Flash Forward with Business

Flash forwards are used in movies to interrupt the continuity of the story line through the narration or portrayal of some future episode.  If we liken our mental gymnastics to a movie or play, our daydreams are nothing other than flash forwards.

Similar to the great new TV series on ABC, some of our imagined scripts are pleasant and some are less so.  Either way, the film director in our minds has set the stage and played out events that are expected, projected or imagined to occur in the future.  The polar opposite of a flash forward is a flashback, which are the stories that have occurred in our pasts that we use to guide our judgments.

Finding success takes much more than positive thinking and watching training videos.  All that we take in is supposed to be applied.  Measuring our success against another person’s can cause us to stall in our forward progress.  For example, if one of our colleagues has tried out a program and made good income in a minimal amount of time and our attempts do not produce a similar or greater amount as quickly using their same methods, we can easily talk ourselves out of proceeding with our plans.  That doesn’t mean it didn’t work.  It means that those methods used by your colleague do not work for you.

In the movie Hitch, perseverance is defined as continuing with a course of action without regard to discouragement, opposition, or previous disappointment.  Man!  Does that ever describe the mindset needed to effect change in your business or in your life but let’s stick to business.  Like kissing frogs to find a prince, programs that we try can manifest what we are looking for … or not.  Using the proverbial “cup is half full” viewpoint, we must be adaptable and take things in stride, fully aware that each one has taught us something that we can leverage down the road.  Eventually one will be “the answer” or spark a brand new idea that cannot be quashed by anyone or anything.

So what if your idea isn’t unique?  If the information or product isn’t readily available for free, you have found something you can monetize.  Pining over worries that your new idea will not be as popular as a similar one you have heard of or tried is a flash forward can keep you from innovating something even better.  Clairfy your thoughts, jot down your idea, conduct your market research and, if the results of your findings reveal a niche market that you can go after and hope to dominate, continue by defining your market strategy and business plan.  Once you know where you’re going and how you will get there, it is full steam ahead!

Frequently, our ideas are born from personal needs.  As the old adage goes, necessity is the mother of invention.  It is the truth that there were no wheels, once upon a time.  There are literally millions of examples just like that in your everyday life, once you stop to think about them.  Each of those inventors and entrepreneurs may have sounded like lunatics when their ideas were new but they didn’t let that stop them, thank goodness.

Brilliance is everyone’s birthright, isn’t it?  Whether or not we made the Dean’s List at school, we all come up with amazing ideas which seem mundane to us and others view as being strokes of genius.  You will know when you have latched onto one of these.  When your light bulb moment consumes your waking thoughts and is exciting enough to keep you from hitting the snooze button in the morning, promote it to a passion.  You know it is right, you know people need it, and you must do what is necessary to bring it to them.

Your Flash Forward doesn’t have to be a flash in the pan.  You know what you must do.  Quit thinking and talking about it and get to work!

The Most Successful Entrepreneur

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my new life in the place that I’ve always wanted to live … San Diego, California.  This transition would not have been possible if I had not decided to become an internet entrepreneur and learned what it takes to get income online.

The year has been personally exciting.  It was delightful to experience a winter without sub-zero temperatures, far too much snow, and long, dark, gray days.  Enjoying bright and sunny 80 degree days for the Holidays, without the temperature being an anomaly, put a smile on my face too.  I haven’t tired of driving through the marvelous mountains while traveling around the area on business and roaming along the shores of the Pacific Ocean whenever I choose to is nothing other than magical.

From a business perspective, San Diego has opened new doors of opportunity.  For example, I was privileged to attend a local chapter meeting of Glazer-Kennedy’s Insider Circle this evening.  After some power networking and a few business card trades, I gazed around the room to see what sorts of people were also interested in moving their business beyond mediocrity.  Attendees came from all walks of life.  There were lawyers, doctors, building contractors, mechanics, holistic practitioners, artists, and, of course, non-pretentious internet millionaires in baseball caps.  What was most important was one common thread.  Each person in that room was there because they knew that there is always something more to learn.

Equally interesting to me was one of the motivational posters taped to the wall which read:

The most successful entrepreneur is the loneliest person in the world

I’ve experienced some entrepreneurial success and I totally  understand that statement from personal experience…

It isn’t that entrepreneurs are aloof or choose to walk alone but the road we are on is certainly a road less traveled.  When the scent which will lead to success is found, it requires fastidious and incisive intellect to hone in upon the source and follow the trail.

