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Command, Don’t Control

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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.

🙂

Why Multiple Streams of Income Are Better Than One

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For years now I’ve been a big believer in having multiple streams of synergized income.

Some people, such as some leaders in the network marketing industry, however, frown upon multiple streams of income and usually try to discourage their downline members from having them.

You’ll often hear leaders talking about the need to just focus on ONE thing and one thing only.

You’ll often hear them say things like “You have to focus on ONE thing 100% so that you get 100% out of it, instead of trying to split your focus in multiple directions.”

What they try to tell you is that focusing on something 100% is better than putting 50% focus into two things, or 25% focus into 4 things.

In this post I’m going to show you why that may not be the best advice for your business.

The Input / Output Formula

Most people look at a business like a box which you invest a certain amount of time, resources and energy into and they say that you’ll get out of it (OUTPUT) however much you put into it (INPUT).

They’ll say that if you put everything you’ve got into it, you’ll get a lot out of it.

We could simplify this into a formula that looks something like this:

TOTAL ENERGY YOU INPUT INTO BUSINESS (INPUT) = RESULTS YOU GET OUT OF BUSINESS (OUTPUT)

This may seem like a simple formula that makes logical sense, but it’s not entirely accurate.

It’s typically based on a simplified model that is similar to having an hourly job, where the hourly rate is set at a certain price, such as $20/hour, and then the only variable is how many hours you work.

For example if you work 10 hours (Input = 10 hours), then you’ll make $200 (Output = $200).

If you work twice as much, putting in 20 hours (Input = 20 hours), then you’ll make $400 (Output = $400).

Using this simplified model of the world, if you were to go out there and try working TWO equally paying jobs, putting in 5 hours into each job (Input = 10 hours), you’d make $200 (Output = $200).

Based on this model, it makes no sense to work 2 different jobs putting in 5 hours into each one, when you could just instead focus on ONE job and put 10 hours into it.

If BUSINESS worked like this, then yes it would make sense to just focus on doing ONE thing, and ONE thing only.

But in reality, business does NOT work this way, which is why multiple streams of synergized income is a much better strategy.

Let me explain.

The More Realistic Business Formula

When you’re building a business of any kind, you have to realize that YOU are always just one part of a more complex system.

Unlike a job system where your hourly rate is set and guaranteed to be a certain rate, in a business environment, the amount of OUTPUT (money made) you get from each hour of energy you put in (INPUT) can vary greatly over time.

There are MANY variables that affect the amount of OUTPUT you get per hour of INPUT from a business system.

Factor #1 – Seasonality

For example, if a kid was to setup a lemonade stand on the road, in the middle of winter, trying to sell lemonade to people… that kid could sit there all day long and not make a single sale.  Why?  Because it’s cold outside and nobody is thirsty.

Take that same kid with the same lemonade stand, and put them out there for the day on a hot sunny day in the middle of summer, and that kid might completely sell out of lemonade.

In this way, most businesses are at least somewhat seasonal as well.

For example, weight loss systems, personal trainers and gyms are busiest during January when everyone sets their New Year’s resolutions to lose weight.  But that same business might be completely dead during the summer time, when people don’t have weight loss on their minds or they just go outside to exercise.

So the season of the year could have an impact on the amount of OUTPUT you get from the amount of INPUT you put into a business.

Factor #2 – Product / Service Launches

Another thing that can affect results in your business is product or service launches.

For example, right now, Empower Network is right in the middle of a new product launch with it’s Kalatu blogging platform and new sales funnels.

This makes it a prime time to join Empower Network and to promote it.

When a company launches a new product or line of products and when there are a lot of cool and exciting things happening, you can build that business much faster and easier with the same amount of work.

But as an example, if I was part of a company that isn’t launching a new product for another 6 months, right now might not be the best time to put energy into promoting that company.

Sometimes the season of the year affects how easy it is to make money with a business.

Sometimes whether or not the company is rolling out a new product can affect how easy it is to make money with a business.

Factor #3 – Industry Changes

Sometimes temporary changes in government regulations, or some good or bad media publicity can affect how easy it is to make money with a business.

For example, back in Oct/Nov 2009, Google changed the entire affiliate marketing industry by all of a sudden banning over 100,000 Google AdWord’s accounts.

The entire affiliate marketing industry changed virtually overnight.

Eventually, within about 6-12 months the industry started to recover as people found other streams of traffic to utilize for their campaigns, but anyone without another income stream for their business had to scramble to not go bankrupt.

