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Mobilising Your Customer Sales Force by Dr Paddi Lund Create a system for referrals ... and harness the power of your own Customer Sales Force! How Dr Paddi Lund made a 'By Invitation Only' practice and thrived - 'A' class customers on tap with no marketing or advertising and a locked front door. Paddi's Frustrating Problem - His investment in marketing was giving him an unpredictable return with prospective customers of questionable quality. Paddi's Creative Solution - Build a System that encourages regular customer referrals and takes the inconsistencies of conventional marketing out of the equation. Imagine spending nothing on advertising and yet having a constant supply of ideal customers lining up to do business with you! If you're familiar with the power of a good referral system, then you'll want to learn about Mobilising Your Customers Sales Force. Visit PaddiLund.com and pick up your own copy of Mobilising Your Customer Sales Force today.

The Value of Networks

By Chris Brogan

Purchase a plane ticket and fly to a new city for the first time. Take a cab to the heart of the city and then realize you’re hungry for a bite to eat. Open your laptop and steal wifi, trying to find a restaurant, and realize you’ve left your laptop power cord at home, and will need to find a replacement. Get a call on your cell from your aunt saying that she needs to buy a new digital camera, and which one should she get, because she’s standing in Best Buy right now. See a new email come in from your boss stating that you’re fired.

Your Network: The Old Days

In the way old days, your network was your family, your neighbors, your coworkers, and a few scattered others. You lived reasonably close to some number of these people, and they knew your comings and goings as intimately as a Facebook news stream. These people knew you when you were a foolish kid, and knew that you weren’t very good at math, but that you were a hard worker. If you needed help with something, you could reach out by mail, by phone, by “asking around.” It took a while, but usually someone could find something.

Your Network: The New Days

Several of your “friends” aren’t that. They’re more “friendlies.” They agree to be part of your network. You can reach more people than ever before. They’re all over the world. They have different roles, different networks of their own. It’s exponential the difference in the combined sum of what these people know. They might not know you the way a cousin or Junior High School teacher would say they know you, but they are willing to do some level of information sharing with you.

What Do I Mean By Network?

The idea of a network is just that it’s a connection of things that form something larger in sum. Networked computers mean that you can access some resources back and forth and communicate. Social networks (in the software sense) mean that the software makes a connectivity between users. Networks in the human sense mean that we have chosen to align ourselves in some form or fashion around common beliefs, goals, values, etc.

Organized religion works on the power of networks. So do labor unions. So do governments. Business is ultimately about networks of one kind or another.

What Can A Network Do?

Networks are about sharing resources. It’s the same for computers, social networks, human networks, and pretty much all kinds. Thus, if you’re looking to build a good network of people, sharing has to be the common link. Networks can help someone raise money quickly. They can direct lots of attention at the same point. They can help someone find a job. They can elect government officials. They can shift power and resources seamlessly.

Not a Numbers Game, Or Is It?

I think some of the value of a network comes from its numbers.

In social networks, I’m fortunate to have a reasonably good number of “friends.” Partly, this is because I’ve been fortunate to attend a lot of conferences, and I’ve been diligent in meeting lots of people. Partly, it’s because I publish a blog. Partly, it’s because I do a lot of work to link things together to FORM networks by inviting people to certain social networks, to accept requests from people, to build out the digital structure of such things.

Some quick tidbits:

• I’m not in any way a “collector” of friends in social networks. At this point, I say yes to most anyone trying to connect, but I don’t gather.
• I don’t believe in the “rule” that some use that one must “really in real life” know someone before accepting them as a “friend.”
• I don’t build networks to market. I’m not a marketer. I build networks to be helpful, and to deliver value in both directions.
• I think the key to it all is: “more hands lighten the load.”

Tips on Building Valuable Networks

Quick definition of “value:” I don’t mean money. I mean the ability to deliver and receive information, help, and further development (of networks, information, capabilities).

I can only tell you what I believe has worked best for me. I imagine your mileage may vary. I hope others add their own ideas on building networks in the comments.

• Be friendly and inclusive. When I go to conferences, I look for the fringe players, the people who aren’t well known, but who are interesting. Sometimes, these turn into amazingly wonderful connections.
• Treat “big names” like real people, and oddly, they treat YOU like a real person. This comes in handy later, when you can be helpful.
• Seek to be helpful. Always. The more you can do for others, the more that wheel comes round, should you find yourself in need.
• Connect. Connect. Connect. Help others find each other. Connect people with other people as often as humanly possible. This keeps flow moving, and it shows that you’re into sharing.
• **BEWARE** network leeches. Occasionally, in trying to form communities of useful and sharing people, someone comes along who needs, needs, needs. Learn how to cut that sort away from your network. It’s not rude. It’s not elitist.
• Diversity and opportunity are great ways to build something more interesting. Homogenous networks are only useful in a narrow scope. Meaning: meet lots of good people from lots of walks of life. You never know.
• Say thank you. Often.
• Do as much as you can, and then offer to help connect them to even more help, if you can.
• Be as timely as possible. Help isn’t much help if it’s too late.
• Never take credit. Always assume responsibility. Be as humble as you can muster.
• Give often and long before you ever have to ask for something for you.

Social Networks and YOUR Network of Value

One last point before I ask you for your ideas: the power of all these social software applications is that they empower us to communicate rapidly, in a one-to-many format, and along the lines of our networks of value. To that end, be sure to use this to accomplish your goals. Make sure you know the size and depth of your personal database. Make sure your contacts and connections are well connected through these digital tools. Try to build them all such that you can respond quickly to people’s needs, and that you can reach the edges of your network, and help others extend out to theirs, so that everyone may take full effect of that work.

And don’t be evil. (Easy, right?)

I consider your participation here a value of my network. The fact that you come and share your ideas and insights is wonderful to me. I’m not always nearby a computer to respond back to every comment, but I read everything you say, and I LOVE when someone in comments communicates to someone else, and when you go off and blog your own take on the original idea that takes it in another direction. Thank you for this. I’m forever grateful.

And now, what do you think? What have I missed? What are other ways to keep a network strong?

How to Stop Being an Employee

By Paul Piotrowski

Most employees think that when they work for a company, the reason they work there is because the company pays them a certain amount per month and they need that amount to pay their bills. This is only partly true.

In reality, the real reason employees continue to be employees is because of something I call the “Uncertainty Factor”. What does that mean? Well, basically what it means is that when you work for someone else, you make an agreement with them to exchange a certain amount of value for a certain wage. However, in most cases it is not the wage that you’re truly going after but rather the CERTAINTY that you will get that wage.

