Beach Report from Sunny Sri Lanka

Welcome back!

This is a quick video report from the beach on my recent trip to Sri Lanka. I’m always interested in how people do business, and to go somewhere which has been hit hard by the tsunami a few years back as well as enduring a long war, it was a real eye opener.

I talked to people, who are out there trying to make a living and build their own little businesses, but there is a sense of optimism for the future with the long conflict with the Tamil Tigers now over.

It has to be said the situation in the north is still pretty bad with the refugee situation and we noticed a heavy military presence in most cities – but the country and people are beautiful – definately put it on your travel list!

The video shows me talking with Chai (sorry about the shaky action) and I spoke with many other people, mostly selling their wares and trips around the country.

We took a 3 day trip around the country and it was a fantastic – elephants, crocs, tea plantations high in the mouintains, curry, beers, arrack (local spirit), goats at the train station and lots more all spring to mind.

The Art of Selling

This weekend we opened up our house to the public as part of an ‘art trail’ with close to 1000 people coming in to see our exhibition of work. You may or not know but I draw cartoon illustration and this weekend put on my work on show along with other artists as part of the Bristol Art Trail.

This was a great opportunity to talk with people interested in my work and hopefully sell some. Just as any online selling, building the relationship with your prospect and sharing your story is a vital part of making sales. People wanted to know about the background to the work and my first sale was based on, obviously a liking of the artwork, but also the background story to that work.

I also made sure I had a sheet so interested punters could leave their name and email updates and news. So we had the traffic (500 people on Saturday, and around 400 on Sunday), an email capture form and a variety of products (my artwork) some of which is based on a story book I will be publishing. Blowing up images to large prints from the upcoming book certainly grabbed interest and now I have a list of people gagging to buy when it is published!

In 2009 Believe that you will Succeed

Wow..I just listened to a great video over at Lee McIntyres blog..If you are unsure of your own abilities, or struggling to get things moving online I think you should hear this. Lee has been at the bitter end of the struggle for online financial independence. Working alongside his day job he worked like a nutter to make an income and had his fair share of ups and downs.

Today, Lee is one of the most respected marketers online for his integrity and honesty as well being very successful!

Click here

Don’t forget you can still grab the leaked chapter of Lee’s revealing Mailing Lists Unleashed which lays out his successful mailing list strategy >> Mailing Lists Unleashed

Inspirational Girl

I had a wake up call recently.

A friend of my family was over in the UK visiting and got herself into a jam. She had lost her credit card and the replacement was no good for cash. She also got let down by a friend in London, so had virtually no money to last the few days before flying home to Australia.

On hearing the news I had no problem helping her out and took a short train ride over to her hotel. She was out in Salisbury for the day as she had a travel pass, so I had a drink in a bar up the road to wait the half hour or so.

I took her back to the bar as she was hungry and I quickly learned how much fighting spirit and joy this girl of 23 years has. Being pretty much 95% blind has not made this girl hesitate or hold back from living her life. This was her third trip to Europe and she intended a lot more ‘living’. Travelling can be pretty hard work at the best of times but Marian took it all in her stride.

I think the story speaks for itself in terms of what we can achieve and how thankful we should be for what we have. But yep, ‘wake up call’ springs to mind!!

Leaving Microsoft to change the World

Imagine not having a book to read when you were going up as a kid? We take this stuff for granted but in 1998, John Wood, a rising executive at Microsoft, took a soul-searching trip to the Himalayas that changed his life. What started as a trekking holiday in Nepal became a spiritual journey, and then a mission: to change the world one book and one child at a time by setting up libraries in the developing world. He was soon driven to leave his career with only a loose vision of the change he wanted to bring to the world.

I’ll say no more just have a read of the site and read the book

http://www.leavingmicrosoftbook.com/index.html

Hats off to John I think..