FreeYouNow.com

How to Easily Take and Share a Screenshot in Windows

by 1 Comment

Do you want to know how to easily take screenshots in Windows?

I have found that taking screenshots can be cumbersome and annoying.

Windows 7 and 8 come with a snipping tool which makes it pretty simple to take a screenshot of your screen, but if you want to share that screenshot with someone or upload it to facebook or to a Blog, the process requires multiple steps such as:

  1. Load Windows Snipping Tool
  2. Hit a hot-key button to activate screen capture mode
  3. Select the area you want to capture on your screen
  4. Windows Snipping Tool takes the screenshot
  5. Save the file to your computer, giving it a name you’ll remember
  6. Find the file on your computer and share it with someone, or upload to Facebook, or to your Blog

As you can see, there are 6 steps involved here.

It’s not that difficult, but it’s not a very efficient way of doing things if you take screenshots quite often.

Want to know a much better way of doing it?

Use ShareX

My friend, Tyler Cruz, shared with me that he uses this tool called ShareX for his screenshots.

It’s a neat little tool that you can download for free, which shortens the process of taking a screenshot considerably.

The reason it’s more efficient is because it automates a few key steps.

#1 – Auto-load on Windows Startup

You can setup the tool to automatically load up when you load Windows.

This means you don’t have to remember to load up the Windows Snipping tool each time.

ShareX simply maps itself to a hot-key you preset and then it just works.

The default setting that I use is the hot-key CTRL + Print Screen.

So any time I want to take a screenshot of anything, I just hit CTRL + Print Screen and ShareX pops up and gives me a selection tool to select which area of my screen I want to take a screenshot of.

#2 – Setup Automatic Uploading of Your Screenshot File

Once the software takes a screenshot of an area of your screen, you can set it up to automatically upload your file to an FTP server or any type of cloud service like Dropbox or Flickr or Photobucket or whatever you want to use to store your uploaded images.

I just set up mine to automatically upload the file to my FTP server so that I don’t have to waste any time uploading manually.

Also, I have my FTP server directory setup so that it puts all my files into a sub-folder on my Blog, so this way all my screenshots are also visible to anyone I want to share them with just by giving them the URL to the file.

#3 – Setup Automatic Copying of File URL to Clipboard

Once the software takes the screenshot, and uploads it to your FTP server or file sharing site, it can automatically copy the URL to the image directly to your clipboard.

This way, a few seconds after you take your screenshot the URL to the image is loaded up in your clipboard and you can then PASTE it into any window.

For example if I’m chatting with someone on SKYPE, and I want to show them something really quickly, I’ll just take a screenshot by hitting CTRL + Print Screen and then selecting an area on my screen and then as soon as I do that, the software uploads the file and copies the URL to my clipboard.

Then I just go to my chat window and hit CTRL + V (hot key for PASTE) and boom the software puts the URL to the file in the chat.

This way the person can click on the link in the chat window and see the screenshot.

Or if I want to upload something to Facebook, I’ll take a screenshot and 3 seconds later the file is uploaded to my FTP server and the URL is ready to be pasted.

Then I click Upload in Facebook and when it asks me for the location of the file – instead of spending time looking for the file on my computer’s hard drive I just PASTE the URL into the input box which asks me where I want to upload my file from.

This way Facebook actually pulls the file from my FTP server and uploads it to Facebook.

There are many other features that this software has, but even with just these three simple settings, I’ve shortened my screen capturing process from six steps to just three:

  1.  Hit a hot-key button to activate screen capture mode
  2. Select the area you wan to capture on your screen
  3. File is uploaded and the URL to it is copied to my clipboard, ready to be shared

Where to Get ShareX for Free

You can download ShareX for Windows for free by clicking here or on the picture below:

My 2015 Strategy For Making Money Online

by 1 Comment

Just  before the new year started I had some time to sit down and really think about what I believe would be my best strategy for making money online in 2015 and beyond.

I looked back over the last 20 years of my life as an entrepreneur and the last 8 years as a blogger, affiliate marketer, network marketer etc., and I realized that my strategy up to this point has looked something like this:

Basically, when I started Blogging in 2006 I focused on that for a period of time and didn’t really do much else in terms of making money online as I was still very much working full time in the corporate world.

In early 2008 I got more serious about making money as a Blogger and started to build up my monthly blogging income to making several thousand dollars a month.

Then I decided to put the majority of my focus on affiliate marketing with PPC traffic, as I wanted to be able to quit the corporate world by the end of 2008.

By January 2009 I left the corporate world and focused entirely on affiliate marketing with some sporadic blogging from time to time.

