Building business muscle in 2009 – will you in 2010?

NOTE: This business success article begs to be re-tweeted and passed onward because of the truth in what it takes to succeed at life and in business.  Please do not leave this article without re-tweeting it or paying it forward.  Your friends and colleagues will thank you. 

===========================================

Are you building real, true long lasting business building muscle that will allow you, your website or your company to sustain continued growth well into the future?

In other words, as you are running online websites (businesses), are you truly mastering skills that produce quantifiable results?

Here’s what I mean and, in fact, I’ll give you a very real story to relate this to with an insightful visual.

Earlier this year, I had what I thought was a stiff back that turned out to be a herniated disc at L4/L5.

As if that weren’t bad enough news, my chiropractor who kept telling me this was “all muscular” insisted on cracking me and twisting me until 2-3 weeks after his manipulations caused my right leg to go nearly paralyzed.

After a fine neurosurgeon removed about 75% of the contents of my herniated disc stuck in my spinal column, things felt much better.

Only thing is, just prior to surgery, I was laid up in bed for 10 days straight with the muscles in my right leg going into atrophy (it really is true that if you don’t use something, you lose it!).

After surgery, I began getting the feeling back in my right leg, but I had suffered nerve damage and still couldn’t feel the bottom of my foot.  I was also walking like an 80 year old man because my right calf muscle completely atrophied and you can see how much smaller it is.

Interesting insight:  It’s amazing how you don’t realize the muscles you use on a daily basis, then have one pulled out from the mix and bammo, one day I’m going down Whistler Mountain, the next day I’m a cripple!

Now let me tell you something shocking about the picture above.

That picture is taken on December 30, 2009, 8 months after surgery took place and after only 1/3 through rehab (yeah, that’s right, this will take me at least 18-24 months to recover).

I am not pretty much no longer limping and can half-heartedly run now.   Yippee!

But even still 8 months later, you can see that I have not built up to the original muscle mass, not even close.  And I am taking 3-4 walks with my dogs who have been my savior.

Alright — so I can hear you saying it.

What in God’s name does this have to do with business and building an online presence and getting good at it?

It has everything to do with it.  (I talk about these concepts (mastering things) inside my Private MasterMind Group).

Building muscle in your body is just like building muscle in your daily habits and rituals that make up the results you produce now. (And if you’re not happy with the current results, just change the things you are doing.)

You see, it’s not some amazing keyword tool or software device that is all of a sudden going to make everything happen for you and figure out your specific business, but it’s actually you as the user who pushes the buttons in the right order that will make things happen.

And usually, those “pushing the buttons in the right order” thing to make cash pop out of the computer screen and PayPal account doesn’t usually come included in the Owners Manual (wait – didn’t you read the fine print?!).

But what is the right order of doing things?

That’s the magic that YOU need to figure out.

That takes time just like building back my muscle up above (so slow down, it doesn’t have to happen all at once).

Because see, those amazing tools and software that will supposedly make you rich doesn’t come with a MINDMAP on exactly how the developer of the tool uses it (exactly down to the “T”) to profit.

Without the mindmap of exactly how a successful user uses the tool, you will have to SLOWLY break in, fail and fail miserably and go through trial and incorporate the use of the device, service or software to actually get good at it.  It could well be at the point you think it’s pointless when you have a breakthrough.

Sadly, most do NOT have the stamina to last through the “break in” period and never stand a chance at succeeding (they didn’t tell you that you have to KEEP AT things?).

This is why I laugh at folks who purchase a product or service from one of my many online companies and then ask for a refund the very next day claiming “It doesn’t work!”

You are kidding me — you used it a day and it don’t work?  (Most things can’t be learned in two weeks let alone a day.

For anyone to build true skill at anything, whether it be a video game (I personally still like playing Ms. Pacman on my Tilt Smart Phone), you’ve got to invest at least 100 hours to get good at something and at least 500 hours to get really sharp and master something.

I mean, I hate to make it sound akin to something so barbaric as lifting weights, but you’ve got to do mental weight-lifting exercises and flex your mental skills to get good and master anything (and this is truly scary for some people (the fear of it all).

HINT:  It took me 5.5 years of practice to get good at writing and thoroughly hone the skill to become persuasive enough to create over $3.5 million in revenues and rising.

So now that I’ve preached to you my squawk and holler, allow me to share with you how exactly how I’ve applied my own panacea and built my business muscle in 2009.

In fact, not only did I make sure to get good at the things that I’m going to mention, but I mastered them by putting in the extraordinary amount of time (which most might consider going above and beyond the call of duty).

Perhaps this will spark some course of disciplined action on your part to master one, two, three, or maybe you are really adventurous and want to master four new things in 2010.

Most of the actual in-depth training will be imparted inside my Private MasterMind Site (and there are a few hidden proprietary things I can’t talk about here or Uncle Vinney would have to visit you).

So without further ado and too much extra prose, allow me to share with you what I did in 2009 to build some business muscle (that will be applied in full fashion in 2010).

1.    Webinar Marketing – rather than doing boring tele-seminars on the phone, I took the dip and mastered doing webinars on GotoWebinar and building an actual system around it.  I mastered the training side and the selling side with some webinars doing as much as $20,000 per event (which is also why my rates are $500 per hour).  I believe these webinar events were much more engaging with visual stimulii.  The web is evolving into a multi-media spectacle, and if you don’t start learning, you will be left behind and getting table scraps for profits.  (NOTE:  I took a webinar coaching class in the beginning of 2008 which I spent $1500 on and didn’t apply the stuff over 18 months!  Back to this webinar thing).