Factor #4 – Other People Inside Your Business

Another big thing that can affect the amount of OUTPUT (income etc.) you get from a business is the OTHER people who are involved in your business.

For example, anyone building a network marketing company will have a downline of team mates working with them.

Often times, your income is directly proportional to the results that THEY are producing in the business, and their results will depend on the amount of time and energy that THEY are willing to put in.

So, for example let’s say you were building a downline in a network marketing company part time and you had 5 people working with you and each of them was putting in 5 hours per week.

That means that your business was getting the benefit of 25 hours of INPUT (other people’s energy/time) every week.

And let’s say that you were putting in 5 hours / week yourself as well…so that’s 30 hours TOTAL.

Now, let’s say that you were to quit your job and focus 100% on just that ONE business, and now you are putting in 50 hours per week yourself, as well as the 25 hours that your team is putting in.

That’s a total of 75 hours of time invested in your business – 50 hours coming from you and 25 hours coming from your team.

But let me ask you this….

If you were previously putting in 5 hours / week into your business, and that was enough to get 5 other people to put in 5 hours each, that means YOUR input was 5 hours and the business was getting a total of 30 hours of energy put towards it by your team.

Now, if you focus 100% on your business and put in 50 hours into it, do you think that the other people in your business will also go from 5 hours/week to 50 hours per week?

In most cases they won’t.

Just because YOU commit 100% of your available time to a business, doesn’t mean everyone in your team will.

This means that just because you multiply YOUR efforts by 10 fold, it doesn’t mean your business income will go up by 10 fold.

In this example, YOUR INPUT went up by a factor of 10 TIMES, but the business as a whole is only getting about 3 TIMES the total input.

Does that make sense?

So, sometimes the limiting factor in a businesses growth is not just YOU and what YOU do, but also the other people involved.

Factor #5 – Your Customers

Another factor that can play a key role in how much money you can make from a business (OUTPUT) based on how much time/energy you put into it (INPUT) is your customers.

For example, if I invest 1 hour of my time per day to write valuable content for my Blog, and I email that out to my subscriber list, there’s a certain amount of value that is received by them each day.

But let’s say that I decided to focus 100% on my blog and tried writing 8 blog posts in 8 hours, every day and I sent THAT out to my subscribers every day.

Would I be offering 8 times the value for my subscribers?

Probably not, because my subscribers most likely will not have the time to consume 8 blog posts per day, every day.

So a LOT of that time would be wasted effort.

Other Factors

These are just a few of the factors that are always at play when working on an income stream or a business.

Because of this, the formula isn’t as simple as YOUR INPUT = BUSINESS OUTPUT.

You can’t just say, “You’re going to get out of the business, as much as you put into it.”

It would be easy if it worked that way, but the truth is that in most cases you are NOT the only factor in a business or an income stream.

Yes it is true that in a lot of cases you can be a BIG factor in the amount of income a business or an income stream can produce, but that’s not always the case.

Some businesses or income streams actually work better if you just invest 1-2 hours per day to them, and then work on something else.

Other businesses work better if you invest 4-6hours/day into them, and yes there are other businesses / income streams that only work when you focus on them full time.

Personally, what I like to do is to have a maximum of one income stream that requires a 4-8hours/day commitment and then to also have a few other income streams that only require a 5-10hour/week commitment to them.

Also, depending on some of the other factors above, such as for example seasonality and product/service releases I may also rotate how much time/energy I put into each income stream throughout the year.

What I love about income streams such as Blogging with Empower Network, is that you can decide on a certain number of hours per week that you want to invest into the business, and it doesn’t have to be a lot to start building a pretty respectable income stream.

With each Blog post you write, you’re launching another online “real estate property” as each blog post gets indexed by Google and starts to draw in more and more traffic into your business.

SO the cool thing with income streams like that is that even though I’m not working on them 24 hours a day, my BLOG is serving people and providing value with my blog posts 24 hours/day.   This provides an awesome amount of leverage, so that I don’t have to always be working on this income stream for it to generate income for me.

 

Are You One Step Away From Success?

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What if I told you that you were just one step away from success?

As someone who has both mentored and coached people and also as someone who has spent tens of thousands of dollars on coaching and mentoring myself, I have come to realize one important thing about success…

In most cases, people are just ONE STEP away from success.

The sad truth is that whenever we pursue success in some area of our lives, we often do 99% of all things right, but we get tripped up on 1% and never achieve the results we want.

Let me give an example that just happened to me today.

