- Automate most of it
- Get others to help you do it
- Start implementing strategies you don't see elsewhere
- Spend more time creating content
- Spend more time networking
Archive for Success
Dec-09
21
Git Er Done – Stopping Stress In Your Life
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I’m going through a list of things that will help make your life less stressful. By New Year’s Evening you should be prepared to have a much more relaxed and successful 2010. So let’s get started. You know the old cartoons that depict good and evil standing on your shoulder having a conversation with your conscience? I have a third entity that hides behind my head and coaches one of those. He is known as Mr. Procrastinator. You can only guess which one he is helping. He is making sure that you can find all 101 reasons not to finish something you start. Yes Mr. Procrastination is robbing you of your sense of accomplishment, your success, and giving you lots of unneeded stress!
The number one best way to rid yourself of stress is to get things done. Have Mr. Accomplishment battling Mr. Procrastinator. Any tasks you have to do typically can be broken down into smaller sub-tasks. Then just do them, one after another. It is usually harder just thinking about tackling your task list than it is to actually just start doing it. What works for me is using index cards to create the lists. Once they are written down, this will free up much of the mental space required and you can concentrate at the task at hand.
What you will really get out of it, is a lot more done, a sense of accomplishment, and a LOT less stress. Tomorrow, I’ll tackle number 2.
Have a great stress free Holiday!
*I used cows because I live in the dairy state of Wisconsin. 
Oct-09
01
Einstein Like Wisdom With Jonathan Budd
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Johnathan Budd over at his blog shares an equation and formula that literally tells us how to achieve success and make your way to the top 3%. I recommend it highly.
Read it here:
Finally… The Answer To Why 80% Will Fail, 17% Will Make A Little Money, And 3% Will Become Financially Free Revealed…
avdngc35x8
Sep-09
27
Can Your Marketing Have a MVP Season?
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I’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.
Sep-09
26
House on Marketing
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House
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.
Sep-09
14
What’s Your Motivation?
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Small Business
I went to a Tea Party meeting last April to observe and chat with a few folks. This was no large gathering in a large city but a small one with just a few hundred folks in a town of about 5000 people. I spoke with many people I did not know, and I ended up actually speaking to the whole crowd after being prompted by many with whom I spoke to on the sidelines. I mainly talked with many folks from truck drivers, retired veterans, moms, small business owners and conversed about a familiar theme that is near and dear to me, small businesses and their impact and contribution to this great nation we live in. On my Facebook profile I proudly proclaim that it will be entrepreneurial spirit, not government intrusion that will revive our economy. This folks is the heart of small businesses. Small business employs over 75 per cent of the United States workforce. Anything that harms small business in my opinion, harms America.
What I Said
I did not speak about how the current administration is taxing or is planning to tax. I reminded them that it is the Washington politicians of both stripes that are reaching into our wallets. This has not been something that just happened. It has been incrementally occurring for over the last 95 years. The news media is portraying it as a battle between the parties, but for most of us it’s Government overreaching their bounds and getting involved in issues that are not ever discussed in the constitution and using that to fund their own constituencies for one reason or another. It is done by politicians to get re-elected and to have power. I’ve seen right through this for many years. The second oldest profession is being a politician and I actually think there’s not much difference between the first and second.
Leader or Politician
Now there is a line between what constitutes being a leader and being a politician. A leader by definition has to serve their followers and constituencies. I suppose a politician can do that. But one thing that is sorely missed in all of this is what their motive is. If the motive of a leader or politician is to be in charge, make the organization or government run smoothly, make a profit, build a respected company or department, get elected, and to win that might sound good. But to truly define leadership we need to completely understand one thing, motive. How was it the person got into a position where they could be called a leader by the definition used above? Did they inherit it? Was it simply appointed to them? Was it funded by interest groups? If it wasn’t earned on the merit of truly serving others then I would hesitate at calling them a leader. Leadership is also not the one who promised the most. If the leadership was arrived at by taking from someone and giving to another, it is not true leadership.
