| To ensure that you never miss an issue, please whitelist our email. | |||||
 | |||||
| |||||
| Wednesday December 15, 2010 | |||||
| From The Editor: In today's issue, David Cross talks about leveraging your work experience to help start a new business or pursue a new career path. This is an invaluable strategy for entrepreneurs who join our Internet Money Club. And at Early to Rise, we believe an Internet business is one of the quickest and easiest ways to generate a second income stream -- one that could eventually replace your full-time job.
"Every thing must have a beginning... and that beginning must be linked to something that went before." Mary Shelley Starting Out Big When You're Starting Out Small When you're starting any business -- an Internet business, for example, with a new website and an e-mail list of zero names -- the thought of competing with the established companies out there can be intimidating. And if you're trying to set up a partnership or joint venture, the fact that you've just started can seem like an insurmountable hurdle. That's the way I felt a few months back when I was getting into a business that was new for me: Doing commercial voiceover work. But I put into place some advice that I am always giving my clients. And it worked beautifully to open doors for me. The advice? "Focus on your strengths." I've got 25 years of public speaking under my belt, and last summer a client gave me the opportunity to do some voiceover work for him. The project was a success -- and it cemented my decision to get some coaching, become proficient in voiceover, and build that part of my consulting business. Call it coincidence, but the day after I made that decision I discovered that a major conference of top voiceover professionals was being held the following weekend just down the road from me in Portland, Oregon. The only problem was that, to attend, I needed to be a working voiceover professional with at least a year of experience -- which, of course, I didn't have. Why did a successful salesman walk away from a six-figure job? It's not a joke, and there is no punch line. It is actually the story of one Internet entrepreneur who, in his first 10 months of being his own boss, made $85,000 and realized that his true life calling was running his own successful Internet business. His story is one of perseverance and triumph -- and you can read all about it here. What I did have was 25 years of experience in business and marketing. And when I did some research, I found that many voiceover artists were asking business and marketing questions on discussion boards. In general, there appeared to be a lack of self-promotion skills in the voiceover community. So I put my best foot forward and wrote an e-mail to the organizers of the conference. I explained that, although I'd just started out in voiceover, I had 25 years of international business and marketing experience -- and that I would love to attend, contribute, and share my expertise with the other attendees. A few weeks later, I was voted one of the best presenters at the event, where I made some great business and personal connections. As a result of a referral from one of those connections, I've just completed a university-accredited course in voiceover with a top LA voiceover coach, and the skills I've learned have more than paid for my investment. But if I'd given up because I didn't have the "official" requirements to attend the conference, none of this would have happened. When you are starting your own business, the business may be new but there's a strong possibility that you have at least 5 years of experience (perhaps many more) in a related field. And that's what you focus on. Let's say you're contacting potential business and joint venture partners. Astute business owners, marketers, and e-mail list owners are always looking for new ideas to captivate their customers. So if you can bring something fresh and relevant to the table, you improve your chances of working with them. Look for something in your experience that you can apply. If, for example, you are starting an investment newsletter and have 15 years of experience as a successful trader, that 15 years of experience is your strength. If you're starting a website to show the best trout fishing locations in Oregon and you've been trout fishing for the last 35 years, focus on those 35 years. In other words, find something in your experience that will be useful to the people you want to connect with -- whether they're potential partners or customers. (For me, it was that the voiceover community needed strong marketing and promotional skills.) A side benefit of starting a new venture while "piggybacking" on your existing strengths is that you quickly gain credibility. (I gained immediate implied credibility at the voiceover conference because of my depth of experience in marketing.) Kicking off a new venture in this way will help you overcome any resistance based on your being too "new." [Ed Note: If you are looking to start an online business to capitalize on your professional experience but aren't sure where to begin, we have the answer you are looking for. The Internet Money Club was designed to teach anyone, regardless of past experience (in business or online) how to