We can learn much about what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur by studying great figures from history.

Below are 5 that possessed attributes that made them great during their time. Attributes that will also help us find success today.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Acquiring Knowledge

Knowledge is power. No one demonstrated, or knew this better than Napoleon Bonaparte. At the time of his birth, a person’s future was practically laid out for them depending on what class they were born in to.

Napoleon wasn’t born into a family of wealth or prestige, actually the opposite. He was born on the conquered island of Corsica, to a family with no influence or power, yet he grew to become the most powerful man on the planet.

How did Napoleon do this?

While his classmates at college partied, Napoleon read. Books became his love, the object of his affection. His lust for knowledge eventually served him on the battlefield. Napoleon’s ability to size up a battle and determine the best way to defeat the enemy was uncanny because it was as if he’d seen every battle formation that ever existed in the books he’d read. Nothing could trick him, and no one could out maneuver him.

How does this help the entrepreneur?

We can’t simply do the work, we also need to learn and educate ourselves. We need to understand our message, our goal, and the best possible way to accomplish it.

A large portion of our hustle should be given to the acquiring of knowledge. The more we know, the better equipped we are to find success.

Thomas Edison

Perseverance 

Thomas Edison failed more than 10,000 times in his attempt to create the light bulb. He, however, didn’t see those failures as failures, but rather as positive steps towards his goal.

Every entrepreneur will face failure and tribulation, those who succeed will be those who persist.

Winston Churchill

Sticking To Your Guns

We need to know our core values; those things that we hold most important in life. We also have to follow our gut. When Churchill thought something to be true  – whether it was or not – he stuck to his guns.

The leader of a company needs to do the same, as does the leader of a country, and an entrepreneur. We have a vision, we need to stick to that vision.

Does that mean we don’t listen to others? Of course not. Counsel is always welcome, and needed to get out of a rut, or to see things in a different light. But it’s our vision and dream we’re trying to create, and we need to be in line with our values. As a company grows, it’s easy to move away from our values, but it’s those values that led to growth. And it’s those values that will keep us true to our original vision and purpose.

Theodore Roosevelt

Embracing the Struggle

Teddy Roosevelt accomplished more in his 60 years than many would accomplish in 160. He embraced the strenuous life, as he called it.

Hard work isn’t something Teddy feared, but actively pursued.

As an entrepreneur, hard work needs to be your best friend, and laziness your worst enemy. A life of ease isn’t what an entrepreneur will get, probably ever. They’re always creating, innovating and working. But what you will get is freedom.

William Wallace

Do What Others Think is Impossible

Before the light bulb existed, no one could even comprehend that we could flip a switch that would light up a room. It’s the people that at least try the impossible, while others prefer to remain in comfort, that history treats kindly.

William Wallace, in his defiance of tyranny, fought an impossible battle against an enemy too great to defeat. Well, guess what? Wallace’s bravery and courage in the face of an impossible enemy, eventually led to the freedom of his nation.

No matter how great the obstacle, whether it even seems possible, or not, an entrepreneur will do his best to conquer it, and defeat it.

Impossible isn’t in an entrepreneur’s vocabulary. Keep that in mind. Whatever you’re doing right now, no matter how rough the road may seem, nothing is impossible. An entrepreneur is simply here to show the rest of us this universal truth.

As a speaker and consultant I meet a lot of new people over the course of a year.  Every single one of them is different but the start of our conversations is always the same.

There are only two questions people ever ask me when we first meet.

Unless we are in France, or a French speaking country, the first question is normally “how do you pronounce your name?”  If you’re interested it’s like “go be yo”. I sometimes wish it was “go be you” to enable me to play on that theme as part of my leadership development practice, but my forbearers did not anticipate my chosen career so I missed out on the “u”.

The second question normally comes after they have found out what I do for a living. At that stage, what most people really want to know is “what do great leaders do?” I don’t blame them. I have devoted the last 15 years of my life trying to find out the answer.  However, in that search, I have also realised that it is the wrong question.

There is a question that comes before what do great leaders do and that is “what’s a leader?” The answer is simple; “someone who is followed”. This being the case, the most important person in the equation is the follower. A great leader is someone who manages to have a great many followers, prepared to give up some of their freedom to act, in search of something greater than they can achieve alone.

When looked at it in that way, forget “what do great leaders do?”; the key question becomes “what do great followers want?” With that question we can explain why seemingly different people become great leaders. We no longer have to hope we can be “like somebody” but rather can feel free to explore what we are like when we are at our best. Development stops being about aping someone else and starts becoming about being a better, more skilled version of ourselves in the service of our followers.

When we make the switch from the “great leaders” to the “great followers” question we no longer need a model of what we ought to be but rather a set of principles that will help us to find out who we truly can be.

Having worked to support others in that search for over a decade there are four things I know to be true.

1 – THERE’S A TICK IN “AUTHENTICK”

I have always been appalled by trite business sayings like ‘there’s no I in team’ (there should be) and ‘assume makes an ass of you and me’ (it doesn’t). Yet I admit to being fascinated by their staying power. So for the last decade I have been trying to come up with my own. So here goes “There’s a Tick, in authentick”. It may be bad but it makes the point!

That point is that leadership is entirely dependent on authenticity.  You will always sub-optimize your impact if you try to be someone other than yourself. And you cannot be authentic if you don’t understand what makes you tick. To be yourself you have to know yourself and what you stand for.

2 – SURROUND BUT DON’T SURRENDER

People are always keen on giving advice. Everyone has a view or opinion they like to share. Even if you are high up in an organization and the people below you find it hard to give you feedback, peers, analysts and shareholders are never shy at dispensing their wisdom.

While surrounding yourself with advisers enlarges your view, you should not surrender to their advice.  It is your leadership, your principles and your points of view that matter. Becoming a mouthpiece for the conflicting views of others or acting purely as a curator for those views is a sure way to fail in engaging others.

This is the hardest balancing act of leadership. We shouldn’t be stubborn when faced with a reality that questions the very essence of our views. Yet we must remember that it is only reconciliation, never compromise, that is necessary.

3 – THINK MADONNA AND CHILD

The key to success lies in our ability to achieve our goal of attracting others whilst remaining true to ourselves. I have developed a simple test for self-regulation which I call the madonna and child principle.

If your mother (the madonna) would be ashamed of whatever you are considering doing, or if you can’t explain it to a six-year-old (the child), or both, then don’t do it.

Effective leadership relies on a strong moral compass (the madonna test) and clarity of your intent (the child test).  The madonna and child test preserves your integrity and, in tandem with my next and last “truth”, should enable you to make the most critical of development decisions and choices.

4 – BUY AN EGG TIMER

To understand who you are you need to reflect. Whilst you can think quickly, reflection takes time. I am not advocating a retreat or a long reflective walk, although I would if I thought you might do it. What I am advocating instead is developing an ability to think things through in the moment.

So buy an egg timer and put it on your desk. Don’t try to get away with a watch or a guess – there is something powerful in the novelty and physicality of the egg timer. It also helps you signal in a playful way to others around you that you are thinking and value this thinking time. When faced with a decision to make, turn over the egg timer.

Thanks for reading this and I hope we meet someday. And when we do, don’t worry about the “go be yo”, Emmanuel will do just fine, and if you struggle with that one, blame my parents and just call me E.

This post is an excerpt from Mastery by Robert Greene (Viking). Mastery is the latest book from the bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, and The 50th Law.

In the stories of the greatest Masters, past and present, we can inevitably detect a phase in their lives in which all of their future powers were in development, like the chrysalis of a butterfly. This part of their lives—a largely self-directed apprenticeship that lasts some five to ten years—receives little attention because it does not contain stories of great achievement or discovery. Often in their Apprenticeship Phase, these types are not yet much different from anyone else. Under the surface, however, their minds are transforming in ways we cannot see but contain all of the seeds of their future success.

Much of how such Masters navigate this phase comes from an intuitive grasp of what is most important and essential for their development, but in studying what they did right we can learn some invaluable lessons for ourselves. In fact, a close examination of their lives reveals a pattern that transcends their various fields, indicating a kind of Ideal Apprenticeship for mastery. And to grasp this pattern, to follow it in our own ways, we must understand something about the very idea and necessity for passing through an apprenticeship.

In childhood we are inculcated in culture through a long period of dependency—far longer than any other animal. During this period we learn language, writing, math, and reasoning skills, along with a few others. Much of this happens under the watchful and loving guidance of parents and teachers. As we get older, greater emphasis is placed on book learning—absorbing as much information as possible about various subjects. Such knowledge of history, science, or literature is abstract, and the process of learning largely involves passive absorption. At the end of this process (usually somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five) we are then thrust into the cold, harsh work world to fend for ourselves.

When we emerge from the youthful state of dependency, we are not really ready to handle the transition to an entirely independent phase. We carry with us the habit of learning from books or teachers, which is largely unsuited for the practical, self-directed phase of life that comes next. We tend to be somewhat socially naïve and unprepared for the political games people play. Still uncertain as to our identity, we think that what matters in the work world is gaining attention and making friends. And these misconceptions and naïveté are brutally exposed in the light of the real world.

If we adjust over time, we might eventually find our way; but if we make too many mistakes, we create endless problems for ourselves. We spend too much time entangled in emotional issues, and we never quite have enough detachment to reflect and learn from our experiences. The apprenticeship, by its very nature, must be conducted by each individual in his or her own way. To follow precisely the lead of others or advice from a book is self-defeating. This is the phase in life in which we finally declare our independence and establish who we are. But for this second education in our lives, so critical to our future success, there are some powerful and essential lessons that we all can benefit from, that can guide us away from common mistakes and save us valuable time.

These lessons transcend all fields and historical periods because they are connected to something essential about human psychology and how the brain itself functions. They can be distilled into one overarching principle for the Apprenticeship Phase, and a process that loosely follows three steps.

The principle is simple and must be engraved deeply in your mind: the goal of an apprenticeship is not money, a good position, a title, or a diploma, but rather the transformation of your mind and character—the first transformation on the way to mastery. You enter a career as an outsider. You are naïve and full of misconceptions about this new world. Your head is full of dreams and fantasies about the future. Your knowledge of the world is subjective, based on emotions, insecurities, and limited experience. Slowly, you will ground yourself in reality, in the objective world represented by the knowledge and skills that make people successful in it. You will learn how to work with others and handle criticism. In the process you will transform yourself from someone who is impatient and scattered into someone who is disciplined and focused, with a mind that can handle complexity. In the end, you will master yourself and all of your weaknesses.

This has a simple consequence: you must choose places of work and positions that offer the greatest possibilities for learning. Practical knowledge is the ultimate commodity, and is what will pay you dividends for decades to come—far more than the paltry increase in pay you might receive at some seemingly lucrative position that offers fewer learning opportunities. This means that you move toward challenges that will toughen and improve you, where you will get the most objective feedback on your performance and progress. You do not choose apprenticeships that seem easy and comfortable.

In this sense you must see yourself as following in the footsteps of Charles Darwin. You are finally on your own, on a voyage in which you will craft your own future. It is the time of youth and adventure—of exploring the world with an open mind and spirit. In fact, whenever you must learn a new skill or alter your career path later in life, you reconnect with that youthful, adventurous part of yourself. Darwin could have played it safe, collecting what was necessary, and spending more time on board studying instead of actively exploring. In that case, he would not have become an illustrious scientist, but just another collector. He constantly looked for challenges, pushing himself past his comfort zone. He used danger and difficulties as a way to measure his progress. You must adopt such a spirit and see your apprenticeship as a kind of journey in which you will transform yourself, rather than as a drab indoctrination into the work world.

The Apprenticeship Phase — The Three Steps or Modes

With the principle outlined above guiding you in your choices, you must think of three essential steps in your apprenticeship, each one overlapping the other. These steps are: Deep Observation (The Passive Mode), Skills Acquisition (The Practice Mode), and Experimentation (The Active Mode). Keep in mind that an apprenticeship can come in many different forms. It can happen at one place over several years, or it can consist of several different positions in different places, a kind of compound apprenticeship involving many different skills. It can include a mix of graduate school and practical experience. In all of these cases, it will help you to think in terms of these steps, although you may need to give added weight to a particular one depending on the nature of your field.

Step One: Deep Observation—The Passive Mode

When you enter a career or new environment, you move into a world with its own rules, procedures, and social dynamic. For decades or even centuries, people have compiled knowledge of how to get things done in a particular field, each generation improving on the past. In addition, every workplace has its own conventions, rules of behavior, and work standards. There are also all kinds of power relationships that exist between individuals. All of this represents a reality that transcends your individual needs and desires. And so your task upon entering this world is to observe and absorb its reality as deeply as possible.

The greatest mistake you can make in the initial months of your apprenticeship is to imagine that you have to get attention, impress people, and prove yourself. These thoughts will dominate your mind and close it off from the reality around you. Any positive attention you receive is deceptive; it is not based on your skills or anything real, and it will turn against you. Instead, you will want to acknowledge the reality and submit to it, muting your colors and keeping in the background as much as possible, remaining passive and giving yourself the space to observe. You will also want to drop any preconceptions you might have about this world you are entering. If you impress people in these first months, it should be because of the seriousness of your desire to learn, not because you are trying to rise to the top before you are ready.

You will be observing two essential realities in this new world. First, you will observe the rules and procedures that govern success in this environment—in other words, “this is how we do things here.” Some of these rules will be communicated to you directly—generally the ones that are superficial and largely a matter of common sense. You must pay attention to these and observe them, but what is of more interest are the rules that are unstated and are part of the underlying work culture. These concern style and values that are considered important. They are often a reflection of the character of the man or woman on top.

You can observe such rules by looking at those who are on their way up in the hierarchy, who have a golden touch. More tellingly, you can observe those who are more awkward, who have been chastised for particular mistakes or even been fired. Such examples serve as negative trip wires: do things this way and you will suffer.

The second reality you will observe is the power relationships that exist within the group: who has real control; through whom do all communications flow; who is on the rise and who is on the decline. These procedural and political rules may be dysfunctional or counterproductive, but your job is not to moralize about this or complain, but merely to understand them, to get a complete lay of the land. You are like an anthropologist studying an alien culture, attuned to all of its nuances and conventions. You are not there to change that culture; you will only end up being killed, or in the case of work, fired. Later, when you have attained power and mastery, you will be the one to rewrite or destroy these same rules.

