How to Keep Your Business Healthy

How to Keep Your Business Healthy

by: Charlie Cook

Can you imagine you’re ninety years old and still hiking up mountains with your grandchildren, bench pressing more than most twenty year olds, and making millions of dollars?

Recently Jack LaLanne, Americaกs first TV fitness guru, turned ninety. Not only is he still sound of mind, in great shape, heกs made millions and is still earning more. How does he do it?

You know it is important to eat your fruits and veggies, exercise regularly, avoid drinking and smoking and get enough sleep to stay healthy. To that list Jack LaLanne would add, set clear goals, exercise with weights twice a week, avoid eating between meals and keep your mind active.

Of course you can’t just eat well and skip the exercise or avoid the drinking and smoking and skimp on sleep. Jack LaLanne is still going strong at 90 because he does ALL the things required to stay healthy every day.

Marketing your business requires the same comprehensive, disciplined approach Jack LaLanne uses to stay healthy at 90. To attract new clients and retain existing ones you need to set goals, target a need, get attention, prompt action, grow your network, establish credibility, provide a solution, follow up, demonstrate value and stay in touch. These are the ten essential steps to marketing your business.

Like a staircase, the steps are connected and you need to put them together in the proper sequence and use each of them regularly. A common marketing mistake is to focus on just one or two of the above steps and hope for the best. Joan, who owns a sports facility, called last week about her advertising campaign. It was costing her significant dollars but wasn’t translating into new clients. What was the problem?

Advertising can help get attention but to be effective it needs to be focused on clientsก needs and prompt them to action. Joanกs advertising was focused on her solution, not on prospectsก needs resulting in a disappointing response. Once she rewrote her ads to target prospectsก needs, her response rates and business revenue increased.

Larryกs promotional efforts were working but he wasn’t having success translating all the attention he was getting into dollars and cents. Thanks to top search engine positioning and hundreds of links to his web site, thousands of people were visiting his site each day. Yet, on average, only five people per day were contacting him about his services. Larry was doing a great job of getting attention but wasn’t prompting his prospects to action.

Your Marketing Fitness

You can have a steady flow of new prospects and clients each month if you adopt a healthy marketing strategy. Hereกs how.

1. Set Goals

Regularly review your marketing. Assess whatกs working and what isn’t and set objectives for lead generation, client acquisition and retention.

2. Target a Need

Focus your ads, your elevator speech and your marketing copy on prospectsก concerns.

3. Get Attention

Prospects need to know that you exist before they will contact you.

4. Prompt Action

In order to get prospects to give you their contact information, inquire about your services or buy your products, prompt them to action. Use your marketing copy and your offers to get prospects to call you, visit your web site or your store, and buy your products and services.

5. Grow Your Network

The more qualified leads you have, the better.

6. Establish Credibility

You need to demonstrate your competence and convince prospects to trust you before theyกll make a purchase.

7. Follow Up

Old leads are cold leads. Follow up when leads are fresh. When people contact you, send an immediate email response and give them a call within 24 hours.

8. Provide a Solution

Make sure your products and services are the solution to your prospects’ problems.

9. Demonstrate Value

If you want someone to buy, they need to understand the benefits.

10. Stay in Touch

Don’t let prospects forget you when they need you and are ready to buy.

If you increased the time you spent working out each day and improved your diet, youกd start to see a difference in a couple of weeks. You’d be stronger and healthier.

Marketing is the same. You need to do all the right things consistently. Start using these ten marketing steps and in a couple of weeks youกll start to see a change. Youกll find more prospects contacting you and a steady increase in revenue.

Whether you want to be fit and profitable at 90 or not you can learn from Jack LaLanne’s continued health and prosperity. It just takes some discipline and knowledge. Apply both to keep yourself and your business in good health.

About The Author

2004 © In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.

The author, Charlie Cook, helps service professionals and small business owners attract more clients and be more successful. Sign up for the Free Marketing Plan eBook, ก7 Steps to get more clients and grow your businessก at http://www.marketingforsuccess.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 09, 2004

by Charlie Cook

Childhood Obesity & Parentsก Healthy Food Confusio

Childhood Obesity & Parentsก Healthy Food Confusion

by: Cheryl Haining

Many parents struggle to know which foods are healthy for their children. When they are able to opt for healthy choices, about twothirds struggle to get their children to eat healthily, a poll of nearly 800 parents found. Developing Patient Partnerships (DPP), which commissioned the survey, said that parents need more support to tackle the growing problem of childhood obesity. Childhood obesity has tripled in the past 20 years, official figures show.

Recent studies suggest that parents do not know what good nutrition is. Perhaps advertising of fast foods, and busy life styles has contributed to this. Nutritional meals can be prepared quickly and simply at home.

Of the parents of children aged 15 years and younger questioned by the DPP, 45% said they found it difficult to work out which foods were healthy for their children. When parents did select healthy foods, 65% said they struggled to motivate their children to eat it. Threequarters of parents blamed advertising and marketing of unhealthy snacks and drinks for making this job so difficult. Another 87% believed that schools should play a big role in teaching children how to be healthy.

