Entrepreneur

5 Ways To Make Your Business Run On Autopilot

July 4, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Autopilot Business

Wouldn’t it be cool for your business to run on autopilot? Imagine being able to take a four week vacation and know that you are still going to make a strong income from your business. Nothing falls apart when you step out of the driver’s seat. Instead, everything keeps on moving forward and moves forward even faster when you go back to the driver’s seat. However, that four week vacation was definitely nice. In order to have more four week vacations by having your business run on autopilot, these are the five things that you need to do.

Make sure you don’t have to ship out anything. If you have to drive to the post office to ship out your product to a customer, then you are never going to have a business that runs on autopilot. You need to have other people take care of the shipping for you. If you have an eBay business, hire someone to look after it while you are gone. If you publish your own book, self-publish it on CreateSpace or get it published by someone who will take care of the shipping for you. If you have a training course, make sure the technology involved with making the sale runs smooth enough that you don’t have to intervene in order to make the sale. You should be able to make the sale, and the customer should be able to get what he wants without you doing anything.
Hire assistants to do the hard work. If you self-publish 1 Kindle eBook every month, hire a ghostwriter for that month. You still get the final say and get to edit the book so it reflects your style. However, hiring the ghostwriter saves you the time of writing the manuscript. How else can you use assistants to save you time?
Schedule content in advance. I schedule my blog posts weeks into advance. The reason I do this is that I have more time to write longer blog posts (like this one). However, I take multiple vacations in the summer (including a two week vacation). It is at these times when having scheduled blog posts is really helpful. Instead of rushing to write a blog post so I can enjoy the vacation, all of my blog posts are already scheduled for that entire week (or two).
Don’t work alone. This is why hiring assistants is very important. If you work alone, then you will never be able to have your business run on autopilot. It’s okay to ask for help. In fact, it’s also okay to ask for a lot of it. I’m sure you would save hours of time every day just by hiring 10 assistants.
Be very effective when you are in the driver’s seat. If you are an effective leader for your business, then your assistants will know exactly what to do when you take the four week vacation. In addition, the more productive you are when you are in the driver’s seat, the less you will have to worry about during that vacation (hopefully nothing at all).

An autopilot business is the entrepreneur’s dream. Hours that could never be opened up before will suddenly become open for you to interact more with the most important people in your life. What would an autopilot business do for you? Do you have any additional tips on turning a business into an autopilot business? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Celebrations Connect People Together

July 4, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

celebration

The 4th of July does a really good job at connecting Americans together. Friends get their friends together, watch fireworks go into the night sky, and talk about America. They talk about where the nation is going as well as what it took to get independence. They also talk about other things that occur in their daily lives and have long conversations with the people who are important to them. Some also have a big feast of potatoes, chicken, hot dogs, and hamburgers.

The 4th of July brings Americans together with the people they care about. The reason this happens is that the 4th of a July is something that Americans celebrate in unison. The celebration reminds us of our values and allows us to strengthen our connections with one another.

Why not make a celebration of your own that connects your tribe together? The 4th of July brings Americans together because they celebrate their own independence. What kind of celebration can you come up with to bring the people in your tribe together? Maybe a free giveaway of your book that is awarded to the 10 person who asks you good questions related to your book’s content. Maybe your celebration can be a teleseminar that your tribe knows about (and causes it to spread) where you offer your expertise.

The 4th of July is one celebration that connects people together. Christmas, Memorial Day, New Year’s Day, and Easter are other celebrations that connect people together. Coming up with a celebration of your own that only matters to your tribe. Some people can’t stand the Indy 500 while others are sitting on the couch watching every minute of it. Your celebration won’t please everyone. It will only please your tribe, but pleasing your tribe is what encourages communication and new members.

8 Ways To Make More Money As A Consultant

June 30, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

Consultation Session

I have been exploring more ways to make money through my expertise. There are plenty to choose from such as creating training courses, writing books, and other options as well. However, I recently tapped into another source of income that has many benefits: consulting others. You get to charge an hourly rate, and as you get more people, you will become more successful. However, many people who say they are consultants struggle to make a respectable revenue from their job. While some consultants make thousands of dollars every month, others are struggling to get 1 person to consult with every month. In order to make more money as a consultant, follow these 8 tips.

Charge more for your consultations. This one seems like a no-brainer, but it is this kind of attitude towards this method that prevents people from getting better results. Think about it this way. Consultant A charges $50 per 1 hour consultation and gets 6 people every month for an hour each. Consultant B charges $100 per hour and gets 3 people every month for an hour each. Consultant A got more clients than Consultant B, but Consultant B was able to make the same amount of money as Consultant A by only spending three hours talking to clients instead of six. You have three extra hours to do things that will boost your credibility.
Boost your credibility. There are many consultants that clients can choose. They are only going to choose the consultants who are the most credible or charge the lowest price. If you want to turn consulting into a full-time income or at least five figures every year while living a comfortable lifestyle where you are in control of most of your schedule, do not rely on lower prices. Lowering your prices will result in too many clients and divide your time into too many segments amongst each client (which results in less quality).
Ask for the money up front. Many consultants make the mistake of asking for the money at the end of the consultation. That’s when some clients decide to call it quits and act as if they never heard of you before. This results in many consultants chasing their clients around for the money those consultants deserve. It’s like the teacher in elementary school chasing students around for homework. That doesn’t happen in as many middle schools or high schools, and it almost never happens in college. What encourages students to hand in their homework (even when late) is avoiding the F. However, your client does not have that reason to give you the money. That’s why you need to ask for the money up front instead of having battles with some of your clients so you can make your money. If you have good credibility, clients will be more willing to pay up front before the consultation.
Only be a consultant for specific aspects of your niche that you are good at. If you know how to come up with an Instagram strategy, but you don’t know how to come up a GooglePlus strategy, then both do not belong. Only be a consultant for the specific aspects of your niche that you can do a good job at. This will encourage more returning clients.
Make the consultation process smoother. If you get the money up front, it will be easier for you to create reports for your clients. The fear of sending a report that normally costs $100 won’t bother you anymore because you already got the money. In addition, you want to know about the person before you do the consultation. If you spend 10 minutes in the consultation catching up with the person and that person’s goals, then that person will feel as if he/she is wasting money at your consultations. What you need to do is provide a questionnaire for all of your paying clients that consists of 5-10 questions. This process will make you more prepared for the consultation and allow your clients to get their money’s worth. This process will entice people to pay you up front the first time and then become returning customers later on.
Offer a discount for returning clients. You can tell your clients that if they do two of your consultations then they get the third one 50% off. If you price your consultation sessions correctly, you will be still be able to make more revenue with the 50% discount. In addition, some of your clients will have a 4th and 5th consultation with you just to take advantage of the 50% deal again (and to learn, of course). This discount will look attractive to potential clients, and you will be able to develop strong connections with the people you consult with three or more times.
Give your clients an enticing but unexpected free prize. When a client is consulting with you, you have their undivided attention. Clients are not going to be surfing the web, reading through emails, or checking what time The Big Bang Theory is on tonight. They are only going to be paying attention to what you are saying to them. Since you have their attention (and an extra $100 or so), you can spend some of that money on your client. Tell your client that you are really proud of him/her for sticking with the consultation and showing up, and for that you will ship over a free copy of one of your books at no additional cost and you just need their address. You must be sure to promise that the address will never get shared. No one would like for their address to get posted online, especially Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. Most clients will give you their address on those conditions and be happy to get the free product. Sending a free copy of your book gives you a distinct advantage because you are able to sign the book and leave a personal note. That personal note can further congratulate the person for showing up to your consultation and ask that person to leave an honest review for your book on Amazon. Now you client is more likely to become a returning client and your book gets another review with one transaction. The best part is that you will still have a good amount of money left over if you price your consultation sessions right.
Tell your clients in advance that you will record the consultation. For all forms of consultation, you have the option to record an audio version of the consultation. All you need to do is have a smartphone and record an audio when the consultation starts. If you have a computer, the audio still works, but you also have the option of recording your computer’s screen. No matter how you record the consultation, this will mean your client won’t have to waste time taking notes and instead will be able to focus more of their attention on you (which in most cases results in a returning client, or at least a client who is going to leave a good testimonial).

