Click the headphones to catch me on iTunes... :)
Learn How To Ask Empowering Questions And See Through The 7 Great Lies Of Network Marketing
In the last three episodes of Web Business Podcast I’ve talked about generating the right mindset for online business success and about how to get to know the territory of Internet marketing well enough to recognise and avoid online scams.
Generating the Mindset and Knowing the Territory are the first two so called “secrets” discussed by Christopher Hoenig in his book, “Six Essential Secrets to Thinking on a New Level“.
In today’s podcast I want to talk some more about the kind of mindset an Internet marketer because developing the right mindset to succeed online is not ultimately about simply writing out and repeating affirmations such as “I am rich” or “I make $10,000 a month on the Internet”. In fact, as lifestyle expert Noah St. John argues, affirmations can actually be counter-productive and leave you feeling like a frustrated failure when they do not bring about the change in your life that you are seeking.
Instead, we will look at Noah St. John’s alternative method, which he calls Afformations: the technique of asking yourself empowering questions.
We will also do a fly-on-the-wall sneak-listen-in as online network marketing expert Ann Sieg reveals just what’s wrong with the training techniques that network marketers are taught and what you need to know instead to be successful with network marketing on the Internet.
Noah St. John: Afformations
What is an “affirmation”? An affirmation is a statement of something you want to be true. You’ve probably heard many times that repeating affirmations over and over again is supposed to help you change the way you think and bring positive results into your life.
Well, a guy called Noah St. John has written a book The Secret Code of Success: 7 Hidden Steps to More Wealth and Happiness
Noah St. John argues that classic affirmations such as telling yourself again and again, “I am rich, I am rich, I am rich,” don’t work because of the way the human mind is wired. He points out that we do not simply passively accept and absorb statements that we don’t really believe.
He points out that Human thought is the process of ASKING and searching for answers to QUESTIONS.
So if the human mind is always asking and searching for answers to QUESTIONS, we should stop trying to make ourselves accept statements we don’t really believe and start asking questions.
Take the affirmation “I am rich” — to which the brain replies “Yeah, right!” Let’s change it into a question:
“Why am I so rich?”
Try it. Ask yourself “Why am I so rich?”
What’s happening now? According to Noah St John, when you ask yourself a question you start racking your brains for an answer.
He points out that it’s by asking questions that you form your reality, and so you can change your reality much more effectively not by telling yourself affirmative statements but by asking yourself empowering questions. Noah St. John calls these questions “Afformations“.
4 Steps to Creating Afformations That Change Your Life for the better according using Noah St John’s Afformations technique.
Here’s how you can use use the Afformations Method to create a better life for yourself and your family:
Step 1: Ask yourself what you want — and write it down.
For example, “I want to increase my online sales and make $2000 a month clear profit.”
Step 2: Form a QUESTION that assumes that what you want is already true.
This is the key step to creating Afformations that change your life.
Since you want more online sales, you should now ask WHY that has already happened! So your afformation will be: “Why did I increase my online sales so quickly and easily?”
As Noah St John says,
“the quality of your life depends on just two things: the quality of your communication with the world inside yourself, and the quality of your communication with the world outside yourself.”
When you do Step 2 of The Afformations Method, you start to change the quality of your communication with both worlds — inner and outer. You begin to ask yourself new, empowering questions, and stop asking disempowering ones.
Step 3: Give yourself to the question.
The point of Afformations does not lie in finding “the answer,” but in asking better questions. When you ask better questions, your mind automatically focuses on things you’ve probably never focused on before — and according to Noah St John, the results will amaze you.
Which brings us to Step 4 of The Afformations Method — the one you MUST do to get the results you want…
Step 4: Take new ACTIONS based on your new assumptions.
Even though you may have spent thousands of dollars on “how to succeed” programs, you may have subconsciously assumed they wouldn’t work for you. That’s precisely why they didn’t.
But The Afformations Method makes conscious and clear that which has, until now, been subconscious and hidden.
For example, when you start asking yourself empowering questions such as “Why did I increase my online sales so quickly?” you will probably start thinking about what someone who had more online sales would do — and then, this is the fourth step, you must follow up by taking the actions your questions brought into focus.
So, afformations are all about asking empowering questions like “Why am I so rich?” that immediately change what your brain focuses on. Change your questions, change your focus, change your results.
