So I was checking my email this morning and I found a really cool thank you letter from someone who I hadn’t actually met before.

So you’re probably wondering… if I had never met him, how the hell did I deserve the thanks?

Check this out to get the story:

Since filming the vid, I had a few more exchanges with Dean. Very cool guy with a great story.

THE BEST PART…

His product that he had some success with, was all about a topic I am currently needing advice and coaching on. He sent me a copy at no cost cuz he’s cool like that.

It’s all about outsourcing and Virtual Assistants. AWESOME TIMING!! I can’t wait to read it but in the mean time, go check out his offer here:

Building a Killer Business With VAs

(not an affiliate link )

Let me know what you thought about this overall topic in general. Is there someone you need to thank or acknowledge?

I summarized my major actions in this video:

Here is a text summary of my 3 major actions towards adding 100 new members to my business:

Action Item 1: Post a Warrior Special Offer (WSO) to promote our free trial

The Warrior Forum is an amazing marketplace for people who sell downloadable content like we do in my PLR business. They have a section called the Special Offer forum where you can place an ad for $40 and get your information in front of hundreds (or even thousands) of potential buyers. Here is a link to the WSO I launched today.

Action Item 2: Publish a new pricing page for the website

The pricing page we had up until this morning was VERY weak. This was not just my opinion. I had friends and mentors tell me that it needed work. This 30 Day challenge really helped me get my ass in gear and get it up and running. I will say that this page was in the works already… but I had the forcing function to get it done finally

Here is the new sales page for Best Quality PLR.

Action Item 3: Start recruiting affiliates

Unless I had a massive ad budget (which I don’t right now), affiliates will be one of the only ways to get 100 members in a month. I truly believe that we have a WINNING product and man of our members have told us they agree. Today I spoke or exchanged email with 5 people who have all agreed to promote our business as affiliates.

The next challenge is having proper tools and training in place to help affiliates promote our content with the most effective strategies possible. That is on tap for tomorrow

Thanks for following along.

I have been wanting to blog about this topic for some time now. For the past 6 or 7 weeks, I have spent all of my “study time” immersed in the work of Tony Schwartz from The Energy Project.

I am almost done his book called The Power of Full Engagement (not an affiliate link, second book in the list) and it has been one of the most powerful, life changing books I have ever read.

In a nutshell, his work is all about energy management and helping people perform at elite levels by understanding how energy impacts performance. I intend to share more information about his work but for now I wanted to start with a REALLY cool video I found about The Energy Project and how he was able to help a group of high school students tap into their own potential

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Do you know about energy management already? How do you maximize your work time and your renewal time? Is this your first time hearing about The Energy project?

Guest Post by Richard Butler

Creating a successful business online

For many people the dream is to have and run a successful business online.  It’s a dream because it means a lot of things to people:
Untold riches
Untold amounts of travel
Untold amount of free time

However is this a dream or a reality? To be honest it depends on one thing. That thing is you. Your commitment and your business idea.  Having worked with people online I find that one big issue that people face is that they do not actually know what they are doing online. I’ve talked to a lot of people and found that they sell “stuff” online.  Nothing concentrate. Every week they are promoting something new and they have little or know focus.

The first thing you must do to create a successful business online is to look at what you want your business to be. The key here is if you were to go to the bank to finance this business and they asked “what do you do?” how would you answer them?

Would they take you seriously if you said you sold “stuff” of course not. If you told them you sold different things each week would they be impressed? I guess not.

So the first thing you must do is look to find out what business you are in. Focus yourself in a niche. That could be self development, business building tools, offline marketing, SEO, creating handmade cards. No matter what it is define it.

The second thing that is so important is to look at what success is to you. Forget about untold riches, cars, houses etc.  let’s break it down. What is success to you, not what you think it is compared to other people.  Is success to you working 40 hours a week and making $1,000 a month? For some it will be and that’s fine. For others success is launching a new project and making $20,000 in sales.

You need to define your success.  Compare it to no one but yourself.  Make sure you know what you want and how you will get it.

For example success for me is to have an online business that brings me in $1000 – $2000 per month requiring me to do about 80 hours a month.  Some might say that’s too much or too little. But it’s my measure. Also being able to travel is important to me.

So let’s start and let me ask you to post what success is to you. Just post your comment below

——————

About Richard Butler

Richard Butler is a trained Life and Business Coach and Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programmer. He has been training and consulting for the past 10 years, and his clients include individuals from Coca Cola, Pepsi Co, Kerry Foods, Aib amonst others.

Richard has been interviewed by some of the top marketers online, including Simon Hodgkinson and Jeremy Gislason. Richard has interviewed Willie Crawford, Ross Goldberg and Terry Telford amongst others.

Richard has worked with many clients to help them discover, achieve and surpass their potential. If you are ready to make the change email Richard at successcoaching at richardbutlerthesuccesscoach.com

If you are anything like me, you really hate the feeling of being pushy when it comes to marketing and promoting yourself and your business. I think we hate it because we hate when people sell to us in that manner.

I read a great article by Sonia Simone from Copyblogger called:
How To Stop Marketing (And What to do Instead)

It is a quick read with a simple message…. which is why it works so well! I thought it was great and I recorded some of my thoughts in the video below.

Check out Sonia on Twitter at http://twitter.com/soniasimone

Here is the video:

I recently read an article on the Jonathan Fields blog which REALLY stood out to me. I read so many great pieces of content online but this one practically jumped off the screen at me.

It was a guest post by a guy name Scott Gerber called The Cold, Hard Truth About Starting a Business. Here is a link to the article:
http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/the-cold-hard-truth-about-starting-a-business

I recorded a video summary below with some of my own thoughts and opinions. For anyone even remotely interested in business, please have a look at the article and let me know what you thought:

If you are looking to get into business for yourself, check out some of my coaching offerings. I have helped many entrepreneurs get off to a quick start in their business.

In my latest video update, I talk about a topic that has been popping up a lot in my world for the past few weeks. For anyone doing something creative (like starting a business, running a blog, creating music, etc…) you inherently open yourself up to criticism and judgment.

Most people avoid this at all costs but I have a slightly different perspective.

Check it out and let me know what you think:

I have recently started following an up and coming motivational speaker based out of the US named Eric Thomas. Eric has a very inspirational story and is doing some incredible work to help the inner city youth throughout the country.

In one of his talks to a group of students, he describes dropping out of high school and spending over 2 years of his life homeless and living in fear on a daily basis. This was a very common theme in the area he grew up in. He then states that that period of his life is actually his greatest gift! After feeling the pain of living on the streets, he overcame the odds, completed high school and college and is now an international speaker working on his PhD.

From the moment I heard his story and the way he described his hardships as a gift, my perspective was forever changed. I started thinking about all of the times in my life where I felt overwhelmed or frustrated by my circumstances. Luckily for me, my situation was never as dire as being homeless or living in fear for my safety. My problems were very minor in comparison. Why then, was I reacting with the same amount of stress and overwhelm as someone in a much worse position?

I realized that I was basically spoiled. I think many of us in this part of the world are. We have been sheltered from so many hardships that it has actually made us soft and in some cases very weak.

We should embrace our challenges and move towards those things that we are afraid of. Instead of talking ourselves out of a risky idea, we should focus on the potential benefits of our ideas and lean into them.

As a former corporate employee turned business owner, I think about all of the problems I inherited by giving up my salary to go out on my own. I have had times where I didn’t know if my business would survive another month, times where I had to confront a client that was becoming increasingly difficult to work with, times where I did not get paid thousands of dollars owed to me for work completed (not to mention many other issues). These are among many of the reasons why people talk themselves out of ever trying to start a business for themselves.

The truth is that each one of those hardships has strengthened me. They are assets that I use in my own personal arsenal to keep me motivated and driving forward toward my goals. Every time I conquer a new challenge, I see myself as a bigger person who is now capable of achieving more than ever before.

Hardships in life are an asset. Instead of avoiding them, seek them out and face them head on.

I reserve the Inspirational People category on my blog for the select few people who have made a huge impact on me and I simply want to share their story.

Eric Thomas is one of those people. I found his video on an Internet Marketing forum that I visit regularly and everyone was talking about this inspirational speech he gave that really connected with them.

I watched the video myself and I have probably watched it another 10 times since. Sometime we just need a shot of motivation to get us out of our chair or out of a rut. This video did it for me and I’m confident it will do the same for you.

Have you ever been in an “urgent” situation that commanded all of your attention? Most of us have faced this sort of “back against the wall” type of scenario at some point in our lives. When this happens, we are far more likely to take immediate action to resolve the problem or address the issue as quickly as possible. We often amaze ourselves at how well we handled the event.

The interesting thing to note here is that we can actually create environments where we force ourselves into taking the kind of action required to achieve big things in our lives. It may not always be the most comfortable decision to make but if we are truly committed to a result, then we can use urgency as a forcing function to get things done.

Here is my latest video discussing it. Please let me know your thoughts below the video: