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If you've tried to use networking to get more referrals, you've probably experienced something like this: You spend time and gas money to drive to an event, give your elevator speech, listen to everyone else'selevator pitches, exchange business cards, give and receive promises that “if I meet someone who needs you, I’ll send them your way”, hopefully follow up with your potential referral network members, and then... nothing happens. You try again next week, because maybe repetition is the key. You give the same pitch everyone's... Read More

When you're starting or growing a business, having the right tools, training, services and resources can make your job exponentially easier. To help you accomplish that goal faster, I've made a new page on my website with descriptions and links for the software and services I use to: 1. Get more referrals and get paid for the referrals I make, WITHOUT spending hours attending networking events 2. Attract clients through social media, without getting sucked into the black hole of my timeline feed 3. Create attractive lead capture... Read More

ByJock Purtle When you first decide to launch your own business, the chances are that you'll be full of excitement and expectations. There's something wonderfully freeing about making the decision to launch your own company and bring your incredible ideas to life. Unfortunately, while there are many people out there who dream of creating fruitful ventures, only a handful achieve the success that they crave. In a world where everyone has an opportunity to launch their own company online, it's the entrepreneurs that put extra time and... Read More

Guest blogging can be highly lucrative, if you do it the right way and in the right places. Not only does it boost your search engine rank by creating backlinks to your site, but sharing your expertise with other people's audiences exposes you to potential clients who wouldn't have known you existed otherwise. I've personally made well over $10,000 as a direct result of my guest blogging efforts. But as a site owner, I've also seen would-be guest bloggers make mistakes that waste their time and that of the businesses... Read More

By Chris Mercer I’m naturally a very agreeable person. It’s because I like it when people are happy – even more so when I’m the reason they feel that way. At the same time, at one point that sentiment nearly destroyed me. ​There are many reasons for that, but one of the biggest ones was that I was spending all of my time dancing to other people’s tunes and never getting the things that were important to me done. Then I learned how to say ‘no’ and everything changed. Admittedly, it wasn’t easy at first. It caused... Read More

Another business owner recently asked me, "How do you keep your business profitable?" Today, I'm going to share the answers I gave them: 7 short, sweet tips for staying profitable. Business Profitability Tip #1: Don't stop marketing. Some business owners keep marketing until their schedules are full or their income is at a comfortable level, then they stop. As a result, if one of their clients stops working with them or reduces their purchases, they end up in a financial crisis. Even if you already have as many clients as you need,... Read More

I recently had an interesting conversation with some of my fellow writers who were struggling with social media addiction. They wanted to focus on creating content, but they felt compelled to continuously check their notifications on their favorite social channels. As a result, they were struggling to actually produce content, because they were spending so much time online. But as I pointed out, social media addiction isn't 100% a bad thing. As a creative, introverted copywriter, I have the opposite problem: if left to my natural... Read More

Once in a while, children's movies give us important reminders about what it takes to succeed. I was recently watching the "Married Life" montage in Up , and I noticed a pattern in the way Carl and Ellie pursued their shared dream of going to Paradise Falls. This pattern is reflective of the way many people pursue their dreams, so I decided to delve into it in today's blog post. This article will contain spoilers for Up , so if you haven't seen it yet and you care about spoilers, then go watch this great movie and come back when... Read More

Sometimes, you need to focus for a long period of time without getting distracted or bored. Whether it's writing a blog post, mapping out the content for a group program, finishing a project for a client, or anything else that requires a protracted period of mental concentration, I've found that having pleasant, non-distracting music in the background can be invaluable. It helps me to concentrate, and it makes the task a lot more fun. If you need help to concentrate on your longer and more mentally taxing tasks, here are some of my... Read More

If you've ever surfed, boogieboarded, or even just swam in the ocean when the waves were large enough to curl over on themselves, you probably know that the impact zone can be one of the scariest places on Earth. If you've been too busy working on your business to tangle with the surf or to look up the phrase "impact zone", it's the part of the ocean where a sufficiently large swell of water flattens out vertically, curls forward, and then slams down in an explosion that instantly transforms soft water into a hard wall of white... Read More