Last year I decided to get back into making money online more seriously and one of the things I wanted to get good at was generating leads with Facebook.

I bought several different courses, and went through hundreds of hours of training, setup, testing and tweaking of facebook ads, and various different funnels.

I managed to get to the point where I was starting to produce some consistent results, but there was one missing piece to my strategy.

Based on the conversion rates I was getting from my funnels, I needed to be able to get traffic from Facebook for less than $0.50/click at the most, and ideally more likely somewhere around $0.30-$0.40/click.

Unfortunately, no matter what I did, I was not able to get my clicks that low while still maintaining lead quality.

So what I did is I started looking for different businesses / funnels out there which could still be profitable even while paying $0.75-$1.00/click, like I was playing.

After several months of trial and error, and quite a bit of frustration, I decided to put my Facebook testing on hold as I just couldn’t get my costs down low enough for it to make sense for me to keep spending money with Facebook.

After you spend several thousand dollars in testing, and can’t get it to be profitable, it can get frustrating and it’s easy to give up.

I put my campaigns on hold, but I didn’t give up.

Instead I put out a “call” to the Universe to help me figure out what it is that I’m missing, while I focused on getting other things done.

About two weeks ago, the Universe responded to that “call” by having someone pop into my life who had figured out a way to get highly targeted Facebook traffic for around $0.05 per click, and in some cases even lower.

After verifying a few things, I asked the guy if he would be willing to coach / mentor me on how he is achieving these kinds of results, and he agreed to do it for just under $500.

Now, to most people, spending $500 for a single coaching/mentoring call may seem like a lot of money, but I have learned that in a lot of cases in life you can be SO CLOSE to success that all you need is just that one little extra piece of advice that will change everything…

… but if you’re too cheap to invest in getting that advice from someone who is producing the results that you want, then you can continue to struggle forever!

So this morning I had my coaching / mentoring call with this person, and he showed  me EXACTLY how he’s producing these results.

And you know what?

The crazy thing is that when I learned exactly what he is doing to produce those kinds of results, as compared to what I was doing before, I was already doing about 98% of what he is doing.

Like all I had to do is change about 1% – 2% of my strategy to do exactly what he was doing.

Our coaching call was only about 1 hour long, but honestly it could have easily been 5m – 10mins long to just teach me the one piece I was missing.

Now, the question is… would that 5m – 10mins be worth $500 to me?

ABSOLUTELY!

See, most people continue to struggle in life and in business, because they’re too cheap to invest in CONSULTING services from someone who knows what they’re doing, and who can come into the picture, analyze the situation and find that small 1% or 2% difference that is MISSING in your strategy.

This principle applies in virtually EVERY area of your life.

For example, let’s say that you’ve been wanting to lose weight and you’ve tried EVERY diet on the planet and you’ve failed over and over again, losing weight and gaining it all back etc.

Do you realize that there is probably just ONE small belief change, or strategy adjustment that you need to make and you could SUCCEED in your quest to lose weight?

Or if you’ve been trying to make money online, and nothing seems to be working for you.

The truth is that you could already be doing 98% – 99% of everything RIGHT, but you’re just missing that 1% or 2% that will change EVERYTHING for you.

So how do we find that missing 1% or 2%???

Well, there are really only three ways to do it.

Method #1 – The Long Way – Trial And Error

The most common way that people try to figure things out is by trial and error.

They essentially scour around the Internet, looking for free advice from people on forums, and facebook groups, trying to see if they can figure out what is the missing piece and why things aren’t working for them.

Often times they’ll even ask questions on forums, which are full of people who are ALSO struggling with the same issues, and they usually get bad advice or in the best case scenario good advice that is INCOMPLETE.

You can spend a LOT of wasted time and effort this way, and 99.999% of all people who try to figure things out with trial and error end up giving up.

Method #2 – The Short Way – Join a Community of Successful People

A much better way to figure out what is the missing 1% or 2% in your strategy is to become part of a community of like minded people, who are producing the results that you want.

For example, if you wanted to learn how to train to run a marathon, from scratch… yes you COULD just go outside and start running (ie. trial and error), but you probably wouldn’t do too well if you ran into any issues.

A much better option would be to join a running community, such as for example The Running Room, or a some sort of running club where maybe 10-20 people get together and train for a marathon.

Ideally, you’d want there to be at least a few people in the group who have already ran a marathon successfully, so that you could get some good advice.

After joining the group, you would simply pay attention to what YOU’RE doing and the results YOU’RE producing, and compare those to the results someone else who is successful is producing.

