You know the story of Superman. You’re familiar with the boy from Krypton who was sent to earth and took on the job of a lowly newspaper reporter at the Daily Planet, hiding behind a pair of thick framed glasses, while at the same time dashing off to the nearest phone booth to save a plane that was falling out of the sky or help the police catch a bank robber.
With all of the strengths that Superman has there is still one tried-and-true way to bring him down: a radioactive piece of his planet known as kryptonite. What about your kryptonite? What are the weaknesses that have prevented you from being successful in the past and, unless you overcome them, are going to keep preventing you from being successful in the future?
Okay, here’s where you’re going to need to be honest. Don’t worry, no one is going to grade this after you finish it; no one is even going to see it. You can be honest with yourself here because if you can’t be honest with yourself, who can you be honest with? If you really want to improve your life and start achieving your goals you are going to have to take a good,
hard look at some things that you might not be proud of.
If you procrastinate doing work on your online business because it interferes with your primetime television shows, be honest about it. If you are terrible at managing your time and whatever spare moments you might have had in use during the day get lost in the shuffle, be honest about that as well. We’re going to split these weaknesses into three different categories.
Interpersonal Weaknesses
The first type of weaknesses that we are going to discuss is interpersonal weaknesses. These are weaknesses that come from other people. Most of the time, you will not actually have people stopping you from achieving success, you will just think they are stopping you. This is a form of the mental block rather than an interpersonal one.
You can identify when interpersonal weakness is actually a mental one, because the person that you think is keeping you from achieving success actually hasn’t said or done anything to prevent you from being successful. An example of this would be someone who is afraid of taking a leap of faith because they don’t want to disappoint their parents, when they actually haven’t discussed the matter with their parents and don’t know for sure what their reaction be at
all.
The actual interpersonal weakness, when you really have someone that is impeding you, is more difficult to get past. This usually comes in the form of a spouse. The spouse may not understand what it is that you’re trying to do, they may have fears that you aren’t going to be able to pay your bills; they might even be fearful that you, yourself, are going to change and they aren’t sure where that leaves them. Most of the time, this impediment comes in the form of anger. Rarely does a personal block like this resort in a major life change such as a divorce thought.
Physical Impediments
The next type of weakness that we’re going talk about is the physical one. Depending on the exact type of physical problem this can be easy to resolve or can be nearly impossible. If you want to understand how this weakness works, imagine that you wanted to become a graphic designer.
However, you didn’t own a computer; you had no access to Photoshop and you wouldn’t have known how to create something in Photoshop even if you did. In this situation, two of the physical blocks could be solved with money. You could buy a computer to do graphic design on and you could buy a copy of Photoshop, or sign up with Adobe’s monthly subscription program to get access.
However, the last one is a little bit more difficult to manage. It is actually one of the biggest reasons that people put off starting their online business or their road to success for so long, because they think they don’t have the appropriate training, schooling or experience. In the case of our graphic designer, they could develop the skills that they need by watching online tutorials and by starting to create graphic designs. However, that would depend on whether or not they had a computer and access to the software.
Mental Blocks
The last type of weakness that we will talk about is probably the most difficult to face. These are the mental blocks; the things that you believe or think that keeps you from achieving your goals. Mental blocks can be difficult to overcome because the first step is to identify them and this can be extremely hard to do. Facing the facets of your own personality that are self-destructive and are keeping you from being successful is a scary proposition. In fact, figuring out what these mental weaknesses are is probably the hardest step.
Once you’ve figured out what is mentally keeping you from success then you can start to take steps to remove these mental blocks, one by one. What you will normally find is that these blocks aren’t helpful and they certainly aren’t logical. You might have a fear of failure that is based on some past event that has no real bearing on your life today, but since that mental block is always been there, it seems like it belongs.
You have two choices when it comes to these mental blocks: you can cultivate a failure mindset, reinforcing it every single day with negative self-talk – even subconsciously – or you can chip away at those mental blocks every day until you have removed them completely. What is interesting is that both of these take about the same amount of time. You just have to decide if you’re going to shore up your mental blocks or work on removing them.