As my affiliate income started to grow I started to get excited as it was growing so much faster than the income I made from blogging.

Then in November 2009 Google pulled the plug on affiliate marketing via their Pay-per click Google Adwords system and banned over 100,000 affiliates, including me.

My affiliate income basically disappeared overnight.

I went back to blogging for a short period of time, now having to re-build consistency with my blog and me readers.

Then, I decided to try doing affiliate marketing using SEO strategies.

That didn’t really work out too well, so I went back to blogging again…. once again having to re-build consistency and re-build my following.

Then I decided to try getting back into network marketing for a period of time.

When that didn’t work out with the company I was with, I decided to go back to blogging again – having to re-build consistency yet again!

Basically, over the 8 years that I’ve been a blogger I’ve started and stopped blogging on a consistent basis more times than I can count.

During certain period of time I’ve written daily blog posts for a month straight, and at other times I didn’t write a single blog post for a month.

Essentially I’ve been very inconsistent with my blogging audience and my email list.

Having said that, I still managed to build a following of over 10,000 email subscribers with my Blog, but in hindsight that list would probably be 10 – 20 times bigger if I just remained consistent!

I was still able to achieve my goal of being able to leave my corporate job behind in 2009 and to make a six-figure income from the comfort of my own home, but I probably COULD be making a 7-figure or even an 8-figure income if I did things differently.

(Income disclaimer – Results not typical.  Just because I make a six-figure income from home doesn’t mean that you are guaranteed to also.  See my income disclaimer below.)

Modeling Successful Online Marketers

When I sat down and documented what I have done to try to analyze what has worked for me really well and what hasn’t, I also did a careful analysis of some of the top income earners that I know who are making 7 and 8 figure incomes online.

They all made money online using different methods, however there emerged one single pattern that virtually all of them followed – with rare exception.

Pretty much all of them are doing one of two things:

#1 – Blogging daily, or at the very least 5 days a week.

#2 – Emailing their list daily, or at the very least 5 days a week.

If you look at virtually every successful marketer online, they are all doing ONE of these two things OR BOTH!

I’ve been a blogger for over 8 years, but I’ve never done ONE or BOTH of those things CONSISTENTLY for more than a month or so at a time.

That is the difference!

So, based on this, my NEW strategy for 2015 and beyond looks like this:

Basically what I’m planning on doing is to create a foundation of Blogging and/or emailing my list every single day or at the very least 5 days a week.

That is PRIMARY and mandatory for my business.

If I do nothing else, I want to stick to blogging and/or emailing my list every single day.

See, by doing that, by creating valuable content every single day, I *KNOW* that my online income will skyrocket at some point – it’s just a matter of time.

On top of that layer of daily blogging and/or emailing my list daily, the second later on top of that is embracing network marketing on a more consistent basis over a longer period of time.

I’ve kind of had a love/hate relationship with network marketing, mostly because I didn’t really understand it properly like I do now.

I didn’t know how to produce results in network marketing on a consistent basis or how to build a team long term.

Also it took me a long time to find a network marketing company with a product that I’m passionate about.

So now I also plan on being way more consistent with network marketing BUT it still comes second to Blogging which is my primary foundation.

See, once I’ve got my solid foundation of daily blogging and/or emailing my list every day, THEN I can pursue the many different income streams that show up in my life.

All those things are ON TOP of my foundation of Blogging.

Meaning, if I want to promote an affiliate offer that I’m super excited about, I can do that – AFTER I write my Blog post for the day and/or email my list.

If I learn some new Facebook traffic strategy, I can do that – AFTER I write my Blog post for the day and/or email my list.

If I want to take a paycation (vacation where you make money while vacationing!), I can do that – AND I can blog about it at the same time.

If I learn some new SEO strategy that I want to try out, I can do that – AFTER I write my Blog post for the day and/or email my list.

New exercise program?  Sure, I can do that, and Blog about it.

Basically, instead of bouncing around from strategy to strategy, making money online using all these different methods and then getting frustrated if something doesn’t work out or the environment changes on me and trying to go back to blogging again, now I’m just going to Blog on a consistent basis and just do all those other things ON TOP of Blogging.

See, long term I know with 100% certainty that if I just blog daily and communicate with my followers on a regular basis, I will achieve all my financial goals – period, end of story.

Why Not Just Blog Daily and That’s It?

Some of you might then think to yourself “Well if you already know that you’ll reach all your financial goals just by blogging, then why bother with all those other things anyways?”

That’s a great question, and I actually know some people who have tried doing that.

They just said to themselves “I’m just going to blog every day, and I’m not going to get involved or even look at ANY other systems out there, or any other ways of making money online, or network marketing or anything else…I’ll just Blog every day and make money by blogging.”

