The Recovery Trail

Hello Bloggers,

I guess I mentioned that my computer crashed last week. What a chore it is to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I don't know how I could have done it without the help of two very kind friends. I won't mention their names, but I do want to send out a heartfelt thank you to Doug and Alan. I am back in business, except for losing all of my photo files.

That will teach me!

Hopefully I will get out and take some new photos and find the sunny side again. In the meantime, I will try to get some posts out as time permits. Have a great day. Terry

Terry L White -Author of the Chesapeake Heritage Series
"Travel Through Time With Terry"
http://www.terrylwhitesblog.blogspot.com/

Computers for Fun and Profit

Hello All,

I would like to say my absence has been due to a nice book tour or something like that, but alas, my computer crashed and I am still trying to restore its memory - and mine!

This post will be brief, written in the hope future posts will be longer and include art, although all of mine seems to be lost along with who knows how many other lost files.

Like my mind, I miss them all.

To make this short: I am still mowing my own lawn, my resident bat has flown from my window, and the Wednesday Morning Artists had a successful yard sale. Things are going well on most fronts and I have been invited to a week on Fire Island, which will be my yearly vacation.

Hopefully things will get back in order soon. Bless you all and keep on the sunny side. Terry

How can you say that selling is spiritual service?

How can you say that selling is spiritual service?

Earlier we shared with you how Jim discovered the idea that selling is spiritual service. But that concept may seem foreign to you, even impossible. So what we've said bears repeating. Now we go more deeply into what we mean by Selling Is Spiritual Service.

This perspective on selling is based on the profound reality that we are all connected. We are all one interconnected web of consciousness. We all create together the experience of being alive, so we all need each other. That's a simple and profound fact of life.

As John Donne wrote in the seventeenth century, "No man is an island."

When someone has a problem they can't solve by themselves-and you have a solution in the form of a product or service-you have an ethical, even moral obligation to make your solution available to as many people as you can.

If you don't, you shortchange your own creative spirit as well as your business. You shortchange all the people who need what you provide. And you shortchange Spirit or God, or whatever it is you deem to be The Source of All.

This point of view is fundamental to your larger success as a soft sell marketer, and The Heart of Marketing is devoted to supporting you and the growth and expansion of your heart-based marketing.

So let's look at this more closely.


What Is Selling?

Selling is the process of converting someone from being a looker, a seeker, a searcher, a prospector into becoming a Customer.

It's the art and skill of helping your reader make the decision they know they need and want to make in order to solve the problem they're wrestling with. The selling process guides them to that decision for the benefit of both of you.

As a soft sell marketer, when you add the commitment to sell with respect and care, your priority becomes the well-being of the relationship between you and your buyer, which also includes the sale.


What Is Spiritual?

At the core, practical spirituality takes us to the fundamental connectedness that permeates and creates this world and the need we all have of one another. When you take in the emotional truth of our interdependence-and let it guide your business dealings-you begin to market and sell with consciousness and conscience.


Consciousness-with awareness of the co-creative life that joins us all together, the customer becomes not just someone who will buy, but a necessary partner in determining the best outcome for both you and your buyer.

Conscience-reflects the care and respect for ourselves and our customers as feeling-filled human beings, not just walking wallets.
Doing business with consciousness and conscience you advance the experience of being alive by recognizing and supporting the well-being of the whole-the whole of life on this planet through the whole transaction-that is, your awareness of both the seller and the buyer.

When you participate in a spiritually motivated sale you recognize the gifts you, the seller, bring to the marketplace as well as the need brought by your buyer. There is a unity of purpose and respect that is expressed through and manifested in a value-for-value exchange.


What Is Service?

Service is the assistance you offer as you put yourself forward to support and advance your prospective customer's buying experience. When in service, you contribute to the well-being of your prospective customer even if they never become a buyer.

However, when you come from service, you must avoid martyring yourself. To fully participate in the buyer/seller partnership you must make sure to serve your own self-expression, your own personal value, and your own economic well-being. Otherwise you negate the partnership and are thrust back into the every-man-for-himself mindset. It's essential that you respect and support both you and your customer.

When you take to heart that Selling Is Spiritual Service you are on your way to release from fear, shyness, embarrassment, guilt and any other internal millstone holding you back from marketing with passionate commitment. You are emboldened to use your marketing to educate your readers about what you know, what you've created for them, and you invite and encourage them to make the decision they already know they want to make.

You share your story, you outline the many benefits they can enjoy, and you provide testimonials from satisfied customers so that your readers know, truly know they are in the right place. Then when they buy, when they put money in your bank, their payment is a form of appreciation and gratitude.

That's the power of Selling As Spiritual Service.

The Heart of Marketing is a great resource for anyone looking for solid marketing strategies and tactics with a Soft Sell, heart-based approach to create real profit and long-term customer relationships. Order your own copy of The Heart of Marketing within the next 24 hours and receive over $8,400 in bonus gifts from experts around the globe. Go to http://www.theheartofmarketing.com

Take Me Home, Country Roads

I think one of the most difficult - and miracalous things about life is the roads that bring us home.

My journey started on a small dirt road in the Appalachain mountains of northern Pennsylvania, a place where the summers were endless and the winters so bitter I often suffered from frostbite, a condition my dad remedied by a brisk application of snow to the already chilled digits and toes.

