Welcome to our blog. We would like to blog on marketing skills and health care for entrepreneurs, business owners, and professionals. Sometimes we are too busy taking care of our business that we tend to forget taking care of ourselves.
Are You Afraid?
It is well documented that many people fail to achieve their goals in life due to the phenomenon known as “fear of failure”. Are you aware that a major factor that is often overlooked, is a state known as “fear of success”?
Fear of failure will lead many people into inertia – the inability to make decision or take action in case they receive rejection or negative outcomes. This mental state is easy to identify and there are many tools in the personal development industry to help combat this plague and reprogram the mind for success. However, the fear of success is much more subtle, harder to spot and also harder to eradicate.
Perhaps you have this tendency in your life. Here are some indications of a fear of success mentality.
Studying and trying to implement self-improvement techniques and/or personal development tools but your life does not improve or may even get worse. You seem to not able to take actions.
You settle for less than you feel you deserve or are capable of achieving.
You start new projects full of enthusiasm and optimism but wane in your efforts or stop short before you have completed them.
You expect things to go wrong no matter how well the situation appears to be at the moment.
Can you identify your own patterns in any of the above statements?
The fear of success can also make you behave in ways that hold you back. Look at the list below. These are the symptoms of the fear of success.
Procrastination – putting off what needs to be done or not doing what you know will bring you closer to your desired result. Everyone suffers from this issue at some point in their lives (although some of us suffer from it more than others!).
Procrastination is a ‘success killer’! How can you expect to reach your destination if you do not take steps towards it? Strive to do little things each day that will bring you small steps closer to your goal. This is why having a personal development plan is an essential ingredient in the fight against procrastination. Take action! Any action! Refine your steps as you go along but do not sit and do nothing. Taking action is one of the key aspects in personal development.
Can’t see the forest for the trees! – this is almost the opposite of procrastination but has the same effect on your personal development. The aforementioned saying is well known but have you ever given it real consideration?
Don’t get caught up in your plan believing that it is more important than the goal! For many years I got caught in this trap. I started to think and act as though my plan was more important than my end result and thus missed many opportunities to alter my path and reach my goals more quickly! Let go of your ego and allow the Universe to show you a quicker route to your goal. Remain flexible.
Thinking that the time is not right – have you ever waited until the timing was perfect before starting a venture? Have you ever waited until you had more information on a better plan?
Again ACTION is the key to the door to success. Taking small steps forward are better than taking none or waiting to see if your foot is landing on the right spot! Even if your actions take you away from your goal you have at least gained insight and knowledge about what does not work!
Being a perfectionist – this is similar to the point above and has the same effect, namely, that you never really move forward. No matter how good a job is when its finished it can always be improved! I have heard many great musicians tell how they hate listening to their own songs because they can find a million things that need improved. Yet, we still enjoy them. I think a classic example of this is “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Paul Simon. This song is hauntingly beautiful yet Mr. Simon does not think its good enough!
Seeing only problems – how do you use your focus? Do you constantly see only and all the problems involved? If you are this way inclined it is pointless trying to change overnight! However, you can use this mindset to your advantage while you strive in your personal development to acquire an opportunistic frame of mind instead.
Look at the problems and prepare a plan to deal with them. Every time you overcome one, congratulate yourself. Use them as a gauge for your achievements. If you keep seeing more problems remind yourself of how well you dealt with the others. Look at how far you have come! If you see a problem ask yourself, “how best can I overcome this challenge?” or “how quickly can I rectify this situation?”. The quality of your questions are important as I have outlined in a previous article. Use the problems as fact finders. Is there a real problem now? If so then deal with it. Is it a potential problem? If so then create a contingency plan in case it does occur but don’t get caught up in it just be prepared.
Enjoy the journey, follow the above guidelines and you will achieve success. Eventually your fear of success will dissipate and you will have moved a long way forward in your personal development.
“Again ACTION is the key to the door to success. Taking small steps forward are better than taking none or waiting to see if your foot is landing on the right spot!”
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The Secret to Online Success
I am not going to deny the fact that a lot of profit can be generated in short periods of time. It has happened in the past and will keep happening in the future. There is an old saying, “There’s nothing more powerful than an idea who’s time has come!”
