I just found this great new blog by a woman, Pamela Slim, who specializes in teaching people how to go from office worker to entrepreneur.
I got caught up reading several of her blog posts and I REALLY like her approach, philosophy, etc. If you’re dreaming about leaving the worker-world and starting your own business, I think you’d find her stuff useful and inspiring – at least it will get your ‘thinking juices’ going:
http://www.escapefromcubiclenation.com/
soar higher,
Jini
Amy Miller – Artistic Director
Transcendence Theatre Company is a group of artists with an extensive list of Broadway, National and International Touring, Regional Theatre, Film and Television credits.
They are a nonprofit organization established in 2008 dedicated to developing a new approach to the performing arts. The company is united in a passionate belief that a movement truly integrating health and well-being into the arts and entertainment world will help thousands of artists already suffering from eating, addictive, anxiety, and emotional disorders due to the pressures of the current entertainment industry.
A new holistic approach for the artist will revolutionize arts education, the commercial arts sector, and have an unbelievable impact on the artists’ ability to serve our youth, our communities, and our world. The Company’s mission is, through their art and lives, to encourage individuals to commit to living their best lives ever.
So when this theatre company needed to raise money for a production down in Mexico – they created this video, placed it on Facebook and YouTube and also contacted various large-list natural health personalities to promote it to their lists.
The video is nicely done because it is a good example of blatantly asking for something – but doing it in such a cute, funny way that no one minds.
I think what would make it even more powerful is to combine it with an opt-in; get people to give their name and email in return for some freebie. This would have two benefits:
1. It would catch the people who like the video, but are not quite moved enough to donate. It would get them more involved with the theatre company over time (as they would now be on the newsletter list) and they are all future potential donors.
2. Sometimes people want to donate, but if it’s not super-easy, then they just move on to the next thing. If you received this appeal in someone’s newsletter (like I did), then you still have to take an extra step into the unknown (= hassle) in order to donate. You would have to then go to their website, or paypal, etc. If, however, they offered you something free on their site – “Click here to get your free_____” that would provide the added motivation to get you to their site, where of course they would have the very easy DONATE button right there on the landing page.
Anyway, watch the video and see if it gives you some ideas for novel ways you can appeal to your customers…
soar higher,
Jini
Andy Jenkins – StomperNet CEO
The last time Stompernet opened its doors, soliciting for people to join its elite monthly membership program, I signed up.
Like most internet marketers today, they used the SCARCITY tactic – if you don’t sign up now, we’re closing the doors and who knows when you’ll be able to get in again?
So I joined and if I cancelled within 30 days, they would return my money for the membership. However, it was not disclosed in their No-Risk Guarantee that I would have to pay separately for shipping the course materials (about $40), and upon cancelling, I would also have to pay for the return shipping to send them back.
You’d think that for a membership fee of $800/month, they could send you the course materials for free. But perhaps this is indicative of a high cancellation rate on their products. Who knows?
At any rate, I joined and I spent about 6 hours a day powering through as much learning as I could glean from their membership site and simultaneously implementing some key tweaks on my website that they claimed should immediately result in a 15 – 20% increase in sales.
By the end of about two and a half weeks, I cancelled my membership. Why?
Well, I can tell you that if you’re fairly new to doing business on the Internet, Stompernet Membership is probably worth your money and you should see a good return on your investment.
However, I’ve been doing business online for 10 years now and while a lot of their stuff was useful, it did not lead to any increase in revenue for me – either immediately or longer-term. Also, a large portion of their stuff I already knew.
But the big disappointment was the coaching and mentoring. This is the main reason I joined. Stompernet promised a one-on-one coach who would work directly with me on my business. This is what was worth $800/month to me. Since it is very hard for me to find people with more experience than I have to take an objective view of my biz. I get lost in the classic “can’t see the wood for the trees” scenario.
An independent, objective, yet highly experienced internet coach was definitely what I needed… and didn’t get. Stompernet’s excuse was: Wow! We’ve had so many people join, we’ve run out of coaches, so it’s going to take us a while to get new coaches up and running.
Can you believe that? I’ve never heard anything so pathetic in my life! And just where are they going to find all these new, highly trained, specialized, experienced coaches? What are the odds I would eventually be assigned someone with less experience than I have? Pretty darn high, I think
An Aside: This is exactly what happened to me when I joined IMC’s (Internet Marketing Center’s) mentoring program (cost: $10,000). First of all, they were honest and said it would take a while to find me a coach with more experience than I had. Okay, that’s fine, I appreciate honesty. But then the coach they eventually assigned me had WAY less experience than me and then they also wanted me to go through their cookie cutter “website-improvement” program without taking a close, individualized look at my business. Ridiculous.
Anyway, back to Stompernet. So there I was, after nearly 3 weeks (that’s $600 gone) and NO COACH.
My second problem with their excuse/reason for not having enough coaches is that it reeks of amateur planning. Anyone with any business experience would have figured out in the planning stages how many people they could accept for membership, based on the number of coaches they had.
Either that, or they got rampantly greedy and decided to wing it. Not good either way. They’ve betrayed my trust, I wonder as to their skill levels and business acumen and I’m now suspicious of their motives. I’m not feeling a whole lot of care and regard for the customer here.
Now, IF they had brilliant support and coaching on their membership forum, that could have made up for it somewhat. But here’s what I discovered about the Forum Experts – and I posted extensively: As long as I asked generalized questions, I would get a response.
But as soon as I asked specific, detailed questions, directly applicable to my unique situation – that would require the expert to actually go and have a look at my sites – I got….NO response. I’m not kidding. They would just ignore any specific questions entirely, or else give me a generalized answer about the topic in general.
So there you have it in a nutshell:
Personally, I wonder just what their rate of cancellation was… it must have been really high.
My membership site has a teeny-tiny number of members by comparison. But I’ve only had 2 cancellations since I launched 8 months ago. Apparently, this is unheard of for membership sites. But you know what? If you actually deliver what you promise and you don’t scalp people for it, why would they cancel?
It’s a real shame, because I’ve remained on Stompernet’s mailing list since they do put out excellent content for free (wonder if we’ll see a backlash with Eben Pagan’s “moving the free line” ethos after a while…) and I really like Andy Jenkin’s personality. I think he’s a great guy.
But due to that bad experience, I simply don’t trust them anymore. Case in point: I just received an email from Andy inviting me to their StomperNet LIVE 7 Event on March 6-8 in Atlanta. Ordinarily, I would seriously consider going as it looks right up my alley.
However, I DON’T TRUST THEM ANYMORE. Hence, I’m not willing to take the chance and waste any money. Because my last experience keeps playing through my head; where they made some very attractive promises and so miserably didn’t deliver. It’s sad really.
p.s. One good thing about the StomperNet Membership – they were so late getting the course materials sent out, that by the time I cancelled they still hadn’t shipped them. So I avoided all the shipping charges. Again, poor management, or, delayed on purpose due to high cancellation rates? Another positive: Their customer service was really good; responsive, pleasant and absolutely no hassles.
all the best,
Jini
I just finished reading through a bunch of Frank McKinney’s websites launching his 3 new books ( biz book, spiritual book, kids book). Then I watched his video compilation of all the tv shows he’s been on and his many successes in real estate. And I find myself wondering yet again: How do these people accomplish all this whilst raising children??
Now you can tell me all you want about working hard vs. working smart, and delegating. But here’s the thing: you’re preaching to the choir. I am the Queen of time management and outsourcing. And at the end of the day, there are only so many hours and so much energy available in that day.
So call me judgmental, but if you’re raising young children (before school babysits them for a nice 6 hour chunk each day) and accomplishing monumental work successes, then something is suffering – and it’s obviously not your work stuff.
I figure people who are seeming to “do it all” probably have very little downtime in their lives. And they’re cutting corners in their child-raising. Because my main business is natural health, I know how extremely important nutrition is. Both to the growth and development of a child and to the long-term health of all family members. So you tell me that “do it all” moms like Carrie Wilkerson are cooking organic, unprocessed food from scratch for their 4 children every single day. Have they breastfed each child for at least 1-2 years? Have they been there for the child at night, or have they let the child “cry it out” and gone to sleep themselves, thereby preserving their energy for the next day’s work?
Or, the other thing I suspect, is that these have-it-all powerhouses have a spouse who is completely dedicated to them and the children and that is the person who is putting in all the work on the home front. Or, their business was cemented and generating a high income before they had their kids. Because, as we all know, most of the work is in the set-up.
My husband and I each have our own business and we each parent our children and suffer sleep deprivation and a crushing work load from just meeting the children’s needs. And these needs range from the emotional to the spiritual to the physical. My husband volunteers at school to help kids learn to read, he coaches soccer, he drives for field trips, and he’s done all the nights and night feedings (I pumped the breastmilk into bottles) with our youngest.
I did the all the nights and nightfeedings with the first two. I did not sleep more than 3.5 hours in a row for three years. You tell me how you can do all that (whilst breastfeeding day and night) and simultaneously be hosting teleseminars, going to conferences, marketing consistently, coaching and doing speaking engagements? It’s simply not physically possible.
So I’m here to stand up and tell the truth: Yes, you can have it all. But not all at the same time.
it’s simply not physically possible. And personally, I’m getting a bit miffed at listening to all these people purport that they are doing and having it all and there’s something wrong with me that I’m not! So to all those “I’ve got it all: family, multi-million dollar business, spiritual growth and purpose, community involvement and charity” people. I have six questions for you:
I would really like to hear from anyone who really and truly is doing/having it all, so they can explain to me how it is physically possible.
In my experience, all you can do is your best. And that’s really going to vary depending on your personal energy levels, work habits, functionality, etc. It’s also going to depend on whether your work is “work” or something you love, that provides you with a break, stimulation and enjoyment. If it’s the latter, then obviously, you’re going to get a lot more done in your business. Because although it will still use up energy, it’s also giving back to you in various ways.
But until you get that last child full-time into school, there’s a definite limit on what you can accomplish in your business. And all of us active, compassionate, nurturing parents need to stop feeling guilty that we’re not doing better financially during this difficult time! We need to challenge all these “have it all” gurus and say, quite bluntly, “You’re lying!”
And on that note, I think I’ll go get the porridge soaking for breakfast tomorrow, and the meat marinading for dinner tonight!
My Young Family in Playa del Carmen, Mexico
This actual email exchange between my darling husband and myself, shows exactly why you should never let your spouse stop you from following your gut.
Our partners don’t need to agree or even like everything we do. Many of us consciously choose not to do things we’d like to, or feel we should – because we don’t want to go through the hurt and hassle of our spouse’s negative response, the tension in the relationship, household, etc.
But you know what? It’s all good! Challenging each other and forcing each other to stick to our own gut can be a good thing. Being forced to separate your self-esteem and opinion of yourself from that of your loved one is a good thing. Growth is always a good thing.
So here’s the email exchange between my husband Ian and I – I’ve put it in order, so you can just start reading from the top. There’s only one email from me, because after his response I mostly ignored him!:
Chris Dufresne – Renowned Psychic, Son of Sylvia Browne
To: Ian Thompson
On 26-Jan-09, at 4:09 PM, Jini Patel Thompson wrote:
I’ve been on a wait-list for this and my appt is tomorrow (Tuesday) sometime between 8:30 – 11:30 am
I’ve booked with Chris Dufresne (I’ve read one of his books and several of Sylvia Browne’s) and have put the $400 charge on the Visa.
If you think that’s steep, Sylvia charges $850 (her wait list is 2 years)
Here’s more info about it:
http://www.sylvia.org/home/readings.cfm
Will be interesting to see what he has to say about our “living” issues and our business questions….
If you have anything specific you’d like me to ask, email it to me today….
wif.
***************************************
From: Ian Thompson
Subject: Re: Psychic Reading
Date: January 26, 2009 2:29 PM PST (CA)
you know what I cannot say I agree with spending $400 bucks on a physic reading…it will not put money on the table tomorrow – you had one done 4 years ago who told you what you had to do and it is these type of things that you drive me crazy with…..
we have just hired someone again, we are trying to buy a home in mexico and are sales are not going up and we are going deeper and deeper into the red each month…..
there I have said my piece – but that is why I find you so frustrating to be in business with coz you never stick to what we agree and you always find a good justification and reason for you to do what you want to spend money on.,..and if I say no coz I am in charge of the budgeting etc – you then blame me for stopping you for spending money coz you are the main person who makes the money……
all I can say is it is a waste of money – you know you are destined for great things – it is all in the implementation……..there that is my psychic reading for you and you can now pay me $500 as I know exactly what your future has in store……
ian “what is the point in us having any type of meeting to agree on expenditure” thompson
***************************************
From: Ian Thompson
Subject: Re: Psychic Reading
Date: January 27, 2009 12:01 AM PST (CA)
i totally think these type of things are a complete waste of time – specifically as you have already had one four years ago who told you you were going to be really rich and you know what you have to do!!!
but as you are asking – you may as well find out if we
1/ should move to sanata cruz – coz I do!
2/ should we buy in mexico..
3/ is this biz going to make us rich.,..
love me
***************************************
From: Ian Thompson
Subject: Re: Psychic Reading
Date: January 27, 2009 7:30 PM PST (CA)
all sorted and thanks for filling me in with your session – great for giving us the clarity we need to keep driving forward in this direction – well done bnz!!!!
I may kick scream and fight but the bottom line is I always come through!!
ian
***************************************
So there you have it. You don’t need to enter into dialogue with disapproving friends or family. You can just let your actions and results speak for themselves.
It’s important to remind yourself not to feel offended. Just because someone loves us, doesn’t mean they should agree with us about everything.
Ian and I in Mexico – Yes, Chris said we should go ahead and buy the condo there!
Soar higher,
Jini
Let me start by saying that Jeff Walker is one of the few internet bigwigs who actually answers emails! This alone inspired tremendous confidence long before I decided to give him any money.
I’ve been following Jeff for about 2 years and I have to say that his integrity and down-home persona have not changed. I missed out on his last offering of PLF (Product Launch Formula) due to scheduling conflicts, so although this year’s schedule is no better for me, I’m going for it anyway!
So, I’ve plunked down my two grand and I’ll let you know how it goes – probably in about six months or so, after I’ve had time to test and implement a launch.
Since my business is also a product-based, ecommerce business, it will be interesting to see how works in comparison to just internet marketing or information businesses.
ya never know till you try…!
Jini
Let me preface this by saying that in my entire life, I think I’ve won 2 items. In fact, I’m so unlucky at winning things, that I pretty much gave up entering any contests or draws by the time I was 20.
So imagine my surprise when I opened my email this morning to find this:
Hi Jini,
Congratulations! You were chosen as one of the winners for a free package of Yanik’s Maverick Business Insider based on your blog reply at Yanik’s Internet Lifestyle Blog.
If you could reply and give us your shipping information, we’ll get the package out to you ASAP!
Thanks for your support and we look forward to working with you!
Sincerely,
Gary
MaverickBusinessInsider.com
I’m still in shock! Especially since I did not post in order to enter the contest – having given up on winning contests! – I simply wanted to respond to his video. But hey, life’s great and I’m certainly looking forward to going through the materials when they arrive.
Here’s my winning post on Yanik’s Blog:
Jini Patel Thompson Says:
November 4th, 2008 at 4:25 pmHi Yanik,
I’ve derived 100% of my income from my online businesses for the last eight years – hence I’ve listened to and bought stuff from a lot of internet marketers (including you, of course!).
And I have to say – it is SO nice to see someone finally putting forth a more holistic business success model. This industry is so dominated by turbo-charged males – who are not up nights with their kids, cooking unprocessed food to ensure their health, volunteering for the reading program at their kids’ schools, etc.
Whoever said SUCCESS was just about MONEY anyway? Sure, money is a nice big part of the success pie, but not the only slice. Here’s how I define success:
* How’s your health? (Good Health Is Real Wealth is the title of my subscription newsletter)
* Do you have meaningful, intimate relationships with your spouse and kids?
* Are you actually parenting, nurturing and teaching your own children?
* Do you do things on a regular basis that nurture your soul and stoke your passions?
* Are you well-travelled and able to move fluidly in different cultures?
* How many languages do you speak?
* Are you helping the earth, or harming it?
* Do you have lots of fun and a good measure of adventure in your life?
* Do you have enough money to live the life you want to live?
* Do you have enough money to travel, pay for your hobbies and provide for your kids’ needs?
* Are you giving back or just taking?
And yes, I walk my talk. I’m not to the level of wealth that you are, but I live in a million + house, have a second vacation home, my main online business generates 35 – 40K per month. Since we have outsourced, subcontracted and automated everything, we routinely go away to hot, beach destinations for 2-3 month blocks of time. Our 3 kids – aged 2, 5 & 8 – travel brilliantly and never suffer jet lag cause they’re so used to it and can sleep anywhere.
I take art classes (I’m learning to paint!), do yoga or martial arts (with and without my kids), have breastfed all 3 of my kids for 5 years total, I cook them organic, unprocessed food from scratch and I spend at least a couple hours every day nurturing my soul with my favorite thing: lying in bed with a good book and a table of snacks.
And no, I’m not a hyperspeed, supermom either – just listening to women like that exhausts me. I’m the queen of outsourcing and working smart – not hard – so I can be chilled out and smooth. Now I sound like an alcoholic beverage…
Anyway, of course, I want to make more money (and I will) but I’m on the path. So like I said, it’s REALLY great to see someone else (in your nice relaxed, chilled out manner) putting forward a well-rounded, holistic business model too.
Thanks for being you!
And for having the balls to share that in a marketplace glutted with hyper, driven, let-me-make-sure-at-least-every-sentence-I-utter-contains-at-least-two-power-words, gooroos.
cheers,
Jini
****************************************************
I’ll let you know what I think of the program after I’ve had a chance to go through it and implement some stuff – probably in the Spring, since we’re spending December & January in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Yeah, I know, life’s really rough for me these days! 
The flow of money is a principle talked about by even the most dogged entrepreneurs. Many top business gurus (like Dan Kennedy and Robert Kiyosaki) advise their clients and readers to donate a percentage of their profits no matter what their financial situation is. Robert Kiyosaki – many of you will recognize him as the best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad – talks about when he and his wife were so poor they couldn’t even afford an apartment and were living out of their car, and they still gave 10% to charity of whatever they made. Today, of course, they are extremely wealthy.
The flow of money principle can be simply described as: You get back what you put out. Therefore, if you are freely and gladly giving money away, then the Universe can bring money to you – because you are keeping the flow of money fluid and open. If you are hoarding and clutching your money – always making excuses for why you can’t give – then you have shut down the flow of money in your life. You have entered a contracted, limiting state where you have made your world smaller.
Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money writes:
“I am moved by the struggle we all have with money. I now see that this arena in which we brush up against the hard realities of life can be the place where we develop a kind of a spiritual practice in which we use the money that comes to us as an instrument of our intention and integrity.
Money is like water. Money flows through all our lives, sometimes like a rushing river, and sometimes like a trickle. When it is flowing, it can purify, cleanse, create growth and nourish. But when it is blocked or held too long, it can grow stagnant and toxic to those withholding or hoarding it.”
So take this opportunity to examine your attitudes and practice with your money – no matter how much, or how little you have and decide on a percentage that you want to give out to world. Some people give 5%, some give 10%. I don’t think it’s the percentage that matters, it’s the intention and energy and commitment behind the giving that’s important.
Many people’s excuse for not giving is that, “Those charity organizations are a waste of time, most of them spend half of every dollar on administration and their own salaries and very little actually gets to the people in need.” For some large (especially government-based organizations) this may be true. However, there are also many grass-roots organizations where either most or 100% of your donation actually goes to the people in need – and their administrative costs are covered in other ways.
In my own charitable giving, I like to take a two-pronged approach: I believe that small business ownership is key to defeating poverty. It’s the old adage about: If you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. But if you teach them to fish (and fund them to buy the boat, the fishing line, net, etc.) you feed them and their extended family for a lifetime. Then they can also teach others to fish, and the web of respect and self-sufficiency grows. Also, I have seen firsthand the difference in self-respect and motivation between giving someone help vs. supporting them to pull themselves out of poverty. The latter is much more powerful and produces long-term results.
However, if someone does not have access to clean drinking water, or doesn’t even get one good meal a day – it’s going to be pretty hard for them to start and run a successful business. Therefore, I like to support both aims simultaneously. And I specifically look for charities that hire and use local people to develop and implement their objectives – rather than flying in Westerners who know very little about how the local people live, what’s meaningful to them, what motivates them, what they can handle, etc. This too greatly increases the self-respect and self-sufficiency of the village being helped and helps to ensure long-term success.
