Students Of Success

Cloves, which symbolize dignity, are the unopened flower buds of a tropical tree in the same family as allspice and guavas. The tree is native to the Molucca Islands (also known as the Spice Islands) in the Indian Ocean, but are now cultivated throughout Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Tanzania and Brazil.

The word “clove” derives from the Latin word clavus, meaning nail, and refers to the tack-like shape of the dried bud.

Cloves first arrived in Europe around the 4th century, but the spice remained a rare luxury until about 1500 when increased sea trade with the orient brought cloves in quantity into European kitchens.

In Moluccan folklore, villagers treated blossoming clove trees like a pregnant woman. No man could approach them wearing a hat, no noise could be made near them and no light or fire could be carried past them at night for fear they would not bear fruit. Some Moluccans still plant a clove tree at the birth of a child, with the belief that if the tree flourishes, so will the child.

Chinese medicine has used cloves to treat indigestion, diarrhea, hernia, ringworm and athlete’s foot and other fungal infections. In traditional Indian Ayurvedic medicine, the spice is used to treat respiratory and digestive problems. The brilliant medieval German abbess, composer and herbalist, Hildegard of Bingen recommended cloves in the treatment of gout.

Toothache is still effectively treated with cloves as the eugenol in the spice has both analgesic and antiseptic qualities. A bruised clove or some clove oil on cotton wool is held in the mouth near the tooth. Some dentists still use cloves to disinfect ailing root canals and mix clove oil with zinc oxide for temporary fillings.

In the kitchen cloves make a powerful contribution to both sweet and savory dishes. Generally whole cloves are removed from the dish before serving. To avoid discoloration of the dish, clear clove oil may be substituted for powdered cloves. As a testimony to the power of the scent of cloves, the clove-studded pomander is a perennial favorite as a room or closet freshener and moth repellent.

Cloves have an affinity for green beans, pea soup, root vegetables, fruit compotes and salads, spiced teas, mulled beverages and pickles of all types. People on a bland diet should avoid cloves as the spice can be irritating to the intestinal tract. However, ground cloves, made without the clove head, are milder than the whole spice.

Here’s a wonderful cold summer soup using cloves and cardamom:

Summer Root Vegetable Soup

2 Tbsp. virgin olive oil

2-3 large shallots, peeled and diced

5-6 small carrots, peeled and diced

5-6 small turnips, peeled and diced

1 small jalapeno or other hot pepper, diced

¾ tsp. ground cardamom

¼ tsp. ground cloves

3 cups chicken stock

1 Tbsp. basmati rice

2 cups of milk (or milk substitute such as soy or nut milk).

Heat the oil in a large, heavy pot. Sauté the shallots and the hot pepper for several minutes, then add the carrots and turnips. Continue cooking for about five minutes before stirring in the spices, chicken stock and rice. Bring to a boil, then lower heat, cover and simmer for 25 minutes. Allow the soup to cool before blending it in batches until smooth. Add the milk and chill thoroughly. Garnish with a little fresh parsley.

Here’s a great lemon and ginger pickle to serve with a curry or other spicy dish (it’s also great on cheese sandwiches!):

Spiced Honey Lemon & Ginger Pickles

10 medium lemons, washed, dried and cut into quarter inch slices without peeling (discard as many seeds as possible as these will make the syrup bitter)

1 cup plus 1 Tbsp. honey

1 cup apple cider vinegar

1 cinnamon stick, broken into several pieces

½ tsp. whole allspice

3 Tbsp. fresh ginger, chopped fine

5 whole cloves

½ tsp. of salt.

Combine the honey, vinegar and salt in a non-reactive (e.g. glass, porcelain or stainless steel) saucepan. Tie the spices in a cheesecloth bag and add to the pan. Boil for five minutes. Add the lemons and ginger and bring back to the boil for another minute, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Discard the spices, pack the lemons into hot, sterilized half-pint jars, cover with the syrup and seal at once.

Another excellent preserve recipe using cloves is the following one for spiced gooseberries courtesy of Gingerich Farms in Canby, Oregon. The recipe can be used as a jam or syrup or as an accompaniment to a meat dish.

