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The 7 Step Process To Stay Calm Through The Chaos Of Being An Entrepreneur And Take Action

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Process To Stay Calm As An Entrepreneur

When you become an entrepreneur, you sign an oath, and one of the things on that oath is to accept that there will be chaos in the journey. The chaos people experience varies by the individual. Steve Jobs’ version of chaos was getting fired from Apple, and Richard Branson founded Virgin Vodka, which failed. Then are the bloggers who experience many problems throughout their journey such as the blog not displaying properly, an error page instead of a landing page, and plugins with a negative impact on the blog.

If you continue with the journey as an entrepreneur, you will have to go through chaotic times to reach the end goal. That is why the beauty of success is not in the success itself, but in the struggle. However, getting through the chaos is just as challenging as reaching success. The key to getting through the chaos is by staying calm. Here are seven ways to stay calm through the chaos of being an entrepreneur.

 

#1: Think About How The Chaos Struck

One of the main reasons chaos is despised is because chaos represents uncertainty. If there is a problem on your blog (maybe it suddenly decides to redirect to the homepage every five seconds. That happened to me once), the uncertainty is the cause of the problem. When chaos strikes, ask yourself what you did prior to the chaos that could have created the chaos in the first place. When something happens to my blog, I ask myself which plugin I activated recently.

For some people, it may be more difficult to pinpoint the root cause(s) of the chaos since some chaotic moments in an entrepreneur’s career are based on events that happened weeks, months, or even years ago. However, I encourage you to spend as much time trying to identify the root cause(s). Identifying those root cause(s) will bring back a sense of certainty into the chaos.

The more uncertain chaos is, the stronger it becomes. By bringing back certainty, not only do you weaken chaos, but you also get closer to approaching the solution. You can’t fix a problem without knowing what caused the problem in the first place. Other tips in this blog post will go into detail about how you can get out of the chaos, but before that, you need to have the right mindset. The second and third tips are designed to strengthen your confidence so you can attack chaos with the right attitude. Having an optimistic attitude is essential towards getting out of any type of chaos that you encounter.

 

#2: Think Of What You Have Already Done

Many times, entrepreneurs feel bogged down about where they are and desperate to get out of the chaos. It is at this point when entrepreneurs need to take a step out of the chaos and look at the good things they have accomplished. In It’s A Wonderful Life, George Bailey finds himself trapped in so much chaos that it affects the way he acts and thinks about himself. Then, George’s guardian angel fulfills his wish of never wanting to be born.

In the classic movie, George quickly realizes all of the things he has accomplished, and how the lives of people he knew fell apart since he was never born. He saved his brother’s life, the drug dealer from getting arrested, and he married his wife. Since George was never born, the drug dealer accidentally killed a customer, George’s brother died at a young age, George’s mom was a wreck, his wife was unmarried and worked at the library, and his kids were never born.

When Clarence gave George his life back, George embraced the chaos and gleefully said he was going to jail. Not everyone has a transformation like that, but thinking about what you have already done as an entrepreneur and a person can weaken the chaos and make it look less frightening.

 

#3: Think Of The Stepping Stones You Have Taken To Reach Your Destination

Part of looking back at you have already done is looking at what steps you have taken to get closer to your goals. Instead of looking at goals that seem so far away, look at the progress you have already made to get to where you are. This will ignite the motivation you need to continue making progress.

 

#4: Think About Where You Want To Be

After you weaken the chaos by thinking about what you have already done, think about where you want to be. When you think of where you want to be, have an optimistic attitude that you will reach this destination.

 

#5: Identify The Next Stepping Stones You Need To Take

Once you know where you want to head, identify the stepping stones that will allow you to reach your goal. Identifying the stepping stones allows you to see where you are heading instead of you trying to go all in with blindfolds. Stepping stones further establish that sense of certainty that is essential towards wiping out chaos.

 

#6: Take Those Stepping Stones

Once you identify the stepping stones, the only way to move forward is by taking those stepping stones. You have to put in the work to get the results you want to achieve.

