Quote: “A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience.”~Elbert Hubbard

Below is a list of the best stock photo sites for your blog or website that are “royalty-free”. Enjoy!

1. freedigitalphotos.net
2. dreamstime.com
3. freedigitalphotos.net
4. shutterstock.com
5. morguefile.com
6. iStockphoto.com
7. fotolia.com
8. everystockphoto.com

I’ve always felt that I’m most effective communicating any message when I’m speaking directly to my intended audience, either one on one or in front of large groups.  Unfortunately most of the times I have spoken or trained large groups were not taped and the ones that have been arent applicable to the present enterpreneurial coaching focus.  When I started my business I made a deliberate decision not to pursue training and speaking engagements as one of my foundational priorities. I wanted to safeguard the type of business life I would create by ensureing that I would contol how I ran it, and not have it run me.  Otherwise it could affect my family by not rpeventing it from mirroring the obligations of my past corporate life where my family suffered as a result of me being in such high demand. 

One of the elements you will immediately notice on video is that I am very passionate about what I do.  I have a burning desire to do what I do and that comes accross far better using this medium. To a large extent, blog posts and emails are’nt the ideal method by which to convey that.  In an effort to connect with you genuinely and more often, these will not be videos shot with cutting edge technology and with production values. They will be shot from my home office in the morning or in between client meetings and conference calls.  You can expect for them to occur a few times a week and distributed to you all the same day.  I also intend to have a video tab on the blog so that you’ll be able to refer back to past topics. 

Concerning the video topics; my original thoughts are that they will be based on needs that I hear from you guys, all be it motivational, marketing strategy or business owner mindset related where I feel I can both meet the need and compliment the resources I already provide.  They will stick to my mantra of no fluff but just steady helpings of online business “meat & potatoes” to give you a shot in the arm and create as many “Ahhh! Now I get it!” moments as I can provide.  I truly want to serve as your tour guide as you build your business in a way that allows you to be both successful and live a fulfilled life.  Please don’t overlook that distinction.  I’ve known many who have built successful businesses and yet were slaves to them, hating what they did because of the flawed foundation they built it upon.

My intention is also to make this video content totally free to you all, having chosen not to put them on the Learn2Earn training and support site.  Its not because I think $27 is a high price to pay for all the content and training I give you there.  Rather my perspective is, how does anyone know the level of value and content I provide unless they see the steady stream of it?  That type of honest value has always been my goal and it will not change. Make no mistake, these will not be promo commercials.  That again would not give you the content I am aiming for or for that matter, content that can easily be applied to your efforts.

So look for them coming this week.  I look forward to your feedback.

Patrick Daugherty

The “Biz Coach”

CEO of “Learn2Earnitnow” Online-Education & Support

 You can also connect with me at:

I find this hard to swallow because there are little published rules detailing what they will or will not allow.  You then are forced to learn them when you taste the back of their hand!  This is important as many online businesses use You Tube as a great advertising and traffic getting tool while even more use You Tube to host their video content that they use on their blogs and sales pages.

I felt it would be very valuable if someone did the research to find out what exactly the “rules of engagement” are for YouTube which would then allow everyone to avoid unknowingly leaving their business vulnerable and thus costing you money. The information below is the result of interviewing many fellow entrepreneurs in my network to learn the mistakes they made which resulted in their accounts being immediately shutdown. I also included information found from my staff’s investigative research. The combination of both sets of information will allow you to “crack the code” sort-to-speak regarding what makes You Tube cranky and leave your account and thus your business vulnerable  Here you go:

1. You should only have one email address associated with your account
2. You should never post duplicate content
3. You should always make your videos relevant to its title & key words
4. You should never purchase views
5. You should never ever use software to add friends, comments or ratings automatically
6. You should NOT keyword load your descriptions with non relevant search terms to get traffic
7. Never (and I mean never) set up multiple accounts using the same IP address. You might get away with it for a while but you can only cheat the YouTube “Reaper” for so long. I don’t know exactly why this seems to be a stipulation for them but their enforcement of this rule has been repeatedly substantiated.
8. Avoid using your videos to aggressively market your business opportunity, product or service.  The key word here is aggressively. As I always say, build relationships.  If you’re sending your videos to other You Tube subscribers and spamming them, then you quickly become background noise to be ignored (or reported). This is proven true for all social media marketing for that matter.
9. With YouTube’s new insight feature, they are tracking the attention people are giving to each video.  If people are watching your entire video, YouTube can see this and then easily assume that your title is extremely relevant to the information on the video.   
10. The Google search ranking rules of providing good, accurate content that generate public interest are exactly the same rules that You Tube is using as well so bear that in mind when chosing the title, content and keywords for your video.

I would also strongly advise you to NOT use YouTube as your only video hosting source.  If you are using video marketing (and you should since it is very affective) then this is very important. I’ve talked to numerous online business owners who lost all their video content because they used YouTube as their sole video hosting provider.  Nothing is worse than waking up one morning to realize over a hundred of your videos are on “lock down” and thus, not playing on any of your sales pages or blogs.

 Trafficgeyser has a great audio & video hosting service that I’ve used for years.  I’ve tried several but the added value with Traffic Geyser is that they will also affectively distribute you video getting it ranked on Google search engines for your keywords quickly.  I have heard nothing but great reviews from advanced marketers that use this service as well.  iTunes is another option for such informal videos as pod-casts.  With more people on their mobile devices than on PC’s this is not a bad route to consider either.

Another great option is Tubemogul.com.  They offer some very impressive free storage and distribution options and their site analytics are pretty spectacular, even on their free service options.  The only caveat is that you cannot directly advertise you business or MLM on the video posted on Tubemogul.com (policy).  This is to prevent constant sales spamming and keep content fresh and valuable.  Most videos you dont really want to sell for knee jerk sales conversions anyway.  Those arent the “quality fish” you are trying to catch. You want to make certain that you affectively promote you, branding yourself as one that offers value and who is very likable, referring them to your blog or another feeder site.

Either one of these two options are reputable and come highly recommended.  It just comes down to which option best fits your marketing and online business objectives.  Bear in mind that you need to make certain when you use any video distribution service that you do not duplicate your video submission to YouTube.  That would of course violate rule #2 and leave you vulnerable to a good old-fashioned YouTube back-hand.

So avoid the YouTube slap by adhering to the rules I’ve mapped out above.  I never mind when rules are tightened because I feel it thins out the numbers of those that don’t provide real value, that spam others and aren’t committed to running their business the right way.  That equates to more opportunities for you and I.  I do mind however, when they are ineffective at communicating what those rules are.  Video advertising is too valuable for you to site on the side lines and not play ball just because you don’t know the rules on the YouTube field. You now know where the out of bounds lines are in your You Tube field of play.  So go ahead and play ball!

See AlsoPrevious Post: Making the Video: Internet Marketings Inexpensive Money-Making New Frontier

Patrick Daugherty

The “Biz Coach”

CEO of “Learn2Earnitnow” Online-Education & Support

 You can also connect with me at:

It’s also a fact that the challenge of navigating through the “training minefield” causes 9-out-of-10 new online home businesses to fail in the first 63 days. That’s right – 63 days!  But why do most fail within 2 months??

After months of being preyed-upon by “training vultures”, basically giving away your money for instructional products that are WAY overhyped and provide only partial truths with no results, you begin to think this just isn’t for you.

You have to realize that there are people out there that have become successful purely by taking the money of those who are starving for insight and reliable instruction.  I’m dead serious when I say that this decision will literally make or break your chances for success!

I just couldn’t sit on the sidelines anymore knowing what I know and yet do nothing as I watched good people continue to fail!

So last year I committed to creating a training system that covered everything you’d need to know to establish and run a successful growing business online.

It’s a complete how-to guide written for “non-geeks” that not only teaches you everything you need to know to create a thriving successful online business, but also contains exercises to walk you through creating & executing your unique business plan & marketing strategies.

I’ve also wrapped that instruction around an online educational website that would enable you to receive continuous training and support. I told you – it has everything!

I’m committed to training 1000 people how to earn 6 figures this year.  For a limited time I will give you complete access to all the training absolutely RISK FREE!  I’m out to change lives this year in a big way!

To learn how you can become 1 of the 1000 visit “The Success Steps” training system and lets create the life you want!

Now is the time! 

Patrick Daugherty

The “Biz Coach”

CEO of “Learn2Earnitnow” Online-Education & Support

 You can also connect with me at:

Foundational Blog Marketing

I am fully aware that there are blogs that are created to be product driven “money sites” where transactions are designed to occur.  Understand that we will be discussing creation, marketing and writing of blogs that will serve as what is called “feeder sites”.

Let’s start with some foundational blog marketing principles.  I am a firm believer that one needs a good social media marketing push to help promote the blog.  This can be done simultaneously as you get the blog off the ground.  The main focus is to increase the number of those who will receive announcements and updates for new posts and general promoting of your blogs mission and what you want to accomplish through the blog.  Let’s say you’ve decided to use Facebook and Twitter together for social media marketing.  You also decide to duel-publish your posts as articles through a site like Ezinearticles.com with your blog promoted in your signature at the bottom of the article.   Facebook and Twitter will allow you to reach out and build targeted relationships that you can point to your blog for insight and information that they would find valuable.  Ezinearticles will publish your posts as independent articles that will not only gain readership themselves but will also rank high when they appear in Google searches for the keywords and title it contains.  You can also create quick videos that promo your blog and throw them on YouTube making sure that the keywords you want to be ranked high in are consistant in the blog, and videos containing your blog link. (FYI, you can refer to blog the post “Making the Video: Internet Marketings Inexpensive Money-Making New Frontier” for executing a video campaign.)

