Savvy marketing executives and business owners are leading a new business trend. No longer content with being passive participants in networking groups, they are taking charge of their business growth and producing their own events designed to generate more leads and more sales.

The event marketing formula is a simple one. Host an event whereby you create an opportunity for your guests to network. Give away valuable information that helps your guests in their professional and personal life. And then take an opportunity to pitch your wares.

Is it generating more leads and more sales? You bet! Trading valuable information for leads and sales can truly be a rewarding social, financial and business experience. And leveraging that information in the context of producing your own networking events has its benefits. For example, as the event producer, you create the potential to:

Quickly garner trust as a leader in your area of expertise.
Collect attendee information and use it to follow up.
Create opportunity for yourself and others.
Disseminate valuable information that creates real world results for your networking group.
Entertain and educate your clients, suppliers and potential customers which fosters relationships and builds more trust.
Most importantly, you create a built-in opportunity to pitch your wares or upsell your products and services to a specific target market.

When producing networking events, there are few guidelines you want to follow:

No one appreciates a maverick producer. The last maverick event I went to, the leader, a group insurance re-seller by trade, was clearly using his group to scope out potential candidates for something else. The day following his event, I received his multi-level-marketing pitch. Annoyed by my own ignorance, I now interview network group leaders before I find myself attending potential maverick productions.

Avoid being a passive event producer (PEP). A PEP is a business professional with an authentic agenda to help grow local businesses or help charities. However, PEP producers often fall short of creating fruitful networking experiences. For example, one of our local networking groups invites its members to a different local business once a month. The owner gives a very dull speech about the history of the business. Afterwards, there is one hour for us to network with wine and cheese in hand. The unfortunate part is that both the PEP and the business host have completely missed the opportunity to engage the guests and create a critical flow of information. A well produced event might hire an entertaining host and lead networking games and exercises and lead active participation. The whole idea is to raise the energy level in the room and engage your guests. This creative energy usually manifests into opportunity because you have stimulated the flow of information.

Even though the lack of a good networking structure will eventually diminish your audience, rigid rules are almost worst. There is nothing that takes the fun out of networking more than unrealistic rules. While implementing group traditions and guidelines is a positive thing to do, rigid rules will eventually suck the creativity out of the group. A healthy approach is to create realistic goals for your guests while they are present in the room. Avoid setting up future expectations such as being penalized if you miss a meeting, or having to bring two leads before entering the next event. These types of goals may be setting your guests up for failure. The long term effect is that your events will not attract new prospects.

A great networking event engages you from the minute you receive your invitation to when you exit the room. The successful producer has planned every logistical detail and delivers Valuable Information in an Entertaining Context(VIEC). A VIEC producer thought of the perfect room, perfect music, perfect sound system, perfect guest speaker, and perfect set up for food and beverage. They have given away valuable information that helps people, and have implemented networking games that enroll every single person in that room. They implement successful traditions, guidelines and have strategies to keep the group energy up the entire event. They have collected and disseminated information, created opportunity and made the whole experience entertaining. And while people are offering you great testimonials about how much value your event created in their lives, you too will enjoy the leads and sales your VIEC event generated for you.

Copyright Training Business Pros 2006

Nancy Houle
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/trading-valuable-information-for-leads-and-sales-44390.html

It seems that we’re all fighting the battle of the bulge. Especially as we get older, it seems to get harder to keep the pounds at bay. We often think of women as being the dieters, but in fact, men are just as subject to weight problems as women.

As you’re looking for ways to make weight loss easier, consider the research that has been performed on the health benefits of tea. Tea has long been used in Asian cultures to prevent illness and protect health, and it seems that science is proving what Asians have believed all along: tea is good for you.

Lifelong tea drinkers have lower incidences of heart disease, high cholesterol and some forms of cancer. They are also less likely to suffer from diabetes or be overweight. Tea protects your teeth and may even have potential to prevent diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

We are beginning to learn a lot about the benefits of tea, but clearly there is much more to learn, so that we can pinpoint exactly how we can best use tea to help with medical needs.

One of the most promising areas of tea research centers on tea as a weight loss aid. Much research has shown that tea seems to speed up the metabolism and promote fat oxidation. Other studies have shown that lifelong tea drinkers are less likely to be overweight, have a lower percentage of body fat and have a lower waist to hip ratio.