How’s your financial situation? What do your actions say about the flow of money in your life? What financial reality are your actions and energy/intent creating for you in your life?
Here are a few of my favorite ways to give effectively and help make a difference:
Akshaya Patra is an organization dedicated to providing a daily unprocessed, cooked-from-scratch, nutritious school lunch to underprivileged children. This meal is crucial in providing children (and their parents) with an incentive to come to school, stay in school and receive the nutrients necessary to improve their brain functioning, so they can do well in school. For many of these children, this is the only meal they receive each day. They also have a long list of North American employers who will match your donation if you work for that company: www.foodforeducation.org
A Glimmer Of Hope Foundation provides a variety of services to Ethiopian communities mired in poverty; clean drinking water, healthcare, education and micro-financing. The charity was founded by an endowment from Philip Berber when he sold his online trading company in a multi-million dollar deal. Hence, when you donate, 100% of your donation goes directly to the people in need as the organization’s operating costs are all paid for by Berber’s endowment fund: www.aglimmerofhope.org
Water Aid works with local partners to provide clean water, sanitation and hygiene education. Local people are supported to plan, construct, manage and maintain their own projects – self-sufficiency is a key part of their objective. Only 14 cents of every dollar goes to the organization running costs and 86 cents goes straight to the community projects: www.wateraid.org
Village Enterprise Fund founder Brian Lehnen studied several models of international development. Most of them provided temporary relief with relatively little long-term benefit. Many failed to reach rural areas. Brian envisioned a program that would have a profound impact on extreme poverty – not just for a day, or even for a year, but for a lifetime. Over the past 20 years, VEF has developed and refined a successful program that combines training, seed capital grants and ongoing mentorship to help villagers launch small businesses. Proper training, seed capital and mentorship transform desolate villages into vibrant centers of commerce. Through June 2008, they have helped start 16,430 small businesses. Eighty-eighty percent continue beyond one year and 75% are still going after four years – compare that to new business statistics in the US where 90% fail in their first year! This is an example of your money being well-spent and really making a difference. A third of their entrepreneurs go on to start additional businesses: www.villageef.org
Me (Jini Patel Thompson) In My Business Gear
One of the first things people usually ask me about is my racial background – so let’s start there. I am half East Indian (my Dad), 1/8 Russian Jewish and the rest English (my Mum). I have the oddest assortment of great grandparents due to this mix – from a Cantor in a synagogue in Warsaw, to a seamstress for the Queen of England, to a merchant in Gujarat who was so aggressive (and healthy – he ate nothing but yoghurt for one month out of every year) he was known to all as “the Bull”.
I started my very first business at the age of nine. And learned my first hugely important business lessons. Those of you who know any Indians named “Patel” will know that for millennia we have owned our own businesses. In fact, I can hear my Dad repeating (almost like a mantra), “Why the hell would you want to work your ass off to put money in someone else’s pocket, when you can put it in your own?”
So, the summer of my ninth year, my 10-year-old brother Millan and I built a candy store out of spare lumber at the end of our driveway. We had already helped our Dad build a barn, a doghouse and 3 acres of fencing by this point, so this was not a difficult task for us. We got the candy from my Uncle who owned a pharmacy (at wholesale plus 20% – cause he’s a Patel too and god forbid he should just let us have the candy at cost, without making a profit!) and we opened every afternoon for business. Being kids ourselves, we knew exactly which items to stock – chips, candy, chocolate bars and popsicles (in a cooler). We got so busy, we had to hire our next-door neighbor to help out.
Why was our little candy store such a roaring success? Because we lived out in the country and the nearest competition was 20 minutes away by car. So kids rode their bikes, motorbikes and horses from miles around – all summer long. Since my brother Millan was older and a math whiz, he handled all the money and inventory. At the end of every day, we stored the remaining stock in his bedroom in the cool basement. I tell you, I was rubbing my hands with glee thinking about all the money we were making!
At the end of the summer, Millan handed me my share of the profits from the summer-long venture…. $20.
I was aghast, how could this be? I was expecting closer to $300! Millan mumbled explanations about cost of inventory, hiring our neighbor, etc… I still didn’t understand, but then he was the math whiz and I assumed it was my fault I couldn’t understand the math. I was just gutted.
Next summer rolled around and Millan asked, “So, you want to do the candy store again?” I was gobsmacked, “What?? You want to work like a dog all summer long, for 20 bucks, are you crazy??”
When I was 38, my brother finally told me what really happened to our profits that summer: Every night after we packed up the stock and stored it in his bedroom, he and our neighbor would gorge themselves sick on our candy! They ATE all of our profits and that’s the real reason there was only $20 left to give me at the end of the summer’s labor.
So what were the lessons from my very first business?
Well that was it and I didn’t start my next business until I was 19. Then I partnered up with my University friend, Corey Anderson and started a photography business. She was the photographer and I handled bookings, the accounts (note who handled the money this time!), production, styling and even some of the lighting. Due to our artsy connections, we ended up doing mostly portfolio shots for models and fashion designers. This led to a few layouts in our local newspaper, The Edmonton Journal.
Me & Heather Phillips Modelling Deidre Hackman Designs
A year later when we graduated from University, we wanted to go travelling. So we approached the fashion editor of The Edmonton Journal and asked if they could sponsor us to shoot the international fashion shows in Tokyo, Japan and we would send back photos and copy for the newspaper. She agreed – thank-you Vivian Sosnowski for giving us our first break! – and we were on our way.
About six months after living and working in Tokyo, some kind soul finally told us that our company name – Boboh – which was printed on our business cards, handed out to every single person we met – was slang for “clitoris” in Japanese. Doh!
Whilst in Japan, we continued to run our photography business but I also worked as a sub-editor at The Japan Times newspaper (where I also had my own fashion column), and as the Fashion Editor at Tokyo Time Out magazine. Those were wonderful days in 1989-91, there were very few foreigners in Japan, nothing was in English (not even subway signs), and we made an absolute fortune. Again, just like the candy store, because there was little to no competition. When you’re the only game in town you can make scads of money very easily. It was wonderful!
Because there were hardly any gaijin (foreigners) in Tokyo at that time and I was doing high profile, glamorous activities, I was often headhunted and offered an amazing job opportunity about every 3 months. Since these were all long-term positions I really had to think hard about my future and what I wanted. And you know what I realized?
I kept being pulled back to my childhood dream of being a singer/songwriter. I had started singing in church at the age of nine and as the years went by I learned to play the guitar, took voice lessons, sang in bands, concert choirs and toured in musicals. What I realized after two years of raking in the money and living the high life in Tokyo was that if I didn’t make the break now to pursue my childhood dream, I would probably never be willing again to step so far backwards into being a “poor, struggling artist”.
So I left Tokyo and moved to London, England. Not only did London produce great musical talent, often more original than North America, but I figured my accent would work in my favor and get me in the door a lot quicker – which it did. I had an eight-song demo of songs that I’d written and recorded and I had my heart set on getting a record deal that would allow me to write and sing my own music.