So you have a family budget. There’s only one problem – you haven’t stuck with it! Maybe your budget is nicely outlined and detailed, but sits unused on your computer or in your desk drawer.
Formulating a budget is a challenge, but once you have it done, it doesn’t do any good unless you stick with it. Of course, sometimes you do need to compromise, and your budget does need to be somewhat flexible. But you can periodically tweak and adjust your budget and still stick to it. Here are some creative and even fun tips for sticking with your budget.
Have a Look-See
Maybe your budget didn’t work out because it didn’t fit your needs. Take a fresh look at your budget and ask some of the following questions:
Include Fun Alternatives
As noted above, having alternatives to fill the void created by cutbacks is helpful to keeping your budget. Having creative and fun alternatives may be even more helpful. Here are some ideas.
Sometimes, just getting creative and customizing your budget to fit your family can go a long way toward encouraging everyone to stick with it.
If you do all this then your social media channel will instantly be better than a huge proportion of what’s out there at the moment. But it won’t be perfect.
Why?
Because if you look at social media only from that perspective then you’re missing out on a very big part of it. Simply put, social media is a social tool. It’s intended for communication and that’s a two-way thing. Even if you’re posting the very best content in the world, if that’s all you’re doing then it will still feel like a one-way bombardment that will quickly become frustrating for your following.
So instead, you need to focus on that social aspect too by actually engaging with your audience and communicating with them rather than making this a one way thing. And this starts by treating your visitors like VIPs.
This is a small and simple difference but it’s one that can have a huge impact on your success.
The key is to make following you on social media seem like an exciting lifestyle change and the first step on a great journey. If your social media channel is about fitness for example, then you can create a situation where simply signing up to your social media channel feels like the first step toward the body your audience wants.
Did you know that people who tell others about their plans to get into shape often fail to do so? The reason for this is that simply telling other people that you plan to lose weight or build muscle relieves some of the psychological tension of wanting to achieve a goal.
When we tell people, it becomes a part of our identity and that means we sometimes feel as though we don’t have to work so hard! Of course this is not a good thing but what it does show, is how making a social step like this can actually feel like positive progress and even bring a sense of catharsis and achievement.
When someone clicks on your ‘follow’ button, you can make them feel like they’ve taken the first step to a new them: more confidence, more muscle, more money, more sex. And that makes them feel great about themselves, which is excellent feedback!
Your job is to encourage this feeling by positioning your social media channel as some kind of movement, some kind of statement. This is why many of the most successful online brands will tell people to ‘Follow and take part in the new fitness revolution!’ or ‘Join a community of elite money makers!’.
This also has another advantage, because it makes your followers feel like they’re a part of a community. This creates social pressure to join (everyone who is anyone is following you!) and it makes them feel that they may be missing out by not following. People hate missing out but they love being a part of something and if you can combine these two feelings, then you will be on to a winner!
You can then also carry this on by making your followers feel like VIPs in the way you continue to speak to them throughout. For example, you might refer to them using a group name, or you might tell them how they are receiving early access, or restricted information. Anything that makes them feel good and feel excited to be a part of your brand.
What’s in a Brand?
A big part of this will come automatically from building your brand in the right way to begin with. A brand is much more than simply a logo you see. Rather, a brand is all about your value proposition (as we’ve discussed) and your ‘why’.
Going back to that why, we can refer to Simon Sinek’s ‘Golden Circle’. This is the idea that you need to understand three ‘rings’ of your business. The outer ring is ‘What’, which is the service or product you create. Ring two is ‘How’ which is how you make it different and how you achieve it at all. And the inner circle is ‘Why’. Why do you do what you do? What is it that you want your business to achieve?
How do you want to make your mark on the world? And it’s by emphasizing this why over the what that you can create a brand that people are excited to get behind. We’ve already seen that the best way to market your social media channel is to create real value. But it also follows that you need to be able to have a motivating force and a vision behind your products themselves.
Look at Apple. Apple didn’t create a computer and then try to find a purpose for it. Jobs and Wozniak began with their why. Their reason for existing was to make computers fun, personal and creative. They wanted to overturn the idea that computers were for businesses only and they wanted to empower people to be creative and expressive.
That is what enabled Apple to thrive. That is why people responded to their products. That is why there are still so many fervent Apple fans today – despite the hardware being technically inferior and no longer quite so ground breaking. Other companies aim to give people more personal freedom. Or they aim to make the planet a cleaner place to live. Or they aim to help us see the world. Or achieve financial independence.
What is it that makes you wake up in the morning? How is it that led to your business? Focus on that because that is a movement and a vision and that is massively more motivating, engaging and exciting than ‘We Sell Washing Machines’. Plus, once you find the reason for your brand’s existence, then you can start to look into other ways of expressing that so that you can find ways to deliver value through your social media channels or to generally be more inventing and creative with your marketing etc.
In the world of entrepreneurship there are times when your strategy is going to fail. Obviously, your goal is to minimize this is much as possible and work as hard as you can to make a strategy work so that it doesn’t fail. But sometimes, there is nothing you can do to avoid it and you must cut your losses and move on. But before you go on to the next opportunity, you should know how to make the most of a failed strategy and learn from it so you’ll be better in the future.
Find out Why It Didn’t Work
Your first task is to find out why the strategy didn’t work. This might be difficult but it will be vital to not making the same mistake in the future. If you just shrug your shoulders and move on, you could make the same mistakes in the future that cause the strategy to fail.
But if you know what mistakes you made, how to fix them or avoid them in the future, you’ll have a big head start towards connect opportunity. Keep in mind, it is usually a combination of several factors that make a strategy fail and not just one single problem.
Don’t Let Discouragement and Negativity Keep You from Moving Forward
Just because a business strategy failed doesn’t mean that you, personally, are a failure. In fact, the very fact that you failed shows that you’re willing to take a risk and put yourself out there. Most successful people fail several times before they get it right. If they had stopped after one or two failures they would’ve never gotten to the point they are today.
A good example of this is novelist Stephen King. He had hundreds of rejection slips posted on his wall before finally getting published and now he’s the most successful novelist of the 20th century.
Find out What Did Work
Finally, you’re going to break down the strategy as you’re looking for reasons that it failed and find out what things did work. You can use those same things in the future when you’re ready to begin a new strategy. Knowing what worked and what didn’t can be a powerful asset in your next endeavor and understanding what actually did work can teach you just as much is figuring out what didn’t work about a strategy.
There is nothing like achieving the success you want to make you grateful, but eventually the newness wears off and you forget to be grateful. There are so many opportunities to be grateful each and every day and so many reasons to do so. For one thing, people around you will be happier and much more willing to spend time with you. You’ll also be happier yourself and have a more positive attitude. You’ll also find that everyone is more willing to help you when they know that you’re grateful for everything that you have and everything that you receive.
People Who Feel Entitled
You have probably encountered people who feel entitled. They somehow believe that they deserve to have success without working for it, even though all of the other successful people in the world have had to work their butts off to get where they are. These people are always negative, they whine and complain about any work that they have to do and believe that
the world should be handed to them on a silver platter. If you are one of these people, stop! If you just know people like that make sure you avoid ever falling into that trap because it is a pit of negativity that is very difficult to crawl out of.
Be Grateful for Your Opportunities
Be thankful for the opportunities that you have. If you live in a developed country, think of all the people around the world who don’t have the opportunities that you have. Think of people who not only don’t have access to the Internet and the ability to start their own business online, but they don’t even have access to clean water or electricity. The opportunity to
build a business and achieve that much success is nothing to be scoffed at. If you have that opportunity, you are a very lucky person and you should be grateful for it.
Also, you should be grateful for the teachers that you have in the information that you’re able to acquire, from the Internet or whatever sources you are using. You should be grateful for the teachers that you have, that they have the knowledge to teach and that they are willing to teach you.