Spiced Gooseberries

2 quarts of gooseberries

4 and a half cups of brown sugar

1 cup of cider vinegar

2 inch cinnamon stick

8 cloves

¼ tsp. ground nutmeg

2 whole allspice.

Wash the berries, remove the stems and blossom ends. Place sugar, vinegar and spices together in a large pot, add half a cup of water and boil for five minutes. Add the gooseberries and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes. When the berries are tender and the syrup is thick, strain out the spices and turn into hot sterile jars and seal.

It’s a marketing dream come true: A potential customer, looking for what you have to offer, types a few words into her favorite search engine and voila! She is led directly to your website where she can go from “prospect” to “customer.”

The best part is, it didn’t cost you anything (except time and elbow grease) to get to the top of her results. Unless, of course you paid for someone else’s time and elbow grease. Even so, you’ve got a sale and your customer got what she was looking for. Sounds like the classic win-win situation.

So, what’s not to love about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Plenty – if your efforts stop there. Because getting your site to the top of the search result heap is only half the battle. Leave the other half un-fought, and you’re actually doing yourself more harm than good.

Lets not forget that the ultimate goal of this whole exercise is to eventually make sales. And last I checked, search engine spiders weren’t spending a whole lot of money.

When an actual human being gets to your site and sees a page designed for a robot she feels a bit used. Kind of like being pitched to by the used car salesman in the polyester suit. She reads copy that, rather than telling her how she might benefit from what you have to offer, repeats variations of her search term over and over. This tells her you don’t care about her, you only want her money. She clicks away and searches some more.

This hurts you in at least three ways:

1. You lose the sale. So you don’t make any money.

2. She still visited, as did everyone else sucked in by your high placement. Depending on your hosting arrangement, you could be paying for more traffic. So you may actually lose money.

3. Most importantly, your prospect now has a negative impression of you. Even if you clean up your act she’s less likely to ever click on your link again. It’s called negative branding and, you guessed it: It causes you to lose money.

It also has the potential of hurting you even more in the future, as search engine spiders are getting smarter every day. Not only do they eventually catch on if you mindlessly repeat phrases to trick them, they also notice if searchers are always coming back to the results in a hurry because you weren’t what they were looking for. If that is the case, they won’t continue to recommend you so highly.

It takes more time and more effort to develop content that is both human and spider friendly. But not doing so can actually do you more harm than good.

Does your marketing forge an emotional connection with your prospects? It can. Lisa Packer delivers persuasive, targeted copywriting that dramatically increases your business. Unleash the power of words on behalf of your business by visiting http://www.dramatic-copy.com today.

One problem-solving technique you should master is changing perspectives to redefine the problem.

The way you define a problem is often the key to solving it. Take a current problem from your life that you’re having difficulty solving. Then ask yourself: How can this problem be redefined as a financial problem? A health problem? A time management problem? A human resource or staffing problem? A technology problem? A prioritization problem? A communication problem? An education problem?

Here’s a simple example. Let’s say you’re a guy who really wants to have a girlfriend, but you’re becoming frustrated by a lack of progress in this area. How have you been defining the problem? As a problem meeting the right person? How else could you define it? Maybe your real problem is your career, which forces you to work in a male dominated industry — might the problem be a lot easier to solve if you worked in a female-dominated industry? Maybe your hobbies keep you homebound and alone, so you have to go out of your way to meet new people instead of naturally encountering them in the course of your normal life. Maybe your communication skills are poor, turning people away before they get a chance to know you. Maybe you’re putting everything else first in your life, and you’re not giving this problem the attention it requires. Maybe your finances are so poor you can’t afford to go out much.

Consider how the problem would change if you were to tackle it via one of these alternate definitions. What would happen to the problem if… you were a masterful and confident communicator? your income doubled? you worked in a totally different industry? you moved? you made it your #1 priority in life? you recruited a partner to help you solve it? you read 20 books on the subject?

Some problems that are really tough to solve via one route will more easily succumb to another approach. For example, many problems can be solved just by throwing enough money at them. While obviously money can’t solve every problem, money can hire a personal assistant, a nanny, a housekeeper, a private tutor, a personal coach, a personal trainer, etc.

