Do You Need a Believability Makeover? Your Ability to ASK May be a Clue!

February 27, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

“You’ve got to ask. Asking is in my opinion, the world’s most powerful and neglected secret to success and happiness.” ~ Self-made Multimillionaire and Philanthropist, Percy Ross

A big challenge faced by many entrepreneurs is feeling alone and isolated. And often, the isolation stems from the limiting belief that we should be able to figure out the challenges we face – on our own.

Not knowing the answers is frustrating, it makes us feel inadequate, like a failure. The new question I want you to consider is… are these feelings & thoughts based in reality? Are these thoughts true?

Some years ago I listened to a tele-class with Stephanie Franks, author of The Accidental Millionaire where she talked about this limiting belief that we should be able to figure it out on our own.

If you remember being in school, during exam time, students were required to complete the exam alone, in silence. The expectation was that we should know the answers or be able to figure them out – on our own.

If we dared to ask a fellow student anything concerning the exam it was a no-no and viewed as cheating. Our teachers didn’t encourage us to work in groups or “mastermind” with students who were top of the class.

These experiences impact our belief systems and as entrepreneurs a belief that once served us well and kept us out of the Principals office no longer supports our success.

And here’s another example I was reminded of by Billionaire business owner, speaker, coach & mentor Anne McKevitt… (google her she’s amazing!).

The average person… okay, 99.9% of people are aiming for middle ground, taking baby steps and playing it safe. Think of your childhood and how often parents and adult role models told you to “be careful”. That advice may have served you as a child (key word = may) but, as an adult and moreover an entrepreneur, playing it safe is keeping you small!

Your belief system has years of background stories just like these ones. Sculpted and molded through experiences, our culture, influential people and more.

If you’ve caught yourself doing things that sabotage your success or, not doing things to support your success and you can’t figure out why, start to listen to your inner voice.

Our beliefs influence our thoughts, dictate our habits, affect our decisions and ultimately create our results/reality.

Are you living a reality that you love?

If not… it may be time for your believability makeover ;)

~ Gina xo

P.S. My Believability Makeover Program is getting a makeover of its own! It’s usually reserved for my coaching clients only but I’m offering the newly remastered version this one time as a 2-week, 4-module workshop. Click the photo below to find out more – we start on March 22nd…


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List Attraction in Action: 20+ Tips to Leap Your List!

February 22, 2011 By admin 2 Comments

If you’ve been an online entrepreneur for any length of time you’ve probably heard someone say… “the money is in the list”. But what does that really mean?

It means, as a woman in business online, YOUR LIST is your greatest asset. But not just ANY list. It’s not just about accumulating the biggest list you can.

There’s strategy to consider…

=> Why are you building your list?

=> Who should be on your list?

=> How do you get these people on your list?

=> How do you keep them on your list?

=> How do you grow your list faster?

=> How do you make money from this list?

And I’m saying “list” for simplicity. For you the word might be community, network or tribe. Whatever the word, effective list attraction, retention and monetization skills are ESSENTIAL for long-term success.

Grow your list size and quality and you grow your PROFIT POTENTIAL and this is one aspect of growing your business that you can influence immediately.

If that sounds like something you want to experience in your business, read below to discover what’s working, right now, in the real world, for women in business online:

P.S. We’ll be delivering more crowd sourced tips just like this on other business boosting topics every single month. Some are shared publicly like today’s post – others are reserved just for “insiders”. Click the “Hope Chest” box on the right side of the page and sign up to make sure you don’t miss a thing!

P.P.S. A super-huge THANK YOU to all the awesome women who contributed a tip to this post xo

Would you like FREE PR like this too? We’re currently collecting tips on the topic of: How to get more traffic to your blog or website. You can submit your tip at http://iawbo.com/blogtraffic AND, we’ll notify you when the post goes live so you can let your community know :)

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FreedomRICH Business Basics (Part II): Is Your Niche Attracting Freebie Seekers or Prospects Who Are Ready to Buy?

February 4, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

A profitable niche has two important components:

1. It is “hot,” meaning there is interest in the topic.

And…

2. It attracts people who are ready to buy.

Most of us are investing our time marketing online to earn a living, not because there isn’t anything good on TV. And profitability begins with selecting a topic or a niche that’s got enough natural interest and traffic that you don’t have to spend tons of time (and money) to attract visitors and convert them into buyers.

Here’s now to find a profitable niche:

Step #1: Find a Popular Topic

Your first goal is to select a niche or market that is large enough to be profitable. It doesn’t have to be huge, but if there are only a handful of people interested in what you have to offer at any given time, your niche is most likely too small to support a business.

