Helen over at Bankaholic just linked me to 8 tips for saving money while becoming healthy.  (Or perhaps just just being less unhealthy!)  While some of them are sort of along the lines of “Don’t buy 3 lattes a day,” there are a couple good reminders in there as well.  Check it out if you have a couple minutes.

The town of Albert, Texas is for sale on eBay–current price listed at $50,100.  An investment project?

Hey, check out this shampoo.  Look at this new game.   Try the ice-cream there.  How often do you get recommendations and actively seek them out?

Sure there is a chance that your word of mouth marketing efforts might bring you business and branding, but how many times do they work?

Seth Godin has a few thoughts on why sometimes there are problems in regards.

Sometimes, what you do is done as well as it can be done. It’s a service that people truly love, or a product they can’t live without. You’re doing everything right, but it’s not remarkable, at least not in the sense of “worth making a remark about.”

What’s up with that?

He then goes on to list some reasons why some things spread virally work out better than others.

Some of the reasons are fairly obvious.  Perhaps it’s not something that you would talk about naturally, or perhaps you’re with the wrong group at the time.  Anyways, this is a quick little article and I would recommend it.

Whenever you buy anything online, it’s always a good idea to do a quick search for coupons or discount codes. You can often easily find 10% off, 20% off, and free shipping. Many times the values are even higher than that.

With many purchases or just large ones, these discounts can add up quickly. Whenever you are checking out and see a box for a promo code, it’s always prudent to take a quick look for some codes before submitting the form.

You can find some great discounts with Adobe coupons. (Although university students can get very cheap education packages from their campus bookstores) If you need to get a copy of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Acrobat, or any of Adobe’s other products, then you should check it out

You can get discounts with Kohls coupons or Macys coupons. This could save you a chunk of change, versus shopping at their department stores. And if you wanted, you could even go take a look at the items in the brick and mortar stores beforehand.

Hopefully you will be able to find some great bargains and codes that will save you money today and down the road.

This post has been sponsored by ‘Coupons for Everyone’.

Back in December when I reviewed  Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, I did not live in a community dotted with a Starbucks at every block, so I have never been to a Starbucks.  I was able to read the book and see the vision Howard Schultz, the CEO, had of the company.  I saw how he wanted the Starbucks image to exist. I wrote my review of his business techniques in the book here.

Now my commute to work passes three Starbucks Cafes, so I decided to check the place out.  My brain carried the image Schultz painted in his book.  The experiences have been totally different.  Yes the employees were great and the coffee was delicious–but it was the other things that were off.  He said they give real cups unless customers ask for to-go cups.  The baristas told me it’s actually the opposite.  They don’t even have enough porcelain cups to accommodate the seats in their shop.  Schultz said his business was green; the places I visited had no recycling for the disposable cups.  The differences between what Shultz said was standard and what I saw were shocking.  But it just goes to show:

A CEO can’t always be in touch with what is really happening in his company.  It’s like a king–does he really know everything his subjects are up to?  There are so many people and so many cups of coffee.

I feel lucky that I read the book before I walked in the coffee shop.  Of course, it means I was disappointed when I walked in while the average person is won over by the experience.  Oh well.  No wonder this book is on clearance at Amazon now.

I thought it might be nice to organize the books that Katie and I own or have talked about here on Aridni.  I’ve started to put together the Aridni Library -click here to check it out- there are still some books that need to go in.  And I’d like to get them linked up to relevant posts later on.

So this is a starting point for that process.  I hope it will become a helpful resource for you as it gets developed more and more.  Pretty soon we’re going to need to get a librarian on staff!!