There actually are successful people out there who don’t subscribe to this particular thought model, instead taking the approach that the more people they shared the secret of their success with, the more competition there will be, which will apparently somehow devalue their own success, even if it’s not the same industry. However, most successful people are really grateful for those who help them get where they are today.
You’ve probably heard of Tony Robbins. Tony is a motivational speaker, author and very successful individual. Even with as much success as he’s had, and all the things that he has done to create this environment for himself, he is still immensely grateful to the people who helped him get where he is today. In a recent interview with success.com Robbins said that he is still grateful to his earliest mentor, a man named Jim Rohn, who motivated Tony Robbins when he was very young.
Follow Tony’s example and be grateful because there are benefits; not only the ones mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter, but also some pretty amazing benefits for your business itself. Science can’t seem to find a metric to measure, but people that are grateful for all the opportunities that they had and all of the people who have helped them, are more likely to be successful than those who are not, and are usually several times more successful.
Practice Being Grateful until You Get it Perfect
It’s okay if you don’t feel that you’re at the point where you can be very grateful. Like anything else, being grateful takes practice. You might actually have to think hard about what you have to be grateful for when it comes to your online business, or you may have to wait until you actually do have something to be grateful for. The point is, start changing the way that you think. This grateful attitude goes along with everything else in this book. You are just being grateful because you should, you’re being grateful because it changes you as a person; it makes you a better person and it magnifies your success.
Start a Gratitude Journal
One of the things that you can do to become better at being grateful is to start a gratitude journal. A gratitude journal is when you sit down at the end of the day and write down some of the things that you’re grateful for. You can use your computer, you can use a piece of paper and a pen or even a smart phone app if you prefer. Just as long as you spend a little time each day thinking about what you have to be thankful for, writing it down and using it to further your success.
Ways That You Can Show Your Gratitude
One of the things that you can do to give back is use whatever assets that you have gained from being successful to help someone else. If you’re an Amazon affiliate, and you’re getting your first check from Amazon for just over $100, if you can afford it donated to charity, or take it down to your local soup kitchen to help buy groceries or even outsource some of the
things that you need for your business so that other people can make money too.
If you can show the world that you’re grateful, the world will keep giving you opportunities and information to help you be successful. It sounds hokey, like some sort of new age philosophy, but it truly is the way this thing works and if you talk to anyone who has achieved a decent level of success they will tell you that positive attitude, gratefulness and a willingness to learn are all keys to success.
So, you are ready to make some goals. In order to discuss goals are going to use the analogy of a vacation that you are traveling to by car (picturing the station wagon from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is perfectly acceptable). The goals that you set are like the ultimate destination, the place that you’re going.
The vehicle that you’re going to use to get there are the short-term goals that you’ll be achieving along the way but without an ultimate destination, a very specific ultimate destination, you aren’t going to get anywhere. That’s like trying to drive to Florida on your vacation and saying that it is somewhere “over there” east of you.
What Are Specific Goals?
What exactly are specific goals? Let’s take one of the goals that you probably have, because everyone trying to achieve success as an entrepreneur has this goal; to make more money. You can’t just use the goal of making more money, becoming rich or financial independence either, because those things mean nothing specifically. How are you going to know when you get there? How will you know if you’re on the path to get there?
Unless you make your goals specific you’ll have no direction; no specific place on the map that you can arrive at and know that you’re in the right place. So, let’s take our example of wanting to make money. Instead of having a goal that is this general, try creating a goal with something like: increase income by $10,000 per year by the end of the year, or by month 12 if you happen to be in the middle of the year.
So, you’ll know if you’ve actually achieved that goal, because you can look in your bank account, or at your financial information, and see that you earned an extra $10,000 in the past 12 months. Also, when you get to month six you’ll be able to look and see just how on track you are. If you are around halfway there, you know that you’re on track. If you haven’t made anything, you really need to step up during the next six months.
Aim High, like the Air Force
Do you know what you’re capable of? You might think you do, but for most people what they can actually achieve is quite different than what they think they can achieve. You have probably heard the axiom: whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right. People have set world records in athletic events, and experts have deemed some of them the fastest or best the human body is capable of, and then someone from a remote part of the world didn’t get the memo that there was a limit as to what the human body was capable of until after they’d already broken the record.