You then begin posting on forums and interacting with FB & Twitter followers where your potential readers might read or contribute.  As you interact make sure your blog link is below your signature.  This serves not only to highlight your credibility but also creates what’s called “inbound links” (aka. back-links) which are incredibly important when Google ranks your blog page.  The more incoming links on other sites the higher the ranking for your keyword searches by potential readers. You’ve just been indoctrinated into Site Marketing & SEO 101.  Congrats you got an “A”!  Marketing your blog (or any site) should typically have some variation of this multi-facetted approach in it’s marketing strategy to be optimally affective.  It can and should be just that simple!

Soap Box Time-Out!

By-The-Way; I could expound the marketing strategy I just threw out there, with tons of  overly mondane details surrounded by lots of fluff, but I don’t have the patience and you don’t need to read 40 pages and be sold some ebook strategy under the title of “Blogging For Riches” for $45! 

Can you tell I abhor worthless ebooks that are marketed to be a real solution to create wealth, just for the sake of creating a product that makes the author money. Sorry (really I’m not), but I see them every day and they drive me bonkers! You guys are smart enough to execute what I threw out there in one paragraph.  If I write much more I run the risk of insulting your intelligence and alienating most of you by giving you useless info that makes me look smarter than you and keep you searching feverously like a crack addict to learn more tactics that will make you successful.  You all know you can just let me know if you have questions unique to your business and as always, I am more than willing to help you guys anytime. 

But alas, I digress. So, imploring that strategy is a great start.  It will gather interest from targeted readers but there are some real questions we need to address.  How do you keep them coming back for more? What should you write about to create good blog content?  These are important questions my friends, so listen up because EVERY new marketer and blog geek totally miss the answers to those!

Completely Ineffective Blogging

I know incredibly intelligent people who love to write incredibly detailed posts about new marketing software gadgetry or technological wizardry that allow you to implore Jedi-like marketing powers so that you can be the king of the geeks and rule over your marketing kingdom until the next thing that is reviewed next week….yeah well, to that I say, “Whatever…enjoy your hamster wheel of futility”. 

I have also repeatedly heard it preached that if you don’t know much technical jargon or new cutting-edge insights for the segment your online-business is going after, you should read those same articles and then recreate (i.e. regurgitate) that information in a post on your blog. I would say that yes, you can do that…..if you really want to be like EVERYONE ELSE!  I often ask those I coach, why does the desire to appear intelligent make you want to duplicate something that for you was so difficult to read through originally without wanting to poke your eye out with a pencil, that you would subject your readers to that same torture.  The normal “non geek” reader is screaming for someone to speak their language… and lets face it, so are most of you! 

Should Blog Traffic Alone Be Your Goal?

You have to understand the purpose of your blog is far more than just to gain traffic.  It’s to gain a following.  Read that again because it is paramount! In order to do that you need to connect with your potential targeted audience.  The easiest way to accomplish that is to write in a way that conveys who you are as a person, a human being beneath the online entrepreneur, while you sprinkle in communicating targeted information that they feel is valuable. 

Now, I am a HUGE proponent of continuous learning. I wade through the technical geek-speak that those from “Geek-o-slavia” write, in between their “World of Warcraft” games where they throw their Mohawk-grenades (Ya gotta love Mr. T’s commercials!).  Recognize that what they write becomes so weighed down in the minutia that extracting the useful points becomes as tedious as brain surgery. To a certain extent, this is a necessary evil as an online entrepreneur because you have to continuously be a student concerning your business area of focus, your marketing and personal growth.

In my experience, most underachieving business bloggers fit into 2 categories.   The first are those that read and duplicate content from tech focused authors of blogs often revolving around such things as SEO, Internet marketing and web technology, who are incredibly likable but write with the appeal of a college astrophysics professor. Then there are others promoting their “widget” or business opportunity who are akin to a little kid crying out for attention “Hey Mom! Look what I can do!…look what I can do!”.  If you have been led astray to adopt either of these marketing philosophies then I have a message for you…. please understand that the vast majority of people online do not care.  I’m serious!  That methodology, though popular, serves only to make people roll their eyes and click the “back” button to get out of your blog or advertisement like it contains a computer virus.  When we are talking about personal branding please recognize that doing so is “Committing Self-Branding Suicide” (See previously written post with that title). 

Who Are You?

