I found the following article and copied it to my blog to preserve it as a resource for myself and my readers. This philosophy is life changing, although it is not easy to apply in daily life.
We went to visit my daughter after Christmas and she and her family had just returned from a holiday in California where they enjoyed much better weather. She was changing job and looking for a new purpose in her life and her husband is also in the course of changing jobs.
Not surprisingly, being jet-lagged, and facing the reality of every day life, she was feeling a bit down and depressed.
I gave her a pep talk and I expressed some of the points listed below including my favourite quote from Henry Ford ‘Failure is just an opportunity to begin again more intelligently.’ I also told her to let go of her worry and to let her life unfold because her sub-conscious would guide her i.e. at the centre of of your being, you have the answer.
I hope that this article may be of interest to you dear reader!
8 Life Changing Lessons Everyone Can Learn From Lao Tzu
Lao Tzu is one of the most famous Chinese philosophers and is the mind behind many important lessons our souls have to learn. He’s the author of the Tao Te Ching and the founder of Taosim. He’s been a central figure in China for centuries, and you’re about to find out why.
1. You already hold the answer to life’s questions.
“At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
2. You’re freed when you let go.
“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.”
“Therefore the Master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go. She has but doesn’t possess, acts but doesn’t expect. When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever.”
“If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial. If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked. If you want to become full, let yourself be empty. If you want to be reborn, let yourself die. If you want to be given everything, give everything up.”
“Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?”
3. Your ego will never give you true pleasure.
“He who defines himself can’t know who he really is.”
“He who has power over others can’t empower himself.”
“He who tries to shine dims his own light.”
4. Evil dies when ignored.
“Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself.”
5. Kindness always wins. Evil always loses.
“Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.”
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
6. Be yourself.
“Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.”
“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”
7. Be humble and you shall be wise.
“The wise man is one who, knows, what he does not know.”
“All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.”
8. Change is inevitable, so embrace it.
“If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”
“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”
(This article is courtesy of www.higherperspectives.com/8-life-changing-lessons-everyone-can-learn-from-lao-tzu-1429977337.html)
This simple process is capable of generating $87 every single day and it only takes 22 minutes to set-up.
It is 5-step ‘point-and-click’ simple and taps into a little known free traffic source which typically deducts 10% of the sale price in payment for the traffic AFTER each sale is made.
If that seems fair enough then read on…
First you will need a platform on which to sell. Just setting up a website can be a problem for many people but with this system it is as simple as point and click!
Sign up with ‘Shopify’ and you will get the first 14 days free – after that you can choose which package to join. They start at just $29 per month.
You then need to add the free App called Oberlo to your Shopify store. This app enables you to add products easily to your store.
Oberlo is a drop-shipping supplier who will complete all sourcing and deliveries of products so we do not have to touch any physical stock. This means that we have no up-front costs of purchasing stock, storing and insuring it or packaging and delivery costs. This is as easy as e-commerce gets!
After you have connected the Oberlo App to your store, you need to search for products using the App.
Decide which market demographic you are going to target e.g. women aged 18 to 30, and then choose products that will appeal to this market demographic.
The more products that you add, the more likely you will have something that appeals to your customer. As it is totally free to add products and the products and product details are automatically added into your Shopify store when you choose them, adding loads of products is easy to do.
Import each product you like but don’t second-guess the marketplace as you don’t yet know what will appeal to your prospects. You can optionally clean up the product title and tags for each of your products if you wish or just run with what the supplier gives you.
All color and size variants will be added in by the supplier thus saving you the time and effort of doing this yourself. You can choose your price or just run with the automated price.
After you have chosen your products, you will need to click a button entitled ‘Push All Products to Shop’. You will then be able to view the products in your shop and begin selling!
You now need to start sending traffic to your new store in order to make sales.
To do this you can connect automated ‘Sales Channel’ apps to your store. Within Shopify, simply click ‘Sales Channels’ and add the following Apps one by one by adding and connecting each sales channel:
Kik
Pinterest
Wanelo
Houzz
Wish
Amazon
Buzzfeed
These apps will send out automated bots to your Shopify store and place adverts in front of their traffic. (When you are setting up each sales channel, you will be asked to identify the type of audience and categories that match your products so they can send you relevant traffic.)
So just to recap:
Register at Shopify (- set shipping at $5.99 and add in your payment method)
Add in the Oberlo App as your drop-shipping agent
Add products to your Shopify store – aim for a minimum of 50 but the more the merrier
Add in your sales channel apps (- remember you only pay if you make a sale and keep the profit!)
You start making sales – lets say you get an order for $40, you pay your supplier say $10 and keep the rest.
Don’t over complicate this method – this is as simple as it gets. How much you make depends on how many products you have and whether they appeal to the customers viewing your store. As it is free to test this, you have nothing to lose as long as your sales cover the Shopify fee.
Given how quickly this can be set up and the low cost of Shopify – free for 14 days and then starting at $29 per month, you have very little to lose and a lot to gain by experimenting with this method.
Advertising can be pretty boring but Ikea’s headline is inviting its customers to to wee on their advert. If their woman customer is expecting a baby, it will reveal a discount for one of their cots. Their headline is:
PEEING ON THIS ADVERT MAY CHANGE YOUR LIFE!
Apparently there is a chemical in the urine of a pregnant woman that interacts with another chemical on their advert to reveal the discount code.
Very clever.
You could say it is also a pregnancy test! However, it does mean that they have a tightly targeted audience who will get a great introduction to Ikea and encourage them to come into their store to buy more products for their baby.
Of course, most of us would like to piss on advertising for very different reasons!
Creativity is a key ingredient in advertising and in the past there have been some great headlines.
Here is one from Jon Morrow:
HOW TO QUIT YOUR JOB, MOVE TO PARADISE AND GET PAID TO CHANGE THE WORLD
You could easily change this for your own purposes:
HOW TO FLIP YOUR MIDDLE FINGER AT YOUR BOSS, WORK FROM HOME AND GET PAID TO IMPROVE OTHER PEOPLES LIVES
HOW TO CHUCK IN YOUR JOB, WORK ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD AND GET WELL PAID FOR DOING SO.
Here’s another by Ashley Ambirge:
CAUTION: STOP MASTURBATING WITH YOUR MONEY
We can change that to:
WARNING: THIS IS JUST ‘MIND-MASTURBATION’ IF YOU DON’T TAKE ACTION (- this should be a warning on all training courses and ‘how to’ books!)
DON’T MASTURBATE WITH YOUR MONEY – BUY THIS!
Here is another by Rita Templetion :
YOUR PENIS WON’T FALL OFF AND OTHER THINGS BOYS SHOULD KNOW
How about this:
IF YOU DON’T BUY THIS YOUR PENIS WON’T FALL OFF BUT…
WHY THIS COULD TURN YOUR BALLS TO RAISINS AND OTHER SECRETS INTERNET MARKETERS SHOULD KNOW
How about this one by Yvette Caster:
21 REASONS TO HATE KIDS
We can come up with:
21 REASONS TO HATE… (KITTENS, PUPPIES, PARENTS, MARRIAGE, SEX, GOLF, INTERNET MARKETING, MY BLOG etc etc)
These headlines are both outrageous and entertaining and invite readers to read on to find out what you are talking about.
Other than inviting your readers to piss on your advert, what outrageous ideas can you come up with for your adverts?
This extract from an article called ‘How to make $1 million in 3 years’ is very interesting because it is not difficult to create a digital product or a funnel of digital products that could sell for $100 or much more! Indeed there is enough information on this website to do just that.
I loved the advice in point #3 – this is really the key and I like the fact that you can break the problem down to a micro-level of selling just one copy of your product. This makes the problem much easier to solve.
Critical to the success of this advice is having a method to calculate the cost of acquiring customers – if you can then make more profit than the cost of acquiring a customer, it is just a matter of scaling up.
Here are the three keys I have observed in practice by those who are crushing it:
1. Pick something “boring” and consistent. I’m not saying boring in the sense that it doesn’t excite you or your potential customers. I say boring to mean that it is boring in its simplicity. Stop looking for the next big thing. Pick something that is proven and just do it a bit better.
From there, figure out what you should be selling it for. Figure out what it is going to take numerically to hit your goal.
To make $1,000,000 in 3 years (gross revenue), you only have to make $913/day. That’s it!
Here are a couple ways to arrive at $1,000,000. You have to sell:
100 items at $10,000 each
1,000 items at $1,000 each
10,000 items at $100 each
20,000 items at $50 each
A $100 product sounds pretty good. To make $1,000,000 you would have to sell 9 of those a day. That’s it!
I think this perspective is very important because it stresses the key behind this entire strategy. CONSISTENCY. All it takes is selling 9 items a day.
2. Use your own money to finance it. Don’t fall into the line of thinking that you need a ton of money and partners upfront to make your business work. I fell into this early on and went as far as almost raising capital for my first blog. I spent months working on raising money, developing business plans, thinking about partners, roles and responsibilities. Ultimately I discovered that this was all unnecessary. Bootstrap it yourself, rely on yourself and launch!
3. Figure out what it takes to get 1 sale. This is the most important rule.
Making a million is easier than most people think. The key is to identify your ‘profit centers.’
These are the areas of your business that drive revenue and are where you should focus the majority of your time. For most, marketing, promotion and sales are the core profit centers. Spend your time here, make it your strength and then outsource the other items that don’t drive sales and aren’t your strengths.