Set your goals higher than you think you can achieve. Of course, don’t set them outrageously high to the point where they’re unrealistic, but set them higher than you think you’re probably capable of. For example, our previous goal of earning an extra $10,000 in 12 months is pretty reasonable and probably achievable depending on what you do to make it
happen. If your goal is to make $100,000 over the next 12 months, that’s pretty unrealistic.
But what if your goal was to make an extra $15,000 in 12 months? You might think that you’re only capable of making an extra $10,000 but by setting the go higher you have something to aim for, and suppose you only make $12,000; that’s still $2000 more than your original goal.
Putting Goals into Action
You want to make a list of around five goals to start with. The number is not important; it is arbitrary. What is important is that you create enough goals that will allow you to accomplish something substantial in the next 12 months, or five years, or whatever your time frame is, and not so many goals that you have no chance of achieving them all. Then, for each goal, you’re going to make a plan of action. Earlier we used the analogy of driving a car to a vacation destination. Your plan of action is that car; it is the vehicle that is going to take you all the way to the end where your success waits.
Your plan of action is going to take you from where you are now all the way to the end result, which is your goal. It is going to include milestones, or places that you stop along the way to check your progress as well as specific small goals that you’ll need to achieve to get to the big goal. It is sort of like playing a video game – you have to beat all of the easy monsters before you get to the big boss at the end of the level.
If your goal is to make an extra $10,000 in the next 12 months then you need to know what specific things you need to do to make that happen. Are you planning to start an online store? Are you making investments? Whatever your method is, you’ll have specific things that you need to accomplish, and that makes up the framework for your plan of action.
What If You Don’t Know How to Get There?
Sure, you might be saying, this is all well and good, but what you do if you don’t know how to get to your destination – or achieve your ultimate goal. There are several ways that you can figure it out. You can do research online, you could write to some of the people that you admire and that you know of had success and asked them how they were able to achieve their goals. You can read a few books or get advice from family or friends. There are many things that you can do to learn how to get from point A to point B.
They say that all of us have a book in us but it’s also true that all of us have an idea in us. Nearly everyone will have at some point had an idea for a business, for a product, for an app, or for a service. We all have ideas that we think could make money, maybe even have a positive impact on the world.The problem is that we don’t have the know-how to make it happen, or the time. Or the money.
So, the question then, is how you take that chance and how you build a business even if you don’t just so happen to have a ton of experience, financial backing and all the right contacts. Let’s take a look at what you need to do…
Start Now!
The first thing to do, is to start your business right now. Too many of us mistakenly make the assumption that we need to quit our current jobs and then put all of our resources, time and effort into our businesses. It’s ‘all or nothing’ and there’s no way you can start a business half-heartedly…
Except that’s not true. In fact, there’s no reason that you can’t start your business in the evenings and weekends. Even if you just start a ‘shell’ of your business, it’s better to test that the idea has legs before you invest a lot of time and money into it. Start a website in the evenings, start buying and selling shirts in small quantities with a small budget. Just start now and only once you know you can earn a full-time salary do you need to consider quitting your current job.
Bootstrap
Another reason a lot of people hold themselves back from starting a dream business is that they don’t have the funds that they believe they need. If you’re planning on selling a product you invented for example, then you will probably make the assumption that you need to invest in a large order (called the MOQ – Minimum Order Quantity) to start.
In fact though, you can once again get by without doing that. One way around the problem is to start your business with two revenue streams, or maybe three. Find a way to start raising capital through your other services or products and then only once you’re making more money do you invest into R&D or large bulk orders.
For instance, you might sell a hand-made product and use that money to invest in manufacturing!
Otherwise, you can also get funding in a range of other ways. How about Kickstarter? This way you can generate funds from the web and not even need to give away any of your equity! Or how about a PayPal loan which won’t impact on your credit score?