In addition, studies have shown that when tea was part of a sensible diet and exercise plan, subjects lose more weight than those subjects who used a diet and exercise plan without tea as a supplement.

One study that is particularly interesting was conducted by the Beltsville Human Nutrition Center in Maryland in conjunction with the University of Tokushima in Japan. In this study, twelve men between the ages of 25 and 60 were evaluated. All participants were in good health, and the study was conducted over a period of one month. The target participants were those who consumed the caffeine equivalent of 2-4 cups of coffee each day.

Prior to the beginning of the study, each participant was evaluated with regard to their calorie expenditure per day without caffeine or tea. During the study, each participant was placed into one of four study groups. One group received a supplement of water, one group received water with caffeine, one group received half strength oolong tea and one group received full strength oolong tea.

For three days, the participants were fed the exact same diet. The diet was low calorie and free of caffeine, other than the caffeine in the beverage supplements. The beverage supplements were given to the participants five times per day.

This study found that the participants who drank full strength oolong tea and caffeinated water burned more calories in a day than the subjects who drank water or half strength tea. Drinking caffeinated water increased energy expenditure by 3.4% over those participants who drank water alone.

Drinking full strength tea increased energy expenditure by 2.9% over drinking water alone. Drinking half strength tea did not significantly increase energy expenditure over drinking water alone.

So, why not just drink water with caffeine?

You might ask why we wouldn’t just drink water with caffeine to help increase our metabolic rate. Well, according to this study, you could do just that. However, when you consider the many other studies that have touted the many other benefits of tea consumption, it’s clear that getting your metabolic boost from tea is far healthier than adding caffeine to your water.

Tea is full of anti-oxidants, which is believed to be why it prevents illnesses and protects health. Anti-oxidants are powerful fighters of free radicals in the body. Free radicals are oxygen containing molecules that are created as a by-product of our digestion process.

These free radicals damage our cells and DNA if left unchecked. However, consuming anti-oxidants combats these free radicals before they can harm our bodies. Scientists have shown that consuming a diet high in anti-oxidants helps us to avoid serious illnesses and slows down the aging process.

In addition, there have been other studies that have suggested that tea promotes more weight loss through fat oxidation than other caffeinated beverages. It is believed that this too is the result of anti-oxidants. It appears that the combination of caffeine with the anti-oxidants in tea is a more powerful weight loss supplement than caffeine in other beverages.

Finally, research has shown that the caffeine in tea seems to be better tolerated than other forms of caffeine. Many people who are caffeine sensitive find that they can drink tea without the usual side effects of caffeine. The caffeine in tea often does not produce the irregular heart rate and nervous jitters that caffeine sensitive people experience from other caffeinated beverages.

So, adding tea to your diet plan may be a great way to speed up your weight loss. Tea is healthy, refreshing, inexpensive and readily available. So, why not add tea to your diet routine?

Marcus Stout
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/can-oolong-tea-help-men-lose-weight-114601.html

It seems as though added sugar is in everything these days, from ketchup to salsa to soup. It is everywhere, I suppose, because we have come to expect it to be.

And it is not just the white stuff we need to worry about. “Refined carbohydrates,” such as white bread and white flour products, produce the same reaction in our bodies.

Researchers have linked sugar consumption to everything from cavities to wrinkly skin, as well as wide range of much more serious health problems.

Some research has been cited that says sugar has not been proven to be a direct cause to these health problems and may not even be directly linked to them, but when you consider that added sugar is basically non nutritional calories, the lack of nutrition and obesity can cause health problems in themselves.

Sugar, some researchers say, can lead to the damage of healthy cells, and can lessen the effectiveness of white blood cells, leading to a weakening of the immune system. Too much sugar means lots of empty calories, too, which can lead to obesity. As any parent knows, when you fill up on sugar, you simply are not hungry for nutritious meals. And sugar can make you hyperactive and irritable, too, as it knocks your body out of whack.

When you eat sugar, your blood sugar spikes. So your body secretes insulin, which sends your blood sugar crashing. The result? Irritability and fatigue. Plus, you are hungry again and probably craving another hit of sugar, and so the cycle repeats itself anew.

