The Online Prosperity Experience

Never try to change your prospects’ minds.

Have you ever tried to change someone's mind? And failed miserably? You're not alone. In this podcast, we'll explore why it's so difficult to change someone's mind, and what you can do instead to better persuade them.

After listening to this podcast, you'll know how to better identify your target market, what cognitive biases to avoid, and what methods of persuasion are most effective.

I always try to be in concert with my audience’s beliefs and absolutely avoid disagreeing with or challenging those beliefs.

This may sound obvious, but all too many coaches, consultants and small business owners interpret “persuasive” selling as meaning that one persuades a reader, listener or prospect to change his or her mind.

Not going to happen.

Your job is to persuade the reader, listener or prospect to do something they are already inclined to do.

What have you done to promote your freelance business today?

We all know that online marketing is important. But what are the two words that will open the most doors for you when it comes to getting results?

Push marketing and pull marketing.

In this podcast, you'll learn what each of these terms means and how you can use them to get more traffic, leads, and sales for your business.

Push marketing is all about getting your message out there in front of as many people as possible. This can be done through paid advertising, PR, and other forms of outreach.

Pull marketing, on the other hand, is all about getting people to come to you. This can be done through SEO, content marketing, and social media.

Too many coaches, consultants and small business owners, particularly those who have just started out, think that promoting their business is something that needs to be done occasionally.

Not so.

Promoting and marketing your business is something you should be doing on a daily basis.

Every day? Yes, even if it’s something small.

If you are wondering what you could do on a daily basis, I have compiled a suggestion list for you.

It is divided into 2 sections – Push and Pull.

In other words, it isn’t hard to do something every day.

My list certainly isn’t complete. But there is enough there for you to compile your own calendar of marketing activities, and do SOMETHING each day of the week.

Don’t always do the same, easy thing. Mix it up.

Help your customers decide.

Are you struggling to get people to take action on your website? If so, then you need to check out this podcast on 8 rules for writing high-converting calls to action.

These tips will help you write CTAs that actually get people to take action, whether it's subscribing to your email list, buying your product, or anything else.

So if you're ready to start writing better CTAs and boosting your conversion rates, then listen to this podcast now!

People come to the internet to get information, are they finding yours?

What is curated content?

In a nutshell, it’s sharing original content you didn’t create yourself.

It’ll still be high-quality, relevant content for your industry. It should also be entertaining, inspiring, and educational.

By the end of this podcast, your social media platforms will include a mix of original and curated content. And it’ll be a huge part of your content marketing strategy from now on.

As I explain in this podcast, I think the days are past when you can get away with asking, “Is this content good enough?”

Smart coaches, consultants and small business owners now need to raise the bar considerably, and ask themselves a much tougher question, “Is this content good enough to be curated?”

Aim to achieve the same level of quality content for your own websites, podcasts or blogs.

This makes good sense because if your content is chosen by a quality curator, who is familiar with your topic, then you can be absolutely certain that it’s more than good enough to satisfy Google and the other major search engines.

In other words, don’t try to stay just ahead of what Google wants – and you can never be sure of what that is anyway – but move way ahead of “good enough” and blow your competition out of the water.

We're past the time for content for content's sake.

We need you, we need more outliers!

We have all heard of those people that are so insanely great at something that we categorize them as flukes or outliers. We describe them with phrases like:

“Well, yeah she can do that but she is the exception”

“Yeah he did it, but he is crazy”

“Well everyone except for her, she doesn’t count”

People that come to mind include:

• Thomas Edison
• Oprah Winfrey
• Steve Jobs

Somehow these people have attained outlier status and as such don’t follow the same rules that everyone else does. The popular perception of them becomes less that of a real person and more that of an idea.

Most of us set the bar way too low when it comes to believing what we are capable of.

We do good work. We are productive. We put energy into our work.

But how often do you do CRAZILY good work?

How often are you CRAZILY productive?

How often do you put a CRAZY amount of energy into what you do?

We can all do it. It's just that we don’t reach up that high very often.

This brings me to you.

You have all of the raw ingredients necessary to become a changing force in the world. Bursting out of the league that the rest of us occupy is a possibility. It is just a possibility to require an uncommon amount of work and dedication. It requires moving forward when your brain screams for you to stop, taking risks that will scare your loved ones and putting yourself in dangerous situations. Even still, the potential is there.

You have a chance to change the world for the better. Take it. We need you, we need more outliers!

Humans crave certainty, take advantage of this.

I’m not suggesting you be dishonest. Far from it. Instead, create for and relate to your audience so that they are certain you are a trusted adviser for them.

In order to be truly certain that you have the best solutions for your clients, you will need to do some work to determine who you’re selling to.

You need to create a relationship with your prospect that allows you to understand the challenges and pressures that they’re facing, and to sell to their deeper needs.

If you are a coach, consultant or small business owner, use the same approach when marketing your services. Find a way to promote yourself that offers certainty.

Will my advice make a difference to the results you achieve? Yes, it will. It’s money in the bank. No ifs, buts or maybes.

Be ambitious, and plan to create a memorable body of work

We can be so consumed with achieving right now. Instant gratification is the driving ambition of our generation, but how do you create to leave a powerful legacy?

