Hello everyone. This is Noah from the comfort of my home and the comfort without typing. I thought that I would post this blog as the first real life test with my brand-new Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9. And boy I must say I am impressed. Not being one that is a big fan of typing, or a great speller. I am extremely excited about having this program and not having to type as much anymore. It takes a little getting used to but boy it smokes having to type everything. And I must say that I am pretty impressed with the quality of the speech recognition and the speed at which I can speak without slowing down. The Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 is my new best friend. I can not communicate the amount of enthusiasm that I have for this program right now you have no idea. It is so much faster to be able to speak everything I want to communicate versus typing it. I had never taken any typing courses in school growing up nothing whatsoever. I have naturally due to the work that I do developed a speed of typing around 40 words per minute. And I must say that this Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 is much faster than my measly 40 words per minute. I will highly recommend this program to anyone even remotely considering purchasing. I got the standard version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9. Unfortunately I couldn’t buy it from my favorite store Circuit City. So I ran on down to Best Buy which is a partner that carried and stock the software program on the shelves and picked it up for $99. I wish I had bought this program a long time ago. I don’t know why I had waited so long. I had heard about this program years and years ago when it was in its early stages and I’m sure it has made an a drastic improvement since then but I am very impressed with how good this works. You do still have to communicate your punctuation. But in my opinion even with that it is so much faster than typing regular style. I am not sure if this works with Mac programs because I just bought a brand-new HP. But if you have a PC this is a must-have productivity tool for any entrepreneur or business professional. As for myself I’m sure that is going to help with my own spelling and grammatical errors that I usually make in my typing.

If there is one thing you don’t want to waste in this life, it is time. In the workd of internet business, time is more important than ever – it’s too easy to spend your time doing “stuff”, and not get the important stuff done. Here are two tools from Google that you can use to organize your business and save time.

Google Calendar

The Google Calendar is perfect for keeping track of many things – not just meetings or appointments. I use Google Calendar to remind me of anything that needs to be done, including:

• Sending reports to clients
• Webserver maintenance
• Weekly marketing tasks
• Blog posting
• Sending invoices
• Completing projects
• Ordering products

Just go to Google Calendar, login, and click Create Event.

Gmail

I’ve always used Gmail as my primary email, and have been impressed by the accuracy of Google’s spam filtering technologies. Just recently, I started using the Gmail interface to check and manage all my email accounts. Ah, what a wonderful thing it is to not have to sort through umpteen spam email each day!

If you don’t already have a Gmail account, just comment here and I’ll send you an invite.

If you already have a Gmail account, just go to Settings > Accounts to add your other email accounts. You can then read all your email in your Gmail account, and Google’s spam filtering will filter out the spam emails.

“Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.” ~Samuel Smiles

That may be a little ambitious of a statement. Having just officially become a Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador I must say I have come to appreciate how Yahoo! does business. There are a few differences in the program that I am pleased with. I also Like the fact that Yahoo! has a large enough staff that I can call in and speak with an actual person in less than 30 seconds. Also one thing I didn’t know was that there content ads are also just CPC not CPM. My affection is starting to increase for Yahoo! search marketing. I no longer look at them as the red headed stepchild of search. No offense if you are a red headed step child. Yahoo!’s stats on page views and average user time are impressive. I also cant wait till they roll out their publisher network. That should make things interesting!

What up ePeople? I’m a little late on my thursday post. I apologize for slackin’ on my pimpin’. Anyhow…I want to talk to you about Risking Big. Or rather taking calculated risks. We all take risks every day. For most of us our biggest risk is getting into our car to drive to our destinations. But health risks isn’t what I’m talking about. When were young were more likely to risk more. Thats why our insurance costs more generally. We also as young men and women have a tolerance for more error. What’s the worst that can happen? They give us a bad credit score? Trust me, I have trashed my credit and brought it back relatively quickly to put my self in a position to win. Plus with a good idea and plan people will still back you with the right situation.
Don’t worry about what “they” say. I have been in many closed door meetings with big law firms and banks to discuss ideas that i have and also to brain storm. You will be surprised at the constructive feed back you can get from a large law firm or bank. It’s there job to entertain and consider business opportunities with clients and potential clients on behalf of the firm or banking institution. Plus most of the people you talk to will enjoy hearing and sharing ideas to help you. That is as long as your not in there every week with a new scheme.
There’s a great book called “Believe and Achieve” 17 principles from W. Clement Stone. W. Clement Stone was a “baller” in the insurance Field way back when. One of his main quotes was “do it now” I love that quote! when ever i have an idea or a hesitation about an idea i say to my self “do it now”. I believe Hesitation is one of the biggest idea/dream killers that live. If you have an idea or a dream go after it NOW. Don’t wait. Some things may take time but pursue them now!

That question really sums up your entire business nicely. I read a good post called Differentiate or Die that touched on this issue, and it has set me to thinking.

To put it another way, if a customer said “John, I’m considering buying this product from you and from yourcompetitor.com. Why should I buy it from you?” What would answer the customer? Do you have compelling reason? If not, you need one (or more) – NOW!

Here are some benefits you can offer your website visitors to differentiate yourself from your competitors. This is by no means an exhaustive list – if you can come up with unique benefit you can offer your customers, you are on your way to success.

The bottom line is that if you want to get customers, you MUST offer them something that your competitor(s) don’t or can’t. In some cases, you may be selling the exact same product, so it’s even harder to differentiate yourself. But it’s still very important!

What ways do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?