Training your customers on how to do business with you, so that you can maximize your productivity and profits, is vital.

But I don’t like to be the guy who always says “no”.

I like to find ways to say yes.

Example…

I don’t haggle over my rates as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant.

Does that mean that when I am in conversation with a new client, I’m quick to quote an astronomical rate, and turn them away if they suggest a lower payment? Not at all.

I simply look for ways to change the nature of the offer, so that I’m able to accommodate their rate request.

It’s as simple as asking a few targeted questions:

1. “If we were able to lower the price to what you ask, would you be ready to do business today?” If the answer to this question is no, the discussion is really over isn’t it?
2. “What part of the project seems most important to you, if we were able to deliver it for the price you suggest?” This helps identify pieces of the project you may be able to eliminate, thus also eliminating the expense created by that particular activity, giving you more flexibility in your rate.
3. “What makes you think our service is only worth the amount you mentioned?” You have to be careful of your tone of voice when asking this question; you don’t want to sound confrontational. But the issue may simply be one of the perception of value. If the client doesn’t feel that having me consult on a product launch is worth $50,000 upfront, no amount of sales technique will get them to write me that check. I need to determine where they feel the value is.

While these suggestions may not turn every price negotiation into a business deal, they will help you find ways to say yes to proposals you might’ve said no to in the past.

And that can dramatically increase your bottom line.

If you’d like more tips on how to market your copywriting services, you’ll want to get on the notification list for my upcoming newsletter. It’s called “Marketing Your Copywriting Services” and it’s just for copywriters. Copywriters who want more clients… juicier assignments… and bigger fees… fast.

Sign up for the FREE Early-Bird Notification List here.

After all, most everyone who had any interest in making such prognostications has already posted theirs.

But I’m not late.

To paraphrase Gandalf, the wise wizard from the Lord of the Rings stories, “A prophet is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.”

Here are 7 predictions for 2012 from your ol’ Uncle Ray.

1. Faith will play a more pronounced role in the Presidential election. Sure, it’s always an issue. But in the past it has, more or less, been tangential. This time, with the mix including President Obama, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney, I see this becoming a forefront discussion. Is America ready for a Mormon president? And if you think a President’s faith doesn’t inform his politics, you’re a wee bit daft.




2. The economy will not collapse nor resurrect – it will change, though. Chicken Little, settle down. Pollyanna, you might be disappointed. It is a new world order, just not the one many were expecting. It’s a new game, with new rules, and some new players at the international table (hint: can you speak Chinese?)




3. More people will see their answer to money woes lies in starting a business. We need entrepreneurs – not merely technicians with independent shops. Technicians merely siphon off pre-existant streams of wealth. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, actually create wealth. Many of these entrepreneurs will come from the ranks of the church – as more believers realize it is time for the church to stop simply having a message, and to start being a message. Spirit-filled entrepreneurs will demonstrate what it looks like to have God’s favor on our lives — including our businesses.




4. The Google game will be harder to play on all fronts. I wrote this before Google changed their search fundamentally with the “Your World” update. Would that I had published it a day or two earlier!




5. China. See prediction #2.




6. Being debt-free will become the new American status symbol. Turns out the Book of Proverbs is right: the borrower is the slave of the lender.




7. “Internet Marketing” (ie, marketers who sell marketing advice to marketers who sell marketing advice) will be harder… but “information marketing” (selling your knowledge and expertise) will still be insanely profitable.

So – what to do with these predictions? They are of little value if not joined with action. Within each is a kernel of encouragement. A seed of hope, possibility, and potential opportunity.

The diligent will find and seize upon these possibilities – and the many others not mentioned here.

I do acknowledge reality, by the way.

Is it tough these days? Yes, in some ways.

Is fear running rampant on the Earth? Yep.

Many wish these times had not come upon us. Perhaps you, too, wish our present times were different.

To quote Gandalf …

“So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world… besides the will of evil. And that is an encouraging thought.”

Indeed.

To finally achieve your dreams?

What will it take to get you off your… um… couch… and into action?

Look. It’s December. January 1 is rolling directly at you like a locomotive. New Year’s Day is unstoppable.

Many will set ambitious goals for the New Year. Inspiring plans. Rockin’ resolutions. And almost 100% of them will be broken and abandoned by January 15th.

Most of those “resolutions” will be HISTORY in less than two weeks. It happens every year. So ask yourself…

“WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE TO CHANGE THAT?”

What will it take to make 2012 the year you SET goals and actually ACHIEVE them? What will it take for 2012 to be the year you:

• Get your online business going and making money.
• Grow your list (or start one!).
• Get out of debt.
• Overcome the technical challenges that hold you back.
• Get your website built and working right.
• Break free from overwhelm and confusion to JUST GET STARTED.
• Find the time to work on your Internet business.
• Figure out WHO to listen to or follow, so you can QUIT chasing after the “latest and loudest”.

I actually have an answer for you. TWELVE ANSWERS. And I’m sharing them in a special LIVE Webinar training  NEXT WEEK, on December 13th. It’s called…

[font family="impact,chicago" size="24" color="DE0202" textshadow="2" alignment="center" weight="normal" style="normal" lineheight="110"]“12 Transformational Truths For 2012
That Will Make This The Year You FINALLY
Achieve Your Online Business Goals”[/font]

I believe this will be the single most important webinar I’ve EVER done… and it is 100% free.

We’re holding it twice that day, once in the morning and once later in the day.

Register for one or both – but do commit to attend. I absolutely can NOT promise a replay.

[contentbox width="300" borderwidth="1" borderstyle="dotted" bordercolor="000000" dropshadow="1" backgroundcolor="F5F5F5" radius="0"]

WEBINAR #1 (EARLY WEBINAR)

Tuesday, December 13th at Noon Eastern

(9am Pacific)

REGISTER NOW – CLICK HERE

[/contentbox]

[contentbox width="300" borderwidth="1" borderstyle="dotted" bordercolor="000000" dropshadow="1" backgroundcolor="F5F5F5" radius="0"]

WEBINAR #2: (LATER WEBINAR)

Tuesday, December 13th at 9pm Eastern

(6pm Pacific)

REGISTER NOW – CLICK HERE

[/contentbox]

See you on the webinar(s)!

I’ve had the privilege of getting to know John over these last few weeks, and he really lives the stuff he teaches and writes about – one of the most important qualities for any teacher! What is this movement about? As John expresses it: “the passion that starts when God connects your job, business, ministry, and life purpose into one package. Entrepreneurs (like you) in your workplace or your home business bring a creative health to cash flow, co-workers and customers.”

Have a listen and let us know what you think (in the comments section below, on your own blog, or via Social Media!)…

I receive many questions about how I work, how I manage my time, and what my “systems” are for working as a writer and consultant.

First, this caveat: There are some significant changes now that we are operating in the “new economy”.

What’s different about the “new economy”? A few key points for freelancers and entrepreneurs – these must be understood and internalized:

The bubble has burst. Easy credit is gone. Houses of cards in the banking industry have come tumbling down. People have lost their jobs, their houses, their credit cards. The spending habits and market behaviors of almost all people have irrevocably changed, altered forever by the economic shift that took place recently. And if you’re waiting for things to get “back to normal”, this is your wake-up call… it’s never going back. This is the new normal. Get used to it. Adapt.

Competition is at an all time high. And thanks to Google it is easier than ever before to find all your competitors in a few seconds.

Nobody needs anything. In the Western World, even though we have experienced an economic shake up, we still have everything we need already. Yes, I know some people are in need and I am not ignoring them nor minimizing their needs – but I am also acknowledging that for most people, their needs are over-supplied. Do you have a roof over your head, clean water, and at least one meal per day? Then you are better off than most of the people in the world. To see how good you have it, check out how wealthy you rank in the world by clicking here.

What does all this mean? It’s time to review and evaluate how you do everything you do within your business or practice. Does it measure up? Is it effective? Does it produce profit? Is it the best possible use of your time?

That’s what I’m doing here – reviewing my current systems an findings. Hopefully it’s helpful.

I offer the following with this caveat: I’m still workin’ on it, and I don’t always follow the system perfectly. But each time I fall “off the wagon”, I get up, dust off my britches, and climb back on. So far it’s worked pretty well.

A “day in the life of Ray” is a busy one. Here are current projects I’m working on:

1. Private Client Copy Project. This was a big project, comprising 3 full video salesletters, email campaigns, affiliate email copy, and text versions of the sales videos. This project was a beast in terms of time invested, but it was fun. And it paid well.

2. Private Consulting Client. This relationship translates to regular phone meetings, a small in-house launch every quarter or so, and reams of copy generated for upsells, ridealongs, retention, phone scripts, etc. This is a retainer + revenue deal, just like all my deals these days.

3. Private Retainer Client. This client retains me strictly for two sales letters per month, for different products each month; again, I have a piece of revenue.

4. Private Client in the business opportunity market; this is only the third time I have been ripped off by a client. I collected the fee and wrote the initial copy. My client has, so far, stiffed me for 6 months worth of royalties. I did have some misgivings about this project in the beginning but suppressed them and took the job anyway. Lesson learned: trust my inner promptings. Just a note to my client, V. If you’re reading this, just know that if you want to make it right, send me the check for what you owe me and all will be forgiven. And if you simply can’t pay for some reason… at least answer my messages and let me know what’s going on. Maybe I can help.

5. Writing Riches Member Site. This is a “coaching club” I run for those who cannot necessarily afford to hire me but who want to learn from my work, get me input, and receive training from me each month.

6. Book Promotion. My new book on copywriting, Writing Riches, is a #1 Best-Seller on Amazon.com. It’s the best deal I offer on training and is available as a softcover or on the Kindle.

7. Three books in progress. One is a business book (first draft completed), one is a book for Christ-followers on the importance and power of forgiveness (first draft about 75% complete) (this book is being folded into the next one), and one is a book about achieving true, lasting success, called Taking Back Tomorrow.

8. Two monthly newsletters. I write one for my clients, and one for paying subscribers.

9. Workshops. I am planning a small, exclusive workshop in my offices this Fall. It will be me and four guests… and you’ll get my hands-on help with your project. Plus, my team will even build your site for you! This won’t be cheap – the price is $5,000. If you’re interested, please call my assistant Kathy at 509-624-2220 and let her know. Acceptance is not guaranteed, as this is not for everyone.

10. Copywriting Protege Program. My students write for clients who either (a) can’t get on my schedule soon enough or (b) can’t afford my fees. My team writes your copy, I critique the drafts for re-writes, and then I approve the final work that is delivered to you. This means we can deliver affordable copy that still receives my “touch”. (To inquire about a project, please submit your request here: http://RayEdwards.com/contact )

The Big Question

How is it I’m able to juggle so many priorities and projects? Through careful conscious choice, and good systems.

And quite frankly: it’s a work in progress.

In order to deliver the very best work to my clients and partners, and to still leave room in my schedule for rejuvenation (sleep, family time, time with God, and time to just plain relax)… I have to guard my time vigorously. And I have to be on guard against what Dan Kennedy calls “Time Vampires”. Some tactics that work for me in my current system:

MSR
My Morning Success Ritual is vital to my most productive days. While I don’t manage to get this in every day, I’m getting better at it. My goal between now and the New Year is to achieve 95%+ compliance with this ritual every day.

The MSR is summed up by the acronym WWW B PREP, which stands for:

• Wake
• Water (16 oz. filtered)
• Walk (at least 20 minutes)
• Bible
• Prayer
• Eat
• Plan (the day)

The days when I follow this MSR, starting the minute my feet hit the floor out of bed, are invariably my best days (most productive, most joyous, most satisfying). Probably because the most important things were done first – and when I’m still in the “NDZ”: No Distraction Zone (meaning no email, no voicemail, no phone calls, etc.)

Writing
The first thing I *must* do each day, after my MSR is complete (and after I have showered, driven to the office, etc.) is WRITING. I am primarily a writer. So this is my #1 Revenue Producing Activity (RPA). At this point my phone is off, I have still not checked email, not checked voicemail, etc. Still in the NDZ. I write for a large block of time at the beginning of the day — often 4 hours. NOTHING gets to interrupt the writing — including (and even especially) the clients for whom I may be writing.

Email
My auto-check feature in Apple Mail is turned OFF. I only get email when I press the “Check Mail” button. I check it twice once per day, Monday thru Thursday Tuesday thru Friday. Usually around 11am Pacific and 4pm Pacific. This is one of my policies that tends to be unpopular with those who are “urgency addicts”, and who want me to have a constant email discussion about minutia with them. I refuse to sacrifice my highest valued commodity (time) for the sake of what usually amounts to trivia. I suggest you adopt the same policy.

Meetings
Any meeting that lasts longer than 15 minutes is probably too long. Not always, but most of the time. Any project that requires multiple meetings each week is probably in trouble. Long meetings = inefficiency at best, and postponement of the inevitable at worst. (As a sidebar: frequent short meetings are just a disguised way of having long meetings. HEAR ME: if you have “meeting-itis”, either you just want an excuse to talk about work instead of doing it, or something is wrong with the project … something another meeting won’t solve).

Phone Meetings / Conversations
Same as meetings, only worse. Conversations and phone meetings should be 15 minutes or less. Anything longer and you’re probably wasting time for at least some people in the group.

Instant Messenger
Just say no. The only time I use it is when I have SCHEDULED events on Skype (usually interviews). Also, I occasionally chat with family or friends — but again, this is SCHEDULED. I am NEVER “just available” to be interrupted. (If I was, that would mean that I was either doing something unimportant, or that I was doing NOTHING. If I’m doing something unimportant… WHY? And if I’m doing NOTHING, it’s a PLANNED nothing and it’s important that this not be interrupted!).

Office Hours
Yes, I have an office outside my home. I lease currently. I’m considering buying an office building. I keep regular business hours most of the time: Mon – Thurs, Tuesday – Friday, 8am – 5pm Pacific.

By the way, my office phone is answered by a LIVE HUMAN (not some stupid voicemail torture device) Monday – Saturday, 8am – 6pm Pacific time. Why do I have the phone covered even when I am out of the office? Because other members of my team keep different hours… and because emergencies DO happen, and I like to be available if a TRUE emergency arises. My phone team knows how to reach me in those cases.

Why The Emphasis On Not Being Interrupted?

Interruptions cost you dearly.

As a writer, I know that allowing myself to be interrupted by a client or vendor (“Hey Ray – got a minute to talk about the new logo?”) can seem harmless… but it isn’t. That interruption costs me (a) the state of “flow” I was in while working, maybe impossible to recover, (b) the time of the interruption itself, and (c) the time it takes me to get back into the “zone” with what I was working on… minimum 20 minutes, maybe longer.

I can’t afford to let that happen. Especially not in the “New Economy”.

My clients and customers can’t afford for me to let that happen.

I once had a client who loved to call me at 11pm at night and talk for two hours. I tried to tell him I worked set hours and was available at those times, but he didn’t seem to understand. When our first project was finished, I fired him. His dysfunction did not automatically become my problem. Be warned – people will WASTE your time if you let them. Will you let them? be polite, be loving… but don’t be a victim.