Find your why. Ask yourself the big question, why you are writing? Be honest with yourself and dig deep. If your goal is for immediate success, then give it your everything. You will be able to achieve that goal if you apply yourself, get some mentoring, and keep at it, just don’t give up. Create without the pressure of performance, develop your work and stay true to your vision.

If you are going to leave something that stands the test of time, you will need to have the courage within yourself to disregard the critics. Not everyone will understand what you are trying to achieve. Great artists show us what is possible; they inspire us to become more and reach further with our creativity.

Only you can decide what you want to achieve, know who you are, and give us your honest and authentic self. It’s ok if you are not driven to make money with your writing, create great art, and allow the world to enjoy it, your grandkids just might be glad that you did.

You can achieve anything you want in your life. 

You can build the career you want, you can write and publish a book, you can become a yoga instructor, you can travel the world, you can learn how to play the guitar and you can learn how to speak Italian. 

You can do all those things in your lifetime — but you can’t do them all at once. And, more importantly, you can’t excel in any of those fields, if you’re not willing to invest consistent hours into mastering them.

Too often though, this is the trap we fall into. We spread our energy too thin by going after too many things at the same time. As a result, we don’t end up achieving much.

Personally, I’ve fallen victim to this kind of thinking a few times. I wanted to travel the world and launch a project from scratch. I wanted to write a book and build a company. I tried to do them at the same time, but of course, that wasn’t possible.

But all that changed when I came across this Russian proverb that transformed my understanding of what it takes to succeed:

“If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.”

If you want to create sustainable change in your life, you must choose “one thing” and you must go deep in that thing. You must choose—and chase—one rabbit .

And that’s the secret to mastery: You do one thing, you do it every day, and you did it for years.

You’ll feel better as a coach, consultant or small business owner when you see the difference you can make.

I was asked on a podcast recently to identify my most memorable job from the last 10 years as a Digital Marketer and entrepreneur.

The interviewer was probably expecting me to come up with a job I did for one of my big-name clients from the past, like Office works, Myer! or Jim's Cleaning franchise.

But I didn’t. My most memorable job is one I did for a friend about 5 years ago. I helped her start a Chutney business and to help her grow her one-man business.

And it worked gangbusters. In fact, she now has her products in her local IGA and has published a recipe book.

Why was that job more satisfying than some huge project I did for a much bigger company?

It was satisfying because I could clearly see the results. I could see how much I had helped my friend and her company.

In other words, I had made a difference and could see it.

With much of our work, we never really get to know if our contribution made any significant difference… The Digital marketing work I did for Office works may have been good, but it certainly didn’t change the trajectory of the company. I couldn’t see the difference I had made.

This is important because as humans we find it deeply satisfying when we can see that our skills and hard work are actually worth something.

Working for money is one thing. But making money is not as meaningful to us as the knowledge that what we do has meaning, and that our work can change lives.

I’m not suggesting you stop working for larger companies, but you might want to consider an occasional job for some very small companies or causes. It doesn’t matter what they pay you, or whether they pay you at all. I never took a penny from my friend.

What matters is that from time to time you get to see and feel that the work you do is important.

Do more work that matters, more for the selfish reason of the satisfaction it gives you...

There are few things more wonderful than being able to earn a living by writing and speaking. It's a remarkable gift that allows us to share our thoughts and ideas with the world, and to connect with others in a meaningful way.

If you're lucky enough to be a speaker or writer, then you know how precious this gift is.

But it's also a gift that comes with a lot of responsibility. Because when you're a writer, you're not just writing for yourself.

You're writing for your audience.

And that means that you have to be constantly aware of what your audience wants and needs. You have to be able to give them what they're looking for, whether it's information, entertainment, or both.

• First, you will have found a way to express yourself, your feelings and your opinions beyond simply writing one more Facebook entry or a Tik Tok Tweet.
• Second…you will have developed a craft that allows you to make a living, or some supplemental income, in a variety of different ways.

Myself, I have made a living by writing for the last 10 years.

One of my brothers-in-law is a journalist. One of my nephews is a feature writer. I know someone who makes a living as a travel writer, and a couple of people who are nonfiction writers. Not to mention all the people I know professionally, most of whom make an excellent living as copywriters or business communications writers.

Writing or speaking is not simply one more way to make a living. It is a unique way to make a living.

As a writer and a digital marketer, I have some huge advantages over friends and colleagues who have traditional jobs.

– My work skill is evergreen. I don’t have to relearn how to write as the world and technology change around me.

– My work skill is hugely flexible. I can write sales copy, editorial content, books and ebooks, programs and courses, and so on.

– My work skill is totally portable. Give me a small laptop and you can drop me off anywhere in the world, so long as I can find internet access. In other words, I can work as a writer from wherever I want.

– I can’t be fired. I work for myself and am light on my feet. If I lose a client, or some project comes to an end, I can just find another. In effect, I can never “lose” my job.

– It doesn’t matter how young or old I am. Most employees start to get pretty nervous when they hit the age of 50. If they lose their job, they know they’ll have a tough time finding another. That isn’t the case for me, or for anyone else who writes for a living. For as long as my writing and speaking have value, I’ll never be penalised for my age.

And so on. In a world where everything is changing fast, and where jobs are disappearing faster than they are being created, it’s wonderful to have a skill that is so resilient.

Can you follow the same path? Of course, you can.