How To Achieve Great Success From A Home Based Business

Profitability is the most important factor to success with any home based business. A home-based business can run for a long period of time as long as you make it profitable.

However, as many businesses don't make a profit to start with this is often the first goal of the home-based business owners, and you should achieve this goal as soon as possible.

To achieve this goal you should focus on business development, be careful with your expenses and focus on what you are offering.

Focusing on growth is a key way to build your home-based business profits. In order to influence your results you should have the right mindset. If you don't have a profitable mindset then you are likely going to stay where you are.

Rather focus on growth and have the mindset to notice opportunities when they come along that can lead to gain, and then take action on these opportunities right away before they are gone. Again, success loves speed.          

Next you must pay attention to your expenses seriously. All businesses have some expenses when they first start out even home-based single person businesses. Make sure you set up a budget that includes things such as advertising, utilities, office supplies and anything else that may be necessary to the specific home-based business you are considering.

On your list write down the expenses that are necessary for operating your business, these should be items that you need in order to make your home-based business profitable.

You will likely run into some expenses that you don't really need to operate your business. These are the expenses that don't make your business grow and only take away from the profits of your business.

Carefully consider before you truly need these expenses and if they don't make any profit then you should cut them for something that will actually help with the growth of your business.

However, you can only move your business so far by restricting your expenses. You also need income in order to gain profitability from your home-based venture.

Promotion is the most important factor to developing any business and gaining profitability. Basically you should focus on making your business known to people.

You can't expect to do business with them if they aren't aware of your company. While this may seem like an obvious point, the fact is that many businesses (home-based, store front, and internet based alike) fail simply because individuals don't spend enough time promoting their business. Once again, promotion is the key for your success.

If you have more than one product that requires promoting then consider focusing on just one main product for your business since you can focus most of your attention on marketing one product and once you get interested customers or visitors you can tell them about the additional products.

This will make it easier to run your business and you will also have better results from your actions. Remember, it isn’t impossible for you to promote many products at the same time, just time consuming and has a habit of dividing your concentrations.

These tips don’t just apply to those who are starting a new home-based business. You can still use these helpful advice to let you move your business in the right direction if you have been working on it for awhile and just can get it to work for you. By applying these tips you will be able to have success with your home based business no matter how long you have been in business.

Don’t forget that I am here for your success, if you have any topics that you want me to cover, drop me a line and let me know.

Easily Create Email Marketing Campaigns

How do you develop an effective email marketing campaign?

 

What you send to your customers is very important. If it isn’t well designed or professional looking the results could be damaging to your business instead of beneficial.

 

The first part of the email marketing campaign needs to include your goals.

 

What do you expect to achieve from your email marketing campaign?

 

Who do you want to reach?

 

You should also decide what type of marketing you are going to do. Will it be random discounts and promotions, seasonal, or will you be sending a regular newsletter?

 

Next you will need to do some research. Do you know the email marketing laws? What are the current market trends? How are you going to make your email marketing campaign more appealing than that of the competition? You have to have these goals clearly defined and outlined. Otherwise your will just spin your wheels while developing your email marketing campaign.

 

Since the goals of every business are very different, the strategies they use in email marketing will also be very different. While this gives each business the ability to be creative a unique in developing their marketing campaign, it also makes it difficult because there are no clear-cut, cookie cutter answers.

 

If you aren’t skilled in developing email marketing campaigns you may need to purchase some type of email marketing software or hire an email-marketing consultant.

 

How well do you know your customer? I hope well because this is a very important part of developing an effective email marketing campaign. You have to be able to address your key audience by providing them with relevant information. If they aren’t interested in what you have to say then it doesn’t matter how many emails you manage to send out.

 

Dot Your I’s and Cross Your T’s

 

Once you have decided on your email marketing campaign you may think you are ready to hit the send button, but hold on just a little bit longer. Make sure everything in the email is spelled correctly and grammatically correct. Nothing looks more unprofessional than an email marketing campaign will errors.

