Rothacker Reviews

The Service Roundtable

Are you a plumber, electrical, solar or HVAC contractor? Do you know the technical side of your trade like the back of your hand? Does the business side of your profession however, seem like a foreign language? And no matter how honorable your intentions are, doesn't it seem like you can't muster the time to learn it?

Join the Service Roundtable today! Learn how to run your business in a profitable manner from others who have succeeded in doing just that. In the short clip below the narrator tells us about Sam's secret and what the Service Roundtable has to offer.

I've been engaged with the Service Roundtable since its launch in 2002. They've been cranking out fresh marketing pieces and management tools for contractors every week since. These resources continue to pile up in their coffers and are still accessible today. Not only are they still available, some if not most are of more value  today due to interest earned.

How does marketing material and management tools earn interest you ask?

By way of the Service Roundtable community. Community members embrace the material and tools, use them and then often time provide feedback to others. How did it work for them? What could have been added or subtracted to work better? Would they recommend others us it? The other coffer or vault that has been around since Day One is the Idea Exchange center. Ten plus years of knowledge, wisdom and understanding from some of the brightest minds in the industry. 

The value that the Service Roundtable provides exceeds cost. But they call your investment and raise you one. The Service Roundtable has a vendor rewards program that provides rebates and discounts to members for making certain purchases. With the variety of vendors in this program there is a fair chance that not only will rebates and discounts cover the cost of membership, you'll end up making money.

Join the Service Roundtable today!

 

 

I Don't Eat Junk Food

Check out the confident and determined "I don't" look. It works.

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How to be an Explorer of the World

How to be an Explorer of the World by Keri Smith

Does the idea of bringing value to another person's life intrigue you? Where do you get the stuff value is made of? Grade school? High School? College? Sure. 

Let's say you have a small bottle filled with marbles. Let's say a marble is the equivalent of a good deed. Let's say each time you do a good deed one marble is removed from the bottle. What happens when all of the marbles are gone? Do you run out of good deeds?

In order to give value, one must ingest the type of stuff value is made of. When marbles are taken out, new ones must go in. Conventional learning is a fine place to begin. School, seminar and websites provide knowledge that can be turned into value. But take a look around you. Isn't everyone trying to take their education and turn it into a value supplying machine? Sure. That's the world of work.

I don't know about you, but when I see sheep standing in line to walk off the cliff because the sheep in front of them are, I'm thinking twice before getting in that line. The key is to turbo charge and enhance your education. And you don't have to go to school to do it. Increase your value by providing something that no other person in the world can. How? By being an explorer of the world.

 If you take basic math in school and your job requires this knowledge to produce results, the outcome that you produce will be identical to everyone else who works in your field and who took the same math. Think sheep. Think cliff. Think splat. But if you go out and explore the world, download what she has to offer onto your internal hard drive, letting it permeate your existing education, knowledge and wisdom, then what comes out will most likely be unique to anything in the universe. 

In How to be an Explorer of the World, Keri Smith provides a creative medium that will help transfer what the world has to offer onto your own personal hard drive. 

Check out the following book photos:

What One Book Transformed Your Life Forever?

Vishen Lakhihani and his friends are tapping into the power of crowdsourcing to come up with the top list of books that transformed people's lives. It appears that Vishen's efforts are just getting under way. As more people hear about it, the list will no doubt change. 

This is so beyond cool that I am speaking about it on all of my online outlets. 

 

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M & M Sharpening - Tampa & Wesley Chapel

We were at Wiregrass Mall this past Saturday. Rosemary was shopping and I was people watching and vendor observing. Wiregrass had their Fresh Market event going on. 

I walked up to M & M Sharpening's booth. Or rather I was attracted like a rat to cheese. I've owned knives since I was a pre-teen. I think I'm on my fourth or fifth sharpening stone and I flat out suck at putting a decent blade on a knife. I asked proprietor Mark Bertsche how long it would take to sharpen my pocket knife. He did it and would not accept payment. He said, "tell your friends about us." He didn't know about Rothacker Reviews and I didn't tell him. Btw, my knife's blade was gorgeous when Mark finished with it.

I asked Mark how he got into the business. He retired as a software engineer and needed something to occupy his time. He attends local Tampa craft shows in the winter time and heads up north in the summers. Mark will not be back in Tampa until the Fall. Ric, a protege, who is also an ex-software guy, was sharpening knives in the booth on Saturday. He is providing area sharpening services at this time. I'll give you the 411 on Ric once I use his services, but I was watching him work on one knife and it looked pretty sweet. Drop me an e-mail if you'd like to get in touch with Ric in the meantime. 

