AuthorAndGrowRich Blog

One of my Inner Circle clients—Jan—who happens to be working on building her business while traveling in Malaysia sent me this comment.

Jan write…

“I just wanted to share my ah-ha based on our call today…
 
One of the things I did earlier was complete a survey from one of your links, I cannot remember what you called it but I scored myself then had my husband score me (without seeing my scores) regarding knowledge, skill and attitudes. I remember you wrote attitudes are the most difficult to correct.
 
My ah-ha is from a statement that you made today that I have to train my mind to think about “making money”… I’ve never done that before! Frankly, I’ve been working my own incongruent belief issues (attitudes) in preparation for step 2: applying the flow charting technique that you mentioned to retrain myself to think about “how-to make money”! Totally amazing how the Universe/Law of Attraction works… thank you for allowing the Universe to work through you to bless others!
 
This flowcharting my thought process is something I did years ago with choosing how to prioritize or spend my time in alignment with a goal I was working at the time. I suspect this will be the same thing; however, do you have any examples of what one of your flowchart index cards look like that you would be willing to share?”
 
On another post I will share with you how this flowchart system works, but suffice it for now that I want to share with you an important principle around creating the most expensive programs in your niche.
 
As a child growing up, my father was always about dollars and cents. Not surprising since my father was an accountant.

He would often talk to me about assets and cash flow.

I remember some of the conversations we would have driving around town. He would say, “Glenn, look at this corporation. Look at their fleet of vehicles. Look at their nice offices.” He would sometimes surprise me with the following, “You know what? As good as it all looks, that company is going ‘down’.” My dad would go on to share with me that many of these companies were heading towards bankruptcy. Why? They were asset rich and cash flow poor.

Let me share with you how I resembled these companies for the first two and half years I was in business struggling to build momentum. I was literally toiling on the Internet doing just about everything wrong. I was amassing a huge amount of debt trying to figure things out. I was asset rich. I had all kinds of programs. I was a recognized trainer. My company had created programs that were recognized by Fortune 100 Company ADOBE Corp. and many other companies around the world. Yet, please take note of this, the asset I built was NOT monetized properly. I was asset rich and cash flow poor! It was horrible!

What you want to make sure that you’re doing, and I catch a lot of people doing this, is that they create their whole fleet of products and services detached from market feedback. I’ve had clients that do this. They are out creating five, ten and more different products and services all at the beginning of their entrepreneurial endeavors. And they are doing this without the proper feedback needed from their target market.

What they have failed to do is to fully engage their marketplace to allow them to begin to sell and market. They have not tested the worthiness of their idea ensuring that it is matched with a hungry market.

Remember, your twin tickets to freedom are sales and marketing. You have to remember that everything you’re creating needs to be tested in the marketplace. What a lot of people like to do, and this is what the old Glenn did unfortunately, is to create programs and services devoid of testing the efficacy of their idea among potential consumers. What they end up doing is working hard to create what they think the market place will want, all within the context of a dream—the dream one day making it big. It feels great. It sounds romantic.

But.

When push came to shove, it does NOT do what is absolutely critical for you business success. That was actually getting into the marketplace immediately to test my ideas. This makes a lot of people nervous, but what it does is it not only helping you with valuable feedback, but it teaches you to begin to learn how to sell and market yourself in the context of product creation.

The biggest ah-ha moment as I self reflect on how I set two Internet records four years ago is that you must constant check the efficacy of an idea in the context of making money. Don’t fall into the trap of spending hours, days and weeks thinking you are in business. Prove it with cash flow. And do it by flipping your business funnel upside down immediately as you sell your writing.

I’ll have a lot more to say about this.

For now, if you are struggling with your business, you don’t need to. Phone our International Headquarters in Canada at 519.542.3043 and let us help you author your future.

To Your Legacy!

Glenn

In his Internet Lifestyle Blog Yanik Silver writes about the true selling power of Scarcity.

At the end of this impressive article about using scarcity in your copy to compell people to take action, Yanik makes an important point about Scarcity: it has to be believable. If you’re selling an ebook or piece of software, this is often much harder to do than it is if, say, you were selling high end sports cars.

If all you do is mention in your copy that your ebook is a “limited time offer” or that customers should “buy before tonight” will this really help your sales? Not likely! Such weak tactics could actually hurt your conversions by causing leads to question whether you’re telling the truth about your offer!

Instead, focus on both hinting at scarcity and giving a very good reason for it so that the scarcity feels real. Then, and only then, will you truly capitalize on the sales efficiency of using scarcity in your marketing copy.

Are you ready to sell your writing.

Here is definitely not how to publish and prosper!

True story.

Unbelievable when you consider this person worked in an open-concept office with 20 other employees!

And he sat dead for days with no one noticing him.

Three ‘Author Your Future’ Key Questions To Ponder:

1. Do you feel that your talents go un-noticed?

2. Are your working on the wrong projects that are simply sucking life out of you?

3. Your story is worth millions. Do you know how to position it?

Don’t let the book that’s in you, die in you.

