You Can Laugh At Your Money Worries If You Follow This New Simple Marketing Trend.

Normally, most entrepreneurs are looking at shortcuts to success through marketing.  Everyone is looking for a shiny new object to bring in more business, and there seems to be no end to the number of “gurus” out there that will hawk a free report, or recent book telling you about a “new secret”.

In reality, there is nothing new under the sun, and the same exact principles that were used 40 years ago, will still bring home the bacon today. 

(If you missed my last post you missed the fact that you should get yourself a herd, tribe or a HIVE MIND COLLECTIVE as a proven way to get more sales, conversions or loyalty.)

The technology of communicating the message has changed but the formula for communicating the message is the same old, tried and true, which is why any really good advertising copy writers will study works by guys that earned their stripes years ago.

This is not to say that you should only learn how to write or use static sales letter pages.  I said the technology has changed not the actual messages.  For example, if you learned how to use it properly, you could easily use Youtube videos to market your business, and many people have done just that, to include myself.

As a matter of fact, just one of the many videos that I have produced, Facebook for Beginners has pulled in a whopping 19,000 views.  Having said that, I would like to point out that if you try to just slap together a thoughtless, unplanned and unclear message you will not get very many views or conversions on any level.

One of my pet peeves is a video wherein a person just gets on there and rambles on incessantly about their business.  These folks make these “marketing messages” while driving their cars, sitting at tables, etc.

You can usually tell that they put very little thought into these messages or that they did the entire production with their left hand. I could never really figure out why anyone would even watch a video like this, because it usually doesn't help you or tell you anything that you don't already know.

If the marketing message doesn't connect with the viewer, àclickß the viewer goes elsewhere. That’s the problem with all of this new-fangled technology is one click and you’re gone. 

It’s a little different with a highly crafted direct mail piece that you've got in your hands, but if that medium isn't crafted and formatted properly, it’ll wind up in the trash too.

So, what is this new-fangled marketing trend mentioned in the title? Well, recently Forbes Magazine unleashed its Top 10 Brand andMarketing Trends for 2014, and low and behold, mobile marketing should be optimized is number 9 on that list.

Trend spotters got this right several years ago when they accurately predicted mobile methods of accessing and using the Internet would go mainstream.  This means that when you design a webpage it has got to be optimized in a fashion that is acceptable to smaller devices than a laptop. 

Years ago, I used to build my own websites so I know how the process works.  However, as a down and dirty marketer, I learned that more complicated, sexy web design is expensive, harder to maintain and more difficult to make changes to. 

Don’t get me wrong, if you are Amazon, Zappos, eBay or any of the other online giants, you have a complex e-commerce site. I get it. However, if you are a mid to small time business, you may want to do the smart thing and have a Flash free, easy website that is easy to post regularly to. 

(Notice I am using WordPress and Blogger for my sites because they are easy to use, post new material to and if optimized properly, do fairly well in the search engines for the keywords you are targeting.  You can still have a single, stable sales page and if post articles regularly, you will get noticed by the search engines a little easier.)

My disclaimer on this advice is: I am not a professional web designer, although, I have a degree in Education Technology and have built professional websites for business and educational purposes.  I know that there are probably a bunch of web designers that are going to descend on me with all of their technical terms and wizardry, telling me how I should be hoisted up by my ankles and flogged until sunset for this bad Web design advice. 

However:  I am right, and never wrong, so there!

My point is, that if you are designing simple sites, or using WordPress or Blogger (which are already optimized for mobile formats automatically) you shouldn’t have to worry.  If you are hard-coding your own complex, Flash induced website, you will probably need to brush up on what the mobile marketing formats are and keep abreast of the trends in this area.

TIP: One of the ways you can always get people to come to your site in the mobile format is to create an app that connects to your website.  If you can put a regularly updated piece of information on your site then the app will connect to your page to access that particular information.  

You can always hire someone from an outsourcing site like oDesk or eLance to create your app for a very reasonable price. The trick of creating an app like that is that it needs to be conducive to your niche or business.  You don’t want a weather update on a site that has a comic book or cooking niche. 

