We had to put Gypsy “The Wonder” Dog in a kennel. Wait… it’s a Resort and Spa for dogs. The place we always use is called Best Friends Pet Care. And they always go out of their way to make us feel special.

Study and take notes on how they create an experience instead of a transaction

When we dropped off Gypsy the staff fussed all over her, and told us how much they liked her personality. Of course being the proud parents of Gypsy “The Wonder Dog” we got a real kick out it.

Now, Gypsy only understands a few words… some of which she chooses to ignore on a regular basis. Some of her more words are: cookie, scooby snack, walkies, car ride, do you want to go?

So, with her limited English… most of the praising sorta went over her head. Although she did enjoy the pets and back scratches.

About half way through our vacation Becky was checking her email. And excitedly showed me an email we got from Gypsy…

Having a blast at Best Friends Chestnut Ridge…wish you were here!

I’d love to tell you all about it, but since I can’t talk my Best Friends agreed to send this photo along to you instead.

See you soon!

Love,

Gypsy

Attached to this email was a picture they took of her in the Play Room. Of course my wife started forwarding the email around to friends & family. She thought it was so cool to get an email from Gypsy telling us how much fun she was having.

Here’s the picture…

We came home & went to pickup Gypsy…

We got back this past Saturday, and went to pick up Gypsy. The girl behind the counter quickly pulled up the records on the computer. She then started telling us how much fun it was to have Gypsy stay with them. We were given the report cards to look over.

The report cards are comments left by the staff members who are taking care of Gypsy. There is a place to leave comments about how things went. Most of the comments said things like: “Gypsy is such a sweetie! She really is a cuddle hound… Gypsy is always a treat to have stay with us!”

How do I know what the comments say? Simple, my wife has kept all the report cards! I’ve been reading them while typing this post.

I then handed them Gypsy’s leash so they could go get her from the back. We paid the bill and waited for one of the staff to go get her.

But, wait it didn’t stop there…

There is a large screen TV hanging up behind the counter. It usually shows rotating pictures of the “Spa & Resort”. Usually it has a live shot of the doggie playroom. And you get to watch the other dogs romp around playing with each other. It can be fun to watch most of the time.

As we watching the picture changed. It was showing the picture of Gypsy in the playroom she had sent us in the email. The caption read something like we have arrived to pick up our best friend Gypsy. Of course we got a big laugh out it, and it was a nice touch.

This is getting long so I’m going to stop here. In a couple of days I’ll talk about some of the marketing lessons. And how you can apply them to your business.

But in the mean time… why don’t you add your comments here & tell me what you think made this an experience vs a transaction.

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1. Let People See You With Other Celebrities - The power of association instantly builds credibility. People will associate you with the celebrities you are seen with. You get to borrow from their influence. And probably the best way to do this is to get your picture taken with other celebrities in your niche.

2. Keep Other Celebrities Updated - This is simple to do and very effective. Keep the leaders in your niche updated on your activities. If they find something about you interesting, they could pass your updates on to their followers.

3. Let Your Accomplishments “Slip Out” - Plain and simple, this is no time to be shy. Waiting around for someone to stroll along and notice your achievements guarantees one thing – A long wait. You need to get your accomplishments out into the public.

4. Collaborate With Other Celebrities - One of the biggest boost to your credibility is to collaborate with another leader. You get instant access to their network, and you get to borrow from their influence.

5. Be Seen At “Events” - Getting out and meeting people goes a long way towards legitimizing your business. No need to go crazy and spend thousands attending every event, but a handful a year should do the trick. Remember, there are plenty of free events if you take the time and look around.

6. Be Persistent - “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never–in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” – Sir Winston Churchill. I think that pretty much sums it up. The most successful people bounce back quickly from setbacks, overcome obstacles and deflect unproductive criticism.

7. Get A Coach or a Mentor- You are not an island. Everyone and I mean everyone needs a coach or mentor to help reach their goals. A coach will provide valuable feedback. They will point out the good, the bad and the ugly. (OK, you can stop singing the song from the movie!) Look at it this way – If the world’s best athletes, actors and musicians need a coach, then why would you be any different?

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1. Rewrite as article - You can easily rewrite the blog post, change the title, and submit it to EzineArticles.com.

2. Submit to Blog Carnival - This option is one of the easiest of all these tips. Go to a Blog carnival, find one that matches your content & submit the post. Take your best one or two posts of the week and use them.

3. Make a video - Fire up the video camera and get busy demonstrating your latest post. But what If your blog post cannot be demonstrated? Simple, turn on the camera & record yourself talking about the blog post.

