Better Business Blog

The Power of Helping Someone Else (and you too!)

Wonder what it would be like to go from two clients a year to over $40K a month without buying leads or working yourself to death?

Check this out: 

Debi Berndt, founder of Attract Love Coach.com and author of the best seller Let Love In, did just this…

She went from two clients to over $40K a month (with the same list and the same marketing) just by getting out of her own way and shifting her focus!

Even though she had a background in marketing, Debi was “lucky” enough to be stuck at 100K a year. It was a painful seven years, and she felt powerless to shatter her income ceiling. She decided to take a stand and raise her rates, only to watch her business crumble.

All but TWO clients abandoned her. 

Debi says, “I was ready to give it all up.” 

That’s when Million Dollar Income Acceleration Mentor, David Neagle, showed her how to get her ego out of her own way and “serve her clients.” 

What does “Get Out of Your Own Way” mean? Check out David’s video series More Than enough and find out for yourself.

 

Check out the video by clicking here: 
 

Some of the biggest names in our industry pay David the big bucks to help them break through the five-or-six-figure income ceiling into seven easy figures (and often in as little as twelve months). 

Here’s your chance to get coached by Million Dollar Income Acceleration Mentor David Neagle (for free).

P.S. If you desire more freedom than you have now—more cash flow, more clients, more opportunities— these More Than Enough videos will show you how to open the floodgates of abundance into your life.

Check out the video by clicking here: 

 

Are You Missing This Critical Piece?

Do you ever look sideways at really successful people and think to yourself:  

“I’m as smart as they are. I’m working as hard as they are. I’m doing everything I should be doing. I’m checking every box…and I’m still not getting the results and success I see them enjoying! Why?!?”

You are not alone. 

Master Money Mentor, David Neagle used to wonder that himself. Eventually he realized that 99% of what he “knew” was wrong – and that his current level of thinking and believing was never going to get him the success and abundance he dreamed of. 

Then one day David says he discovered “The Confidence to Be Who I Really Am”, and he embraced the universal principle, “Success is not OUTSIDE of you. Success is an effect of who you are being.” 

David made an excellent video exercise to show you how you can make the same shift he did.

Check out the video by clicking here: 

Not only did David make the shift for himself, he helps his clients and students make them too! One client is Angelique Rewers, the founder of The Corporate Agent. She was trapped in the same mind set. Angelique was most-often the smartest person in the room. But she was suffering from “intelligent with the wrong information.”

Angelique’s business was stuck at 10,000 bucks a month. And she was working really hard to make that money. With David’s help she finally discovered “The Confidence to Be Who She Really Is”. In a few months she went from $10K in thirty days to $10,000 a one-day! 

BUT what does it really take to own who you are?!? 

In David’s video exercise The Confidence to Be Who I Really Am he shows you the same secret principle of the universe that he showed Angelique. 

Check out the video by clicking here:

Announcing David Neagle's Free "More Than Enough" Video Series

For every entrepreneur wanting to ramp up their life and their business.

Enjoy Free access to The Law of Polarity case study and video exercise; video #1 in the four-part prelaunch video series.

This case study and exercise video tells the story of RJon Robins, the founder of HowToManageASmallLawFirm.com, and how he transformed his business from struggling at 7,000 to 10,000 dollars a month to over a million dollars a year.

WATCH THE FREE VIDEO AT: https://lifeisnow.infusionsoft.com/go/mtev/b3biz/

WHY WATCH? This More Than Enough video series is about BEING, DOING, and HAVING so much more than “just enough;” it’s about BEING and HAVING exceptional abundance. 

So often people are just getting by...Or stretching themselves only far enough to just pay their bills, with nothing left over. 

If you desire so much more freedom than you have now—more cash flow, more clients, more opportunities— these More Than Enough videos will show you how to pry open the floodgates of abundance into your life.

PRESENTER: David Neagle, Million Dollar Income Acceleration Mentor. Mentored / Mentoring Suzanne Evans, Baeth Davis, Blue Melnick, Fabienne Fredrickson, Bernadette Doyle, Christine Kloser, and Kendall Summerhawk, among others!

WATCH THE FREE VIDEO AT: https://lifeisnow.infusionsoft.com/go/mtev/b3biz/

 

The Key Planets of the Social Media Universe – Infographic

There is a myth circulating that if you have a Facebook page for your business then that is all you to need to succeed at social media.

If that is your paradigm then you need to rethink your social media strategy.

The reality is that this is only one piece of the puzzle and you are starting from the wrong end. This misconception is especially paramount if you are operating in a B2B business (business to business).