Can you see how that puts you in conscious control of your subconscious thoughts? It automatically changes your perspective, which can change your actions, which will CHANGE YOUR LIFE.
Ann Sieg: The 7 Great Lies Of Network Marketing
In this part of today’s WebBusinessPodcast.com podcast we’re going to be flies on the wall and listen in to online network marketing expert Ann Sieg talking about how much of what you are taught by traditional network marketing systems simply don’t work and then we’ll take a quick sneak peak at the contents of her free 35 page ebook The 7 Great Lies of Internet Marketing in which she explains a permission-based system of marketing called attraction marketing…
ANN SIEG
I have a copy of Ann Sieg‘s ebook, The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing right here so let’s lift the lid on those 7 great lies of Network Marketing
Lie #1 – Everyone is your prospect!
No they are not! It is madness to try and sell your business to “everyone” – and so embarrassing too. Remember, while everybody likes buying stuff, i.e. making their own decisions, nobody wants to be sold to. And not everybody wants to join your team and start an Internet business.
A better principle is to keep in mind that no prospect is worth your time until they’ve expressed an interest in your offer and have asked you for more information. This is based on the sound principles of Permission Marketing which Seth Godin describes in his book, “Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers
Lie #2 – This really isn’t sales.
We just share products with people. No no no! Network marketing is about selling your business model to targeted prospects, to people who are in the market and who have approached you. Ann Sieg explains that:
Learning effective sales techniques is vital for the success of your business; You need to master the sales process and know what really motivates people.
Yes, you want to have great products to sell – and remember that a good network marketing business must not only have great products to sell, but when it comes to team building, the business opportunity itself is also the product. However, When It Comes To Selling the business, people spend Too Much time selling the product and too little time focusing on the perspective of the person who is your prospect.
Lie #3 – Anyone can do this!
Ann Sieg writes that a lot of the people who look at network marketing are not in a great position to succeed at that point in their lives. When you talk through the business with your prospect, keep the focus on the prospect by asking questions and if you discover that the prospect is not able to commit enough time or money to do what you honestly believe is necessary to stand any chance of success, then be up front and honest about it. You will only be wasting your time and your prospect’s time if you encourage someone to join your business just to get a sign up that you know is not going to succeed.
Lie #4 – We’ll build your business for you.
This is one of the biggest lies out there! You will not make money without taking action! The ability to create and monitor automated or semi-automated marketing systems are one of the great benefits of the Internet, but automation of the system is only half the story. The other half is human contact, especially if you are aiming to build a successful team. You will need to be actively involved in training and in providing support for your team. You will need to be a leader and that takes action.
Lie #5 – We have the best product ever!
Well, you may have the best product ever – and you certainly do want to have a great product to sell, but the key word in that phrase “a great product to sell” is not “great” and is not “product”. it is “Sell”. Not even great products sell themselves… You could have the best product in the world, says Ann Sieg, but if you’re not using effective marketing, nobody will know and nobody will care.
Lie #6 – You just don’t have enough belief!
Remember how Noah St John debunked affirmations in the first part of this Podcast? A lot of network marketers get burned by trainers who tell them that they just need to believe and to affirm their success to succeed… and so they affirm and they affirm, but they don’t really believe and worse still, they don’t learn HOW to succeed. In the end, it’s not a problem of affirming your belief in your success, but of asking the right questions, knowing the territory and learning HOW to market and HOW to talk to the prospects who approach you in such a way that you focus on their needs more than on your product.
Lie #7 – The proven system.
The so called “proven system” – write a list of people you can contact, pick up the phone and cold call them using the cheesy script supplied by the Internet marketing company, talk to everyone about the products, don’t sell, just show, all that stuff has created an industry with a 97% failure rate; the typical network marketing system pulls in a lot of people who have little or no experience of sales and doesn’t train them to sell effectively.
So there we have The Seven Great Lies of Network Marketing in a rather large nutshell.
To develop the right mindset for, and get to know the territory of Internet marketing, you need to learn how to ask empowering questions and learn to see through the seven great lies of network marketing and develop an attraction-based method of selling, which focuses on the prospects who fit your target profile.
