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How to Leverage Yourself: Work Smarter Not Harder

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You can’t be in more than one place at a time. Physically speaking, it’s impossible, yes? Let’s think outside the box a little bit so you can learn how to leverage yourself in order to have a real financial impact.

Leveraging Yourself for Financial Success

A lot of you are familiar with the concept of leveraging yourself, yet I often find that many people out there don’t fully appreciate the importance of leveraging. It’s one of those terms that get bandied about in the business world so often that people take it for granted, one of those “Here we go again” terms. Yet, a huge part of financial success building is leveraging.

It simply means doing more with less. The idea is to work smarter not harder, get more done and deliver more value. You know you’re leveraging to the maximum when you’re away from the things you don’t enjoy and are doing what you really love to do. That means you’ve changed your blueprint about what’s available for you in your life, where you can be and how you play the game.

How does this apply to the average person?

You can start a business with little or none of your own money. It means delegating as many tasks as possible to others. It means using other people’s talents, skills, contacts, abilities and resources for mutual advantage. You’re good at whatever you do, but other people are better than you in other areas. Do what you’re good at and let others do the rest.

After you’ve gotten over the blueprint barrier, the next step is coming up with what will maximize your ability to leverage a talent, product, or idea. Can you create a book, program or a technology, and license it for royalties? That’s one of the easiest ways to generate easy, lucrative, passive income.

Using your resources

When it comes to leveraging, though, you’re not just maximizing other people’s skills and resources. You also want to get more out of yourself. That means enhancing your business knowledge and developing yourself personally. Be a constant learner. The best form of leveraging is self-education.

When you know certain things and develop yourself, you put that into action. If you’re not doing something with your skills, your knowledge becomes useless, it stagnates, and you start to feel bad about yourself. Who needs any more of that?

You vs. Your Health

If you really want to take it to the next level, leverage yourself by increasing your:

  • Health
  • Stamina
  • Energy
  • Anything business related

Get into shape. “I don’t have time” is an easy excuse. However, a person can think that they don’t have time to work out. Think about how much could get done when you have more energy to keep going instead of feeling fatigued and drained.

In general, leveraging means managing your time effectively. Less turns into more: more you, more money, and more of what you really want out of life.

Exercise: Think about what you could leverage and act on it.

  1. What’s that one thing that you know you should not be doing because it is not a good fit for your skills and time?
  2. How can you give it to someone else that is better suited to take it on?
  3. Act now to get your “leverage momentum” moving forward!

Has this post helped you to learn how to leverage yourself? Let us know in the comments section below!

Up Next: How To Be More Than Just Interesting With Your Marketing

This article has been updated for relevancy and accuracy. It’s original publish date was 03/26/10.

How To Be More Than Just Interesting With Your Marketing

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Want to learn how to be more than just interesting with your marketing messages? Keep reading to learn four basic elements to highly effective marketing.

Creating Marketing Messages That Are More Than Just Interesting

 

As you might have noticed in recent blogs, I’ve been talking about some of the actual aspects of business rather than the mind of the millionaire side. The concepts of both the tactics of business and the psychological prerequisites can’t be summed up in a few pages of blogging. I thought I’d focus on marketing a little bit more—something that’s so easy to know is a necessary thing to get right, but not always so easy to execute effectively because it takes work to learn how to be more than just interesting.

Last week we looked at making clear, concise statements in a marketing message. There are four basic elements that make a message highly effective so you can build success:

  1. Attention
  2. Interest
  3. Desire
  4. Action

For now, let’s focus on interest because gaining a prospective customer’s interest will play a huge part in the other three elements. Interest has to come at the beginning of the message. If you don’t hook them immediately after you’ve got their attention, they’re gone.

So what gets people’s interest? That one’s easy enough: pleasure and pain. No matter what we’re doing in life, it has to do with either finding ways to increase pleasure or avoid pain. These are mind-based motivators with some emotional elements attached, as well.

 

A pleasure-based opening for a marketing message is actually very simple. You’re capturing interest based on a positive benefit. For example: “Get ripped fast!” The message: get in shape. The benefit: it can happen quickly.