If you are just publishing short updates to Facebook, then your business is going to look a little cheap and fluffy and not that substantial. If you playing with Twitter and just tweeting 140 character little nothings with no links to content of substance then you will look just a tad adolescent.

So it is time to grow up and get serious with your social media marketing.

The Center of the Social Media Universe

This is the blog where you reveal your exceptional understanding of your industry and stakeout your claim as a thought leader.

The blog should have so much content with gravitas that it attracts other planets to your business as close members of your orbit and solar system. Other phrases that are synonymous with this are:

• Inbound marketing (the content is so good that people are drawn and attracted to your blog. They want to download it, link to it, talk about it and share this content on social media networks)
• Content Marketing (same idea really, just a different way of phrasing it)

So get serious and build this hub for your business universe.

Click Here to Read More:

Please Visit Our New Blog

Hi Business Peeps.

We are beta testing our new website. We are now publishing our articles on our new blog. Please visit us at B3 Global by clicking here.

We'd love to see your feedback and suggestions on our new website so keep us posted.

 

Cheers, ilana

The NYC Business Networking Group
B3 Global

 

Entrepreneurs & Startups Apply For: IBW#3 | International Business Week | Israel

IBW | International Business Week is a "boutique" and very special one week program for chosen entrepreneurs from around the world, in Israel.

The program exposes the participants to Israel's unique eco-system of entrepreneurship and innovation. IBW is a business oriented program, as we provide participants with the opportunities to pitch to investors, receive exposure in Israel's high tech industry, extensively expand their professional network, visit leading start-ups and tech centers, receive professional know-how by leading mentors, and more.

IBW is organized by StarTau - Tel Aviv University Entrepreneurship Center. More information about IBW could be found here: http://www.startau.org/ibw

Join us in a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity to visit Israel's high-tech and entrepreneurship ecosystem. The International Business Week is hosted by StarTau - Tel Aviv University Entrepreneurship Center.

APPLYNOW:
http://www.startau.org/ibw

The Agenda Includes:

• Visiting cutting edge hi- tech companies
• Networking with venture capitalists and angel investors
• Lectures from leading entrepreneurs
• Excursions and events: Global Networking Forum, Pitch Night
• Tel Aviv nightlife

 

StarTau - Tel Aviv University Entrepreneurship Center

Content Marketing 101 – Essential Questions & Answers

By Lee Odden 

Who hasn’t wrapped their arms around content marketing yet? Believe me, plenty of companies are still navigating the pros and cons, ins and outs of how to better implement content in their digital marketing mix.  In a recent interview I was asked about content marketing basics and what companies should consider. I thought it would be useful to share some of those insights here as well.

If you’re new to implementing content marketing as a productive complement to your paid, earned and shared media efforts, check out the basics below on starting out, measuring success and where content marketing may be headed.

What is the one key thing that marketers need to know to kick-start a successful content marketing program?

Most importantly, to realize that it’s not about you, it’s about the customer.

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How to Move Your Brand from Invisible to Visible

Geoffrey Rush the Oscar winning actor said he has strived to accomplish two things in his life…”Credibility and Visibility“. 

If you are a job seeker then standing out is important in securing that next job.

Business owners and entrepreneurs need to be noticed to obtain funding and sell their products and services.

To succeed as a musician and artist your work obtains visibility as it is played, displayed and seen.

Authors have the challenge of writing a book that has to stand out in a mountain of 15 million books that will be published in 2012.

If you want to stand out, Seth Godin recommends “Purple Cows”

Do something unique and different.

Pick Yourself

We live in an age where we have the means and the machines to self publish and self market. Technology is democratising publishing and marketing.

The Gutenberg press has been superseded by the digital press. The written word has been set free from the confines of time and space.

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The Most Powerful Blogging and Content Marketing Image I’ve Ever Seen

I think there are always moments in the life of a blogger when, regardless of how many comments, tweets, and shares you’re getting, you wonder whether or not your stuff is really making an impact to change lives and businesses.

Personally, I’m no different. Yes, all the social media “mentions” are nice, but action is what gets me worked up. Movement. Results.

Such was the case when I received this recent email from a reader and new friend Des Williams, who was kind enough to talk about the impact TSL and the eBook had on his developing business. When I read his email, I responded with a question I often ask– “I’m thrilled to hear it Des! Tell me, have you got that list of blog articles ready to go yet?? ”

As most of you know by now, since the moment The Sales Lion was born I’ve been preaching one essential blogging strategy– Write down every question you’ve received from a prospect/client and make each a title of a blog post.