Once you figure out how much money it costs you to acquire your first customer or first sale, you’re off to the races and it all becomes a numbers game. Assuming you are able to get decent margins when acquiring customers you’ll spend your time here… optimizing and pivoting as necessary.
The most successful people I know have figured this out and understand that it takes money to make money. They spend tens of thousands of dollars a day and a week on Facebook and Instagram ads to acquire customers. They have figured out the return on these investments and it pushes them closer to a million each day.
4. Make Money While You Sleep
The best way to make money is to do it passively. The great thing about the internet is that it is quite simple to automate this process. Once you have your product and cost per acquisition locked down, it’s time to automate the process.
There are countless platforms and services dedicated to helping you automate your sales, marketing and customer service. Use them!
At this point, you’re probably wondering what are some examples of successful business models that can make you $1,000,000 in under three years. Below are some ideas, but keep in mind that you need to create your own based on what you are both passionate about and good at. If you’ve read any of my articles before you’ll recognize that I tend to lean towards online business models and e-commerce models. For first-time entrepreneurs and people looking for side-hustlers, I recommend starting this way.
Here are some ideas.
Self-publishing and distribute a book
Dropshipping
Affiliate marketing
Online products (ebooks, Guides, video courses, membership groups, etc.)
Consulting
Speaking
Media appearances
Writing opportunities.
Build an email list you can sell other products around
Now it’s time
My last piece of advice? If you’re going to set a monetary goal like make a million dollars, do it for the right reasons. I have seen entrepreneurs purely motivated by financial gain create absolute sh*t products that offer no value and do nothing to teach them any lessons. They ultimately fail (and look quite silly in the process I might add)
Going on Alibaba, slapping a logo on a little trinket and trying to sell it online simply because you might be able to squeeze some profit is not in-line with the above.
The above was written for driven people who want to create something derivative of their passion. They want to provide value.
If you want to make a million dollars on your own, you have to provide value.
Take your creativity and give it to others so that they can benefit from it. In return, you will be rewarded for your time and effort.
That is the hustle I want to be associated with and I hope you do too.
(This is an extract from prsuit.com/life-in-review/make-million-dollars-next-3-years)
This is the cover of my new book of images of Stratford-upon-Avon. These are images taken with my own camera.
Whilst I own a sophisticated Panasonic camera, I find the colour palette of my cheap Casio Exilim camera (less than £100) preferable for landscapes and, in particular, the colours of Warwickshire.
you can watch a slideshow of the book. I suggest that you watch them on full-screen.
How can I monetise these?
Stratford-upon-Avon is a tourist town with two big outlets – the Shakespeare Trust and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Would it be conceivable that these oulets could incorporate these images into gift products for the tourists?
Also, there is a weekend market where I could sell these via a stall which would cost around £80 for a day or I could take the cheap route of simply handing out leaflets to a web page where the tourists could order what they want.
This is an info graphic that gives a beginners guide to writing books and how to publish them. I copied it to my blog because I thought that it might prove useful to my readership.
If you are starting out in internet marketing, you may be asking ‘what tools do I need to get to $5k per month’.
The problem with this question is that just about every marketer will give you a different reply to this question, particularly if they are trying to make money out of you by selling their own product or even someone else’s product or service.
It was refreshing therefore to receive an email from Sean Mize that sets this out clearly and simply (and truthfully)!
It’s sad, really.
And it’s not their fault.
One guru after another has told them, you need this $20 a month tool.
Another says you need this $40 a month tool.
All the way until they are spending $300 A MONTH on tools . . . .
And not making $100 a month, if that.
I talk to several folks a week in that boat.
It’s not their fault.
They’ve been told they need them.
Want to know the tools I personally used to get to $13k a month in one year?
Here goes.
Prepare to be disappointed.
1) a squeeze page
2) a way to make sales pages
3) an email autoresponder
4) good old word docs
That’s it.
$13k a month.
No bells.
No whistles.
That’s right.
ALL you need to get to $5k – or $13k a month
is:
a way to make squeeze pages
a way to make sales pages
a way to make download pages (to deliver)
and an email autoresponder
a word processor
And here’s a secret – you don’t even need a website to have squeeze pages and salespages and download pages.
Just some service that allows you to create them.
You could use mine . . preneurpages
or any other one that does the same thing
and you need an email autoresponder . . I started with aweber and still have my account
That’s it folks.
If you have $300 in tools and no revenue . . .
please, something’s wrong.
How would it feel if you only had $20 a month in expenses . . .
would that make it easier for you (and your wife) to relax
and just focus on selling something
instead of worrying about how to make $300 a month in payments one more time?
Do something!
In this email Sean is promoting his page builder ‘Preneurpages’ but there are plenty of page builders that you can use. Here are 5 other page builders you might consider (- I own all but the last one listed):
Thrive Content Builder plugin by Shaun Melaugh – this is my favourite from a design perspective and is constantly being improved
WP Profit Builder by Keith Dougherty – some good page templates within this plugin
Convertri – this is a hosted service – provides a very fast loading platform for landing pages and an infinitely customizable page builder. There are only a limited amount of page templates unless you buy a monthly subscription to their Pro service but if you are happy to design your own pages, is a good option.
For a cheap but good page builder, you could try Instabuider 2.0 that you can have installed on your WordPress site for $5 through Fiverr.com
Launchpages.co is another page builder that has just been launched as I write this article.
These page builders are a great way of developing landing page templates as part of your system for selling and promoting products and services. They are useless unless you have something to promote, a method of driving traffic to them and a method for monitoring your results.
However, in answering the question ‘What tools do I need to get to $5k per month’ Sean is exactly right and, if you do not already have a page builder system, his page template system ‘PreneurPages’ is worthy of consideration as he will be sharing his own sales page templates that are proven to work.
Here is a collection of oil paintings of Stratford-upon-Avon that have been compiled in my new book.
I have to take my dog for a walk everyday and I take my camera with me. As a result, I have taken numerous pictures of places on my walk and have built up a selection of images throughout the year.
It is interesting to view the changing colours and scenes throughout the year. Also, the difference that can be made by using different colour filters.
I put the pictures into Photoshop and apply an oil painting effect including colour saturation to enhance the colours.
I feel that these would be quite commercial if I tried to sell these to the many tourists that visit Stratford-upon-Avon but so far I haven’t explored this possibility. By putting the images into a book, I can get some feedback from the tourist retailers about this.
I recommend that you view the book in full screen on a fast slide-show…
In this extract from a comment on Perry Marshall’s blog, he sets out the problem with the make money online niche:
The problem is you’re selling “how to make money on the Internet” information, and that’s how you’re attempting to succeed online.
There is a whole host of problems with that:
1) If you do this the way you’ve probably been taught, it’s nothing but a glorified chain letter.
2) You haven’t succeeded yourself, so you have no business teaching others how to succeed.
3) This general ‘get rich on the Internet’ topic is one of the most competitive categories in e-commerce, period. Telling a regular guy off the street he can get rich on the Internet by showing other people how to get rich on the Internet is like telling your grandmother that she can go down to the local martial arts dojang, take on 3 black belts at one time and kick their ass.
Fat chance. This particular niche is a game for razor sharp, A-level marketers. Not for entry level people.
All that happens to entry level people is, one way or another their money ends up in the hands of razor sharp, A-level marketers and you have nothing to show for it. All kinds of razor sharp, A-level marketers take advantage of this fact without the slightest twinge of guilt.
(Their rationalization for exploiting peoples’ ignorance is: “Well if I don’t take their money they’ll just waste it on some other equally stupid thing.” Well hey, it’s not like they’re exactly wrong about that…even piranhas have their rightful place in the food chain, right? Hey pal, I’m just saying, if you’re not a piranha, don’t swim with them. Find a pond that just has regular frogs and dragonflies and hang out there.)
4) Carbon copying other peoples’ product is a doomed strategy, no matter what niche you’re in. Sure you might try to be the guy who makes El Cheapo knockoff products in China and sure, some people make a lot of money doing that, but the bottom line is: If you don’t have a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) then sooner or later you’re dead.
My advice to you:
Abandon this niche entirely. Stop selling “get rich” stuff. Stop selling “how to market stuff on the Internet” stuff. Do a thorough inventory of yourself and your knowledge and your skills.
Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about.
Find some OTHER niche (hey, there are only a MILLION other things you could sell on the Internet – yes, literally a million). Find some other product to sell. Find something that has NOTHING to do with making money on the Internet.
Maybe you’re familiar with specialized motor parts or some sort of industrial equipment or maybe there’s some odd thing you collect, like pink flamingos or wrought iron furniture. Or you grow orchids or collect 16th century romance novels or movies from the 1930’s.
Or maybe you can go to a trade show and find manufacturers in some market where most people are clueless about marketing, and build them an online presence. Work out some kind of profit sharing deal, or get them to put you on retainer. Sell that product.
(That’s a real useful tip I just gave you there.)
Or sell some kind of information about that topic. Like I said, do a thorough inventory of what you know and where you’ve been and go into a niche you’re intimately familiar with.
My nephew Josh asked me advice about starting a home business and here’s what I told him:
Josh,
1. Don’t get into a pre-packaged business. There are LOTS of them out there. Network Marketing deals, Internet deals, etc. You should capitalize on your individuality.
2. Doing something online…. boy I deal with that ALL THE TIME. Is is VERY competitive. An at-home online business is the white picket fence of the 21st century. Super great – if you can pull it off. Most common things are things like selling ebooks or selling things on ebay. If you do something like that you have to specialize in some particular niche.
