OK, this is probably overstating the obvious for many people, but every now and then something are right in front of us and we just can not find it when we need it.  So I put together this article Maven Mapper’s Information » MindManager Update Available for MindManager Pro 7 - Uh Maybe . . .   and this video to show you how to check for a MindManager update. 

Hope it helps if you happen to be a little lost looking for this, it happens to everyone from time to time. 

Side note, I had a car a couple years ago, and every time I went to the dealer, they did not have a particular accessory I was looking for. They gave me the website for Chrysler 300 accessories, but when I got home, I wasn’t able to find the section I needed. I went about a year without that part, because I seemed to have some mental block preventing me from finding the item when I got home. These days, I’d probably pull out my phone and grabe a quick video to jog my memory.

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Over the last six months I have had a crash course in marketing utilizing direct marketing lists.  During that time, I have worked with a number of providers of specialized direct marketing services.  I have seen some very good marketing practices and services and I have seen some services that were not worth paying for.

As I proceed into 2008, my own company will be focusing even more on this market.  It is currently going through a rapid upheaval as many direct marketing services fail and as many others consolidate with each other.

It has been my experience that if a company is looking to buy mailing list leads they need to do their homework and focus on companies that provide both consulting services and highly specialized metric analysis.  It is also imperative that the data be timely. 

Too many companies sell old information that is not worth the email it is attached to or the CD that it is stored on.

But possibly the most important aspect of working with these types of leads is to insure that the company buying the information has the technical means to work with the data and close deals or complete transactions with the opportunity they are purchasing.  If a company does not have this technical means to work with the data then just purchasing a cheap list is a waste of money.

A list is not needed, a full fledge consulting solution is required.  This will mean that shopping around list prices will be nothing more than a comparison of apples to oranges.  When consulting solutions are needed, the only way to garnish results is to test the service provider and grow into the relationship preferably in a way that generates results with the help of the consultants, but also trains the purchasing companies people in how to achieve the same results and data analysis and management expertise.

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I have returned from a very nice and happy holiday vacation and I am determined to get a number of items that I will soon consider as old business (2007) cleared up and cleaned up before I dive into the great opportunities available in 2008.

So this weekend, I am working to clean up as many of those loose ends as possible.

Among some of these, I am cleaning up a number of areas related to my finances, my computers, and many of my websites and subsidiary business holdings.  I’m even re-arranging my office, my shed and garage and body shop supplies from a past venture.

As I considered my New Years resolution, I realized that I almost never actually get to any of the things on the list until well into February.

There is always something going on to delay my start and so I am working on things now to clean them up and close the books so to say early (or at least earlier than normal!).

Once I get things cleaned up and organized, then I will have a fresh perspective to create my resolution and Achieve it.

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Here is an article that I have started and stopped several times over the last 9 months. I finally just finished it off and published it here to close things out for 2007.

I was always a book worm when I was a kid and even as a party hard teenager. I’d throw a kegger for the local college when I was sixteen, wake up and go to school and tutor other kids in high school, reading a book in between classes.

When I joined the military, I was required to read two foot tall stacks of intelligence reports each day (that prepared me a little for blogging-we’re talking circa 1993).

But it wasn’t until about 1996 that reading 2.0 came home for me. It happened in the form of an audio book.

While working for the USPS for about 4 years (while attending college full time too), I read hundreds of audio books from the local library, along with my college text books that I read the old fashioned way. I did a lot of data entry work for the USPS, and I only needed my eyes, fingers and a quick reaction time/ short term memory. Audio books helped to keep my brain engaged and prevented me from getting bored.

Last year I re-discovered Dragon Naturally Speaking. I had tried it around version 3 back in the mid 90’s and it didn’t deliver then, but in Version 9 it definitely delivered powerfully workable results. The interesting thing about Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 is that it not only makes things easier on your hands and wrists, but it SIGNIFICANTLY reduces eye strain.

When you talk through a Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 compatible microphone, you often times look at your computer screen less than you would if you were typing. Plus, when you do look at the screen you are not following every letter and word that you are typing, but casually glancing at the phrases. This reduces eye strain and helps your body stay relaxed and work longer with more efficiency.