Well, after three years in London I’d had a total of four recording contract offers – but none of them would allow me to write and sing my own music!
My priority was not fame or wealth. What I wanted was to make and sing my music. You know, the ‘girl & the guitar’ thing. But this was seven years before Sarah McLachlan broke that genre wide open. At that time, no one was producing that style of music or artist and Sarah was just an underground artist going round singing on University campuses to a few hundred people at a time. What I was doing was good, it was just seven years ahead of the market.
What did I learn from the record industry?
So, great life experience, I had a lot of fun and learned some good things – that’s what life is for right? If you never try, you never know…
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Action Point: Take some time to go back over your own work/business history to date and list (a) what worked well for you and (b) what didn’t work so well. After you’ve done that, you’ll have a good picture of your strengths, weaknesses, lessons learned and a better game plan for your future endeavours.
Note: You have to actually write all this stuff down. Just doing it in your head will not carry the same power, or yield the same results.
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I left England and moved to Vancouver, Canada where I began applying for jobs whilst working as an extra on movie sets and thought about what I wanted to do next. An old work colleague of mine approached me with a business proposition. He’d gotten into telecommunications and had a great idea for a niche product offering tele-dating to ethnic markets. Since realizing that I was now pretty much unemployable (you can’t go backwards in life, it just doesn’t work), I thought it sounded like an interesting business. And since this fellow had been one of the top-performing sales people in furniture and then diamonds for about 7 years running, I figured we should be able to make a go of it.
So we started a 50/50 business called Protocol Teleprocessing Inc. and we set up 1-900 ethnic telephone datelines for Chinese and Indians. Our Indian product was called Auntie-Ji’s Matchmaking Service and our Chinese product was Club 2000 (this was in 1993 so it sounded futuristic).
But here’s what we did differently that brought us success in a venture that typically required a large amount of start-up capital (which we didn’t have): Instead of buying ad space in the newspapers for our customer’s personal ads (remember the pages of personal ads in the back of the newspaper?), we joint-ventured with the newspapers.
We said, tell you what, you list all our ads in your newspaper and we’ll split the revenue from the 1-900 lines ($1.99/minute) with you 50/50. We put together a nice pitch-package with some tempting number forecasts and every newspaper we approached across North America said yes. For our top-performing Indo-Canadian newspaper I also wrote an anonymous advice column as a value-add and to expand the branding called, Ask Auntie-Ji – which also turned out to be a roaring success.
Things were going along tickety-boo, expanding nicely, when I found out (by unexpectedly walking into the middle of a phone call he was having) that my partner had gone behind my back to our lawyer and was in the initial stages of setting up an IPO (Initial Public Offering) to take the company public. When I confronted him he said, “But I wanted it to be a surprise, I thought you’d be really pleased!”
See what I mean about con-men believing their own con? Our lawyer was horrified to find out that I had known nothing about this super-expensive endeavour. When the dust settled, I bought my partner out (thank god we had signed a shotgun buy-sell Agreement when we started the company) and our lawyer, Peter Mogan reduced his bill to a fraction of what it was – you see, there are good lawyers with integrity and a sense of responsibility out there!
It was at this point that I also met my husband – Ian Thompson. He was living and working in telecommunications in Hong Kong at the time and we were hooked up by a mutual friend of ours, who told me, “Call him, he’s a real hunk!” Since this was just before the internet and email, we faxed and phoned each other for 2 months solid (our combined phone bill was over $10,000!) at which point I said, “You know, we either need to meet, or chill this out, cause this is getting ridiculous.” At this point, we still did not even know what each other looked like.
He said, “If I send you a ticket, will you come to Hong Kong?” I agreed, with the caveat that if we didn’t “click” in person, or if there was something non-negotiable like really bad B.O. then I was going to visit my friend Joseph in Jakarta. He agreed, sent me a ticket that weekend and I flew off. Well, click we did and got engaged 3 days later and married 6 months after that (in Las Vegas of course). That was 13 years ago and he’s still my Hunk.
The Hunk Made A Pretty Good Dad Too!
A year later I had expanded my ethnic dating company to include internet dating (we were one of the very first dating sites on the web). After several debacles with website programmers I realized, you know what, these guys can tell me anything and I don’t have a clue! So I went back to college at night and took a course in website design and HTML programming. That was one of the best things I ever did. And it has benefited me immeasurably ever since. But, a key point here: I don’t use that knowledge/training to program my own websites. I use it to manage and communicate with the people I hire to write the code for my sites – and to ensure they aren’t overcharging me.
A software magnate in New York read about my telecommunications company in a magazine article, made me an offer, and bought me out. To be honest, I was bored with the dating business and ready to move on to something new.
I was also at the point in my health journey where I wanted to write a book telling others how I had healed myself of widespread Crohn’s Disease using only natural methods – no drugs and no surgery. So I took the next two years easy, wrote the book and helped my hubby Ian in his marketing/advertising company – he had started his own company when he moved to Vancouver from Hong Kong. Click here if you want to find out more about Ian and what he’s doing now.
Yes, I could have expanded the dating business into India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc. and made an absolute boat load of dosh (rather than selling it), but again, whilst I love having money, it is not my top priority. I like money to be a by-product of me doing what I want, not the sole or main reason I do something. And yes, this means I was not a millionaire by age 25. But you know what? I have always had enough money to do whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to do it.
Many people in the business world measure success primarily by one criteria: Financial.
I measure success in a holistic manner:
That is the kind of success that is meaningful to me. I know a lot of business gurus say, “The purpose of a business is to make money.” But I disagree. My motto would be more along the lines of “Figure out how to make money from something you enjoy, or that has meaning and a higher purpose to you.” And of course, I love what Muhammad Yunus (Founder of Grameen Bank of micro-lending) said in his book, Banker To The Poor:
“Somehow we have persuaded ourselves that the capitalist economy must be fueled only by greed. This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Only the profit maximizers get to play in the marketplace and try their luck. People who are not motivated by profit making stay away from it, condemn it, and search for alternatives.
We can condemn the private sector for all its mistakes, but we cannot justify why we ourselves are not trying to change things, not trying to make things better by participating in the economy. The private sector, unlike the government, is open to everyone, even those not interested in making a profit.
The challenge I set before anyone who condemns private-sector business is this: If you are a socially conscious person, why don’t you run your business in a way that will help achieve social objectives? [emphasis mine]
I profoundly believe, as Grameen’s experience over twenty years has shown, that personal gain is not the only possible fuel for free enterprise. Social goals can replace greed as a powerful motivational force. Social-consciousness-driven enterprises can be formidable competitors for the greed-based enterprises. I believe that if we play our cards right, social-consciousness-driven enterprises can do very well in the marketplace.”
My younger brother, Ricken Patel, is living proof of Yunus’ economic theory. His very first company, an NGO called Avaaz.org generated millions of dollars in it’s first year. In 2008 he was featured in People Magazine’s Summer’s Hottest Bachelors list.
Yes ladies, Ricken Patel is still single!
The other really important thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to make all your money from just one thing. You can have as many revenue streams as you wish. This can be determined by your personality. Are you the kind of person that likes to focus on just one thing and drill deep? If so, then you need to be careful picking your business since you’re going to want to derive all your income from that one thing.
Or are you the kind of person that has a lot of different skills, talents and interests? In that case, you may prefer to have lots of smaller businesses, each of them in a different niche (or series of related niches) all generating you varying amounts of income.
I love adventure in life and business. I love the fact that I am in complete control of my life and finances at any given time – I can create whatever I want, whenever I want. And when life throws up an opportunity (also referred to as crisis) I 100% get to choose how I’m going to respond to that and what good things I’m going to mine from that experience.
When my book, Listen To Your Gut, was finished I used the big lesson I’d learned from the music business. Rather than looking for a publisher – spending months or years getting rejected, allowing someone else to edit my message at will, setting myself up to do all the marketing for only a 10% royalty on the sale price – I started my own publishing company: Caramal Publishing Inc. I called it Caramal because one of my husband’s pet names for me was Caramel-Coat.
A few years later I told a taxi driver in Mexico the name of my company. Guess what he said “cara mal” means in Spanish? It means “ugly face”.
Oh well, seems to be my destiny! At least it doesn’t mean “ugly twat”.
A month after Listen To Your Gut was published I gave birth to my first son, Oscar. I had already set up the website, automated payment processing, warehousing and fulfillment (sub-contracted to a company in Texas) so I was able to be side-whacked with the exhaustion of a new baby while my new business ticked along mostly without me. That was back in 2000. Now Caramal Publishing has multiple books, CDs, DVDs and an online health store selling 200+ products and I have two more little monkeys – Zara and Hugo.
My Three Little Monkeys – Zara, Oscar, Hugo – in Puerto Vallarta
When Oscar was 2 weeks old, he developed colic and being an expert in digestive diseases, I figured out how to heal it. So when Zara was 8 weeks old, we shot a DVD with her as the demo-baby where I show other parents exactly how to heal their baby’s colic. I figured stressed out, desperate parents need to laugh, so I called the DVD, Baby Fart Aerobics.
One night my Mum overheard me telling a bedtime story and insisted it was so good that I needed to start recording my stories. So I did and they became the Murray the Shark series of Sleeptime Story CDs. In them I teach kids aged 2-6 (through storytelling) things like meditative breathing, listening to your body’s wisdom, the importance of trying new things, teamwork, etc.
As you can see, I walk my talk. I take the things that are interesting or useful to me and I figure out a way to make some money from them. I don’t do a whole lot of market research or testing, etc. My approach is more like the late Anita Roddick (founder of The Body Shop).
I once heard Anita speak at a press conference in Tokyo (and got a great goody bag!) and she said that she never researched the market before launching a new product; no focus groups, nothing. She said that if she wanted or needed it and if she liked it, then others would too. And she was right.
This method works well for me too – except that I tend to be about 5-7 years ahead of the market, so my stuff does eventually make good money, it just takes a while!
I also formulate and manufacture health products. Again, these are products that I needed myself, that didn’t exist in the marketplace. So I created them. My liquid elemental diet product, Absorb Plus, has helped thousands of people with digestive diseases. And through word-of-mouth alone, it is now also used by people with Cancer, AIDS and the elderly who have trouble chewing or swallowing.
My FissureHeal suppositories, which heal anal and rectal fissures are used not only by people with bowel problems, but also by post-partum women. Did you know that 15% of pregnant women suffer from anal fissures – either from the pregnancy (constipation, pressure) or from the birth? No, neither did I – I discovered that after I had formulated and manufactured the product. I’d also like to market them to gay males, but haven’t had the time yet.
Recently (thanks to my children Hugo and Zara) I figured out a pretty much 100% effective protocol for healing ear infections – it even works for middle ear infections where blood and pus is coming out of the ear. And I’m currently working on a hemorrhoid remedy. Again, I let the natural progression of my life, my needs, and my interests guide my business activities.
When I started my online health store back in 2005, I only did so because I received so many emails from my international readers saying, “I’m having to order 10 different products from 10 different suppliers, the shipping charges alone are killing me and it’s so exhausting! Isn’t there just one place I can go to get all this stuff?”
So Ian and I started Caramal Holistic Health Shoppe solely as a result of customer requests. We were hoping just to break even. Little did we know that our U.S. customers (90% of our market) would also prefer to use the Health Shoppe (for the convenience factor) and order from us too! Today we sell over 200 products and generate some nice revenue.
Last year I started a membership/continuity program called JPT Wellness Circle. Many of my readers, like me, had healed themselves of their disease, but now wanted vibrant, full-speed-ahead health. There is a world of difference between being disease-free and enjoying energetic, top-level health. So JPT Wellness Circle helps take them there.
People who never even had a bowel disease to begin with are now becoming members. These are people with “normal” health who have also realized there’s a huge gap between where they are and how good they could be feeling. They are also interested in preventative care.
How many times have you heard someone say, “He was perfectly healthy and then, boom, cancer.” This is the medical/pharmaceutical view of cancer. If that person had been pursuing holistic healthcare and utilizing holistic diagnostic tools, they would have seen the cancer seeds planted long before and been alerted to the precursors to cancerous growth. And speaking of which, there is indeed an astoundingly effective natural treatment protocol for cancer that works for everything but bone cancers.
Well, there you have it. Some of the highlights of my journey to date. I hope I’ve given you some ideas, maybe opened up some doorways to freedom for you – or at least given you some glimpses of it. I’ll leave you with some choice words of wisdom from Stephen Pierce (took himself from homeless to multi-millionaire):
“Action is a learning process. It’s feedback; okay now you need to change this, modify that, move over this way… That is the process of life itself. Nobody is immune to that. So what we have to do is understand that and embrace that process and appreciate that process and no longer be afraid of the mistakes. Embrace the mistakes and the learning process equally – as we do the things that we get right.”
Oh yes, and one more thing. If you sense you have some financial blocks and saboteurs in your life that are holding you back, then here is a great program to clear those financial roadblocks from your life. My husband Ian and I have both been through this program (set of CDs using an acupressure-based method called EFT) and it is truly transformative.
Soar higher,
Jini
My publishing company, Caramal Publishing Inc. has been going for eight years now and we’ve published hardcover, softcover and ebooks, CDs and DVDs. I’ve found that for shorter books (up to 200 pages, but ideally not more than 100 pages) people don’t mind an ebook. But for anything longer, they want the physical book. I also have quite a few customers who purchase BOTH the hardcover and ebook (which I offer at a substantial discount) so they can get started right away while they’re waiting for the hardcover to be delivered. Here’s an example of how I set up an order page to offer these options:
http://www.crohnsalternative.com/order.html
There are lots of security options for ebooks – but at the end of the day, once someone has bought the ebook, if they want to send it to someone else they can (and why not, we can lend our physical books anytime we want).
