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By Catherine Franz
Editors will buy a book for one or more of the following reasons:
1. The author's previous books have sold well
2. They love a book and think it will sell
3. They think a book will sell
4. They love it enough to publish, regardless of its commercial potential
5. It's a book that deserves to be published because of its value to a cause or the country
6. An editor is passionate enough about it to overcome any doubts the house may have about the book
Monday 8/30/04 5 am, Exploration of Language Writing Exercise, by Catherine Franz
My body feels like I slept in the Australian Outback. It’s way down under. My head feels like the morning after too much tequila. My eye lids as heavy as a car garage automatic door opener with no reaction after pressing the button several times before moaning and creaking slowly open screaming for oil.
Normal thoughts peek through as if the sun trying to get out through lays of clouds. Do I need aspirin or Pepto-Bismol? Naw, both. Confused as all get go, the brain responds, “What did I do to deserve this?” All I did the day before was go to a spa and be pampered. Maybe my body isn’t use to any kindness and it time for payback. Or maybe it just doesn’t know what to do.
With shaky legs and a carefully planned path to limit motion, I slither to the cabinet for aspirin and the kitchen for water. Darn I forgot the plop, plop, fizz, fizz tablets. Back to repeat the route.
Maybe water running down my back will help with a slight pause in my tracks by the bathroom door. If I could shake my head I would have, the pain just let out a thought instead, “not now, not yet.”
Its back to bed I go. No work today, at least for a while. I can feel the fever coming on again. Even my finger nails don’t want to come out and play. Nestled back in bed again, I carefully inch my way around to find a place that doesn’t ache. Before I fad back again into dreamland, I pray my stomach will stop gurgling and my head will feel straight again when I reappear.
One of the major ways to become a millionaire is to learn to get your money to work for you instead of you always working for your money. This is not an all comprehensive list, but close.
1. Savings account
2. Certificates of deposition (CDs)
3. Bonds
4. Trading gold and silver
5. Investments that generate dividends
6. Stocks with long term growth
7. Owning a house
8. Real estate investments
9. Commissions
10. Referral Fees
11. Affiliate Fees
Continue reading "21 Ways To Get Your Money Working For You" »
Personal journal entry Aug 26, 2004 by Coach Catherine Franz -- Exploring language and thought.
The truth is there is a gap between sight and hearing, between visual and auditory, between seeing and believing. And the fact is that this gap creates a billion dollar industry. Improving communication has billions of books on how-tos sitting on shelves and training services galore. And the topic keeps on selling.
People push themselves to improve their verbal and writing skills as a prediction to their increased success. How many have asked the question that Dr. Stephen Covey continually reminds us to ask, “Is it S.M.A.R.T.?” That is, is it specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. If you use SMART as a measurement, the fact is, it doesn’t work. Is great communication achievable and realistic? Is it SMART?
We want to believe so. We want to hope so. We want so badly to stand up in front of millions and say something as wisely as, “I have a dream….” Or simpler, we say something wise to our children or friends. Yet, have you ever asked if this was even possible? Martin Luther King didn’t write this speech all by himself and possibly didn’t even create the phrase first. Yet we assume it to be. Based on our personal growth with sight and sound since nee we assume we can do it all alone, all by ourselves. Has any wise communication ever really been written all by one? Not usually. There’s always seems to be a spiritual hand at least.
Did you know that we see things at 1,086 miles per second and we hear at 1,100 feet per second? Our culture is speeding up because it’s crafted a “seeing is best” mindset. Television, Internet, movies, the list goes on. The visual world is communication. Is communication based on visual alone? It’s going that direction, it seems? Doesn’t it?
The truth is that never the two shall meet – seeing and hearing. They are too far apart in the spectrum. In order to hear, truly hear, one must slow down to what seems like a baby crawl in comparison to the speed of light and our sight’s reflection.
Yet, it takes the two to fully understand communication does it not. Not sure, then that is correct. How would the visually impaired or hearing impaired communicate then?
What is the speed of feeling? Is it faster or slower than light or faster or slower than hearing? Is it measured by feet or by miles? No one knows, I don’t think. Its never been quantitatively tested, at least anywhere I could find. Yet can it be? If you would measure feeling, what would that be? Maybe in nanoseconds. Feeling is instinctive and touch is a sense. Then is feeling a sense as well? Or are they both the same? What is different between feeling and hearing? Can we define its difference?
Do you sit and watch television with a sense of touch or smell? Not at least from my blurb tube you can’t. Did you ever think of hearing a television program? Of turning your back to the box and watching the show? Why not? Why not try it and feel this exact disconnect, this gap, that I’m talking about. Strain your ears to hear. Learn again what it means to hear.
What brings sight and sound together? Meaning and definition becomes only throughout our growing years. When a parent points to something moving in the air and calls it a butterfly or a plane. When we sat in class and see pictures of the Eiffel Tower or a bullfight in Spain. There was no sound. All we could do was imagine, place assumptions on what sound could be, would be. And wonder if there will be a time when we will be there, when we will hear. And be able to match a picture of an eagle with one actually flying above.
We see a picture of a beautiful women, you know, the perfect 10, in some magazine. You wish to be like her or to want her. Then one day you meet her in the street and hear her voice. It squeaks as if you were stroking chalk backwards across a blackboard. You can’t wait to run and hide. The disconnect, the gap, was there. But gosh darn it, she’s a 10, you say. In a split second from sight to sound, the desire to be like her to have her dropped, it wasn’t the same.
It is said, “seeing is believing,” is that the truth? How many of us know that isn’t always the truth, yet we’ve heard it so frequently there are assumptions tied to it that makes its seem like the truth. How many assumptions have you made because of things you’ve seen and hear, made between the gap, between the speed of sight and the slower hearing?
What would change in your daily routine if you began really hearing, slowing down to 1,100 feet per second? What would you loose? What would you gain? Would the gain be positive? All thoughts to think about, to mull over in our simple yet complicated little minds.
I encourage you to shift a little in your life and begin to give equal value to hearing if you can. To listening to the universal sounds, to what is far below the speed of light. Light that gives you the ability to see. But to begin to see with your ears.
“Its not what you say but how you say it,” is a phrase frequently told. Is it the truth? Or is the real truth how everyone else hears it that makes a difference?
The gap can never be brought together, that is the truth. All our senses are on different parts of our rainbow. Don’t loose sight of hearing. Practice differently today and tomorrow. Lie in bed and hear the walls. Hear the breeze whenever outdoors. Hear the plants grow. Yes you can once you learn to hear again. Hear your heart beating and watch the cravings for things you know you shouldn’t have go bye. Learn discernment between the two. Close your eyes in the next meeting, what do you hear? What do you not?
As Shakespeare once said, “That is the question?” This is from me to you and for fuel for thought. Just so you grow.
Woman instinctively want to give. She wants perpetually to ooze herself away. She is the nourisher of children, a man, and even society. Society too demands that she give; the first one to blame for things going afoul.
Over time, her energy, her creativeness, leaks until fully drained. Traditionally trained from childhood to congenitally give; and now. The driblets seep out so slowly and unaware. There is seldom time for quiet space or peace unless stolen in seconds or moments in a bathroom break. It seems that only there she finds the quiet; the peace.
This is a strange paradox for woman. They naturally want to give, yet resent the continual drain. Is this conflict? Is the resentment due to the fact that woman gives herself away? Not likely. The leaking is usually done generously. Then what does woman fear? They fear that the leaks are going down the drain without much good. Woman’s work usually cannot be seen in short terms results, thus the impression all is going left unfelt. It isn’t until their children are maturely adults and society’s productionaries that the results are fully declared.
Woman’s creation, more so today, is almost always invisible. It appears in a packed lunch with a bag tossed, clean clothes on the backs of many later tossed back in to be redone. It is the dry-cleaning that magically appears in the closet that man dash off with every morning. It is the bathroom that somehow, as if by magic, gets cleaned. Or the refrigerator restocked and spills disappear.
Up till come lately woman had a purpose. In the pioneer days or during World War II, their lives were purposeful, even indispensable. Today, woman hungers not understanding why for a purpose. Wondering in the desert not by design. The purpose leaving a void that is filled with endless distractions – soap operas, errands, adding more events to their children’s lives. All just searching for the sense of purpose.
When the void can no longer be packed with mothering reasoning does the aspiration of their lives appear a need. Popping in and out on occasion as if it were a beach ball being held under the water. Appearing quickly before being squelched again by something invisible to fill the void. As if, please don’t appear, then it will need to be addressed.
Ask woman their dreams and for a brief moment their eyes sparkle like diamonds, their tone and body change, with language of life after all else; after they find their soul mate, after they have children, after the children are gone, or when they find the perfect job or have time to find their passion. Yet not an action for them except another invisible supportive action for someone else.
Woman take vacations with husbands and/or children in toe. They actually work doubly hard instead. Planning everyone’s needs, packing for others, tossing in their needs in between, usually the one to forget something for themselves that they need. Only to return, glad to be home, with more stress than before. Everyone else not understanding their stress because they return from having a true vacation for themselves. Not noticing it was woman that found the restaurants and miniature golf so they could have their fun. It was they who packed the cooler for the beach and made sure they were comfort cozy during their stay.
