SFI AFFILIATE TEAM-BUILDING ON STEROIDS!
13th May 2012- I've promised to give away 15 affiliates to 3 members of my team in June.
- I've given away 4 affiliates to 4 member of my team so far in May.
- I've gave away 60 affiliates to 12 members of my team in April.
- I gave away 101 affiliates in December 2011. (A Record!)
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Book Reviews
Another Book By Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us
Seth Godin is a remarkable guy. In 2006 he set up Squidoo.com. Prior to that he published several bestselling books on Internet marketing, such as the 1999 bestseller, Permission Marketing
The latest book by Seth Godin, Tribes We Need You to Lead Us, published in 2008, is the result of his thoughts about what leadership means in a modern world of fast pace of technological change and the growth of the Internet. However, he does not lose sight of the fact that leadership is ultimately about character and will power, not technology:
“You don’t need a keyboard to lead… you only need the desire to make something happen!” – p. 6.
Leadership is something that comes from within, and harnesses modern technology in order to find or build or gather around itself a “tribe” of like-minded people, who are all driven by something that is ultimately larger than themselves.
That leadership is a quality which emerges from the pursuit of something beyond one’s self, gives it an almost religious quality. It is no surprise then that good in devotes the heart of the book to a discussion of faith and belief. As good in sees it faces good, or more correctly, dogma is bad, with a capital B!
So, if established dogmas are bad, heretics become heroes. They are willing to stand up and come front of the dogmas of the day. Although they will inevitably face resistance, they have the advantage of being more in tune with changing times.
“Stability is an illusion”, (p. 16) , writes Godin. “Today’s market place rewards heretics.” (p. 11).
Not only does today’s market place rewards heretics, but the development of new communication technologies has given everybody the opportunity to become a heretic or a leader, Godin argues.
There is a problem, however which is that there are far too few people who are willing to take upon themselves the role of leadership because they fear to be seen acting differently from the crowd.
Godin calls those people “sheepwalkers”.
In comparison with “sheepwalkers” there are the members of a “tribe”. A tribe is a group that shares strongly held beliefs or aims and forms around a leader.
Godin suggests that it is more important that a tribe be tightly knit than that it grow.
One of the examples of leadership that Godin discusses is the case of Chris Scharma. Chris Sharma is a rock climber who discovered that if he simply “let go” of a jutting cliff face and jumped upwards he could quite often catch hold of crevices higher up the rock face and successfully complete climbs that had been thought to be impossible. He also fell into the sea on many occasions, but it is exactly that willingness to risk failure that is the true essence of the kind of leadership that Seth Godin wants to encourage.
A tribe can be very small and local or it can span the world and come together via the Internet.
If you are willing to stop being a “sheepwalker” and follow your passion, Seth Godin would tell you that there is definitely a tribe out there waiting for you to lead it. If you think that you lack the charisma, consider this:
“Being charismatic doesn’t make you a leader. Being a leader makes you charismatic.” (p. 127)
Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
David Hurley
Originally published, 2008
Revised, 2011.
A Review Of Michael Masterson’s “Ready, Fire, Aim”
“Nothing matters more than selling,” writes Michael Masterson in his book, Ready, Fire, Aim. “Many first-time entrepreneurs have the impression that they are doing things in a logical order when they look for the perfect office space, have logos designed, and order a lot of inventory. The reality is they are wasting valuable resources on secondary and tertiary endeavors. If no one is going to buy what you want to sell, you’ve just wasted a bunch of money on a business that will never be.”
When Michael Masterson talks about business, it’s a good idea to listen up because over the course of his career he has helped set up and develop dozens of businesses, many of which have developed annual profit figures of several million dollars. One of his businesses has a turnover of over $135 million and another is now growing past $300 million.
In Ready, Fire, Aim, Michael Masterson sets out the following three-part strategy for entrepreneurs to follow in order to build a successful business:
1. Get the product to the point where you can sell it, but don’t worry about perfecting it.
2. Sell it.
3. If the product sells, improve it.
Masterson places the selling process right at the heart of any business operation:
“Selling can be terrifying. It can be tough, gritty, unglamorous work. But when you make that first big sale, you realize it’s also exhilarating. And like it or not, you probably won’t become a successful entrepreneur until you can sell your product or service in your sleep.”
