In today’s video, I respond with some possible solutions to the personal obstacles posted by my youtube, Facebook & blog fans yesterday. Thanks for the participation and keep them coming.

This week I I’m offering YOU a chance to have ME solve/surpass the biggest obstacle, thats stopping you from getting the success you desire. All you have to do, is share your obstacle in the comments, and I’ll do my best to respond to as many people as possible.

In this video I give you more insight into the reports that help me feel at ease while on vacation, away from my business.

Today’s daily video is about a study carried out between entrepreneurs who fail vs entrepreneurs who succeed. Most importantly, today’s tip will focus on the critical steps you need to take after you fail.

In today’s video, I’ll let you know about the critical reports you need to see, as a business owner, that will help you relax during your vacation.

I’m recording today’s daily video from Michael Masterson’s house in Nicaragua, my vacation paradise for the week. I’ll give you a sneek peek of his beautiful home. I’ll also give you some insight into some vital pieces of my luggage, my vacation books.

In today’s video, I discuss what it REALLY means to be a strategic entrepreneur. I even share a personal example to help you associate today’s tip with the real business world. Today’s tip will move you a step closer to creating a loyal following for your brand.

Read Transcript:

Hi, Rich Schefren here and in today’s drive to the office I want to talk to you about some of the beginning elements of what it means to be strategic and why when you’re strategic, you end up growing your business faster; you end up making more money and you end up working a lot less. Now before I get to that though, let me remind you that next week I’m going to be spending the entire week with my family at Michael Masterson’s house in Nicaragua. Now why am I telling you this? Well I’m telling you this because I am going to still do videos from there. So if you’re curious to see Michael Masterson’s house or you’re curious to see what Nicaragua is like, then just make sure to come back and check out the videos because that’s what I’ll be doing. Alright, so now let’s talk about being strategic and the first vital elements of really understanding the game that you’re playing. I want to give you an example first though because I think it will help illustrate what I’m talking about. So when I used to own my retail store, clothing stores, the Antique Boutique, when we had clients or customers at that time come into the store, we never sold them the clothes first. We sold them on the store first, so whereas most stores you might go in and they might ask you do you need any help. That’s focused on a product. We focused on the store. Have you ever been in this store before? Now if they had been in the store, we would tell them what was new. And if they hadn’t been in the store, we would tell them why our store was so special and why they would find stuff in our store that they couldn’t find anywhere else. You see, because our long-term goal was to have loyal customers of our store. We sold them on the store, not on just the clothing purchase that they wanted to make at that moment. That concept has followed me through all my businesses. In fact, at Strategic Profits, we are much more interested in turning an opportunity seeker into a strategic entrepreneur than to make a single sale of a single product. And because of that, we’re able to grow faster; hold onto clients longer and help our clients actually become more successful because they understand the steps to their success and how we fit into the picture. That is incredibly important for you to do in your business; to think about the ultimate objective that your clients, customers, prospects want and think about how ultimately what you want integrates into that. In other words, what steps could you be taking in your first introduction to your website, to a report that you’ve written, to a webinar you’ve created or what not and what could you lay the foundation for so that you have a bigger role in their life than just the immediate; that you actually develop a longer term relationship than just the first sale. Now when you do that, you are starting to think and act strategically. That alone will make a difference. Now there’s a lot more to thinking strategically and being ideally a strategic entrepreneur, but that’s a big step because when you do that, you end up being a lot more effective. So think the long-term game. What is it that you want and how can you lay the foundation for that in the very beginning of your relationships with your clients, prospects and customers? So that’s the tip for today. Like I said, make sure that you tune in next week because I won’t be on the road. But you’ll see the cliffs behind me. You’ll see the ocean behind me and I’m going to try and take some video as well, like the ride out there and everything else. So just stay tuned. I look forward to getting back next week or the following week and filling you in about Nicaragua and Michael Masterson’s house. So adios. I’ll see you next week. To higher profits and beyond and go have some fun this weekend. You deserve it. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve worked hard and make sure to at least spend 24 hours doing no work and just having a great time. That’s what I’ll be doing all week, but I’ll be talking to you every day. To higher profits and beyond, Schefren over and out. Adios.