In the end, if you guard your time, you are being most respectful of other people. Think about it: if you allow yourself to be interrupted, or your time wasted when you should have been doing something else… who suffers? Your clients. Your customers. Your family (“Sorry honey, I have to stay late because I wasted 2 hours today listening to the web team make excuses…”).

You’re not serving anyone by being a poor steward of your time.

New Experiments In Time Management

I’m currently going through a re-vamping, refining, and re-evaluating phase and I thought it might be useful to you if I shared some ideas I’m trying out. While I’m sold on the stuff I mentioned previously, I’m telling you right now these next items are EXPERIMENTAL. If they prove successful, I’ll have more to say here in the future about them.

1.Three-Sentence Emails. If you receive a lot of email, you know what it’s like to feel overloaded by it. This is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be three sentences or less. Read more at http://three.sentenc.es/
This practice, I have abandoned. I also am not using the ubquitous “I’m so busy I can’t answer your email for at least 2 days” autoresponders. I have come to view these as slightly (at best) obnoxious. I still only check email once per day, and even though I have abandoned the “email policy” signature and autoresponder, I don’t get any complaints.

2. Fifteen Minute Meetings. Just like the above, only not quite so regimented. *Most* meetings will be 15 minutes or less. That’s my default meeting length. If it needs to be longer, we can negotiate in 15 minute blocks. If it needs to be longer than 45 minutes, we better be working on something like the Middle East Peace Talks.

3. Free Days. I used to cheat on this. I’m sorry to admit it. But no more. I “fell of the wagon” on this one again. Embarrassing. But, as it says in the Book of Proverbs, “though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again”. So here’s the practice I’m aiming for… a “free day” is one in which there is NO business activity of any kind: no emails, no blogs, no IMs, no phone calls, no reading articles, no business books… NOTHING. Right now, I have at least one scheduled FREE DAY per week (Sundays). The purpose is to allow for real refreshing, rejuvenation, and creativity to arise. My goal is to eventually reach 3 FREE DAYS per week. This does not mean that I’ll be spending 3 days a week doing NOTHING… these days will be filled with family time, spiritual and charitable pursuits, and yes, even recreation. For more on this, see Dan Sullivan’s “The Time Breakthrough”.

This was a long post – I hope it was useful to you. If you have questions or want to add some ideas of your own, please do it below!

It’s the principle discovered by the Italian mathematician (whose last name was, surprisingly enough, Pareto) that states something like the following: 80% of the results in any system arise from 20% of the inputs in that system.

In the world of business, the Pareto principle is commonly invoked when noting such mathematical oddities as the fact that 80% of the sales are generated by less than 20% of the sales people; 80% of the revenue is generated by less than 20% of the customers; 80% of the leads are generated by less than 20% of the phone calls… and so forth.

As an entrepreneur, it is profitable to think about the Pareto principle in the following way: 80% of your results will flow from only 20% of your activities. They should become a liberating truth for you. It constitutes mathematical permission for you to focus only on the 20% of things you like to do anyway. The truth is most entrepreneurs are people who enjoy “visioning”-or, as my private client Frank Kern likes to put it, “scheming”. This doesn’t imply anything evil; it simply recognizes the fact that entrepreneurial types tends to enjoy coming up with the big ideas, seeing the big picture, laying down the strategy, and leaving the cleanup and details to others on their team. In the world of the Internet, there is an ethos that if you can do it yourself you should do it yourself. This has had the result of locking up entrepreneurs in a prison of detail work.

No entrepreneur should be installing WordPress blogs, debugging scripts, or figuring out how to make the latest plug-in work… unless this is out of financial necessity. And assuming that you’re any kind of entrepreneur at all, the period of financial necessity may exist from time to time, but should be short-lived.

The prosperous practice of the Pareto principle simply means: only do the stuff you’re best at, the stuff that gets results, that puts sales on the books, new clients on the roster, and “moves the needle”. Anything else is a waste of time.

SPECIAL NOTE: For a limited time, you can become a member of my new Writing Riches Community at our special Preferred Member Rate. Right now, membership is a no-obligation $97… but in the near future, we may raise the price to $147. Click here right now to lock in your Preferred Rate and save $50.

If you haven’t read it, move it to the top of your list.

If you have read it and haven’t yet implemented every single strategy inside its covers, read it now. Again.

Probably my favorite passage from Chet’s masterful business work is one that most people read without understanding its import. In the early pages of the book, Chet points out that most people will read his book, agree with its precepts, and still not do them. He says this is the “reverse psychology” section of the book, in which he attempts to prod the reader into doing what needs to be done. In Chet’s words, “I’m goading you into applying a powerful force for creating success from what you’re going to learn… and that force, my friends, is pigheaded discipline and determination.”

Pigheaded discipline is the subject of this post for very good, and simple, reason. That reason being the fact that this is the most-lacked skill in over 90% of entrepreneurs. In my experience, what stands in our way, what holds us back from our potential, is usually not some external force (such as competition or marketplace conditions)-it is, rather, our own inability to say no to the things that distract us from our most profitable activities, and our continued inability to say yes only to those activities that produce the results we seek.

It is as if the world conspires against us to lead us down this path to destruction. Most of our peers, and certainly most of our employees, are happy to tell us what we should be spending our time on-and almost without fail their advice is dead wrong. It usually doesn’t come packaged as advice, by the way – it usually comes packaged as a meeting… a phone call… a personal plea… or some kind of interpersonal conflict. None of which are, perhaps, designed to take us off target- but all of which inevitably do.

Guard your heart carefully, eternal entrepreneur, and focus only on the things that expand the kingdom. Employ pigheaded discipline.

SPECIAL NOTE: For a limited time, you can become a member of my new Writing Riches Community at our special Preferred Member Rate. Right now, membership is a no-obligation $97… but in the near future, we may raise the price to $147. Click here right now to lock in your Preferred Rate and save $50.

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
William Shakespeare

I will leave the discussion aside as to whether William Shakespeare is indulging in moral relativism.

I think he is not, if one reads the above quotation in context, but I do think the quotation illustrates a basic principle we, as entrepreneurs, would be profited to recognize and employ with more frequency.

It is popular, in our culture, to be well versed in bad news.

It is popular to be able to quote the bad news, and to elaborate upon its badness, and one is presumed to be more erudite and wise for doing so.

But as entrepreneurs-those who create something from virtually nothing-I believe it is the kiss of death. It is a way of limiting ourselves, of violating the principle of the best use of resources.

The best and highest resource we possess is ourselves, and that never brought so into focus as in what we think about most of the time.

I don’t believe it’s possible to talk about the bad news all the time, without also thinking about it all the time. And it should stand to reason that thinking about something all the time tends to put one’s focus on that something, and that focusing on something inevitably draws us closer to the something.

I’m not talking about mysticism here.

I’m simply talking about the fact that the more we tend to think about a thing, the more likely it is that our behavior, actions, attitudes, and lifestyle will come into alignment with that thing we’re thinking about.

So the “bad news” is this: thinking and talking about bad news all the time might make you seem smart, but it inevitably makes you dumb, and what’s more it likely will make you broke. In the rare cases that it does not make you broke, because you have in some perverted way discovered how to profit from bad news, it will make you soul-sick.

Yes, I’m sticking my neck out on this one. But my poster child for the premise of being rich but soul-sick is Howard Hughes. And I don’t think any of us wants to end up like him, hoarding our fingernail clippings, living on orange juice, and slowly going insane.

The good news is, there is obvious profit in thinking and talking about good news. In looking for the good news in every situation. It is after all, as entrepreneurs, what we are paid to do.

Let’s go do it.

SPECIAL NOTE: For a limited time, you can become a member of my new Writing Riches Community at our special Preferred Member Rate. Right now, membership is a no-obligation $97… but in the near future, we may raise the price to $147. Click here right now to lock in your Preferred Rate and save $50.

While I do my best to be generous, is becoming increasingly obvious to me that I simply don’t have enough money to give some of it to everyone who asks. I have to make choices.

On a similar note, I seem to get more and more requests these days for free consultations or pro bono work. Again, I do a certain amount of pro bono work, but I cannot do it for everyone who asks. It’s simply impossible.

Which has me thinking about boundaries. Being intentional about who I can give money to, or who I can contribute free work to, means that I must establish boundaries that govern how I will respond to such requests.

You have a similar dilemma in your own life, whether you realize it or not. When a friend asks a favor of you after work, for instance, you have to decide whether you’re willing to grant the favor (and potentially sacrifice time with family, etc.) or whether you will say “no”. In either event you have to make a decision about whether you will allow a certain boundary to be crossed.

In my mind, “boundaries” establish the conditions under which you will say “yes”. Boundaries are gateways.

Boundaries are different than “barriers”.

Barriers, it seems to me, are more like walls. Their purpose is to say “no”.

Knowing, and acknowledging, the difference between boundaries and barriers will give a great degree of clarity to your decisions.

Good boundaries are a plan about how you want to deal with certain situations in your life — a plan formed BEFORE you need one.

I think this is worth giving some thought to. What are the boundaries in your life? Under what circumstances will you say “yes” to certain requests?

And what are the barriers in your life? I do believe that certain barriers should exist; there are behaviors, people, and situations to which your answer should always be “no”.

If you don’t decide in advance what your barriers are… and what your boundaries are… and how you will enforce each… how do you expect to be able to make good decisions at the critical moment?

SPECIAL NOTE: For a limited time, you can become a member of my new Writing Riches Community at our special Preferred Member Rate. Right now, membership is a no-obligation $97… but in the near future, we may raise the price to $147. Click here right now to lock in your Preferred Rate and save $50.

“Can I please have a tall LOTTY?” she asked.

The barista did not quite sneer, but managed to convey that emotion when she said, “Oh, you mean a LAH-TAY?”

The customer meekly answered in the affirmative, and moved to the end of the counter. She paid her tab. But I wonder if she will ever go back to that coffee shop again?

I also wonder what was the purpose of correcting the customer?

As near as I can see the only reason for doing it was to send the message: “you pronounced it wrong.”

That much is clear, and, I think, accurate.

Anything I say about the motivation that the barista had in correcting the customer would be mere speculation. Was the barista jaded, angry, disdainful, malicious? I don’t really know.

I do know that she cost her store a potential bundle of money from that one customer, who was made to feel stupid.

The most alarming thing about this story is, I’m pretty sure the owner of the coffee shop would have been appalled to learn about this. I’m sure it’s not his intent that his customers be treated with scorn. I’m sure he simply doesn’t know.

Which leads me to ask you this potentially uncomfortable question: do such things happen at your business?

I’m certain you don’t intend for them to happen… But do they happen anyway?

How do you know?

Something to think about.

SPECIAL NOTE: For a limited time, you can become a member of my new Writing Riches Community at our special Preferred Member Rate. Right now, membership is a no-obligation $97… but in the near future, we may raise the price to $147. Click here right now to lock in your Preferred Rate and save $50.

“Pig Pen, this here is Rubber Duck. We ain’t gonna pay no toll…”
CW McCall, “Convoy”

Who would have dreamed, in the 1970s, that anything would ever replace the CB radio? Some readers will, like me, be old enough to remember the CB craze. We will all remember, for instance, that the “main channel” on our CB radio was channel 19.

“Breaker 19, this here is the CopyGuy, with a newsflash: before that Hollywood actor named Reagan becomes president, CB radio will be a fad from the past…”

Fast-forward to just around the time CB radio had completely faded from the American consciousness, and you’ll discover a curious new technology called the compact disc just making its debut on the market. There were scoffers. There were purists who said nothing sounded as good as vinyl (there still are, but that’s another post). And there were plenty of people to point out that nobody in their right mind would replace an entire record collection just to go buy the same music on CD. Those people were wrong.

Fast forward again. Apple introduces a service called iTunes. There are scoffers. There are purists who say there’s nothing like having the liner notes you get inside the case of a CD. And they’re plenty of people pointing out that nobody in their right mind will replace an entire CD collection is to go buy the same music for the iPod. Those people were also wrong.

Just to be clear: those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Change is constant. Industries appear and vanish in the space of a decade. Those who win are those who anticipate the trends, and get in front of them. Distinction worthy of note: it is much easier to predict trends and get in front of them that it is to be the creator of said trends. Much, much, much easier.

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“Big picture” people.

“Idea” people.

And that’s good. BUT… in times like these it can also be problematic.

Because…

What we want is a simple solution to our complex business problems.

What we need, however, is not an “easy button”.

What we need are often complex, multi-faceted tactical plans guided by a carefully conceived strategic course.

The tricky thing is, from the outside this often looks like simplicity.

But it is simplicity on the other side of complexity.

Getting to the other side of complexity requires the hardest of all work: thinking.

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Henry Ford famously said that if he had listened to the public, what he would’ve delivered was faster horses. Instead, he sought to do something different, and brought us the mass-produced automobile.

Before Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, very few people were asking for one. In fact, Saturday Night Live joked the week after the iPad’s release that it was the first time in history a company marketed a product by forcing people to buy it in order to learn what it was.

Millions of iPads later, Apple has the last laugh.

Don’t be afraid to think different.

Yes, you will fail more often than the average person. But a function of failing more often than the average person is that you also succeed more often than they do.

Something to think about.

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Customers are seldom impressed with how well you are able to remove human contact from every transaction.

People are always amazed at a personal touch-even as brief as a two-minute phone call, a handwritten note, or an e-mail that was clearly personal.

Automation may save you money in the short term, but did you ever stop to think how much it costs you in the long run?

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Here are three simple but compelling qualities that will make your business stand out from the competition:

1. A great first impression. It’s true, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. Too many people (and businesses) miss this opportunity, or worse, they botch it. Pay attention to details, especially on your website. Prospective customers will examine it closely for inconsistencies, errors, misspellings, outdated information, and false claims. Take great pains to make a good first impression.

2. Quick response. As simple as it may sound, answering the phone after no more than three rings… returning phone calls the same day… following up with e-mail correspondence quickly… all these “little things” can build trust in a remarkably short period of time. The reason: people are so accustomed to being disappointed in this area, that even if you simply meet your obligations, you will impress them. Exceed your agreements, and they will be astounded.

3. Go the extra mile. Perform unexpected service for your clients-such as early delivery, coming in under budget, delivering more than was promised, even losing money to make a complaint right. These kinds of “extra mile” gestures can win you a customer for life-certainly worth sacrificing short-term profits for the long-term gain.

It’s not always easy to stand out – but it is usually simple.

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Often, these difficult choices leave us trying to decide between one option or the other.

Buy an office building, or lease office space?

Hire a new employee, or outsource to the Philippines?

Develop a new product, or focus on better marketing for the existing product line?

In almost every case, there is more to be gained by refusing the “either/or” decision paradigm… and instead embracing a “both/and” paradigm. For instance…

Instead of either buying an office building, or leasing office space… what if you became the landlord, owning the building, leasing from yourself, and collecting rent from other tenants? That might let you enjoy the best of both the options.

Instead the choice between hiring a new employee in-house or outsourcing to Manilla… what if you did both, and extended the speed, flexibility and working hours of your team… without spending extra money?

Instead of choosing between product development, or marketing existing products in a better way, why not do both? Is there really a reason you’re forced to choose between the two options?

Usually, the answer is… there is no reason for such an artificial choice.