4. Record as teleseminar - Take your main points of your post and create an outline. Then get on the phone and record yourself talking about these main points. This one is good because people like to get on the teleseminar & interact with the author/host.

5. Turn into questions & do an interview - Take the main points of your blog post and turn them into questions. If you know another expert in your niche, then ask them for an interview. Another option would be to ask a success story to give their views on the questions. Each way has worked well for me in the past.

6. Create a Squidoo/Hubpage page - Harness the SEO love of these two sites. Google is gaga over both sites and likes to give them high ranking. It’s important to change the blog post just enough to not be duplicate content. Then add an RSS feed and/or embed a video, now it’s ready to go.

7. Turn into a report - Creating a report out of your best blog posts will build your credibility as a thought leader in your niche. You could easily take each point and expand it to a page or more. This will give you a 7-15 page report ready to be given away, or sold.

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http://ezinearticles.com/?Article-Writing-Case-Study:-The-100-Articles-in-100-Days-Project&id=627427

http://ezinearticles.com/?&id=584558

I thought it was pretty cool she wrote 100 articles so fast. For a brief few minutes I toyed with the idea of taking up the challenge myself… but it scared the crap out of me. So, I pushed it out of my mind & went about my business.

The problem…

This idea wouldn’t go away. I kept thinking about writing 100 articles in a 100 days, but I kept putting it off. Finally I realized the only way make myself do this me was to make a public announcement. So, where was the most public to announce my challenge? That’s right… Twitter!

OK, I went over to Twitter. Type it in, closed my eyes, held my breath & hit enter…

I was shocked to see a reply from Jeff Herring telling me it was very doable.

Now I did it… there was no turning back. I grabbed the hashtags #HAHD so others could follow & join. Then replied to Jeff that it was on…

At the same time Jeff was talking to Fleicia Slattery about her article marketing & she tweeted she was going to do a 100 articles in a 100 days like Connie Green did.

While the 3 of us were tweeting about doing this challenge, it suddenly exploded! People were joining the challenge on Twitter left & right… this was going viral. It was exciting to see so many people fired up about this challenge. It made my head spin.

That was Saturday March 21st & by Monday the 23rd I was on a kick off Teleseminar with Jeff Herring & Felicia Slattery telling how this all came together.

As of Today over 425 members have joined us on our 100 articles in 100 days marathon challenge.

I’m inviting you to join us, and create your own traffic, prospects, publicity & profits explosion today… It’s free & imagine the benefits you’ll get out of completing your own challenge.

Sign up today at

Here is a quick over view of the site I recorded on March 24th…

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Yep – no email, no affiliate links, nothing! Just dial in & listen.

The call is Tonight March 25th, 2009 at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern.

What is the topic?

“The 5 Internet Success Factors”
and The AM TeleSeminar Club…

Here is the link(non-affiliate)…

http://www.thearticleguyteleseminars.com/club-am.htm

Why should you listen in on this call?

Jeff is the real deal… I know that phrase is over used in IM circles, but this is the case with Jeff. He goes out of his way to make sure he gives top quality material.

I’m a member of Jeff’s AM TeleSeminar Club, and he over delivers easy to implement tips, strategies & techniques month after month. And here is the best part is… the information Jeff delivers is the same stuff he uses to build his business… No theory weenies need apply here!

How do I know this?

Jeff is very transparent. He gives examples from his own experiences, and it’s not just from the “make money online” arena. Plus – it’s not hard to find his stuff out there, if you look around.

I’ve also found Jeff to be very accessible… something that is rare today with many people today. I’m not sure how he does it, but he answers question & comments shockingly fast.

So, I’m inviting you to join Jeff & Alex on the call tonight. I’m confident Jeff will deliver some great content & it will be entertaining at the same time. I’ll be listening in… with my notebook in hand.

Here is the link again…

http://www.thearticleguyteleseminars.com/club-am.htm

One more thing…

Could you do my a favor & let me know that you called in tonight. I would really appreciate it. You can send me a Tweet @KeithGoodrum, leave a comment below or contact me here…

[contact-form 2 "Post contact"]

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I think it’s a pretty cool plugin…

Here it the link to download the pluging from Andy Bailey’s site…

http://www.fiddyp.co.uk/wp-twitip-id-plugin-add-a-twitter-field-to-your-comment-form-easily/

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It tells us all the reasons why we can’t accomplish a goal, or reach a destination. A lot of times we talk our selves out of something before we even try. The video below shows what happens when you take away your limitations.

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Here are Michel rules:

Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a post with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose five more people to be tagged. You also have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. To do this, you simply link to their blogs so that they know you responded to their tag.

