Sales letters for working mothers

ATTENTION WORKING MOTHERS

How do you decide if it makes sense to leave a job and become a stay-at-home parent?

The whole issue of choosing between being a stay-at-home mom and being a working professional started with the controversy of whether a stay-at-home mom “ever worked a day in her life.”  This is nothing but a slap in the face to the institution of motherhood.  Being a stay-at-home mom is work, a full-time a job—it’s just not a paid one.

That’s only the tip of the iceberg surrounding this arduous, misunderstood dilemma.

We love our children.  What we wouldn’t give to be there for spending time with them, making the most of those cherished moments—treating them, walks in the park, going out to eat, driving or flying to special spots for family vacations.  We want to share with them our life wisdom, guiding them so they may grow into happy, responsible adults.  We yearn to celebrate the milestones in their lives, their first steps, making friends, bringing home a good report card, excelling in sports, performing in school plays or music recitals.  We want to continue encouraging them, so they strive and attain ever greater achievements, setting a solid pattern for whatever they do in their adult life.

At the same time, we require the material means to fulfill those joyous, legitimate responsibilities of motherhood.  Children need a warm, safe home, healthy food, health care, transportation, clothing, a good education, savings for college.

A good mother would do no less for her children.

But society fails to recognize child care from the economic side.  Whether they choose one path or the other, whether to work or stay at home, both mothers and fathers this day in age are especially vulnerable.

If they stay at home, it leaves a gaping hole in their financial future.  They can never build a retirement plan, never get full Social Security benefits.  College funding is damn near impossible.  Disability or premature death of a husband can pose devastating, soul-crushing consequences for a family, far more than if both spouses work outside the home.

According to a Pew Research study, 60% of Americans say children are better off when a parent stays home to focus on the family, while a growing share of stay-at-home mothers say they are home because they cannot find a job: 6% in 2012, versus 1% in 2000.

The role a stay-at-home-mom, homemaker and housewife is deeply fulfilling to many women.  Working part-time for a couple of years would be ideal.  It would give you the best of both worlds, wouldn’t it?  To keep one foot in the workforce while being there for those formative years of children’s lives?

But most employers wouldn’t be that sympathetic.  They have a business to run.

And it goes even deeper than that.  Most often we have no option but to work.

It’s a far cry from when we first started our careers.  We gave way to the desires that drew us to marrying our husbands, someone who would work as hard as we do, to build a life together.  In the beginning our interdependence had strengthened that undercurrent of romance, brought to a whole new level with the experience of childbirth.

We might have had blind faith in conventional wisdom.  When the kids were sick, Mom was there to care for them full time, without having to hire a nurse.  If Dad was laid off, Mom could enter the workforce for a while, earning income until Dad found another job.  Back then, the family found that it had one member with considerable, respectable value: a well-skilled, dedicated adult, available to pitch to help her family in times of emergency.  Why shouldn’t we expect this wonderful woman to have the power to render her beloved family a safety net, an all-purpose insurance policy against disaster?

Like many, we may have felt the first mild interruption in earnings, one that gave way to devastating impact over the ensuing years in the labor force.  The world has changed.  Inflation is taking its toll.

As a result, more often than not, Mom is no longer the indomitable pillar of strength.  Today more stay-at-home moms are in poverty—an astonishing 34% in 2012.  For many the story that began so wonderfully and well-planned slowly unravels.

We love our children.  At the same time, in a financial standpoint, children are the biggest predictor of financial catastrophe.  Despite our willful obligation to care for our children, we are forced to make a more distressing sacrifice.  Each lost year of employment could cost our family more than three times a parent’s annual salary.

And if that weren’t bad enough, the rising cost of child care exhausts—or even exceeds—the take-home pay of both working parents.

Cutting back is hard if you’re not really spenders in the first place. For many, their income goes to basics like a mortgage, car payments, daycare, and food on the table.

But what about the all-too-frequent occurrence nowadays, of either you losing a job, or your husband losing his?  Some other company or store sucks away their business, so to keep their heads above water, to cut costs, they lay off people, no matter that company loyalty once meant something.  You may resort to making money with garage sales, or asking family or neighbors whether they’d pay you $50 or so for odd jobs, maybe more specialized like filling out tax returns.  You ask for loans from family and friends with no foreseeable means of paying them off—they’re just temporary infusions of money.  They cover minimum payments for a few months but way out of the hole.  Bills, credit card payments, and IOUs build up.  Car repossession, foreclosure and bankruptcy—all too common landmarks in American life—may loom ever closer on your financial horizon.

You’re both frantic and desperate.  Either you or he are willing to do jobs, even degrading ones, that don’t even match your previous salary, because at least it’s something.

You may even cling to the belief that the situation is only temporary.  But for many, it isn’t.

Yet you never neglect the deep and desperate love for your children and husband, your purpose, that solid rock in a stormy sea of life.  Despite that the lack of work—which would give you the best of both worlds, at least in part—is an empty, mind-numbing experience when you have only the scarcest means of providing for them.  Out of a desire for stability, you tolerate being reduced to an empty shell of a human being, live a life of quiet desperation.