Free yourself from the box!

Occasionally, when I was struggling with some decision of dilemma, I would take my problem to him.

He would scratch his chin and say, “Well, what do you think is the right thing to do?”

I would answer quietly, already knowing where this was headed.

And he would grin.

“I would just do that.”

Not the easiest thing. The right thing.

Good advice for many businesses and entrepreneurs.

When in doubt, do the right thing.

The idea was that if you were in an accident, or had to be rushed to the hospital, you didn’t want to be embarrassed by your undergarments.

Mom’s advice was good, and applies in business as well.

Not that you should live in fear of accidents, but that you should anticipate unexpected things will happen.

Unexpected meetings will pop up.

Unexpected phone conversations will occur.

Unexpected opportunities to make your sales presentation will crop up.

Being prepared-“wearing clean underwear”-means always being dressed and ready to meet important people.

It means always being ready to give your presentation at a moments notice, with or without the PowerPoint slides.

It means never being in a situation, engaged in an activity, or being in a place that would embarrass you in front of that important client or colleague.

So.

Always wear clean underwear.

Sometimes the customer is wrong only about a particular situation or issue; sometimes the customer simply wrong for your business.

An essential business skill is learning how to determine which of these is true with each customer.

But it is also true that the customer does have the power in the relationship. Let’s be real here for a moment. Without customers spending money with your business, you have no business.

Having the power, however, does not mean that a person has unilateral control over the relationship. Power is merely the potential to do work-or in this case, to spend money.

In the martial art of aikido, the general practice is not to overpower opponents in a physical combat. It is, rather, to pay attention to how your opponent is directing the force of their attack. Then to gently, but effectively, redirect that force so that you are actually in control of the power your opponent is wielding.

This has more of the appearance of a dance than it does the appearance of combat.

The very visual is instructive.

While the customer does indeed have the power, you have the opportunity to observe the customer’s movements, to anticipate where they are going, and to encounter them in a way that redirects their attention, their focus, and ultimately their dollars.

This is the ultimate form of respect, and is the total opposite of manipulative marketing.

It requires paying attention to the customer in a way almost all businesses fail to do. When you are involved in doing business with a company that is anticipating your needs, moving to help you before you even realize you need help yourself, and making every transaction effortless, you feel a sense of affinity for them. You feel respected. You feel heard. You feel valued.

Isn’t that what you want your customers to feel about you and your company?

The idea that “the customer is always right” is good and useful, within its proper context. When you’re dealing with a good customer, one who brings profit to your business, who doesn’t cost you time, money, and energy, it’s good to take an accommodating attitude. If you have a profitable customer, and you want to have them remain a customer, it’s often prudent to give them concessions on requests or complaints.

But as you know, not every customer is profitable.

Some customers have unreasonable expectations of you and your company. Some customers will never be happy or satisfied, until they win some sort of “superiority position” in your relationship that allows them to take advantage of you.

Now you may feel that this idea-the idea that some customers are not worth keeping-is not very kind. You may feel that it is a violation of the Golden rule, for instance. But think of it this way…

If you permit a customer to actually cost you money in order to do business with them-in other words, if for every hundred dollars the customer spends with you, you must spend $200 to keep them happy-how long will you be in business?

What if all your customers were like that?

The answer is, you wouldn’t be in business very long. You would quickly be bankrupt, once your capital had run out.

So clearly some customers are not right.

I’m not suggesting you take a hard-nosed, unsympathetic, unkind approach to business. If you are providing valuable goods and services to the marketplace, the kindest thing you can do is to remain in business. The only way you can do that is to continue to generate profits. And to continue generating the most amount of profits possible, so that you may render the most service to the marketplace possible, you must be able to identify customers that do not belong in a business relationship with you.

Perhaps they do belong in a business relationship with someone else, or they need to learn how to do business properly.

It may or may not be your task to teach some of your customers how to do business properly. I leave that to you to decide.

My goal here is to simply raise your awareness that the customer is not always right. However, the right customer is always good for your business.

Something to think about: how can you attract, do business with, and stay in  relationship with more of the “right customers”?

“What gets measured, gets improved.”

In quantum physics, the phenomenon is well known. In that field, the key observation is that it is impossible to observe and experiment without affecting its outcome.

This has applications in marketing.

The first step is to view every activity in your business, as far as possible, as a marketing activity, having as its goal the generation of revenue.

The next step is to simply measure the effectiveness of each individual activity at producing revenue.

Certainly this is easy to apply to your advertising. You know the medium, you know the message, and you know the market. And you can know with a high degree of certainty, depending on how you structure the offer being made in the advertising, the results produced.

Once you have achieved one result, your goal in the next marketing campaign, or ad, or cold call, is to produce a result greater than the previous one. Simply continue producing results, measuring them, and doing more of the things that produce the better result.

While this sounds like simplistic advice, the truth is most businesses do very little measuring of any kind. If you begin measuring even some of your marketing activities, you will instantly join the ranks of the top 5% of all businesses in America.

The sooner you begin measuring your marketing activities and its results, the sooner you can identify the 20% of your marketing that produces 80% of your revenue. Your task at that point is to begin systematically and consistently improving the yield of that crucial 20%.

This is the way to massive business growth in record time.

It’s an important question that deserves your attention. Dr. Bill Bright said, “The Christian life, according to the claims and promises of God’s Holy, inspired word, is meant to be an exciting adventure, an abundant, fruitful life, characterized by the supernatural.”

Does that make you a little uneasy? Do you see this proven out in your own life and in your own business?

One of the most disturbing things about the life of the modern Christian is the way it seems to differ so little from the lives of people who are not believing Christians. Divorce rates are the same, family problem rates are the same, financial failure are the same for the majority of Christians as it is for unbelievers.

It’s not true in all cases.

For those who really believe God’s Word, and receive the gifts of grace that are available to all of us through Jesus Christ, we can experience changed lives and success in every way.

This includes — perhaps especially — our business lives. A believing Christian who is truly receiving the grace of Jesus Christ, and following Him, will experience good success. The choice deals will come your way, the right contacts will come into your life, you’ll be preferred over other vendors for the prime project.

Are you trusting God’s wisdom for your business decisions? Are you regularly going to Him with questions about strategy and tactics in your business? Are you asking Him for His favor so that you can be a blessing to others when you are blessed?

The world is watching. They want to see Christians with changed lives. They want to see believers who have been transformed by the power of God. The reason they want to see these things is because… they hope to be able to get that kind of life for themselves.

This is how we “make disciples of all nations.”

My admonition to you: start believing, start receiving, and start fulfilling God’s commission on your life.

The world is counting on us!

What it means to be favored by God is quite simple. Things will go your way. You’ll get the new client. You’ll receive the promotion. If you’re a parent your children will respect you and be well-behaved. If you are a taxi driver you will get the choice fares and the big tips. If you are a physician you will get patients who take your advice and follow your instructions.

Some will accuse me of preaching a “prosperity gospel”. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t believe there is such a thing as a “prosperity gospel’, there is only the gospel as given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ. And that gospel tells me that he paid the ultimate price so that we would not have to. And that we became heirs to his kingdom. To me that sounds like being highly favored.

It makes sense, too. Think about it, how can we be a blessing to others (which God promises that we will be) if we are constantly in poverty, constantly sick, and always depressed? We can’t. That’s one reason God has set up a plan for you to be highly favored. Will you receive it?

For some, it will be shocking, even scandalous, to hear that God wants to richly bless you in business, but this is exactly what he promised Abraham. Remember that he said to Abraham, “I will bless you”. The question worth asking though is why did God want to bless Abraham? The answer is supplied in that same verse of scripture. God said clearly, “You shall be a blessing”.

God wants to bless us so that we can be a blessing.

And yes, this even applies to modern-day Christians. The Apostle Paul tells us we are the “seed of Abraham” and “heirs according to the promise”.

This can be a dangerous position if we don’t have a proper relationship to money and success. As long as we know in our heart that money is not our God, and that the purpose of our success is not to create our own self worth, we will be safe. We will be safe for success in a way that is pleasing to Jesus.

When we are truly safe for success, God will bless us richly. He promises it in His word, and His word says, “he who promised is faithful”.

Where Christian entrepreneurs sometimes get lost is forgetting that the primary aim of their life is not to simply pile up as much money as possible. Your purpose is not to be a participant in some kind of contest to see who can get the biggest stack of gold. No, the primary aim of the Christian entrepreneur’s life is to render service to God – and the way God has called and gifted you to render that service is through entrepreneurship. For those who are truly called to the entrepreneurial life, this means having a successful business.

In order to fulfill God’s purpose for our life as entrepreneurs and small business people, it is necessary that we have a proper relationship between our heart and money. God clearly says in His word that we cannot serve both God and money (or, more accurately, “Mammon”… but that is a topic for another post). What is not so obvious to many people is we can serve God with our money, and that doing so represents a proper heart-relationship to money.

We must be “safe for success” – not giving in to greed and pride. We must succeed in a way that honors Jesus. That means not making an idol out of our money. It is important to remember that God is not against us having money – but he is against money having us.

Make sure you are safe for success and that money does not take a place in your life higher than that occupied by God, who much always be our first priority. If you do this, you will keep money moving, you will pay fair wages, you will make square business deals, and you will enrich the lives of your employees, your customers, your vendors and the world at large. That is truly a formula to profit more.

God instructs us to use wealth, but not to rely on it. He also promises that it will indeed fail.

Interesting video from Mars Hill Church in Seattle…

Hogwash.

You ALWAYS bring your spiritual beliefs with you into whatever you do.

Here’s a question worth considering: did Jesus bring his “spirituality” to work with him? I suspect the answer is yes, don’t you?

Jesus only spent 3 years in “full-time ministry”.

Up until about age 30, he worked for a living as a carpenter. He had to deal with clients, customers, competitors, and co-workers. He had to deal with a boss (his adoptive father).

Do you suppose Jesus went to the shop each day thinking, “I’m not going to bring that spiritual stuff to work with me…”?

No, I don’t think so either.

This does not mean you have to hop up on your desk at the office and start preaching. And it doesn’t mean you need to make the radical shift in your own business that I have made in mine – just because that is what I’m called to do doesn’t mean you are.

Unless it does.

In any event, I think it’s impossible to not bring your spirituality into your business – because real spirituality is not something you do. It’s who you are.

What do you think? Please share below.

One way to define it is simply failing to give full value; representing that you’re giving your best, when in fact you’re not.

By this measure…

If you’re not building your business as big as you can, you’re ripping people off (your customers, vendors, suppliers, employees and affiliates).

You’re even ripping off your competitors, by failing to set the bar higher (and this driving them to greater levels of success).

Stop ripping people off.

The reason I wrote this article is simple.

Someone needs to speak the truth. Here’s what I mean…

Everywhere I go in the Internet marketing community (and elsewhere), I see people being robbed. I see you being robbed.

There are lies and half-truths that are stealing from you every day. Robbing you.

You are being robbed of customers, profits, success, fulfillment, and peace of mind.

These lies and half-truths are being taught and promoted both by innocent people who don’t know any better, and also by some who are simply out to take your money. Or your life.

These lies are at the root of the problems many Internet marketers are experiencing right now.

Internet Marketing Meltdown

You may not know this, but many so-called “Internet Marketing” and “self-help” “gurus” are in deep trouble these days.

• Their sales are down.
• Their refunds and chargebacks are up.
• Their ride on the gravy train is apparently over.

I don’t write this in order to gloat. These are not, by and large, bad people. They have been robbed, too.

Something huge is happening, and hardly anyone is talking about it.

So… Is Everyone In Trouble?

No, not everyone is experiencing this downturn in business.

Some are thriving.

A few of my colleagues and clients continue to prosper, despite the discouraging economic climate.

I have been blessed to be among those who are prospering.

Here’s a shocking fact: almost without exception, those of us who continue to succeed share a common “x-factor”.

This “x-factor” is the antidote to the lies I mentioned earlier.

It is also effective protection against the thief who seeks to rob you.

It is the secret of my success.

It can be, and should be, yours.

The Only Success Secret You Need

Don’t worry. I’m not out to sell you anything.

I’m going to tell you what this mysterious thing actually is, and I’m not going to charge you for it.

I received it freely, and I will give it freely to you.

But before I do, let me set the stage…

This is the one thing that will give you access to success in all areas…

• Wealth
• Health
• Relationships
• Business
• School
• Love
• Life

This is the one thing that will free you forever from…

• Poverty
• Debt
• Greed
• Sickness
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Addiction
• Fear

This works without you studying, “trying harder”, or attempting to improve yourself.

In fact, as amazing as it seems, “working hard” or “trying” actually works against the “uncommon key” to success I’m talking about. The key itself is a gift and it is, in fact, already yours. All you have to do is accept it.

I’ve Been Keeping This From You

No, I haven’t wished you ill.

I wasn’t keeping it from you to try and deprive you of the good things in life.

You see, I knew all along that for some, this would be hard to accept.

That it might, in fact, make me a few enemies.

So to be polite, and preserve the peace, I’ve kept the secret of my own success pretty much to myself.

But after taking a long hard look at the condition of the people that I know (and love) in this business, and in life in general, I decided that silence was no longer acceptable.

It’s time I let you in on this life-changing key to real success. We’ll begin with this revelation…

Self-help Doesn’t Help

If you have bought more than one self-help product or book… you already know, deep down inside, self-help doesn’t work.

Oh, some of the ideas, techniques, and programs may provide temporary “Band-Aid” fixes for your problems, but it seems like the problems always come back.

It seems like the “fix” is always temporary.

Well, I’ve got some good news.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

You see, the problem with self-help isn’t that you lack discipline, or that you just need to try harder, or any other such nonsense.

The problem is more fundamental.

You’re looking for success in all the wrong places.

And trust me, I know. I did too, for a very long time.

When I Finally Embraced This — It Changed My Life.

Once I fully realized the power of this “singular success key”, my life did a 180° turnaround.

The first thing that happened was my miraculous recovery from clinical depression.

“Recovery” is not the right term; “healing” is the term that most accurately describes what happened to me.

Most people don’t know that in the early 2000′s I suffered from deep, debilitating depression.

For a short while, I underwent counseling and even took antidepressants. Both of those things are good, and they were helpful to me.

But what is even better is the power of this “x-factor” I’m talking about today-the power that completely healed me of depression.

Freed me from taking pills of any kind. Completely changed my outlook on life.

Gave me my joy back.

The freedom I gained also empowered me to leave a successful radio career  to start my own business, and as a result to quickly become one of the most successful direct response copywriters on the Internet.

It seemed as though doors were open to me that were not open to others; it seemed as though nothing I touched could go wrong; and people were beating down my door to have me work with them.

I believe the same thing that caused my amazing healing, that provided incredible financial abundance, that enriched my marriage in ways I never expected, that gave me an “extreme life makeover”… that thing is also freely available to you.

I believe that it can change your life the same way it changed mine.

And I believe it is time for me to unveil this life-changing success secret, and share with you openly.

Doing so will in fact become my life’s work, starting today.

A Strong Warning

I’m about to tell you exactly what I’m talking about, in just a moment.

But let me warn you ahead of time, there will be strong reactions to what I’m about to say.

