I believe you have to know where you come from to know where you are going. Many people have personal conflicts that stop them from attempting new ventures. Often the energy will be from whoever you are surrounded by. You must get to the bottom of why you feel the way you do about yourself.
When it comes to the subject of envisioning yourself, I like to use what’s called a vision board. In 1938 author Napoleon Hill wrote in his book Think and Grow Rich about the power of the visioning process, meditation, and prayer. This book is the number one selling business book of all time.
Before you set your path there are a couple of things you must know if you don’t know already. You have to know what you’re going up against out there. You’re in constant competition with coworkers and most importantly yourself. It’s great to smile and have rapport with friends and coworkers.
I asked one of my brothers (I have four), Harold Wayne, for his definition of a side hustle. He then looked at me like I was crazy and summed it up perfectly, saying "What you think, getting more money than you already got.” You have to keep a side hustle no matter what. I normally don't agree with multi-level marketing or anything of that nature. But these days, you have to do what you have to do survive as long as it’s legal, of course. Consider businesses like Mary Kay, Quick Star, and Pre Paid Legal.
When marketing yourself you should always look your best. Some people have the luxury of looking relaxed at work and that’s ok. I personally learned the hard way not to go that route. I noticed that even though I am a fairly intelligent individual that performs well at work, I remained in the same position for many years.
Before you venture out into the real world with a new idea, you should think about running it by some of your trusted friends and family members. This can be difficult because they can be your biggest critics. Your family should always give you both positive and negative comments that you may not hear from the general public. Even if they don’t have the level of insight you have on the given topic, family can help you identify all the problem words and complex statements that might turn your audience against you presenting your next presentation.
My father always used to say, “Nothing comes to a sleeping man but a dream”. I always took that as you need to “get up get out and do something” (Macy Gray), even if you don’t have the money to do it. A popular hip-hop term that’s commonly used is the word “sleeping”. Put in a sentence it's used as follows, don’t get caught sleepin’. Unfortunately, most people don’t take this advice. Instead, they sit and pity themselves because they do not have the resources to get something done, never touching their pen to the paper.
One of the worst things you can do when creating a business plan is to copy someone else’s business plan or use software that everyone else tends to use. The best way to create a business plan is to keep it simple and short. Your bank or credit union will not take the time to read a 200 page business plan or a fifty slide long PowerPoint presentation. I was personally told by a branch director at a popular bank that most of the business plans they receive look identical and are produced using the same software. So make sure it’s clean, simple and professional looking.
To become an authority on any topic, you're going to need to write about it. Once you start to post information online and people reply, you will become an authority on your respective topic. Now a days, websites like LinkedIn ask what have you published or patented. If you want to be taken seriously in your field, you're going to need to write about it.
Public speaking might not be your strong point. It’s something that most of us need to overcome in order to be taken seriously in our chosen fields. When you publicly speak about any subject you appear to be an authority on the matter of which you're speaking. Even if you don't know what you're talking about some will give you the benefit of the doubt. Your job is to keep them captivated while educating them on the topic at hand.
I'm going to keep this chapter pretty simple. I was recently asked what an agenda is, which was kind of alarming to me. The person who asked me had been doing business by the seat of his pants for thirty years and only invested in cash-in-hand endeavors. He never really attended a meeting that followed an agenda, mostly dealing in phone calls and handshakes. So, for those of you who want to know…
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Business cards are one of the single most effective forms of marketing yourself. Business cards have the ability to generate business or scare away business which is why you should take designing and printing your business card seriously. I personally have designed my cards myself using Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Publisher. There are easy ways to create business cards that can save you a lot of money. Some companies even give away the first couple of hundred cards.
One of the first things you need to think about before planning a meeting is your venue. The type of venue you should choose is dependent on what you’re teaching or presenting. Let’s say you’re throwing a book club meeting, then naturally you should meet at a book store or a library. You should also choose a location where you and your presentation won’t be too disruptive to the other customers or patrons after all, you want to be able to use the space two or more times per month.
If you’re going to be taken seriously in person or online you’re going to invest in yourself and your future. I would like to tell you that you can make it out in the online marketing game with just a webcam and a basic computer microphone, but that’s not the case here, you have to stand. In a world where my daughter and step daughters have cute little Acer Aspire One laptops complete with web cameras, professionals with goals are going to have to step their game up.
Meetup.com is a very simple way to find people to come to your event. All you have to do is setup a Meetup.com account and give basic information about your event. When I lived in Beavercreek, Ohio, I was looking for a group of people to help me with my French. I looked on Meetup.com and found at least two groups of people who meet every week for free. Also, I have seen a lot of writer’s workshops and publishing groups publish their events using Meetup.com. It's worth a try. You have nothing to lose, and if you have an email list of people who might be interested then you're in luck. Now you can email everyone the link to the info you posted on Meetup.com.
Web 2.0 is the way of the future. It's not actually a piece of software or a specific computer language. It’s best described as the way people use the web vs who programs it. Web 2.0 pertains to methods of sharing information vs. just reading it. Youtube.com is a perfect example of people viewing information on one hand and uploading/sharing on the other hand. Sites like Facebook.com are perfect examples of Web 2.0.
The following chapters will help you get your foot in the social media realm. Once you have joined and setup your accounts on the following websites you should be able see a significant increase in traffic to your personal website and business than you had before. At the end of the book, I will show you how to tie it all together.
LinkedIn.com in is one of the fastest growing network sites around. LinkedIn allows professionally minded people to network with one another. Signing up is pretty easy. It's no different than any other community site we talked about before so take your time and sign up.
Some people still wonder why they need a Facebook account. Others say, “it's just too much trouble” or "I heard that blah blah blah" type of bull crap. Sometimes, I have to look at people and say are you kidding me? Facebook.com is a tool just like any other. If you use the tool correctly, you can get a lot of work done and Facebook is no different.