Getting clients to go to your consultation sessions is important. However, you also want to make as much money as possible with your consultation sessions. Those are 8 ways that you can make more money as a consultant and reach 5 figures every year from consulting. If you are not there already, it is possible for you to get there by following these tactics in less than a year. A big part of your success as a consultant depends on your credibility. You may not want to have consultation sessions right now (I didn’t for a while), but it is still important for anything that you do to boost your credibility and become an expert in your niche.

What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips on making more money as a consultant? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Create Killer KeyNotes

June 21, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

KeyNote Presentation

As you become more popular in your niche, it will become increasingly important to know how to create killer KeyNotes. There are a variety of purposes for a KeyNote such as when you get a speaking opportunity or decide to turn your KeyNote into a free prize for the people who like your Facebook Page. No matter what the purpose of your KeyNote is, it is important to create a killer KeyNote that better serves the person who watches your entire KeyNote.

No matter what your KeyNote is about, you need to include pictures throughout KeyNote. Include pictures that are breathtaking, stunning, humorous, or analytical. Adding these pictures will make the text easier to read, and if you are engaging an audience in a public presentation, you will be able to grab your audience’s attention with the pictures. If you really want to grab your audience’s attention, make sure some of your pictures are a bright yellow. Out of all of the colors, humans notice yellow before any other color. That’s why a lot of the street signs are a dark yellow. They get more attention because of the color.

Another way to create a killer KeyNote is by having 1-3 motifs that appear throughout your KeyNote. Having motifs appear throughout your KeyNote will get stronger over time at keeping the person’s attention. In addition, the better your motifs are, the more value you will provide for the reader.

Providing surprising facts in your KeyNote will also get more attention. If you catch yourself ordering someone to do something, turn it into a fact instead. Instead of saying, “Make sure your picture includes your tweets,” say something like, “Tweets with pictures get 10% more engagement than tweets without pictures.” Providing this fact educates the reader and gives them a reason to tweet with pictures not just because you said so.

Finally, your KeyNote needs to be organized. If your KeyNote is organized and properly presents your ideas in a way that makes sense to the reader, then your KeyNote will be easier to read. If you jump back and forth between ideas in a random order, you will lose the attention of your readers.

Audiences enjoy the presentations with killer KeyNotes. If you are able to create a KeyNote with all of the components in this blog, you will be able to create a KeyNote that grabs everyone’s attention and provides quality at the same time. What are your thoughts on creating killer KeyNotes? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

10 Ways To Improve Your Facebook Page

June 19, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

The two components that decide how many likes and engagement your Facebook Page gets is the way it looks and the content you post on that Facebook Page. However, many people are not optimizing these two components well enough in order to see better results. The better you implement these two components, the more likely you are to be successful on Facebook. In order to make your Facebook Page better, follow these 10 tips.

