I recently watched an interview on Bloomberg Television’s new show about entrepreneurs called Venture with this lady, Jacqueline Novogratz.

Jacqueline is the founder and CEO of a venture capital fund named The Acumen Fund, which happens to be set up, curiously enough, as a non-profit entity.

She published a book last year named, The Blue Sweater, which became a NYTimes Bestseller.  It’s an autobiography of her 25 years working in the area of philanthropy, trying to change the world one micro-loan at a time.  I picked up a copy of her book and have been transfixed by it!  It’s an amazing book on so many levels.

There are many parallels between what she has been doing all her life, working with poor people, and what we as “normal” entrepreneurs are doing, it’s crazy. And while it may appear on the surface that she’s working with only one “class” of people, there’s virtually no difference between the people she’s been working with and folks like you and me.

Here’s an analogy:

Imagine looking at a HUGE aquarium filled with fish. You can see all of the fish swimming around in schools, but … they’re swimming in roughly horizontal bands. They never venture outside their little “altitude” region in the water. Try as you might, you can’t see what’s keeping them “stuck” there. But day after day, year after year, you return, and the same fish keep swimming around in the same little vertical band, generation after generation. How? Why?

The funny thing is there are other fish that DO seem to go up and down visiting different bands, apparently doing things to entice the other fish to leave their little areas, and it works a bit for a short time. But in the long run, the fish always seem to return to their “comfort zone”.

If we look at our lives, every one of us acts like these fish swimming around within a narrow range of activities in our lives.

Jacqueline has dedicated her life to working with people trying to get them out of these “stuck” areas. She has been working mainly with “poor” people in “underdeveloped” parts of the world, I suspect because they’re easier to find and work with than other socioeconomic classes, and there’s a lot of money available to “help” them.

Nonetheless, the issues are the same regardless of where we find ourselves in life.

Jacqueline shares the efforts she’s gone through and observed other try to implement, as well as the results she’s seen first-hand over 25 years, trying to find ways to alter the behavior of these people. She’d say it’s a complex interaction between Governments, people, funding organizations, and product suppliers.

In the end, I think it’s really quite simple: what motivates us to make significant changes in our lives? We grow up and survive within a complex ecosystem; it’s what we know. And we tend to find it threatening or fearful when anybody or anything tries to change it.

Those of us who live in nice homes with running water, indoor bathrooms, easy access to food and clothing, may find it hard to comprehend why “the poor” would not want the same. So all of these “do gooder” agencies have been set up to try to lift these people out of their so-called “poverty”. Over time, it has become clear to Jacqueline that all of the monies, goods, and services, have benefitted the actors in this play far more than the intended recipients. It has been going on for over half a century now.

It’s fair to say that Jacqueline has dedicated her life to understanding why this system — set up to help get people out of poverty — is so broken, and what can be done that’s truly helpful.

For some reason that I can’t explain, I’ve never believed that “poverty” exists. Those of us with “more” look at people who have far less, and we say they live in this state we call “poverty”. Yet, when you look closely at the lives of those people, they’re dealing with the exact same issues we’re dealing with. The live, they laugh, they cry, they mourn their dead.

Only 100-150 years ago, there wasn’t so much difference between the “have’s” and the “have-nots”. It’s just that the “have’s” have come such an incredibly long way, while the “have-nots” are still living the way our great-great-great-great-great ancestors did. Do WE say “our ancestors lived in poverty”? Perhaps, but … how many of us have forgotten?

Most of us in America are descendants of people who CHOSE to get OUT of their squalid conditions and make a “better life” for themselves and/or their children. My own grandparents were from Eastern Europe, their parents chased out by the pograms going on in the late 1800′s. “Pograms” is a nicer word than “genocide” applied to certain ethnic groups at the time. That was a half century before Hitler showed up and turned it into something more mechanistic, but no different than what is still going on in many parts of the world today.

