One of the most important keys to success is imagination. It’s actually closing your eyes and seeing yourself there. Allowing yourself to stay in the moment & to take in every aspect of what your goal feels like. This may sound like wishy-washy pseudo science – but in reality it is one of the main characteristics successful people in all fields share. They can literally see themselves reaching their goals.

P.S. The picture will make sense at the end of the post – and you’ll probably laugh, or cry.

How to Set & Reach Your Goals

Setting a goal may seem basic but it’s surprisingly overlooked by people who strive for success. If you can make it through these 5 steps when setting your goals and dreaming about your future I promise your chances of actually achieving them are 1000 times better.

1. Write them down.

This is a huge part of goal setting in preparation for seeing yourself there. So few people do this when in reality it should be a religion for entrepreneurs – every few days I rewrite down all my goals in a notebook and look them over. I keep my written goals on a white board above my desk and in a moleskin that I carry with me everywhere. Writing down your goals helps you subconsciously implant them and is the first step towards ultimate success.

A Harvard Business School study once found that only 3% of the population records their goals in writing. Another 14% have goals but don’t write them down, whereas 83% do not even have clearly defined goals. More interesting is that this 3% earned an astounding ten times that of the 83% group. Source

Another Harvard study showed that the biggest usage of Facebook is men looking at pictures of women they don’t know – This has nothing to do with goal setting, but I felt like it was a creepy stat I just had to share. Source

2. Make your goals specific & measurable.

Most people say “make them short, measurable and attainable” I leave the word attainable out because I truly believe any goal that you set your mind to you can attain – with the right amount of creativity & persistence. Now don’t be a smart ass and say “Well I want to be 8 feet tall and that will never happen no matter how hard I try”, but if you did say that I’d retort with “someone else wanted to be freakishly tall and when they set there minds to it stilts were born… smart ass”.

Setting quantifiable goals that you can measure and are very specific helps greatly when you try to see yourself reaching the certain goal. The goal “I want to be rich” or “I want to be beautiful” is too generic. Here are some examples of specific, measurable goals:

• I want to be 110 pounds, have my hair touch the small of my back and have perfectly straight teeth.
• I want to have $10 million in the bank.
• I want to write a 500 page book.
• I want to start a non sucky telephone company that revolutionizes the way people talk to each other and never, ever gives them bad service (*Cough* AT&T).

3. Give yourself a deadline.

Another big problem I struggled with when I first started was saying “I want to achieve X” without any kind of time line. This is a killer of dreams and paves the way to laziness. If you have no deadline you can tweak your product for three years before you release. With no deadline there is nothing to strive after or to challenge you to push yourself further. Let’s take the examples above and add a time line to each – then the chances of you actually attaining that goal are 100 times better.

• I want to be 110 pounds, have my hair touch the small of my back and have perfectly straight teeth by the time my 10 year highschool reunion rolls around.
• I want to have $10 million in the bank by age 40.
• I want to write a 500 page book in 6 months.
• I want to start a non sucky telephone company that revolutionizes the way people talk to each other and never, ever gives them bad service (*Cough* AT&T) before the next iPhone comes out so I can actually USE it.

4. Look at your goals constantly!

Oh, whaaaw, I’m too busy to look at my goals everyday. If that is the case then you are also too busy for true success. Read and write down your goals as much as possible – I suggest once a day if you are really ambitious and once a week at the very least. Another tip I’ll share that I use so my goals are ALWAYS on  my mind is to use them as my passwords, for stuff like my computer, different websites I use often, etc. This is a great way to keep your goals fresh on your mind and to help you not forget your password while your at it! Examples:

• $40kamonth
• GotothegymFatty
• Sellfor10millionby2012

Other visual aids to help you see your goals and constantly keep them on your mind would be writing them down on a whiteboard near your desk, putting stickies with your goals on them on your dashboard or creating a collage of some sort where you look at the things you’ll have once you reach your goal i.e. 1# spot on the best sellers list, a perfect stomach, a mansion in the hollywood hills.

5. Make your goals into a routine

I strongly suggest you read David Allen’s Getting Things Done if you want to learn how to get ultimately organized and develop a routine that will greatly help you in achieving your goals. Now let me warn you – the book is somewhat tedious (or at least it was to my small brain) – but utterly worth it. If “Cliff notes” exist for it – I’d suggest those too.