Fail Fast
Another tip is to create an MVP – or Minimal Viable Product – and to start trying to make money from it as soon as possible. This is simply a way to test your business model before you invest too much in it. Don’t make the mistake of investing in an idea that you have no proof will work and don’t put off getting your business up and running. You can refine once you’re live!
You might be confused by the title of this chapter. You might be saying: “Hey, I value my time. That’s why I am doing this whole entrepreneurial thing.” What you probably mean however, is that you value your leisure time, and this chapter is more about valuing the extra time that you have when you’re not doing something that you absolutely have to do, such as
going to the doctor or going to work, so that you can have the time you need to be successful.
“I just don’t have time,” is the common battle cry among those who never actually make a success of themselves in any field. You have time during the day or evening or when you should be sleeping that you can use to be successful. You just have to find it.
Jealously Guard Your Time from Others
Do not let other people monopolize or even have any part of your precious success time. If you’ve committed to working on your business from 7AM to 8AM every single weekday, then don’t agree to run an errand for a friend during this period. You don’t want to be a “yes man.” Your time – at least the time that you’re spending working on your business – is your most precious commodity, and you should jealously guard it from others and not let anyone take you away from spending that time working on your business.
If you’re getting into the entrepreneur business because you don’t like to work hard, you are definitely in the wrong occupation. While there are many entrepreneurs out who have achieved a great deal of success and now have free time that they can spend doing what they want, they either worked very hard to get to that point or are still working hard. In fact, successful people can’t seem to stop working.
Even if they’re retired, there is always something that they are doing to achieve goals or to better themselves. Is your business really your number one priority? Are you willing to make some sacrifices to achieve your goals? The answer to both of these questions needs to be yes because if you don’t make your business your number one priority it will slip further and further down on your ranking list of priorities until you almost never work on it and you need to be willing to
make sacrifices to achieve your goals; some of the sacrifices are going to be painful. Just like a man or woman who is going on a diet, you might have to sacrifice the chocolate cake and Rocky Road ice cream of your life in order to achieve success.
Price Your Products What You’re Going to Be Worth
If you are entering the marketplace with a product or service, don’t do more than a basic, cursory examination of the going prices. Once you know what the going prices are, consider how much you think your services are worth, which also goes for products. Some people start their business off on the wrong foot by lowering their prices drastically in trying to undercut the competition. This is a bad idea for many reasons.
First, you’re not going to be able to out price the biggest retailers out there like Amazon and Walmart. Second, people are more apt to buy something that costs what they think is a fair price than something dirt cheap. Cheap stuff isn’t good and good stuff isn’t cheap, as the saying goes. Have you ever wondered how some people charge what seems like exorbitant prices for the same services that you’re providing? It’s like the story about the fruit merchant who met another fruit merchant on the road.
The second merchant asked the first how much he charged for apples and the man replied that he sold them two-for-a-dollar. The second merchant was aghast, and asked him how he could get people to pay two-for-a-dollar for his apples when everyone else was charging two-for-a-quarter. The man replied that he didn’t know what everyone else was charging, he just charged with he thought they were worth. If you think you’re worth a certain amount, then charge that amount. You’d be surprised how willing people are to pay a competitive price if you’re confident and good at what you do.
Manage Your Time Effectively
If you want to be successful, you’re going to have to start managing your time differently than you have in the past. In the past, you may have flirted with the idea of starting an online business but spent most of the time looking around, seeing what other people have done and watching videos on YouTube – business-related or not. From now on, you have to be more serious. You’re going to have to start devising a schedule and sticking to it religiously.
Make sure that you set aside enough time during the day to actually make a significant amount of progress with your business. If you have allotted 15 minutes per day to grow your e-commerce website, you’re going to grow at a very, very slow rate We live in a distraction filled society.
When you get on the Internet there are 4 billion things vying for your attention. Someone just got on Facebook that you’ve been wanting to talk to; there is a tweet from your favorite celebrity that you really want to read; there’s a video on YouTube that literally everyone is watching. If this is how your Internet experience usually is and you are starting an online company you’re going to want to take active steps to remove the distractions.