The people who do best at that 1) know their subject and their customers EXTREMELY well; and/or are 2) very in-tune and comfortable with the whole online scene and culture and websites and everything.
The more nichy your topic, the more you can rely on #1 instead of #2.
3. Anything you know how to do – like plumbing or handyman stuff or swimming pools or repair hang-gliders… or knowing how to cook or take care of kids or organize a house… as soon as you have a way of advertising and getting customers, you have a business. Might not necessarily be an “at home” business, but it’s a business.
Oh, and by the way if you do a business like handyman stuff or repair or remodeling, all you have to do is show up on time, answer the phone, tell people the truth, finish projects on-time and on-budget, and you’ll kick everybody else’s ass in town. In a business like that, half the secret to success is literally “showing up.” You’ll get lots of referrals, customers will love you, and you’ll make a good living. Even in an economy that sucks.
4. If you know what you want to do, then I can advise you about promoting it. Let’s take plumbing for example… to advertise yourself as a plumber you need all the certifications and everything. Doesn’t keep you from doing it when people need it and getting paid for it, if you’re a ‘handyman’ instead of a plumber.
5. Any business that is going to work for you is based on the gifts and skills that you mostly already have. So it’s actually kind of sitting under your nose all along. You just need to start taking inventory. Asking other people what they see you being good at. Listing your skills and looking at all the things you’ve done etc.
Here’s something I sent to a personal friend of mine, Anita, last summer when she asked me pretty much the same question:
Anita,
OK, here’s some things I’d like you to do… Good stuff to do over your morning coffee or whatever.
BTW what we’re ultimately looking for here is intimate knowledge of various microcosms in the world, where you may have sell-able skills.
BUT….. right now I don’t want you to think in terms of selling or jobs or all that while you’re doing this. That would be a limiting way to think of it right now.That can fall out of it later. For now, just crank out the list o’ stuff.
-List every magazine you’ve ever subscribed to for any length of time
-Same for newsletters & various publications that you consistently enjoyed reading
-Every job or industry you worked in long enough to become really familiar – even if you’ve been out of it for a long time
-Every “group” that you’ve been a member of. Examples could be – golf, Presbyterian church, girl scouts, cancer survivors support group, bowling league, pottery making class, David Hasselhoff Fan Club, horsemanship, stamp collecting, backgammon, owning rental property, investing, chess club, etc.
-Every major schooling / training / educational experience you’ve had (like travel to Africa or airplane mechanic school or nursing degree)
-Every hobby or fascination you’ve had
-5 topics you know a lot about, that most people don’t know you know a lot about
-Specific products, services or experiences that you have great familiarity with (like a washing machine that broke down so much, pretty soon you knew how to fix it better than the repairman)
-Topics you own more than 5 books on
-A story of 2 major personal victories from each of the following: childhood; teen years; early adult; recent adult. Tell what happened and what made you feel GOOD about it.
Why don’t you chunk on that for awhile and let me know what you come up with. I bet somewhere buried in that list is a marketplace that would pay money for your skills.
From that you can form a USP, determine something unique to sell, have a ready-made understanding of the customers who buy that sort of thing, and have a MUCH easier go of it.
If you in fact do have a solid grasp of basic direct marketing principles, then I DARE you to do this homework assignment – and I mean, do *everything* I just said to do right here – I dare you to do that and not have some kind of successful business that you are really proud of, 1 year from today.
Perry Marshall
This comment was made in response to a frustrated make money online marketer after Perry had looked at his website.
What he is advising is to take the marketing skills learnt in the make money online niche and use them to promote products and offers outside that niche, preferably in an area that caters to your strengths, because the competition will be weaker.
This question could make you millions – I pinched this from a thread on the Warrior Forum.
If you let it… trying to make money online can be confusing.
Okay, that’s too mild.
If you don’t have a solid plan, it can drive you F**KING nuts!
Believe me, been there, done that, bought the Teespring t-shirt.
So, after 17 years online and multiple millions sold of my own
stuff, and for clients… I try to keep things simple as can be.
Why?
Cause simple gets implemented. Simple gets you to take action.
Simple means you can test and track. Simple means you can make
fast changes and see how it turns out.
Simple is just, well, simpler when it comes to making money online.
And the ONE simple question that I ask myself, every single day
I’m online… and it’s probably helped me more than anything else
I’ve done?
“How can I add value to the MOST amount of people today”.
That’s it.
When I break down everything I do, each and every day,
my mission is pretty much the same.
“How can I help the greatest amount of people”.
When you ask yourself THAT one question… when you
use THAT as your “guiding light” or “North star”…
It makes it easier to decide what you need to do, if you want
to make the most money.
Now, I will say this is a pretty general statement. I get it.
And honestly, it doesn’t work each and every time.
For example, if you offer high ticket coaching, then maybe
your goal ISN’T to help the most people.
Maybe you just need to help a handful… and when you do,
you make a lot of money.
But, you still have to add a lot of value to those people.
The 2 biggest keys to making it online?
Value and scale.
Work on getting those 2 things handled, and you’ll
make a killing.
Not sure what to use for traffic?
Which source will allow you to reach the most people
with your message?
What do you offer for a lead magnet?
Again, what can you give away, to the most people,
that will help them and add value to their lives?
What can you offer, for a product or service, that
will help people solve a problem, reach a desire, or
get what they want.
That one question…
“How can I add value to the MOST people” is
responsible for creating more millionaires and
billionaires than any other.
Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook…
You name it, there’s a good chance they
add value to a lot of people at once.
Movie stars, rock stars, athletes…
ALL add value to a lot of people at once.
So if you ever find yourself stuck online, and
you’re not sure what to do… maybe asking yourself
that same question I ask myself each day…
“how can I add value to the most people today”…
That may make it a little easier to determine what
you need to do in order to get your online business
where you want it…
Answering this question may yield more than one idea. The additional tip I want to add to this article is… don’t be tempted to do more than one thing at a time.
It is a proven fact that multi-tasking does not work – particularly for men!! Prioritise your actions and just do one thing at a time until you have completed the task and then move onto the next task.
The next tip I have is that it is easy to live your life thinking about past events or dreaming about the future. However, the only reality is the present moment.
If you can work in the moment (sometimes described as ‘being in the flow’), totally absorbed by your current activity, this is the source of ultimate creativity. You can tap into subconscious knowledge that you probably never knew you had.
We are all capable of adding value to someone else’s life. We all know things that other people would like to know. We all have skills that might help someone else. We all have thoughts that could turn someone else’s life around – even if you are just promoting someone else’s content that you found helpful (as I am doing in this article).
I would also add that when ‘adding value’, don’t just think about quantity. I sometimes find that big products that take a lot of time to consume are unhelpful to me as I get distracted and move on before I can consume the whole thing. I would much prefer a shorter, high quality piece of content or training that has been boiled down to the essentials that I can consume in one sitting!
Sometimes simplifying someone else’s training would be a great way to add value or perhaps converting it into a different format or media e.g. text to video or vice versa.
Do you think asking yourself this question could make you millions? The only way to know is to try it out!
I received an email from Tony Shepherd (one of my favourite marketers to follow) – it was entitled ‘The Entire Marketing Strategy’. What a great subject line – it is difficult not to open an email with that subject line. This is what he said:
Did you know that the term ‘Hooker’ for a lady of the night actually originated with US Civil War General Joseph Hooker, who brought working girls along on military campaigns for his men.
Or that during the Great Depression people were so broke they often made clothes out of potato sacks and seeing this, the potato distributors made their sacks more colourful to help people remain at least somewhat fashionable.
Why am I telling you this?
Because it’s daft content like this that sets my open rates among some of the best of any other marketers I know.
It might not be relevant to online business although it often is.
But it’s engaging.
And if you keep your readers engaged and then follow up with relevant IM content you’ll make thousands of dollars a month.
Whoops – just gave away my entire marketing strategy 🙂
I think this is why he is just a handful of marketers whose emails I open – they are always entertaining to read and laced with great marketing advice.
The other reason that Tony is so successful is that he is very down-to-earth and authentic in the way he writes and I instinctively like people like that.
This is his entire marketing strategy and it seems to work – perhaps it might for you too? (Did the picture of the naked lady make you open this article?)
I was listening to to a live video presentation by Sean Mize yesterday and the truth about traffic i.e. getting clicks to your content and landing pages, was revealed during the 2 hour plus talk.
Sean Mize seems to have had two principle traffic sources:
Ezine Articles, where is was the leading article submitter, having submitted thousands of articles
Warrior Special Offers, where he became adept at creating numerous offers based on his one hour audio format
Sean is now getting into YouTube videos as a traffic source. The presentation yesterday was his first foray into live YouTube videos and he had over 50 people listening in.
If live video interests you as a traffic source then you may also want to investigate Google Hangouts as Google gives good SEO ranking to Hangouts.
What became clear from the presentation is that Sean places an intense focus on one traffic source at a time. This enables him to master the traffic source and eventually dominate it within his niche simply because he is more hard-working and prolific than anyone else.
From his previous forays into Ezine Articles and WSO’s, he observed that a tiny percentage (say 3%) of his output was driving most of his traffic.
Once he identified where most of his traffic was coming from, he stopped creating content for the 97% and focused on scaling the 3% of topics, keywords etc that were producing the results.
Unfortunately there is no way around the hard work of identifying the 3% that will work in your niche. You must be focused and dedicated.
There are 3 keys to identifying this 3%:
tracking results using tracking links
grouping topics or keywords together initially, finding which ‘groups’ are working before then finding the gold within each group. (The analogy is panning for gold – most of your output is dross, with just a little gold dust sprinkled in! You job is to identify and extract the gold dust that converts to buyers from the torrent of traffic available.)
consistency i.e. systematically working over time to find out what works and, more often, what doesn’t work.
So the truth about traffic is that that hard work is unavoidable i.e. there is no easy button. You will need to test 100 to find the 3 or 4 that work for you. This means that most of your time and money will be wasted in order to find that sweet spot. You then need to scale the sweet spot and drop the rest in order to make a return on your work.
This truth is the same for affiliate traffic – out of 100 affiliates, you will find that 2 or 3 affiliates will account for the majority of your sales.
If you didn’t know this truth, it would be easy to get discouraged, and even give up, before you found ‘the gold at the bottom of the pan’.
Now that you know the truth about traffic, you need to get focused and work all-out to discover what will work for you.
My grandson, Daniel, who has finished reading his book!
How to finish what you started is the subject of the email that I received from Sean Mize today.
I think the essential skill that Sean outlines here is having clarity about what it is we want to achieve and then holding onto the ‘picture’ of what that is for long enough in order to achieve it.
The process he outlines is simple.
Personally I would use a mind-map in order to get my ideas into some sort of logical order and then tick off each element of my plan as I progressed. A mind map enables me to move things around easily and to add and subtract ideas as they occur to me.
The other important element of any plan is to put a deadline on its accomplishment.
Here is what Sean says:
It’s easy to fall into a pattern of just doing one thing then another in this business, but the parts never fit together to make a finished product.
Here’s how to out of that trap:
Create for yourself a solid picture, draw it if you are creative, write it out if you are logical, do it the way that works for you
But make a picture that tells you what you want in the end.
Like this:
I want to change the world by helping (name who you are going to help) and helping them do (what you are going to help them do/teach them)
I will use the following medium to do it:
For example, I will create 10-15 information products that will sequentially teach them
And/or I will create a coaching program to teach them and then coach, support, and encourage
And/or I will create a membership that gives them access to my teachings
Then once that’s done, make EVERYTHING you do be a part of making that happen.
You commit to not doing anything that doesn’t lead you close to the fulfillment of that flowchart.
And then just fill in the blanks.
A product one month.
A membership the next.
A product the next month.
Another product the next month.
A coaching program the next month.
A product the next month.
Just one step at a time, filling in the empty places, the spots in your dream that aren’t done yet.
This works, it really does.
This is the kind of process successful people use to realize their dreams.
It WILL work for you.
It’s practically a law of nature.
Sean
As you get into the process of creating your content:
create an outline for that content (again I would use a mind-map)
turn on your video recorder and teach that particular topic
write an email to your subscribers about what you taught
write an article, or get the video transcribed on Fiverr, and add it to your blog or membership site
I hope this simple process will help you to finish what you started in order to earn an income from it. Please sign up to the free offer on my blog if you want to receive more tips like this.
This article will help you to research content with Google. We are in the information marketing niche and finding top-quality content to offer to subscribers is vital. Use these tips to find what you need.
Top Tip: If you are looking for random content ideas then Stumbleupon is also an excellent tool.
How To Be A Google Power User [Infographic] by the team at NeoMam
Please join my list if you wish to receive more great information and tips on how to improve your information marketing business.
I thought that I would set out the reasons why I avoid Apple products and any products like them.
Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world with huge profit margins. That effectively means the consumer is paying more than they really need to for their products. Great for Apple but not so good for the consumer.
Apple eliminates competitors by making sure that all Apps and related software are controlled by them so that they can control competitors and thereby their profit margins. Apple products only integrate with other Apple products which once again enables them to expand sales of their other over-priced products.
The consumer is trapped in their universe of well-designed but over-priced products.
When running my business I work hard to reduce any other businesses control over my business.
For example, if your main traffic source is SEO traffic then you are dependent on Google or Bing for your traffic. They change their algorithm and you can be out of business overnight. Same goes for platforms like Facebook.
It is OK to use these platforms but always be sure to have a back-up service in place and reduce your business risk by diversifying.
That’s why I use a self-hosted solution for my websites – it’s more expensive but I have more control over my ultimate destiny. I don’t have complete control because a hacker could take me down so I mitigate the risk by backing up my websites.
You need to think through your business decisions properly.
Let me give you another example. My son is running my 10 year old Saab and was wondering if he should scrap the car or pay a £500 repair bill to keep it on the road. This is the email that I sent him:
Hi James,
I have been thinking about the cost of the car repairs and I think you need to get real about this.
Just to illustrate.
A 2015 BMW 1 series with 25,000 miles on the clock would cost around £17,000. If you financed that you would have to pay a £1,700 deposit and £250 per month (or £3,000 p.a.) for 4 years and have a residual payment of £7,000. On top of that you have tax and insurance and servicing costs. The main cost is in fact depreciation of the car as interest costs are no more than £500 p.a.)
In my opinion, you should budget £100 per month to cover repairs for the Saab plus the cost of MOT & service (£250), insurance (£400 incl breakdown) and tax (£270) i.e. £76 p.m. + £100 = total £176 p.m.. That gives you a contingency of £1,200 p.a. to cover running repairs for the car to keep it on the road as long as possible – hopefully you will not require anything like this figure.
You have to compare that £100 per month with the monthly outlay of £250 and the huge capital outlay for the deposit and final payment for the BMW to see that keeping the Saab on the road is financially the right thing to do. On the other hand, I understand that it is not cool to be running around in an old car but if you look after it and polish it it is still a good looking car with a lot of power under the hood.
I suppose reliability is a big factor but sometimes new cars have problems too!
Hope this helps you to get things in some sort of perspective
Love Dad
In financial terms, the decision to pay the repair bill is easy but the desire to run a new car to look and feel good i.e. ego – gets in the way of making a rational decision.
The same is true of Apple products – they are well designed fashion items that people desire in order to look cool and sophisticated.
Personally, I think most people are ‘chumps’ when they let ego get in the way of making a rational decision. They are surprised when they end up with nothing at the end of their life.
I thought that I would write this article to demonstrate why running with the crowd is not advisable. Think for yourself and take responsibility.
If you are reliant on Google’s SEO traffic in your business and you lose your traffic overnight then you alone are to blame for making your business dependent on a traffic source that is outside your control.
I hope you can see why I avoid Apple products (or perhaps you think I belong to the ‘basket of deplorables’!)
I really like this TED talk entitled ‘Why comfort will ruin your life‘.
In internet marketing it is easy to stay in your comfort zone and this will limit your growth. Let me give you an example.
It is uncomfortable to buy traffic because initially the outcome is not within your control – you will not know how your landing page will convert and how much you will make in sales in order to cover the cost of traffic.
That uncertainty may stop you from taking a risk and it is in that moment that you stop growing.
This TED talk illustrates the dilemma exactly and why we have to make the choice to choose ‘complexity’ rather than ‘order’.
Of course, eventually you will once again create order out of complexity as you get more skilled with your chosen traffic source and to grow again you willl once again need to choose complexity over order.
In short, growing a business is about taking risks. It’s about being willing to fail and ‘begin again more intelligently’.
If you are stuck with your business, perhaps you have stopped taking risks that are a necessary part of success.
Hopefully this fully explains why comfort will ruin your life! (That being said, I doubt that my dog – pictured here – would agree with this statement!!!)
Placing the focus on changing lives when creating your business is where it’s at in the opinion of Sean Mize… and I agree with him. Here is his latest email to me:
What would happen if you discovered that what people wanted to know – wasn’t what they needed?
You’d stop teaching it immediately and start teaching them what they need, right?
Over the course of the last year, it has become crystal clear to me that folks who want to get started online with nothing, and just want to “find that silver bullet” that will change their life . . . what I teach doesn’t work for them.
What does work . . . .
I have found that when the following 3 things occur, success can happen:
1) when someone has an idea about changing lives in a particular way and they determine they are going to focus on learning how to change as many lives as possible
2) when they focus on building a rock-solid foundation in their business that simply supports #1 above (not a zillion other things that big marketers tell you you have to have)
3) and this is a bonus . . . the most effective business model I know of, I have taught, and I have seen, in online marketing, is the coaching model, the one I teach in my book, Anyone Can Coach.
When I see folks who do those 3 things, I see success.
When folks try to do any of these things:
look for a perfect system
focus on traffic
focus on the money
copying what they see others doing to make money
get involved in fads
think they can game anything
or anything else not directly related to #1, #2, and #3 above . . . they spin their wheels relentlessly.
So with that said, I’m changing my own focus to teaching those 3 things- the things that have had the MOST impact for my clients over the last 10 years.
The question is ‘what can you and I do to change other peoples lives?’
I create a book of samples of my work each year, mainly so that I can see how my graphical skills are progressing and to show potential clients.
All the images are created from ordinary photos and then stylised using Photoshop, Photoshop Actions and manual editing.
I currently own around 300 Photoshop Actions and each action has multiple layers and settings that enable me to produce literally thousands of variations.
However, as you will see I revert to a relative handful of my favourite actions to produce most of my work.
Reviewing my work this year, I think I need to be a bit more adventurous with my styles and introduce a greater variety of designs.
Although there are some 160 images in the new book, there are literally hundreds of images that I couldn’t reproduce because of lack of space. The book is in A3 format.
The book starts with oil paintings of Stratford-upon-Avon landscapes taken with my camera, then a flowers section and then portraits of humans and animals thereafter.
