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Why Multiple Streams of Income Are Better Than One

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For years now I’ve been a big believer in having multiple streams of synergized income.

Some people, such as some leaders in the network marketing industry, however, frown upon multiple streams of income and usually try to discourage their downline members from having them.

You’ll often hear leaders talking about the need to just focus on ONE thing and one thing only.

You’ll often hear them say things like “You have to focus on ONE thing 100% so that you get 100% out of it, instead of trying to split your focus in multiple directions.”

What they try to tell you is that focusing on something 100% is better than putting 50% focus into two things, or 25% focus into 4 things.

In this post I’m going to show you why that may not be the best advice for your business.

The Input / Output Formula

Most people look at a business like a box which you invest a certain amount of time, resources and energy into and they say that you’ll get out of it (OUTPUT) however much you put into it (INPUT).

They’ll say that if you put everything you’ve got into it, you’ll get a lot out of it.

We could simplify this into a formula that looks something like this:

TOTAL ENERGY YOU INPUT INTO BUSINESS (INPUT) = RESULTS YOU GET OUT OF BUSINESS (OUTPUT)

This may seem like a simple formula that makes logical sense, but it’s not entirely accurate.

It’s typically based on a simplified model that is similar to having an hourly job, where the hourly rate is set at a certain price, such as $20/hour, and then the only variable is how many hours you work.

For example if you work 10 hours (Input = 10 hours), then you’ll make $200 (Output = $200).

If you work twice as much, putting in 20 hours (Input = 20 hours), then you’ll make $400 (Output = $400).

Using this simplified model of the world, if you were to go out there and try working TWO equally paying jobs, putting in 5 hours into each job (Input = 10 hours), you’d make $200 (Output = $200).

Based on this model, it makes no sense to work 2 different jobs putting in 5 hours into each one, when you could just instead focus on ONE job and put 10 hours into it.

If BUSINESS worked like this, then yes it would make sense to just focus on doing ONE thing, and ONE thing only.

But in reality, business does NOT work this way, which is why multiple streams of synergized income is a much better strategy.

Let me explain.

The More Realistic Business Formula

When you’re building a business of any kind, you have to realize that YOU are always just one part of a more complex system.

Unlike a job system where your hourly rate is set and guaranteed to be a certain rate, in a business environment, the amount of OUTPUT (money made) you get from each hour of energy you put in (INPUT) can vary greatly over time.

There are MANY variables that affect the amount of OUTPUT you get per hour of INPUT from a business system.

Factor #1 – Seasonality

For example, if a kid was to setup a lemonade stand on the road, in the middle of winter, trying to sell lemonade to people… that kid could sit there all day long and not make a single sale.  Why?  Because it’s cold outside and nobody is thirsty.

Take that same kid with the same lemonade stand, and put them out there for the day on a hot sunny day in the middle of summer, and that kid might completely sell out of lemonade.

In this way, most businesses are at least somewhat seasonal as well.

For example, weight loss systems, personal trainers and gyms are busiest during January when everyone sets their New Year’s resolutions to lose weight.  But that same business might be completely dead during the summer time, when people don’t have weight loss on their minds or they just go outside to exercise.

So the season of the year could have an impact on the amount of OUTPUT you get from the amount of INPUT you put into a business.

Factor #2 – Product / Service Launches

Another thing that can affect results in your business is product or service launches.

For example, right now, Empower Network is right in the middle of a new product launch with it’s Kalatu blogging platform and new sales funnels.

This makes it a prime time to join Empower Network and to promote it.

When a company launches a new product or line of products and when there are a lot of cool and exciting things happening, you can build that business much faster and easier with the same amount of work.

But as an example, if I was part of a company that isn’t launching a new product for another 6 months, right now might not be the best time to put energy into promoting that company.

Sometimes the season of the year affects how easy it is to make money with a business.

Sometimes whether or not the company is rolling out a new product can affect how easy it is to make money with a business.

Factor #3 – Industry Changes

Sometimes temporary changes in government regulations, or some good or bad media publicity can affect how easy it is to make money with a business.

For example, back in Oct/Nov 2009, Google changed the entire affiliate marketing industry by all of a sudden banning over 100,000 Google AdWord’s accounts.

The entire affiliate marketing industry changed virtually overnight.

Eventually, within about 6-12 months the industry started to recover as people found other streams of traffic to utilize for their campaigns, but anyone without another income stream for their business had to scramble to not go bankrupt.

Factor #4 – Other People Inside Your Business

Another big thing that can affect the amount of OUTPUT (income etc.) you get from a business is the OTHER people who are involved in your business.

For example, anyone building a network marketing company will have a downline of team mates working with them.

Often times, your income is directly proportional to the results that THEY are producing in the business, and their results will depend on the amount of time and energy that THEY are willing to put in.

So, for example let’s say you were building a downline in a network marketing company part time and you had 5 people working with you and each of them was putting in 5 hours per week.

That means that your business was getting the benefit of 25 hours of INPUT (other people’s energy/time) every week.

And let’s say that you were putting in 5 hours / week yourself as well…so that’s 30 hours TOTAL.

Now, let’s say that you were to quit your job and focus 100% on just that ONE business, and now you are putting in 50 hours per week yourself, as well as the 25 hours that your team is putting in.

That’s a total of 75 hours of time invested in your business – 50 hours coming from you and 25 hours coming from your team.

But let me ask you this….

If you were previously putting in 5 hours / week into your business, and that was enough to get 5 other people to put in 5 hours each, that means YOUR input was 5 hours and the business was getting a total of 30 hours of energy put towards it by your team.

Now, if you focus 100% on your business and put in 50 hours into it, do you think that the other people in your business will also go from 5 hours/week to 50 hours per week?

In most cases they won’t.

Just because YOU commit 100% of your available time to a business, doesn’t mean everyone in your team will.

This means that just because you multiply YOUR efforts by 10 fold, it doesn’t mean your business income will go up by 10 fold.

In this example, YOUR INPUT went up by a factor of 10 TIMES, but the business as a whole is only getting about 3 TIMES the total input.

Does that make sense?

So, sometimes the limiting factor in a businesses growth is not just YOU and what YOU do, but also the other people involved.

Factor #5 – Your Customers

Another factor that can play a key role in how much money you can make from a business (OUTPUT) based on how much time/energy you put into it (INPUT) is your customers.

For example, if I invest 1 hour of my time per day to write valuable content for my Blog, and I email that out to my subscriber list, there’s a certain amount of value that is received by them each day.

But let’s say that I decided to focus 100% on my blog and tried writing 8 blog posts in 8 hours, every day and I sent THAT out to my subscribers every day.

Would I be offering 8 times the value for my subscribers?

Probably not, because my subscribers most likely will not have the time to consume 8 blog posts per day, every day.

So a LOT of that time would be wasted effort.

Other Factors

These are just a few of the factors that are always at play when working on an income stream or a business.

Because of this, the formula isn’t as simple as YOUR INPUT = BUSINESS OUTPUT.

You can’t just say, “You’re going to get out of the business, as much as you put into it.”

It would be easy if it worked that way, but the truth is that in most cases you are NOT the only factor in a business or an income stream.

Yes it is true that in a lot of cases you can be a BIG factor in the amount of income a business or an income stream can produce, but that’s not always the case.

Some businesses or income streams actually work better if you just invest 1-2 hours per day to them, and then work on something else.

Other businesses work better if you invest 4-6hours/day into them, and yes there are other businesses / income streams that only work when you focus on them full time.

Personally, what I like to do is to have a maximum of one income stream that requires a 4-8hours/day commitment and then to also have a few other income streams that only require a 5-10hour/week commitment to them.

Also, depending on some of the other factors above, such as for example seasonality and product/service releases I may also rotate how much time/energy I put into each income stream throughout the year.

What I love about income streams such as Blogging with Empower Network, is that you can decide on a certain number of hours per week that you want to invest into the business, and it doesn’t have to be a lot to start building a pretty respectable income stream.

With each Blog post you write, you’re launching another online “real estate property” as each blog post gets indexed by Google and starts to draw in more and more traffic into your business.

SO the cool thing with income streams like that is that even though I’m not working on them 24 hours a day, my BLOG is serving people and providing value with my blog posts 24 hours/day.   This provides an awesome amount of leverage, so that I don’t have to always be working on this income stream for it to generate income for me.

 

Are You One Step Away From Success?

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What if I told you that you were just one step away from success?

As someone who has both mentored and coached people and also as someone who has spent tens of thousands of dollars on coaching and mentoring myself, I have come to realize one important thing about success…

In most cases, people are just ONE STEP away from success.

The sad truth is that whenever we pursue success in some area of our lives, we often do 99% of all things right, but we get tripped up on 1% and never achieve the results we want.

Let me give an example that just happened to me today.

Last year I decided to get back into making money online more seriously and one of the things I wanted to get good at was generating leads with Facebook.

I bought several different courses, and went through hundreds of hours of training, setup, testing and tweaking of facebook ads, and various different funnels.

I managed to get to the point where I was starting to produce some consistent results, but there was one missing piece to my strategy.

Based on the conversion rates I was getting from my funnels, I needed to be able to get traffic from Facebook for less than $0.50/click at the most, and ideally more likely somewhere around $0.30-$0.40/click.