Every task you are given, no matter how menial, offers opportunities to observe this world at work. No detail about the people within it is too trivial. Everything you see or hear is a sign for you to decode. Over time, you will begin to see and understand more of the reality that eluded you at first. For instance, a person whom you initially thought had great power ended up being someone with more bark than bite. Slowly, you begin to see behind the appearances. As you amass more information about the rules and power dynamics of your new environment, you can begin to analyze why they exist, and how they relate to larger trends in the field. You move from observation to analysis, honing your reasoning skills, but only after months of careful attention.

We can see how Charles Darwin followed this step quite clearly. By spending the first few months studying life on board the ship and perceiving the unwritten rules, he made his time for science much more productive. By enabling himself to fit in, he was able to avoid needless battles that would have later disrupted his scientific work, not to mention the emotional turmoil these would have presented to him. He later practiced the same technique with gauchos and other local communities he came in contact with. This allowed him to extend the regions he could explore and the specimens he could collect. On another level, he slowly transformed himself into perhaps the most astute observer of nature the world has ever known. Emptying himself of any preconceptions about life and its origins, Darwin trained himself to see things as they are. He did not theorize or generalize about what he was seeing until he had amassed enough information. Submitting to and absorbing the reality of all aspects of this voyage, he ended up piercing one of the most fundamental realities of all—the evolution of all living forms.

Understand: there are several critical reasons why you must follow this step. First, knowing your environment inside and out will help you in navigating it and avoiding costly mistakes. You are like a hunter: your knowledge of every detail of the forest and of the ecosystem as a whole will give you many more options for survival and success. Second, the ability to observe any unfamiliar environment will become a critical lifelong skill. You will develop the habit of stilling your ego and looking outward instead of inward. You will see in any encounter what most people miss because they are thinking of themselves. You will cultivate a keen eye for human psychology, and strengthen your ability to focus. Finally, you will become accustomed to observing first, basing your ideas and theories on what you have seen with your eyes, and then analyzing what you find. This will be a very important skill for the next, creative phase in life.

Step Two: Skills Acquisition—The Practice Mode

At some point, as you progress through the initial months of observation required in an apprenticeship, you will enter a critical stage: practice toward the acquisition of skills. Every human activity, endeavor, or career path involves the mastering of skills. In some fields, it is direct and obvious, like operating a tool or machine or creating something physical. In others, it is more of a mix of the physical and mental, such as the observing and collecting of specimens for Charles Darwin. In still others, the skills are more nebulous, such as handling people or researching and organizing information. As much as possible, you want to reduce these skills to something simple and essential—the core of what you need to get good at, skills that can be practiced.

In acquiring any kind of skill, there exists a natural learning process that coincides with the functioning of our brains. This learning process leads to what we shall call tacit knowledge—a feeling for what you are doing that is hard to put into words but easy to demonstrate in action. And to understand how this learning process operates, it is useful to look at the greatest system ever invented for the training of skills and the achievement of tacit knowledge—the apprenticeship system of the Middle Ages. This system arose as a solution to a problem: As business expanded in the Middle Ages, Masters of various crafts could no longer depend on family members to work in the shop. They needed more hands. But it was not worth it for them to bring in people who would come and go—they needed stability and time to build up skills in their workers. And so they developed the apprenticeship system, in which young people from approximately the ages of twelve to seventeen would enter work in a shop, signing a contract that would commit them for the term of seven years. At the end of this term, apprentices would have to pass a master test, or produce a master work, to prove their level of skill. Once passed, they were now elevated to the rank of journeymen and could travel wherever there was work, practicing the craft.

Because few books or drawings existed at the time, apprentices would learn the trade by watching Masters and imitating them as closely as possible. They learned through endless repetition and hands-on work, with very little verbal instruction (the word “apprentice” itself comes from the Latin prehendere, meaning to grasp with the hand). Because resources such as textiles, wood, and metals were expensive and could not be wasted on practice runs, apprentices would spend most of their time working directly on materials that would be used for the final product. They had to learn how to focus deeply on their work and not make mistakes.

If one added up the time that apprentices ended up working directly on materials in those years, it would amount to more than 10,000 hours, enough to establish exceptional skill level at a craft. The power of this form of tacit knowledge is embodied in the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe—masterpieces of beauty, craftsmanship, and stability, all erected without blueprints or books. These cathedrals represented the accumulated skills of numerous craftsmen and engineers.

What this means is simple: language, oral and written, is a relatively recent invention. Well before that time, our ancestors had to learn various skills—toolmaking, hunting, and so forth. The natural model for learning, largely based on the power of mirror neurons, came from watching and imitating others, then repeating the action over and over. Our brains are suited for this form of learning. In an activity such as riding a bicycle, we all know that it is easier to watch someone and follow their lead than to listen to or read instructions. The more we do it, the easier it becomes. Even with skills that are primarily mental, such as computer programming or speaking a foreign language, it remains the case that we learn best through practice and repetition—the natural learning process. We learn a foreign language by actually speaking it as much as possible, not by reading books and absorbing theories. The more we speak and practice, the more fluent we become.

Once you take this far enough, you enter a cycle of accelerated returns in which the practice becomes easier and more interesting, leading to the ability to practice for longer hours, which increases your skill level, which in turn makes practice even more interesting. Reaching this cycle is the goal you must set for yourself, and to get there you must understand some basic principles about skills themselves.

First, it is essential that you begin with one skill that you can master, and that serves as a foundation for acquiring others. You must avoid at all cost the idea that you can manage learning several skills at a time. You need to develop your powers of concentration, and understand that trying to multi task will be the death of the process.

Second, the initial stages of learning a skill invariably involve tedium. Yet rather than avoiding this inevitable tedium, you must accept and embrace it. The pain and boredom we experience in the initial stage of learning a skill toughens our minds, much like physical exercise. Too many people believe that everything must be pleasurable in life, which makes them constantly search for distractions and short-circuits the learning process. The pain is a kind of challenge your mind presents—will you learn how to focus and move past the boredom, or like a child will you succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction? Much as with physical exercise, you can even get a kind of perverse pleasure out of this pain, knowing the benefits it will bring you. In any event, you must meet any boredom head-on and not try to avoid or repress it. Throughout your life you will encounter tedious situations, and you must cultivate the ability to handle them with discipline.

In practicing a skill in the initial stages, something happens neurologically to the brain that is important for you to understand. When you start something new, a large number of neurons in the frontal cortex (the higher, more conscious command area of the brain) are recruited and become active, helping you in the learning process. The brain has to deal with a large amount of new information, and this would be stressful and overwhelming if only a limited part of the brain were used to handle it. The frontal cortex even expands in size in this initial phase, as we focus hard on the task. But once something is repeated often enough, it becomes hardwired and automatic, and the neural pathways for this skill are delegated to other parts of the brain, farther down the cortex. Those neurons in the frontal cortex that we needed in the initial stages are now freed up to help in learning something else, and the area goes back to its normal size.

In the end, an entire network of neurons is developed to remember this single task, which accounts for the fact that we can still ride a bicycle years after we first learned how to do so. If we were to take a look at the frontal cortex of those who have mastered something through repetition, it would be remarkably still and inactive as they performed the skill. All of their brain activity is occurring in areas that are lower down and require much less conscious control.

This process of hardwiring cannot occur if you are constantly distracted, moving from one task to another. In such a case, the neural pathways dedicated to this skill never get established; what you learn is too tenuous to remain rooted in the brain. It is better to dedicate two or three hours of intense focus to a skill than to spend eight hours of diffused concentration on it. You want to be as immediately present to what you are doing as possible.

Once an action becomes automatic, you now have the mental space to observe yourself as you practice. You must use this distance to take note of your weaknesses or flaws that need correction—to analyze yourself. It helps also to gain as much feedback as possible from others, to have standards against which you can measure your progress so that you are aware of how far you have to go. People who do not practice and learn new skills never gain a proper sense of proportion or self-criticism. They think they can achieve anything without effort and have little contact with reality. Trying something over and over again grounds you in reality, making you deeply aware of your inadequacies and of what you can accomplish with more work and effort.

If you take this far enough, you will naturally enter the cycle of accelerated returns: As you learn and gain skills you can begin to vary what you do, finding nuances that you can develop in the work, so that it becomes more interesting. As elements become more automatic your mind is not exhausted by the effort and you can practice harder, which in turn brings greater skill and more pleasure. You can look for challenges, new areas to conquer, keeping your interest at a high level. As the cycle accelerates, you can reach a point where your mind is totally absorbed in the practice, entering a kind of flow in which everything else is blocked out. You become one with the tool or instrument or thing you are studying. Your skill is not something that can be put into words; it is embedded in your body and nervous system—it becomes tacit knowledge. Learning any kind of skill deeply prepares you for mastery. The sensation of flow and of being a part of the instrument is a precursor to the great pleasures that mastery can bring.

In essence, when you practice and develop any skill you transform yourself in the process. You reveal to yourself new capabilities that were previously latent, that are exposed as you progress. You develop emotionally. Your sense of pleasure becomes redefined. What offers immediate pleasure comes to seem like a distraction, an empty entertainment to help pass the time. Real pleasure comes from overcoming challenges, feeling confidence in your abilities, gaining fluency in skills, and experiencing the power this brings. You develop patience. Boredom no longer signals the need for distraction, but rather the need for new challenges to conquer.

Although it might seem that the time necessary to master the requisite skills and attain a level of expertise would depend on the field and your own talent level, those who have researched the subject repeatedly come up with the number of 10,000 hours. This seems to be the amount of quality practice time that is needed for someone to reach a high level of skill and it applies to composers, chess players, writers, and athletes, among others. This number has an almost magical or mystical resonance to it. It means that so much practice time—no matter the person or the field—leads to a qualitative change in the human brain. The mind has learned to organize and structure large amounts of information. With all of this tacit knowledge, it can now become creative and playful with it. Although the number of hours might seem high, it generally adds up to seven to ten years of sustained, solid practice—roughly the period of a traditional apprenticeship. In other words, concentrated practice over time cannot fail but produce results.

Step Three: Experimentation—The Active Mode

This is the shortest part of the process, but a critical component nonetheless. As you gain in skill and confidence, you must make the move to a more active mode of experimentation. This could mean taking on more responsibility, initiating a project of some sort, doing work that exposes you to the criticisms of peers or even the public. The point of this is to gauge your progress and whether there are still gaps in your knowledge. You are observing yourself in action and seeing how you respond to the judgments of others. Can you take criticism and use it constructively?

With Charles Darwin, as the voyage progressed and he began to entertain the notions that would lead to his theory of evolution, he decided to expose his ideas to others. First, on the Beagle, he discussed them with the captain and patiently absorbed his vehement criticisms of the idea. This, Darwin told himself, would be more or less the reaction of the public, and he would have to prepare himself for that. He also began to write letters to various scientists and scientific societies back in England. The responses he received indicated he was on to something, but that he would need some more research. For Leonardo da Vinci, as he progressed in his studio work for Verrocchio, he began to experiment and to assert his own style. He found to his surprise that the Master was impressed with his inventiveness. For Leonardo, this indicated that he was near the end of his apprenticeship.

Most people wait too long to take this step, generally out of fear. It is always easier to learn the rules and stay within your comfort zone. Often you must force yourself to initiate such actions or experiments before you think you are ready. You are testing your character, moving past your fears, and developing a sense of detachment to your work—looking at it through the eyes of others. You are getting a taste for the next phase in which what you produce will be under constant scrutiny.

You will know when your apprenticeship is over by the feeling that you have nothing left to learn in this environment. It is time to declare your independence or move to another place to continue your apprenticeship and expand your skill base. Later in life, when you are confronted with a career change or the need to learn new skills, having gone through this process before, it will become second nature. You have learned how to learn.

So you want to become a blogging superstar huh? Earn the passive income online, do what you love, inspire people and work only a few hours a day? I know how that feels. The temptation is certainly there, to create a successful blog and live the life you always wanted. The main problem that prevents most bloggers from creating a successful business online is the very draw of success in the first place.

Some bloggers think it’s gonna be easy, that you will have to simply just apply some tactics and automate everything.. Then the money will start rolling in.

It isn’t like that. I’ve been at this game for over a year now. I’ve tried so many different things out there and failed a ton of times along the way.

Here are 9 realistic points of advice that can help you gain blogging success

1 – Be good at one thing

In the world of blogging there are so many different aspects to it all.

You can write, do videos, podcasts, webinars or just scout for something cool online to share with others.

It’s tempting to think that you need to do all of them for online success, but that’s not true.

Align yourself with your passion and what you’re good at. Then stick to that ONLY. Keep at it and soon you’ll be known as a professional of that subject in your field. This is how you have real focus online and eliminate distractions. Besides, you don’t want to be the jack-of-all-trades and end up becoming a watered down version of other bloggers.

Stick to one thing only and keep honing that craft. Personally, I only write. I don’t do video or podcasts. I’ve tried them before and not only did I not feel good about it, the content came out mediocre and ultimately useless.

2 – Then grow later

Many bloggers have this mixed up. It’s kind of understandable as all the talk of having massive amount of traffic, eyeballs and subscribers can easily get to you.

Yes, gaining exposure is important, but it’s useless to attract people to your blog filled with mediocre content. You’ve  got to attract them, but then also make sure they STAY, and you do that only by being good at something and being recognized for it.

3 – Stop it with the tricks, tactics, hacks and whatever.

“Top 10 Twitter TRICKS…”

“This traffic LOOP-HOLE….”

“AUTOMATE your blog today…”

The list goes on.

Remember this now and forever: These are just tactics. They’re just the icing on the cake.

You need a strong foundation consisting of good content and then you need to create a strategy for yourself. This is why the tired, but true line, “Content is king” is still around. It matters the most. Be good at one thing and then you can grow with all these tactics, otherwise, it’s all going to crumble down as you don’t have a strong foundation with quality content.

4 – If it’s too good to be true, then it’s definitely not true

“Top 10 Twitter TACTICS to gain a million followers overnight”

“This traffic LOOP-HOLE accidentally made me $9,424!”

“AUTOMATE your blog today and earn $(insert another very specific number) while you sleep”

If it sounds too easy, it’s most likely not true at all.

Consider the fact that people, or the “gurus” who are trying to sell you on these ideas are complete scammers and liars.

Don’t fall for them.

Blogging is a business after all. It’s not going to be easy. If it’s as easy as simply buying some cheap “guru” product, then everybody would quit their job and start making tons of cash online today.

5 – It’s okay to spend money before you start making money online

When I started out blogging, like most others,  it was my way out of the corporate 9 to 5. I thought it was going to be easy and hence, I didn’t need help at all. I ended up learning everything the hard way on my own. You can do that of course, but why not give yourself a little boost? Put in the money to start investing in a good training programme or even a mentor. These will help you learn things the right way and definitely speed things up.

You don’t want to start out feeling lost and lonely. Or worse, learn all the wrong things that will only slow you down or steer you in the wrong direction.

6 – That being said, you don’t have to do everything on your own

You aren’t the heroic solo-preneur who absolutely has to overcome everything on your own.

Again, it’s tempting to think that way since the internet is supposed to make everything “easy”.

Nope. You’re bound to run into some challenges and discover things you aren’t very good at.

Outsource the things you aren’t passionate about.

Like for me, I write all my content, but I outsource my design and programming, I merely give the directions from there.

It’s also okay to seek help. Put in the effort to ask questions and email other bloggers if they want to work together.

No business is truly a one man-show. Everybody needs help and people work together for success.

7 – Don’t quit your job just yet

How often have you heard of the successful guy who left everything behind to pursue his dream?

Or, they’ve even been fired from work and then they later call it, “The best thing that happened” in their life.

Those are certainly very inspiring stories, but that doesn’t mean you need to follow suit just like that.

This is life. We need to be real. We may have our dreams, but we also have responsibilities in life.

I left my job to do this myself. I paid for it later on when my savings depleted (thanks to a lot of partying).

There’s really nothing wrong with holding on to a job while working on your dream at the side.

If you want to quit your job. Then do it when it’s realistic. Make sure you’ve a substantial amount of savings left aside and also a clear direction and purpose on what to do next.

8 – Ignore everyone and don’t underestimate yourself

Maybe this point is a bit contradictory to seeking help online, but hear me out.

In business, you definitely need to learn all the concepts, theories and also get some help from others.

But you will eventually hit a point where you need to call the shots on your own. This means believing in yourself and doing what you think is right.

And trust me, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

I used to lack a lot of confidence in myself, so much so that I had to get an “Okay” from some other blogger or get the virtual green light by reading up a lot about something online.

I ended up not taking action at all. I also got very confused as everybody else seems to swear by their methods and kept telling me what to do. (This will happen A LOT).

When I finally decided that I would do things my way, real, tangible results came. Don’t ever underestimate yourself. Ignore what others say especially when deep down, it doesn’t feel right to you.

Once you’ve studied and learnt enough, just take action.  You’d want to create a business you can truly call your own anyway.

9 – It gets easier

And finally, yes, it gets easier.

It’s going to be tough at first, but it gets easier.

So work hard, believe in yourself and keep pushing.

Online success will come and your dreams will come true.

A mentor is more than a teacher. Teachers show you something and leave you to your own devices. A mentor is concerned about your “whole being.” They pierce who you are to help guide you without interfering with your individuality. A mentor should never want you to be like them, but help to mould those characteristics that make you, well, you.

Who is your mentor? and why is it important to have a mentor? Read on as we explain why.

The Definition Of A Mentor

A mentor is someone you can look up to, normally deemed to be a trusted counselor or guide. Mentors play a crucial part in our lives by sharing their experience, words of positive thinking and how you can go about getting the best out of your life. Most people only think of mentors in the form of academic or job relations. Even though this is not uncommon, here, we speak of mentors in deeper terms. In fact, a mentor can emerge in various forms. Whether a person, a movie, lyrics of a song, or a book, a mentor gives the student a unique tool, training, or advice that puts them on the right road of life’s journey that suits the particular challenges they face. A mentor cannot free anyone from life’s challenges, but they can teach you how to cope with them, overcome them, learn from them, and move onto your next level of growth.

 “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” - Benjamin Franklin

Today, the term “mentor” is used loosely. You can practically find a mentor in your basement if you look hard enough. There are self-help gurus, life coaches, TV personalities, motivational speakers, and the whole lot. There are a number of channels in which these mentors can be contacted as well. The Internet, videos, Skype, books, Facebook, just about anywhere today, someone can be contacted instantly to assist you with your life journey. Life is certainly complicated enough. If you want to build a momentous life, you will need to meet individuals who can help guide you, and you must be ready to be guided.

Wisdom is the Mentor’s Hangout

In order to succeed in life your best teacher is wisdom. It should be pursued with enthusiasm. Hang out with wise people and model your life after them. Ask questions and continue to ask for as long as your mentor is willing to answer. To the surprise of many, wisdom is not just book learning, and certainly not instantly obtainable. It defies precise definition. To define wisdom too strictly is curtailing the depth of it potential to help us.

The spirit of wisdom is praised in every land. It is frequently viewed as a state-of-mind that leaves one calm and able to filter through situations put before them without acting rashly. Wisdom consists of the ability to reflect and view the bigger-picture while still appreciating the minute details that make things work well. The great philosopher Confucius said, “There are three ways one may learn wisdom. Firstly, through reflection, which is gracious, then by imitation, which is simplest, and last by experience, which is the most unpleasant.”

A “true” mentor must possess qualities of wisdom. There are mentors who are charismatic, but that does not equate wisdom. There are mentors who are attractive, but it has nothing to do with insight. There are mentors who are materially wealthy, but there are fools who are as well. You can find mentors in every walk of life whether they are for personal or professional assistance. Nevertheless, if they do not possess the characteristics of sincerity and the ability to deeply comprehend where it is you need to grow, a mentor will be of very little help.

Mentors in Your Professional Work Life

A few years ago a large technology company based in the United States released results of a study that delved into the value of mentoring. The study, conducted by a research and advisory firm and a software and services company, utilized statistical investigations to analyze the financial influence of mentoring and how funding could be used in that area. The study determined that “mentoring had a positive affect on mentors and their learners and produced staff that was more highly valued by the company.”

Researchers checked data from over 1,000 employees through a five-year period, classified by job description, such as engineers and administrators. The study analyzed nearly 70 variables such as previous employment code, base pay, job performance rating, salary grade, promotion, salary grade change, salary increase because of promotion, and merit increase in salary.

Researchers discovered that 25% of employees in the test cluster that participated in the company’s mentoring program had a salary-grade change, The program also had positive financial advantages for the mentors: over 27% of mentors in the test group were given a salary-grade change compared to 5% in the control group.

Researchers also discovered that the company’s mentoring program was not as effective for high achievers. This was astounding, since many mentoring programs concentrate on developing high-performers with the best potential. This led researchers to deduce that “funds are better spent on lower-performers to assist them in raising their performance level.” Overall, the study showed that mentoring can only be worthwhile if the learner is willing to be taught. The perfect mentor needs perfect students, if not, no one benefits whether in the corporate world or in private life.

Modelling the Masters

In Homer’s noble verse “The Odyssey,” Odysseus had difficulty finding his way back home to the palace after the Trojan War, there were too many dangers threatened to disrupt his crossing. However, Odysseus felt comforted knowing that he had a wise and loyal friend named Mentor to protect and teach his son, Telemachus, through his absence.

Despite the wave of change in our culture, in some cases because of it, mentoring is vital in every person’s life. Especially younger people looking to learn from more experienced individuals in their private and work lives. In fact, mentoring may be just as important for organizations since connecting with mature mentors with a promising protégé is a perfect means of keeping valued employees and preventing them from going elsewhere.

Mentors help to guide an individual, organization, or employee to become acclimated to the world around them while keeping the validity of each one’s purpose. As adults, we must take the proper approach to finding the right mentor for our lives. To find the right mentor, search deep. Don’t grab the closest expert from down the block. Look with your eyes open. Check their credentials and references. Find out if they live by their word. Test their wisdom. Make sure they are respected.

The secret to a good mentor is a developed commitment to communication and trust. Criticism is something many of us find hard to take lightly; however, it is a less difficult pill to swallow if it is coming from a person you trust, a person with insight and wisdom, someone who you know has your back. In particular, be sure that you mentor is available to you. You may have the utmost mentor in the universe; however, if they have no time for you, then they will not be the best option to guide you to the place you really want to be.

If you believe that you have what it takes to be a mentor yourself then checkout our post 10 Steps To Becoming A Motivational Speaker to learn the ropes on how you can inspire others to do great things and live a successful life.

Feature Image Courtesy of OWN.

The following is an excerpt from The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success by Bob Sullivan and Herbert Thompson.

We all hit plateaus from time to time.

Bodybuilders and dieters know this well. They begin a new regimen of weightlifting or starvation. For 10 days or so, the results are fantastic, even inspiring. Down 4 pounds, or up another 10 on the military press. But somewhere near that two-week mark, they hit a wall. The scale seems frozen in place. The strength gains top out.  They have, cruelly, plateaued.

Plateaus rob you of success. They make hard work worthless. They turn beginner’s luck into sophomore slumps. They can even make you look lazy, dumb, careless, or unloving. You aren’t any of these things. You’ve just been fighting an invisible enemy.

We believe the Plateau Effect is a law of nature, as real and as impactful as gravity or friction. It’s built directly into the genetic code of our bodies, and into the planet we inhabit. The Plateau Effect explains why the world is full of one-hit-wonders, why all good things come to an end, why all trends eventually fall, why most people get less for more, and how you can break through, again and again.

If you’re stuck, one of these devils is probably to blame. Remember, what helps you break out of your plateau today will one day stop working – and you’ll have to try another method. Breaking through plateaus requires constant recalibration – it takes a little of this and a bit of that. In the list below, we show you what “this” and “that” really are for you, today, and into the future.

Element 1: Immunity

People, relationships, businesses and even physical processes become immune to the same techniques, the same approaches, the same solutions. Immunity is perhaps the most basic force of the Plateau Effect. Everybody has experienced what it’s like to become immune to something: maybe it’s the complements of your spouse, the smell of garlic at an Italian restaurant, or the effects of your second beer. Immunity can be frustrating – what worked so well yesterday just won’t work today.

Solution: Diversity

Immunity’s Kryptonite is diversity. You’ve got to shake things up and be radical. Trying different approaches, techniques or procedures can shake you out of an immunity plateau.

Element 2: Greedy Algorithm

The greedy algorithm is a concept borrowed from the field of mathematics. Here’s how it works: you always pick the best short-term solution and ignore the long-term outcome. As it is in mathematics – and in life – the best short-term solution hardly ever leads to the best long-term outcome.

Solution: Extend your gratification horizon

Short-term greed is bad but long-term greed is actually good. To get beyond the greedy algorithm, you need to think about solutions on a bigger timescale. Someone following the greedy algorithm (driven by short-term greed) would never go to medical school – the student is building debt with no income year after year. Someone who’s thinking about a 10-year horizon instead of a 1-2 year horizon sees the six-figure checks that will eventually start coming in.

Element 3: Bad Timing

If you’re working hard but you’re stuck in a plateau, maybe it’s as simple as taking a break. When you do something – and more precisely, when you don’t do something – is critical. The key is to take control of when you apply effort, not just how much effort you apply.

Solution: Wait

If bad timing has you stuck in a plateau, remember, the periods of rest and inactivity are just as important as the periods of great effort, just as silence between the notes is part of the music. If you use time as a tool, you can literally wait your way out of a plateau.

Element 4: Flow Issues

Whenever things seem to be sailing along, sometimes the engine just breaks down. Specifically, you can run into one of four dysfunctions:

Erosion: Sometimes we deplete the resources that we need to be successful. Maybe we run out of capital, or time, or skilled workers. When you hit an erosion plateau, progress tends to degrade slowly as some critical resource is gobbled up over time.

Solution: Find a counterbalance, something that replaces the resource you consume. If you can’t find a counterbalance, you might not be in a plateau at all. You may have reached a terminal point.

Step Function: Sometimes you want to add just a little more of something, but that thing is only available in bundles. The result is a jump in cost, effort, or benefit. We call these things “step functions.” If you aren’t aware that something you need follows a step function, you can hit a plateau because incremental investment won’t lead to incremental improvement.

Solution: Try to smooth out your step function. Sometimes this can be done by identifying some other person or business that has complementary peaks to your own. If you can pool your resources, you can share the cost of the step and make it look more like a comfortable ramp.

Choke points: A choke point is the part of the system that breaks first and slows everything else down. Failing to identify a chokepoint can bring a gushing flow to an unexpected trickle.

Solution: The trick is to find out where the choke point is and creatively route your way around it.

Element 5: Distorted Data

We often react based on distorted data. It’s like walking through a hall of mirrors, and basing a major decision on the crazy fat (or skinny) image you see. Sometimes we measure the wrong things or inappropriately assess risk. In other cases, we fall victim to common psychological errors with data, such as overreacting to the most recent piece of information we’ve received, we get hung up on sunk costs, or we conform to what we think the data is telling us.

Solution: Recognize the signal, ignore the noise

The Enlightenment brought us the scientific method because smart people realized that they couldn’t trust their own eyes. The key is to boil out the impurities of data and recognize that you are looking through a lens that might be deceptive. Each type of distortion has its own remedy, but the tie that binds them is to look for a ground truth of data amidst the chaos.

Element 6: Distraction

It’s easy to fall victim to the illusion of multitasking and become distracted. Distraction is the enemy of adaptation and can lead you straight towards a plateau. How do we know when and what we need to change to live in a world of unrelenting distraction?

Solution: Radical Listening

If you take a page from improv comedy – where you look for the truth in what others are saying and build on it through the “yes…and” strategy – you get to a skill we call radical listening. It’s a mode of active engagement, where you are attuned to your surroundings, listening, and adapting.

Element 7: Failing slow

Failing slow is natural because it’s difficult to tell that a situation is incrementally getting worse. Often the incremental worsening of a situation happens slower than what psychophysicists call the just noticeable difference. The just noticeable difference helps explain why we continue forging ahead when we’re in the throes of a plateau – we just don’t realize how much less we’re getting for our efforts.

Solution: Fail fast

Once you understand the just noticeable difference you can counteract its effects.  By setting clear markers, you can objectively see how you’re progressing, figure out what’s working and what’s failing, correct it and move on. It’s important to realize if your efforts will eventually fail by accelerating failure. This ability to fail fast is key, especially when the problems are changing quickly.

