After posting the first video I realized I never had any specific goals or any real way to keep myself accountable. This is my real beginning & my way of keeping myself accountable to finally become a man who can be of real value, and maybe even a hero, to the people I love & to those who love me.
Project Sugar Daddy: My Personal 90 Day Challenge and Fun, Fitness & Finance workout plan for my ultimate goal of becoming… a sugar daddy.
The premise is a simple one: Put a personal development training program in place for yourself, set your goals and have fun achieving your goals. Your personal journey is what you make it, so you might as well make it fun.
As always, please send me your feedback. I love to hear what’s on your mind after watching my videos. Take care and have fun out there.
When figuring out how to start your own business there are a lot of things that need to be considered, but one of the biggest things that must be conquered is how you are going to position yourself as a likeable, trustworthy authority in the industry you’re tackling. The question remains, though, if you’re barely figuring out how to start your own business online how are you going to compete with people who have years of business experience on you? How are you going to separate yourself from the pack? Luckily, there is hope for the new entrepreneur to not only thrive in a market of established competitors, but to also take advantage of the mistakes his/her competitors may be making. Here are some steps that need to be taken to have people see you as that trusted authority so you can thrive in your new endeavor, from creating your marketing campaign to talking to your prospects one on one.
First you must have a public persona that the public can like and accept as a trusted expert in your field. Here are some quick steps to get you started.
1. Look for top earners in your industry and list the characteristics they portray in their marketing.
2. Then you want to list your own characteristics. Be BRUTALLY honest about this; list all positive and negative traits you see in you.
3. Take both papers and go through them. Look at the differences and similarities.
4. Create your future you 6 months from today. Be specific about what you want to be and have! Keep in mind how it would feel to accomplish the goals you set out before you. You want to take that feeling and bring it back into the present moment to move you forward to accomplish what you want in your business.
5. Lastly, create a character that merges all the best traits of the top earners with ONLY the positive traits of you; a character that carries him/herself as though they are currently living in that future.
Next you will want to write your incredibly compelling story through your character’s eyes, saying why you are the BEST person to work with! Use descriptive words that brings out emotions. Put in ONLY what will help you move the story forward. Here is a framework to get you started:
1. Write a powerful headline and SHORT background, as in 2 small paragraphs, that tells people who you are and welcomes them to your site.
2. Establish a problem THEY have; people will do more to move away from pain than to move toward pleasure.
3. Talk about the solutions your product/service provides in a way that uses descriptive, emotional language.
4. Lead them to where you want them to go and what you want them to do. (Fill out an app, visit this website, leave their information, etc.)
5. When talking to a prospect do what you can to position yourself to where you appear to be incredibly busy and booked up. Do NOT appear to be desperate; don’t respond right away.
6. If you are using a webpage for all this, then have pictures throughout your site. Make them relevant to what you are promoting. If you are in an MLM or Top Tier company you will want to make them of you having a good time (with friends, traveling, as opposed to being next to a Ferrari, etc.) People want to know they’re working with a real person that is living a life worth living. If you are promoting another type of business, say for instance Massage Therapy, you will want to use pictures relevant to the service you provide as well as pictures of you providing your service whenever possible.
Now, before people can buy your stuff, they need to know about you first. The biggest task at hand now is to put your character on stage, so to speak. This is where you get the word out and let people know about you and the services you provide.
1. First, be where the people shop! Online, this means look for keywords that boatloads of people look for that also has few (around 300,000) competitors. Google’s Keyword Tool is an excellent, free resource for this. (More specifics on how to optimize your results with Google Keyword Tool in a later post.)
2. Now, after you found the relevant keywords you want to use, write or record your content. Make sure you use your keywords in your title and 3 times in all of your materials, including video, in a way that is relevant.
3. Next, you’ll want to disperse your media throughout the web so your stuff comes out on top of the search engines. The more article, video, and social media sites you post your material the better chance it has of reaching the top of the listings.
4. One excellent way to leverage your video, article, and blog marketing efforts is a service known as TrafficGeyser. It’s a phenominal one-stop shop for getting your work to the top of the listings for whatever keywords you optimized your campaign for.
5. Finally, and most importantly, contact and personally connect with people interested in you and your services. Your main job is to connect with your prospects as a friend and offer information and guidance, not to pitch them. At this point people are already interested in what you bring to the table; just relax, be natural, and enjoy the ride from here.