Be incredibly careful to guard against treating the reader of your blog as a potential customer.  If you can view this process in a dating context, then you obviously want to show your pure motives to foster a strong relationship where the reader feels you both can continually see each other and eventually “seal the deal” with a transaction.  If they feel that you want to hump them like a horny Doberman as soon as they walk in the door then you’ll scare them away, never to return! 

Having said that, recognize that like Christmas and birthdays, the most important part of whatever you write to your desired audience has to do with what’s inside….i.e. YOU!  So many business blogs fail to gain readership because they believe that the business opportunity or the service they offer is the “gift” when it is not.  This is different when readers eventually become prospective customers and are at an “opt-in” or “pitch page” of your “money site”. Within the blog segment of the relationship, the gift is you! 

It doesn’t matter if you are marketing a stand-alone business, a fitness blog, marketing an MLM or any other business opportunity.  You need to realize that transparency; allowing them to see the real you, is the most important thing. If you write what equates to a textbook, white paper or fax machine user-manual then you’re not going to be very popular. If you have a blog that appears to visitors to obviously have the goal of selling the reader they can’t relax, let their guard down and get to know you. It’s a proven fact that people want to buy from people who talk like them and who they feel they could be friends with.

Forging The Path To Credibility

As you begin to write, commit to letting your personality come through.  Write as you would talk to a friend.  Have a rough outline in order to work points into the post that help deliver value to your audience and thus credibility as you would in any conversation with a friend looking for advice in the market you’re pursuing.  Affectively doing so will position you as a friend who is perceived as intelligent and credible.  If you make certain your main motivation is to make a connection with the reader for the overall purpose of helping them, you’ve then established yourself as an intelligent friend who they also desire to learn from.  They will continuously return to seek guidance, to seek information and return to see what new posts you’ve written because of the relationship you’ve established.

Case In Point

I know of a blog written by a female online coach who has written an SEO ebook.  It’s very basic but I know for a fact that she seriously sells the heck out of it solely from her blog.  How? She writes almost totally about her life, her husband, her obstacles during the day, crazy stuff that happens as she grows her online home business etc.  She proves my point to the extreme.  You see, she also has a habit of cursing needlessly and profusely to the point it would totally offend most people! It’s hilarious how many times she drops the “f-bomb” in a post and yet still attracts readers and customers hand over fist as much as she offends others…because she’s real. 

She includes practically no technical content in her blog other than once or twice every month or so, at which time she either promotes her product or one of a fellow marketer she is affiliated with.  The result is that she not only draws others like her but she connects far more with those that respect how real she is even if they don’t talk like a sailor.  They follow her like the “Pied-Piper” purchasing everything she points them too.  Now that’s not my personality-style at all but you know what, I read that blog every week because it cracks me up so much and I relate to her struggles. It’s a great read!

Conclusion

The key is to be real to the point that people can feel that they can relate and connect with you emotionally.  Your credibility lies in how earnestly you desire to connect with your readers to create long-term followers in order to offer the service or product that helps them in some way. That my friends should be the way you see your function within your blog which will in turn, stand apart and delineate itself from the masses, allowing you to reach your goals.  You’re uniquely different and your blog should be too. The end result will be the consistent building of a loyal following that will regularly return to read what you share and follow your recommendations.  Happy blogging!

Your coach & fan

Patrick Daugherty

“The Biz Coach”

Make 6-figures this year! Get my training: http://tinyurl.com/yfj4yyc

I speak daily with aspiring home business owners, new entrepreneurs and those trying to become successful in business.  I find myself often sharing the foundations of what I call my “Success Blueprint” for their life.  Since the common challenges seem to be so pervasive, I want to share them with you as well.

Let me start by stating that an enormous amount of people buy into living a lie by conforming to the crowd, settling for what amounts to being average in many or most areas of their personal and professional life. In order to change this we must first understand one major fact; we are born to use our talents to pursue our unique passions and live fulfilled. Anything else is actually a decision to exist and watch others truly live. 

Those who are content with existing do so because they’ve allowed themselves to believe it is irresponsible, foolish or selfish for them to aspire to achieve fulfillment in their life. They believe that they should just be satisfied with the status quo and/or are too afraid of failure that they cannot even take a step that requires them to hope to create a better reality for themselves and those around them.  

As a result of accepting that there’s no hope of affecting change in their own life, they’ve numbed themselves of any hope they once held. They have made it their life’s mission to prevent anyone else from hoping or aspiring to positively affect their life as a result of their own bitterness.

Most allow themselves to be convinced that they aren’t special enough to live a fulfilled, extraordinary life marked by personal or monetary success. They’ve accepted that they’re not smart enough, not talented enough, not wealthy enough, well connected enough or have any remarkable skills to speak of. 

But you my friend, you have the same capacity to learn and live as much or more than those that lead successful and fulfilling lives.  This transformation process begins however, with leaving the aforementioned false notion behind in order to begin viewing your aspirations as an extension of who you truly are.

Below are a few of the fundamentals required for your success blueprint:

1. Stop allowing yourself to be turned into a puppet by the opinions & insecurities of others.  Begin empowering yourself to pull your own strings. 
2. Commit to charting a new path that begins with taking stock of your strengths followed by reconnecting and uncovering your passion. 
3. Once you’ve connected yourself with what deeply fulfills you, start taking initial steps to find as many ways of applying it as you can. 
4. Work on identifying your value proposition – what value does the passionate application of your strengths provide for others?
5. Begin to discover various ways to leverage monetary gain (if applicable) and emotional fulfillment for helping others through the inspired applications of those strengths. Bear in mind that there are two currencies in everyone’s life, monitary and emotional fulfillment
6. Take time to visualize how, if you committed to this direction, your life would be different.
7. Create goals based specifically on the desired outcomes required to make the visualisation above into a reality.
8. At this point, commit right then to finding ways to get out and stay out of your previous comfort zone.
9. Recognize and buy-into the fact that those who’ve achieved their life goals saw failure as “Success University”. Commit to yourself right now not to quit on your dreams but to study through setbacks in order to graduate!

Each step must be adhered to in order for the Blueprint to affect the change required for an aspiring entrepreneur to truly be successful. During this process don’t ever let anyone convince you that you’re inadequate.  It’s a proven fact; in the end, your passionate high-effort combined with a solid plan will ALWAYS win the day.

You must commit to yourself that you’re willing to do what it takes no matter how long it takes to reach your goal. As you chart this new direction never relinquish hope. No matter how challenging life can be at times it can always be far worse and it can only get better if you bring your effort to bear, applying it to your plan to create your desired outcome.

Always remember that no matter how the story of your life has read so far – it isn’t done!  Never take for granted that you have an opportunity everyday to write the next defining chapter.

 ”How are you going to live today in order to create the tomorrow you’re committed to?” ~Tony Robbins

Make up your mind today to do something spectacular!

Your Coach & Fan,

Patrick Daugherty

“The Biz Coach”

• Owner of Learn2earn it now training.
• Join him on Facebook! http://tgli.de/E4E 
• Join FB Training Group: http://cli.gs/6TvuJ
• Connect on LinkedIn! http://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickdaugherty

Let me start by stating that I am an avid proponent of online businesses and entrepreneurial opportunities in practically every shape and size. This includes network marketing, MLM systems, Internet marketing, affiliate marketing, marketing of online home business training and supportive software.  

Having said that, I hear people I work with everyday complain about how social media is ruined by entrepreneurial “leeches” who want nothing more than to spam them repeatedly with their auto-updates created to shove their opportunity or service down their throats. 

The ironic thing about social media is that it is a reflection of who’s driving it.  It is a reflection of its users both individually and as a whole.  Individually, it is a reflection of what we want our business to accomplish for us and for those we seek to do business with.  Currently, I’m not sure there is a better example of the “garbage in garbage out” principle being more accurately displayed than when a new online entrepreneur begins building their  network and establishing their personal brand using social media with little or no planning.

The purpose of your social media efforts has to be more than sending random “buy my widget” or “make money by signing up now” messages set on auto-repeat every 15 seconds.  That’s akin to social media telemarketing. It’s offensive to the very people who you need to trust you, causing you to quickly lose credibility and thus the ability to positively impact people along with it. 

After all, we’re all on the same path working to reach relatively the same destination.  We all want to be successful and fulfilled as we each define it.  It is far easier to do it together by building a functional network of mutually supportive people than by committing what I call “self-branding suicide”. 

Know this, that large numbers in a network mean absolutely nothing if you can’t do anything with them.  They are good only for eye-candy and ego stroking.  If you cannot effectively communicate and leverage your network at any given time toward a mutually beneficial action then you have no real usable network at all.  You have useless numbers.  If you spam them and you lose no-one then you have the first sign that NO ONE IS LISTENING!  I have found however that these symptoms reveal a deeper issue found at the core of the business foundation, and even more specifically, the perspective of the online entrepreneur that must be rectified.

Diagnosing The Dysfunctional Home Business Cycle

But why do people, especially new MLM, Internet and affiliate marketers in the first year, do this? Primarily because they’re taught to.  After feeling that they have bought into a lie, that the pursuit of a career had paid them in wasted years and less time with the people they love, they vow like an abused spouse, never to let that happen again.  With this as a main motivator, they jump into their online venture with a mindset of “this is about me getting what I want now – it’s my turn!”. 

Unfortunately, there are those that have sales copy written specifically to prey upon and attract those who are feeling exactly that (which ironically are most potential entrepreneurs) instead of offering something of more substance.  This new entrepreneur seeking training is then coached to build a business foundation that utilizes that same selfish ideology as the motivational gas in their online business engine which in turn attracts others the same way.  This type of training is prevalent unfortunately.

