Self Employed Success

Just a quick note to let the locals know that I’m speaking in Philadelphia on Saturday, January 10, 2009 at the National Speaker’s Association (NSA) Midatlantic Chapter internet marketing event, Plug Into Profits. The full-day event is being held at the Renaissance Philadelphia Airport Hotel.

I’ll be doing two sessions: one on SEO and the other on paid online advertising (using Google Adwords, etc.).

Here’s the information:

===

Are you a professional speaker, coach, trainer, consultant or business owner who wants to:

• Generate more and better leads from your online efforts, using websites, blogs, podcasts, and social media?

• Use e-mail newsletters (ezines) and promotions to extend your brand and grow your business?
• Motivate more of your prospects to take action – whether it’s buying your products, inquiring about your services or signing up for your ezine?
• Improve your position in search engine rankings so your website attracts highly qualified prospects at the very moment they’re searching for your exact type of product or service?
• Develop paid search strategies that deliver high returns without breaking the bank?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then this intensive 1-day event is for you! The agenda is packed with tools and strategies to help YOU turn your web presence into sales and enhance your bottom line.

Here’s what we have planned for you:

MORNING SESSION: Use the Internet and Web 2.0 to Establish Authority, Boost Your Brand, and Build Your Business

As the list of web technologies and social media tools continues to explode, it can be overwhelming trying to figure out what to do – or even where to begin – to drive prospects and customers to your website. But your next level of success in growing your business might very well depend on it, so you definitely can’t afford to leave things to chance.

This value-packed session, led by nationally recognized internet marketing expert Tom Gray from Denver, Colorado, will take the mystery and a big chunk of the fear out of pursuing the many opportunities that Web 2.0 and social media present to drive prospects to your website and convert those prospects to profit-rich customers. You’ll understand what Web 2.0 and the social media explosion is all about and take away actionable ideas that you can put to work immediately.

LUNCH and AUCTION: Eat, network, and join the fun bidding on valuable products and services specially chosen to help you grow your business! You’ll choose a “table interest group” focused on a specfic internet marketing strategy you want to explore.

AFTERNOON SESSION: Internet Marketing Labs

Roll up your sleeves and plunge in-depth into the topics of your choice! Our roster of afternoon presenters will lead 60-minute breakout sessions where you’ll learn their best tools, tips, and secrets that you can incorporate into your own internet marketing gameplan. You’ll choose two topic areas of most interest to you and walk away with dozens of low-cost and no-cost strategies that will make your cash register go ka-ching!

CLOSING SESSION: Internet Marketing Excellence panel discussion
Put all the pieces together in this closing session, featuring our panel of internet marketing, search engine, blogging, and web audio/video experts. Bring your most pressing questions and leave with a clear plan and the answers you need to “plug into profits” and boost your business fast.

Members: $127 / Early Bird $97
Non-members: $187 / Early Bird $157
(Early Bird rates end Friday, December 12, 2008)

Register right now, mark your calendar, and maximize your savings!

I saw a great video this weekend about a Massachusetts business called The Hungry Ghost Bakery. While they prefer to use organic flour for their bread-making, the cost of growing wheat in Montana and shipping it to South Carolina to be milled, then on to Massachusetts to the bakery sometimes tripled in the past year.

So the owners had a brain-storm! Why not ask their customers, many of whom are farmers and gardeners, to grow wheat for them. Many farmers thought of this as an “experiment,” although wheat had been grown in the region prior to World War II. One farmer was able to produce 2,000 pounds of wheat from one acre of land.

While it’s doubtful that you own a bakery, this story gives us all inspiration about how — with a little creativity — we can reduce our costs and include our customers in the process. When so many people are complaining about feeling isolated, why not ask your neighbors, your customers, to participate in your business? Now that’s teamwork!

You can read more about this story here.

I’ve been reading Po Bronson’s book, What Should I Do With My Life? Has anyone read it?

It’s a series of stories about how people found meaningful work and a meaningful life. Not every story has a happy ending (which I appreciate) and some people didn’t get to follow their dreams until they were in their 60s.

In one story, the woman was always asking “What should I do next with my life?”  When she rephrased the question to “To what can I devote my life?” it changed the way she perceived her world and her choices.

I love that question. When I’ve been looking for “the next big thing” in my business, I’ve been stumped. Nothing came up that excited me, challenged me, or made me any happier than I already am. (I’m a pretty happy person by default. I’m not looking for more happiness in my life.) But when I asked myself, “To what can I devote my life?”, I could immediately drop off those things that were interesting but I wasn’t willing to devote my life to, especially when it comes to work.

The result? It was surprising to me (but maybe not surprising to anyone who knows me) that the work that I really could devote my life, my heart, my soul to was “helping people to be successfully self-employed.” It was a simple statement of what fires me up, what mirrors my values and beliefs, and where I can best serve the world.

I’m such a huge fan of self-employment. It gives people freedom and flexibility that they wouldn’t have in a job, and forces them to bring forth character traits that will hold them in good stead throughout their lives and their relationships, like honesty, self-discipline, and creativity.

To me, self-employment is a fire that forges the personality. It’s an incredible personal growth vehicle. It also helps people to put their personal values into every aspect of their lives. The integrity it offers is extraordinarily important, especially as more and more people find that they can’t express their integrity in their job for an employer.

I still don’t know what’s next for my business, but I feel more strongly than ever that I’m doing the “right work” in working with other self-employed people to grow their businesses. So I’ll stay in the not-knowing about the future and see what comes up, certain, at least, that I’m on the right track.

THANK YOU to everyone who responded to our survey, How Do You Prefer to Learn? I appreciate the feedback about how you prefer to learn new information, skills and ideas.

I think these results will be helpful to you if you are creating any boot camps, classes or teleclasses in the next 12 months. This information is also helpful if you’re creating information products: books, ebooks, audio and video.

Here’s what you had to say about the ways you like to learn.

The first question was about whether people liked to learn on their own, or whether they liked to learn with an instructor:

With a teacher in a classroom/teleclass setting – 42.3%
With a teacher, one-on-one – 26%
At my own pace – 32%

The second question was, specifically, which learning techniques do you most use. (Note: people could vote for more than one way they liked to learn, so the numbers don’t tally to 100%):

I like to learn by reading a book or ebook – 70.4%
I like to learn by listening to audio (CD or MP3) – 60.3%
I like to learn by watching a video/DVD – 31%
I like to learn in a teleclass with an instructor – 54.7%
I like to learn at a live event (1-2 hours) – 30.2%
I like to learn at a live event (full weekend) – 12.3%
I like to learn by one-on-one mentoring – 46.4%

I hope this information is helpful to you!

If you didn’t get a chance to take the survey, or if you’d like to see how I worded the survey so that you can ask your own students similar questions, you can see the survey here.

Free November Teleclass

5+1: Six Top Techniques to Use in an Economic Downturn

The economic news is worrying everyone. Even if your business hasn’t been hit by the slowing economy, it’s always good to know the best things to do when times are tough.

In this 1-hour teleclass, we’ll be discussing six concrete, practical, and doable things that you can use to build and maintain your business during this downturn.

November 18, 2008
1:00 – 2:00 PM eastern

Class will be recorded, so if you miss can’t make it live, register anyway — you will be able to download the audio recording of the live class and listen to it at your leisure.

To register:

http://www.passionforbusiness.com/calendar.htm

I guess I’ve made it to the big times. 

See my mention in Paul Brown’s article, “How to Avoid Becoming a Failure Statistic” in NY Times from last week.