In other words, you can have a very lucrative idea, but the market is not ready for it, therefore you may end up loosing your investment just to find out months later that that very same idea becomes a huge success for someone else. Basically, being at the right place at the right time certainly helps. And you will ALWAYS be at the right place and the right time if you listen to your heart. To the guiding Spirit within.
Then off course, there is the other side of the coin. Having a great idea, being at the right place at the right time, but not being able to capitalize on it. Well, this is what this article is going to address. We are going to explore the reasons why people buy! And I am going to dissect each topic briefly so you can have a much deeper understanding as to how all of the following pieces of the puzzle fit together.
First, I am going to address the importance of the word VALUE. When you have something to offer where there is an open market for it, and more than likely there is a demand for your product, your efforts revolve around advertising. If what you are advertising is being offered by other businesses, then you have what is called competition. That being the case, you have to be able to create an urgency for people to buy from you, otherwise you could loose your potential customers to your competition, not because their’s are necessarily better. But because of the fact that not everyone buys on the first visit. Sometimes customers need a little bit of time before they make a decision. So if you already exposed them to what you have to offer and later on they see the same product on someone else’s site, they may be ready at that moment to purchase. They may end up ordering from someone else that product or service which you took the time to educate them on the first place.
Since internet surfers are what it’s called impulse buyers, you got to be prepared so that when a potential customer visits your site, she/he is ready to make the decision at that moment!
If you are advertising a video tape that teaches people how to market products online, you need to figure out ways to increase the “VALUE” of what you have to offer. You need to answer questions such as;
* Why is your video better than the rest?
* What is in your video that you feel would make someone say, “I want this!”
* What are they gaining from ordering?
Since the beginning of time, marketing is all about figuring out ways to sell people on the idea that if they acquire whatever is you have to offer, they will “gain” something from it. If you have been subscribed to few newsletters and have read marketing articles, they summarize what I have just said in one word. BENEFITS. If from the very beginning you can point out what is it that your visitors will gain from your product or services, you increase dramatically the value of your product.
This is not the only way to add value to your product. But this is the best way to establish rapport and generate interest. So you must always begin by letting them know how your product or service is going to make them feel, or improve their life, or help them win, etc.
Once you have been able to add value to your product or service, honesty, integrity and credibility play a very important role. Maybe right at the moment of purchase, depending on how much your asking price is, they may wonder, “how do I know this person knows what she’s talking about?”
So how do you add integrity? If you are an expert on something, can you tell me about your experience? Do you walk your talk? Does your site reflects what you talk about?
If you do not have a great resume people wont buy from you? Absolutely NOT! Your resume could be your website. Here is what I mean, if someone visits your site and you don’t have a degree as a nutritionist, but your site is filled with very convincing articles and valuable information that shows that you know what you are talking about, that is enough to add credibility.
Let me take it one step further, if you create a very powerful sales letter, you can have your visitor so engaged in the information that she/he wont even bother to figure who you are, or what you do. However, to pull that off, you must offer a product that has great value, and if possible, a money back guaranteed!
All you need to do is to come from a place of honesty and service, and as long as you can show credible ways in which your product will benefit your market, you should be able to sell your product(s) and/or service(s) online.
So you have something of value and you have been able to gain credibility. What can you do to add more substance to your product or service?
Let’s say you are giving a speech and want to quote an article regarding your subject matter which you have written on a piece of paper, if you hold the paper and read the words from it, it holds more credibility than if you were merely saying the words. Why that is? I don’t know. But that is just one of those interesting mysteries we come across every once in awhile.
So by having someone saying something positive about your product or service, it helps add credibility which in turn helps also increase the value of what you are offering.
What we have done so far is, we have strategically created leverage. We have given a solid foundation as to why people not only should, but must obtain whatever it is you are offering. Assuming that you are placing all these strategies in the RIGHT ORDER, positive results should be way within your reach.
So what makes people buy is:
* Value-Benefits (What am I gaining from this.)
* Value-Honesty (How do I know this is true.)
* Value-Endorsements (What others have to say about this.)
Notice that I used the word “value” along with every example because value is what people consider before obtaining anything. Benefits, honesty and integrity as well as endorsements, even when each play a role in itself, they all have once thing in common. They “add value” to your product.