Last week was a very interesting week when it comes to social media marketing. It seems like 2 new heavyweights of social media are emerging, Twitter and Squidoo. Since I joined Twitter in June the buzz has been getting bigger and bigger. Twitter has seen an immense increase in new members and all big names of online marketing are catching up too.

This has also causes major issues like long periods of downtimes (the whale). Last week a major breakdown occured when all over sudden peoples followers were deleted and nobody was able to use Twitter for a whole day. Since Twitter lives by a constant stream of new messages this caused quite an uproar in the Twitter community.

Despite the trouble Twitter is still a great tool for networking and online marketing. If you have considered joining Twitter there couldn’t be a better time. For starters 2 new free Twitter guides were published last week. One is an ebook by Joel Comm and the other a video guide by Harris Fellman. Both seasoned internet marketers.

For advanced twitter users Twitter Squeeze opened is doors. This membership site shows Twitter users how to be more effective on Twitter and how to use it as an effective online marketing tool. Since the price is $20 until the end of July (it will go up after that) it was a no brainer for me to sign up. So far the content is great and I am very excited to learn more advanced Twitter marketing strategies.

Another social media site that is gaining momentum in the online marketing community is Squidoo. Squidoo is a great site where users can publish free webpages (lenses) without any html knowledge. This website is especially good for targeting long tail keyword phrases in the organic search engine rankings. I haven’t really used Squidoo a lot even if I knew how effective it is. I just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t waste my time. Well last week another great ebook was released that finally answered all my questions about Squidoo and also offers a step by step manual how to effective market on Squidoo. The ebook is called “The Secret Cash Machine On Squidoo” and I can recommend it to anybody that wants to learn how to use Squidoo to make money online.

With all these new developments in social media marketing I am curious to see what comes next. If you want to follow me on Twitter click here.

The last weekend in June it was Viva Las Vegas for Patrina and me. Well it was not exactly your typical Vegas trip (even we have done that before). This time we went for a marketing seminar called “Renegades of Persuasion” that was hosted by Dave Lakhani. I found out about this seminar a couple of weeks ago. I have to admit that the main reason for visiting this seminar was that it was free (We only had to buy Dave’s book to attend). Before this seminar I had never heard of Dave or any of the speakers that attended the seminar.

I have to admit that I was a little skeptical in the beginning that this would be just another of this full-time-sales presentation seminars. This was totally not the case. The 2 day seminar started Friday morning right after breakfast. It went on for the whole day till around 9 pm in the evening. It continued on Saturday morning and went on all day as well.

The seminar was an amazing experience and we learned a lot about marketing and beeing successful in business. Here are some of the amazing speakers that attended and I encourage anybody to check them out. Most of them have also published books which can be found on Amazon:

Joel Bauer - effective selling, public speaking, personal presentation

Kevin Hogan - marketing, body language, psychology

Dave Lakhani - persuasion, marketing

Rachna D. Jain - social media marketing

Ben Mack - marketing, branding

Joost Van Der Leij - nlp, personal development

I took great wisdom from all of these speakers. The collective knowledge at this seminar was amazing and opened our eyes to totally new ways of marketing and persuasion. I just finished organizing all my notes from the seminar and already started implementing some of the techniques I learned. Dave promised to have another seminar next year and we already know that we will go. One of the things I am working on is building my personal brand and using social media to build a network of like-minded individuals.

For everyone that wants to learn more about Dave and his teaching I recommend his book “Subliminal Persuasion: Influence & Marketing Secrets They Don’t Want You To Know”.

Just in time for my vacation in Hawaii in August I found out about a study that evaluated over 1,000 sunscreen products for effectiveness and potential health hazards. I was shocked to learn that so many name brands are full of dangerous chemicals and only offer minimal protection. Click here to see the full list. Additional to the top ten list you can also download a free pdf with the most important facts about the study. I will look into the top ten products and see which one I will use for my Maui vacation. I got sunburned pretty badly last time I was in Hawaii, so this is an important issue to me. If your skin ever hurt so much that you couldn’t sleep you know what I mean…

A couple of weeks ago I came across a new free tool that allows to track the time you spend on your computer. This tool shows exactly what you do while on the computer and what tools or websites you spend the most time on. The tool is called Rescue Time and can be downloaded online.