 

#7: Repeat

Throughout your journey as an entrepreneur, chaos will come up multiple times. There is no magic bullet journey that avoids chaos, but there are entrepreneurial journeys that effectively cut through the chaos. You can constantly use these steps to get through any chaos you have in your business or life for that matter.

 

In Conclusion

Chaos thrives on uncertainty. The less we know about what we are dealing with, the easier it is for us to get overwhelmed and belittle all of our accomplishments in life. It is an unfortunate truth that people fall so far down into chaos that they become their own prey, and their own predator. People become predators when they think badly about themselves, and they become prey since they are being surrounded by self-induced negative thoughts.

Instead of being the predator of your own actions and the prey of your predator side, champion around yourself, your accomplishments, and where you want to go.

What are your thoughts on this seven step process? Do you have any additional tips for getting through the chaos? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

The Seven Right Reasons To Become An Entrepreneur

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The Right Reasons For You To Become An Entrepreneur

Successful entrepreneurship is one of the most desired lifestyles. When many people think of successful entrepreneurship, they think of the private jets, mansion of a house, and a booming business that brings in a ginormous amount of revenue. Although this is the ideal lifestyle to live, this lifestyle is hard to attain. It takes many years to reach that point, and there will be points in your journey when your entrepreneurial enthusiasm will be put to the test.

When individuals get put to the test, only the entrepreneurs who are committed for the right reasons are the ones who persevere, become successful, and maybe, just maybe get the private jet, mansion of a house, and a booming business. If you are an entrepreneur for any of these seven reasons (the more the better), then entrepreneurship is the right path for you to stick on.

 

#1: You Want To Solve A Problem

No matter how advanced our society is, it will still have its set of problems. Solving problems such as making an infinite amount of information available in one place (thanks Google) and making online videos easier and cooler to watch than ever before (thanks YouTube) is the blueprint to success.

Even if you solve smaller scale problems (providing people with new information that makes a process easier), you can still make a large income. Gary Keller’s book The ONE Thing did not solve a problem on the scale of Google or YouTube, but it still solved an important and common problem by empowering readers with the knowledge they need to become successful. If you can solve a problem and promote the solution so numerous people who need that solution are exposed to it, you sales will jump upwards.

 

#2: You Want To Serve Others

Life is not about serving yourself; it is about serving others. So is entrepreneurship. If you are so focused on serving yourself, you will forget to create an experience that also serves the customer. Amazon serves its customers by saving a trip to the store, and then another trip, and those trips to various stores add up. In addition, Amazon Prime Members get their orders delivered within two days. Amazon makes it easy to self-publish books and does a plethora of other things to serve its customers.

Jeff Bezos became a billionaire because of Amazon, and one of the primary reasons Amazon succeeded was because it focused on serving others. When Jeff Bezos had Amazon on his mind, he was thinking of serving his customers, not himself. Customers are not buying from Amazon because Jeff Bezos is a billionaire. When I buy something from Amazon, I’m not thinking, “Gotta do it for Jeff.” I’m thinking, “It beats driving to the store, there are so many options, and as an Amazon Prime member, I only have to wait two days to receive my order.” If a business serves the customer, then that customer will become a returning customer.

 

#3: You Want To Spread Your Message

You have a powerful message that you are proud of and want to share with the entire world. Spreading your message and going from no audience to being an authority in your niche is a challenging task. With that in mind, make sure the message you are spreading is a worthy one. It will take you many months and years to spread your message far and wide. Spreading your message may result in a full-time income, but the full-time income is simply a by-product. Spreading a worthy message, and getting people to believe in that message should be the two main goals. Money should not be driving your efforts.

 

#4: You Want To Change The World

If you want to change the world for the better with a product, service, or any other innovation, then entrepreneurship is the right path for you. If you want to change the world, then you need to think of a way to serve other people on a global scale. Amazon changed the world because it has served people from all around the world.

A business that serves people in a county, city, state/providence, or country only serves the people in those areas. To truly change the world, your business needs to impact anyone’s life, regardless of where that person is on the planet.