The funniest example of a niche that could be profitable but just isn’t popular enough is underwater basket weaving.

I can’t tell you for sure how many people spend their time submerged in the pool, creating baskets from reeds and willows. I’m pretty sure I could sell them an ebook on getting started, hawk some supplies (including scuba gear), and maybe even create a membership site where they could swap tales and weaving techniques. But since this is a pretty obscure topic, it just isn’t worth my time.

Okay, it’s a silly example so let’s look at a more realistic one. What about college-aged adopted children of multimillionaires from France. While this market “exists,” there wouldn’t be enough people in that situation at any given moment to make it worth the effort of addressing them. It would be much smarter to broaden the market slightly to adopted children of multimillionaires, or college-aged children of French multimillionaires.

Step #2 Attract Buyers Ready to Make a Purchase

After you’ve identified a niche with a decent amount of interest, the next step is to figure out if your target market includes people who are sitting at their computer with their wallets in their hands, ready to buy.

I have a colleague whose very first website was focused on crafts for kids. It included a ton of free craft projects that parents just loved. Traffic was good when the owner was actively promoting the site, BUT it was almost impossible to sell anything. She had traffic but wasn’t making any money.

The answer was simple: Moms and preschool teachers were heading to the site to grab free ideas for keeping their kids entertained for 15 or 20 minutes. But they weren’t coming to the site to buy. Anyone searching Google for a free butterfly craft for kids just isn’t in the mindset to buy a parenting book – or even a craft kit!

Instead, I advised my friend to reformat the site to attract buyers who are ready to make a purchase. For example, that same mom who last week was looking for a way to keep her kids busy for ten minutes before dinner may want more information about educational toys or arts and crafts kits for her kids. Same person, different Google search, different motivation, different likelihood of buying.

To figure out if your chosen niche is make up of buyers or freebie seekers, you really need to get in their head. Think about what people would be looking for in the niche you’ve chosen and how they would land on your website. What frame of mind are they in: desperation? relaxation? curiosity? Are they looking for information or are they ready to buy?

Something to think about isn’t it ;)

In the next post we’ll discuss whether you have to be in love with your niche – in other words, can you “marry” your niche for profits, not passion? Your thoughts?

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FreedomRICH Business Basics: How to Identify a Hot Profitable Niche Part I

February 3, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

A common question I get asked from women in the beginning phase of their online business (and veteran women in business online wanting to expand their income potential) is how to identify a profitable niche.

Choosing the right niche can seem really elusive and difficult to pin down, but it’s actually a teachable (and learn-able!) skill, just like playing tennis or baking bread. This post is the first in a series that will reveal the specific steps I go through (and guide my clients through), so you too can confidently identify a niche that will be profitable for you.

Here’s just some of what we’ll cover:

  • What is a niche anyway?
  • What is a target market (nope, it’s not your niche!)
  • What makes a niche profitable?
  • How to TEST the profit potential of a niche
  • and a lot more…

After this series you can expect to know more about niche marketing than most of your competitors and how to use that knowledge to boost your bottom line. So let’s get started!

What is A Niche?

Here’s Wikipedia’s definition of a Niche Market:

A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact.

And here’s how they describe an Online Niche Market

An often used technique for affiliate marketers is Internet-based niche marketing. By appealing to smaller segments of larger markets, referred to as niches, a website can be developed and promoted quickly to uniquely serve a targeted and usually loyal customer base, giving the affiliate a small but regular income stream. This technique is then repeated across several other niche websites until a desired income level is achieved. A bigger niche is harder to market to as the expense of online advertisements increases according to the popularity of the keywords used (on Adwords, for example).

In other words, a “niche” is a smaller segment of a larger market. Let’s look at some examples of larger markets as well as niches.

Health and Wellness is a large market, weight loss is a subset of that market. We can then “niche” it down even further by choosing weight loss for new moms as our niche.

Finance is another large market, debt reduction is a subset and paying off credit card debt is a niche within that market.

Think of a bookstore: the large market is the broad area of the store, like “Self-Help,” “Spirituality,” “Cooking,” “Fitness,” “Finances.” The shelf labels identify the subset of the market (“relationships,” “vegetarianism,” “weight training,” “Buddhism.”). Then a niche is a group of a few titles within that subcategory (“getting along with your in-laws,” “vegetarian cooking for kids,” “weight training for bone density,” “converting to Buddhism.”).

If you can’t tell if your topic is a large market, subset, or niche, imagine where you’d find your category in a bookstore: On a big sign hanging from the ceiling, on a shelf label, or on the title of a book?

Your goal is to identify a niche within which you can sell a specific set of products to a well defined group of people, otherwise known as your target market.

What is YOUR Target Market?

Once you’ve figured out your niche, your target market is your ideal audience or customers within that niche. For instance, if you want to sell weight loss products to new moms, you’re naturally targeting women age 20 to 40 who have recently given birth and are wanting to lose their “baby weight.”

You may be wondering why there’s such a focus on defining your niche and target market. Simply put, the more closely you can define your niche and your target market, the more easily you can create products and marketing materials to draw the attention of the exact subset of the population that will be most interested in your product. Not only will this make your efforts easier, it will also make them much more effective – and that means much more profitable!

In the next post we’ll talk more about why choosing an “hot niche” is an important first step to your online success!

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How to Make 2011 Your Year to Get Clear (and Grow Rich)

December 20, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

If you’re feeling frustrated with how fast your business is growing and you’d really love to pick up the pace, here’s something you can do right now…

Start making powerful decisions about every action you take. Ask yourself: Will this (action or decision) take me closer to or further away from my goal?

It’s simple enough but not always so easy. The premise here is assuming you have clearly and confidently set goals in the first place. You’ve got to know where you’re going before you can make decisions and take actions to get you there.

It sounds so logical yet so many entrepreneurs don’t spend much time thinking about what they really want. They just start doing. I’ve done it too – I just know better now.

Bottom line: If you don’t have a clear destination (and, if you’re not being totally honest about where you are now) – any decision will feel like guesswork and the actions you take may actually be moving you further away from what you really want.

Guessing next steps and hoping for the best is not how successful women grow in business.

So imagine this instead… knowing exactly what to do first and next – and why. Do you think you’d move a little faster and enjoy more significant results from your efforts? You bet! This is what clarity can do for you.

So – as your clarity catalyst – I have TWO action steps for you:

1) First, go to my personal coaching site and get a copy of How to Set Goals with Confidence – this 30+ page guide on its own will position you to enjoy greater and faster success in 2011.

“A goal properly set is halfway reached.” – Abraham Lincoln

2) Next, apply for a complimentary 30 minute Strategy Session with me. During this call you’ll gain clarity about where you are, where you really want to be and what you can do immediately to bridge that gap quickly and easily. (Scheduled on a first come first serve basis).

Make 2011 your year to get clear (and grow rich!)

- Gina xo

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8 Great Reasons to be More Joint-Venturous!

October 27, 2010 By admin 1 Comment

Joint venture marketing is the primary way that I grow my “list”… my community… my peeps… my tribe by leaps and bounds! Joint ventures (JV’s) are what I call a CATALYST marketing strategy.

Virtual Events, like telesummits, are  my fave and I highly recommend them but, here’s the caveat… it’s not for the weak at heart! While there are definitely a lot of moving parts to a virtual event you’ll discover that the end results are totally worth it!

And in case you need a little more motivation, here are my top 8 reasons WHY leading a joint venture project – like a telesummit – is so smart:

1) RAPID LIST BUILDING:

The co-promotion of the joint venture partners creates massive exposure for everyone involved. Ten joint venture partners with an average list size of 2,000 means that your message/event will be exposed to 20,000 people multiple times (AND, exponentially if your concept has legs… “has legs” means it’s an idea that’s worth spreading… it continues to travel down the road all on it’s own. This is good for you and good for your joint venture partners too! I’m sure you can imagine how this can quickly grow your list of new subscribers!

2) RELEVANT LIST BUILDING:

When done correctly – the flood of new subscribers you attract through your virtual event are targeted and relevant to your area of expertise. Take the recent Laptop Mom Telesummit as an example. The invitation page (opt-in page) was very clear that this event was for Moms who want to run a rewarding business from home… What’s so exciting about joint ventures, is there is the potential to have the best of both worlds: quantity because of co-promotion AND quality. And, when it comes to list building this is a winning combination!

The more relevant your list, the easier it is to build RELATIONSHIPS which is the heart of your community. Through relationships comes trust and that is the cornerstone of profitability.

3) IMMEDIATE REVENUE:

A successful joint venture planned correctly can also lead to immediate revenue. A percentage of the targeted and relevant subscribers you attract will become paying customers.

If we use the Laptop Mom telesummit as an example again, Nika invited Moms to attend at a free level (and after you register, extended an invitation to support you further with optional upgrade for extended access to the mp3 recordings). It’s really win-win, it’s non-salesy and attendees get to decide how they wish to participate.

4) DIVIDE EFFORT MULTIPLY EFFECT:

In my opinion, a virtual event is the ultimate leverage. By partnering with other experts in your area of expertise, the collective energy and effort grows your list, boosts your credibility and stimulates revenue. Now you can impact more people AND… do more and more of what you LOVE to do!