This short little guide on how to start your own business is only a brief summary of what needs to be done to survive, let alone thrive, with your business in this day and age. Keep in mind this is only a general guide, as I cannot possibly go into detail about every niche out there, especially in this short guide. Regardless of the niche in which you may compete, this guide should be able to help you put together a solid marketing campaign, from how to attract high quality prospects ready to buy all the way to connecting with your client during and after the sale. I sincerely hope this quick guide on how to start your own business gave you the information you needed to get you started in your own entrepreneurial efforts and finally accomplishing the goals you set out to reach and to live the life of your dreams.
It is a very ugly fact that there are still a huge number of scam artists out there preying on those who are desperate and looking for a way to provide for themselves and their family. At the same time there are those people out there who honestly DO have others’ best interests at heart. The real trick is to find out which is which. Many people have become incredibly jaded from their long search, leading many to unfortunately answer “no” to the question “Are there legal real work from home jobs out there I can truly depend on?”
Thankfully, there are many surefire ways of telling if a company you’re looking at joining is worth your time. So here is what to look for in a work from home business, in no particular order:
1. Are they trying to hard-sell you like a used car salesman, or instead do they say that this business may not be for everyone? The more upfront they are the better the op, mainly because of the caliber of people you’ll work with & the example they set. You can read volumes about a biz op by the people you would be joining and the integrity they show. Ensure the leaders in this company are of the highest integrity. Go up and shake their hand. Get a feel as to how they interact with “the little people.” Use your gut feeling on this. If they feel “off” they probably are, but if they feel genuine, that they truly have your best interests at heart, then you definitely have a winner. Simply put, where we end up in life is largely determined by the quality what information we put in our head and the people we associate with, so surrounding yourself with people of integrity and success is an absolute must.
2. Does it take you sponsoring the equivalent of the state of Rhode Island for you to replace your job income? What is the cost of the product compared to the commission? Many MLMs are guilty of this primarily because the way their system is set up; there isn’t much money to give you upfront for your work. What you are looking for is a strong upfront commission (A good number is around 50%) coupled with a solid residual income to make your efforts worth your while both in the immediate AND long term.
3. Is this company just another me-too biz op? How many people are selling something almost identical to what you’re looking at? Nutritional supplements & juice companies are the biggest culprits here. Even though there are phenomenal businesses that sell high-quality juices and/or nutritional stuff, what the world sees is yet another juice company, and trying to convincingly educate people as to why your juice is better than XYZ brand’s juice is like literally using your head to tear down the Berlin Wall. What positive thing truly separates this company from the rest? If you can pick something right off the bat you’re on the right track.
4. How much value is in the product if an opportunity were not attached to it? You need to find a product that can stand on its own with or without an opportunity attached to it. If people are willing to buy the product on its own you’re on the right track. If possible take a sample and share with friends before even thinking of signing up in the business. This eliminates the fear of rejection since you’re still an unbiased third party. Gauge their responses on the PRODUCT; do NOT talk about the business side of things, as few people will side with you on the biz op side being a good idea, regardless of what it is. (Side note: just because it’s featured on the news doesn’t mean it’s a good product or business. I have personal experience on that one.)
5. How does this company give back to those not in their company? Does it have a charity built into the biz-op that is transparent and (most importantly) can easily be tracked? This certainly adds to the integrity factor, and it’s much easier to get behind a group of people who look to help others in need outside of their business.
6. Is there a solid, proven, duplicatable marketing system that fits your needs? Does it teach you how to market and attract people using both traditional AND online marketing? Usually, the company itself doesn’t provide you with this (though they have SOME marketing materials to use); this is (almost) always created and provided by the team that you would sign up with. You need a system that teaches you how to generate quality leads, and shows you the most up-to-date methods of attracting leads, online AND offline. The wider the net you cast the more you can catch. The best system you can find is one that has a group of people that call people on your behalf that do all the complicated telling and selling for you. This informs your prospects far better than you might be able to on your own, and it also let your prospect know THEY won’t have to do all the selling and telling; it’s all done for you! There is a place for 1-on-1 sales, but if that is your primary method of business then you are surely taking the long route, and it may on its own send the wrong message to those you want to bring into your business. 1.4 Billion people have internet access. If the team you’re looking to join doesn’t take advantage of actively marketing to the internet crowd it is behind the times, and it’s time to look for a team that does.
7. Do you have a knowledgeable support network to help you figure all this stuff out? Let’s face facts, this is a brand new skillset that few people have right from the start, and even the best laid plans and training can be confusing to those of us that are just getting started. Having an experienced guide, someone who has actively put this training to use with great success, is absolutely vital to your success. At the very least it will help to quickly replace a steep learning curve with a steep earning curve. (Note: it is important to have a guide, but it is also important to study the system on your own as well. Guides help those who help themselves; they cannot build your business for you. The system will provide the answers, and if you get lost and confused your guide will be there to give you perspective to help you understand the answers so you can implement them more effectively.)