So for example, if you started running and you started getting shin-splits, you might ask someone in your group if they had that issue and how they solved it.

Then you would try whatever solution they found to work for them, and hopefully it would work for you as well.

This is the process of MODELING SUCCESS by being part of a community where at least some of the people are already producing the results you’re looking for.

As another example, for someone who wanted to make money online, they could join a community like the Empower Network, where there’s already a proven track record of people producing success.

Then, by going through the trainings, attending events, and getting around other people in the community, you can figure out what the missing 1% or 2% is in your strategy.

This is a MUCH faster and better way of achieving success than trial and error.

This method also has the benefit of usually not being too expensive either.

Method #3 – The Ultra Short Way – Hiring a Coach / Mentor / Consultant

The third and most effective method of figuring out what the missing 1% – 2% is in your strategy is to hire a coach / mentor or consultant.

With this method, you hire someone who has the ability to either coach you or mentor you to produce the results that you’re trying to produce and they work with you 1-on-1, or in a small group to help you achieve that result.

This is usually the most effective method IF you can find someone who can teach you to produce the results you’re looking to produce, AND if you can afford their services.

Personally I like to combine methods #2 and #3 together, where I try to get most of my training from groups and communities, because then the costs of training are much cheaper than trying to learn everything 1-on-1, but when I get stuck on something, I prefer to hire a coach/mentor/consultant to help me get “unstuck” like I did this morning.

For example, as a member of Empower Network I get access to all of their recorded group trainings which are awesome to learn everything you need to make money online in MOST cases.

Then in some cases where you get stuck on some very specific thing that’s not covered in the trainings provided, I then seek out the help of a 1-on-1 consultant.

How to Get Coaching and Mentoring From Me

If you’re looking for 1-on-1 coaching from me, you can get more information about my rates and such on my coaching page.

However, one of the benefits that I offer my Empower Network team-mates is that they get free coaching and mentoring from my in my private group for my team.

The cool thing about that is that in the majority of cases, in my group trainings I can usually figure out exactly what is the missing 1% – 2% in your success strategy online because chances are I already ran into it myself and overcame that obstacle or I hired a consultant to help me overcome it.

So one of the benefits that my team mates get is that they get the best of both Method #2 and Method #3, and if there is some really strange, rare issue that they’re struggling with that I can’t help them with, I usually know someone I can refer them to who can help them.

If you’ve been struggling in some area of your life, be it with your health, or relationships, or in your career or in your business, I strongly recommend finding a way to apply Methods #2 and #3 as much as you can.

Don’t waste your life in constant “trial and error” mode.  It may seem like a cheaper way than joining a community or getting help, but it will cost you WAY more in the long run.

Is This One Mistake Keeping You Broke?

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There’s one very common mistake that most non-sales type personalities make in business that prevents them from achieving financial success in their business.

As a person with a non-sales type personality myself, I have also made this mistake myself and it has probably cost me many millions of dollars in income already.

Until I finally figured this out, this mistake plagued every business I ever owned, or was a part of.

TRUTH – Non-Sales Personalities Don’t Like “Sales People”

Most of the people who enjoy talking to me or hanging out with me are not “sales type” personalities.

I’m pretty laid back and introverted in real life, so I tend to attract people with similar personalities as well.

Whenever I talk to “non-sales” type people about entrepreneurship and making money online, one of the things that I will often hear them complain about is how “salesy” or “pushy” or “persistent” someone is.

I’m going to use Empower Network and David Wood as an example here to illustrate my point better, but I’ve heard people say these exact same things about ALL the top sales leaders out there.

In the past two or three weeks here are a few examples of the types of things I’ve heard people say about David Wood and Empower Network…

“Yeah, Empower Network seems really cool Paul, but I’m just not 100% sure about it yet, because that David Wood guy seems like such a sales guy.”

or

“Yeah, so far I’m really liking Empower Network, but that David Wood guy emails me like every day, what’s up with that?”

or

“Yeah, the new Kalatu Blogs look pretty good, but is there a way to disable all the banners?  I don’t want people visiting my blog thinking I’m trying to sell them something.”

or

“Yeah, the training in Empower Network seems really cool… I’m just not 100% sure why, but just something about David Wood or the MLM side of it or the sales side of it just doesn’t resonate with me 100%”.

Now, here’s the thing…

…these are just examples about David Wood and Empower Network.  But I’ve head variations of this same complaint about pretty much EVERY successful Internet Marketer or leader in industry.