Unfortunately, no matter what I did, I was not able to get my clicks that low while still maintaining lead quality.

So what I did is I started looking for different businesses / funnels out there which could still be profitable even while paying $0.75-$1.00/click, like I was playing.

After several months of trial and error, and quite a bit of frustration, I decided to put my Facebook testing on hold as I just couldn’t get my costs down low enough for it to make sense for me to keep spending money with Facebook.

After you spend several thousand dollars in testing, and can’t get it to be profitable, it can get frustrating and it’s easy to give up.

I put my campaigns on hold, but I didn’t give up.

Instead I put out a “call” to the Universe to help me figure out what it is that I’m missing, while I focused on getting other things done.

About two weeks ago, the Universe responded to that “call” by having someone pop into my life who had figured out a way to get highly targeted Facebook traffic for around $0.05 per click, and in some cases even lower.

After verifying a few things, I asked the guy if he would be willing to coach / mentor me on how he is achieving these kinds of results, and he agreed to do it for just under $500.

Now, to most people, spending $500 for a single coaching/mentoring call may seem like a lot of money, but I have learned that in a lot of cases in life you can be SO CLOSE to success that all you need is just that one little extra piece of advice that will change everything…

… but if you’re too cheap to invest in getting that advice from someone who is producing the results that you want, then you can continue to struggle forever!

So this morning I had my coaching / mentoring call with this person, and he showed  me EXACTLY how he’s producing these results.

And you know what?

The crazy thing is that when I learned exactly what he is doing to produce those kinds of results, as compared to what I was doing before, I was already doing about 98% of what he is doing.

Like all I had to do is change about 1% – 2% of my strategy to do exactly what he was doing.

Our coaching call was only about 1 hour long, but honestly it could have easily been 5m – 10mins long to just teach me the one piece I was missing.

Now, the question is… would that 5m – 10mins be worth $500 to me?

ABSOLUTELY!

See, most people continue to struggle in life and in business, because they’re too cheap to invest in CONSULTING services from someone who knows what they’re doing, and who can come into the picture, analyze the situation and find that small 1% or 2% difference that is MISSING in your strategy.

This principle applies in virtually EVERY area of your life.

For example, let’s say that you’ve been wanting to lose weight and you’ve tried EVERY diet on the planet and you’ve failed over and over again, losing weight and gaining it all back etc.

Do you realize that there is probably just ONE small belief change, or strategy adjustment that you need to make and you could SUCCEED in your quest to lose weight?

Or if you’ve been trying to make money online, and nothing seems to be working for you.

The truth is that you could already be doing 98% – 99% of everything RIGHT, but you’re just missing that 1% or 2% that will change EVERYTHING for you.

So how do we find that missing 1% or 2%???

Well, there are really only three ways to do it.

Method #1 – The Long Way – Trial And Error

The most common way that people try to figure things out is by trial and error.

They essentially scour around the Internet, looking for free advice from people on forums, and facebook groups, trying to see if they can figure out what is the missing piece and why things aren’t working for them.

Often times they’ll even ask questions on forums, which are full of people who are ALSO struggling with the same issues, and they usually get bad advice or in the best case scenario good advice that is INCOMPLETE.

You can spend a LOT of wasted time and effort this way, and 99.999% of all people who try to figure things out with trial and error end up giving up.

Method #2 – The Short Way – Join a Community of Successful People

A much better way to figure out what is the missing 1% or 2% in your strategy is to become part of a community of like minded people, who are producing the results that you want.

For example, if you wanted to learn how to train to run a marathon, from scratch… yes you COULD just go outside and start running (ie. trial and error), but you probably wouldn’t do too well if you ran into any issues.

A much better option would be to join a running community, such as for example The Running Room, or a some sort of running club where maybe 10-20 people get together and train for a marathon.

Ideally, you’d want there to be at least a few people in the group who have already ran a marathon successfully, so that you could get some good advice.

After joining the group, you would simply pay attention to what YOU’RE doing and the results YOU’RE producing, and compare those to the results someone else who is successful is producing.

So for example, if you started running and you started getting shin-splits, you might ask someone in your group if they had that issue and how they solved it.

Then you would try whatever solution they found to work for them, and hopefully it would work for you as well.

This is the process of MODELING SUCCESS by being part of a community where at least some of the people are already producing the results you’re looking for.

As another example, for someone who wanted to make money online, they could join a community like the Empower Network, where there’s already a proven track record of people producing success.

Then, by going through the trainings, attending events, and getting around other people in the community, you can figure out what the missing 1% or 2% is in your strategy.

This is a MUCH faster and better way of achieving success than trial and error.

This method also has the benefit of usually not being too expensive either.