What used to be effective was a tool called Freedom which allowed you to irrevocably and completely block the Internet for a period of time. However, now that we have mobile devices at our disposal and multiple methods for accessing the web, you’re just going to have to exercise some good, old-fashioned self-control, buckle down and get done what you need to do make your business successful.
The most successful people in the world do not have people in service to them; they are in service to other people. Think about Domino’s Pizza. A few years ago, this pizza chain had reduced profits with low sales all over the United States. So they changed their tactic. Instead of making pizzas according to their recipes, because that is the way it had always been, they asked their customers what they would prefer. It turned out, their customers wanted a better tasting pizza and so Domino’s went to work creating one. Now, profits are back up and the company is doing fine.
Another contemporary example: the fast food chain McDonald’s just announced that they are going to provide breakfast all day long. For decades, people have been held hostage to McDonald’s breakfast hours and other restaurants have taken advantage of this and enticed those customers by having a breakfast menu that was available longer or even all day. McDonald’s finally decided that they were here to serve their customers and not dictate the times that they should be eating breakfast, and expanded their breakfast menu hours to the entire day. Needless to say, the move was quite popular.
Who is your audience? Who are the people that are going to be responsible for your success? Your customers, of course; they are the people who buy your products and services. Some people look at this audience like it is here to serve them and their needs and in fact, the opposite is true. You need to be here to serve your audience. You need to find out what they want and what they need and then provide it to them. No matter if you are providing a product or service, if you want to be successful then get ready to serve your audience.
Take Time off for Mentoring
Your customers aren’t the only people that you should be serving. Helping people after you have already become successful is important but you don’t have to wait until you’ve reached your goals to start helping other people. There are many advantages that come with helping people with some of the areas that they’re struggling with, that you’re able to assist in. First, you’re going to feel great because you’re helping someone change their life and that is one of the biggest rewards and the most fulfilling things that we can do is human beings.
Also, you’re going to be teaching yourself at the same time you are teaching others. They say that that is the best way that you can learn something – by teaching it to someone else. You’ll be helping someone and you’ll both be learning something valuable as you strive for success. You’re also going to get some major motivation from helping others and especially if you can help them succeed. Your own enthusiasm is going to go up, your motivation is going to increase, your excitement will be high and your successes can be greater than they have been before.
You might not have thought about it, but those same people you’re helping now could end up being more successful than you and some areas and that could be a valuable relationship down the road. Most people are going to remember that you helped them for many years to come and not only would they be willing to do a favor if they’re in a position to do so they might even seek you out and offer.
Seek out Ways That You Can Help Others
Whether you are helping mentor other people trying to be successful in the same industry that you’re in or you’re helping your customers find exactly what they’re looking for and making sure that you provide them with the best service possible, you’re going to actually have to go out and seek ways to help people; they may not come to you. So, what are some of the
ways that you can find people that you are able to help? How do you know that they need help? Most importantly, what do you have to offer that is valuable enough to teach others?
This last question is important, not because there’s something that qualifies you to be a great teacher above all other things, but because you’re going to want to know the answer to that question so that you have the confidence to teach. As for finding people to help, your customers will probably come to you but make it clear that if they’re looking for something specific, even if you don’t necessarily deal with it in your own store or business, that they should ask you about it anyway because you might be able help.
Make sure that you post this on your website somewhere and go to social media to offer help as well. As far as mentoring goes, there are forums all over the Internet with people that are seeking advice, some of them better than others. Try to find people who are actually serious about being successful, like-minded with your own values and goals and willing to accept your help. There’s no sense in helping someone who isn’t going to put in the work because this will not give you any of the benefits that comes from helping people.
Become Known As Someone Who Will Go above and beyond for Your Customers
You want your customers to be happy. This means good customer service but if you really want to shine, go above and beyond with every single customer that you get. Do absolutely everything you can do to solve the problem and make them happy and you will reap the rewards.
They will talk about you to their friends, their colleagues and their family members and when they need a product or service that you sell they’ll be back to buy from you again and again. This is how Amazon has become so successful, by cultivating a reputation for customer service that is matched by no one else.
