Mastering Your Inner Game

We’re going to talk about the inner game of building your business. I believe that the inner game is simply all-important. “The inner game” is a new term for a classic idea explained many different times, many different ways by virtually every success educator, and even philosophers.

In the book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill reveals the secret using the words, “thoughts are things.” Dennis Waitley has worked with U.S. astronauts and Olympic athletes on their inner games. Author Tim Galloway explores the ideas of his books, The Inner Game of Golf, The Inner Game of Tennis and The Inner Game of Selling.

Interestingly, there is a never-ending connection between the inner game in sport and the inner game in business, allowing experts like Waitley, Galloway, ex-quarterback Fran Tarkenton and golfer Arnold Palmer, among others, to step back and forth between expounding on success techniques in the athletic and business worlds.

In all cases, these people speak much more about attitudes than aptitudes for a good reason. Surveys, studies and research consistently reaffirm that 85% of your success will depend on attitudinal factors, 15% on aptitude. Yet in your formal education and in most continuing education, the emphasis is on the opposite – 15% on attitude, 85% on aptitude.

Certainly technical knowledge and skills are important. In your profession, you must deliver excellence based on your staying up to date in techniques, products, materials and ideas.

However, such excellence alone will never build a successful, growing, profitable business. The excellence that will is an excellence created and sustained in your own mind. This is the most difficult, least tangible aspect of building your business that we’ll ever talk about, but it is also probably the most important.

Yeah, but what is it? So what is the inner game? The way I see it, the inner game can be broken down into four major components:

• Self esteem
• Self image
• Self confidence
• Self discipline

Quality in these four areas is a necessary foundation to personal and professional success.

Self Esteem

Self Esteem is essentially your feelings of worth. How much success do you deserve? How much money should you make? How much is your time worth? Here, briefly, are seven ideas for strengthening self-esteem:

1. Establish worthwhile, meaningful goals and values.
2. Take massive action to get your own financial house in order if it isn’t now. Reduce debt, bring expenses under income, and invest every single month.
3. Give yourself recognition for each and every accomplishment.
4. Manage your time productively. Procrastination and disorganization rob many people of their self-esteem.
5. Associate with positive-minded, happy people who encourage and motivate you. Don’t hang out with folks who are negative, unhappy, critical or jealous.
6. Continually acquire new know-how in you profession and in the areas of business, sales and communication.
7. Regularly invest in improving your office and home environments, tools and equipment, wardrobe and other external things that impact on your attitudes.

Self Image

Self-image is how you see yourself; it’s who you think you are. Your self-image is controlled mostly by self-imposed limits. Very few people ever perform beyond those self-imposed limits.

A salesman whose father never earned more than $25,000 a year in his life may well see himself as a $25,000 a year guy. And he will subconsciously screw up the opportunities to earn more that come his way.

In the financial area, the controversial Reverend Ike calls this a money rejection syndrome, and I am convinced that such a thing definitely exists. One man I know, who made over $100 million in his business in its first three years from scratch, had gone broke in business several times before. After the three years of remarkable success, he said, “Making $100 million is about the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Believing it could happen to me was the hard part that took 20 years.”

Your self-image was created and is sustained through self talk, the use of affirmations – and that is also the method you can use to alter and modify your self image, literally as you wish.

I call the process self image goal setting, because most people who set goals set only “to get” and “to have” goals; they fail to set “to be” goals. I encourage you to balance your approach to goal setting by including some self-image modification.

Self Discipline

Self-Disciple, the fourth component of the inner game, is quite possibly the most important.

Success lecturer Jim Rohn says that most people do not associate lack of discipline with lack of success.

Most people think of failure as one earth-shattering event, such as a company going out of business or a home being foreclosed on. This, however, Jim Rohn says, is how failure happens.

Failure is rarely the result of some isolated event; rather, it is a consequence of a long list of accumulated little failures, which happen as a result of too little discipline. I agree. I find that most people understandably tend to look everywhere but in the mirror for the sources of their failures as well as the victories.

I’m here to tell you it’s not the town you’re in, not your location, not the economy, not the weather, not your competitors – it’s your own discipline that makes the difference between excellence or mediocrity, between getting by or getting rich.