[tweetthis url=”http://bit.ly/1DBXvsV”]To truly change the world your business needs to impact anyone’s life regardless of where that person is on the planet[/tweetthis]

#5: You Have A Passion

Having a passion for what you do is the secret sauce to entrepreneurial success. The “crazy people” in society, the ones who stick with their ideas when the situation looks grim but still end up on top, are fueled by their passions.

Steve Jobs’ life and legacy was fueled by his passion for technology, even when he got fired from Apple. Bill Gates’ life and legacy have also been fueled by his passion for technology. Even when Traf-O-Data failed, Bill Gates founded Microsoft and took it very far. You will encounter obstacles throughout your journey. The amount of passion you have for what you do will determine how high you can jump over those obstacles.

 

#6: You Want To Be A Pilot Instead Of A Passenger

You are tired of watching others become successful as you continue to stay where you are, and you realize that now is your time to take action. You want to put in the hard work associated with being an entrepreneur. It is easier to look out of the window as a passenger than it is to land the plane as a pilot. It is easier to watch television and procrastinate time away than it is to put in the work required to become a successful entrepreneur.

If you make the switch from passenger to pilot, then you are committing yourself to the work it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. Making this commitment for the sake of your dreams is the most important step entrepreneurs ever make.

 

#7: You Want To Live A Fulfilling Life

You want to live a life that you will be proud of when you summarize your life during your final days. This is not exactly a life defined by how much money in your bank account. A fulfilling life is one where you control the hours you work, you only work on what you love, you make a strong income (by-product), and most importantly, you get to spend more time with your family. Many marriages start going south when partners spend long amounts of time away from each other and fail to help each other. It is important to serve your customers, but some people are even more important than your best customers who will buy everything that you put into the marketplace.

Although entrepreneurship initially takes up more time in your day, you always work under your own schedule. You can take breaks and be with your family at any given moment. If something bad happened between you and family members, you will have newfound time to patch things up. When you become successful as an entrepreneur, you will make money in your sleep, and your business will grow even if you take a four week vacation.

 

In Conclusion

Entrepreneurship is a desired life path because of the chance of great fortune, full flexibility over your time, and the ability to do what you love to do. However, the most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who continue for the right reasons.

I started my journey because I wanted to serve other people with valuable information. When I first started, that meant writing a blog about the Boston Red Sox. A few blogs later, I created this blog, and the purpose for this blog is to provide valuable content that serves others. Money was a by-product of the value I was already providing before I made any money at all.

Why did you become an entrepreneur? Why are you still an entrepreneur? Please share your entrepreneurial experiences below.

The One Simple Way For Entrepreneurs To Get What They Want In Life

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The One Thing

Who wants to be successful by doing what they love? I’m sure everyone’s hand would go up. It is a shame that we are not properly trained to be successful by doing what we love to do. We are trained to get a job and work in the status quo, but for most people, the status quo does not offer a lovable job. There is a distinct feeling of dignity and happiness to make your own success instead of working for someone else.

Every entrepreneur takes a bold step by getting out of the status quo (or never being a part of it), but not all of these entrepreneurs are successful. Many entrepreneurs are rising stars who are not household names quite yet.

If you are like most entrepreneurs, you have an array of tasks to complete. If someone asks you how many tasks you have to complete today, you may say dozens. You may have the sticky notes, the score cards, the plan, and everything else all laid out so you can easily accomplish the tasks in front of you.

It is a shame that few or even none of the tasks most entrepreneurs perform line up with what they truly want in life. The primary reason most entrepreneurs do not reach their high standards is because most of their time gets split up until only the crumbs are left. These crumbs of time are all entrepreneurs allocate to the one thing they want at that moment. Maybe you want to be a millionaire, see your training course get twice as many sales this month, triple your blog traffic in the next quarter, or something else.

The one thing you want, the most important thing, is the one thing you need to spend the majority of your time on. If your one goal is to become a millionaire, you need to carve out 50% of your time towards that goal. You need to grow your email list, create the products, find partners, and make your products wildly successful. If you are focusing on anything that derails you from your one main goal, then it is a distraction. As New York Times bestselling author Gary Keller puts it, “until your ONE Thing gets accomplished, everything else is a distraction.”