They say this is the coveted “duplication principle” however WHAT you’re duplicating is far more important that the act itself.  This cycle seems to be prevalent with any new entrepreneur who seeks training, whether it be a new Internet or affiliate marketer seeking training, an MLM or other business opportunity newbie.

Only  You Can Identify & Alter The Cycle

There are plenty of mistreated children who grow up to unknowingly train their own children to mistreat the following generation.  My point is this; there is a stark difference between healthy duplication and a dysfunctional spiral which, at the end of the journey, makes one feel that they were taken advantage of, despondent and stupid for ever hoping for something more fulfilling in their life.  Many of those involved in MLM’s and business opportunities are caught in this same cycle but it doesn’t have to be this way.  The immediate results for business opportunities that aim for this large demographic is that it attracts large numbers because the marketing is geared to identify with their emotional desire to stand up and take their life back, but unfortunately, it helps them neither heal nor become successful.

Your self-branding should ideally be an accurate reflection of who you are and what you want your business to accomplish BOTH for you and for those you seek  to do business with.  So often many do not take off the rose colored glasses to accurately estimate ”what’s in it for them?” apart from giving them the same Kool-aid that they themselves are gulping down.  

The great thing about many business opportunities is that you have almost total control to brand yourself and create your own strategy for delivering value.  Unfortunately if you are standing behind a company that simply does not deliver anything other than the “expectation to make money” it is almost impossible to break out of the cycle and represent the product or service. 

I see this all the time with affiliate marketers who lose large chunks of their emailing opt-in lists because they over promoted a product, training or service that had a high-payout for them but did not deliver on their promises.  They allowed the organization they promoted to use them along with their email list of potential customers and left them by the side of the road when they were done. 

This is where the affiliate would say that it is merely a numbers game of getting more potential customers, or the MLM opportunity that preaches that its all about getting more recruits, sponsoring more people, when actually it’s not.  It’s not about numbers but about delivering something of value that improves the lives of those you share it with.  I’m talking about choosing a deliverable that bolsters your credibility and doesn’t threaten it.   

So What’s The Antidote?

So how do we go about correcting our unhealthy business owner perspectives? It’s actually simple if you’re ready to take the leap of letting go of a few deeply held false ideologies.  Are you ready? Ok, here it is….your primary goal should not be first and foremost about making money.  You gasp, I know but read on and I’ll explain.

The key is finding something other than money that you can become passionate about. This is because the desire for money alone will NOT make your life to magically feel more successful and fulfilled.  I’m not kidding – it’s true!  The next two paragraphs will convince you.

If you’re like most online home business owners I’ve coached, you began your entrepreneurial journey when you decided to stop trading hours for dollars but (because you didnt know any better) immediately ignored what would truly fulfill you and instead convinced yourself that it was money that was the missing piece all along.  No my friend, there is something larger missing and it involves what I call emotional currency. 

You need to realize that the most fulfilling currency in your business life is one where you are deeply, emotionally satisfied that your entrepreneurial efforts make a difference.  From my experience I will tell you that if you commit to passionately pursue that, the by-product will result in reaping more financial reward than you ever expected. 

You need to identify with what you really want to achieve with your business efforts. 

It starts by asking yourself:

• Other than money, what do I want my business efforts to accomplish that would fulfill me?  
• What type of reputation do I want to work toward earning in the online community that would deeply satisfy me? 
• Expand on the previous question: If successful, what will that reputation look like? 
• How should I approach my marketing and branding efforts in light of the answers to the previous 3 questions?

Now work backwards; make your business foundation to reflect those answers.  THAT in-turn will produce a fire-in-the-belly that you cannot extinguish.  It results in a business foundation that is tied so closely into who you are that you don’t need a pep talk to get excited about it. 

The end result is that it begins to provide emotional paychecks which fulfill you before and after the money pours in.  

Translating That Into A Successful Marketing Strategy

There are myriads of people who give up following their financial dreams because they feel emotionally bankrupt.  Realize that they are all incredibly hungry to deposit this currency into their emotional bank account.  When you think about it, it is a pretty simple undertaking to stand out from the crowd because people are very hungry for unique, credible and trustworthy resources. Practically 95% of online business marketers form their sales discussion from the same faulty perspective.  You‘ll see headlines such as “secrets from the guru who made 5-figures in first month, make money online using this double matrix” or “use this software to trick Google to making you big money” and so on. 

If your business involves marketing a product with competition then you want the 95% to continue to do what they are doing.  Write your ads, sales copy and articles from the perspective of your new healthy foundation and you will immediately stand out.  Identify with those you want to attract to your product or service.