Sources:
Christopher Hoenig: 6 Essential Secrets for Thinking on a New Level
Noah St. John: The Secret Code of Success: 7 Hidden Steps to More Wealth and Happiness
Seth Godin: Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers
Ann Sieg: The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing
Asking The Right Questions To Identify Internet Scams
In this week’s podcast we move on to the second of Christopher Hoenig’s Six Essential Secrets for Thinking on a New Level, which is all about asking the right questions and getting the information you need to succeed online. Today we focus on the information you need to identify and avoid getting caught by Internet scams and how you can find that information on the Internet.
Two websites that I use everyday to help me develop my online business are:
In today’s podcast I take the opportunity to thank the coaches of the Affiliate Power Group as well as Evan Carmichael and two of his forum moderators, Michelle Jayes and Trent Brownrigg for helping me to get this podcast set up or for offering feedback on the show so far.
Asking the Right Questions To Avoid Internet Scams
Learning “how to know how to know” whether something is a scam or not is an important Internet business skill. There are quite a few simple techniques you can use to find out whether an offer is an online scam or not.
Here is something I found a couple of years ago. It was a classified ad offering “fifty guaranteed paid signups”. I clicked the link and was taken to a rather shoddy looking website that explained the deal and offered the package for just $425. Four hundred dollars may look like a lot of money, but actually, if they really could deliver, then getting fifty PAYING subscribers into your downline for that price would be a steal.
But remember, if something seems too good to be true, then it IS almost certainly too good to be true.
For example, one of the most successful recruiters on the Internet is Daegan Smith. He built a team of 625 affiliates in just 90 days. Six months later he had 2,000 affiliates in his downline. Other leading recruiters such as Ewen Chia and Stone Evans regularly add more than 50 paid up affiliates to their downlines each month. Ewen recruited 147 affiliates into his Empowerism.com downline in September 2009 alone.
But no matter how good the top affiliates are at recruiting, you won’t find them offering to add “fifty guaranteed paid sign ups” to your downline for just $425, or any other price.
So, how come such a tacky-looking website as the one I was looking at was claiming to deliver fifty paid affiliates to all comers?
This ad is an example of a classic Internet scam. It promises to deliver a quick and effortless way for you to get rich, but only if you pay $425!
1. Research the website on Google. Add the word “scam” to your search.
2. Use the Godaddy tool, who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx to check up on the website owners.
3. Check the domain name as Internet scams are often run from sites ending .tv, .hk and so on.
4. Has the website owner posted his or her name on the website?
5. Are there any contact details on the website? If so, run a check on them to see if they are genuine.
6. Do all the links really link out to the websites they point to? Do they redirect you elsewhere – or nowhere?
7. What is the payment method?
8. Find out if anybody knows about the company on Internet marketing forums.
9. Check IMReportCard.com to see whether the company has been reviewed.
One more tip: the older the company the less likely it is to be a scam, so when choosing an Internet business to promote, check how long it has been around for.
Resources
1. Recommended Reading
6 Essential Secrets for Thinking on a New Level
2. Online Internet Marketing Coaching
3. Online Internet Marketing Forums
4. Other Tools
Google.com – Check out what the word is about any business opportunity or offer on Google before you commit to it…
IMReportcard.com – The place to look for independent Internet business reviews plus feedback from affiliates.
Who.Godaddy.com/WhoIsCheck.aspx – Find out who owns a particular website that interests you.
DomainsByProxy.com – Note: If you were to get ripped off by someone hiding behind this website there are still certain steps you could take to recover your money and DomainsByProxy.com now explains the circumstances under which they will reveal a client’s identity.
David Hurley
An Olympian Luger’s Guide To Success Mentality
Discover the secrets to developing unstoppable momentum for your online business with some Olympian success mentality insights from four-times Olympian, Ruben Gonzalez.
Click the green arrow to listen to the podcast.
In last week’s podcast I mentioned a book by Christopher Hoenig called “6 Essential Secrets for Thinking on a New Level” and I talked about how those six secrets could be used to help you succeed with your internet marketing business.
Just to recap, the six essential secrets are to do with
- Mentality – how you think, your mindset.
- Knowledge – what you know, research.
- Relationships – who you know and how you treat them.
- Problems – identifying what needs to be done.
- Solutions – finding the best way to respond.