Without exception, EVERY single one of those people did NOT succeed as Blogger.

Why?

BECAUSE they ran out of things to Blog about!

See, Blogging is an amazing tool for personal development and learning how to communicate and for building a long-term online income – BUT – if the ONLY thing you ever do in your life is sit in front of your computer and Blog, you’ll run out of content!

And you’ll most likely have a really hard time attracting and maintaining an audience as your Blog will be BORING and all based on theory.

See, one of the reasons that I’ve been able to build a following of over 10,000 email subscribers with my Blog is because I’m ALWAYS trying out new things, testing out new things, and then Blogging about my results or the lack of results.

When I try a new diet and I Blog about it, people are interested because they’re curious to see if the diet actually works!

Even if they’re not trying to lose weight right now in their life, they’ll follow along because they want to know if the strategy works just in case they ever want to lose weight later on in their life.

And when I try out a new income stream, they want to know how it’s working for me.

So they tune in and read my Blog posts.

This is why I believe that Blogging is an awesome foundational strategy for making money online long term, but it has to be coupled with actually LIVING LIFE and BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR.

If the ONLY thing you’re doing is sitting at home and Blogging, pretty soon all your posts are just about Blogging.

I see many people making this mistake.

They start a Blog and their Blog’s topic is “Blogging”.

They write their first 5 or 10 posts talking about “How to make money with your Blog”, where they share 5 to 10 things THEY just learned about Blogging.

Nothing wrong with that.

But then, after 5 or 10 posts, they run out of things to say as nothing else is happening!

See, I *LOVE* the fact that I’m a scanner type personality where I’m always trying out new things, looking at new income streams, going to different events, trying out new personal development strategies, taking on new hobbies, meeting new people, etc.

By doing all of those things, I have a TONNE of content for my Blog for years to come!

I NEVER run out of things to Blog about, because there’s always something new I’m learning and some area in my life that I’m growing in and it’s a lot of FUN for me to share what I learn with others.

If you’ve struggled to make money online and jumped around from system to system, from strategy to strategy, trying out blogging here and there for short periods of time like I have in the past, you may want to consider making the decision that I made to get SERIOUS about consistent blogging.

Even if you’re a TOTAL BEGINNER, if you start TODAY, one year from now you could have over 360 articles/blog posts written on your site, you could be an established authority and a recognized name online and you could have a sizable online residual income growing.

If you’re interested in doing that, I invite you to join my team at Empower Network and start blogging today!

One year from now, you’ll be VERY GLAD you did!

Command, Don’t Control

by 2 Comments

Something that I’ve been really learning in many different areas of my life recently is the interplay between the concepts of COMMAND and CONTROL.

Most people, especially poor and middle class people are OBSESSED with CONTROL.

They try to control EVERYTHING they possibly can in their lives to the last detail.

The typical belief of a poor or middle-class blue-collar worker is:

“If you want something done right, you’ve gotta do it yourself.”

People say that all the time, and I used to say it as well.

However, the challenge with this way of thinking is that it implies that there is only ONE way to do something right – your way.

In reality there are MANY different ways that something can be done, and yes sometimes the way you do something might be a slightly better way of doing something – BUT – is the other way of doing it really that much worse?

And what’s the tradeoff?

Living YOUR Mission In Life

The most important thing we should really be focusing on in life is connecting to OUR mission and living OUR mission here on Earth.

We all have strengths and weaknesses and to be successful in life we have to put a laser focus on our STRENGTHS and let go of control over everything else.

Living our mission in life means learning to take COMMAND of our lives in two ways:

  1. Learning to COMMAND YOURSELF
  2. Learning to COMMAND OTHERS

The most important first step that we must take is to learn how to take command over ourselves.

Self leadership is always the first step.

You can’t command and lead anyone else if you can’t even command yourself.

Our life is a life-long journey over learning how to become the “commander” in our lives.

Being in “command” of our lives means taking 100% responsibility for EVERYTHING that happens in our lives.

No matter what the situation is that shows up in your life, you have to take 100% responsibility for how you RESPOND to the situation.

Responsibility literally means RESPONSE + ABILITY.

Life may throw things at you from time to time that seem to come out of left field, but YOU always have the ability to choose how you respond to these things.

When you learn to COMMAND things in your life, by taking 100% responsibility, you become much more powerful.

The other part of learning to command things in your life is the ability to know which things in your life YOU want to be in full control over (usually your strengths), and which things to delegate to others.

Learning to COMMAND others involves learning to let go of the CONTROL that you would have over how something is done if YOU were the one doing it.