Method #3 – The Ultra Short Way – Hiring a Coach / Mentor / Consultant

The third and most effective method of figuring out what the missing 1% – 2% is in your strategy is to hire a coach / mentor or consultant.

With this method, you hire someone who has the ability to either coach you or mentor you to produce the results that you’re trying to produce and they work with you 1-on-1, or in a small group to help you achieve that result.

This is usually the most effective method IF you can find someone who can teach you to produce the results you’re looking to produce, AND if you can afford their services.

Personally I like to combine methods #2 and #3 together, where I try to get most of my training from groups and communities, because then the costs of training are much cheaper than trying to learn everything 1-on-1, but when I get stuck on something, I prefer to hire a coach/mentor/consultant to help me get “unstuck” like I did this morning.

For example, as a member of Empower Network I get access to all of their recorded group trainings which are awesome to learn everything you need to make money online in MOST cases.

Then in some cases where you get stuck on some very specific thing that’s not covered in the trainings provided, I then seek out the help of a 1-on-1 consultant.

How to Get Coaching and Mentoring From Me

If you’re looking for 1-on-1 coaching from me, you can get more information about my rates and such on my coaching page.

However, one of the benefits that I offer my Empower Network team-mates is that they get free coaching and mentoring from my in my private group for my team.

The cool thing about that is that in the majority of cases, in my group trainings I can usually figure out exactly what is the missing 1% – 2% in your success strategy online because chances are I already ran into it myself and overcame that obstacle or I hired a consultant to help me overcome it.

So one of the benefits that my team mates get is that they get the best of both Method #2 and Method #3, and if there is some really strange, rare issue that they’re struggling with that I can’t help them with, I usually know someone I can refer them to who can help them.

If you’ve been struggling in some area of your life, be it with your health, or relationships, or in your career or in your business, I strongly recommend finding a way to apply Methods #2 and #3 as much as you can.

Don’t waste your life in constant “trial and error” mode.  It may seem like a cheaper way than joining a community or getting help, but it will cost you WAY more in the long run.

Free Car From Blogging

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I started blogging way back in April 2006, but truth be told, for almost two years I didn’t make any money as a blogger.

Even though I had good intentions, and I worked hard, I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I was too cheap and too stubborn to invest in proper training and mentoring.

So I spent almost two years trying to figure everything out on my own, and didn’t really make any money with my blog, even though I wanted to.

Then at the end of 2007, after a lot of needless frustration, I decided that enough was enough.

I got some proper training and mentoring and in January 2008 I set a goal to start making money with my Blog.

At first it was slow, but by July 2008 I had made around $2,700 from my Blog in that month – working on it part-time.

Around the same time I decided to quit my corporate job and to pursue making money online from home on a full time basis, but instead of continuing to focus on growing my blog income I decided to focus primarily on affiliate marketing.

Some of my the people I met as a blogger were making a LOT of money doing affiliate marketing and I saw it as a faster way to replace my income than blogging, which I saw as a more longer-term way of building up an income.

I also explored many other income streams, ranging from starting niche blogs & websites, to running a software development company, to network marketing and of course affiliate marketing.

In the end, all of these different income streams paid off, and now allow me to make a comfortable 6-figure income working from home, but one of my primary passions throughout all this time that I always seem to go back to is blogging.

I enjoy blogging for so many reasons, but except for that brief period of time between January – August of 2008, I haven’t really focused my energy on making money from my blog.

Until now.

On January 1st of this year I decided that I really want to focus on building up an income as a blogger.

And one of my first goals that I want to hit is for my blog to be making at least enough money per month to pay for my new car.

I haven’t actually picked the exact car I want yet, but my goal is to get my blog generating at least a minimum of $500/month, which would most likely cover the car payment on my new car.

I may end up deciding to up that goal to $750-$900/month if I decide to get a more luxurious car, but I haven’t decided yet.

In either case, what I want to do is to build up this blog and just like I did back in the beginning of 2008, I want to stat posting regular blog income reports showing how much money I’m making from my blog each month.

I want to do this to both keep me accountable to my audience, but also to hopefully inspire others who enjoy blogging to make money with their blogs.

I know back in 2008, when I was doing monthly income reports, I got a lot of emails and comments from people who were inspired by my success and I think if I can build up an enough income with my blog to be able to pay for a car, that will inspire a lot of other people as well.

There are a lot of gurus out there who make HUGE amounts of money online, and I know that the six-figure and seven-figure incomes that some of these guys make per month are probably a lot more inspiring than the $500-$900 target I’m setting for myself – BUT – I also think there’s a lot of inspiration to be gained from making even $100 or $200 or $500 per month with a blog.

And since I hardly did any blogging at all from 2012 to 2014 as I was focused on other projects and income streams, and since the whole online world has changed pretty drastically since 2008, I’m pretty much starting from scratch here.