I have been using this nice piece of software for over 3 weeks now and so far I am very impressed. I can see exactly what takes most of my time on the computer (which is more of a surprise than I thought).

One of my goals is to become more organized and make a better use of my time. This tool is a great helper for that. Since I have started to invest more time in leading a more succesfull and healthy life time has been a major issue for me.

I am always happy for advise on time management and if you know any other great tools that can help with this please leave a comment on my blog! I will keep you guys posted about my progress as well.

Last weekend my wife and I went to the Play To Win seminar at the Los Angeles convention center. We learned about this seminar at the Millionaire Mind Intensive seminar earlier this year. Both seminars were free of charge, so there was really no reason not to go. We really loved the Millionaire Mind seminar and it changed our life in a major way. My wife started her own business and I started to focus on my online business.

We decided to go to the Play To Win mainly to meet people and promote our businesses. We didn’t expect the seminar to be any different than any other seminar we had been to but we were totally wrong. The seminar was on for 3 days from Friday to Sunday. On Friday we had to arrive later since I had to go to work in the morning. When we arrived in the afternoon the seminar was already in full effect. Surprisingly there were only around 40 attendance at the seminar. Compared to the Millionaire Mind with 2000 people this was a very small event.

Soon we found out why there was such a limited amount of people. Play To Win is not an actual seminar. It is more an interactive event where business skills are taught through games. First I thought that this would not work and was not very excited. Once the first game started I saw how effective this method really was. Just like in life you are thrown into new situations with certain rules and need to figure out what to do to win the game. Most games are played in teams which helps to learn about teamwork and leadership skills. The first day was over around 9pm at night and we were more than excited for the next day.

Saturday and Sunday started with reviewing the lessons learned from the second day. Then the new games started. All games were a lot of fun and a great learning experience. In our society where we are used to sit in class rooms and listen to someone talking this active way of learning is totally underrated. During the games and the breaks I met so many cool people and made a lot of interesting connections. The games make it so easy to learn business skills in real life scenarios. The trainers did a great job of making the games as realistic as possible. The program founder Clinton was present all weekend and took the time to answer everybody’s questions.

The biggest lessons for me were that I can do far more than I sometimes think and that I need to ask for teaching more often. Frontier Trainings also offers a great membership program with many advanced games. We are thinking about joining the program since we liked it so much. The whole weekend was totally sales free. Only in the last hour of the course Clinton was presenting his membership program. This happened without any hard selling tactics or pressure. The whole concept for Frontier Trainings is more to promote the membership though the quality of the free seminar. In my own opinion this was by far the best seminar/course I have ever been to. A great unique learning experience and I can only advice anybody who lives close to San Diego where most free seminars are currently held to take this free 3 day course.

Three months ago I came across a new product that sounded to good to be true. I was looking for a more natural way to make the laundry, since I read a lot about the negative health effects from regular laundry detergents. A lot of people are concerned about their food, but they don’t even think about the dangerous chemicals they come in contact everyday through common cleaning products. Since I wear my clothes on my body every day, I felt it was time to do something to get rid of the brand name detergent I had bought up till then.

I visited the local health food stores and found a couple of green cleaning detergents. I tried them, but was not fully satisfied since I noticed that they left white stains on some of my clothes. It was at this time that I read about soap nuts for the first time. The term soap nuts refers to the seeds of the Sapindus tree that grows mainly in India and Asia. These seeds contain saponin, a natural detergent which can be used to clean clothes.

At first I was skeptical since I never heard of nuts cleaning clothes, but I was ready to give it a try. I ordered a smaller package first to test the effectiveness of the soap nuts. With the package I received a small bag that would hold the soap nuts during the cleaning process. For the first load of clothes I used 2 soap nuts and nothing else. I expected my clothes to be not really clean and maybe to have a weird smell.

I was surprised to find that the clothes turned out perfectly clean and had no smell to it at all. Since that first time I have used the soap nuts over and over gain and so far I can’t complain. These nuts clean my laundry like any other detergent would without the smell and the chemicals. Sometimes I add some Borax, if the clothes have heavy stains on them.

After I used up my first small container of soap nuts I decided to buy a big bag, since this should last me for a while and also saves on the price. This big 1kg bag can be purchases at Better Life Goods. Smaller test packages for a good price can be found at Maggie’s Pure Land. Since I read that soap nuts can also be used to create soap and other cleaning products my next goal is to find more ways to use soap nuts in my home. This is by far the most natural and at the same time effective cleaning product I have found and the price is good too. Makes me almost want to grow my own soap nuts. I wonder if they would like the weather here in California?