You need to make sure your goals work there way into your daily life in a reinforcing way. Often this can be done by titling a to-do list in Basecamphq (I use it & LOVE it) with the name of your goal and then make “to-do’s” that are baby steps in reaching that goal.

Example:

Goal: Break up with Adam by October 1st

1. Start moving my stuff out of Adam’s house
2. Take him off my phone plan
3. Say hi to Jason in Accounting because he’s kinda cute and may be a good rebound
4. Kidnap Fluffy – mutually owned Poodle – and tell Adam she ran away, to avoid nasty puppy custody battle
5. Buy Visine for fake tears when telling Adam about Fluffy
6. Use previously acquired Visine for fake tears when telling Adam “It’s not you, it’s me”

So in closing, use these 5 steps to set your goals and then achieve them through constantly seeing yourself there. Spend a half an hour a day (in the morning or night work well) just laying down, playing calming music and envisioning your life when you break up with Adam.

Think of how sweet it will be to not have to wash his dirty gym shorts anymore. Envision yourself on a nice date with Jason from Accounting, possibly talking about your feelings – because you sense Jason is that sensitive, strong type. Just remember, your goals will come true when you follow these steps and envision your ultimate success… and puppy custody battles are to be avoided, trust me.

I’ve been working on the new and improved Escaping the 9 to 5 site & design for the last month now. I’m in the last throws of the process but I cannot for the life of me decide on a color scheme! So I’m coming to you – my lovely escapees – to ask for your help & which color scheme you think is best. The comments on Facebook where completely split down the middle so hopefully this will help!

Number 1.

Number 2.

Number 3.

I truly appreciate your input and as a thank you I will be choosing one of you who leave a comment and linking back to you with the anchor text or your choice! Thanks again!

First off this post on finding the best keywords for your website, blog, etc is very different for me, since I normally post on entrepreneur ideas & how to start businesses. But it is EPICALLY important if you are involved online, which you should be at the very least with a blog platform for personal branding.

This post comes from 2 years of me fumbling around when it comes to choosing keywords and finding the best keywords that serve my niche. In the last 3 months I’ve started to study keyword research and have finally gotten the ‘tools’ needed for choosing the best keywords for my websites. I decided to share them because I would have given my left foot for this information, in an easy “Maren Proof”* formula two years ago.

The “Maren Proof” Guide to Finding Your Best Keywords

1. First, my lovelies, we must decide WHAT your website/blog is aiming for. Are you trying to sell tomato by products or build a personal branding platform that will push your public speaking career to the next level. Write out, in a sentence or two, the point of your blog and then try to find someone else to read it.

If it makes sense to them – good. If it doesn’t, it’s back to the drawing board. An example: Escaping the 9 to 5 is a blog dedicated to teaching people how to start a business that will change their life.

2. Now, we’ve got our purpose (i.e. mission statement) and our URL hopefully (if not here are some resources are choosing URLs properly) – it’s time to bring on the keywords. First go to Google Keyword Tool and start entering a few terms & phrases that you think has to do with your site. I.E. ostrich breeding, eco friendly, bank loans.

You’ll notice tons of results will come up, go to the right hand corner & change the ‘Match Type’ from Broad to Exact.

This gives you a far better understanding of how many actual searches are going on each month for the keywords. Now once you have that it’s time to look at keywords that you feel as if your content relates to (or will relate to) and choose 5-10 of them by hitting ‘Add’. Also if a keyword has like 100-1000 searches a month you may not want to bother UNLESS you are doing a mini-site (read more about mini sites here).

3. Now it’s time to go to Google & query each keyword with quotation marks around it

4. Look at the results from 1-6 and get an idea of what your competition is. Ostrich.com is going to be a big one to compete with since they are obviously so niche specific, so if your site is just about “Farming” and one of your keywords is Ostrich you probably won’t be able to rank near them. But if you are dedicated to your ostrich farming business then, by all means, let’s carry on.

5. You just need to make it into the top 3,4,5 or 6th slot to really make a difference – once we are they we can worry about how to get to number one. To do so we must know how secure the people in those spots are. So let’s check out number 3 in the results page, the tantalizing article on Recent Developments in Ostrich Farming – now this may be a real crowd pleaser so we have to do two things:

A. Click on the link and get a general sense of the page

B. Check how many back links that page gets… which is far more important than whether or not it’s pretty   (teaser alert: IT ISN’T).

6. So copy the URL http://www.fao.org/docrep/V6200T/v6200T02.htm and hop on over to Yahoo.com (not Google, Yahoo).  In the search bar it in like so…

That is the word Link + : + the URL

You may want to go over to Yahoo and do it yourself a few times to get the hang of it – remember, this is the Maren proof guide. So forgive me if I’m going Maren speed.

7. Press “Web Search” and its off to the races! You’ll see a screen like this

And you’re there! Now you should see (unless this keyword has gotten CRAZY competitive since I wrote this post) about 5 back links to the site that is currently holding the n. 3 position in Google for “Ostrich Farming” – that is NOTHING and means there is a great chance you can totally dominate on that keyword. You can actually get more specific and click the ‘except from this domain’ bar on top – so that you don’t see any links Fao.org has given itself.

8. Now that we know “Ostrich Farming” is a keyword ripe for the picking – you should go back and do this with all your chosen keywords – to see which really are the best keywords for your niche. Rate them from 1-10 with the first being the easiest to dominate. If you’re in a more competitive niche (like this site which is on starting a small business – haha see that clever trick!) then you may see several thousand backlinks on the first page of Google. But never fear, you can win – it’ll just take you longer and you’ll have to do more SEO then those lucky ducky Ostrich people.

Now if you are indeed in the Ostrich Farming/Mating game I did you a favor! So you better send me a big ole Ostrich egg so I can make the world’s largest breakfast sandwich with it (don’t eeew me you know you want to see a scrambled Ostrich egg as much as I do!).

But if you are in another niche that means you have to go out and do this yourself, but I promise you it is SOO worth it. I fumbled for far too long with just guessing at what my best keywords were. But now that I’ve found them it will change everything. I expect my traffic to start growing by leaps and bounds. So please, trust me, this stuff is boring but it is what you need to do BEFORE you can build an empire online or off. Everyone should have some sort of website in this day and age, even if it is just a basic portfolio or blog.

Make your presence count online and the sooner you find your keywords the sooner you can start monetizing your site or benefiting from the tribe that will be built around it.

For more on this topic I strongly suggest Glen Allsopp’s amazing eBook “Cloud Living” I have read it through several times and it has infinitely helped me when it comes to learning how to monetize my site, learning how to choose stellar keywords and figuring out how I pick a truly profitable niche. Glen is an internet legend who has made tens of thousands on mini-sites and runs his own very successful blog at www.Viperchill.com – so you know he knows his stuff!

*Apologies to all you other Marens out there, this is not a slam against Marens as a community – just a dig at this Maren who is epically hopeless when it comes to most things tech. When I say something is a Maren proof guide you have my assurance that despite all my best attempts at failure, I actually got through this guide – meaning that you (who are no doubt a faster learn than I) will breeze through it at awesome speeds.

Technorati claim code: DPXMU95N2PH6

I’m not an internet marketer and I certainly don’t consider myself anything close to a pro blogger either. I am most definitely not in the business of making money online, by teaching people how to make money online.

…And please don’t take offense if you are in that business – this is my mantra – you don’t have to dig it – it’s just to help solidify the tribe I’m part of.

That being said here are a few things that I am (and you may be too):

• I’m ridiculously passionate about start ups & building businesses.
• I love the idea of making money online & off mobile entrepreneur style (i.e. you aren’t tied down to a brick & mortar location 24/7).
• I believe in online businesses that fatten your wallet, provide great value to others and help you build a lifestyle where you enjoy more freedom and fulfillment – no snake oil salesman!
• I like the idea of passive income & only working a 4 hour work week… but I love the idea of working really hard for a few years to build a business that becomes the next Zappos, SEObook.com or Groupon.

You may think more like me, or you may not. But the point is this is a very helpful exercise you should do with yourself at least every 6 months. It helps you stand out from the crowd, differentiate yourself from your competition &  figure out what you really love and what you have just fallen into.