If you’re just starting out, this is a system I can recommend that will take you to mid-level sales/complexity:
they have an ebook sales facility automatically included – immediately upon purchase of your ebook, the customer goes to a download page for your ebook (which you have uploaded as a pdf). They also receive an email giving them the link to the download page. However, the security feature is that the link/download is only live for 24 hours. This makes it harder to ’share’ an ebook, since many email providers won’t let people email large files to each other. Just adds a layer of hassle. Go to the site and check it out as you can signup and test it for a month for only $4. Once you see how easy it is, you’ll be hooked.
Oh yes, and they also have a built-in affiliate program – so that you can have other sites advertising/offering your book and whenever a sale comes from them (your affiliates), they will automatically get a commission on the sale (you can set the commission at whatever % you want). They offer many more useful features, so go to their site and check it out.
I used 1shoppingcart.com for about 5 years and was really happy with it, until we outgrew it and our marketing got too complex/extensive for it. Now we use a CRM (customer response management) system since we also have the Holistic Health Shoppe with over 200 products:
Now, I recently found this company in Ohio that looks like it would be really good for short-run, softcover books (minimum order 50 books) – that way you can have books in stock if someone wants the physical book, with minimal investment. I haven’t tried them yet, but they look legitimate and like they know what they’re doing:
If you’re planning to sell on Amazon though, then your best option may be a company affiliated with Amazon called Create Space. This service allows you to print-on-demand only the number of copies you need. You submit your book design files and they will keep them on file and just print and bind the number of copies you request – and the print cost is very competitive.
Once your book is printed, you then have two options. You can sell your books through Amazon (i.e. the customer has ordered your book through Amazon) and Amazon will handle shipping and fulfillment of that book to the customer, plus any customer service issues.
Or you can order your books to sell on your own website, at your seminars, workshops etc. To do this, you simply place an order of your book with Create Space and again, there’s no minimum order. So you can order 10 books or 100 books. Here’s quick look at the pricing guidelines on Create Space. They also do DVDs and CDs as well.
Since companies change their pricing, you would do best to compare the pricing of 48hour Books and Create Space – taking into account Create Space’s affiliation with Amazon, and then choose the solution that will work best for you.
Don’t even think about printing 500 or 1000 copies of your book until you have established a sales record. It’s not uncommon for a niche publication to only sell 20 books per month. At that rate, it would take you over 2 years to sell out a print run of 1000 copies, by which time some of your information will probably be out of date.
Also, another big reason to print small runs – no matter how well you’ve edited your book, after it’s published your readers will call your attention to all the errors you missed! If you only print 50 books at a time, you can easily fix these errors before the next print run.
Okay, last nugget to share (my publishing company: www.caramal.com has been running for eight years now so I’ve had a fair bit of experience) when you want to get your ebook formatted and a cover design done, definitely use:
to source a cheap-as-chips designer from India, Russia, China, etc. In fact, due to the competition in this marketplace you can often find a North American designer who will quote for only a little bit more. Also use elance.com to source your website designer, etc. The cost differential is astounding. There is no charge to you to post your project and receive quotes for the job (the provider pays Elance the brokerage commission). I outsource everything now. My long-term computer programmer for $15/hour is in Pune, India, my latest logo design project was done in Buenos Aires, my forum management (to keep out porn, spam etc.) is done in Assam for $2/hour, my virtual assistants for customer service are in Massachusetts and Wahsington, etc. etc.
If you use www.elance.com it will be very cheap to get your ebook ready and available. Then just test it and see! You can’t know anything for sure until you test it.
Jini
Those of you who utilize teleseminars or teleclasses in your business have no doubt encountered a fair number of glitches and technical problems with the medium.
I have to tell you, these continual technical glitches drove me crazy. And not just because I’m a “do it right or don’t do it” kind of person. No, they particularly bugged me because I used to own a telecommunications company. We specialized in ethnic (Chinese and Indian) dating. This was back when everyone was using 1-900 numbers – remember that? This was before the internet and you’d pay $1.99/minute to listen or respond to personal ads, or chat with others.
My point is: We would often have 200 people or more on the line at the same time…. and guess what? No glitches, no echos, no one got dumped off the line, no one had trouble dialing in. So if we could do all that nearly 15 years ago, why can’t teleconference bureaus today provide glitch-free service?
Well, I’m thankful to report that I’ve made good headway in solving this problem and I’m happy to share my tips and tricks with you. Whether you’re a newbie to teleseminars, or just incredibly frustrated the way I was, the following should go a long way to helping you capitalize on this technology.
And of course, feel free to share any gems of wisdom you’ve discovered in the Comments section below.
Troubleshooting For Teleseminars
Well, there you have it, the benefit of my experience doing teleseminars to date! Hopefully this will help you to avoid the excruciating downtime that dead air and technical glitches can result in – not to mention the stress!
Don’t forget that if you’re a newbie to teleseminars, or if you want to find out how to maximize your revenue, or streamline your marketing funnel using teleseminars, then this is the course that I recommend. It’s solid information without the hype that a lot of internet marketers include and very reasonably priced.
soar higher,
Jini
If you haven’t started hosting teleseminars yet, you’ve no doubt heard the buzz about how they can be great tools for your business to help you accomplish the following:
Obviously, a whole article could be written about each of these points (and maybe I’ll get to that in the future!) But for now, if you want a referral to a good teleseminar course that will expand on each of the point above and lots more (how to use them, how to set them up, how to maximize sales, etc.), this one is very detailed and can get you hosting your first teleseminar within a week.
Setting Up Your Teleseminars
There are plenty of free teleconferencing services available. Just do a Google search on “free teleconference” to pull up a whole list of them. If you are really broke, or, you do not charge for your teleseminars, then this may be a good way to go.
However, if your reputation for excellence is important to you, or if you are charging participants, then you definitely should NOT use a free teleconferencing service. These free bureaus often use internet-based lines and the quality can be really poor. You are almost guaranteed to have glitches on these calls at some point – hey, they’re free, what do you expect?
So, if you want to provide consistent, good quality calls, then use a good quality teleconferencing bureau that, yes, you have to pay for. However, as I found out, just because you pay for the service doesn’t mean they will provide good glitch-free service either! Since I’ve been in business online for the past 9 years, I have contacts with a number of the “big players” in internet marketing. So I tried a bureau that well-known guru Dan Kennedy / Bill Glazer uses for their calls – and I know they have hundreds of people on a call, so I figured the bureau would be a good one, right? Wrong. Not only did I have some bad calls using them, but when I talked to the boss of the company after a particularly bad one (a total of 20 minutes of glitches and I have the recording to prove it!) His only solution was to not charge me for the call! This is not a good sign. I don’t want free teleconferencing, I want GOOD, reliable, consistent service.
Anyway, without going into all the different ones I tried, VoiceText Communications is the bureau that I’m happy with and still use:
Now, not being sexist or anything, but this company is woman-owned and perhaps that’s why they’re so diligent….
When I had some glitches on calls with VoiceText, they worked with me to help me figure out what was going wrong and what we could do about it, to ensure they did not recur.