One of the nicest things you can do for your body (and your mood) is to reduce your intake of added sugars and refined carbohydrates.

What is the Daily Recommended Sugar Intake?

The World Health Organization recommends reducing your intake of added sugars to less than 10 percent of your total caloric intake. That means, if you eat 2,000 calories, you should eat less than 12 teaspoons of sugar each day. The US Department of Agriculture also recommends limiting your consumption of added sugar to between 6 and 12 teaspoons of sugar each day, depending on your daily average caloric intake. (Six teaspoons a day for people who eat 1,600 calories; 12 teaspoons if you eat 2,200 calories each day.) Keep in mind that a single 12 ounce soft drink contains 10 teaspoons of sugar.

To find out how much sugar is in some of the items in your cupboards, look for Sugars (measured in grams) on the Nutrition Label. Then divide the number of grams by 4 to get the number of teaspoons. So, 12 grams of sugar is 3 teaspoons of sugar. Sixteen grams of sugar is 4 teaspoons.

How to Break Your Sugar Addiction

So how do you start to reduce your sugar intake? Here are some tips.

Try decreasing your intake of added sugar gradually. It can be difficult to suddenly cut all added sugar and refined carbohydrates. Try taking a week by week approach. One week, add less sugar to your morning coffee. Next week, replace your afternoon soda with bottled water. The following week, replace white bread with a whole grain alternative. Before long, you will find that the foods (and drinks) you used to love now taste sickeningly sweet. And you will likely find it easier to keep your moods on an even keel, too.

Keep notes on your sugar intake in your journal or Daytimer. How does decreasing your sugar levels impact your energy levels? Your mood during the day? Your ability to fall asleep at night? When do sugar cravings hit? It might be helpful to start with a Sugar Fast for a day or two. See how one day without added sugars affects you.

Make easy substitutions. Buy brown rice instead of white rice, for example. Brown rice has a nice, nutty flavor, and takes just a bit longer to cook. The next time you go to the store, experiment with all kinds of whole grain alternatives. You might find some new family favorites.

Keep healthy snacks readily available, and rely on a bit of protein in your snacks to keep your energy levels high. Keep a small bowl of nuts on the table, along with fresh fruits. When you are hungry for a mid afternoon snack, opt for lean protein and complex carbs.

Indulge in moderation. If you are a chocoholic, treat yourself to a square of fine chocolate at the end of a long day. When the chocolate is quality, you will not feel the need to have more and you will be more apt to take your time and savor it. When you do indulge in a sugary snack, keep it small, eat it slowly, and eat a bit of protein, too, to help moderate those blood sugar spikes and dips.

Dilute the fruit juice. If you or kids love fruit juice, try diluting it gradually to the point where you are just adding a splash to the top of water.

Become a sugar detective. You can start by knowing the alternate names for added sugars, often found in ingredients lists. These include any ingredient that ends in the suffix “ose,” including sucrose, dextrose, fructose, lactose, polydextrose, maltose, and galactose. Also, look for the following: corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, honey, maple syrup, molasses, carob syrup, turbinado sugar, fruit juice concentrate, brown sugar, cane juice, cane sugar, evaporated cane juice, beet sugar, and sorbitol.

Avoid replacing added sugar with artificial sweeteners. Your best bet is to gradually reduce your taste for sweet foods, not to replace them with chemical alternatives. On ingredients lists, look for sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame K, and neotame.

Avoid the center of the supermarket as much as possible. That is where most of the processed foods are shelved. Instead, shop the perimeter for healthy, raw foods.

If you have young kids, go to the grocery store by yourself. You may be less apt to come home with sugary treats. Plus, you can take more time to examine the labels for hidden sugar. If your kids are grade school age or older, take them along and enlist their help as Sugar Detectives. Give them each a list of hidden sugars and artificial sweeteners and turn it into a game.

Carefully measure how much honey you put in your tea and how much sugar you put in your coffee. Aim to put in a bit less each day or each week until you are drinking it either unsweetened or with just a bit of sugar.

Buy items that are not sweetened, and add sugar only if you find that you need to. This will help you wean off the sugar gradually.