[tweetthis url=”http://bit.ly/1xck0wi”]The one thing you want, the most important thing, is the one thing you need to spend the majority of your time on.[/tweetthis]

Of course, events outside of our businesses will call for our attention. Attending the kid’s soccer games, seeing loved ones, and having dinner with your family are three of the many events that are more important than goals and business. Entrepreneurs work on their own schedules which means they control how long they work, but they also control when they take breaks. You don’t want to work on your business at the dinner table when you should be talking with your family members instead. Business is important, but it should not consume your life.

The reason many of us feel consumed is because our tasks do not line up with the one thing we want. If your one goal is to grow your Twitter audience, then don’t focus on growing a Facebook audience. Sure, if your Facebook audience becomes big, you can promote your Twitter account to that audience. However, growing a Facebook audience takes time, and now you have less time to grow your Twitter audience. Then you may give Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube a try all in the effort to grow your Twitter audience. Creating accounts on all of those social networks and updating them with new content takes up time that you could have used to learn and implement powerful techniques that could have grown your Twitter audience.

This is why social media experts encourage users to focus on one social network at a time. If we split our time amongst different social networks, we will have many small audiences instead of one large audience. I would rather have 5,000 followers on one social network than 500 followers on 10 social networks.

The days of your one thing in life constantly getting the crumbs of your time are coming to an end. In order to truly move forward in your industry and get what you want as an entrepreneur, you need to make your one thing your top priority. In fact, you should allocate 50% of your time towards your one thing. If you want to be a millionaire, 50% of your time should be spent implementing the most important parts of that plan. The other 50% of your time can be carved out to various tasks that are not as important, but those tasks should only be completed after you complete the important tasks that move you closer to the seven figure income.

 

In Conclusion

Logically speaking, the one thing you want to do in life should be the one thing that you spend most of your time on. Although the logic is simple to follow, the actually implementation of this logic is almost never done. We need to identify the one thing we want to do in our lives and then take the bold steps needed to make that one thing happen. Then, everything else that is needed will fall into place. It is better to be good at one thing than it is to be mediocre at 10 things.

10 Social Media Tips For Entrepreneurs

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Social media is one of the most powerful avenues for traffic and connections. The only problem with social media is that it is also a giant maze. Not everyone knows where they need to go, how to get the connections, how to grow an audience, and what they want to be known for.

Each time another person becomes successful or well-known because of social media, entrepreneurs are seeing the importance of social media more and more. The truth is that every entrepreneur only needs two things to become successful on social media:

  1. Guidance
  2. Dedication (the will to implement and make it happen)

Although all of the dedication comes from you, I will provide you with the guidance you need to have a smoother journey on social media. Here are the 10 social media tips that you can utilize to be more successful.

#1: Identify Who Your Target Audience Is And Focus On Them

One of the most important things you need to do before anything else is identify who your target audience is. There are many people who make identifying a target audience much harder than it needs to be. I am going to break it down into two questions:

  1. What do you post about often (what is your niche and expertise)?
  2. Who would find those posts valuable?

Answering these two questions will allow you to find your target audience. The main benefit of identifying your target audience is that you now know which types of people are going to retweet, favorite, and engage with most of your tweets. Having an engaged audience is critical towards success on any social network.

Just because you have 100,000 followers does not mean you are going to be successful. The person with 50,000 targeted followers is doing better than the person with 100,000 non-targeted followers that rarely engage.

#2: Engage With Your Audience

Engagement is a two way street. You want to build an audience that engages with your content, but you also want to engage with your audience. Engaging with your audience allows you to see more than just a number.

Regardless of how many followers you have, it is important to individually know the followers who interact with you. I know a few people who comment on numerous blog posts (if you are one of them, you know who you are). I respond to all of these comments on my blog and respond to all of the people who share my content on my social networks.

Does this take up time? It definitely takes up about 30 minutes every day, but this interaction allows me to know my audience. Knowing your audience allows you to realize what type of content they like. In addition, some of the people I interact with have subscribed to this blog and bought some of my products.