You definitely want to point out benefits, but research shows that messages about how to avoid pain have a much more profound effect on sales than the pleasurable benefits of your product or service. Pain-based marketing can triple a business’s income. Pain-based messages identify a problem and then offer remedies. It’s the problem-solution opening.

There are three types of problem-solution openings:

  1. You-based
  2. Me-based
  3. Them- or People-based problem

You-Based Opening Marketing Message

An example of the You-based opening: Do you have [fill in the blank] problems? What you’re implying in just a few words is that if the prospective customer had been looking, they’d have already found a solution by now. Your solution could be just that more appealing.

Me-Based Opening Marketing Message

The Me-Based opening tells your own story or that of your client’s. Telling the story of how I went from one failed business to another, then becoming a millionaire adds credibility—“I’ve been where you are.”

Them-Based Opening Marketing Message

The them-based problem-solution creates an instant line of connection whereby you ask the prospective customer a question. They can identify with it immediately, kind of like Seinfeld doing a stand-up about common things that everybody can identify with yet may not think about too often. For example: “You know how so many people today are stressed about their retirement savings? Well there’s an amazing informational product out there that’s helping thousands of people right now…”

Exercise: Working On Your Marketing Message Skills

As an exercise for learning how to be more than just interesting, write five openings for a marketing message.

  • Pleasure-based
  • Pain-avoidance-based
  • You-based
  • Me-based story
  • Their problem (“You know how …?”).

One great place to start is with your headlines. If you can get your reader to notice you via your headline, your success rate of capturing their attention to actually read your message skyrockets. Anyone can come up with dozens of these messages, but your challenge is to be more than just interesting. Be absolutely convincing. Be creative, effective, productive, and then be rich!

Here’s a great resource to help you become a master at crafting headlines: http://www.copyblogger.com/magnetic-headlines/

Tell me your thoughts in the comments section. Have you had great success learning how to be more than just interesting when crafting marketing messages that work? Let us all know your strategies. Have you struggled in this area? Share your challenges here, and let our online community support you and give you ideas to move you in the right direction.

This article has been updated for relevancy and accuracy. It’s original publish date was 03/12/10.

Effective Business Systems: Create Wealth With Less Struggle

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Effective business systems are key to making your company a success. Stop yourself from becoming too bogged down and overwhelmed with these three strategies.

Establish Effective Business Systems With These 3 Categories

What’s the point of starting a business? To make more money, yes or yes? And what’s the point of that? So you can do more of whatever you want, whenever you want.

If you haven’t experienced this for yourself, though, then you might have heard: that’s often not what happens, at least not at first. People get caught up in their business. A lot of the time, they work harder. They do so out of necessity to make sure that it’s running, thriving and growing. Other times, they do so out of fear or over-reacting panic that without their presence, the business will collapse.

In other words, the business—for one reason or another—takes them over. And that’s not unusual especially at the beginning stages. However, if you find yourself in that same “supervisory” position after years and years, then I’d say you made things harder on yourself than you had to. That’s because the freedom of accumulating wealth through business is directly related to how well you structure your business’ foundation.

What happens if you try to build a house on a weak foundation? It eventually cracks, caves in, or turns into the leaning Tower of Pisa. The business equivalent of building a solid foundation is creating a system. You need repeatable methods and procedures that produce profit. The idea is to systematize your business so that you can effectively and efficiently sell and support your product or service in bigger numbers as you grow.

So how do you create an effective business system?

Keep it simple. When it comes down to it, an effective business system should consist of only 3 categories:

  1. Marketing: getting people to know about what you have to offer
  2. Production: getting the products and/or services made, distributed, or performed
  3. Administration: accounts payable/receivable, human resources, finance, assistants, etc.

Each part requires specific processes so they run smoothly. Aim for flawlessness, but be prepared to settle for “almost automatically”. The idea is to create a well-oiled machine—a money machine. And what do machines do best? They repeat the same functions over and over. Your system must be a repeatable process that can work without you!

Why does your business need effective systems?

If you want to gain wealth, you can’t have a ceiling on your income. Your earnings must be unlimited. If you have to be physically present for your business to work, it can only grow to the extent that you can personally handle. It doesn’t matter how brilliant and energetic you are, you still only have but so much time in a day! You have to eat, sleep, relax, talk, think, meditate, spend time with family and friends …

In other words, all the things you’d rather be doing instead of stressing.