These Top Marketers Use This Power to Make Piles of Money

If you ever want to have a viable business on the Internet or anywhere else, you need to harness this power from the git-go.  Once you gain traction in this avenue, you can almost guarantee you’re your job marketing your product, or service will be much easier. 

Notice that I said “easier” not easy.  As the old adage goes, “If it we’re easy everyone would do it and everybody would be rich!”

Actually, you can look back over history to see this principle at work, especially in the world of business.  If you even went back to the Dark Ages you can see that this power is super important to humans, and in that case, survival.  As a matter of fact, this principle works so well that sometimes humans will gravitate toward it even when it is dangerous and stupid.

I don’t really want to paint this principle in a dark light, but this evidence reinforces my point perfectly.  If you read about world history for more than three seconds, you will find yourself saying, “How could a group of people do something so stupid? How is it that a country or a large group of people could buy into something so insane that it defies logic?”

Well, like it or not, it is what we, as humans, do and it is here to stay. We are determined to follow along with what everybody else does and if you don’t believe me, just look at the way people stand in line for days on end waiting for the next Apple iPhone to be unleashed.

Of course, I am talking about the POWER OF THE HIVE MIND.

My son has raised bees since he was in the 7^th grade, and he is very passionate about it.  Since he started this hobby at such a young age, I had to help him buy all of the equipment, set it up and then later we had to use a honey extractor to get the honey out of the colony boxes.  He was really in to it, no kidding.  Anyway, along the way, my son taught me a great deal about the HIVE MIND. 

You see, among the many peculiar attributes of bees, is the fact that they are loyal to their hive and their queen.  If a bee from a neighboring colony box strays too close to another box where there is another colony, the bees will smell that there is a foreigner and kill it, plain and simple.

However, this is a relatively rare occurrence because bees are extremely loyal to their hive and mission, which is survival.   They really don’t want to waste their time wandering around when they have other commitments like making wax, flying miles to harvest nectar and pollinate plants, and create honey. (That’s just a few thing they have on their agenda.)

So, you can see people acting in the same manner with things they are involved with.  Just take a look at teenage girls that are fans of Justin Bieber.  Not only are they infatuated with him, they have created their own buzz term for themselves called “True Bielbers”.

 So, why not harness this power for something good and useful?

Let’s say that you have an outstanding product, like a book that shows people how to save money.  And just for the sake of driving home a strong point, let’s say that what you wrote lessons in that book were so effective that people benefitted immensely from what you had to teach them.  They were able to pay off their mortgage, send their kids to college, etc.

Do you think it would be harmful for you to lead your own HIVE of people that were loyal to your product or service? Of course, it would be beneficial.

So, in order for your business to survive and thrive, you need to your own HIVE and you need to develop it so that it has its own HIVE MIND or loyalty to the products that you create and the group that follows them. 

By developing your own HIVE with its own HIVE MIND (group of loyal followers) you will have accomplished at least three things:

• ·         Your HIVE will identify with you and the group and therefore be receptive to more products and services you have to offer
• ·         Your HIVE will spread the word for you automatically, like viral marketing
• ·         If you have over delivered and you have made a great impression on your HIVE your reputation will allow you to demand more money for future products and services

There are incredible marketers out there that have harnessed this power and put different terms on it, but it always revolves around this same principle.

Seth Godin, author of a multitude of marketing books and creator of the highly successful site SQUIDOO, calls the group that follows you a TRIBE. 

 “A group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea is a TRIBE. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one and a group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.”

― Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Another very powerful marketer that has harnessed this idea is “The Millionaire Maker” Dan Kennedy.  He calls his loyal followers a “HERD”.

You’ved got to find a HERD. 85% of all my clients use me repeatedly or constantly and these clients pay $18,800.00 per day as a base rate, and routinely $100,000.00 to $1-million in project fees plus royalties tied to results.

--- Dan S. Kennedy

So, harnessing the power of THE HIVE MIND is paramount to your business if you are going to THRIVE in this new economy.

To learn more about how to harness this power and use it effectively check out these books and sites:

Dan Kennedy’s Website

Seth Godin’s Blog

Dan Kennedy’s Free Ebook

Mark "Elmo" Ellis

Ad Copywriter

Do This One Thing First To Give Your Business the Edge It Needs to Survive

Every now and then you stumble on a way to do something that will make your life a little easier.  For many entrepreneur wannabes the process of finding a viable niche in a product or service that they would like to start a business in can be tough. 

