Warnings on Fake Home Inspections, Home Working Scams and Baby Photo Tricksters

If you've had some property improvement work done recently, you won't be surprised if someone from your contractor or city planning department turns up to do a home inspection to check that the work has been done properly.

But you will be surprised if a bill arrives a few days later for the follow-up work. And you'll be furious when you later discover it was a scam and the inspector had nothing to do either with the contractor or the city.

Or, imagine being duped into letting crooks use your credit card to buy goods and then getting you to ship the items to them.

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©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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Why That Great Credit Card Offer Could Be a Scam

It's a pretty safe bet that at some time in the past year -- and lots of times before -- an enticing credit card offer has dropped into your mailbox, either online or at the end of your driveway.

And you've probably had your share of telesales calls offering you similarly "great deals."

Some offers, especially the snail-mail variety, come from genuine card companies -- and mostly they end up in the trash (after being shredded of course -- you do shred them, don't you?).

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©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission.

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WHERE DOES YOUR MARKETING TIME GO?

The typical self-employed professional spends much more time on marketing than he or she ever spends in money. But yet, most professionals are considerably more careful with how they spend their money on marketing than how they spend their time!

Your marketing time is one of the most precious commodities your business has to work with. It's critical for you to know where it goes, know where it SHOULD go, and take steps to stay on track with how your time is spent.

Here's my recipe for taking control of your marketing time:

1. Track where you're spending your time now. For the next two weeks, track every minute you spend on marketing and sales. Whether you are talking to a prospective client on the phone, going to a networking meeting, or posting on social media, record how much time you spent and what you were doing. One easy way to track the time spent on any task is to use Toggl, a free, simple timekeeping system with both desktop and mobile apps.
2. Determine where the most effective places to spend your marketing time truly are. Look back at all the new clients and repeat client business you've landed over the past year. How did that business come to you? Were the clients referred? Did you meet them somewhere? Did they find your website and contact you? Are they members of your social media network? Have you been following up with them with calls or emails? If you haven't been in the habit of tracking where your clients come from, start now. It's the only way you'll know which marketing approaches are working for you, and which ones are a waste of time.
3. Set aside time for marketing in your calendar. The best way to make sure you always have enough time for marketing is to block it out in your schedule just like you would a client appointment. Do this at the beginning of each month, and then schedule other commitments around it. When other urgent needs threaten your marketing time slots, don't cancel them; reschedule them, just like you would a client. It's surprisingly common for self-employed professionals to discover that they haven't been spending as much time on marketing as they thought. You may be thinking about marketing -- or worrying about it -- much more often than you are actually taking action on it.
4. Continue tracking both your time and your results. Tracking your marketing time will have a positive impact all by itself, like writing down what you eat when you're dieting. It will sharpen your awareness of your marketing and sales activities, which will cause you to begin changing your behavior for the better. Tracking your results will give you the essential data you need to make smart decisions about where your marketing time goes. You can use my free Get Your Marketing Unstuck Journal to record both time and results in one place, along with your notes about what you might need to do differently. (If you already subscribe to my newsletter, you can scroll to the bottom of the page to download the Journal without subscribing.)

Start today to take control of where your marketing time goes. Lost time can never be recovered. While in most cases, it's possible to make more money, I don't know a single person who has succeeded at making more time.
Copyright © 2014, C.J. Hayden

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