My parents kicked me out of the nest the day after my high school graduation, and I know I should be grateful for the shove - even though I was still a kid and scared to death of what I might find in the world.

How did I do? I am still here. I followed some county roads and a few city streets - although I liked those shaded rural lanes much better than the fumes and rumbles of city blocks. I ambled along the roads that led to enlightnment, and did my best to bless the dead ends.

I live in town now, on a pleasant, quiet city street where services are close by. The critters play in my yard and the lawn needs to be mowed most of the time. I love it here and spend my days doing what I love best - writing.

Today, I think of country roads and I know the journey was especially designed for me. Think of that - and keep on the sunny side! Terry

PS: The incredible photo is by prize-winning Cambridge photographer Lisa Krentel.

Terry L White -Author of the Chesapeake Heritage Series
"Travel Through Time With Terry"
http://www.terrylwhitesblog.blogspot.com/

Relativity Rocks

A couple of years ago I was privileged to take a road trip cross country to South Dakota with a friend. I purchased a card for my digital camera and was able to take photos of many things we saw onthe journey.

Of course,I took a great many more images on the trip out than I did on the journey home. Vacations are like that. You are fresh on the trip out and every visita is witnesed with wonder. Coming home is less magical. The road is much shorter, the scenery less inspiring.

For one thing, the trip is a lot quieter. My companion and I had run out of small talk days before. We were weary, and the golden days of autumn had been washed away by a dismal gray rain. The dogs were used to traveling now. They slept between pit stops. Even our wardrobes had lost their savor - we learned that one or two outfits with discreet layers are more than enough fashion for a great trip.

I was thrilled, however, the day we crossed the Mississippi River. I believe we were driving across Minnesota, and one particular rest stop featured a hiking trail that seemed pefect for exercising Cinder and Pebbles, Melanie's toy and standard poodles.

Wonder of Wonders! The path we took led straight to the banks of the river - a river I had crossed much further south where it was ever bit as mighty as one might imagine. The Mississippi of our odyssey, however, was no more than stone's throw across - a mere creek bordered by trees just beginning to don their autumnal finery. The sun shone for a brief moment, and I snapped the photo you see above.

I still think of the Mississippi as a grand river, and it is. Everything, you see, is relative - especially when you happen to catch a glimpse of it on the sunny side. Terry

Terry L White -Author of the Chesapeake Heritage Series
"Travel Through Time With Terry"
http://www.terrylwhitesblog.blogspot.com/

Burning The Past

A few years ago I was a struggling writer, living on hope. I took classes, pored over Writer's Digests listings, wrote my stories and sent them off to magazines almost daily.

Back in the day there was no such thing as an electronic submission. One had to produce a pristine manuscript in the publisher's preferred format, and include return postage for the package.

You sent the stories off, then you waited. For some manuscripts, a reply could take more than a year, and that long-awaited reply often took the form of a mechanically reproduced rejection letter that looked as if it had never been touched by human hands. For all I knew there was a machine available to publishers that punched out those cold rejection letters at the touch of a button.

Could have been, but back in the day there weren't any personal computers. I wrote my first book eleven times, trying to produce that shining story so complete, so perfect a publisher could not resist.

None of it did much good. Over the years I collected a stack of rejection letters three inches tall. Wow! That represented a lot of optimism, a boatload of hope, and an awful lot of spaghetti dinners eaten to save money for postage. Talk about being a starving artist!

To make a long story short, there came a day when I was invited to a bonfire. The invitation urged participants to bring the things they wanted to 'burn' out of their lives. One fellow charred his girlfriend in effegy. Another toasted his unemployment. I burned the rejection letters. It felt good.

And a few weeks later, I got a check for my very first sale. Apparently, getting rid of the negative paid off. I was a real author! Someone paid me for my work! Yay!

Think about it friend, and keep on the sunny side. Terry

Terry L White -Author of the Chesapeake Heritage Series
"Travel Through Time With Terry"
http://www.terrylwhitesblog.blogspot.com/

Why Do We Write?

I was talking with a friend the other day and one of the questions that came up was why we write. I have an idea there are as many answers to that question as there are writers.

Writers used to be fairly exclusive club, but there was the remote possiblity of being discovered. Your manuscript was actually read when you submitted it over the transom. Or a friend of a friend knew someone in the industry. Or - you had been writing for the pulp magazines and someone decided to collect your work.

Being a writer has traditionally been the occupation of the leisured classes - or the demented. Today, there are millions of literate folks with stories to tell. After 40 years of practice, Amazon tells me I am ranked about five million short of wealth and fame for all my trouble.

Poverty has not always been a good excuse to write, often because the poor are not always literate. Edgar Allen Poe has the reputation of a drunk, and so, having weathered two recessions in his brief life - settled for writing dreadful tales of horrors beyond belief. Poor Eddie never met Stephen King or Robert McCammon. Their tales might have scared even Poe.

So why do we write? For many of us, writing is an itch to be scratched, whether it is good for us or not. There is something about stringing words into sentences, paragraphs, chapters and books that brings satisfaction to our souls. Our work may illustrate - or punctuate - our history, or present or our future.

It is all good, which is why I keep writing and looking for the sunny side. Terry

Terry L White -Author of the Chesapeake Heritage Series
"Travel Through Time With Terry"
http://www.terrylwhitesblog.blogspot.com/