One of the reasons why most new entrepreneurs fail is because they haven’t done the market research required to build a viable business on the front end.

 I once knew someone that went into a business selling wired closet shelving.  This was back in the days before wired shelving was in Walmart and Lowes, so it was rather a new item at the time.

So, this guy who was making good money installing wired shelving into closets, had a business partner and they were selling them out of a van, and the shelving was stored in a warehouse.  The business actually did quite well, selling and installing the shelving into private residences and working with contractors putting the shelves into new residences.

Life was good, they were doing well, and then things got crazy.

One of the partners decided to get out of the partnership and strike out on his own.  His idea was to take the shelving business to a new level.  He opened up a retail store in a mall and had an entire store dedicated to wire shelving.  Of course, the mall had a lot of rules and restrictions on the way the business was to be set up. For example, the business had to have an expensive electric sign erected on the store.

And I don’t even want to tell you how expensive the monthly rental in a mall is.  Ridiculous.  Actually, too ridiculous for a mere shelving business.

So, without doing any market research, this individual thought he would set up a store in a mall, right down the hall from Sears.  Not a good idea on any level. 

Not only that, but the budding entrepreneur didn’t do any marketing for his business either.  That’s right, no advertisements, no coupons, not even a method of greeting a customer when they walked into the door.  So, needless to say, this business did terribly and the business owner not only lost his shirt, but his home eventually as well.

However, to the addicted entrepreneur, this would have been a mere learning experience.  If I were that individual, I would have picked myself up, dusted off and started another business.

I’m an avid watcher of the show “Shark Tank” and I can almost guess every time who is going to get a partnership with one of the bazillionaires on there and who isn’t.  It is almost always someone that has NOT done any market research or has any track record of success with their product or service.

It doesn't matter if you are in the information marketing business or a service, if you don’t do good, measurable market research on the front end, you will have a very tough time marketing your business, plain and simple.

It is exactly the same thing writing advertising copy.  Whether you are writing your own advertising copy or someone else’s, you have to do an intense amount of market research on the front end.  You need to know everything possible about your target market as you possibly can.

As one famous marketing guru put it, “You need to know how these individuals do everything.  If you can find out how they put on their underwear even, then your job as a marketer is going to be that much easier."

So, if you intend on marketing your business in anyway, do your research up front to determine what your target audience wants, or you will probably be closing up shop before your business even gets a chance to get started.

Why the Transformers are not Worthy Enough to Sniff Indiana Jones’ Butt

Every now and then I go off on a tangent and get way off topic. Actually, I am a master at doing this, and sometimes I get so far off topic that I have less of a chance than a goat of figuring out where my point originally was.

However, today I am going to deviate from my original blog planning and talk about something that is absolutely critical to the success of your sales copy.

Character

Character is actually a fun subject for me, because I am a con –o-sewer of movies.  (I think that’s French  for “I like them”.)  Anyway, for years I've wondered why I like certain movies and hate others. 

Some website on the Internet recently had a massive list of movies that you could go through and mark so that you could see how many movies you actually watched over the course of your buttered popcorn laden life.

Facebook has recently started a listing similar to this, and that social site looks more and more like MySpace every day to me.  But, there I go off on another tangent again.

So, as I was going through the many movies I had seen, I began to wonder why I could stand to see some movies over and over again, while others, even though they were very expensive to make, bored the snot out of me.

For example, my all-time favorite movie was Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was a slam – bang, live on the razors edge, laugh in the face of death action/adventure flick, while the Transformers, which ranked very low with me because I thought it was a very expensive, special effects loaded bore-a-thon, not worthy of sniffing the butt of Spielberg’s masterpiece.

But hey, that’s just my humble opinion.

I came up with two key reasons why some of the moves stunk while a few of the others were awesome.  One reason was the writing, and the other was an extension of that reason, which was the characters were BORING.

Someone once observed that even if a movie or TV show isn’t too good, if the character is well written or developed and the audience can identify with him or her, people will still watch the show.

