Sign up as voice.google.com.  Once you get your account, choose a friendly number.  What I mean as friendly is that you can put the letters to your own name or business name as a number.  Google will search to see if it’s available.  I have a couple of cool numbers including XYZ-CONTEXT.  where XYZ is the area-code and CONTEXT represents the keypad version of a number.

The next step is to forward the number to a wrong phone number that you can answer.

Once you have your new number, you’re now ready to play.  Give all your friends and business colleagues the Google Voice number now.  For each call you recieve,  Google will transcribe the call and either Email or text you. If you have it set to call you, then you phone will automatically ring.

It makes my life easier, as I can leave the country and either have my Google Voice number to forward to one of my team members or I can receive the messages via email or streaming Mp3 from my Google Voice inbox.

The best thing is the cost of the service…Free! The only cost from what I see are if you are making international calls from your Google Voice number, at which point it operates like Skype to phone and you are billed a fairly nominal amount per minute.

Having a timer has allowed me to put Parkinson’s Law in action, hence knowing that the time I have is the time I take to complete a task.  It’s allowed me to get out of Social Media overwhelm, as I set a timer a few days a week for my 20 minute Facebook and Twitter sessions.

Now, here is the ultimate timer that I’ve recently stumbled onto by Derek Franklin.  It’s what’s called the The Action Machine Timer or AMT for short .

The AMT is awesome as I can put different tasks for my day and see them Visually.  There is a box for each action that I call the “Why” box.  I put down the bigger reason Why that the task is important.  Knowing my Why encourages me to stay the course until completion.

There are pre-made action item templates or you can make your own.  Thisis something I encourage people do as there are certain days where you will be taking on many of the same tasks, and hence each of these tasks becomes a Focus Session.

It’s worth the $37 as you will make your money back with the amount of completion you bring in your life.  There are a couple of bonuses that will teach you how to get rid of known time wasters and to manage your energy the best as you build up your own template.  I highly recommend Derek’s Action Machine.

]]> http://www.josephrecommends.com/the-action-machine-timer/feed/ 0 http://www.josephrecommends.com/action-popup/ http://www.josephrecommends.com/action-popup/#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:56:55 +0000 admin http://www.josephrecommends.com/?p=102 Here is a Pop-up that is not too intrusive that I use for most
of my marketing ventures. I find it especially integrates with
Wordpress.  I’ve found to have gotten 4 to 5 times the number
of Opt-Ins from using the Action Popup script.  The beauty is
that you can control which pages and the number of times it
pops up on your site.

If you are looking for a more online collaborative  solution, then consider mind42.com

I personally had no idea what to expect. This was of course my first cruise ship adventure. My first thought was that it would be a few hundred online keyboard junkies on a boat drinking Pina Coladas. Was I wrong?

When I got on board, the first person I bumped into was Mike Filsaime from Butterfly Marketing and also a New Yorker. Mike and everyone that I came across were generous and open. We ate like Kings, had our own private excursions where we connected and shared ideas. People were creating products on board. We had Hot Seat and Mastermind sessions. Not to mention scuba diving, snorkeling and afternoons on the beach. It was fabulous and fun! I had the oppurtunity to coach writer Robert Allen on creating a Social Media strategy.

Captain Lou and Mike did a phenomenal job organizing the cruise. Everyone got tremendous value… to the point where 80% of the attendees signed up for next year in 2009.

Below is a picture from the cruise experience in 2009. Click on it for more details.

If you are interested in joining us is 2010, please use my affiliate link.

Welcome to the world of mindmapping.  Mindjet is a top of the line desktop tool that’s available on PC and Mac.  I also use http://www.Mind42.com which is a free mindmapping tool that also allows you to import Mindjet miindmaps.  I like Mind42 because it also allows for collaboration online.

If you are looking for an email management software and you want your emails to get through SPAM filters, Aweber is the best. Aweber has the strongest relationships with most hosts including Yahoo, Gmail and MSN and hotmail.  You have the highest chance of deliver-ability with it and avoid your messages from going into your client’s SPAM folder.

Try AWeber Email Marketing Risk-Free

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Another Email Manager Autoresponder solution that I use is 1AutomationWiz.  This integrates shopping cart and autoresponder. Just connect it with your Merchant Account.  AutomationWiz is the 1 shopping cart system that the top marketers out there are using.

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Constant Contact is another email management tool which you may have seen or heard radio and television ads for.

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Memberwing is the top membership site integrated plugin for Wordpress.