This month I’ll be working on putting together a tracking sheet for all my income streams that I generate money from as a blogger and I’ll probably have my first income report ready by the end of the month.

I’m not sure how long it will take me to get to the point where my blog income can pay for my new car, but it’s going to be fun to go on this journey. 🙂

If you’d like to learn how to make money from your blog as well, feel free to contact me for more info or watch this video, but just as a quick disclaimer, my results are not typical as I’m not a typical person, so check out my income disclaimer here if you’d like.

Is This One Mistake Keeping You Broke?

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There’s one very common mistake that most non-sales type personalities make in business that prevents them from achieving financial success in their business.

As a person with a non-sales type personality myself, I have also made this mistake myself and it has probably cost me many millions of dollars in income already.

Until I finally figured this out, this mistake plagued every business I ever owned, or was a part of.

TRUTH – Non-Sales Personalities Don’t Like “Sales People”

Most of the people who enjoy talking to me or hanging out with me are not “sales type” personalities.

I’m pretty laid back and introverted in real life, so I tend to attract people with similar personalities as well.

Whenever I talk to “non-sales” type people about entrepreneurship and making money online, one of the things that I will often hear them complain about is how “salesy” or “pushy” or “persistent” someone is.

I’m going to use Empower Network and David Wood as an example here to illustrate my point better, but I’ve heard people say these exact same things about ALL the top sales leaders out there.

In the past two or three weeks here are a few examples of the types of things I’ve heard people say about David Wood and Empower Network…

“Yeah, Empower Network seems really cool Paul, but I’m just not 100% sure about it yet, because that David Wood guy seems like such a sales guy.”

or

“Yeah, so far I’m really liking Empower Network, but that David Wood guy emails me like every day, what’s up with that?”

or

“Yeah, the new Kalatu Blogs look pretty good, but is there a way to disable all the banners?  I don’t want people visiting my blog thinking I’m trying to sell them something.”

or

“Yeah, the training in Empower Network seems really cool… I’m just not 100% sure why, but just something about David Wood or the MLM side of it or the sales side of it just doesn’t resonate with me 100%”.

Now, here’s the thing…

…these are just examples about David Wood and Empower Network.  But I’ve head variations of this same complaint about pretty much EVERY successful Internet Marketer or leader in industry.

In fact I’ve actually heard the same complaint coming from people with MY personality type in EVERY industry out there.

The truth is that the typical introverted non-sales type personality types like us…we don’t really LIKE people who are “salesy” or “persistent” etc.

Now, I’m not saying that we don’t like the PEOPLE themselves… but we just don’t like when those people go into “sales mode” and try to sell something to someone.

So if you’re a non-sales type personality, and you FEEL this way…trust me…I *TOTALLY* understand.  You’re not the only one.

AND….

This ONE Shift in Your Thinking Will Change Everything

About 15 years ago now, I bought and took over the operations of a multimillion dollar business with a partner of mine.

I was excited and scared sh**less at the same time.

Finally for the first time in our lives we had 100% full control over the operations of a business and we could run it exactly how we wanted to.

So guess what we did?

We ran it like OUR type of business.

Since both my business partner and I have similar “techy” type personalities, we shaped the business around that.

Over a period of about a year or so, many of the people on our sales team left and we didn’t really put any emphasis on that side of the business.

Most of our emphasis went towards the development of the best technology on the planet, and we treated our programmers / developers like royalty.

We found that the majority of the marketing that the business was doing prior to our arrival was wasted on ineffective marketing pieces, brochures and catalogs that were becoming obsolete.

So we slashed our spending on marketing big time, all proud of ourselves for not throwing away money on useless marketing.

And guess what happened.

After a short period of time, our business started to suffer.

We had virtually NO marketing, and just a tiny small sales team.

The business stagnated and then finally stalled.

Luckily we reached out to our multimillionaire business mentor and asked him for help, and the advice he gave us CHANGED EVERYTHING for me.

When he looked at our budgets and how we were running our business, he immediately saw what we were doing wrong.

We had COMPLETELY pushed away one of the most important parts of running a business… having a SOLID and powerful MARKETING and SALES process.

When he saw that we slashed our marketing budget, he didn’t give us “props” for saving money, he gave us sh*t for being idiots.

He told us “If your marketing is not working, you don’t just CUT your budget.  You FIND marketing that works!  NEVER cut your marketing budget!”

Ooops. 🙁

He also saw that our sales team had shrunk to the point where we HAD no sales team.

See, for some stupid reason all of my life up to that point in time, I had this CRAZY idiotic belief or idea that went something like this…

“If you create something of great value, you don’t need to SELL it… people will just see the value in it automatically.”