Just recently, the Marvel Comics empire launched the “Agents of Shield” TV show.  Now, just for the record, I am a huge fan of Marvel comics.  I exclusively collected them, especially anything with Jack Kirby’s genius artwork on it.  Spiderman was the character I most identified with as a kid even though Kirby didn’t draw that comic.

Ooops! Off topic again!

But, my point is, that even though I am a die hard Marvel fan, I don’t like the show and it all boils down to a few things, like, fer instance….Situations that are just too unbelievable or fantastic it makes the rest of us mere mortals feel like gnats.

The other thing that I don’t like is that the characters are too cardboard.  I mean, they take everything for granted no matter how fantastic it is.  Some wet-behind the ears 7^th grader invents a device that splits the moon in half, and all the main characters can do is yawn.  You know, that sort of thing.

I mean, they don’t react to anything!

So, if you have boring characters, or the story is just too unbelievable, then you will lose the interest of your readers.

It is exactly the same in your sales and advertising copy.

If you are painting a rather boring picture of your client, product, service or yourself and the ad copy is just plain unbelievable, your advertising copy will probably not convert very well. 

So, what you should take away from this is that when you have somebody write your advertising copy, if the copy is missing a certain amount of character, your ad will probably not get read very much.  And let us not forget the credibility factor either. 

Oh, another one of my pet peeves is what I like to call the Star Trek Statue of Liberty Play.  If you watch any of the Star Trek TV shows for very long there is always one of these.  There is almost always a situation where the star ship is facing eminent danger, and at the last minute, one of the crew members comes up with a way to save everyone using some sort technical wizardry.

Situation: The ship is about to be sucked into a black hole and there is absolutely no way in hades that they are gonna get out of this alive.

Then, some ensign with a brain about the size of Donald Trump’s ego says,

“Captain, if we re-calibrate the trans-inducers and boost the thermal power to the ship’s core, we might be able to reverse the polarity of the gravitational pull and have the black hole catapult us like a bucket of chicken into the negative zone.”

Captain:  “Make it so.”

So, if you are writing ad copy, make sure that if you really have a fantastic offer, you can back it up with facts, too.

I could elaborate on that idea more, but I went off topic again. (Sigh…)

How to Find Out Which Direction To Go In Life In 700 Words Or Less!

In my last post, I talked a lot about being a wandering generality.  If you haven’t read it, go there now and read it.  That’s right, don’t think or blink or even breathe, just jump back to my last post.

 I’ll wait, I promise. 

Leaves fall from the trees, the ball drops again at Times Square…

Oh, goody, your back!  I’m sure that you read my rather depressing story about how NOT to live your life. Right?  Yeah, you definitely don’t want to go there in your personal life.  But, some people, or should I say, most people have to learn from their experiences.

Anyway, I finally got around to my point about finding out what your passion is in life because if you aren’t passionate about what you do, you will probably live a very boring, tedious life, to say the least.

So, I’m sure that in your mind, the question begs…How do I find my passion?

There are usually two ways to do this. 

Way to find your passion #1 – Do what you love the most.  If you have a particular thing that you find yourself doing all of the time, that you just love, or if you find yourself reading and studying about a particular subject, then finding your passion is going to be easy. 

For example, if you find yourself always looking at artwork and reading about it, then perhaps you should do research about different careers in the field of art.  Even if you can’t make art, there are all sorts of things you could be involved with that are in that field.

Unrealistic you say? 

Look at Simon Cowell. (OK, maybe you SHOULDN'T look at him)  Cowell, as most of you know, is a major hotshot of the music industry, however, he has had no formal music training nor does he play an instrument.  He doesn't even sing.  However, his passion is the music industry and he has clearly made his mark there. 

So my point again, is if you are truly passionate about something, you will find out a way to get involved with it and make it your life mission.

If you already know what you love, then you are already on your way.  However, what if you don’t know what to do with your life?  What if you have absolutely no clue as to what it is you want to do, and you find just thinking about it drives you nuts?

Way to find your passion #2 My advice would be to explore different paths and ideas.  You may need to try several different things to see where your interests lie.  Considering that we are in the information age, there really isn't a reason for you to not explore vocations that you may be interested in.

One good way would be to start looking at categories.  Whenever I need to look at categories of subjects, I go on Amazon.  The reason for this, is because you can pick a topic and then drill down intro different categories on that topic very easily.

This will give you an opportunity to explore many ideas that might interest you.

After you have looked at different subjects and their categories, you can order books very cheaply to begin exploring different areas. 

My way of thinking is that if you are really interested in a particular hobby or vocation, then purchasing a book on it will give you an actual thrill.  No kidding!  And don’t worry about spending a wad of money, because you can almost always start on a shoestring. 

If you buy used books on Amazon, you will find that they are very cheap.  When I got my master’s degree in Education Technology, I bought all of my books for less than a quarter of the price the university wanted to sell me theirs for.  So go cheap if you can’t afford it.

There are a lot of successes out there that had nothing but a dream when they started out. Bill Gates started Microsoft in a garage so, start out small in a big way.

Once you have uncovered your possible passion, you will need to actually practice, do or explore it as much as you can.  Maybe it will be for you, maybe it won’t.  There are always other paths to explore.

You may find something else that knocks your socks off.

Oh, don’t forget the principle we discussed in my last post.  You know, the principle of following money rather than your passion.  Would you rather do what it is you really love to do for $40,000 a year or do something you hate every day for $500,000? 

Think about it.  Seriously.

How to Avoid Getting Beat Up At 1:00 in the Morning

When I was young I was what you would call a wandering generality.  I had no focus, no dream and most importantly, no passion for anything.  

Thank God I was single at the time.  

I wound up working almost 20 hours a day, no kidding.  I worked at a shoe store during the day and a pizza parlor at night. I wasn't too swift in the finances department either, because I spent almost everything I made, never saving a cent for a rainy day or for things that would make my life easier, like a car. 

Survival was my only direction and I had nothing else to look forward to.

Looking back at my life from that time period, I am amazed that I am still alive.  Because I blew all of my money on frivolous things, I never bought a car and I had to walk some dangerous areas of a big city to get to and from work.  Almost every night, I had to walk home from the pizza parlor because I had to help shut it down at 1:00 ahem. 

In a big city, there are a lot of very weird people cruising the streets, looking for easy prey.  I had used syringes, from people shooting up, thrown at me from passing cars as well as booze bottles. One night that I walked past a convenience store, someone threatened to beat me up.  I knew to keep my cool and keep walking like I wasn't scared, even though, I was almost in a panic.

Of course, this is what happens to wandering generalities; they get thrown this way and that, never knowing where they will end up at, and they rarely end up on Success Avenue.

The reason I lived such a miserable life was pretty simple, I had not found a vocation that would take me out of the minimum wage trap. 

Look, if you have no viable skill for the job market, you won’t get very far, and that is just the reality of it. You need to have a skill or a set of skills that are marketable.  Now that I have been through all of this, I find myself talking to younger people about what they need to do to survive.

I almost always tell them to get a good education... 

However, that can be a bit tricky.  One of the reasons for this is because colleges and universities are now money making machines, whose sole purpose is to suck in money no matter what the standards or the cost.  Yep, there is a whole generation of folks that attended college for their four year degree, only to find out how worthless it all is. 

I’m not saying to skip college if you really want to go, but getting a degree in basket weaving will probably be a tough skill to market to potential employers, versus, say a civil or environmental engineering degree from a good university.

I usually tell young people that a good, specialized skill is paramount.  You have got to kind of drill down in the skill area to find the specialized skill that suits you.  For example, let’s say you love electronics.  Well, there are a lot of electronics jobs that just don’t pay much at all, but what happens when you drill down and actually look at specialized areas.  You could look at surveillance electronics, which is a huge industry right now.  (Just look at the news.)  Or, you could also look at repairing hospital equipment, which is a very demanding, yet well-paying gig.

Oh, and let us not forget trades that only take a few years to learn and don’t cost nearly as much as the coveted 4 year degree.  HVAC repair, watch repair, musical instrument repair, piano tuning, etc. Culinary arts are huge right now because people eat out a lot now. 

I could go on and on listing all of the trades and degrees that are usually in demand and pay well, but there is still one problem.

I wouldn't run just after the money, because no matter what vocation you decide to jump on, you will still have to LIKE what you are doing, or life will be miserable.

 I went to college late in life and got a specialized degree myself; I was almost 40 as a matter of fact.  Every semester, I saw young people showing up to shoot for a degree that they thought would make them a lot of money.  Usually, they were going for a legal degree or a degree in medicine when they had never, ever even looked at a medical book or diagram.  And, at the end of every semester you’d see those same students loading up their cars to leave, never to return.

If you are going to pursue a thing, it really helps to have a key ingredient that is very important to your chosen path:

PASSION

If you are lacking this, you will find life more dreary and empty than ever. Think about it for a minute.  Let’s take a look at very successful people and imagine they hated what they did.

Bill Gates hating programming, only using a computer to play Pac-Man on.

Arnold Schwarzenegger thinking it’s a waste of time to do a few push-ups.

Isaac Asimov with a TV bigger than his book collection.

Tiger Woods collecting comic books, rather than practicing putting.

You get the idea; you need to find out what your passion is. 

They Actually Did Poorly in  School

Funny thing about the folks mentioned above, almost all of them did poorly in school.  Why?  Even though I’m not sure about this, I would probably say it is because being forced to learn a skill set that you have absolutely no interest in is a drag, plain and simple.

So, if you don’t know what you passion is, don’t feel too bad, because sometimes it takes a lot of trial and error to find out what it is that you really love to do. And that’s where a good skill comes in handy. If you can get yourself a skill that is good enough to help you survive, you can always find the time to explore and pursue your passion, if you know how to manage your time properly.

That way, you won’t be making pizzas and walking mean streets at 1:00 in the morning.


Mark "Elmo" Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Portfolio Site: http://markelliscopyportfolio.blogspot.com/

Top SECRET Mind-Blowing Technique that Will Catapult Your Business into the Millions Of Dollars Over Night!

 

If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, one who undoubtedly makes his or her mark on the world and

magnetically draws people to you and your business, then this post may be for you, because I am going to unleash a secret that has been hidden in an underground vault for years. 

This secret is so well guarded by top millionaires, that once you learn it and unleash its incredible power, you will be amazed at how fast it works and how successful you will become.

Now for the first time ever, here is the incredible secret that you've been waiting for……..

Ha ha!  Gotcha good buddy!

You know, it really cracks me up when I see people peddling books and courses with the words “secret” on them, because the word “secret” is a real sponge.  It sponges up a lot of your attention and draws you in like a black hole, pulling even light into its vortex. 

There are a bunch of words like that in marketing.  Some of the top attention getters are:

• Secret
• Sale
• Now
• Free
• New
• Guaranteed

“New” cracks me considerably because it is used in the most ridiculous of circumstances. I once saw a jar of mayonnaise that said “New Look!” on the front, because they had merely changed the label.  They also keep changing the shape of the jar so they can splash the word “New” on it as well.

I’m sure there are other words, but these are the main attention getters. 

But to get back to my meandering method of making a point, in the age of the Internet, Amazon, Subscriptions, 9 million TV channels, mass and global communications, there really are no “secrets” out there, if you don’t believe me, just ask Edward Snowden.

However, having said that, there is knowledge is available that seems to be ignored by the general public.  Knowledge that is high octane, sure fire and available for use but for some reason, is overlooked and under used.

I wrote about the use of time management in my last blog post, where the millionaire author, Dan Kennedy, took ten time management techniques for entrepreneurs and concisely wrote about them.  Now, those techniques have been written about for hundreds of years or more.  As a matter of fact, Benjamin Franklin used those techniques, and you can read about it in my last blog post.

So if you want to know a “secret” that will help your business gain some serious marketing traction, then pay close attention, because I am going to introduce you to a book that will do just that.  Yep, I looked into my top secret vault and pulled this blueprint out and once I unleash this beast in your general direction, your entire life will change.

Ha ha!  Gotcha again, good buddy!

Actually it’s a book written by one of the world’s top advertising copyists, Bob Bly, called “Become a recognized AUTHORITY In your Field in 60Days or Less!”

If you take a look at some of the world’s top authorities in a particular subject area, they all have something in common: they have all written books.  (Actually, they have done a lot more than that, but we will get to that in a second.)

Just watch the daytime talk shows.  Every time they introduce a guest on their shows, they usually say, “Please welcome to our show, Dr. Ino Mooredanu, with his new book, “How to Pick Your Nose at the Dinner Table and Get Away with It”.