Facebook prefers that you use 180×180 pictures but then converts your picture to 160×160. That means the avatar picture you choose for Facebook needs to look good even if it is 160×160. Make sure your entire company’s logo or the picture of you shows up on the entire avatar. If part of your company’s logo or your headshot gets cut out of the picture, then you need to fix that. There’s nothing worse than having a sloppy appearance prevent you from getting more engagement on Facebook.
Make sure your background picture further emphasizes what your Facebook Page is about. A picture of your company’s logo or a headshot does not necessarily tell people what your Facebook Page is about. If you put a headshot of yourself on your Facebook Page, then your background picture needs to show people what your posts are all about. If you only write Facebook posts about Facebook marketing, you can have a picture on the background related to Facebook marketing. If you write Facebook posts about motivational quotes, you can have a background picture of the sun rising with your favorite quote in the same picture. No matter what you post about on Facebook, your background picture needs to give everyone a good idea about what you post. As a side note, the ideal dimensions of your Facebook Page’s background image are 851 pixel width by 315 pixel height.
Make sure your Facebook posts are only 80 characters. The longer your Facebook post is, the less likely someone is to read the entire post. If you want to get more likes and engagement on Facebook, you need to create short and sweet posts that are easy to read and have a clear message.
Include pictures in your Facebook posts. Facebook posts with pictures get more engagement than the Facebook posts without pictures. Although pictures are optional for Facebook posts, you should make it a point to have at least one picture in a Facebook post.
Experiment with your posts. When you first start to see more engagement and likes coming in every day, it is important to identify what kind of content your fans like the most. There are a variety of factors that decide how much engagement your Facebook posts get such as the character count, topic of choice, way you worded what you said, the color of the picture, and other factors as well. You will be able to identify which factors work for you by posting a lot of content and seeing which Facebook posts get the most attention.
Have an effective short bio. People get to see your short bio directly under your picture. They don’t have to click an About Me Page on the menu like you have to do with a blog. Instead, it’s right there. Your short bio can give people an idea of who you are and what you do. Since a short bio does not take a lot of time to read, most people will read your short bio before reading any of your posts.
Post videos on Facebook. Videos grab our attention differently from the way a typical post grabs our attention. Posting videos will keep someone on your Facebook Page for a longer period of time. That’s long enough for someone to like that Facebook post, leave a comment, possibly share it with their friends, and repeat the process for some of your other Facebook posts as well.
Get more likes for your Facebook Page. These are a bunch of ways that you can get more likes on your Facebook Page. Getting these likes makes your Facebook Page look more popular. Whether it is actually very popular or not, potential fans will see your Facebook Page and believe that it is very popular. These people will then engage with your posts and like your page because they see that so many other people have done the same.
Post every day. New visitors are more likely to like your Facebook Page if you post every day. Posting every day shows that your Facebook Page is active, and if visitors like what you have posted in the past, then they know they need to like your Page in order to get your future posts in their news feed. The average dormant Facebook Page does not get as many likes as the average active Facebook Page. Facebook also does a really good job at telling people when they have not posted on their Facebook Pages in a while. If you ever get that kind of email, you need to stop what you are doing and immediately post something on Facebook and then schedule posts for the days to come.
Time your posts based on what your audience is on Facebook. In order to get the best engagement from your Facebook posts, you need to send these posts out when most of your audience is on Facebook. Facebook provides analytics that contain the number of people who visit your Facebook Page for every hour of every day of every week. That is a powerful statistic that Facebook gives you for free. If it’s free, it doesn’t hurt, and in this case, the statistics can be the difference between your Facebook post getting 25 likes or 50 likes.

By constantly improving your Facebook Page, you will continue to see better results over time. Your engagement will go up, more people will hear about you, and by implementing circular viralocity, your blog and all of your social networks will be able to go viral. Having an effective Facebook Page is just one piece of the puzzle.

What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice about improving your Facebook Page below.

How To Make One Sale Every Day

June 17, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

One Sale Every Day

One of the most discouraging moments for any author, entrepreneur, or business is when your products stay on a sales drought. Some of these sales droughts last for a few weeks while others last for a few months. It is during these sales droughts when people learn the hard way that they “don’t just come.” It takes a lot of work to get the customers to come, and it takes even more work to make six figures from your products. When I was in my sales droughts at the beginning of my career, I would feel very accomplished if I could get closer to making 1 sale every day. This thinking got me from making 1 sale every two weeks to making 1 sale every week. Thinking the same way allowed me to pass a major milestone: getting one sale every day. While some people are getting hundreds of sales every day, and companies like Apple get millions of sales every day, it feels incredible when you get daily sales for the first time in your career.