 

They will stick out like a sore thumb. Remember to test the effectiveness of the email on the various email service providers as they all have variations. You will be disappointed to discover that subscribers to a particular service weren’t able to open your email for it to read properly.

 

Subject Lines Are the Beginning of the Email

 

Make sure the subject line of your email is clear and effective. This will help your email marketing campaign to get past the various spam filters and virus protectors. Many researchers of email marketing believe the subject line will make or break the reader’s decision to open your email. Make sure you personalize the email and address it to the consumer rather than a broad introduction. You will want to attach a clear expiration date to your email marketing promotion. Nothing motivates the consumer than having a deadline. They don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to take advantage of what you are offering.

 

Email marketing is a great opportunity for you to communicate with your customers and to promote your business. It is very important that you take the time to set your goals and to know the market before you develop your email marketing campaign.

 

This will ensure it is successful. While you want your email marketing strategy to be unique and creative you need to keep the wants and needs of the customer in mind. You can choose to develop your email marketing strategy on your own, using software, or by hiring a consultant. Getting your email to the consumer is only half of the battle.

 

As always, here’s to your success and to building your legacy.

Assertiveness Q and A

First, if you missed this series, go back and check out the other posts on this topic and the Q and A will be more pertinent to you. Just click here for the first of the series.

Here are just a few Q and A discussions on the topic of assertiveness. Again, there is no quick fix, one side fits all ability to go from being used and abused to being assertive without being pushy and obnoxious, but hopefully you see the importance of being more assertive in order to be successful and keep moving forward.

 

Q: What if I do become more assertive and I use what I have learned in my relationships, in my office work, or with friends; I even learned to say “no”. What if people get angry with me?

 

A: People who are truly your friends are not going to get mad at you. Real friends want you to learn and grow as a person. They will probably be happy for you now that you have learned to stop being a doormat. True friends want the best for you; in fact, they may have been secretly worried about you being such a pushover.

 

As for your spouse, if your partner truly loves you and wants the best for you, he/she will rejoice that you are learning to be more assertive and growing as a person. Your spouse’s own life will be enriched by your experience. You will be more self-confident and happy, thereby making both of your lives better.

 

If you apply these skills to your job, your boss and co-workers will have more respect for you. At work, it can mean getting a promotion, being assigned new and interesting challenges, or maybe even a raise. When your boss sees your capability to take control, handle crises, remain calm, and maintain poise, he will begin to see you in a completely new light.

 

Standing up for yourself makes a huge difference in the way people look at you and in how they treat you, especially at the office. It may be true that you cannot please everyone with your newly acquired skill. The ones who will not like the new you are probably the ones who used to push you around and took advantage of you at every turn. Do not worry; they will get over it.

 

Stop depriving yourself of the respect due to you. Be assertive and earn other people’s respect. Be in control of your life and feel more self-confident.

 

Your life will never be the same again.

 

Q: If others do get angry with me, how do I handle it? What if I fall apart?

 

A: If you use these new skills appropriately, things will change, situations will improve and yes, you will earn the ire of some people. As previously pointed out, those who will get angry are probably the ones who used to mistreat you.

 

However, you are improving your own life and protecting your rights. They are upset because they can no longer push you around, infringe on your personal rights, and pass on to you the jobs they do not wish to do.

 

That is why they are angry. Bear in mind that you are not responsible for their feelings. They will have to deal with their feelings. It is now their problem, not yours.

 

Q: Are my friends going to get mad when I start telling them “no” all the time?

 

A: They would be more upset to know that you have been saying “yes” to everyone, when you really mean to say “no”. Agreeing to things that you really do not want to do will make you feel resentful towards that person.

 

You hate feeling that way towards friends, right? It is almost as if you have been lying to them.

 

Being assertive and saying “no” is a more honest approach, don’t you think? Or would you rather risk destroying their love and respect just because you cannot say “no”?

 

Q: What about saying “no” at work; won’t that get me in trouble?

