishing” because the unscrupulous authors of these messages are fishing for valuable information which they can use to capture your online identity.

If you think that you won’t be fooled by such tricks, think again. Phishers commonly send emails which look like they come from respected financial institutions, such as PayPal, Visa, Ebay, America Online. The messages spoof the email address of the institutions and the letters have the proper logos and everything. They look real. The subject message usually has a dire warning: “Your Pay Pal Account (or Ebay, or online bank account) has been suspended.” “Warning: Confirm Your Online Banking Account.” These messages look so real, that 5% of recipients respond to them

Naturally if you have a good amount of money in your PayPal or online banking account, you are going to panic when you receive email like this. The first thing to do is to stay calm. Remember, responsible institutions will never suddenly suspend your account or ask you to give personal information in an insecure manner.

Usually the phishing emails will ask you to enter new information for your account and they will give you urls, asking you to click through and log into your account. The urls in the email will look like the log-in addresses for these institutions, but if you put your mouse over them you will see that the actual web address is different.

If you get any email of this type the second rule is never, never click through and try to log in. If you log in with your user name and password, then phishers have captured your password. If you go on to fill out other information such as: bank account numbers, social security number, mother’s maiden name or driver’s license number then the fraudsters will really have you.

If you are worried about your online account and want to see if it is OK. Then go to the home page of PayPal, Ebay or your bank, and log into your account in the customary way using the usual url, such as https://www.paypal.com rather than with the url in the suspectt email. When you get into your account you will probably see that everything is normal. If your institution indeed has a message for you, you will find it in that safe environment without compromising your security. If you are still in doubt, call up your institution using their toll free customer service numbers.

PayPal also has a security section where they tell you what to look for in fraudulent emails. For example, whenever PayPal sends you an email it will always start off with “Dear Donald Nelson,” in my case, or whatever name you used when you signed up. They will not say “Dear Valued Paypal customer.” So log into the proper areas of your institution and learn as much as you can about security procedures.

The third thing to do is to report suspicious email . We have to put these crooks out of business, and that can only happen if we report fraud whenever we see it. You can get quick service from PayPal by forwarding email of this type to spoof@paypal.com. Usually within an hour you will get a reply telling you whether the email comes from PayPal or not. For other instances of Phishing, you can report them to the Anti Phishing Working Group at www.antiphishing.org. This website, staffed by volunteers, has up to date information about the latest scams and is doing its best to make the Internet safer for us.

Finally, if you have given any information to fraudulent websites move swiftly to protect yourself.

Notify your bank, change your passwords for online accounts, and watch your online accounts for any signs of unusual activity. A good guide with useful and detailed information on what to do if you have given out valuable information can be found at http://www.antiphishing.org/consumer_recs2.html

So, enjoy the Internet but take precautions and protect yourself from any devious phishing message which may land in your mail box.

Copyright 2004

Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor, and social worker. He has been
working on the Internet since 1995 and is the proprietor of A1-Optimization,
http://www.a1-optimization.com, a firm providing search engine optimization,
copywriting, reciprocal linking, and other web promotion services. He
publishes a monthly ezine, A1-Web Promotion Tips, available at
http://www.a1-optimization.com/newsletter.html