Still, you ask yourself why?  Why does life have to be like this?  Your family’s future and well-being at the mercy of unstable economic indicators, government fulfilling self-serving political agendas, industry leaders making decisions more over profit then people?

But you and your family are not as powerless as you might think.  Sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees.  We focus only on the people closest to us who are as poor as we are.  Other women succeed, and gain financial security, in spite of the sexism, mansplaining, objectification, shaming and the wage gap.  They succeed because they have knowledge we don’t, associate with people beyond our social circles, and run their own businesses.  They live life in a way that challenges outdated standards of feminine behavior—and in the process redefine what it means to be a woman.

Many such women share equal professional and financial status in a nationwide community of real estate investors called Renatus.  They focus not only on real estate investment, but also commercial marketing, tax and legal strategies, mortgages, financial literacy, wealth management—all those things that men and women alike never learn in school.  They work together, support and encourage each other, and their work brings profound benefit to the communities in which they live.

Computer Application Interfaces: In what ways can be expedite software productivity and make it more efficient?

Computer Application Interfaces: In what ways can be expedite software productivity and make it more efficient?

Designing interfaces for computer software is essential to enable users to perform tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible.  Interfaces are the essential link, the point of communication between human operators and the devices and support systems providing information and carrying out instructions.  Of course, attaining this goal bolsters both the sales and user satisfaction upon which all software vendors depend to remain competitive.

Yet however sensible this goal is, however simple it seems, the means to achieve it is much more complex.  It requires the implementation of methods from a multifaceted discipline known as human-computer interaction, or HCI.  HCI draws from other relevant and long-standing disciplines such as psychology, sociology, cognitive science and graphic design.  Empirical evaluation provides developers to compare prototype designs to their users' evaluations in an informed and intelligent manner, to revise the design to yield the lowest error rates, fastest performance and lowest cost.

Consider communication itself. It is the act of conveying intended meanings from one entity or group to another via mutually understood means of exchanging meaning. While language is most commonly the means of exchange between humans, communication between user and application is much the same.

·         Clarity, unambiguous clicks or keystrokes sent to the program as commands, and clear messages sent back to the user in response to a command.

·         Brevity, to simplify and expedite a series of user actions without the program displaying progressively distracting content of those actions. This might also involve a tab control, or tab controls within tab controls, for the entire interface if the application has multiple groups of related functions that could more briefly appear in a single tab page.

·         Consistency in the interface so that the user recognizes patterns.

·         Familiarity, where design retains the location and operation of functions commonly used in other software, such as exiting, opening, saving or closing files, to remain the same

Embarking on the Design

Interface design should begin even before more expensive programming effort begins.  Developers should first ask potential users to educate them about their needs so that they can evaluate successive versions of the interface as efficiently as possible.  Interface design is characterized by three basic principles:

1.      Focus on users and tasks.  Interface problems are detected long before the complete package is delivered.

2.      Empirical evaluation.  Representatives of the user population thoroughly test successive interface designs so that they prove satisfactory once the vendor releases the software.

3.      Iterative design and revision.  Designs are rarely perfect at first.  Developers can better identify and correct problems with successive prototypes in an iterative design-test-redesign-retest process executed in a timely fashion

This ideal user-computer interface design process takes place in three stages: first, a requirements analysis, where a system is operationally defined.  Analyses for both users and tasks are performed to find out how users interface with the functions and modes of the interface's operation.  Developers identify design constraints and activities, set a schedule and identify resource requirements.  They also analyze comparable software and define user roles and requirements.

Second, an empirical evaluation tests models of the interface to enable developers to understand how the system should operate from a user's point of view.  Alternative designs are introduced and tested repeatedly to optimize user performance.  Screens and displays are developed, interactions specified, procedures defined.  Developers also define tradeoffs and users aids, and conduct simulations.

And third, test and implementation of a full interface by users ensures optimal performance.  In this third stage, the interface is integrated into the actual software.  It verifies displays, dialog boxes, control and procedures, conducts both individual and group tests with users, plans the integration with a larger system, allows for a training plan and user documentation, verifies that the software meets all the user's specifications, and at last, implements a fully integrated system.

Such a system analysis approach avoids common, costly mistakes.  It focuses on the functional requirements from a user- and task-oriented perspective.  It avoids expensive changes in design before the software is ever released, so that later updates won't wind up becoming corrections instead of enhancements.  Software testing which should be conducted as soon as an executable software is created, but the point of contact at which the user interacts with the software—the interface—deserves as much attention.

Consistency in design

In the design process, consistency is key to efficient learning and user of software, and applies to many aspects of the interface such as screen layouts, colors, interaction and navigation, and the definition of data elements.  Software typically requires multiple windows or dialogs and should be crafted with regularity.

On the downside, inconsistent interfaces lead users to errors and frustration.  For example, the meaning of a comment is different depending on context.   If you delete one record from a database table, will you inadvertently delete all the records from the table?  Users can also make errors when the procedure for implementing a command changes from one context to another.

But if design is consistent, developers empower users to learn more easily and not tax their memory with operations that are similar in nature, but too diverse in the means of their execution.  When users learn one part of the system, they should be confident that it applies with all other parts of the system.