Selling a physical product has a ton of advantages over selling digital ones. While digital products have their benefits and have their place, nothing quite beats the broad appeal of selling something tangible that people can actually hold in their hands and use.
The problem is that selling a physical product often requires a little more thought than going digital. In this post then, we’ll take a look at some surprisingly easy ways to start a business selling something physical.
Let’s get physical!
Selling Crafts
One option is to sell crafts. If you have the ability to paint, to make jewelry, or to sculpt with clay, then you can turn that hobby into a money making venture – and if you’ve seen the Penny Blossom episode of Big Bang Theory then you’ll already know how this works.
Simply create your product, take some photos for Zorarte Marketplace, and then sell them! It really is that easy – but make sure that the product you choose is something you can easily make in volume and that doesn’t have high CoGS (Cost of Goods Sold).
Reselling
Reselling is the oldest business model in the book. All you’re doing here is ordering large volumes of something at a relatively low price (this is called wholesale) and then selling those items off individually at a profit. Reselling is a very effective way to make money but involves a small amount of risk because you have to buy inventory. If you start small though, you can reinvest your profit and thereby create a fairly reliable business model.
Affiliate Marketing
Yes, you can sell physical products as an affiliate. And most people reading this will already know that that means getting commission on sales. The best place to find physical products to sell this way is to go to Amazon, where you can sell pretty much anything you can think of – and through a site that most shoppers will already trust.
Dropshipping
Dropshipping is what many people consider to be the ‘ideal’ business model. This basically means you’re buying through wholesalers but you don’t have to put in bulk orders. Better yet, you don’t need to worry about fulfilment because the company will do that for you! All you need to do is to sell the products and then pass the details onto the wholesaler that will sell the product. Best of all, some companies will even stay quiet and allow you to take credit for the manufacturing!
Selling Your Own Product
Finally, you can sell your own mass?produced product. For most people, this will mean coming up with an idea, creating a 3D model and then going to manufacturers in order to get it made.
There are different options today though. For example, how about creating your own book with POD (Print On Demand) publishing? Or you could use a 3D printer and print out simple plastic items this way.
Today, it’s easier than ever to sell your own physical products. So what are you waiting for?
People say that the home is where the heart is, but forget about this and end up with a box filled with furniture. When you think about your heart in regards to the one you love, you will often have images of the good times, or remember some poem that helps you express that love. So why not do the same for the rooms in your home? The best way to truly express the love that you have for your home is with the right Wall Art. You can transform each room into a work of art that you will love to come home to. Whether you are looking to liven up your living space or your work space, having some fine art on the walls will make a big difference. If you are looking to add a bit more relaxation to a room, then you will perhaps like to choose some beautiful Canvas Art Prints that will inspire a feeling of contentment. Or maybe you want to set up a room that will knock the socks off any guest that comes by putting up paintings that are alive with color and activity. In fact, you can create different themes for each room that you occupy.
Wall coverings are the best way to transform any room from a square box into a masterpiece. And just like a really good outfit can do for your figure, the right kind of art can pull out the shape and color of a room. Try purchasing some Landscape Photography for that sitting room that has no windows. It is not only a great way to help liven up the room, but it can give you a feeling of nature that you will miss with the absence of windows. Furthermore, there is no other way to add such color and design to a room than with putting art on your walls.
Are you the type of person that likes to have one room that feels fresh and clean? You design it with all white walls, and even put a lot of thought into the lighting to accentuate your cream colored furniture. But once it is all set up and done you may find that it looks starker than clean and comfortable. This room would be the perfect place to put some Black and White Photography on your walls. They have the right hues to fit with the white clean walls, but also add color to finish off any room.
And whatandrsquo;s more, by using art on your walls you can help set the environment for any themed room. For example, if you are an avid hunter, then you will most likely have a room with your trophy hunts. This is a great place to add some Nature Photography. In the end it all depends on what kind of feel you want to give off. Why not go online and look at the website for more ideas, or look at some information to help you make the best choice for your home.
