Congratulations, America!
Published by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in Better-Than-TV, Lifestyle, Pickups
US Americans… Here is to congratulate you and your country for having Barack Obama as your 44th President. It is the right man at right place at the right time. He’s the one who can and will bring the United States back on track, and he’s the one who brings people together.
It was very emotional when I followed the Election Day last night (via TV and Internet) and watched the results pour in. And then… We both had tears in our eyes at Barack Obama’s incredible speech in Chicago. It was a very special moment. It still gives me the creeps whenever I watch it. (John McCain’s speech was also touching.)
The last time I had such emotional, deeply touching moments was during the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Millions of people became free that time. And last night… I saw people from all over the world celebrating, including entire Germany. (Likely 98% wished he would win, including me.)
A historical moment that will change our lives to the better. The American dream is alive again.
I’m so proud and happy for you Americans.
Thank you, Barack Obama.
—Marcus Hochstadt
P.S. For some more touching moments, here’s a video of Barack Obama’s Berlin speech (July 24th, 2008) in front of more than 200,000 celebrating, cheering people (and this although he was just a candidate that time!). Listen closely to what he said.
Amazing. Simply amazing.
Internet Lifestyle
Published by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in Lifestyle
It was a long time ago when I was so excited to travel like I am today.
Right in this moment, we are in the airplane and just taking off, flying from our home in north-east Brazil to my ‘ol comfort homeland, Germany, spending some time there.
I really love both places, Brazil and Germany. Both have their qualities. And most importantly, both places offer Internet access. ;-)
What a wonderful world it is that we’re living in, isn’t it?
Go ahead and create your own Internet Lifestyle and enjoy life wherever you want.
—Marcus Hochstadt
Live Where Your Heart Calls You To
Published by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in Lifestyle
I made my dream of living in Brazil come true almost two years ago after the FIFA World Cup in July 2006. It was my second attempt to move to this amazing country.
The first attempt was in 2004. It was when I gave up most of my belongings and temporarily moved to my mother’s home. I was so sure to move to Brazil and to continue to build and expand my Network Marketing business here, which I had to that time. Though, a sudden change in business made me stay in Germany and work on the new venture there.
My second attempt was when I invited Edilene to visit me in Germany for 3 weeks. (We got to know each other on the Internet.) Those 3 weeks ended up to 3 months, she experienced the entire World Cup, and I decided to finally give up 90% of my belongings (again) and move to Brazil.
We have an amazing climate here (~30°C/86°F all year), and I enjoy beach view when looking out of the window of my home office. (The beach is just a 2-minute foot walk away.)
Having an Internet business gives you a lot of freedom. If you haven’t started one, of if yours is not profitable yet, I strongly encourage you to focus on getting one up ASAP. It gives you more freedom to decide to do what your heart calls you to.
What is your favorite place when going on vacation? Why not move there?
Are you afraid of losing contact to your friends and family? Skype and its amazing specials can help solve that problem.
You think you don’t have enough money for “the jump”? The cost may be lower than you expect. Why not calculate? It’s the first step towards manifestation.
Worried you have too much “stuff”, like furnitures, clothes, and other material goods? Let eBay help you get rid of them. Or give it to non-profit organizations who may need your stuff more than you do. 80% of the things you own you do not use anyway, so why keep them? Get rid of the dust collecting junk! This step alone will bring more mental freedom into your life. Do it and you’ll see. :-)
You’re afraid to live there “forever”? Well, who says you would have to do that? Why not do a test drive? Living 2-3 months in your paradise may give you enough chances to evaluate if that place is really your “dream come true,” or if it’s actually another spot on earth. We have a big planet. :-)
Bottom line, the excuses we develop in our mind may be just that, excuses. Only once you do it you know how it really is.
Start to plan and calculate. You may be amazed at how easy it actually is to to the jump and live where your heart calls you to.
If you do live at your dream spot, I congratulate you. Enjoy the time of your life.
If not, however, then I encourage you to do the first step now and get rid of some of the dust collecting junk while you outline the next steps.
Life is supposed to be fun!