When more than a thousand children aged seven to 16 were questioned about their lifestyles, 70% said they would be more likely to eat healthily and get active if their parents were doing it. Only 16% said they ate the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables per day. This suggests that parents are not making healthy food choices themselves. There are strong links between obesity and ill health. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare lists the following increased risks of cancers in obese people:

MEN WOMEN

Cancer % Increase Risk Cancer %increase Risk

Prostate 23 Uterus 178

Leukaemia 43 Kidney 110

Bowel 53 Bowel 35

Liver 128 Liver 48

Gallbladder 76 Breast 71

Statistics such as these are a stark reminder of the importance of maintaining a healthy weight level. Children must be given every opportunity to have a healthy body. In order to get their family on track to a healthy lifestyle parents need to learn how to feed themselves and their family good nutrition.

A simple way to improve nutrition is to add raw fruit and vegetables to family diets. These are foods that have no preservatives or added color. They provide plenty of vitamins, mineral, antioxidants, fiber, water and trace elements. (All necessary for good nutrition.) They look appetizing and have high water content. They have a firm texture which means we need to chew them well. This aids the digestive system. The body quickly and easily processes them. This means less work for the digestive system.

They are natural, that is, not processed and prepackaged with extra chemicals. They are pure energy – living foods. Look for different colored vegetables and fruits when you shop. Experiment with ones you have never tasted. Visit a market for more variety and fresher foods. Eat at least one from each group every day.

Red/Purple Group includes tomatoes, watermelon, berries, cherries, and grapes

Orange/Yellow includes carrots, sweet potato, squash, mangoes, cantaloupe, apricots, oranges, mandarins pineapples and many stone fruits

Yellow/green among this group are avocado, spinach, beans, peppers, corn, beans, broccoli, green leafy vegetables,

White/green some in this group asparagus, celery, garlic, leeks, mushrooms, pears

For more information read, ขWhat Color is Your Foodข by Dr D Heber.

Experiment with adding these to your daily diet. Of course a balanced diet must also include daily servings of dairy, whole grains and protein. Start with the simple idea of adding more fresh fruit and vegetables to the family’s daily food intake. This simple step will have fantastic and long lasting impact on your health.

About The Author

Cheryl Haining is a skin care, body shape and nutrition coach. She has her own successful business. Her mission statement is to ensure everyone reaches his or her optimum body shape, size and condition. Contact Cheryl at www.uloseweight.net To learn how to create an income stream from home visit www.keybusinesstips.info.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 30

by Cheryl Haining

Getting The Big Picture Series: Part 3กBe Good T

Getting The Big Picture Series: Part 3กBe Good To Youก

by: Treci Cauthen

Iกm from New York ‘the city that never sleepsก where things move at a fast pace, and things can get pretty hectic here. Sometimes you just have to say, hold everything, and take time out to regroup. Just like many of you who already have busy schedules, work, children, and after school activities to name a few.

You have to learn to organize your time to get the most out of every day and in the same instance you have to กBe Good To Youก. The majority of our time is caught up in daily rituals. Get up, get the children off to school, go to work, come home and prepare dinner, get the children to bed then we get up and do it over and over again.

The thing is now you want to start your own business so that means your going to have to find a few extra hours in your week, besides the fact that we all need to unwind sometimes. So along with your regular schedule keep a few things in mind.

กBe Good To Youก

Exercise Itกs really pertinent that we learn to incorporate 2030 minutes of exercise into our day atleast 3 times a week. Your metabolism will increase, energy level will rise and you will begin to feel like a brand new person. Walking, jogging, gardening and for some of us who just weren’t born with that exercise gene daily house cleaning will do the job.

Eat Healthy Our eating habits can really make or break us. At this point in time I think all of us know what eating healthy means. When we begin to cut out the sugar and the fat we begin to see a significant change, but consult a physician because iกm not too big on the word กdietก. So what ever healthy means to you กjust do itก.

Plan Your Business Hours All I want to say is follow a schedule. Do you have an extra 20 hours a week? How about 15 or 10 spare hours that you can set aside and devote to your home internet business? You will need to be consistent to stay in the game. I don’t want you to get lazy on me. Treat your work like a flourishing business and it will become just that.

Hang Around Positive People None of us can afford to waste time with negative influences. People that always have a problem or look at life through a pair of dark shaded glasses. Whether we believe it or not negative people leach off our energy when they don’t have enough of there own. Iกm not saying totally avoid these people but keep in mind you can’t spend lots of time with these people. So for those of you who have friends or relatives who can’t seem to get their lives together, can’t seem to find the positive in their situations, or always try to turn your smile into a frown I say กrun don’t walkก. They can and probably will hinder your progress. These people do need some positivity in their lives but just try to cut back on time spent with this type of character.

Getting The Big Picture?

About The Author

Treci Cauthen is a Writer/Internet Marketing Coach. To read more articles and find Home Internet Business:: Opportunities, Articles and Resources! go to: http://www.homeinternetbusiness.bravehost.com.

Be sure to check out other sites by this Author:

http://www.homeinternetbusiness.bravehost.com

http://www.webvillage.bravehost.com http://naturalcures.bravehost.com

http://www.telecomusa.bravehost.com

Copyright © 2004

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 10, 2004

by Treci Cauthen