5 Essential Environmental Self-Defense Techniques

Today, you are going to earn your white belt in Environmental Self-Defense. Just like in the martial arts, I teach 5 basic blocks for white belt. We're going to talk about 5 essential techniques of Environmental Self-Defense. Once you implement these 5 essentials into your school – congratulation, you earned your white belt in the new martial arts style of the Green Warrior.

Why start with these 5 techniques?
I have organized the information so that the first five techniques are the easiest to implement and give the environment and your wallet the biggest impact. So, let’s get start! Shall we?

Checklist of 5 Essential Environmental Self-Defense Techniques
1) Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (CFLs) – Replace any standard incandescent bulbs in your business used more than 15 minutes per day with compact fluorescent light bulbs.

2) Programmable Thermostat - Did you know that you could save over 33% on your energy bill by getting a programmable thermostat. You create a 10% energy saving on heating or cooling by simply turning your thermostat back 10% to 15% for 8 hours. 10% means, instead of setting you’re heating to 68, you set it to 62 or for cooling; you set the thermostat to 78, instead of 72. Programmable Thermostats make this easy by programming a schedule to turn your thermostat back when you are not there.

3) Water Heater Insulation - Water heating accounts for about 13% of your total heating costs. Reduce your impact by turning the thermostat down and insulating your water heater.

4) Recycle – Businesses are one of the biggest producers of garbage but also, business are less likely than individuals to have a recycling plan. Green you’re school by providing recycling bins. Place them in high traffic areas for example, by the entrance, by the front desk, in the parent’s waiting area, and by any vending machine. Make sure to clearly label the recycling bins and communicate with your students regularly about the importance of recycling.

5. Weather Stripping Doors – Tremendous heat loss occurs at the entrances and exits. Adding weather stripping to your doors will minimize this heat loss - especially focus on the often-neglected emergency exits. Weather stripping will not only assist in reducing heat loss but it has the added benefit of making the room more comfortable for your students and families by reducing drafts.

Once you mastered these 5 Essential Environmental Self-defense tasks, you can consider yourself a white belt in environmental self-defense. Your Green Warrior journey to a black belt in Environmental Self-defense has begun…

Making money work for you

These days, money seems to slip through your fingers as easily as the sands of time. The rich know that in order to build wealth, you must be able to keep money in your pocket and have methods of continuing to increase it’s value over time. Making money work for you is as simple as getting money and using it to create more money.

Essential Steps to Make Your Money Work for You

1. Control your expenses - If you don't control your expenses, your money will come in as a paycheck and disappear as an expense - leaving you living from paycheck to paycheck. This phenomenon happens regardless of your income level. As most people’s income increase, so does their spending. To control your expenses, create a buying policy. For example, waiting at least 24 hours before buying anything valued more than $50 then ask yourself the follow questions, “Is this sometime that I need?” “Do I own something that can serve the same purpose?” “Can I borrow one, find one used, or make one instead of buying new?” Like the defense of professional football team, draft a superior financial defensive line to tackle unnecessary purchases before they happen.

2. Save 10% of your earnings - At 10%, you'll see that your money will grow - giving you “attitude money”. What is attitude money? When you have money invested, you feel more secure and abundant, therefore, gaining a better attitude towards money and your financial situation. Okay, most people claim that they can't afford to save 10% of what you earn. Notice that people earn different salaries but are all equally as broke. This signifies that most people just spend as much as they make and don't really control what they're spending. The wealthy find ways to control their expenses and save 10%. Once you start saving 10%, I bet that you will not even notice that it's gone. Make saving this 10% easy by automatically deducting it directly from your paycheck into a wealth account. Essentially, paying yourself first.

3. Generate Passive Income – Now that you have an excess of cash flow and savings, it’s time to create a passive income. Passive income is money generated from sources that require some upfront work and generate a stream of income for a long time. For example, some passive income sources are investments in stocks or bonds, real estate or property rent, writing for Helium, creating a blog, or designing a website that generates advertisement income. These are just a few examples. Let the miracle of compound interest start working for you by building multiple streams of passive income.