• Some simply won’t believe it.
• Some will be offended.
• Some will find it hard to swallow because of past hurts or injustices.
• Some will think they’ve “heard it before” (but I believe you’ve never heard it quite like this).
• Some will think I’m trying to “sell something”, or that I’m working some kind of angle. I assure you that is not so.
• Some will unsubscribe, stop reading my materials, and vilify me in online forums.

So be it. But…

I urge you, before you refuse the meal, taste and see for yourself if it’s good.

I assure you it is absolutely the one meal you cannot afford to miss.

How To Receive Success In Everything You Do

Almost everyone I know is looking for “the key” to success in all areas of their life.

Most people, as I’ve already stated, are looking in the wrong places. They are looking for guidance from the wrong people. They are seeking their fulfillment-their success – from the wrong things.

The real answer to all of your problems in life is simple: if you want success and victory in this life, this is my secret (and can easily be yours, too)…

God’s Wisdom Always Leads To Success

I’m here to tell you that whatever you need in life, Jesus Christ, who is God in human flesh, is right beside you and ready to help.

He wants you to experience success in every way that is good.

Not only in some mysterious “afterlife”, but in this world. Today.

I know this is probably different than anything you may have heard before, but stick with me…

Wisdom From God Will Prosper You In Every Way

When I say that “wisdom from God” will bring you prosperity, I’m not talking about pretty, poetic sayings that sound wise.

I’m talking about experiencing a heightened awareness of the right actions to take in life… I’m talking about supernatural intelligence and wisdom that you can have access to. Right now. Today.

You may not know this, you may have never been taught this, but God says in Scripture that he wants us to succeed. And if you will simply partner with him, he will guide you through every challenge you face.

He will give you the wisdom and the intelligence and the understanding to make the right decisions-in business, in relationships, and in life in general.

God will, in fact, place his “favor” on your life. What that means is, everything you touch will prosper.

And don’t worry, there is nothing you need to do in order to earn this favor from God. In fact, it is impossible for you to earn it. You can only receive it from him as a gift.

Hear me clearly: when you choose to follow Jesus, he will give you wisdom and favor in all areas of your life.

Does this mean that you will never face any problems? No. Of course not.

But read this next section very carefully…

Why Bad Things Happen To Good People

Organized religion has been guilty of misrepresenting the nature and character of God.

Perhaps you have been the victim of some of this teaching.

One thing that is commonly taught is that bad things happen to us “for a reason”. That through trials and tribulations, God is shaping our character and teaching us lessons. That there are things we “need to learn”.

There is no doubt in my mind that there are things that each of us do need to learn; and I certainly know that each of us can experience growth in our character.

But none of that gives us the right to impugn the character of God.

If you latch onto nothing else that I say, please get this and receive it in the core of your being: God is good, all the time.

That is the one basic truth of life.

When anything bad happens to us-whether it be sickness, financial problems, emotional trouble, or broken relationships…

…those bad things do not come from God. They come from the enemy of God…

Commonly known as satan.

Yep, I’m talking about “the devil”.

And while “satan” may sound like an old-fashioned idea to you, it might come as a surprise to learn that he is a real being. And he really has an agenda to do you harm.

You see, the devil of Scripture was never portrayed as a red creature with a pointy tail and a pitchfork.

He is, in fact, a powerful being who is filled with pride and who opposes God.

And because God loves you and wants you to succeed – because God has a great destiny for you – satan opposes that. Satan hates you, and wants you to fail!

Without veering off into some pretty deep theological waters, let’s just boil it down to this: good things come from God. Bad things come from the devil.

God wants us to spare us the evils that our enemy has planned for us. And that’s why he sent his son, Jesus Christ, to the earth. Jesus did all the work necessary to “pay the bill” for each and every human being on the face of the earth. To give each of us a clean slate, pay the price of our own sin, and make us righteous in the eyes of God.

But that’s not all.

The Bible says that Jesus came to “destroy the works of the devil”.

The Scripture teaches that we can have protection from the schemes of the enemy, that we can be victorious over the evil that he has planned for us.

The more you behold Jesus, and the work he has done for you, the more wisdom and favor you will receive from him.

And through Jesus, God provides a way for you to receive the benefits of blessing. As you behold Jesus, and learn to sense his presence, and walk in his wisdom, you will experience success and favor in your life.

Wait! Is This The “Prosperity Gospel”?

Some critics of what I am saying here will be quick to label me as a purveyor of the “prosperity gospel”. Or, as is sometimes derisively known, the “health and wealth” gospel.

Well, would you prefer a “sickness and poverty” gospel?

I’ll be quick to admit that I do believe God wants us to prosper.

It isn’t simply about amassing piles of money and toys to make ourselves feel better or to seem more important than other people (that certainly misses the point). It is about receiving everything that God has in store for us-and it is all good.

Because he is good.

This all comes straight from Scripture, too.

God Favors Those Who Honor Him

All we have to do is look in the Bible itself to see that God showed special favor to those who honored him. For instance…

David. Most of us know the story of David and Goliath; the young Israelite who faced the giant Philistine in battle and defeated him with a slingshot. Now, David knew that he could not defeat Goliath from his own strength. David did not trust his own self-effort to give him success in the battle with Goliath. He relied on the power of God. You too have access to that same power. You can trust God to give you victory over the “giants” that you face in your own lifes; the circumstances, sickness, and challenges that come against you.

Solomon. When God asked Solomon what he desired most, Solomon answered that he wanted wisdom – an understanding heart. The Hebrew word that was used in the original text of this story is “shama” which literally means a “hearing heart”. In other words, Solomon asked for a heart that could hear God’s voice. We can ask for the same thing, and God will give us the gift of his wisdom and truth within ourselves. Doesn’t that sound like an advantage in life that you would want?

Joseph. You may or may not remember the story of Joseph from the Old Testament, but he faced some pretty hard times in his life. Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers. He was thrown into prison, falsely accused of a crime he did not commit. He languished in prison for years, apparently forgotten. But even during those dark times, Joseph kept his focus on the presence of God. In the end, he was promoted to a position of high authority in the palace and became a ruler in the land. And just like Joseph, when you learn to be sensitive to God’s presence in everything you do (including business and your day-to-day life), you too will experience success.

Jesus himself. Jesus never faced a situation for which he lacked wisdom. We know from Scripture that even when he was a child he amazed the leaders in the Temple with his knowledge of Scripture and of the power of God. When you simply meditate on the word (the Bible) you are actually meditating on the person of Jesus, because the Bible teaches us that he is the Word become flesh. This is how, through the finished work that Jesus did on the cross, and through the gift of his grace over your life, you are free to walk in wisdom, victory, and success.

It really is that simple.

You don’t have to attend church a certain number of times, or say certain prayers over and over again, or do any “work” to receive these blessings of success and prosperity.

Jesus did the work for you, and he gives you the results of his work as a gift.

The Two Traps

At this point, it’s important that we are aware of two traps that await those who wish to follow Jesus and experience the success that he offers.

Those traps are the twin perils of poverty and greed.

Right now, these two mindsets hold the world in their power – especially so in the realm of business and online marketing; they are the source of the economic woes we see all around us today.

The poverty mindset is a product of fear. The kind of fear that tells you there will never be enough, that in order for me to win someone else has to lose, and that disaster is always around the corner. That doesn’t sound like a very pleasant way to live, now does it?

The poverty mindset will keep you broke, in debt, and fearful for the rest of your life if you don’t stand against it.

The other enemy of true prosperity is the greed mindset. This is the mindset of selfishness, of self-aggrandizement, and of making oneself feel better by putting others down. This is the mindset that leads people to collect as many boats, cars, gigantic houses, and material possessions as a way of proving their own value as a person. This mindset is also motivated by fear-the fear of not being valued by others.

It’s Okay To Be Rich – But First Seek God’s Kingdom

Please hear me very clearly: there is nothing wrong with having a big house, or nice cars.

Merely having nice possessions is not an indicator of the condition of someone’s soul.

Neither is having very few possessions; just because someone does not experience financial abundance in one particular moment in time does not mean that they are in thrall to poverty.

Likewise, being focused on material possessions for the wrong reasons can lead to pride, and tempt one to become greedy.

My point is simply this: the external circumstances are never a reliable indicator of the condition of a person’s heart.

But from the standpoint of guarding yourself against great unhappiness, I caution you to avoid both of these deadly mindsets. Stay far away from the poverty mindset, and have faith that even when you are temporarily in lack, there will always be enough. There is always more of everything you need available to you.

Likewise, you should strenuously avoid falling in love with material possessions acquired for the sake of stoking your pride. Piling up “stuff” in order to prove your own value is a quick road to misery.

When you can navigate successfully and stay out of these two mindsets-when you are slave to neither greed nor poverty-you experience what God wants for you with all his heart. You experience true prosperity.

The apostle Paul said that he had learned the secret to being content whether he had much (which he sometimes did) or whether he had nothing (a condition he also experienced frequently). What was his secret? The same secret I’ve been talking to you about all along: he said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

The Cat Is Out Of The Bag

Jesus Christ is the reason and the source of every good thing that I have experienced in my life.

Yes, he has “saved” my soul and made me “right with God”… and…

• He also healed me from clinical depression.
• He restored my love of people.
• He gave me back my joy.
• He blessed my marriage, renewing and increasing the joy I already had in my relationship with my wife.
• He has given me material blessings beyond measure, and the freedom to do work that I love without fear of external economic conditions.
• He is the reason for my business success.

While I have often talked about being a follower of Jesus in the past, and done so openly, I have never before revealed the true depth of my belief about exactly what it is Jesus has done for me. And what he wants to do for you.

But now, the gloves are off.

I want everyone to experience the same joy, the same piece, and the same prosperity that I myself enjoy.

I realize that for some, this may be a bit much to take. Please know that is not my intention or desire to offend you-far from it, it’s my intention and desire to see you succeed wildly on a whole new scale. It’s what I have committed my life to.

And here’s what that looks like…

My Marketplace Mission: 1,000 Millionaires.

I feel that God has prepared me for this very time to help demolish the mindsets of both poverty and greed that have a grip on so many.

I am privileged to be called to be part of the solution.

Our mission going forward, here at Ray Edwards International, Inc, is a very simple one: to mentor, foster, and lead 1,000 people to become millionaires.

Not to become millionaires for the reasons the world normally supposes people want to be rich. Not so that they can buy the biggest house, or the fastest sports car, or acquire the “most toys”.

Our aim (and my personal mission) is to develop “Kingdom millionaires”. People who seek to accumulate wealth in order to do the work of God’s kingdom.

Leading 1,000 people to become millionaires means bringing one billion dollars into God’s Kingdom – money that will be used for His purposes.

Over the last few years, I’ve had the great privilege of working with many well-known marketers and thought-leaders.

Some of my clients are household names.

I’ve been able to contribute to their success, and my work has been responsible, in part, for bringing millions of dollars into those businesses and those personal fortunes.

Now, I am dedicating my work-all of it-to the building of God’s kingdom.

How? By continuing to help people and businesses create more wealth – but now with a renewed and more accurately-focused purpose. By being dedicated…

• To the destruction of the poverty and greed mindset.
• To the creation of new wealth.
• To the alleviation of suffering, sickness, and poverty.

We are in a world at war. It’s Good against evil.

While evil wants to take over, we resist the idea of giving up a single inch of ground.

This is the sound of a revolution.

If You’re Receiving This Message, You Are The Resistance

If this resonates with you, if you want to be part of this revolution, I invite you to stick with me.

As dark as some people think tomorrow looks, we have a different view.

We believe the future is pregnant with promise, and we are committed to taking back tomorrow from the “gloom and doomers”.

So how can you join in?

First, and absolutely of most importance, make sure you are following Jesus. Accept Him as your Lord (your Master) and as your Savior. It’s not complex. All that is required:

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Romans 10:9

Next, if what I’ve said here seems to draw you toward it, then this is your place!

Subscribe to this blog, if you haven’t already.

In the coming days and weeks, you’ll see our new focus reflected in the articles we publish, the podcasts we produce, the information products and books we make available.

My teaching and materials will reflect the principles of helping you build wealth from a foundation of Kingdom principles – for Kingdom purposes.

We will be together on the journey of true prosperity.

And like John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, I want you to prosper, even as your soul prospers.

I look forward to contributing to your success.

We have some exciting things in store for you.

In the meantime…

May you prosper wildly, and may you be radically blessed.

Yours in Christ,

Ray

Click for the Podcast Audio:

Click Here

“Big picture” people.

“Idea” people.

And that’s good. BUT… in times like these it can also be problematic.

Because…

What we want is a simple solution to our complex business problems.

What we need, however, is not an “easy button”.

What we need are often complex, multi-faceted tactical plans guided by a carefully conceived strategic course.

The tricky thing is, from the outside this often looks like simplicity.

But it is simplicity on the other side of complexity.

Getting to the other side of complexity requires the hardest of all work: thinking.

More thought to each product you produce.

More care to each customer interaction.

More value for each dollar you receive.

Jesus said, “It is better to give than to receive.”

He also promises elsewhere that if we give faithfully, and joyfully, we will receive much more in return.

Imagine what the world would be like if everyone (including businesses) operated on that principle.

I know… that’s not how things work with everyone.

But the way to get closer to a world that looks like that, is to be the kind of person who does.

“Pig Pen, this here is Rubber Duck. We ain’t gonna pay no toll…”
CW McCall, “Convoy”

Who would have dreamed, in the 1970s, that anything would ever replace the CB radio? Some readers will, like me, be old enough to remember the CB craze. We will all remember, for instance, that the “main channel” on our CB radio was channel 19.

“Breaker 19, this here is the CopyGuy, with a newsflash: before that Hollywood actor named Reagan becomes president, CB radio will be a fad from the past…”

Fast-forward to just around the time CB radio had completely faded from the American consciousness, and you’ll discover a curious new technology called the compact disc just making its debut on the market. There were scoffers. There were purists who said nothing sounded as good as vinyl (there still are, but that’s another post). And there were plenty of people to point out that nobody in their right mind would replace an entire record collection just to go buy the same music on CD. Those people were wrong.

Fast forward again. Apple introduces a service called iTunes. There are scoffers. There are purists who say there’s nothing like having the liner notes you get inside the case of a CD. And they’re plenty of people pointing out that nobody in their right mind will replace an entire CD collection is to go buy the same music for the iPod. Those people were also wrong.

Just to be clear: those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Change is constant. Industries appear and vanish in the space of a decade. Those who win are those who anticipate the trends, and get in front of them. Distinction worthy of note: it is much easier to predict trends and get in front of them that it is to be the creator of said trends. Much, much, much easier.

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
William Shakespeare

I will leave the discussion aside as to whether William Shakespeare is indulging in moral relativism.

I think he is not, if one reads the above quotation in context, but I do think the quotation illustrates a basic principle we, as entrepreneurs, would be profited to recognize and employ with more frequency.

It is popular, in our culture, to be well versed in bad news.

It is popular to be able to quote the bad news, and to elaborate upon its badness, and one is presumed to be more erudite and wise for doing so.