- Results – putting your solutions into action
In today’s podcast I want to talk a bit more about developing the right mindset for Internet marketing success because getting the right mindset is fundamental to everything else. It is often said that 95% of people who start an internet based business never make any money with it, and the vast majority fail even to make a single sale, and the fundamental reason for this is due to a failure to adopt a mindset that is geared to success.
On the other hand, when you look at successful Internet marketers you find that they are very often very ordinary people of average intelligence from typical backgrounds; the only difference between them and all the failures is that they have developed strong mental habits of self belief and self discipline; they have a strong determination to win, they have the mental stamina to suffer temporary a temporary defeat and come back stronger, they have a powerful motivation or vision and are focussed on turning that vision into reality, and they become unstoppable.
One of the best examples of how a clear vision, mental stamina and determination to win can make you unstoppable, is the testimony of four-time Winter Olympian Ruben Gonzalez.
When Ruben Gonzalez was in the third grade he realized he wanted to be an Olympic Athlete. But For several years Ruben didn’t believe it was possible for someone like him to make it to the Olympics because he was not a great athlete, just a soccer player struggling to stay in the second eleven of his college team, so he was not motivated to take action. It wasn’t until he saw tiny Scott Hamilton win the Figure Skating Gold Medal at the Sarajevo Olympics in 1984 that he started to believe that if he was willing to work hard enough, he could realize his Olympic Dream too.
Ruben was already 21 years old when he saw Scott Hamilton win the Gold, an age usually considered much too old to take up a new sport and master it sufficiently to go to the Olympics.
But Ruben’s story proves that if you BELIEVE something is possible, and you are willing to do the work, then you can do it. Because 4 years later he was competing in the 1988 Calgary Olympics.
Ruben took up the luge, a notoriously foolhardy sport in which you lie down on your back on a bit of fibreglass attached to two steel runners and send yourself down a bobsleigh track at about 85 miles per hour. To do that you either have to be nuts, or have a pretty wild dream!
So how did Ruben raise the self-belief necessary to achieve his dream?
The first thing he did was not physical but MENTAL – I mean mental in the positive sense of that word, really!
Ruben began reading biographies of great people such as Wilma Rudolph, Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur, and George Patton. All people who overcame great odds to reach their goals.and discovered that great achievers were all motivated by a dream they were passionate about. And they never gave up pursuing it.
The other thing Ruben did was to seek out people he respected. Associate with people who think big and you will start to think big too. Gaining the support of those whom you respect is a great way to boost your own self-belief.
So, in 1988 Ruben Gonzalez competed in luge event in the Calgary Winter Olympics. He went on to compete in the 1992 Albertville Olympics and the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Then, in 2010 he competed in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. That made him the first person to compete in FOUR Winter Olympics, each in a different decade, and also, at the age of 47, one of the oldest people ever to compete in the Olympic games.
Let’s listen to Ruben talking about his experience…
You can also check out Ruben’s website at http://www.thelugeman.com
If you would like to make a donation to my Japanese Earthquake & Tsunami Appeal, please visit my other website at http://grasp-the-nettle.com and see the first of the two right hand columns for details.
David Hurley
Generating The Internet Marketing Mindset
In today’s podcast I talk about the importance of developing a successful Internet marketing mindset, or rather, cultivating a success mentality and then applying it to Internet marketing.
References
- Christopher Hoenig: 6 Essential Secrets For Thinking On A New Level
- John Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress
- Cynthia Minnaar: http://www.cyns-home-biz.com
- David Hurley: http://grasp-the-nettle.com
- Napoleon Hill: Think And Grow Rich
Click the green arrow to listen to the podcast.
Part 1: Christopher Hoenig And The Internet Marketing Mindset
According to Christopher Hoenig, in his book, 6 Essential Secrets for Thinking on a New Level
So here they are again. I have reduced the six success secrets to six simple keywords to help you remember them. And here they are…
- Success Secret Keyword #1: Mentality
- Success Secret Keyword #2: Knowledge
- Success Secret Keyword #3: Relationships
- Success Secret Keyword #4: Problems
- Success Secret Keyword #5: Solutions
- Success Secret Keyword #6: Results
In today’s podcast I’m going to look at the first of these six success secrets – MENTALITY, or MINDSET – and I will deal with each of the other ones over the course of the next few podcasts.
So Today’s Internet Marketing Mindset Tip doesn’t require you to master any kind of online technical or marketing skill at all.