And there are many ways to achieve this: either on a command-based basis, menu selection or direct manipulation, or a combination of any of these three.  This takes place at the top level, while decisions for the second level of interaction establish how users perform actual work through the interface.  That consistency also extends to comparable software.  Users may be familiar with the manner in which the same function is executed—such as the basic menu functions of File > Open, Close, Save, Exit—so they will come to expect the same regularities.  Specific elements of the interface, such as data entry screens, highlighting, text, graphics and tables are also critical to user performance.

There are two methods for evaluating consistency:

·         a questionnaire method to gather a detailed  assessment for most of the aspects in the interface after they work with it for a period of time.  In a variation, developers can also conduct a structured interview.  Questionnaires have the advantage of providing a standardized and quantitative approach to assessments, though has the disadvantage of relying on the user's memory about his experience.

·         a "thinking aloud" method, where users verbalize their impression of the software while they are interacting with it.  A system analyst records what is said and asks for clarification when necessary.  The only disadvantage is that it doesn't provide the quantitative results that a questionnaire would.

These methods can, however, be combined to maximize the benefits, so that any violations of the user's expectations can be better identified.  The heightened awareness of those violations reveals a point in operation where developers could program alerts, such as a dialog box, enabling the user to choose for certain whether he wants to perform a particular operation.  They also help identify inadvertent problems that result from system shutdown or commands that change system status and result in data loss.

User Characteristics

Designers also need to be aware that not all users share knowledge about how a system operates, so they often establish three levels of experience: novice, intermediate and expert.  Another consideration is that some software would require permissions to access certain types of data but be prohibited access others.  A well-designed interface meets the needs of all users.

We usually tend to let the computer decide when and how much help to provide.  One good rule of thumb to avoid user frustration is to rely entirely on user-controlled aids, to provide a level of interaction in a dynamic manner.  That way, users can control the amount of assistance depending on their particular expertise.

Also beneficial for development are user models, reflecting the actual work that users perform.  The interface could be designed to mirror workflow, especially if it exists in a graphic form, to minimize the frequency the user needs consult help.  Designers can then build features to assist and not inadvertently hinder users in the tasks they set out to perform.  The revision of task models, sequences of mental and physical operations users would perform, goes a long way to minimize the keystrokes, mouse movements and other actions necessary to complete a task.

Moreover, user acceptance of an interface, his ease and willingness to do work using it, is as at least as important as usability.  The factors involved include the time required to learn enough to run the software, as well as the time needed to complete tasks, similarity among different tasks the software is designed to perform, and ease of recovery from errors.  Designers can also use questionnaires to gauge user acceptance on top of its actual operation.

******

Within just a few decades, computers have become indispensable to the home and workplace.  But as H. P. Lovecraft pointed out, such revolutionary change invariably brings out fear—of failure, of success, of looking incompetent, and more broadly, of the unknown.  What better gift can software developers bestow on the working world than interfaces that provide employees control over their performance, certainty about their tasks,  extend their capabilities, and render the only key to self-esteem and worker satisfaction—accomplishment?

Renatus - BIF webinars 4/6 - after follow-up webinar

Congratulations again!  Now that you've participated in the live follow-up webinar, you've gained an excellent foundation of knowledge of what Renatus is all about.

It always pays to be absolutely certain before making a major life decision, so let's recap what you've learned in the follow-up about the Renatus business model, and perhaps may still have questions about in more detail.  This valuable information will also be vital to convey to prospects who may have doubts themselves, or others who are cynical to the extreme.  But whatever reaction you encounter when you talk to others about Renatus, remember that solid facts trump assumptions and cynicism every time.

·         Is Renatus a pyramid scheme?

In a nutshell, no.  A lot of people don't realize what a pyramid scheme is.  The Federal Trade Commission has set specific guidelines to distinguish legitimate business models from illegal ones.

A pyramid scheme recruits members with promises of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme.  Perpetrators could go about this in two ways:

o   they promise recruiters payment, services or goods to sell for enrolling others into the scheme, but they never deliver on what they promise because it doesn't exist.

o   the services and goods they advertise are worthless and unsellable, some of which are marked up in value by as much as 300%, picked for the allure of getting rich by selling them instead of purchasers actually using them.

o   in a variation called a matrix scheme, members pay to join a waiting list for a product, which only a fraction ever receive.

Whatever way you look at it, it's an unsustainable business model.  Whether they sell any products or not, all participants have to pay a membership fee to join.  As recruiting grows, the vast majority of members are unable to profit.  For example, if a person at every level is obliged to recruit at least six people, all members at the 13^th level are obliged to solicit and recruit 13,060,694,016 others—which is impossible.  That number is twice as many people as the population of the entire planet.

So on the basis of simple mathematics, the conclusion is inescapable.  They can never make good on their promise of profit for every new member they recruit because the population of Earth is finite.  For everyone to profit, it would have to expand indefinitely.  But the scheme couldn't possibly include the entire world anyway—a tiny portion joins these hoaxes because so many others recognize it as the scam that it is.  Inevitably the scheme runs out of new recruits, and lacking other sources of revenue, it simply collapses.  That leaves the perpetrators and people nearest to the top with all the money that those at the bottom have irrevocably lost.  In other words, it's just trickled upwards.