Motivation
A leader’s motivation is not how far they have advanced their position or power, but how far they have advanced others. That’s the bottom line. If a person takes away from someone intentionally, they are not a leader. A leader strives to add value to others. The value you add to others is teaching them skills, providing opportunity, giving them insight and perspective, and having faith in them. I know this may sound like a politician but the difference lies with their motivation. You can add value to others by not having to take resources from others to give them. A real leader provides inspiration, values, strength, solutions, character, and does not waver in them. There may be politicians whose motives are those of a true leader, but I find it rare to find one. Remember, a true leaders motivation is not to advance their own position or power, but to advance others.
Jul-09
07
My Passion For Building My Business
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Johnathan Budd had a highly passionate post with a video and at the end we were asked to leave a comment:
I want you to LEAVE the BIGGEST reason you are building your business, spending your time learning new goals, researching how to succeed, and developing yourself into an entrepreneur.
This is how I responded.
I am driven. I am motivated. In that internet marketing is now a science, it is the creative aspects that I like. Creative aspects for me are the results from the originality of thought, the expression, the interaction, the learning, the teaching, and gaining satisfaction from accomplishment. The challenges make it much more fulfilling than any 9-5 job ever could. It’s like I am painting a masterpiece and I have to concentrate on the brush strokes on a small corner of the painting. As I work on the colors and learn how to mix the paint to achieve the exact real life colors and textures and then transfer them to the canvas, a picture of the future is emerging.
I of course will have to consult with others with whom I will associate to have them help and guide me and give me perspective to the process of finishing the painting. And it will be those relationships that I end up fostering that will determine whether my painting is a masterpiece. I can’t do it myself and when I do finish the painting, it will be because of those with whom I trusted and shared my passions. The success will be reciprocal as one of my passions is to help people understand and achieve things that they didn’t know they could archive or thought unattainable. My way is perfect only for me. But there are things I can offer that will help others and in return I will learn from others.
In the end, I want to be able to help people and kids in some of the eastern Europe countries that would make a typical U.S. minimum wage job seem like a muti 6 figure job here. Outside of the main cities there are families that live on $50 a month, don’t have a water heater, use outhouses still, and live the life our parents and grandparents lived in the 20′s and 30′s. There are orphanages whose conditions are deplorable at best, and run by corrupt governments and bureaucracies were little ends up directly benefiting the children. That’s my dream. to see the smile of some happy children who are the happiest they’ve been in their lives just because I bought them all some new shoes.
Jul-09
06
Content Is King – Learn What To Write About
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I know a lot of people out there are getting online to somehow start making some money because they have aspirations of firing their boss, staying at home to raise their own kids, supplementing their incomes or retirements, and to nurture their entrepreneurial spit that hides in each and everyone one of them. If they’ve done their due-diligence they should know there’s a lot more than meets the eye and have partnered up or found someone to emulate to teach them the ropes. Even then, the bottom line on how successful anyone is going to be in this industry is how much traffic they can generate and how they convert that traffic into sales.
I just noticed that what I’m about to say rhymes but maybe it will help to remember. That is “The number ONE thing, is that CONTENT is king”. I heard it said just last week by an online millionaire. Content for me means, blog posts, ezine articles, videos, reviews about others content, and comments on others content. I know a large part of the landscape in social media is Twitter, but it may be possible to convey some content, but 140 words won’t cut it in my book. Twitter is used as the communication channel to tell, educate, and inform others about content that is educational, interesting, and teaches something. It is merely the communication channel.
Content does not have to be eloquent prose. It simply has to state some facts, why you agree with or not, why you think it’s important, and what YOUR perspective about them. The exact same topic should be different than what others write because it will be from YOUR perspective. If you’ve discovered something that really helped you, write about it. You have a different perspectives and the people who read your material will appreciate it because they may be just learning, just like you are. As we speak there are tens of thousands of people a day coming on to the internet to find their fortune. You can be their guide.
