Since the Internet came about, advertising has taken numerous turns, but almost all are centered around getting in front of more people for less money. Marketing 101 right? I don’t think so. Let me explain. I can reach millions of people through a blast email campaign but if I do it wrong, I have spent thousands of dollars with no return and often may be fighting to keep my name off of spam servers. Sure, I could pay large “per-click” fees in pay per click campaigns, but if I am getting the wrong people, I will not convert.

So what makes me think of all this?
My wife recently opened up a cleaning company here in the Biloxi/Gulfport MS area. I started by making her a nice Facebook page, getting some traffic to it – all the things we teach others to do in the Internet Marketing world. Sure, I got some calls and my wife has a few cleaning contracts, but we were obviously not hitting our potential. I have to THINK LOCAL! Wow, what a concept right? Now, I did not think much about this considering I am perfectly capable of getting local traffic to websites, but why not use some old-school approaches? I printed up 100 flyers and 20 pull-tab flyers and told her to go to a neighborhood where she would like to get some contracts. She headed right down the road and within 20 minutes got her first phone call. This means people are READING it instead of deleting (trashing) it without reading.

So what? How does this effect you?
Everyone knows I am a big supporter of direct sales. It provides the average person the above average chance of securing insane incomes by just going to work. I thought that if even a small percentage of my readers…my friends, read this and put together a flyer or some other creative offline marketing, that they could really look at the possibility of expanding their business in their local market.

I know I am about to do just that. I am going to print up a bunch of 24 Day Challenge flyers for my Advocare business and hit town with them. Maybe you should try thinking of something you can do?

1. The “Above Average” class which was actually below average for all intents and purpose.
2. The “Below Average” class which was really above average for all intents and purpose.

By the time the error was found, the schools, scared to say anything, simply watched and recorded information. They found that the normally above average students had shown a decrease in scores while the normally below average students had shown an increase.

Barring the potential psychological factors, it was said, and widely agreed that the reason the normally below average students did better is because the teachers believed in them based on their test scores given before classes and that when their methods were not working, they redesigned their methods.

The Potential

The potential for learning here is fantastic. Can you think of what kind of world we would live in if the teachers actually took responsibility for the students‘ ability to learn? Teachers are there to teach. If the methods they are using are not working, it is time to find some new ones. This same premise works for leadership and parenting. If your methods are not working – change them. The best leaders work on themselves more than anything else.

If you are a professional educator or in a leadership position, I urge you to consider this paradigm. Everyone else, I urge you to share this using the little buttons below!

Drew Brees, National Spokesman for Advocare

What is the first thing you usually think about when you hear the words “company image”?

I guess it really depends on the company.
Think about Wal-Mart for instance. The first thing that comes to mind? I usually think of a place where I can get stuff cheap but I am not going there if I know I am going to have questions about something.
Try thinking about a few other businesses and visualize the first words that come to mind… McDonald’s…. Burger King…. Your Local Mall….

The thing is, no matter what I say, you are going to have an opinion, or image, of that business. What many people do not think about is that people have images too. What do you think about when I say “Bob” or “Joe” or “Sue”. Surely you know someone and you had an image of someone with that name. What did you think about? Was it positive or negative?

Images are not just about national figures. Everything you do contributes to your image and have an effect on what others think of you or how they see you. Do you know me personally? What would you say about me?

I have Drew Brees up here as the feature image for good reason. Whether you love the New Orleans Saints or you hate them, you can’t help but like Drew Brees. The things he does in the community and the way he treats other people is amazing. He is a true leader and people respect him. He is the epitome of a great image. When I went looking for a healthy energy drink, I tried a lot of products. I had just about made up my mind on one until someone told me about one more to try. I almost didn’t try it but I saw that Drew Brees was the national spokesman for this company. I saw that he was an unpaid product endorser for 8 years prior to becoming the spokesman. I had to try it. It just so happened that Spark by Advocare was an awesome product at an awesome pricepoint, but it was Drew Brees that got me to try it!

When you think about your image, ask a few people that know you personally and professionally to be direct with you and see what they say. You may be surprised. Ask them to do it anonymously and you will be even more surprised.

See the Full Drew Brees, Use it – The Pros Do Image from Feature.

Okay folks, here is the skivvy on the last year since it is obvious that I have not done anything on this site since then. I mean, these posts are dated after all. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon or brain scientist to figure out my last post was in August of 2010. I could probably give you a shovel load of excuses on why, but they would belong right next to whatever else that shovel was loading and unloading. yep, I went there.

Anywho…
Since my previous posts on this blog were short-lived…seems I started to post and then stopped after a couple of months (bummer, right?)…I will start by recapping my entire blog and where I am not based on previous entries:

1. SoyLicious Posts – I still use and love the SoyLicious products. I have stopped promoting the business though because of changes in the compensation plan. If you are just looking to retail product or do fundraisers – awesome opportunity. That is not me. I steal love the tarts (aka melts), sprays, and candles though although I use the tarts the most.
2. Weight Posts – Any basic diet is set to fail. After losing a significant amount of weight, I gained a good bit of it back, getting back up to around 210.  I stuck there for about a year and found some great products to get me in better health and made a few lifestyle changes. I am feeling great now.

Over the past year, I have done a lot of other things as well. I literally feel better now than I have since I was in my 20′s. This is because of some major lifestyle changes I made. I quit smoking and found an awesome nutrition company I have been working with (see My Projects for info).

I have decided to make some serious changes in the way I am doing business. I am starting to gear more towards helping others through my sales, coaching and leadership.

I love my work and I want to keep it that way. So long as I always maintain my purpose, which is typically helping others, I will continue to move forward. Oh yeah, I am going to try to update my blog a little more often too

Entrepreneurs are those individuals that see a good opportunity and work to make something out of it. They work hard at building their business, building their brand, getting the word out, and driving forward every day with the feeling that no matter what – they are going to make a success of what they are doing. They get an idea or take a sales position with a company and they BUILD it because they wake up every morning knowing that they CAN.

An opportunist is someone who finds something, jumps on it for a while thinking it will be easy money and then, upon realizing that it is not as easy as they thought – they look for the next “opportunity”. They often blame others for their lack of success, and sometimes even blame the companies which they worked with because it was not as easy as they thought it would be.

In a perfect world, there would be a great balance of these two – a great opportunity with real entrepreneurs working it. Unfortunately, this is not the case. There will always be those that work hard at whatever they do and there are always those that take the opportunity and do nothing with it. The old adage “once in a lifetime opportunity” actually comes to many people many times in their lives and lack of motivation (or entrepreneurial spirit) leaves them later wishing they had done something, done more to promote, told more people about it. Instead, the vast majority of people are scared to take those first steps and ultimately fail out because they tried to take advantage of an opportunity rather than being an entrepreneur and making it work.

The next time you are thinking, “what can I do with some spare time?”, try doing a little work towards your business. Every business owner can directly see the results of their efforts. You reap what you sow and if you want to harvest the rewards you have to plant the seeds of success today.

If someone asks you – Are you an entrepreneur or an opportunist? – how would you honestly answer that question?
If you can’t honestly say entrepreneur – is it time you started to do something about it?