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:
Attention
Interest
Desire
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:
You-based
Me-based
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!
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.
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.
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?
How can you give it to someone else that is better suited to take it on?
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!
When it comes to getting rich, most people pour their time, energy, and money into the wrong areas. Instead of focusing on the actions that will lead them down the path to becoming wealthy, unfortunately, they end up wasting their time and energy. If you haven’t been successful in what you want in life yet, chances are, you have done this, too.
Become Wealthy By Following The 80/20 Principle
Maybe you’ve heard of the 80/20 rule before.
It’s the principle that states that 80 percent of your success is determined by only 20 percent of your actions. If you think about most areas of your life, this is probably true and some things just have more impact than others. True or true?
Whether you like it or not, it’s the part of your work that has the biggest impact on both your business and your life.
Would you like to know what it is?
If so, watch the video below — a sneak peek of my free web class — to find out. You’ll also learn:
00:20 — How I used to believe all parts of my business were equal and that each part deserved equal amounts of time, money, and effort
00:41 — Why that belief left me constantly broke and struggling to make ends meet
00:53 — How there are only three major parts to any business and what they are
01:18 — The real secret to business success and how it will have the single biggest impact on your financial life
02:17 — Why you should focus 80% of your business time, energy, money, and learning in this one particular area
Again what I covered in this video is counterintuitive. It’s not common knowledge nor is it common sense — but it works in the real world and that’s all that matters. True or true?
The fact is, if you don’t put your time and focus on marketing, you will always be working too hard AND earning too little.
So whether you like it or not, marketing will always have the single biggest impact on your business’ success, mediocrity or failure.
Which is a big, big problem…Why? Because unfortunately, most people are bad marketers.
But there is good news! You don’t need to know everything in marketing to succeed. You only need to know the right things. So to help you in this arena I created a FREE web class, called:
The most common AND deadly mistake that underachieving businesses make and how you can avoid it
How to get 10X more sales and make 10X more income from one slight change to your business model
The 10-letter word that will practically hypnotize your prospects and customers and make them fall in love with you
How to instantly eliminate all fear, doubt, and non-supportive beliefs around the word “selling”
And much, much MORE.
Friends, I can’t emphasize how important this free training will be for you and your business. Allow me to teach how you to approach marketing in a whole new way so you can reach the level of success where you’re finally working LESS and earning MORE!
Click hereto register for my free class and select a date and time that works best for you.
Where do you put the majority of your focus on in your business or career? Leave a comment below.
When it comes to wealth and success, there are only a few rules and principles that you need to follow consistently in order to succeed.
However, if you don’t get good guidance and end up taking incorrect actions, you’ll find yourself struggling to reach the level of wealth and success that you desire.
So T. Harv Eker wanted to do something special for you and share his best tips that he’s learned over the course of 30+ years in business, bringing in over 500 million dollars in revenue.
Watch the video below to learn T. Harv Eker’s top 10 tips for wealth and success. They worked for him and if you follow them closely, they can work for you too.
Enjoy!
1. Take Ownership Of Your Life — You Create Your Success, Mediocrity or Financial Failure
So many of us spend our lives waiting for our “big break.” We think that if we just put our heads down, work hard, and do the right things, eventually someone will hand over the keys to our success.
If you want to create real success in your life, you need to believe that you are the one creating your own life. And on the flip side, that you are the one who creates any mediocrity or financial struggle.
It may sound harsh — but if you look at it the right way, it’s actually empowering. Because if you’re the one responsible for your own failure…
Thenyou’re also capable of changing your life for the better.
This is how wealthy people see the world, and it’s one of the reasons for their success. Most middle class and broke people see things very differently Instead of consciously creating their lives — they see life as something that “happens” to them, instead of “for” them.
So before you try to do anything else, it’s time to take control.
When you believe that you can create the life that you desire, rather than waiting for good things to happen to you, you’ll be putting yourself on the fast track to wealth and success.
2. If You Want To Change The Fruits, First Change The Roots
This may not make a lot of sense at first, but picture a tree in an orchard. Any kind of fruit will do. This tree you’re imagining represents your life.
In life, all of our actions will eventually have some kind of result – in other words, your tree will someday bear fruit. But what kind of fruit? Will it be juicy, crispy, and sweet? Or will the fruits of your labor be disappointing and bitter?
Most of us would like the juicy, sweet fruit – the successful results. So, if you want a tree to produce more and better fruit, what do you do?
You go back to the roots.
You can’t change the fruit that’s already been produced, but you can make tomorrow’s fruit sweeter. You nurture the parts hidden under the ground, knowing that eventually your efforts will affect the entire system of the plant.
Life is the same way. If you aren’t getting the results you want, it’s important to make sure you’re focusing on the real problem, not the end result. Focus on the invisible in order to change the visible.
3. Be Willing To Be Uncomfortable
The truth is, most people have trouble stepping outside their comfort zone. When we hit a roadblock or an obstacle, we assume that we’re doing something wrong.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Instead of retreating back to old, familiar territory, try taking a different approach:
If you’re feeling uncomfortable, challenged, or discouraged – that means you’re growing.
Even if it doesn’t feel like you’re making progress, the fact that you’re moving outside your comfort zone means you’re moving forward.
Many of us envision success as a straight line, a road from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’. But in reality, the road to success is filled with unexpected twists and turns. Being able to accept and adapt to them is one of the major factors in actually achieving any big goal in life.
So the next time you feel lost, or confused, or just a little out of your depth, remember: it’s actually a good thing to try things that make you uncomfortable.
4. What You Focus On Expands
Have you ever met the kind of person who can’t seem to stop complaining about everything that’s wrong with their life?
You probably have. Did that person seem happy — or did they seem absolutely miserable?
It’s an unconscious trap we all fall into sometimes, but it’s a habit you must break if you want to reach your goals in life. And here’s why:
When you are complaining or negative, what are you focusing on — what’s right in your life or what’s wrong in your life?
What’s wrong in your life.
So if what you focuses on expands then what are you going to get more of in your life?
What’s wrong in your life.
So instead of looking for reasons why everything is wrong, commit to looking at what’s right.
By really focusing on your goals in a new and more dedicated way, you’ll find new roads opening up that you never would have noticed before.
5. Your Word Must Become Law
It’s time to be honest, and the answer to this question may make you cringe. But how often do you start projects and never finish them?
So often, we hear from people who start new programs, who set goals for themselves, and then never follow through.
Finishing what you start is more important than you might think, and it comes down to one word: integrity.
And that doesn’t just mean in terms of being honest with yourself (although that’s important).
It also means being whole and complete as a person.
When you don’t keep your word to yourself, it feels bad. When you don’t complete what you set out to do, it can shake your confidence and make you feel like there’s no real path to your goals.
It’s easy to get stuck in a loop of bad habits and turn this into a self-reinforcing cycle if you’re not careful.
On the other hand, when you do whatever it takes to keep your word to yourself, that confidence will spill over into every area of your life.
It’s a simple matter of self-discipline. It will take some practice and hard work, but in the end, it’s the only way to reach the goals you set for yourself. This is one of the major ways you can own your life and take control of your own success.
6. Be A Great Money Manager
Do you have a system for managing your money?
If you aren’t making as much as you’d like yet, it may seem easy to write the idea off. To tell yourself you’ll think about it later when you have extra money to budget.
But if you don’t take control of managing your income now, what will you do when you achieve the success you want?
If you have a poor habit of managing your money then there is a good chance you’ll still have a bad habit no matter how rich and successful you get.
The answer is to first build the habit no matter how much money you earn because money management is one of the biggest differences between rich people and most middle class and broke people.
7. Stop Focusing On The Money, Focus On Solving Problems
A big problem I see with struggling business owners, entrepreneurs, professionals and people transitioning from a job to owning their own business is that they are fixated only on themselves.
Do I know enough? Will it work? Will I make enough money? Will they like me? And it goes on and on.
However, this is the wrong approach. Stop focusing on yourself and start focusing on others.
Making money isn’t complicated. People will pay for something that solves a problem for them. It’s that simple.
