There is a Danish song going: “Your mouth says no, no, but your eyes say yes, yes”. Very often, even though you do your best to speak in an assertive way, other things, like your eyes or your voice, will betray you. Let’s take a closer look.

First of all, do like grandma told you: Stand straight. Stand in a neutral way, arms along the side and on your two feet, meaning without any external support. It might seem pretty aggressive, if you are leant up against the wall in a relaxed way: I am totally relaxed, and I don’t care much about what you have to say to me. Don’t put your hands in your pockets and no crossed arms or legs. Just stand.

Don’t stand too close to the person, about 1 metre (40 inches), is fine. If you are too close, it could be perceived as aggressive. If you are too far away, it could be perceived as submissive. Beware, though, that there is some difference depending on the status of the person. 40 inches are fine if you are speaking to a colleague, but it is too close if you are speaking to your boss. Keep your distances.

Next, look the person in the eyes. Don’t stare and do dare blinking, but look the person in the eyes. Don’t look down. You may look a bit away from time to time, just not down.

Don’t smile. If you smile while talking, it can be understood as aggressive, like you are making fun of the other, or submissive, like you are trying to soften the other person.

Watch your voice, use a neutral tone of voice. Speak loud and clear so you are heard but don’t sound like a burglar alarm. There are many possibilities in between the two. Do not sound like you are asking a question or permission to speak your mind. Very often, if you feel unsure, you might let your voice go up at the end of the sentence, like you are asking a question. This is not a good idea, when you want to sound assertive.

Control your movement as much as possible. Don’t play with your necklace, or your hair or your ring or a piece of your clothing. This shows you feel very unsure.

There may be some things that are out of your control. For example, you might tend to blush. In this case, just thinking of not blushing can make it worse. So instead of fighting it, accept it as a fact. Think that you do tend to blush when you are speaking your mind, and that this is not the end of the world. It is not a catastrophe.

By accepting you are blushing from time to time, you will reverse this tendency by blushing less and less for each time.

Before you go on with your message, prepare yourself. Write on a piece of paper exactly what you are going to say, then repeat it until you can say it fluently. Don’t think about your body language or your facial expressions at this moment. Just concentrate on what has to be said.

When you are able to say the message fluently, stand in front of a mirror and work on your body language and facial expression. Don’t be to hard on yourself but do notice your errors and correct them. Don’t be too disappointed if you can’t do it correctly right away. It is very logical that it will take you some time to learn a new behavior. Most changes take some time.

Have you recently been published but don’t know where to sell your book or how to market a book? It all depends on your targeted audience. Book marketing doesn’t have to be expensive or burdensome. You can promote and sell your book efficiently with the right strategies.

As mentioned, knowing your target audience is important when determining where to sell you your book. “Where” can be broken down into two different meanings. You can mean where as in offline and online or where online and offline you can market a book. Any practical and successful marketing endeavor will include both online and offline areas. As you know location is key and not just in real estate.

After you identify your audience, you then want to create a list of places they would frequent on the internet and locally in their neighborhoods. These areas will let you know where to market a book.

A perfect example would be fitness and exercise. Consumers interested in fitness and exercise shop at health food stores and can be found entering and leaving a gym. I’m not suggesting you set up shop in front of a local gym and try to market a book. What you can do however, is ask the manager of the gym if he or she would be willing to raffle off your book in a drawing.

You can also have the members leave business cards in small fish bowl and hold a drawing at the end of the month. In the process you’ve exposed your book to all the members who pass by the service desk. If the winner of the drawing enjoys the book, your marketing will go viral as she spreads the word.

An online way to market a book for the fitness and exercise crowd would be health boards and weight lifting forums. I’m a health conscious person myself, so I often end up in such forums. My guilty pleasure is reading comments because they can be very funny at times. Choose two or three forums and/or boards and become a member. You will soon be chatting away, networking and making friends. You can either place a short description of your book or just a link to your author website in your signature. Not only will appear with each post and comment you make it’s a subtle way to market a book.

When I leave the parking lot for the movie theatre in my hometown of Norwalk, CT, there is a small advertisement space directly in front of me at the traffic light. Of course if it’s red, I have to wait. While waiting my eyes inevitably land on the currently empty space. I always wonder why hasn’t someone taken advantage of this space? The location is perfect to market a book. It could be rented for a short period of time, say when a new blockbuster movie premieres. Ideas like this can drastically increase your readership.

Your readers are out there and they will buy your book if you put it in front of them. A good friend of mine is an abstract artist. His home is filled, I mean FILLED with books on art. I’m beyond impressed at how seriously he takes his craft to have so many books and he actually reads them. So what does that say about your readers? They’re waiting for your book, so get going and figure out where they are and how to market a book to them.

Everybody has a mobile phone these days. They all come out of their factories with their firm’s standard settings on them, so they all come out the same. All Nokias, all Sony-Ericssons are the same and all Samsungs are the same.

Millions and millions of them, all the same. However, they all, every single one of them have the potential of being customized in hundreds, if not thousands of combination’s.

Most cell phones have a minimum of twelve different ring tones; twelve different screen savers, twelve different wallpapers, twelve different themes and twelve different colour schemes and some have twenty or more of each.

It is also possible to download further variations and occasionally even to make your own. This means that there are usually thousands of methods of customizing your cell phone.