Element 8: Perfectionism

Perfect is the enemy of good. The desire for perfection kills beginnings – it’s never the right time to start, and even if you do, a task is never complete because it is held up to an impossible standard. A plateau of perfection is similar to a plateau of inaction.

Solution: First Steps, etc.

Accept that perfection isn’t achievable. Focus on taking the first step, and then the next step. There are some tricks that can help, such as structured procrastination and setting hard (but liberating) deadlines.

Understanding why we reach a plateau can help us stop wasting time on things that we’ve stopped getting value from and focus on other things that leverage our time and energy better. Instead of being stuck on a series of plateaus, you’ll find yourself scaling mountains that always seemed far out of reach. And when you reach the peak, as all mountaineers know, you’ll see there are always new mountains to climb. This time, however, you won’t feel like you’re going in circles. You’ll be going up, and up, and up.

Those who master The Effect, who can identify a plateau and break through, will leave one-hit wonders in the dust.

Bob Sullivan and Herbert Thompson are the authors of The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success. With more than 40 years of experience between them researching, writing, and analyzing systems and human nature, their new book helps you bust through the plateaus in your own life.

Envision something you have always wanted to do. Go on, take your time. Let yourself go. Is it Snowboarding in the Swiss Alps? Finishing your education? Making a million dollars? Starting your own business? Whatever it is, you can accomplish it, and this can be achieved by first envisioning your dream to be real.

By creating a vision, you can reach far beyond your material existence, get out of your comfort zone, and imaginatively extend yourself beyond what previously seemed impossible. By going deeper, and understanding yourself better, you create a better balance. The heart and soul are enhanced and you then become more focused on the positive. Most people are focused on what they believe they “can’t” do, and not on what they “can” do. Fear is the paralysis and usually the culprit, and creating a vision can help you overcome this.

Great visionaries like Walt Disney emphasized “If you can dream it, you can do it.” Goethe stated, “whatever you are able to do or dream you can initiate it. Boldness has magic, genius, and strength. Start now!” Michelangelo said, “The biggest threat for many of us is not that our goals are too high and we might miss them, but they are too low and we may reach them.” The list of words of wisdom can go on infinitely. There has been great minds throughout the centuries that have learned the secret of seeing the invisible and creating a vision. In fact, it would be impossible for them to achieve their dreams without envisioning them first.

What is a vision for success?

- A vision is something like a mirage in the mind. A state you want manifested into your outer world.

- The idea becomes a conviction after your “will” joins in to support the idea.

- Fine tuning and expounding the concept with the will and intentions to achieve the perceived idea are what creates the vision.

The vision is the expression of a much wished for future, that is better than what exists now or of what is projected to subsist in the future.

Why Develop a Vision?

- Every decision and choice we make has consequences. Without a clear vision, we fall short of having the quality of life we desire.

- Our visions must be strong and steady in order to manifest what we truly desire. Weak visions lead to an imbalanced life.

- Visions not based on our “inner self” are not satisfying and empowering.

- Clear vision leads to fulfillment, purpose, and brings meaning into our lives.

- An unclear vision leads to vulnerability to “whatever” happens, staying true to your vision will make things happen better than you ever thought possible.

Expanding Your Vision

The initial step of a vision becoming a reality is well, by envisioning. In other words, the focus of your vision has no apparent reality on the material plane. Some people call this faith. Not creating a vision is like walking around with your eyes closed, except in the invisible realm your “inner eye” is shut. You cannot go anywhere if you have no place to go to. You must see yourself going somewhere in order to get there! In effect, seeing something in the invisible as “real” manifests the energy in your outer world to eradicate the obstacles that would prevent you from realizing your vision. However, be forewarned. Negative visions can manifest negative results as well. People who are always “envisioning or saving for a rainy day,” eventually have one. “When it rains it pours” is usually the battle cry when misfortune manifests.

If you expand your vision and connect deeply within your inner needs, with the Soul, you will eventually discover an ability to fuse and display visionary creativity. You will become more powerful and charismatic as well. Your relationships will become more sincere, authentic, and energized. Think about it, what do you believe you could accomplish if you perceive it in the invisible, thereby, manifesting the so-called impossible?

A number of highly successful people have claimed to have made a vision board and have recognised it is an important tool for their success. A vision board is usually designed with a big sheet of cardboard that has a collage of different pictures and notes of wants, needs and dreams you wish to fulfill and is usually hung up on your bedroom wall as a reminder of the possibilities that are out there and is also a great visual aid for envisioning your hopes and dreams. This is a great way to reinforce the vision and direction in your mind so that you can be more sure of reaching your dreams.

Cut out a picture of your favorite car, your dream holiday destination, your company logo, a picture of some money etc… and add that to your vision board. Make it appealing as possible so that you will be inspired when looking at it every morning and evening.

I have one myself and find that a vision board has been my saviour when I lose sight of my dreams and has been a great inspiration for me when I forget how good things can be in life if I just hang in there.

I have my moments of low motivation also, believe it or not, and nothing is wrong with that, sometimes our body is trying to tell us to slow down and balance out a little, but when it is time to perform you have to really have a strong reason behind WHY you must succeed in what you are doing, that will be the key to finding your motivation.

Write it down and create an eye pleasing visual of the reason why you must succeed, and make it a MUST, not a should or a maybe.

Create a Vision: Start by Dreaming

- Think about who will participate in the vision.

- Suggest, dream, and envisage.

- Concentrate on positive things. Things that create a sense-of-purpose and meaning to life.

- Do not limit your vision to appearances. Visions go beyond what is in front of you and reaches beyond the three-dimensional world.

- Visions are not limited by needs, but the needs are determined by the vision.

The Power of the Mind and The Placebo Effect

Without a doubt, many of you have heard of the placebo effect. A substance or some other treatment is given to a person that looks like standard medicine, but it is not. It is really a fake identical looking substance that is not a medicine. The person receiving the placebo is not aware whether the treatment is genuine or not.

Although placebos are not actually reacting to the ailment, one out of three individuals claims to have a reaction to the fake medicine. When a person’s symptoms change due to this “fake remedy,” it is called the “Placebo Effect.” However, sometimes the effect can go in the opposite direction and patients believe that the “fake medicine” is causing disagreeable or worse symptoms. This is known as the “Nacebo Effect“.

What it all boils down to is the power of the mind to heal or destroy through the power of imagination. The NCCAM, National-Center-for-Complementary-and-Alternative-Medicine, a branch of the National Institute of Health states yes, “there is significant proof,” that the mind can have a positive influence on mental functioning and quality of life.”

Carl T. Javert, a holistic doctor now deceased, believed that illnesses were frequently psychosomatically brought about by emotional stress. He assisted women during pregnancy to supervise their problems and difficulties in order to prevent miscarriages and other impediments. With the placebo effect, an individual experiences what they “expect to happen.” If the expectation is to feel better or worse, either could occur. The placebo in itself had nothing to do with the effects directly. However, the person’s “belief” helped to change the outcome.

Imagine harnessing that tremendous power of the mind and envisioning an outcome so strongly that it transcends your material surroundings. A very famous actor did just that. He did not have much, but plenty of talent and faith, before experiencing a very successful acting career. He wrote himself a check for $10,000,000 and post-dated it for 10 years later, hoping he would be able to eventually cash it. That actor is Jim Carrey, one of the most famous comedic actors in the world!

The Power of a Vision

The power of a vision permits us to see beyond our present condition. The power to visualize was given to us for a reason. We are able to manifest our miniature worlds within the colossal world we call earth. Through vision we can dream, create, and manifest what does not yet exist. However, the vision must hold steady to the true and the good. If we want positive results, we must hold true to a positive outcome. The vision must be powerful enough to create a conviction so strong within, that it cannot be shattered regardless of appearances.

Some would say vision is nothing but good ole’ faith under a pseudo name, and this might be true. If one wants to call it faith by all means, do so. Whatever works is fine. Think of your vision in the same way as a diet. In order for your diet to work, you must stick with it. You must think about how much better you will feel and look by staying with that diet, this is the exact same way the “power of vision works.” It works through determination, commitment, and faith.

“See the invisible, Believe the incredible, Achieve the impossible” – Joel Brown

Article by Joel Brown | Addicted2Success.com

The idea of buying and selling websites, otherwise known as website flipping, is becoming a very common trend on the Internet. Ideally, a less functional site is bought at a low price and later sold at a higher price after it has been tweaked and modified for better presentation and functionality.

This stems from the idea that most individuals who need a website to run their business or projects, lack the time and technical knowhow of designing one. You can take this opportunity to buy websites, fine-tune them a little and your efforts will be recovered when you sell the awesome new re-designed website. A powerful investment opportunity if you know how to flip a website properly.

The types of websites you can buy

You need to understand the types of websites available before deciding on the business of buying and selling websites. Essentially, the type of websites you may venture in will depend on a variety of factors; this may include the purpose of the website, the expected traffic, audience, structure and so on.

The most common types of websites for sale in the market include:

• Forums
• Dropship product sites
• Blogs
• Popular sales and Clickbank pages
• Clickbank ready affiliate sites
• Niche communities
• Paid membership sites
• Social networking websites

Clickbank affiliate ready websites are great and have high income potential, but this is true if you understand that specific niche. You may otherwise be required to throw in a little more effort. These sites also tend to produce high income at the start due to he launching effects, but then die off after a while.

Blogs are great, but they require extra effort to drive in traffic, unless you have a creative writer to supply constant high quality SEO content.

Community sites on the other hand are great because they don’t rely on Google or social media sites to drive in traffic. This can considerably make your venture of buying and selling websites a success story.

Niche specific or paid membership sites have proven to be lucrative as their monthly income can be maintained relatively high with some good marketing.

Considerations before website buying and selling

1. Technical know how:

If you are buying a website then you need to find out if you have the technical knowledge required to manage the website. Some sites are pretty easy to run; you may just need to update content through its content management system once in a while. Other sites may however be quite complex to handle and may require some advanced IT skills.

2. Traffic:

You need to find out how much traffic the website gets. It’s all about traffic, remember? Google analytics can come in handy for this. You can request an authentic screen shot from the person you are looking at purchasing the website from so that you can verify the websites traffic is legit.

If you are selling your website, then you can use a screen shot of your awesome flood of traffic to promote the sale of your website.

3. How much money does the website make?

Ask the owner for screenshots or video screen casts to verify the weekly or monthly income of the website. Some months may be better than others in certain niches, so you want to see a graph of their performance report as far back as possible. Just in case they are only showing you a visual of a miracle month of income, which a number of websites have from time to time.

4. Is the website established?

You need to verify that the website you are about to buy has solid roots, otherwise the income and the traffic may vanish after a few months. You can do this by checking the number of pages Google has indexed so far, age of the domain name, traffic and revenue income history and number of back links that point back to the website.

5. Does the Website have a good promotional system in place?

Once you create content for your website you want other people to share it also right? Well you need to make sure that the website you are considering purchasing has a Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram account etc… The Social Media accounts don’t have to have a strong following, (although that will give you a great knee up to drive traffic), but they at least have to have the websites full name included in the username so that you are accepted officially through these social network platforms by visitors and viewers.

Where to buy or sell websites

There are a number of websites on the Internet where listings of sites for sale are maintained. These websites can be used for website buyers and website sellers. Most sites require that you bid on the listings and the seller will choose on the best bid, kind of like eBay.

You need also to consider several factors on such websites such as security as well as the fees charged. You might also be required to develop a reputation on such sites to be more successful at bids.

The most common and reliable market places for buying and selling websites are Digitalpoint and Flippa. You may find some other smaller ones when you search on Google, but these two websites have so far gained the most trust and reputation.
Most of these sites are convenient when it comes to buying and selling websites. Some sites like Flippa may however charge up to 5% transaction fees, but this should not be an obstacle if you have found a potential site to buy.

You may also opt to go to website owners directly, if there is some way of contacting them. Some owners even announce the sale of the site or domain name on their platforms. This might be a viable option considering that sites that rank highly for certain keywords may be relatively expensive in the marketplaces.

If you have trouble tracking down the owner of the website you can always head over to whois.com and run a search on their websites domain address. Most sites will come up with the webmasters email address and this is usually a good way to reach out to the website owner.

How much should you offer when buying or selling a website?

You should first keep in mind that a website is generally valued by how much revenue the site is generating at the present. For transaction purposes, do not allow the website owner to value the website based on foreseen “potential”. This is because if such potential existed, they would not be selling it in the first place. The following three other means should assist you in finding the value of an existing website.

Website Valuator Sites

There are a number of websites out there that can determine the site’s value, but this is not always reliable and should only be a rough estimate of the true value. What a number of people do is, they will visit 5-6 websites that value your desired site and then you average the total value that the 5-6 sites equate to.

Value by Comparison

Another way to value a website is to compare it to a number of sites in that niche or field and see what other similar sites have sold for in the past or are currently priced at on the market.

Website’s intrinsic value

This is how much you get when you break down the components of the website. Look at the key traits of the site, applications, programs, design, social media following, mail subscriptions.

How to improve your site before selling

There are thousands of ways in which you can improve on your purchased website before selling it at a profit. Such value addition practices include:

Design: you can make the website to be a little more eye-catching by changing style, colour theme and even fonts. There are various templates that can do this for you to make the process a little less involving. If you are running a blog through wordpress then google “wordpress themes” and download some to play around with for a better layout or style. 

Add content: You can also add some rich SEO content to increase the visibility of the website and improve ranking on search engines. This is especially useful for niche specific websites. SEO, stands for Search Engine Optimization and is highly convenient and very rewarding to understand if you are interested in mastering the art of “increasing your organic website traffic”.

Rethink your hosting: you may want to move your newly acquired website to a more reliable hosting company that runs at least 99% of the time. A number of sites guarantee a 99% up time, and are more reliable with a lot better support in case you have any technical issues.

One thing I have learnt through running Addicted2Success.com is that it is highly important to have a fast enough Dedicated Server with enough CPU, Storage & RAM to manage the high amount of traffic during peak times. It may cost around $100 or more per month for a dedicated server but at least your site wont crash and your page loads are a lot quicker, resulting in better google rankings, which is something any serious website owner should strive for.

Add some personality: A personalized site draws in more of an audience and ensures a steady supply of traffic as people feel more like you’re their friend than some corporation or robot run business that they go to from time to time.

You may want to also brand you domain name, add a logo, open forums, throw in a bit of your personal experience, create a bio or any other way that connects you with the audience and builds more of a friendly rapport.

Others: Depending on the type and purpose of the site, you may add applications, plug-ins, change the structure/site map, link to social sites and more.

Selling your website

As mentioned earlier, there are websites that act as marketplaces for buying and selling websites. You can list your websites here after you have done all the necessary improvements and wait to select on potential bidders.

Similarly, you can set aside a space on the website for an announcement that shows the website is for sale. This might be a slower process but it puts you in control of the transaction and pricing. Better still, you can set aside a small website specifically for the purpose of your website buying or selling activities especially if you are an established figure in the website flipping business with several websites on the line.

One more thing, do not overprice your websites. Always make sure you sell at the true value and this will cultivate more happy returning clients in your venture of buying and selling websites.

We hope this gives you enough information to buy and sell websites successfully, best of luck!

Article By Joel Brown | Addicted2Success.com

We all want to be amazing. We all want to be successful, happy, and regarded as important figures in our fields. I am sure that you’ve heard all of the keys to success before: planning, hard work, perseverance, etc.

But today we are going to look at the one factor that will likely make or break your success: the people you surround yourself with.

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn

Want to be Amazing? Surround Yourself with Amazing People

The Make or Break List

A good friend of mine once told me of a man he knows who brought himself up from rags to riches.  Living paycheck to paycheck was a luxury for this man, and he decided that he was tired of being trapped by his own life. The poor man looked around at his friends, and noticed that one of them – who wasn’t particularly smart or more talented – had become quite wealthy. He asked this man how he accrued this wealth, how he was able to become a millionaire. The wealthy man’s response was simple: “keep the right company.”

The man took that advice to heart. He quickly noticed that all of the other friends he had hated hard work and had no desire to improve themselves. So he sought out new friends, he went around to conventions and seminars to connect with people who had made something of themselves. After he had completely replaced the people in his network, he decided to make a list. This list was simple. It had a column for people who would improve his life, and a column for people who would drag him down.

If someone could improve his life, he spent as much time around them as possible. If someone could drag him down, he never spent more than five minutes around them. After following his “make or break” list, the man was able to become a millionaire within three years.

No One does it Alone

The five-minute rule may be a little extreme, but there is an important lesson to learn from it: if you surround yourself with positive people who build you up, the sky is the limit.

There is an ideal in our society of the “self-made” man – a man who is able to find success through his own efforts. Now, don’t get me wrong, success does require an immense amount of determination and personal grit. However, success also depends on the ability to connect with people who have already made it.

There was once a man named Ernest Hemingway. If you aren’t familiar with Ernest Hemingway, he was one of the greatest American writers of all time. Even a great writer like Hemingway didn’t succeed on his own. He worked at a newspaper where his boss – a writer named Sherwood Anderson – helped him get his first novel published. Hemingway then connected with other no-name writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce.

This community of great writers helped to influence his style, success, and drove him to write every single day and become one of the greatest authors of his generation.

Hemingway is a testament to the fact that innate talent alone does not equal success. It’s hard to keep up a strict schedule to perfect your craft or improve yourself if you don’t have people around you with similar interests. Your network – your five key people – will determine the way you think, the way you act, and the way you approach your life goals.

Three Essential People

A mentor once told me that no matter how many close people you have in your network, if you want to be truly great, you must have three essential people in your life at all times: 

1. A person who is older and more successful than you to learn from
2. A person who is equal to you to exchange ideas with
3. A person below you to coach and keep you energized

A great figure of history who embodied this principle was Aristotle. Aristotle was one of the greatest minds to ever grace this beautiful Earth, but this was only so because he was constantly challenging himself and working to refine his talents. He exchanged ideas with other Greek philosophers in the “Academy,” learned from his mentor Plato, and taught a young boy named Alexander…who would later become “Alexander the Great.”

Every great person was, is, or will be successful because of the company he or she keeps. They will make an impact because of a successful network of driven peers who provide both inspiration and healthy competition.

If you want to be remarkable, you must constantly challenge yourself and surround yourself with remarkable people. So think about what your goals are, and take a look around you. Do you need to write a “make or break” list?

Do you have the kind of people who are going to lead you to live the life of your dreams?

“Don’t join an easy crowd. Go where the expectations and the demands to perform and achieve are high.” – Jim Rohn

Strive to be better. Strive to be more. Strive to be amazing.

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering. - Theodore Roosevelt

Never in history has the easy life led to a great life. Not in one case has something great come without tribulation, struggle, or failure. Instead of fearing struggle, strain, and tribulation, you should embrace it; nay, seek it at every opportunity, and incorporate it into your life daily. It’s in struggle that you experience growth. It’s in conquering obstacles that you experience life.

A Case Against the Easy Life

Ease isn’t living, it’s dying. It’s forgoing life and awaiting death. Ease brings a halt to your growth and evolution as a human being.

Every year I do an exercise where I write out my perfect day. The other day I looked back at what my ‘perfect day’ was 5 years ago. It was almost the exact opposite of what my vision of success is today.

Back then I wanted ease. I wanted no alarm clock, little work, and a life of luxury. What I’ve come to understand is that in creating the ability to have that life of luxury, I’ll have to go through my fair share of failures and struggles.

Those failures and struggles are where I’ll develop into a man, a success, and a better human being. Why, then, would I want to forgo that growth? Why, even if I’m able, would I reach my idea of success, and then simply stop my evolution by lulling in to a life of ease?

Today, I know I wouldn’t. Just because success is attained doesn’t mean our growth as people, entrepreneurs, or leaders, comes to a halt. Look at Teddy Roosevelt. He never stopped achieving, accomplishing, and growing as an individual until the day he died. The same with Steve Jobs, Napoleon Bonaparte, Andrew Carnegie, and any other person in history who accomplished anything of great value.

Ease is Not Only Useless, It’s Evil

There’s a commonly held world view that your life is your own and you have the right to do what you want with it. I disagree with one aspect of this argument, and that is with regards to laziness.

Just like ease has created nothing of great value in the way of great people on this planet, the fundamental understand that your time on this earth is limited and dwindling has led to great accomplishment, and names worth remembering.

It’s a universal truth that the day you’re born is the day you start dying. Those who accomplish greatness understand this, and they don’t let a day go to waste.

It’s also a universal truth – especially in this free, democratic, capitalistic society – that many have died so you and I can live the freedom you so casually take for granted. They’ve sacrificed their lives in battle. They’ve laid down their lives in protest. They’ve given their lives to innovation and helping others.

Those who came before you, and died before you, have done so in vain if you give your life to laziness, and that’s when laziness is no longer a right, but an evil.

Ease’s ugly cousin is laziness. To be a lazy person is a slap in the face of anyone who’s sacrificed anything to give you the life you currently enjoy – to give you the option of being lazy. Be it your mother, father, grandparents, or that soldier who died in the Second World War whom you’ll never meet, but owe so much.

How to Truly Live: Embrace the Struggle

The goal for all of us here at Addicted2Success, is to create a successful life. I’m sure we can all agree that a successful life, in part, is one truly lived. That is, a life filled with accomplishment, adventure, highs and lows, struggle, defeat, and victory. A life is filled with action, not ease.

Look back to the man who gave us that famous quote at the beginning of this article, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a man who embraced the strenuous life. He saw the value in hardship, and the evil of a life of ease. As such, he accomplished more in his 60 years than dozens have in their 100.

To create a life of accomplishment, and one of success, YOU have to embrace hard work. Hard work creates grit. It gives us a sense of pride, purpose, and accomplishment; without which, we can never truly feel as though we’re giving our best to this dying flame we call life, or our true value to the rest of those we’re connected to on this planet.

Instead of looking forward to a future of ease, embrace your present hardships, and look to add more strain to your life. This is how you grow. This is how you evolve. This is how you live.

Japanese businessman and co-founder of Sony “Akio Morita” was an innovator of high quality electronics, selling billions in revenue around the world. Akio Morita’s business strength was in his ability to understand both Western and Eastern cultures and combine the best of both worlds to globalize Sony as a household name.

In 1966, Morita wrote a book called Gakureki Muyō Ron, which means “Never Mind School Records“, where Akio stresses that school records are not important to success or one’s business skills.

So what skills are important for achieving success? Akio Morita shares his advice for breaking down barriers in the business world.

Akio Morita’s Success Advice

Why Akio Morita Believes Sony Succeeded:

1. “I established the rule that once we hire an employee, his schools records are a matter of the past, and are no longer used to evaluate his work or decide on his promotion.”

2. “My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target.”

3. “I believe one of the reasons we went through such a remarkable growth period was that we had this atmosphere of free discussion. A company will get nowhere if all of the thinking is left to management.”

4. “I have always made it a point to know our employees, to visit every facility of our company, and to try to meet and know every single employee.”

5. “The company must not throw money away on huge bonuses for executives or other frivolities but must share its fate with the workers.”

Akio Morita’s Business Advice:

1. “Advertising and promotion alone will not sustain a bad product or a product that is not right for the times.”

2. “From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people’s inborn creativity. My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it.”

3. “I believe people work for satisfaction. I believe it is a big mistake to think that money is the only way to compensate a person for his work. People need money, but they also want to be happy in their work and proud of it.”

4. “There is no secret ingredient or hidden formula responsible for the success of the best Japanese companies.”

5. “There are three creativities: creativity in technology, in product planning, and in marketing. To have any one of these without the others is self defeating in business.”

On Being Humble:

If you go through life convinced that your way is always best, all the new ideas in the world will pass you by.

Thoughts On Innovation:

Carefully watch how people live, get an intuitive sense as to what they might want and then go with it. Don’t do market research. I knew we needed a weapon to break through to the U.S. market, and it had to be something different, something that nobody else was making.

Do’s & Don’ts:

Don’t be afraid to make a mistake. But make sure you don’t make the same mistake twice.

Thoughts On Success:

We all learn by imitating, as children, as students, as novices in the world of business. And then we grow up and learn to blend our innate abilities with the rules or principles we have learned.

Akio Morita’s Final Years

On November 25, 1994, Morita stepped down as Sony chairman after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage while playing tennis. He was succeeded by Norio Ohga, who had joined the company in the 1950s after sending Akio Morita a letter denouncing the poor quality of the company’s tape recorders. Instead of taking offense, Akio saw a talent in Norio and decided to hire him for his honesty and keen eye for improvement.

On October 3, 1999, Morita died of pneumonia at the age of 78.

Although Akio is no longer with us, his story and his knowledge of transforming the business world still lives on. R.I.P Akio Morita.

Article By Joel Brown | Addicted2Success.com

Steve Stoute has established himself as the go-to guy for Fortune 500 brands who want to partner with celebrities and rebrand their products. This 43 yr old branding and marketing genius is the brain power behind a number of successful celebrities and companies such as Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Reebok, McDonalds and Hewlett & Packard.

Read on as Steve Stoute shares his 12 Rules For Success with you.

Steve Stoute’s Keys To Success

1 – Learn to fall in love with the pain of hard work

2 – Know that pain is temporary

Nothing Lasts Forever, pain included.

3 – Every day matters

Everyday is an opportunity to bring you closer to your goals.

4 – Return every phone call

A missed phone call is a missed opportunity. In business,  a return phone call often equals return clients”

5 – Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do

6 – To get what you want, you must do things you don’t want to do

7 – Know what you don’t know

Will Smith once said in an interview, he doesn’t think he is smarter than anyone else, he simply just “understands his stupidity”. That is, he is well aware of what he DOESN”T know because those are the things which require a greater effort to learn and improve on, than what he DOES know.

8 – Respect the commodity of persistence

9 – The more successful you become, the more humble you should be

10 – If you respect someone’s success, do not feel ashamed to imitate their successful behaviour

If it worked for one person, chances are it can work for you as well!! Feel free to tweak and add you own flavor to one’s successful behavior. “The genius behind being a genius is…simply applying what you know to what another genius has already done”.

11 – Learn to tan your business

I encourage businesses to embrace change, to evolve, and become more relevant to this new generation of consumers while staying true to their core brand.

12 – Set the bar high

I tell young entrepreneurs to use the leader in their industry and as a benchmark as they work to create their own brand. Don’t look at what your competition is doing — if you emulate the leader in your industry you will achieve a higher level of engagement with consumers and make their buying experience richer.

Make sure you get your hands on Steve Stoute’s amazing book “The Tanning of America”:

Credit goes to Steve Stoute for the 12 rules of success

A lot of us are afraid to fail. We believe it as a sign of weakness and can even come to regret ever taking that leap of faith. Well, contrary to this belief, a number of highly successful achievers often credit a failure or two, to their success.

Read on as we break down the fundamental reasons why failure should be important to you.

Welcoming Failure

“Eventually, we all must come to a decision, for ourselves, about what represents failure; however, the world is very keen to put failure on a schedule, and give you a set of decisive factors, if you allow it. A meager seven-years following my graduation, failure had hit me on a grand scale. A fleeting marriage was dissolved, I had no job, a single parent, and as destitute as anyone could possibly be without living on the streets. My parent’s fears for me, and those I had for myself, had finally transpired, and according to the book of failure, I was the biggest.” This paragraph is a summation of a speech given by J.K. Rowling at the, AMHAA, the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association. If any of you are not familiar with the name J.K. Rowling, she is the creator of Harry Potter. A fable filled with unbelievable characters and imaginary. Yet, at one time, she had considered herself a failure.

The premise of using J.K. Rowling as an example about the importance of failure is to emphasize the point that, failure is not unusual. Being an author worth billions of dollars is not a prerequisite in order to learn from our failures and to attain success. Success means something different to different people. However, there is something everyone has in common who has succeeded at what they set out to do; they have failed at one time or another. In fact multiple times. Henry Ford, the great automaker, went bankrupt four times. Google tried to sell itself for one million dollars! Thomas Edison produced thousands of light bulbs that gave no light at all!

Failure is a type of freedom. Why? Because the worst has happened. Now, you can relax and rebuild your life. You do not have to fail on a large scale, but failure in life is inevitable. There is no way to live life without failing from time to time. The only way you won’t fail is if you live so guardedly that you are barely living at all, wherein, you fail by default. A wise thinker once stated, “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than out-and-out exposure, and the fearful are captured just as frequently as the bold.” Failure is not something to shun, but something to embrace.

