Any comments or suggestions are welcome!
Thanks for your patience and understanding 
Steve
Ran across a great video from Darren over at ProBlogger - lots of great content!
I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.
It covers:
I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.
I love this video! It says a lot without saying much - check it out and then we’ll talk about what we can learn from it.
This video comes from the movie “300″, which is the story of the 300 Spartans that set out to fend off the world’s largest army in order to save their people. It’s a pretty good movie with some great one-liners and teaching points, but the above movie illustrates one of my favorites.
I think it’s asking us, “Who are you, What do you do, and Why do you do it?” I think that this is a very important question to ask ourselves, today more than ever.
Passion, Purpose, & a Singular Focus
It’s pretty easy to see from the video that the Spartans knew who they were, what they did, and why they did it. They were passionate about their profession and they knew, from an early age, what their purpose in life was. These two things lead to a singleness of focus that allowed them to rise to the pinnacle of their class - the warrior.
I think that today, very few people have these three things in their lives. Once we enter the working world, most of us kind of lull off into mediocrity and go from day to day just doing what we can to get by, hoping that someday things get a little better than they are now. The only problem is, “someday” never comes. While I know this isn’t something people sit around and talk about with each other (can you just imagine the conversation?! “You know man, this being mediocre thing and not having any real success or significance in life is really starting to get to me.” “I know what you’re talking about bro…I’m just not feeling very fulfilled lately.”), I can promise you that it’s a conversation going on in many people’s heads right this moment. Perhaps if you’re reading this blog, you might be one of them.
Why is that we love movies like “300″, “Braveheart”, “The Gladiator”, “The Patriot”, “Lord of the Rings”, and so on? It’s because for a brief moment we can put ourselves in the shoes of those that lived with passion, purpose, and singular focus and be the heroes we all long to be…to be significant in the history of time. Now, I don’t think that everyone aspires to go down in the actual history books as someone famous, but I do think that most people would at least like to leave an impact on the world around them…to be remembered for something other than Employee of the Month in December of 2007.
An Expectation of Success in their Training and Unity
So how do we get to that point? How do we get to a place where we operate at the pinnacle of our industry or chosen area of impact?
Not to be overly-simple or to reiterate something that’s been said a thousand times, but it starts with a goal. Without a goal, you’ll never know where you’re headed…and if you don’t know where you’re headed, any destination will do.
The Spartans had a goal of creating the perfect warriors, and each Spartan’s personal goal was to be the best-of-the-best of those warriors. That goal laid the foundation for everything else they did - it became their guiding principle and priority, and all other things came second. That is the type of clarity and focus you’re going to need in your life - that definiteness of purpose that sets you in the right direction, even if you’re not sure how to accomplish the goal.
But once you’ve arrived at your definiteness of purpose (goal), you now must begin your training - for a warrior without training is no warrior at all. You’ll lose in battle every time. And through your training, you’ll no doubt come alongside people of like mind and purpose, and at some point you’ll band together in the journey towards accomplishing that goal. And when there is a group of people unified behind a singleness of purpose, very little can stand in their way!
There becomes an expectation of success in your training and unity, and through that, you can overcome virtually any obstacle that comes your way! There will always be challenges, but those that stick together and rely on their training will always find a way around, over, under, or through what stands in their way.
So how does all this apply?
Simple. If you are not today in life where you want to be, not living the life you thought you would be at this point in your journey, then today is the day you get to change that. Take a few minutes (heck, take a few days if you need to!) to think about where you want to be 5 and 10 years from now - what you want your life to look like and the impact you’d like to have - and then write it down. Putting it in writing automatically increases your chances of success by an order of magnitude.
Now that it’s written down, start firming that picture up into a few specific, measureable goals that you want to accomplish.
Next, break those goals down into action steps you can take and be able to check each one off as it’s completed.
And finally, make a list of the skills, knowledge, and training you’re going to need that you don’t currently possess and seek out mentors or programs that will help you attain them. (Examples could be speaking skills, finances, language, writing skills, investing knowledge, etc…the web is a great place to start looking.)
Once you’ve completed all these steps, pick the biggest and most important item off that list of action items/skills and get to work!
