ChrisKilber.com

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Tag Archives: Life

Power of Expectation – High Five!

October 21st, 2011

What is the usual outcome when someone someone complements you on a job well done? When you accomplish something good? When you achieve something that you’ve been working on for a long period of time? When you even do something simple that keeps you focused on your goals?

Is it, “Oh, it was nothing.” or “Just doing my job.” or “It’s no big deal.” ? That’s what most do. Or they do nothing. They diminish their own success. They feel somewhat embarrassed and try and change the subject quickly.

How you handle successes, even small ones, are just as important as what you do with your failures.

Now there is no question that we learn best by infusing information via several mediums, visual, auditory, reading, and even physical, and by repeating them over a 28 day period, have the ability to reprogram ones thinking.

So try this out for 28 days. For each and every little success you have starting with getting out of bed, clench your fist, pull it, and say “YES!”. If there are others around, do a high five with them. Do a fist bump. Something physical that gives you a feeling of accomplishment, raises your attentiveness, and otherwise makes you feel good. Go ahead and try it right now. Don’t you feel better? Careful with belly bucking and head butts!

Another thing to do after having your mini-celebration is to tell yourself that you earned this, that you deserved this, because you were prepared. Take ownership of the success.

Then use that feeling to tell yourself that this is just the beginning. Your starting the day off right? Use this first success to launch your day, your week, your month, your life.

So if you make a call to someone with the goal of setting an appointment and you achieve those results, high five! Someone calls you and gives you a referral, high five! You close a deal, high five!

What happens is you will have a aura of expectation and will come to expect good things to happen. This will provide you energy beyond belief and others will feel this energy emanate from you. The world will as well. Going to the mall? Go to the front row, there will be a parking place waiting for you. Need to get a hold of someone? They will call you. Closing a sale? No problemo.

Your business can be great. Your marriage can be great. Your life can be great. High Five!

Weekend Recap!

October 18th, 2009

gustophHello everyone. I’ve spent the last few days replenishing. I had some relatives in town last Friday evening and we went to an Authentic German restaurant, Gasthof zur Gemutlichkeit. I’ve been to some German restaurants but this was more like we were right in Bavaria. The mugs of beer were in liter sized mugs. There were plenty of glass boots as well. I had to toast so many people over the next two hours! Hoy! Hoy! Hoy!

It was a very festive time there. I remember looking around and there wasn’t anyone who wasn’t having a great time. The restaurant is known for their meter long bratwurst dinners. Yup almost three feet! I didn’t have that but I’ll bet my pork chops were one and a half inches thick. Next time I go I think I’ll bring along a designated driver. Boy did that stout look good. You can click the picture to enlarge the photo.

Crush-It-Book-Cover-final-smallI also read Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, CRUSH IT! If it isn’t a wake up call for everyone to get into action and live your dream nothing is. One of the first things you learn about Gary is he wraps his passion with his life. Even though he spends countless hours on his business, it’s not really work to him. It’s his life, his passion, and he wakes up every day looking forward to his passion, his work, his business. He says, and I’m paraphrasing here, if you are true to yourself, be it as a baseball fan, a pilot, a mountain biker, skateboarder, wine connoisseur, an interior decorator, stop doing what you hate to do, and start following your passion, you will be able to monetize it and enjoy your life’s work.

The second part of the book is about the action steps necessary to do. If you follow this blog, I’m on the right path. Certainly there are things I wish I could do more of but till I’m in the position of telling my boss to take a hike (coming sooner than you think), I’m spending a lot of time doing a lot of things. I can’t stop learning and still have weekly training. I’m coaching and teaching others. It seems it never ends, but… I really enjoy it. It’s not a hobby, it’s a passion I’m enjoying and eventually my income streams will pick up to the levels I expected. This I’m sure. So if you haven’t got the book yet, I highly recommend it.

wordpressI wrote a wordpress plugin to feature syndication of other tribe members. I actually had written some code that accomplished what I wanted but I needed to package it as a plugin and a widget. You can see it over on the right hand side called “Visit My Colleges”. It is a widget that will randomly pull an excerpt of one of the last three blog posts for a given list of colleagues. This will feature a college or tribe member. It does require a gravitar email address so without knowing some of them you will get a default picture sometime.