For all those asking themselves “Are there legal real work from home jobs out there I can truly depend on?” there is hope at last. Now more and more companies are realizing the more honest they play the game, the more real they are with the people who sign on with them, the more everyone prospers. And if you follow these simple steps, and as long as you are willing to be persistent in doing the necessary work to get the results, then nothing can stop you from achieving the success you desire and living the life of your dreams.
For more information on success in home based businesses click here.
Before we get started, why are we talking about spreading the word of YOU when you say “Roy, I told you I want to advertise my home business for free, what does spreading the word of me have to do with my business?”
The short and simple answer: Everything.
There are three main understandings that are necessary to bring together to begin a successful online business marketing campaign.
1. The understanding that people connect with and join not a business or company, but you.
2. You need to leverage as many free methods of marketing available to you online to be effective. The more the merrier.
3. The understanding that your advertising needs to give universal value to your target market before directing them to your product, regardless of what method of marketing you use. People join people of value, not a sales pitch.
Even as I type this hundreds of new startup home based companies are preparing to launch, and they’ll tell you all the recycled crap of “Everyone needs this product! Get in on the ground floor! Use our materials to promote our…uh…I mean ‘YOUR’ business.” All of the home-based businesses, even the best ones, do this. From this you get everyone and their brother spewing forth methods and materials that barely worked decades ago (admittedly it works, but for a VERY select gifted few.)
What many people in the home based business and MLM field must understand is the one truth that will raise your business to new heights if you embrace it, or crush your hopes of a life of seeing your child grow up knowing who his/her parents are. That one truth is this:
People don’t join a company, at least not directly. They join YOU! They join you because they connect with you and trust you to guide them to what they need to succeed in their new entrepreneurial adventure. It is the one major part that cannot be duplicated, and at the same time is where all of your influence truly begins. As powerful as this truth is it’s only one part of the equation.
There are people in the network marketing field that I have worked with personally that know this principle better than most. At the same time they are not leveraging all the free materials we have at our disposal thanks to the second part of the equation, the great blessing bestowed upon the business world known as high-speed internet.
Through this we have boatloads of free methods at our disposal to spread the word of You, Inc. such as video sites like YouTube and Viddler; social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter; and free blogs like WordPress.com and Blogspot.com. The more of these methods you use and link to each other the better. Many, if not all, of these sites will allow you to automatically (or at least allow to to do manually with little effort) update to all your other avenues of marketing when you manually update just one area such as a blog.
I have seen the most successful leaders in this business set up these different methods to promote themselves using less personal sites like video sites and social media sites (since there’s a limit as to how long your messages can be) and link them to their blog and/or personalized website which acts as a main hub for their marketing efforts for themselves and their business.
This next area may be the trickiest, but also the absolute most crucial aspect to master. That is you must freely give away messages (and sometimes products) that are highly valuable to people in and of themselves before you send them to buy your product. As a general rule of thumb, 80%+ should be value-based content, whereas 20% or less of your message informs people of your product or service you provide and where to get it. This is highly important since Google is not a fan of blatant sales pitches; any site that appears to be one instantly gets “slapped,” meaning it gets knocked to the bottom of the search listings IF it’s still on the listings at all.
There is an optional fourth understanding you may eventually want to put into action, but only when the income’s right.
Eventually, when you start making money from your free advertising you may want to start seeking out paid methods to leverage your free marketing efforts. You may not find this necessary, as there are people in this industry that have made over $2,000,000 in one year using nothing but free advertising. That little statistic will more than likely keep you saying “I want to advertise my home business for free.” But those who have taken the paid marketing plunge usually notice incredibly quick returns on their investment when utilized properly. Remember, just because you pay money for advertising doesn’t mean it comes with a guarantee. Remember to treat this with as much, if not more, care as your free marketing efforts. Properly utilized, this can drastically improve your bottom line, but improper use will leave you feeling like you just got mugged.
These are the three main understandings that are necessary to bring together to begin a successful online business marketing campaign: The understanding that people connect with and join not a business or company, but you; the necessity to leverage as many free methods of marketing available to you online to be effective; and understanding that your advertising needs to give universal value to your target market before directing them to your product, regardless of what method of marketing you use. When the time and money are right, paid advertising can certainly springboard you to eyeballs that may not have otherwise seen what you have to offer.
