Nate Blankenship - Spartanburg, SC Realtor

We have all read about people who are successful briefly. They win a gold medal, make a fortune, or star in one great movie�and then disappear. Or, there are those like Marilyn Monroe and Howard Hughes who achieve extraordinary success, at the cost of their own lives. These examples do not inspire me!

My focus and fascination is with people who seem to do well in many areas of life, and do it over and over through a lifetime. In entertainment, I think of Paul Newman and Bill Cosby. In business, I think of Ben and Jerry (the ice cream moguls), and a local hardware store owner who is famous for the money he�s give to children�s charities. As a Naval Officer, husband, businessman, politician and now as a mediator and philanthropist on the world stage, Jimmy Carter has had a remarkable life. We all know examples of people who go from one success to another.

These are the people who inspire me! I�ve studied them, and I�ve noticed they have the following traits in common:

1. They work hard! Yes, they play hard, too! They get up early, they rarely complain, they expect performance from others, but they expect extraordinary performance from themselves. Repeated, high-level success starts with a recognition that hard work pays off.

2. They are incredibly curious and eager to learn. They study, ask questions and read � constantly! An interesting point, however: While most of them did well in school, the difference is that they apply or take advantage of what they learn. Repeated success is not about memorizing facts, it�s about being able to take information and create, build, or apply it in new and important ways. Successful people want to learn everything about everything!

3. They network. They know lots of people, and they know lots of different kinds of people. They listen to friends, neighbors, co-workers and bartenders. They don�t have to be "the life of the party", in fact many are quiet, even shy, but they value people and they value relationships. Successful people have a rolodex full of people who value their friendship and return their calls.

4. They work on themselves and never quit! While the "over-night wonders" become arrogant and quickly disappear, really successful people work on their personality, their leadership skills, management skills, and every other detail of life. When a relationship or business deal goes sour, they assume they can learn from it and they expect to do better next time. Successful people don�t tolerate flaws; they fix them!

5. They are extraordinarily creative. They go around asking, "Why not?" They see new combinations, new possibilities, new opportunities and challenges where others see problems or limitations. They wake up in the middle of the night yelling, "I�ve got it!" They ask for advice, try things out, consult experts and amateurs, always looking for a better, faster, cheaper solution. Successful people create stuff!

6. They are self-reliant and take responsibility. Incredibly successful people don�t worry about blame, and they don�t waste time complaining. They make decisions and move on. Sometimes they are criticized for taking this to extremes � Jimmy Carter carried his own briefcase and a President "shouldn�t" do that! Extremely successful people take the initiative and accept the responsibilities of success.

7. They are usually relaxed and keep their perspective. Even in times of stress or turmoil, highly successful people keep their balance, they know the value of timing, humor, and patience. They rarely panic or make decisions on impulse. Unusually successful people breath easily, ask the right questions, and make sound decisions, even in a crisis.

8. Extremely successful people live in the present moment. They know that "Now" is the only time they can control. They have a "gift" for looking people in the eye, listening to what is being said, enjoying a meal or fine wine, music or playing with a child. They never seem rushed, and they get a lot done! They take full advantage of each day. Successful people don�t waste time, they use it!

9. They "look over the horizon" to see the future. They observe trends, notice changes, see shifts, and hear the nuances that others miss. A basketball player wearing Nikes is trivial, the neighbor kid wearing them is interesting, your own teenager demanding them is an investment opportunity! Extremely successful people live in the present, with one eye on the future!

10. Repeatedly successful people respond instantly! When an investment isn�t working out, they sell. When they see an opportunity, they make the call. If an important relationship is cooling down, they take time to renew it. When technology or a new competitor or a change in the economic situation requires an adjustment, they are the first and quickest to respond.

These traits work together in combination, giving repeatedly successful people a huge advantage. Because they are insatiable learners, they can respond wisely to change. Because their personal relationships are strong, they have good advisors, and a reserve of goodwill when things go bad. And finally, none of these traits are genetic! They can be learned! They are free and they are skills you can use. Start now!

Time - the most precious of resources. It can not be increased nor recreated when lost. A finite resource that is delivered in equal installments of 24 hours each day. Given time is a fixed commodity; we must improve at getting more done in less time. So.... what can you do differently tomorrow to manage your time better?



Let's start with you. As Jerry Seinfeld famously put it "The morning guy doesn't like the night guy" referring to what he is like in the morning after staying up late. Are you a morning person who bounces out of bed early and gets to work on your most important tasks while others are still sleeping? Or do you start off slowly and really get firing in the afternoon or evening? This is a really important aspect of your personal make up to understand. I don't believe that we really change fundamentally in this regard through life. While we can get better at working at our peak throughout each day, we still seem to have a few golden hours each day where our focus and output is at its optimum.