The Importance of Failure

Okay, it’s clear; we all will face failures in life. However, this does not mean we should “chase failure” in order to get it over with, so to speak. It’s a funny thing, but failure is never planned. It’s the companion of success. An unwanted companion for sure, but nevertheless, a very important one.

When we resist failure, it attaches itself to us. You don’t solve an issue by resisting it. We overcome failure by accepting it, analyzing it, dissecting it, and looking at it from every possible angle. Without failure, there is no growth.

The Business of Failure

The United States, SBA, Small Business Administration, states that more than half of small businesses fail during the initial five years in service. However, failed entrepreneurial pursuits are as vital as successful ones. One trade that thrives on failure is the technology industry. There’s hardly anyone over the age of 25 who is not familiar with the late Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers. He was the perfect example of courage in failure. In his first attempt at a mobile gadget, it failed. In fact, it failed pretty badly and he was thrown out of the company. Nonetheless, he is one of the greatest comeback stories of all time.”

Unfortunately, failure in entrepreneurial activity is frowned upon. During Steve Job’s attempts at success in the 70s, failure was par for the course. Markets are certainly sought-after not because they are “failure proof.” It’s because they offer a procedure for gaining from mistakes along with the inducement to correct them. Entrepreneurs have to be crafty. They are not only good at getting things right, they, like the rest of us, can understand when they have it wrong and work on correcting their mistakes.

The More You Fail, the More You Win

Failure drives us to change. Without it, where would we be today? Thomas Edison produced tons of light bulbs that did not work. If he had not tried again and again, well, we all know the answer to that one. Winston Churchill once stated, “Success is based on going from failure to failure without losing eagerness.” Of course, some individuals are sardonic. These types of people never pick themselves up from failure because they did not grow from a previous failure. Failure is the most wonderful teacher if we are willing to learn from it.

Success does not come easy. Everyone must face one hurdle after another. It’s the only way to reach success. The reason being is that success must be maintained. If you think that once you have the success you crave and it’s time to relax, you are sadly mistaken. For example, you’ve always wanted to buy a home. You finally purchase the home of your dreams. However, your home must be maintained. Once a goal is reached, you must have the tenacity to remain there and move higher if you wish. Without repeated failures, you do not have the know-how of sustainability.

Even though success is the power that hastens us en route to our goals, it is failure that guides us to those goals that count. When failure is acknowledged as being just as vital as success, it’s easier to accept it freely and carry on with searching for a resolution.

Plan B

A very well known fellow stated, “the most successful people are those who are good at Plan B.” Individuals who are good at “brushing failure off their shoulders” take the necessary steps to try again, usually with Plan B. In fact, Plan B may not even be a plan at all! Plan B is the “I can do it attitude.” Plan B, is the transition from failure to success. We can comprehend the function for failure if we acknowledge that human beings prefer to “dispel the uneasiness of failure.” Human beings are forever determined to achieve their loftiest goals as frequently as time permits. However, failure surrounds us and no person ever experiences a total lack of uneasiness. There is always that smidgen of the unknown. Regardless of our best efforts, we are never 100% sure of success! There is always that lingering doubt in the back of our minds; in spite of this, our will is stronger than failure and doubt inevitably loses.

“The desire to succeed, must be great than the fear of failure.” This statement was made by well-known actor and comedian Bill Cosby. In our personal and professional lives, the aforementioned quote states the significance of failure and how big a part it plays in each of our lives. Consider this. During the day, where is your energy focused? Is it focused on succeeding or failing? Is the glass half-empty or half full? Our thoughts have us on leash. Eventually, we go where they lead.

If you focus on negativity, then your world become cynical. If you focus on positivism, even the harshest defeat is only a stepping-stone. A mother was speaking with her daughter who was despondent about repeated failures. She spoke about well-known personalities and how they succeeded because they “tried that one last time.” This gave her daughter the incentive to try again. After reading about the importance of failure she stated, “you never know what waits beyond failure; therefore, I will try again.” Failure is the stratagem that leads to success. Without it, where would we be?

Here are some examples of those who failed before reaching amazing success:

Here are 13 harsh, yet truthful indicators as to why you are nowhere near success at this very point in time.

Reasons Why You Are Not Successful Yet

1 – You procrastinate

Actions speak louder than words, the longer you leave something as just a thought someone else out there is taking action and achieving YOUR dreams, only problem with that is, you will never feel what it’s like to achieve success because someone came along and took the rug from underneath your lazy ass.

2 – You forget that you are mortal

No one lives forever, time is of the essence and every minute that passes you by is another chance gone to make your dreams come true.

3 – You listen to others stupid advice

“That’s too hard”, “that won’t work”, “you’re too young”, “you’re too old”. All of that advice is bullsh!t. If everyone listened to the negative advice of others, no one and no thing would really progress in this world.

4 – You are in a bad place

You need to position yourself in an environment where you can be stress free, creative and surrounded by positive people. Your environment is very important, it can influence the way you think, feel and see things.

5 – You dont have a strong enough belief

You need to believe in your dream. It has to be as real as you can make it. If you believe it, you can conceive it and achieve it. The mind and body is an incredible machine, why waste it on the easy and average things in life.

6 – Your motivation is not compelling enough

Why do you want to be successful? Paint a vivid picture in your head of why you deserve to be successful, why you? How are things going to look once you achieve your dreams? This picture needs to be so motivating that it will inspire you to do anything to reach your dreams.

7 – Your crew sucks!

The great motivational speaker Jim Rohn once said “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”.

As humans we learn through repetitious info and the influence of others. We unconsciously learn a lot of things from one another and are affected by our closest of friends and family members. This been said, make sure whoever is in your circle is of good benefit towards your growth, whether it be financially, spiritually, physically or mentally. Don’t be afraid to cut off those who will only drag you down.

8 – You haven’t learned how much regret can really be a bummer!

You never want to be the one who said “I wish I did this” or “I wish I did that”. The one emotion you don’t ever want in life is regret.

NOW has never been a better time to work towards your success.

9 – You are a part time player

You only work towards your goals when it is really convenient for you, or when you have nothing else to do. You look forward to your weekends so you can go out and party instead of using some of that time to work towards your dreams. Balance is good (don’t get me wrong), because you SHOULD take a break from time to time,  but if you live for the weekend, every week, then your plan to be successful is most definitely broken.

10 – You have not set any reminders

Everyone needs a reminder or a wake up call.

Set goals, an inspirational wallpaper on your phone, revise a collection of top quotes, tell your partner or best friend about your dream and make it a daily ritual to remind yourself of what you are truly capable of and what you are working towards.

11 – You think you have arrived already

You cannot afford to settle and stay complacent if you want to achieve success, there is always room to grow, there is ALWAYS more good that we can do in this world.

Keep moving, keep winning.

12 – You are not persistent enough

You hit a bump and you gave up. It’s just a hurdle, so pick yourself up and TRY AGAIN!

Studies show that the most successful people in life are passionate and overly persistent in reaching their goals and dreams. As this picture below would suggest, you could be inches away from success, Never Give Up:

13 – You forgot to be happy

What is all the fame and fortune worth if you are not happy? See, we grow up believing success leads to happiness, when in actual fact our brains work in exactly the opposite order.

Everyone’s view of what success means to them will be different, but at the end of the day if you are not happy with your achievements, the people around you or the journey itself then you should re-evaluate the direction you are headed in and adjust your plan accordingly.

Your journey may be a while on the road to success, so why not enjoy the view along the way

Article By Joel Brown | Addicted2Success.com

The next time your puppy chases your child’s pet frog, your baby has a funny look on their face, or you witness an unidentified flying object, you may be an upload away from YouTube fame and fortune.

“Thousands of people are cashing in on youtube“, reveals the Head of YouTube’s Partner Program, Bing Chen. Today, like never before, makeup enthusiasts, Pilates instructors, music DJ’s, and people from just about every walk of life are making money off of each viewing of their YouTube video.

What is so astonishing is that 99% of the most successful individuals on YouTube are the average everyday people who happened to have a bit of nerve, good timing, and talent thrown in for good measure.

So here’s our 11 Creative ways to make money online using YouTube.

How To Make Money Using YouTube

1 – Sell your own Products

The channel for fitness, Blogilates, and Pilates teacher Cassey Ho has 16 million views along with an e-commerce feature where she sells her own Pilate exercise clothing line and gym bags.

Cassey Ho says she makes a six-figure income now, all thanks to the #1 video sharing platform, “YouTube”.

2 – Tutorials

Michelle Phan is a 25 year old who creates makeup tutorials and teaches women how to purchase cosmetics. Miss Phan’s vivacious persona and sharp tutorials made her an instant sensation with over 3 million subscribers and more than 647 million video views.

Michelle Phan has been asked by Lancôme to become their authorized video makeup artist. She is just one of many that have made some serious cash from creating a successful tutorial youtube channel.

3 – Create a Series

Brother’s Benny and Raffi Fine made their You Tube “Kids React” series profitable. With over 360 million views, it is easy to see why. The videos show teens and children responding to pop-culture and other viral videos.

They have had so much success they can now afford to hire a team of ten employees to work with them.

4 – Reviewing affiliate programs

An easier, faster and probably the most effective method of making money on YouTube is by promoting affiliate products and then linking them in your description field. To get guaranteed sales through this method, all you need is to show how the product is used to get results. This way you will be able to make a lot of sales.

5 – Create a Hit Single!

South Korean sensation Psy showcased his song “Gangnam Style” on YouTube and the rest is history. Not only has he clocked up more than 7 million likes and over 1 and a half billion views, Justin Bieber’s manager has added Psy to his roster, his single reached pole-position in the iTunes charts in at least nine countries, and he’s now a multi-millionaire just from google ads on his YouTube video!

Teen artist, Rebecca Black also cashed in on her millions when her single “Friday” went viral on YouTube. She can thank TV host Jimmy Fallon after he shared her “Friday” video clip on late night TV across America resulting in a domino effect of stardom.

6 – Let your voice be heard!

Ted Williams was homeless and down on his luck until a fortunate encounter with a videographer from the Columbus Dispatch. Ted’s speaking voice was so mesmerizing, his YouTube video went viral. After more than 20 million YouTube views Ted has been on countless TV shows and offered voiceover work from well-known companies for TV commercials and radio.

So, if you have a voice with an interesting quality, tone, or twist to it, let it be heard!

7 – Become A YouTube Partner

Currently there are more than 15,000 YouTube partners throughout the world, and online video advertising has reached a staggering $3.4 Billion in 2012; it is expected to reach over $5 Billion in 2013. Most of them make a career out of their videos, with some managing to make 6 figures or more in a year. Partners in this program share income generated from rentals and InVideo overlay ads. They also get opportunities to participate in branded entertainment openings. The YouTube partners are usually featured on YouTube’s homepage, meaning that they enjoy more views and more chances of making money.

It is important to note that, to get into YouTube Partner Program is not easy and requires one to gain subscribers even before applying for the program.

8 - Start A YouTube Competition

Mariah Carey’s Fan Club Remix proposed a remix competition to market a new song. There were 45,000 views within two weeks. The winner’s video claimed the 1st spot from 1,200 entries. Now, this individual has a career as a DJ and video-mixer due to YouTube’s exposure and the competition from the singer’s fan club.

If you can make your competition fun, exciting and with a great reward, you will be able to generate enough exposure for your project or company, so hit the drawing board and come up with a great, legitimate competition out there that will be a win win for you and your contestants.

9 - Sell Links In Your Video Description

Primarily, this method focuses on directing or converting YouTube visitors to another webpage or source. Here, you do not have to make ads in your videos to make money, just a link placement in the description box below.

Your main target is the small percentage of visitors that convert to real customers.

10 – YouTube Rentals

This is one of the most recent ways of making money on YouTube. In this method, content creators are allowed to offer their content for rent and then share a portion of the profits made with YouTube. However, YouTube has not yet clarified whether the service will be available to all or just certain types of users.

This will definitely provide a whole new method of making money on YouTube, as users will be charging rental fees for their videos.

11 - Just Ask for It!

One good success deserves another, and exposure on YouTube helps to sanction start-ups, assisting them with raising the venture capital they need. In addition, YouTube has been assisting nonprofit organizations for fund-raising ventures as well.

The International Fund for Animal-Welfare and Greenpeace has worked with YouTube along with struggling filmmakers. If you are running a non for profit then this may be the platform for you, just make sure that the video is compelling and produced at a high enough quality to really present to the world your good cause.

Summary

Overall, in order to build a following on YouTube the beginning video maker must frequently produce fresh work. This will keep curiosity seekers returning to see what’s new, which in turn spreads the word in cyberspace about what’s trending on YouTube. In addition, video novices must title their video so that anybody searching for its content will easily find it.

If you need a little more info on how to stand out on YouTube visit this link here: 8 Ways To Create A Popular YouTube Channel.

Article By: Joel Brown & Jack Jay | Addicted2Success.com

Bob Parsons, the CEO of Web Hosting & Domain name registration company “GoDaddy“, shares his 16 Rules for Success in Business & in Life.

Bob Parsons 16 Rules Of Success In Life & In Business

“Copyright © 2004 Bob Parsons – http://www.bobparsons.me. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.”

You can’t assure success, but you can increase the chances of it happening. After all, opportunity favors the prepared. With the following 15 success principles, you can dramatically increase the chances of success in your life.

Success Principles

1 – Prepare

The first success principle is preparation. It’s the foundation of success. With preparation you create your own opportunities. Once you have all the different elements lined up, it only takes a small opening to realize your goal. At the same time, taking advantage of big opportunities without enough preparation means risking your success, as you’re building without a well-laid foundation.

2 – Do something you love

You have to work very hard whatever it is you choose to do. Your work or your project will dominate much of your time and your life. Therefore, find something that you enjoy doing and do that.

3 – Get started

You have to start somewhere. Today is as good a day as any to start. Get into action today and start moving in the direction you want. Putting it off can only lead to failure, whereas if you start and see an early setback, at least you conquered that setback early on.

4 – Move in the right direction

Keep everything moving in the direction you want. It doesn’t matter if things go slowly initially. As long as the overall direction is favorable, you’ll get where you want to go eventually.

5 – Use the power of dreams and your imagination

What you dream and visualize today will become true tomorrow. You just have to work on turning it into reality. Just as your dreams can only influence your life if you let them, the cities you build in your imagination can only become real if you build them.