Hi, Rich Schefren here with another profitable drive to the office. Today, I want to take what we’ve been talking about even further about getting inside the minds of your prospects and getting them ultimately to purchase your product or service. Now, Ingor had a great comment. She said, “isn’t this somewhat manipulative at the end of the day.” And the truth is that it is. Marketing in its essence is somewhat a manipulative process. All marketing is. All commercials are. The sooner that you realize that and the more that you embrace it, the more successful you will be. You see, Peter Drucker once said ‘that the goal of marketing is to make selling superfluous.’ And I couldn’t agree more. That’s what my goal is when I market. In fact, every communication can be seen in the context of manipulation. When my kids are trying to get permission to stay up later than their bedtime, they’re trying to manipulate me to say yes so that they can stay up later. When I’m marketing, I’m trying to get my prospects to see that my product or service is the absolute best solution to them getting the end result that they want. Now, what will block you from doing that? Well, what will block you from doing that is if you don’t believe it; if you don’t believe that your product or service is the absolute best thing that they could buy, you’re left in a conundrum. So what’s the way out? Well the way out is to invest the time, energy and effort to actually make your product or service that thing that your prospects would most greatly benefit from so that you remove all the barriers to marketing as aggressively as you can; to getting inside the minds of your prospects and helping them see their problems, their frustrations more clearly and how your product or service is the solution to those problems and those frustrations. You see, at the end of the day, you have to be totally aligned with what you sell and how you sell it so that you really can market as aggressively as you can because you believe in your whole of hearts that it is the best option for your prospects and your clients. That’s why I’ve committed my entire business life to just a few key products that we continually improve and we continually improve the way we market because I believe and actually I more than believe, I know that any prospect, any client, that buys our products, at the end of the day will be more successful because of it. There’s also a test. And I put this test to you, okay, and actually I’ll take my glasses off because it seems like people like that. Here’s the test. I call it “are you comfortable walking in the room.” And what I mean by this is if you were to gather all your customers, all your prospects, all your clients and put them in a room together and they could discuss their experience with your product or service for a few hours and then you were invited into that room. Would you be comfortable walking in that room? Most unfortunately in internet marketing would not be comfortable. I’ll tell you that I’ve been doing a Q & A call for all my clients for the last six or seven years. I am there week-in and week-out and I am never afraid to talk to all my clients in one big room. That’s actually one of the criteria I use to make the decisions I make. So what about you? Are you that comfortable? If you’re not, then you’re probably paying a price in your marketing as well because you just don’t feel comfortable enough to go balls to the wall in your marketing. The solution here is make your product as good as it possibly can be. The key thing that your prospects and clients need and then you’ll remove all the barriers to being as aggressive as you can be, getting inside the mind of your prospects and then getting them to buy. Because in your heart you know it’s the best thing that they could possibly do. So..let’s wrap this up. What can you do now? Well, look at your product and see if you really believe it. Do you believe that this is the best thing that your prospects could buy and if not, what do you need to do to be able to actually feel that way? Once you have that, then you can market like an animal. So to higher profits and beyond, Schefren over and out. Go take action. Go actually build that product and market aggressively and I’ll see you in tomorrow’s drive to the office.

Yesterday, I talked about WHY the success of your marketing efforts is hinged around getting into your prospects mind ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st9d7PC8opY). In today’s video I’ll reveal one critical skill that you must develop, in order to get in the minds of your prospects. I’ll show you one simple exercise that will get you one step closer to your prospects mindset.

