I have to say that while I have lived here in the Greater Washington DC area for just about 13 years, I am still AMAZED at the reaction this region has to snow.  Having grown up in Michigan, I can remember growing up praying that school MIGHT be cancelled due to snow…key word there, might.  It took nearly a blizzard to have school cancelled (and if I had grown up in the upper peninsula even that wouldn’t have cancelled school).

Yet here, in the DC area…the sheer threat of snow sends parents and government decision makers into a frenzy of cancellations.  But that’s not all that happens, the threat of snow also sends the mobs into the grocery stores to stock up on three items…milk, eggs, and bread.  We used to joke that Marylanders just loved their French Toast.  I could understand bottled water, toilet paper, and canned food…right?  Yet that is not the case here.  I used to joke with my coworkers that it was a myth, until my first winter and the threat of snow was imminent.  It took one trip to the local grocery store to see that the supply of milk, eggs, and bread was depleted.  The myth was true.  I was mystified.

Now for those of you who don’t live in this area, it may seem like I’m making fun…and I am, yet the truth is the locals all know it’s funny too.  One year there was a scratch off lotto ticket called the complete shopping list, or Maryland shoppers list or something like that.  Everyone here had a good laugh, and then the first snow rushed out to get their French Toast supplies.

The title of this article is a joke that K and I have based on a Family Guy episode I think, it’s been quite a while.  With the imminent threat of snow, the local News channels were filled with “March Roars in Like a Lion!” and “White Death 2009!”…ok not really but they clearly had nothing else to report on since within a 30 minute news show, they covered weather for 28 minutes.  I mean they even had commentary from the Governor of Maryland about the weather and what he was going to do about it!  I can’t make this up…

Last night we got nearly a foot of snow.  Every school in the region was closed, the government was probably closed,  and most businesses were empty…along with all the French Toast supplies!  Ask me how I know.  Like I said, I have lived here for almost 13 years now…and I like my French Toast too!

To all my Maryland/DC/Virginia readers, be safe and enjoy the snow!  In two days it’s gonna be 40 degrees again.

I was recently talking with K about a conversation I had with a group of Entrepreneurs concerning how I have so many businesses.  When I say tell people that I have nine businesses I often get looks of disbelief, awe, and shock.  They simply can not understand how I have any free time to do anything, let alone have coaching clients, business clients, family time, and cycling time.  Yet I always give them that knowing smile and say one word: Automation.

In my world of being a recovering control freak, analytic, and perfectionist I realized that I needed to get my businesses automated so that I could simply check in on them from time to time and make sure that they were still rocking and rolling.  When the business is built around Read the rest of this entry

One thing that I am often asked by my clients is how they can increase the number of leads coming into their business.  No matter what your industry, I hope that you realize that new leads or customers are the path to growing your business.  This does NOT mean that you should ignore your current customers by any means, instead it simply means that if you were to not generate any NEW business, you would eventually either be OUT of business (as your current customers move on, or leave you) or at the minimum your business would remain stagnant or in decline.

So here are four quick ways to increase your business right NOW online using my favorite method, pay per click (Online Marketing, Paid Search, etc).  Please note that these will get customers to your site, it is still up to you to convert them once they arrive!

1.  Create Ads for your Pay Per Click Campaign with your Telephone Number

I started doing this with our Real Estate Investing business by simply recreating the Bandit Signs that K had made.  I ran several different versions, including the standard “We Buy Houses” but below is a sample Read the rest of this entry

Recently I posted that I was a Mentor now, or a Life Directional Coaching…sounds like of mystical, very esoteric even!  I have gotten a LOT of emails about this from friends, family, and clients who thought I had perhaps jumped off the deep end.  Some thought the name was great!  Others called me a sissy boy (Yes I’m looking at you James!)  So I thought I would come clean on where the term came from…Ancient Greece!  Oh wait, that’s mentor not Life Directional Coaching.

In truth it came up in a conversation I was having with a new friend of mine, Tom Zeeb of Profitable Partnerships, when I was trying to describe to him what it is that I do.  You see for the last few years I have been a Business Management Consultant and most recently I have spread out into being a real estate investor and mentor to young (not in age) Entrepreneurs.  In my conversation the term “Life Direction” came up.  It really does embody what I do, after all.

As any of my readers know, or perhaps don’t realize, I believe that living in balance is the path to not only healthy living, opportunity, but more importantly freedom and true happiness.  Each of the three top level areas of living in balance (Health, Wealth, and Fun) are individual facets of our life.  We have our personal life, our business life, our financial life, our social life, our private life, and the list goes on and on.  All of these facets make up the complexity that we call SELF.

So recently, I decided to brand myself as a Life Directional Coach.  I help to coach those (primarily Entrepreneurs) through the hardships of LIFE.  All the facets of LIFE that affect their business and balance…but primarily business.   I have to be honest here, I am a very private person and I was not really all that sure of whether or not I wanted to “out” myself as a coach/mentor/etc fully, yet I knew it was my path…it is after all a HUGE responsibility helping a young (again not age!) Entrepreneur move forward through the trials of that life and learning how to Live IN Balance.  Yet it is extremely exciting and fulfilling!

So here is my question to all of you, my readers, what do you think of the term Life Directional Coach?  Is there a better name out there?  Is it an AWESOME title/description of what I do?  Or is it lame?

James…you are not allowed to comment, nor are you allowed to rally your supporters!

Let me know what you think!  Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts!

Most people track their weight gain or weight loss by the numbers on a scale.  Imagine this scenario: you weigh yourself but to your horror, the scale shows 160lbs.  Stop right there!  Let’s go on a field trip to the moon.  Once on the moon you jump on the scale, and obviously, you weigh less.  Did your appearance change? Do your clothes fit better? What is the reason for this, if the scale shows a lower number?  The fact is a scale measures your body under the control of gravity. It can’t distinguish if you’re losing water, muscle (which diets do quite effectively), or fat.  So why judge your progress on something that can’t possibly tell you how much fat you’ve lost?

At this point it seems the right thing to do is to have your body composition measured (body fat percentage). Well, hold on a second. The problem with body composition tests is that they’re not 100% accurate. Don’t misunderstand; Read the rest of this entry