Well of course, nowadays every internet marketing bod on the planet is waxing lyrical about using video as a more dynamic method of capturing your visitor’s eye, imagination and if you’re offering something half decent, their cash too.

And of course, as someone who gets suckered into reading a whole load of fantastic – and errrm not so great – sales letters/pages I have to agree with it. It’s like the Big Brother thing – people love having a sneak peak at the person behind the screen and it DOESN’T MATTER if they are sitting there being critical of your big nose or tragic hairstyle that day, they are still sitting there engaging with you.

So I’ve finally bitten the bullet and ordered a great webcam and a digital camera – my friend Flugel will fall off his chair at hearing that as I’ve been procrastinating about it for ummm a year or more. My sister Nicola is constantly frustrated at me for taking NO action as I start researching things and either take forever or give up as there’s just too much choice.

So how did I overcome my complete overwhelm at looking for ‘the right one’ for the job?

Well first of all I made the decision that I was going to do it and THEN I wrote it down in my notepad that I was going to do it.

Now that may seem a bit woo woo but for some reason if I actually WRITE a list I tend to get a load more stuff done – try it sometime. (By the way don’t tell my soon-to-be-ex-husband that I am writing lists now ‘cos he’d be too smug for words having tried to make me do them throughout our marriage).

So what about the actual action then Sarah? You’re probably asking…or getting bored of reading this post and thinking ffs woman get on with it.

Well I did my usual thing of wasting time looking in eBay, faced with a myriad of ‘fantastic’ products at ‘best ever’ prices and mostly waiting to be shipped from Hong Kong. So after half an hour of looking at fecking ugly webcams I thought to myself – hang on, lemme look at Skype.com and see what they recommend – they must have done some research! So off I went and sure enough they have a list of products and even tell you what the most popular ones are that people are buying.

So I narrowed it down to the one with the sexy sounding Carl Zeiss optic and after comparing prices between Skype and eBay I clicked the buy now button via Skype and was taken to… Amazon who are currently doing an amazing deal on Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 Webcam. Why this one? Well it promises great visual clarity and clear sound and having looked at the reviews – paying special attention to the video testimonials – I have to agree. It also promises to be simple to use

As I was there and in a buying mood, I then thought, SOD IT, I need a digital camera I’ll have a look while I’m here. I don’t have a clue about cameras – all I knew is I wanted one that had a clear display image on the back, was simple to use, good zoom and could take video too – essential for when I’m out and about and want to do on the spot interviews with people or record an event I come across.

So I clicked on the Deals Of The Week link in Amazon and voila! A Canon Digital IXUS 970 IS camera jumped out at me – 40% off, did everything I wanted plus in the blurb it promised I’d be able to take amazing sunset shots which is a must for recording the ones we get off the coast here. I of course read the reviews which confirmed that this was going to be good for me and hit buy… and also got sucked into the very clever upsell that Amazon now does too for a case and spare battery.

I haven’t shopped at Amazon for a while actually and was seriously impressed at how slick their sales process is nowadays with all the suggestions, different ways of reviewing products and how they’ve managed to take the pain out of the decision process – if you have an online shop make sure you go take a look and adopt their business model!

So, now I’m armed with two essential tools that I’ve been missing from my arsenal it’ll be interesting to see how, where, when and why I use them and what affect it will have on my feeble business attempts.

I will of course keep you updated here *smile*

*lol* I don’t know what it is about me but everything at the moment seems to involve ten other things to do so I can get the original thing I wanted, completed. (re-reads that to see if it makes sense!)

So I stick the installation disc in and it get nearly all the way through then throws up the error message that it can’t find a file called SKU011.CAB aarrrrghhhh. I retry – still nothing so have to cancel the installation and wait for it to reverse what it’s done.

Hmmmm… what now I thought. Maybe I need to restart my computer. So I do that and STILL did the same think.

Thank gawd for Google! I input the name of the missing file SKU011.CAB and up came lots of forums so I read a few and this was the winning formula!

Thank you to Technotes for your post, outlined below.

Regedit (start menu -> run -> type regedit)

Expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> Software -> Microsoft -> Office -> 11.0 -> Delivery

There should be only 1 directory under Delivery, which is your DownloadCode – delete any duplicates and select that directory.

On the right side of the screen, right-click on CDCache. Change the value to 0 (mine was 90000409-6000-11D3-8CFE-0150048383C9). S.

Edit the registry at your own risk.

After a relaxing lunch at the Crown & Anchor in Shoreham, overlooking the river and basking in the unseasonal hot sunny weather we went back to hers and got out a bundle of brightly coloured Post-it notes.

Nicola’s daughter Phoebe, and I, looked on bemused at Nicola caressing them before laying them out on the table and handing us both pens.  What did she have in store for us???

A very neat system for chunking down goals into actions and turning obstacles into objectives!

Nicola had discovered this from her mentor, Rich Schefren, and immediately tested it on clients at her Lets Talk Money workshop on Saturday – see www.TheMoneyGym.com/events for info of the next one.  Buzzing with the successful breakthroughs people got from doing it she wanted us to do it too.

First we…

wrote one goal we wanted to achieve and the date we wanted to achieve it by and stuck the note on the wall -  this felt very naughty as my mother used to flip her flop when we were kids if we did things like that *grin*

Next we had to write down all the reasons why we COULDN’T do it – one on each post it note (a diff colour from the goal) and stick them up beside it.

Phew!

Now we had to take another colour pad and write down the opposite to that statement eg.  objection:  I don’t have the time  objective: I have organised my schedule so i have enough time. and stick that up beside it.

We then repeated this process – looking at each positive and writing down the objections to our positive responses and then writing the positive to counteract them.

The walls were a riot of colour! *lol* and then the best bit – we removed the two rows of objections and stuck the positive actions to the positive outcomes we wanted and voila!  A plan!  After prioritising them we then wrote down actions to take within the next couple of days, weeks and months.

This was so powerful I will be doing it again.  In effect I helped myself become unstuck by answering myself.  It was also really interesting to see how many of my stumbling blocks were all saying the same things.  I discovered:

• I need a goal that will draw me to it – so something that i really WANT – regardless of whether my mind thinks I can do/be/have it.
• I need to write down a plan.
• I need to set up systems.
• I need to take at least one action every day – no matter how small it is.
• I need to remain positive and surround myself with positive people and literature

I feel like I’m taking back control of my life and am I excited? Blimey! too right am