Steer clear of sugars for breakfast. When you start your day with a sugar blast and crash, you may find yourself in a vicious cycle for the remainder of the day. Start your day with healthy lean protein and complex carbs. Try natural whole grain breads and cereals for breakfast, along with a lowfat protein, such as skim milk, cottage cheese, or yogurt.

If you need to lose weight, consider a diet plan that focuses on reducing sugar intake. The Sugar Busters Diet Plan is probably the most well known. The idea of this diet is to reduce your intake of sugar and high starch carbohydrates, focusing instead on lean protein, low starch veggies, and whole grain carbs, in order to lose weight. Many of the low GI diets out there use this method, as well.

Be careful not to make sugar taboo in your household. With children, especially, when you swear off something completely, you run the risk of creating a mystique around the forbidden food. Instead of running a completely sugar free household, make sure your children understand the effects that sugar can have on their bodies and their moods, and then help them understand the beauty of moderation. Encourage them to eat low fat protein and help them develop a taste for healthy whole grain carbs.

Focus on well balanced, nutritious diet, instead of simply swearing off all sugar. Your cravings will slowly and naturally fade once you gain a better understanding of why they are cropping up in the first place.

(This article is for informational purposes only. Please discuss any dietary changes with your doctor.)

Jamie Jefferson
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/breaking-the-sugar-addiction-16-tips-88786.html

When I visit large cities, I like to do a lot of walking. To explore and visit little back streets off the tourist tracks, inaccessible to tourist buses.

Most large cities are made for walking. How could you visit London without walking through Hyde Park and the markets of Notting Hill? When in Paris, visit the gourmet delights of the market areas around Rue De Montague. The area where the Parisians shop and live. Walking across Sydney Harbour Bridge or the Brooklyn Bridge provides views that are breathtaking. You can stop, take photos and enjoy the discoveries that only walking can provide.

To fully enjoy these walks, you need to be healthy and fit. This article focuses on the importance of boosting your immune system before you travel and nutritional supplements to keep up your energy and fitness levels while traveling.

BOOSTING YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM.

Up to 80% of people suffer some form of travel sickness, says Dr Jonathon Cohen, medical director of Travel Clinics Australia. Poor hygiene in eateries and a change of bugs going into your stomach are to blame. If you’re in a country where you don’t trust the food or water, the secret is to eat or drink it only if it has been boiled, cooked, bottled or peeled.

“Using a daily dose of a high quality acidophilus supplement while on holiday is also a great preventative treatment”, says Sharon Baker of the Wholistic Medical Centre in Sydney.

Her views are shared by two doctors who are well informed in the art of traveling in good health : Dr Robert Rountree, a frequent traveler and director of Boulder Wellcare of Boulder, Colorado and Dr Mark Wise, author of “The Travel Doctor: Your Guide to Staying Healthy While You Travel”.

Dr Rountree says you should start buttressing your immune system during the countdown to your trip. His main focus is improving the gastrointestinal system. Having a healthy GI tract frees up your body’s resources to fight other potential problems, especially respiratory bugs. Furthermore, if you are traveling overseas, you’ll have to deal with bacteria that your body is not used to.

To keep your GI system healthy, Dr Rountree recommends starting on a probiotic, containing healthy bacteria, several weeks before you travel. He suggests you take one a day starting several weeks before you leave and continue with it for the duration of your travels. For this reason, you should look for one that doesn’t require refrigeration.

To keep you regular, a daily intake of oat bran, psillium husks or other high fiber carbohydrates is suggested. For minor stomach upsets, I always take with me some ginger tablets. Ginger is a great stomach soother and is excellent for problems ranging from indigestion to relief from nausea, fever and seasickness.
A brand I have found to be particularly effective is “Travel Calm Ginger”.

BOOSTING YOUR ENERGY.

Dr Rountree advises travelers to get lots of antioxidants, natural viral disease fighters that help protect your immune system from potentially damaging free radicals. There are many available, but the two I take with me on my travels are also great energy boosters.

COENZYME Q10 is a powerful antioxidant present in all body cells and helps with the production of energy. It is an important for fuelling organs such as your liver and heart and is sometimes called your body’s “spark plug”. Both organs will be kept busy during your travels, so it is important to protect them.