I apologise for the sound in the background of this video which is picking up background noise – you may prefer to switch the sound off:
In addition to Photoshop Actions, I have literally thousands of banners, icons and graphic templates all accumulated as a result of my subscription to Envato Elements. This enables me to create an infinite variety of graphical designs.
As I produce my images, I keep them in monthly folders so I can see my productivity each month.
I would love to produce my work in poster size and display in a big gallery but for the time being I am selling my designs on Redbubble . I am also doing a few private commissions.
Perhaps the greatest use of my graphics is to use them on my websites and those of my clients.
One of the biggest challenges I see when working with folks who are trying to build something from scratch but they keep spinning their wheels is that they aren’t real clear on who they are going to help, and how they are going to charge . . .
And last night I thought of a 5-question process that can help you do that . . .so here it is, I hope it’s helpful to you!
Take out a sheet of paper (yes, do this old-school)
Write down the answers to each:
1) What is the thing that you teach (for example, how to use youtube, how to quilt, how to blog, how to think confidently, etc)?
2) Who is your target market (aka, in normal spoken English, who NEEDS what you teach? for example, people who want to use youtube for traffic, people who want to quilt, people who want to blog, people who want to think confidently)
3) How will you teach them? For example: write books (like on Amazon), record videos (like on youtube), create pictorial manuals (like pdfs with pictures)
4) How will you sell your teachings? (for example, on Amazon [books], udemy or similar new sites [videos], from your site (pictorial manuals)
5) How much will you charge? For example, $10 per book, or $97 per video course or $50 per pictorial manual, or something like $30 a month for membership access or $97 a month for coaching?
This might take some time, to drill deep and figure out what you want to do , . . but once you have it, it’s like it drives your business
Because right now you may not even know what you are supposed to be working on, you are just working on a part here, a part there.
BUT . . . once you have taken the time to determine the answers to these questions . . it’s like you have a compass point to point towards, and you have something solid you can build, instead of some ethereal concept of an “im business”
Seriously . . . take the time to dig deep and find the answers to these questions for YOU and you will be amazed at your new-found clarity!
I did this exercise and here are my answers:
1) What is the thing you teach?
A: How to make money online, working from home. I am seeking to simplify and systemise systems and processes that lead to the goal of generating a reliable income for those seeking financial freedom.
2) Who is your target market?
A: People who want to quit their job or who simply want to supplement their income.
3) How will you teach them?
A: I will use all modalities including text, audio, video and coaching/consulting
4) How will you sell your teachings?
A: I will build a list and seek to create a relationship of trust with that list . I will use paid advertising, the warrior Forum and JV Zoo to build my list
5) How much will you charge?
A: I will have a variety of product offerings including, free, low ticket ($4.95 -$17), mid-ticket ($27-$97) and higher ticket ($97 – $4,997)
In answering question 2, it may help to write out an ‘avatar’ of your perfect customer. This is what I wrote:
Customer Avatar
George is in a job that is stressful but reasonably well paid. He commutes to work every day and the commute is getting more and more difficult as the amount of traffic on the roads increases.
He cannot afford to just give up his work because he has commitments such as a house mortgage and all the usual monthly bills to pay.
Whilst his job is reasonably secure, he realizes that he is now only going through the motions to earn money. He has lost his initial passion for his work and he now looks forward to the weekends so he can get away from the stress of work.
He often works long hours and even takes work home in the evening, sometimes just so that he can keep on top of his heavy workload.
Whilst he would like more holidays, holidays are really a problem because he has to work hard to get away on holiday and there is a huge backlog of work to go through when he returns from holiday. This means that any good the holiday could do him in terms of relaxation is soon dissipated by the stress on both ends of his holiday dates.
Just booking holidays is difficult because he has to fit in with the holiday dates of his colleagues at work and often George finds that he is taking holidays on dates where holiday prices are at their peak.
Sometimes George wonders if he will live long enough to reach the retirement he is saving for, particularly as retirement dates seem to be extending as pension funds realise that people are living longer than before and investment returns and interest rates have reduced.
His long hours at work means that he is physically and mentally unfit. He often has headaches from stress and, because he forgets to look after himself, and so does not drink enough water, this gives rise to chronic constipation.
He is over-weight and generally unfit.
There is an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach – he knows that he needs to change the way he lives his life but he is trapped by his commitments and the fear of not having enough money to pay his bills.
He is often given to bouts of worry because his thoughts are unhealthy.
He thinks about the fact that his life is gradually ebbing away and he has not fulfilled all the dreams that he had when he was younger and full of hope.
Whilst he can afford some of the material things that he dreamed of, like a good car and a nice house, somehow these have not satisfied him spiritually. He feels trapped on a treadmill that is gradually grinding his life down.
Perhaps he set the wrong goals in life for himself?
Perhaps he is in the wrong job?
George asks himself how long can he hang-on in his current job given that he is finding it increasingly difficult to motivate himself to achieve the work goals that are set by his employer who always want more than was achieved last year?
Whilst George is getting no younger, there seems to be a well of youthful up and coming talent in his business who could soon replace him if he doesn’t perform to expectations.
In an over-crowded work market, George knows it would be difficult to find another job. The competition for jobs is fierce and George is not as young, confident and energetic as he once was.
George has a friend called Mark who lives locally…
Mark works from home and is an internet marketer. Whilst George doesn’t know exactly what Mark does, he knows that he regularly sees Mark walking his dog in the morning, usually when George is waiting impatiently at the bottom of the road in his car in a long queue of traffic!
Mark looks like he has all the time in the world, whilst George only has a feeling of rising impatience to get on his way to work.
Mark works from home, so George knows that he doesn’t waste time and money every day trying to battle through the traffic to work.
For George that would be at least 2 hours per day commuting – across a working year of say 240 days that amounts to 480 hours or 20 x 24-hour days simply spent trying to get too and from work. Assuming George works 10 hours a day that amounts to 48 working days commuting!
George wonders what he could do with the time if he had 48 free working days in a year available simply by not commuting to work!
Mark has also told George that one of the things he discovered was that his monthly budget reduced a lot when he stopped going to a job. He saved on petrol/fares, lunches, expensive suits and his car mileage dropped to a couple of thousand miles a year. This reduced the depreciation and maintenance costs on his car.
Because Mark works from home, he could also carry out most home maintenance jobs himself without the need to call in expensive contractors. Tasks like looking after the garden, painting the house etc are easy to do when so much time is saved from the daily commute.
Mark is always available for his family to help out with things like looking after his grandchildren when his daughter needs some help or simply picking them up from school.
Mark and his family can go on holiday when they want to – he is not constrained by fitting into the holiday dates of others. In fact Mark says that because every day is like a holiday now he doesn’t feel the need for holidays much – in fact he prefers to take time out to explore his local area and really have quality time enjoying nature, tending the garden and his hobby of photography.
Mark has confided to George that he threw his mobile phone away when he quit his corporate job. In his former job he was always at the beck and call of customers, staff and his boss, who would leave messages if he did not answer immediately. This was another cause of stress as Mark felt that he was constantly at everyone else’s beck and call according to their agenda.
The same held true for his email inbox. As soon as he answered an email, it seemed like two new ones had arrived. He could never get ahead of the game.
Since leaving his job, Mark looks at his inbox for just 30 minutes each day and his help desk is outsourced to a virtual assistant.
Marks health has improved dramatically since he left his job – he has much less stress, no worries, he is kept fit by walking his dog 2 hours a day – time when he can also take pictures with his camera to indulge his hobby.
Mark has time now to really connect with his family and friends because he is not pressed for time.
As far as his work is concerned, Mark works around 4 hours a day. He says that since he set up his initial business, he spends most of that time writing emails, creating content and driving traffic – no onerous deadlines. He is simply building and maintaining his business one step at a time.
He has no stock-holding cost, no creditors to keep sweet, no premises costs, no transport costs, no staffing costs (although he occasionally uses freelance contractors who get paid only when he is satisfied by their output) – his overheads are low compared to a standard bricks and mortar business.
Mark originally realized that, if he could grow his internet marketing business to a position where he could simply cover his adjusted monthly personal spending budget, he was effectively free from his job.
Mark tells George that to do that he worked evenings and weekends to establish his internet marketing business and it took him about 6 months to get accumulate the skills and get to a position where he was earning enough money to safely quit his job without worrying too much about whether or not he would make it.
Of course, he was worried about making the leap but he also realized that when he quit his full-time job he would have more time to grow his online business. Mark also said that he had around the equivalent of 3 months personal expenditure as a safety net in his savings in case things didn’t work as expected.
Overall, Mark never regretted the decision to leave his corporate job – he soon appreciated that the decision could extend the length of his natural life and the quality of his life experience had also increased dramatically.
Mark quickly realised that many of the material trappings that most people think are important are actually more of a burden. We simply desire them because marketers tell us that we need them. The satisfaction of owning stuff soon fades after purchase and we are quickly yearning for the next shiny object.
By distancing himself from ‘normal’ society Mark’s common-sense soon returned and he set himself on a course that would give himself peace of mind and deep satisfaction from things that are essentially free – nature, knowledge via the internet, doing things with his hands, creating information products using text, audio and video – a small legacy of work that was tangibly his small way of making a positive difference to other people’s lives.
Mark now simply shows other people what he did to replace his income and they reward him well for his knowledge.
After all, Mark asked, what price would George put on gaining his freedom from his stressful and unsatisfying job?
I hope these 5 internet marketing planning questions will help you to plan your business.
It’s different for different folks, depending on what you already have in place.
If you do not have a clear picture of who you are going to help and how you are going to help them, the most important thing you can do to build your business in 2017 is:
–> to clarify your purpose, who you are going to help, and how you are going to help them
(Selling stuff you don’t care about to people you don’t care about, doesn’t count.)
If you have a solid picture of who you are going to help, the most important thing you can do to build your business is:
–> build a list of people who are the people you want to help
If you have a solid picture of who you want to help AND you have a list of people you can help, the most important thing you can do to build your business is:
–> Find out how you can help them best and get paid for it, and start helping.
That might mean:
a free layer (daily email, blog posts, youtube videos),
paid layer (like $97 – $997 training programs, a membership) and /or
a coaching layer (coaching program, mastermind program, etc)
So . . .based on where you are at in the 3 – phase process of building your business, do YOU need to:
1) figure out who you can help them most
2) build a list
3) build a 3 layer delivery system
This is the way to start building your business in 2017! And a Merry Christmas to all my readers.
In the video below, the KGB defector says that marketing is a form of subversion. It forces people to consume more than is good for them i.e. it is ‘mind-rape’ of the consumer.
This is one of the mechanisms that is taught to the KGB as a means for destabilising our society. I personally feel that this may be true.
Our society has accumulated massive debts in order to consume more.
Debt is a form of slavery – we have to work within the system (many for a minimum wage) in order to repay the creditor for our excessive consumption. The creditor therefore has power over the debtor, who can easily be put into immediate crisis simply by increasing the interest rate on the debt.
As a self-employed entrepreneur and former banker, I have been debt-free for the last 20 years. I have exercised restraint to ensure that I am not too enslaved to the system – to some degree we are all enslaved, it is just a question of degree.
This is also relevant to the goal of personal freedom. By exercising some restraint in what we buy, or think we need in order to live a good life, it reduces the amount of income required to obtain freedom from working a job. It is much easier to achieve an income goal of £1,500 or £2,000 a month rather than, say, £10,000 per month.
I can clearly see how marketing, and many of the other ways of destabilising our culture and society, that are discussed in this video, have been employed successfully in the UK, Europe and the US.
For example, our membership of the EU was effectively giving away our democratic rights to 28 un-elected EU commissioners.
Also, the media has been taken over by the liberal left in order to de-stabilise our society – this has been recently highlighted by the US election and the Trump campaign against the liberal Democrats and the Globalisation agenda. The BBC news is also very biased to the liberal left in the UK.
The split in the EU referendum last June, where many young people, the elites and the new immigrant population largely voted to Remain in the EU, whereas the older, indigenous working and middle-class population voted to Leave, demonstrates the degree to which our UK society has already been subverted using the tactics outlined in this video.
I think that everyone needs to view this video in order to understand a little bit more about what is really going on in our society.
His comment about marketing is around the 25 minute marker and I will leave you to decide whether or not marketing is a form of subversion so you can be a little clearer about what business we are really in… After viewing this video, it will be difficult for me to ask you to ‘buy my junk’ even if it does show you how to make more money in order to consume more! 🙂
Obstacles = opportunities i.e. don’t allow yourself to see obstacles as excuses. See them as opportunities.
My son and I have just finished a joint project to set up a new website for a client.
It wasn’t an easy project from the outset. The client’s existing website was in a bit of a pickle and remedial action resulted in two different designs on the same site.
My attempts to get login details for the existing site server failed. However, I was able to get login details for the domain name registrar.
We therefore decided to build a draft website on a directory of one of my existing domains to show the client what we had in mind to win the job.
My son did some research and we looked at the competition to get ideas before coming up with our initial design. (The image on this page is one of the rejected mock-ups I created when thinking about graphics for the site.)
We showed our draft website design to the client to get their feedback and managed to get approval to finish the project with a deadline of the end of September.
We met the deadline quite easily and the finished website was signed off by the client.
I now had the task of redirecting the domain to my server and setting up a clone of the website we had built on my server. This was a 29 step process as I did a manual clone and set up a new database for the website.
We carried out the work on a Sunday to minimise any downtime for the clients site.
Whilst, setting up the new site on Sunday afternoon, I suddenly realised that the client was using hosted emails and potentially their email systems would be down on Monday morning.
I rang my son who thought that they only had 3 email addresses when we initially discussed the project.
It turned out that they had 13 hosted email addresses and were using Microsoft Outlook, a system that my son was not familiar with!
As you can imagine we were a little bit horrified.
As my son had won the business, because it was local to where he works (but some 80 miles from me!) my son was doing all the face-to-face liaison.
Fortunately, on Sunday night I was able to gather a list of the 13 email addresses that needed setting up. I duly set up the email addresses on my server that evening.
After some tuition and guidance from me, my son attended the company at 7 a.m. the next morning and by 10 a.m. had everything set up on the clients premises to ensure that all emails were being received to begin their week.
We then discovered that the company was using Microsoft exchange and emails were being directed into 2 inboxes for each email account.
My son had to withdraw because he had his normal job to attend as a Marketing manager for an accounting software firm.
Needless to say, my son was frustrated and angry that we had encountered these problems – as was I.
However, I reminded him that the important thing to remember was that our client was getting all their emails, albeit in two inboxes.
After some online research, we managed to discover that we could set up a Rule in Outlook that automatically transfers emails coming into one folder to another folder. I did a video tutorial for my son demonstrating how this worked.
Implementing this for the company (another early morning call) resolved the problem.
The point of this story is that, whilst these obstacles literally made our blood boil with frustration, it was also an opportunity to demonstrate to the client how we could work together to resolve problems.
The result was that the client offered my son a job to work for them!
Whilst he his very happy with his existing job, it just goes to show how victory can often be snatched from the jaws of defeat.
This reminds me of a sign we had on the back of our toilet door at one time. It said something like
‘When you are up to your arse in alligators, it’s easy to forget that the initial objective was to drain the swamp.
So next time you and I meet an obstacle, let’s remind ourselves that obstacles = opportunities!
In this article, I want to discuss the differences between short term versus long term marketing relationships.
I think you know what I mean…
How quickly do you go for your customers wallet after they have subscribed to your list?
Should you have a packed sales funnel after the initial optin or should you seek to offer additional value before asking for more?
Personally, I have little objection to a long sales funnel immediately after optin, as long as the products offered in the sales funnel meet the following criteria:
they genuinely complement and add to the initial purchase
the initial offer delivers a valuable solution that is not dependent on buying the upsell i.e. that I am left with a feeling of being ‘tricked’ into the initial decision.
The upsell offers good value e.g. perhaps a discount or a genuine step-up in performance
You must leave your customer thinking that you are genuinely interested in delivering excellent value versus an impression that the vendor sees you as a gullible consumer who is there simply to hand over as much cash as possible before you move onto the next product or customer. In the make money online niche, this is known as ‘burning your list’.
For this reason, it is important to think about how your business can deliver genuine value. For this to happen, you need your customer to actually do something with your product.
Also, consider whether you can you really deliver value across a whole range of niches or unrelated topics within your niche?
Or is it perhaps better to focus on a particular area and ‘go deep’ so that all the products you offer to your customer list are related to delivering the solution you offered initially when they first came to your squeeze page.
This means that you become a genuine expert in a particular area rather than a superficial generalist.
I believe that by focusing on your area of expertise and going deep in the creation of your own products, you will have more credibility and will be able to create a longer term relationship with your clients.
This does not preclude you from then offering the products of other experts in your niche who have genuine expertise. These must be selected carefully because your customers are buying based on your recommendation and an unscrupulous vendor could quickly degrade your relationship of trust with your customer.
One of the biggest keys to business growth is increasing the number of times customers buy from your business and it is therefore sensible to sometimes sacrifice short-term monetary desires in favour of long-term growth of your relationship.
One way to think about this is by first considering whether or not you would send this email, or make this recommendation, to a friend or a member of your family. If you hold yourself to a standard like this and write with their best interests at heart, then you will not go too far wrong.
You may be saying to yourself that you would freely offer your product or services to a friend. I don’t think that this is appropriate and I’ll tell you why.
I have discovered in my consulting business that people do not value that which they get for free. If they don’t value it, they won’t use it or learn from it so you are actually doing them a disservice by offering it for free, assuming you have a genuine solution to their problem.
Far better to fully explain the benefits and get them to commit to the solution by putting some ‘skin in the game’ which requires them to do something to get a return on their investment i.e. pay for it and use it!
Whilst there is a short-term imperative to at least cover our initial costs of marketing, taking a longer term perspective on the relationship you create with your customer is usually the most profitable way to proceed. However, the only way to create a genuine long-term relationship is when you persuade your customer to take action on what they get from you so that they actually receive the benefit you offer.
In order for that customer to be persuaded to take action, most times they need to have paid for the product or service that they received from you because otherwise they will not attach any value to what you provide (particularly in the info marketing niche where value is somewhat subjective and often based upon the willingness of the buyer to act on what you tell them.)
It is still possible to promote early on in your relationship with a subscriber if you do it with some finesse and elegance. An example of this, is offering plenty of free value along with your promotional link.
Content Frameworks
Also, a great way to not be overtly promotional is to extensively use personal stories based on your experience that somehow end up leading to your promotional link.
Great exponents of the story-line technique are Matt Furey, Ben Settle and Andre Chaperon. I am on Ben Settle’s list and I own training by the other two so I can speak from first experience of their techniques.