WRONG!

That is how you go bankrupt in life and in business.

See, as non-sales type personalities, my partner and I basically groomed our business around who we were and how we thought, and what our beliefs and values were.

We didn’t really value sales that much, so we ignored that side of our business.

And we almost went out of business because of it.

I don’t care WHAT product or service you create, or how good it is… you STILL need to MARKET it and SELL it to your target market.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.  Like I was. 🙂

Luckily though, we learned our lesson, and we started to make some changes that saved our business and helped me to build and start businesses that THRIVE instead of DIE.

So what is the ONE shift that WE made that changed everything?

Change your belief to this…

New Belief – I May Not Be a Sales Type Personality Myself, but I Love, Respect and Utilize Those Who Are

If you embrace THAT belief in your life, your business will thrive.

See what I did at that moment in time in my life is I made the decision to STOP being an egotistic introverted moron who thought he was better than all those “sales” type people and I got off my high horse and actually started to try to UNDERSTAND sales and marketing and the people who are successful in that field.

I attended Tony Robbin’s premiere sales seminar called “The Power to Influence” and I started learning what it really takes to be good at sales.

Not necessarily to become good at sales myself, but just so that I could understand better what sales people have to go through to generate sales.

To say that the seminar opened my eyes would be a gross understatement.

When I actually learned what it takes to be good at sales, I was blown away at how much skill, intelligence, intuition, practice and persistence it takes to be good at sales.

It’s an art form!

Professional sales people are like professional athletes.  There is a LOT of work that goes into becoming good at sales.

From that day forward I’ve been a student of sales and marketing ever since, and even though I don’t consider myself a “sales type personality”, I learn about sales and marketing because it helps me to be successful as an entrepreneur.

The reason being is because …

A Successful Business MUST Have a Professional Marketing and Sales Team Behind It

See, to be successful, EVERY business needs a professional marketing and sales team behind it.

If you don’t have that, you don’t have a business.

Look at ANY successful business out there, regardless whether it’s a giant like Apple or a single Internet Marketer working from home… if they are successful, they’re utilizing a professional marketing and sales team/system in their business.

Period.

End of story.

If you don’t have that, your business is as good as dead.

Now, since you’re most likely NOT a sales-type personality yourself, like me, what you have to do to be successful is you have to PARTNER with someone who is.

See, what you do is you take YOUR skill set, which might be creating things, writing content, writing blog posts, writing books, creating art, or building things with your hands, or perhaps providing services to people, and you COMBINE that skill set with someone who is good at marketing and selling!

That is how you succeed.

In fact, the reason why you haven’t succeed in a big way YET in your life is because you haven’t added this ultra important component into your business.

I didn’t start making a six-figure income in my life until I embraced MARKETING and SALESMANSHIP in my businesses.

In most cases, embracing and adding in a good, solid, powerful marketing and sales process in your business IS the missing piece that’s been keeping you stuck all this time.

So let’s go back to those concerns I mentioned people saying to me previously, and let me now answer then with this new perspective…

“Yeah, Empower Network seems really cool Paul, but I’m just not 100% sure about it yet, because that David Wood guy seems like such a sales guy.”

RESPONSE: “You are absolutely right!  David Wood is a master sales professional.  His ability to sell is amazing.  And that is exactly why you want to partner up with Empower Network and David Wood, because that is exactly what your business has been missing all this time.  By joining Empower Network, you get to utilize YOUR skill set, essentially being the creator of content, and you’re partnering up with one of the world’s best sales people to do what he does best – to market and sell for you, so that YOU don’t have to!”

and

“Yeah, so far I’m really liking Empower Network, but that David Wood guy emails me like every day, what’s up with that?”

RESPONSE: “You are absolutely right!  David Wood is a master at email marketing as well.  He has tested virtually every combination of email strategies so that you don’t have to.  Him and his team have already figured out what is the best overall strategy for emailing people… whether that be daily or weekly and multiple times per day.  They already know what the best strategy is and they are constantly improving it as well.  By partnering up with him and his team, he will email your prospects and do the absolutely best job of converting them and generating sales for you, so that you don’t have to!”

and

“Yeah, the new Kalatu Blogs look pretty good, but is there a way to disable all the banners?  I don’t want people visiting my blog thinking I’m trying to sell them something.”

RESPONSE: “I totally understand.  You’re not a sales type personality, and in fact you probably don’t like sales-type personalities, and that is why you are afraid that people will not like you if you have any type of banners or monetization strategies on your Blog.  However, that is exactly why your Blog isn’t making any money and why it will NEVER make you any money, until you embrace a proper monetization strategy.

The great thing about Kalatu and Empower Network is that you’re getting the world’s TOP MARKETERS who specialize in monetizing content and blogs working with you on your behalf, so that you don’t have to.  They take care of making sure that the banners on your site attract the right type of client, and that those clients convert and that your blog generates sales for you.  This way, you just have to focus on doing what you’re good at, which is blogging and generating free content for people to consume, and you let the geniuses at Empower Network take care of monetizing it for you, so that you don’t have to concern yourself with that.”

and

“Yeah, the training in Empower Network seems really cool… I’m just not 100% sure why, but just something about David Wood or the MLM side of it or the sales side of it just doesn’t resonate with me 100%”.

RESPONSE: “Of course it won’t resonate with you 100%!!!  You’re not a sales type personality.  David Wood is, and so is the Empower Network marketing department.  They are the BEST at what they do, and they know how to generate sales and how to monetize your Blog.  You don’t resonate with them, because they are not 100% like you.  But that is EXACTLY why you MUST partner with people of that personality, so that your business succeeds.  Think of it like this.  If you needed your accounting done, and you’re not an accountant-type personality, would you want the person who is best at accounting working for you?  Or would you want the non-accountant person just like you trying to do your accounting?

If you needed a body-guard.  Would you want the best body-guard type personality who spends their entire life training and learning how to defend people and who has trained their body to be a weapon, or would you want to hire the body guard who is just like you?  See my point?”

To be successful in business we MUST learn how to work with different personality types and to respect their skills and abilities and strengths and to use them to compliment our weaknesses.

In the businesses that I run, I LOVE my sales team.

I treat them like royalty.

I’m not like them, but I respect them and I love them.

Because they DO what they DO so that I don’t have to!

Flip This Switch NOW

If you take this ONE piece of advice right now… your potential for being a successful entrepreneur will skyrocket.

FLIP the switch in your head which right now is STUCK in a way of thinking where you PUSH AWAY people who are sales-type personalities or who are amazing MARKETERS just because they are not like you.

FLIP that switch and instead EMBRACE the benefits of having someone like that on your team.

DON’T look at someone like David Wood and think that his sales ability is “annoying” or “not resonating with you”, and instead realize that HIS sales ability can make you a MILLIONAIRE if you can just flip that switch in your mind that makes you think that sales people are “scammers” or “bad people” or that they are “pushy” or whatever other negative associations you’ve programmed your mind with.

PARTNER with professional marketers and sales people and you will see your income explode.

This is one of the biggest reasons I’m with Empower Network.

I’m an awesome Blogger, and I’m great at producing content… but I still SUCK at monetizing my Blogs.

And instead of trying to change who I am, I just partner up with someone like David Wood and Empower Network and I use THEIR awesome sales ability to monetize my Blog for me.

I *strongly* recommend that you do the same.

Because one way or another, if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you WILL have to have a powerful marketing and sales team.

So that means that either YOU start building the skillset required to become the world’s top sales person yourself, OR you partner up with someone who is.

Personally, I’m of the opinion that it’s MUCH easier to just partner up with someone who’s already a great sales person than to spend the next 10 years of your life trying to become a “salesy” type person. 🙂

If you’re ready to partner up with me and the world’s best sales and marketing team by joining me in Empower Network, click here to get started.

How Funding Micro-Loans Can Help You Make More Money Online

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In yesterday’s post I wrote about the Law of Giving and Receiving and the benefits associated with engaging this Universal Law in your quest to make money online.

I wrote about how if you want to RECEIVE more money in your life, you don’t necessarily have to GIVE away more money.

You can GIVE value to the world in other ways.  Money is just one of the ways to activate this law.

I also wrote about how starting a Blog so that you can give to the world by sharing your passions, your wisdom and experience with the world is one of the easiest and coolest ways to activate this law and to get more money flowing into your life.

If you haven’t had a chance to read my post from yesterday, you can read it here.

In today’s post I want to write about another method of activating the Law of Giving and Receiving to help you make more money online.

Supporting Entrepreneurs Worldwide with Micro-Loans

One of the other ways to get support from the Universe as an entrepreneur is to GIVE support to other entrepreneurs!

For the longest time, one of my dreams has been to get to the level of wealth where I can invest in businesses and support the entrepreneurial spirit of people around the world.

There are so many amazing entrepreneurs out there with great ideas, but who lack the financial backing and funding to make things work.

I always thought to myself that once I’m a multimillionaire, one of the ways that I want to give back is to help entrepreneurs get their businesses going.

Most people out there have similar dreams of giving back.

We think to ourselves “Once I’m rich I’ll give back in this way.”

But why wait until you’re rich?

Thanks to new innovations like crowdfunding and micro-loans, almost ANYONE can afford to support the entrepreneurial spirit of others even with the smallest budgets.

