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The Magnificent Power Of Asking

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Just Ask

One of the most underrated but powerful ways to grow your business and get more sales is asking. There is no harm with asking. If you ask a blogger to promote your book, the worst thing that can happen is that the blogger says no. If the blogger says yes, then one more person is promoting your book. Your book gets a backlink and extra sales.

Asking can lead to better business opportunities. Every time someone sends a pitch to reporter’s query on HARO, they are asking if they fit the story. The worst thing that happens is that the reporter rejects the story. The best thing that can happen is that the reporter takes your story, asks you for more information, and then publishes your story. That’s how I got featured on the US News.

One of the people who I interviewed for Lead The Stampede was Dan Nainan, the world-renowned comedian. I knew I would include Dan in Lead The Stampede whether he followed me on Twitter or not, but I decided to ask him if he could follow me on Twitter. I worded my request in the right way (I was not begging), and he ended up following me. Dan has over 400,000 people and he only follows 40 people. I am one of those 40 people only because I decided to ask Dan if he would like to follow me on Twitter.

What are some of the things you can ask? Ask the questions that you are afraid to ask. By asking these kinds of questions, you are showing an interest in what you do and getting the desired result. If you can ask a question in a way that does not look like begging, you can get the result you want many times.

 

3 Lessons We Need To Learn From High School Sports

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High school is definitely different from prior school experiences. There are more sports and clubs to choose from. The academics get more challenging and in many cases, there is a larger student body, a larger school, or both. Sports in particular can teach a lot of lessons. I am an athlete who has tried out for sports and now runs for my school’s track and cross country teams. I have learned many lessons along the way, but these are the three most powerful lessons I have learned.

  1. There are cuts. Not every athlete makes the roster which is just like not everyone who sends in the job application gets hired. For entrepreneurs, there are countless options. For me in particular, there are thousands of Twitter tools to choose from. However, I only use a select few so I am able to save time and get the best results at the same time. I do not use JustUnfollow very much because I would have to pay in order to get the good features without limits. Instead, I use ManageFlitter and Tweepi for free which when combined can do better than JustUnfollow. Some people use JustUnfollow to put two Twitter tools together, but I prefer using the two Twitter tools that are free that can almost do the same as one paid Twitter tool. Not every option is the right one. There are a lot of reasons to go with JustUnfollow, ManageFlitter, and Tweepi, but there need to be cuts.
  2. The most dedicated athletes make it the farthest. The strongest athlete on the team is not necessarily the best athlete. A dedicated athlete can put in twice the amount of practice and eventually become faster than the strongest athlete. However, if the strongest athlete has a lot of dedication, that tends to results in breaking records and being very effective on game day. Only the most dedicated entrepreneurs and bloggers will be able to go from getting no sales and no visitors to getting hundreds of thousands of visitors while having the luxury of living the 6 figures life.
  3. The best athletes get the most attention. When it’s the best athlete’s turn to play, conversation stops. Everyone watches the best athlete in action simply because that athlete is the best. While all of the other athletes do the same thing, there are some athletes who do a better job than everyone else. If you want to get more attention for your business, do not focus on being the second best or running behind the best person. Focus on becoming the best person so people see your business and products as remarkable.

Those are the three lessons we should all learn (or now remember) from high school sports. Some sports are easier to make in than others, and the amount of attention the best athlete depends on the sport that athlete is playing. However, for all sports, these three lessons apply, and they are also lessons that can easily be applied to business and entrepreneurship.

 

The Best Picture You Should Use For Your Profiles On Social Networks And Elsewhere

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There are millions of different profile pictures spread across social networks and elsewhere on the web. However, there are ideal profile pictures and other profile pictures that are not as ideal. While some of the things to avoid are obvious, others are not as easy to detect. When choosing your profile picture, these are some of the things that you need to know.

  1. Never ever use the default option. The Twitter egg profile picture shows inexperience and easily identifies you as a newbie. Right when you start using a social network, get rid of the default picture.
  2. The profile picture must be a picture of you or your company’s logo. Having a picture of yourself or your company’s logo will dramatically improve the number of followers you get on a daily basis. People are more likely to trust you if your profile picture is of you or your company’s logo.
  3. Make your style appeal to your targeted followers. If your targeted followers are social media experts, you need to be wearing a buttoned down shirt or something similar in your profile picture. If your audience is teenagers who love to use Vine, you should dress casual for your profile picture.
  4. Use the same picture for all of your social networks and other places on the web. If your picture remains constant throughout your social networks, people will be able to remember you by your picture. When people remember your picture, they also remember you.

Those are some of the things you need to know so you can make the proper changes to the profiles of all of your social networks and other places where your reside on the web. Do you have any suggestions? Please share your thoughts and insights below.

 

Just To Give You An Idea Of How Fragile Our Reputations Are…

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I solemnly vow that none of the content on my blog has been plagiarized in any way, shape, or form. However, if it were discovered that I plagiarized a blog post, my joyride would be over. The term plagiarist overshadows all of a blogger’s achievements, even the earned ones. Plagiarizing a speech puts all of your other speeches in question, even if the first 10 speeches were all your own and inspired bestselling books.

Employers are getting more social media savvy, and they don’t like when the job applicant has a private Twitter account. There are several stories of young adults getting arrested for the things that they posted on Facebook. Although those kinds of posts should not be on Facebook in the first place, people have gone from normal lives to being behind bars.

To many Americans, the Watergate Scandal overshadowed many (if not all) of Richard Nixon’s accomplishments. When you think of Richard Nixon, you don’t think of the guy who launched initiatives to fight cancer and illegal drugs. You think of Watergate.

Whether they are big or small, good or bad, we all have reputations. Unfortunately, the odds of having a bad reputation are greater than the odds of having a good reputation. In some cases, one bad mistake resulted in someone being known for a bad reputation. In order to be known as someone with a good reputation, you need to stay true to yourself and avoid doing anything that you believe would be bad enough to get a bad reputation. People are more likely to remember mistakes than they are to remember acts of kindness. However, multiple acts of kindness get remembered more often than a single mistake.

 

The Question You Need To Ask Yourself Before Trying Something New

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Is it worth learning and mastering?

That was the question I asked myself when I decided to give HootSuite Pro a try. At first, HootSuite Pro’s bulk scheduler seemed just as confusing as a Google product. Here was the problem: When I tried to schedule a tweet for 7 pm, it ended up being scheduled for 7 am. I was unsuccessful at scheduling tweets in every pm time except for 12 pm.

This problem took over an hour to figure out. The main problem is that I went too far ahead without anticipating the problem. Regardless, the problem came, and I was presented with the option to quit and the question above. When I thought about the question, I realized that mastering HootSuite Pro would allow me to save a large amount of time. It takes me well over 4 hours to send out a week’s worth of tweets. With HootSuite Pro, I could do the same task in 15 minutes.

I was thinking to myself, “The time I save here would really add up. I could send out more HARO queries, write two 200+ page books every year, write twice as many blog posts every day, read more books, and work out longer.

In the end, I decided that it was worth it. I figured out that HootSuite Pro’s bulk schedule feature requires the use of military time (i.e. In order to get a tweet to be scheduled at 1 pm, you need to schedule the tweet for 13:00). Although it took me a day to rearrange pages and data, the problem was resolved, and now I save a big chunk of time because I gave HootSuite Pro a chance.

HootSuite’s bulk scheduler was something worth learning and mastering. It was an opportunity that I was not going to waste.