 

A: By agreeing to everything that everyone wants you to do at work, you will find that you simply cannot keep up with all the work. There are just so many hours in a day. If you say “yes” to everything, you are cheating yourself and the others who are depending on you to finish what you said you would do.

 

Doing shoddy work is not going to impress anyone. By taking on too much, you would not have the time to do a good job on everything. By limiting the number of jobs you accept, you are actually doing everyone a favor. If you keep the workload down, you can do a great job on your assignments. This is what will impress people. It is better to cut the workload and finish everything well, than to take on too much and finish nothing.

 

Q: What if someone asks me to do something I know I can easily accomplish and yet, I say “no”; will he think that I’m selfish or self-centered?

 

A: Just because you can do something does not mean you have to do it. You can refuse even legitimate requests assertively. Sometimes, you have to put your own needs ahead of others. You cannot please everyone all the time and you do not have to. Bitterness will grow if you let the guilt get to you and make you a ‘yes’ person all the time.

 

Q: If I’m assertive about what I know and what I can do, won’t that make me sound egocentric? Shouldn’t I be more modest?

 

A: Being assertive and let people know you are clever and skilled is not being immodest or egocentric. Sometimes you have to toot your own horn, so to speak, and there is nothing wrong with that. If you do not do it, who will?

Sometimes being modest is not a good thing. It makes you sound like you cannot say anything positive about yourself. It also indicates that you cannot give or receive compliments.

 

Q: If I toot my own horn, as you say, won’t people expect me to be great 100% of the time? What if I screw up?

 

A: Without being assertive and letting others know of your skills and accomplishments, you will miss out many opportunities. Since no one is perfect, you will make mistakes occasionally. Own up to them and learn from them, then move on.

 

Even if you mess up once in a while, you will be respected far more for giving it your best shot than by not trying at all. As Wayne Gretzky, the hockey player said, “You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

 

Q: I’m a woman and I’m not sure it’s considered feminine to be assertive all the time. Men can get away with it, but not women. Will men in my office hate me if I try to be assertive in the workplace?

 

A: It is unfortunate that assertive women often have more trouble at work than their male counterparts. However, that should not stop any woman from standing up for herself in the workplace. If you possess the skills necessary for the job and have the experience and the drive, you can assert yourself and get what you want.

 

A woman in a management position may find herself walking in a fine line. She must be assertive in order to do her job, but may be thought of as pushy or unfeminine when she does. Oddly enough, studies done on this topic showed that the criticism came mostly from other women, not the men in the workplace.

 

Someone once said that we should learn to live without the good opinions of others. If your career is important to you, you will have to learn to be assertive and be selective about considering other people’s opinions.

 

As I said in the first part of this series, assertiveness starts with being aware.

If you have read my blog for very long, you know that I am not doing this to get rich off of my readers, I want to help others succeed and do it without having to hit all of the bumps in the road that I have, so when I offer something, it is not very often and it is to help. Like with this offer; a big part of assertiveness is being able to find your voice and speak up. Click Here! for an awesome book on speaking. It is a great one to own, but if not, try to find it in your local library.

Law Of Success: Part I

 

The last few months, I have been immersing myself in the teachings of Napoleon Hill and would like to share with you a summary of the main principles that I have learned from his book, “Law of Success: The 21st-Century Edition.”

 

Unless you are new to learning success strategies, then you know the name Napoleon Hill. But for the benefit of those who are new to this and just now starting to purposefully work on making their lives more successful and don’t know the name; Mr. Hill is quite arguably the author of the world’s first practical philosophy of human achievement. Many NLP theories came from him before there was even a name for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. 

 

Commissioned back in 1908 by the great steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie, Hill spent well over 25 years researching the lives of over 500 of the most successful people on the planet to find out what actually made them so successful.

 

What makes his findings so amazing is that most of Hill’s work didn’t come from second-hand research but first-hand knowledge from personal, direct contact with some of the greatest names of the day including people like Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, and US Presidents Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt.

 

While “Think and Grow Rich” is certainly Hill’s most popular book based on the results of his exhaustive research and I would suggest that it be in the personal library of anyone who wants to learn about success, the “Law of Success” (which was first published in a set of eight volumes) is Hill’s most comprehensive work of achievement, I’d almost say that it is the world’s first and foremost encyclopedia of success.

 

I would rank Napoleon Hill’s “Law of Success: The21st-Century Edition” as the foundational book for developing a practical success philosophy that anyone can easily apply to their lives. The fully revised and updated 21st-Century Edition comes in at 1035 pages containing Hill’s deep analysis of the 17 proven principles of success, many personal examples and stories from his own life experiences, and new commentary from the editors providing modern parallels with contemporary events and the latest management theories.

 

In this special three part series, I will attempt to give you a brief summary of each of Napoleon Hill’s 17 Principles from his classic bestseller; master these principles and you will master your destiny!

 

Principle # 1: The Master Mind

 

The mastermind is basically a friendly alliance of two or more people working together in full cooperation towards achieving one goal. It’s used for creative problem solving, the mastermind group is created from a combined group’s spirit, which can accomplish far more than any individual member could possibly hope to achieve independently.

 

The way Mr. Hill recommends forming a workable mastermind group is with ideally six to twelve like-minded individuals who will support the chief aim of the group, who are generally like-minded, and who are willing to meet with you regularly to help you accomplish the aim of the group by everyone helping each other and holding each other accountable. You must offer each group member something in return that will reward his or her participation in your mastermind group.

 

Whether you choose to develop a formal alliance or not, the Master Mind principle will still have a powerful influence over your life – for better or worse. It is said you are the average sum total of the people you spend the most time with which will either help or hinder you. Choose your friends and associates carefully.

 

Principle # 2: A Definite Aim

 

Without a definite purpose backed by a definite plan, it could be said, is like a rudderless ship in the middle of the Atlantic. Good intentions and hard work are not enough. You need a purpose, you need a plan, and you need a whole lot of perseverance backed with a burning desire to achieve your goals in life.

 

To realize your direction and main goals, Hill suggests writing out your WWWH and reviewing it daily: “know what you want, when you want it, why you want it, and how you intend to get it.” Also include what you plan to give in return for reaching your dream.

 

Note: I have found that the what, when and how are important, but the most important is the why. If your why is big enough, all of the other answers will come.

 

By reviewing this manifesto (if you want to call it that) on a daily basis (I suggest first thing every morning), with intense feeling, you will begin attracting the people and circumstances in your life to make your wildest dreams come true.

 

It may sound a little “woo-woo” but you do find that you attract that which you spend most of your time concentrating on. Try it for a week.

 

Principle # 3: Self-Confidence

 

To be self-confidant you must know yourself and know your business. Know your strengths and weaknesses, your greatest fears and deepest desires. Those who do not know live in constant fear and anxiety. A leader must know.

 

Keep a log of all your accomplishments and all the praise you receive and review it frequently. Tell yourself daily about how successful you are becoming.

 

Fill your mind with positive, inspiring thoughts. Surround yourself with people who will empower you. Have faith in others and see the good in people because how you view others is a reflection of yourself.

 

Principle # 4: The Habit of Saving

 

Pay yourself first by developing the habit of consistently saving a portion of your income. Hill and many others suggest saving at least 10% of your earnings.

 

Tip: if you’ve accumulated high-interest debts such as credit card debt, student loans, etc. it’s a good idea to use the 80/20 rule and allocate 80% of your savings to paying down the debt in order to avoid that debt from growing faster than the rate of return you’re getting on your savings.

 

Note: After my wife and I lost our house, one car, facing bankruptcy and about to lose our other vehicle, we found ourselves over $100,000 in debt and used Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University to start getting back on track.

 

Those who have will be given more. Having even a modest savings account will increase your self-confidence and will attract many opportunities that would normally not come your way without that extra cushion.

 

Successful people will be more willing to back your idea or promote you within their enterprise if they see that you yourself have developed the self-discipline of saving.