So another way I come up with content. Whatever your niche is going to be, come up with 75-100 keywords about it. Keywords are going to be your nouns and verbs of the nomenclature of your niche. As an example I’ll use a niche called marketing. Here are ten keywords that would be expected to find for this niche. (affiliate, article. auto responder, back link, banner, blog, business model, central hub, and content). So with those 10 words mathematically I could write about 90+ combination of those keywords. Here are about 10 titles you could use from those 10. Attracting Affiliates With Back links. Do I need An Autoresponder For Affiliate Marketing? Using Back links In Your Article Marketing. Can Blogging Attract Affiliates For You? What Kind of Banner To Use On Your Blog. Using Keywords On Your Blog. Using Keywords In Your Article Marketing. The Key to Your Business Model – A Central Hub How To Write Blog Content.
So there I came up with 10. You get the idea. There is no reason you can’t come up with 75+ keywords for your niche. Think them through. Go to ezinearticles.com and pick the 10 most read articles in your niche and look for them there. Use a thesaurus and find them. Then think of as many combination of key words as possible. An advantage to using multiple keywords in a title is Google will rank them higher. Then sit down and write. Step away when your done. Reread it and check for grammatical errors then post it. Your done. I did this one in about 20 minutes. Went down an had a drink of water and chatted with my daughter, came up to my office and proofed it. There is no reason not to have content. Now have at it! Content is king. If you found this useful consider clicking the Tweet and Face book buttons next to the title.
Jul-09
06
Keeping Your Rudder Straight
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Today I would like to emphasis that leaders know where they are going. Leaders have charted a course and have taken many factors into account. They rely on their past successful and unsuccessful experiences. The successful experiences provide confidence and teach you what you’re capable of. Likewise, unsuccessful experiences can help you keep your rudder straight. They can reveal wrong assumptions, character flaws, errors in judgment, and poor working methods. Taking time to reflect on experiences is vital.
A leader will examine the conditions before making a commitment. They examine not only measurable sources such as finances , resources, and talent, but also intangibles such as timing, morale, momentum, culture, etc. A true leader will listen to what others have to say. There is no way one can know everything and therefore must gather information from many sources. They listen to members of their leadership team. They also talk to the people in their organization at the grassroots level. Leaders will possess a positive attitude and provide confidence to those depending on them.
Predetermine a course of action.
Lay out your goals.
Adjust your priorities.
Notify key personnel.
Allow time for acceptance.
Head into action.
Expect problems.
Always point to the successes.
Daily review your plan.
Notice the first letter of the list spell PLAN AHEAD. Anyone can steer a ship but it takes a leader to chart the course.
1. Do you have any bad experiences you have learned from or did you just simply forget them?
2. Do you listen to constructive criticism easily?
3. Have you charted a course for you and your team for the next 30, 90, 365 days?
Have a fantastic week everyone and do something remarkable!
Chris
Photo Credit gbrands
Jul-09
03
It’s About People Not Products
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So someone wants to start a business? An online business at that? Where 95 plus percent of people don’t ever make one thin dime? How are they going to do that? Those are the questions we certainly hear from our self talk and from others that share their ideas with when they first start. Not everyone is geared to be an online marketer. Most people are not even prepared. Most will start by finding a product on a click bank type affiliate site and start figuring out where they can advertise. They start using Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace and anything else they can lay one of their affiliate links down. They justify it by saying it’s advertising. In reality it’s spam. If someone or anything reminds people of someone selling to them what will they do? Run for the hills, Some simply think if they have a page with their product with all the features and a button that says ‘buy me’ on it, people will start purchasing. After all, it’s a great product and it should sell itself. The product may be good but they haven’t grasped the idea that they may be only 1 of 25000 people selling that product. How do they get traffic to their site? Even then, why would they buy from them? What differentiates that person from the other 24,999?