I expect it to also provide back-links for each tribe member you supply. There is no reason why a group of 25-50 people couldn’t be syndicating their syndication partners in this fashion. It will be configured in the dashboard and you can add as many or few as you want. So everyone who opens the site a different person’s except will be displayed. I use a combination of a gravitar API and a RSS parser in a PHP library called Simple Pie. Ya, its called that!. The plugin is about 98% done and will be available for everyone within 2 weeks. I need to do some regression testing with some other themes to see how it renders. I’m going to have a website for it with some FAQ’s I know will come and some video instructions. It will install just like any other plugin. I’m going to ask for people to register to get it and when they do, I’ll send them a link. I have a few others along the same lines right behind it. Some of the ideas might be “Last Three Tweets”, or “Breaking News”, or “Football Scores…” I’m sure I’ll think of more. Throw some ideas down in the comments.

secretI’ve always seen the trailers to the movie called ‘The Secret’ and my wife picked it up last week. I finally sat down to watch it. I’ve always been aware of what they call The Secret so there was nothing terribly new or profound that I saw in it.

What I did get out of it is that I sometimes tend to dwell on the bad things that could go wrong. My wife is aware that I have been changing for the better over the last two to three years so giving my 16 year old daughter the keys to my Cadillac has to mean something, right? I used to tend to think that I always ended up having the adverse consequences happen to me, like the tickets I get when I run into the bank to get some change to feed the parking meter because I don’t have any quarters. Or stepping out of my house in the morning when it is still dark outside and find the neighbors dog visited my grass last night. Or getting stuck behind the guy who’s afraid to go to the center of the intersection to wait when having to take a left hand turn. I guess I don’t mind waiting a light or two. When it comes down to it, what the heck am I in such a hurry for anyway. These are supposed to be the times you cherish.

Hope everyone else had a great weekend and hope your week is remarkable!

How to Market Like a Spartan

September 30th, 2009

spartan300
One of my favorite movies within the last few years was a movie called 300. It depicted a group of Greek warriors led by 300 Spartans who fought against a Persian army of an almost limitless size. Despite the odds, the Spartans did not flee or surrender, even if it meant their deaths.

What’s In You?
I believe that inside of everyone there is someone who is rooting for the underdog. The movie was also symbolic in that Greece stood as one of the last bastions of freedom and democracy against it’s antithesis, government, represented by Persia’s slavery and tyranny. The Spartans were an example of the power of a patriotic army of freemen who were defending their native soil. The bravery of the Spartans stands today, as a symbol of courage against overwhelming odds.

Qualities
What made the Spartans so brave? Courage? Of course. Resolute Character? More than likely. Boldness? Most certainly. The list could go on. We have dauntlessness, fearlessness, daring, firmness, prepared, seasoned, gallant, heroic, determined, spirited, valiant, purposeful, and stout. But even though they all had these qualities, what and who did they did it for?

Why did they do it?
They did it because it was ingrained into them from when they were able to think on their own. It was their way of life. Their duty was to nurture their way of life surrounded by their families and friends. This meant having to defend themselves against others who would want to take away that life. That very existence, noble indeed.

What about your world?
In the world of online marketing, mostly because the playing field is ever changing, I don’t know if we ever can really NOT be labeled as a NEW marketer. Things are changing all the time. So things you learned last month may not be as applicable or as relevant as they are today.

Take Action!
If you educate yourself to not only learn the application of the new concepts you study, but to understand the reasoning behind them, you stand to educate yourself at a little different level. It is at this level that you can utilize your time at it’s best best efficiency which will result in increased achievement. If you understand the rational and underlying principals in your marketing techniques, it stands that new implementation of new ideas will manifest other ideas and techniques. Ideas and concepts will start to automatically come to you.

Conclusion
To get to that point you are going to have to ingrain learning and self development into your lifestyle. You are going to have to grow. Daily. Unless you had Spartan like parents and were raised in a family that teaches marketing from the get go, the only path you have will be to always be trying to learn something every day. What this entails is being courageous and persistent. This is not unlike the Spartans. You have to learn never to give up. Courage and confidence can be taught and learned. When you mix the two, you will be a Spartan in your own right.

Questions
What are you learning new today?
Is your education on a different plane?
Do you learn things well enough to be able to teach them?
What’s stopping you?

Can Your Marketing Have a MVP Season?