Flickr.com is a very useful tool if used correctly. Flickr.com provides different types of widgets (small programs) that allow you to enhance your website, blog or community site profile depending on the provider (MySpace, Facebook etc.).
I know what some of you are thinking: Do I still need a MySpace page? Yes! What if that one client or one business connection accidentally came across your MySpace page? What if you are an artist of some sort be it music, computers or canvas? You’ll want to create a MySpace page and link it to your main website.
I'm assuming you have already signed up and have a working Facebook.com account. So we’re going to log in to Soundcloud.com using Facebook
Once you have logged into your Soundcloud.com using your Facebook account, you’re going to see your "Dashboard". Your Dashboard is pretty much your home page after you have logged into your account (most websites refer to it as your profile page or home once you have logged in).
The following chapters are the most important chapters of this book. Almost everything we have done so far will come down to linking the content from different blogging, photo sharing and video websites and sending it to other locations to be read or displayed. We want to make sure that our clients, friends, or fans have access to our content at all times. The method used to send out your info (feeds) is called RSS or Really Simply Syndication.
Some people ask me, "why do I need a web site?". Even if you're not selling any products you need to be able to at least sell yourself when the time comes. You never know who will need to hire you. Why not show all your skill and projects you ever worked on? I just so happened to record everything I did in college and in grad school. I always believed that one day everyone will have a website or profile somewhere on the web
Have you ever wondered why every web site is a .com or .org or .edu or just plain dot something? Well, computers love to deal in numbers and every website, computer system, IPhone, Ipod Touch, Google Phone, video game system, and network ready printer in the world has a huge number attached to it. These huge numbers are called an Internet Protocol Address or simply IP Address. Any time a computer hooks up to a network it’s automatically assigned an IP Number. IPs help other computer on a local network or wide area network find each other.
I host my websites using a company out of Texas called HostGator.com.has very reasonable prices and they will walk you through any real problem that you’re having. HostGator.com will stay on the phone with you until you’re ready to get off the phone or its time for them to go home. This is why I use them. I tell all my friends and people in passing about their company and how they answer the phone 24 hours a day!
Make your own website in a few clicks! Mobirise helps you cut down development time by providing you with a flexible website editor with a drag and drop interface.
hese days you can’t get around having a Google account. Google allows you to do so many positive and helpful things that it will hurt you in the long run not having an account. So many websites now use the Google API for the login of their sites (sort of like the Facebook API) not to mention all of the cool Google apps and software that come along with your Google account. Over the years Google has acquired many different companies that now are a part of Google. All of these programs are called “Apps” or Google Apps (short for Google Applications).
Google Doc is a very important part of the Google Documents (now Google Drive) family. If you have ever used Microsoft (MS) Office from the 80s to 2006, you’re going to be able to use Google Docs. The GUI (Graphical User Interface) is very similar to that of a traditional word processer. Google Documents is an online web browser based office suite free of charge that you can access anywhere in the world (except certain parts of China) and open your basic Microsoft Office documents (except MS Publisher, and MS Access).
Google presentation is very easy to use. It has everything you need to create a basic presentation and/or slideshow. And best of all you can export the presentation Straight to MS PowerPoint (.ppt file) if you want. You can also embed your presentation inside of your web page blog or give someone a link so that they can view it within their web browser with no special software. I’m going to cover the very basics to get you started. I advise you to play around with the software for a while. I will guarantee you will like it. So let’s get started.
Google has cool software called forms that work hand and hand with Google spread sheets. I’m not going to go into it in much detail but we will cover the basics of a Google Spreadsheets. Google spreadsheets can be shared and worked on from anywhere in the world.
What is a feed you might ask? It's simply a blog. If someone has a website that allows them to make posts every day or updates and it stacks on top of the previous day's post, then it's more than likely a blog. The most common blog content management software out there is WordPress followed by Blogger.com. If you have not made a free WordPress site please read the chapter in this book carefully and create your own. For learning purposes I'm going to use my site as a quick example and take my blog info and use it to make a cell phone app. So please make sure you follow along and create one of your own.
Google groups are another great way to get the word out and actually find likeminded people doing the same thing you're doing or trying to do. By setting up a group you credential yourself as someone who knows a little bit about the particular subject at hand. Make sure you know what you're talking about or the community will eat you alive.
Video blogging is basically when someone post a series of short videos about a variety of topics. You should create a video blog about anything you want to talk about. I would also create a write up to go with the video. Basically, typing (almost) word for word what you're talking about in the video so that search engines and your followers can find whatever niche you're talking about via search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo!. Trust me it helps people find you and makes you a better writer. I want you to sign up for the following video based websites if you haven't already. Start by posting your videos with full descriptions that eventually link back to you or your company.
QR codes are one of the fastest growing forms of marketing around. Have you ever been walking down the street and wondered why the does every new advertisement have a square barcode on it? Well that's because it's probably linked to someone's website or promotional information.
These days anybody can make apps to complement their businesses and services. If you have followed along and have taken the steps to create your own website and join all of the websites I asked you two in previous chapters, you will be on your way to having an app in no time. Most of this book was designed to get you to this point. Trust me, you want have your app in their pockets. People throw away business cards, but they rarely delete apps until they need the disk space on their phone, meaning your app will take up real-estate on their phone, for a considerable amount of time.
By now you should have grasped why you need to combine your personal appearance, technology and networking skills. There are so many things that successful and almost successful people are missing that can boost their career to the next level. I would be as fake as a four dollar bill if I told you things like your suit, shoes and teeth don't matter. It does. And people judge you off your appearance. What else do they have to judge you?
If you need help laying out your idea and need a check list of what to do next, fill this "Google Form" and the results will be emailed to you.