Sometimes discovery leads to changing strategies or tactics but the rewards are great when things begin to come together.  The path might not be straight forward and seeing around the bend requires occasional leaps of faith, at times.  One of the most important skills you must have is to stay the course and believe in your vision.

Striving for Mediocrity

In my ongoing study of internet based businesses, I’ve subscribed to many newsletters and met online acquaintances through Skype. Occasionally, I will receive a Skype broadcast or email message inviting me to something like this:

Subject: Up to $15 per hour

This is something to get excited about! Here is a way that you can make $15.00 per HOUR by simply clicking on ads. I just did this tonight.

This is not your standard fly by night, run of the mill, surf site where your money gets tied up for weeks or even months so please hear me out and read this carefully.

I’m not excited. Are you?

I don’t mean to be disrespectful if this sort of offer is exciting to you, as each of us has different strengths and interests, but each time something like this is introduced, I wonder what would motivate someone to want to spend their time in this way. Equally pointless is taking online surveys “for cash.” These sorts of programs are aimless and, in my opinion, tend to stunt your creativity.

When I began my online journey and was more naive, I followed the recommendations of my “mentor” and tried ad surf sites. My takeaway from that short-lived cycle was that it was BORING! All of the ads seemed to make similar wild claims of instant riches without effort, suggested they were “the best ever” fill-in-the blank, and some even claimed to be the last stop in a quest to get income online. Pictures of fancy cars, palacial homes, and luxury vacations endeavored to lure in unsuspecting people who were trying to find a method to augment or replace income earned through traditional means.

The payoff at most ad surf sites is a point based compensation allowing the user to post their own ads at the same site which possibly will result to capturing a lead and/or new customer who might be surfing ads for similar reasons. Sadly, what passes for compelling landing page copy is nothing more than hype, in most cases.

An article posted today at the Philadelphia Business Journal reports that Interactive Advertising is down 5.3% from last year. The statistic is sourced from a PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP study and includes both display ads and digital video advertising. However, when digital video advertising is separated into its own category it is on the rise by 38%.

In fairness and most likely, the drop in interactive ad agency revenue, which would be interesting to a firm like PricewaterhouseCoopers, has a lot to do with our ability to leverage free resources to get our marketing message out there. The risk of using free advertising sites is relevant to one’s niche and presentation skills, especially using video.

Although the Law of Attraction suggests that new business will find us if our intentions are clear, any business person will agree that advertising makes their business more visible. As business owners, we need to make wise choices, especially when it comes to advertising an marketing expenses.  If you are on a slim budget, putting your content up on YouTube fulfills the digital video marketing need.  The challenge is to get your video noticed, viewed, commented and recommended.  In a best case scenario, it will be interesting enough to go viral.

It is somewhat of a conundrum determining how to effectively advertise our business online and ways to make our advertisement stand out. Consumers don’t want to be “sold” anything and we are bombarded by advertisements everywhere we go so something about your video needs to be special enough to make it stick in the minds of your target market.

Using social networks give us a potential audience. However, making friends merely to push ads about your business idea can get you labeled as a spammer and your account could be shut down.Social Media Mavens, claiming to know the best ways to leverage those venues, have had their Facebook accounts shut down without notice, which must have been just a little embarrassing since this was their claim to fame.  Additionally, your new online friends will learn to ignore you if all you are doing is sending ads.  It is highly recommended that you develop relationships with your social networking connections and send advertisements to them ONLY if they express an interest in learning more about what you’re doing.

Print advertising can be expensive but it is a way to reach people who you may not encounter online.  Using free online advertising sources like Craig’s List is another way to get out your good news but there are  restrictions which you need to understand and comply with or you ad will be taken down at those sorts of sites too.

Having your own website, hosted on your own hosting account, is an essential tool for anyone in business. Up front evaluation of your niche and target market is necessary. People shop online first so knowing what your market is searching for is critical. If you aren’t good at copywriting, hire someone to do this for you so you have effective content on your page which will resonate with your market niche.

When you have your new website finished, don’t forget to use PRWeb to announce yourself and your business site to the world.  At no cost, you can notify a wider audience.  For a nominal fee, the reach becomes wider.  PRWeb ads convert to print advertising, in some cases and the wider the reach, the better are your chances to draw in suspects … er … prospects.