Clearly, history shows that there are people who will do whatever it takes to change their world. And there are people who, no matter what you do or how much you help, they’re seemingly happy to stay right where they are. From OUR station in life, WE can say THEY are “living in poverty”. But if they’re HAPPY … who’s to say we’re right? It’s US who are making them wrong for the live’s they’ve chosen to live. My great-grandparents made a different choice. So who am I to say someone else is wrong for making a different choice?

The point is, it’s all about the choices we make for ourselves, not how we see others.

A wonderful saying I heard years ago comes to mind:

The fear of change
is inevitably exceeded
by the pain
of remaining a bud,
and a rose blossoms.

I’m only about half-way through the book, but based on the interview, I know the outcome, which is something she’s found that is actually starting to work. And it’s having very positive results.

Her general conclusion so far: it’s all based on establishing the right trade-offs between incentives, rewards, and encouragement.

Funny thing … the guy who wrote “The Big Short” about the sub-prime mortgage implosion said pretty much the same thing: “if you want to know the direction any system is heading, just look at the incentives it uses to motivate the players”.

-David

Somebody asked me the following question the other day:

“I understand that helping a business with a web presence is important. But how does this really make them money?”

Most media advertising is effective for “Branding” which builds “brand recognition”. In a world of limited media exposure and a tiny funnel called the Yellow Pages, there’s a strong correlation between “Branding” through “exposure frequency” and the likelihood with which someone will select them. That is, they’ll often pick the brand that’s “most familiar” to them, regardless of their experience.

However, in a world of unlimited exposure and access to information, like what the internet provides, and a firehose rather than a funnel, consumer behaviors are changing. Branding isn’t as effective any more. People are searching for other things that aren’t limited to the printed page in a phone book. And their access isn’t limited to 30-second spots on radio or TV.

As “Branding” type advertising steadily declines, something is going to replace it. Generally speaking, that’s already showing up as “topical search” limited by geographical relevance.

For years, companies have spent a big chunk of their marketing and ad dollars on “Branding”. Any more, people don’t know their brand! With the shift of audiences away from mass market media (radio, TV, newspaper) over to the internet, they’ll have to spend MORE just to maintain the branding exposure rates of past years. That is a lost cause.

The time of “get a unique domain name that lets you brand yourself / your site / your business” is past.

Today, 85% of consumers begin a search for products and services online. A large percentage of them end up visiting a store to make a purchase, but only AFTER researching what they want to buy online first.

They’re not searching for Ace Hardware. They’re searching for “4-digit combination door lock”, finding a particular vendor and part number, checking for prices, THEN figuring out WHERE they can buy it locally.

Show me an Ace Hardware store that’s got their inventory online? You don’t know if they even have the part in stock unless you call them!

Most of the time, it’s easier to order from Amazon than hassle with trying to find something at Ace Hardware or Home Depot.

To their credit, most larger chains ARE putting their product inventories online and they ARE searchable for store quantities on-hand.

Smaller mom-and-pop businesses have no idea how to do this, and honestly it would be rather expensive to try to accomplish it on a business-by-business basis.

But building a catalog slowly of popular products, giving part numbers, prices, and options, simply by posting regularly to a blog, is a fine substitute. It will eventually lead to a large portion of their inventory being online and accessible to the search engines.

The sands are shifting as we speak. Anybody who can’t see that will be out of business pretty quickly.

It’s not a question of whether they’ll make money by using the internet. It’s a question of whether anybody will know they exist in a year if they DON’T.

At Business:Impossible, we’re all about helping small business owners maximize the return on their marketing investments, primarily by leveraging the use of the Internet.

One of the tools we have at out disposal is a service called Traffic Geyser.

Traffic Geyser (TG) is a service that is used to distribute videos, audios / podcasts, and articles to over 130 different websites around the internet with a lot less effort than it would normally take.

The guys over at TG have come up with a really cool training package that’s focused on Marketing to Main Street.