Every paid worker expects a day off and a vacation every year. Why does it take woman until she’s 50 to finally get what everyone else gets before?
Woman rarely complains about their lack until there is no more to give. And even then rarely see it as a justifiable need. If woman convince themselves that an hour of solitude is a reasonable need, they would add it to their agenda and not hide in the bathroom or the beauty parlor.
Woman know the cup retains its fullness when down time fills it; that it refreshes the pot for new brewing. Needing a new perspective that it isn’t a void needing to be filled; a space long over due but one surely due.
When woman close their eyes, swirls of relationships, obligations and activates dance in their head. While children see sugarplums and men see nothing. The problem here is how to still the hole; to feed the soul. So that the spirit of woman survives and thrives. Time enough to find their purpose besides all others, besides all else, to see their path as clear as the morning seen in the clear blue sky.
Each generation that women adds a true vacation to her life, an hour, a day, a week, maybe even a year, is all she needs to let the next generation see their purpose sooner without a war, without returning to the trails of wagon wheels. Then to fulfill society’s needs with a taller order. Woman is the pioneer of their own inward strength, always has been, yet to be seen as always will be.
It is woman’s choice for vacation now; for the needed space, that will feed the future. She must be the pioneer in achieving stillness not only for the salvation of woman as a whole but for the future of family, society, humanity.
Catherine’s personal journal is dedicated to the writer in me that is yet to come. It is my playground for new language, for thoughts and ideas not exactly ready to be sprung yet worthy of more than just gathering dust or sitting next to my bedside. A place to experience the merry-go-round, titter totter, tetherball and such. A sand box that doesn’t require rules and the fresh air to explore.
Created on the encouragement of my CoachU instructors on language, Margaret Krigbaum and Edie Pereira Hulbert. Both admired and well-versed in the language playground. I thank them for their patience, understanding, and wisdom, yet more for giving me permission to come out and play.
This is also dedicated to Carly Anderson, another teacher at CoachU, who I met long ago, and who has travelled a similar path to find her right path. Carly, lank you for your encouragement to be free to explore language, to create my own playground.
This playground has no rules, other than to use words not yet used before and to use them in ways that open freedom to writing. Grammar isn't the focus, not punctuation too, just new language to be explored. To add rhythm and soul of what is yet to become.
Identifying the Rejection
In order to change the who of you, or to shift your perspective, so that rejection isn’t a block any further in your life. You first must become aware of what rejections means to us on an individual basis. For what I consider rejection might be entirely different, or it may have a common theme, yet its underground plumbing is never ever the same.
Today, take a few minutes and work with these writing prompts to help you gain a clearer understanding of what rejection means to you and how you can deter it’s hold on your success. If you journal add this to your assignment for the week. Yes, many times you need the space of time to allow all what is boiling below to come to the surface. This takes patience, creative allowing, trust and permission. This can only occur with actually doing this excavational work and the space to let it surface.
Create a bulleted list or if an even bubbles up, write through that as well.
Rejection Prompts
* I feel rejected when (what occurs)…
Examples:
…when people don’t return my calls.
…when people don’t respond to a personal email.
…when people can’t say no, and just leave me hanging on to nothingness
…when people don’t ask me for the business
Even if you “know” that you shouldn’t feel rejected to what you write that doesn’t mean you bury it. Allow it to come to the surface and find out what stems below. Rejection is one of the top ten saboteurs to allowing us to finish our actions to success. Even if you “know” but still have those feelings of rejection. Honor those feelings. They are as important as you are. Allow them to bubble to the surface and don’t push them under like holding a beach ball under water. It takes too much energy from what you want to accomplish, what you want to attract.
* Where is the truth in that rejection? Is it really a truth or an assumption?
Great news! If it’s an assumption, you can toss it out with the bath water and move on.
Then ask what I consider the most magical question in the world, “What is the truth to…[these feelings][this event][this story]?” There will be a smidgen of truth buried somewhere in all that muck. You can toss the muck without honoring the truth. Allowing the human in you to feel that truth and allow it to be something to learn from and not the perfectionism block.
Email me and let me know how this exercise works for you.
Catherine Franz, Life and Business Coach
http://www.abundancecenter.com
Information is coming at us from all directions nowadays. This pace requires us to demand that we receive it fast and predigested in order to inch ahead of the game. This also requires a new filing system method for storing the bites and bytes.
In this article, we will go into greater details on:
* Why slogans are important in today’s society fast-pace information systems.
* What is a slogan?
* Learn the six major types of slogans.
* The many uses for slogans.
* Seven ways to make slogans memorable.