But as entrepreneurs-those who create something from virtually nothing-I believe it is the kiss of death. It is a way of limiting ourselves, of violating the principle of the best use of resources.

The best and highest resource we possess is ourselves, and that never brought so into focus as in what we think about most of the time.

I don’t believe it’s possible to talk about the bad news all the time, without also thinking about it all the time. And it should stand to reason that thinking about something all the time tends to put one’s focus on that something, and that focusing on something inevitably draws us closer to the something.

I’m not talking about mysticism here.

I’m simply talking about the fact that the more we tend to think about a thing, the more likely it is that our behavior, actions, attitudes, and lifestyle will come into alignment with that thing we’re thinking about.

So the “bad news” is this: thinking and talking about bad news all the time might make you seem smart, but it inevitably makes you dumb, and what’s more it likely will make you broke. In the rare cases that it does not make you broke, because you have in some perverted way discovered how to profit from bad news, it will make you soul-sick.

Yes, I’m sticking my neck out on this one. But my poster child for the premise of being rich but soul-sick is Howard Hughes. And I don’t think any of us wants to end up like him, hoarding our fingernail clippings, living on orange juice, and slowly going insane.

The good news is, there is obvious profit in thinking and talking about good news. In looking for the good news in every situation. It is after all, as entrepreneurs, what we are paid to do.

Let’s go do it.

For proof, click here and watch a startling, but enlightening video. Yes, he’s selling something; but what I want you to glean is his absolutely correct grasp of principles regarding levels of knowledge about money. You don’t need to buy anything to get the value from the video.

If you haven’t already, click here and watch the video. I’ll wait.

Now, why is it that the things he teaches in this video are true?

This post from Sam Carpenter explains it perfectly. You should read the entire post, but let me point out the principle I want to highlight:

We must study the mechanical minutia of our tasks if we are to excel. This means observing: looking down and analyzing the sub-systems of our lives…to see our selves as mechanical devices that can be made to be super-efficient. The next step is to spend the majority of our time perfecting each of our sub-systems, one by one.

Here’s a happy thought: Study and then perfect your systems as a main focus and you’ll find yourself in select company and therefore flying faster and higher than a huge percentage of the competition. Make More. Work Less.

Lots of people work hard to become expert at what they do, but what great heights will be achieved by becoming expert at a flawed process?

All very well worth pondering – it all does apply to you & me, Eternal Entrpreneur. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it: figure out how, and how you might use this distinction to your benefit.

SPECIAL NOTE: For a limited time, you can become a member of  my new Writing Riches Community – the place where I share the specific SYSTEMS that sell more of your products & services. And you can claim your spot in our club at our special Charter Member Rate. Right now, membership is a no-obligation $47… but in LESS THAN one week, at the end of January, the price goes up to $97. Click here right now to lock in your Charter Rate and save $50.

If you haven’t read it, move it to the top of your list.

If you have read it and haven’t yet implemented every single strategy inside its covers, read it now. Again.

Probably my favorite passage from Chet’s masterful business work is one that most people read without understanding its import. In the early pages of the book, Chet points out that most people will read his book, agree with its precepts, and still not do them. He says this is the “reverse psychology” section of the book, in which he attempts to prod the reader into doing what needs to be done. In Chet’s words, “I’m goading you into applying a powerful force for creating success from what you’re going to learn… and that force, my friends, is pigheaded discipline and determination.”

Pigheaded discipline is the subject of this post for very good, and simple, reason. That reason being the fact that this is the most-lacked skill in over 90% of entrepreneurs. In my experience, what stands in our way, what holds us back from our potential, is usually not some external force (such as competition or marketplace conditions)-it is, rather, our own inability to say no to the things that distract us from our most profitable activities, and our continued inability to say yes only to those activities that produce the results we seek.

It is as if the world conspires against us to lead us down this path to destruction. Most of our peers, and certainly most of our employees, are happy to tell us what we should be spending our time on-and almost without fail their advice is dead wrong. It usually doesn’t come packaged as advice, by the way – it usually comes packaged as a meeting… a phone call… a personal plea… or some kind of interpersonal conflict. None of which are, perhaps, designed to take us off target- but all of which inevitably do.

Guard your heart carefully, eternal entrepreneur, and focus only on the things that expand the kingdom. Employ pigheaded discipline.

SPECIAL NOTE: For a limited time, you can become a member of  my new Writing Riches Community at our special Charter Member Rate. Right now, membership is a no-obligation $47… but in LESS THAN two weeks, at the end of January, the price goes up to $97. Click here right now to lock in your Charter Rate and save $50.

As an entrepreneur, it is profitable to think about the Pareto principle in the following way: 80% of your results will flow from only 20% of your activities. They should become a liberating truth for you. It constitutes mathematical permission for you to focus only on the 20% of things you like to do anyway. The truth is most entrepreneurs are people who enjoy “visioning”-or, as my private client Frank Kern likes to put it, “scheming”. This doesn’t imply anything evil; it simply recognizes the fact that entrepreneurial types tends to enjoy coming up with the big ideas, seeing the big picture, laying down the strategy, and leaving the cleanup and details to others on their team. In the world of the Internet, there is an ethos that if you can do it yourself you should do it yourself. This has had the result of locking up entrepreneurs in a prison of detail work. No entrepreneur should be installing WordPress blogs, debugging scripts, or figuring out how to make the latest plug-in work… unless this is out of financial necessity. And assuming that you’re any kind of entrepreneur at all, the period of financial necessity may exist from time to time, but should be short-lived.

The prosperous practice of the Pareto principle simply means: only do the stuff you’re best at, the stuff that gets results, that puts sales on the books, new clients on the roster, and “moves the needle”. Anything else is a waste of time.

SPECIAL NOTE: For a limited time, you can become a member of  my new Writing Riches Community at our special Charter Member Rate. Right now, membership is a no-obligation $47… but in LESS THAN two weeks, at the end of January, the price goes up to $97. Click here right now to lock in your Charter Rate and save $50.

The enemy of most entrepreneurs is not perfectionism, as some have suggested. It is the idea of perfectionism. It is the dream of what their beautiful business will finally look like someday. What I mean is this: it is possible to hold such a magnificent dream in one’s mind, that one never gets around to actually doing the work required to bring the dream to fruition-because if one did so, one would be faced with the inevitable reality that the thing itself did not live up to the promise of the dream. This is more important than it may at first appear.

I’m convinced that more businesses are killed because they are never started, than are begun and lost to the ravages of the marketplace. I have a friend who has begun at least a dozen enterprises that completely and utterly failed to make a single dollar-because he started all of them in his mind only. He made elaborate plans. He drew incredibly complex mind maps. He constructed detailed, banker- pleasing spreadsheets. And finally, overcome by the weight of all of the fantasizing he had done, eventually realizing all the potential dangers that lay ahead of him if he proceeded, he quietly laid each enterprise to rest before it had even been born.

There is a much-quoted saying in this business of ours: “Don’t get it perfect, just get it started.” Or something very close to that. I have heard this quote attributed to various different people, but I’m determined to believe that it originated with Zig Ziglar. Regardless of who first said it, it contains a great deal of truth. Please bear in mind that this particular saying is not an endorsement of creating inferior products or services; it is, more accurately, a condemnation of allowing the ideal of perfectionism to prevent the birth of enterprise.

It is the law of the farm writ large: if you don’t plant the seed, no crop will grow.

SPECIAL NOTE: For a limited time, you can become a member of  my new Writing Riches Community at our special Charter Member Rate. Right now, membership is a no-obligation $47… but in LESS THAN two weeks, at the end of January, the price goes up to $97. Click here right now to lock in your Charter Rate and save $50.

Not moderately successful; very successful. His business’s revenue each month is measured in the millions.

Recently, when speaking about how we should communicate with one another, he smiled sheepishly and admitted, “I’m not really an e-mail guy.”

Think about it. $24 million dollar business. Doesn’t do email.

I’m not saying the success of his business is dependent upon him not using e-mail. But I am saying it is interesting to note that he is successful despite not using e-mail.

Something to think about.

You might think, for instance, you just did something to serve the customer… And they might have an entirely different perception.

Case in point: I recently enroll the large number of students in an online training webinar series. Thinking I would best serve those students by getting the series underway as soon as possible, I scheduled the webinars immediately after enrollments were complete.

I felt good about this decision, because I would be delivering the material the students had paid for in a very timely fashion.

I was somewhat surprised to receive an e-mail from a student who was upset with me for not waiting longer to schedule the online classes. This student criticized me as being “just like those other Internet marketers” who think only of themselves, and not of their students. What?! I thought I was thinking of my students!

I quickly got over my feelings of having been spat upon, and realized this was an opportunity for me to learn something. That something was this: my perception of what’s happening can be completely opposite of my customer’s perception. One of my primary responsibilities as a business owner is to be as aware of these differences as possible, and always working to close the gap between the two.

As my friends in the UK are well aware, it’s very important to “mind the gap”.

PS - I am hosting a free webinar tomorrow night (Thursday, December 16, 2010) where I will share a number of business insights that might be useful to you. For instance, I’ll be sharing how I cut my work week from 60 hours down to 20… And massively increased my profitability in the process. If that sounds interesting, click here to register for the free webinar.

I thank God for that.

I’m also thankful for you, Constant Reader, for taking time to peruse what I write here.

As a way of expressing that gratitude, I am hosting a free webinar this week to share my biggest most fundamental earthly distinctions about how to enjoy more free time, more fulfillment and yes, more money.

Now, you know me well enough by this time to know I don’t love money… but I also don’t discourage it from coming into my life! Register for the webinar (free) by clicking here.

On this webinar, called “Shaping Your Destiny: How to Make 2011 Your Best Year Yet”, you will discover:

• How I was able to slash my workweek from 60+ hours to less than 20 hours… and yet dramatically INCREASE my profits in 2009-2010! (Plus, I will explain EXACTLY how I believe anyone can do what I did, no matter what your business)
• How I took 3+ months to tour the USA in my motorhome with my wife & son… yet had the most profitable quarter to date in our business, all while working less than 20 hours a week in coffee shops, campgrounds and national parks as we made our 7,500 mile journey.
• The revolutionary goal-setting method I learned from one of my Private Clients that guarantees you will ALWAYS achieve your goals, and causes many seemingly “outrageous” goals to ACHIEVE THEMSELVES, as if by magic (it’s NOT magic, and I will explain ALL of this on the webinar!).
• The most powerful earthly question I know that transforms you mind, your perspective and your ability to achieve more of your dreams. And no, this has nothing to do with “affirmations” or “positive thinking”. I will give you the entire question and teach you how to start using it yourself right away.
• My advice about “product launches”, based on behind the scenes experience as the copywriter most hired for these things. Are they a thing of the past? Has their time come and gone? Do they still “work”? Are they even morally right? I will give you serious answers to these questions.

I want to reiterate that this is a free webinar. It should last about an hour and a half.

Register now by clicking here.

I heard someone saying this on their cell phone at Starbucks during the last week. It sounded completely disingenuous, and I was appalled to realize I’ve been guilty of saying it myself. A lot.

What’s the problem with this phrase? The real message you’re conveying, it seems to me,  is: “I just haven’t made calling you a priority, and facing you with it is uncomfortable. So I’m giving you an excuse.”

This doesn’t mean that I’m going to call everyone back instantly who leaves me a voicemail. That’s just unrealistic, not to mention poor stewardship of one’s time. It does mean, however,  I’m going to do my best to stop making excuses.

1. Call previous clients and ask for business. I know. Seems simple when I say it, doesn’t it?

2. Answer your e-mail. I mean, really answer it. Look for opportunities to help people with questions they didn’t even realize they were asking. Usually, it’s easy to identify what problems people are having if you just pay attention to what they’re actually saying. Look through that inbox again, and look for opportunities to serve; these often lead to opportunities to get paid.

3. Call people in your network. Pick up the phone, call people you know, and simply tell them: “I’m looking for business. Do you know anybody I might be able to help with my services?”

Nothing glamorous here. Just good, old-fashioned, uncompromising hard work. Gets the job done.

This morning, while thinking about all this, I remembered a delightful piece written by Robert Fulghum called “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarden”. It seems to me this piece by Fulgum provides some good starting points for how to approach online community:

Play fair.

Don’t hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

What would you add to the list?

The only problem is, if everyone followed that advice, we would not have Indiana Jones, airline travel, the iPhone and a host of other things we didn’t know we wanted because they hadn’t been invented yet.

Henry Ford said that if he had given his customers what they wanted, it would have been faster horses.

Give your customers something that will delight them – not just what they want. Don’t give them faster horses.

1. A customer who wants a refund on something they clearly did not buy at your store?
2. A customer who “buys” an expensive TV for the holiday weekend, only to return it Monday for a refund?
3. A customer who is abusive, obnoxious, or just too high-maintenance (costing you valuable time and emotional resources)?

Are those customers right?

Is the customer, in fact, sometimes wrong – and what do you do when they are?

“I have a right to a good job.” (Really? How much responsibility do you have for earning that job? To be qualified for it? To dress nice, brush your teeth, and show up on time?)

“Everyone has the right to vacation.” (Is that true? How do you know it is true? Do some people have the right to more vacation than others? How much of your responsibility is it to ask for/negotiate your vacation?)

“We all have the right to health care coverage.” (Who is responsible for paying for it? The government? Who is that? Who is responsible for giving the government the money to pay for it?)

Rights and responsibilities. Not as simple as you might think.

Ostensibly, it is a day we set aside to be grateful for the gifts that God has given us.

At this moment, as I write these words, I am struck by the bounty He has laid before me. And the things I treasure most are not material things: they are people.

I’m thankful for my wife. I’m thankful for my son. For my mother, and my brothers; for my fathers (yes, I am blessed to have more than one-including my natural father, an adoptive father, and my father-in-law… Fathers to me, all. Beloved, all.)

And I’m thankful for you, for reading this blog, for sending me e-mail, for commenting on what I have to say, for not always agreeing with me, for being my customer, client, and friend.

I could go on. But suffice it to say, I am very grateful for all that I’ve been given. Thank you for reading.

The reason we are turned off by “pushy” salespeople is their attempts to be likable are almost laughably transparent. And absolutely inauthentic.

The key to creating a bond through your writing (and any other form of communication that involves language) is surprisingly simple.

Be yourself.

For sure, be the best self you can authentically be. But don’t try to be something you’re not; people can smell that incongruence a mile away, and it’s definitely a turnoff.

So how does this apply to writing in order to achieve bonding?

In my experience, most people who write for the purpose of strategic influence (to get other people to do something) develop a rather formal way of writing. Part of what happens when they adopt that formal style of writing is their natural voice disappears. It’s as if this particular style of writing sends the unspoken message, “I’m not going to let you know anything about me, because if you did you wouldn’t like me.”

This is where we get rules of thumb like, “never talk about religion or politics”. That’s good advice if you don’t want to offend anyone. But how will you bond with people if you never let them know who you really are?

I’m not suggesting you try being purposely offensive. I’m simply saying let people see the “real you”.

You don’t have to write long diatribes about politics or religion. But you can certainly mention who you voted for, where you go to church… as well as the fact that you like to bowl, you’re vegan, you raise greyhounds, and even more unusual things (like your fear of wigs, or how you still watch Saturday morning cartoons).