It’s interesting to observe professionals. I often say to my associates, “Let me watch the professional’s behavior before, during and after the seminar, and I’ll guess his annual income within a few thousand dollars.” It’s actually pretty easy to do.

Jim Rohn says that discipline is the bridge between thought and accomplishment.

I’d encourage you to take the self-discipline challenge very seriously.

Select those areas that you know are your weakest links – timely paperwork, punctuality, daily self-improvement study, being happy and enthusiastic first thing in the morning, whatever your personal stumbling blocks are – and apply new, tough, demanding disciplines to yourself in those areas.

You’ll find that success in these particular areas of your day-to-day life will roll over into greater success in all parts of you life.

For example, let’s look at the ultimate game players – professional football players. A pro ball player knows that every single moment of his on-the-job performance is recorded on film, to be replayed and reviewed later in stop-action slow motion, for critique by his superiors and co-workers.

If your day was filmed and reviewed, how would you feel during the replay?

Of course, the professional football players who have to put up with this sort of thing are highly paid.

Yes, the inner game stuff is tough. If being a big success were easy, everybody would be one. You’ve got to decide what you really want to be, do, have, accomplish – and decide whether or not you’re willing to adhere to the disciplines necessary to get it.

In order to have the opportunity to accomplish virtually any goals you honestly desire, you must accept the related responsibility for everything you get.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up.  His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world.  Get a FREE gift from Dan Kennedy here.

Mastering Your Inner Game is a post from: Darren Crawford

My father told me that the reason doctors whack babies on the ass immediately after they are born is to communicate a fundamental truth they need to know to survive: outside the womb, life is tough. (Do doctors still do this? I don’t know. I’d guess not; today, it’d be viewed as infant abuse and threatening to the tiny soul’s fragile self-esteem, like, say, playing dodge ball and keeping score a bit later in life. But in 1954, the year of my birth, the Doc at Deaconess Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio delivered that whack.)

Everybody is presented with countless opportunities to quit. We stumble into places far most hostile than we anticipated – my daughter’s full term in the Peace Corps, in some godforsaken jungle with rats on her tin she’s roof, peeing through gaps, that leaps to mind. We sign on for things that quickly seem more challenging and difficult than we’d hoped for – maybe putting to use what is being provided to you by the publisher of this; maybe putting together furniture from IKEA.  We walk into a dark alley, perhaps stupidly or ignorantly or arrogantly, figuratively of course, and then get the crap beaten out of us, literally, and limp home, humiliated. The list of celebrated, influential and rich entrepreneurs with at least one embarrassing bankruptcy or very close call, past and contemporary, is long, long indeed. I, myself, am on the list, and in very fine company. And if the doc’s message is true, that life is tough, life for those who claw their way to the peak of the business success and money pyramids is even tougher. Entrepreneurship is all about managing a never-ending in-flow of crap, and diligently looking for the pony occasionally in it; about converting adversity to opportunity when you can, and not being overly troubled when you can’t. And, of course, not quitting.

Quitters are very uninteresting. What’s interesting and instructive is those who are unabashed, who are quickly resilient, who achieve redemption, who have a greater and grander next act. Over the long haul, this ‘resiliency’ may be the single most important of all personal characteristics. How well you can take a punch. How quickly you can recover. How you can weather storms of criticism or humiliation. How adept you are at reinvention. How courageously and creatively you respond to difficulty. If you want to cultivate a characteristic, this is the one. And one way to do it is with little stuff. The day to day. A lot of people are easily derailed. Easily put into a funk lasting hours or even days. Easily compromise their agenda. The breeze from a missed punch is sufficient to send them to the canvas. They wonder why they don’t get more accomplished. It’s “their glass jaw.”

At least be honest whenever you quit – especially if your reason is “gee, where’s the Easy Button, anyway? Don’t see it here. I’ll go look over there.”  That kind of quitting isn’t about the place you walked into, the activity you started, the toolbox you opened up, the learning curve and time required. It’s about YOU.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up.  His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world. Get a FREE gift from Dan Kennedy here.