You’ll find that once you have a goal to accomplish and something to work on that contributes to your ultimate picture in life, you’ll have much more energy and much less apathy towards starting every day. And just remember this: the day you wake up without a goal is the day you die…you’ll simply be waiting on the burial ceremony. When you accomplish the first one, make sure you’ve got the second one in the hopper…
Passion, Purpose, and Singular Focus - those are your keys to a fulfilled and successful life where you will most certainly leave a legacy for those that come along behind you.
To your success,
Steve
Unless you’re new to the internet, you’ve heard the buzzword “Web 2.0″ for at least a year now. While there’s been a decent amount of debate on what specifically Web 2.o is vs Web 1.0, the bottom line is it’s changing how we interact with each other in a big way. In general, the difference is between the one-way communication of the early internet vs the two-way, conversational tone of web 2.0 sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, etc…anything that allows the reader to engage in the conversation would broadly be considered a web 2.0 site.
What this means for those looking to create an income online is that the rules of the game have changed - and changed in a big way!
Rich Schefren, the Guru’s Guru for internet marketing, has just released “The Attention Age Doctrine: Part 2″, and I have to say, it’s amazing! Rich has a way of taking things that we all probably know to a certain degree, but bringing them all into perspective from a business standpoint.
If you haven’t read it yet, you can pick up your copy here.
The Doctrine covers topics like:
The Doctrine Part 2 is 93 pages of pure information that will help you understand where we are and where to go from here when considering the landscape of the internet today and how to ultimately be successful using it to create lifestyle.
There are no affiliate links for this, and I’m not getting anything for promoting The Doctrine - I just think it’s very valuable information that all of us can benefit from…and a rising tide raises all ships.
To your success,
Steve
If you’re a blogger, you know that traffic is the lifeline to your success. Without traffic, you’re dead in the water. You can have the world’s greatest content, be one of the most compelling writers, and have the sweetest layout on the web - but without traffic, it’s all for naught.
So if you’re currently a blogger, or thinking about starting a blog, this is some information that you’re not going to want to miss out on.
Yaro Starak, the Blog Traffic King, is closing the doors on his Blog Mastermind Training program in just 2 Days - and he’s not quite sure when he’s going to open them back up. Truth is, the program has become so popular that Yaro just can’t handle all the students he’s mentoring, so in order to give the highest quality content and instruction for his students, he’s locking the program down!
If you’ve never seen any of Yaro’s training content, you’re really missing out. But you’re in luck! Yaro’s been gracious enough to open up a couple of his ACTUAL training lessons to give you a sneak peak at what quality of mentorship you get with his program.
Click Here to Watch an Actual Case Study on How to Get More Traffic to Your Blog.
Yaro is one of the top internet marketers and bloggers online today - the opportunity to personally work with him is second to none, and there are only 2 days left to take advantage of the training before the doors close.
Topics Include:
If you’re more of a reader than a visual person, Yaro also opened up an actual lesson in the program for you to read through as well. Click Here to check it out!
Bottom line, if you’re looking to generate more traffic for your blog, and you’ve been dragging your feet on taking action or just haven’t known where to start, this is your chance to make things happen in a big way.
To your success,
Steve
In part 1 of this post, we covered the definitions of the 4 personality types. In this post, we’ll actually talk about why knowing them is important and how to use the knowledge to improve your dealings with people.
The bottom line to the whole issue is that people like people like them…and in turn, they like to do business with, buy from, partner with, refer people to, etc, people like them. So, the more you can relate to someone, the more likely you’ll be able to have a mutually beneficial relationship.
Sometimes this is called “mirroring”, and that’s basically what it is - mimicking people’s personality types, posture, tone, speech rate and volume, etc. Again, people like people like themselves.
So how do you do this? We start by being able to identify what someone else is: choleric, melancholy, flegmatic, or sanguine. Once we’ve identified what their dominant personality type is, we can then begin playing towards that type (regardless of our own) to maximize our relatability.
Here’s how it breaks down for each personality type:
If you remember the definition of a choleric, they are the “get to the point, now” people. Accordingly, when dealing with cholerics, your primary relatability tactic is to not add a lot of fluff and just get to the point. You will want to speak directly to them and look them in the eye. Since cholerics like to do things their way, if they’ve got a suggestion or an idea as to how they want to do something, your best bet is to do what you can to agree with them, or make them think that the changes you’re suggesting are actually their idea! That’ll make things go much more smoothly, because when a choleric is told they can’t do something, to them it’s a challenge to prove that they can! Cholerics also make relatively quick decisions - they see a direction that looks good and they take it. They don’t need to wait around for a committee to decide…so if you provide them with the solution to their issue or help them accomplish what they’re looking to accomplish, expect the decision to be made quickly to take advantage of whatever it is you’re offering them.
