It was around 10:00 AM Central Time last Wednesday that I got the call.My mother-in-law was on the other side of the phone line.

She kept talking about getting prepared for a hurricane. I kept thinking to myself, “I don’t know anything about a hurricane coming our way.”

That’s when the first epiphany hit me.

How often are we so engaged in our work that we forget about the outside world and what is going on?

I had no idea that Hurricane Gustav was headed towards us until my mother-in-law phoned.

Now, it turns out Hurricane Gustav missed us by a couple hundred miles (I live in a Southeast suburb of Houston, TX about 30 miles Northwest of Galveston). But man, what was the potential impact of me not paying attention to the weather? What if she had not called and it did head our way? It definitely reminded me that no matter what I need to do one of two things.

I either need to spend a couple of minutes a day checking the weather or I need some one else to do it and let me know what’s up.

Now, ask yourself this question?

Where in your business or better yet, where in your marketing efforts are you not paying attention and you should be? Do you have stats tracking for your marketing efforts? Are you tracking your ROI (Return On Investment)? Do you know which ads, web sites, pop-ups, letters, post cards, etc. are pulling the best? Even more important, which ones are pulling the worst?

This is going to be blunt…are you heading for a financial disaster much like the poor, unfortunate souls in the path of Hurricane Gustav? I heard that in some areas of Southern Louisiana the damages could be over $100 million. How much is your lack of attention going to cost you?

Remember what I said I was going to do about the weather? You don’t necessarily have to do it yourself.

If you have a very small business maybe you will do it yourself but the bigger your business the more you have to hire others to “watch the weather”.

Now I know some of you analyticals out there are going to want to do it yourself and spend hours analyzing the data. Trust me on this, hire someone else. Take it from experience - there is only so much you can do until you become the hurricane that demolishes your business. Don’t let yourself get in the way of your own growth.

The time and money you will spend hiring and training someone else to do stats analysis (among other things) will more than pay you back in the long-term in both time and money.

My wife, kids and I did prepare for the hurricane (both to stay or leave) and we watched the weather closely on 2 different tv stations. We analyzed the data and finally came to the conclusion that the place we would escape to (Dallas) looked like it was going to end up with worse weather than us. So we stayed put.

…looks like our analysis saved us time and money. Can you say the same for your business?

Mark Walters
CashFlowInstitute.com

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

Three Inner Secrets of Internet Success

By Yanik Silver

www.SureFireMarketing.com

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

* Secret #3: Decision *

This is such a big point. A lot of people have so many problems with decision. That’s because they don’t like it because it cuts off other options. But frankly that’s exactly what you want. You want to cut off other options.

One of our top apprentices, Cindy Kappler, WebAdMagic.com, had no other option but to succeed because she quit her job. Now I’m not encouraging you to do that if you still have a real job but it does prove if you cut off your options, you’re much more motivated. Successful people make decisions quickly.

There’s a magic of attraction when you make your decision. However, when you’re hemming and hawing, you don’t experience this magic. I don’t want to get into too much woo-woo or metaphysical or spiritual stuff.

But there’s this magic of attraction. I can’t even explain it. When you set your mind up that you’re going to do this, all of a sudden, at the next dinner party
you’re attending you meet somebody that can help you get to where you want to go. Is that luck or is that something else?

I don’t think it’s luck.

It’s like once the decision is made your mind is tuned into the solution and all kinds of ‘freaky’ coincidences and occurrences happen.

And that brings me to another important point about decisions - fail quickly. Don’t be afraid of failure. A lot of people are so afraid of screwing up, or making a
mistake that they are forever frozen. Who the hell cares? Screw up quickly! I screw up all the time. And you want to fail quickly.

That’s the great part about the Internet. You want to go out there and find out if your dumb idea is going to work right away. You can do it in days instead of months. Sometimes hours and if it doesn’t work, you move on. You say, “Next!”

Look, I know a lot of people who are working on their products for the last two, three, four years. Get the damned thing out! You just make it better as you go
along.

Instant Sales Letters, our first product was not where it is now. We’ve added a ton of stuff to it and made it better. But I just wanted to see if the thing was going to sell.

It wasn’t complete and utter rubbish, as my British friends say, but it was enough that it made the point. It found out if there was a marketplace for it. So find out.

Some people like to go around at dinner parties and so on and say, “I’m writing a book. I’ve been writing a book for five years. I’m an author.”

Uh huh…

I can show you 6 different ways to have your book done in days. It’s a cop-out and complete B.S. Bottom line - make the decision to get the product out there. See what happens and fail quickly.

(c) Surefire Marketing, Inc.

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

Yanik Silver is recognized as the leading expert on creating automatic, moneymaking websites…and he still doesn’t know how to put up a website.

He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-selling online marketing books and tools, including his quickest and easiest way to create a product to sell -
Public Domain Riches

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

Let me just say that you’re definitely in the right business. Your email was VERY helpful. Following your steps got people promoting in no time!

Thanks again!

Kimberly Dudley
Dudley Consulting, LLC
www.workathomewealthteam.com

==========

Three Inner Secrets of Internet Success

By Yanik Silver www.SurefireMarketing.com

* Secret #2: Do one proactive thing a day *

You don’t need to do 100 things a day. Just get that one proactive thing a day. So each little brick builds a big wall for you. Trust me it’s easy to be overwhelmed with hundreds of tasks. You’re like, “Oh, we need to do e-zine ads and free-for-alls and pay-per-click search engines, and I need to do all this other stuff.” Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

But just relax and do one task a day.

Your action will create more and more and more action for you. You simply need to make a commitment to do one proactive thing a day no matter what. Even if you’re dead tired and worked a 14-hour day - come home and mail one letter or send out one joint venture proposal. I’m telling you - just these little tiny proactive things will have an immense impact.

Most everyone has heard of the ‘80/20 rule’ or the Pareto Principle. It says that 20% of your actions produce 80% of your results, and the other way around. 80% of your work only creates 20% of your results.

So go back and look where your successes came from, and I know that they’re from a tiny little group of actions. So if you just get that one proactive thing a day (from the 20% group) that is going to propel you further, that’s going to bring you to where you want to be.

Make it a point to focus on those “20% activities”. In Stephen Covey’s famous work “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” he calls these activities “important but not urgent”.

One of my Apprentices, Peter Woodhead, from the UK is a perfect example of simply doing one proactive thing a day. A lot of Apprentices bolted out of the gate during our one year program but Peter was an Internet newbie and he also had a full time job so he was a bit slower getting started. However, he took my advice and simply managed to do one proactive thing every single day. No matter how big or how small. It could be writing one autoresponder message or it might have been writing 50 headlines. No matter the day - Peter was moving ahead. And not surprisingly his project was completed before many of the other Apprentices were finished.

(c) Surefire Marketing, Inc.

=========

Yanik Silver is recognized as the leading expert on creating automatic, moneymaking websites…and he still doesn’t know how to put up a website.

He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-selling online marketing books and tools, including his newest resource for online copywriting - www.UltimateCopywritingWorkshop.com

Learn from Stephen Covey Yourself: