What if you could influence people before you even met them? Would that be a valuable skill in business?

Not only is it possible, you can engineer it with intention. And you should. In today's episode, you'll discover:

•  The difference between strategic and tactical influence, and when to use each.
•  The three key factors we need whenever we feel we've heard a special calling from God.
•  My very favorite photography app.
•  And the always award-winning, much much more.

Announcements:

• I am updating my copywriting course… win free access with your comments between now and Christmas.
• Seats available for Strategic & Tactical Influence (STI) — dates January 14-16 in Phoenix, AZ.

Conferences where I will be attending and/or speaking:

• NMX, Jan 4-6, 2014, Las Vegas, NV
• Strategic Influence Jan 14-16, 2014, Phoenix, AZ
• NAMS 11 February 7-9, 2014, Atlanta, GA
• Social Media Marketing World, March 26-28, 2014, San Diego, CA
• "Permission to Prosper" April 8-10, 2014, Spokane, WA

Tip Of The Week

I've recently taken up photography as a hobby. My current cameras are my iPhone 5S, the Canon A1400, and an old Nikon DSLR that I'm borrowing from my son. My dream kit is a Sony NEX-7. But one thing I've learned is long before you need a new camera, you need better skill with the camera you have, and you need some finesse and how you process your photos after you take them. Which leads me to the fact that I own many, many photography apps. But the one that consistently produces the best results for me is snapseed. Even though it gets a lot of complaints, it seems fairly easy to use to me, and I have produced some pretty nice photos using. Above are three examples.

Spiritual Foundations

The key to taking a word from God in bringing it into manifestation usually lies at the intersection of three circles: Spirit, Soul, and Strategy.  The reason people are often disappointed when "God's word" doesn't come true for them might be because they've missed one of these three.

Feature Segment: The Unconventional Guide to Influence

What is influence? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary: "the power to change or affect someone or something : the power to cause changes without directly forcing them to happen."

When you have strategically crafted your influence in a particular sphere, you can affect change without direct communication. Change the atmosphere around people, and you change the atmosphere inside people.

1. Get clarity on what outcomes you seek to achieve.
2. Reverse engineer the required influence to produce the outcome.
3. Discover who you have to become in order to exert such influence.
4. Codify your wisdom in a way to is easy to distribute to other people; the most powerful way is to write a book.
5. Practice and enhance your communication skills so that you are able to transmit your message in an effective, powerful, and memorable way.
6. Become skilled in the science of causing your ideas to spread; in common parlance, we call this "marketing".
7. Develop an intentional process that causes others to want what you have; transform your ideas into cash.

What To Do Now

The development of the seven steps has both a Strategic and a Tactical component.

At our three-day workshop in January, not coincidentally entitled Strategic and Tactical Influence we develop both of those components, and we work through all seven steps in the system, producing a distilled, Big-League Idea born out of your knowledge wisdom and experience… Developing this into a full-fledged outline for your Big-League Book (and even finishing the book, if you choose to opt for the upgrade)… Developing your talking points for media interviews, etc.… And devising a customized, intentional cash flow funnel for transmuting your ideas into income.

The investment for this workshop is not cheap, but for the right person this is the bargain of the decade. We have a handful of seats left; if you would like to reserve one, if you are serious and you want to know more,  click here to fill out an application. If it looks like you might be a good fit for the workshop, we will get back in touch with you.

If you enjoy the podcast, I would consider it a great favor if you subscribe (and leave a review) in iTunes. This helps new people discover the podcast. You can also find the podcast on Stitcher.

Question:    What's your plan for developing more influence in 2014? Click here to leave your comments.