I want to get a little philosophical this time. I want to tie in the philosophy with our dog rescue work, your publicity campaigns and your desire to be successful.

I’m a huge believer in the idea that things happen for a reason. Many times, though, we don’t understand the reason.

For the past few months we’ve hit lots of bumps in our dog rescue organization. Specifically, we’ve taken in a lot of dogs with very significant health problems – problems that have run up enormous vet bills. For example, we currently have a dog that’s going to need surgery that will be costing $3,500. Last week we adopted a dog that cost us about $2,000. These are fairly common examples.

The money is not the major issue, although it is important. The real issue to me is what these dogs have to go through with the various health problems.

When we agree to take in a dog, we don’t have the luxury of being able to have the dog examined by a vet. Actually, since many of our dogs come from Southern states, we never see the dogs until they show up at our kennel.

In another article I told you that we had just taken in three 4- week-old puppies that were killer cute with wiggle-worm tails. Well, about one hour after I sent you that issue, I went into the kennel to take care of the pups and I didn’t like what I saw. After doing dog rescue work for 10 years now, I’ve developed very sharp instincts when it comes to dogs.

I looked at one of the pups and immediately got the feeling that she had Parvo. If you’re not familiar with Parvo, it’s a viral disease that mainly affects puppies. The bad news is that it kills up to 80% of the pups it infects. It can also spread like wildfire.

Within minutes I had the pups on the way to the vet. Mary started disinfecting the kennel.

Sure enough, they all had Parvo.

It was the final straw for me in a long string of canine health problems, which I take very much to heart and am significantly affected by.

I lashed out at God. I have very strong religious beliefs, but enough is enough. I gave him what for. In essence, I told him to stop screwing around with my dogs. “Leave them alone. I’ll take care of them. I don’t need you.”

The next several days were very anxious as the pups were put on life support.

Now the good news. Incredibly, all three pups survived the bout with Parvo. As soon as the disease winds itself down and they rest up, they’ll be good as new.

But the breakthrough for me came when I was driving them back here from the vet. It finally dawned on me that these dogs are not being put in our care to make our lives miserable and to run up huge vet bills. They’re being put in our care by God, the universe or whatever because they stand the greatest chance of surviving and thriving right here. I challenge anyone, any rescue group, any shelter, anywhere to provide better care for dogs than we do.

If those pups had stayed in the shelter they came from for just one more day, the symptoms of Parvo would have become obvious and they would have been put down immediately. The biggest nightmare for every shelter is an outbreak of Parvo. Parvo has wiped out entire populations of puppies.

So God and I made up and I spent the good part of an afternoon thinking about the whole episode. I thought back to the many times I thought I was getting the wrong end of the stick. I thought about the “disasters” that confronted me at various times in my life. I thought about the various injustices I thought I’d been the victim of.

And I thought about how every one of them turned out. Without exception, every one of those situations produced something in my favor, far outweighing the downside I was experiencing.

I also remembered one of my favorite quotes. It’s from Mark Twain:

“I’ve had a lot of troubles in my life, most of which have never happened.”

I had developed the attitude that I was entitled to get only healthy, well-adjusted dogs.’Taint necessarily so.

But that feeling of entitlement is all around us.

I often come across people who feel they are entitled to get publicity for their business simply because they sent out one press release. I actually had one person complain to me that she had sent out one press release and did not get a call from the reporter.

Mind you she wasn’t saying that she sent out 50 copies of one press release to 50 reporters. She only sent one press release to one reporter. That was it.

Now that’s a feeling of entitlement!

People feel they’re entitled to have “an avalanche of money” pour into their bank account simply because they purchased a “guru’s” information product.

Some of the blame goes to the “gurus” who have sales letters that, in my opinion, are WAY over the top.

But the vast majority of the responsibility rests on the shoulders of the people who want to be wealthy. Becoming wealthy requires work.

Getting publicity requires work.

As I’ve told you before, the reporters are going to be giving you very valuable air time or space in their newspapers and magazines. They have to be sure you’re the real thing. They have to be sure you know how to do the interviews. They have to be sure you have something to say.

All of that requires following a system and following the system requires work.

Some of my marketing friends are cringing right now because I’m actually telling you that you have to do work to get publicity. Well, you do.

Like anything else, you have to learn what to do, what not to do, how to do it, how to do it most efficiently. When I first put together my publicity kit, I went over it time and time again, making it as clear and simple as possible for anyone, in any business, to pick it up and put my system into action.

Over the past 20 years that my publicity kit has been on the market I’ve gone over it many times, refining it, streamlining it, making it as effective as I possibly can.

If you are creating information products, you must do exactly the same thing. You can’t leave any details out. You must make everything crystal clear. You must be able to give your manual, or CD or DVD or whatever to any adult of normal intelligence and they should be able to follow your plan.

When you are working on your publicity campaigns, reporters will expect that you are following the plan they have grow accustomed to. If you don’t, getting publicity will be very difficult.

After all, you’re not entitled to it!

Paul Hartunian is respected around the world as a leading expert on how business owners can get publicity both online and offline. His website – http://www.hartunian.com – is a resource center for reliable publicity advice.

Paul Hartunian is respected around the world as a leading expert on how business owners can get publicity both online and offline. His website – http://www.hartunian.com – is a resource center for reliable publicity advice.

Author Bio: Paul Hartunian is respected around the world as a leading expert on how business owners can get publicity both online and offline. His website – http://www.hartunian.com – is a resource center for reliable publicity advice.

Category: Business
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