Both Mark and Ric sharpen much more than knives. Check out M & M's site for more info. I love the fact of doing business with people who love what they do. Check them out!

New Tampa: Swiss Spirit Massage

You live in New Tampa and need a massage. Do you get one to relax? Or do you get a massage for the therapeutic value? Until first going to Swiss Spirit Massage a few years ago, I didn't even know there was a difference. I'd been trying out the various New Tampa massage establishments but couldn't seem to find the right one. Ten minutes into my first massage at Swiss Spirit and that changed. I experienced something that day that I continue to experience every time I go there and, after years of message therapy, had never experienced before. Still however, it's not the main reason that I go to Swiss Spirit once per week.

Bonnie Whitaker is one of the Swiss Spirit massage therapists who I see. Although Bonnie has had her therapist's license since the late 1990's, owned her own business, is most talented and knowledgeable, I think one of her main assets is due to her previous work history - she's no longer there. Bonnie finally found an outlet to truly channel a deep desire to help and make a difference in people's lives. 

Bonnie possesses a very, very rare talent when it comes to message therapists. She orchestrates a combination of physical strength, compassion and softness of spirit into a symphony of pure ecstasy. Bonnie's specialty is deep tissue massage along with therapeutic, neuromuscular, myofacial release and traditional Thai massage.

Marlen Caduff is the owner of Swiss Spirit Massage. Marlen is a registered nurse with four-year college degrees in both nursing and massage therapy. That experience that keeps me coming back to Swiss Spirit every week?  Well, actually, it's an integral piece of the culture that Marlen has built over the years. I call it a learning environment. To learn one must be exposed to knowledge, information and wisdom. That is exactly what Bonnie and the others do each week. Whether it is anatomical, physiological, holistic, nutrition-wise or basic overall health, the knowledge is there to be had. I suppose if you wanted to lie there in silence and listen to relaxing music you could. I'm way too curious for that. And the fact I'm educated in a subtle, clear and succinct manner, I simply can't resist. I've dealt with therapists at other establishments who have a pretty good handle on anatomy. But never a place like Swiss Spirit where an overall holistic knowledge is so pervasive.  

What could be even better than the opportunity to be educated and massaged each week? This borders on downright magic and it's difficult to explain. A deeper grasp and understanding develops after multiple visits. Bonnie and the other therapists learn your body and its needs and adjust treatment as they go. It's positively uncanny. I have fibromyalgia and am in tremendous pain 24-7. Bonnie has the ability to sense and exert the exact amount of pressure that I can handle and the treatment my body requires. 

I continue to visit Swiss Spirit once per week for the therapy my body needs and the knowledge my mind craves. Call and ask for Bonnie today! 813-325-1296

Selling Your Book: To Sell is Human

As a member of Dan Pink's pre-launch / launch book team, I've enjoyed a sort of behind the curtain look into a portion of the process. The thing that is most noticeable to me is the exhaustive effort he's placed into birthing this book. The folks in this video do a superb job in bringing clarity to some of the book's main themes.

 

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Seth Godin Assures: I Artist

By participating in Seth Godin's The Icarus Deception: Why Make Art? Kickstarter project, I secured a limited edition, BIG ASS book titled This Might Work. The twenty pound behemoth is a collection of Seth's online posts. This is not the kind of book that one grabs and flies off to the bathroom with. I had to put some thought and care into how I was going to tackle reading it. If I placed it on my lap while sitting in my reading chair, it would cut off circulation to my lower extremities. And overall, I'm not very comfortable sitting at my writing desk to read books. 

So I placed it on our kitchen table and propped it up with a cookie tin. I began to read, make notes and highlight text. As the western sun made its way across the pond, through the window and down upon my face, I began to feel like, well, like an artist. 

Now truth be told, I already felt like an artist. Especially as Seth outlines in We Are All Artists Now, a Change This manifesto. I feel my writing is an attitude, it's human, it (and I) strive to connect with those who matter and it's very personal. But sitting at the kitchen table I felt like the bloke who is in front of a blank canvass with a paint brush and paint. My inscriptions and markings into the behemoth reflected the backsplash of Seth's wisdom. I was feeling wise, spiritual and inspired. And I was really looking forward to sitting down once more to paint. 

Pick up a copy of Seth's new book The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? today.

Yes. I artist.

Thanks Seth.

 

 

 

Morrie: Lessons On Living (with Ted Koppel) -1

I am rereading Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie and thought I'd like to collect Ted Koppel's interviews with Morrie here at Rothacker Reviews. When nearly twenty-four hundred people take the time to write a Amazon review, you pretty much know the book is special. It is.  

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My Staple Removers

For my heroes and to my friends who feel the same way about them as I do. 

Amazon sells them here.