A simple perspective change can open up a whole new world of possible solutions. When you consider only one perspective — one limited way of defining the problem — you automatically rule out an enormous number of potentially viable solutions. But blanket the problem with a multi-perspective attack, and your odds of success increase dramatically.

Often we fall into a pattern of being stuck with a single favorite perspective. I.e. if all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. My personal weakness is technology. I love solving problems via technology — a little PHP and MySQL can automate just about anything — so I often get stuck trying to solve problems via technology when they’d be more easily solved another way. It’s hard to break the favorite-perspective addiction, but when you start thinking through what it costs in terms of overall effectiveness, that helps provide the push needed to branch out.

You can use this approach with business problems too. Reframe your current big challenge as a marketing problem, a sales problem, a product development problem, a financing problem, a hiring problem, a “not firing” problem, a focus problem, a procedures problem, a values problem, etc.

Sometimes you’ll find that a multi-perspective solution is best. You may see that there are two or three perspectives which individually aren’t sufficient, but together they can provide a complete solution.

Pull out one of your big hairy problems, and try it for yourself. See what the problem looks like from different angles. What would happen if you threw money at your weight loss problem by setting up a home gym and hiring a personal trainer? What if you threw people and brainpower at your financial difficulties by forming a mastermind group? What about throwing education at your spiritual troubles by studying the lives of people you admire?

Copyright © Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People
http://www.stevepavlina.com
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog (blog)
http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles (articles)

Steve is intensely growth-oriented. He trained in martial arts, ran the L.A. Marathon, and graduated from college in three semesters with two degrees. He can juggle, count cards at blackjack, and make damn good guacamole. Steve is also a polyphasic sleeper, sleeping just 2-3 hours per day and only 20 minutes at a time. So chances are good that he’s awake right now.

1. Sign-up to win web site awards. When you win, some award
sites publish your web site link, name and description on their
site.

2. Join online business associations or clubs. If you join, they
will usually list all their members on their web site. It will
give your business extra exposure.

3. Utilize a simple form of viral marketing. Write or have
someone else write a small report with your ad included on it
and allow others to give it away.

4. Improve your business by promoting customer feedback. Tell
them you want their honest opinions about your business, good or
bad.

5. Design your packaging so it sells your products. Utilize
colors and lettering that make your product more attractive to
your prospects.

6. Compare your product’s guarantee to your main competitors.
Find a niche were your can design your guarantee to be more
powerful.

7. Try not to assume your audience understands everything in
your ad copy. If you have words they may not know the meaning
to, define them.

8. Build alliances with other online businesses. You could trade
links or ads, create joint venture deals, cross promote your
products, etc.

9. Design your web site to be a valuable resource for people.
Include original content, links to other interesting web sites,
ebooks, software, etc.

10. Compete with the highly branded businesses by practicing
good customers service, strong product quality and speedy
service.

When I bought my first digital camera, complete with its little viewing screen, people would invariably ask, “Can I see the picture?” Children would ask me to take their picture, and then run over and ask to see it, then go back and ask me to take another!

It’s great to have all that excitement, but were my pictures actually the best they could be?

Here are 7 tips that I have learned that have improved the quality of my photos.

1. Use the high resolution setting. At the start, I had the resolution set to medium. That way I was able to take about 100 pictures before having to download the memory card to my computer’s hard disk. That was fine for viewing on screen, but then one day I wanted to do an 8×10 paper version, and the results were disappointing. Now I always use the highest resolution my cameras can provide. I have had to spend some money on more memory cards, but it was worth it.

2. Use a Tripod. Even the slightest movement of the camera can create a blurry image. Invest in a tripod. I have also found that when taking group shots, I am better able to judge when to “click” if I am looking directly at the group, rather than through the view finder.

3. Buy a Good Photo-Editing Program. Perhaps your camera came with Photoshop Elements, or similar. If not, go to your computer retailer and buy one. Not only can you fix blemishes (maybe Susan was having a bad zit day), but you can do more creative things as well. Recently I combined a photo of my grand-daughter with one of Dora-the-Explorer. Jasmine loved it.

