Slow forward to present day, the kids found that guitar from 1st verse  and got it out of the case. “Teach us how to play Dad !?” Dad’s forgotten most of it, but a strum sounds pretty good for a while, provided I can remember how to tune the thing. Twannggg – a busted string – better replace them all. “Dad can I get a guitar ?” I bought a cheap one at the auctions for $50, but I have 5 daughters. So it goes – last Xmas I buckled, new guitar for Emily, a ukelele each for young Sophie and youngest Monica, plus I picked up a Banjo at an auction because I just love the look and the sound. But that’s as far as my Musical Teaching career goes! I’ve looked at quite a few guitar courses on the internet. There’s one particular course which looks to be just right for a born-again beginner like myself and “The New Corrs” and will make a lot of savings with several daughters wanting to learn, and we can do it in the comfort of our own home, no travel etc.   

        I know that my musical bones are aching to stretch themselves. A few weeks ago I went to my cousin Matt’s place in Oratia Valley, Auckland to celebrate our wives’ birthdays. His wife Catherine, and my wife Kate, share April 7th, just a ‘few’ years apart, and just so I don’t forget, it is also Tax Filing day in New Zealand !! Anyway, Matt is a gifted musician who is guitarist and singer in 3 bands (as well as a PhD in Biochemistry) but his main band is called   Leonard, and to celebrate and as a surprise (pleasant I hope) we sang a duet for my wife, a Beatles’ number, “I Saw Her Standing There” . Matt on his lead guitar, the guy on the bass, who looked for all the world like Elvis Costello, another mate also called Matt on the second lead, and the drummer who looked like the actor Colin Farrell. I felt like I was in a celebrity band ). Anyway we belted out this song, and apparently it sounded all right – too loud to tell probably, but it felt good, and I really envied the ‘boys’, well they’re in their early 30s, so old boys, but a lot younger than yours truly. I really wanted to hold one of those guitars and make the music while I sang the song. What a creative rush it must be. When you get up and sing and strum, something liberating happens – it’s good for the soul !!

 I’m not alone in this urge – there is a huge move to ukeleles and guitars as people rediscover the fun of making their own fun, instead of watching others entertain them. This weekend is New Zealand Music Month Guitar Record Challenge, and there will be somewhere around 2000 people with their guitars, singing a Kiwi classic by Jordan Luck, called “Why Does Love Do This To Me”. Check out this video, check out the Kiwi accents ), check out the Harmony. One player is a pro, one is a beginner, spot the difference, although this beginner is also a rising tennis star. Enjoy )

PS Next time I’ll be trying out this Guitar course – subscribe to my blog and see me make a very cheap music video ), and other stuff.

You’ve ‘confessed’, you’ve gone ‘cold turkey’. Now you want to stay ‘On The Wagon’.

 Whether you are an Internet Consumer or an Internet Producer, you need to get organised with a system for storage and retrieval of valuable information, such as emails and website adresses, and of data, which may be text, images, audio or video.

1)  EMAIL – Decide which senders are okay, and delete, block and unsubscribe the rest. Create 10 main folder categories to sort emails you wish to keep for reference. This gives you an easy overview of your email universe, and stops you from the ‘Overloaded Inbox’. Then each list of subcategories that you evolve in each category can be also limited at say 5-10, so that when you click on the little dropdown arrow by the category name, the ‘Folder Tree’ does not shoot down off the bottom of the page ) . Examples of emails which are important to store could be receipts for purchases and login details for product websites. If you have emails you want to peruse later then make a folder for them. The important thing is to keep your INBOX lean. Have a look at Paula Brett’s blog and see where you might fit as an ‘emailee’.

2)  PASSWORD MANAGER  - Get yourself a secure password manager. Make it a habit to add the username and password for each secure site you are member of. eg memberships and support desks. Make sure you do this straight away with a new membership, or you will forget the details and waste time finding them. I use Roboform, which lets you store about 10 free logins, before you need to upgrade to the pro version which has unlimited slots. It is also excellent for instant form filling and will save you heaps of time and allow you to generate passwords when needed. Google has a basic Autofill tool, but I don’t know how secure it is.