Hi, Rich Schefren here and on today’s drive to the office, I want to talk to you about what we spoke about yesterday. Yesterday, just to recall, I told you about how to get inside the mind of your prospects and why that was so important. Well today I want to take it even further. You see, there is one critical skill that you must develop in order to be able to get inside the mind of your prospects. And it’s often overlooked by the majority of entrepreneurs and marketers and this stunts their ability more so than anything else. But let me share a specific quote that will really open up this concept for you. Here’s the quote. “That which is most personal is most general.” Let me say it again. “That which is most personal is most general.” Now why is that such an important quote? Well, you see, what it means is that the deepest emotions, frustrations, desires, etc. that you have are actually shared by more than you would every imagine; that the things that you think are only specific to you, others are thinking the same exact thing. Now why is this quote so important? Well, you see, most people cannot identify the real reason why they’ve made a big purchase. They can’t identify the underlying emotions, drives, frustrations, desires etc. of why they bought what they bought. And here’s the problem. If you can’t do that for yourself, you’ll never be able to do it for your prospects and clients. So here’s the exercise. The exercise is to think through the last three purchases that you’ve made and think through, not the rationalization of why you bought it, but the real underlying emotional reasons why you bought it. What was specifically going on inside your mind that made you feel you needed to make that purchase right then and there from that place? If you can identify what you’re going to find is that you’re going to find the real deeper inner drives that drive purchase. You see, it’s often been said by many people who read my reports that they feel like I’ve been looking over their soldier, like secretly spying on them and being able to articulate in words what they’ve been feeling and never been able to articulate. Well the reason I’m able to do that so well, is that I’ve been keeping a journal for twenty years. So I’ve constantly dug deeper into my own psyche and by doing that I can dig into other psyches. That is the specific skill set that you need to succeed in marketing today. So that’s what you need to do. You need to explore your own psyche; to get deeper into your own thoughts about the reasons you do the things you do and the better that you get at that, the better marketer you’ll be. So think about it. And think about this going forward. Every time that you make a purchase, every time you take a new action, think about not the rationalization why, but the real reason, the deeper emotional reason why and the more that you’re able to articulate it, the better the marketer you will be. You see, at the end of the day, if you can’t dive into your own psyche, you’ll never get inside the minds of your prospects and clients. So my wife has been making fun of me of all the different ways that I end these calls, or sorry, these videos – over and out, to higher profits and beyond. She said pick one. Stick with it and don’t keep doing all these cheesy taglines. Well I don’t know what my tagline should be. I mean, it’s always been to higher profits and beyond, but I feel like I should say over and out or something. So why don’t you tell me. Tell me about what you think about this idea about the exercise of the three last purchases and maybe what you realize. And most importantly, tell me how you think I should end these. What should be the very last word, excuse me that comes out of my mouth right before I end these videos. And I’ll save it with that and I won’t even end. I’ll just wait until you tell me how to end.

All great marketing begins. All great marketing begins in the minds of your prospects; and because that’s not the most sexy or the most exciting, many entrepreneurs and unfortunately many marketers, kind of skip over the most important step. What is going on inside the mind of your prospects? You see, if you don’t know that you can never really have a blockbuster marketing campaign because you have enter in the conversation that’s already going on in your prospect’s head. You have to enter into that conversation and then you have to show how your product bridges the gap from where they are now to where they want to be. Now that’s impossible to do if you don’t know what’s going on inside the mind’s of your prospects. That’s why in all my programs I’ve always created quite a bit of information for my clients to go out and figure out where their prospect’s minds are and figure out what’s currently their frustrations, their beliefs, their desires, their wishes, their dreams, etc. You need to know that. You know, Dan Kennedy several years back took his clients through an exercise. He had them on the first page describe their favorite TV character. So let’s for example it was Seinfeld and you were describing George Costanza. Odds are is that if you’re a Seinfeld watcher, you could write a full page about George Costanza; about him being a loser; about him living with his parents; about him being sensitive about balding and short; about etc., right, all the crazy antics that he did. Now, what Dan Kennedy did after that was he had people turnover their page and now write about their prospect. The sad fact is that most people couldn’t even write a fraction of what they could write about their favorite TV character. And if that would happen to you, you really have to ask yourself where are your priorities? If you can describe a TV character better than the people that keep you in business and that are the biggest determinant of your success, then you’ve got to shift your priorities. You see, I could tell you a lot of advanced marketing tactics but it won’t matter if you don’t know what’s currently going on in the mind of your prospects. You see, I’ve been known to be able to sell things or create demand for things where there was no demand. And I’m quite effective at that actually. When I sold the Business Growth System, nobody was looking for business information. When I released our course on Theory of Constraints, nobody was looking for Theory of Constraints information. But I was able to do that first and foremost because I was able to meet my prospects with what was currently going on in their mind and I could show them that what I had to offer could take them to where they want to go. So what about you? What is it that is currently going on in the minds of your prospect? And once you know that, how can you show them that what you offer is the best way to get from where they are now to where they want to go. Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow on the drive to the office and you have to stay tuned for next week. Next week I have a really special treat for you. I’m actually heading to Nicaragua. I’m going to be spending the week at Michael Masterson’s house with my family. But I still plan on doing these daily videos. I’ll be doing them from the cliff overlooking the ocean. Hopefully I’ll be able to upload them. I’ll see you tomorrow on the drive to the office. To higher profits and beyond, Schefren over and out.