Millions of people worldwide are struggling to capitalize on opportunities to be successful online in 2014. I hope what I share about the power of investing in positive relationships can help as a part of that learning. The biggest opportunities as an entrepreneur I have found in the last three years of growing my business online have come from building positive, mutually beneficial relationships. I have struggled consistently to do it in a way that works well and hope you can have a little bit easier time of it.

At least half of your most important work in building your business or trying to earn a living online should come from building positive mutually beneficial relationships. My number one priority is to build as many mutually beneficial relationships as possible. Since I am blogging, producing videos, and narrating a podcast, I work first each day to give as many people information they can use. I do my part to benefit my audience and they return the favor with praise and opportunities. Next, I continue building my relationships with existing clients. Then, I engage with people asking to be a new client. The challenge is to consistently build positive relationships without assuming you know which are most valuable and appreciating the opportunities you have more than the ones you might have. Two of my most valuable business relationships began with no concept of what amazing opportunities would come. At the same time, I often worked fanatically whenever I guessed someone might be a big client only to have always wasted my time.

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Whether you are working for someone else, just starting your business, or working to optimize the life you have, I hope that by sharing my story of how I struggled to find and build a business system that worked for me, you can benefit. My story starts with thinking I should trade my time for money most of my life, seeing a different path three years ago when I started my business, and then building a business where I was still trading my time for money. You might like that my story concludes with appreciating the value of any opportunity and building a business system founded on daily satisfaction from putting first things first.

The business system I have found that is right for me is a simple one.

I do what matters most first, what matters second next, and so on. To determine what matters most, I reflect on what work I did over the last three years that was most valuable. Clearly, creating the free tutorials and Udemy courses is proving to be the most valuable work I did. After that, the work for my largest client clearly is next most important and then that for other clients as well as responding to my emails.

Since I know what my most important work is and I know I need to do it first, that is what I do. The last few weeks I have started six days of the week out with creating what I want to and I absolutely love it! This new process has allowed me to make a new Udemy course faster than ever, put more than 10,000 new words on my blog in less than two weeks, upload a new YouTube video nearly every day, and double the amount of podcast episodes I have. Yesterday I started the day somewhat slow creatively and ended up with a 4,000 word article on Facebook marketing. Since I know when I will be creative now, my brain is getting in the habit being prepared for this time and my schedule is built to suit it. Before I do any work for clients, I do the work that I enjoy and that people can use either for a low cost on Udemy or for free on my website. I start by doing what does the most good for the most people.

Next, I do the work I need to for my clients in the order of what they invest with me in the five hours or less each day I devote to doing everything else besides creative work. This means my largest client that consistently pays me the most gets my complete attention until I have everything finished for them that day. After them, I move on to the client that invests the next most with me until either my time is up for the day or until I have completed all of my work for all clients. If I still have time left, then I respond to emails from fans and then emails from potential clients. If I have any more time left, I handle items on my to do list that I thought at some point might be a good idea such as hire a graphic designer or research a topic.

The business system I have that works for me is putting first things first every single day.

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If you are an entrepreneur working to grow your business online using Facebook marketing, using my overview for Facebook marketing and ads will prove really helpful in maximizing the return you get out of your time and money spent on Facebook.

The first key question is do you need to use Facebook at all? For nearly everyone, Facebook proves helpful in growing your online reputation. Where Facebook helps the most is with building trust, establishing communication, and relationship management. For entrepreneurs, Facebook is the first tool you should learn to use for building your long term success. When I started my business in October 2011, I struggled for six months to do anything successfully online. Within weeks of putting serious energy into Facebook, I was making money and rapidly increasing my learning. Facebook has been the single biggest factor in my success as an entrepreneur and I hope I can share what I have learned with you here completely for your benefit.

Facebook is really helpful for building trust online. Building trust online is a critical first step towards succeeding at getting anyone to pay attention to you. Your Facebook profile can be helpful for building trust because people see that you are a person just like them with friends, photos, and status updates. Seeing a bit of your personal life can give people the confidence that you are worth learning more about. Why else would employers consistently check for Facebook profiles of potential employees? Every opportunity you get online can benefit from having a polished Facebook profile you actively share new updates publicly on.

With your Facebook profile, you can establish communication with people and companies. You can add people you want to get to know better as a friend and you can message company Facebook pages you want to contact. Where Facebook shines compared to any other method is establishing communication and keeping people talking with you through Facebook messages. People and companies usually take their Facebook messages seriously and will pay attention to what you share during a chat session. You can count on this approach to work much better than email or LinkedIn for reaching people that are difficult to contact. If you use this strategy in addition to email, LinkedIn, text messages, and phone calls, you can be sure to reach nearly anyone effectively.

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I like to think of myself now as a programmable robot.

Thinking like this helps explain the depth of getting what you give. The same as with a computer, all of what I let into my mind, body, and soul impacts what I get back out. When I listen to negative news and energy, I get negative feelings, fears, and awful thoughts. When I eat too much, I feel tired, irritable, and disappointed. When I skip exercise, I feel lazy, unmotivated, and useless. When I say something hurtful, I immediately feel bad inside.

While I am no expert on my own feelings now, watching how my body reacts is pretty easy.