3)   FAVOURITE WEBSITES – The object is to limit the Favourites dropdown menu to 10 categories, to start with. Have you ever noticed categories that made sense 12 months ago, now seem irrelevant ? Your mind is expanding – change the labels on the filing cabinet. If you already have Favourite websites that dropdown into a maze of categories that no longer make sense, then start a new category called At The Top, or some other title staring with the letter A (eg Action Today, At Home Business so that it will be easy to find at the top of the menu. Create a list of 10 subcategories, and these will be for websites that you use a lot, making them quick and easy to locate. This is your new FRESH SLATE tree. Then you can go through the old categories and delete/reassign the saved urls into the new Tree, according to how relevant they still are. As long as you have the 10 rule going for each branch of your folder tree, then you can keep your menu display small and save time and distraction when locating the favourite.

4)   HARD DRIVE  - When it comes to retrieving stored data, it is important to have easy recall, and once again don’t have too many Major Categories. So you might have stored it under Documents>Subject eg Internet Marketing>Name of  Vendor>Name of Product with Date of Acquisition. Generally I look for stuff based on the Vendor eg John Thornhill or Ewen Chia etc, but if you want to cross reference based on say Listbuilding, then rather than filling your hard drive with duplication, you can just have a subfolder with a brief note on which vendor product is the source. Remember when you unzip a compressed or ‘zipped’ file to access the contents, you are duplicating content and eating up disc space, so delete the zip file to keep your folders uncluttered, and preserve disc storage.

All Righty Then - now we are ready to go out and meet some people on the Internet, but stay sober.  Look in again soon, in fact why not subscribe to my blog and get notified of my next update, when I’ll give some tips on dealing with fast-talking pickup artists and other sales people who might try to ‘spike your drink’  :o)

Ciao JJ

Auckland War Memorial Museum and Cenotaph

Anzac Day on April 25 th, is a national day of Remembrance in New Zealand and Australia, for the Dead of all wars that our countries have participated in. The word Anzac comes from Australia and New Zealand Army Corps and came into parlance after the Allied invasion of Turkey at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915. Casualties were enormous on all sides, and the invasion ended in failure and withdrawal after 8 months. The tragic experience of our troops under Imperial command, was the beginning of the sense of Nationhood and separation from the Colonial mentality of  Great Britain, the King and Empire of the WW1 era.

When you travel around New Zealand and Australia, it seems every town has a memorial for the dead of both World Wars. The losses from WW1 especially were heavy. It is poignant to see the names, often of more than one from the same family, and to reflect on the price they paid.

My grandfathers were at the right age for WW1.  Thomas Edwin Olds was badly wounded at the Somme, but survived to a full life as The Reverend Thomas Olds, married to Daisy Calvert, with two daughters, Kathleen (my mother) and Margaret, and one son, David Leonard. John Thompson Kelly, an apothecary’s assistant in England before the war, served in ‘ The Forgotten Army of  Salonika’ , survived to marry Florence Emily Riddell, and emigrated to New Zealand to become a dairy farmer in the King Country of the North Island (so-called because of the Maori King movement of the 1850s). They had two sons, John Riddell (my father) and James Alexander and a daughter, Barbara.

This next generation were just at the right age for service in WW2. When once I asked my father, a farm boy, why he volunteered in 1942 at the age of 20 yrs, he said they were worried they’d miss the chance to travel, and the war would be over before they got there. In 1945, at age 23 yrs, I’m sure he felt differently. He had served as Artillery Gunner in the Pacific, landing on the Treasury Islands in the Solomon Group, and then later in Italy, witnessing the end of the war in Trieste, even caught a jeep ride with a Soviet major on a little excursion outside Trieste. Fortunately for me, he came home in one piece. His brother Alex served in the Royal New Zealand Navy as a signaller first on HMNZS Kaiwaka, a coastal minesweeper, then transferred to the Aircraft Carrier HMS Patroller, which was in commissioning trials in the North Irish sea. His majesty no longer needed him after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

My mother Kathleen saw her elder brother David go off to train as a fighter pilot in the US, he served in the Fleet Air Arm, saw action over the Normandy landings, came back to England as an instructor, married his beautiful Greek fiance and 3 weeks later was killed when his plane crashed into the sea on a student training flight. Sub-Lieutenant David Leonard Olds, Royal New Zealand Naval Volunteer Reserve, died 21 August 1944, aged 23 years. Buried at St Bartholomews Churchyard Yeovilton in England.

 What motivates people on both sides of a conflict, to sacrifice their lives and liberty?  In WW1 it was Empire and Honour. In WW2 it was the threat of Naziism and Fascism. The Cold War was about Communism. The War on Terror is about religious extremism. The cost is not just the actual destruction of life and property, but the aftermath of families and communities destroyed, the absence of lives not lived, the agonies of lifelong physical and mental damage. 