For example, lets say that you are a top notch computer graphics artist. You have the ability to create amazing computer graphics that you know are valuable in the industry. You hear about freelancers getting paid top dollar for such work. However, you find yourself working at a “stable job” making a stable but not so exciting salary. Why? In the majority of cases, it is because you are addicted to the CERTAINTY of knowing that you’re going to get a steady paycheck at the end of the month. It’s not the size of the paycheck, but rather it’s stability. You’re addicted to guarantees.

Here is the main difference between an employee, and an entrepreneur.

Employee:

1. INPUT (Do what you’re asked to do.)
2. OUTPUT (You get a paycheck.)

Entrepreneur:

1. INPUT (You follow your dream.)
2. UNCERTAINTY
3. OUTPUT (You get paid.)

Essentially, as an employee you just have to make sure you show up to work, do what you’re asked to do, and then collect a paycheck. As an entrepreneur, however, you have to first figure out what you want to do, then figure out how that’s going to make money, then do that thing, and then there is a level of uncertainty in the middle of whether it will work and whether the value you create will be converted to cash, and then there’s the output which is you getting paid.

That middle part, the uncertainty is what kills most people’s ambitions of being an entrepreneur. Everyone wants the “Employee” benefits inside the “Entrepreneur” model and it just doesn’t work that way. There are no guarantees.

Do you guys realize that when I started Blogging two years ago, I had absolutely no guarantees that I would ever make money doing this? Nobody offered me any kind of pay to Blog. Nobody told me that if I do A, B, C, D etc. that I would be guaranteed to make money. Nobody said this would work. In fact, most people say that this doesn’t work. Interent Marketing, just like any other entrepreneurial venture is full of risk. There are no guarantees.

So how the heck did I stick to this and kept at it, researching, tweaking, learning, studying and adjusting my strategy for over two years before ever making more than a few dollars a month? The reason I was able to do it is because I have a much higher tolerence for UNCERTAINTY than most people. Why? Because this isn’t my first venture. I’ve been running businesses since I left highschool. I’ve failed many times and each time I put a lot of work and in most cases money into my projects, only to see them “fail”. However, each time I did this I learned something, so I didn’t classify them as “failures” in my mind, I classified them as learning experiences.

If you want to ever stop being an employee and move into being in business for yourself, you need to start embracing uncertainty instead of avoiding or running away from it. I know it’s not easy, and I still do it as well to a degree in some parts of my life, but you need to start getting comfortable with it. You can start small and work your way up. You don’t need to “stake the farm” on a single business idea, but you need to start taking more risks. If you don’t have money, just start risking your time.

I think the reason most “employee minded” people won’t even try entrepreneurship is because they have no idea how much higher the payouts can be. Here’s what they think the formulas is:

Either be an employee and get this:

1. Do what you’re asked to do.
2. Get paid $40,000/year guaranteed.

or be an Entrepreneur and get this:

1. Figure out what you need to do and do it.
2. Uncertainty whether it will work.
3. If it does work, you may make $40,000/year or maybe $45,000/year for doing same work as employee.

In reality, the Entrepreneur model is more like this:

1. Figure out what you need to do and do it.
2. Uncertainty whether it will work.
3. If it doesn’t work, you either make $0, or you lose money and perhaps even bankrupt the business. If it works out poorly, you may make $20,000/year. If it works out average, you may make $60,000/year. If it works out nicely you might make $240,000/year. If it really works out of you, you may make $750,000 per MONTH or more.

I know that to most people figures like that are beyond the realm of possibility. Meaning, most “normal” people laugh if you were to even propose that they could make $750,000 per month or more. They just don’t believe it. However, entrepreneurs out there are doing this right now and they’re probably not any smarter than you are…they’re just more able to handle risk and uncertainty. There are also a whole bunch of entrepreneurs right now filing for bankruptcy. That’s the UNCERTAINTY that keeps people employed as employees working for someone else. They don’t want to take that kind of risk themselves so they offload that responsibility onto their boss who takes that risk on their behalf and in exchange ends up making a profit for providing such “security” to the employee.

I’m not saying this is good or bad. That’s just the way it is. I’ve been in situations before where I worked for businesses where I didn’t want to participate in sharing the risk with the owner of the business so I demanded a salary to work there. I’ve also been in situations where I traded in my salary for a pure performance based compensation structure. I’ve also been in the situations where I was the owner of a business where I took all the risk personally and removed that uncertainty for my employees. I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to borrow large sums of money (basically the size of a second mortgage) against my house personally, just so that I could have enough money to cover payroll for my employees who had no idea I had to do that in order to provide them that “secure” place of having no uncertainty.

When I see people making six or even seven figure incomes, I look at them and think “There’s someone who’s probably taken some big risks in life and is comfortable with uncertainty”, while most employee minded people are probably thinking “Man that dude is grossly overpaid… he doesn’t even do anything more than I do at work… I work way harder than that guy, why does he get to make so much money?!”

So, how do you stop being an employee? You need to develop the courage necessary to deal with uncertainty. You need to be able to start taking calculated risks, start believing in yourself and your ability to not only survive but to also thrive on your own. You need to start embracing uncertainty and become comfortable with making mistakes and failing a little bit in order to learn from your mistakes.

The payoffs if you succeed are huge, and the journey is much more exciting, but it’s not for everyone.

I’ve met Bloggers who make four times the yearly income of a police officer or a fireman. I’ve seen affiliate marketers with monthly revenues about three times the yearly salary of what the President of the United States gets paid.

So many people want to make this type of money as entrepreneurs, but they don’t want to risk anything. They want no uncertainty and everything to be guaranteed and handed to them on a silver platter.

I read this in a forum once. (Paraphrased)

“Person1: I want to make money as a Blogger. Like those $25k/m Bloggers out there. What’s the first step?”
“Person2: Figure out your name, go to GoDaddy.com and register a domain name.”
“Person1: Thanks! …. ….. oh wait, it says here I have to pay $9 for the domain name.”
“Person2: Yeah…so?”
“Person1: Oh…this costs money? What if it doesn’t work out? Nevermind then…”

See what I mean? No risk tolerence. No willingness to tolerate any uncertainty. You can go and return pop bottles to go make $9 to afford a domain, but most people are too lazy to do it. If you want to stop being an employee, then learn to tolerate some uncertainty grow some balls. Learn to handle some uncertainty and take some calculated risks. Or, if you don’t want to then just accept that you’re choosing to be an employee and that’s ok too. Go find something you enjoy doing for a decent wage and stop complaining about it.