Once I am aware my body is feeling pain, seeing the changes in my mood is a lot easier. I first noticed this at my friend’s wedding. I had been sober just long enough to feel vulnerable at a place where most of my friends were drinking and regretful that I had not been a good enough friend to be in the wedding party. To escape some of these feelings, I went hard at eating but not as hard as I might have in the past. I had a couple of tacos, some salad, and several desserts. The problem was I had been overeating all weekend before this and my body was just about fed up with it. Just a few minutes after finishing the last dessert, my body felt really uncomfortable. I felt overly full and like I had eaten too much rich food. Just a few more minutes after I noticed my body was disgusted with me, I started feeling really depressed. The rest of the night I was frustrated with myself and had a hard time keeping it together. At the time, I saw no connection between these two.

The next week, I suddenly realized what had happened. After not getting any exercise and eating much more than usual all weekend, my body was feeling ill. The more discomfort my body felt, the more it communicated that to my mind resulting in bad moods. For most of my life, I never would have realized that the feeling I had resulted from exactly what I did before that.

Most of us think our lives are so compartmentalized. What we do at work is separate from home which is separate from how we are with our friends. What we eat is separate from working out which is separate from sleep. What I have learned is that for me, nothing is separate. Every single thing I do is related to everything else I do. Knowing this has been like a superpower and has encouraged me to watch every detail of my life each moment. In knowing that the little things add up, I have the power to modify all of the little things I do every day to fit the life I want.

With figuring out the power of all the little things in my life, I discovered how easy it is to reprogram myself.

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The problem with Facebook is lack of long term benefits. Using YouTube solves this problem. You might know me as the Facebook ads guy and you might find it shocking that I have turned off all of my own Facebook ads to make room for investing in YouTube. The data I share with you will show why you have huge opportunities waiting for you on YouTube even if you don’t have a clue about how to make videos or want to make videos. YouTube is your best chance for a high long term return on your investments now with social media marketing.

The bottom line is that Facebook is too competitive today while YouTube is consistently growing and competition is still light in most areas. Perhaps more importantly, being successful on Facebook gets you nearly nothing in the long term while having people watch your videos on YouTube leads to higher search result rankings and more long term traffic. If you make a popular post on Facebook, you might get some immediate traffic to your website or a few extra likes for your page. As my friend Raymmar can tell you, if your post does try to go viral on Facebook, you are likely to get it removed or spam blocked by people making reports to Facebook. Going viral on Facebook is nearly out of the question since just a few people have to report your post to stop it. Going viral on YouTube is easier than ever and the long term benefit you get is huge due to high rankings in search results.

The problem with Facebook is that leaving is not easy. By leaving, I don't mean closing your page or your profile but just quitting the mindset that Facebook is where you will create your success. Maybe my story will show you why. After managing billions of ads on Facebook in 2013, I have turned off all of my own Facebook ads today and will not attempt any more ad campaigns on Facebook. All of my online advertising dollars will now be devoted to YouTube because I get a lot out of those ad dollars. On Facebook, when I boost a post, I get a few short term engagements and no long term return. The cost per engagement used to be just a few cents but now it is outrageous. I have seen posts going for as high as $100 optimized CPM which means even with a 10% click through rate, I am paying a dollar per click!

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Why do I, Jerry Banfield, do what I do?

I work so that there is more happiness in the world and so that more people can enjoy more love, hope, and faith in their daily lives.

I know why I work and what I do will always adapt to match that. This makes describing what I do challenging. The short answer is that I am a consultant offering some of the best advice you can get in the world about digital marketing and online advertising. The difficulty I have is explaining what I do further is deciding whether I am what I have done, what I am doing, or what I want to do?

What do I hope you can get out of reading this?

I hope in seeing how what I have do has evolved, you can get a sense of how challenging it is to get started and be successful online. I hope what I share about how I got to where I am today is helpful for you in seeing what you can do best today to get where you want to go and to see that the journey is all that matters!

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You might enjoy the practical tips I share about how starting each day with thank you is my secret to happiness and how stopping to say thank every day you helps me appreciate what I have right now.

Gratitude is the secret to happiness because of how saying thank you makes you feel. I appreciate you making this journey with me and hope I can communicate to you what I have learned about how saying thank you has helped me be a lot happier each day. The power I see in saying thank you comes from how you feel after you do it. How many times have you wondered why we cannot appreciate what we have until it is gone? How many times have you wish for a bad day to end? Hopefully you can get some answers here about these questions that will prove helpful in having more good days and loving what you have while you have it.

Each day, I do not get out of bed until I am thankful to be doing it. Usually this means around thirty minutes of thinking about what I am thankful for. I know other people that start the day off with prayer or meditation get a similar boost in mood. You might think at first glance this is a minor detail and seems ridiculous given the schedule most of us have. My wife has to get up at six am for work so when would she have time to do this? Am I skipping thirty minutes of work I could do each morning to do something that seems optional?

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If you are asking yourself what you can do to be more productive, maybe we can answer this question together. I think the solution is to do a little bit six days per week on what you most care about. For me, this means a little bit on my relationships with people that care about me, a little bit on my health and fitness, a little bit on my work, a little bit on my spirituality, a little bit on handling my problems, and a little bit on my fun.

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If you want to learn how to work and get work done on oDesk with pro tips and experience, this podcast is for you!

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The short answer is that working exclusively via email in every situation has proven the best strategy for growing my business and building successful relationships with clients.

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