A couple of months ago my fiance and I made a great discovery in our local grocery store. She had been complaining about stomach pain and discomfort for a while and no medicine seemed to help. The doctors she went to had no alternative either than expensive prescription drugs that did not help at all.

One day when we visited our local supermarket we found a brand of herbal teas in the tea aisle that stated that they would help with digestive problems. Open to anything at that time we decided to give this a try and bough a pack of Eater’s Digest tea.

Back at home my fiance fixed herself some tea after dinner to see how it would work. She started to have discomfort after the meal, but as soon as she drank the tea the problems went away. For the rest of the evening she had no more stomach problems at all. This was a great surprise for us after all the traditional medicine didn’t help at all.

From now on she has used this tea on a regular basis and so far we are very happy with it. The tea’s main ingredients are peppermint, fennel and ginger which all have been used in many cultures as a medicine for centuries. The tea is also caffeine free which is important if you don’t plan to be up all night long after drinking it. After we have discovered tea as a way to improve your health we are always looking for new teas that we use for all different kinds of problems. This tea has saved us a lot of money so far in doctor visits and expensive drugs.

So the next time you have health problems you might want to check out the tea aisle in your local health store. We have not found these teas in many regular stores, but health stores such as Whole Foods and Mother’s Market carry a lot of different herbal teas.

Coconuts are a great nutritional food and are worth giving a try if you haven’t done yet.

Health benefits of coconuts include:

- Reduce the risk of heart disease
- Lower your cholesterol
- Improve Crohn’s, IBS, and other digestive disorders
- Prevent other disease and routine illness with its powerful antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal agents
- Increase metabolism and promotes healthy thyroid function
- Boost your daily energy
- Rejuvenate your skin and prevent wrinkles

You can buy coconuts at any good grocery or health food store. Many people are afraid to buy a coconut because they don’t know how to open them and think this is difficult. This is far from true. In this post I will show you step-by-step how to open a coconut in less than 5 minutes.

Step 1: You need the following: a coconut, a hammer, a kitchen towel and a pocket knife.

Step 2: Your pocket knife needs a sharp pick (if you don’t have this you can also use a long nail). Now set the pick on one of the three dark spots on the coconut top. This part of the coconut is the thinnest and you should be able to hammer it in easily.

Step 3: Widen the hole in the coconut until it fits a straw. Use the straw to drink the coconut water (very tasty and refreshing!).

Step 4: After drinking all the juice make 2 more holes where the two other dark spots are on the coconut.

Step 5. Take your towel out and wrap the coconut in the towel. This will keep everything clean and helps to avoid splinters.

Step 6: Hammer the wrapped coconut until it cracks. This takes a little bit of muscle power. Start hammering directly at the spot between the three holes you made. This way cracking the nut should be easy.

Step 7: As soon as the coocnut is cracked use your hammer to widen the crack and split the coocnut in half.

Step 8: Now use your knife to cut out the meat. Just cut out small pieces or stripes. You might have to lift the meat up from the shell with the knife. This takes a little bit of work, but once you have the hang of it it is not that hard anymore.

Step 9: Finally you can enjoy the tasty coconut meat. This is also a great healthy snack. Keep it refrigerated so it stays fresh.

Often it is the little things that can make a big difference. I made that experience this year in February when I finally decided to get a shower water filter for the shower in our apartment. I had played with the idea for a while, but always dismissed it as something unnecessary. Boy was I wrong! I finally decided to buy the filter since our water did smell so bad like chlorine that I smelled it on my skin after taking a shower. I also noticed taht my skin was very dry and itchy after taking a shower and often even lotion didn’t help. I did my research online and found out that the problem was our local water supply. Apparently the public water is heavily mixed with chlorine, which by the way is not healthy at all. Additional to the smell and my dry skin I started to think about the negative consequences for our health.