4. Watch the Compression. As you use that fancy photo editing program, be careful of your compression setting. Most programs default to “jpeg” format, which saves space by selectively removing pixels, and recreating them the next time you view the photo. If you open, edit, and save a photo multiple times, the over-all quality decreases. Try to do all your editing in one pass, using the lowest compression, or use a format like “tiff”, which does not compress.

5. Get in Close. Don’t waste pixels on excess background. Get in closer, either physically or with an optical zoom setting.

6. Good Things Come in Threes (or more!). Considering the incremental costs of taking a photo with a digital camera (close to nil!), you should take lots of shots. If the shot is available for more than a few seconds, take more that one exposure. I always tell the subjects of my photos that I will be taking at least 2 or 3 shots of them. A blink at the wrong time ruins the potential.

7. Read the Manual In fact, read it more than once. As if I have to explain this one!

Here’s an equation for you.

(LOTS of photos with your digital camera) + (the above tips) = (a day coming soon when you’ll be proud to show off your creations)

Richard Killey is an amateur photographer who shares the love of his hobby with readers of his website. Visit http://www.photosbyrichard.ca to read other articles of interest.

You want to start up a business on the Internet but it hasn’t happened. What can you do to put yourself on the journey to success?

You can identify what is stopping you and take steps to overcome these common but deadly barriers…

(1)Lack of Goals
If you sit down at your computer with the Internet connected with no goals, it is likely you will end up surfing without a purpose. This is very time consuming.

Decide what you want to achieve, make it as specific as possible and plaster copies of them all over your home so you can’t fail to read them at least 5 times a day.

Your mind will start to believe them and if you take active steps to achieve them – they will not be out of your reach.

(2)Lack of Money
Okay for some people this will be a genuine factor but for the majority of us, there is a vice or an activity we can give up, like smoking, the odd bottle of wine or an aerobics class.

Most of us will be able to find something to give up or cut down on for the few months it takes to get started.

The Internet provides so many free resources and is the cheapest way to start a business these days so buckle down the purses or give up a vice and join the ride.

(3)No Research
This is a most deadly barrier. Because you might think you have a idea for a product but unless you are absolutely sure there is a market for it, you have no assurances of success.

If you have a list you can ask them for their opinions. Or go onto to some of the many forums and ask for people’s opinions and test the water.

Don’t create a product and waste precious resources until you are sure there is a market. Even better create the product after you have investigated a market and know what they want.

(4)Scared of Failure
You’ve probably heard it before but do you think Einstein got it right first time? Do you think any inventor gets it right first time?

I’m sure it takes 100s and even 1000s of attempts in some cases before its “Eureka”. Failures happen to be learnt from so don’t be afraid of them or give up when one occurs.

Sit down, learn your lessons and get on with your next plan of action with your head held high.

(5)Information Overload
I know all about this one! You get so many ideas and ways of marketing in your head, they all merge, make your mind utterly confused and you can’t even think of one straight idea.

The solution to this is to try one thing at a time. Test its success and if it doesn’t work, move on. And when you find something that’s works, stick to and master it.

Then you can go onto try something else but only if you want to. Its better to be excellent at one thing, then not very good at lots of things.

Also you could try choosing one or two ‘gurus’ to follow. You can copy their roads to success as long as it is in your own words.

(6)Procrastination
This is the one thing NOT to become a master at! Tomorrow never comes. Don’t put off things you can to today. Do something every day to bring you closer to your goals.

I know the soaps and TV in general can be very entertaining but imagine what you can achieve if you spent that time making substantial amounts of money on the Internet. The possibilities have no limits.

(7)Other People’s Views
Whether its your partner, boss, kids, friends, neighbours, acquaintances, whoever – do not let them put you down. If you want to succeed, its down to you and you alone.

Keep that one mindedness and don’t budge from it, whatever the daily grind throws at you. You can success and you will.

Live the life you want to. If you want to work from 9 to 5 and are happy, then so be it. However, if that is not case, it’s up to you to do something about it. Today, the Internet is your oyster, so get out there and find the pearls.

Helen Farmer is a budding enterpreneur. She has been reading about setting up on the Internet for the last two years and her mind is about to burst! Join her on her business journey as she finds out what really works on the Internet at mybusinessjourney.blogspot.com/