So what does that mean for people setting out to start an online business? The first you should begin to do is build a mailing list of potential customers. To build a successful list you’ll need to have a powerful, targeted sales pitch on your website and online ads.
That is what the most successful online marketers do, and it is the basis of their repeated success. Unfortunately, most Internet marketing “newbies” tend to focus on other stuff, partly because they don’t know any better, and partly because they lack the necessary marketing skills.
Not only does the successful online marketer focus on sales, he or she also develops a whole range of products to sell, and a whole network of marketers to sell them, as Masterson explains:
“As the business grows out of its infancy–as it goes beyond the million-dollar revenue mark by selling many more products through many more channels–you can let other people do most of the selling.”
Key Points of the Book:
* Why selling is your first business priority and the one thing you should never stop doing.
* The handful of numbers that are critical to every business.
* When to cut your losses short and when to let your winners run.
* The front end/back end method of doubling profits easily.
* Why having a Plan B is as important as Plan A, and when and how to create it.
* The difference between pushers, thinkers, organizers and sellers, and how to attract the ones you need for your business.
Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to 00 Million in No Time Flat (Agora Series)
David Hurley
Book Review: From The Hood To Doing Good, by Johnny Wimbrey
Johnny Wimbrey‘s first book, “From The Hood To Doing Good
The key message of the book is that YOU must take responsibility for the way you think and act, and think and act in ways that will bring about great positive change in your life. Wimbrey gives you his tried and tested blueprint for achieving that change.
The book is liberally sprinkled with inspirational quotations, many from the Bible, testifying to Wimbrey’s Christian faith, but other quotations draw on other traditions such as this one
from the Buddha, which returns to the theme of personal responsibility:
“It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.”
It is therefore very important we change the way we think and speak, that we seek out the positive in negative situations, avoid negative influences, watch out that your friends are not really the foes of your goals, watch out especially for your inner foe – the voice that tells you you can’t; above all you must take control and move on:
“Every individual holds the key to the God-given ability to consciously decide whether to master a situation or be mastered by it.”
The point of it all is that Johnny Wimbrey is his own best witness and testimony to the words he preaches. Johnny Wimbrey’s beginnings remind me of that line from a song by The Who,
“I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth.” Wimbrey describes how, according to usual social expectations, he was a very unlikely candidate for success:
“Society and statistics tell us that because I’m biracial, was born in the projects, lived on welfare, had an alcoholic for a father, and came from a single-parent home that I supposedly will never have any control of what ultimately determine my future.”
But, and this is one of Johnny Wimbrey’s key teachings, you don’t have to let another person’s opinion of you become your reality. The source of this insight is acknowledged to be Les Brown, one of Johnny Wimbrey’s mentors and the writer of the Forward to this book.
The message will be familiar to anybody who has seen Johnny Wimbrey on stage, television or DVD, or listened to one of his CDs. But what singles Johnny Wimbrey out is his style of delivery. From the Hood to Doing Good: From Adversity to Prosperity Through the Choices You Make
His real strength is rooted in his Biblical heritage – insights from the Bible flow into and invigorate an already lively delivery. For example, Johnny Wimbrey does not say that you should have a vision and write it down, he draws on the Prophecy of Habakkuk and the Book of Proverbs when he declares:
“I believe it is paramount to write your vision and make it plain, because where there is no vision, people perish.”
Those words are powerful not only because of their strong biblical overtones, but also because they were forged in the fiery furnace of experience, in an environment where guns were plentiful and vision scarce.
While From The Hood To Doing Good will give you a flavour of the essential Johnny Wimbrey, he is at his best not on paper but on the podium where he can give full voice to the passion and the testimony that drives the message behind the Johnny Wimbrey success story.
Johnny Wimbrey’s message is that if he can succeed so can you. His mission is to inspire the masses to believe in themselves and to achieve greatness in their lives too.
Though the book be slim, the message is not lost. Here’s a taste of Johnny Wimbrey…
New 2012 Edition!
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