Interaction allows you to get a friendship going, and friendship in itself is a two way street. That’s why, “I owe you” is a common phrase. If one of your friends does something good for you, chances are you will do something good for that friend in return. Being friendly to your audience and engaging with them may entice them to do something in return such as subscribe to your blog or tell their friends about you.

#3: Post As Consistently And Frequently As Possible

Many people think that posting often is a bad thing because it will annoy followers. I decided to give it a try and found the complete opposite. Posting more consistently and frequently has allowed me to engage with my followers more than ever before, and it has also resulted in my blog getting a big spike in traffic that never seemed to go away.

For the tweeting in particular, I send out one new tweet every 15 minutes. Some people may think I would be annoying my followers at this frequency, but that is not the case. The truth about social networks is that many people are simply using social networks to check their activity for a short period of time.

The average Twitter is never on the social network for more than 20 minutes at a time. That means most of the people who go on Twitter only see one of my tweets unless they log in again or scroll through my timeline. It is okay to post often, and it is also recommended.

#4: Use A Universal Avatar On All Of Your Social Networks

If you think of a business, you think of their logo. When you think of Apple, you see the white apple that someone took a bite out of. When you think of Twitter, you see the blue bird. Similarly to how people think of the logo associated with the business, the people in your niche who think of you will think of your avatar.

Using a universal avatar for all of your social networks will make it easier for people to remember who you are. The easier it is for someone to remember you, the more often that person will visit your blog and see what you are posting on your social networks.

#5: Do not be afraid to promote yourself often

There are many social media users who go by the fear that promoting yourself too often will make their followers become unfollowers. This is a concept that many experts use to tell marketers to avoid over-promoting their products on social media. If you are using social media for that reason, it’s not going to work out well.

However, it is okay to promote yourself. In fact, it is okay to promote yourself often, but only if you promote yourself the right way. The right way to promote yourself is by promoting your blog posts on your social networks. It is entirely okay to tell people about the same blog post twice as long as the two social media posts are spaced out for a long period of time.

On Twitter, I go by a 4-7 day cycle depending on how my spreadsheets are organized, and I send out over 100 tweets every day. Someone would have to scroll down for a very long time to find any social media posts that repeat themselves.

As long as your blog posts are valuable to your followers, they will not mind that you promote them often. On the contrary, some of your followers will be eager to read the other blog posts that you share on your social networks.

#6: Focus On One Social Network

There are many social networks to choose from, and that’s the problem. Many people create accounts on numerous social networks and have small audiences on all of them. It is better to have a large audience on one social network than it is to have a bunch of small audiences on a bunch of social networks.

When I started my social media journey, I decided to focus most of my time and energy on Twitter. It paid off nicely, and Twitter now brings in a bulk of this blog’s traffic.

However, it is important to have multiple social networks with big presences. The best way to approach this is by taking another social network seriously after you master one social network. After I mastered Twitter, I went over to Pinterest. Now that I have over 15,000 Pinterest followers, I am now finding time to focus on YouTube.

The main takeaway: you need to eventually be on multiple social networks, but in order to have large audiences on all of them, take it one step at a time.

#7: Identify Where You Want To Be Month By Month

Many people do better on social media by giving themselves goals. The reason why goals are very effective is because they create a sense of direction. You need to have some kind of an idea of where you are heading.

What are some of the things you aspire to do on social media? Maybe you aspire to get 100,000 engaged followers, or you aspire to get more blog traffic.

The aspiration is a starting point towards social media success. After you give yourself the aspiration, you need to identify the steps you are going to take to get there. It is important to take give yourself steps that are neither too easy nor too difficult to achieve.

Gaining 100 followers every week is a great start. It’s not far out there, but it’s not incredibly easy either. If you are at that point already, raise the bar to 150 followers every week and keep on raising the bar as you accomplish the goal. Then, once you identify the aspiration and give yourself the steps you will need to get there, all you have to do at that point is implement.

#8: Be on social media every day

Just like everything else, social media requires practice. The more you show up and do the right things, the more likely you are to have the big audience. “Do the right things” is in bold because most people are already on social media every day. However, not all of that time is being used effectively.