So what is your "zone" where you operate best? Listen to your mind and body here and respect and utilise your golden hours. If you are a morning person, try and schedule your most important tasks and priorities at this time of day. You'll get the big stuff done more effectively and accurately by working when you're in your zone. If you're more of an afternoon person, perhaps schedule your "think tank" time or important projects, tasks or meetings then. Trial this for yourself. It works!

Now, let's think about the major interruptions to your time which are people, meetings, telephone and email. How can you leverage these to your advantage?

People. Have neither a permanently open door nor permanently closed door at work. What do I mean by this? A lot of us feel the need to be permanently available for access or interruption by others. Who made this rule up? Regulate access to yourself when needed. Most of the time you can probably have an open door policy, particularly when you are doing bump and grind type day to day work. However, when you are working on an important document, preparing for a meeting or working on a strategic activity; it is reasonable and appropriate that you close your door, block calls or move to a quiet work space. This type of work is not "pick up put down" work and needs an uninterrupted focus. You may need to explain to people around you that you're "off the air" for the next two hours but people should accept this.


Meetings. Meetings should be short, sharp and to the point. They should have agendas with a start and finishing time. There should be outcomes, accountabilities and deadlines that flow from them. They should be scheduled in your diary in advance. All businesses need regular meetings. If set up well, meetings are actually the conduit for implementation so learn to love them. If run and scheduled well, they should not be an impediment to your personal time management.

Telephone. The telephone rings and you pick it up. No.... not always. Certainly mobile phones and telecommunications have created an overwhelming expectation of immediacy in today's business world. However, don't let it dominate you. Again, if you are attending to low priority day to day tasks, by all means answer the phone. But if you are working on a major project that requires high level thinking and is time sensitive, consider this approach if it's doable for you in your work environment. Bank your phone messages through to mid morning. Stop work at say 10.30 am and spend 10-20 minutes returning calls. Do the same again before lunch, mid afternoon and close of day. Now you have returned all calls on the same day in 3 or 4 banks saving you significant time, increasing your productivity while completing and focusing on your most important priorities.

Email. Email comes in and beeps at me. I hear it and go straight into the email message. No, No, No. Research has shown email robs people of one hour or more every day. Imagine coming in over an hour late each day to work and keeping on top of things. That is a staggering observation on the modern world and must surely be the greatest contributor to diminishing productivity as it touches every person every day. Absenteeism as a comparison involves only a fraction of all people on only some work days. So what can you do to stop this impacting on you?

First, turn off the beeping noise that announces incoming email. Secondly, don't leave your Outlook screen maximized permanently as your background screen. Minimize it or turn it off. Introduce the same banking system for your email management that I explained above for telephone. If you are fortunate enough to have a PA or administration support personnel, consider asking them to review all emails and only forward you genuine solicited email. Also, keep your inbox clean. Set up folders in MS Outlook (or your chosen email browser) to the left of screen with titled folder names such as Administration, Personal, Client names, Work projects etc and drag and drop email messages into these grouped folders. You can then go into a folder and view all emails relating to the one topic quarantined together. I also highly recommend only using your inbox as "Work In Progress" containing emails that either need to be responded to or are prompts to act on. This approach to email could save you an hour every day which is powerful.


Closing Thoughts

In closing, to summarize these time management techniques:

· Understand yourself individually and know the times during the day that are your "golden hours"

· Proactively manage the access other people have to your time

· Ensure meetings are scheduled and run well and use them to facilitate implementing action

· Consider banking phone messages and returning calls in batches while working on major projects or important tasks

· Re-engineer the way in which you manage email and gain up to one hour per day

In considering the benefits of changing the way you manage your time, I can't think of a more powerful reason than creating more hours in your week. The return on your modest investment in introducing these changes is significant, so start tomorrow.

Writer's block is a common ailment among writers, whether it is a news reporter under a deadline or a student trying to finish a report. If you are a blogger, you may find yourself suffering from "blogger's block", the condition of not knowing what to put in your blog.

Your blog should feature your voice. It is easy to find reprint articles when you feel stuck, but try to avoid putting them in your blog. You can publish a reprint article on your website and create a blog post that links to it, but keep the blog content your own. This will enable your readers to get a feel for your personality, as well as develop a relationship with you.

The media is a great place to find things to blog about. Watch the local news, read the paper, or check media websites. Take a look at what is going on in the world and spin the stories into a tale for your readers. If you have a website about home schooling and come across a news clip that features something they would find interesting, by all means, blog about it. After you give your opinion on the story, link to the original news source as a convenience for your readers. They may find your post so interesting; they'll want to read the original story, too.