What they’ve done is put together an incredible array of educational materials, including videos, audios, and print stuff, as well as marketing handouts like flyers and brochures, all designed to help someone market to offline businesses.  These materials are mainly focused on using TG to generate traffic to websites, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

They have some terrific videos that explain their whole program.  They require you to opt-in, but then they’ll send you an email letting you know when they’ve posted another video.  As I write this, they’ve posted three so far, and there are a few more left.

This is a great opportunity for someone looking for some kind of work at home business, or just something to help you get out of a lousy job and into something more exciting and satisfying.

Take a look at these videos and see if there’s anything there that might interest you.  If nothing else, you may learn some little-known facts about small businesses.

http://MarketingToMainStreet.com

-David

Before you read this, I have to warn you that it will make some sensitive people upset…

It’s no wonder, though. The news is blaring about the economy and how terrible things are for business. It’s got lots of entrepreneurs running scared.

And that’s not just for us internet marketers – it goes DOUBLE for Mom-and-Pop, Brick-and-Mortar stores like the ones in YOUR hometown.

What if I told you there’s a way you can take what you ALREADY KNOW about marketing online and TEAM UP with the BEST businesses in your area to make MORE money…

More money than EITHER of you could make alone…

And you actually do it by HELPING people, not SELLING them!

It’s true! http://marketingtomainstreet.com

Listen, you may have heard about similar “Offline” money-making schemes before, but this is drastically different.

No need to become an uber-expert guru to land clients…

No need to hire a designer – a programmer – a secretary – a sales staff… Because…
Well, look – you might not believe me unless you saw it yourself. I watched it twice just to make sure.

Markeing To Main Street

Seriously. Go check it out,

BTW, there are people who are “kinda ready to learn a little about making money with internet marketing”…

And then there’s “ready to MAKE SOME MONEY with internet marketing – HELP ME DO IT ALREADY!”…

The video over here is a great start:

http://marketingtomainstreet.com

Do you want to become a SEO expert? If you are a small business owner, you will like to know more about the SEO techniques to give that additional boost to your business. But you need not spent a lot of money to get targeted traffic to your site. There should be good content in the site. And the design should be such, so that it can be accessed easily by the users. What you need is expertise. Once you learn to optimize the pages, you can get natural search engine traffic. There are some great resources which will help you to become a SEO expert. Magazines.com, for instance will help you to make your site more SEO friendly.

* Check out some of the most important books which will help you to get a basic idea about SEO techniques! You can go through the book of Aaron Wall, a SEO blogger who have written a book about SEO techniques and will help a layman to understand the basics.

* How about checking Copy Blogger! This is probably one of the most useful resources which can help you to know more about SEO practices. You can check the blogs to know more about SEO copy writing, content creation, idea generation about SEO techniques etc.

* You will simply love Magazines.com. This is one of the most effective websites. you can do your research about SEO techniques in this site. You will be able to find some of the most delightful and enlightening articles about SEO practices from this site.

* There are some sites which actually urge you to take a trail of 30 days for implementing the SEO techniques. Over the month, you will have ready access to pod casts and videos and these will teach you about social bookmarking and the promotion of the site. The videos are especially useful for learning the basics of site rankings.

* You can go for the WordTracker Free Keyword Tool. You will have limited access to keywords. But they will be free versions and this is a great way to start and know more about the keywords. If you really feel that the tool can help you in your business, you can go for monthly subscriptions. This is the most economical way to get your own WordTracker.

* You can actually go through Bloglines which helps you to organize all your subscriptions for blogs and RSS feeds. Once the folders are done, you can add new feeds and scan through the various blogs. The Bloglines will help you to know about the latest in SEO practice.

* You should always try to avoid the black hat SEO techniques. These are some quick methods which actually tell you that you can get a good ranking in the search engines. This is not entirely true. There can be no quick methods to success and SEO will take some time to take flight. It will be months before you actually get the results.

Your new recruits are probably very excited, nervous and downright scared! They are anxious to get started earning money, confidence with their products and a steady business growth. But are you casting them to the world too soon?