September 27th, 2009

justinI’m a fan
I’ve been a fan of baseball for all of my life. I can also proudly say that I’ve been a Twins fan all my life as well. This year has been an interesting year for the Twins. The manager has thrown over 20 different pitchers on the mound this year and for the most of the year they have had a .500 record.

But…
But as many pitchers as the Twins have used, we are at the end of the season, the Twins have won 9 out of the last 10 games, and they are only 2 games out of first place with only 8 games left to play. And 4 of those games are with the first place Tigers! It is the classic definition of a pennant race. While I don’t watch as much as I once did, I do get to watch one game a week.

Remembering my Grandparents
As I stated above, I’ve been a Twins fan as far back as I can remember. I remember as a kid listening to Halsey Hall and later Herb Carneal to the game with my grandfather, Adam. That’s one of the things I remember most about my grandfather. He seemed to know everything about baseball and especially the Twins. He not only influenced me as his grandson, but my grandmother, Grace, who will be 98 this year. She still watches the Twins and is very opinionated about them. I think she would have made a great baseball manager. I remember asking my grandfather how a team could be 1 ½ games out of first place. Did they play only ½ a game and it counted? He just answered that if a team was 3-0 and a team was 2-0 which one should be in first place and by how much. The formula works this way; Games Behind = ((difference in wins) + (difference in losses)) / 2. Well at that time I didn’t even know what a fraction was but learned the importance of math at an early age.

I played too…
I did play a lot of baseball as a kid and never was stellar at it. I wasn’t bad either. I did learn it took a lot of skill hitting. I was good at hitting when I was hitting against the neighborhood kids in the local sandlots but going against pitchers at the higher levels, that ball came mighty fast. Hitting a baseball thrown at 85 mph is not easy.

Justin Morneau became an MVP
So why all the nostalgia with baseball and my grandfather? Well the skill needed to play at a Major League level is not easy, even for the ones playing there. The Twins have as a first baseman, Justin Morneau. Justin has played for 7 seasons for the Twins. He first came up with the Twins in 2003 toward the end of the year and the next year was slated to play first base for the Twins. But in 2004 he struggled during the year and only after 74 games was sent back down to the minors. He did manage to play the whole year with the Twins the following year, 2005, but only hit .239 with 22 home runs. So he did show some potential but nothing phenomenal or something to write home about. The next year, 2006, the first baseman hit .321 with 34 home runs, 97 runs scored and 130 RBIs. That won him the American League’s Most Valuable Player honors.

How did he do it?
So what happened between 2005 and 2006? Well it’s not so much about what happened between those years as what has happened over the years. Baseball players are not simply handed a baseball glove and a bat and told to go out on the field. Major league teams have batting coaches, pitching coaches, fielding coaches, dieticians, doctors, psychologists, physical therapists, physiologists, coaches, and many people with a lot of baseball experience. It was the combination of the organizations support staff, some experience, and some talent that earned Justin his MVP honors only 2 years after being sent down to the minors.

Did you pay your dues?
So it is with online marketing. There is no way anyone can just simply decide to start online marketing and be successful with it right from the get go. You are going to need a plan, hopefully from someone who has already had success. You are going to need some training, some coaches, a mentor, and hopefully an organization or team that can help you learn the ropes. Without any of this, the odds of success are not very high. I can’t say it won’t happen, just that the odds are against it.

What you need to do!
If you don’t have a coach or mentor, get one. Follow and study those who have proven track records. Don’t fall for the flashy promises of a Lamborghini and Lear jets. Take action. Track what you are doing. Refine. Seek insight if you don’t understand something. Practice. Split Test. Training is tax deductible. Take advantage of it. Learning online marketing is a process. Staying on top of new trends in marketing is a process. You are going to have to take batting practice every day if you want to be able to keep up with the pitches thrown your way. By keeping at it with the major leagues as a goal, there is no reason you can’t have your own MVP season. Play ball.

House on Marketing

September 26th, 2009

houseHouse
Hey, do you all know the character on the FOX network’s show called House? Hugh Laurie plays an eccentric, grumpy, though poignant, and articulate, doctor lacking in bedside manner. In talking to friends and other people, I’ve found that either you like his character or you hate him. He has a condescending and somewhat biting style that pierces and cuts to the chase. But is his demeanor really brash? I like to think he’s saying what others are thinking. In the end, he always is the one who diagnoses the ailment and saves the day or should I say patient? Does it matter how he accomplished his goal, to save a life?