Human Capital and Local Economic Constraints

In my work as a freelancer and service provider, I frequently find myself in competition with overseas talent whose rates don’t even meet minimum wage requirements in the United States.  While I am all for supporting the global economy, it is impossible for me to meet their prices.  Sometimes my clients decide to go for the lowest cost bid, even though they would prefer to work with me … or so they say.  And sometimes my clients return to me with a partially completed project and a story to tell.

What is funny about this is that there are also overseas buyers who know they could acquire talent for a lower rate who grasp the importance of working with someone who is readily available and also has skills that meet the needs of their projects.  I’ve delivered projects to business owners in third world countries who admitted this was true.

In the early 1990s, when corporations began to shut down divisions of their companies and eliminate jobs, to subsequently open them up again on foreign soil where labor was cheaper, there was a public outcry.  Corporations were accountable only to their shareholders, however, so the devaluation of human capital became a common method of meeting those demands.  And what has been the effect on the global economy?  It is my opinion that liberal credit policies are not the only contributors to the current crisis.

Wikipedia defines Human Capital as being the stock of skills and knowledge embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value.  The wiki goes on to say that it is the skills and knowledge of a worker acquired through education and experience.  I acknowledge that some overseas service providers have equivalent skills, education and experience to a US based service provider.  I also acknowledge that some overseas talent fall far short of the line drawn in the sand.

Until the effect of offshore outsourcing begins to affect your income, it is easy to explain away choices that keep a local service provider from working with you or declare that US labor prices need to be lowered so offshore competition is healthy.  I value your insightfulness and honor your decisions.  After all, you are in business and the economics of your projects balanced with your sales will define the return on your investment.

I would like to present another side of the coin for your consideration.  If your project is intended to target the market whose labor rates you feel are inflated, your sales may be affected because your target market has to make difficult choices about how to allocate the income they are able to attract.

In the end, there always is a balance to things.

Everything’s Relative! (The Relevance of Blogging to your Online Brand)

It’s true; I came of age during the 60s. While this places me in some people’s stratospheric age groups, my age is merely a number to me and I’m thrilled to have grown up in such interesting times. Being a Baby Boomer surrounded by Hippies and other sorts of rebels brought many ideals to my purview … some more palatable than others but each of them born from a cry for freedom by my generation.

After recently re-theming my GetIncomeBlog.com, my interest in writing to it has been renewed, along with the traffic that comes to my site. I use several tools to determine how you all get here and, during the past month, the viewership statistics that I’ve been monitoring inform me that there are folks out there who appreciate my articles. Seeing what keywords you’re using is also fascinating.

I don’t write any of my articles to obtain your admiration, however. I write them because of a conversation I’ve had with newer online marketers or offline business owners has reminded me of something that will help them and want to pass along this information to you too. Whether or not you are a grizzled veteran, reminders about how things work in business and the entrepreneurial world is helpful.

I read such an article myself today at Yaro Starak’s blog. This young man is brilliant in his writing and has really done well for himself by blogging. I was unaware of this site until today when I was evaluating a competitor’s backlinks. Even though the article I read at Yaro’s blog wasn’t brand new, it spoke to many things that I’ve been writing about lately.

A colleague recently opined that a blog was nothing more than an online diary. Network marketers, BizOp chasers, and another group of business people whom I will lovingly refer to as “Elitists” tend to say that blogging is not important. But people like Yaro convince me and others who are determined to establish an Online Brand image that having a blog with high-quality content is essential. I can’t think of one reputable top gun marketer who isn’t using a blog as a component of their branding strategy.

But let’s get back to the statistics on my blog. On a “bad day” here at GetIncomeBlog.com, I am getting about 5 – 10 times more traffic that I used to get on a “good” day and I’m just beginning to ramp up. On a “bad” day, I spend very little time thinking about the “low” traffic volume. I merely smile and tell myself that everything is relative … a canon of my youth.

What is Leadship to an Entrepreneur?

Leadership is a topic of interest when one is working for a wage.  In that context, a leader is defined by rank, company holdings or some other arbitrary definition of success.  When the transition from wage-earner to entrepreneur occurs, leadership takes on a little different connotation.

The life of an internet entrepreneur varies by their interests, passions and motivations.  It is entirely possible to build a lucrative business that requires no more than you, an internet connection and time.  If the product is not digital, you certainly will become embroiled with inventory management, packing and shipping.  Maintaining a high level of customer service is critical to your success.  Digital products or services are a less labor intensive way to be an internet entrepreneur but your responsibility to support questions or concerns from customers is still a factor.