Command vs Control

Learning to be a good leader / commander of people in your life, involves learning certain skills.

One of those skills is developing the understanding that when you delegate something to someone, there’s always a balancing act of asking the person to do something – to produce a certain result – versus telling the person HOW to do something.

Being a good commander / leader of people involves spending more of your time and energy being very clear on WHAT you want done, and what result you want achieved, and LETTING GO of the CONTROL of how they accomplish that thing.

As long as the person produces the result that you desire, you have to be okay with letting them do that thing however they thought was the best way to do it.

The best leaders in the world surround themselves with people that they TRUST to produce the results that they want, and they are constantly challenging themselves to release more and more control over HOW things are done, in order to be able to have more COMMAND over more things in their lives.

When you release control over things that don’t really matter in your life – things that you shouldn’t be trying to control – it frees you up to have more focus on the things that really DO matter to you.

Otherwise, you can spend your entire life trying to do everything yourself, because you have this limiting belief that if YOU don’t do it your way, maintaining an iron grip of total control over it, then someone else will do it the “wrong” way.

Learning to Trust The Universe

Another side to the COMMAND vs CONTROL concept is learning to relinquish more CONTROL over to the Universe or God or whatever you believe in.

Often times we ask the Universe for something, issuing a COMMAND like “I want to make $5,000/m more than I do now”, but when the Universe starts to bring us opportunities to do just that, we start arguing with what shows up.

Meaning, we have some idea of how WE THINK that extra income might show up in our lives, but when the Universe manifests some other opportunity or way for it to show up, we ignore it or we fight against it.

We have to learn how to relinquish more control over the HOW that the Universe uses to accomplish what we want.

The “HOW” doesn’t really matter.

The Universe will often have a plan that is a hundred times better than whatever our mind can conceive, but we lack the necessary trust to keep going long enough to see that plan come to fruition.

Give the Universe a COMMAND… that is what your role in your life is – being the Supreme Commander in Charge of YOUR Life.

Your role is NOT being the supreme CONTROLLER of everything in your life!

You can’t control everything anyways – so it’s a futile thing to try to chase anyways.

Relieving Stress

The next time you’re stressed out about something, just ask yourself “Am I trying to CONTROL the situation too much?  Do I need to gain more clarity over what I WANT?  Do I need to become better at communicating with myself and others so that I can COMMAND myself and COMMAND others to do give me the results I want?”

Often times you’ll notice that stress comes from trying to CONTROL something you don’t really have control over anyways.

Take a few moments to relax and think to yourself “More COMMAND, Less CONTROL.”

Try to gain more clarity over exactly what you want, and work on your ability to COMMAND others to give you want you want, without trying to CONTROL every little detail of how they accomplish it.

You’ll be amazed how much stress you can release, just by letting go of some of the control you’re clinging onto.

🙂

Is This One Word Sabotaging How You Communicate?

by 2 Comments

Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw said that “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

One thing that I’ve been fascinated with for quite some time now is how people communicate and how communication relates to leadership, marketing and entrepreneurship.

Since I’m always looking for ways to continue to improve my understanding of communication, I recently started reading a book called “Sleight of Mouth” by Robert Dilts.

It’s a very fascinating book which primarily focuses on the topic of belief change through conversation.

The book is like an encyclopedia of language patterns and goes into a lot of depth in terms of how language and conversation relates to people’s beliefs.

It’s one of those books that you really have to study, over a period of time, and go back to over and over again as a reference for various things.

In this blog post I’m going to give an example of just ONE concept that I learned from this book that I found rather fascinating and enlightening.

The One Word That Sabotages What You’re Trying to Say

There is one word in the English language that is responsible for sabotaging a lot of conversations.

No, it is not some swear word that starts with the letter “f”.

It’s actually a much more common word, and it has probably done a lot more damage in terms of causing miscommunication in conversations than the “f” word ever did.

The word I’m referring to is the word “but”.

It’s very commonly used in conversations even though most people don’t understand how it affects the mind.

See, most of us – including myself – use the word “but” all the time, when trying to communicate something to someone, and we’re largely unaware of the actual effect that this word has on how our mind processes the specific words that it hears before and after this word.

Let me use an example to illustrate my point.

Imagine a parent having a conversation with a child about their report card.

Imagine a child coming home from school, with a report card showing a big improvement in their grades.

The child is excited because most of their grades have gone up, except for one subject – let’s say it’s science.

So the child comes home, shows the report card to their parents and the parents say something like this:

“Wow, this is great, you have improved so much in almost all of your subjects and we’re very proud of you and very happy that you’re taking school seriously now so we just want to say great job, but now you just have to get your science marks up.”