Being Honest
How’s this related to marketing? Well we all have first of all have to be honest with our potential customers, affiliates, and others about our products and most importantly, the chances of success when joining our network marketing organizations. Are the promises of 25,000 dollars a month realistic? Are the fist-full’s of cash and Lamborghinis realistic? Is it really turn key and does it only require a limited amount of knowledge? Does it grow itself without any human interaction? Is the marketing really provided by someone else?

Promises and Reality
We all know the promises and even after years in the business, we are still somewhat seeking the ‘Holy Grail’, so to speak. There are even examples of diamonds in the rough of those who have had their dreams realized. But as Dr. House would say:

1. Your prospects really don’t care what you have to say, really!
2. When you’re selling an Network opportunity, the product is secondary!
3. Logic does not win the day when it comes to motivating someone to enter your business.
4. People listen to and respond to hearing negative things.
5. Most people are highly skeptical about the industry.
6. 97% of everyone who starts an online business fails.

Just Tell the Truth
So just as Dr. House can save the day, what or how can you save the day or bottom line when it comes to attracting prospects as your customer or affiliate? Being honest can go far. Choosing the correct marketing style and tactics can go far. Implementing strategies that speak to the items Dr. House espoused above will go far. We don’t need to be as brash as Dr. House when explaining the honest realities of our industry, but we do need to address them. By doing so we can attract prospects with our honesty, and additionally weed out the meek tire kickers by making them aware of the work involved with having your own online business. I think Dr. House would make it big in the network marketing industry.

Discover How To Create Irresistible and Tempting Titles

September 25th, 2009

I had a few questions about titles this weekend. I’ll bring this old post out front and center once again in case you missed it.

titleWhat’s in a title?
How you title things make a tremendous impact on whether people will read or consider reading content. In this context, content is in the form of emails, blog posts, tweets, Ezine articles, and other forms of communication that you want others to read. In all cases the main goal is to get people to open, click, or otherwise save or bookmark for reading later. Let’s examine some of the forms of communication.

Email Subjects
The title is contained as what in email parlance as the subject. Subjects are treated a little bit differently based on who the email is coming from. The difference is based on one thing. That is trust. If the email is coming from someone they trust, friends and family for sure, they will open. But there is also information that was requested and comes in the form of newsletters, RSS feeds, and other aggregations of information. If someone doesn’t recognize the senders name they are typically going to look at the subject and make a determination as to what they are going to do. What the subject contains will determine the reader’s next actions. If it’s from you, you want to have as an inviting subject as possible.

Blog Post Titles
A blog post title works in the same way as a subject line in an email. Your objective is to get people to read your post. Hopefully, when your blog post is syndicated throughout the Internet via Twitter tweets, Facebook notes, blog backlinks, email bodies, and other forms of electronic communication it will compel people to open and read it. Another factor that has to be considered in blog post titles is the SEO factor. Your title should both contain a keyword or two and also be relevant to the content that is contained in it. If you have a title about cars, your content better not be about plants. I’ll talk about some of the psychological factors below.

Ezine Articles
Titles should work the same way as blog post titles but should probably have more of an emphasis on keywords than actions or questions contained in the title. Most people simply do not search Ezines. They use Google and Google recommends the Ezine articles to them. The more SEO friendly the title, the better the ranking and higher it’s possibility to be towards the top of the search. I also recommend your resource box contain a link to your blog.

Twitter Tweets
Now tweets per se don’t have the concept of a title but it should be contained some where in the 140 characters. Having important attention grabbing phrases that are contained in the actual article with the title in your tweets will help people feel compelled to click them and follow the link over to the source. Using certain psychological keywords will raise the probability of the tweet being opened. They will grab the attention of the readers.

In all these examples, if you understand underlying psychological impulses and urges you can use them to your advantage. So if we ask the question, what do people want?, what do people respond to?, what do people have an interest in?, and are people interested in?, this should provide us with some clues to help formulate a title. Here are some different types of titles that you should strive for?

Types of Titles

  1. Tell them something true about them and then tell them to take action.
  2. Create compelling curiosity.
  3. Make claims that are almost unbelievable.  (Be able to back them up)
  4. Create something of high interest to target direct interests.
  5. Use humor.  If you can make them laugh they will click.
  6. Inspire and motivate them.  If they feel good about themselves and they will act.
  7. Make them mysterious.  People like mysteries.
  8. Appeal to their logic.  Restate something they believe strongly.