For as little as $1 you can make a donation to one of the thousands of Kickstarter projects that are popping up every month.

I’ve supported about a half dozen Kickstarter projects now and plan on supporting many more in the future.

However, in this post I want to talk about something a bit different – micro-loans.

Thanks to websites like Kiva, you can now offer micro-loans for as little as $25 to help entrepreneurs worldwide to start their businesses.

Basically how it works is you make a deposit with Kiva for any amount of money you want to start with.

It can be as little as $25.

And then you choose one of the many people or groups on the website who are looking for loans.

Each loan that is made has a repayment schedule, and the majority of people repay their loans.

Once the loan is repaid you can then take the money and loan it out to another person.

Here are a few examples of a few entrepreneurs I recently supported through Kiva.

#1 – Sarvinoz from Kurgantyube, Tajikistan

This mother of 3 was looking for a $600 loan so that she could buy a computer for her new business – a computer center which will offer different computer services to local people.

This loan is fully funded now, so she has gotten her $600 for the computer.

#2 – Benito Antonio from Chigorodo, Colombia

 

Benito is a 51 year-old man looking for a $675 loan to start a vitamin and natural supplements business.

This campaign is currently 11% funded.

#3 – Maria Consuelo from Marinilla, Columbia

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Maria is a 46 year old mother of three who wants to start a sewing workshop and was looking for $1,675 to buy sewing machines and thread, needles etc. to start the business.

This campaign is also already fully funded.

Why I Like the Kiva Idea Better Than Charity

There are just a few examples of some campaigns I’ve supported on Kiva.

The reason I particularly like the idea behind Kiva is that these campaigns support entrepreneurs who want to better their lives by starting their own businesses, but who just don’t have access to the financial resources you and I might have due to where they live in the world.

The really cool thing is that the Kiva loans are NOT just handouts, they are loans that these people get to pay back over time as their businesses make money.

Energetically speaking, things can get pretty complicated when you’re dealing with situations where people are given a handout, charity, etc. as it can actually hurt them more than helping them by supporting a welfare type mentality.

But with Kiva you’re not just giving someone a handout.  You’re just participating in offering them a short-term loan, so that they can start their business, and then pay back the money.

In this way way, you’re sending out positive energy when you participate in the loan process, and you’re also helping them to build their confidence over time as they pay back the loan and feel good about it.

How I Pick Candidates

There are many different ways that people choose who to give loans to on Kiva.

Personally, I go through the candidates and I look for specific common threads between the people who I’m lending money to and situations that relate to my life.

For example, when I was a little kid during one Christmas the ONLY thing I wanted was a computer.

This was during the days when computers still hooked up to your TV and long before there was something called the Internet.

That Christmas, all I wanted was a computer but I was told it wasn’t something my family could afford at that time.

Somehow though, my parents managed to come up with the money to buy me that computer and I remember the amazing feeling I had that Christmas morning.

In my imagination I imagined there being so many different things I could DO with that computer, for weeks before I got it.

Once I actually got it, that Tandy Color Computer was what I actually learned to type and program computers on.

It led me to embrace computers, programming, and all the different ways I’ve made money with computers over the last 20+ years can all be traced back to me getting that computer on that Chirstmas morning.

So when I saw how Sarvinoz wanted to get a loan for $600 so that she could start a computer center business in her town, it reminded me of how awesome I felt when I got my first computer.

By linking my personal experiences with these people’s campaigns and profiles, with each loan I make I am also sending out that money with an incredible amount of GRATITUDE to the Universe for all the support it has already given me in my life.

I believe that money is just energy, and so when I fund a micro-loan by sending that energy to that person, and I wrap that energy (money) in a veil of GRATITUDE I also know that the money will carry with it an energy that will attract positivity and gratitude in their lives.

Contrast that with how most people make charitable donations.  Usually they see some commercial on TV where they are made to feel guilty or bad about someone else on the planet starving or dying from some disease, and they feel the energy of guilt and sadness and so the money they donate to these charities also carries with it the energy of guilt and sadness.

I prefer not to donate money to charities out of guilt or sadness for someone else, because that just creates those types of feelings in the people receiving the money.

With Kiva, I choose my candidates carefully and I make sure that when I read their stories and when I look at their pictures I feel GOOD about lending them money towards their campaign.

By doing this, I’m supporting THEIR entrepreneurial venture, and by the Law of Giving and Receiving, the Universe showers me with support towards *MY* entrepreneurial ventures. 🙂

If you haven’t taken a look at Kiva before, you can check out their site here.

If you haven’t taken a look at crowdfunding on Kickstarter, you can check out their site here.

If you want to join my team on Kiva (Team Free You Now) – you can do so at this link.