In the case where there is no product, service or any value of exchange, it's worse.  Based solely on the promise of a nonexistent product, the group has no other purpose except to recruit people.  That's it.  Nothing else.

This gives a pretty clear distinction from other business models and shows why pyramid schemes are illegal and unethical.  For the perpetrators—whether they do any work or not—the scheme is extremely lucrative.  In the end, product or not, the enterprise accomplishes absolutely nothing beyond funneling money to the people at the top.

Let's compare this to MLMs, or multi-level marketing enterprises.  These are legal per se.  In 1979, the Federal Trade Commission issued a decision regarding Amway Corporation as legal, but it was guilty on the grounds that plague many MLMs—price fixing.

That's where participants on the same side of a market agree to buy or sell a product, service or commodity only at a fixed price, or maintain market conditions so that the price is maintained at a certain level by controlling supply and demand.

What makes this shady is that they tend to push the price of what they sell—and do so as high as possible—amounting to a conspiracy between buyers and sellers.

Price fixing is also inefficient. The anti-competitive agreement by producers to fix prices above the market price transfers some of the consumer surplus to those producers and also results in a deadweight loss.  MLMs are permitted in some markets, but not others.  To be ethical, they should generally be avoided.

So how does Renatus do things?

Totally different.

It may come as a relief to both you and anyone else you bring into Renatus, no one gets paid for enrolling anyone into the program.  They are paid for selling a product—the education.

And you don't even have to market the education to be part of the Renatus community.  That option is entirely up to you.  No one is going to force you to give you give him your credit card number.  Or you might feel confident, after reviewing it further, to purchase the education, pursue an investment career, and not market the education at all.  And that's okay, too.  No one's going to twist your arm.

Renatus just provides this opportunity of these multiple streams of income, and the ones you choose are totally at your discretion.

Now that we have that settled, let's press further.  Instead of a pyramid scheme or MLM, Renatus has a direct sales business model.  Only contracted marketers, called IMAs or Independent Marketing Affiliates, can market those educational products, which again for quality and content sake are taught only by qualified real estate practitioners.  And to become an IMA, there's a yearly fee of $125.  There's also a matter of learning marketing guidelines and completing a brief entrance exam so can make sure to market it honestly and ethically.

But think about it.

If you really believe in the benefit of Renatus education...

...if you are convinced that it this product doesn't depreciate in value over time but instead appreciates to make people money...

$125 for the privilege of marketing it is a pretty tiny price to pay.

Especially when the compensation plan enables IMAs to earn between $1000 to $10,000 commission on a single sale.  That varies depending on the type of education someone purchases.  But with a generous return like this, how could you not recoup your original sign-up fee many times over on your very first sale?

Although you're not required to purchase the education yourself—even when after a few sales you'd earn enough money for it—owning it just helps to know even more about what the education entails.  That way, you become a more experienced and more successful marketer.  This is the case for any salesperson who truly believes in his or her product.

Furthermore, the conference calls or webinars for in-depth marketing training are available to you have no cost whatsoever.

There are two other enormous differences between Renatus and the other business models: 1) the prices of each of the three educational products remain the same, and 2) while upper-level IMA's earn a smaller percentage of commission from a marketer's sale, the commission percentage for the marketer who actually sold it never decreases.  The compensation plan provides a level playing field, in which each participant—no matter their status in Renatus—has an equal opportunity.

Renatus offers three different educational products:

o   Essentials, which, as the name implies, teaches essential topics of real estate investing and business education.

o   AIT (Accelerated Investor Training) Advanced Package, suited to the purchaser's investing goals, from which he or she can choose from two to five vocational tracks and up to 24 months of online access.

o   AIT Xtream Plus Package, which includes Essentials and all other tracks, comprising the entire scope of the education Renatus offers.

And it doesn't end there.  Renatus provides a variety of levels of certification to enable you to earn the maximum incomes based on the number of sales of each of the three packages.  The details are far beyond the scope of this letter.  Contact the IMA who introduced you Renatus to learn more.

So as you can see, on the marketing side of the business, Renatus is no pyramid scheme.  Quite the contrary—the rewards the Renatus compensation plan offers are without parallel in the industry.

·         How is the investor education any different from what all the real estate gurus peddle?

Way different.  We can all agree that education is the key to inspiring desire and developing a strategy for wealth.  The gurus play on that desire to toy with potential customers' enthusiasm—an emphasis on a luxurious lifestyle, subjective self-descriptions, universally  applicable techniques when in reality only specific investment strategies apply, depending on a particular real estate market.

If you've ever attended one of their seminars, courses or boot camps, you can see how full-blown emotionalism can interfere with people's ability to make logical decisions based on the information they're presented with.  Everyone can benefit from motivational material like The Power of Positive Thinking, and every new entrepreneur needs motivation to make that big leap from the life he was never meant to live into another with boundless options and opportunities.  But it's just plain disingenuous for gurus to promise detailed how-to information and deliver nothing but a near-worthless plethora of you-can-do-it platitudes instead.  It's a crime.