Andre likens short-term (or front-end) marketing and long-term marketing (or ‘backend’) marketing to an iceberg. The front-end being the tip of the iceberg in terms of profitability and the backend being the 90% of the iceberg that is hidden underwater and that generates the bulk of his profits.
In Autoresponder Madness, Andre refers to his story-line as a ‘soap opera’ – in other words his emails are an ongoing story so you are eager to open up the next email to find out what happens next. This is particularly powerful if you can leave the reader on a ‘cliff-edge’ at the end of the email.
What I particularly like about Autoresponder Madness is that when I read it it was in its third iteration i.e. the product was under constant revision and improvement. (I suspect that buyers of the initial book were offered a discount to buy the updated version.)
In Matt Furey’s case, the email story-line often has very little to do with the promotional link at the end of the email. The promotion is almost an after-thought to the story. Matt’s training is called Tao of Email Copy That Sells and I highly recommend it.
One of the best products I ever bought was a simple 45 minute webinar by Peter Garety called ‘Content Creation Framework Secrets’ in which he outlined a system for creating a structured framework for content creation that meant that all content created whether for blog, products or email marketing is created around a coherent framework which when taken together creates a coherent whole. This framework could be for all content created within a specific time-frame, say 3 months, dependent on the size and scope of your project.
Hopefully, these few ramblings offer you some insight into the differences between short-term marketing and the benefits of taking a longer term view of your content creation strategy.
Here are some business quotes to help us through the day:
Every moment of every day, transformation happens. By its very nature, life changes, and you can direct many of those changes.
Worrying, complaining, feeling sad or sorry for yourself won’t do you any good. Choose instead to be realistic, putting thought, energy and action into creating the best outcome.
If it’s complicated, embarrassing, or inconvenient in the moment, so what? Do what will make the biggest positive difference in the long run.
You have this day, and it is the opportunity that exceeds all opportunities. Embrace what’s now possible, and make it all count.
Inject the power of passion and purpose into every experience. Choose to get better, act to get better, every moment, every day.
You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.
What is the one thing I could do today that when completed would make you feel that you had a successful day?
Fate whispers to the warrior, you cannot withstand the storm. The warrior whispered back, I am the storm.
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
Compared to immediate gratification, everything else feels like work. Be strong, be purposeful, rise above shortsightedness, and do the work.
What lies behind us & what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Don’t allow yourself to see the obstacles as excuses. See them as opportunities.
You’ll get much more done when you start the day with a detailed list of what you intend to do. Intention immunises you from the distractions and interruptions.
Remember, the greatest failure is not to try.
When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen you may learn something new.
It’s important to hold people responsible for their actions. But it’s a waste to obsess endlessly over who is to blame for every undesirable turn of events.
All dreams come true if we have the courage to pursue them.
It is hard to fail, but it is worse to never have tried to succeed.
Stop wondering why you can’t, or why you don’t or why you won’t. Figure out how and why you will.
You cannot grow unless you are willing to change.
Be careful not to become too smug about the successes or too discouraged about the failures. Instead, direct your attention, your focus, your energy and efforts toward what you can do now.
Experience the power of your own focus. Stay centered on the specific difference you’ve chosen to make.
Push yourself past the doubt, fear, uncertainty. With your sustained effort make some momentum, and confidence will come with it.
Yes, be ambitious, set goals, work toward them. Just remember that there is much goodness, life, fulfillment to be enjoyed along the way.
Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.
The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem.
You know you’re on the right track when you become uninterested in looking back.
Complaining and feeling sorry for yourself will produce no real benefits. Skip all that wasted time and energy, get the job done, and move on ahead.
You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.
Inspiration without action is wasted. Not only that, but with no action the inspiration itself soon turns sour.
Your actions and your words should always agree with each other.
Hope… Sometimes that’s all you have when you have nothing else. If you have it, you have everything.
If you’ll not settle for anything less than your best, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish in your lives.
Don’t waste another day with excuses, procrastination, self-pity or doubt. Get up, get moving, get focused and get a lot of great things done.
There’s some challenge right now that can change your life, your world for the better. Choose challenge, and choose to live at your highest level.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Rise above the concerns, frustrations, distractions of the moment. Feel the substance, the goodness, the momentum, and carry it forward.
What happened yesterday, last week, ten years ago is not what matters. What you do today, right now, where you are, with what you have, is what counts.
Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it.
There are only so many hours in each day. Your priorities are demonstrated by the way you invest that time.
You are more than your capabilities, more than your achievements. Those things are great, and important, yet they are things you do, not who you are.
Though the effort will be complicated and inconvenient, the reward will be worth the trouble. Go ahead and simply do it.
Though you may not get it perfect, you can get it done. Make the commitment to do your best, and simply do it.
Remind yourself over and over again that what matters is never what you’ve been dealt. You can handle any turn of events when you’re willing to give your best.
What is it you really want? Do you want to sit around doing nothing, or do you want to make a difference?
Ideal conditions are nice, but not necessary. You can get good work done no matter what the situation.
From every disappointment, gather more determination. Seize the opportunity when things go wrong to learn how you can do it right.
Your struggle is part of your story.
If you want something you’ve never had then you’ve got to do something you’ve never done.
The mistakes, disappointments, and poor choices have occurred, and cannot be undone. Yet they can teach you, motivate you, make you more determined and purposeful.
Sometimes, not always, a waste of time is a great use of time. Sometimes, when you’re not sure what you’re doing, you can do some very creative things.
Deal with the world the way it is, not the way you wish it was.
Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have.
Pain is nothing compared to what it feels like to quit.
What good is having the latest update if all you do is replace it with the next update? Make real, meaningful use of information instead of making it into an addiction.
Events and circumstances matter, but not nearly as much as what you do with them. When you so choose, everything is an opportunity.
Success always starts with failure. Success is a process.
The 7 components of a $100,000 a year business (or a million a year, or $600 million a year like Agora is purported to do):
visitors who have the need you solve–>
squeeze page to get folks on your list –>
thank you page that builds credibility–>
sales page for product –>
delivery page for product –>
sales page for membership –>
delivery area for membership
For $10k a month (roughly $100,000 a year) it might look like this:
10,000 visitors who have the need you solve–>
squeeze page to get folks on your list (get 2,000 subscribers per month) –>
thank you page that builds credibility–>
sales page for 1 product –>(sell 50 units at $97)
delivery page for product –>
sales page for 1 membership –> (have 200 members at $30 a month)
delivery area for membership
Looks very easy doesn’t it! The devil is in the detail.
You need to drive targeted traffic at a reasonable cost (if you could get targeted traffic for 3 cents a click, which is low, it would cost you $300) to a squeeze page that converts at 20% (not too difficult), convert 2.5% of your subscribers to buy a $97 product and 10% of them to a $30 a month membership.
These latter two goals require a good offer and excellent conversion skills including some skill with copy-writing.
Also, you might have to pay $3-5,000 for 10,000 clicks if you are using solo ads.
The key would be to start with a low cost test of your funnel and then gradually scale up using split-testing to optimise your sales funnel.
The 7-components above do not include the fact that in order to optimise your returns you will need to follow up with subscribers and buyers using email marketing.
Whilst the system above is one strategy, there are many others. For example, you might start with lower cost products at the front of your funnel to increase conversions and recover the upfront cost of traffic before trying to convert them to your higher priced/recurring income products.
Hopefully by illustrating the 7 components for a $100,000 a year business, it gives you a flavour of what is required to succeed in this business.
I have just been reading a 25 page report by Jeffrey Davis called ‘Write To Lead’ which is really about how to be a leader in your niche. Here are a few of the key points in the report..
He says that in order to lead, you do need some grounding of expertise gained through one or more of the following areas:
Experience – what you have produced or created with your own customers or clients
Skills – what skills you bring to bear in your business
Knowledge – what you know to be true in your niche
Research – what you are willing to discover through reading, interviewing, viewing and testing
He then gives ’10 Kickstart Actions’:
Claim Your Content Influence Areas – this is an exercise where you draw a circle on your notebook. Outside the circle you list words or phrases that you do NOT want to be associated with. Inside the circle you list words or phrases that you want to write about, research or discover. You refine these down to 3-5 topics that will become your Content Influence Areas.
Take Your True Stance – you have a point of view and certain values. You examine your niche and contribute your own ideas and critique
Get Obsessed and Get Devoted – gives you the courage to surmount unpredictable difficulties. Your words line up with your choices and actions.
Give Your Readers a Slice of PIE – consider the purpose of what you write – there are 3 purposes:
to Provoke – challenge the accepted norms
to offer Insight – give valuable tips or knowledge
to Entertain – tell a story, surprise or arouse delight
Comment on and add to the big picture – dare to ground your ideas in a greater context than your personal experience. Examine trends and conversations in your niche.
Test it and ship it – the act of writing clarifies your ideas on your topic. It doesn’t have to be perfect – you learn by shipping and testing your ideas in public (possibly on social media). You are a mad scientist in a laboratory of your own making.
Fashion Your Voice – consider your ‘tone’ – it’s not what you say but how you say it. Create a writing persona.
Ask & Listen – be curious and ask questions e.g. at the end of an article to get comments, on social media, crowd-source an article (i.e. get different peoples opinions on a subject).
Search Again – research to see what is currently going on in your niche – top 5 books, 3 current experts etc
Tell stories rather than sell stuff – tell stories to illustrate why you are writing what you do- use experiences gained by you, your clients or other people.
