It’s always been interesting to me to me how everyone focuses with the end goal in mind. Mind you this is good, but it is not how you will accomplish your goal or task at hand. You need to reverse engineer what you want. Once you’ve mastered this one aspect, everything else will suddenly fall into place for you. Read on to see how…

What do I mean by reverse engineer?

As I said, you already know what you want to accomplish, that’s the easy part. In order to achieve your goals, you need to know how to get there. All the positive thinking in the world means absolutely nothing without proper and immediate implementation.

If your objective is to drive a car… what is the first step?

• Many people will say you need to first start the engine. WRONG!
• Some people will say you need to open the door. WRONG!

The first step to drive a car is first make the DECISION you want to drive the car and the the next action is to first have a car to drive… either one you own or someone elses. Once you have the car, you must then open the door, then sit down, now take the key put it into the ignition, turn the key, put the car into drive and then press the gas.

Remember.. the key was to drive a car.. not drive it well which takes a bit more explaining. :) 

Just as I have broken down how to drive a car, you must break down what it is you want to accomplish. Nothing is too small to leave out and everything starts with one thing and that is a decision that you want to do whatever it is.

Start Reverse Engineering your life and your business today. 

It’s almost the end of the year and as many people do, started to reflect upon 2006 and what I can do to make it my most successful year to date. I receive countless emails for requests for interviews as well as many question about what one topic consistently throughout the year. The question is this… what is the key to success? Here’s my answer…

The Key To Success?

I’ve thought long and hard about this subject. I have spent thousands of dollars researching this as I am sure many of you have. I believe I have found the answer which is consistent, universal and which will work for anyone.

Here it is my ULTIMATE KEY TO SUCCESS…

Success is derterminded by NOT what you do in public. Success is dertermined by what you do in private when no one else is around watching you.

Think about this for a moment. It’s easy to do what is right or what is expected when you have other people watching your every move and you have the pressures of what society and social behavior guiding your actions.

The true mark which will determine if you will succeed in business or in life is determined what you do when you are alone. This holds most true if you are self-employed. You don’t have the time managed struture of a job and literally no one telling you what do and when to do it. 

Voip (Voice Over Internet Protocol) service are jumping up all over the place. Google has Google Talk. Yahoo has their Instant Messenger. Once of the most popular PC phone applications is Skype. Literally millions of people are using Skype to make calls to computer to computer or even from computers to land lines. When I travel to places like Sinapore, Australia, or England I use Skype to call back home. It’s quick easy and honestly you can’t beat the price of it. The question is… is there something better out there than Skype? Here’s what I just found and currently testing…

The program is called Gizmo. Gizmo Project uses your internet connection (broadband or dial-up) to make calls to other computers. With the click of a mouse, you’re connected to friends, family, and colleagues anywhere on earth. It’s just that simple. You talk clearly. For as long as you want. For free.

And with inexpensive add-ons like Call In and Call Out, you can talk to any telephone–mobile or landline–on the planet. Any phone? Yes.

Download Gizmo Project, and suddenly it all clicks–some calls are better online.

Gizmo – A free phone for your computer

When dealing with customers in business there are really only a few critical laws you you must follow in order provide exceptional service to your customers.  One of the most critical of these Laws is the Law of Expectation. Ask yourself this one question… "What do my customers or prospects EXPECT from me?" Do you know? Chances are you have probably never thought it about before until now, even though this is mission critical to your business and specifically your marketing and customer follow up.

The Dictionary defines Expecation as this… 

ex·pec·ta·tion n.

1. 1. The act of expecting.
   2. Eager anticipation: eyes shining with expectation.
2. The state of being expected.
3. 1. Something expected: a result that did not live up to expectations.
   2. expectations Prospects, especially of success or gain.
4. Statistics.
   1. The expected value of a random variable.
   2. The mean of a random variable.

When you think of expectation it goes hand in hand with the word process. What is the initial process of getting a new prospect? What is the process of when a customer purchase from you?

One of the main reasons why people do not buy is "Fear of the Unknown". Simply put, they do not know what is going to happen next. Example… if they give you their name and email address, what happens next? What can they EXPECT to happen. I know you are thinking… how can they expect anything if this is their first dealing with you. Right? From previous experiences they have had, they currently have a level of expecation. If the process varies according to what they have previously experienced they instantly put ouside of their comfort zone.