You can blog about your affiliate programs and make money at the same time. If you are an affiliate for something, find a way to create a blog post about it. You can review the item, give tips on how to use the item and so forth. You will have something to write about, and if your reader clicks on your link and purchases the item, you'll make money at the same time.

Blogs are also a great way to promote your website. Let your readers know when you have made a change to your site, such as publishing a new article. Create a blog post that contains the first few lines of the article to tease your readers, as well as a link to the page that features the full text.

Keep your posts timely and helpful. If it is almost Thanksgiving, adding a post with tips on celebrating St. Patrick's Day isn't timely or helpful. However, a turkey recipe or a how-to post that explains a quick and easy craft in the shape of a pilgrim would be both timely and helpful.

To help your readers stay up to date with the new posts that you add, you can install a feed burner. There are different feed services to choose from, including free ones. Once you register, you will be given a small amount of HTML to add to your blog. Your readers can choose to subscribe and have your new posts delivered to their email or computer's home page.

Improve blog ranking and marketing is no longer kids stuff. Its beyond the sappy diary entries and torment fueled rants. Its serious business, especially if your goal is to make money blogging for your business. Blog marketing is more dominant than static site marketing mainly because of all the options Web 2.0 offers. Below are some things you can do to take advantage of what web 2.0 has to offer to boost blog traffic, links and engine ranking.

1. Get exposed

Do you wonder how some large news and content sites deliver their headlines? Syndicate with RSS. While using the feed that comes with your blog may seem like an ok option, using a custom feed, that particularly separates keyword groups for content you develop often, is a far better option. Syndicating with RSS increases your exposure. Pheedpress, accessible from Content Desk is a great tool for this.

2. Tag youre it!

Tags make it easier for people to find your blog post, and video and photos that are related. You can write the most informative blog in your niche but if it can not be found it can not get read. Tag your posts.

3. Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking allows users to save and categorize a personal collection of bookmarks and share them with others. Users may also take bookmarks saved by others and add them to their own collection, as well as to subscribe to the lists of others.

Bookmarking is an easy way to improve blog ranking and get traffic; the more you do it the more youll be noticed. Ideally, your site should be bookmarked somewhere in all the major bookmarking engines. But having your entire site booked in just a few can greatly increase blog traffic.

4. Get involved

Much like the tip above, adding comments is a great way to sprinkle your links around. Note however, your comment must be informative and relate to the original post. Bloggers will grant your trackbacks when your comments are on topic and useful.

5. Get connected

Social networks like Myspace can be found in nearly everywhere corner of the web. They are great places to meet like minded people and above all receive important links from.

Article syndication is still one of the most popular ways to get links. Well-written content that serves the reader first then your business will receive rewards. This is the type of content that is read, passed on, and linked to. Writing content gives you links as well as branding you as an authority figure in your niche.

6. Digging for treasure

Some sites take stories from users and post them on the site. Users then vote on them and decide which get dugg and which are buried. If you are dugg it can result in a flood of traffic.

Use the above tips to take full advantage of all the rewards blogging can have on your business and to be able to make money blogging.
Publishing on a blog platform gives you the chance to reach a greater quantity of people faster than a static site.

What If You Owe More Than Your Home is Worth?
A Common Situation
Many homeowners are currently under water or upside down on their mortgages, actually owing more than their homes are worth. Right now, during this mortgage crisis, this is a common situation.
If you are a homeowner behind on your payments and upside down, or under water, on your mortgage, you may feel there is no possible way you can remedy the situation and either salvage your home loan or get out from under it without foreclosure.
You may, in fact, be considering walking away from your mortgage and letting the bank have your house. There are many other options to try to rescue the situation, and walking away is your absolute worst option.

Workout Options
There are a number of workout options banks will consider to rehabilitate mortgages for homeowners in trouble. By contacting your lender and attempting to work out a solution, you only help yourself. Lenders appreciate borrowers who try to work with them, and are less likely to foreclose if the borrower contacts them with a workout plan. While they don�t accept all workout plans, most banks are willing to negotiate a solution to your situation if at all possible.
One of the worst things you can do is refuse to communicate with your lender. As long as you�re talking, you are in a very good position to salvage your home loan and save your home or at least your credit rating.