Some people who use social media are using it to procrastinate. There are many videos and social media accounts to choose from. In essence, social media can either be your best friend or your worst enemy.

When I say be on social media every day, I mean you are utilizing it as an entrepreneur who interacts with the audience, not someone who procrastinates. Definitely use social media, but use it wisely.

#9: Do not let social media consume too much of your time

Social media is a great tool to grow your business and get more traffic. However, you need to have a good business and valuable content so all of the work you put in on social media was worth it. Just because you have 100,000 followers does not mean you are going to make a full-time income.

Having that many followers does significantly help out in the process, but you need more than a big audience. You still need to find a good chunk of time in your day to create products and work on big projects for your business. That way, when you grow your social media audience, you can lead them to places that can bring in more revenue.

You should constantly be trying to perform the same activities on social media is a shorter amount of time. If you can do something in 15 minutes instead of 30 minutes, then make that change. I use HootSuite Pro and am able to schedule hundreds of tweets per day in just five minutes instead of a few hours every day if I had to manually schedule tweets.

#10: Be patient

This last tip is a tip that commonly appears in numerous articles, and it appears in this one as well. Being patient is the most important tip on the entire list. Sure I went into more detail in the other tips about growing an audience and boosting numbers, but none of those changes happen overnight.

It took me 993 days to reach 100,000 Twitter followers, and most of that big change happened in the last year of that span. For more than half of that time, I was lost and had no idea what to do. I was struggling to grow my audience and was stuck at 1,667 followers for many months. Then, methods started to work, I modified them along the way, and now I have a large, engaged Twitter audience.

There is no such thing as an overnight success. All of the leaders in your niche got to where they are after years of work. By not giving in and learning new techniques along the way, you may become a big player on social media.

In Conclusion 

Social media is a powerful way to get more traffic and build an engaged audience. There are many entrepreneurs in various niches who have utilized social media and seen their traffic, subscribers, and sales jump up. Patience is the key to success on any social network, and the more time you put into the learning process, the better you will become.

Do you have any social media tips for entrepreneurs? Which of these tips was your favorite?

It’s So Much Easier

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Easy

To watch than do.

To work for someone else than work for yourself.

To walk than run.

To quit than continue.

To continue doing the wrong things than quit.

To settle than thrive.

To get discouraged than feel optimistic.

To take than to give.

To live in despair than in happiness.

To want more than to be grateful for what you already have.

Just because something is easier does not necessarily mean it is better. We are constantly searching for the shortcuts to avoid putting in more time and effort. Taking shortcuts results in the final result not being as good as it could have been.

 

4 Tips To Becoming An Influencer

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Influencer

Becoming an influencer allows you to become an important public figure in society. Since one of the human desires is to be and feel important, many people strive to be influencers. However, most people are doing it all wrong, and many of these people have the wrong definition for what an influencer is. An influencer is someone who changes the world, and many people would miss if that influencer went away. Nelson Mandela is someone that millions of people miss, and he changed the world. We now celebrate Mandela Day every year.

Chances are you want to be an influencer too. Whether you become an influencer at Mandela’s level or not, it is important to know how to become an influencer in the first place. In order to become an influencer, here are the four things you need to do:

  1. Identify the audience you want to change. Who is going to benefit from the changes you put in place? You need to choose who you are targeting, and if you choose everyone, then you are really targeting no one.
  2. Money comes second. Alas, everyone ignores this one. Being an influencer is about making a difference and changing the world. It’s not about ending up with some extra green cash in your pocket. If you want to be an influencer, you need to put money second. The money will come eventually, but changing the world needs to be your top priority.
  3. Make it your livelihood. If you are trying to be an influencer and are working at two jobs, things are not going to work out in your favor. In order to be an influencer, you need to focus a majority of your time on changing the world the way you want to.
  4. Get people to know about you. This is where social media is very helpful. You want to interact with the people you are trying to change. The bigger your audience is, the more your message will spread.

You have the power to change the world. YOU have the power to make a difference. By being an influencer, you will be able to change the way many people live their lives. What are your thoughts on these tips and being an influencer?