The World Business

Archive for August, 2010

We all do it even if we are embarrassed to admit it; we all talk to ourselves. But what you might not know is that what you say is literally sealing your fate. I always cringe when I hear someone say, “Nothing good ever happens to me” or “I don’t have the right connections to get ahead.” While these may sound like normal expressions of frustration, they are far more powerful than you can ever imagine!

 

It has long been recognized that the human mind does not differentiate between fact and fiction, but merely receives whatever it hears as truth. If negative things were said about you during your childhood, plus you have continued to say the same things about yourself as an adult, your mind now firmly believes them to be true and you are probably acting accordingly.

 

That’s why many students that were failing in school were actually discovered to be quite intelligent. They had been told by abusive parents that they were dumb and would never amount to anything, and therefore they believed it and proceeded to live out that expectation.

 

Am I stuck with my beliefs or can they be changed?

 

The 20th century novelist William James was quoted as saying, “Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” And since attitudes are simply habits of thought, the good news is that you can definitely change your thoughts; and once you change your thoughts, everything else in your life will have to respond.

 

The most powerful tool ever discovered for changing your thoughts, beliefs, and ultimately your actions, is a tool called affirmations. An affirmation is a fancy word for self-talk or self-suggestion. It’s basically talking to yourself. And since we’ve already agreed each of us does that, why not make the type of self-talk you use work in your favor.

 

How do affirmations work?

 

Affirmations are positive statements used repetitively to alter your attitudes, self-confidence, and behavior patterns. In time as you constantly repeat positive statements about yourself, your subconscious mind accepts them as truth, which changes your belief, which changes your habits and actions. In other words, new fresh input will eventually override previous negative conditioning.

 

Steps for developing successful affirmations:

 

1. Decide what you want to become, what you want to do, and what you want to have. Stating things in general terms, such as “I want to spend more time with my family” will not be effective. Instead say, “I spend an hour each night talking with and reading books to my children.” Be very specific!

 

2. Use the first person pronoun “I” in your statement, never “we.” Although you may have mutual goals with your family, each person’s affirmation must be stated individually such as, “I cooperate with the financial goals my family has set.”

 

3. State your affirmation in a positive way. Say, “I enjoy public speaking” rather than, “I don’t feel afraid when I have to speak publicly.” Omit negative words like “don’t.”

 

4. Use the present tense. Say, “I am the Vice President of the company” not “I want to be the Vice President.” Remember, the mind does not differentiate between what is true and what is false, so you will want to plant the seed that you have already arrived so that your mind will begin to influence your behavior and actions toward your goal.

 

5.  Make your affirmations fun. Motivation arises from the expectation of the fulfillment of your needs and desires. Enjoy your affirmations; be creative!

 

6.  Write down your affirmations. Writing crystallizes thought and thought motivates action. Write your affirmations on small cards to keep with you, tape them to your mirror or refrigerator; repeat them the first thing each morning and the last thing each night.

 

You can create an affirmation for every area of your life: personal development, job promotion, family relationships, and spiritual growth. Affirmations are aided by pictures of your goals, such as posting a floor plan of your dream house on a bulletin board; by number combinations, such as I make 10 calls a day, 6 become appointments, and 3 become sales; and by actions such as listening to motivational tapes, practicing a piece of music over and over, or using a daily “to-do” list. 

 

Affirmations are used by all self-motivated, successful people. They possess an inner drive for achievement that keeps them striving toward their goals and are not dependent on outside circumstances or others to make their life work.

 

Self-motivation is a learned skill; if you don’t presently have it, you can acquire it by using positive affirmations. The simplicity of affirmations sometimes causes them to be overlooked or discounted. But they are incredibly powerful. If you are patient and consistent, you can literally change your destiny. You are what you say!

The general notion about entrepreneurship is that it is only about starting a business and making it successful. However, that is far from the truth. The fact is that entrepreneurship has everything to do with implementing ideas, and for that reason it becomes important that you have a basic set of qualities in you.

 

Here we shall take a look at some of the qualities that you must possess in order to be a good entrepreneur.

 

You Must Be a Good Leader

 

You cannot be a good entrepreneur without being a good leader first. When you are implementing an idea, you will definitely need to enlist the support of some people, and these people will start looking up to you for various reasons, probably because you pay them or because you teach them or something else. The crux of it all is that you need to be a leader. You have to be able to extract the services you need from these people and make sure that you give them their remuneration for it.

 

You Must Be a Good Time Manager

 

A person cannot be an entrepreneur without being a good time manager first. That’s because everything is time-bound; if you are implementing any plan, time is certainly of the essence. You have to make sure you are making optimum utilization of it, because time is indeed money.

 

You Must Be a Good Resource Manager

 

You will have some resources at your disposal if you are becoming an entrepreneur, or at least you will be gathering some resources to use so that you can implement your idea. You need to make sure that you know to handle them well. You have to always remember that there is a limit to the resources you will use whether it is money or time or people or something else and you have to work within those limits.

