How do you trick yourself into a bonus?  Every time you spend round up!  If you use a check or debit card round the amount up in your register and at the end of the month all that change adds up to your bonus.  Use it to do something to help you feel prosperous, get further out of debt or save it for your emergency rainy day fund.

Piggy Banks Courtsey of Daniel Y. Go/flickr

How can you keep it for a rainy day?  At the end of the day when you have change put it in a piggy bank.  Then when it feels heavy enough, take it to the bank and save it in your emergency fund, get further out of debt or do something that helps you feel fancy.  I like to use mine to pay the local neighbor children for odd jobs and when they have fundraisers.

How do you spread the love with your pocket change?  Every time you spend, tell the clerk to, “keep the change!”  or put the change in those local charity cups that a lot of shops have at the check out.  You know that the good Lord has more on the way to you and there is enough to share.

Simply doing any of these things with your pocket change will help you keep on track and stay in prosperous place.  Like my grandmother shared with me, “money is like a river, it has to flow.  There will always be more upstream.”   Choose what works best for you and your family and keep it flowing.

© Lyndi Lytle 2009

Astronomical Clock courtesy of simpologist /flickr

For some people putting a rubber band on their wrist and snapping it helps them to do the new behaviour.  For others EFT or Tapping works.  Sometimes just a verbal reminder like an affirmation is useful.  Its important how the wordage is used when trying to change our behaviors with affirmations.  Always use positive language when doing them.  If your often late, you would say something more to the point of, “I am always on time”.   It does need to be believable, so if you want to say, “I’m always on time to meetings” or, “I’m always on time to important events”, that can work for you.  Its sort of a baby step to new habits.  I’ve recently been reminded that saying the bad habit in past tense is a great way to help yourself believe what your saying.  For instance you would say, “I used to be late all the time.”  You are using the present to remind yourself that you don’t do that old behavior anymore.  Whatever you choose to do, you want to interrupt the old pattern and create a new more successful version of it.   If your comfortable, get others to help you in a positive way, like the idea of a swearing or cursing jar, every time someone curses they owe money to the jar.  Then do something fun with the money.

Depending on the bad habit or behavior it can take anywhere from a week to six weeks to change an naughty habit into a behavior of the past.  Keep that in mind and be patient with yourself and keep on going!  At the end of the day your the only one who can do it for you anyway.  Good Luck and let me know how it goes!

© Lyndi Lytle 2009

Lyndi

7 Things I love about Summer:

1- The Light!  I love that is light longer during the day.

2-The beautiful green fragrant gardens and manicured lawns.

3- The FRESH produce.  Yummy fruits and veggies.

4- The Parties and barbeques!  Fun summer get togethers all summer long.

5- The Fireworks!

6 – My favorite Drive Inn Movie Theater or make our own theater and watch movies on the side of the house.  :)

7- Campfires.  It’s so much fun to gather round and tell stories and visit!

What are some of your favorites of the summer?

Photo Courtesy of GraceL Photography via Flikr

I’ve heard that lemon in your water is good for you.  It helps detoxify your body and loose weight because of the acidity and high ph, the citric acid breaks down fat molocules.  Plus lemons are great for tons of other things.  Use a half a lemon and some salt to clean your cutting board.  Use the rind to clear out your dish disposal.  Anyway, there was a little scare when one college study found that 77% of the lemons for drinks were covered with ecoli.  Which means the other spots in the resurant are just as questionable or your server needs to wash their hands.  I’ve seen other reports, like the one below that puts the whole thing in perspective.

I’m pretty sure you can get lemon in packets, but I haven’t seen any avalible, so I’ve been trying Tru Lemon and one packet is equil to one lemon wedge.  Other than the fact that you have to wait a minute for it to disolve, its tastes pretty good.  Which is nice when your traveling and the water tastes all minerally.  Ooooo and they come lemon, lime and orange you can get free samples  so check ‘em out. True Lemon.

© Lyndi Lytle 2009

http://laterthis.com/

Lyndi

Lyndi

Just announced June 1st.  Monkey Island has a whole new saga! Telltales Games announced The Tales of Monkey Island. I remember playing this game and loving it!!  I’m so excited they are expanding the series.  The team even got the same people to do the voices!  Really it was the beginning of gaming.  Well this and Hugo’s House of Horrors and Laura Bow, boy she had a ton of stuff in that purse!  I digress, Monkey Island….so excited.  PLUS!  It looks like they’re working on some really great stuff for the origional Monkey Island too!  Lucasarts is releasing The Secrets of Monkey Island Special Edition! They’ve updated the look of the game and increased the kinds of platforms it can be played on.

So, lets look at the marketing.  They anounced the release on June 1, at the E3 convention and created a couple of press releases had a mention on a few blogs and are allowing the new saga to be pre-ordered with a few bonuses.   Its been twittered a bunch and they have widgets avalible to make it easy to virally spread the word they’re working on these projects.  See anything that you could do for your business?  Create raving fans by having a fun, great product!  It was really hours of fun at my house growing up.  I can’t wait!

© Lyndi Lytle 2009

Sara is one smart cookie, let’s look at what we can learn from her company.  She has called the brand Spanx by Sara Blakely.  I once heard her say she knew from stand up that the ks sound is more memorable, so she really wanted that to be part of the name.   She is building a dual brand, herself and Spanx.  She is positioned so that she can use her own name later for other products if she choose to sell Spanx at some point.   It really could work well, because Spanx is trusted now if Sara were to move on to something completely unrelated say, kitchen gear then it would automatically have some trust, because we already trust her.  There is an about Sara tab and then an about us tab on the website.  Under the About Sara is Sarah’s story how she came to invent Spanx and how it came to market.  Under the about us tab, its a time-line of the history of the company with a shout out to the Sara Blakely Foundation.   Her company didn’t really advertise, quite frankly its so good why would they need to?  Their product is for women and women talk – bingo! word of mouth and media.

Spanx is engulfing the market they have a high end version with delicious lace Haute Contour by Spanx and a less expensive minimal version called Assests by Sara Blakely.  Every price point is getting covered by its own twist on the brand.  What improvements can you make to your company following Spanx and Sara Blakely?

© 2009 Lyndi Lytle

Photo courtesy of BigTallGuy on Flikr

Then make yourself a Google alert for their name.  You should already have one for yourself.  Have you thought of having an alert for another company you’re modeling or admire?  Well get on it, you choose the phrase to search for, how often they arrive in your email, its free, its easy and its good stuff!  You definitely should have an alert for your name and your company!

http://www.google.com/alerts

Lyndi