darrencrawford.com

Adding Video Can Open The Customer Floodgates

Darren Crawford — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:22:07 +0000

If you have been impressed by ANIMOTO [affiliate link] videos and the quality that they can do, you will be BLOWN AWAY by these KILLER SALES VIDEOS [affiliate link]. Check out the rest of their sample templates at their main sales. I am sure you will be blown away like I was.

Simple GTD & Evernote System Quick Overview

Darren Crawford — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:47:59 +0000

As a follow-up to my original, #1 Google Ranked posting of Evernote & GTD I have made a quick slide show to cover the system… in just 60 seconds. Enjoy!

Simple GTD & Evernote System Quick Overview

Design Your Best Year Ever!

Darren Crawford — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 01:12:37 +0000

It is that time of year… the annual march towards a new set of goals and resolutions. For most people they don’t stick. For a vital few, they seemingly get everything they want in life. What is the difference? I think Darren Hardy, the Publisher of Success Magazine has nailed it. I recently purchased his book and wanted to share it with you

Here is an excerpt from his page:

We all have the ability to achieve the seemingly impossible!

How? The key is properly inciting your creative power, revving up your inner drive and channeling your focus over a sustained period of time.
Based on 20+ years of refined study, practice, and execution, Design Your Best Year Ever outlines the specific plan that SUCCESS magazine Publisher Darren Hardy developed for himself, synthesizing hundreds of books, seminars, trials, errors, and victories into the best and proven strategies on how to design, execute, stick to, and achieve big goals.
Learn the insights that can alter your future!

Learn to avoid the fatal mistake most make in setting goals. You might be setting yourself up to fail, even before you get started.
Go from goal setting to goal achieving. Discover the “magic factor” that makes the big difference in obtaining your goals.
Find out how to invoke your creative power to attract the people, circumstances, resources and guidance you need to achieve your wildly ambitious goals.

The eBook download will be made available immediately upon purchase.

It’s a simple and easy-to-execute formula, yet incredibly powerful and effective in moving you toward achieving your dreams. Now is the ideal time to begin refining the most important life-skill there is—one that will design and create your Best Year Ever!

To Get It Click Here!

Brian Tracy Discusses The Law of Saving

Darren Crawford — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:37:27 +0000

The Law of Saving

By: Brian Tracy

Financial freedom comes to the person who saves ten percent or more of his income throughout his lifetime.

One of the smartest things that you can ever do for yourself is to develop the habit of saving part of your salary, every single paycheck. Individuals, families and even societies are stable and prosperous to the degree to which they have high savings rates. Savings today are what guarantee the security and the possibilities of tomorrow.

Start With Yourself
The first corollary of the Law of Saving comes from the book The Richest Man in Babylon by George Classon. It is to “Pay yourself first.”

Begin today to save ten percent of your earnings, off the top, and never touch it. This is your fund for long-term financial accumulation and you never use it for any other reason except to assure your financial future.

Develop New Habits Regarding Money
The remarkable thing is that when you pay yourself first, and force yourself to live on the other ninety percent, you will soon become accustomed to it. You are a creature of habit. When you regularly put away ten percent of your earnings, you soon become comfortable living on the other ninety percent. Many people start by saving ten percent of their income and then graduate to saving fifteen percent, twenty percent, and even more. And their financial lives change dramatically as a result. So will yours.

Take Every Advantage
The second corollary of the Law of Saving says, “Take advantage of tax deferred savings and investment plans.” Because of high and even multiple tax rates, money that is saved or invested without being taxed accumulates at a rate of 30% to 40% faster than money that is subject to taxation. Self-made millionaires, according to Dr Thomas Stanley’s book The Millionaire Next Door, are almost obsessive about accumulating their funds in assets such as real estate, self owned businesses and equities that increase in value without triggering tax liabilities.

Invest in company pension and retirement plans, 401(k) plans, IRA’s, Keough Plans, Roth IRA’s, Education Investment Accounts, stock option programs and whatever else has been approved by the IRS for long term financial accumulation. Make every dollar count!

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to apply this law immediately:

First, begin today to put away ten percent of your earnings. Set up a special account for this purpose and treat your contributions to this account with the same respect that you do your rent or mortgage payments each month.

Second, become a lifelong student of money. Read the best books, take courses and subscribe to the most helpful magazines. Know what you are doing so you can always make intelligent decisions when you invest your funds.

How Can You Attract More Wealth and Abundance?
We are now surrounded by more wealth than at any time in our history. The real question is how do YOU gain this abundance? Brian Tracy can show you how! Become a money magnet, immediately increase your income and learn wealth building secrets. Get the knowledge you need to make your financial future an outstanding one with The Unbreakable Laws of Money Package. Click here to get yours today!

ENTREPRENEURS::Why is your business killing you?

Darren Crawford — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:04:31 +0000

Have you found your business has become a chore? Has it become boring? Have you lost that lovin’ feeling?

I am working on a new project and NEED YOUR HELP!

Anybody who takes the time to answer these 3 questions, I will be entering into a drawing for $50 Gift Certificate…

If you could ask the best, most successful people in your field of business any questions, what would they be?
As an entrepreneur, what keeps you up at night? What do you find yourself constantly thinking about?
What are the bottlenecks in your business? Where are you spending TOO much time and getting TOO little results?

Enter your comments in fields below. We’ll be announcing the winner in a couple days on a LIVE USTREAM program (details to be announced soon).

@Collective_Soul and the Power of A Tribe

Darren Crawford — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:07:42 +0000

Are you a Collective Soul fan? I am for a couple reasons. Let me explain.