—Marcus Hochstadt
Skype Specials
Published by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in Lifestyle
Heard of the new freedom you can enjoy with Skype Specials? They now offer you unlimited calls (i.e., “subscriptions”) to landlines in 34 countries worldwide that cost a mere $12.95/month! (If you see rates of a country not of yours, scroll down to the drop-down menu at the bottom and select your country to see your specific rates.) And that package even includes a landline phone number in your country plus a voice box (called “SkypeIn”.)
That’s awesome! Imagine someone is calling you at a phone number in the US (or many other countries) but you are at the beach in Brazil—and the caller even doesn’t know where you are—how cool is that! You can receive calls for free while being logged in to their messenger, or you can use call forwarding and receive calls wherever you are to very low rates.
Or you talk with someone for hours and hours without looking at the watch and worrying about the cost. But even if you call someone in a country that is not one of the 34—or when taking advantage of call forwarding mentioned above—the minute rates are really reasonable (they call it “SkypeOut rates”.)
Besides, the voice quality in Skype is the best I ever came across. Skype-to-Skype calls are crystal clear, it is as if your partner is sitting in the room next door, even if s/he is in reality thousands of miles away. This is what impresses me the most.
Skype keeps getting cooler and cooler with its amazing specials. :-)
—Marcus Hochstadt
Back Home…
Published by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in Lifestyle
It were great two weeks in Costa Rica, I learned a lot, and we are happy to be back in our good ‘ol home at the beach in sunny Natal, Brazil.
There was a nice experience on our 18+ hours way. At the airport in Costa Rica, they told us our seats would have been canceled. You can imagine with which eyes we were staring at him, can’t you? And the check-in guy could experience the other side of my otherwise happy and very friendly wife. ;-) (After standing one hour there the guy could finally get us our boarding passes.)
Either way, there are lots of things to do now. How good it’s Sunday so we have some time to clean and fix the most important things.
—Marcus Hochstadt
P.S. Happy Easter! :-)
Xandari Spa Resort Costa Rica
Published by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in Business, Lifestyle
Yesterday was the third interview day with my Mentor, James Brausch. He geniously agreed and offered a second and a third day with him, which I’m endlessly grateful for.
“Dude, either you drink that cocktail now or I do…”
We were in wonderful Xandari Resort & Spa and had a great time there. Xandari is a luxurious hotel with a spa center, located in the central valley of Costa Rica. It is very beautiful with lots of flowers, trees, and has a very friendly staff, always with a smile on their face and very helpful & supportive.
In this and the last week I really got James to work 10+ hours. (He usually works only 3 hours/week.)
If you know James you know that he lives his life on his own rules. He is the one who decides what to do and who to meet when. So why and how did I get him work more than 3 hours? What did I do to get him in front of my camcorder three times? What was the reason?
Giving value to his business
The goal of an interview is giving value to all three… your audience, you, and the person you interview.
Some folks are tempted to think of their own advantages whereas, optimally, a good interview ends in a win-win-win situation.
“That lunch was excellent, like sheeeeeee’s…”
For now though, I have been put to work. There are 10+ videos that I have to get out, which I’ll do withing the next days and weeks. (Geez, if the Internet connection at our location would not be so awfully slow…) Here are a couple topics we covered in great detail in those three interview days…
- Building an Internet business from scratch (and how to make the first $1,000 within 24 hours)
- Step-by-step plan on how to create a product, which product, to which price, ways to overcome “product creation blocks,” etc etc
- Blogging essentials and how to start one
- Internet business optimization and how to increase traffic, reader interaction, income, word-of-mouth, etc
- Outsourcing secrets and an exact step-by-step plan on how to find top contractors, the top 3 sites, which text to use, etc
- Top tips on traffic generation (incl. step-by-step plan when starting from scratch)
- Article marketing (and what most people do wrong)
- List building and ways to increase your list (and his take on RSS and Feedburner)
- Affiliate Marketing and Google AdSense, the biggest mistakes people make, how to approach it properly, and his biggest successes
- When James started his Mentoring program (and when & how to start one)
- And much, much, much more…
And there was a chance of asking him the questions some of you, my precious blog readers submitted. (Was literally in the very last minute.)
Again, I’m going to post the answers to these question as a password protected post soon. To receive the password to that post and therefore the answers, you’ll need to sign up to the blog announcement list. The sign-up form to that list is located right below my image, in the upper right hand corner. (If you tried it before and it didn’t work, please try again. It is solved now and shall work again.)
Alrighty, off to some production (and lots of other) work… Very exciting times are coming! :-)
—Marcus Hochstadt
1 CommentPermalink Tags: costa rica, internet business, james brausch, xandari
Hot Springs Costa Rica
Published by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in Lifestyle
We have a great time here in Costa Rica. It’s a very beautiful country with lots of flowers and volcanoes (*pssst* and some very gorgeous ladies! ;-)
Now after staying for a couple days we seriously consider staying here for a couple months sometime in the future, even though it’s quite a bit colder than in Natal, Brazil. (Roughly 20°C/68°F where we are in Costa Rica vs. 30°C/86°F near the beach in Natal, Brazil.)
The first day that we spent together with my Mentor, James Brausch, his lovely wife Kristi and their driver Francisco, we made a day tour to the stimulating Tabacón Hot Springs Grand Spa Resort located at the foot of the Arenal volcano, probably the most amazing and astonishing volcano region in Costa Rica, and James’ favorite place on earth.
Starting at 7 o’clock in the morning, the tour took 3-4 hours from our hotel. On the tour, we made a stop at a local mini-bar, taking a yummy original Costa Rican breakfast. And there was the first time James put me to a test.
He took a thick black spider in his hand, kept it there for about two minutes, put it back into the glass box, and then asked me to grab it myself…
I couldn’t.
Could you?
We then went on and made another short stop getting some water. While there, we fed a couple Iguanas. For THAT I did have the courage… ;-)
“What do you think, Marcus, will it eat my foot or the banana?”
“W-well, let me call the ambulance, j-j-just in case…”
“Don’t stare at me like that, dude!”
Now we were “well prepared” for approaching the Arenal volcano…
Almost there…
Taking off the clothes and on the swim suit, we made sure to get into the 40°C/104°F hot springs of Tabacón as soon as possible. And the best spot for that was James’ favorite spot on earth, this pool here…
“No, dude, that’s not really the way I did it…”
See James scratching his head? LOL
What looks a bit funny is we tried floating on the water like James did. (Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of that situation.) I tried really hard, but then figured it may be one of his seemingly magical skills that are nearly impossible to copy. (Kristi’s comment confirmed this assumption. See how she’s laughing about me and my wife’s try?)
After floating in the pool, we headed over to the unforgettable 40°C/104°F hot waterfall area.
That was nice, really nice.
We don’t have that in Brazil…
—Marcus Hochstadt
How To Synchronize Your Brain Cells
Published by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in Lifestyle, Strategies
I’ve spent two hours playing Frisbee on the beach today. Sport is, generally, something I do find attractive. It is not only healthy, it also gives me the opportunity to train my brain.
Today, my friend David (who currently lives here in sunny Brazil too, just a couple minutes from my home) received the package from the USA with the Freestyle Frisbee discs he ordered in December. They look really nice and are very good in the hand.
Not only that, but they fly like angles… soft, precise, elegantly. I’m even so far that I can do a little bit of freestyle, which he taught me. Just a little bit and it’s a lot of fun! :-)
Freestyle Frisbee means to rotate the disc on one finger when it arrives at your spot. That’s a very basic thing you may title as “freestyle.” They even go so far and do whatever it takes to make playing Frisbee much more enjoyable (ex., rotating around your body, picking up while you jump, etc.)
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here…
The point is, once we were warm (yup, we’re now back at the beach ;-), I had an idea of throwing a disc to each other at the same time. Meaning, he threw one to me while I threw one to him. So I had to catch his and he had to catch mine at about the same time.
That was the first step to “synchronize my brain cells.” ;-)
I figured my brain was on the one hand concentrating on how my disc flew while also focusing on the disc that came to me and wanted to be caught.
Now, the really fund part started when David recommended to go extreme.
He recommended to go back to one person throwing only, but to throw two discs instead of one. Wow!
Imagine this, two discs in your hand, and throw them to your partner.
With a little training you throw them pretty much together so your partner can catch both, one in each hand.
The stretching of the body looks soooo spectacular, I’m telling you. Not only this, your brain starts to react in a really funny way, too. When I was watching him trying to catch both discs, his brain apparently was confused at times as for which disc to catch first.
After a short while though you could see a tremendous improvement. It got easier and easier to catch both disks fairly quickly.