In fact I’ve actually heard the same complaint coming from people with MY personality type in EVERY industry out there.

The truth is that the typical introverted non-sales type personality types like us…we don’t really LIKE people who are “salesy” or “persistent” etc.

Now, I’m not saying that we don’t like the PEOPLE themselves… but we just don’t like when those people go into “sales mode” and try to sell something to someone.

So if you’re a non-sales type personality, and you FEEL this way…trust me…I *TOTALLY* understand.  You’re not the only one.

AND….

This ONE Shift in Your Thinking Will Change Everything

About 15 years ago now, I bought and took over the operations of a multimillion dollar business with a partner of mine.

I was excited and scared sh**less at the same time.

Finally for the first time in our lives we had 100% full control over the operations of a business and we could run it exactly how we wanted to.

So guess what we did?

We ran it like OUR type of business.

Since both my business partner and I have similar “techy” type personalities, we shaped the business around that.

Over a period of about a year or so, many of the people on our sales team left and we didn’t really put any emphasis on that side of the business.

Most of our emphasis went towards the development of the best technology on the planet, and we treated our programmers / developers like royalty.

We found that the majority of the marketing that the business was doing prior to our arrival was wasted on ineffective marketing pieces, brochures and catalogs that were becoming obsolete.

So we slashed our spending on marketing big time, all proud of ourselves for not throwing away money on useless marketing.

And guess what happened.

After a short period of time, our business started to suffer.

We had virtually NO marketing, and just a tiny small sales team.

The business stagnated and then finally stalled.

Luckily we reached out to our multimillionaire business mentor and asked him for help, and the advice he gave us CHANGED EVERYTHING for me.

When he looked at our budgets and how we were running our business, he immediately saw what we were doing wrong.

We had COMPLETELY pushed away one of the most important parts of running a business… having a SOLID and powerful MARKETING and SALES process.

When he saw that we slashed our marketing budget, he didn’t give us “props” for saving money, he gave us sh*t for being idiots.

He told us “If your marketing is not working, you don’t just CUT your budget.  You FIND marketing that works!  NEVER cut your marketing budget!”

Ooops. 🙁

He also saw that our sales team had shrunk to the point where we HAD no sales team.

See, for some stupid reason all of my life up to that point in time, I had this CRAZY idiotic belief or idea that went something like this…

“If you create something of great value, you don’t need to SELL it… people will just see the value in it automatically.”

WRONG!

That is how you go bankrupt in life and in business.

See, as non-sales type personalities, my partner and I basically groomed our business around who we were and how we thought, and what our beliefs and values were.

We didn’t really value sales that much, so we ignored that side of our business.

And we almost went out of business because of it.

I don’t care WHAT product or service you create, or how good it is… you STILL need to MARKET it and SELL it to your target market.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.  Like I was. 🙂

Luckily though, we learned our lesson, and we started to make some changes that saved our business and helped me to build and start businesses that THRIVE instead of DIE.

So what is the ONE shift that WE made that changed everything?

Change your belief to this…

New Belief – I May Not Be a Sales Type Personality Myself, but I Love, Respect and Utilize Those Who Are

If you embrace THAT belief in your life, your business will thrive.

See what I did at that moment in time in my life is I made the decision to STOP being an egotistic introverted moron who thought he was better than all those “sales” type people and I got off my high horse and actually started to try to UNDERSTAND sales and marketing and the people who are successful in that field.

I attended Tony Robbin’s premiere sales seminar called “The Power to Influence” and I started learning what it really takes to be good at sales.

Not necessarily to become good at sales myself, but just so that I could understand better what sales people have to go through to generate sales.

To say that the seminar opened my eyes would be a gross understatement.

When I actually learned what it takes to be good at sales, I was blown away at how much skill, intelligence, intuition, practice and persistence it takes to be good at sales.

It’s an art form!

Professional sales people are like professional athletes.  There is a LOT of work that goes into becoming good at sales.

From that day forward I’ve been a student of sales and marketing ever since, and even though I don’t consider myself a “sales type personality”, I learn about sales and marketing because it helps me to be successful as an entrepreneur.

The reason being is because …

A Successful Business MUST Have a Professional Marketing and Sales Team Behind It

See, to be successful, EVERY business needs a professional marketing and sales team behind it.

If you don’t have that, you don’t have a business.

Look at ANY successful business out there, regardless whether it’s a giant like Apple or a single Internet Marketer working from home… if they are successful, they’re utilizing a professional marketing and sales team/system in their business.