Many sellers we consult with offer to help their new recruits with their first party or two. Once the recruit has a party booked, the recruiter attends to assist and guide them until they feel comfortable. However, some of the most successful sellers we work with go one step better: they offer a New Recruit Practice Party.

Each of your new recruits could be invited to such a “practice party.” This party would involve each of the new recruits you’ve signed up that month. Each of these new recruits should invite two people to attend the practice party. Having friendly faces in the crowd always helps to steady jitters. The party should include their friends/relatives and possibly a couple of your own more successful and seasoned team members. The team members can offer valuable advice and tips to newbie recruits for boosting their sales, how to present, ideas for party games, etc. They will be excellent at “critiquing” the newbies and offering useful and applicable tips.

These parties should be segmented so each recruit gets the chance to do a part of the presentation. The presentations should be divided up and each recruit does a separate item, service, etc. They should each be involved in the sales part of the presentation (usually toward the end).

These parties are fun and relaxing and perfect for new recruits to “get the bugs out” of their presentation skills, sales skills, etc. The guests should be informed that it is a practice party and everyone will feel more relaxed knowing that fact. Guests are at ease and the newbie sellers will feel more freedom in giving information, showing the products and practicing their sales skills.

Recruits will feel much more comfortable knowing that they have this practice party (or even two) in order to develop their confidence and skills before setting off themselves. Since it won’t be billed as a “real” sales party it will set them at ease. Of course, it should be a selling situation as well. It should be productive financially but very casual and easy-going (read: lots of laughter, a few goof-ups, but ultimately a confidence builder!).

As their recruiter you can attend the party to offer them tips, suggestions on their techniques, etc. This can be done after the party at a personal consultation session or as a group session after the party. This is when the seasoned team members should offer their own ideas on how to run a profitable party. Recruits can learn from others’ mistakes and their own triumphs.

Some sellers even go so far as to pair up a newbie with a seasoned team leader. They work together until the new recruit feels comfortable on her own. Using this tactic helps get the newbie off to a faster start, earn more at her parties and streamline her party/presentation skills. Remember, an earning recruit is a happy recruit!

Buying a franchise business is very different from buying an online business. Each business model represents two ways of doing business. One is not necessarily better than the other. They are each a good fit for the right business owner.

Let’s break down three areas that you will need to consider when buying either business. You want to look at what kind of investment capital you will need. You want to look at what kind of overhead costs are involved, what kind of profits can be obtained, and finally what kind of daily challenges you will face.

Investment capital can not be avoided by any real business owner. It takes money to get a business going. In some cases, the business owner may need to constantly fund the business. Let’s look at the cost of buying a franchise. It usually can cost between $250,000 to $1.5 million depending on the type of product, and the company you associate yourself with. If you consider paying any less, you will most likely end up investing more at some point in your start up.

Let’s examine the cost of buying a successful online business. There are many out there, and you want to do your homework. You should expect to pay between $500 and $20,000 depending on your income goals. In this business model you would be paying a fraction of the cost of a franchise. Make sure it is legitimate, and a partnership you can be proud of.

With an online business, you should look for a business that includes complete online training, and a website set up so you can market immediately. Your monthly overhead will be minimal since you can do the work from home. You will need a good computer, internet connection, and a marketing budget.

With a franchise, your monthly overhead will be extensive. You will want a complete list of all the areas of operation. You will have a lease to pay for a high traffic space, employees to pay, workman’s comp insurance, building insurance, inventory, and maintenance costs. Some of these items are big ticket items so you will want to make sure you have a fair amount of working start up capital to fund these items while you get your business going.

One of the most important areas to look at in owning your own business is the profit and loss category. You must make sure that after your overhead is covered, your profits are still there. With the large expenses of a brick and mortar business, it is easy find the profits are low and your return on investment is not always there.

With a quality online business, profits can be very high. Overhead is low and there is more room for profit in your pocket. There are two things to look for when your evaluating which online business to go with. Look for a quality product that has high commission sales. This will allow you to make a high monthly online income. Make sure that the marketing and website system doesn’t require more than twenty percent of your profits to reinvest back into marketing and advertising.