The Truth about Quitting is a post from: Darren Crawford

by Dan S. Kennedy 

Oscar Wilde said: “It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.” There’s nothing wrong with both, of course. Those who insist that money doesn’t buy happiness are usually short on money, ignorant of means of getting any, and selling their philosophy hard because misery loves company. Mark Twain wrote that, actually, no one can stand prosperity – another man’s. Money can’t buy happiness, but absence of money, endless worry about it, and envy and resentment of those who have it most certainly buys unhappiness. There are reasonably happy, almost poor people. I know some. But they are rare. The lack of financial security wears a person down. I’d also note, making a great deal of money by honest means does not guarantee unhappiness. I know quite a few 7-figure earners and rich folks who are quite happy. And it shouldn’t just be about personal happiness anyway – such a childish pursuit. There is some ethical obligation for being here, to be constructive, productive and contribute, whether by creating magnificent art, or writing an influential book, or building a company and creating jobs, or amassing and being a good steward of wealth, or being the best schoolteacher, nurse, cop, taxi driver or whatever you can be, and being willing to do tasks and bear responsibilities that don’t necessarily produce happiness-as-you-go in order to accomplish significant things. Money is not the only measurement of such accomplishment, but it is certainly a valid measurement; money is a mirror reflection of commercial value created. Those who resent the rich are often, truly, resentful of their own failure to create such value. It’s not a constructive emotion, and others’ having and expressing it ought not influence you in the least.

One of the great benefits of my work is the up-close relationships I have with people I categorize as Renegade Millionaires, and beyond that, getting paid to be keen observer of many others similarly striped. An interesting thing I find about them is, compared to most, little time or thought or angst given to the question of happiness; and compared to most, much more time and thought and energy and, yes, angst given to achievement.

It’s easy to lose sight of the central question: are you choosing goals for yourself that are significant and rewarding to you, and progressively achieving them? If you went to Harvard Law School and now choose not to practice law and instead live as an itinerant cowboy, sleeping under the stars and drinking campfire coffee from a rusty tin cup, and you’re honestly, authentically happy about that, more power to ya – unless you have unpaid loans and debts to family, or institutions for your education, or other responsibilities that must be honored and discharged. If you make millions and wish to spend much of it on wine, women and wine, and it’s your money, and you do no harm to others, have at it. It’s unlikely, though, that such things absent achievement and contribution will long sustain happiness, but you’re welcome to try. The trick in it all is honesty with self. Earl Nightingale observed, that when it’s all said and done, each person is about as happy or unhappy as they choose to be. That’s true as far as it goes. Happiness is amazingly subjective, but not entirely subjective. For one person, never even having to think about money makes for happiness. For another, with no economic necessity, still, redeeming a coupon and getting a good deal makes them happy. But there is fact: achievement contributes to happiness; lack of achievement contributes to unhappiness. Envy contributes only to unhappiness. And much criticism masks envy.

Your business is YOUR business. Never forget it. That’s the core philosophy behind so much of my work, including books I hereby self-servingly but also sincerely suggest you get and read: NO B.S. RUTHLESS MANAGEMENT OF PEOPLE AND PROFITS; NO B.S. TIME MANAGEMENT FOR ENTREPRENEURS; and NO B.S. WEALTH ATTRACTION IN THE NEW ECONOMY. As arrogant as it is to say, they just may change your life.

So, by all means, seek out role models, inspiring examples, teachers, mentors, advisors, experts – validated by relevant, successful opinion – and learn from and sift and sort and consider all they have to offer. But ultimately know that The Renegade Millionaire Way is by very definition the finding of one’s own way.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up.  His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world.  Get a FREE gift from Dan Kennedy here.

On Achievement, Prosperity, and Envy is a post from: Darren Crawford

Behind every great entrepreneurial success story that everybody knows, there is an untold story  – and it’s usually more interesting and a lot more instructive. They all tend to have a few common elements, though. One of which is ugly grunt work.