But regardless of what methods you use to get your name out there, remember it’s you and your information you are giving to people. In this day and age of the me-too home based business avalanche it is absolutely critical to stand out from the crowd and give a personal touch to your message.
The days of succeeding in business by being a nameless cookie-cutter automaton are long gone. Those who are willing to put their name and face on the line are the only type people trust; those are the only type most have ever really trusted, and you will be an elite member of the only type people will trust when you begin to share your personal message, share your personal story, and truly become the CEO of a new type of corporation; the one we will all come to know as You, Inc.
Who knew breakfast could be so entertaining? I wandered into a German cafe in Nuremberg, which was at first a little difficult; I speak VERY little German and I could hear the alluring call of all the surrounding, and very familiar, American restaurants (Pizza Hut, Burger King, and Fourbucks Coffee.)
But I was determined, for once in my stay here, to have at least ONE semi-traditional German breakfast (or Frühstück in German. You learn something new everyday.) even though I saw what I wanted, even though I understood about 75% of what the menu said, I was still somewhat unprepared for what happened next.
I placed my order, all in German (I’m so proud of me.) Soon after I ordered she did the one thing that many tourists ignorant of the language absolutely fear; she asked a question… In German… As if I was going to actually (gasp) understand her. But this time, I actually DID! She asked if I wanted bacon or ham in German and I understood her! And replied back in German! Woohoo! I successfully passed myself off as a local…or so I thought. Then the German question onslaught followed.
What kind of bread do you want?
Which kind of jelly?
Do you want coffee?
Which kind of coffee?
(Did I tell you the coffee costs extra? I didn’t? Oops, my bad.)
This poor woman was saying all this stuff while physically pointing and showing me what the hell she was talking about. I was 2 years old all over again. I could tell by the odd communication that she thought I was not a tourist, but a local with a serious yet oddly adorable mental deficiency.
We finally finished the ordering ordeal and I paid for my yummy breakfast I clumsily ordered, and I walk to my table expecting my dining experience to be a somewhat quiet one. My delusions of mental peace was suddenly shattered when 2 middle-aged women started talking to me in German…very fast I might add.
Throughout the onslaught of words I did not understand I managed to pick up a word that sounded familiar: pepper. I’m thinking they need some pepper. I understood! Woohoo…until I tried to hand the pepper to the ladies. It turns out they were wondering why I wasn’t adding pepper to my ham & eggs. What else could I do except be a typical, confused American, asking “When did breakfast become so damn confusing?” The whole time the ladies and I were busting up laughing at how absolutely confused I was. I didn’t care; I was happy I could be the free entertainment. I even told them that at the end.
These little exchanges reminded me of a few important things. For starters, sometimes being a confused foreigner can be incredibly fun if you allow yourself to look silly for the sake of entertainment. Even a simple conversation that normally has absolutely no apparent importance can supply you with hilarious memories, even if you may be the only one who can see or appreciate the humor of that moment.
It also taught me to keep my eyes open in the here and now. There’s so much beauty and wisdom all around us if we simply find the time to slow down and pay attention with all of our senses to only what is happening right here, right now at this very moment. There is so much in this world that we take for granted; we pass by these visions and events of pure wonder and dismiss them without a second thought. How much more beautiful would this world really be when we decide to stop being so much in our heads, being focused from the outside in, and begin to really see and recognize the miracles that we pass by every, focusing from the inside out.
It’s amazing how the simplest of life’s experiences can show us so much, but only when we allow ourselves to listen to and see what the messages in these experiences really are. Sometimes it may be necessary to forget ourselves and lose ourselves in the moment to see what is really right in front of us. We may not be able to choose what experiences we may have, but it absolutely IS our responsibility to choose what we take from these experiences whether they be obvious blessings or blessings disguised as complete catastrophes. When we allow ourselves to STOP…and really pay attention to the world around us without the chatter going on between our ears, that is when true clarity occurs. That is when we can see the world, each other, and ourselves as the miracles they really are.
I know it’s a far stretch to take all this from a confused cafe experience, but more wondrous things started from stranger places. They also started as an idea, regardless of where the idea actually came from. Most importantly, it a start in the right direction, and a simple idea that many people, myself included, need a daily reminder of. It may be a while until this becomes mainstream belief, but until then it’s vital that we understand that it all starts as a belief within ourselves. When we focus on beauty is when we really start to see it in front of us. Let’s make sure we see it in ourselves. From there it’s only a matter of time before what appear to be miracles appear before us on a regular basis; from there we will truly begin to see, and begin to say “What a wonderful world.”