So you need to shift your focus to being what Harv calls a “problem solver.”
How can you best help people?
Money is a result of helping others and providing value to their life.
Think about your life right now. What are you paying for that is helping you solve problems in your life?
How many of us grew up with millionaires in our lives we could use as role models for success? Not too many, right?
The sad fact is that most of us just haven’t seen what it takes to be rich and successful in life. We can’t go to mom and dad and ask them for advice on how to become a millionaire because most of our parents aren’t millionaires… so how would they know?
Instead, it’s imperative to find people who are rich and successful – and study them to learn how they got there.
You don’t have to meet these role models face-to-face to use this strategy.
You just need to do your homework. Read their books and watch interviews they’ve done. Find out what you can about their past through biographies and news stories. Learn what their lives were like when they were at the same point in their journey that you are now.
And then… do what they did. Model their approach.
9. Have No limits On Your Income
If you have a job, you have a limit on your income. You automatically have a ceiling on what you can earn.
If you want to get rich, you must get rid of all limits on your income.
In most cases that means starting a business.
However, a big mistake people make is when they start a business, they are the business. They are the ones who are solely responsible for the business succeeding or failing. Most small businesses and professionals are setup in a way that gives the owner such a vital role that without them present, the business is unable to function.
That kind of setup is a mistake. And that’s the reason why so many small businesses remain small or unfortunately fail.
To be truly successful, your business needs to be able to run without you having a hand in every little thing. If you can step back and allow the systems you develop to run your business for you, even better!
Once you step back and allow your business to run without you, there are no limits to the income you can earn.
Think about it – most jobs are based on an hourly rate, a salary, or a commission. That means you can only earn as much as you’re able to work.
But when you step back and let your systems do the work for you, suddenly the number of hours in the day will no longer hold you back.
10. Never Stop Learning — If You’re Not Learning, You’re Automatically Dying
Finally, don’t make the mistake of thinking that once you’ve achieved a goal, you know everything there is to know! The most successful people in the world are committed to continuing to learn and grow.
Set aside time in your life (and money in your budget) to invest in programs that will teach you something new each day. You’ve probably heard the saying that “knowledge is power” – take it to heart!
So, now that you’ve read Harv’s top tips for wealth and success, what comes next?
Well, that depends… are you ready to learn some more advanced strategies and principles that will make you rich.
If so, then we want to invite you to join us for Harv’s 500 Million Dollar Secret FREEweb class to learn how you can take control of your life, create extreme wealth for yourself, and reach the level success you’ve always dreamed of.
Go ahead and click here to register for a class time that works for you.
As an entrepreneur, I often get asked this question:
How exactly do you transition from being an employee to being in business?
My answer is always simple. There are two types of people in the world: there are waders and there are divers. You’ll see how important this distinction is as we go on.
I’m going to outline my top three tips for starting a business before you leave your current job. After being in business myself for decades (and struggling for 12 long years), this advice comes from my firsthand experience — and could save you a LOT of valuable time and money in the long run.
Here we go…
1. Find Out How You Work
First, you need to decide what kind of person you are. Do you like to just dive into things, take a big risk, just go for it and put all your attention on it at once, or do you like to just wade in slowly?
Simply asking this of yourself will come into play when choosing whether to start a business (or not).
Regardless of who you are, one of the things that really bothers me is when people drop their current income to zero in order to start something new. I’m not just talking about a job here — I mean income.
When you’re starting out in business, it’s crucial that you take care of cash flow. There is no point in jumping in and running hard only to find out you’ve run out of cash two months in. Instead, it’s super important to make sure you have money coming in, so you can give your business the chance it deserves.
I don’t care if you’re a diver — suck it up for a little bit. Don’t lose your income. You can lower it, yes, but don’t lose it.
Why is this? If you are starting out in business and cut yourself off financially, you won’t be happy. Let me tell you now, you’ll be stressed, in fear, and full of anxiety.
You’ll start coming from a place of scarcity, as opposed to abundance. There won’t be any joy in your new business, and it will feel like a burden… before it’s even started.