Years back, I spent some time with Bob Stupak, a true Renegade marketer. He took a one floor, slots only dump at the downtown end of the Strip and built it into the big, tall, flashy Vegas World Hotel & Casino, now The Stratosphere – without taking on debt, building it one floor at a time as he had the cash to do it; generating the cash by mail-order selling of pre-paid $399 vacation packages. His full-page ads for his Vegas World package featuring 2 nights’ lodging, meals, drinks, shows and $1,000 of ‘house money’ to gamble with for $399 were seen everywhere: Parade Magazine in Sunday newspapers, Playboy, TV Guide. People on certain lists received elaborate direct-mail pieces selling the package, and over several years, millions of those sales letters were sent. His was and remains the only Las Vegas Strip hotel literally built by direct-response advertising. Now, the untold story: where Bob got the two most valuable prospect lists he mailed most aggressively to…

Every guest got a fancy welcome package, which included four full-color postcards with a photo of Vegas World and a display of One Million Dollars In Cash on one side. They were wrapped with a note telling guests to address them with notes to friends back home and drop them in the specially marked mail slot in the lobby, and Bob’d buy the stamps. He did not mention he would copy down the names and addresses before mailing out the postcards. He did not mention that he would soon afterward mail a letter telling these folks that they were invited to get the same great vacation their friends had recently enjoyed for just $399, plus get a free spin of the Million Dollar Slot Machine and be guaranteed to at least win a diamond-like ring or a little color TV or some other nifty prize. He mailed these prospects repetitively and persistently, and told me that he converted upwards from 20%. So, if 300 guests turned in 4 postcards, that’s 1,200 fresh prospects every couple of days, about 15,000 fresh prospects a month for which no cost was incurred in acquiring them but a postcard and a stamp, and how could you get better prospects?  His other method of list-building was nearly as ingenious, and just as troublesome. Its details don’t matter, to make the point: Renegade Millionaires go to trouble to accomplish their goals that most people won’t. That’s the untold story of extraordinary achievement. Nothing elegant, nothing efficient about Bob’s system. Just effective.

I am 56 years old and I imagine my perception is skewed by age, but I still don’t think I’ve ever seen as many people in search of the mythical Easy Button at any other time of my life. The explosive proliferation of accessible technology has acted as gasoline on this fire. But it doesn’t change the fact of society’s money pyramid: 1% rich at the top, 4% doing well, 15% doing okay, 80% doing poorly – principally because the 1% are willing to do a lot more, and a lot more troublesome stuff than the 80% are. While the 80% are hunting for Easy Buttons, the 1% are working.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up.  His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world. Get a FREE gift from Dan Kennedy here.

The Untold Stories is a post from: Darren Crawford

Government does not work because it is more about royalty remaining royalty than it is about results, so the only time it gets anything of real importance accomplished is in moments of severe crisis, when all the royals are equally threatened. Business works – when it works – because of an opposite operating system. Small business works better than big business, because its leaders have little fear of being deposed; they are the owners, a status actually higher than royals (which is why royals despise business owners), so they can act without political considerations. For that reason, they are often proactive instead of only reactive. Because they deal in real rather than fictitious numbers, have a limit on debt they can get their hands on, and eat profit, they often make intelligent and rational decisions. Many work at defusing problems at their tiniest, in their infancy, rather than postponing doing so as long as possible, until the monster has grown big enough to eat them. If you stand back and observe all this, you can see what works and what doesn’t work quite clearly, and make your personal behavioral and business practices choices accordingly. If you will.

Felix Dennis is a Renegade Millionaire – actually worth about $500-million, which he manufactured for himself, entirely on his own, from scratch. He is one of Britain’s richest citizens. In his newest book, The Narrow Road, he tells more blunt truth about what works in the making of money, more succinctly than any other credible person I’ve ever read on the subject. I am more simpatico with his conclusions than I am with anyone else’s. Like me but more so, Dennis is offensive to many and frightening to many more. Truth is rarely pleasing or reassuring, except to the very tiny number of people who prefer it to being pleased or reassured. I suggest getting and reading this little book, but in a well-lit room, not in gloom inhabited by scary shadows.

Unlike most authors of most success genre content, he makes no attempt to deliver ideas that will be popular with a large audience. This mirrors my own approach as an author, spanning, now 32 years and more than 20 published books. (www.NoBSBooks.com), My scariest is No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profits.