Daily challenges with both businesses are inevitable. With a franchise you will be challenged by the head aches that come with managing employees, managing the fine line of stocking inventory to meet demand. You will have paperwork to file, submit and coordinate to keep your books in line to manage the company efficiently.

The online business model has completely different challenges. The number one challenge is learning something new if you are not familiar with online marketing. With this in mind the learning curve is quick with the right mentors. This challenge comes with a huge reward of learning how to market anything, to anyone, from anywhere in the world.

Only you can decide if you are a good fit for a brick and mortar business model, or if you would be better suited with the freedom of working online. I have personally worked both business models and find that the online business model works better for me and those I coach.

http://www.ipost.com iPost provides tools for targeted email marketing campaigns. Relevant timely programs can bring a large ROI for B2B and Ecommerce websites. Improve profitability and deliverabi…

Internet Marketing Email

http://www.dsterlin.com

If your serious about your goals, why are you wasting time with techniques that obviously can’t get you past the point your at now?

Just a though…

10 Tips for Raising Your Search Engine Rankings.

Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when you have a website that needs more traffic. If your website doesn’t have a good position in the rankings then no-one will find it, so you need to make sure that your website is ranked highly enough to be seen…..

The other important quality to getting high traffic to your site is having a nice arsenal of links. The more links that you have to your site the more traffic you will get, but also, the more links to your site the more search engines like your site. Keeping a nice supply of links pointing at your site requires similar precautions and practices as getting high search engine listings.

Although no SEO company can guarantee a high ranking for your site, here are some tips for raising your search engine ranking. Using these tips will not get you to the top unless your site is the best out there, but they will at least put you into the positioning that you truly deserve. After all, the internet is basically a free market. You will naturally flow into the place that you deserve and many search engines try to insure that you do not rise above or fall below this position. This is why they are so strict, and this is why you must keep yourself on good terms with them.

1) Content is an important factor in high search engine rankings. Make sure that you have plenty of content throughout your site with your target keywords in the articles. It’s also worth doing a search for websites similar to yours and taking a look at their articles for ideas. The more content you have the better. It is generally a good idea to have between three hundred and five hundred words per page, but more important than a quantity of content is the quality of the content that you are providing. You cannot just put out three hundred words of jargon and expect your visitors to find it interesting and stick around for the long haul.

2) Your website’s URL can help you rank higher with the search engines if it contains your keywords. However, don’t think that naming your site after your keywords will always help your rankings – you need to do more than just that.

3) Search terms should be written out in text, instead of graphics. If you do use pictures, be sure to give them alt tags. The alt tags in your pictures are almost as important as text. It’s also a good idea to put some of your key words in links to other pages. In the eyes of a search engine it is almost as good to have a link to a page full of the content that the visitor is looking for as it is to have the content that the visitor is looking for on your page. If a visitor is looking for something that you are linking to and he or she finds your page, they may look around your site on the way through.

4) The title of your page is very important, and making sure that you choose it wisely will make a big difference. Terms such ‘free article on safe children’s toys’, or ‘contact the children’s toy expert today’ are good to use as titles, for example – they would get you a high ranking. The title area is the most important place to include your keyword phrases, so make sure that you put them all in.

5) The navigation menu that appears on each page of your website should include your page’s title.

6) Don’t just use the most popular keyword phrases – the market is so competitive that you should be sure to include some niche keywords too.

7) Make sure that you don’t have a lot of irrelevant links on your site. The more closely related to your site your links are, the better your chances of being ranked in a higher position.

You need to periodically update the content of your website, even if it’s only a slight change, as websites like sites that are kept updated.

9) You need to consider the fact most search engines don’t like automatic submissions or multiple submissions – submit once

10) Always be on the look out for SEO news – staying up to date and using the latest techniques will help you stay one step ahead of your competition.

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Search Engine Rankings, Search Engine, Engine Rankings, Search Engines, Make Sure