KOREAN {PANAX} GINSENG is noted for improving stamina and is popular with those involved with endurance sports because of its anti fatigue effect. It is called an adaptogenic herb, as it enables the body to create more energy and vitality during the day and promotes relaxation at night. It has a tonic effect on the body and is popular in Asia primarily because of its fame for extending lifespan. It also increases resistance to stress and disease.

Graeme Lanham
http://www.articlesbase.com/nutrition-articles/your-travel-health-nutrition-for-fitness-and-energy-98808.html

Dental health is important to all of us. We buy special toothpaste, mouthwash, dental floss and rinsing agents to help ensure that our smile is white, our teeth are cavity free and our breath is fresh. But, did you know that drinking tea may be one of the best (and simplest) things you can do to protect your teeth?

Well, it’s true. Tea has been shown to offer protection to our teeth. Tea is a natural source of fluoride, which is known to protect against tooth decay. This is great news for children, who need significant amounts of fluoride in order for tooth enamel to harden properly. When teeth harden properly in our youth, it protects us from cavities throughout our lives.

However, even for adults, whose teeth are fully formed, tea’s fluoride is a great way to protect your teeth. The fluoride found in tea has been shown to inhibit the growth of glucosyltransferase. This substance helps the plaque that naturally forms to adhere to our teeth.

Dentists in the UK have also reported that black tea disables certain forms of bacteria that work with sugars to form clumpy aggregates that stick to teeth. These dentists believe that drinking black tea reduces the total mass of dental plaque.

In addition, one study has suggested that green tea may inhibit the enzyme that causes plaque to form in the first place. Plaque is formed when an enzyme in your mouth mixes with sugar in the food you eat.

This study, reported by the UK Tea Council, looked at a sweet drink offered by a gourmet coffee house. This drink included sugar and whipped cream, but also included green tea. When the teeth of those who consumed this beverage were evaluated and compared to those who consumed heavily sweetened drinks that did not include green tea, the results were significant.

Even when the participants consumed the same amount of sugar, those whose drinks contained green tea did not have the same amount of plaque formation as those whose drinks were made with something other than green tea, leading researchers to conclude that green tea has a cleansing effect on the teeth.

And, for those of us concerned about bad breath, green tea may have good news, as well. Green tea also inhibits the growth of many of the bacteria that cause bad breath. So, drinking green tea on a regular basis may help keep your breath naturally sweet.

Not getting your daily dose of tea? Here are some simple ways to increase the amount of tea you’re getting each day.

Â? Skip that second cup of coffee – Even the most serious coffee connoisseurs can usually forego the second cup if given a cup of tea as an alternative.

Â? Make iced tea – It doesn’t matter whether your tea is hot or iced. The protective effects are the same. So, brew up a big pitcher of tea and keep it in the refrigerator for serving at and between meals.

Â? Grab a bottle – Today, major tea manufacturers offer green tea bottled like soda. This is a delicious replacement for your daily soda, and is far healthier.

Â? Carry tea bags – Carry tea bags in your purse or suit case. This makes it easy to have your favorite tea anywhere that hot water is available.

Â? Wind down in the evening. Many people avoid tea in the evening, because they fear the caffeine will inhibit sleep. However, both black and green teas are lower in caffeine than coffee, with green tea having less caffeine than black. In addition, the caffeine in tea doesn’t seem to cause jitters the way coffee and soda can. So, tea is a great way to wind down in the evening, most likely without interrupting your sleep.

Green or Black?

If you’re wondering whether you should be drinking green tea or black tea, you’re asking a good question. Both are healthy, but there are significant differences between the two.

Black tea is fermented during processing, which changes the natural anti-oxidant compounds. While black tea does contain anti-oxidants, and does offer many healthful benefits, those natural, unfermented anti-oxidant compounds in green tea are healthier.

Research has shown over and over that green tea’s anti-oxidants have significant power to protect health. Green tea has been shown to prevent cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease and to help reduce premature aging.

So, while black tea is definitely good for you, and is protective to your teeth, for the maximum overall health benefits, get your daily dose of green tea. Many scientists today suggest that for the maximum benefit to your dental health, you combine the two. Both are delicious and refreshing, making a wonderful drink any time of day. It may be one of the simplest ways you can protect your health – and your smile.

Marcus Stout
http://www.articlesbase.com/medicine-articles/protect-your-teeth-drink-green-tea-106081.html