All of this does start from a premise, which you need to be aware of: it is that you are, in ways that count, very similar to your prospective audience. I’m assuming that you’re in business because you have a love of certain things, and that you share those things in common with your customers and potential customers.

Thus, as you strategically reveal true qualities of your personality, your customers will be struck by a sense of recognition. And what they recognize is themselves. This, my friends, creates bonding. And it’s not the result of manipulation; it’s the result of being real.

Fair warning: this technique will not work if you’re the exact opposite of your customers.

I once worked with a client with a rather substantial business. During our first meeting we were discussing his customers and his prospects. I asked him, “What can you tell me about your customers?”

His answer startled me: “I don’t like them very much.”

It wasn’t difficult to figure out why his company was experiencing a downturn in business.

Do you like your customers very much?

And, more telling: are you very much like your customers?

While you don’t have to be like the people you sell to, it certainly doesn’t hurt.

And I propose to you that if you don’t like the people you sell to, it might be time to consider another line of work.

We obsess over our favorite celebrities, their lifestyles, relationships, and illnesses.

In her book, Fascinate, Sally Hogshead claims that the ability to create fascination is one of the most powerful ways of influencing behavior. She says, in fact, that it is “more persuasive than marketing, advertising, or any other form of communication.” While I don’t agree with all her conclusions, I do recommend her book.

So how do you make yourself, your ideas, your products and services more fascinating? The answer is surprisingly simple. Human beings are fascinated by a fairly narrow band of phenomena. Some things to keep in mind when writing to influence, with the end of creating more fascination in mind:

1. Curiosity. Who among us does not understand the intense allure of curiosity? This powerful point of fascination is magnetic in its ability to draw people into your story, to make them want to hear your message.
2. Fear. While I absolutely do not advocate the invocation of fear as a tool of manipulation, the recognition of pre-existing fears can be a powerful illumination for your communications. Know what makes people afraid, and you know how to engage them in conversation.
3. Power. Whether they admit it or not, nearly everyone wants more influence over others, in some way. “Power” in itself is neither good nor evil, but its appeal is nearly universal.
4. Identification with the object of their admiration. This is the very source of intense devotion, the driving force behind “fans” of all kinds. When we grant a person or even an organization our admiration, we experience an intense desire to be identified with that person or organization.

What is it about you, your company, your organization or product that already fascinates your customers?  Are there ways in which you can focus more on those aspects that are natural points of fascination for your audience? Are people fascinated with the wrong things about you? Are you?

All questions worth considering.

Strategy in this context means: the overall approach to achieving the outcome you want.

This may not be as simple as you think.

Even if you know your desired outcome is the sale of a product, you have only identified the target; that is not an answer to the question of strategy. The question of strategy is: how will I hit the target?

One possible strategy is: the creation of advocacy in the mind of your prospects. Let me explain.

The most straightforward product sale can be strongly influenced by first defining a position of advocacy you want the reader to adopt.

For instance: let’s assume you sell a highly commoditized product, like machine screws. How on earth could advocacy for some position or other influence the purchase of machine screws? Well..

Perhaps you begin by realizing your company has a commitment to using only the finest quality materials in the manufacture of your machine screws. Perhaps you further realize that you have unusual attention to detail in your manufacturing facility, and that this grows from the quality philosophy of your business. Maybe you believe that a lack of such strong standards is one of the things that have contributed to our current economic woes.

In the above scenario, you might choose to write and publish an essay on the importance of high standards not only in the manufacturing process, but also as the foundation of success upon which our country was built.

You might even go so far as to suggest that the solution to the economic problems facing our country is rooted in a return to this kind of commitment to quality.

If you publish this essay (or blog post, or podcast, or brochure, newsletter, even postcard) in a place where your potential buyers will encounter it, and if it is written powerfully, you stand a good chance of influencing their buying decisions about machine screws without ever overtly writing about that particular subject.

Of course, before you can authentically write to persuade people to adopt a position of advocacy, you first have to possess such a position yourself.

A worthwhile question to ponder: what do you stand for, and how does that relate to the world of the people you wish to influence?

Changing behaviors of your audience can be merely temporary; changing mindsets is more permanent, and changes behaviors automatically.

No, I’m not talking about ancient Greece. When I say “mythology”, I’m referring to “story”.

I believe great marketing-and thus, great influence-starts with great stories. I’m not alone in this thought.

Seth Godin writes in his book All Marketers Are Storytellers, “Either you’re going to tell stories that spread, or you will become irrelevant.”

All the ground-shaking movements in history started with great stories. Our ancestors sat around the hearth and told stories that transmitted their values, their ideas, their wisdom and faith.

Jesus taught primarily through the telling of stories.

John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Martin Luther King all told stories that moved people to take action. You don’t have to agree with the ideologies of any of these people, by the way, to get the benefit of what I’m saying. All I’m attempting to do is point out the power of the story as a form of persuasion.

It’s important to understand that the story must be true. Telling lies simply won’t work, not to mention the fact that it’s wrong.

Before you begin your next writing project, whether it’s the book you’re working on, the sales material for your website, or the next speech you’re giving, become aware of the stories you’re telling (or the ones you’re not telling that you should be). Here are some qualities your stories (or mythology) should possess:

1. The stories you tell must, first of all, be true.
2. They must be told in the service of others. The goal of your story should be to impart something to hearer, not to manipulate them.
3. Your stories should appeal to emotion. No matter what people tell you, they buy your ideas, your products, and your services based on emotion-not based on logic.
4. Your stories should be told quickly, and in an entertaining fashion. In today’s world, people have limited patience for long-winded stories.
5. Don’t hit them over the head. The more subtle your story, the less overtly self-serving, the more you allow your reader to come to their own conclusions… the better.

So, what stories are you telling? Are they the right ones? How do you know?

Something to think about.

This will be of interest if you want to use the power of persuasive writing to change, improve, expand, and empower your business.

But first, I’ll need you to bear with me; it’s necessary to explain the ideas behind this new series of articles.

The time has come to move beyond our old models of writing to persuade.

In the world of old media (radio, newspaper, and television) there was a clear distinction between writing that was intended as content, and writing that was intended to be persuasive.

The “content writing” took the form of entertainment, commentary, and news; the “persuasive” forms of writing were self-promotional, advertising, and marketing.

Today, the Internet has fundamentally shifted the way we receive, process, and act upon information. The walls that separated content from marketing have not just been taken down, they have been obliterated.

Michel Fortin has written convincingly about “The Death Of The Sales Letter”. With seemingly prophetic insight, Michel accurately predicted the coming trend that would spell the end of the stunning effectiveness of traditional online “sales letter websites”. They still work-only not nearly as well as they once did. Things have changed. I recommend you read his work on this subject.

Seth Godin writes with equal prescience about the end of what he calls the “TV industrial complex”, and the advent of the “Linchpin” (the essential individual who makes a powerful difference).

These are striking insights into the new world of persuasion and marketing; and I propose to you that they are only partial glimpses of the reality that has already begun to manifest around us.

I propose that far from simply being a different way of delivering persuasive copy, the new “content marketing model” is actually a reflection of something far more significant.

No longer do our customers accept our neatly packaged, carefully honed, isolated messages about our own products and services.

In today’s world, our customers (and our prospective customers) are able to see the entire persona of an individual or company with startling accuracy. They can read praise from clients and customers, read articles written by and about the company, and see reviews from actual buyers.

They can also easily identify complaints against a person or company by doing a simple search on the Internet. They can assess how the person or company deals with such complaints. They can read the market’s response to mistakes the person or company may make in the pursuit of their business. In other words, everything is marketing, and marketing is accurate because it’s no longer possible to control it.

Thus it becomes more important than ever to think about the written words we generate, both content and marketing. In fact, my proposal is that we stop thinking about them as two different forms of writing.

I find it more useful to adopt a new paradigm: that of writing for strategic influence. Let me explain…

Let’s begin with this tacit assumption: if everything our company (or an individual, if the person is a solopreneur) engages in is in fact visible, transparent, and available for public inspection… gone are the days we could “have a marketing message”.

A new day has arrived. Instead of “having” a marketing message, we must “be” a message.

Every communication we engage in with our customers and our prospective customers should be thought of as simply writing another page in our “book of communication”.

What this means is: we have arrived at a time when accountability is no longer optional, it is simply reality.

We have to think more carefully about everything we say, and everything we do. This is a good thing. It raises the bar for all of us who work in the service of other people (and what is work, or business, if it is not being in the service of other people?).

So if every communication (answering the telephone, handing off a business card, putting out a flyer, a Google ad, a blog post, e-mail, or public talk) is in fact marketing… it becomes necessary to be conscious of what sort of influence we wish to have in the marketplace.

The marketplace is, ultimately, a marketplace of ideas. Spread your idea far and wide, and see it have an impact on the world. Good or ill, time will tell.

Ideas have always been influenced by the written word. Literature has been the medium that molds mindsets. Literature has now expanded and moved off the printed page. Literature now includes blogs, e-mails, and YouTube. Writing happens in all sorts of formats-from essays like this one, to 140 character blurbs on twitter.

It’s time to start thinking about what sort of strategic influence we wish to have on the world around us-and how we are going to craft our messages to achieve that influence.

This is “the new copywriting”.

Your life (and your business) is literally an open book. The pages, starting today, are blank, and yours to write. What story will you write?

I can’t tell you what your message should be; first, as I have already alluded to, I think you must become your message. Whatever you’re selling, you first have to live. That part, I cannot do for you.

The upcoming articles in this series will focus, instead, on the actual techniques you might wish to consider in the process of spreading your ideas through persuasive writing.

To be clear, these techniques will apply whether what you are selling are concepts, products, or services. The techniques we will discuss should be applicable whether the group you wish to influence is your family, your city government, your church, your Board of Directors, or customers and prospects.

I look forward to your feedback.

Perhaps you are a one-person shop, or perhaps you are a big company with hundreds of employees.

It doesn’t matter. You need to stand for something that matters. In today’s cluttered marketing environment, standing for something is the only way you’re ever going to stand out.

Most people (and companies) are afraid to say what they stand for-because they don’t want to upset anyone. Forget about that. When you stand for something, you can count on someone being upset with you. That’s good-it means they were able to figure out what you stand for.

Now let me be clear: I’m not saying you should purposefully anger people. I’m just saying that if you’re being authentic to who you really are, you will inevitably have a polarizing effect on people. Don’t be afraid of that; embrace it. It’s what will bond you to your best customers. And those are the people you serve, so it’s good for you to let them know you’re standing there, right alongside them.

It’s a reflection of your identity as the leader of a group or company.

Who are you? That’s what your culture will end up looking like.

So if you don’t like your company (or club, or group, or church) culture… you know where to start working on the problem: in the mirror.

Urgency addiction looks like this:

Checking e-mail every five minutes

Answering the phone whenever it rings

Tolerating endless interruptions from coworkers, friends, and clients.

Enjoying the “high” you get by putting out fires and solving crises.

All this may feel good-it may make you feel important temporarily-but in the end it undercuts your mission.

If you are constantly living in a state of urgency, something is wrong with either (A.) your perception of reality or (B.) your planning process.

In either case, this is a problem worth fixing.

This is the new version of “divide and conquer”.

While your competitor is busy trying to be a Swiss Army knife, you simply decide to be a razor blade.

We buy into these images, don’t we?

The problem is, they’re founded on lies. The lie says that if you want to succeed, you have to sacrifice your free time, your personal life, your values.

That’s why so many workaholics end up divorced, addicted, broke, and sick.

Workaholism is not romantic; it’s stupid. That’s true whether you’re a CEO, a freelancer, or in ministry.

Let a word to the wise be sufficient.

So are 1 year plans.

Go ahead – show me a 5 year or 1 year plan that worked as planned.

I’ll wait….

Right. Don’t waste time with 5 year plans.

1. Your job is to answer email. Skip the rest of this post.

2. You are addicted to checking your email, and you let other people derail your priorities every day.

3. You WORK for someone who is addicted to checking email, this addict requires you to share their disfuntion… and you let other people derail your priorities every day.

Just saying.

Nothing great gets done by committees.

Typically meetings are the exact opposite of actual work. They are a way of avoiding work, a way for egos to inflate, and a great way to waste time.

If you must have a meeting… and I mean if you really MUST… here are three tips to minimize the damage:

1. Keep it to 15 minutes or less. Use a timer! Be ruthless.

2. No speeches. Consider a 2-minute rule: no speaking for more than 2 minutes by any one person.

3. Stand up. No sitting. And no snacks, no drinks, and no handouts (if you can put it on a handout or in an email… why are you wasting my time with a meeting?).

This all applies to phone meetings too.

Eventually I had to put my money where my mouth was; and I quit.

The only regret I have is that I didn’t do it sooner.

So I say to you: if you’re not having fun in your job, your work, or your business… quit.

Realistic does not change the world; it does not shake up the status quo; realistic does not create legacy.

The greatest advances of history were created by unrealistic people?

I’ve been involved in a little bit of each, and they are certainly nice. But the reality is S. not the way normal business growth occurs. The way businesses normally grow is incrementally, over time.

Interestingly, it seems to be the businesses that have been growing incrementally over time that more often than not experience those big home run moments every now and then.

One way to increase profits, almost without fail, is to try a little bit of improvement every day. Improve your process for selling, prospecting, and producing products. Just a little bit, every day. It adds up.

You might laugh when you see the list. But it’s my belief that many of the businesses we see closing their doors these days might have been saved by the diligent application of $10 marketing tactics.

1. Call every one of your past customers on the phone and ask them if they need help with anything. Listen to their answer.

2. Write a letter to every one of your past customers and ask them if they need help with anything. Watch for their response, or be ready for their phone call.

3. If you send out any kind of billing each month, include an offer inside each envelope. It can be a simple one sheet description of a product-but it must contain a call to action. Ask for the order.

Now, you might say that some of these will cost more than $10. It’s true, if you’re going to mail all your past customers and you have 100,000 of them, it will cost more than 10 bucks. But my guess is, if the title of this post caught your attention, your problem is not having 100,000 previous customers and not knowing what to do with them.

2. Stop trying to act like you’re rich.

3. Do what you love, and the money will probably follow. It may not be as much, but at least you’ll be doing what you love.

4. Seek first after the things that cannot be bought, because once you’ve lost those… well, I think you understand.

5. Don’t be a “second hander”. Stop living your life according to what other people think.

Finish at least one good marketing book every week.

If you’re not currently an avid reader, this might seem like a big deal. It’s really not very difficult. Many marketing books are short, to begin with. And nobody said you have to read words printed on the page-audio books count. Most audio players have an option to speed up the audio-meaning you can often finish a book in half the time it might normally take.

If you read one good marketing book per week, you will have read 52 of them at the end of the year. How many of your peers do you think do that? How many of your competitors? Exactly. A+.

So please don’t disregard what I’m about to recommend simply because it’s “basic information”. For some, it will be new information. For others, it will be something they’ve heard but never done. And for some, it will indeed be something they’re already doing… but even for those I submit it may be possible to do it in a better way.

Here’s the lesson: there is a fortune in the follow-up.