Melancholies are the folks that love details. Because of that, when dealing with a melancholy, no detail should be spared! They love all the ins-and-outs and want to know the specifcs about everything - so induldge them. You’ll want to be very organized and step-by-step in your approach because that’s how they think. Graphs, charts, spreadsheets, percentages - these are the things that melancholies love. But with all the details, melancholies aren’t quick to make decisions - they want to think things over and spend time analyzing what they’ve learned. So don’t push them faster than they want to go or they’ll pull back…let them have some time to think. As long as what you talked with them about made sense to them, they’ll be back to have you help them make a decision.
Flegmatics are the laid-back, go with the flow-type people. This means that pressure is a no-no. You’ll want to speak a little slower, not be in a hurry, and generally have an aire of nonchalance about you…there are no emergencies. As long as you help them see that everyone else is doing it then you’re on the right track. Flegmatics also don’t like to exert a lot of energy in doing things, so the easier you can make it for them to make a decision, the better. Lots of small talk and kicking back is good as it establishes your non-hurried status and makes them feel comfortable with you…again, you’re being like them, so they like you in return. Once you’ve established rapport, leading them to the next step is as simple as suggesting what your next step is.
Sanguines are the life-of-the-party, excited and energetic about everything people. They like new things and new directions, and are typically quick to act. To relate to a sanguine, you’ll want to smile a lot, speak quickly (match their speed), and generally be quite expressive in your interaction. If it’s going to be fun and exciting, sanguines are all for it!
The bottom line is that regardless of your dominant personality type, you’ll be able to better relate to other personality types by mirroring them. It can be challenging at first, but with practice you’ll improve and eventually it’ll become second-nature. You’ll always have an easy time relating to your own personality type as it’ll come naturally, but the learning to relate to others is an acquired skill that will help you in every area of life - both personal and professional.
As I mentioned in part 1 of this post, I am a choleric-melancholy, so by nature, it’s very difficult for me to relate to phlegmatics and sanguines. While it’s still a bit of a stretch for me to totally relate to sanguines, I’ve learned how to tone-down my choleric nature when speaking with phlegmatics, and as such, I’ve become much more effective in dealing with upwards of 60% of the population! And that’s a pretty important thing when your business is people.
If you’ve got any questions on this or any thoughts, fire-away in the comments section - I’d love to hear what other people’s experiences are.
To your success,
Steve
Business is all about people - like it or not, even in this hi-tech age, it’s all about people. The better you understand people, the more you’ll be able to relate to them. And the more you can relate to people, the easier it is to earn their like, trust, and respect, which are the 3 keys to doing business with them.
People will not do business (long-term) with people they do not like, trust, or respect. And one of the major ways to obtain those three things from someone is to be able to relate well to their personality type.
So you may be asking, “How many types are there, and how do I relate to them?”
Good question.
The answer is there are 4 major personality types, and lukcy for you, you’ve probably already got 1-2 of them mastered! How, you ask? Because you’ve already got at least 1 of them pre-programmed in your subconscious and you’ve been living it out all your life! Now we just have to teach you the other 3 and you’re all set!
Well, it’s almost that easy. Yes, you’ll need to learn what yours and the others are, but then learning to relate to all 4 is the part that takes practice & patience. But the acquired skill is 100% worth the investment once you’ve learned it and can successfully apply it in everyday situations.
So let’s get started.
The 4 personality types are:
Let’s break them down so we have a better feeling for each one.
Choleric: Cholerics are the natural born leaders who aren’t happy unless they’re out in front of the group, leading, directing, and taking charge of the situation. Cholerics are the ones who will naturally rise up out of a group of people to give it direction if there is a lot of indecision amongst the group. Cholerics aren’t really interested in a lot of feelings or details, they just want to get moving, even if it’s not the exact right direction. They want things done now and done their way - which is naturally the best way! Sometimes Cholerics can seem cocky, arrogant, or mean; but they’re really not intending to - they just want to accomplish the goal or task at hand as quickly and efficiently as possible. If you want to get a job accomplished quickly, give the task to a Choleric.