So the real question is how do we overcome this?

Honestly, it’s quite simple… we simply tell them what to expect next. This is certainly the most obvious move once we think about it. Simply guide them each and every step of the way using audio or video and any other method which will allow you to communicate the "next steps" to your customers.

The bottom line is this… inform your customers what is going to happen next and they will feel more comfortable with you and ultimately purchase more products from you.

If you run your own blog and you use FireFox, then I have something that will blow you away. I just downloaded this extension from Performancing and it’s freaking incredible. I have been looking for something like this forever. Basically it splits your browser and shows a split window with a built in blog editor I posted this post with it.  Here’s what their site says…

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox. Just hit F8 or click the little pencil icon at the bottom right to bring up the blog editor and easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.

Performancing for Firefox is for Firefox 1.5 and above only. We’ve made use of a number of cool new features within Firefox 1.5, so you’ll need that version of Firefox to try it.

Performancing for Firefox | Performancing.com

If you are marketing online, I’m sure you’ve run across the problem of formatting your emails to wrap at 65 characters and making it look properly in most email clients. In my online ventures today, I found this tool which I found very easy to use and I would definately recommend you also give it a try. http://www.formatbluesoftware.com/ Give it a try I"m sure you will find it very usefull for your business.

In this article we will discuss a relatively new internet tool – the Blog. Blog (also known as Weblog) is traditionally a webpage where pre-surfer or a blogger “logs” all pages he/she finds interesting. In other words, it is a Web page that contains brief, chronologically arranged items of information. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author.

Weblogs provide a series of annotated links to items such as news stories, and often include personal rants. They are maintained by one person, most commonly someone who is involved in Web design or some other tech-related field.

A blog is often a mixture of what is happening on a particular website and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people. Blogs can be used to introduce products to potential customers.

People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process.

Blogs as a marketing tool

Blogs offer huge marketing potential. They are highly strategic tools that can strengthen relationships, share knowledge, increase collaboration, and improve branding. Besides, blogs can represent the real voice of the website.

A weblog can take the form of a diary, a news service (or summaries of and links to current news items on a topic), a collection of links to other Web sites, a series of book reviews or products, reports of activity on a project, the journal of an expedition, and much more. Businesses can use this tool to effectively advertise their products or services.

One of the most interesting ways to use a weblog is by allowing it to function as a discussion forum for customers of your products or services. In this case, the webmaster can give posting rights to other people – visitors and customers, and their posts may or may not be reviewed before they are published to the Web page. Customers, in such a way can post favorable comments about the websites offerings. Some weblogs are set up in such a way that only the owner or the owner and certain other people have posting rights, but anyone else can add comments to the posts.

Weblogs when used with newsletters present immense marketing opportunities:

• Articles within newsletters can be linked to a blog, extending life and creating a massive conversation.
• You can offer a bidirectional forum to customers to get true, personal opinions on your products and services.
• Company experts can start a blog and become industry experts, helping your company edge out competition and, through this interactive forum,draw customers into another exchange of information and thoughts.
• The beauty of this interplay is you can layer your blog with editorial controls.

How to create a Blog?

The majority of weblogs are now created using software or services designed specifically for this purpose. Some of the software is free - and some of the organizations that provide weblog software will also provide free server space to house a weblog so that it is publicly accessible on the Internet. There are also commercial versions of some of the free software; these commercial versions often provide more features. Some weblog software is available only as commercial software. Alternatively, bloggers can create and maintain their weblog using free software or a free weblog service, but use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to load the resulting weblog to their own Website.

There are many blogging softwares available easily on the Internet. One of the most popular weblogger is “Wordpress” which can be downloaded for free at http://www.wordpress.org. Most webloggers simplify the process of Website creation. However, they do require basic knowledge of FTP, Website structures and a few technical terms. Besides, creating an advanced weblog requires knowledge of HTML.

So get out there and start your own Blog…it’s free,easy and can work seamlessly with the rest of your website or newsletter.   Until next time…