So these are the categories or types of possible titles or subjects that can be used.  Now that we know what it is we need to formulate what words can we use that will compel people to act.  We need to use words that influence, persuade, and motivate people to act, (click, read, signup, etc…).  This can be accomplished by using words that can help people image something.  They are words that describe things in ways that make them bigger than life.  They are words that evoke emotion.  Here are some words that will practically compel people to their natural predispositions to investigate things that are curious, humorous, mysterious, logical, interesting, and bold.  This of course is not an exhaustible list.  They contain:

Words to Use

irresistible untold boggle double
triple quadruple unstoppable potent
banned phenomenal willing calculated
psychological seduce spell binding unable
magnet effortless insatiable secret
record-breaking amazing cutting edge incalculable
absolute thrilled legendary boost
enhance improve benefits enjoy
reduce release loosen combat
discover achieve counter increase
how-to discover master create
generate optimize enliven improve
advanced cultivate progress revamp
refine upgrade align balance
cheerful enthusiastic inclined zealous
attract allure induce invite
tempting follow substitute uncomplicated
simple agile knowing powerful
able clever straightforward intricate

Conclusion

The list could go on and on. Using these words in your titles and subjects along with a keyword will work wonders for your traffic. Take the time to craft titles that will draw people into your world, get them to click it, and then read it. Spend more time on this aspect of your writing and you will be guaranteed to see results.

What other words do you like to use?
What are some titles that you’ve used that have worked for you?

If you enjoyed this article I would appreciate if you click the link below to tweet this post. I’ll use these concepts as examples to craft the tweets for this post.

CLICK HERE PLEASE TO TWEET WITH A CUSTOM MESSAGE

Thank you.

You Have To Love What You Do

September 19th, 2009

Crush-It-Book-Cover-final-smallIf you haven’t seen or researched Gary Vaynerchuk and his work and life, you’ve missed out on a lot. You can find him at @garyvee on twitter. He has 857,184 followers. Here’s a video on the importance of building a personal brand.

I would love to hear your comments.

I’ve pre-ordered his book and will soon be released. I recommend buying it now.

What Is Your Perception?

August 1st, 2009

violin, music, perception, passionI received the following in an email yesterday that I thought was very thought provoking. I’d like to share it with you and ask a few questions after you’ve read it.

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007 The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later: The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes: A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes: The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money, but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour: He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

Findings: No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the Metro Station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and people’s priorities. The questions raised: “In a common place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?”

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made…. How many other things are we missing?

I first of all thought this was extremely interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, as a guitarist, when I was in college, had played on street corners a few times. They were the same corners Bob Dylan had played on 40 years ago. Now I never made $36 an hour, but it was a few years back, nor was I even remotely a virtuoso. But it was fun. Secondly, I thought it was interesting that the one person who wanted to watch the most, though his mother never let him, was the 3 year old boy. That three year old had no conception of the supposed stigma of street musicians, the stereotypical response that they were somehow psychologically unstable, close to homelessness, and hungry. The piece doesn’t go into it but I can only image the responses. This boy heard live music being played and was mesmerized.

I am also reminded of some of the questions we ask ourselves and hear from others we know about our entrepreneurial endeavors, especially the online ones. There is an evergrowing trend toward people making a living using their own brain power and the internet. The costs are very minimal compared to the brick and mortor business. The stereotypical vision for people when it comes to jobs is that they need a good education, a good job, and good things will happen. While generally true, what we have here is the traditional trading of knowledge and time for dollars, 40 years of 40 hours a week. When I explain to people that the internet gives people options to escape from the 40/40 plan, they remind me of the lady rushing along her 3 year old boy. “You can’t do that! You need a regular job! You need to work hard to get ahead.!”; the same dogma we are taught by our government school teachers and parents. These are the people who have been trading their freedom for supposed security. They also find it hard to imagine that there are people who make money by following their passion. But your and I know different.

I would love to hear your ideas and thoughts on this. Do you have people doubting your ability to make a living online? Do you sometimes have doubts yourself? And if you are doing it full time, what was the exact feeling you felt when you finally got there? Finally, are you always in such a hurry where when you see or something that has intrinsic beauty that you don’t take time to smell the coffee?

I look forward to hearing from you. Have a remarkable day.

Photo credit A Goddess of Divine Indifference

ChrisKilber.com

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