How Analytics Are Changing Business

Is Your Small Business Marketing Strategy Killing Your Profits?

by Charlie Cook
©2006 In Mind Communications, LLC, all rights reserved.

With the wrong small business marketing strategy you could be killing your profits and limiting your business. Your small business marketing strategy is like the driver in a car, with marketing tactics being the engine. If you know where you want to go and how to get there, your small business marketing tactics will help you attract many more clients, if not you could crash.

Every business uses one or more of the following tactics to attract clients; mailings, advertisements, phone calls, networking, promotional events, a web site and sending email. If you use any of these and aren’t attracting as many new clients as you want or making as much money as you’d like, the problem may not be the tactics. It's your marketing strategy that needs attention.

Without an effective offline and online marketing strategy you won't achieve the results you want, no matter how much time and money you spend. A high profile radio ad campaign won’t help you grow your business unless it includes a message that attracts your prospects. An article about your firm in a newspaper can bring in business or just be a conversation piece. Email messages you send can end up in your prospects' delete bin or prompt them to contact you.

Mailings, radio advertisements or web sites are only delivery vehicles for your marketing message. They are the tactics you use to implement your strategy. Are you using the right offline and internet strategy to market your business?

Ready to stop wasting time and start making more money? Discover how to attract more clients with a comprehensive small business marketing strategy. Discover how with "The Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing" manual."

"The ‘Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing’ work! I’m getting many more leads and new clients since I started using the ideas from the manual in my ads and mailings. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to put their marketing on track and sell more. This is one investment that has already paid for itself."
Myra Shelton, Realtor

What are the fundamental principles of your marketing strategy? If you can answer this question, you're among one percent of business owners who can. Most people think only about their marketing tactics or vehicles and wonder why their profits aren't growing as quickly as they would like.

Business-Building Marketing Strategy
To grow your business you need to:

Define Your Goals
Identify where you want to take your business and what you want to achieve. Other than making more money than you are now, have you written down a vision of what you want your business to be two years from now? Five years from now?

Target Your Marketing
Most small business owners waste their time and money pitching too broadly. Do you have an effective method for identifying the people who want your products and services?

Use a Problem Solving Approach
Over 95 percent of small business owners focus their marketing on the reasons people should buy their products and services, not on their clients. Is your small business marketing focused on client's concerns and problems or on yours?

Demonstrate Value
Getting your name in front of people is a first step in marketing, but if your prospects don’t know what you do or how you can help them, you haven't achieved your goal. Past clients and prospects may have only a limited idea of how you can help them. Do your prospects understand the range of problems you solve and the solutions you provide?

Build Relationships
Every past client and prospect who has shown an interest can help you grow your business. Most service professionals know this but waste this resource through lapsed or infrequent communication. Do you have a method for staying in touch on a monthly basis with every person who could help you grow you business? Do you have a strategy for growing the number of qualified prospects on this list each week?

Many people find that defining their marketing strategy is the hardest part of their job. So hard that many small business owners use a tactical approach instead. Don't make this mistake!

Once you have clear business marketing goals and a well-defined strategy, your marketing will be more focused and you can make more effective use of appropriate marketing tactics to grow your business. Shift to strategic small business marketing and you'll turbo charge your marketing and your business.

The Top Reason Most Small Business Marketing Fails

by Charlie Cook
©2006 In Mind Communications, LLC, all rights reserved.

Is there something missing from your marketing? Is your small business marketing on target? Or could you be generating ten times as many sales?

Most small business owners know that to grow their business they need to generate interest and sales. Sounds simple enough. Then why is it often so difficult to do? Why aren’t you selling ten times as much as you are?

Selling is essentially a simple transaction. Your prospects give you money or a credit card to pay you for a product or service that they want to buy. The question is, how to you get more of them to do that?

The answer is simpler than you realize. To convert more prospects into clients, give them the marketing information they want. If you’re not generating a steady stream of sales, it may be for the top reason that most marketing fails; you’re not giving your prospects the information they want and need to become customers.

Do you know what your prospects want? Do you know what information to provide to convert them to clients?

Before a prospect will purchase from you, they need to;

• Want the product or service you sell,

• Know you exist,

• Like you and

• Trust you.

Most small business marketing is focused on getting attention and getting right the sale. This approach doesn’t help prospects determine whether they truly want the product or service or whether it solves their problems. It doesn’t help them get to know you, like you and trust you.

Imagine a determined young man looking for true love and marriage. Looking for immediate success, he decides to stand in the center of the local mall, jumps up and down and yell, “Marry me!”, “Marry me!” at the top of his lungs. Yes, he gets plenty of attention. But no customers (and he only needs one). No woman in her right mind would marry someone they didn’t know, like or trust.

Your clients are making a commitment when they make a purchase, exchanging their hard-earned dollars for your products and services. Before they plunge into this relationship, they’ll want to know you and trust you too.

Ready to find out exactly what to do to get more clients and customers? You could keep marketing the same way you have been, but you’re going to get the same results. If you’re serious about growing your business, discover how. Use this link to get the details >

Want more clients? Here’s how to get them:

1. Provide a product or service that people want

If you want more people to buy from you, do a better job of communicating to them through your marketing that you have what they want.

Use your lead generation system, ads, web site and mailings to get more attention by focusing on your prospects’ concerns and interests. Speaking to their needs will motivate them to contact you.

2. Help more people get to know you

Did you assume that sales would start pouring in because you sent out that mailing or took out that ad touting your product or service? If you did, you made the most common mistake made by small business owners.

One time ads or mailings rarely work to generate sales. People need to get to know you before they’ll do business with you.

Fortune 500 companies spend hundreds of millions dollars a year helping their prospects get to know them. If you had a marketing budget of a hundred million dollars, you could do the same.

If you don’t have that kind of cash on hand, focusing on building your brand image is a waste of time and money. There are other ways to help your prospects get to know you and buy from you that cost little or nothing and will get you the results you’re looking for.

Use your lead generation system to prompt prospects to contact you for your expertise, a free consultation or report. Then build on this first contact by continuing to provide your prospects with helpful ideas that will help them get to know you and like you.

3. Help more prospects trust you

The two best ways to help your prospects learn to trust you are to regularly help them by giving them information they want and have others vouch for you by using testimonials.

What’s the key to helping prospects trust you? Follow up! More than 80% of sales are lost due to lack of simple follow-up, calls, emails, and letters.