Granted, no one ever got ahead by underestimating themselves, or assuming they can't do something because they're not good enough.  But the sensible individual also recognizes the importance of being realistic about goals that require both knowledge and initiative.  You would have never reached this point in the qualification process if you didn't inherently know this yourself.

For businesses led by such names as Carleton Sheets, Robert Allen and Robert Kiyosaki, the completeness and cost of the content, coach quality and success rate rank dismally low.  Some do better than others.  But for many the material is just too vague and superficial to be of much use to anyone.  Or the scheme is an upsell that empties the bank accounts of overeager, unthinking people who ultimately wind up with the very same thing.

 The Federal Trade Commission is shy to name the names of these outfits, but to their credit they do identify red flags on their website.  State Attorneys General, the Better Business Bureau, customer reports, reviews and complaints provide more solid material for anyone to exercise the same kind of due diligence Bob Tierney performed.

Here again Renatus distinguishes itself.  To be qualified to teach a course in the curriculum, an instructor must earn at least $1 million in the particular profession or strategy they teach.  Each one is monitored by both a curriculum advisory board as well as the students themselves.

Renatus founder Bob Snyder has even gone to the effort of consulting a Ph.D. in Education to have the curriculum conform to Instruction Systems Design—a method employed in every college and university in the nation.  The outcome of ISD, directly observable and scientifically measured, ensures that the acquisition of knowledge and skills is made more efficient, effective and appealing.

Much can be explained about all three educational packages Renatus offers.  For now, let's focus on Essentials.

In addition to corporate tax strategies, credit management and funding, Essentials teaches the most basic but necessary concepts and mechanics of real estate investment transactions—from acquisition to exit— in a self-paced, online learning environment, offering the flexibility to learn in several ways.  In this course you will discover:

•     How to acquire properties at massive discounts

•     How to gain access to massive amounts of private money to fund any deal you want

•     How to save thousands of dollars on your taxes every single year

•     How to build a team to leverage your time so you can do deals 24/7

•     How to create legal structures to protect your portfolio and make you judgment-proof

•     How to acquire property without using any of your own money

•     How to do deals and fix houses without even owning a hammer or fixing a toilet

•     How to find the hottest deals on houses before anyone knows they exist

The Essentials Course enables you to learn through video classrooms available 24 hours a day or downloadable MP3s from their Audio Library. You can also participate in our live-class filming as a part of the studio audience when we update our Essentials Course classes. The curriculum is made up of eleven classes:

1.   Creative Acquisitions

2.   Real Estate Essentials

3.   Real Estate Marketing

4.   Real Estate Red Flags

5.   Self-Directed IRA

6.   Tax and Legal Strategies I

7.   Tax and Legal Strategies II

8.   Deal of the Decade

9.   Fast Track Review

10. Credit Management

11. Mortgage Acceleration

The cost of the Essentials course is $2000 and will remain active for the life of the company. Someone with little money and no credit can be accepted into a third-party financing program for as little as $500 and $150 per month payment plan for an entire year.

Even then, none of the three packages is the limit to the education you can gain.  Rather, it's the solid foundation upon which you can further it, by sharing your experiences with others on webinars, intensives, workshops, walk-throughs of purchased properties under rehab, as well as group coaching calls. Renatus' coaching staff—again consisting of actual real estate practitioners—draw from a range of useful topics every week, including but not limited to:

•     Introductory Goal-Setting

•     Understanding Your Marketplace

•     Pre-Foreclosures/Foreclosures and REO’s

•     Wholesaling

•     Buy and Hold

•     Short Sales

•     Fix and Flip/Rehab

•     Lease Options

•     Subject to

•     Tax Liens and Deeds

You now have a choice: do you continue to do what you have been doing—or worse, do nothing at all?  Or do you accept the challenge of becoming a real investor, or a marketer, or both, which in any combination enables you to become an invaluable asset to your community?  Will you relinquish control of your destiny to the whims of rich and powerful, or will you yourself take control?

The path of least resistance may likely result in decades more of working in a thankless, unrewarding, mediocre work force, if you're lucky to get and hold a job with at least meager earnings—and continue to struggle.  Yet the road less traveled offers the vast potential of changing your life, that of your family, and of the community at large.

Should you decide to become an IMA and market the education, be sure to contact the IMA who introduced you to Renatus for information about how to register.

Should you decide to obtain any one of the three educational packages, again, contact the IMA you introduced you.

Sample caption for Polish photography portfolio

Young Women Embarking on a Variety of Careers

Generations of strong, independent, empowered women are changing the world. By entering into a vast spectrum of professions in ever greater numbers, they are establishing a moral standard essential for the prosperity of the world, striving, despite all hindrances and obstacles, for the educational and social opportunities which are rightfully theirs. It is our pleasure to present to you but one sample of this momentous trend, a series of photographs from one of our recent photo shoots. They are divided into two sections: young girls working in the field of prosthetic dentistry, and the second, software coding. Click below to view them at larger resolution.