start and grow a profitable Internet business. You'll learn about e-mail list building, product and content creation, joint ventures and affiliate marketing, copywriting, and much more. But you must hurry. Once we have 250 new members, the doors to the IMC will be closed for another year. So don't wait. Check it out right now.] "Thanks, Michael. I needed this book." Ready, Fire, Aim is full of practical, step-by-step advice that just makes sense. While reading it, my internal "light bulb" was going off with multiple ideas and solutions. I feel so motivated and revitalized... I am going to grow my company to over $100 million! Now I know I can do it. I have a clear roadmap. Brent Jones "Your story inspired me." "Dear Mr. Masterson, "Thank you for today's journal issue. You shared this story with your subscribers before, and it inspired me a great deal then. I didn't print it out, though, which regretted many times over. Having your story to re-read would have been like having a special friend close by providing good counsel. "As a woman in her 50's re-entering college to finish my undergraduate degree (started 37 years earlier), intimidation at the magnitude of hard work lying ahead would sometimes get in my way. However, I kept your story in mind. I did my work consistently and strove to be on time for class, although I was a full-time single mom, working, and a college commuter. I raised my hand all the time in all my classes, so much so that professors would finally say, 'I need to call on someone other than you, Krista.' I let my family and friends in on my goals -- however, there were often family issues that required priority attention. When that happened, I stayed up late and/or got up early to work on my assignments. "Hard work and determination were the main factors in my finally receiving my college diploma this past May. But it was the essence of your story that often helped push me along when I didn't think I could do it. "Today, I'm printing it out for my high school senior to read. Although he is the brightest of my three sons, the past several years have been very difficult for him academically. This past summer, he was finally diagnosed with having ADHD. I'm hoping your story, or even someone else's, will inspire him like your story inspired me. That said, I have ordered three copies of your book, The Pledge: Your Master Plan for an Abundant Life, to give to each one of my sons as a Christmas present. "Thanks again, and may you have a blessed holiday season." Krista Import and Grow Rich One of the best ways to build wealth FAST is to import cheaply produced, in-demand products from abroad... then resell them at a huge mark-up back home. And now, thanks to the Internet, it's never been easier for home-based entrepreneurs to get in on this lucrative market. We've profiled several Internet import-export entrepreneurs generating over $1 million per year in revenues... just a few short years after they got started. And they all started from home with little in the way of capital or expertise. See their stories, and find out how easily you can follow in their footsteps, here. Today's Words That Work: Funambulist A Funambulist (fyoo-NAM-byuh-list) -- from the Latin for "rope" + "walk" -- is a tightrope walker. The word can also be used figuratively to describe someone who is mentally agile or able to walk a fine line between two opposing viewpoints. Example (as used by Grant Whitney Harvey in The Huffington Post): "It's an extraordinary quality bartenders have; a bar or, in this case, a lounge, can be quite adverse and hectic and easily become chaotic, yet bartenders -- good bartenders, that is, go about the storm of hands and impatient glares and fidgets with a frightful calm, riding a teetering wire between cordiality of social obligation and quickness and precision of hand with the balance of a world-class funambulist." | |||||
| Whitelist Our Email | Click Here to Unsubscribe | Customer Service | |||||
We want your feedback! Let us know your thoughts on today's issue. Email us at: AskETR@ETRFeedback.com Copyright © 2010 Early to Rise, LLC. NOTE: If URLs do not appear as live links in your e-mail program, please cut and paste the full URL into the location or address field of your browser. Disclaimer: Early to Rise only recommends products that we've either personally checked out ourselves, or that come from people we know and trust. For doing so, we receive a commission. We will never recommend any product that does not have a 100% money-back satisfaction guarantee. Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized Financial Advice. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized Financial Advice. We expressly forbid our writers from having a financial interest in any security recommended to our readers. All of our employees and agents must wait 24 hours after on-line publication or 72 hours after the mailing of printed-only publication prior to following an initial recommendation. Any investments recommended in this letter should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company. Order Processing Center |
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Starting Out Big When You're Starting Out Small
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment