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BUSINESS PERSPECTIVES Philip E. Humbert, PhD I recently had a chance to interview several groups of extremely successful people. A handful are famous athletes, several are nationally known artists, writers or politicians, and all are multi-millionaires. I asked them for the keys, or essential factors that allowed them to accomplish so much more than the rest of us. Their answers included a wide variety of specifics, but to an astonishing degree, seven items came up in every discussion. I've called them the "Seven Sisters of Success", and want to share them with you. 1. Self-awareness. The first thing that struck me about these men and women was the degree to which they understood themselves. They know their values and goals, and are comfortable with the choices they have made in life.They admitted some regrets and mistakes, but they have made peace with the past and are eager, confident and optimistic about the future. 2. Specific Goals. Every single one of these 26 people have written goals, ranging from 30-day projects to 10 year programs.I was impressed that their goals are IN WRITING. Athletes had performance targets, and the business leaders had sales goals. They all had family or personal goals that were just as detailed as their professional objectives. The advice we have all heard about writing down your goals really works! 3. Powerful Networks. They all acknowledged their network of friends and colleagues. Each one gave credit to a mentor or friend who taught them the ropes, opened doors, or gave them a chance when they needed it. They were profoundly grateful and appreciated that success is the result of partnering with many people over many years. 4. Surprising Idealism. I was surprised at the degree to which these seasoned, mature individuals openly discussed their ideals. Some talked about religious beliefs, others framed it in political or psychological terms, but they all want to make a difference, fulfill a life-purpose, or pursue a dream. They are motivated by a desire to create a better world, to contribute, and to help others. 5. Intense Pragmatism. Balanced with their idealism, these highly successful people were extremely practical. They are solution-focused, and use technology, information, and skills to reach their most important goals. They were not interested in theories, or in defending past choices or old traditions. They use practical tools to help them reach their goals. 6. Extraordinary Curiosity. They observe culture, read the paper, read about their industry, and try to learn about everything around them. They read about politics and religion, they want to know about the stock market and cooking. I was surprised that most of them were not "experts" in the usual sense, but they are extremely educated, bright and curious. They have earned their doctorates in "real life". Very interesting! 7. Personal Discipline. They don't waste time, and they don't lie to themselves. They don't exaggerate or minimize, and they don't generalize. These people were precise when they spoke about their age, relationships, business affairs or dreams. Numbers and dates, dollars and cents were important to them, and I found them easy to talk with, and very clear in their communications. What impressed me was that the keys to their success were not related to family or background. They had not been born wealthy, and only about half completed college. They did not seem "driven" for success. They did not make their fortunes in high-tech or by winning a lottery. Instead, they followed a plan that created persistent, high levels of success or a lifetime. Each of these skills can be learned by anyone! There are no "secrets" of success, and talent, family and luck had little to do with it. These highly successful people knew what they wanted, and used their networks, hard work, patience and discipline to achieve outstanding results. So can you! About the author: Visit Dr Humbert's website for over 250 pages of articles, Top 10 lists, humour, quotes, tips and tools for your success! There's a free book on making (and keeping!) more money, and a FREE motivational newsletter. Check it out at: http://www.philiphumbert.comCopyright © 2000 by Philip E. Humbert, PhD. Email: Coach@philiphumbert.com Autoresponder Courses: The Automated Marketing Tool Shelley Lowery Autoresponders, also known as mailbots, automatic email and email on demand were derived from the very popular fax on demand and designed to automatically respond to any email message it receives with an automatic response. Autoresponder programs vary from software set up to run with your desktop email program and automatically answer your incoming email to a script that runs on your server. The script may run a Web-based autoresponder system that utilizes a web page form, or it may run with your pop email account on your server. It is programmed to automatically send out a predetermined message when a message is received to a specified script address or email address. In addition to the standard autoresponder systems, there are also autoresponders that can send an unlimited amount of follow-up messages. These follow up messages can be set up to automatically be sent out at predetermined intervals. In other words, you can set up your autoresponder to automatically send out a new message each day for as many days as you would like. This powerful technology is currently being used by some of the top online marketers to reach thousands of potential customers. As you may know, it may take up to seven contacts with a potential customer before closing a sale. By setting up an autoresponder and offering a free autoresponder course, you can completely automate a portion of your marketing efforts. Creating A Course The
first step in creating an autoresponder course is to decide upon a subject.
Your course should focus on a subject in which you have a great deal of
knowledge and target your potential customers.
Setting Up Your Course After you've written your course, you'll need to transfer your text into an autoresponder. You can find free follow-up autoresponders here: http://www.getresponse.com/Sign up for a follow-up autoresponderand follow their instructions in regard to setting it up. Once you've gotten your autoresponder set up, your final step will be to place your course information on your web site. This will include a description of your course and a mailto link to your autoresponder. By offering your visitors a free autoresponder course, you arenot only providing them with a great service, but you are also automating a portion of your marketing efforts. This form of free advertising can increase your sales considerably. About the Author: Shelley Lowery is Webmistress at http://www.web-source.net ("Your Guide to Professional Web Site Design and Development"). Subscribe to "Syndicator Etips" and receive articles just like this in your email. syndicator-subscribe@egroups.comCopyright (C)2000 Shelley Lowery 10 Incredible Ways To Keep Your Sales Soaring! Larry Dotson 1. Maximize the effectiveness of your banner ads. Don't just use the same ad on every banner, use a variety to attract the greatest number of clickers. 2. Make your web site load much faster by cutting down on banner ads and start using more buttons. Button ads are also smaller and take up less space. 3. Offer free advertising space to well known and respected companies on your web site. Sometimes people link their business credibility to yours. 4. People have been taught all their life to respect people in authority. Tell your visitors that you are the president or CEO of your business. 5. Offer people a free telephone consultation before they order your product. When they get to know you personally, it could convert to more sales. 6. Test the "bill me later option" on your web site. Most people are honest and will pay you. It is a powerful little niche and could increase your sales. 7. Find a charity your target audience would likely support. Tell people on your ad copy that you will give a percentage of the profits to that charity. 8. Hold a "buy the most wins contest" on your web site. Tell people each monthly winner will get their entire purchase refunded. 9. Attract visitors to your web site by offering them a free course. You could package the course on a follow-up autoresponder and send lessons daily. 10. Interview people related to your industry and get their legal permission to convert it to an article. Promote your web site by submitting it to ezines. About the Author: Over 40,000 Free eBooks and Web Books when you visit http://www.ldpublishing.com. As a bonus, Bob Osgoodby publishes the free weekly "Your Business" Newsletter - visit his web site to subscribe and place a FREE Ad! http://adv-marketing.com/businessCopyright (C)2000 Larry Dotson How to Detect the Web's Most Popular Scam James Lessenberry On the Net, the old saying if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, does not apply. If you use a simple test, the most popular scam used on the Internet doesn't sound good at all, and the websites look even worse. The web's most popular scam is "an ease of entry" scam. All you do to get in on the deal is to pay money. Scammers tell you "they'll take care of everything". You actually buy a feeling that success is simply a matter of time. A typical con game. Examples in this article come from actual companies which have been put out of business by state or federal regulatory offices. The most common scam of this type involves websites from which retail consumer items are sold. Since you can lose $45,000 without trying, I suggest you consider the following test: The example used here describes a typical company with a fictitious name, Virtual Smoke and Buried Mirrors, Ltd. (VSL). VSL claims to have "100s of thousands of products". (Not unreasonable since they claim to "sell products from Sears, Dell, Wal-Mart", and 20 or 30 others of the biggest businesses in the world.) Now for the first part of our test. If you had 100,000 products and did represent 50 different companies, how would you make it easy or your 10,000 website owners to make money for you? *Volume discounts *Your own search engine so associates can buy from each other *Malls for categories such as cooking, gardening, etc. *You could think of more, but it's not necessary Now the second test: Look at the websites. How many are doing any of the above. You won't find anything but a bunch of sites that look the same. In fact, this would represent a typical site: a golf club, a wireless phone and an electric handsaw. You would not see more than 200 products displayed if you visited all the thousands of websites. VSL sells three sites and calls it a "mall". One sucker actually paid about $400 each for 10 malls. Why did he pay that much for a business in which he actually has no say so as to products, web design, or advertising? Examples of products under two headings from the sucker's mall: OUTDOOR EQUIPMENT: a tent, a backpack, a bag of dehydrated stew. JEWELRY: a necklace, a silhouette pen, a heart pendant. If this is your idea of a $40,000 per year mall, just wait for the scammers to start again under a new name. You can get your chance then. The attorney-general of a large industrial state notified federal bank regulators in May that they were investigating VSL's "business practices". The bank froze VSL's account. Their top managers resigned. VSL was out of business. The attorney general charged VSL with violating a code which prohibits "operating a business devoted exclusively to selling distributorships rather than products". Let's go back to the part of the test where we examine websites. How could you promote any of the sites in the above examples? "Dear Yahoo: I have this great claw hammer for sale, and just wait 'till you see my diamond necklace and matching chainsaw." Remember the "sucker" with the hyper mall? What would his target market be? People who wear diamond pendants while using a chainsaw to open a package of dehydrated meat? Victims soon realized the only way to make their money back was to sell websites. That's exactly what VSL wanted them to do. Scammers don't care if you make money selling products from your website. They don't do anything to help their victims make money. Scammers don't intend to be in business very long. Do you? So the test then is, how many chances does the company selling the websites pass up to make money. They simply pass up too many chances to make money themselves. So how do you yourself expect to get rich following their plan? About the Author: James Lessenberry's articles on scamming "have miffed too many people already" so he doesn't list his web address anymore. Subscribe to "Thirdpaycheck" at jlessenbe@aol.com (subject "subscribe") and get free report "Beware of Viral Marketing Scams". Copyright (C)2000 James Lessenberry
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