Although most individuals do not go to the bother of switching the wallpaper, screen saver or theme, most individuals do experiment with the ringing tone. Older people might only use one of the standard ring tones that came with the phone, but younger people are more likely to either buy a ring tone or download one of the thousands of free ones accessible on line.

One difficulty for ring tone enthusiasts was (or even still is for some) that there is no true standardization of the music format between the cell phone manufacturers. This means that a tone in Samsung format will not play on a Nokia etcetera. This led to the creation of ringing tone converters, although some phones cannot make use of them.

Another manner of overcoming this is to upload your ring tone to an on line converter, convert it then either SMS it back to your cell phone or download it to a computer and transmit it to your phone by wire or by Bluetooth. It is all too much bother for most older people, although it is quite simple after you have done it once or twice.

Other cell phones have a composer built in. These composers are fairly elementary in some phones, yet others allow polyphonic composition. However, it can be quite tedious to compose a good tune, so this is one for the serious customizer with time on his or her hands only.

One function that practically all cell phones have, but which most individuals do not use to the full is assigning different ring tones to different people or groups of individuals. For instance, you could have one ring tone for your parents or spouse and one for your home landline. Then if you hear those ring tones, you know that you should answer it.

You could have one for your friends, so that even without glancing at the screen, you know that you could have an amusing conversation to cheer up your day and you could have one for your boss so that you know to ignore it if it rings outside working hours.

It is fun to personalize your cell phone and it can be done fairly quickly once you get started and it allows you to while away half an hour next time you are waiting for a train.

Firstly, you need to get the base house price from the builder. No matter if you’re using a Building Broker, Architect or Project Home Builder you should receive a written quote that nominates the base price of the new home. This base price should include the minimum requirements to complete the primary house structure. This would be the costs for the foundations such as a slab on ground, through to the finals which would be brick paving, cabinets, ceramic tiling and electrical fit out.

Using the base price it is easy to calculate a square metre rate for building by taking the base price and dividing it by the overall size of the home. For instance, if the base price is $300,000 and the house size is 300 square metres then the square metre rate is $1,000 per square metre. This method of comparison is poor however, as ‘vertical prices’ aren’t easily compared. Vertical prices are costs that increase the overall rate, without adding space to the home. An example may be a luxury kitchen fit out which may cost an additional $20,000, but doesn’t increase the house size. Using our example above the square metre rate would jump to $1,066 per square metre and to the untrained eye would seem to represent poorer value than the $1,000 p/sqm house. Having an expert like a Building Broker working for you to help you compare ‘apples to apples’ makes the comparison process a lot easier.

However, the base price of the house normally excludes site costs and finishing costs. Often additional engineering costs are separate from this figure also. This is where it’s a lot more difficult to ascertain pricing until final quotes are received. However, as a guide site costs are generally less than $3,000 in Perth, Western Australia for sandy building sites. Where that is the case then engineering is also minimal. Additional surprises may arise if other site conditions are found such as rock removal or clay. Ask your builder or local council if those conditions are prevalent in your area.

Your finishing schedule should be completed also and will include items such as; Floor coverings to the main living areas, carpets to bedrooms and theatres, additional brick paving, window treatments such as blinds and curtains, air conditioning, clothes line, letter box, garden shed, swimming pool, swimming pool fencing and gates, light fittings and installation*, internal wall painting*, landscaping and reticulation* and boundary fencing*. The items marked with an asterisk * are sometimes included in the base price of the home or by the developer.

Finally, one cost that is most often overlooked when building a new house is the loan repayments while building. If you have borrowed money to purchase your block and building then you will start making repayments once the block settles. As you begin building the builder will draw down progress payments after each stage is completed on site. You should factor these repayments into your plan to build so that you can endure the repayment costs especially when the home is almost at completion and the repayments are the highest (as most of the loan will have been drawn down).

One of the unexpected benefits of building a log home today is the industry’s ability to handle both standard and custom designs with ease. While most companies offer a wide variety of standard designs, they are also capable of deviating from their stock set of plans to build something truly unique. Here are the three most common scenarios for people building these rustic style homes.

The standard design

This is of course the easiest path to a new home. Standard plans are generally developed by a trained home designer. You can count on them being well conceived, time-tested and capable of meeting a variety of lifestyles. Also, if a quick turn-around is needed, the standard plan will be the shortest path to having a new home produced quickly.

Modified standard design

This may be the most common type of log home constructed today. Someone may begin with a standard design but add changes to make the plan work better for their own lifestyle. Perhaps a room size needs to be increased, or a window added or a floor plan needs to be reversed. None of these changes are difficult or costly. In some cases a feature from one standard design is incorporated into another, creating a totally unique home.

Custom home

With so many floor plans readily available through plan books or online searches, it is not uncommon for someone to create a unique home from their own research. It may be a variation of a plan that they come across; or perhaps a combination of features from several plans. In any case, this is a custom design for the log home manufacturer and it will require drafting and engineering. Fortunately, custom homes are something which the industry does very well! And while the cost may be marginally higher than the cost of a stock plan, it is in no way cost prohibitive. Keep in mind, however, that if designs are copied from an outside source, there may be copyright and permission issues to consider.

If you are planning to build a log home, consider the three most common approaches and then choose the one which is best for you.