We just got back from a week trip to the Lake District and had a great time. It felt good being out in the fresh air and away from work… of course, I still had my permanent marketing hat on picked up a few lessons along the way.

Marketing Lesson One:

We stayed in a lovely Bed and Breakfast run by a really nice family. They do it all - They make the breakfast for all the guests, clean and set up the rooms, provide information about the local area, fix anything that goes wrong and look after three kids of their own in the process.

Hi,

I just sent this out to the subscribers at Internet Based Moms, but wanted to make it available to you as well. Here it is:

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I wanted to pop in quickly and tell you about a teleseminar I just finished listening to. It was by my friend Terry Dean who is a brilliant marketer and is all about working smarter and truly enjoying your business.

As always, I was extremely impressed with Terry’s information, and it’s actually perfect timing because I’ve been mapping out a plan for my business that will carry me till the end of 2007 and into 2008.

Starting a business is the easy part… staying focused on your goals, especially during rough times, is the hard part.

I’m sure every business owner (me included) suffers from inevitable bouts of lack of motivation or direction, but it’s important to keep these in check and quickly overcome them. Here’s what I do to stay focused, successful and on track:

Write my goals down. No surprise here, but the trick for me is to break my goals down into achievable steps. Writing down a 5 year plan just doesn’t work for me, plus I think more in the moment rather than the future — life is so unpredictable and 5 years seems so far ahead to me.

Okay, you’re getting two posts from me on one day but that’s because my friend Alice Seba has tagged me tell you 8 things about me.

Let’s see if I can come up with a whole 8!

1. Growing up I wanted to be a model, haha… I guess I didn’t have the bone structure! Although recently I’ve been told I resemble Sandra Bullock

2. I also wanted to be a pop star, I used to hang out on the monkey bars at the park for hours and sing very loudly and off key to Madonna’s Borderline and Like a Virgin. I was 10 and I had no idea what the words even meant (I was as very young 10).

Neither. I don’t believe in luck or natural talent.

It’s easy to say “She has a natural talent that I don’t” or “He’s just lucky, everything turns out his way.”

Sure some people can excel in certain areas more than others, but even if they have a ‘natural’ talent it wouldn’t mean anything if they didn’t have the right mindset to use that talent to their full advantage. This ‘natural’ talent is usually nothing more than hard work and sheer determination to succeed.

After all no matter how great an athlete is, he won’t get very far if he has low self esteem or doesn’t believe he deserves success.