From the perspective of the parents, they believe that the key points that they communicated with their child are:

  • this is great
  • you have improved so much
  • we’re very proud of you
  • we’re very happy
  • we want to say great job
  • now you just have to get your science marks up

In other words, the parents believe that what they communicated to the child are these points listed above.

Do you know what the child’s mind – and especially their subconscious mind actually heard?

This is ALL that the mind actually processes and retains from that conversation:

“You just have to get your science marks up.”

That’s it!

That is ALL that the child thinks the parents said, five seconds after hearing what they said.

Why?

Because the way that the human brain processes information that surrounds the word “BUT” is essentially the word is a NULLIFIER of any information that precedes the word.

Meaning, anytime you say something to someone and in the middle of your sentence you use the word “BUT”, essentially EVERYTHING you said before that word is virtually erased from the mind and the ONLY thing that the mind remembers a few seconds later is anything that was said AFTER the word “BUT” was inserted into the sentence.

So for example if I say “Your outfit looks wonderful, but we have to hurry because we’re going to be late.”

ALL that the person hears is “We have to hurry because we’re going to be late.”

If I say “You played really well in today’s soccer game, but I know next time you’ll do even better.”

ALL that the person hears is “I know next time you’ll do even better.”

If I say “You were acting like an idiot, but I love you.”

ALL that the person hears is “I love you.”

Now I’m not saying that the EARS of the person don’t hear any words before the word “BUT”.

Of course the ears hear the words, and the mind actually processes every word in the sentence you’re saying to someone, it’s just that once the mind hears the word “BUT” it is programmed to essentially dismiss or significantly discount the value of the words spoken prior to the word “BUT” and to amplify and give more value and meaning to the words that are said AFTER the word “BUT” is spoken.

So in the example I gave earlier with the child and the report card, if this is how the parents are always communicating with their child, then chances are that this child will probably tend to feel judged and unsupported and unappreciated, and may even lash out and tell their parents that they never support them.

Of course the parents will be perplexed and confused as in their minds all they ever do is support the child with compliments, words of support and encouragement etc.

The challenge is that the parents don’t realize that it is their improper use of the word “BUT” in the middle of their sentences that is causing the child to feel unsupported!

The same mistake can be made when speaking to employees.

For example, an employer could be giving their employee a very favorable review and they could be trying to communicate to the person that they’re very happy with their performance overall, except for this one small issue of the employee being late a few times.

The employer might say something like “You’ve been doing a great job, and we really appreciate your efforts here at Smith and Associates, and we recognize that you’ve really stepped up your game and really improved a lot over the last few months but the only thing is that there were those few times that you came in late, so if you can just make sure you are punctual that will really help us out.”

Do you see how the word “but” injected into the middle of that sentence takes the focus away from the compliments in the beginning of the conversation and places the emphasis on everything AFTER the word “but” is spoken?

Go back and re-read that sentence and just see what sticks in your mind as you read it.  Do the compliments stated in the beginning jump out at you or the fact that the employee came in late a few times?

Now, let’s replace the word “but” with the word “even though” and re-read the same sentence again.

“You’ve been doing a great job, and we really appreciate your efforts here at Smith and Associates, and we recognize that you’ve really stepped up your game and really improved a lot over the last few months even though the only thing is that there were those few times that you came in late, so if you can just make sure you are punctual that will really help us out.”

Doesn’t that change everything just by changing out those two words?

Go back and look at some of the other examples above where I’ve used the word “BUT” in the sentence and replace that word with the words “even though” and you’ll see how drastically the meaning of the statement changes.

Now just think about how often we use the word “BUT” in our conversations with people, not realizing that the word causes this mental process to unfold in the minds of the person we’re speaking to.

This is just ONE tiny little example from the first chapter in this book.

There’s so much more that the author reveals about words, language, conversations and how we communicate.

I strongly recommend picking up a copy of this book if you’re looking to improve the way you communicate with people both verbally or in written form.

Breaking Free in 2015 eBook

by Leave a Comment

Today I put the finishing touches on the latest version of my “Breaking Free in 2015” eBook.

I’m offering it as a free download to anyone who wants to break free from their jobs and learn how to make a full time income online, working from home in 2015.

The book chronicles my journey from burger flipper to corporate zombie to a six-figure Internet marketer who makes money from home.

In the book I share my journey, and some of the struggles and challenges that I had to face, learn from and overcome to get to this level.

I share my story with you, so that you can learn from it and hopefully avoid some of the same pitfalls.

Also in the book, I reveal my #1 recommendation for how to setup your business in a way so that you succeed no matter what happens.

Click here to get your free copy today.