This reduction of eye strain is also one of the big advantages to reading a book in an audible form. You do not have to look at the pages. You can even close your eyes and relax or look around doing many other tasks. The key is that you can focus your eyes in different directions and distances. When we focus on the same screen at the same distance the work load on our eyes is the equivalent of attempting to holding 2 buckets of water straight out from our body without moving, keeping our arms parallel to the Earth. It is extremely difficult to do, even for the strongest person. Keeping our eyes focused on the same screen for hours is very difficult for the muscles in our eyes as well.

The key to reading and writing 2.0 seems to share the concept that the user interface both on the input and output, reduces the eye strain from the person that is experiencing it. This gives the person more endurance to work (if they choose to work longer), it gives them more energy when they finish work (for playing or spending time with other people) and they both also enable the user to either get more information (output) or provide more information (input) much faster than normal.

Reading and Writing 3.0 will likely change the interface again and move us into an era of brain wave interpretation.

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As a writer, web designer and CEO, I have a serious need for creativity.  It is intrinsic to everything I do.  My business will not survive if I am not constantly innovating and creating new things from:

• websites
• graphic design
• artwork, buttons, banners, flash presentations
• mindmaps
• databases (yes designing a database requires a great deal of creativity)
• coding
• designing processes
• business plans
• stories,
• articles
• how to guides
• videos

Those are all activities that I will hit in a given month, sometimes a week and sometimes a day.  That doesn’t even include the marketing work that I do!

Now trying to stay fresh and creative when you are creating so much, so fast, so often is not easy.

To keep my creative juices flowing during so much production these are some of the things that I do to stay fresh and keep my soul from fading.

1. I read incessantly.  Mostly for time reasons, I listen to audio books from Audible on my Treo.
2. I watch a lot of movies and TV while I’m doing all of the activities above.
3. I read and watch a lot of news.
4. Traveling helps a great deal also.  New landscapes, sites and new people are very important.
5. I talk to people as much as possible.  Working in a home office, its easy to fall out of touch with people.  Fortunately technology comes to the rescue in the form of discussion boards, Skype, twitter, other blogs, calling people the old fashioned way, email and more.
6. Sleep!  This is very very important, and the thing that is my biggest weakness.  I do not get enough sleep.
7. Exercise, especially exercise in natural surroundings.  I can’t get much from a gym, the cold surroundings bore me to death and I leave feeling like crap.  Put me outside, jogging, hiking or doing sit-ups hanging from a tree and I’m happy.  Add in some swimming or kayaking and its pure serenity.
8. Don’t get into any routines.  For some people this does not work, but for me if I avoid routines and keep myself out of a comfort zone that challenges my thinking and forces me to continually re-evaluate and continually improve.  (Nice trick I learned at working for the Postal Service during the 90’s. )
9. Try new things all the time.  Food, hobbies, software, technology, etc.  The important thing here is to look for new insights from the new perspective that new things give you.  If you just go bungee jump off a cliff, you’ll get a nice adrenalin rush, but if you learn nothing from the experience you have missed some of the potential.
10. Learning new things all the time, follows that last one very closely.  I am a habitual student, which is partly why I have a couple hundred credit hours of education.  Its also why I have a resume that never ends and leaps from discipline to discipline.  Plus, its why I constantly by lots of training DVD’s and take lots of non-credit technical courses all the time.  I also am becoming a connoisseur of free courses.  The internet provides a lot of good knowledge for free.  The trick is that you have to typically create your own syllabus, then do the research to fill it in with good content!
11. Lastly, accepting your vices until you can beat them.  I am a coke zero junkie, never been much for coffee nor espresso machines, although I have rotated in and out of various teas.  At the end of the day its water with chemicals in it.  It could be worse, unfortunately its not better, but I do not stress over it.  Stressing over your vices is sometimes worse than the vices themselves.  Someday I’ll kick my vices or replace them with something better, but until then I accept the reality that they are there and that I could be even more flawed.

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