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Category Archives: Success

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Target Surfing

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To know the importance of having a website for your business is one thing. Knowing the purpose behind having a Web presence is a whole other thing.

If your business is already up and running, you’ll have to cater your strategies to what you already have in place, particularly in terms of your pre-existing customer base. That means getting them to fill out cards in your physical business, or otherwise enticing them to your website with special offers. Then follow-up emails. We’re still talking basic marketing and backend selling–making money on those who are the easiest to sell to–those you’ve sold to before.

But if you’re still unsure of what kind of business you’d like to create, take a good, long look at creating an online business.

What works in your favor is that the easiest way to make money online is to focus on a specific market, find a product that they want, and give it to them. Searching for your best prospects online isn’t that much different than offline.

How do you do this? The same way you look for anything else online: surf. Just type it in–for example, maybe you have a passion for scuba diving that you’d like to turn into a business. You find all the news groups, forums, and websites regarding scuba diving. Is there anything that they’re talking about a lot? Any patterns where something is wanted but not easy to find?

That’s how you find your target market. It may take you a day, a week, a month, maybe longer. It depends on what your market is and what you’re trying to find, but whatever the niche, there’s a large enough market that’s relatively easy to get to. You know where they are, and after some research you’ll know that they want something specifically. All the gamers are hanging out in one market. All the sports nuts are hanging out in one market. All the people that are interested in holistic medicine are hanging out in one market. All the doctors are hanging out in one market. It’s easier to get people than you might think.

Try getting those people through the local newspaper. If 20,000 people view your ad (theoretically), you’d be doing great to get 10 of them to show interest. Online, you can go right to where all of your target market hangs out. Your target market is sitting right in front of you.

There are tons of people who know enough about the money-making potential of the Web and ask, "So what do I sell online? What’s going to be a hot seller?" It’s the most common and most fatal mistake.

You never decide on the product. You find an easy, targetable market, find out what they want, and you give it to them. It’s the easiest method in the world. You have an instantaneously successful business. It is a no-brainer. It doesn’t take any smarts to figure that out.

Anybody out there discovered the power of doing business online recently (I know you’re there)? What did you find frustrating, or powerful, or even profound? Did you incorporate a Web presence into an existing business? What have been your greatest learnings? We want to hear from you!!!

https://bit.ly/UltimateInternetBootcamp

https://bit.ly/ClickAndBeFree

Cruise Control Over Your Business

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It’s a virtual road-trip toward business success, the final destination–whatever your next venture will be, because you’re done with that last one. It’s running on its own, without you.

Until then, cruise control helps. Without cruise control, long road trips would be more tiring for the driver and for those of us with lead-foot, a lot more speeding tickets.

All you need is a dashboard that has the exact read-outs you need to control your business. You pick your top 5 – 10 critical success factors and come up with a system on how you’re going to measure them. If you can’t think of five, pick that top factor.

If you’re measuring lead generation, for example, how many leads are coming in? You gauge leads per week and per month, at least. Now dig deeper. How many leads from each lead source? How much does each lead cost per source? Is one source cheaper and bringing more return than another? When you have benchmarks–like how much you’re willing to pay for each lead–you’ve got numbers right in front of you that tell you how many leads come in and what you pay for them. What do you have?

You have control over your business.

Consistency, predictability, tracking–systems that can be operated and understood by practically anyone. When you can duplicate that, you’re on cruise control.

Now take 15 of the most important things you want to track. It might be lead generation. It might be customer satisfaction. It might be cash flow management. If you have a business with labor, labor productivity is a good thing to measure. And then the question you want to ask is what’s going to enable you to measure whether or not you are being successful at that?

All you do is establish a handful of gauges, tools, or metrics–whatever you want to call them– for whether or not you’re executing that critical factor properly.

We test to make sure it works. We test it backward and forward. You want to make sure you can get to the benchmarks you set from the steps in your system. The good news about systems is they don’t require that much training. A good system is where you put that system in someone’s hands and they know how to use it.