Plan for article regarding user interfaces

It certainly makes sense to design interfaces for computer software so that users can perform tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible.  However sensible this goal is, the means to achieve it is much more complex.  Falling short of the goal would negatively impact both sales and user satisfaction.  The solution involves methods from a multifaceted discipline known as human-computer interaction, or HCI, drawing from other relevant and long-standing disciplines such as psychology, sociology, cognitive science and graphic design.

Sections:

"Interface Design: Extending Usability of Software"

The prior introduction.

Basic principles: examining users and the tasks they perform, testing initial and subsequent designs and evaluating user feedback and user performance of those tasks, then repeating redesign based on successive evaluation to optimize performance.

Aspects by which the user interface is the point of communication between the user and program behind it.

Christopher Wicken's often-used thirteen principles of display design to create effective interfaces.

Conclusion:

Within just a few decades, computers have become indispensible to the home and workplace.  But as H. P. Lovecraft pointed out, such revolutionary change invariably brings out fear—of failure, of success, of looking incompetent, and more broadly, of the unknown.  What better gift can software developers bestow on the working world than interfaces that provide employees control over their performance, certainty about their tasks,  extend their capabilities, and render the only key to self-esteem and worker satisfaction—accomplishment? 

Renatus - BIF webinars 3/6 - after intro webinar, before follow-up webinar (testimonial)

At just 19 years old, Bob Tierney became a remodeling contractor involved in historical restoration in Oak Park, Illinois.  He became a craftsman, and started own company in the 1990s.

He worked on a rehab project in Chicago, what was once a gorgeous, luxurious Victorian-era home built in 1893, which had 13 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms.  But through the years it remained vacant and fell into disrepair.  Homeless people routinely stayed in the abandoned house, even keeping warm with fires in the fireplace.  Of course, Bob and his colleagues sure had their work cut out for them. Among other things, they acid-washed the roof and gutted the interior completely.

And $1.1 million later, the property was restored to its former glory, complete with modern-day amenities.  It was now worth $2,450,000.  The investor sold and came away with a handsome profit of $700,000.

But Bob was not the investor.

Instead, after slaving away at 60 to 80 hour a week, he and his co-workers earned only $60,000, less than a tenth of that.  He saw the same thing happen in every other job before that.

And he wondered why.

After all, without him, there would have been no deal.  It was a classic love-hate dilemma.  He passionately loved his profession, yet still had reasons to be dissatisfied with it.  He was destined to struggle.  He was utterly unprepared for retirement.  He was never going to make more than $100,000 in a single year.  He was burdened with a pitiful credit score of just 400.  It wasn't working, and he couldn't possibly continue on the same path.

Bob mulled over what led to this sorry state of affairs.  To be sure, wealth wasn't winning some big lottery ticket.  Even investors have to work to earn their income.  The difference was that each job Bob took was a case of the investor's company owning the owner, instead of him owning it.  Regular W-2 workers like him spent their lives trading their time for dollars, as if they were selling off part of their lives.  It was pretty clear to him that actual ownership was the key to the profit he both needed and craved.

It went even farther than just real estate deals.  Corporations of all kinds benefited from other people's liabilities.  The government benefited from people's taxes.  All that didn't jibe with the conventional, age-old wisdom he grew up with.

He decided the only way out of this dilemma was to become an investor himself.

But how?  So many things stacked against him.  The lack of knowledge, of time, of money and credit.  He graduated from DePaul University in Chicago with good grades, but all those years in school never taught him anything money, taxes, interest, financial strategies—nothing at all about financial literacy, much less real estate.  That also hinted to a lack not only of knowledge, but also a perspective, or way of thinking about these things that ordinary people didn't have, but entrepreneurs did.  Poorer people operated in a system of debt, liabilities and taxes.  Wealthy people operated in a system of passive income, accumulated assets and tax write-offs.  The wealthy also had advantage of networking with like-minded people, not just working for them like he did.  There would be huge opportunities from thinking differently, he thought.

The one big thing that manifested from all those other things was fear.

Bob then searched for real estate education.  One of the first programs he found was Donald Trump's now infamous show promoting Trump University, with Trump himself landing at O'Hare Airport, making his way to Rosemont.  Bob paid the admissions fee, expected to learn, but it was nothing but a sales pitch.  Trump tried to sell a $50K-coaching program payable by next Sunday night, at which time the discount would end.  Bob was livid.  It was crazy, nothing but a big gimmick, all hype and high-pressure sales tactics.  To make matters worse, it wasn't the only scam out there that operated this way.  And the more of these bogus guru exhibitions he attended, the stronger his desire to overcome grew.  He was sick of making other people rich.  He needed to get real estate education somewhere to be successful.  The opportunities were out there.

Allied with his rage of determination was fear.  He reminded himself that fear was just the normal reaction to the unknown.  That fear would only lead to heartbreaking, self-limiting beliefs, the kind that paved the road to so many broken dreams.  But as God as his witness, he wasn't about to let that to happen.  Real estate investment wasn't a pipe dream.  Not when the population was growing and saw the inevitable demand for housing he was renovating.  Not when so many other people were doing it.  People who weren't sitting on a couch attending a webinar and expecting money to roll in.  Especially people with their heads in the clouds who thought they could become a real estate experts at some three-day boot camp.