2.  Video Creation, Editing and Production – I tried all sorts of devices this year from $900 HD cameras to HD webcams to Flip cameras to Digital Cameras that have You Tube Video ready modes.  T’was a great learning experience.  The one thing I couldn’t figure out was how to put the movies together without having to get into Video Editing.  Well, it figures that I couldn’t avoid it, so I ended up mastering Sony Vegas 9 video editing software and couldn’t be happier with the stuff I’ve produced thus far.  NOTE:  It actually took me about 45 minutes to begin actually using Vegas 9 it’s so friggin easy (I can’t believe I waited two years to take the dip).

3.  Video Podcast Production and Network Distribution – are you beginning to see a theme here?    Yup, I even mastered how to manage video podcast distribution with Blip.tv and how to cross-distribute and syndicate content across multiple networks without having to lift much of a finger.  Right now, I’ve got it down to the point where it won’t be just the Let’s Talk Profits Show, but there will be two other shows launched in the early part of next year, the busy guy I am. 

4.  WordPress and Amember Complete Mastery and Business Model Setup – people are sick and tired of paying the high monthly fees for a “half rate” MemberGate and they don’t want to rely their complete eCommerce solutions on some WordPress plug-in that manages members (a la MemberWishlist).  I have a member inside my Private MasterMind Forum who created the same type of membership plug-in and continuously had idiotic folks using wrong versions of WordPress leading to copious compatibility issues and constantly being behind the development curve, never knowing what WordPress may do in the next update.  Amember and the power plugins that I use allow me to do upsells, funnels, physical shipping via APIs and stuff that most would consider me a digital publishing warehouse and this makes Amember the most robust member management option outside of moving up to a higher level of member management such as InfusionSoft which’ll run you $700 a month or more.

I have personally used Amember since January 2006 and processed over 750,000 membership payments with it.  This year, I mastered integrating Amember and WordPress to make the most unstoppable membership management system that doesn’t rely on the updates of WordPress and whether some security risk could cause a hacker to completely corrupt the WordPress database and thus, the entire customer list (I hate restoring stuff).  2010 will be the year of truly leveraging premium content.

Lesson in this section that I learned a long time ago – Axiom #1 is never build desktop software with all the various crap computers people still have in their houses; and Axoim #2 is never build software that is a plug-in to other software that requires the user to hing their entire customer database or membership management on it.  It’s fine to build plug-ins to enhance performance, but ecommerce is another touchy, finnicky thing to hook in with a content management system.  That is a disaster waiting for something to happen.

I know for certain that Alex, the developer at Amember, is well dug into the project and Amember is well recommended throughout the entire online community (at 1ShoppingCart.com) and having been with the project for over 6 years, I know he has stood the test of time and has the stamina to not abandon the project.  (But who knows, I could be wrong as I have been before.) 

5.  Social Media and Social Networking Distribution – during the beginning of 2010, after hundreds of hours of setup and practice (key word in business building), the light switch on the Full Throttle social networking plan will go on and there will be this gradual build and illumination of light coming from an immensely bright source.  At this point, there are tools on the market that would allow someone with a certain amount of consistent action and content to flood a niche market with so much valuable content and distribute it on such a mass scale, a literal eclipse could take place in that niche market.  But like I said before, tools are only an ends to a mean and only there to make you more efficient.  If you don’t train yourself or find out how the owner uses it most effectively, then you’ll never master it.

None of these strategies or skills were built overnight.

As I have illustrated for you in the physical world, real muscle takes time to build.

That ripped left calf (pictured above) has taken 39 years of solid time to build up.

Who knows how long it will take for me to build my right calf up to the size the left one is at.

But what I do know is that I must continue to take action daily and keep building that muscle with frequent repetition and practice and resistance (and never give up – key element).

The same must continue to happen with the mind.

The moment I give up, the moment my muscle starts to degrade (both in my mind and in my body).

Flex your mind by doing tasks in your business daily.  And if you have trouble reminding yourself, just have Outlook or Google Calendar remind you by email.

You have NO excuse!

It’s simple…

If you are not doing things like website promotion, video marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, whatever it may be, you are not creating muscle.   The muscle between your ears is dying and I’m quite certain you don’t want that. 

It’s time to get out of the training mode and get into the doing mode and start getting some feedback on new found skills you are yet to discover.

It’s like I tell my clients who pay me big money, you have to condition yourself like an athlete that conditions himself/herself daily for four years until the Olympics arrive.  If you are not conditioning yourself everyday to be ready for that moment when “opportunity knocks,” with the right set of skills, having mastered them, then you, my friend, will be SOL.

I hope this web post not only sparks a little action on your part, but also knocks you back on your feet about what you may be doing hopping like a fish off the deck back into the big blue sea.

Remember to pay it forward and retweet this above, pay if forward and continue forward, keep on progressing without any echoes of giving up. 

Your partner in profits,

.

.

Jim Morris, President/CEO – FTEI

NicheBOT.com – “Finds exactly what people search for”

.

P.S.  You’re still reading? Okay — so here’s a usual scenario. Many people get a keyword tool (names don’t matter here).

The marketer did his job to sell the software to the end because the marketer and all his testimonials are using the tool to such greatness and with incredible results.

So the business owner (you) think to yourself.  Wow, the tool is just so great that I will just go out and do all my work and  I literally don’t have to think.

The user then digs in without even reading an iota or a shred of material and begins using the tool — because, after all, it’s the bomb tool that does everything as the “Swiss Army Knife.”

But there’s nothing that explains the “psychology of the how and why and how to print money with it.”

After days of use and mass confusion, the end user gives up because he/she can’t figure out what he’s/she’s doing despire what the marketer and all other marketing whores have said.

What’s missing?

Learning the same skills as the developer to achieve mastery of the tool.

Now it’s just a matter of choosing which tool you want to master.