Is war necessary for human civilisation to progress? I don’t believe so. To quote Dwight D Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe in WW2, 34th president of the USA      “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” To quote Jimi Hendrix,  rockstar guitarist      “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” And finally Bhudda      “Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.” Jesus “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. “   Muhammad “Do you love your creator? Love your fellow-beings first”  

Peace, out  )

How do you feel ?

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”

As a New Zealander, I feel quiet pride in the achievements of Sir Edmund Hillary, who along with Sherpa Tensing, conquered Mt Everest for the first time in history 29 may1953. When Sir Ed died in Jan 2008, by coincidence our family was holidaying at Waihi Beach in the Bay of Plenty of New Zealand, where Sir Ed kept a holiday home right on the beach. We went down to see where we might have met the Great Man in days gone by, and were touched by the sight of flowers placed on an old bench seat which he undoubtedly would have sat upon, at the edge of the unfenced lawn giving straight on to the beautiful ocean beach.

As I watched my two youngest daughters play happily on the beach, blissfully unaware of a real feeling of mourning gripping New Zealanders, my mind went back to two personal memories of meeting Sir Ed in the flesh. Even in a relatively small nation such as New Zealand, Joe Kiwi rarely bumps into a World Famous Person such as Sir Ed. The fact that he owned a bach (crib) near to my father’s small home town of Waihi, was a talking point in itself :o)

 I have always remembered the first sighting of  the Great Man (6ft5in) when I was boy. He must have been touring the country after the Everest expedition, and my father took me and my little brother Conal (good Irish name) to a tree planting in our local parish of Ranui. We came home with a photograph, and an autograph on a piece of paper, which survived for many years.

Fast forward to about 2005. Sir Edmund had lived an adventurous life, first man to the South Pole since Scott, Himalayan and Ganges-to-Sky expeditions, Himalayan Trust for building schools and hospitals in Nepal, family tragedy, missing the Erebus Crash, High Commissioner to India. I was on a plane to Dunedin to attend a Veterinary Conference, when I noticed the rear view of a distinctive head of bouffant grey hair a few seats up the aisle. I have a memory that never forgets a face, and in this case a hair-do ) I just knew it was Sir Ed. He was now well into his eighties, travelling economy on a small commercial flight, and when I saw him leaving the terminal, frail and slow with his wife at his side, my urge to say hello, and perhaps ask for another autograph, gave way to a feeling of respect for his privacy. It was enough to have seen him in the flesh, and remember the occasion to retell my children. 

Of course Sir Ed was always a humble hero, and called himself an ordinary man who had an extra-ordinary life – “You don’t have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things – to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated.       Sir Ed also alluded to the fact that as a youth he was told that he would never be any good at sport because of his build :o) - that was his motivation !!                                                    

No, I haven’t just sneezed, I’m talking about the Japanese concept of ‘continuous improvement’ or literally from ‘Kai’ = change/correct   and ‘Zen’ = good . This produces a mindset of always looking for ways to improve things, thus being creative rather than reactive. Compare this to mottos like ‘ If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ or as we say downunder ‘She’ll be right mate’ , even  ‘Hakuna Matata’ no worries!

While the The Kaizen Way is normally associated with Big Business like Toyota or Canon and evolved from the postwar rebuild of Japan, it can be applied by anybody, to any process or product. It doesn’t mean revolutionary change, but more sustainable, gradual improvement in ‘baby step’ fashion, and it needs less time out of your day. By implementing simple small steps, you avoid  fear and stress, which tend to lead to procrastination, blocking success and the achievement of desired goals. The other benefit is that it implies that we can never attain complete perfection, that there is always room to improve, and reflects the dynamic nature of  time and tide, which waits for no-one )

For example, I noticed while reading another blog, that the author was replying to comments with a bracketed answer below the comment, thus avoiding a separate post. I would rather my blog sidebar just references the comments from visitors, without my answers. I can do this from my control panel. This saves space and streamlines the post. Perhaps an associated small improvement would be to notify the commenter by email when I answer the comment, which gives a good reason to revisit my site and look around again, perhaps subscribe if not already, and make my visitor feel more valued.