To get the clients you want, start by giving them the marketing information they want. Once you do, you’ll see your sales increase by two to four times or more.

How You Could Have All The Clients You Want
Selling more isn’t about luck. Truly successful business owners don’t turn prospects into sales by magic. They understand – and apply – a few simple marketing principles and techniques to pull in hungry prospects and convert them to clients.

Use This Small Business Marketing Strategy to Attract More Clients

by Charlie Cook

Not Getting As Many Clients As You Want?

There is a good chance it is not the services or products you offer that is the problem. While you may be an expert in most aspects of your business, many service professionals and small business owners don't do the right things to market their products and services. They don't have a small business marketing strategy that works.

You are probably spending time and money on advertising, mailings, sales calls and presentations to prospects. But going through the motions of marketing doesn’t guarantee results.

More often than not, potential clients aren’t fully aware of the range of your products and services and don’t think of your company even when they have a genuine need, despite all your efforts. You could pour more time and money into individual marketing tactics and achieve only an incremental amount of growth. Or you could use these proven marketing strategies to attract clients and grow your business.

Is your business strategy helping you earn as much as you'd like? Does your marketing plan help you generate hundreds of prospects a week and help you convert them to paying clients? Are you getting the results you want from your marketing?

Use the Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing Manual to define the blueprint for a profitable web site. You'll learn the strategies and tactics that can help you grow you online and offline business. Click here to increase sales with a better small business marketing strategy and marketing plan .

The marketing approach I help clients apply to build their businesses is based on five principles of highly effective marketing. Apply these principles to attract all the clients you want.

1. Start with Client Problems
2. Target Your Market
3. Demonstrate Value
4. Build Your Network
5. Stay in Touch

1. Start with Client Problems
Most service professionals focus their small business marketing on their expertise, their approach and the products and services they offer. While competence is a key to doing the work, most clients' primary concern is getting problems solved and having their spoken and unspoken needs met. Instead of marketing your credentials, your processes and methodology, market your knowledge and the solutions you offer.

Use every resource available to you, from web research to your network to identify the common problems your clients experience. Use every opportunity, phone call, every contact to deepen this understanding. Instead of focusing on your services and methodology, use questions to understand clients' specific needs. Lead with an identification of clients' problems and follow with a focus on the solutions you provide.

Marketing is about making connections, specifically between a client's unmet need and the solutions you provide. The best way to impress clients is to show them you understand the problems they are experiencing. If you want to leverage your credentials, mention past clients when you provide examples of how you solved similar problems.

2. Target Your Market
Are you getting a positive response to your offline and internet marketing plan? If not, then you may not have targeted your market and their specific needs and interests precisely enough. Many business owners and marketers often try to do the impossible and be everything to everybody. Instead define your niche market and get the attention of this group.

3. Demonstrate Value
Actions speak louder than words. If you want clients to be aware of the value of your products or services, you will need to give them a test drive. Open the door with newsletters, workshops, a free session or articles found on your web site. Over time demonstrating the value you provide will convince prospective clients of your ability to solve their problems and help position you as a trusted advisor.

4. Build Your Network
The objective is to know who is interested in your products and services. Networking is a good idea because people like to buy products from people they know and trust. If they’ve met you or been referred to you they are more likely to trust you.

Depending on the business you are in, you can build your network of prospects through conventional networking or through your web site and email. Either way the more qualified prospects you have in your network the better.

5. Stay in Touch
Memories are short. Once we hit middle age most of us can't remember what we had for dinner two days ago, much less the host of services various firms provide. In most cases its safe to assume your target market has forgotten about the range of solutions you offer, if they remember you at all.

Stay in touch with your target market on a monthly or, at a minimum quarterly basis. When you contact people be clear about the action you want prospective, existing and past clients to take.

The Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing
The foundation of the small business marketing approach I teach clients are the Insider Secrets to Highly Effective Marketing. The focus is on giving value and building a network of clients and prospective clients. Put this strategy together effectively using the five marketing principles detailed above and you'll be ahead of the competition.

Questions to Answer

1.	What marketing strategies will help you develop a steady stream of clients?
2.	What web site marketing tactics can you use in concert to implement your strategy?
3.	Which individual marketing vehicles should you use and when?

For over two decades I’ve been helping senior managers and independent professionals learn the marketing ideas and skills they need to grow their businesses. To help you market your business I’ve written marketing workbooks and manuals and provide one-on-one coaching.

Catch More Clients Using Strategic Business Networking

by Charlie Cook
Copyright 2006©. All rights reserved.

Is your business networking helping you bring in the new clients you want?

If you are like most independent professionals and small business owners, you put hard work into getting your name out there and distribute your business card wherever you go. You may even attend a weekly or monthly networking group or occasional business conference where people share leads. And like most people, your time and effort isn’t generating a steady stream of new business.

The problem is that most people think that business networking consists of telling as many people as possible what they do, and handing out as many business cards as they can. They waste the few precious moments they have with new and existing contacts by focusing on themselves.

Its possible to meet someone in the airport, hand them your card after a brief conversation, and have them call you to request your services, but this random approach is like playing the lottery. You can’t count on it to produce results. It is a Push and Pray technique: you push your information out to others and pray that they respond.

Discover how to get more clients and job offers with a better business networking strategy.

It rarely works. Your contact loses your card or simply forgets about you, or the timing wasn’t right, or, in spite of the connection you thought you’d made, a single conversation usually isn’t enough to launch a client relationship.

That initial conversation should be about understanding your prospects’ problems, needs and concerns, and collecting their contact information. The objective of business networking is not to expound on your credentials.

Is your small business marketing plan helping you earn as much as you'd like? Does your marketing plan help you generate hundreds of prospects a week and help you convert them to paying clients? Are you getting the results you want from your small business marketing?

Use the 5 Principles of Highly Effective Marketing Manual to define the blueprint for a profitable web site. You'll learn the strategies and tactics that can help you grow you online and offline business.

Click here to get your copy and improve your marketing plans.

Spend the time you have with prospects (or people who might know a prospect) asking questions and collecting information. Then you can determine whether they would have any genuine interest in/need for the solutions you provide. Use this client problem centered networking strategy to initiate and build profitable relationships.

Get the Free Marketing Plan Guide, "7 Steps to Attract More Clients and Grow Your Business" and the Free Marketing Tips Ezine, "More Business". Click Here >>

Pull Information
1. See how many cards you can collect from prospects, and don’t worry about how many of your own business cards you distribute. Some successful marketers don’t even have a business card.

2. When you meet people, use the time to gather information from them, including:
• Primary concerns about their business
• Problems they want solved
• Unmet business needs.
• Areas where the solutions you provide overlap with their needs
• Their contact information

3. Continue to expand your network. Whenever you make a contact, ask for referrals to other prospects.

4. Once you have this information, enter it into your database or contact manager.

Build Relationships
1. People have short memories. Follow-up after your initial contact and then stay in touch with your network on a regular basis. If you let more than a month go by without making contact they’ll forget that you exist and that you are the best person to solve their financial, legal, human resource, design, or other problems.

You’ll want to make personal contact with some people on your prospect list, but in most cases, a letter, newsletter or ezine will do the job. Use the merge function in your software to personalize your mailings.

2. Demonstrate the value of your expertise or products by sending prospects and clients an idea or suggestion they can use right away. You could present this in an article you’ve written, or one you’ve read. Your contact will then associate you with the problems you solve.

Discover how get more clients and job offers with your networking groups.

Pull information from prospects and clients to grow your network, stay in touch and regularly demonstrate the value of your products and services.

Networking should be one of the core small business marketing tactics of most independent professionals and small business owners. Use client-centered networking to lessen your reliance on costly and time consuming cold calling/telemarketing and advertising. Over time, this business building strategy will reward you with a steady stream of new clients.

Which comes first, the Success or the Happiness?

Written on 4/28/2008 by Shilpan Patel of Success Soul.

We've heard the classic expression, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Chickens hatch from the eggs, but eggs are laid by the chickens, arousing endless debate over each side of the arguments.

I've come up with an equally controversial expression to perturb your mind, "which comes first, the success or the happiness?" Before you jump the ropes, I wanted to warn you that arguments could be made to prove which gives rise to the other. Success comes from within, knowing the true worth of our human potential.

I have several profound reasons to prove that happiness leads to the success.

1. Positivity is the mother of success: We all know that positivity leads to attitude and unwavering faith to achieve success. In the history of the human race, no negative person has ever climbed the peaks of success; happiness is a virtue of positivity. Without happiness, positivity dies a horrible death.
   


2. It's all in my head: Success begins with self-affirmation. It's that staunch belief that when I love what I do, success has to come. When the mood is positive, we give rise to our self-esteem leading to relentless pursuit of success.
   


3. I succeed when others succeed: It is a known fact that success comes to those who invest in other people's success. Being happy is a prerequisite to have a pro-social attitude leading to generosity with time and money.
   


4. I'm happy, so I am healthy: Happiness tends to instill positivity towards life goals including a healthy mind and healthy relationships. With the virtue of healthy mind, body and soul, I now am focused to achieve success.
   


5. Be confident: I've noticed that staying under sun energizes my mood and willingness to pursue my goals. Similarly, with happiness, I get an abundance of confidence in my skills and in my resilience towards temporary failures to achieve success.
   


6. Constancy of purpose: Success comes to those who have a definite purpose. Their relentless efforts towards definite purpose come from happiness within to affirm that victory is the only acceptable outcome.
   


7. Success holds no limits: Happiness leads to creative vision that seeks achievement without limits. My success is limited only to the limits I impose on my thoughts. With happiness, I take my self-esteem to unseen heights to achieve success beyond my wildest expectations.
   


8. In the moment: Enjoying every moment with focus of mind, body and soul leads to happiness that shows in the activity that we engage in. I tend to be at my best when my mind is neither engaged in the past failures nor in the future fantasies. I am giving all I have to the task at hand with unbound happiness. I am destined to arrive at success.
   

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) Preeminent leader of Indian nationalism.

Our profound view towards success and happiness shapes our destiny. You may focus solely on success and sacrifice happiness with the belief that happiness will follow success. That may prove to be wrong; sharing laughter with family, helping others, being personable and establishing social relations are all forms of happiness, essential to the health of you success.

You may have arguments from the other side of the fence. If so, I'd love to hear why you think success gives rise to happiness?

-Shilpan

Really Bad Powerpoint

I wrote this about four years ago, originally as an ebook. I figured the idea might spread and then the problem would go away--we'd no longer see thousands of hours wasted, every single day, by boring PowerPoint presentations filled with bullets.

Not only has it not gone away, it's gotten a lot worse. Last week I got a template from a conference organizer. It seems they want every single presenter to not only use bullets for their presentations, but for all of us to use the same format! Shudder.

So, for posterity, and in the vain hope it might work, here we go again:

Really Bad Powerpoint

It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to champion at a church or a school or a Fortune 100 company, you’re probably going to use PowerPoint.

Powerpoint was developed by engineers as a tool to help them communicate with the marketing department—and vice versa. It’s a remarkable tool because it allows very dense verbal communication. Yes, you could send a memo, but no one reads anymore. As our companies are getting faster and faster, we need a way to communicate ideas from one group to another. Enter Powerpoint.

Powerpoint could be the most powerful tool on your computer. But it’s not. Countless innovations fail because their champions use PowerPoint the way Microsoft wants them to, instead of the right way.

Communication is the transfer of emotion.

Communication is about getting others to adopt your point of view, to help them understand why you’re excited (or sad, or optimistic or whatever else you are.)If all you want to do is create a file of facts and figures, then cancel the meeting and send in a report.

Our brains have two sides. The right side is emotional, musical and moody. The left side is focused on dexterity, facts and hard data. When you show up to give a presentation, people want to use both parts of their brain. So they use the right side to judge the way you talk, the way you dress and your body language. Often, people come to a conclusion about your presentation by the time you’re on the second slide. After that, it’s often too late for your bullet points to do you much good.

You can wreck a communication process with lousy logic or unsupported facts, but you can’t complete it without emotion. Logic is not enough.

Champions must sell—to internal audiences and to the outside world.

If everyone in the room agreed with you, you wouldn’t need to do a presentation, would you? You could save a lot of time by printing out a one-page project report and delivering it to each person. No, the reason we do presentations is to make a point, to sell one or more ideas.

If you believe in your idea, sell it. Make your point as hard as you can and get what you came for. Your audience will thank you for it, because deep down, we all want to be sold.

Four Components To A Great Presentation
First, make yourself cue cards. Don’t put them on the screen. Put them in your hand. Now, you can use the cue cards you made to make sure you’re saying what you came to say.

Second, make slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them. Create slides that demonstrate, with emotional proof, that what you’re saying is true not just accurate.

Talking about pollution in Houston? Instead of giving me four bullet points of EPA data, why not read me the stats but show me a photo of a bunch of dead birds, some smog and even a diseased lung? This is cheating! It’s unfair! It works.

Third, create a written document. A leave-behind. Put in as many footnotes or details as you like. Then, when you start your presentation, tell the audience that you’re going to give them all the details of your presentation after it’s over, and they don’t have to write down everything you say. Remember, the presentation is to make an emotional sale. The document is the proof that helps the intellectuals in your audience accept the idea that you’ve sold them on emotionally.

IMPORTANT: Don’t hand out the written stuff at the beginning! If you do, people will read the memo while you’re talking and ignore you. Instead, your goal is to get them to sit back, trust you and take in the emotional and intellectual points of your presentation.

Fourth, create a feedback cycle. If your presentation is for a project approval, hand people a project approval form and get them to approve it, so there’s no ambiguity at all about what you’ve all agreed to.

The reason you give a presentation is to make a sale. So make it. Don’t leave without a “yes,” or at the very least, a commitment to a date or to future deliverables.

Bullets Are For the NRA
Here are the five rules you need to remember to create amazing Powerpoint presentations:

1. No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.
2. No cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images.
3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions.
4. Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running.
5. Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They don’t work without you there.

The home run is easy to describe: You put up a slide. It triggers an emotional reaction in the audience. They sit up and want to know what you’re going to say that fits in with that image. Then, if you do it right, every time they think of what you said, they’ll see the image (and vice versa).1

Sure, this is different from the way everyone else does it. But everyone else is busy defending the status quo (which is easy) and you’re busy championing brave new innovations, which is difficult.

Seth Godin

The difficult choice

In an brilliant post Seth Godin asks if we

In a review of The Dip, a listener writes,

"Many winners and people or companies that get great results or wind up on top simply stumbled into winning or lucked out! He ignores the whole notion of how randomness plays into people or companies being winners or losers. But that's the whole point of these types of books - to make you feel like you have more control over your destiny. I would argue that luck and randomness play at least as big a role as all of this dip stuff. "

Without a doubt, luck is involved. I don't think anyone would tell you otherwise. The choice one needs to make, though is this:

Either you believe that luck is dominant, in which case, why bother with effort?
or
You believe that luck is random, in which case it can be eliminated from your thinking and you can focus on all the stuff you can control.

I don't think luck alone gets you into Harvard Law School or a clerkship at the Supreme Court. I don't think luck gets someone to buy your car (the best in its class and a great value) instead of the lame alternative.

I've been astonishingly lucky with many elements of my career. Mostly because solid singles turned into doubles or the occasional homer. I figure most of the failures are my fault and many of the successes were really good breaks. But I can't imagine how lonely and depressing it would be to view myself as nothing but a pinball, batted around by forces over which I have no influence.

The problem with not assigning it all to luck, of course, is that you're not only responsible for your wins, you're also responsible for your losses. This decision also means you've got a lot to do all day.

Waiting for the fickle finger of fate to point at you (and cursing the universe until it does) is a lousy strategy. What a shame that so many people rationalize their lives this way. It might be a useful rationalization, but how does it increase the likelihood you'll get what you want?

Medalhas Olimpicas

Olympic Medal winners at NBC Olympics.com!

Opportunist or entrepreneur?

"An opportunity seeker is always looking for their big opportunity to make lots of money from the hot opportunity (or method) of the moment. Their only question is,"Can I make money from this?"...Opportunity seekers buy lots of products (or businesses), use only a few, and abandon them when the next so-called "easy" way to make money comes by."

On the other hand...

"A true entrepreneur is a completely different animal...An entrepreneur has a clear vision of what they want the business to become. Because they have a vision, they can analyze their own strengths, their competitor strengths, the marketplace preferences, and devise different strategies for achieving their vision.

"After reviewing the pros and cons of each strategic alternative they pick the one strategy most certain to successfully achieve their vision. The entrepreneur knows that their biggest opportunity is always inside their business. They follow their ideal strategy and not the hot product that everyone is doing this week." -Rich Shefren

Do you agree this distinction applies to us in the NM business, jumping from deal to deal and method to method?

Looking at your history with NM so far, which one are you?

by Kim Klaver

Unleash Your Lead Generation Machine

Lead generation is a funny thing. It's the lifeblood of any growing business, yet many approach it in a casual manner at best.

Consistently generating leads for your business takes momentum and momentum takes energy.

In my experience, lead generation energy is best created by effectively approaching your very well defined target market from several angles, advances and mediums.

Your multi-pronged attack should come just short of making them feel that you and your business are everywhere they want to go.

One way to accomplish this is through the carefree spending of bucket loads of money on advertising. It's an approach that has actually worked for some, but I don't recommend it for most small business owners.

A more effective small business lead generation machine, one that generates the greatest return on investment, is best created through the blending of targeted advertising, consistent public relations and a systematic approach to referrals.

This three prong attack is the stuff that momentum is built on.

Advertising

For most small businesses, direct mail is one of the best ways to target specific markets. The key to making small business direct mail, or any form of advertising, work is to use your advertising to gain marketing permission, before you try to gain a sale.

In other words, focus your advertising message on creating a lead. Make them an offer of a free report, seminar, evaluation, newsletter, or other low cost or no cost education message and let them begin to get to know you through this two step process.

The fact is you can't really expect a prospect to make a buying decision about your product or service from the 127 words you can cram onto a postcard. You can however, get their attention with a free report that offers them 5,000 words of your expertise. Once they have consumed that, they will be primed and ready for your follow-up sales message.

Public relations

PR is a big field but for the sake of this article, I'm talking about two things - Getting nice articles about your firm in publications read by your target market and placing expert articles, written by you, in publications read by your target market.

If you aren't doing both of these as part of your lead generation strategy, you are missing the boat.

When a prospect reads an article in a newspaper or magazine it carries much more credibility than an ad. The fact that someone else (the publication) thinks that you are great is a very strong endorsement.

Target the publications you want to appear in and then start to market to them. Read them, send information and notes to writers on staff, find out what guidelines they have for guest authors and start creating some positive PR to go along with your advertising.

Here's a quick tip. Ask your best clients what publications they read and rely on the most. This can be a great way to find the best publications to advertise in as well. Every industry has dozens of trade publications, but only a few are actually read.

Referrals

It's a good bet that a large percentage of your business came to you by referral. Cousin Louie liked what you did for him, so he told two friends and the rest history.

Referrals are a great way to build a business. Leads that come to you by way of referral generally cost nothing. Clients that come to you by way of referral are often your best clients.