If you’re goal is to attract others to your business opportunity, training or service, know that the 95% with an unhealthy foundation know that they are missing something.  They are not your competition;, they are your prospects. If you create a healthy foundation and portray a healthier, more functional and fulfilling alternative that involves emotional currency, you are immediately more appealing. There are also so many people publicly branding themselves dysfunctionally that it’s an instant delineator, setting you apart from the spamming masses. 

If you commit to establishing your unique healthy foundation which seeks primary compensation from emotional paychecks you will not only be more satisfied, but you will also be fishing with different bait than most others.  People will come to work with you because they believed you were personally offering something different before you even presented your business opportunity.

Conclusion

Regardless of your type of business, be mindful that every word typed online contributes to the perception or misperception of you by others which is directly tied into your credibility.  By adequately taking the time to affectively establish your unique business perspective, you can then create a strong foundation for your business by redefining your goals and expectation. 

This will also in turn, create a more noble cause that naturally sells you on that fact that what you are doing and why you are doing it are for the right reasons.  The end result of that effort is the creation of fertile ground where the seeds of your true success and fulfillment can now germinate and grow.

“Life’s ultimate excitement is to be convinced that one is fighting for all they are worth on behalf of a clearly seen & deeply felt good” ~Ruth Benedict

Your Coach & Fan,

Patrick Daugherty

“The Biz Coach”

• Owner of Learn2earn it now training.
• Join him on Facebook! http://tgli.de/E4E 
• Join FB Training Group: http://cli.gs/6TvuJ
• Connect on LinkedIn! http://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickdaugherty

Effectively using social media is becoming increasingly vital for any online business marketing and branding.  Simple tips that are (what I call) “effort-efficient” to communicate with your network in order to move them to action is paramount to accomplishing aggressive marketing goals for your online business. Sending mass e-mails using Facebook is of course easier and faster than sending separate e-mails to all of your Facebook friends yet many do not know how to do so.

It’s important to learn how to use this feature to simplify your life and save your time. It’s quite easy to learn, and takes only a few minutes to execute, even for the initial setup.

Step 1

Sign into your Facebook account, using the user name and password.

Step 2

From your dashboard, find the ‘”Friends” link on the left side of your computer screen. When you’re taken to the next page, look to the left of your screen again and you’ll see a link titled “Lists.” If you’ve never created lists in Facebook, you’ll have to create them in order to send mass e-mails.

This is where I emphasize that you create and maintain a list of your Facebook friends.  If you haven’t done this before then you might want to start by making a list that includes all of your friends.  This is the only real “donkey work” that you’ll have to do in the front end. There are many justifications for multiple lists to organize your business friends, such as if you have certain competitors that you don’t want taking your ideas or if you have both friends & business relationships using the same page. 

I typically suggest that there be 2 different accounts that are applicable to both but there are arguments on either side of that issue. You will also want to create a list if you start a “group” as well in order to have a list of those that have joined and communicate with them separately.

Step 3

 After creating your lists, visit your inbox using the link at the top of your screen. You’ll see to the right a link which will allow you to “Compose a New Message.” Click that link, and an option will come up, allowing you to e-mail a list or individual friends. Enter the list that you’d like to mass e-mail.

NOTE: New to Facebook is a requirement that each list can only be 20 people or less. This basically means that you need to make a list for every 20 then put all those lists in the email “To:” section.  This adds a little more donkey work in the front end however it is still just as easy to execute once set up.

Step 4

Paste the pre-written message into the text box, and create a title for the message so your friends will know what you’re writing to them about. When you’re sure that the message is pasted just proof it and correct. I typically write it in Word and then paste so that I can use the editor and auto spell-check.

Step 5

Click the send button below the text box.

Again, organizing and maintaining your lists are important and more laborious to do if you wait till your over 1000 friends.  The better your lists are maintained the more effective you will be at moving your network to action.

Good luck & happy Social Marketing!

Your Coach & Biggest Fan

Patrick Daugherty

• Get Online Business training at: Learn2Earn Training & Support 
• Join Patrick on Facebook! http://tgli.de/E4E 
• Connect to his Facebook Training Group: http://cli.gs/6TvuJ
• Connect on LinkedIn! http://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickdaugherty

We’ve all heard the headlines about our healthcare system and how those in government have evaluated the vital signs of its effectiveness during this recession.  Whether you agree with the proposed solutions being tossed around in Washington or not, the function of conducting such an evaluation on the health of your business productivity will have a greater impact on your own recovery than any law that’s passed in Congress. 

The success and failure of practically every online home-based business can be traced back to the health of the daily and weekly revenue generating activity.  Unfortunately, all too often we settle into a rut, which sends our personal economic picture into a tailspin.