And when you decide to author your future and write your own book—make sure it’s the right one!

Read the following true story now and then do what Margaret Merrill did!

Dead For 5 Days—This Editor With A New York Publisher Sat At His Desk …

Executives at a mid-town publishing company say they are perplexed that one of their employees sat dead at his desk for five days before anyone noticed.

Medical examiners say the employee apparently died of a heart attach in the middle of the open-concept office he shared with 20 other workers at the firm.

A post mortem examination indicates that the 51-year old probably died on a Monday, but his death went unnoticed until Saturday morning when a janitor stopped to ask him why he as working on the weekend?

A spokesperson for the publishing company described the employee as ‘the first guy in each morning, and the last to leave at night.’ He said the man was always absorbed in his work and kept pretty much to himself, which might explain why no one noticed that he was dead. He had been with the firm for 30 years.

Ironically, investigators say the man was proof-reading the manuscript of a medical textbook when he died.

The Author And Grow Rich Money Making Idea:

When I was a Vice Principal, I often felt that I would die at my desk doing something I hated. Not only that, but I could not stand working on paper work that robbed me of my own God-talent talents and passion.

Use the Author And Grow Rich System to identify your passion and position it properly. Use Margaret Merrill’s story to inspire you.

To Your Legacy,

Glenn

P.S.

Margaret Merrill, a single mom from Scotsdale, Arizona refused to die with her book in her. Today, this entrepreneur licenses her material from her book to one of the biggest personal development organizations.

And it all happened because Margaret used the principles taught in Author And Grow Rich.

Check out one of the hundreds of case studies at…

(http://AuthorAndGrowRich.com)

Marketing in the Recommendation Age.

You must be different to sell your writing.

You must stand out to be a successful author.

You must be audacious.

You must have something to say in order to write to earn.

And you must encapsulate it into an idea virus in order to successfully sell your writing.

We all have something to say…the problem is only a select few will have the opportunity to be heard. And never has this been more evident than in the new era of content delivery that we now live in.

The term Recommendation Age was probably first coined by Chris Anderson in his book, The Long Tail, and it aptly fits this present age.

In an era when we are simply bombarded with too many messages, our subconscious minds word hard to prevent us from feeling overwhelmed. To do this, we subconsciously filter everything we hear from a pre-existing story that we have about any given idea.

So how do we bypass this natural resistance, the strength of which lies outside of our conscious existence?

We must reframe what we do to enable our target market to hear us.

The psychology of reframing is crucial in order for you to create an idea virus.

Let me give you an example of reframing.

On Sunday, I was at one of our boys’ travel basketball tournaments.

It was half time and I felt an urge to make a trip to the men’s room.

(It was one of those urges that you have after a couple of star bucks coffees and two bottles of water—in other words, it was not going to be a quick trip!)

While standing at a urinal in the washroom of a school built back in 1924, I couldn’t help but notice some graffiti that was written above the porcelain friend I stood before.

On the wall were written the words by Albert Einstein himself. (Well, I doubt that he actually wrote the very words that I saw…but they certainly have been attributed to him.)

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
–Albert Einstein

I couldn’t help but strongly agree with the transcriber who wrote this using the real estate that I happened to be viewing at that time–the wall in front of me!

And that brings up an important concept around the science of reframing in the Recommendation Age in order to create an idea virus.

Normally, when I stand in a high school washroom, I am usually reminded of a different form of the english language that I don’t see in public libraries or witness while sitting in the pew of my church! In fact, the washroom environment is a perfect metaphor for the visual that I have of this form of literature!

So to see something that I would expect to read about in a library left a lasting impression on my mind…and it left me with the desire to share this with you.

The science of reframing is your ability to use a situation or an object as a teaching tool. Reframing is best done thru the ‘suspension of disbelief’ or as I used to call them when I was in education, ‘discrepant events.’ Discrepant events are situations that occur that leave the viewer puzzled because what one expects to happen, the converse or opposite happens.

This was the experience I had in the boys’ washroom. I had pre-programmed my mind to experience a debased form of literature, and instead was shocked to find a quote attributed to Einstein. In other words, I experienced a powerful example reframing!

Right now I want you to understand two important concepts around reframing an idea to make it stick in an over-communicated world.

In order to use the psychology of reframing, you must understand the science of pedagogy (the science of teaching and learning).

Both of these concepts are the result of you developing the skill of self reflection. One of our legacy building concepts found in our new book, Author And Grow Rich, due out in two weeks is the concept that “he/she who self reflects the greatest leaves the most powerful legacy.”

Self reflection is critical and the quote by Einstein jogged my mind around these two concepts.

The first word I want you to record right now is the term, “assimilation.”

In the science of pedagogy (teaching/learning) it is important to have a system of how you understand the world around you so that you can use this understanding to filter all the information that you take in. To assimilate means to apply new ideas into your pre-existing frame-work so that your system for analyzing the world around you is more reflective of what and how other people are seeing their physical environments.