It can be a simple narrative to describe–for people who like words–how this system works. You do flow charts for people who are the linear and visual thinkers in your business. It’s as simple as a check-sheet. Someone else could operate it because all they need to do is go down the list: I did this, check; I did this; check. If you do every step on this check sheet, at the end, you’ve got a system. That simple!

Note, though, that it’s not that easy. There’s work required to put systems into practice. Not torturous work; it can be a lot of fun as you refine them. Intuition and creativity can play into this thing, from the artist to the architect. You are the person qualified because you know it inside out. You know all the parts of it. You know what’s involved. Your business is you, and you are in control!

What do you think Millionaire Mind community? We want to hear from you!

Staying On Track

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Your business is you. It’s you creating something that wasn’t there before; with material results from your intentions, your energy, your essence, whatever it may happen to be at that time. The science of growing it simply means having prepared leadership, development, producers, and administration. As the process evolves, so do your systems for solving frustrations and focusing on those critical factors that matter most.

This is your rich-making vehicle. Like any car, you’ve got a gas gauge, a speedometer, oil gauge–all the key things you need to know quickly and conveniently if this thing is running properly. You need the same things in your business.

You need the ability to track what’s important. There’s what is quantifiable and easy to count–like sales–but there are also subjective things where opinions are measured, when the ‘qualifiable’ becomes quantifiable.

One issue that’s gained tons of traction over the last couple of years is going green–especially in businesses–from "cloud" computing to energy consumption’s impact on the bottom line.

Some people couldn’t care less about the plight of the pelicans in an endangered eco-system (a shame, for sure), but when you can quantify how switching over to energy-efficient equipment can save thousands of dollars, politics goes out the window. Saving the planet is on the same track as the bottom-line.

Also consider, though, the marketing appeal of being able to sincerely tell your market you support green initiatives. Again, the subjective can become countable in response rates.

Put a scale in and it. Customer satisfaction; employee satisfaction–you measure benchmarks, time frames, the ranges you’d like to be in, or what high/low thresholds would signify danger-zones. They sound complicated, but they’re really not.

How many sales calls and closes per hour would you like to see? You look at what your sales are per month and compare. Too low? Too high (maybe there’s something else not being considered if it’s too good to be true)?

You want the salesperson that follows a script, makes the calls and closes the ratio that they should be closing. That can be copied, duplicated, and most importantly, tracked. If the oil pressure in your vehicle is too high, you’ve got a problem. If it’s too low, you’ve also got a problem. You want to be in between, yes? What are your operating ranges for your critical success factors?

It might be that you’re willing to spend a certain amount of money per employee depending on their role in your business’ structure. If you’re paying your marketing guy $30,000 more than you really intended, there isn’t going to be much speculation on why your profits aren’t where you want them to be. Like getting a speeding ticket, you had this gauge that you weren’t paying attention to and you exceeded the operating range.

There are things you can count on and physically look at; things you can measure; and real accurate data that you can track–not guess. They’re documented. It could be in a manual you pass out to all employees, or one that you’ve got linked up online.

It takes consistency, predictability, and tracking–systems that can be operated by someone with a base-line level of skill. When you can duplicate that, you’re on track to financial freedom.

Forgiveness

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Last week we took a look at how anger is one of the bitterest pills you can swallow. It’s the pill that doesn’t dissolve. It just sits there, potentially poisoning any and all good that comes into our lives.

You can’t have a fresh start to a relationship—with people, money or anything else—until you’ve cleaned up that lingering resentment with your parents, spouse, friend, lover, relative or whoever hurt you in the past. If you don’t clean that up first, you’ll drag that hurt with you.

A quote that I really like is from a book called ‘Your Cosmic Destiny’ by W.A. Chapman. It says, “Holding on to anger and resentment is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.”

So how do we let go of anger? We looked at opening ourselves to the other person’s perspective: there might be something going on that we didn’t know about.

The other part of letting go of anger is to forgive those people, even if they were dead wrong; even if they’re still freakin’ jerks. We all do the best we can at any given time. It may not be one of our best moments in life, but it’s the best for that time. Understanding this simple truth makes a huge difference in letting go.