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QB Training Solution's QuickBooks Tip: Close Out the Year in QuickBooks

 

By Danielle Hajen

Close Out the Year in QuickBooks

In QuickBooks there is nothing that you have to do in order to "close out" the year.  QuickBooks will automatically post profit and loss to the retained earnings account.  There is one thing that you should do once you are done with the year and your file is either given to your accountant or you file your tax return.  This one step is to set a "closing date".  After the tax return is finished or your accountant has your file, the information for that year should not change.  This closing date will prevent transactions with dates in the year that was closed out.  You will receive a warning that you are trying to create a transaction for a year prior to the closing date.  You will be required to enter a password in order to proceed.  In order to set the "closing date" follow the steps below.

1) Click Edit on the toolbar

2) Select Preferences

3) Choose Accounting

4) Click Company Preferences Tab

5) At the bottom you will see "Set Date/Password"- click on it

6) In Closing Date box enter the date of the year that ended  (Ex.  12/31/10)

7) Enter a Password

8) Confirm Password

9) Click OK

After the closing date is set, QuickBooks will not allow you to enter a transaction prior to this date without entering the password. 

After a tear is closed out there are a few entries that should be done on the first day of the next year. 

 

QB Training Solutions presents a variety of QuickBooks classes in the NY/NJ area.  We have a course for every skill level. Visit their website by clicking here. 

 

Here Are the Top 50 Small Business Influencers You Should Follow on Twitter

What better way to start a holiday weekend (For all our international readers (especially the UK and India!), 4th of July is Independence Day here in the U.S.) than with some light reading?

Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp, provider of credit building and credibility solutions for businesses, has released its now annual Most Influential Small Business People On Twitter.

Before you check out this year’s list of the Top 50 Small Business Influencers on Twitter, check out last year’s list of Top 68 Small Business Influencers on Twitter.

The list is a who’s who of online celebrities that you probably haven’t heard of in the offline world (another reason many write a physical book to get in front of late tech adopters), but you should definitely get to know them and their craft.

SEO specialists, social media strategists, PR/Marketing experts and writing/blogging coaches dominate the list, which is great for small business owners and professionals interested in boosting their brand online.

Grab an ice-cold beer and a hot dog and check out the influencers below to see how they can help your small business.

Here Are the Top 50 Small Business Influencers You Should Follow on Twitter

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Marketing Strategy for Lean Start-Ups

It’s all about being creative. You can build consumer brand awareness and enhance your brand’s image by selectively implementing some low cost sales and marketing strategies:

Pluck Low Hanging Fruit

 1. Develop interesting and relevant content. Most of the time developing content that is relevant to your target audience is more affordable (and more effective at getting you new users) than advertising. Develop interesting content that will drive your users to learn about your service and your brand. Unique and relevant content can have legs of its own and can get you more exposure and eyeballs online than you ever thought possible.

Read More:

Google's 10-Minute Guide to SEO Basics

From keyword research to backlinking, staying on top of search engine optimization strategies can be a full-time job in itself. But fear not, time-crunched entrepreneurs. Google has a killer resource for you.

It's a 10-minute video loaded with must-know SEO advice for startups from Maile Ohye, a developer advocate on Google's Webmaster Central Team. Some of Ohye's tips include:

• Don’t bother with meta keywords tags. Google ignores it for search.
• Sign up for email forwarding. Google can forward you notifications regarding issues with your site that could dent your search ranking.
• Use Google's Webmaster Tools to search for the keywords related to your domain name. If the domain's previous owners were spammers, your site might not rank highly in search.

Read More:

10 Blogging Tips for 2012

Are you getting the most out of your blog? With the explosion of social media sites and a whole range of blogging and content sharing platforms at your fingertips, you should take another look at your blog. Is it still serving its purpose, reaching your customers and making the most of available resources? Here's a checklist of questions you should be asking and things you should be considering when evaluating your blog and planning for 2012.

1. Is blogging the best platform for your business? By now you probably already know about the success of new, highly visual online outlets such as Pinterest and Instagram. If your business depends on people seeing big, beautiful photos of your product or location, maybe these are a better fit. You could also look at blogging through Tumblr, which supports multimedia sharing well. And if you have the resources and manpower, you can always do both, using a photo-sharing site to showcase your visual appeal, then integrate these into longer traditional blog posts.

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Inside Harvard B-school's Startup Boot Camp

With $3,000 of seed capital from Harvard Business School, around 150 MBA teams were tasked with developing their very own micro-businesses in short order. Here's what they came up with.

By John A. Byrne

(Poets&Quants) -- The idea initially came as something of a joke.