So, better late than never… Here we go:

1. One day I was in the clubhouse bar of a very exclusive golf club & was watching Tiger Woods play in his 1st US Open on TV. Some guy sat down behind me & started asking me questions about Tiger… How’s Tiger doing? That Tiger is a hell of a player, isn’t he? Can you believe he’s this good at such a young age? Did I ask: How’s Tiger doing? I politely answered his questions, but never turned around because I was trying to concentrate on Tiger’s play. Finally after the what seemed like the 100th question from this clown I decided to turn around & find out what his problem was…

And sitting there grinning from ear to ear was… Clint Eastwood.

2. There is a guitar sitting in the corner of my bedroom. For the past 10 years I’ve been intending to take lessons.

3. I was a car salesmen for 5 years. It was a great way to build my sales chops

4. I believe Magnum PI never “jumped the shark”

5. I like to draw. Mostly in pencil, charcoal, graphite.

6. The best compliment I got about my drawing came from a college Art Professor. He said: “You’ve got it.”

7. I was standing in the UPS building in San Francisco during the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. We could see it coming as the concrete floor looked like waves as the earthquake approached.

8. Training dogs is a fun hobby for me.

9. I’ve been happily married for 23 years.

10. I once owned a dog who taught himself how to open the refrigerator. It took my wife & I almost a year before we finally figured out he was doing it & not one of us leaving stuff out.

11. I was a medic in the Army.

12. I learned German in high school, but didn’t get good until I got stationed there for 2 years.

13. I have a problem with authority… which would explain why me & jobs have had a rough & tumbled past.

14. History was my 2nd favorite subject in school… recess was always #1.

15. I met my wife in Germany. We were both in the U.S. Army. I was on CQ one morning & she walked up to ask directions to the mess hall. Since I was getting off duty in a few minutes I offered to show her myself. We’ve been together ever since.

16. My 1st job was not a job… It was a paper route. I was responsible for delivering outstanding service, sales, accounting & turning a profit. If I failed at any of these, I didn’t make any money. I’ve been hooked on entrepreneurship ever since.

17. In December 2001 I became a Marathoner. Because of a bad planter facia flair up the day of the marathon I hobbled across the finish line in 8hrs. It doesn’t matter how long it took… I’m still a Marathoner!

18. I believe if you learn to laugh at yourself, you’ll go through life with a lot of entertainment.

19. I have a soft spot for rescue dogs. Every dog I’ve had has been a pound puppy or rescue dog. Whenever I see a dog walking with their owners, I feel compelled to stop to talk with the owners & give the dog a good pet.

20. Given a choice… My lazy inner child will take a nap vs. attack the to-do list.

21. My wife’s 2nd bout with cancer was much harder for me to deal with than I would admit to myself. It overwhelmed me & I finally let go of my pride & turned back to God.

22. I have yet to meet a piece of chocolate that wasn’t AWESOME!

23. The #1 priority for me right now is rebuilding my relationship with God. We haven’t really been tight the past few years… Mostly because I’ve been nursing a grudge & a lot finger pointing.

24. I think my english teachers would have a collective heart attack, if they saw how much writing I’ve done over the past year.

25. My biggest obstacle in business is delegation. I have a habit of wanting to do everything myself. Of course there is never enough time in the day to do everything… so, a lot of things get pushed to the back burner.

The rules say I’m suppose to tag 5 more people. I decided not to tag others because this tag is a couple months old. However if you want to create your own list, go right ahead. Feel free to link back to me & I’ll add a link back to your post here.

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Thank you for reading & commenting on this blog. It has been a lot of fun & I appreciate everyone who has come to this little spot of the blogoshpere.

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It looks like Mike started doing this in October, and has been posting his url http://TwitterMike.com regularly. The past month I'd noticed several people doing this, decided to give it a whirl & write about it here.]

Here is a tip to easily & quickly promote your twitter profile in all your marketing material.

Step 1

Go to your favorite domain register and get the domain name http://www.twitter(your name).com. In my case I was lucky enough to get http://www.twitterkeith.com.

The key is to get your twitter user name, or if it works a shorter version. So, for example my twitter user name is KeithGoodrum. I decided to see if I could get twitter Keith instead of twitter Keith Goodrum. I really thought it would be gone because there are several twitters named Keith & figured someone would have grabbed it by now.

Step 2

Go into your webhost and redirect your twitter(your name) to your twitter profile. For example: http://www.twitterkeith.com redirects to http://twitter.com/KeithGoodrum.

Step 3

Now you can start using your new URL to promote your twitter profile. You can add it to your other social media profiles like: Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo, Your favorite forum profile pages… The list is almost endless.

The new URL looks cleaner, and is catchier than a regular twitter profile. So, go out and grab your name before it’s gone.

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