This is the thirteenth day of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

It’s not so much that a bunch of stores are having a big sale before the holidays but rather the name that accompanies the sale. Black Friday Sale, where did that even come from to begin with? Let’s take a great holiday time and cover it with the sale to end all sales. It is like more people talk about Black Friday than Thanksgiving. When did a one-day sale become some popular, other than Valentine’s Day? Talk about marketing at its finest.

We now celebrate more holidays in retail stores than we do with our family. I can just imagine way back when people lovingly gave a few handmade or long saved for gifts to one another, that that tradition would become the bonanza it has become today. I hope that I as well as others can recognize the true meaning of all of this holiday time and be truly thankful for the things we are blessed with. I hope that all of us take the time to really reflect on the things we are thankful for and spend quality time with our friends and family. Here are a couple of videos to get you ready for Black Friday.

Tips for Black Friday Shopping

This is the first of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

Sometimes the turkey just isn’t ready. Now, instead of awkwardly looking at all your family and extended family members you can pass that time with a new Thanksgiving Game. The Thanksgiving Game is now up for sale at 100 different Kroger locations in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Tennessee as well as all of the nearly 600 Cracker Barrel stores nationwide and at Amazon.com and many Christian bookstores across the country. The Thanksgiving game will retail between $14.99 and $19.99.

Stotz was doing what he could to hold off dinner until his wife’s parents arrived, but everyone was growing hungry and restless.

To pass the time, Stotz whipped out pencils and scraps of paper and declared, “We’re going to play a game.” He told all the players to write down what they were thankful for that year, and then afterward had them try to guess who wrote what. Players earned points for guessing correctly.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Stotz, a retired entrepreneur and airline sales agent. “You just don’t start Thanksgiving without your mother-in-law.”

The game was such a hit, it became a family Thanksgiving tradition.

Now the family has professionally developed the game and hopes to share it with the rest of America.

Read more here.

This is the third and final in a series about Nido Qubein and his book, Stairway to Success.

Developing a plan for success involves three things:

1. Setting Goals
2. Setting Priorities
3. Developing Strategies

“Good personal planning involves no more than determining how you will get from your present circumstances to the future you have created through your vision.” – Nido Qubein

I tend to set pretty ambitious goals for myself, and I do so by writing or printing them out and hanging them around my office. Up until last week I listed goals on my blog for page views and other meaningless stats. I have since pulled those off because I personally think those are the wrong goals to have because of their small measurable impact. I am instead working on a new set of goals that I might not publicly post for this blog and its growth. Goals are a must and should be taken vary seriously.

“Wisdom ofttimes consists of knowing what to do next.” - Herbert Hoover

Setting priorities gives you a place of reference when you come to a situation in which you are unsure of where to go. Knowing your goals and making them your priority makes day to day decisions easier. Suppose your goal is to save $2,000 and you are buying Christmas gifts for your family and extended family. It is easy to want to splurge on the people you love even if it goes against your goal of saving money. Is there a best way to save money and still buy / create gifts for your family? Of course there is. It might take a little more imagination than cruising the isles of Best Buy, but it can be done.

More important, the issue of saving money vs. buying Christmas presents for your family shouldn’t even be an issue. Nido talks about the different levels of planning and problems. Most problems like the one above can be addressed early and then shouldn’t ever be an issue down the road at Christmas time. If you plan ahead with your goals and set priorities you should be able to navigate your way through most problems fairly easily.

“There usually are half a dozen right answers to “What needs to be done?” Yet unless a [person] makes the risky and controversial choice of only one, he will achieve nothing.” – Peter F. Drucker

Developing your strategies for success in any area of your life is like having a playbook in sports. Could you imagine if a professional sports team just said: “Aw…this week, let’s just wing it and see what happens”? My guess and I am sure yours as well would say they are guaranteed to lose.

Your strategies should meet these criteria:

• They must specify actions to be taken.
• They must specify the person or persons who is to take the actions.
• They must establish a time for beginning the actions.
• They must establish a deadline for completing the actions.
• They must establish criteria for determining when the actions have been satisfactorily completed.

This can be addressed pretty easily by stating what the problem or goal is that you are trying to achieve or overcome. Then developing a plan of action to tackle that issues in a systematic and bit sized way. You need to set an “end game” for that issue when you get to your defined goal or conclusion.

I have brought you through roughly half of the book Stairway to Success by Nido Qubein. If you would like to learn more, I would highly suggest buying it or checking it out of your local library. Although I did not read this book before I started out on my own quest for success in business and life, I have been using many of the same techniques learned by other teachers and writings. I think this book has the plan well laid out and is a solid package of advice for building upon your success in any facet of your life.

Here are the first two parts, Nido Qubein Part 1 and Nido Qubein Part 2