This thought process involves me looking at what’s around in a positive way, giving credit to fellow ‘netizens’ where it is due, and allowing me to have small successes on the way to a profitable online presence. I opted-in to this big name blogger, and on his confirmation page he had shrunk all the whitelist stuff to a small box with links, and then a video popped up which built more recognition in my mind – I noticed that it didn’t stream that well because my wireless broadband is a bit patchy, but it is an upgrade for the future. Then I thought how about a little audio file, which makes me more real to my visitor, would be an improvement …… and probably download more easily.

Anyway Dear Reader, I felt this was an important subject to enlarge on, so I’d love to hear your thoughts.

2009 will be remembered as the year of the Big Bailouts, where governments have stepped in to save the Banking System from collapse. Where did our Governments get these huge reserves of cash?  In reality the Governments are borrowing that money off the banking system.  Not only are taxpayers taking over the ‘toxic debts’ created by the banks, allowing them to keep their ‘toxic profits’, but we are doing so by taking on more debt, giving the banks another asset to profit from over many years. In effect we are paying twice to support the banking systems profit structure.   There is an essential absurdity to this, because it is like borrowing from ‘ourselves’ and running up a crippling interest bill to ourselves.

Where is a ‘bankrupt’ banking system  getting the money? The thing to understand is that the ‘banking system’ is not ‘ourselves’, they are profit-making international cartels who have captured the monopoly licence of the ‘creation of money’. Our sovereign nation with it’s democratically elected parliament, our constitution and our laws represent ‘ourselves’ and the creation of the money supply is actually our nation’s Sovereign right, not the Banks.The real heart of the problem is the ‘fractional reserve system’ of money creation, which the banking system controls, and the present monetary crisis is due to the banking system having created so much debt-based money on high risk collateral, which they are now off-loading onto the taxpayer as security of last resort.

Watch the short video below, and you will understand the massive Fraud of the Banks against Joe Citizen. Knowledge is Power !

You’ve confessed your addiction to information, you’ve spent way more than you want to admit to your spouse . You probably don’t know where exactly  all those Killer Software Products, Blueprints, Businesses-in-Boxes, PLR articles, and Monthly memberships are on your hard-drive. To get CONTROL you must be RUTHLESS.  

CANCEL any current memberships that are not actively valuable NOW in building your internet business, and get REFUNDS on any purchase that is still within the 60 day Clickbank money back guarantee (or whatever Affiliate network you bought through- a big advantage of only buying through them). Don’t feel guilty if you’ve not got around to checking out the product, or you feel some sense of old-fashioned obligation because you’ve had a look inside and you might use it someday. The person who took your money, no matter how honest and well-meaning, knows that 95% of  buyers will probably never do anything with the product. There is always more WORK in the product, than you are led to believe, regardless of how valuable you might think the product is to you. The money back guarantee is there to be used UNCONDITIONALLY.

Next, take an ‘axe’ to your inbox. DELETE and UNSUBSCRIBE without FEAR or FAVOUR – speedread the ‘From’ and ‘Subject’ columns. If the sender is not one of your top five marketers, then get rid of them (with the exception of Masterclassmates ) They will send you another one tomorrow – if you haven’t unsubscribed. So many emails are from competing affiliates. It’s a good habit to block delete at the end of a day or a week, any unopened email, as you have probably opened all your favourite senders. At the very least, move the unopened emails into a reference folder and out of your inbox.

If you are like me, you could have hundreds of emails clogging up your inbox. A good way to prune them is to click the ‘From’ column, which orders every sender alphabetically, and you can easily see whole chunks of senders you have no interest in, so DELETE. Then do it again with the ‘Received’ column so that they order by date received, which will let you cull all those out-of-date ones. If you do this for ten minutes you will be amazed at how you can empty your inbox. Unsubscribing can be time-consuming, but worthwhile if there is a former favourite that is now out of favour, we wouldn’t be human if we weren’t somwhat fickle.

Well that’s enough slashing and burning for now. Stay tuned for my next post about how to start with a  fresh slate.

ciao jj

Internet users generally are all suffering from Information Overload, not just Internet Marketers. Even the casual surfer gets bombarded with information in text, pictorial,audio and video. How do we process all this information in a useful way?

The most basic approach is to organise our time and give priority to tasks and topics. For example, what is the first thing you do after you turn on the computer? Do you open your email, launch your browser and check the news stories, open up your favourite online game like bookworm or freecell, or go straight to your blog and work on a new post? Whatever your priority, when you finally get down to reading then the faster you can do it, the more progress you can make towards completion. How fast do you read? How much do you comprehend? How much can you take at a sitting.