The other word is “accommodation.” This word is also very important in the science of pedagogy. The concept behind this word involves your ability to let ideas transform your system into something that is better substantiated by other people’s perceptions. In other words, the framework by which you analyze the world as an entrepreneur should be open to modifications.

And thank brings me back to my time at the urinal at St Pat’s High School.

Because I had Author And Grow Rich on my mind, my subconscious was open to a quote that impacts the fundamentals of sound pedagogy.

I want to challenge you to increase your own curiosity about the world around you.

The single most powerful way to increase your curiosity is to self reflect on your experiences. And the best way to self reflect on your experiences is to write about them.

Writing is the doing part of thinking.

And it is the venue to become a successful author.

In my next post I will discuss with you how to reframe an idea into something worthy of an ‘idea virus’ using three powerful techniques to help you analyze your idea.

Can you imagine the power of creating an idea virus that naturally mutates to the wants of your target market?

Now I know what you must be thinking…”Glenn, what are you talking about.”

Well let me bring you into a conversation I had last week with a frustrated entrepreneur. This will set the stage for a few powerful comments I want to share with you a way to tap into the power of Zipf’s Law so that in your journey to sell your writing, you laser focus it to the very wants of your target market.

Last week I had a call with a very successful financial planner who is typical of the very successful entrepreneurs I talk to each day. Here is the condensed, Cliff Notes’ version of his complaint to me…

“Glenn, I am tired of people like _____. (He mentioned a person that I am sure just about all of you would recognize.)

“Glenn, what really upsets me is that this person is not only all over television, but the advice this person gives is pathetic.”

And you know what, this conversation can be played out with just about everybody. It seems like in just about every market place, top trainers and experts complain that they are losing market share to competitors who, at best, only know 10% of what these top trainers and experts know.

How does this happen? And what can be done about it.

Let me provide you a quick summary of why this happens…Milgram’s Law and Zipf’s Law.

Many of today’s market leaders are leading because they understand the first principle of marketing in the Recommendation Age, the new era we live in: your book is your business card.

If you do not have a book, it will be very hard–almost impossible–to garner the kind of market share that you want.

So the first answer is to invest in the proper marketing tools to gain a leveraged position in the market place. You must gain the ability to sell your writing–and a book is the best conduit to make this happen.

The second answer will help you get even.

Using the power of what I have been sharing with you below, this will allow you to create a content-rich idea virus that naturally mutates to the specific wants of your market place.

What I am really talking about is the ability to educate your target market more profoundly that what your competitors are able to do because they don’t understand what I will share with you right now around a new craft of pedagogy (the science of teaching/learning) in a market place that is over-communicated and is subconsciouly resistant to your message.

It’s the ability to apply the principles I discussed last week wrt increasing your sales 3X with your own customized free report. This starts with your own Assessment Instrument that is fully programmable to dynamically generate a free report. The bridge to make this happen is thru your rubric or rating scale that you create.

Before you begin to create your own Assessment Instrument, you must understand the power of controlling your market place by controlling how they think.

The best way to control the way your target market thinks is to understand the science of ‘re-framing’.

Here are a few principles to wet your appetite.

1. Understand the difference among features or the tangibles of what you actually do (the most important feature is your system), benefits (what your target market will get because of the features of your system) and advantages (what your system will do for your target market).

2. Understand your competition. To understand who they are, you must first understand how your target market defines the problems you are attempting to address. Create a massive list of key words and key word phrases. Use http://GoodKeyWords.com to help you with this. Plug your key words into Google and Amazon.com to begin to get a better feel of who your competitors are.

3. Gain an understanding of the negative perception of what your target market has of your competitors. The birthing of your own content-rich idea virus must fill this ‘gap’ in the market place.

4. Understand the real ‘wants’ that your target market has. If you can discover what they really want, you will tap into the most powerful trigger points that will get them to scream ‘yes’. By the way, I used ‘trigger point’ because it is a powerful metaphor to me due to a painful IT Band injury that recently required me to have to get some deep tissue message. The most painful areas are known as ‘trigger points.’ And when the message therapist find this point, you most certainly will know!

5. Go to the following URL and watch and listen to this live call we did with Ken McArthur as we used these principles to program his own content-rich idea virus.. http://CustomizedFreeReports.com.

An important pedagogical consideration in your marketing is to always have a dual focus…concentrate on the fundamentals of what you want to convey to your target market (the benefits and advantages of your system) and always due it in the context of your target market’s unspoken ‘wants.’

As we discuss further some critical components of marketing in the Recommendation Age, I will share with you how to align these with your own Assessment Instrument using a rubric (Rating Scale) to position yourself from the onset as the only option amoung your competitors.

How do you put a value on creating a virus that will naturally mutates to the specific wants of your target market?

Stay tuned as I will delve into this further.

To Your Legacy!

Glenn :-)