Period.

End of story.

If you don’t have that, your business is as good as dead.

Now, since you’re most likely NOT a sales-type personality yourself, like me, what you have to do to be successful is you have to PARTNER with someone who is.

See, what you do is you take YOUR skill set, which might be creating things, writing content, writing blog posts, writing books, creating art, or building things with your hands, or perhaps providing services to people, and you COMBINE that skill set with someone who is good at marketing and selling!

That is how you succeed.

In fact, the reason why you haven’t succeed in a big way YET in your life is because you haven’t added this ultra important component into your business.

I didn’t start making a six-figure income in my life until I embraced MARKETING and SALESMANSHIP in my businesses.

In most cases, embracing and adding in a good, solid, powerful marketing and sales process in your business IS the missing piece that’s been keeping you stuck all this time.

So let’s go back to those concerns I mentioned people saying to me previously, and let me now answer then with this new perspective…

“Yeah, Empower Network seems really cool Paul, but I’m just not 100% sure about it yet, because that David Wood guy seems like such a sales guy.”

RESPONSE: “You are absolutely right!  David Wood is a master sales professional.  His ability to sell is amazing.  And that is exactly why you want to partner up with Empower Network and David Wood, because that is exactly what your business has been missing all this time.  By joining Empower Network, you get to utilize YOUR skill set, essentially being the creator of content, and you’re partnering up with one of the world’s best sales people to do what he does best – to market and sell for you, so that YOU don’t have to!”

and

“Yeah, so far I’m really liking Empower Network, but that David Wood guy emails me like every day, what’s up with that?”

RESPONSE: “You are absolutely right!  David Wood is a master at email marketing as well.  He has tested virtually every combination of email strategies so that you don’t have to.  Him and his team have already figured out what is the best overall strategy for emailing people… whether that be daily or weekly and multiple times per day.  They already know what the best strategy is and they are constantly improving it as well.  By partnering up with him and his team, he will email your prospects and do the absolutely best job of converting them and generating sales for you, so that you don’t have to!”

and

“Yeah, the new Kalatu Blogs look pretty good, but is there a way to disable all the banners?  I don’t want people visiting my blog thinking I’m trying to sell them something.”

RESPONSE: “I totally understand.  You’re not a sales type personality, and in fact you probably don’t like sales-type personalities, and that is why you are afraid that people will not like you if you have any type of banners or monetization strategies on your Blog.  However, that is exactly why your Blog isn’t making any money and why it will NEVER make you any money, until you embrace a proper monetization strategy.

The great thing about Kalatu and Empower Network is that you’re getting the world’s TOP MARKETERS who specialize in monetizing content and blogs working with you on your behalf, so that you don’t have to.  They take care of making sure that the banners on your site attract the right type of client, and that those clients convert and that your blog generates sales for you.  This way, you just have to focus on doing what you’re good at, which is blogging and generating free content for people to consume, and you let the geniuses at Empower Network take care of monetizing it for you, so that you don’t have to concern yourself with that.”

and

“Yeah, the training in Empower Network seems really cool… I’m just not 100% sure why, but just something about David Wood or the MLM side of it or the sales side of it just doesn’t resonate with me 100%”.

RESPONSE: “Of course it won’t resonate with you 100%!!!  You’re not a sales type personality.  David Wood is, and so is the Empower Network marketing department.  They are the BEST at what they do, and they know how to generate sales and how to monetize your Blog.  You don’t resonate with them, because they are not 100% like you.  But that is EXACTLY why you MUST partner with people of that personality, so that your business succeeds.  Think of it like this.  If you needed your accounting done, and you’re not an accountant-type personality, would you want the person who is best at accounting working for you?  Or would you want the non-accountant person just like you trying to do your accounting?

If you needed a body-guard.  Would you want the best body-guard type personality who spends their entire life training and learning how to defend people and who has trained their body to be a weapon, or would you want to hire the body guard who is just like you?  See my point?”

To be successful in business we MUST learn how to work with different personality types and to respect their skills and abilities and strengths and to use them to compliment our weaknesses.

In the businesses that I run, I LOVE my sales team.

I treat them like royalty.

I’m not like them, but I respect them and I love them.

Because they DO what they DO so that I don’t have to!

Flip This Switch NOW

If you take this ONE piece of advice right now… your potential for being a successful entrepreneur will skyrocket.