Although having the right mindset is very important, you also need to know the how-to aspect of getting more sales. Having a good attitude is not enough, but it is going to be the main motivation you have when you do the work that will allow you to get daily sales. If you don’t have the right mindset, I highly recommend reading this blog post to acquire the right mindset and then go back to this one.

There are four big things that you need to know about the typical customer in order to get more sales:

Customers hunt for bargains. My training course used to be worth $47, and I offered a coupon for my blog subscribers that reduced the training course’s price to $20 (and I still do this). That was a $27 difference which accounted for a discount slightly over 50%. Then, I boosted the price of my training course to $100. I offered the same coupon on my blog that made the entire training course worth $20. However, this coupon had a stronger effect. Instead of making the training course a little over 50% off, the same coupon now made the same training course with the same videos 80% off. 80% looks a lot better than something that is “a little more than 50%.” When you give people a discount, make sure the discount either ends in a 5 or a 0 so it is easier for the average person to calculate the savings.
Customers love leaders. The most successful people just so happen to be the leaders. It’s not a coincidence. Leaders also happen to be the ones with a lot of credibility. That’s not a coincidence either. In order to become a leader, you need to boost your credibility and do things differently from your competition. By standing out, you will become more popular, and customers love buying from leaders who also happen to be very popular.
A higher priced product is associated with better quality. These products are associated with so much quality that they are worth multiple looks. As a member of HootSuite Pro, I decided to take a look at SocialOomph. It seemed interesting and cost more than four times as much as HootSuite Pro for the one year option. I went on SocialOomph five times before realizing that HootSuite Pro is the better of the two. In addition, the most expensive training courses happen to be the ones we hear the most about. More people talk about the training course worth $2,000 than they talk about the training course worth $500. It’s very easy to put both of these together. You can see a $2,000 training course and tell people that they can get a 75% discount by liking your Facebook Page. Customers would be very quick to click the like button and see the price get cut down to $500. Even if you planned on pricing your training course at $500 right from the start, originally pricing it at $2,000 suddenly makes the $500 look like a steal. In addition, $500 is still a high enough price to associate as a quality product created by a leader.
Customers get influenced by testimonials. Some people call them testimonials and other people call them reviews. Testimonials have a big influence on customers. In order to get good testimonials for your product, your product needs to be valuable. Displaying some of the top testimonials on your blog may be the difference between getting multiple sales and not making a single sale. It is important to realize that customers have become smarter over the years. Creating fake testimonials became a popular way to get more sales for a new training course. In order to prove that your testimonials are real, you need to link to the person’s social network or blog if you want to include that person’s testimonial.

Those are the four things you need to know in order to get more sales, but you need to know what to do with this knowledge in order to get more sales. The first thing you need to do is distribute your product for free so more people can get access to it. Implementing this part of the strategy will make your product more popular and get some testimonials along the way. You need to be simultaneously growing your presence on the web and social networks so you have more credibility. The person with 10,000 followers has more credibility than the person with 1,000 followers…unless the person with more followers gets caught for buying fake ones. After you offer some of your free products, you need to make it look as if your customer is getting a steal. If you intended on pricing a 40 video training course for $500, bump it up to $1,500 or $2,000. Then, offer a discount that lowers the price down to $500 if someone likes your Facebook Page. Not only is it a steal for the customer, but you get to make the same amount of money you would have made anyway. As you get more customers, you will have more testimonials to include on your sales page, and the more testimonials people read about your product, the more likely that person is to buy it.

Whether you are selling a book, a training course, or another product, implementing this strategy will allow you to get more sales. Implementing this strategy over time will allow you to get one sale every day. What are your thoughts on this strategy? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice below.