 

Hill recounts several instances in his book where people who had built up a little savings account were able to invest in new business opportunities, attract financing for their ideas, or enter into partnerships that would later result into untold millions.

 

Principle # 5: Initiative and Leadership

 

“Do the thing and you shall have the power.” – Emerson

 

According to Hill, leadership is “doing the right thing without being told.” Leadership is ultimately about taking initiative and getting things done. Bottom line is that successful leaders get paid for results not warming an office chair.

 

By always providing additional service without any expectation for pay, you will build your initiative muscles. Make it a point to go above and beyond.

 

Leadership requires self-sacrifice. Leaders are givers. Inspire and help others and you will be rewarded in direct proportion to your efforts. Zig Ziglar, likes to say, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”

 

I hope you enjoyed Part I of this “Law of Success” series. For Law of Success Part II, it will be posted shortly.

 

In the meantime, take this week to follow these 5 principles, share these principles with your peers, discuss the concepts and teach other people what you’ve learned. There’s no better way to learn than by teaching others.

 

To get your copy of Napoleon Hill’s “Law of Success: The 21st Century Edition” Click here. It's worth the investment.

 

 

Become Comfortable with the Uncomfortable

 

I continually learn something new and though learning is a passion of mine and I love it, actually getting down to the ‘doing’ part has produced some apprehension and a slight fear of the unknown as study turns to action.

 

Writing my first book, or rebuilding a set of new routines to advance my weight loss and improve my health, and anything else that was and is a ‘first time event’ for me, is very real and very uncomfortable. If you have never felt this discomfort then you haven’t done anything that challenges you.

 

The upside of this is once the new is mastered the physical pain miraculously disappeared. 

 

For me (and most of us) it’s all about the comfort zone.

 

I really know I’m alive when I’m outside my comfort zone, but the challenge is getting up the nerve to step out.

 

The comfort zone is an amazing place of security, comfort, safety, and protection.  Stepping out in this zone can be scary and, so often times, lonely, involving stretching, shedding, building and growing; this is the bit where physical pain comes into it. 

 

I remember, growing up, waking up with flashes of pain in my joints and my grandmother telling me that it was from growing pains, Expanding the comfort zone is pretty much the same.

 

With the growing pains comes growth, making you a bigger person, much like anything in life.  When mastering anything in life has finally been reached and with it increased inner strength and confidence, this is when the discomfort is worth it.

 

To truly be successful in life, you must be aware that this doesn’t just apply to the ‘big stuff’.  This applies across the board no matter how big or small; finances, health, relationships, it all requires the anxiety of the first step into the unknown in order to head in the right direction.

 

Here are 5 easy things to help with becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable.  Starting with the most important:

 

1. Start by taking an honest look around you and take an objective note of what you notice.  Each time you do something different notice what your reaction to it is and where this reaction manifests within your body.   

2.  Keep a journal or diary of feelings and reactions as you continue to grow through stepping out of your comfort zone.  Yes, a little woo-woo I know, but this also serves to give you a physical reference later to see where you were compared to where you are now.

  3. Ask yourself the following questions in regards to growing and stretching:

 

“What needs to happen now to make it less painful for me?”

 

“What are the benefits for me in mastering this new thing (relationship, job, task etc)?”

 

“What am I learning from this experience?”

 

“What am I not learning from this experience?”

 

4. Turn negative self-talk into positive speak.  The more often positive self-talk is practiced the more comfortable it will become, until it’s fully integrated and natural. You will be surprised how many times in one day that you will self-deprecate and insult yourself.

 

5. Know that it takes time to become comfortable with something new and different.   Unfortunately there is no instant fix or cure all. The quicker the mastery level raises, the quicker the return to a comfort zone.

 

The outcome of this effort will be living how you want to live, and knowing that you’ve achieved this through your own efforts.   

 

Always remember to “Become comfortable with the uncomfortable”.  It’s during my uncomfortable moments, I remember that phrase and I tell myself that once mastered, I’ll find myself, not only comfortable again, but at a higher level than I was…well until the next time I decide to take on something new.