Most small businesses get this, but few approach lead generation by way of referral in a systematic way. And, asking a few people if they know anybody that needs what you do is not a systematic referral approach.

Here are the steps in the system:

Target a referral source - this could be your clients, but often the best referral sources are actually strategic partners that also serve your ideal target client

Educate your referral source - Create a one page document that your referral sources can use to introduce what you do, how you do it and why they should consider having you do it for them. The biggest potential pitfall of a shoddy referral approach is that you get tons of leads that aren't right for you.

Communicate a creative referral marketing offer - If you can create a game out referral lead generation everyone will want to play. Reward your referral sources in creative ways. Co-brand powerful information products and show your strategic partners how to use them.

Creative referral offers also make great news stories for your PR program.

Are you starting to get a glimpse of how some of this works together, builds momentum and creates energy?

John Jantsch

How To Make Your Best Ever Presentation

The most important tip...EVER!

Make sure that you always think of your audience - when preparing your talk, writing it and presenting it. Put yourself in the audience's position at all times and your presentation will go with a swing. Remember your audience does not want to know how marvellous you are, or how brilliant your product is. What they do want to know is something that will help them. Find out what your audience needs to know first and your presentation will be bound to succeed.

The second most important tip...EVER!

When you prepare your presentation do not include any bullet points or text whatsoever. All your slides should be pictures, illustrations, charts, cartoons etc. That way your audience does not have to read anything and can concentrate on what you are saying. Equally, if you lose your way in your presentation it is not obvious - with text, the audience knows you've made a mistake!

The third most important tip...EVER!

MOVE! Whenever you are presenting make sure you move. Animation helps your audience and it helps you. Movement stops your muscles from tensing and also puts extra air into your lungs. When you move you relax. When you relax you perform better. So don't be static, get moving!

Use flow charts

If you need to demonstrate the way a project is proceeding or how you plan to achieve something, use a flow chart rather than a list of bullet points. This way you can make the flow chart visual, using icons and symbols.

Avoid too much colour

Try not to make your slides loo like an explosion in a paint factory! Too much colour will be distracting. Try to use 'complementary' colours which you'll find opposite each other on the 'colour wheel' found in most software packages that can produce slides. For instance, you'll find that yellow is opposite red on the wheel. Never use colours that are next to each other on a colour wheel as they will clash.

Prepare different handouts

Many people give printed copies of slides as their handouts. This is next to useless as the slides rarely make sense without the accompanying spoken words. So, the best handouts are those which are a written version of your talk - simply write a summary article with plenty of subheadings and bullet points. That way your audience will be able to review what you said more easily. True it takes more time to do this, but it is considerably more effective. Top presenters never give handouts of their slides.

John Jantsch

How to Create a Powerful Personal Marketing Message

Try this exercise to help you develop a personal marketing message that grabs your prospect's attention.

Quite often small business owners will ask me to reveal the most powerful marketing strategy I have seen. I can say without hesitation that the most powerful marketing strategy has little to do with advertising, direct mail, websites, referrals or blogs.

No, before any of those things will really have an impact on your business, you've got to uncover and communicate how your business is different from every other business that says they do what you do. You've got to get out of the commodity business. You've got to stake your claim on a simple idea or position in the mind of your prospective clients.

You've got to create and bring to life a powerful personal marketing message.

The following is an exercise that I have developed that allows you to find your message by focusing on creating a marketing based answer to one very important question.

And the question is: What do you do for a living? The answer to that question is something that I call "Your Talking Logo."

Like a traditional printed logo, a talking logo is a tool that allows your firm to communicate verbally the single greatest benefit of doing business with your firm. A talking logo is a short statement that quickly communicates your firm's position and forces the listener to want to know more.

The talking logo is generally played in response to the comment, "So, tell me about your firm or tell me what you do." Everyone has attended a networking event or Chamber of Commerce breakfast where you are given a minute to describe your firm...another great place to use your talking logo. When it comes to referral marketing, the talking logo is how you communicate the value of your firm to referral sources.

How do you create your talking logo?

Remember, a talking logo must be a short statement that leaves the listener wanting to know more. Think about your clients or potential clients ... they want to know what's in it for them. Don't just tell them what your firm does- tell them in a way that matters to them.

"I'm in the insurance business." "I'm a registered architect." "I'm a painting contractor." "I'm a computer repair specialist." The only thing this type of response will get you is, "Who cares?" or worse. A talking logo grabs your prospect's attention.

Your talking logo is created in two distinct parts. Part 1 addresses your target market, and Part 2 zeroes in on a problem, frustration or want that market has.

You know you have a great talking logo when a person hears you deliver it and immediately says, "Really, how do you do that?"

"So, if you ask Bill the architect, "what do you do for a living?" Which do you think is more powerful? "Oh, I'm a registered architect" or [Talking Logo] "I show contractors how to get paid faster."

Now if you're a contractor you've got to know more, right? In the example above Bill has focused on addressing a key frustration that he knows contractors (his target market) have.

What about this one? "I show small service professionals how to triple what they charge?"

Do you see a pattern?

Here's the pattern: Action verb, (I show, I teach, I help) target market, (business owners, homeowners, teachers, divorced women, Fortune 500 companies) how to xxxx = solve a problem or meet a need that you know your marketing has.

Now ask yourself, "Who wouldn't want to know more when you heard a talking logo that spoke directly to you?" Communicating a powerful message like this will get you referral appointments too.

Now, once you get their attention with your talking logo answer to what you do for a living, it's time to deliver the goods.

So, now they utter, "Really, how do you do that?"

You must be equally prepared to answer this supplemental question. Once your prospect says, "Tell me more," you need Part 2, and that is when you tell them how you plan to solve their problem.

The key to this tool though, is waiting until you have their full attention with your talking logo.

Part 2: Again, the architect from above - "Well, we have developed relationships with every zoning board in the metro area and can make sure that your projects don't get hung up by red tape, ensuring that you get to that first pay request faster."

By understanding your positioning and your target market and then communicating it through your talking logo, you will be miles ahead of most of your competition and well on your way to generating referrals and leads from anyone you meet.

By John Jantsch

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com

The 7 Core Principles

1. Strategy before tactics

Determine a marketing strategy and then build your marketing activities around delivering on the strategy.

2. Narrow market focus

Stop trying to be all things to a very large market. Concentrate your marketing efforts on a small, niche market and become the dominate player.

3. Differentiate or compete on price

Find and communicate a hook that allows your prospects to easily see how your firm is different from everyone else in the industry and price comparisons go out the door.

