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Jul 8, 2014    |       54 comments

Fascination Advantage Assessment

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Note:

This post has nothing to do with debt. I was meaning to have a post about last month’s budget, but it would appear that is wasn’t meant to be. The program that I use (Quicken Home & Business) is on my laptop, which is currently unaccessible to me. Hopefully either this weekend or next Tuesday I should have up.

Today I want to talk about something that some of you might find interesting, others will not. This weekend on my way to one of my contracts, I was listening to podcasts (I tend to listen to around 20 hours of podcasts per week.) And on one of my favorite podcasts Entrepreneur on Fire, John Lee Dumas interviewed Sally Hogshead, a branding expert and leading authority figure on the science of fascination, about her newest Book, How The World Sees You: Discover Your Highest Value through the Science of Fascination.

I was first introduced to Sally back at the end of last year when John interviewed her the first time. I immediately fell in love with what this woman is doing. After reading her first book, Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation, I started understanding how to start using the right triggers to make anything become fascinating.

Back when I listened to the first interview, Sally gave John a code to be able to get a free Fascination Advantage Assessment for the first 500 people. Well I guess I wasn’t fast enough because by the time I went to redeem the code it was already sold out. I was a little bummed, but I figured I would get an assessment when I could afford it.

Well this weekend, while listening to this podcast and LOVING what Sally was bringing to the table, I happened to be driving past a Barnes and Noble and without hesitation when and grabbed myself a copy of the book.

When I got home I tweeted out

During the podcast there was mention on the Free Assessment again. I did that first. And I must say I was completely blown away with the results. Sally nailed my complete essence when I read my assessment. After taking the test there was an auto tweet that I sent out explaining what I got and how the world saw me. Sally tweeted back to me…

This totally intrigued me, because of how well she nailed me and I totally think people will see value in this. So I joined…

So What is The Fascination Advantage?

It is the first personality assessment developed based on the science of branding, rather than psychology. Unlike traditional tests (such as Myers-Brigss or StrengthsFinder, which I have taken), this isn’t measuring how you see the world, but how the world sees you.

Sally started Project Fascination in order to celebrate all of the insights she’s learned over the past decade of research. Her goal is to show 100,000 people how their personalities add value. That is why she has given me the special code BL-ElementalUnity to give the first 100 people who use it her Assessment for free. This offer lasts until July 25!

How Do You Take The Assessment?

Simple. Go to www.HowTheWorldSeesYou.com/You and use code BL-ElementalUnity. Once you’ve taken the assessment, Sally’s team will load 100 assessments into your account for you to share as well. Note: I don’t think this happened for me till I signed up for Project Fascination.

This Assessment has less than 30 questions and it literally takes less than five minutes to complete.

Now note the code I provided does have some value to me. I didn’t sign up for any benefits, but they are included. I will explain here what is on the table if I hit goals. I highly doubt that I will reach any of these and these are really not the reason I am sharing this. The reason I am sharing this is so you can learn a little about yourself.

There are three prizes noted in the advocates page on the website.

Prize #1: Once 50 people use your code, the team will send you a pre-release copy of How the World Sees You for free. (First the book came out on July 1st, so I am not even sure if this prize is still available. Second I already own the book, so I really don’t need it.)

Prize #2 When 100 people use your code, the team will give you a top-line snapshot of your audience’s results using your code. (Not sure what this means.)

Prize #3 When 1,000 people use your code, the team will create a custom heat map for your audience. (Again not sure what this means.)

So once again note, I am not doing this for the rewards. Now if they were including a way to create my anthem, that is a complete different story.

Well that’s it, I hope at least a few of you will like this.

Jul 7, 2014    |       2 comments

Roadtrip with Toddlers

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Hi friends! I missed you guys (even though I had posts scheduled, I feel like I wasn’t around)!

We have made it back from our road trip and had a great time! It was so fun to be together so much (husband works a lot so it was a treat to have a big chunk of time together), and to be able to talk about how great it feels to be credit card debt-free (remember – one of the reasons we decided to take this trip was to celebrate being free from credit card debt). We have so many plans for our future and it looks so bright knowing that one day we will be debt free!!! It’s an exciting feeling!

Originally, I had planned to write a post about the “numbers” of this trip (similar to this post, but for the costs associated with the road trip). But I paid for all of our gasoline with a debit card and my bank account still has the “$1.00 – pending transaction” label for all the gas costs from yesterday, so I’ll save that post for Friday when I have a fully updated view of things (spoiler alert:  I think we did really well in keeping our costs super low!!!)

But, in case it helps others (since I know I took a LOT of advice from you guys in the comments of this post), I wanted to post a little about my experience with roadtripping with toddlers and what I thought about the experience….

Keeping Sane While Roadtripping With Toddlers

First and foremost – it CAN be done!