One very big difference between the path most are on versus The Renegade Millionaire Way is mixed agendas vs. laser-focused dedication to what works. The Renegade Millionaire Way is simple: find what works and use it. (That’s what being part of a great mastermind group is all about. Why coaching is important.)  Others’ way is far more complicated. It is cluttered with: what will people think of me? am I permitted to do this? but we’ve never done it this way. we should do get more consensus. my peers are all rushing off to do the new thing and I don’t want to be left behind. will this make me popular? liked? or gossiped about? what if it sparks criticism about me on Google?  Ordinary business owners are trying to run fast through a dense forest of all these concerns, thus bumping into trees at every turn, spending a lot of time lost and confused. Renegade Millionaires have left that forest and are running on a clear, paved path.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up.  His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world. Get a FREE gift from Dan Kennedy here.

The Narrow Path is a post from: Darren Crawford

I know a Doctor who started a procedure of giving fresh, long-stemmed red roses to his women patients who showed up for their appointment on time, or paid their bills on time, or referred another patient. “Funny thing,” he told me. “We no longer have patients missing appointments. Our collections have improved. Referrals are up. And, some guys are asking how they can get roses, too!

Here are a few specific ideas you might adopt, as ways of saying thank you:

• Keep customers’ birthdays on file and send cards and/or mail gifts.
• Send Thanksgiving cards or letters. * Make it a habit to drop a personal thank-you note in the mail each day, to at least one customer.
• Send a gift certificate or discount certificate to a customer who makes an unusually large purchase.
• Host a “Customer Appreciation Event” – a Christmas party, a backyard bar-b que.
• Have an occasional closed-to-the-public, preferred customer sale.
• Drop in personally on your best customers, with a surprise gift.

I figured it up just the other day; last year, personally and for my various businesses combined, I signed checks for well over one million dollars, in payment for goods and services to all sorts of people and companies. And I don’t care what anybody says – a million bucks is a lot of money. Yet, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of the recipients of all that money who have expressed any gratitude in any formal kind of way. Only one of them found out and recognized my birthday.

Just saying “thanks” is a big step ahead of the competition today.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up.  His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world. Get a FREE gift from Dan Kennedy here.

Gratitude As A Marketing Strategy is a post from: Darren Crawford

Each year, the Chick-Fil-A restaurant chain, famous for its tongue-in-cheek ads featuring cows urging folks to “eat more chicken”, has a Cow Appreciation Day. Customers who come in dressed up as cows eat and drink for free. Anybody wearing anything with a cow pattern – hat, cap, shirt – gets a sandwich free. Last year, 400,000 people came in dressed up as cows. The guy who started this chain was a bona-fide Renegade Millionaire. Even though many of their shops are in malls, they’re all closed on Sundays nationwide, because he believes in rest and time with family on the Sabbath. If a mall won’t let them close, they don’t go in the mall at all. Hasn’t hurt them. In 2011, at mid-year, they were up system-wide by about 12% in same store sales vs. prior year, the chain is growing, the company profitable. I believe it’s the founder’s son running the show now. I saw him on Fox-Financial, cheerfully and goofily dressed up as a cow, pitching Cow Appreciation Day.

A lot of people let ego, often undeserved ego, stand in the way of achievement. They envy others their wealth, but aren’t willing to totally put themselves out there to get it for themselves.  On the other hand, a lot of people operate without underlying principles and a strong navigational system, so they are easily blown off course. The folks running this particular company have clear, firm values. One is that customers have fun. That’s something missing from too many businesses: nobody’s having any fun. The experience of being a customer is, at best, ordinary; at worst, terrible.

I like to ask business owners what their business is about. What they’re doing. Small-thinking shopkeepers always answer in terms of core deliverables. We clean carpets, we cut hair, we sell insurance. Slightly more sophisticated students of marketing tend to give boilerplate marketing message answers: we help people protect their financial futures. Executives at big dumb companies usually quote the vaguest of mission statements. But there’s little juice in any of that. At one point, Trump set out tochange the skyline of New York City. Well, that’s something. When you tell people that’s what we’re all about here, you can capture their imagination. That has juice. I set out in 1975 to introduce more people to ‘success education’ than any other person or company ever had, and I believe I’ve done that, although I’m not quitting just yet. That has juice. And it’s navigational; you can ask about everything you might do, is it fulfilling that purpose?  It’s good to be about something significant and inspirational. Then, when somebody asks you what you do, and you tell them, they get that you’re about something interesting and will want to know more about it, may be interested in helping you, or being a part of it somehow, if only as a customer. One of the essential ingredients of the Magnetic Marketing® that I’ve taught is creating something that is magnetic. Most businesspeople are thinking too much about how to sell their stuff – not enough about to make it and themselves magnetically attractive, so the selling of stuff occurs naturally.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up.  His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre in the world. Get a FREE gift from Dan Kennedy here.