4. Marketing materials should educate

No one likes to be sold to. Create brochures, websites and other forms of communications that allow your prospects to really experience your expertise.

5. Lead Generation is a 2-step process

Let your prospects get to know you through advertising that invites them in for a gift, free analysis, and useful information. Get permission and then sell.

6. Embrace technology and the Internet

The Internet provides your small business with a powerful way to automatically find, connect and server your clients and prospects.

7. Live by a marketing calendar

The best way to move your marketing forward as you run your business is to create a calendar and schedule marketing activities every single day.

Do the Two-Step

Forget cold calling--now, getting leads is as simple as counting to two.

Every business needs leads; they're the lifeblood of your marketing machine. The trick is to set up a marketing system that lets you create a steady flow of leads without having to subject yourself to the torture of cold calling.

Create a two-step lead machine, and you can say goodbye to cold calling while still generating all the qualified, permission-based leads you can handle.

The basic idea behind the two-step approach is to create a free information product that your target market will see as a valuable read or listen, such as a workshop, evaluation, checklist, newsletter, course or tipsheet. It should have a catchy title that's related to your business, like, "How to Tell if Your Roofing Contractor Is Lying," or "101 Things You Can Do With Your iPod." This is sometimes referred to as bait.

Now that you have your value-packed information product, every bit of your advertising--Yellow Pages, magazine ads, direct mail, business cards, letterhead, e-mail signature, website--should focus on getting people to request, pick up or download that report. Don't try to do anything else with your advertising; let the report sell for you. That's Step One. For startups, this approach is so much more effective than traditional advertising for several reasons. First, this tactic allows you to draw interest without having to tell your entire story--something that's tough to do in a small ad. Second, it allows you to demonstrate your expertise in a nonthreatening way: on the prospect's terms. Nobody likes to be sold to, but if they take the time to read your report and understand that what you do has value, the relationship can begin.

A prospect who has requested your free information is officially a hot lead. When prospects visit your website, they're effectively raising their hand and identifying themselves as being interested in what you do. When that happens, the hardest part of your sales job is done. Capture all the names and e-mails of those who request the report. Then your sales efforts can focus on taking that group--and only that group--to the next step in the process. That may mean following up with an appointment or simply a series of more advanced mailings. That's Step Two.

If you take this advice to heart, everything about how you market your business will change. And finding new business will become a much more rewarding and valuable experience.

You'll probably find other uses for your free report as well, including:

• Referrals: Ask your sources to introduce your business to others by way of your free report, web page or newsletter. This makes referrals easy for them and assures that your story is told.
• Cold calling: I know, I know. You should never need to cold call. But if you do, do it this way: Call those prospects on your list and, instead of trying to convince them to give you five minutes of their time next Tuesday, offer them the address for your power-packed free info, then shut up. Your prospecting time will be much more productive.

John Jantsch

The secret of the web (hint: it's a virtue)

Patience.

Google was a very good search engine for two years before you started using it.

The iPod was a dud.

I wrote Unleashing the Ideavirus 8 years ago. A few authors tried similar ideas but it didn't work right away. So they gave up. Boingboing is one of the most popular blogs in the world because they never gave up.

The irony of the web is that the tactics work really quickly. You friend someone on Facebook and two minutes later, they friend you back. Bang.

But the strategy still takes forever. The strategy is the hard part, not the tactics.

I discovered a lucky secret the hard way about thirty years ago: you can outlast the other guys if you try. If you stick at stuff that bores them, it accrues. Drip, drip, drip you win.

It still takes ten years to become a success, web or no web. The frustrating part is that you see your tactics fail right away. The good news is that over time, you get the satisfaction of watching those tactics succeed right away.

The trap: Show up at a new social network, invest two hours, be really aggressive with people, make some noise and then leave in disgust.

The trap: Use all your money to build a fancy website and leave no money or patience for the hundred revisions you'll need to do.

The trap: read the tech blogs and fall in love with the bleeding-edge hip sites and lose focus on the long-term players that deliver real value.

The trap: sprint all day and run out of energy before the marathon even starts.

The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision and make something for the long haul. Because that's how long it's going to take, guys.

By Seth Godin

The Real Secret of Success

Brian Tracy has produced another level-headed book with Flight Plan. He correctly asserts that “Every year or two, someone comes along with a book like The Secret, suggesting that there is a quick and easy way to be happy and make a lot of money. According to The Secret, all you have to do is to think and visualize positive thoughts and you will attract into your life all the good things you want. This idea appeals to people who are unwilling to do the hard work that is necessary to achieve anything worthwhile.”

Success happens for a reason and it’s not wishful thinking. We are all subject to the Law of Cause and Effect: For every effect, there is a cause or causes. You get what you put in. It’s as simple as that. It’s not luck or mysterious forces. Actually, that should provide some comfort. It means that it is up to you. You’re in the driver’s seat. Tracy applies the principle well: “If you do what other successful people do, over and over again, nothing can stop you from eventually getting the same results that they do. Conversely, if you don’t do what other successful people do, nothing can help you.” That’s pretty straightforward.

Tracy lays out twelve steps to follow to help you determining and responding correctly to the many hundreds of choices in your journey through life that will help to create the results you’re looking for.

1. Choose Your Destination: What contribution will you make?
2. Review Your Flight Plan Options: You are only as free as your well-developed options. Continually develop options. Hope is not a strategy.
3. Write Your Flight Plan: Write down your goals and then resolve to do something every day, without exception, until your goal is achieved.
4. Prepare for Your Journey: Leave nothing to chance; plan for every eventuality.
5. Take Off at Full Throttle: This is the turning point. Your get out what you put in.
6. Plan for Turbulence: Don’t be surprised if you run into problems—everyone does.
7. Make Continual Course Corrections: You will have to make changes to deal with problems and opportunities that come up. It’s okay to change your mind.
8. Accelerate Your Learning and Progress: Never stop learning and upgrading your knowledge. Learning new skills that can increase your contribution is like stepping on the accelerator of your own potential.
9. Activate Your Superconscious Mind: When you relax completely and let your mind go blank, very often a superconscious idea emerges.
10. Avoid Shortcuts and Other Mirages: Be prepared to pay the full price for success.
11. Master Your Fears: The mastery of fear and the development of courage are essential prerequisites for a happy successful life.
12. Persist Until You Succeed: Persistence is the hallmark of success.

He writes, “Character is the ability to follow through on a resolution after the enthusiasm with which the resolution was made has passed.”