Today I stared at a blank sheet of paper for an hour – I kept thinking about blogs that make money online and those that don’t. I wondered if I should have hopped on the make money online by teaching others how to make money online band wagon. The problem is, I’m not passionate about that. Not at all.

So you may say “Was Tony Hsieh really passionate about footwear when he took the helm at Zappos and turned it into a billion dollar company?”, no smart ass he wasn’t – but he WAS extremely passionate about building a business that mattered, creating the world’s best customer experience and growing an empire that was founded on core, community based beliefs. He was VERY passionate about that.

So does it matter what business you go into? Of course. If you hate tires and think mechanics are greasy – don’t open a Tube & Lube. Instead focus on what your core skills are… if they are business development & marketing then you can really go into any industry and succeed with the right help. If it is design & creativity then you need to find a biz dev person to team up with to make your dream a reality.

Sorry If I’m rambling – my point is this:

On the web – where everyone seems to be pitching something – it may get discouraging to think the only way you’ll achieve ultimate freedom is to be like the crowd. To sell eBooks or pitch affiliates if you don’t LOVE what you do is silliness.

Go where you want to be, that is where you’ll be happiest and do the best. And if you’re like me and believe you were destined for giant IPOs and building companies that change the world – then I beg you, do it. Don’t just sit around hoping that you’ll catch the next get rick quick online scheme.

Instead dedicate your blog, your own personal branding platform, to what you are all about – and a tribe of like minds will form around you. This community will help each other and help you. So if you feel like me and you are like minds – then PLEASE tell me, because I love to find other tribe members. If you are going a completely different route, I’d still love to hear about it – since someone else may take encouragement from your path & find out you’re part of their tribe.

I developed a serious entrepreneurial crush* on Brian Sher, while reading his book What Rich People Know & Desperately Want to Keep Secret. When I was first given this book I kind of blew it off because the title to me seemed over the top, then I did a little bit of research on Brain and realized he was the real deal.

Brian got out of college & started consulting for thousands of bucks a pop  because he was confident enough to put an ad in the paper, even with no experience. He turned an upstart business into a multimillion dollar enterprise, he has written several books and has been involved with a bevvy of successful business ventures. When I started reading his book, I could put it down – in a 6 hour period I had finished the whole thing and was eager for more.

This interview is a true jewel, Brian opens up and talks about strategies and steps to take you from zero to 60. His style and wit is entertaining and his business savvy is unrivaled. If you take one step towards building the business of your dreams this week, make it listening to this interview – it will rock your world.

If you want to learn more about Brian check out his website here or pick up one of his amazing books on Amazon.

Brian also included a link to get one of his book The 60 Minute Millionaire for free here!

*Entrepreneurial crush: when an up and coming E falls head over heels in love with the way a Super E runs their business

**E: Entrepreneur…. I am hoping none of you needed that explained

At the age of  25 and I feel like I’ve just started my coming of age as a person and as an entrepreneur. Many start up junkies and super successful E’s have sold there first business by 25 and made millions – but me, I was the girl that didn’t go on a single date until my freshman year of college – so it makes sense that I’m a late bloomer in other things as well.

The reason I started thinking about my late-bloomer-hood is because I spent the weekend in LA with clients (for www.OracleLaunch.com). I got to stay at the oh so nice Roosevelt hotel, meet Jay Leno and party with some neat people from the entertainment industry at Drais in Hollywood.

It was fun, the last day I was there I lay floating in the pool staring up at the palm trees. I kept thinking back to my youth as a nerdy, shy, socially akward girl of 18 and thinking how far I have come. It’s taken too long (in my mind) for me to finally feel confident in my own skin and be at the place where I can pursue my dreams without fear.

I wrote this post as a letter to my younger self,  a short guide to getting to where I am today and hopefully if you are struggling at all in your entrepreneurial journey it’ll help reboot your confidence and put you on the fast lane to success and eventual freedom.