That’s where marketing takes over. Marketing is not simply fancy advertising. Marketing consists of psychology, creating, communicating, fulfilling, exchanging, educating, writing, research, and plain hard work. Are you ready to learn all that? Even then, where are you going to learn all that? You’ll need trainers, mentors, books, video to start to grasp what is involved. Your best bet is to learn from someone who has gone through the same things your going to have to. Personal development is a given. You will need to read books and listen to audio to learn the correct mindsets you’ll need to ingrain upon your self. You’ll also need to develop networks of people that are based on attraction principals. The things you learn will be shared openly with this network. You will also learn from them. You will earn trust. You will start to cultivate relationships that will be based on you, not your products.
Boy those two paragraphs sounded a bit harsh didn’t they. There’s a bit of truth in there for me, but I’m also sure it’s true for most online marketers when they started. The good news is there is a lot of training out there now that is being provided. We don’t have to spend as much time learning from our own mistakes. Being able to hear and understand what others have gone through works just as well. Networking with the right group can save even more time. It has outright become a science. Getting involved with the right group can provide you the materials for success and the only thing that will be left to do is to implement what you learn. As contradictory as this sounds, online marketing is a people business. It’s about nurturing relationships. About helping and educating people that you’ve come to know. It’s about sharing your personalities and nuances with each other. It’s empathy and understanding. Selling is never about the product. It;s about relationships and the sooner anyone who wants to get into the 5% of people who make money, or the 3% that become vastly rich, learns this, the quicker it will happen.
Jun-09
25
Historic Proportions
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Recently over at Facebook I had as a comment in the “What I was thinking today” section at the top the following, “Chris. W. Kilber is thinking that today is a day to make some history! What are you going to do today that you will remember for a long time?” I’m not sure what was in my coffee this morning or it must be the new vitamins I’ve been taking recently that has really fired me up and made me optimistic about a lot of things. Nicole Sundene then replied that it was empowering and a tall order. That may be, but was it the cost of success? Anyways, so then I happened to hear something on the radio dealing with the saying, “historic proportions”. It gave me an epiphany. I was thinking of something that could make a historical impact upon your online business, especially if you are just starting out or you started out following the wrong advice. Here is what I came up with.
There’s a lot of information written on online network marketing. There is so much in fact that it’s hard to separate the grain from the chaff. We as online marketers need to steer or coral potential business partners or customers into a position where we can educate and inform them to the services and offerings we have. How do we do that? We create a “marketing funnel” and attract people NOT by being a salesmen and touting the benefits of your product, but by building “YOU INC.”! I would bet that 98% of the products out there are being marketed by 1000’s of people. How can you be the one whom customers come? What you need to do is differentiate yourself from the others using attraction principals and move them into your funnel.
A successful entrepreneur will build their marketing strategies around processes and systems. They will build their own lists of prospects, customers, and partners by offering real world value. This may be in the form of information, how-to’s, time saving methods, insight, motivation, and other things that your list will value. As your list grows and they begin to gain your trust the potential products and services that you may market to them, which may be the same as others are offering, will have a better chance to be purchased from you. As time goes on you could even develop lists that number in the 10’s of thousands. By setting up your funnel properly and using an auto-responder you then have the ability to build your relationship with them with one simple email. As long as you continue to provide value, they will stay on your list.
It is imperative that you set up your marketing funnel as the basic marketing tool in your arsenal. Your possibilities are then endless once you know how to use this basic business building principles to grow your organization on the internet. By using “YOU INC.” as the attraction to your marketing funnel you will be able spin income streams with a variety of products and services. Once you understand this thoroughly and put it into place you will transform your profitability online. We all know that success begets success and imagine what you could do with 50-100 new opt-ins each and every day. How much would your business grow?
In closing, seek out what you need to learn, study it, implement it, and you will increase your online marketing success tremendously, maybe even to historic proportions. You can then thank Nicole for inspiring me to write this. What are you doing today that will be historical?
Theresa Moss