It’s similar to another exercise I learned when studying NLP. There we were doing some funny looking “dances,” like touching your right kneecap with your left elbow, then your left kneecap with your right elbow, then again the right kneecap with the left elbow, etc etc.
Try it! You might end up coming up with new, fresh ideas! ;-)
~Marcus
P.S. I would really LOVE showing you a real photo of our today’s funny looking exercise instead of the stock image you see above. Didn’t have the camera with me, sorry. Next time, OK?
No CommentsPermalink Tags: , brain exercise
Pay Business Expenses Wisely And Travel For Free
Published by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in Business, Lifestyle
Do you pay your business expenses wisely? Or like the headline indicates, would you like to travel the world for free (which is one opportunity that occurs when you pay your expenses wisely?)
I’m not talking about traveling from street to street by feet, but from continent to continent using an airplane, for example. ;-)
These days, I’m not doing it as often as I’d like to since my expenses are fairly low. But I do collect points using my Lufthansa Gold Card almost every day and will soon have accumulated enough points that entitle me for a free intercontinental round trip once again. (My first and last free round trip was with VARIG since I accumulated 70,000 points using their Smiles card, which I recently gave the trash to eat though.)
What the heck to I mean by that anyway?
I’m talking about owning and using a credit card (or a membership card of an airline company of your choice) where you receive a certain amount of bonus points for every dollar (or Euro, in my case) spent, or for every mile flown.
In my case, a round trip Brazil – Germany may result in 12–18,000 points (Economy Class) up to 24–36,000 points (Business or First Class) PLUS an additional Executive Bonus (up to 43,000 points!) depending on the status of the membership card you own, the booking class, and the ticket you purchased.
In other words, wisely spent, you could end up purchasing a ticket and due to extra points you receive (and the flight itself) you could receive a free international round trip right after the one you just had! Or you take advantage of a free upgrade to Business or First Class. And while you pay your business expenses wisely, that is, accumulating one point (or more) for each Dollar or Euro spent, you’re going to receive that free travel (or upgrade) much, much faster.
For more details, go ahead and find a mileage calculator on your airline’s Web site. For example, Lufthansa has a very neat mileage calculator in four languages at www.meilenrechner.de.
Also, as Tim Ferriss recommends on his blog today, I would, by all means, AVOID using it for purchases of things you don’t really need. It is, instead, a matter of selecting and paying intelligently and wisely…
It is the use of credit cards to pay for inevitable expenses, not the use of credit cards to actively accumulate points by buying things otherwise unnecessary.
For example, you spend $1,500/month in advertising. Because a mileage program is associated with the CC you use, after one year you accumulated 18,000 points that then might entitle you for a free domestic round trip. Or let’s say there are two supermarkets around your corner; both offer about the same products and have similar prices while one of them promotes payments via credit card. You shop in the latter and spend about $500/month there, which makes it to 6,000 points accumulated in one year. Now you’re at 24,000 points.
The list goes on and on like this. I think you get the point…
Here’s what I recommend you to do…
#1 – Research cards available and list the advantages/disadvantages of each. Or hire someone to do it for you since it can be fairly time consuming.
#2 – Decide upon and order two cards. In other words, in many cases you’ll want to have either VISA and AMEX or MasterCard and AMEX. Why? You’ll stumble upon moments where one card doesn’t go through a machine, or you order at a company that gives you additional points when you pay with the CC of company X, while other stores only accept one of them.
In short, sometimes you have advantages using VISA or MasterCard while on another location (or day) you’re better off using AMEX (they seem to be more flexible.) And, of course, where you live is also an important factor as well as a couple other points. (I still have to get my AMEX. Will do so when we visit Germany again this year. They were just too slowly the last time.)
#3 – The next is about “controlling” your own mind from the point you receive the cards. A lot of people fall into the trap of buying in order to gain an XX amount of points. Don’t. Only pay with your CC what you would pay cash otherwise; or you might end up “bankrupt.”
By the way, that includes to pay the whole CC bill ASAP, as soon as it arrives.
OK, that’s about it.
Now I wish you happy flying! :-)
—Marcus Hochstadt
17 CommentsPermalink Tags: Business, cost, credit card, expenses, mileage, miles, payments, travel
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