 

What good is creating wealth if you’re killing yourself in the process?

Work on the business, not in the business. Creating a system is what gives you freedom to do just that. With a strong system in place, you’ll two have options:

 

You’ll have the flexibility to hand it over to competent managers and have an excellent source of passive income
You can sell the business and become an instant millionaire.

The more solid your business foundation, the quicker it can happen. In both cases, because you created a system, you win. An effective system that works, instead of you working, is an absolute must in order to enjoy the ride.

Exercise: Share Your Effective Business Systems

1. Have you had successes with growing your business in ways it can thrive even when you are not around? If so, share your tips and strategies here.

2. If you have not gotten to this point (yet!) share your struggles and challenges—you might be surprised with the support and feedback from the others in our community.

Make sure to leave a comment below and share your insights on effective business systems with all of us.

This article has been updated for relevancy and accuracy. It’s original publish date was 02/25/10.

Deliver Your True Value: Commit To Product Creation

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If you want to make money, you have to know your value so that you can deliver your true value fully. Keep reading for 4 income factors that will help you know your value and deliver it.

Follow These 4 Income Factors To Deliver Your True Value

Who wants to make more money? Better question: who doesn’t?

We’ve heard the phrase, “Money isn’t everything.” Of course it’s true, but … like it or not, money is a huge part of our lives. And a lot of people know it. Heck, they might think about it all the time, but they still don’t really understand it.

Quick: if I were to ask you to give me a definition of money, what would it be? “You buy stuff with it, Harv.” That’d be a fair enough answer.

Technically, money measures the value of goods and services exchanged between people; the key word being value.

 

Value is what determines how much money you’ll make. You will be paid in direct proportion to the value you deliver according to the marketplace. And let’s be honest, folks: there are a lot of broke people out there because they don’t deliver a lot of value in the eyes of the current marketplace. That brings us to the other keyword here; deliver.

There are so many good ideas out there, and so many “reasons” why we’ve never heard of them. It’s simple . . . if you don’t deliver your true value, you won’t get paid a lot. Before we get to the science part of making money, we have to deal with simple and basic understandings.

These 4 income factors determine how much you’ll earn:

  • DEMAND: Offer a hot product or service that a lot of people want.
  • SUPPLY: To increase your value in business, you must provide something few others have, or do something in a way that no one else does.
  • QUALITY: How good your products and services are — and just as important — how good you are at your business. The higher the quality, in relation to the price, the higher the value.
  • QUANTITY: how much of your product or service you deliver.

Of all four factors, most people have the greatest difficulty with this last one. You can have an excellent product or service, and you may even deliver it to the market, but you could also not do it in enough quantities to create wealth. If you want to get paid, you have to deliver your true value to people. If you want to get rich, you must deliver your true value to a lot of people!

 

Here’s the thing; no matter what business you’re in, you have to sell a product, or better yet, products. A product increases your ability to deliver huge quantities. When you have a product to sell, there are no limits on how much you can produce and deliver, therefore, no limit to how much money you can make!

This is where I challenge would-be entrepreneurs, businessmen and women, dreamers, and anybody with a great idea. Stand up! Take actionable steps to at least find out if your idea could be viable. Research usually doesn’t cost much, if anything at all. Ask yourself:

  • What kind of demand is out there for your idea?
  • Is there any competition?
  • What further research do you need to do to make sure it’s a great product?
  • Are there someone else’s great products you could sell while negotiating a cut on that?

Demand, supply, quality and quantity are the cornerstones of value, and delivering massive value means being well on the way to wealth creation.

Exercise: Know Your Value and Deliver Your True Value

1. Have you had great success with an idea you turned into a product? If so, share your success here so others can learn from your actions.

2. If you don’t have a product, why not? What is stopping you from taking action and delivering your value? Share it here and someone else just might have great feedback for you to help you move forward.

This article has been updated for relevancy and accuracy. It’s original publish date was 02/19/10.