Whatever you do though, if you really are hungry for success on the Internet you must Learn to Get Into The Right Mindset For Internet Business Success and make that mindset second nature. Actually, to do that you must develop a success-oriented mentality and then apply it to your chosen field of endeavour which is Internet marketing. And that is why I start with writers such as Christopher Hoenig. You must educate yourself for success by reading the books of successful people, listening to their motivational talks, and also associating with successful people in your chosen field and indeed in any other field because, as I say, success mentality is something that is common to all successful people and can be applied to every field of endeavour.
As I said just now, everything that Christopher Hoenig talks about in his book, 6 Essential Secrets for Thinking on a New Level, can be applied to Internet marketing, as indeed can the insights of the great motivational writers and speakers such as Napoleon Hill who were active before the Internet era, which is why I gave you a large dollop of Napoleon Hill in last week’s podcast and why you are going to get another dollop in this weeks podcast; because no matter how much technology may have advanced and enhanced our lives, and no matter how much potential for changing our lives new technologies such as the Internet bring us and will continue to bring to us, the best way to improve yourself is still to change the way you think because you are the product of what goes into your mind, no matter what else happens to you. What you think determines what you do. What you do determines what you accomplish and it determines what you can accomplish on the Internet as much as anywhere else. And how you think also affects how you will respond to unforeseen events, setbacks and disasters.
Part 2: Facing Setbacks, or “Getting Through The Slough of Despond”
For example, over the last few years that I have spent building a business on the Internet I have got to know people who started out with from absolute zero when it comes to technical knowledge of website design and internet marketing, they were complete and utter “newbies” and yet they have persevered and gone on to build up full time businesses on the Internet.
I know others who have a lot of technical knowledge and can make beautiful websites and yet they are still dependent on day jobs to fill their bellies with meat. And again there are others who, like Christian and his sometime friend Pliable in Pilgrim’s Progress, have started to walk the walk, but then they fall into the Slough of Despond and whereas Christian eventually gets out of the mire on the side closer to his goal, Pliable “gave a desperate struggle or two and got out of the mire on that side of the Slough which was next to his own house and so away he went to play games on Facebook and Christian saw him no more.”
You often hear it said that “Internet marketing doesn’t work”, but if you investigate the matter a little more deeply you will always and invariably find that it is not the Internet marketing business that didn’t work but the Internet marketing business owner.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that you can set up a website, spend a couple of hours promoting it at the weekend and make money with it by the end of the following week. If you want Internet marketing to work, you must work. If you are not prepared to work, study and learn Internet marketing, then – get out of here!
Part 3: Cynthia Minnaar, An Example Of The Right Mindset In Action
I was talking via Skype only yesterday to one of my Internet marketing mentors, Cynthia Minnaar, who is an excellent example of someone who has built up a full time home-based Internet business not on technical knowledge, but on possessing the RIGHT MINDSET which meant that she had clear goals, a determination to achieve those goals and was prepared to do whatever it takes in terms of work, study and learning to deliver on her promise to herself.
Today, Cynthia Minnaar is a successful full time Internet business owner and online affiliate marketer as well as a very dedicated mentor to a group of aspiring Internet marketers at the AffiliatePowerGroup.com. You can check out Cyn’s website at:
One thing Cynthia said to me yesterday was that once she made the decision to give up her corporate job “there was no going back”. She had to all intents and purposes burnt her bridges and had to succeed and was prepared to work an 18 hour day if necessary to get done what needed to be done. I got to know Cynthia over the Internet when I set up my own website, http://grasp-the-nettle.com in 2007.
Cynthia had set up her business just two years before and it was very encouraging to know that she had set out as a complete beginner, as someone who didn’t know anything about HTML or how to upload a webpage to her website and yet she had stayed focused on the essentials, worked hard at promoting her business every day, sought out experienced marketers on an Internet forum, built up a relationship with them, learnt from them, and today works together with them as an Internet marketing mentor on the AffilitePowerGroup.com.
Cynthia is a great example of someone succeeding with an Internet business because she understood the first of Christopher Hoenig‘s six essential success secrets, adopting the right mindset for success.