The Steps to Real Freedom

1. Attitude (having a good one makes all the difference) Have you met those people who are always looking for the negative in life? They tend to bring the general mood down and justify their own lack of living an awesome life by constantly complaining and looking for the worst case scenario in everything. These are the people, sadly to say, that you must avoid like the plague if you want to live a fabulous, healthy, freedom fighter lifestyle. You can try to change them, help them along or preach to them about the benefits of positivity – and once in a while it’ll work. But for the most part you’ll find you’ve wasted your breath, frustrated yourself and just given them more ammo to be negative about you later. So in cultivating your own positive, happy, I-can-do-anything attitude remember the number 1 key is to surround yourself with others who are happy, positive and encouraging towards you.
2. Discipline. This was something that took me WAY too long to realize the importance of. I have always struggled with being lazy, sleeping in way too late and putting things off until the last minute. Over the last year or so I’ve discovered the importance of discipline if you want to become a successful entrepreneur or truly a success at anything. So try things like forcing yourself to get up early every day until it starts sticking, maintain a schedule and manually “check off” items you’ve done throughout the day to keep momentum and especially check into the Pomodoro Techinque (something I’ve personally used and praised for a while now and has totally changed the way I get things done).
3. Doubt (a warning sign or a blockade to success?). When you doubt yourself it’s either a warning sign your subconscious is sending in an attempt to avert disaster or a self protecting mechanism that is sabotaging your success. 9 times out of 1o it’s a blockade to your ultimate success and should be ignored. What you must do is to gain the wisdom through life experiences and reading to realize when it’s real and when it’s a false alarm. An example: Preparing to go on a date with a D-bag would lend to my mind casting doubts on whether or not this is a good idea, if I listened to those doubts and thought about it I’d realize “wow, this is not a good idea, this guy is a cocky jerk and nothing productive will come of me spending more time with him”. On the other hand, when my mental ‘doubt’ sirens start going crazy as I am hunkered down in preparation to start a new business I must evaluate: is this just fear talking or actually grounded logic.
4. Fear (kicking it’s butt). Fear is similar to doubt, we get afraid when we are about to leave a relationship we know isn’t working anymore – simply because we are creatures of habit and shaking up that routine scares the crap out of our lizard brains. Fear, like doubt, is 9 times out of 10 ridiculous and silly. So what you must do as a Super E is to squash fear by playing out the situation with the best possible scenario, and then with the worst, if the best outweighs the worst then go for it. An example: When I started my blog I got fearful, what if nobody read it, what if I spent hundreds of hours on it and it amounted to nothing… then I used my logical brain to judge the best and worst case scenarios. Best: it does exceptionally well and in a few short years is the leading blog on mobile entrepreneurship and living a free, fulfilling life. Worst: it bombs, only my mom and dad read it and I have wasted an hour every other day on it for a few months. The best FAR outweighed the worst so I decided to pursue it… and boy howdy am I glad I did!
5. Kindness. In life it pays to be kind. This is a principle I realized about halfway through college and it has stuck with me ever since. I can judge a person’s character on subtle kindness cues and it has helped me out loads in choosing people to partner up with, to work with and to have personal relationships with. People that are kind are FAR more successful in life, are happier and spread their inner joy to others. Whether you run a Fortune 500 business or serve coffee to haggard commuters – be kind and see how doors open up to you in almost magical ways. An example: You can ALWAYS judge a person’s kindness quotient by the way they  treat wait staff, it is a dead on indicator and a great means of judging their character.
6. Love (makes the world go around). A great book to read on this, in relation to your entrepreneurial pursuits is Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders. His book talks about how to properly use love in the workplace and in your day to day dealings and how powerful of a tool it will be in building success. No matter what you go into, personal or business you should do so with love. I mean truly love the work you do, love the people you surround yourself with and most importantly love the type of person you are. If you don’t have all 3 of these then it is time to regroup and make some seriously life changes.
7. Read (my n. 1 key to success). When people ask me what I would suggest they do to give them a jump start into entrepreneurship I always say “Read like they’ll be burning all the books tomorrow”. Truly reading is the best thing I’ve ever done in my career and is what I point to as a reason for my success thus far. I normally read 2-3 books a week either the traditional way (you know paper and such) or listening to them (audiobooks) or eBooks which I get online. The best thing you can invest in is in your own knowledge and every successful entrepreneur I’ve ever talked to always makes time for lots of learning via good books.
8. Platform (it’s more important than you know). I think I can easily say that 90% of the work I’ve gotten through my businesses directly relate to this blog and the other platforms I use to personally brand myself. Choosing a platform is of the utmost importance whether you are just starting out or have been an entrepreneur for years. It is time to create a thriving personal brand around yourself – to show the world your best face and to create a ‘home base’ on the internet that others can go to and find out more about what you’re all about. I use my blog, my social media accounts (mainly twitter, facebook and youtube) as well as my podcast (which you can find on iTunes by search Escaping the 9 to 5).