Practicing Happiness Now To Make It A Habit

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Practice makes perfect, right? Wrong! First of all, nothing’s ever perfect. I’d even say you don’t really want anything to be “perfect.” Why not? Well, once you’ve reached it, where else is there to go but backwards or, even worse, nowhere? Practicing happiness or anything else should be a process.

How To Start Practicing Happiness In Your Life Now

When this post was originally written, the Winter Olympic Games were just starting, I started to think about the art of practice and perfection. Watching the athletes get ready to compete, I am in awe of their strength, dedication, and focus. There is no doubt these athletes are striving for pure perfection.

The point of practice isn’t perfection

We want to strive for perfection, yes, but that’s only going to work if you understand that it’s not just about the destination but the journey, as well.

That’s why it helps to look at process when it comes to those outcomes we’re reaching for. Because what would be the point of getting to where you always wanted to be, if you’re beat up and worn out by the time you get there? Where’s the happiness in that?

Happiness Is A Process As Much As An Outcome

I mean, don’t get me wrong. A hard-earned victory is awesome. But think about it; should happiness in life be restricted to success in finances, or business, or career, or the attainment of goals?

We have all been there at some point in our lives, saying something like, “If only I had [fill in the blank], I’d be so much happier.” Hey, sometimes we may even get whatever it is we think will make us happy, but what usually ends up happening? We’re psyched for a little while—if at all—and then we find out it wasn’t really enough to make us as happy as we thought it would. There’s always more.

You can work your butt off to get to where you want to be by practicing your delivery, your backhand swing, your investment strategies—you can practice anything until you get it down, but that doesn’t mean things are always going to turn out perfectly.

Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent.

Practices Becomes Habit

Practice becomes habit, and habits become permanent unless we consciously change them. We’re practicing something all the time through our habits, even when we’re not really thinking about it.

If you practice the thought that “I’ll be happy when [fill in the blank] happens,” then guess what? You’re always delaying your happiness until [fill in the blank] happens. Not because things will never be great, but because you’ve become a master at being unhappy. Unhappiness will be your habit!

You have to prioritize happiness. You have to practice being happy no matter what is going on in life; whether you win or lose, succeed or experience temporary setbacks, whether everything is the way you have always dreamed or if you are still on the road to your next major destination.

Practice Whatever You Want To Be In The Future Now

If you want to be more patient and less reactionary, practice patience now. If you want to be a manager of your own personal wealth, start managing your finances now, no matter how much money you earn. If you want to be successful, then practice being successful now. If you want happiness, start practicing happiness now.

The key is to enjoy the process, enjoy the journey. We can have moments of perfection, times where we wouldn’t want a single thing to change, but it’s unfair and unrealistic to ask that of life all the time. But it’s totally within our control to practice being whatever we want to be right now!

Now that you hopefully understand why you should practice happiness, you might be wondering how to do it.

I’ve been prioritizing happiness for a long time, studying and practicing what it really takes to be truly happy. Would you like to know what I’ve discovered?

Well, I’ve got some great news! I’ve developed a set of seven principles that have transformed my life and made me a much happier person. One of them, which we’ve been talking about here, is that you have to prioritize happiness. 

I’d love to share the other six with you, so I’ve put together a FREE, brand-new online training to walk you through them. It’s called: 

The Shocking Truth About Happiness

If you join me for this FREE training, I guarantee you will be much better equipped to create real and lasting happiness in your life. 

Here’s a taste of what you’ll discover:

  • Why happiness is your natural state of being 
  • How to eliminate the true source of UNhappiness
  • How to be happy AND achieve more in life
  • The 7 precepts of happiness you MUST understand in order to be truly happy

And much, much more!

Remember, time is your most precious asset. In less time than it takes to sit through a few episodes of a Netflix show, you can attend this class and get on the path to a completely new and much more joyful life.

In fact, just by signing up, you’re taking your first action step in prioritizing your own happiness. 

Click here to pick the best date and time for you. I hope to see you there!

What’s one way you could practice your happiness today? Let us know by leaving a comment below!

For Your Freedom,

6 Simple, But Impactful Tips To Become A World Class Speaker & Trainer

UP NEXT:

Being Present and Finding Happiness in Your Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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