Oh, by the way, “Dr.” or some other authority degree usually sounds better than “Mr.” but it is not required to become an authority on a subject.

Just to drive in the point, let’s take a look at some authority figures that you probably heard of and the books they have written.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger (Body Builder, Movie Star) – The Education of a Bodybuilder
• Bruce Lee (Martial Arts Expert) – The Tao of Jeet Kune Do
• Donald Trump (Big Shot Millionaire) – How to Get Rich
• Dr. Mehmet Oz (Health TV Talk Show Host) – You on a Diet
• Seth Godin (Marketing Guru and Expert) – Tribes, Purple Cow, etc.

Anyway, you get the idea.

So Mr. Bly’s book on how to become an authority in your field, really is a powerful strategy.  He lays out how you can not only become a driving force in your field of endeavor, but also how you can use it to crush your competition and have an awesome advantage over them. 

Of course, writing books isn't the only way to gain authority, especially in the age of the Internet.  This book shows you how you can write articles, press releases, produce info products, make speeches, give seminars and a whole host of weapons you can use in your marketing arsenal to gain traction and get that “expert” status, you need to become successful.

However, this involves work. Lots, and lots of work, and that’s the trick, isn't it?

As Thomas Edison once said, “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”

So, if you are thinking that this book is some sort of shortcut or method of circumventing that four letter word I just mentioned, guess again. However, as with all of Bob Bly’s material which is loaded with incredible information that I have read, it has a value rating of 5 out of 5 stars for information that will actually help you. 

So grab a copy and learn the “secrets”.  

You won’t be disappointed.

Do You Want A New Year's Resolution or REAL Change in Your Life?

Right after the beginning of the year, the most pressing things on everyone’s mind are usually starting a new diet, and resolutions.  However, for more than 99% of us, both of these ideas quickly fall flat on the floor and die a fast death before the month of February rolls around. 

Mark Twain said that the road to H-E double hockey sticks is paved with the best of intentions, so apparently this isn't a new trend.

You have to ask yourself, why is it that some people seem to experience unprecedented levels of achievement in their lives while others do not?  Do they know some incredible success secret that the rest of don’t? Maybe it’s just luck, like winning the lottery.

Dan Kennedy is a millionaire marketing expert that seems to have mastered success, and he says one of the main reasons why some people are very successful and others are not is because of how time is used. 

Now, to just step back a second, I know personally from history that he is right.  For example, one of our country’s most productive founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, developed his own system of time management which he attributed to his own personal success. 

Franklin would chronically plan out his days and take tasks and goals and break them down into chunks so that he could stay focused.  Considering that Franklin was involved in the writing and implementation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he was an accomplished inventor, developing and inventing lightning rods, bifocals, new stove designs ( as well as a music instrument called a glass harmonica) which are still in use today.

 He founded the first U.S. hospital, fire department, and library, was the 6^th President of Pennsylvania, ambassador for the colonies, as well as the first Post Master. 

The list of Benjamin Franklin’s accomplishments goes on and on, way too much to be listed here, but the gist of this message is great things can be accomplished by planning and executing your time.

Enter a book that will cut through all of the volumes of junk that have already been written on time management and gives you concisely all you need to know how to use time to achieve your goals and raise your level of achievement: DanKennedy’s No BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs.

Speaking as an entrepreneur that has actually read the entire book several times and used some of the techniques in it, I can tell you that I really appreciate the way Monsieur Kennedy cuts out all of the fluff and tells you exactly what you need to know. (Hence the Title “No BS”.)

According to the author, there are only 10 techniques in time management that really work, and he has included all of them in this volume. 

One of my favorite parts of the book is where he shows you a clear correlation between a person’s character and their punctuality.  

No kidding.  

Before I read this book, I never really thought about how the two are connected, but I now believe Dan Kennedy has made a very accurate observation.  He actually selects personalities in society and his personal life that illustrate this principle clearly.

Because the book is written so concisely, it has only about 172 pages to it, which is fine for me because the last thing I want to do is read a 2000 page book on time management.

I just haven’t got the time for it.

-Mark “Elmo” Ellis