Part 4: An Extract From Christopher Hoenig’s 6 Essential Secrets For Thinking On A New Level
“Generating the right mindset is the most intangible, and yet in some ways the most important, influence on how well we solve problems…”
Part 6: Three Feet From Gold, The Story Of R. U. Darby As Told By Napoleon Hill In Think And Grow Rich
One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat. An uncle of R. U. Darby was caught by the “gold fever” in the gold-rush days, and went west to DIG AND GROW RICH. He had never heard that more gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever been taken from the earth. He staked a claim and went to work with pick and shovel. The going was hard, but his lust for gold was definite.
After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore. He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly, he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home in Williamsburg, Maryland, told his relatives and a few neighbors of the “strike.” They got together money for the needed machinery, had it shipped. The uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.
The first car of ore was mined, and shipped to a smelter. The returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado! A few more cars of that ore would clear the debts. Then would come the big killing in profits.
Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Darby and Uncle! Then something happened! The vein of gold ore disappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow, and the pot of gold was no longer there! They drilled on, desperately trying to pick up the vein again? all to no avail.
Finally, they decided to QUIT. They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars, and took the train back home. Some “junk” men are dumb, but not this one! He called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised that the project had failed, because the owners were not familiar with “fault lines.” His calculations showed that the vein would be found JUST THREE FEET FROM WHERE THE DARBYS HAD STOPPED DRILLING! That is exactly where it was found!
The “Junk” man took millions of dollars in ore from the mine, because he knew enough to seek expert counsel before giving up. Most of the money which went into the machinery was procured through the efforts of R. U. Darby, who was then a very young man. The money came from his relatives and neighbors, because of their faith in him. He paid back every dollar of it, although he was years in doing so.
Long afterward, Mr. Darby recouped his loss many times over, when he made the discovery that DESIRE can be transmuted into gold. The discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance.
Remembering that he lost a huge fortune, because he STOPPED three feet from gold, Darby profited by the experience in his chosen work, by the simple method of saying to himself, “I stopped three feet from gold, but I will never stop because men say ‘no’ when I ask them to buy insurance.”
Darby is one of a small group of fewer than fifty men who sell more than a million dollars in life insurance annually. He owes his “stick-ability” to the lesson he learned from his “quit-ability” in the gold mining business.
Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to QUIT. That is exactly what the majority of men do.
More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known, told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach.
Podcast Episode #1 Features Blogging Tips & Napoleon Hill On Goal Setting
Today’s introductory episode of Web Business Podcast kicks off with a brief chat about the purpose of this free podcast: the aim of the podcast is for anybody who wants to set up a business on the Internet and make money with it.
Click the green arrow to listen to the podcast.
Part 1: Six Business Blogging Tips to help you write better blogs
Blog Tip #1. Interesting, edgy, controversial: Popular blogs are stimulating and informative.
Blog Tip #2. Drive traffic to your blog. Don’t just sit back and wait for it to arrive.
Blog Tip #3. Design. It’s worth spending some time, effort and money on creating a unique design.
Blog Tip #4. Break your content into small packets. Make it easy to scan.
Blog Tip#5. Search Engines: use SEO to get your blog ranking well. (An upcoming podcast will deal with this.)
Blog Tip #6. Monetization is useless without traffic. Don’t make the mistake of spending more time monetizing your blog than driving traffic to it.
This part of the podcast is based on an article titled “Six Key Tips To Successful Business Blogging” which I wrote for Free-Wordpress-Websites.com – a website that promotes my free WordPress website set up service.
Part 2: A Reading from Think & Grow Rich: How Edwin C. Barnes Set & Achieved His Goal
This is the story of how a young man who knew how to “think and grow rich”.
In Think and Grow Rich
In the course of Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill tells many stories of people who came from nowhere to achieve great personal and business success and in today’s extract you’ll hear about Edwin C. Barnes,
THE MAN WHO “THOUGHT” HIS WAY INTO PARTNERSHIP WITH THOMAS A. EDISON.
TRULY, “thoughts are things,” and powerful things at that, when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a BURNING DESIRE for their translation into riches, or other material objects.
A little more than thirty years ago, Edwin C. Barnes discovered how true it is that men really do THINK AND GROW RICH. His discovery did not come about at one sitting. It came little by little, beginning with a BURNING DESIRE to become a business associate of the great Edison.
