Self Employed Success

From Philospher Notes:

“Do not be impatient with your seemingly slow progress. Do not try to run faster than you presently can. If you are studying, reflecting and trying, you are making progress whether you are aware of it or not. A traveler walking the road in the darkness of night is still going forward. Someday, some way, everything will break open, like the natural unfolding of a rosebud.”

–Vernon Howard

I’ve posted nine new articles about mastermind groups on The Success Alliance website:

• Why Mastermind Group Guidelines Matter
• Getting Your Group to Set and Keep Goals
• Inviting Guest Speakers to Your Group
• Great Books for Mastermind Groups to Read Together
• 10 Reasons Why Mastermind Groups Fail
• Staying Connected Between Mastermind Meetings
• Start With a Core Group Then Build From There
• How Many Members Should Be In a Mastermind Group?
•  Mastermind For 90 Days

I hope you enjoy these articles and find them helpful with your own mastermind group!

http://www.thesuccessalliance.com/articles.html

“Success”

If you want a thing bad enough
To go out and fight for it,
Work day and night for it,
Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it

If only desire of it
Makes you quite mad enough
Never to tire of it,
Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it

If life seems all empty and useless without it
And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,

If gladly you’ll sweat for it,
Fret for it,
Plan for it,
Lose all your terror of God or man for it,

If you’ll simply go after that thing that you want.
With all your capacity,
Strength and sagacity,
Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,

If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt,
Nor sickness nor pain
Of body or brain
Can turn you away from the thing that you want,

If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,
You’ll get it!

–by Berton Braley

I made an amazing discovery last month. Like you, I’m a busy business owner. Yet I need to continually learn new marketing techniques, new business ideas, etc. in order to maintain my “expert” status in my field.

Where was I going to find time to do all that reading, listening, and studying???

As with most successful projects, lifelong learning is about two things: structure and discipline.

If you took six hours a week to learn something new (read a book, listen to an audio program, take a teleclass), you’d have completed 312 hours of learning new material a year. That’s equivalent to over SIX college-level courses.

If you want to be known as an expert, you must be willing to invest six hours a week to “sharpening the saw” of your knowledge.

The way I do it is this: I’m taking off every Friday for the next year, to read, take classes, learn. From 9:00 – 3:00 I’ll read a book to read, listen to an audio program on MP3, watch a DVD, read websites, or take classes.

A colleague of mine uses her exercise time to listen to audios. Another colleague signs up for one class a month, each and every month of the year. One of my clients takes a weekly trip to the library (“The only place I can find some quiet!” he says) and reads a book for a few hours.

You can do this, too. Maybe you take one hour a day as your Learning Time. Maybe you schedule one day per week. It doesn’t matter how you do it, as long as you schedule the time into your calendar and religiously adhere to your learning schedule.

When you think “300 hours” it’s overwhelming.

When you think “1 hour a day” it’s empowering!

“I’m going nuts,” one of my private clients emailed me last week. She continued, “There are so many marketing techniques, how in the world do I choose the best ones for my business, without making massive mistakes?”

Putting together your marketing plan and your marketing campaigns can be a daunting task. You hear rumors that a specific marketing technique is a “must” for your type of business, yet you wonder: Will it really bring the desired results before I run out of cash and patience?

There are over 30 internet marketing techniques and another 50 or more traditional marketing techniques. How do you choose among these 80-100 possible marketing techniques to find the most powerful ones for your business? Here are some things to consider.

The Purpose of Marketing

First, let’s talk about the purposes of marketing. Knowing which goal you want for your marketing will help you choose the proper technique. There are thousands of books and websites on marketing, and by distilling them down to their core essence, we discover there are four primary purposes for marketing:

• Brand Awareness – Helping your target audience to become aware of you and want to learn more about your services and products.
• Lead Generation – Getting your target audience to request information and/or a sales conversation with you; also, for building a pre-sales relationship.
• Brand Consideration – Your target audience is considering buying from you or at least has included you in their short list of possibilities, along with your competitors.
• Direct Sales – Getting your target audience to purchase directly from you.

For example, you might use search engine advertising, like Google Adwords, for lead generation purposes, but it may be a poor choice for direct sales, especially if your target audience doesn’t purchase that way.

Read the full article>>>