6 – Think big

If you set your aim a bit too high you might fall short. If you set your aim too low you might achieve your goal… and miss out on the other opportunities. By thinking bigger, the only limit is what is possible. You’re no longer limited by what you think is possible.

7 – Focus on growth

Seemingly impossible challenges are just cleverly disguised opportunities for growth. If you take those challenges and, in solving them, improve yourself, you’ll find yourself continually moving in the right direction.

8 – Maintain your determination

With enough determination, you can succeed through almost any odds. Enough determination means you’ll find a way no matter the situation.

9 – Set a clear vision

Think through where you’ll want to go. Develop a clear sense of what your final goal is, and keep this with you. By knowing the destination you want to reach, you can continually look at your current path and decide if it’s a route that will help you get where you want to go.

10 – Set goals along the way

A final goal isn’t enough. You need intermediate goals that set the path. These goals should be specific, measurable, realistic, attainable, and timely. These intermediate goals define the steps that you need to take to get to the final one.

11 - Work out plans of action for your work

For each goal, it helps to have plans to reach them. Your plan describes how you can reach each step from where you are, or where you will be. Keep in mind that the future is never certain. Things rarely work out exactly how you plan. Therefore, see these plans as showing one or more possible routes, not necessarily the route you’ll end up taking.

Still, knowing the plan means you can avoid long detours that might compromise your chances of reaching a goal on time — or at all.

12 - Commit to taking action

Once you start going, keep going. Never, never, never give up. If you find an obstacle in your way, chip away at it or go around it. The only way to really fail is to give up. If you keep going you’ll succeed. If you hit the limits of what’s possible, you can regroup and find another way.

13 - Use affirmations

Affirmations are just short, positive, and above all direct phrases in present tense. Things like “I’m getting more and more successful.” The idea is that they reinforce a positive world view. With affirmations, you are defining your own reality. By transmitting a positive world view to your mind, it adopts this view. As your mind adopts this view, it helps shape the world around you to fit it, which means it helps make the world around you one that reflects a reality of you getting more successful every day.

14 - Get rid of negative influences

Avoid harmful influences around you that might shake you from your goal. Keep people and ideas around you that support your success and your belief in yourself.

15 - Be grateful and appreciate what you have

The final success principle is to appreciate what you have already. Realize that — by sheer virtue of the fact that you can be reasonably certain you’ll live from one day to the next — you already have enough. Enjoy it! Appreciate what you’ve achieved so far, and see that what you want, where you’re going, is not what you need or what you must do. Rather, these are things and actions that will make your situation even better.

Article By James Meyer | Addicted2Success.com

These amazingly talented male and female entrepreneurs share their most valuable advice for achieving success. There seems to be a pattern of looking past your failures and pursuing your goals with relentless persistence to reach success.

Read on for some invaluable advice on how you can be successful in your business and in life.

Words Of Advice By Successful Entrepreneurs

Sara Blakely (Founder Of Spanx)

“When I was growing up, my dad would encourage my brother and I to fail. We would be sitting at the dinner table and he would ask, ‘So what did you guys fail at this week?’ If we didn’t have something to contribute, he would be disappointed. When I did fail at something, he’d high-five me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that he was completely reframing my definition of failure at a young age. To me, failure means not trying; failure isn’t the outcome. If I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘I didn’t try that because I was scared,’ that is failure.” – Sara Blakely –  Founder of Spanx

Gurbaksh Chahal (Author & Serial Entrepreneur)

“People tend to think that in order to start a new business they have to come up with something new and dazzling, but that’s a myth – and it’s often propagated by venture capitalists. Find something you love and do it better than everyone else.” – Gurbaksh Chahal – Serial Entrepreneur, Net Worth $200 Million

Jeff Weiner (CEO of LinkedIn)

“As a child, I can’t recall a day that went by without my dad telling me I could do anything I set my mind to. He said it so often, I stopped hearing it. Along with lines like “eat your vegetables, I just assumed it was one of those bromides that parents repeated endlessly to their kids.
It wasn’t until decades later that I fully appreciated the importance of those words and the impact they had on me.” – Jeff Weiner – CEO of LinkedIn

Kevin Rose (Founder of Digg, Pownce & Milk)

“Go build it. If you really believe in something, you should just build it. If you love it, it won’t feel like work. It’s okay to drop out of college if you have an awesome idea.” – Kevin Rose – Founder of Digg, Pownce & Milk

Caterina Fake (Founder of Flickr & Hunch)

“Entrepreneurs need to start building today. The Internet has amazing powers of distribution. You can test your ideas. You can see if it works, if it doesn’t work, whether it’s fun, and whether you’re sufficiently motivated. People who go into entrepreneurship to get rich aren’t going to be happy. It’s the building of things that makes you happy. You have to enjoy the process whether you succeed or fail.” – Caterina Fake – Founder of Flickr & Hunch

Evan Williams (Founder of Blogger & Twitter)

“Surround yourself with great people, try hard things, say no to distractions and remember to care for yourself. Failure of your company is not failure in life. Failure in your relationships is.” – Evan Williams – Founder of Blogger & Twitter

Richard Branson (CEO of Virgin)

“My mother always taught me never to look back in regret but to move on to the next thing. The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures rather than putting that energy into another project, always amazes me. I have fun running ALL the Virgin businesses — so a setback is never a bad experience, just a learning curve.” – Richard Branson – CEO of Virgin

Eric Schmidt (Executive Chairman Of Google)

“Find a way to say yes to things. Say yes to invitations to a new country, say yes to meet new friends, say yes to learn something new. Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job, and your spouse, and even your kids.” – Eric Schmidt – Executive Chairman Of Google

Elon Musk (Founder Of PayPal, Tesla Motors & SpaceX)

“I always knew that there was a chance of failure in all my endeavors. But I felt that they were important enough that I had to try, even if I thought the probability of success was less than 50%. Try to get together a group of people to do something useful. This may seem like an obvious thing, but often people will organize into a company that doesn’t produce anything useful.” – Elon Musk – Founder Of PayPal, Tesla Motors & SpaceX

Guy Kawasaki (Venture Capitalist & Best Selling Author)

“There is only hard work and luck, which are really two sides of the same coin. The search for a secret sauce is a futile waste of time. Create something, sell it, make it better, sell it some more and then create something that obsoletes what you used to make.” – Guy Kawasaki – Venture Capitalist & Best Selling Author

Mark Cuban (Shark Tank Investor & Owner of the Dallas Mavericks)

“One thing we can all control is effort. Put in the time to become an expert in whatever you’re doing. It will give you an advantage because most people don’t do this. The beauty of success, whether it’s finding the girl of your dreams, the right job or financial success, is that it doesn’t matter how many times you have failed, you only have to be right once.” And, “then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.” – Mark Cuban - Billionaire Investor & Owner of the Dallas Mavericks

Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook)

“I don’t believe we have a professional self from Mondays through Fridays and a real self for the rest of the time. That kind of division probably never worked, but in today’s world … it makes even less sense. I’ve cried at work … I talk about my hopes and fears and ask people about theirs. I try to be myself–honest about my strengths and weaknesses.” – Sheryl Sandberg – COO of Facebook

Chad Hurley (Co-Founder Of YouTube)

“As you start building the product, don’t assume that you know all the answers. Surround yourself with great people. You need people you can trust to do their job and sometimes the product or idea can die if someone is too controlling. Be prepared to adapt. Also, being lean and mean helps you build something more efficient. You may have initial thoughts or ideas on how something will work but you need to observe how you and the community are using it. Don’t be afraid to change direction mid course.” - Chad Hurley – Co-Founder Of YouTube

J.K. Rowling (Author of the Harry Potter Series)

“So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” – J.K. Rowling – Author of the Harry Potter series

Matt Barrie (CEO of Freelancer.com)

“Too many capable people limit their options because they think they don’t have enough experience or feel that they need to work their way up the corporate ladder by visiting every single rung on the way up. Too many people tell me that their dream is to leave their boring cog in the machine day job and start their own business, but they couldn’t possibly think of doing that because they’ve never had experience running one – well that’s a bit chicken and egg! Carpe diem! The time is now! Time and tide waits for no man. No one is going to hand you your future on a plate.” – Matt Barrie – CEO of Freelancer.com

Jordan Belfort (Best Selling Author & Motivational Speaker)

“In business you should always offer value first and then get the money afterwards. The mistake I made was that I focused so much on the creation of money without going out there and giving value first. Monetizing value is easy; it’s a matter of building that value first.” – Jordan Belfort – Best Selling Author & Motivational Speaker

 Daymond John (Founder of FUBU Clothing and Shark Tank Investor)

“Try to make all the mistakes with your own money and on a small level so that when you are responsible for a partner’s money or assets you’ve learned and you don’t make bigger mistakes. Try to go as far as you can without anybody else’s help first.” – Daymond John – Founder of FUBU Clothing and Shark Tank Investor

Arianna Huffington (Founder Of The Huffington Post)

“My mother told me failure is not the opposite of success; it’s a stepping stone to success. You’re going to fail, probably many times. But that’s okay — in fact, it’s essential. Very often, the difference between success and failure is simply perseverance. If we become so dependent on things always being a success, then we’re in a very vulnerable position — because we’re not in control of how the world is going to receive something.” – Arianna Huffington – Founder Of The Huffington Post

Ben Huh (CEO & Founder of Cheezburger)

“You need to put the fear of risk aside. Startups need leaders who are willing to persevere through the hard times. Failure is an option, and a real risk. Failure and risk are something entrepreneurs should understand well, and learn to manage. Don’t have a fear of talking about your failures. Don’t hide your mistakes.” – Ben Huh – CEO & Founder of Cheezburger

James Caan (BBC’s “Dragons Den” Investor)

“Never stop asking yourself whether you can do things better. Keep testing every aspect of your business to the nth degree, and challenge every one of your assumptions. The tougher you are on yourself now, the tougher your business will be out there in the real world.” - James Caan - BBC’s “Dragons Den” Investor

Article By: Joel Brown | Addicted2Success.com

Passive income online is something of a holy grail. Everyone wants to “make money as they sleep.” After all, if you can take care of paying the rent without having to spend your time massaging spreadsheets all day, you can do something more worthwhile with your life.

That’s why we are offering you: 10 Great Ways To Make Money While You Sleep.

10 Great Ways to Make Passive Income Online

As with any business that a large number of people want to enter, the widely known sources of passive income have enough people entering those markets that you can expect lots of competition. Your success depends on whether or not you are able to jump the various barriers to entry that inevitably appear. Unfortunately, jumping those hurdles can (if you’re not careful) seriously reduce the “passive” side of passive income online. Certainly in the beginning, passive income can make for longer (sometimes much longer) working days than traditional income.

Once income is coming in, you may still need to check on things and put in work to keep it going. The mindset of someone who succeeds in passive income is not that of “get it done and go surfing.” You need the mindset of an investor. Passive income always starts with a significant investment: if you buy real estate, it’s a financial investment. If you want to make passive income online, you’ll almost certainly invest a very significant amount of time.

The process of making passive income online involves three choices:

- Your business model
- Your niche
- Your target market.

Once you know these, you can implement your business idea, test, and repeat until you have the income you want.

For all the noise about income online, the process is remarkably simple. Try not to get distracted by the flashing lights and shiny objects along the way.

1 - Build an affiliate blog

Set up a blog, promote the blog, and use it to promote affiliate offers. This is by far the best known way to generate a source of passive income online.

Start with an affiliate site like ClickBank or Commission Junction. Find a few offers in a category that you know a bit about. Ideally offers with some degree of recurring income. Make sure they have good numbers, and do your keyword research to make sure there’s demand. After figuring out what keywords to optimize your blog for, start a new blog and write articles. SEO optimize the blog, and promote it around the web. Once the traffic numbers start going up, deploy some ads for affiliate offers. People click on the ads, and you get paid.

Now repeat the process until you have ten or twenty blogs, or maybe hundreds if you want to make some serious cash online.

2 - Put together an auto-responder list

One of the Internet’s most common business models. Once you know approximately what kind of market you want to attract, put together a free product or information people can download if they give you their email. Now drive traffic to a “landing page” that asks for the visitors’ email address. You can even install plug-ins nowadays called Squeeze pages that pop up with an e-mail sign up box when people visit your page. This is a great way to build subscribers and a sales funnel to sell to.

Use an auto-responder like aWeber to email your subscribers the link to download the product or quality information you have to offer, and follow-up with a series of (automatically sent) emails. Spread over weeks and months, build some rapport with your subscribers and then try to sell them on any number of products or affiliate offers. Make sure you break it up though, you need to offer something of value and every few mail outs or so you can send them a link to the product you wish to sell them.

3 - Create a membership community

This is a natural follow-on to the first two methods. If you establish yourself as a worthwhile source of information, you can charge people a membership fee to receive more information or more access. You get recurring income in exchange for your research and time spent producing high-quality content. For truly passive income, you don’t produce the content at all, and instead pay others. Quality control becomes the main challenge then.

Timothy Sykes who is a self-made millionaire through his penny stock trading and membership website has proven that membership communities do work, and very well may I add.

Find out how Timothy Sykes makes a cool $125,000+ per month of passive income online with his membership community.

4 - Sell commercial products online

Customers are buying products online at an extensive rate nowadays. This means that there are a large number of customers looking for exactly what YOU can supply them with.

Checkout Shopify.com. They supply you with all the tools you need to sell online.

A number of people have proven that this is a great platform to sell products online. Put up a page and promote it. People pay you money. The product gets delivered to them, while you kick back as the money rolls in.

If Shopify is not your thing then you can always try your luck with eBay. You know what they say, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”, so scour through your cupboards and sheds  and sell off some of your unwanted treasures.

5 - Arbitrage services

If you can find a market willing to pay significant amounts of money for a service (like writing or design), and a source of labor that provides the needed quality for a lower price, you can arbitrage the two. You act as the “middle man”, “the hook up”.

Funnel the expensive work to the cheap source and profit off the difference.

6 - Find Sponsors for Articles or Regular Columns

Some website or blog categories tend to be more popular than others. These can be monetized through sponsorship of a product, logo or mentions of the sponsor.

Try to find a sponsor for the articles that tend to attract the biggest number of visitors. The column can be branded or an ad can appear inside a visible open space of the article. Just note that the article or announcement is sponsored by “so and so company”, not only is this good because you are being honest with your visitors, it also shows other potential advertisers that this as a lucrative and effective option that you offer.