 I remember reading somewhere that the information age is doubling the amount of knowledge every 5 years. I see stuff in my children’s school science books, that was university level, back in the day. In 1973, graduating from Massey University after 5 years of  study, where we were required to digest huge amounts of information, mostly text and pictorial, the academic side of a very hands-on practical profession in Veterinary Medicine and Surgery, I increasingly found myself with a mental block towards the written word. I became very unwilling to read professional journals and textbooks, which was a necessity for continuing education, and when I did force myself to read anything, I found my attention span was very short. I felt that I was fighting a losing battle against the proliferation of knowledge.  

 Finally after several years of mental constipation, it became such an issue for me that I did a speed-reading course. I had to ‘unlearn’ my reading habits instilled from my childhood.  Like ’sub-vocalisation’, which is when you say the words mentally or even verbally as you read; re-reading because of losing the place on the page; focussing on too small a section of text, and many other revelations. This really did open my mind to accelerated learning and gave confidence that you can continue to learn about new subjects quickly, and that in fact your intelligence can increase through better understanding of any subject you care to study.

Such knowledge should empower you to embrace the challenges of building an online business, with an enjoyment of the process of gaining the new knowledge and understanding. Audio and video information should make it even better for us, as long as the presenters make them fun, informative and relevant and respect that our time is as valuable as theirs.

I will be posting a review of three experts in the field, so if you are interested in giving your brain a spring clean, please sign up to my blog and I’ll let you know. Until then, here’s to life in the Fastlane of the Information Highway.

ciao jj

My blog is a very therapeutic thing.  I started off by trying a few posts that included links to things, just out of pure curiosity and excitement at being able to make something happen on the web – highlight the word, press the link button, and add the cloaked link. I felt like one of the Spiders that build the online marketing Web . If you’re like me, you’ve been a Fly in the Web for a while – getting entangled from time to time,  spending time and money and thrashing about.  Sometimes I’m a Fly on the Wall – watching other Flies being caught in a sales page. Now when I walk on the web, I am more aware of the Spiders and the quality of the Silk they spin from.  It’s all a bit like the Lion King and the circle of life!

Homecooking

 My life as a Fly is drawing to an end, and I hope to metamorphose in this analogy, to a Spider, only I want to build my part of the web from good quality Silk, so that my Flies are happy!  Now that I’ve spun this rather clumsy yarn I’ll leave you with an awesome image, photographed at the macabre insistence of one of my daughters - and I have no place in my story for the Bee, I’m sorry to say.

Tall Batting Order

This morning, I clicked on a couple of links from my inbox email.  They were from names I know, they weren’t any of the daily Launch Fever Offers. I was taken to a couple of sales page videos, I checked how long each video  would take to watch, because now I begrudge 10 minutes if I’m not in the mood. I looked at a couple of how-to videos and I started to feel anxious,  none of it seemed to make sense. I felt very out-of-my-depth and hopeless. I looked at a couple of other Masterclass blogs, so professional and promotional. Everyone in my inbox was trying to sell me something or give me something, so that they can sell me something later. I walked out of my garage office into the sunshine and cut some bunches of grapes from my pet vine, said hello to Tintin (the dog) and went inside to make a coffee.

New Zealand was playing India in the second day of the first cricket test ( a game that can last for 5 days FYI – if you are American). I watched a few overs on Sky TV and began to feel better. Successful batsmen bide their time, they wait for the right ball to hit, they accumulate runs over a period of time. They know there is always another ball to score from. I realised later on that I had actually suffered a panic attack – so much rides on the success of my online business that I am getting stressed about it.

This is about staying focussed on my game plan. I am in the Thornhill Masterclass for 36 weeks, to learn how to create my own product, and market it online. I will learn what I need to know when the time is right, when I’m ready, just as a batsman waits for the balls he can hit, and lets the rest go. There is no need to worry about the runs that others are getting on the board, because there will always be another game, another day.

I was relieved to see an email from John Thornhill to Masterclass students, letting us know that we need to be wary of getting side-tracked into other products or programmes, even though they could be very good, simply because of the overload factor. I need to keep writing to my blog, it is the one part of the internet that I can control, where I am creating content in the only way I know so far.  I let my little light shine, as the song goes. This week we are in the process of brainstorming topics from which we will choose the niche(s) we are most suited to. Now I feel better.

I am Sachin Tendulkar (the little Master) at the crease, Mike Filsaime is the bowler, no worries mate !