Whatever happened to make us so upset, it’s not the event that has us any more. It’s the story about the event and our choice to keep that story alive. All we have to do is remind ourselves that both us and those we’re angry with were not getting (or perceived we weren’t getting) what we wanted, and both www.fertileheart.com/clomid-clomiphene-infertility-treatment/ side’s reactions are based in fear. Our conditioning blocks our higher selves from stepping back and looking at things as they are, not as we fear them to be.

When we become aware, though, we now have an opportunity to make new choices. We can consciously choose to come from our higher self—be the person we know we can be—forgive and move on, remembering that punishing them any longer only hurts us.

So you don’t necessarily forget but you do necessarily forgive. Forgiveness is the key because when you release them from their deed (or non-deed as may be the case) you automatically release yourself from the anger and negative emotion around that deed.

It’s been way too long, with too much hurt and too much pain. For your own sake, tell whoever you need to that you forgive them, or that you’re at least willing to let it go. Forgiving is not condoning, and it’s certainly not forgetting. Forgiving is our way toward healing.

Here’s what’s important to remember, though: do not expect ANYTHING from them! Heck, in your mind that person “deserves” your forgiveness, but they may feel like they don’t need any forgiving. They might actually be resentful toward you, but that’s okay. It’s not about them. The process is for you. Say your piece, hear and accept their side, and be on your way in peace.

What was the most impactful result of forgiveness that you’ve experienced—from either side of the equation? What significant changes in your life happened as a result of clearing anger and resentment with someone important in your life? We want to hear from you!

Anger

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Of all of the negative emotions we have to deal with, the most debilitating of them is anger. Anger sometimes runs and can often ruin lives.

I was angry at my dad for years. When I was a kid, I had this coin collection that I was really proud of, and I kept the coins in this piggy bank. My dad knew where I kept it as well, and one day it was just gone. My prized collection that—in my mind at least—I worked so hard for, just disappeared. Eventually, the piggy bank reappeared, but when I angrily accused my father of stealing … let’s just say he responded pretty angrily, too.

I thought of it as one of those things that ‘just happens,’ and you move on, yes?

Throughout my adult years I never re-examined that incident. I never considered his side of the story. My perspective was, ‘I’m right and that’s that!’ Fine and swell except for one problem: I unconsciously decided that men weren’t to be trusted with money or anything else. The anger and distrust was holding me back, not him. Think that had an effect on my long-term success and happiness?

Most of us are run by our past circumstances. We play the victim role based on an idea that it’s all our parents’ fault for how they raised us. ‘This is what happened, this is the conclusion, and now this is what I do.’

‘You want me to be a success? I’ll be a failure just to show you what a lousy parent you were!’

The most important thing to the conditioned mind is to be right. And when we’re angry, it’s usually about not getting what we want, and we feel justified in our position for the reason of the moment. So we retaliate by not giving the person that we’re angry with what they want. Meanwhile, we’re often going down the drain with or without them, true or true?

So … five different cities, 12 different businesses, 14 different jobs and 35 years later, I learned my dad was actually showing my prized coins to his poker buddies, and he didn’t want to confuse my coin collection with the poker pot so he just kind of stashed it away and forgot to put it back where I kept it. He was proud and protective, not a thief. Only when I became aware of why I wasn’t settled down—as a form of rebellion, anger and retaliation—I was able to make a new choice and build lasting success in life.

Anger and resentment only hurts you! You feel it, not whoever you’re angry at. It gets stuck in the cells of your body, not theirs. It makes you sick, not them. Even worse, sometimes that anger might actually be totally unwarranted, a simple misunderstanding. It’s not worth hanging on to.

Search your past for an emotional incident that resulted in your getting angry about something that concerned money and/or at least one other person. The idea is to simply re-look at a past or childhood situation from your current and (possibly) more mature point of view, and consider revising it so that it doesn’t haunt you anymore. What’s your story? We want to hear from you!

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