If you are a wise entrepreneur, you are building a solid relationship with those on your list.  Because you have gained their trust, people will begin to follow your advice and forward your recommendations to their friends.  This brings more conversions and income your way.    Your reputation will be enhanced by consistently introducing high-quality products and services that you know your followers will appreciate.  Congratulations,  you’re a leader!

As your visibility and reputation gain momentum, new opportunities will present themselves that can be fun and lucrative.  If an entrepreneur has an established list or has grown a support team, veering off to a new interest before laying appropriate groundwork with your group can cause confusion and discontent … and affect your reputation in a not-so-good way.  This is not the sort of visibility that you want as an business person.

Leadership involves communicating clearly with all the stakeholders affected by the decisions that you make.  If you behave rationally and responsibly, your fans will always sing your praise.

Incoming search terms:

• bad businesses that use a path-goal theory
• oceansapart
• Photos friendship
• what is lead ship

Five Rules To Live By When Hiring A Writer

This is a guest post from Anne Wayman, who is a freelance writer, ghostwriter and blogs about writing at aboutfreelancewriting.com, a blog for freelance writers. She’s also taken all three of Yaro’s programs, Blog Mastermind, Membership Site Mastermind and Become A Blogger Premium (yay Anne!)

So You Want To Hire A Writer?

Until you’ve actually worked with a writer you have no way of knowing how well that writer will write for you. Even when you’ve checked every reference, and read every sample, a writing project can still go wrong.

As a writer who has been hired by many clients, I have developed five questions that when answered clearly almost always result in a satisfied customer.

It boils down to this…

The writer needs to know exactly what you want written.

Sound obvious? Good. I have, however, found some clients don’t understand what they need or how to communicate it.  Read the rest of the article here.

Career Cogwheels and Cul-de-Sacs

There is little doubt that times are tough.  Personally, I know many people who have been out of work for extended time periods, have been forced into bankruptcy, or have lost their homes through foreclosure.  All their stories are all very different but, in every instance, the root cause was attributable to the fact that they held onto some belief that doing things the way they’d always done them would continue to work … a definition for insanity, in some circles.

Personal belief systems can keep us stuck so why not turn that to an advantage?  Believe that change is critical in order to thrive in the face of adversity.  Granted, basking in the things that we are familiar with makes us feel more comfortable but isn’t it time to confront the awkwardness of change and try something new?

Orchestrating a significant change in your life takes some amount of confidence along with a dash of creativity and perseverance on the side.  But there may be more important ingredients that you must NOT include in your career shift recipe, which would be to subtract your mental image of what you do along with the ideas that your family and friends have about what will work for you.

Recently a friend of mine, who has been a nurse for over 40 years, offered this bit of profundity while ruminating about a career change in her 50s.

“The more that I let go of, the closer to no thing I will be”

When we hold onto roles, like having a job or being jobless, our freedom to choose a new life is limited by the belief of what we are.

Why not try an experiment at your next social outing?  When someone asks you what you “do”, answer their question by listing the things that you are passionate about doing, rather than providing the rote answer that they are expecting.  It might give them pause but it also might expose you to a like-minded person who is interested in one of your passions that they have considered turning it into a source of sustainable income.

As for the people that say “Uh huh…” and walk away, let them rotate in circles of  small talk with less passionate people.  This experiment is not about making anyone feel comfortable that you are a “normal” person.  It is about shifting your own mindset and visualizing the possibilities of your passions as a possible source of future income.

Laughter and My Story Marketing?

Listening to the Prairie Home Companion program today, I experienced a bit of home sickness. The program aired from the Minnesota State Fair. As Garrison Keillor spoke of fall, apples, harvest moons, and the fair, all the sights, sounds, and smells from my home state and that event rushed to my senses. These are all pleasant memories. You can take the girl out of Minnesota but you can’t take Minnesota out of the girl, I guess.

Garrison Keillor is a delightful story teller. He may even be remembered with the likes of Mark Twain, eventually. His stories have a way of creating empathy for his predicaments and the laughter that bubbles up when imagining his scenarios is totally spontaneous and impossible to suppress.

How does this relate to Online Marketing? We’ve all heard of “My Story Marketing” by now. This is a method used to evoke empathy, build excitement and gain sales as a result. I’ve sure read some long-winded sales letters in my day. None of them were happy stories, like Garrison Keillor’s witty tales, and most were so tedious and predictable that I didn’t even finish reading them, let alone feel compelled to press the buy button.