If you refuse to communicate with your lender, the chance that they will foreclose is basically 100%.
There are various workout options available, and one of them may be useful in your situation.
You may be able to talk to your bank about a forbearance if your situation is temporary and you expect a lump sum of money to bring the debt current in the near future. In a forbearance, the lender agrees to suspend payments for a specified period of time, with the understanding that you will bring the loan current and continue your regular payment schedule at the end of that time period.
The lump sum money could come from a number of sources, such as an employment bonus, insurance settlement, or tax refund. If you are expecting a payment, and know that you will be able to make your mortgage obligation in the future, you may qualify for a forbearance.
Forbearances are usually used in conjunction with a reinstatement, which literally means reinstating your existing loan, which you continue to make payments on as before after curing the default and bringing the loan payments current.
If your situation is temporary but you do not have a lump sum payment coming in to qualify for a forbearance and reinstatement, you may be able to qualify for a repayment plan. In this type of arrangement, you will make your regular monthly payment on schedule, along with an additional payment each month to pay off your overdue balance.
If your financial situation is permanent, and you do not expect to be able to make your monthly mortgage payment in the future, you may still have options to either salvage your mortgage or get out of your loan through sale.
One option available to borrowers is a mortgage modification. You may be able to negotiate, for instance, an extension of your mortgage. This extension would lower your payments while keeping the interest rate the same. In an extension, you would pay your mortgage off over a longer period of time, thus paying more interest in the end, but rehabilitating your mortgage now and saving your home.
Another option for rehabilitating a loan when your financial situation is permanent is to ask the bank to lower your interest rate. While this does not sound like a promising solution, banks can and do modify mortgages in this way when the alternative is to foreclose on the home.
Banks want to negotiate workouts for failing mortgages. They do not want the home; they want the borrower to pay their mortgage. Many lenders will go to great lengths to help mortgage borrowers who are in financial difficulty but are sincerely trying to save their home.
If you contact your mortgage lender and talk with them honestly about your situation, presenting a plan for how you can save the mortgage and avoid foreclosure, most lenders will give you a fair hearing and try to work with you to resolve the situation.
If you cannot resume payments on your loan, even at a reduced rate, your bank may be willing to consider a short sale, in which you sell the home for an amount less than you owe, and the bank accepts the sale amount as full payment of the mortgage. This is often more difficult to arrange than other workouts, but lenders will accept short sales in certain circumstances, and if the only other alternative is foreclosure, asking for a short sale cannot hurt your situation.
Other Options
Homeowners who are not able to pay their mortgage or sell the home in a short sale may consider renting the home. Ideally, you would be able to rent the home for an amount that covers your mortgage. However, even if the rent falls short of your monthly mortgage payment, if you can make the mortgage payment between rent and your regular income, while renting yourself, you may be able to sell or refinance the home at a later time, when the real estate market has recovered from the current crisis.
Renting your home in order to save it may seem strange, but as long as you make the payments and remain in possession of the home, there is always a chance that your financial situation may turn around, and you do not have a foreclosure on your credit record.
If you are unable to sell your home short or rent it, you may be able to find someone to assume the loan. Be very careful that you actually are executing an assumption, and that your bank is involved in this takeover of your loan. Some scammers will make you believe they are paying off your loan, leaving you with no home and a mortgage payment. A true assumption will sell your home to a new owner who assumes your current loan legally. You will no longer own the home or be responsible for the mortgage, and there will be no foreclosure on your credit record.
If the bank must foreclose, and there is no way to avoid it, you may be able to do a little better, as far as your credit report is concerned, by giving the home back, using a deed-in-lieu-of-mortgage process, rather than forcing the bank to file a foreclosure lawsuit against you. This is a traumatic situation, and you will still experience a foreclosure, but it may be a less traumatic process than the alternative, and your credit report may read differently than if the bank is forced to foreclose through legal channels.
Why Not Just Walk Away?
Deed-in-lieu may sound a lot like simply walking away from the mortgage, but there is a big difference. During this current mortgage crisis, many people are, indeed, walking away, not paying their mortgages, and just letting the bank take over.
The thinking seems to be that if you can�t pay your mortgage, you should just save the money, or spend it, find a place to rent, and let the bank foreclose on the home.
Walking away from a mortgage is the single most damaging thing you can do for your credit. In fact, if you walk away from a mortgage with the intention of renting an apartment, it would be best to line up the apartment while you�re still paying the mortgage. Most complexes check credit references very carefully, and it will be difficult to find a rental if you�ve walked away from the most important financial obligation you�ve ever made.
Your entire credit rating will suffer for many years as a result of walking away, and you may even find that employers who check credit ratings will not hire you or promote you if you�ve walked away from a mortgage. Abandoning this obligation could seriously impair your ability to live your life as you choose for years to come.
The Most Important Thing Homeowners Can Do
Most homeowners, when they start receiving overdue notices from their lender, stop opening their mail. This is a serious mistake. Most lenders understand that people have financial problems from time to time. They are usually willing to work with homeowners who are sincere about repairing their mortgage and resolving their situation.
The best thing you can do is contact your mortgage lender about a loan workout. There is probably something the lender can do to help you either save your home or get out of your loan without foreclosure, and they are willing and usually able to help with this process. By talking with your lender and working out a solution acceptable to both of you, you may be able to save your home. You can usually at least avoid foreclosure, and that is one of the best moves you can make for your future.