FLIP the switch in your head which right now is STUCK in a way of thinking where you PUSH AWAY people who are sales-type personalities or who are amazing MARKETERS just because they are not like you.

FLIP that switch and instead EMBRACE the benefits of having someone like that on your team.

DON’T look at someone like David Wood and think that his sales ability is “annoying” or “not resonating with you”, and instead realize that HIS sales ability can make you a MILLIONAIRE if you can just flip that switch in your mind that makes you think that sales people are “scammers” or “bad people” or that they are “pushy” or whatever other negative associations you’ve programmed your mind with.

PARTNER with professional marketers and sales people and you will see your income explode.

This is one of the biggest reasons I’m with Empower Network.

I’m an awesome Blogger, and I’m great at producing content… but I still SUCK at monetizing my Blogs.

And instead of trying to change who I am, I just partner up with someone like David Wood and Empower Network and I use THEIR awesome sales ability to monetize my Blog for me.

I *strongly* recommend that you do the same.

Because one way or another, if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you WILL have to have a powerful marketing and sales team.

So that means that either YOU start building the skillset required to become the world’s top sales person yourself, OR you partner up with someone who is.

Personally, I’m of the opinion that it’s MUCH easier to just partner up with someone who’s already a great sales person than to spend the next 10 years of your life trying to become a “salesy” type person. 🙂

If you’re ready to partner up with me and the world’s best sales and marketing team by joining me in Empower Network, click here to get started.

How to Set Up a Paperless Office in 2015

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In this article I’m going to share how I setup a paperless office for all of my receipts, bills, documents and everything else that usually clutters up your desk.

There are several things you’ll need to setup a paperless office in 2015.

#1 – A High Quality Receipt / Document Scanner

The first thing you’re going to need is a high-quality, high-speed receipt / document scanner.

Most people today have all-in-one printer / scanner / copier combo that they got on sale for $50 – $100, but that is not going to cut it.

As an average person we go through way too many receipts and documents to waste your time with an all-in-one printer/scanner that is just going to frustrate you and make you quit and go back to a paper system.

If you’re serious about setting up a paperless office, you have to invest in some proper tools that are going to make the job simple, easy, fast and convenient – otherwise you just won’t do it.

So what’s the solution?

After a lot of research I bought the Fujitsu Scansnap IX500 Scanner for the following reasons:

  • It’s fast!  Really, really fast
  • It can scan receipts, business cards, as well as regular sized paper and documents
  • It scans BOTH sides at the same time
  • It can scan receipts that are really, really long (unlike a flatbed scanner)
  • It has a microprocessor that helps with processing the image/scan

This scanner is not cheap.  It will cost you around $400- $500, but it’s worth every penny.

I’ve had mine for about a year now and I just love it.

It makes the process of scanning papers and receipts very quick an painless.

Also, as an added benefit, the way the scanner is designed, when you fold up the lid and bottom tray the scanner doesn’t take up a lot of real estate on your desk and it’s fully protected from dust!

#2 – Software to Convert Scanned Documents / Receipts Into PDF Files

The next thing you want to make sure your paperless office does is convert all your scanned documents into PDF files.

This is where MOST so called “paperless office scanners” and “systems” out there fall flat on their face.

They sell you on the idea that their system is best, but what they do is they try to store all of your documents in a proprietary format that can only be read by THEIR software.

This is the way that they sucker you in with low priced scanner/software combos that only cost a few hundred dollars.

Don’t fall for it.

If you go for one of those systems that doesn’t directly scan right into a PDF file, you will regret it later as your software becomes bloated, slow and unmanageable.

Also if the company you purchase the scanner / software from ever goes out of business you could be left stuck with no way to retrieve any of your files.

The Adobe PDF format has been around for decades and it’s a PROVEN file format that is a standard on all computer platforms and you want to make sure that is what your scanner / software stores your files as.

Luckily for us, the Fujitsu Scansnap scanner comes with a free software that does just that.

All you have to do is place a document or receipt in the scanner, press the blue button, and it automatically scans the document on both sides, very quickly and it automatically loads up the software allowing you to save the document in PDF format.

#3 – File Organization / Management Software

Once you have a system for converting your documents and receipts into PDF files you will also need a way to keep everything easily organized, categorized and easily retrievable.

Most scanners out there come with free software that claims to do this, but from my research and testing I have found that most of them really suck at this part of the paperless office system.

Even the software that comes with the Fujitsu Scansnap is mediocre at best at handling this part of the process.

What I have found to work MUCH better is a software called FileCenter from Lucion Technologies.