Being About Something More Than Chicken is a post from: Darren Crawford

Kill procrastination

Kill Procrastination is a post from: Darren Crawford

I tend to deliver single download information products in a membership area.  It helps to protect the downloads and gives a better experience for the client.  These are single product downloads and not recurring or subscription payments (which DigiResults does not handle at this time).

Surprisingly I didn’t find any posts about how to integrate the two platforms so I emailed their support.  This is the result of the wonderful assistance of Lynette Crase and Dominic Baggot at DigiResults Support broken down into bite-sized chunks.  To integrate DigiResults with WishList Member is actually pretty simple once I got the low down.

Assumptions: I will assume you have your WishList Member site setup and membership levels assigned.  If not, you will need at least one membership level to make this process work.

Integrate DigiResults with WishList Member:

1. In WishList Member go to the Integration tab and make sure you are on Shopping Cart Integration.
2. Choose Clickbank under the Select System option.
3. Copy the Thank You URL to a text file.
4. Copy the Secret Word to the same text file.

5. Copy the membership level SKU to that text file (copy from the ?sku=1234567890)

6. In WishList Member now click the MEMBERSHIP LEVELS tab and copy the Registration URL for the appropriate product.  Paste it in the text file and add the ?sku=1234567890 to the end of it.  Obviously change 1234567890 with your number.

7. Switch browser tabs to DigiResults, login and choose Manage then Products.
8. Either List New Product or click an existing product to edit it.
9. Make sure all the relevant details are setup in DigiResults such as name, price, commission, sales page url and support email.
10. In DigiResults paste the WishList Member registration URL from step 6 to the Thank you page box with the ?sku= stuff added.  This will ensure they land on the right page to get registered for that product.
11. Click Advanced Settings and expand.
12. For your direct receipt URL paste the url from step 3.
13. At the end of the Direct Receipt URL make sure you have the ?sku= and then the SKU number from step 5.  It should look something like:

http://yourdomainname.com/index.php/register/CHfqy7?sku=12345678

14. Now in DigiResults click EDIT ACCOUNT at the top right of the page
15. Under Advanced Settings you will see DIRECT RECEIPT SECRET CODE.  You have two choices here.  Please fully read and understand before proceeding…

a) Not recommended: Using the secret code from WishList Member you paste it here and update.  If this is the first product that you are integrating then this is fine.  If you have multiple products, skip down to step b.

b) Use the Direct Receipt secret code on DigiResults by copying it and changing the Secret Word code on the Integration page (see step 4) of WishList Member.  If you have multiple products on DigiResults and they are integrating with WishList Member then you want to use a single code across all your Wishlist installs.  If you change the code on DigiResults it will break any other products that were using it.  So use the DigiResults secret code as the master.

That’s it.  You are all set.  You can now integrate DigiResults and WishList Member to take orders and create a simple affiliate program for your single-pay products and membership sites.

How To Integrate DigiResults With Wishlist Member To Deliver Non-Recurring Payment Products is a post from: Darren Crawford

Tonight I discovered the free http://kindlefeeder.com which allows you to email RSS feeds to your kindle.  It’s pretty cool.

Just create an account.  Your Kindle Feeder username becomes your email (ie: myname@kindlefeeder.com) then allow that email to send stuff to your Kindle.  Drop dead easy.

I’ve also been adding Instapaper clippings of websites I want to read to a downloadable .mobi file which I email. Handy stuff.

Lots more cool Kindle tips from Wired.com here: How To Do Almost Everything On a Kindle 3.

How To Read RSS on Kindle is a post from: Darren Crawford