Goal Fixation Is Unproductive

That’s right, I just said that (or rather wrote it) but more often than not, goals are errantly substituted into the “action step” category, which they are not. Action steps are objectives that you are committed to achieve today that are required in order for you to accomplish a short term goal.  Short term goals are steps which need to be climbed in order to reach your long term goal.  Daily Action Steps and Short Term Goals should be your obsessive focus – not your long term goals. 

Long term goals are instead desired outcomes that are direct results from achieving those action-steps and reaching those short term mile markers. Unfortunately because they are shiny pretty things representing our ultimate destinations they are also typically obsessed upon far too often causing one to evaluate progress from a totally inaccurate perspective.  Let me give you some examples.

It’s akin to planting a seed and looking at it 3 times a day to see if it sprouts. After a week or so you become increasingly disparaged, wondering if you had done something wrong. Could you have chosen the wrong seed? All the while it had never occurred to you to focus on the action of watering it and seeing that as daily progress. This is how many novice business owners are with their long-term business goals and its one of the greatest causes of business owner de-motivation. Make no mistake, long term goals need to be made, however, long-term goals WILL NOT get you where you want to go. They are a destination. Goal fixation is typically a result of being told to make goals, but not being taught how to effectively plan to reach them.

If you have a goal of hiking to reach a mountain that you can see from 100 miles away and you travel 2 miles a day you can’t fixate on the ultimate goal or you’ll become demoralized every time you self-evaluate.  After 7 days of hiking you become tired of focusing on that mountain and not seeing any progress.  That’s because it’s not an accurate reflection of your daily effort. You must focus on reaching the next road sign that is 100 yards away, then the next intersection that is a mile down the road, in order to accurately evaluate your progress.  It’s the same in business.

Contrary to those that say you must look at your goals everyday, in my experience, goals need to be made, documented and then set aside. They are to be brought out as yard sticks only every few weeks. Otherwise the temptation will be to use them to beat yourself over the head with because you don’t feel you are making progress quick enough.

All About The A+B
I am a firm believer that results cannot be your daily focus because they are actually eventual outcomes that are born from passionately doing the right things consistently (i.e. your activity). The daily plan or formula must be your constant motivational focus rather than goal fixation, for it is only that formula which ensures the desired goals will become a reality.

The formula that I’ve taught for years is HE + SP = DR. Simply put, only your High Effort applied to a Structured Plan will produce your Desired Results. It all starts with a structured plan of those activities you feel are most important for you to get the highest return on the time and energy you invest. The plan can be fluid and altered from one day to the next but its very important that it is solidified at the end of the day prior for the following day.

I cannot stress how important this step is because it naturally forces you to wakeup with a purpose knowing exactly what you need to accomplish that day. The plan is then implemented with your high-effort, which I believe is the “high-octane fuel” that makes your business engine accelerate.

Master The Unnatural
One observance that I have found interesting is that most high-effort individuals are undisciplined planners while most effective planners have the natural “tortoise-like” pace of implementing and executing their masterful plan. The most successful entrepreneurs are those who naturally excel at one of the two traits but have painstakingly trained themselves to become proficient at the other. They in effect have acquired the ability to have a one-two punch by doing what was not natural until it became natural. They lived one of my favorite mantras, which is: “Do one thing everyday that you fear”.

That brings me to the two elements that are toxic when combined; fear and failure. Usually what we “fear” is doing something that comes unnatural which undercuts our self-confidence because of the increased risk of short-term failure. This is the area of the greatest growth for new entrepreneurs. Do not fear short term failure!! As I’ve said before “The entrepreneurs who achieved their financial goals saw failure as “Success University”. Don’t ever quit on your dreams-just study and learn to graduate!

Conclusion
It is practically impossible to fail if a reasonably well-constructed plan is met with daily high effort. If end results are your focus then at the end of the day you are actually demoralized because you feel that you have not accomplished a thing today. As you build your “online highway” it’s very easy to pave a mile of road and feel that you’re wasting your time until you reach an intersection that brings you the fast-paced, consistent (online) traffic ultimately working for.

The truth is that you should feel you’ve accomplished much because you’ve completed all the prioritized activities that you planned for the day. You’ve paved your mile of road. Be assured that you cannot continue to add a mile of road without achieving success even if it is months down the road.

So instead of waiting for a bail out – bail yourself out by becoming obsessed with planning the day prior and pouring your High Effort fuel into that Structured Plan. Be content with knowing the fact that one-mile of paved road is guaranteed to bring you closer to the long-term business goals you’ve set.

Even though long-term goals should not be your focus, they can and should be your celebrated end result. When your paved road reaches a major goal destination, you deserve to become momentarily obsessed with basking in your accomplishment of successfully achieving the milestone. After realizing soon after that you are not yet satisfied, recalibrate for the next destination and reapply the formula that got you there.