Phlegmatic: Phlegmatics are the polar-opposites of Cholerics. They’re the ones who are happy as long as no one is upset, and are totally satisfied to “go with the flow”. 60% of the population has this as their dominant personality trait. Phlegmatics don’t like conflict and are typically not overly-motivated to get things accomplished. Procrastination and “laziness” are things that characterize Phlegmatics…they may not actually be lazy, they just don’t see any reason to upset their current comfort zone to do something they may not think is worth the effort! Phlegmatics are the people that are awesome to just hang out with because they’re easy-going, low-stress, and usually good listeners. If you want someone to bring some “mellow” to the team and be great for shootin’ the breeze, the Phlegmatic is your person.
Sanguine: Sanguines are the life of the party, always talking, “shine the spotlight on me” people…that friend of yours that never has trouble making friends and always has an interesting story to tell about how it all happened :) Sanguines are great at coming up with ideas, but not so great at following through with them…they have “goldfish memory” syndrome! Sanguines are social butterflies who are friends with everyone, and everyone wants to be friends with them - typically they are the “popular” kids in school or the friend that gets invited to all the parties. Sanguines make life interesting and entertaining and they’re genuinely fun to be around. However, in general they aren’t the most accountable people so don’t expect that 10am sharp appointment to get started right on time - or at all in some cases.
Melancholy: Melancholies are the engineers, scientists, accountants, and detail-oriented people of the world. They are the ones who organize everything, create ‘to-do’ lists (and then add things to the list that weren’t on the list just to check them off if they did them!), spreadsheets, and checklists for life. Their homes and cars are always clean and in order, and everything has it’s place. You’ll never find them losing their keys! Melancholies are great people to have around when details are essential, because they enjoy keeping track of things and dotting all the ‘i’s and crossing all the ‘t’s. Melancholies are primarily concerned about detail and precision.
Okay, so that covers our basic definitions of the 4 types. We all know people who fit the above description, and you were probably able to pick yourself out of the above list. Most people are a combination of one dominant type and a secondary type. I, for example, am choleric-melancholy….I like to be in charge, doing things my way, with the utmost detail and structure. My wife, on the other hand, is a sanguine-choleric - she loves being the life of the party and talking with everyone, but she can get down to business when she needs to! (makes life interesting around the house :))
You are more than likely a combination of two of the above traits. Can you pick them out?
But how do we make this info useful? That comes in knowing how to apply this knowledge in your relationships with other people.
And we’ll cover that tomorrow…
To your Success,
Steve
Have you ever had one of those days where nothing seemed to go right and you were pretty sure the world was out to get you? We’ve all had them, but I’ve noticed that successful people handle those days a lot differently than unsuccessful people do.
I’ve heard it said that you can judge the size of the person by the size of the things that make them mad…pretty strong statement, especially if you routinely find yourself getting irritated, agitated, and upset at relatively small things.
I received an email recently that really illustrated the conecpt of how small most of our issues and problems can be in the grand scheme of things…and it was such an awesome visual that I thought I’d share here with you to see if it impacts you as much as it did me.
So here goes:
The sun is approximately 1 pixel in the picture above!
Now try to wrap your mind around this: This is a picture from the Hubble Telescope of entire galaxies billions of light-years away!!
Amazing isn’t it?
And what’s the point? The point is to remember that as important as you think you might be, the world is a big place…and you make yourself bigger in it by adding value to it and to the people around you. When someone or something upsets you, remember how big it all is in the grand scheme of things.
Smile more often. Try to understand where other people are coming from. Focus on what you can do for other people and you’ll be amazed at how things start going better for you!
Successful people know they’re not that big of a deal, and that whatever troubles, issues, or setbacks they may be facing today or this week - they’re all temporary. There are very few real emergencies in life.
So take a step back, take a deep breath, be thankful for what you have and who you are, and remember, “This too shall pass.”
To your success,
Steve
In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.
Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.
It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.
*Updated Bonus Tip: Install the BlogRush Widget on your Blog!! It’s live and already generating traffic! But after you do, Don’t Make These Blog Rush Mistakes!
10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.
9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.
You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.
8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).
7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.
Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.
6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.
This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.
5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.
4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.
To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.
3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!
2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.
How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.
1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.
I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.
This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.
To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link: www.BlogMastermind.com
To your success,
Steve