Next, I strongly suggest you use this teleseminar web host in conjunction with your teleconferencing bureau so that you can provide your customers with the following benefits:
1. People can listen in via webcast, rather than having to dial in and pay long distance charges, if they prefer.
2. Participants (or whoever you give the link to) can access a replay of the call immediately following it and download the mp3 file if they wish. Note: Recording each teleseminar is automatically included, so you don’t have to pay the teleconferencing bureau extra to do this for you.
3. Participants can submit questions via the “Question Box” online, before or during the call – so you can get lots of feedback and interaction with your listeners. People are often too shy to speak up during a teleseminar and they much prefer being able to ask questions this way.
4. You can send all your customers (or list) to an “Event Page” that gives them all the info they need for each teleseminar. The great thing is, this is a template page that is pre-formatted, so you just enter your specific info for each call. No need to get your web programmer to design a special web page for each event! You can customize the look and feel of the page though, to reflect your style or colors.
Where can you get all this? It’s provided by this company Instant Teleseminars, which offers a free trial and very cheap monthly rate. Here’s a video that shows you exactly how it works (I really recommend you watch the video as it’s the fastest way to understand exactly why and how this will benefit you):
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/VideoDemo.asp?x=1801174
Or, if you prefer, here’s the written info on how it works and how you can use it in your business:
http://xiosoft.com/instantTeleseminar/specialinfo.asp?x=1801174
Okay, now you’ve got everything set up to deliver great quality teleseminars to your clients, that are easy for you to set-up and administrate!
In my next article, I’ll get into some of the common glitches that can happen on a teleseminar, why they happen, and what you can do to prevent it.
live strong,
Jini
I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to upload photos to the new WordPress 2.5 blog.
So, in case I can shorten the learning curve for anyone else, here is my research and what worked.
1/
First, in case you just need to know exactly how to insert a photo into a blog posting:
VIDEO TUTORIAL:
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-rc2/
SCREENSHOT TUTORIAL:
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/howto-upload-photos-to-wordpress-25/
- this tutorial contains additional instructions for how to set it up properly to upload photos from your computer. So be sure and go through both.
2/
Now, if you’ve followed these instructions and it’s still not working, here are some possible solutions:
PROBLEMS/SOLUTIONS:
This first one is most likely to solve the problem and is from:
http://joshhighland.com/blog/2008/03/30/wordpress-25-image-upload-problem-solved/
Something was for sure messed it. I tried it in several browsers, but had the same results. no luck. I started to go some searching online but since wordpress 2.5 is so new, there was little info to be found. After about an hour of stumbeling around I came across a post on a forum where someone said they got the image upload to work by adjusting their .htaccess file on thier site with the following code.
NOTE: change all the regular brackets ( ) to html code brackets < > when you implement this (I couldn’t use them here as they would screw up the blog code)
(IfModule mod_security.c)
(Files async-upload.php)
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
(/Files)
(/IfModule)
I made the change to my .htaccess file, and like magic the image upload feature started to work again!
I am making this post in the hopes that other people with similar problems will stumble across this post and be able to fix their problem with out having to wade through all the pages of people trying to diagnose what the problem is when the solution is super easy.
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This sounds basic, but it happens all the time with word press and firefox. DO you have the latest version of firefox? Did you try closing down your window and reopening firefox and see if it works?
Can you try it on IE and see if it works?
There are often conflicts with firefox, even though I use it too. But whenever i have a problem like this that should not be happening, I always go check in IE, and then start checking my browser versions, reboot, etc. Then I look to re-install or check for something corrupt in the install.
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If you try all the above and it still doesn’t work and your photo does not appear in your post, then check to see if it has at least been uploaded to the GALLERY.
If it has, then click SHOW ALL for the photo you want to feature.
Then copy the LINK URL for that photo and post that URL into your blog post using the img src=”URL” tag.
So, for example, it would look like this – but just change the regular brackets ( ) to html brackets < >. I can’t use the html brackets here as the blog reads it as code:
(img src=”http://www.colicinfant.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/3onbeachfinal.jpg”)
hope that helps!
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all the best,
Jini
For those of you who can’t get those darn YouTube or Viddler videos to show up in your blog, here’s how you do it:
NOTE: I have changed the < > brackets to [ ] brackets so they will show up. When you go to use this code, change them back to < > brackets.
1. You have to preface the YouTube embed link with this code:
[strong]Title of The Video[/strong]
[table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="425"]
[tr]
[td]
[object height="355" width="425">
2. And you have put this code at the END of the embed link:
[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
3. As for the video embed link itself, you have to change the code from what YouTube gives you.
For example, this is the embed link of a video as copied and pasted from YouTube:
[object width="425" height="344"][param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HQuODiMlUsc&hl=en&fs=1"][/param][param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"][/param][embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HQuODiMlUsc&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"][/embed][/object]
You have to alter this link:
- delete OBJECT TAGS [object width="425" height="344"] AND [/object] )
AND
- you also have to delete the [a href] [/a] tags that WordPress has likely added
AND
- you have to delete any backslashes [ \ ] that are in the link – there are no backslashes in the link you copy from YouTube or Viddler, but if you’ve clicked the “Add Video” icon on WordPress, somehow they get added in.
So that the link appears like this:
[param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HQuODiMlUsc&hl=en&fs=1"][/param][param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"][/param]
[embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HQuODiMlUsc&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"][/embed]
Sometimes this part of the link code: allowfullscreen=”true”
Will appear like this: wmode=”transparent”
Either is okay to use.
So, when you’re finished, the code for the entire video looks like this:
[strong]Cancer Is A Fungus Part 1[/strong]
[table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="425"]
[tr]
[td]
[param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HQuODiMlUsc&hl=en&fs=1"][/param][param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"][/param]
[embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HQuODiMlUsc&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"][/embed]
[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
NOTE:
1. Sometimes when you copy and paste an embed link to your post, it will insert all kinds of backslashes (backslashes are: \ ). You need to go through and delete these. Just leave the forward slashes in place (forward slashes are: / )
2. If WordPress adds an [a href] [/a] tag to your embed link, this needs to be deleted too.
3. Lastly, sometimes when copying and pasting, double quote marks ( ” ) get turned into single quote marks ( ‘ ), go through and change any single quotes to double quotes.
For videos from VIDDLER, you have to change the size of the video to 437 x 370. So you would preface the link with:
[table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="437"]
[tr]
[td]
[object height="370" width="437"]
Otherwise, everything stays the same as I outlined for YouTube videos.
And that’s it!
Here’s what a YouTube video will look like in your blog post:
http://www.listen2yourgut.com/blog/gut/natural-cancer-treatment-has-90-success-rate/
Here’s what a Viddler video will look like in your blog:
http://www.listen2yourgut.com/blog/tools/are-you-using-the-ltyg-cd-rom/
I find it easiest to copy the block of code I’ve given you above and paste it into Notepad or TextEdit while I’m writing my blog post. Then I can double-check back and forth easily to make sure I’ve got everything correct.
Hope that helps you out and saves you a wee bit of time!
Jini
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