Earlier this year, a team of six Harvard Business School MBA students was brainstorming ideas for a new startup business. They came up with a peculiar takeoff on all the online dating sites: a Facebook application for Jewish mothers to set their children up with potential marriage material.

When the team shared the idea with fellow students, they heard nothing but skepticism. "They said there were a lot of barriers to entry," recalls Jyll Saskin, 24, one of the team members. "Others said they didn't think the market would be that big for it."

The feedback led to some serious rethinking. "We said, 'What if we expanded the idea to leverage the power of friend networks?' adds Saskin. "Friends could serve as yentas to recommend dates for their friends."

With $3,000 of seed capital from Harvard Business School, Yenta was launched last week along with as many as 150 other new startups in what might well be the largest single experiment in entrepreneurship ever undertaken. The so-called "micro-businesses" range from a company called Kinsey that sells "premium undergarments" for men to another called 4n Friend that is creating an online network that matches language tutors with students all over the world.

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3 Slick Analytics Dashboards to Monitor Your Business Website

If you’re running a company website without an analytics dashboard, you may as well be stumbling around in the dark. Building a viable and sustainable web presence in any industry is all about understanding the needs of your users and tailoring your service to fit their needs — how can you do that if you don’t even know what your users are looking at or how they got to your website?

The good news is that analytics dashboards simple to implement, and they also come in a variety of shapes and sizes to suit the needs and goals of your small business. While some people swear by Google Analytics or the tracking plug-ins found organically within their specific web hosting or content managing service (think WordPress analytics), there’s a lot of information you may not be getting from these sources. For example, while Google Analytics does a great job tracking individual page vies, it doesn’t necessarily break down any meaningful social sharing or referrals. You may want to know why a specific webpage on your site garners major traffic, but Google Analytics will only note that it comes from Facebook.

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Before Naming Your Startup, Read This

This guide is divided into three, independent sections: Why Bad Names Hurt You, Coming Up With Names, and Examples of Strong and Weak Names.

Why Bad Names Hurt You

If you don’t need to be convinced that a good name is important, skip to the next section. That’s where the juicy stuff begins.

Almost every bad naming decision can be traced back to one or more of the following attitudes. You must learn to recognize them:

• Mobile: “It’s a mobile app. Who cares what the name is. If people recognize the icon on their dashboard, then that’s all the brand recognition we need. It’s the mobile Web, baby! Get ready for the revolution.”
• Settling: “There’s a shortage of good names. Consequently, consumers are getting used to silly ‘Web 2.0 names. They only care about the product.”
• Politics: “I won’t spend more than the cost of a domain’s registration fees. Domain squatters are pirates, and I would never pay their inflated prices with my hard-earned money.”
• Tired: “To be completely honest, I’m just short on ideas. I think I’ll stick with the one I like best so far and just prefix ‘get’ or ‘try’ to my domain name. Later, when we’re big, we’ll buy the official domain.” (On the surface, this is one of the better excuses, but we’ll deconstruct this approach at the end of this section.)
• Short-Sighted: “What are you talking about? Our name is loaded with meaning. It has a very rich and personal history amongst the team. It represents us.”
• Deprioritizing: “I’m building a business with many more important tasks that need my attention. I refuse to spend more than two meetings talking about our naming options.”

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The Ultimate Digital Customer Service Guide

In our recent Customer Experience Series, Mashable dove deep into the mysterious alchemy of customer service. Those who own their own business will tell you: Getting (and keeping) customers is not easy. There are so many different factors that must work together perfectly within a company to ensure that fans of your brand stay happy.

Whether its making sure that your ecommerce platform doesn’t drive your users crazy or organizing your social media to build your community, forethought is key to a premium customer experience. These articles will give you comprehensive knowledge of many facets of digital customer service, with expert advice from community managers, CEOs and web designers.

Here’s a roundup of all of our articles, brought together into this handy guide. To read more, click through to the full article, and you can access the entire series here.

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How a 9-Year-Old Entrepreneur's Business Went Viral

At YoungEntrepreneur.com, we regularly bring you stories about innovative startups and their wide-eyed founders. But even we were in awe of 9-year-old Caine Monroy, who last summer constructed a makeshift arcade out of cardboard in his father's auto-parts store in Los Angeles.

He started off catering to the shop's visitors. Now, though, his business has become the main attraction, with excited children and television crews filing through daily, all clamoring for a turn. A $1 ticket gets you four spins at one of five arcade games and a $2 ticket gets you 500 spins. The industrious lad also sells $15 T-shirts -- like the one he wears -- that display "Caine's Arcade" on the back.