If you liked this post please feel free to share how you came of age as an entrepreneur or ask questions below, I heart interaction with you all so much!

*photo credit: Yeah that’s from 16 Candles – best 80’s coming of age movie ever!

Fudge man. That is all I can say. So in all my wisdom, I decided to change all my categories on Escapingthe9to5.com to start moving towards the site update I’ll soon be implementing – what I didn’t know was that in doing this I messed up tweetmeme and the facebook share plugin so EVER post reset to zero and I think my links are all broken now!

FUDGE!!!

But, what can you do, when my virtual assistants (I heart them!) come in later today I’ll be on Skype sobbing and they’ll come up with some kind of ingenious plan, because they’re brilliant – while I on the other hand should never be let near my websites without adult supervision.

NEXT MATTER OF BUSINESS…

Guess where I am going tomorrow? LA! Yay! One of my awesome clients is taking me with to do social media stuffs while they go to the Leno show. It’s one of the many perks of being an E (my new nick name for myself and other entrepreneurs) and the reason I do what I do, because at the end of the day I have tons of fun.

NEW CATEGORIES…

The new categories go like this:

• Awesome Sauce: which I believe is self explanatory, this will hold all the awesomeness that can’t fit into a regular category. My promise, it’ll either be awesome or it’ll be sauce, you never know with me which one your getting.
• Blog Soup + Website Goodness: any post I do on blogging, website design or optimization and such will go under this cleverly named category (can any else see the trend of me having too much time on my hands in naming these?).
• E Success Stories: e = entrepreneurs, success stories…well you get the drift. This will be the category that holds all the interviews I do with successful entrepreneurs and the like. Which in the coming weeks I will have some interviews that will knock your socks off, I have finally started to learn how to interview properly and now am digging into to the meaty stuff so you and I can learn together from those who have been there and made millions.
• Empire Building: I don’t consider myself a “Small business owner” I consider myself a tiny empire builder. So everything that will benefit you in your own empire building.
• Marketing for smart people: no dumb people allowed, period. Lol – unless you me and delete all your categories – so cross that dumb people are allowed and encouraged to become smart people.
• Mobile Entrepreneurship: my personal passion! I love to travel and build my businesses so that they are completely mobile and I get to be location independent! Stick with this category to figure out how to build a business with close to 0 overhead and lots of freedom to move about!
• My Life on the E List: my category! I’ve never really told my story on Escapingthe9to5.com but today – that changes! My life on the E list is just that – my life as a young entrepreneur trying things and going towards big goals. Hopefully it’ll be entertaining and educational – but at the very least it’ll be entertaining because I’ve been told my weirdness is quite fun to watch unfold.
• Rock Star Branding: it has always amazed me why there aren’t more rock stars in the business world, I mean they seem to do so well in TV, pop culture and music – why haven’t we adopted crazy rock star antics yet? They garnish lots of attention and if done correctly (ala Lady Gaga) can build a personal brand that will last a lifetime. This is the category where I outline my search for the best way to brand your business and person just like rock stars do.

Okay, so that’s about it. If you live in LA and will be in the downtown area – I think I’m staying at the Roosevelt so give me a shootout on Twitter @marenkate and or tell me good places to eat & drink around there! If you have advice on what to do if you chanage all of your categories like a moron, please, let me know your insights! I will owe you one!

To your continuing E success!

This is an interview with Shane Mac of Gist.com it’s helpful for people who are in the middle of starting up a business (as Shane gives great start up tips) and also for those who want to learn how to better use their social network to get ahead. Short, sweet and to the point this interview will motivate you to start networking better and to energize your business venture!

Gist is an incredible tool that I use and you should look into as well… best of all it’s free!

Also if you want to find out more about Shane check out his blog & his Twitter.