With FileCenter you can easily manage and organize your files, automatically do OCR, join and split PDF files, and integrate with various Cloud Services if you so choose to.

It’s a software with MANY features, bells and whistles, but the truth is that you don’t really need to worry about bells and whistles as you mostly won’t use them.

What you really need is a robust, simple and effective software that can handle the process of organizing your PDF files in a way that makes logical sense – and FileCenter does just that.

The software allows you to create “Cabinets” which basically act just like physical filing cabinets, except that these are digital filing cabinets with unlimited storage space.

So for example you could create one “Cabinet” for your “Personal” files, one for your “Business” or “Work”, etc.

Then, within each of the cabinets you can create any number of “Drawers” which are just like the drawers in a real filing cabinet.

Then, within each of the drawers you create “Folders” which would of course represent a folder, and then within each folder you can have any number of actual files / documents etc.

This means you have three levels of hierarchy within the system which is plenty enough for all of your needs without getting too crazy and confusing.

You can also create sub-folders within folders if you want so that basically means the hierarchy of files can be expanded even further if you wish.

#4 – A Backup Solution

The final thing you’ll need is a backup solution for your files so that you rest easy knowing that your files are safe.

There are two different routes you can go with here.

Firstly, you can backup all of your files to an external hard drive on a regular basis which keeps all of your files safe in case of a computer failure or theft.

Of course if your backup drive is not stored in a safe location it can be damaged in a fire or stolen in the case of a break-in.

Of course in the case of a fire, your physical files would have been destroyed as well, so it’s kind of a mute point, but if you do want to make sure your files are secure you could create an off-site backup for your files, or subscribe to one of the cloud services out there.

FileCenter Pro allows you to sync your files with Could server services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, SugarSync etc., so if you want to use a cloud service you can do that as well.

How you decide to backup your files is completely up to you, but just make sure you back them up!

Paperless Office Flow Diagram

This is a flow diagram which summarizes what my paperless office system looks like.

 

 

Additional Tips for the Perfect Paperless Office System

#1 – Dealing With Digital Receipts

One of the realities of today is that not all companies offer receipts, invoices and bills on paper anymore.  You will find that many of the companies you deal with are now switching to a paperless system as well.

Unfortunately, as convenient as it may be for them to NOT have to mail you a receipt or invoice, when it comes time to send your files to an accountant or to look up an old bill it’s not always easy to get access to your files.

Some companies only keep bills around for a certain number of months and then delete them.

So what’s the solution?

Well, that’s where this system really shines.  See, most of the companies that offer paperless systems also save their documents in a PDF format, or they email you their receipts.

The trick is to SAVE those PDF files that they have on their websites OR the email receipt that they mail you to a PDF file and to file it into your “INBOX” in FileCenter.

This is what I do.

When I get digital receipts or emails I’ll just click the SAVE button and quickly save the file as a PDF and put it into my INBOX folder for FileCenter.  Then, later on when I’m ready to do some digital filing I’ll organize the files accordingly, placing them in the right cabinet/drawer/folder.

#2 – Afraid You’ll Lose Your Digital Backups?

One of the reasons I personally procrastinated switching to a paperless office system was because I never fully trusted digital files.

I’m sure we’ve all had one of those incidents where you accidentally erased some files on your hard drive that you didn’t back up, or lost the photos on your cell phone, or had a hard-drive malfunction that caused you to lose important data.

This was something I was a bit worried about, even though I know a good backup system can usually save the day.

So what did I do?

What I decided to do, and what you may want to consider as well is to NOT throw away your paper files after you scan them.

I know that this might sound a bit weird since I’m talking about going to a paperless office system, but hear me out here.

What I do is I simply get some bankers boxes, and when I take physical paper documents that come across my desk, I scan them into my paperless office, and I chuck them all into ONE bankers box labeled “2015” or whatever year it is now.

This is a very quick and painless process.  The beauty of this system is that I don’t have to organize any of these files in physical form, they are just chucked into a box that I should hypothetically never have to ever open again.

BUT, in the case of a complete computer meltdown or a lack of digital backup, in the worst case scenario, I would STILL have access to the physical versions of my files.

This helps me to sleep at night. 🙂

For me this was a great compromise that allowed me to do all my “filing” and “organizing” in the digital realm, while at the same time knowing that in the event of a digital catastrophe I still DO have the actual physical files as a backup of my backup.

After a few years, when I no longer need the physical files I can just shred the files in the banker’s box.