So he pressed on, doing his lonely due diligence for opportunity.  Ultimately, in January 2006, he found Renatus.

At his first workshop, he found no pressure, no upsells, and was never asked for his credit card.  Instead he found a community of people who in every respect seemed committed to making a change in the world, actual investors who seemed generous with their knowledge and skills.  They even conducted property tours.

Of course, after so many pitfalls, he wasn't about to let his guard down when they mentioned selling the education, despite their assurance that no purchase was necessary to participate in the marketing opportunity.  Some clever pyramid scheme could be grinding away within the machinery.  Yet again he was surprised.  The marketing model didn't promise payments or services for enrolling, but rather worked as a more legitimate direct sales marketing that focused more on the education than on recruitment.  Not that such a generous model that paid thousands of dollars was anything resembling a bad idea.

And the education wasn't the usual books and tapes brimming with useless, superficial information.  It involved live help, coaching, workshops and study groups.  It consisted primarily of a curriculum of different classes taught by actual real estate investment practitioners who had to have incomes of more than $1 million in the topic they were to teach.  They both online and recorded.  Renatus didn't have the ability to accept student loans, but Bob had the ability to earn while he learned.  Those remarkable classes covered a vast array of aspects on investing, tax and legal strategies, and two topics that particularly appealed to Bob—acquisition and credit management.

Because acquisition dealt with his lack of money, and credit management dealt with his lack of good credit.

On the money side, Bob soon learned from the intensives alone that for acquisitions—the first essential strategy for any real estate deal— the government provided unique incentives to the private sector for investors to participate in housing and job creation by giving huge tax deferments—one definite difference between linear and non-linear income systems—meaning that income is taxed, but wealth is not.  He learned there were more than 400 tax deductions for running expenses through businesses.  He learned that investors also bought material at discount which appreciated in value.  Among all the other means of obtaining money, banks also looked favorably on loans for real estate investments as opposed to other kinds of investments.  To illustrate, if someone went to a bank and tried to get a loan on an investment in stock, it would be impossible.  But if someone were to do the same with real estate, it was not only possible, but likely.

On the credit side, he learned not only how to repair his own personal credit, but how to obtain a $1 million line of credit through his own corporation for investing.  There was an origination fee, of course, but the interest rates were down.

Bob then took the chance and purchased the education.  He studied hard, and in his first deal with a partner, in which he split the profit 50-50, he gained a $22,500 profit which financed that entire education—a far cry a professional in almost any other area spending precious years paying off a student loan for a university education.

Bob never imagined quitting his job, but after just nine months, he shut down remodeling company.  Still, he did it responsibly.  The last three months he kept it open to finish projects and do right by his customers.  Soon afterward, with Scott and Nancy Rowe, he opened a training facility in Downers Grove with a seating capacity of two hundred, providing training to both current Renatus students and newcomers.  The Renatus business model is so successful it's been duplicated eight times in major cities across the nation.

Today his life is completely different.  He continued doing other deals, specializing in short sales, at times receiving grant money from municipal governments for historical restoration—not just to make money for himself, but to make a difference in those communities.  He takes to heart the advice that his mentor gave him: "Bob, don't become one of those investors who make one million dollars and forget where you came from.  Be willing to pay forward.  Help others.  Give back.  There's abundance for everyone.  As you learn more about us and become successful as an investor, don't forget." 

By working on the investor side, Bob no longer suffers that love-hate dilemma.  Through his newly formed corporation called IQ Investments, which now earns an annual revenue totaling $7 million.

And today he is a member of the Renatus Founders Advisory Board.

Bob stresses that if he can do this, anyone can.  Whether you focus on wealth creation, fixing your credit either corporate or personal, meeting and networking with people who have the experience, skills and success you want—you can do as he has, and attract different results in your life.

To continue to the last stage of the qualification process, click on the link below to schedule your own live participation in the third and final follow-up video.  You will receive an email to verify the time, and will have the opportunity to ask any further questions you have with the hosts.

Renatus - BIF webinars 2/6 - after briefing webinar, before intro webinar

Congratulations!  Having watched Scott Rowe's briefing, you've completed the first of three steps in the qualification process.  Such a careful, well considered process is necessary in a decision of a magnitude that can potentially change a person's life forever, and for the better.

Such a process prevents us not only from making hasty judgments without facts.  It also prevents us rushing into a course of action without enough information.  It ensures trust, a necessary aspect in any business enterprise.  And trust must be earned.  It must never be freely given.

To establish that trust, let's address a few other concerns new Renatus prospects often have.

First of all...

·         Being a real estate investor is risky.

You need look no further than news reports from just a few years ago to find proof.  From 2007 to 2009, property owners suffered staggering losses during the recession.  That nationwide banking emergency was precipitated by a sub-prime mortgage crisis in which 7 million homeowners lost their homes.  So with that much uncertainty, how can anyone avoid risks in real estate like that?