I once went to school with a girl whose name was Younique, I always wondered if her parents were just intentionally cruel or actually thought that was an rapturous name (apologies in advance to all the youniques in the audience). That’s besides the point, but it’s a nice intro to this post. So do you want to know the number 1 way to build a successful business?

BE UNIQUE

This may seem like old news but hold your horses, you aren’t hearing me. What you think is unique about your business is probably not – hate to break it to you loves. Here is how you can skip years of agony and boredom being stuck in the “middle” and instead sky rocket your success by becoming very, very niche & very, very unique.

There’s no I in Team but there’s a U in Unique

First lets go over some of the reason’s you want (no need) to be incredibly unique with your business or blog to succeed.

1. You can charge WAY more and will never have to drop prices to gain a competitive edge. Example: when is the last time you saw Chanel or Tiffany’s have a 50% off sale?
2. Your USP (unique selling point) will be what drives your business and can carry you even if some of the others things in your burgeoning biz kinda suck at the moment. Example: iPhone’s are ridiculously popular but AT&T (their service carrier) sucks, unfortunately the lure of the iPhone is a stronger urge than the potential suckihood of AT&T – thus apple wins with it’s “cool” USP.
3. Even in an over-saturated niche you can stand out by having a powerful unique selling proposition…

So how do you build a unique business or blog? Well YOU have to do all the hard work up front… yeah that’s right. Don’t push this off to an intern, sales team or marketing firm – instead you figure out yourself what your USP is and why your business is solidly separated from the competition by a large chasm of uniqueness.

Finding your USP

When I started my company Oracle Launch I had no USP. I literally wanted to do anything and EVERYTHING that came my way. You know what happened? I lost every penny I made by trying to cover all bases and be everything to everyone.

So I started niching down. First I cut out building websites for companies. Next I cut out SEO services which I realized was laughable since I would just farm them out to India for EXACTLY what the client was paying me. Then I said “I only do social media marketing”…

Problem was EVERYONE does “Social media marketing”. If you Google that term you find 127 MILLION results. Where as only a few thousand people search for that exact term a month. So what did I do? I found my USP. Here are the steps I took:

1. Who are my dream clients? They understand the importance of marketing, are flush with marketing mullah and are fun to be around.
2. Who are my current best clients? One of the top reality shows on Cable, they are all fun and awesome to be around and working for them is actually enjoyable.
   
3. What do I hate? Cheap people, people that will argue me down for a penny’s difference, people who don’t see the beauty of permission marketing.
   

Then I cogitated for days, mostly in the sun with a tall pina colada, but that part is optional. Finally I realized my niche – I’m going to focus on “social marketing” which is interactive at it’s core and focus on clients who are in the entertainment business because they know the importance of marketing and are desperate to develop a major fan base.

The Challenge

Now if you’ve found your USP and you read this and thought “aah, old news” that is cool – I’m glad for you. But if you are like me when I finally realized I didn’t have a USP and are thinking “Craptastic! I need this now!” please feel free to respond in the comment section with what you are doing and we’ll brainstorm how you could be more unique and thus much more profitable.

]]> http://www.escapingthe9to5.com/business-development/the-n-1-way-to-build-a-successful-business/feed/ 18 http://www.escapingthe9to5.com/success-stories/how-to-really-be-rich-happy-interview-with-john-p-strelecky-and-tim-brownson/ http://www.escapingthe9to5.com/success-stories/how-to-really-be-rich-happy-interview-with-john-p-strelecky-and-tim-brownson/#comments Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:00:54 +0000 Maren Kate http://www.escapingthe9to5.com/?p=2062

One of the most influential books I’ve read in a while has been How to be Rich & Happy by John P. Strelecky and Tim Brownson. At first I judged this book by it’s cover and thought “what kind of title is how to be rich and happy”… but after a few pages I was a fan and when the book was finished I could easily say it had rocked my world. The promise of how to be rich and happy is truly fulfilled by the amazing information within the book, it’ll inspire, invigorate and catapult you into a more successful life.

John, a best selling author, and Tim, a life coach and thought leader, were both kind enough to come on with me and share their thoughts on how as an entrepreneur we can live rich and happy lives too.

Also, after the interview Tim graciously offered me some life coaching and though I was hesitant it really rocked   Find Tim at his blog A Daring Adventure and feel free to send him an email to see if life coaching could be right for you!