Rules for approaching me if you're into MLM

So, you're in MLM and you want talk to me about it? Here are 5 simple rules you must follow to have any hope of selling me on your business.

• Determine if I'm in you're target market. Contrary to popular belief, you're target market is not anyone who happens to be over 18 and breathing. Remember both sales and marketing start the same way, qualifying the prospect. The difference is that marketing qualifies a segment of the market and selling qualifies the indivual.



• Do not under any circumstances attempt to sell me your opportunity. I will be more interested in your product or service. See, without a viable product or service, you have no business. If I like your product or service enough, then and only then will I decide if I'm even interested in your business.



• You must be deriving most of your income from sales of your product or services. Oh, and I'll want to see proof of that. If you can't sell it, how do you expect me to sell it? If you aren't making money at it, how do you expect to teach me?



• I don't like sales people. I don't like marketing people. They both have the same flaw, they assume that I'm interested in whatever they have to sell, and therefore have the right to contact me at will. WRONG!!!!!!!!



• It's not a fracking opportunity, it's a business. You must market, you must sell. If you disagree with that, don't get anywhere near me.

If you like my rules, please feel free to link to them.

A new day.....

Okay, I haven't done much blogging lately, but then again I've been busy. The short story is that I've been working on my business. I have just created an online organizer. While there are a few competitors, most of them don't do a good job of seeing appointments, tasks and contacts as all part of the same life.
They also don't track relationships between your contacts, or the roles those contact play in your life. These are important things, and things that we often forget about.
They also don't attempt to track every communication you make with your contacts, or attempt to integrate with every aspect of your life.
Mine does. Coming soon to a website near you.....
as soon as I figure out a name!

The Nokia N810

Using the wifi on it is great. I just wish my phone would handle more then one page in phone as modem mode. So its time to start blogging again. Well seriosly blogging anyway.

Logging & Eating exception

If you don't know where an exception is. DON'T #!@$^%@#$&^@$%^@#$^ EAT IT!

Wrap it and throw it, after logging it. That way someone like me doesn't spend 40 hours trying to figure out something simple, LIKE A !#$^%@#$^%@$#%!@#$%#^@$% NPE! In a simple part of the @#^@#$^%#!$%@!#%^ equals method.

STOP TRYING TO BE HELPFUL!

Why I hate clear case

Shall we start with how long it takes for files to "migrate" throughout a distributed team? Please? I'm in Az. The rest of my team is in Ca. 3 hours for them to see changes I've made. 3 hours.
Then lets move on to the integration with eclipse... Lack of would be better.
Having to connect each time I fire up Eclipse, or change workspaces.

Motivation comes from the oddest places.

I've decided to follow the Rich Dad Poor Dad strategy for getting rich. I enroll in the coaching course, and one of the things they ask is to find ways to keep your commitment to getting rich. Along comes "The Job" and tells me that I have to work on the single most horrific piece of code I've ever seen. In addition to the incredibly onerous time keeping. Talk about motivation.
I have to put my name to something that I can't change, or make worthy of being called software. I have to keep track of every hour (wasting time tracking every hour) so I can charge a project (but I can't charge them for the time that I spend figuring out and tracking how many hours I used). Then to make matters worse... If we tell a project that we can do it in 80 hours, and it takes 81, we can't charge them for the extra hour. We have to go looking for another project to charge the time to. There's an entire black market devoted to the trading of hours between projects. Keep in mind that tracking all of these hours is to determine what projects truly cost.... This is a major fortune 500 company, partly owned by Warren Buffet. Either he didn't dig deep enough in his research or he's losing his touch.
If your going to figure out how much a project is costing, and keeping people within their budget you have to allow for estimates to be very off. Every single methodology for estimating software development costs has some fudge factor, and admits they won't be 100%. Since we're not using an estimation methodology, we won't be close to right, and don't know how to change our estimation process to be more accurate.

MS I.33

I've taken up studying the I.33 manual, using the book Medieval Sword and Shield. I don't normally like fighting with a shield, usually using a mass weapon for SCA fighting. However, the buckler is something requires a degree of skill that a normal SCA shield doesn't.
In addition it provides offensive and defensive options that the normal SCA heater doesn't. I've always felt that the SCA heater was too big and too restrictive to be practical. Fighting around it pretty much restricts you to point blank fighting. I've never liked this, for a lot of reasons.
Interestingly there is only one stance that is used here in Atenveldt that is not covered in the I.33, and that is the "midguard". Where the sword forms a triangle over the top of the shield, which the fighter looks through. THis is obviously not a period guard, since this leaves the hand exposed, however because of the basket hilt it is considered invulnerable. This seems to be closer to Left Shoulder, then Vom Tag in terms of possible strikes.
Half-Shield seems to be working quite well, and I haven't tried any of the other Left Shoulder counters yet. With Half-Shield, make sure you start out of range, that big shield gives them a lot of cover. A good solid lunging thrust through the triangle is a great opening move. The heater fighter has several options:

1. Raising the shield to blind himself.
2. Dropping the sword to trap your blade.
3. Moving the basket over to block.

Raising the shield seems like a silly thing to do, however, an experinced fighter will combine this with a strike into the arm, over the top of the shield. This I found out the hard way :) Be sure to have your buckler on top of your arm to cover this. Immediately bind that sword with the buckler, and strike the heaters arm yourself. Be careful, your sandwhiching the arm with the heater.
I haven't had an experience fighter try to land a flat snap on my leg yet, as I've always used the leg on the oppisite side of the sword to lead with the lunge. Leading with the other leg may not work out as well. When the heater gets tilted up to block, it changes the dynamics of the shield, and what the heater needs to do to get around his own shield. A long blade seems like a really good idea, even if the heater fighter is also fighting with a long blade.
Against inexperienced and slower fighters I've had excellent luck in slope stepping to the sword side, and pinning the arm. This was supposed to be a bind with the buckler, but so far it seems that I end up trapping the arm against the shield, or with the buckler against both shield and body. This leaves them open for a wide variety of shots.
Against expereinced fighters I'm mostly making the same mistake. I want to stand and trader blows, which I can't do with a buckler. I have to attack, and retreat. The retreat has to be on a different line then the attack as well, or I'm in a lot of trouble. As I retreat I have to also make sure that I end up out of range again. My attacks need to make good use of blade length, and footwork until I'm ready to close. I also have to make sure that I cover my sword arm, and that I hit theirs whenever possible.
It will be interesting to see what happens as I continue to learn and master this interesting style of fighting. I'm sure that everything I've written above will change, but they're starting thoughts so that's not a surprise.