Let’s say you’re one of the enlightened few who has a website that collects e-mail leads. Good job.

Let’s say you’re even more enlightened and you have an automated follow-up system, that sends those leads three, five, maybe even seven follow-up messages. Even better job.

But why stop with seven messages? Why stop with 10?

Here’s my recommendation: block out 3 to 4 hours one day, and write up at least 52 follow-up messages. Logos into your autoresponder follow-up sequence, after your initial weeks worth of follow-up (if you indeed already have a weeks worth). Make sure every e-mail in your follow-up sequence has a call to action, even if it’s simply redirecting prospects back to your blog, or giving them your phone number (obviously this depends on what business you are in).

My point is simple: once someone raises their hand and volunteers to be marketed to, why on earth would you ever stop marketing until they ask you to stop?

The same is true of writers. Stephen King, for instance, can’t seem to go for a single page without breaking some rule of grammar, or roasting some sacred cow.

But rule breaking just for the sake of breaking the rules is not a smart idea. Yes, to succeed at extraordinary levels you will probably need to break the rules; but first, you need to understand them.

The Art of Discipline

I Am a Reverse Paranoid

Your Hour of Power

Become a “However” Person

7 Things That Make Customers Love You

Business Panic and How to Deal With It

These days, business panic seems rampant;  it’s the go-to response for many faced with their very first recession. What’s the proper answer when you start to feel this business panic?

It’s probably the most difficult advice I’ve ever given: ignore it.

Use the one faculty that makes us different from all the animals: your ability to choose your response.

Decide that you will feel the panic, but that you will neither fight nor flee. You will, instead, calmly face the situation — and refuse to be reactive. Some concrete steps to help you do this:

• Get some exercise every day.
• Cut out the sugar and caffeine.
• Cut out television, and media in general.
• Focus on your primary mission as a company, as an entrepreneur, as an artist-as a “whatever it is you are”.
• Wait. The Japanese, in particular, seem to be very good at this. Often, simply waiting is the very best response when you’re in a state of panic.
• Finally, remember the timeless advice of Douglas Adams: “Don’t panic.”

Can you introduce these qualities into your way of doing business? Yes, you can.

Will you? We’ll see.

Fortunately, the reverse is also true. Here are a few words that could help stop your dwindling profits (and I’m saving the best one for last):

• “Let’s figure out new ways to make sales.”
• “What are some ways we can make our products more valuable?”
• “What would wild success look like? How can we increase the chances of that happening?”
• “What can we learn from the bad thing that just happened, and thereby turn it into a good thing? What value can we extract from this problem?”

And now for my favorite…

“However…” use this word whenever following up a declaration about a negative thing that just happened.

For instance: “Yes, I know we just had our lowest sales month in the company’s history. However…” and then fill in the blank. Finish the sentence. Put yourself on the spot.

Become a “however” person.

Regardless of what your situation currently is, what if you set aside one hour each day to do something about it? I know what you’re thinking… where will you get this “extra” hour? You could take it away from watching television, from goofing off on the net, from gossiping and chit chatting with neighbors, you name it… but we could all probably find one hour. If we really, really wanted to.

Now, here’s what to do with your extra hour per day:

1. Exercise for 20 minutes.
2. Read a positive, nonfiction, enriching book of some kind for 20 minutes.
3. Make a real, one-on-one connection with another human being for 20 minutes. This could be a phone call, or a handwritten note-but not an e-mail, or “social media”. Go old school on this one.

What’s the point?

If you do this every day for the next three months, you will be in better shape, you’ll be better informed, and you’ll be better connected than almost every single person you know. It won’t guarantee you a win, but it almost certainly guarantees you’ll be better off than if you didn’t carve out that extra hour each day.

Something to think about.

I’m busy preparing to be ready when the good stuff happens.

What are you preparing for?

… but they all center around the theme of “freedom”.

We start with freedom from poisonous infections in your brain, that sabotage your business and success. I wrote a post about this yesterday (in response to something Jeff Walker wrote on his blog). I’d really love to get your comments and feedback on that post.

Next is the subject of freedom from debt. I believe that the number one financial plague in America right now is that of consumer debt. Here’s one free video that shows you how to start getting out of debt.

Finally, wouldn’t you love to have more time freedom in your business? For many of us, getting our free time back would be as simple as hiring a few new employees. But that can be a challenge for people in today’s environment. Unless… you could hire those employees for free. Watch this video on getting free employees.

Please note that for both of the programs above, I have an involvement in the project. So if you end up buying anything from either of those companies, I stand to gain financially. Cards on the table.

Have a great weekend!

I offer the following with this caveat: I’m still workin’ on it, and I don’t always follow the system perfectly. But each time I fall “off the wagon”, I get up, dust off my britches, and climb back on. So far it’s worked pretty well.

A “day in the life of Ray” is a busy one. Here are current projects I’m working on:

1. Private Client product launch. This is for a new product that teaches a system of “workforce leverage”; this is a sophisticated product that is aimed squarely at real business owners, not “biz opp” seekers, and includes a robust web application. This one keeps me very busy; and it has huge potential. Of course I get a piece of the sales, so my hard work should pay off handsomely.

2. Private Consulting Client. This relationship translates to weekly phone meetings, a small in-house launch every quarter or so, and reams of copy generated for upsells, ridealongs, retention, phone scripts, etc. This is a retainer + revenue deal, just like the one above.

3. Private Retainer Client. This client retains me strictly for two sales letters per month, for different products each month; again, I have a piece of revenue.

4. Private Client in the real estate market; we did a product launch together (for which I still receive royalties over a year later — than God for honest clients!), and we also work on periodic promotions. And, once again, I share in the revenue (detecting a theme?).

5. Inner Circle Program. This is a monthly “coaching club” I run for those who cannot necessarily afford to hire me but who want to learn from my work, get me input, and receive training from me each month.

6. Book Promotion. My new book on copywriting for the web will hit store shelves soon, and I’m working with my publisher on developing the sales promotion for this book.

7. Three books in progress. One is a business book (first draft completed), one is a book for Christ-followers on the importance and power of forgiveness (first draft about 75% complete), and one is a book I’m not ready to talk about publicly just yet (still in outlining phase).

8. Two monthly newsletters. I write one for my clients, and one for paying members of my inner circle.

9. Workshops. I have three scheduled for the next 4 months, each taking place in my offices in Spokane. These workshops are small, for 5 participants only, and focused on Strategic Writing for the purpose of Influence.

10. Copywriting Protege Program. My students write for clients who either (a) can’t get on my schedule soon enough or (b) can’t afford my fees. My team writes your copy, I critique the drafts for re-writes, and then I approve the final work that is delivered to you. This means we can deliver affordable copy that still receives my “touch”. (To inquire about a project, please submit your request here: http://RayEdwards.com/contact )

The Big Question

How is it I’m able to juggle so many priorities and projects? Through careful conscious choice, and good systems.

And quite frankly: it’s a work in progress.

In order to deliver the very best work to my clients and partners, and to still leave room in my schedule for rejuvenation (sleep, family time, time with God, and time to just plain relax)… I have to guard my time vigorously. And I have to be on guard against what Dan Kennedy calls “Time Vampires”. Some tactics that work for me in my current system:

MSR
My Morning Success Ritual is vital to my most productive days. While I don’t manage to get this in every day, I’m getting better at it. My goal between now and the New Year is to achieve 95%+ compliance with this ritual every day.

The MSR is summed up by the acronym WWW B PREP, which stands for:

• Wake
• Water (16 oz. filtered)
• Walk (at least 20 minutes)
• Bible
• Prayer
• Eat
• Plan (the day)

The days when I follow this MSR, starting the minute my feet hit the floor out of bed, are invariably my best days (most productive, most joyous, most satisfying). Probably because the most important things were done first – and when I’m still in the “NDZ”: No Distraction Zone (meaning no email, no voicemail, no phone calls, etc.)

Writing
The first thing I *must* do each day, after my MSR is complete (and after I have showered, driven to the office, etc.) is WRITING. I am primarily a writer. So this is my #1 Revenue Producing Activity (RPA). At this point my phone is off, I have still not checked email, not checked voicemail, etc. Still in the NDZ. I write for a large block of time at the beginning of the day — often 4 hours. NOTHING gets to interrupt the writing — including (and even especially) the clients for whom I may be writing.

Email
My auto-check feature in Apple Mail is turned OFF. I only get email when I press the “Check Mail” button. I check it twice per day, Monday thru Thursday. Usually around 11am Pacific and 4pm Pacific.  This is one of my policies that tends to be unpopular with those who are “urgency addicts”, and who want me to have a constant email discussion about minutia with them. I refuse to sacrifice my highest valued commodity (time) for the sake of what usually amounts to trivia. I suggest you adopt the same policy.

Meetings
Any meeting that lasts longer than 15 minutes is probably too long. Not always, but most of  the time. Any project that requires multiple meetings each week is probably in trouble. Long meetings = inefficiency at best, and postponement of the inevitable at worst. (As a sidebar: frequent short meetings are just a disguised way of having long meetings. HEAR ME: if you have “meeting-itis”, either you just want an excuse to talk about work instead of doing it, or something is wrong with the project … something another meeting won’t solve).

Phone Meetings / Conversations
Same as meetings, only worse. Conversations and phone meetings should be 15 minutes or less. Anything longer and you’re probably wasting time for at least some people in the group.

Instant Messenger
Just say no. The only time I use it is when I have SCHEDULED events on Skype (usually interviews). Also, I occasionally chat with family or friends — but again, this is SCHEDULED. I am NEVER “just available” to be interrupted. (If I was, that would mean that I was either doing something unimportant, or that I was doing NOTHING. If I’m doing something unimportant… WHY? And if I’m doing NOTHING, it’s a PLANNED nothing and it’s important that this not be interrupted!).

Office Hours
Yes, I have an office outside my home. I lease currently. I’m considering buying an office building. I keep regular business hours most of the time: Mon – Thurs, 8am – 5pm Pacific.

By the way, my office phone is answered by a LIVE HUMAN (not some stupid voicemail torture device) Monday – Saturday, 8am – 6pm Pacific time. Why do I have the phone covered even when I am out of the office? Because other members of my team keep different hours… and because emergencies DO happen, and I like to be available if a TRUE emergency arises. My  phone team knows how to reach me in those cases.

Why The Emphasis On Not Being Interrupted?

Interruptions cost you dearly.

As a writer, I know that allowing myself to be interrupted by a client or vendor (“Hey Ray – got a minute to talk about the new logo?”) can seem harmless… but it isn’t. That interruption costs me (a) the state of “flow” I was in while working, maybe impossible to recover, (b) the time of the interruption itself, and (c) the time it takes me to get back into the “zone” with what I was working on… minimum 20 minutes, maybe longer.

I can’t afford to let that happen.

My clients and customers can’t afford for me to let that happen.

I once had a client who loved to call me at 11pm at night and talk for two hours. I tried to tell him I worked set hours and was available at those times, but he didn’t seem to understand. When our first project was finished, I fired him. His dysfunction did not automatically become my problem. Be warned – people will WASTE your time if you let them. Will you let them? be polite, be loving… but don’t be a victim.

In the end, if you guard your time, you are being most respectful of other people. Think about it: if you allow yourself to be interrupted, or your time wasted when you should have been doing something else… who suffers? Your clients. Your customers. Your family (“Sorry honey, I have to stay late because I wasted 2 hours today listening to the web team make excuses…”).

You’re not serving anyone by being a poor steward of your time.

New Experiments In Time Management

I’m currently going through a re-vamping, refining, and re-evaluating phase and I thought it might be useful to you if I shared some ideas I’m trying out. While I’m sold on the stuff I mentioned previously, I’m telling you right now these next items are EXPERIMENTAL. If they prove successful, I’ll have more to say here in the future about them.

1.Three-Sentence Emails. If you receive a lot of email, you know what it’s like to feel overloaded by it. This is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be three sentences or less. Read more at http://three.sentenc.es/

2. Fifteen Minute Meetings. Just like the above, only not quite so regimented. *Most* meetings will be 15 minutes or less. That’s my default meeting length. If it needs to be longer, we can negotiate in 15 minute blocks. If it needs to be longer than 45 minutes, we better be working on something like the Middle East Peace Talks.

3. Free Days. I used to cheat on this. I’m sorry to admit it. But no more. A “free day” is one in which there is NO business activity of any kind: no emails, no blogs, no IMs, no phone calls, no reading articles, no business books… NOTHING. Right now, I have at least one scheduled FREE DAY per week (Sundays). The purpose is to allow for real refreshing, rejuvenation, and creativity to arise. My goal is to eventually reach 3 FREE DAYS per week. This does not mean that I’ll be spending 3 days a week doing NOTHING… these days will be filled with family time, spiritual and charitable pursuits, and yes, even recreation. For more on this, see Dan Sullivan’s “The Time Breakthrough”.

This was a long post – I hope it was useful to you. If you have questions or want to add some ideas of your own, please do it below!

I’d like to propose that the answer is pretty simple: to make money in tough times… solve tough problems.

If you can solve tough problems for people, they’ll be willing to pay you for it. Especially in tough times.

Hey, I said the answer was simple-I didn’t say it was easy.

Try this: set aside a day (maybe a Saturday) and designate it as “cleanup day”. On that day, start off by making a list of every obligation, mess, or situation that you feel needs dealing with in your life. Make a long list.

Now identify the items on that list that you could take care of in five minutes or less. Then… take care of them. Make that phone call, visit that website, send that letter or check, or what ever it takes. But spend the five minutes on each of these items to clear them off your list.

Now experience how you feel. You’ve made some progress. Good work. Here’s the next step…

Decide what the next action is you need to take for every one of the remaining items. Don’t use broad brush strokes; be very specific about what that “next action” is. For instance, you may have a note that you need to “call Bob”. But perhaps you don’t know what Bob’s phone number is. So the “next action” is actually “look up Bob’s phone number”.

Now, with this new-found clarity about what the next action is for each of these items, see how many of these “next actions” you could accomplish in… five minutes or less. Do those actions.

For the remaining actions, decide whether you need to do them yourself (and if you do, go ahead and schedule them in your calendar), whether you need to delegate them to someone else (and if you do, go ahead in delegate them now), or whether you could actually just delete them from the list altogether.

If you’ve taken the time to follow through on this exercise, chances are you feel about 100% better about all those “obligations”.

This powerful exercise can create a real space of freedom in your life. For more about operating from that space of freedom, you might want to check out David Allen‘s seminal work, Getting Things Done.

You’ve heard the saying that “little hinges swing the doors”. Perhaps you’ve heard it so often that the profundity of that saying has been lost on you. The fact is, small actions can lead to big results-and consciously chosen small actions can lead to enormous results.

Here are three little “marketing moves” that can enrich your profits almost immediately, when performed correctly. Please do not dismiss them based on their simplicity; their power springs from their simplicity.

1. Call your customers on the phone. It’s great if you have a script developed for this, but even if you don’t… call them anyway. Simply calling a large number of your customers and asking, “How are things going? Is there anything we can do to help?” Will often lead to new business and sales-even though that wasn’t the overt intention of your call. If you don’t get results with this technique… you haven’t called enough people.