Negative health effects of chlorine:

1. Chlorine has been documented to aggravate asthma

2. Links have been found between chlorinated water and cancer

3. Chlorine contributes to heart disease

4. Chlorine gas released in the shower can reduce oxygen transfer capacity of the lungs

5. Taking a shower in chloridated water will also hasten the skin’s aging process

During my research I found out that shower water filters are not as expensive as I thought and one small filter can last for a whole year. Now I was convinced. I decided to go with the Paragon Water Systems Shower Water Filter, which had some convincing reviews. This filter is less than 20 dollars (and free shipping) at Home Depot Online, so I felt even if it wouldn’t work at least my loss would not have been too large. The filter arrived quickly in a couple of days after I ordered it. It was very easy to install. As long as you have a tool to loosen and tighten the screws you can easily screw it onto your shower head and the pipe. Since the filter is in a upright position it doesn’t take up a lot of space either. The first time I ran the filter black residue came out of it. According to the instructions this was suppose to happen. The residue appeared only the first time and only took a second until the water was clear. It’s a good idea to hold a bucket under the shower head for the first second, to catch the residue.

The first time I took a shower with the filter I noticed a major difference. The water was clear, had no odor to it and felt much softer than before. There was not the slightest smell of chlorine. I have to admit that I was surprised how good the filter worked. The filter also sat very tight between the pipe and the shower head, so that no water was dripping out.

More than 2 months later the filter still works like on the first day. I am very happy with my purchase, since my skin stopped smelling like chlorine instantly and my it is also not dry anymore after I take a shower. Even if I don’t use lotion my skin is still nice and smooth. My fiance, who was very skeptical in the beginning, likes the filter too. She even uses it to cook pasta and potatoes. So these 20 Dollars were definitely worth it and made a big different in our daily life.

Many people want to eat healthier, but don’t know where to start. Here is a short list of things you can do today to make your diet healthier.

1. No more fast food

This might be hard for many people who are used to the convenience of fast food. Unfortunately there is nothing healthy about fast food. It might be deceiving since it smells good and looks good. But all this is chemical engineered and has almost no nutritional value. Also most fast food has excessive amounts of sugar, fat and salt. So stop eating it! Take some veggies with you and some fruit so you have something to chew on when you get hungry. You can also make your own snacks and sandwiches at home and take them with you. This will not only give you control over what you eat, but also help you save some money.

2. Read food labels

It can quite an experience to read labels of modern processed foods. A box of cereal alone has often a long list of unspeakable ingredients. The best rule is: The more ingredients and the more chemical and complicated they sound the more unhealthy is the food. Most of these are artificial flavors, sugars and chemicals to give these foods a longer shelf life. It is also a good idea to take the foods you eat on a regular basis and type the ingredients you are not sure about into Google. The reading of labels should be a rule of thumb. Even when foods say natural and organic on it. They can still contain unhealthy ingredients hidden at the bottom of the list. It is important to know that the first ingredients on the label are the once that have the highest concentration in the food. So if it says sugar first on the top of the list you probably can assume that this product is not very healthy.

3. Eat fruit & vegetables

Everybody knows that fruit and vegetables are healthy. Unfortunately most people still don’t eat enough of them in their diet. The tomatoes on a burger are not a salad and french fries are not a healthy vegetable. I try to eat a salad with each meal and additional make another serving of boiled or steamed vegetables. There are so many great tasting healthy vegetables out there and with some spices added they can be very flavorful. Fruit is a good snack between meals and is also easy to take with you. I eat an apple every day and a couple of other fruits such as banana, grapefruit, kiwi or melon. Start slowly integrating fruit and vegetables into your diet. One small salad a day and an apple is good for a start.

4. Buy organic

Many products these days are grown with pesticides and fertilizers. These chemicals are often toxic and leave unwanted residues in your food. Organic food is a healthy alternative that is not only healthier but also tastes better. Even if organic food is often more expensive there are places like the farmers market where local organic food can often be found for reasonable prices. You can find a local farmers market near you on this website.

5. Buy fresh not packaged

With the advancement of technology more and more packaged food has appeared in the grocery stores. These foods are made for convenience and not for health. Most prepackaged foods that can be heated up in a microwave in 5 minutes are full of chemical ingredients to make them nonperishable and better tasting. One look at the label of these foods will give you a good idea if the product on the shelf is healthy or not. A good step towards a healthy lifestyle is to stop eating any standard microwave-meals. If you don’t have much time to cook during the week and have relied on these quick-meals so far, try to pre-cook large portions of food on the weekend and you can heat up the leftovers during the week for a quick meal.