That attention has turned into big bucks for young Monroy. It's not clear how much money he's made from ticket and T-shirt sales, but in donations alone, Monroy has already raised more than $178,000 through his website, CainesArcade.com. Those funds are devoted to paying for his college education, he says.

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The Power of Your Blog’s Hidden Community and How to Find It

I’ve talked about “community” many, many times here on The Sales Lion. It’s a subject that fascinates me and frankly it’s a subject that continues to develop in my mind each and every day.

Understanding “Blog Community”…and What it Really Means

When I started this blog 3 years ago, the thought of getting comments on a post was magical. The idea that someone would come to my website, read my stuff, and then actually feel prompted to leave their own words was purely exhilarating. But for a long time, almost no one did.

In other words, for the first 6-12 months of blogging here and pouring my heart and soul into this blog, I didn’t sense I’d developed much of a community at all, which was a tough thing to deal with.

After about a year of writing, I shifted my thoughts and actions towards networking. I built up relationships with other bloggers. I commented often on other posts. I worked very hard to serve others.

All of these actions paid off, and the comments started rolling in. The “community” started building, and I was happy…at least for a time.

Something was missing

But even though I would often get dozens, if not hundreds of comments per post, I began to feel a lack of true community in one main regard—I started The Sales Lion to help marketers and business owners—big and small—to overcome their trials and struggles in this information and digital age.

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58 Ways to Create Persuasive Content Your Audience Will Love

Would you like to become a better writer?

Would you like to create content that people will remember, tweet, and plus?

How about content that inspires your audience to click, subscribe or buy? That’s the Holy Grail, right?

It may sound difficult, but it really isn’t.

You’re about to become a writer that’s incredibly persuasive and completely unforgettable.

Ready?

Let’s start with structuring your content so your message becomes irresistible.

How to streamline your content creation

Are you forever chopping at and changing your text?

Use the following tips to structure your writing up front, so your message isn’t buried deep in your post:

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10 Proven Ways To Market Your Website

So, you’ve taken the steps to create your company website…but what do you do now?

Now you face the challenge of actually bringing in new, qualified traffic. After all, that’s how you will make more sales and increase your customer base.

Check out these 10 ways you can pull in visitors to your website:

1. Search engine optimization

SEO is the process of increasing your website’s visibility in search engine’s organic results through optimizing your pages with the keyword phrases people are likely to search for. Think about it: when you search for something in Google, do you typically go beyond the first couple pages of results? Probably not, and neither will your potential customers.

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How Chance Spiessbach's Years In Hollywood, Will Catapalt Your Business to Success

The NYC Business Networking Group (NYCBNG) hosted Rapid-Fire Tech & Business Bootcamp at The New York Public Library, Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL).

Chance Spiessbach from Take a Chance.TV presented a seminar titled "How My Years In Hollywood, Will Catapault Your Business to Success".

Rapid Fire Tech & Business Bootcamp was a 4-hour FREE event was part conference, part mini-expo and part networking event to connect you with NYC industry professionals, executives, business owners and decision makers.

 

Online Ads: 7 Dos & Don’ts

You don't need an agency to manage your digital advertising. But if you're going to go it alone, you need to understand a few ground rules.

While many businesses these days want to improve their online visibility, many don't know how to approach it other than to build a website and maybe do some search engine marketing.

Yet 14 years after the launch of the first self-serve advertising platform, GoTo.com, I'm still surprised how little many businesses still know about do-it-yourself online advertising opportunities available to them.

After all: Even though Google's DIY pay-per-click search, contextual and display ad networks create an 800-pound gorilla, and yet there are plenty of other places to try self-serve online advertising.

Why, you might ask, as an owner of a digital ad agency, would I want to tell you about self-serve advertising platforms? There are several reasons:

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7 Practical Marketing Productivity Links

This week on The Lede …

• When Should We Add Marketing?
• The Best Procrastination Tip Ever
• Take a Hot Shower. Get Creative.
• Want More Social Shares? Don’t Ignore These 3 Things …
• The 13 Minute, 33 Second Website
• 20 Days to a High-Quality, Highly-Engaged Twitter Following
• One Piece of Indispensable Writing Advice

If you want to grab more useful links (than the seven we highlight here) every week, follow @copyblogger on Twitter.

When Should We Add Marketing?
Mr. Godin’s answer to this question is simple, but not easy. He argues that the age we now inhabit has turned the tables on the discipline of marketing products, services, and ideas. The Mad Men are gone, as is the way they brought products into the public eye.

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