Late last night while listening to my hometown radio station (97.7 HTZFM) I heard Pauly Morris, their program director, talking about the concerts coming to the area (the area in this case is Southern Ontario / Toronto / Buffalo, NY). What caught my attention was that the AC/DC concert had not sold out, but the Collective Soul concert had. As a lifelong AC/DC fan I made a seemingly innocuous comment as follows:

Well… it wasn’t so innocuous. The band was listening and replied via a RETWEET of my comment which put it out to a follower-base of nearly 24,000 people who promptly started to @reply. You see, COLLECTIVE SOUL has fans. Raving Fans in fact. Here is just a snippit of those @replies:

And it went on like that for the next several hours. I did finally redeem myself in the eyes of these fans, and Collective Soul who were great. Check out my twitter history if you want to see the fun: http://twitter.com/darrencrawford

They have a great tribe and active fans which is clearly an attributing factor to them selling out their venues weeks in advance (besides some kickass music). They follow their fans back, they reply and retweet stories and are genuinely interested in what is going on in their fan base. I’ve never seen them in concert before, but I will be sure to check them out the next time they are any where near Nashville.

Great work guys! Keep it up!

~ A new raving Collective Soul fan.

Proud of my little sis as she kicks butt in Puerto Rico!

Darren Crawford — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:30:15 +0000

My sister, Robin Orlikowski, is bowling the USBC Masters for Team Canada in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She won round one vs lefty Shannon Pluhowsky of Team USA. Round 2 (Final is now underway. Watch live below…

Live TV : Ustream

Nashville Entrepreneur Center Opens!

Darren Crawford — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:50:31 +0000

Are you into the Entrepreneurial Scene? This week the Nashville Entrepreneur Center opened “to connect entrepreneurs with critical resources to accelerate business creation and growth.”

From the Nashville Technology Council website:

The Nashville Tech Story (9/25/2009)

The Nashville Entrepreneur Center (www.entrepreneurcenter.com) mission is to connect early-stage entrepreneurs with the people, businesses and resources they need to succeed, and to celebrate deals and entrepreneurial progress, in Middle Tennessee.

“Nashville has already proven to be fertile ground for entrepreneurs; 21.6 percent of our work force is made up of sole proprietors,” said Janet Miller, Chamber chief economic development and marketing officer. “The Nashville Entrepreneur Center will ensure that new generations of entrepreneurs have access to the tools they need to grow and prosper.”

“This is a community effort and we need to say thank you for helping to get the EC established” said NTC President Tod Fetherling. “We literally met with hundreds of entrepreneurs to get their input and have solicited feedback from business organizations, including Nashville Capital Network, SCORE, Nashville Business Incubation Center, Tennessee Technology Development Corporation and many more.”

The EC would not be in existence if were not for Joe Kustelski and our Owen Accelerator Interns. They worked tirelessly this summer to research and create a plan for the EC. The product and strategy is right on point.

“It’s rewarding to work on a project that will have such a profound impact on this city,” said Kustelski. “While Nashville is already home to a large number of self-employed, this resource is a strong starting point for us, as a community, to transform Nashville into one of the country’s most vital environments for entrepreneurs.”

“[The Nashville Entrepreneur Center] is the next logical step in moving Nashville to prominence on the national stage as a place to build the next great business. ‘You built that in Nashville’ should be the norm, not the exception,” said Task Force member Mark Montgomery, Founder of EchoMusic.

The creation of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center is a result of Partnership 2010’s Entrepreneurship Task Force, which was formed in late 2007 to identify opportunities to strengthen Middle Tennessee’s entrepreneurial community.

The 75-member Task Force met for nine months under the co-chairmanship of Robert A. Frist, Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of HealthStream, and Michael Shmerling, chairman of Choice Food Group. The Task Force identified seven priority recommendations; first among these was the creation of a virtual entrepreneur resource center, an online community tailored for fundable, scalable, high-growth ventures.

“By assembling resources, brainpower and access to capital all in one place, Nashville is demonstrating to the rest of the country that we’re serious about fostering entrepreneurial activity in our community,” said Shmerling. “Nashville is full of smart, creative, independent people, and this resource center will help them achieve their goals as entrepreneurs.”

Next steps for the Nashville Entrepreneur Center include applying for 501(c)(3) status, hiring key positions and working toward the creation of a physical meeting and co-working space.

“This new resource is invaluable for an entrepreneurial business like mine,” said Joe Freedman, Partner of Music City Tents & Events, LLC. “Now, high-growth businesses in the region will be able to access resources developed specifically for their unique needs.”

Sameera Lowe from Nashville Entrepreneur Center on Vimeo.

Gist: Know More About The People You Know!

Darren Crawford — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:15:41 +0000

I recently had a chance to sit down with Robert Pease from Gist.com and give a short testimonial how I use Gist in my regular day job at Dell. If you are not using Gist.com then you are missing out on a powerful application.

Their tagline of “knowing more about the people you know” is not just hype or hyperbole. Straight from their website: “Gist helps you build stronger relationships by connecting your inbox to the web to provide business-critical information about the people and companies that matter most.”

Gist is now in public beta. Make sure you sign up and check it out today! You truly have to experience it to understand the power of Gist.

Check out my video with Robert at Gist here.

PS: I am looking forward to interviewing Robert in the coming weeks about life in a startup and the “Four Steps to the Epiphany”. Stay tuned for details!

Chris Brogan Nashville #cbnash

Darren Crawford — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:55:33 +0000

Chris Brogan was in Nashville yesterday. Gavin Richardson, one of my Nashville Geek Buds (and somebody I’ve had the honor of playing the last 4 holes of Long Hollow Golf Course with) took some video of the first hour.

Check out the video here or watch it below.

Check out his posts on it here.

Check out some of the most recent #CBNASH tweets here.

Post by The Jeff Browne on Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan : Trust Agents conversation : Nashville 2009 from Gavin Richardson on Vimeo.