5) CATALYST FOR MOMENTUM:

A virtual event is a catalyst for tremendous growth. My business grows by leaps and bounds rather than inching along. I’m also able to leverage the momentum and buzz a virtual event creates. My biggest passion is to teach success-driven women how to achieve more online in record time… joint ventures is definitely one of the strategies that can really accelerate your speed of success…

6) CREDIBILITY THROUGH ASSOCIATION:

When you partner with other highly respected experts in your field, it boosts your credibility by association. And, as the lead of the joint venture, you boost your fame factor too! “Oh wow! You know [insert name of super cool guru JV partner]? I’m impressed”

7) POWERFUL AND PROFITABLE RELATIONSHIPS:

Collaborating and creating joint ventures with other experts boosts your credibility through association. As you add value and increase to their lives, they want to add value and increase to you. These mutually beneficial win-win relationships are priceless.

8 ) MARKETING BECOMES FUN AND EASY!

The momentum each joint venture project creates allows me to get the biggest results for my investment of time and money. The key word here again is LEVERAGE. A Joint Venture is SMART marketing on steroids! You’re no longer operating in a bubble.

BONUS REASON #9: New Passive Revenue Stream

If we go back to the telesummit example, at the end of it all, you now have content (i.e a dozen interviews with experts) that can become an information product that creates passive and recurring income for the long term.

Can you see why I LOVE joint ventures so much???

So how about you?

  • What have you observed about joint ventures?
  • What possibilities can you see for you and your business?
  • Do you have a burning question that must be answered before you can JV with confidence?

Let’s get a conversation started here on the blog.

And if you really want to become more joint-venturous too, the next Ready to JV program starts Thursday October 28th. Get all the details over at http://www.ReadytoJV.com

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You Can Be Happy or You Can Be Right: dealing with an energy vampire who drives you crazy!

October 22, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

Guest post by Kimberly Englot, Founder of The Centre for Authentic Self Development

Energy Vampire: someone who take up time and energy and you don’t enjoy communicating with them. Complainer, blamers, bullies…anyone who drives you crazy, annoys you, and leaves you angry, frustrated or wanting to scream. They can also deflate you, fill you with self doubt and make you want to crawl into a hole and go to sleep for a very long time.

Shadow: the part of you that you don’t like. You hide it, pretend it isn’t there, and are horrified whenever anyone demonstrates aspects of your Shadow. We are all made up of everything. In any situation you can display a characteristic that would normally terrify you.

There are situations where you could be a murderer (self defence), or a b*tch (standing up for yourself) or a doormat (letting things go because you choose peace over righteousness). The sooner you get used to this idea, the better (and the easier) life gets.

Choose Happiness

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt

You can CHOOSE happiness. You can choose to be angry at them. You can choose to view them as “walking all over you” (and get upset). You can choose to pour all of your energy into proving that you’re right, and they’re wrong.

And in the end, no matter what, you lose even if you win.

You see, this is why communication between two people can get so sticky (in fact, when I think about it I am amazed we can communicate At All!).

This is part of them that drives you crazy is actually what you recognize as your own “Shadow.” And you are afraid, so you rebel against it. You get angry, frustrated, and you blame everything on them. Then you get to work on “proving them wrong” because you aren’t anything like them…right?

Wrong. You are exactly like them.

You have two choices here.

1. Fight, argue, resist and maybe “be right” in the end.

2. Allow awareness in the fact that this isn’t really about you, release it, and be happy.

#2 is the best option, spirit-wise, but it’s it the most difficult. This person is causing you to react in a way that doesn’t feel good! So instead of fighting the feeling, get it out.

* Vent to a non-judgmental friend — ONCE — Do Not Dwell.

* Write a letter expressing yourself directly to this person — And burn it. Never send it. Ever.

* Journal, Meditate or Pray. Whatever suits you in that moment.

* Get out of the situation and take a breather!

Bring your Shadow into the light.

Recognize that this reaction is from a part of you that is angry, hurt and desperately crying for attention. You Shadow loves you deeply (really) and will go to extremes to protect you the best it knows how, which is usually by identifying any “attacker” as hostile, and proceeding forward in self defence.

When you see this as part of you, trying to protect you, love it. Love even the parts of yourself that you hate, and the resistance will disappear along with judgment, anger and frustration that come with dealing with certain people.

For more information on this, check out Debbie Ford’s movie The Shadow Effect.

And be sure to grab your FREE Copy of “Dump The Junk, and Be Happy” eBook at http://kimberlyenglot.com. Kimberly Englot is CEO of The Center for Authentic Self Development. She is the courage you need to put yourself back on your priority list, without feeling guilty or selfish.

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