How often do you buy a new laptop?

Well, it is that time again… a little sooner this time than expected.  My HP dv9408 which was purchased in July of 2007 has been giving me problems over the last year.  Lately it has been running hot and taking forever to boot up.  The main issue we have now is that when I leave it on and it is supposed to go to screensaver, it goes to a black screen.  When I come back and move the mouse or space bar, it does not respond forcing me to turn it off completely. It will then power up… but not fully turn on.  The blue lights on the keyboard light up but the screen does nothing.  It then turns on and off repeatedly until I turn it off completely again.  Usually after restarting it three times, it will start to work again.  Not last night!  This time I had to press F11 repeatedly, then F10, then F8… when nothing happened I called HP support.  After an hour of finally being routed to the tech support department, they admitted that the motherboard had failed and that there was a recall.  Since it was beyond the 1 year warranty, I was happy to find out that there was an extended warranty and that they would be sending a box to my house where I could pack it up and ship it back to them to be fixed.  Great news! ….. Only I am not in my "house" I am in Mexico!  Not to worry the tech support guy said… I had up to one year from July 2007 to return it. 

So, the laptop will get taken care of on our next trip to the states… most likely in March or April for the next Stompernet Live conference.  Maybe if we find someone taking a trip to the states sooner we can get them to take it back and then ship for us.  But even if we could do immediately, we would need to wait for it to get fixed which I hear is at least a few weeks… then wait for it to be shipped back to Mexico! Since I certainly cannot be without a computer for that long, it is time to buy a new one. 

When we first bought laptops we used to buy the top of the line with all the bells and whistles.  We soon realized that within 2 years we were ready for an upgrade or it was running slow, or other issues so now we focus on buying a mid-range laptop that will meet our needs for the immediate future.  For some time now I have wanted to get a Dell laptop for no other reason than it came in the color pink.  Why pink?  I have no idea.  One of those irrational desires that have no logical explanation but we still want.  Since I could not justify the expense of upgrading just because I wanted a different color laptop… I am actually a little excited I get to upgrade now.  Of course it also has to be 17" and have the number pad at the right.  Also got to have the extra loud speakers and a good video card for watching Stompernet videos! All the other technical stuff I will let my husband pick out.  As long as it runs fast and I can run all of my programs at the same time I will be happy!

Of course we have to price shop so after picking out a few options on dell.com.mx, we will be heading out to the local Costco and Sam’s Club to see what other options there are.  (No Best Buy here in Puebla yet though we just heard it will be coming to Mexico City soon!)  I don’t think that the stores here are going to carry a pink laptop so I am hoping that we can justify the price online over the prices and options in the stores.  If not, there is always 2 years from now when I will be buying the next one!

I hired somebody, now what?

I was on a private faculty call with some stompernet members yesterday and someone basically asked the question, “I hired somebody, now what?”  Since I was not the one answering the questions, I could not give my two cents… so let me take this opportunity to share my opinion!

For most business owners, we know we need to outsource.  We know we just don’t have time to do all the things we need to do. We spend lots of money on ebooks, coaching, courses that promise success.  We even complete the courses, finish reading the books, vow to do better.  The number one factor is time.  We don’t have the time to do everything we need to do.  Case in point.  I know I need to market to my email list.  I mean I have 10,000 names already! I have sent out a grand total of 3 emails in the last 5 years.  So YES I need to do that.  YES it would most likely generate some sales.  YES it would reactivate some old clients. YES it would help me to move some of the inventory sitting in the warehouse. 

The power of the group. I was fortunate enough to be accepted into a super secret Beta program within stompernet.com to be able to test out the effectiveness of the new program.  I won’t share all the cool details now… I have to wait until after the launch of this new cool super secret Beta program! But basically, in one of our group phone calls I committed myself to get started on the email campaign. First week went by and I wrote the first email in the auto-responder series that I have set up with aweber.com and then I programmed the mailing list to let me know when someone new signed up.  (A former employee email address was still being notified!) I then went in, figured out which template I wanted to use and then got to work writing my first email.  I decided to write one on Parenting Tips as it was topically related to that mailing list and for a mom of five, soon to be six, writing on parenting is pretty easy! I then went out and hired two people.  One to write the emails and another to put them into the autoresponder series.  Why two?  Well I hired them both full time… one as a full time writer and the other as a full time Editor for my team of writers.  I told the Editor it was going to part of her job to take care of the email campaigns for me!  So now when we have our group coaching mastermind phone call on Monday I can say, YES I did my homework. The power of the group.  Peer pressure at it’s best!

Back to the topic.  Let’s say you found someone willing to work for your budget and you want them to be as profitable as possible.  We all know that links is one of the most important factors in improving search engine rankings.  In this case I would recommend you to purchase the software program internet business promoter and to have them to some initial analysis of your site.  Get the business version as you are a business owner correct?  And use the link section to have the software find some potential link exchange partners for you.  Then INSTEAD of doing link exchanges, have your new employee call the websites and see if any of them would be willing to place an article on their site in exchange for a link back to yours! Then have your new employee write up an okay article related to the website content of the OTHER site. Somewhere in the middle if it is relevant or in the author resource box, have your new employee add a link back to your site.  Of course the link should be with a keyword and the keyword should be the same as the title of the page you are linking to… and of course, NEVER link to your home page.  It is a waste of a good link! This is just a start of the many things you could have your new employee do… but in my opinion, a good start.  Make a goal for them to have 2 completed articles placed on other sites per week.  Within a month they should have a list of 10-15 sites that are willing to put up your articles on a monthly or weekly basis.  At that point, or even sooner, you will want to outsource the writing part and have your new employee focus on just going out and finding new partners and cultivating the realtionship you have with the current partners.  There you have it!

Healthcare in Mexico

One of the main reasons people give about not wanting to move to a foreign country is “What if I get sick?” Most Americans will definitely want to keep their US health insurance plan for major medical emergencies of course. However, when you are living in a large city in Mexico, it hardly becomes necessary. It about one month our 6th child will be born here in Puebla, Mexico.  Of our children, only the oldest was born in the states.  When we were expecting our second child, we came to realize that the doctor was the most important factor for healthcare in Mexico. The hospital facilities are not as backwards as some would automatically think. We are blessed to live in a major city with good hospitals.  In fact, our city is home of the Puebla’s Children Hospital.  Puebla’s Children’s Hospital is THE major hospital for public healthcare for most of southern Mexico.  If people are sick from as far as Chiapas, they might be flown in to the hospital here.  But back to my story.  As we are getting ready for baby #6 we went to the hospital - La Beneficencia Espanola - to register.  Since we don’t have insurance, we pay privately.  We went to fill out the paperwork so that when the day arrives we would be all ready.  I know this will be hard to believe, but the rates for the hospital part of the bill are incredibly low!  The package includes 2 nights and 3 days in the hospital and is only about $350 USD! Now from experience we will tell you that by the time we get out the bill is going to be closer to $900 but that is going to include all of the medicine, treatment, and so on. That does NOT include what we pay our doctor or her medical team.  When we were in the states a few months ago, we had to take little Hannah to the emergency room for stitches.  She had 4 stitches on her eyebrow.  FOUR.  The bill came to $1000 more or less including the hospital and the doctor… which we found out later are two separate charges! So basically, the cost of 4 stitches in the states and the cost of having a baby in a nice hospital in Mexico are about the same!  I could go on and talk about how ultrasounds here cost $25 and the ultrasound I had done in the states a few months ago was $250 but I won’t.