We go on a LOT of 12-14 hour roadtrips so we’ve got some experience. I honestly think it was MUCH easier now that the girls are walking (compared to when they were younger babies). I think it helped that they could walk around and stretch out their legs, and there are more toys, songs, and games to keep their attention and keep them occupied compared to when they were younger. I also think the commenter who mentioned the importance of the parent’s perspective hit the nail on the head. I had totally been dreading this experience and fearing it would be awful. So I made a conscious decision to put on a happy face, think positive thoughts, and go into it like it was a fun adventure (as opposed to a dauntingly-long road trip).

I should also note that the way there (when we split the drive into two 6-hour days) was a total breeze. If we had unlimited time and money, I would definitely do this every time! But we’re constrained by both, so sometimes its necessary to have 1 long day of driving (which we did for our return trip). All of the things I’ll write about here really pertain to the long day.

Here a couple of the key suggestions that I think saved our sanity:

  1. Start early. We left at 4:30am, which gave us a solid 2 hours drive-time before the girls even woke up (they’re good about being transferred from bed to the car without waking). Once they woke we gave them milk sippies and snack-cups with Cheerios and kept driving another 2 hours before our first stop. That solid 4 hours of drive-time was crucial, as it turned out to be the longest uninterrupted stretch of the trip.
  2. Break often and as needed. We found that we had to stop more frequently as time went on, such that our first leg of driving was the longest, followed by the next leg, and then the next leg,  and so on. We hadn’t planned our breaks ahead of time (trying, instead, to see how the girls were doing and go-with-the-flow), but they ended up working out nicely. Our first one was at 9:30 and we walked around and ate a light breakfast at a bakery (the girls had already eaten cereal in the car). Our next stop was 12:30 and we walked around and ate at a fast food place. Our final stop was at 2:30 pm, where we stopped for gas and walked around the parking area/gas station for a bit. We finally made it home by 4:30pm (there’s an hour time change, so our trip was actually 13 hours long).
  3. Bring fun toys. I did two things that really helped save us sanity (and money!). First, I took away some of their favorite toys and hid them a couple weeks ago. I wanted them to feel more special when I brought them on the trip so I purposely removed them from the toy bins and kept them hidden until the road trip. Second, I went to Dollar Tree and bought $5 worth of new toys:  2 music-maker toys, 2 necklaces/bracelet packages, and a package of party-blower things (like these, but only $1). I also brought stickers, crayons and coloring books from home. I saved the toys for opportune times when we really needed to make it a little bit further before our next stop.
  4. Let ’em eat crap. This was the girls’ first time to ever eat a sucker (I bought a bag of ring pops). That sucker took my girls an entire HOUR to eat, and they were happy and quiet the entire time. Score! On top of that, we brought lots of other snacky foods like my homemade fruit leather, animal crackers, cheese crackers, Cheerios, pretzels, the list goes on. The toys worked better than the snacks for the most part (aside from those miracle ring pops), but they did help.
  5. Sing and dance.  I don’t know about your kid, but mine LOVE to sing and dance! When they’d start getting cranky, I’d sing fun songs with them that have hand motions (like itsy bitsy spider) or put on some music and do silly dances. The girls would laugh and dance and play along and we had a good time with it.

I had many, many people recommend that we buy or borrow a portable DVD player, but we ultimately decided against it. Our girls have never really watched TV and never ever watched a movie, so I didn’t think it would work for us. About a month or so ago I was sick and tried to have them watch cartoons so I could lay on the couch and wallow in my misery (I had terrible food poisoning), but they would have none of it. They just don’t have the attention span for it so I think it would have been a waste of money for us. I certainly think this could help with kids that are older though!

All-in-all, I certainly think its possible to do long road trips with toddlers, even when you’re trying to be budget-friendly. Hiding your kids’ favorite toys so they seem new and fresh is a great option! The ring pops (which cost $1 for 4) were another little miracle, and the girls’ favorite toys were the party blowers! They played with those on-and-off for the entire 13 hour trip and we had gotten a package (I think 6 or 8 total) for $1! They thought the blowers were hysterical and had such a blast blowing into them!

I also think its nice to be able to stop places where there is some sort of attraction. On our second day driving to Utah (remember we split the drive into 2 days on the way there) we happened across a totally random and FREE petting zoo!!! There was no place for donations so I have no idea how they operated for free, but it was such a cute and fun thing for the girls to get out and stretch their legs! There were also plenty of rest areas (some with incredible views), so I think that’s a great option, too. We happened to plan our stops mostly around food and part of me feels guilty that we purchased food on the trip (instead of making/bringing our own – though we did bring all our own drinks), but it worked for now. For future trips, I can definitely see us bringing PB&J sandwiches and eating at one of the rest stops along the way. I was really shocked by how nice many of them were!

What’s your experience like traveling with toddlers? Any tips to keep costs down?

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