 

You Must Be Good at Understanding What People Want

 

Businesspersons may seem like obscure celebrities, but the fact is that they are more tuned in to what people want than anyone else. If they don’t understand popular public demands, they don’t stand a chance at whatever they are doing. Another hallmark of a successful entrepreneur is that they must listen to public demands, and that’s another quality that you must have in you.

Silence is good sometimes but for the businesses it can be lethal. Communication is vital in that case and it must be done effectively. If you are running a business or if you are involved in providing products and services, then it becomes imperative that you advertise well. Because through advertisement you communicate with your prospects and customers. With the rise of Internet, online advertising has become famous and Emails have become nice online ad tools which communicate and promote very effectively.

This kind of communication ensure that your prospects know about your products and services. They identify themselves with your brand and they would be interested in using them in future. These days various Internet marketing companies are providing consultations regarding Email marketing services. If you have any question regarding Email marketing, for example what kind of Email should be sent, what you should not tell in an Email, how to take precautions to prevent an Email looking like a Spam, or any such question, then you can opt for an Email marketing services company.

People are using Email marketing services because sending an promotional Email is much cheaper and convenient than the other forms of promotion. An email lets you deliver your message to the people and not to a website so direct communication happens, which is more effective. Email marketing services have proven very successful for people doing it right. You can learn the substance of Email marketing by choosing an Email marketing services company. Generally, Email marketing is done in 3 ways.

Direct mail- Here you rent a list of Email addresses from an Email marketing company. Then you send promotional messages to these addresses.

Retention Email- Here you are sending newsletters which are so far the best form of promotional Email templet.

Advertising in other people’s Emails- Here instead of sending your own newsletter, you are using newsletters published by others to put your advertisement in the mails they send to their subscribers. You pay them for the service.

You can choose an Email marketing style of your choice. So, opt for an Email marketing services company and start communication with your prospects.

During the new year holidays, I stumbled upon an interesting post written by Andrew Cavanagh in the Warrior Forum. The post is about how to make money by selling your online marketing skills to businesses right in you local city. This post went completely insane with thousands of views almost immediately and all kinds of positive comments.

Andrew who has over 25 years of experience in developing small businesses also written a 50-page report called “Offline Gold For Online Marketers”. and sales. When I saw his new report, I grabbed it immediately not because of its introductory low price ($19.99) but the idea of selling our online marketing skills or services offline.

The idea of offline marketing is consistent with my thinking. Like I mentioned in my website before, most online marketers are glue to their PC all the time but there are a few smart ones who also spend their time doing networking offline. Because these people know that there are gold mines in the offline world. But, the question is… how do you promote and sell your online marketing skills offline?

If you’ve experience in building a small business before, perhaps you know that the average business owner is very busy just trying to keep his business running. He doesn’t have the time to take a long hard objective look at the way he could improve his marketing strategy. But he is also acutely aware that anything that can improve his net profits will help to keep his business more stable and put real cash in his pocket! Most small business owners are well aware that they can always find time for someone who’s genuinely interested in helping them to improve their businesses and they’re willing to pay for it.

Now if you’ve some basic online marketing skills and are willing to walk into a business and just have a casual conversation about how they can improve their sales using the Internet, a good percentage of them will listen. Of course, besides having some basic online marketing skills, you also need to learn how to talk to these business owners and understand their NEEDS. That’s why I find the report “Offline Gold For Online Marketers” so valuable because it outlines step-by-step how to approach small business owners so they want to listen to you and how to sell your services to them.

Here are some tips on where to find those small business owners and how to communicate with them…

I’m sure you’ve heard about Business Networking International (BNI). If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s basically a business and professional networking organization whose purpose is to provide a structured environment for the development and exchange of qualified business referrals. It’s the largest networking organisation of its kind in the world. I’m sure you can find them in your city.

They hold regular meeting for their members and if you know someone there, you can ask him/her to invite to join their meeting (for free). It’s a great avenue for you to get to know other entrepreneurs from different fields. Make sure you bring a lot of business cards if you attend one of their gatherings.

Just get to know people and have a casual conversation with them. My favorite technique to communicate with small business owners is to always remember to ask questions! For example, let’s say he/she asks you first, “what do you do for a living?”. My normal answer for that question is… “I have a home-based Internet business. How about you?”. Always remember to end your answer with a question. You need to get to know about your potential client and a great way to do this is to talk less and listen more (ie. ask more questions).

Ask them if their businesses currently have a website? Most of them don’t. For those who have websites, they have no idea what is online marketing and they have never made any sale from their websites. You must always in a position to gather information and seek the opportunity to talk about your services. Remember not to talk too much about yourself. Focus on your potential client. it’s enough to say that you have a home-based internet business and you also help small business owners to improve their businesses through online marketing. Ask them this question: “Do you think your business will do better if you have a website?”. Then LISTEN!

I hope this article has given you some great ideas on how to sell your online marketing skills offline. Click here to find out more about “Offline Gold For Online Marketers”.