2. Send your customers mail. Some people don’t answer the phone, or don’t respond well to phone calls. No problem. Send a piece of mail to your customers. It doesn’t even have to be a piece of mail with an offer (although that’s probably the best piece of mail to send). The problem with sending mail that makes an offer is most people will do it wrong. Most people will make it look so much like an ad, that it will end up in the trash can. So here’s an alternative: send a one-page letter, hand-addressed and hand-signed, that says something like, “How are things going? Is there anything we can do to help? Here’s our phone number-please call…”. Don’t laugh. Some people will call. And the ones who do are your best prospects.

3. Ask for referrals. Call up your current customers, and ask them if they feel you’re doing a good job for them. Most of them, presumably, will say yes. If that’s the case, ask them, “Who else can you think of who might benefit from our help?” Maybe even give them suggestions to help jog their memory. If done correctly, simply asking for referrals will get you new business; the fact is, almost nobody does this. Prove it to yourself: when was the last time you asked for a referral?

There you go. Three little marketing moves that can put money in your bank account-almost immediately.

The shortcuts.

The backdoors, secret paths, and arcane formulas that will allow us (or so the purveyors of these products propose) to bypass the hard work it takes to achieve success.

It is seductive.

And, unfortunately, most of the time it is untrue.

If you’ve known me very long at all, you know I am a fan of information products. You know that I have spent lots of money on learning materials, seminars, and the like. And you’ve heard me say that I have enjoyed improved results because of those products.

So how do I reconcile the fact that success requires work, with the fact that I’ve enjoyed a shorter route to success thanks to the intelligent use of continuing education products? The answer is surprisingly simple.

Despite what most buyers believe, it has been my experience that sellers of information products usually go out of their way to point out that none of the results from their product will happen without work. Most info product sellers go overboard in stressing the fact that work will be required. Yet… these same individuals are often labeled as purveyors of “get rich quick” material. It boggles my mind. And yet…

People will believe what they want to believe. People buying info products are often looking for a “get rich quick” solution. So even though the products are considering buying is not a “get-rich-quick” product, even though the sales copy on the website clearly states that work will be required to get the illustrated results, even though the copy further states that the results being cited are not typical, that they are in fact outstanding results… the buyer will believe what the buyer wants to believe.

I created and sell a product called The Seminar Profit System. It is a simple audio product that teaches people how to profit by attending seminars. The product itself is all about what actions one needs to take before, during, and after a seminar that will increase one’s chances of profiting from having attended the seminar. In other words, the product teaches you how to work. Yet…

Would you be surprised to learn that some buyers of the product are dismayed that they haven’t made money by attending a seminar, even though they did little (if any) of the work described in the product? No… I wasn’t surprised either.

What does surprise me is people who buy a product like this, steadfastly refuse to take any of the recommended actions in the product, and then self righteously demand some form of refund or apology because their dream of “instant riches” didn’t happen. Never mind  that “instant riches without effort” was not what was offered for sale.

Ask them if they took the actions recommended within the product, and you’ll get an answer that starts with something like this: “No, but…”

Makes me  think about one of my earliest business mentors, Earl Nightingale, who said “successful people consistently do the things that failures don’t like to do”.

These days, that is not a popular point of view. But it is true, nonetheless.

The road to success is rewarding-but it is also frequently uncomfortable.

So how do you know when you are believing a lie?

Here are three clues to look for in your own behavior, speech patterns, or attitudes that may indicate your believing some sort of lie about the way things really are. Anything you say, feel, or do that seems to…

• shame
• blame
• justify

…might indicate that you are believing, and even defending a lie about how things really are.

When faced with any problem, or uncomfortable situation, watch your language. Do you say things that are intended to bring shame to another person, or even yourself? Do you try to assign blame for the way things are, to another person or even to yourself? Or do you work to justify the wrong actions of another person, or even yourself?

If so, it may be time to examine your premise. There’s a good chance that something you currently believe about reality is inaccurate.

The accurate view of reality will always lead you to recognize, in the words of my friend Armand Morin, “It is what it is”. No shaming, blaming, or justifying required.

When I was about 14 years old I wanted a job at a radio station. The problem is, the radio station wasn’t hiring. I hit upon the strategy of showing up with annoying regularity day after day, asking for some kind of job. Apparently the annoying part of my strategy worked: the manager of the radio station finally stopped in the lobby where I was waiting when they, looked at me and said, “if I give you a job, would you stop bugging me?”

I got what I wanted; he got what he wanted. Just not for the same reasons.

In the end, did the reasons matter? My point (and, with apology to Ellen Degeneres, I do have one) is that we should never confuse our own motivation for the other person’s motivation. Thinking about what motivates the other person in any negotiation is almost always a more effective basis for that negotiation.

Even though we may feel our reasons to be superior to those of the other party, our reasons are not the same as theirs.

What if you discovered you possessed superpowers?

What if you were the last hope for humanity?

What if you had the power to change the world for the better?

What if… you treated everyone you met as if all those things were true of them, too?

What if you conducted business that way?

• “Why didn’t I see this coming?”
• “Who is to blame?”
• “Why does this always happen to me?”

More than likely those questions are not going to help us access our best personal resources for dealing with the problem we’re facing. Here are 3 questions that will:

1. “What’s good about this?”
2. “What valuable lesson can we learn from this?”
3. “What opportunities might this create?”

If you have some empowering questions of  your own, share them in the comments below!

It really is that simple; everything else is little more than wishful thinking at best, and manipulation at worst.

A good question to start asking continuously: “How can I add more value right now?”

Key words: “right now”.

Not tomorrow.

Not someday.

Right now.

Social groups here in the real world work much the same way. Those in control of the group decide what constitutes “right thinking” and “wrong thinking”. The group will dole out the punishment and rewards – sometimes in subtle ways and sometimes with no subtlety at all. Break the rules – be shunned. Follow the rules – be rewarded.

Not an inefficient system, but there is one problem: every single advancement in history started off with someone engaging in “wrong thinking”. Usually resulting in their being punished. Often the punishment was severe – being stoned to death or crucified, for example. But thanks to these brave souls we have seen life improve here on Planet Earth. No, it’s not perfect, but in many measurable ways, it is better.

This is not a recommendation for “wrong thinking” for its own sake; but it is an exhortation not to mindlessly stop at the first resistance you encounter. That resistance might be a sign you’re on the right track, whether the “group” realizes it or not.

Right. Me too.

Well, let me save you some money and time. Forget the gurus for a moment.

Here is the real, true, ‘Master Secret of Success’:

Just get started!

Don’t laugh.

The problem most business people, entrepreneurs, and companies have is that they spend far too much time coming up with new buzzwords and management systems — and almost zero time just getting down to the work that needs to be done.

For the individual or entrepreneur, I offer this tactic that will help you ‘get started’ on something that will generate new revenue…

Think carefully about your answer to this question: If you could only do one thing to generate revenue immediately, what would that one thing be?

I really want you to think about this.

If it was a “must” – for instance, if it meant being able to pay the mortgage on your house this month – what one thing
would you do right now? Some possible examples:

• Write a letter and mail it.
• Make a phone call.
• Send an email.
• Drive to see a prospect in person.
• Complete and deliver a proposal.

Okay, do you have your “one thing”? Great. Write it down. Then…

JUST GET STARTED!

When it’s done, do the whole exercise over again.

I know that right about now you’re thinking, ‘Ray, this is the most elementary, simple, stupid thing I’ve heard all week.’

That’s okay. Try it anyway – and after you have tried it, I’d love to hear from you with your success story.

And remember, you heard the Master Key To Success right here. In case you forgot already, it’s this:

Just get started!

1. Coffee
2. Oatmeal
3. Relationships
4. Websites
5. Success

That last one hangs people up. Many people want instant success, but few want the years of preparation that lead up to it.

While we may prefer the “microwave” solution, some things only reach their potential when they “marinate” instead.

As RT Kendall once wrote, “The worst thing that can happen to a person is that they succeed before they are ready.”

And yes, it’s possible that you’ll “try” and it might not work out.

But that’s already happened, if you’ve been laid off. The job didn’t work out.

So now, you have nothing to lose.

If what you need is permission: consider this your official permission to try something outrageously great.

To quote one of my radio mentors, voiceover legend Mark Driscoll: “Go light a signal fire. We’ll find you.”

To boost your number of creative ideas, you might consider getting away from your computer and introducing your brain to some new stimuli every now and then.

7 ways that work for me:

1. Enjoy coffee at a cafe (without iPhone, iPad, or laptop).
2. Take a walk outside.
3. Play ball with my dogs.
4. Listen to music.
5. Read fiction.
6. Talk with another human about Stuff That Matters.
7. Take a nap.

Those are some of my ways of boosting creativity. You will have your own. Just try to do something  that doesn’t involve the Internet.

To quote John Cleese: “We don’t know where we get our ideas from. We do know that we do not get them from our laptops.”

I know it sounds crazy. I’m not suggesting you only do one thing each day. But make yourself a list at the beginning of the day with one item on it that “must” be done.

The thing that, if you only did one thing today, this would be it. Consider anything else you do a bonus.

Now: make your One Thing the first thing.

Trust me – this is a stress-buster that works. It is also a great tool for releasing you from bondage to Insanely Unrealistic To-Do Lists.

Look, I’m a marketer. I believe in entrepreneurship. But I think it’s far beneath any of us to fan the flames of fear for personal gain.

No matter how bad the events that happen around us may be, and no matter how out of control we may feel, we have been endowed with an ability no mere animal has: the ability to control our response to those external circumstances.

We can choose whether we will dwell in anger, in love… or in fear.

If we purposely live in fear or anger – or if we encourage others to do so – don’t we empower the very evil we say we oppose?

Fear is a prison that locks us into patterns of smallness.

As an American, I too feel the sadness of the loss we all suffered on this day nine years ago. But I will not be defined by another’s act of evil.

And I will not be driven to hate other men because of it — especially not in the name of God. The God I follow, when beaten and bloodied and killed by the very ones he came to save, said the following: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

I want to follow that example.

What if we turned this day into a day to show love to our brothers and sisters, instead of sowing seeds of fear and anger? What if we decided to reap a harvest of forgiveness and reconciliation, instead of a harvest of bitterness?

I’m not saying it would be easy. Maybe, for mere men, it’s even impossible.

But what if we tried?

What happens next is… you don’t follow through on the idea, right? It just didn’t seem as exciting as you first thought it was.

I wonder what would happen if you started implementing your ideas so quickly there wasn’t time for the shine to wear off?

One thing for sure: you’d get more ideas shipped.

Seems like that might be a good thing.

The venerable organization is struggling in the face of alternative delivery mechanisms like email, instant messenger, and a general decline in letter-writing.

They need some innovation to bring in more sales. They’re trying harder. I get that. And I applaud it. But…

Lately I’ve been faced with an unpleasant scenario at my local post office. It goes like this: I approach the understaffed counter and say, “I’d like to send this book at the book rate, please.”. Then the employee behind the counter, with a glassy look in her eyes, begins to recite all the rate options, beginning with Express Mail and working her way down the price scale.

I listen, and when she’s done I say again, “Book rate, please.”

She runs my postage, and then takes my second book package. I say, “It’s the same.”

“I have to tell you all the options,” she says.

I protest that I already know what I want, but she insists. Meanwhile, the line behind me is building.

Then the Postal worker proceeds to try and sell me a bunch more stuff. Again, I applaud the effort. But the execution is very, very poor.

My apathetic Postal employee insisted it’s a policy and she has no choice.

Is this really a rule for all Postal workers? Does anyone realize it’s a Sales Prevention Mechanism – and not a sales making mechanism? What happens when your customers get tired of being insulted and decide they’d rather ship UPS?

I actually love the USPS and its services – but this policy of forcing me to listen to the litany of options, if it is indeed a policy, is asinine.

Dear Postmaster: I advise you to reconsider. Fast.

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Warner Brothers Video, for instance, had what they must have thought was a great idea. On the Netflix DVD of Sherlock Holmes, you can’t skip to the menu without watching about 20 minutes of commercials.

Now, that might have seemed like a great idea to the gang in the marketing department.

But to the customer, it just seemed annoying at best. Certainly didn’t make me all warn & fuzzy about buying more of their DVDs – that’s for sure.

Advice: if you can’t “wow” your customers, at least try not to annoy them.

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Yet it isn’t necessarily so.

If we mean “scam” or “rip off”, we should say those things. But there is nothing inherently wrong with getting rich quick, is there?

I mean, which would you prefer: get rich quick, or get rich slow?

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I don’t know if they are right or not. What I do know is just because I may have the right to own a bazooka doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Marketing application: just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

As always, if you have feedback or suggestions I’d really like to hear from you.

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In my opinion, it’s something like, “Make a lot of money without doing anything.”

There’s a reason it’s called fantasy. It never happens.

Even lottery winners have to cash in their ticket (and then most of them end up just as broke as they were before winning the lottery in less than 5 years).

And of course, it’s morally wonky to expect “something for nothing”. The Apostle Paul — the guy who wrote a big chunk of the New Testament — said, “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”

Maybe it’s time to stop fantasizing and instead go to work.

The same people don’t have a Blackberry or an iPhone either.

And, not surprisingly, they’re not on Facebook or Twitter.

Whenever I share these facts with colleagues or friends, I normally get a shocked reaction. The underlying attitude seems to be: you can’t be successful without those things. You’ll be out of touch!

I wonder. Perhaps being “out of touch” also means being in touch… with your own creativity, ideas, and internal leadership. Perhaps being “out of touch” means not being told what to think by the “million bright ambassadors” of self-induced ADHD.

I’m just sayin’.

What do you think? Is it possible to succeed today without being Uber-connected? Is being “out of touch” (in the way I have described here) a virtue? Or is it a sign that you are a complete and hopeless Luddite?

I don’t feel that way anymore, because I have realized every human being on the planet practices affirmations. It’s simply that most of us do it unconsciously. Most of us didn’t even take the affirmations we use.

Here’s what I mean: it seems to me that most of us have certain phrases, thoughts, and thinking patterns that we inherited from our nurturing environment as we were growing up. From our parents. From our peers. From our teachers. And those phrases ring in our minds no matter how old we might be today. Some common examples:

• “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”
• “Look before you leap.”
• “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
• “Haste makes waste.”
• “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

I’m not here to debate the truth of any of those statements, I’m just illustrating that we all have phrases we repeat to ourselves over and over throughout our lives. There are, I believe, many other such phrases (and unconscious patterns of thought) that we repeat on a daily basis. We are unaware of these patterns, for the most part. They may be subtle, or they may be quite obvious (like the examples I’ve already given).

The spooky part, at least as far as I’m concerned, is the fact that most of us didn’t choose these affirmations. We are not even aware of them. We simply accepted them without critical evaluation. You might want to let that sink in.

As a business owner or entrepreneur, you’re automatically thrust into a leadership position. Others look to you for example. Don’t you agree it’s valuable to be aware of what you are thinking, day in and day out?

Suggested exercise: pay attention to repetitive patterns in your speech and thinking today-and ask yourself whether those patterns are helpful, or perhaps not so helpful.

Comments or observations? Leave them here on this page, please!