Do you know what that is called? That’s called diving with no water into a pool.
And what’s going to happen if you jump into a pool with no water? You’re going to crack your head right open. I have a million students, and I’ve heard thousands upon thousands of stories about this. It happens all the time — but the good news is that it’s easily preventable.
2. Start Your Business Part Time
Whether you’re in a business that you think is not doing well and you want to get out of that business and into a new one, or if you are in a job and you want to get into a business that you love… here is the route I highly recommend you take.
Keep your current situation and start your new situation part time.
Of course, this would mean working overtime, late at night, and on weekends.
Let me say right now that if this is unappealing to you, you shouldn’t start a business. Because if you want to be successful in business, you will have to work weekends and you will have to work at night. Boohoo!
The truth is, when you own your own business, at the beginning you will have to work your freaking buns off, with 1,000% attention and 1,000% focus. That’s how it works.
I didn’t make up the rules. It’s just the way it is.
If you’re not going to stay in your job, while working nights and weekends on a part-time basis and earning some income with your new business (until it’s stable enough for you to fully transition), then my humble advice to you is to forget about starting a business altogether.
3. Get Educated In Your Field
This is a big one so pay close attention.
If your new business situation is in your current field, and it’s very similar to what you’re already doing, then you’ve got a nice head start!
But if you want to jump into something new and different than you’re doing right now, what do you have to do? You need to get hands-on experience in the trenches.
Even if it seems like a downgrade at first, it’s really an investment in yourself, your knowledge, your skill — and the assurance that your business will succeed instead of thinking short-term.
If you get a job in the field you want to run your business in, then you learn the ropes… on someone else’s dime.
(You do this at the same time as building your business on nights and weekends.)
The truth is, people go to university for four, five or six years to get skilled in their chosen field, and they pay to go. But if you do it this way, instead of you paying them, they’re paying you a little something.
Think of it as an investment in your business – and your future success.
In my book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, I tell a story about when I was 95% sure that I wanted to open a restaurant. I wanted to open a restaurant, so I took my own advice and I started working in different jobs in the restaurant industry.
I was a broiler cook, a sous-chef, a host, a busboy, a waiter and a manager at a pie store, because I thought I was going to have a dessert restaurant, so I wanted to meet bakers. I was going through the garbage every night to see the boxes they threw out, and who their suppliers were.
I had seven different restaurant jobs in four months. I would leave each one of them, sometimes even before I got paid fully, because I was simply there to learn.
I learned the most important thing about the restaurant business for me: that I would never be in the restaurant business.
Can you believe it? That’s honestly what I learned: that I don’t want to be in the restaurant business. This was the most valuable advice I could’ve ever received.
When you work before diving head first into a new business, you go to school on someone else’s dime. You learn what it’s like to be in the business, not to look at it from the outside.
You want to be inside the business. You look in the trash can. You learn the suppliers. You learn everything you can about being in that business: the pitfalls, the good stuff, where the money is made and where the opportunities are.
Here’s a statistic: 80% of all new businesses fail within the first five years.
You’ve heard that 100 times, and it’s true — except for one thing: 65% of all new businesses succeed if the person was already in that industry.
If they were just creating a new niche within the industry they were already in, then the chances of success skyrocket.
If you’re serious about having your own business, you need to know how you work, be prepared to do the work, and be humble enough to admit you don’t know everything.
By taking a step back and seeing your approach as a slow and steady investment in your future, you’ll be able to play the long game — and reap the rewards.
So there you have it. My top three tips for starting a business, before you leave your current job.
Again, like I mentioned, I have many years of firsthand experience with starting businesses. I started 14 different businesses throughout 12 years and out of the 14, almost every single one of them failed. If you follow my guidelines above, I assure you your chances of success in business will dramatically increase.
For Your Freedom,
Before starting a new business or leaving your current job or business, having an idea or vehicle that’s going to create wealth is absolutely critical.
Unfortunately, most people try and succeed with the wrong vehicle at the wrong time and wonder why they struggle.
So to help you with this, I’ve created a template that will give you a step-by-step blueprint for generating highly profitable ideas on demand.