It's a fair question.  But the truth is that quite a few investors did avoid loss—by recognizing that the one thing that conquers uncertainty is knowledge.

The property owners who took a loss made the mistake of overleveraging their properties.  This was due entirely to their lack of knowledge about other financing and exit strategies they could have otherwise used to avoid it.  No one strategy is appropriate for all situations.  Despite the obvious outcome of losing money, they made the mistake of working with the only strategy they knew.

The homeowners who lost their houses entered into fraudulent mortgage agreements that they didn't know how to interpret.  If they had, or were able to obtain the counsel of a reputable, knowledgeable investor, they would have never faced financial ruin.

There is so much more knowledge for so many other scenarios—including other topics like tax strategies and credit repair—in the Essentials courses alone.

But let's get back to the question of risk.  We can narrow down the question further by asking

·         What if I make a mistake?

Simply put, there is risk in doing real estate deals, just as in performing brain surgery, flying a jet, running a business, even riding a bicycle—just about every profession or skill.  Granted, risk for one may be dwarfed by the massive degree of another.  But the means to minimize the change risk for any one of these is knowledge.

Renatus not only takes extreme care to ensure that students retain the knowledge they gain, but also offers class support, daily mentoring to walk novice investors through their first deals, and encourage partnerships with other investors in the Renatus community.

Reduce risk, and you increase the probability of success and high profits.

·         What if I don't have enough knowledge to do it?

This is exactly what Renatus' education is for, to provide you enough information to avoid the mistakes that new investors may tend to make if they were to work alone.

Systems are available, most notably a software Renatus has produced called IOS, which stands for Investment Operating Software—a incredibly powerful software that enables investors to handle a vast array of critical business operations such as leads, analyzing deals, offers, funding, purchase and sale.

·         What if I don't have that much time? or

·         What if I procrastinate, or don't have the initiative... or

·         Life gets in the way?

 We all have twenty-four hours every day, seven days every week.  Still, if the need for financial stability—or anything we value—is important enough, we don't just find the time.  We make the time.

But if we all have the same amount of time, how do we do that?  Perhaps it would be better to ask how the wealthy and successful do that.

They change their habits, like watching television, spending time on social media—limit or even eliminate what robs of the time to spend on things that are truly importaefRnt to them.

For any wealthy person, one powerful method to save time is to build systems.  Renatus education helps you to just that, so you spend you time on your investment career in the most efficient and effective ways possible.  Just as they leverage their wealth to their advantage, they leverage their time.

Yet another method is common sense: a schedule—a benefit overlooked by many, a list of commitments to meet.  What great endeavor has ever been accomplished without a timetable?  And who among us has not felt relief and satisfaction of meeting a goal or finishing a task, compared to the anxiety and stress of things left undone?

Changing habits is hard, but what things worthy in life are gained without challenge?  So many other Renatus investors have gone through the same struggle, and have prospered.

·         What if I don't have enough money, or my credit's bad?

You find money, the means for which—to finance both deals and education—ordinary people know nothing about.

And even assuming that your credit report has no errors (and it might, which would drive your score down), there are ways to finance real estate deals with corporate credit that you can build up independent of your personal credit.

You have more money and credit available to you than you know.  A 401K/IRA class addresses this very subject.

·         What if a lot people try convince me that I can't succeed at it?

If you associate with people who doubt that you can succeed, despite that you have the opportunity to also associate with those who already succeeding, you'll simply be trapped in the same mindset for failure.

Mostly that's because they prefer to see you in the same circumstances you're in now.

Many people may not be supportive of what we do.  And that's okay.  People are individuals, and they always have differences.  But however close they may be, whether friends or family, if they like or love you, then they should allow you to pursue your ambitions.  They don't have to be supportive, but neither should they put you down, either.

To make up for the lack of support, you won't be alone.  You'll have the Renatus community—the experienced investors, other students who want to be partners.  And you can attend the events they sponsor, take advantage of the services they offer—the coaching and mentoring, the regular webinars, the intensives at which you can ask questions and alleviate doubt.  All of these advantages are within your grasp.

Ultimately, the basis of all these concerns is fear.

And what is fear?  Merely our response to the unknown.  Only knowledge can dispel the unknown, and thus conquer fear.

So what all does this education entail?  How does it differ from the bogus education that the fly-by-night gurus?

At the minimum, the Renatus Essentials Course provides an affordable, efficient and convenient method for learning the essential topics in real estate investing. It teaches the concepts and mechanics of real estate investment transactions from acquisition to exit in a self-paced, online learning environment.

And that environment is flexible.  Video classes are available online, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.  If you’re on the go, you can download mp3's.  And if you're able to travel, you can participate in our live class filming, whenever Essentials Course classes are updated.

What will you decide?  To do what you have been doing with the same results?  Or do something different, for results better than you could have ever imagined?  Would it be worth it to you to be able to pay for your entire education from a single real estate deal?

These are the details.  If we've addressed your concerns, all you need to do is click on the link below to view any one of the pre-recorded intro webinars hosted by leading Renatus representatives, each one a personal testimony.