One of the chief characteristics of Barnes’ Desire was that it was definite. He wanted to work with Edison, not for him…
When this DESIRE, or impulse of thought, first flashed into his mind he was in no position to act upon it. Two difficulties stood in his way. He did not know Mr. Edison, and he did not have enough money to pay his railroad fare to Orange, New Jersey.
These difficulties were sufficient to have discouraged the majority of men from making any attempt to carry out the desire. But his was no ordinary desire! He was so determined to find a way to carry out his desire that he finally decided to travel by “blind baggage,” rather than be defeated. (To the uninitiated, this means that he went to East Orange on a freight train).
He presented himself at Mr. Edison’s laboratory, and announced he had come to go into business with the inventor. In speaking of the first meeting between Barnes and Edison, years later, Mr. Edison said, “He stood there before me, looking like an ordinary tramp, but there was something in the expression of his face which conveyed the impression that he was determined to get what he had come after. I had learned, from years of experience with men, that when a man really DESIRES a thing so deeply that he is willing to stake his entire future on a single turn of the wheel in order to get it, he is sure to win. I gave him the opportunity he asked for, because I saw he had made up his mind to stand by until he succeeded…”
Just what young Barnes said to Mr. Edison on that occasion was far less important than that which he thought. Edison, himself, said so! It could not have been the young man’s appearance which got him his start in the Edison office, for that was definitely against him. It was what he THOUGHT that counted…
Barnes did not get his partnership with Edison on his first interview. He did get a chance to work in the Edison offices, at a very nominal wage, doing work that was unimportant to Edison, but most important to Barnes, because it gave him an opportunity to display his “merchandise” where his intended “partner” could see it.
Months went by. Apparently nothing happened to bring the coveted goal which Barnes had set up in his mind as his DEFINITE MAJOR PURPOSE. But something important was happening in Barnes’ mind. He was constantly intensifying his DESIRE to become the business associate of Edison.
Psychologists have correctly said that “when one is truly ready for a thing, it puts in its appearance.”
Barnes was ready for a business association with Edison, moreover, he was DETERMINED TO REMAIN READY UNTIL HE GOT THAT WHICH HE WAS SEEKING.
He did not say to himself, “Ah well, what’s the use? I guess I’ll change my mind and try for a salesman’s job.” But, he did say, “I came here to go into business with Edison, and I’ll accomplish this end if it takes the remainder of my life.” He meant it! What a different story men would have to tell if only they would adopt a DEFINITE PURPOSE, and stand by that purpose until it had time to become an all-consuming obsession!
Maybe young Barnes did not know it at the time, but his bulldog determination, his persistence in standing back of a single DESIRE, was destined to mow down all opposition, and bring him the opportunity he was seeking…
Mr. Edison had just perfected a new office device, known at that time, as the Edison Dictating Machine (now the Ediphone). His salesmen were not enthusiastic over the machine. They did not believe it could be sold without great effort. Barnes saw his opportunity. It had crawled in quietly, hidden in a queer looking machine which interested no one but Barnes and the inventor.
Barnes knew he could sell the Edison Dictating Machine. He suggested this to Edison, and promptly got his chance. He did sell the machine. In fact, he sold it so successfully that Edison gave him a contract to distribute and market it all over the nation. Out of that business association grew the slogan, “Made by Edison and installed by Barnes.”
The business alliance has been in operation for more than thirty years. Out of it Barnes has made himself rich in money, but he has done something infinitely greater, he has proved that one really may “Think and Grow Rich.”
How much actual cash that original DESIRE of Barnes’ has been worth to him, I have no way of knowing. Perhaps it has brought him two or three million dollars, but the amount, whatever it is, becomes insignificant when compared with the greater asset he acquired in the form of definite knowledge that an intangible impulse of thought can be transmuted into its physical counterpart by the application of known principles.
Barnes literally thought himself into a partnership with the great Edison! He thought himself into a fortune. He had nothing to start with, except the capacity to KNOW WHAT HE WANTED, AND THE DETERMINATION TO STAND BY THAT DESIRE UNTIL HE REALIZED IT.
David HurleyI hope you enjoy my podcasts about Internet marketing.
Feel free to post your feedback in the comments section of each post.
If you have any requests for future podcasts, please drop me a line via the Contact Form.
To find out more about me, check out my About Me page.
Happy listening!
David Hurley