First, lets create a clear definition for a slogan. A slogan is a noun, usually repeated and persuasive that creates a memorable catch phrase, motto, or jingle, that expresses a particular aim or concept. A concept that you want to stick in your audience’s mind like glue to paper.
Second, what makes a slogan memorable? Brevity is first in line – normally 10 words or less. Rhythm is the only exception to brevity. Rhythm is easier to create if there is an association to the receiver’s past – like a particular jingle on TV during their teen years for those now in their 50s. I still hold one from a TV ad long ago, “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.” And I never smoked.
An additional method is through repetition or language vividness. More on this later.
Third, what are the benefits for using slogans? Brevity, as mentioned earlier, meets the requirements of today’s fast pace. Slogans also influence decisions, persuade, and add credibility. Our brains are like filing cabinets. A slogan makes it easier to file and pull when needed. For NLPers, neuro-linguistic programming, slogans create anchors. When people repeat the slogan, then consider it filed.
There are five major slogan types:
(1) A feature -- a uniqueness or difference between a substance, product or object. Ex: “Write an ebook in 7 days.”
(2) A benefit – a result that someone receives. Remember, this saves you [time or money].
(3) A question – thought-provoking methods. “How would you like to be a millionaire in three years?”
(4) A challenge – a dare. Ex – the Marines, “We are only looking for a few good men.”
(5) A structure – a design or collection put together for a single purpose. Ex: “The Abundance Center holds all the information you will ever need to know on abundance.”
Click here to finish reading this article. This click will take you directly to the article located on the Abundance Center's main site.
The number one key to getting business in the real estate
home sales market is to be people’s first contact. The
National Association of Realtor’s last three surveys between
1999 to 2003 said 66% of buyers stayed with the first real
estate agent they contacted yet only 6% of this number came
from web sites. This number is rising as people become more
comfortable finding their information on the Internet.
There are three ways to show your uniqueness on the
Internet: words, pictures, and interactive activities.
What is pulling prospects to visit your web site? You have
the obvious -- strategic alliances with lenders, title reps,
home inspectors, appraisers and attorneys. Here are ten
ideas that aren't obvious.
1. Use balloons besides at the open house. Print an action
slogan on the balloon along with your URL -- web site
address. An action slogan is very important, otherwise
people will not know what the URL is for. When attending an
outdoor event, like a fair, carry them, place them on your
children’s arm so you can find them, and hand them out.
Take the balloons to the kids baseball games or other
sports. If traveling with balloons is difficult, call the
show’s event office and find out if there is going to be
someone there with the equipment for balloon blowing. When
you get there, give them a few dollars to blow a few up for
you. You can order all sizes and balloon shapes:
http://www.gopromos.com/store/category.asp?CL=101A1276A1292
2. On brochures add an action request, such as "Search all
area homes for sale anytime." Or change "anytime" to
"24/7". If you don't have this on your brochures, go to an
office supply store and pick up some colorful Avery labels,
or maybe you have some hanging around the office, and create
them yourself. Also add your URL to that action request.
Go ahead and use the stickers for a lock box action request,
"If this house doesn't fit your needs, visit [URL] for a
complete search of other homes in this area".
To read the remainder of this article, please click here.
You will be forwarded to the article directly. It is located in
the Articles section of the Abundance Center's web site.
According the National Association of Realtors(R) ("NAR")
surveys completed between 1999 and 2003, 66 percent of all
home buyers stick with the first real estate agent they
contact. The number one reason stated was that buyers
perceive all real estate agents to be the same. This means
that two out of every three contacts that you receive when
you are the first contact, you are most likely to get the
business.
There are two major items that get in the way of this not
happening. First, if you don't show them how you are
different from the other realtors and if you don't have a
formalized conversion system.
The NAR news is good news if you are the first contact. But
what do you do if you aren't? What can you do is a more
accurately way of asking? Agents know there is a wide
difference between experience and competence. This doesn't
really matter though, agents main target isn't selling to
other agents.
The key is to create a marketing process that pushes you in
front of the line of other realtors.
The 2003 NAR report stated that 71 percent of buyers use the
Internet to gather information on buying a home yet only 6
percent use the Internet to find an agent. This means that
65 percent of the people visiting realty-type web sites and
just there for information. The 2003 numbers are an
increase from 41 percent and 3 percent in 2002. Keeping at
this same growth rate, the 2004 prediction would be 91
percent and 9 percent.
The Internet is the fifth method to find agents. The first
four are: referrals, repeat business, met agent at open
house or office walk-in. The fifth with the Internet were
yard signs. The least effective at 1% were advertising
trinkets and direct mail.
Click here to read the remainder of this article. It is located
in the Articles section of the Abundance Center.
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