4. Increase your current salary – Nothing can increase your worth quicker than receiving a raise or promotion. If you receive a 10% raise, as quick as Clark Kent changing into superman, you become instantly 10% richer. The best way to increase your salary is to “show up” for work. Most people just punch the clock and mill their way through the day. Give your job the full eight hours of attention it deserves. Talk to your boss about your desire to increase your value (read as salary) to the company. Ask yourself what are the five most important tasks to do today that will get you noticed. Assist your boss move up the corporate ladder and like the links of a chain, you will move up too.

5. Create your own Business – Are you going to slave away making all the money for someone else. Creating a side business is a terrific way to earn more money. Start small and follow your passion. Who knows in time, it may become a full time occupation. With a fantastic business and the right mindset, it's possible to work less hours per day and make more money than you did at your regular job. Wouldn't you rather have more time in your life and make more money?

By employing, these five essential strategies to making money work for you, you will begin a snowball effect on your finances. Each day adding snowflakes until the snowball builds momentum. That’s what making your money work for you is all about – overcoming the financial inertia holding wealth at arm’s reach.

Cater to our best customers, Fire your worst

I had a new prospect come in the parents talked to my wife, Ester. They were really drilling her with question and did not like our terms. Another words, they complained about the classes being only half hour long, asked if we could pick their son up from the daycare down the street, and making all kinds of other ridiculous demands. My wife could hardly believe it.

I think that excellent student service is vitally important, but when does it go too far. In America, we’re taught to be very accommodating especially to customers to the point of nauseam. Don’t get me wrong here. I believe in stellar service but this sometimes sets you up for someone take advantage of you at the expense of your good customers.

The impact… Your worst customers are still unhappy and complaining even with your special accommodations and your best customers suffer and leave. Would you rather keep your best customers, not your worst customers?

The longer I'm in business the more I realize the importance of attracting the right people to your business. I see too many business owners completely change the way they do business just because of one complaint. These changes often hurt the business because it take into consideration one client over the needs of your current clients - leaving them feeling disillusioned and upset about the change in service that they already enjoy.

Why?
Because you create a system of doing business, you must remain in the system for it to work very effective. When individuals go around the system, the system is no longer effective, and rest of your business follows.

If a prospect doesn't like the way, you do things, and wants you to do sometime totally differently. Beware… this is the start of a problem and this customer maybe better off as some else’s client. The best rule of thumb is to remain within your core competency.

Finding good customers assists your business in many ways. They are easier to service, complain less, see the value your service, spend more money, provide well-qualified referrals, and benefit tremendously from your service. Sounds like a win-win deal. On the other hand, get rid your complainers, cheapskates, whiners, and any other people who cause trouble and create more headaches. It's better to charge more for your tuition and to have fewer students that really enjoy your service than have many customers that only partly enjoy your service.

Introduction to Greening your Dojo

The series of blog posts are your step-by-step guide to Greening Your Dojo. Each post will rank you from White to Black Belt according to the actions taken to green your business.

Why Green your Dojo?

As Martial Arts teachers/ educators, we teach our students a level of social consciousness. You would not tell students after their first lesson to go home and practice their punches and kicks on their parents and siblings.

Of course not! Instead, we give the new student a sense of responsibility with the new skill and teach them to respect the new skill - developing a level of social responsibility.

Greening your martial arts school is extension of this social consciousness to wider field, which includes the environment. By leading by example, you integrate a new level of learning experience into your school.

We all know that our students follow what they see.

Benefits of Green Your Martial Arts School

The benefits of Green your business vary from reducing waste to saving money.

• Allergy free environment – Many store bought cleaners contain additive that cause allergies.
• Reduced waste that end up filling up landfills
• Energy savings – electric and heating cost
• Reduce Co2’s

In the next post, you will earn your white belt in Environmental Self-Defense just like a student performing an introductory lesson by completing a checklist of 5 Essential Environmental Self-Defense Techniques.

Talk and Transcribe with Jott.com

I found this great free service called jott.com. It allows you to call a number and leave a message. Jott.com translates the message and e-mails it to you. You can even setup reminders, or send a email or text to people or groups added to your account.

It's a great way to capture ideas on the move. For example, I always get ideas for writing while walking my dogs - usually caught without a pen and paper. Now, I just take my cell phone and basically dial in my ideas.

Okay, jott.com requires that you are able to talk to yourself which seems a little silly at first, but after a while you get use to it. With practice, it becomes much, more natural. The clearer you speak the better the transcription.

Jott has really increasing my productivity. You know, I am just like anybody else. I have a family and responsibilities at home, but Jott lets me to do my work around the house while I continue to write (talk?) through Jott. It's pretty amazing!

In fact, most of this post was written through Jott.com

Weekend Links – Off to My Accountant Edition

Today, I sit down with my accountant for my 2007 taxes. Looking back, 2007 was a challenging and rewarding year – quick my full-time day job, finished the UBBT team 3, sold our home and moving into the new home.

I meet huge challenges head on – financially and in my business. I made vast changes in my school and now in 2008, I am reaping the benefits. The turbulent seas are calming and I foresee some smooth sailing on the horizon.

I see our school becoming like the flywheel that Jim Collins talks about in “Good to Great.” At first, the flywheel is hard to turn but once inertia takes over, the flywheel starts chugging along.

I found some great links to reading for this week.

• I read this free report called Teaching Sells. It's great reading for any business owners out there. It's a great concept for Martial Arts School Owners.
• Crunchy Chicken interesting and risqué blog post provides tips for planning a Green Valentine's Day.
• Zen Habits is one of my favorite blogs. This week, he talks about The Simple Guide to being Present for the Overworked and Overwhelmed. Why not making meditation part of our workday too.
• Having trouble meeting your goals? Maybe they are not specific enough. Hop over to Goal2Go at here.
• Write to Done shows how to put more zest into your writing, here.

I hope you enjoy your weekend reading.

I’m not frugal, I’m a conservationist

Okay, the word frugal for most people brings up images of self-denial, suffering, and like Mr. Pink in the Movie “Reservoir Dogs” does not leave tips at restaurants. So I will not call myself frugal but I’m a conservationist.

Why?

Because… I believe things like time and money are resources not to waste. Also, committing to a frugal -oops, I mean conservationist- lifestyle gives me a huge margin of error in my business. Owning a business is a huge risk. Every decision could create a gain or loss on your P&L statement.

I combat risk by being conservationist – just in case the unexpected happens. Believe me, in business the unexpected happens frequently.

Ester and I moved to a new home. Our new home is beautiful but has some significant advantages over our old home.

For example

Lower Mortgage – This is amazing since we moved from a townhouse to a single family house. Since the townhouse was located in an upscale community, home values were much higher. (Save on mortgage and taxes)

Close to Dojo – We are extremely close to our business. In fact, I walked my dogs there this morning. (Huge savings on Gas and Car Maintenance – over 10,000 miles/yr)

Peer Pressure – When you live in a more upscale area, there is huge levels of social proof that spending and a high consumption lifestyle is acceptable and normal.

Community Association Fees – The association fees at our old home were $115 per month.

Compare prices – A cup of coffee at our old house was almost $2 and a cup of coffee here is $1. I see similar price differences at the grocery store adding up to tons of savings.

I found that being a conservationist gives you a real piece of mind since your cash flow exceeds your expenses. Besides that, we love our new home in it's quite location.

Dynamic Newsletter

I am very excited about my new e-newsletter. Feedburner has created a new generation of marketing by allowing you to publish blog materials directly to a website using tools like Google Calendars and your blog.

Check out our newsletter here. Sorry, about the poor formatting. I am still working on it. I worry about the functionality first then design second.

The great thing about this page is that it automatically updates as I add events to my google calendar and write my blogs. At the beginning of the month, I update the school information and e-mail it to current students, canceled students, and prospects through my Mr. Marketer from Championsway.

Part of my phone script asks for your e-mail address. In fact, I barely let prospects walk in the door without finding out their e-mail. Ha Ha! My e-mail prospect list has grown to over 250. The thing that I love about e-mail list is that it virtually free and less time consuming then mailers. Oh yeah! Did I mention that you don't waste paper?

I am generating many new students through our newsletter because even if they do not join right away, they receive our monthly newsletter. Because I write the articles, the prospects view you as the obvious expert in your community – giving you the upper hand over your competition.

Here’s a video on how to setup your own feeds for your calendar.
Video: Google Calendar published on a web page

I figure out that the same process will work for a blog using Buzz Boost at Feedburner.