This is simply a short summary of the report I read but it does give you a place to start when you are considering how you can create thought leadership in your niche or you are thinking about how to become a leader in your niche.
This article covers why Brexit happened i.e. the UK voted to leave the European Union on 23rd June 2016.
This was a seismic event for the UK establishment and the bureaucrats in Brussels who never contemplated that this could happen. However, I thought that it probably would happen as set out in this article that pre-dates the referendum vote.
There are many reasons put forward for people making the decision to vote Leave:
the undemocratic nature of the EU
the sheer weight and cost of regulations that flow from the EU
the amount of money we pay into the EU
no control over our borders and immigration
the loss of national identity and sovereignty
Underlying all these reasons for discontent are these incredible facts:
Between 2007 and 2015 average real wages in Europe have only increased by 4 or 5% over this 8 year period. However, two countries stand out as having a real wage DECREASE in the same period – Greece and the UK. Greece is hardly surprising but the UK may be more so as in real terms wages have dropped by 10% in the UK.
This means that the spending power of the average citizen in the UK has been severely squeezed whilst the richer top 1% of citizens (mainly based in London) have continued to thrive.
On top of this, the Governments austerity measures and the continuing high rate of immigration, have seen a squeeze on public services – roads, hospitals, schools, care services etc are all operating at capacity and in some cases are failing.
This means that the quality of life for the average citizen in the UK has taken an enormous reduction over the last 10 years. No wonder there is a growing discontent with the status quo in the UK!
For this reason, I think the only way out of this poverty trap is to take matters into our own hands.
One way is for workers to create worker cooperatives rather than work for a boss. If you want to see a very good example of a worker cooperative, take a look at Mondragon Corporation in Spain. (The John Lewis Partnership is an example of a worker cooperative in the UK although it is really a hybrid of a traditional business and a cooperative.)
The other way is to set up your own small business that transcends local markets. I am of course talking about setting up an online business. You can sell goods and services in any English speaking country in the world from your low-cost home-based business.
Why Brexit happened is not a surprise when you look at the facts of every day life – the question is, what are you going to do about it? You could join my list and break the strangle-hold that having a job has on your income prospects.
In this article I want to discuss the topic of choosing goals.
I was watching a TV programme last night called ‘How The Other Half Lives’. The programme specifically covered the lives of billionaires living in New York (which apparently has more billionaires than any other city in the world.)
After watching for a while I turned to my wife and said ‘I honestly don’t think that they have anything I really want‘.’
In fact their lifestyle slightly disgusted me because of the excess consumption. It was almost as if they really didn’t know what to spend their money on.
We were introduced to $4m plus ‘sneakers’ covered in diamonds, a picture that cost $3m which was a black ‘V’ on a white background, watches costing $400,000, a city apartment on sale for $54m (reduced from $60m) etc. Most of it looked like worthless, over-valued junk. The owners no longer knew the value of anything in my honest opinion.
One of the wealthy widows lived in an opulent apartment inside an exclusive hotel at a cost of $38,000 per week, excluding room service! The apartment looked somewhat cramped because it was over-filled with ‘priceless’ objects. The main advantage to the apartment was that room service was on call 24/7 and the lady had security. In fact,from the outside, it looked like a gilded cage to me!
The latter profile introduced the idea that having wealth was in fact a huge security problem. In other words, these wealthy people needed to secure themselves from other people that wanted to steal what they had.
Also, it occurred to me that in our relationships with other people, we would never know whether they liked you for who you are or because they wanted something. This suspicion would infect every human interaction, no matter how innocuous.
In fact, having wealth carries it’s own high price – firstly in acquiring it and secondly in keeping and spending it.
Perhaps we are all guilty of over-looking the things that truly have value:
Time – such as the time we have left between now and when we die. Queen Elizabeth I said on her deathbed ‘My kingdom for another moment of time’. If someone said to me, ‘you have a week left to live’ suddenly each minute would have a much higher value than it had before – would we really spend it chasing after more money and more ‘stuff’?
Living in the moment. Most of us live our lives in our head, worrying about things that happened in the past or may happen in the future. This means that we don’t live properly in the present moment and appreciate everything we already have in the current moment. We are looking for life satisfaction at some time in the future through the acquisition of more things, which only provide a short-term pleasure before we soon start looking for the next ‘fix’.
Peace of mind. Without peace of mind, we cannot truly enjoy anything. I don’t believe that the constant desire to acquire more stuff and the effort required in keeping and maintaining it securely from other people can really deliver peace of mind. Too many possessions, beyond the necessities in life, can in fact be a burden (- buying, insuring, storing, organising, maintaining, repairing and selling are all necessary actions that absorb our valuable life.) My wife and I have two garages full of surplus junk – a huge burden to us because we cannot summon up the energy or motivation to deal with it.
Maintaining health – both physical and mental health. Ironically, we usually take our health for granted until one day we have a health problem. Then nothing else in life can be enjoyed until we recover. Whilst it is true that we can purchase better health care if we are wealthy, perhaps we need to ask ourselves to what extent the pursuit of wealth impairs our physical and mental health?
Our connection with nature. I walk my dog for at least two hours every day – in the early morning and early evening. These are my favourite times of day – on many days it feels almost like a meditation as I try to enjoy the present moment in nature. Sometimes, I get lost in wonder, simply watching life around the river or staring vacantly up a tree. (Nothing gives me more delight than walking past a long line of commuter traffic with people staring out of their car windows as I amble slowly past with my dog on my way to the river and the park.)
Doing what I want to do. Simply having the time to do what I want to do – whether its working or simply reading a book or watching a video or gardening or visiting my grandchildren – without someone else dictating what I do with my times is priceless to me. I don’t think that I would have the same time freedom if I was super wealthy, even if I employed others to do what I didn’t want to do, (because I would have to employ them, pay them, monitor their performance, meet with them, lead them, train them, sack them etc etc)
Relationships with others. Often the time and effort required to accumulate huge wealth means that we have less time for loving and caring human relationships. Is this a price that is worth paying? On your death bed, you may not think so…
I think the secret to living is largely embodied in the teaching of Eckhart Tolle and the degree to which we can live our life in the present moment. This enables us to connect more deeply with life – even the simplest of things have increased value and piquancy. It is a way of savouring life as it already is without craving satisfaction at some time in the future or the need for anything more than we already have.
I have a theory that the reason why people are constantly travelling and going on holiday is that they are constantly looking for something more in life – some satisfaction that can be acquired by going somewhere else.
The problem is that wherever they go, they take themselves and their faulty thinking.
It’s true that we can sometimes get a new perspective by changing our circumstances, but often, as soon as we return to every day life, we are back in the same way of thinking and living– worrying about things in the past and what the future holds, always looking for satisfaction at some future indeterminate time and date.
I wonder how many people take the time to sit down and really think through what they want in their life. Even if we do this, it easy to think superficially and put down a lot of stuff like houses, cars, boats etc
The reality is that those that actually achieve goals like this often find very little satisfaction (or at least only short term satisfaction) and quickly need to strive for something more to make sense of their life.
What if personal freedom was the goal? Or helping others?
This means setting a goal that delivers a reasonable quality of life without having to surrender personal freedom of choice.
This might mean that we look at what is essential to living a comfortable life and giving up excessive desires.
For example, having a fast super-car may be struck from our list of goals when we consider that our existing car essentially does the same job i.e. gets us from point A to B albeit with less speed or comfort.
Setting a goal to make a million pounds in our business may be a goal that is abandoned in favour of a business plan to deliver enough to live a simpler, more connected life – a life where we don’t have to give up enjoyment of the present moment in order to strive excessively to achieve a goal that ultimately delivers a superficial benefit without real value.
Projecting forward to our death bed, what is it we would want to say about our life? That you made a huge pile of money and bought a lot of man-made stuff ?
Or… you savoured each moment of your life and connected deeply and gratefully with what you already had?
Perhaps you would want to say that you enriched the lives of everyone you interacted with? That you lived a life that added some real value to their lives?
These are questions that we all need to answer when making our life choices if we are not to lead a life of ‘quiet desperation’. Sifting through choices and selecting what is truly important is time well-employed but you will need to connect more deeply with yourself in order to do this effectively.
I hope that this article will help you to reassess your personal and business goals and to think about what you really want to achieve in your life.
You may even find that you already have everything you need in order to live a happy and fulfilling life! How amazing would that be?
I found the following article and copied it to my blog to preserve it as a resource for myself and my readers. This philosophy is life changing, although it is not easy to apply in daily life.
Here is a collection of oil paintings of Stratford-upon-Avon that have been compiled in my new book.
In this extract from a comment on Perry Marshall’s blog, he sets out the problem with the make money online niche:
This question could make you millions – I pinched this from a thread on the Warrior Forum.
I received an email from Tony Shepherd (one of my favourite marketers to follow) – it was entitled ‘The Entire Marketing Strategy’. What a great subject line – it is difficult not to open an email with that subject line. This is what he said:
I thought that I would set out the reasons why I avoid Apple products and any products like them.
I stumbled across this video review checklist and thought that I would post it to my blog because it may be useful to my readers.
The 7 components of a $100,000 a year business (or a million a year, or $600 million a year like Agora is purported to do):
I have just been reading a 25 page report by Jeffrey Davis called ‘Write To Lead’ which is really about how to be a leader in your niche. Here are a few of the key points in the report..
This article covers why Brexit happened i.e. the UK voted to leave the European Union on 23rd June 2016.