7 - Sell your own information product

This is just like selling an eBook, except you publish and sell it yourself (generally) and it can come in the form of an eBook, DVD, software, audio book or VHS video.

When selling your own information product it allows you to keep a higher percentage of the profit. You have greater flexibility with upsells and landing pages compared with selling your products on a 3rd party site, and you can even use this to build your list (see #2), two birds with one stone

8 - MLM / network marketing

For people who are willing to put in the time understanding just what MLM (Multi Level Marketing) is. The problem with this approach is that it’s very close to a pyramid scheme. In essence, you make money from signing up people who sell the product. A number of highly reputable entrepreneurs such as Donald Trump & Robert Kiyosaki are big fans of Multi-Level Marketing.

Do your research first and make sure that it is a product line you are familiar with and passionate about selling otherwise you will be wasting your time and your friends and family may laugh at you when you approach them with your sales pitch.

9 - Sell advertising

This is very close to #1, but takes much more traffic. In order to make money while you sleep, the site has to be self-sustaining and self-maintaining, which isn’t the easiest thing to do, but is quite possible.

With enough traffic the advertising revenue becomes passive income.

You will make money while you sleep and the hard work will finally pay off. A good way to look at it is, within the first few months you may be earning around $10 – $20 dollars per day (That’s a McDonald’s meal or a full tank of gas), but as you persist and create new content your traffic will grow and so will your earnings, you may even get to the point where you could be making $100 per day, that’s a new pair of shoes each and every day or a flight to a nearby city of your choice per week.

10 - Peer to peer lending

Risky and capital-intensive, peer-to-peer lending involves lending money to people over the internet — generally to people who can’t get credit any other way.

Peer-to-peer lending is very similar to ordinary investing, except with a different asset class and payoff structure. This one is often a last resort but has proven to make good for those who run things the right way and do their homework before they launch.

Article By: James Meyer & Joel Brown | Addicted2Success.com

Tony Hsieh has successfully built and sold not one, but two companies. Link Exchange sold for $265 million to Microsoft and online shoe retailer Zappos.com sold for $1.2 billion to Amazon.

Here are the 10 lessons that every entrepreneur can learn from Tony Hsieh, the CEO of “Zappos”, which is consistently voted one of the best places to work for and has a reputation for outstanding customer service.

Entrepreneur Lesson’s From Zappos CEO, “Tony Hsieh” 

Lesson #1: Being Passionate Increases Your Chance Of Success

If you want to be successful then you need to find something that you are passionate about. A lot of entrepreneurs are too caught up with the money that they can make. However this can actually hinder their chances of finding success. As Tony says “business that are run by people who are passionate about whatever the business is about tend to have a much higher” When you are passionate about something you are able to work harder and inspire others to do the same. When faced with adversity you will have the passion to keep going.

Lesson #2: Understand What Really Motivates People

In Daniel Pinks best-selling book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” He talks about how direct rewards such as bonuses or increased salaries can actually reduce productivity for many types of work. He also suggests that intrinsic factors such as being inspired by your work are actually much more important for motivation. Tony Hsieh illustrates this principle perfectly with his mission to create a company that you would want to work at even if you weren’t being paid to be there.

Zappos actually offers their new hires $4,000 to quit. Only about 3% have so far taken the money since the program was started. This concept was designed to weed out those who are only in it for the money and not in pursuit of a place where they can be part of a great working culture.

Lesson #3: Learn From Your Mistakes

Building and selling Link Exchange for $265 million might seem like the kind of mistake that any entrepreneur would be happy to make but Tony has stated he was not happy with his first company. The mistake he made was to try and build a company culture too late. With Zappos he didn’t want to make the same mistake and established the company culture at the very beginning.

Lesson #4: Focus on the Customer not the Product

Many entrepreneurs become so focused on the product or service that they are offering that they end up forgetting about their customer. Tony Hsieh wants to be known not as the best online shoe retailer but as the company with the best customer service. He has stated that he is actually not that passionate about shoes but providing the best customer service is something that inspires him.

Lesson #5: Talk To Your Employees

While we may understand that making our employees happy will increase their productivity how we achieve this can sometimes seem unclear. However Tony offers a simple prescription – “just talk to your employees. Ask them what would make them happy” Asking your employees what would make them happy and then giving it to them might sound simple but as Zappos has shown it can be incredibly effective. This includes ideas such as the laughing yoga classes, a full-time life coach and free lunches.

Lesson #6: Company Values Are Not Just Empty Slogans

Zappos has what are known as its 10 commitable core values. However these are much more than empty slogans. They guide the company in all decisions that are made on both a strategic and day-to-day level. An employees success in the company is directly related to how the live up to these core values. If they are failing to meet them then this is grounds for being fired.

Lesson #7: Support Your Staff

At Zappos, provided you are working according to the companies stated values then you will be fully supported. A lot of companies like to talk about integrity or customer service but fail to back their employees. A good example of this is a customer support call at Zappos that took over 7 hours. In many companies spending a whole work day over a relatively small order would be viewed as incredibly unproductive. However at Zappos this kind of customer service is celebrated.

Lesson #8: Understand What Makes You Happy

Tony Hsieh was running his own venture capital business when he initially invested in Zappos. At the time it was just one investment among many. However Tony realized within a year that what he really enjoyed in business was operating fledgling businesses not just being an investor in them.

Lesson #9: See Yourself As An Enabler

A desire to micro manage is something that many entrepreneurs find it difficult to avoid. However Tony Hsieh believes that the primary purpose of an entrepreneur is to enable people to do their best work. Tony also knows what it is like to be stifled by corporate culture. He quit his first job at Oracle after only five months. At Zappos he intended to create an environment which allows people to realize their full potential.

Lesson #10: Relationships Big or Small, Can Build Opportunity

Tony tells the story of a lesson that he learned from one of his business partners Fred Mossler. During a shoe show Mossler invited a rep for a very small brand out to dinner, rather than a rep from one of the larger brands they where introduced to. While the brand contributed almost nothing to Zappos bottom line, the relationship was something Fred Mossler truly valued. That rep would shortly there after go onto become the president of a company that Zappos had been trying to acquire. If Mossler had been concentrating on immediate gain rather than the relationship then the opportunity would have been lost.

To learn more about what Tony Hsieh is currently working on you can follow him on Twitter.

Article By: Jonathan Savage | Addicted2Success.com

Apply just a few of these techniques and you will rapidly double, or even triple, your devoted following of Twitter fans!

How To Get More Twitter Followers

In this revealing and informative article we will look at 10 of the best and most effective techniques to get more Twitter followers.

Strategy #1 – Use A Great Twitter Profile Photo!

When people scan through the list of potential Tweeters to follow one of the first things they will see is your profile photo. As such, you want to make sure that your photo is unique, interesting and eye-catching.

With a great photo your likelihood of attracting new twitter followers is significantly increased. It is also a good idea to change your photo regularly as this keeps things fresh and exciting.

Strategy #2 – Have An Interesting Biography!

Your biography is, by necessity, short and so you only get a few lines to make an impact. Therefore, you want to write something that inspires people to follow you. Whether by signalling the topics and themes your Tweets are generally going to be about or by engendering a little curiosity and mystique, this brief bio needs to be impactful, noteworthy and able to inspire people to follow you.

Strategy #3 – Tweet On A Regular Basis!

Unless you are already extremely famous, it is almost impossible to build a sizable following without Tweeting on a regular basis. You should ideally aim to send a Tweet out at least once a day, if not twice or even more. Being visible to your followers gives your Tweets more chance of being Re-Tweeted and shared which will further increase your number of followers.

You can also use BufferApp to pre-load tweets and schedule them in if you are going on a holiday or have a jam-packed week of exams ahead of you. This is a must if you strive to keep your tweets consistent.

Strategy #4 – Tweet Interesting, Newsworthy Information!

If you Tweet thought-provoking ideas and information then you exponentially increase your chance of being Re-Tweeted. Since Re-Tweeting is, undoubtedly, one of the easiest ways to gain more visibility among potential followers you need to make this a key part of your strategy.

Strategy #5 – Choose Your Hashtags Wisely!

If you want to get your Tweets in front of other people with related interests then putting a bit of thought into your Hashtags can pay off handsomely! Think of something relevant that is likely to be shared or might even trend and you can be onto a real winner.

Strategy #6 – Don’t Be Overly Promotional!

Perhaps the quickest way to lose a whole bunch of previously loyal followers is by promoting too heavily. Twitter is not designed to be overly commercial in terms of content and affiliate links so you should keep any form of advertising to an absolute minimum.

Strategy #7 – Request A Re-Tweet!

This tactic won’t always work but, when it does, it can be extremely effective. The key idea is to get either a celebrity or a key Tweeter in your niche to Re-Tweet your message. If you are successful with this then you can get your message seen by potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. That sort of visibility can increase your total of followers incredibly quickly!

Also if you know that your tweet is quality content, it doesn’t hurt to ask your community once in a while if they can RT your link or tweet. This has actually proven to increase your chances of a Re-Tweet by 2X. Just don’t over do it on this request.

Strategy #8 – Follow Similar Tweeters!

Another effective strategy that always works is to follow people with similar interests. When you follow someone who is a good match in terms of hobbies, interests and opinions, there is a high likelihood they will follow you back. If you do this enough times you can build up a very large Twitter following using only this one strategy.

You could use TweetAdder which is great for finding people to follow who have followed your role models or competition.

Strategy #9 – Add Your Profile To Twitter Directories!

Strange as it may sound, but, some people literally trawl through the main Twitter Directories to find people to follow. It doesn’t take long to add your profile to the main Twitter Directories, such as JustTweetIt.com and WeFollow.com, and it can boost your following significantly over time.

Strategy #10 – Tweet Neat Pictures To Your Followers!

For some unknown reasons, Tweeting pictures works spectacularly well on Twitter. If your pictures are at all interesting or comment worthy then you will effortlessly generate a lot of Re-Tweets. This increases your visibility and inevitably means you will gain more followers. As such, you should make this a regular part of your Twitter strategy.

Strategy #11 - Stay Engaged

You have to stay engaged with your followers. If I go to your Twitter page and you are just writing about yourself and you are not “@replying” to your  followers then chances are I am not going to be interested in connecting with you. I would consider you as the type of guy who goes to a party and only talks about himself and is not willing to interact with anyone else or even ask how they are doing. People want to see that there is a real human being on the other side of the keyboard that they can get an honest answer or interaction out of.

You want proof on how the @reply works. check this link out and also follow @garyvee, Gary Vaynerchuk has millions of followers and interacts with nearly anyone who reaches out too him.

Summing Up

There are a number of ways to quickly and easily increase the number of your Twitter followers. To maximize your results you should use consider using these strategies in combination. Pick a few of the 10 strategies outlined above, start applying them today and you will soon see amazing results. Good luck with your Tweeting!

Article By: Kenneth Lindsay & Joel Brown | Addicted2Success.com

Creating The Best Business Name Or Domain Name

Finding the best name for your business or website is a crucial first step. A successful name can not only define the character and values of your organization but will also play a vital role in attracting visitors’ attention.

Selecting the perfect name can be confusing, with some businesses splashing out as much as $80,000 to get their brand title professionally designed by a naming firm. Fortunately for those on a more modest budget, the following methods can help your business or site develop a memorable and effective name for free.

1st Option: Brain Storm

Brain storming is a great way to kick-start the ideas process. Begin by creating a list of 4 or 5 key words that relate to or describe your business. You can then start playing around with combinations of these words and add prefixes, suffixes, and modifiers to set the name apart. For instance, if you are setting up a mortgage company, you could experiment with words like ‘mortgage’, ‘house’, ‘property’, ‘finance’, or ‘home equity’ until you find a good match.

You could also come up with a few slightly more abstract words relating to your business, and use them to develop some fun and interesting titles. This works especially well for businesses seeking a young and playful image. Here a couple of good examples:

“Spoon Me” – The name of a frozen yogurt brand that now makes almost as much money selling branded t-shirts as it does from its food sales.

“Eat My Words” – A naming firm

“Pugs and Kisses” – A dog grooming spa and salon

2nd Option: Think Sensibly

If you are struggling to narrow down your choice of possible names, there are some generally held rules that apply to most successful company names:

- Let Visitors Know What To Expect

Have a name that allows visitors to understand the function of your business before knowing anything about you. Sites like Autotrade.com and CareerBuilder.com let visitors know what the site does without even needing to access it. Companies like Monster.com (a job search website) on the other hand, are equally successful but need to funnel much more money into advertising so that customers recognize what they do.

- Make Your Name Easy To Say and Spell

Whether a person is searching your company name on Google or typing out your domain name in full, a long and confusing title is likely to be typed out incorrectly by visitors and can put potential customers off. Avoiding any use of the letters z and x can also make typing easier.

- Don’t Limit Your Future Growth

A name that is too specific about what your business or site does can limit your growth into other areas of the market. For example, a website called Buyantiquebooks.com may start selling new books or vintage records as well. Consider the future direction of your company when you are deciding on a name.

3rd Option: Be Inventive

If you’re struggling to find a unique name or domain address in your area of the market, then developing a new word is an interesting option. These creative website names are guaranteed to be original, but you also run the risk of confusing your target audience. Instead of grouping random meaningless letters, consider twisting a word which has significance to your company. Here are some great examples:

Acura – A luxury car brand name derived from the word ‘accuracy’.

Compaq – A computer company name based on the ‘compact’ technology they produce.

4th Option: Put Your Name To The Test

Once you have narrowed down your choices to a list of 4 or 5 favorites, it is time to put the options to the test. Hiring a trademark search firm to see if your name is already in use is a good way to avoid any potential lawsuits in the future. For those establishing a new website, you will need to check whether that domain name is already taken. There are a number of online sites which offer a .com, .net, and .org checking feature for free. You can also checkout Bust A Name which automatically generates domain names for you, some are already taken, some are new and fresh, personally I would recommend trying to come up with your own domain name first, this way you will appreciate that YOU actually came up with the domain name/business name yourself.

If all else fails and finding the perfect business name becomes an impossible task, then it is worthwhile considering the services of a professional naming company. Trained designers and market researchers can be hired to quickly come up with creative, memorable, and expressive names, and many also offer additional services like logo design.

Article By: Amy Montgomery | Addicted2Success.com