In fact, the recipe for “My Story Marketing” is to begin with a problem that you have faced in order to grab people’s attention. After doing this, you can explain what you’ve done to effect a change and how your life is now. Supposedly, this will inspire your visitors to buy your product or join your business. Having never tried it myself, there is no way to know how effective it really is but there are enough proponents of the tactic that it is worth evaluating.

In my former career as a Realtor®, I learned that there were two ways to write compelling advertisements. One was to use a headline that evoked fear.  The other type of headline permitted people to imagine or dream.

Statistically, most of my guests came to an open house because they saw the sign while they were in the neighborhood or were neighbors who were merely curious to see the inside of the house but, in my experiments with print advertising, I found that using the positive headline drew more people in, if they came as a result of seeing the ad. If “My Story Marketing” is effective, it would be interesting to see the split test results, assuming they tried a page with a positive and happy story too.

So let’s apply my real estate marketing experiment to Internet Marketing. When we have internet real estate, we use many different methods to bring our websites to the attention of surfers. In a way, some of our website traffic is similar to people driving by an open house sign and deciding to stop in along their way. How are they affected by their visit?

Generally, you have less than a minute to entice someone to stay at your site and have a look around so the look and feel of your site is your curb appeal. This includes color, font, image, and layout choices. If your page is too slow to load, uses garish colors, or has too many blinking ads, visitors will abandon it quickly. But that is aesthetics and one person’s “ugly” is another person’s “beautiful” so you’ll need to experiment with things to see what works best in your niche.  More importantly, look and feel is not what helps you to get income from your website.

For several reasons, the most important part of your page is your content. The area above the fold (i.e., seen without the need to scroll down) is critical real estate so you need to use it wisely. Do you want to frighten your visitors into reading on and possibly taking action or would you rather build a relationship with them established through interest, truth, value, and trust? From my viewpoint, the latter goes miles further than the former.

I’m advocating that Internet Marketers start creating “My Story Marketing” stories that are entertaining. We all need more joy in our lives, don’t we? Enlightenment or laughter must be equally compelling and writing about things like that certainly is much more fun for the author too. Current studies indicate that leveraging humor can lead to a potentially big payoff. Social scientists have long documented that people who are perceived as being witty, clever and funny are destined for popularity and greater success in their work and relationships.

If you actually have had a difficult problem and your business or product has resolved it, by all means write the traditional “My Story Marketing” story. I caution you to be honest in the results you claim, however. Credibility is very easy to lose and nearly impossible to recover.

Living The 2-Hour Workday: How To Create Event Independent Income Streams

In the previous article on living the 2-hour workday I introduced the concept of travel buffers, cash created either through saving or selling assets that is designed to give you a buffer of capital you can comfortably spend if you need to while you travel.

Travel buffers are mostly for piece of mind so you can relax while you travel or use in case of emergencies, but ideally speaking it’s better if you don’t dip into your capital while you travel. In order to facilitate this, you need some form of consistent income streams that are greater than your total expenses, including costs to travel.

What Is Event Independent Income?

My largest source of income has come from significant events, either selling an asset or conducting a launch for a new product.

There’s an inherent weakness with this type of income – you have to do something, often significant work, to get the result, or once you do it’s difficult to repeat, for example once you sell an asset, it’s gone.

Conducting a launch is definitely NOT two hour a day work, it takes a lot more than that. Depending on how you travel it’s quite possible to integrate periods of time where you conduct a launch, for example I did a reopening campaign for Blog Mastermind while traveling in Toronto, resulting in well over six figures in income. However to complete the work required to conduct the launch, I had to settle in Toronto for a summer, renting a house and effectively living there as a local.

You can choose to travel, stop and work, then travel some more, if you depend on event income like launches, but if you really want true flexibility and never want more than a two hour a day work commitment, then you need to develop some event independent income streams. In other words, you need money that is either completely passive, or nearly-passive, consistent as a result of working only two hours a day or thereabouts.

The challenge with this sort of money is keeping it consistent. So many systems for making money online are fantastic as one-hit-wonders, and they work again and again in different niches, but the problem is the amount of ongoing work required to keep things going or to get started in the first place.

Sure you can outsource much of your work (I’ve got a couple of great podcast interviews about outsourcing coming up soon), which is a great strategy especially when you have a system that is already making money, but it takes time to do this and still you have the challenge of always staying one step ahead of the market or finding new markets to enter once one dries up, or the competition catches up.

In my case I’ve always had a solid independent income stream that’s served me well for almost ten years now.

So what is it? Read on to find out…

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