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- Feb 12 2008
- 32 Comments
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- New Beginnings Conference - February 23rd - 29th 2008, Disney World, Orlando Florida
If you know anything about me at all, it’s probably that I’m known for delivering tons of valuable help on this blog completely free of charge.
… But I’ve never, EVER done anything like this before.
Continue reading Five Weapons Of Mass Persuasion -
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- Feb 09 2008
- 72 Comments
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- Strategic Profits Live! - February 23rd - 29th 2008, Disney World, Orlando Florida
I’m in a real jam.
Before I tell you what’s up – I want you to know this: We’re going to have two last minute contests with amazing prizes for anyone who’s game for helping us out.
But first let me go back to how it all started, so I can quickly get you up to speed…
Continue reading No Matter How You Define Success – This Gets You There -
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- Dec 11 2007
- 94 Comments
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Think about this:
It's Monday, February 11, 2008 -- just two months from today and you're getting ready to introduce your new product to the online world.
But before you can tell people about your product or name your price...
- 60,552 unique visitors have already visited your blog to learn whatever they can about you and your new product
- 374 other blogs are buzzing about you
- More than 43,200 prospects have already watched at least one of nearly 200 videos that your prospects have just made about you posted online
- And 39,730 highly qualified prospects have opted in to your house list to make sure they're among the first to know when your new product is released.
A fantasy? Absolutely not. This is precisely what's happened since I released The Attention Age Volume Two just 13 short days ago!
Want to know what all the fuss is about?
Check this video out and tell me what you think might prevent you from being the maven of your market....
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- Nov 28 2007
- 40 Comments
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Continue reading There Is A Crazy Belgian Guy In My Office!
Hey,
We’ve been getting a lot of attention lately. In fact, our blog has been seeing more visitors than ever before…
You may have seen Andrea Yager’s video a couple of days ago. Well over 1,200 people also saw her go absolutely crazy. All because…
She’s been waiting for The Doctrine Part 2, and she’s had enough.
And there’s a lot of people out there who feel as frustrated as she does… maybe even you.
See, Andrea knows how much The Doctrine 2 is going to help her succeed in our new Attention-Deficit world.
What she doesn’t know yet, though, is how The Doctrine 2 is going to raise questions she (or you) haven’t even thought of.
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- Sep 26 2007
- 9 Comments
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Website visitors...No matter how many you've got, you want more. To get more you must know your market, your visitors, and your customers cold.
Sadly, most online entrepreneurs know more about their favorite sitcom characters than they do their customers or visitors.
Here's a painless way to make immediate progress in knowing your site, your visitors, and your market slightly better than you do now.
Last night while surfing, I stumbled onto this nifty little demographics predictor from Microsoft. All you have to do is type in your URL or keyword. (sure beats analyzing analytics - but unfortunately it's not a replacement.)Anyway, once you hit "go" immediately you're greeted with a predicted male-female distribution of your site visitors, and a breakdown by age group.
I wasn't really shocked by my results, let me know if you are.You can use the tool here: Microsoft Demographics Predictor
Also, if you are interested in small little tidbits like this, let me know. My bookmarks are overflowing with lots of cool stuff like this and better.
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- Sep 08 2007
- 31 Comments
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Man, I love this blog.
I enjoy the give-and-take of this group as we hammer-out the challenges and issues in the Attention Age.
Your comments provide great material for Part 2 of The Attention Age Doctrine, which will be ready later this month. Thanks for your contributions and your patience. I promise, it's going to be great!
As you may realize, one of the best attention-holding features of blogging is the opportunity to keep conversations alive. I do it here as often as I can.
While each blog post may survive on its own merit, it is also possible - and encouraged - to carry thoughts from one post to another as a viral thread.
After all, this is how some of the best ideas are spread.
That said, let's return to the topic of Return on Attention (ROA).
Return on attention is the performance metric by which we measure the value of the attention we "pay" to other people and ideas.
You'll remember from a previous post that I asked about the return you are receiving from the attention you freely give to others. Thanks for your comments on this topic and keep them coming. You'll see in a moment why I asked for them in the first place.
Think of ROA as a financial transaction.When you pay for a product or service, you expect something of value in return:
- Pay for milk. Bring milk home and drink it.
- Pay for housecleaning services. Come home to a clean house.
- Pay for business coaching. Get Rich Schefren.
The return should always be of great value, otherwise, there's no point in making the purchase.
Yet, as I've noted earlier, we tend to give our attention away to many things, asking little or nothing in return. Seems strange, especially if you are trying to succeed as an online entrepreneur.
Since attention is such a scarce resource, we should recognize its value and only exchange it for something of equal worth.It's like bartering diamonds for gold pieces. The value of each must be measured accordingly.
Yet each day, we let our mind and our attention wander away from our own business goals. We squander our intellectual capital and waste our energies on lesser subjects and ideas.
By doing so, we take our eyes off the ball with regard to our own business goals. We divide and subdivide our own attention to our detriment, diminishing our power to achieve.
Re-read that last sentence out loud. See if it applies to your own online business situation.
Giving away attention devalues its impact. It dulls the force of our competitive nature.
It's like giving up diamonds for rubber bands. You probably wouldn't do it if you were of sound mind - unless you received a helluva lot of rubber bands - so why do we constantly give away our valuable attention?
ROA often comes in the form of knowledge. It's what we receive as a benefit for having paid attention to a customer, a client, a motivational speaker, or anything else.
What we derive from that experience should have its own reward for us, either in the form of financial gain, wisdom increase or future benefit.
Our goal, as always, is to convert that knowledge into wisdom.
Entrepreneurs are the alchemists of the online world. We are innovative enough to make gold out of straw. But we can't afford to give away our well-earned wealth - in the form of attention - without receiving greater value for our efforts.
Global business strategist and author John Hagel III has his own take on ROA. He says it is "driven by the proliferation of options available to us in all domains of our life, increasing the relative scarcity of an increasingly valuable resource - our attention."
I couldn't have said it better myself, so I didn't. That's why I'm giving him full credit.
Hagel suggests that virtual communities, such as this blog, can be powerful conduits in delivering ROA by enhancing good fortune.
In other words, you'll become "lucky" just by paying attention to my blog. I completely agree.
Don't you get a rush of excitement when you "accidentally" discover a valuable, relevant resource of information that you didn't even know existed?That's what the StumbleUpon.com web site is all about. It creates value from other sites that we "stumble upon" as we navigate our way around the Web.
As a former baseball executive said a long time ago, "luck is the residue of design." You'll be amazed at how lucky you'll feel when you do things with real purpose - not just out of habit - like searching for knowledge to grow your business.
The challenge is to harness the power of these valuable resources and derive a healthy return on the attention we give during our quest.
How can you connect with others to grow? How can you take advantage of your skills for finding relevant "treasure among the trash" and use the materials as key building blocks for your success?
Your attention becomes an investment in that success. You have to mine the gems before you realize their value.
Let's put it to the test on this blog.
Think like a big shot banker… Where will your attention receive the greatest "bang for the buck?"
Share your attention wealth with my blog readers.Tell me your top three goals for getting a great return on your attention.
It is possible to find treasure in the trash, if you know how to pay attention.
Let's see if we can turn that attention into business gold.
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- May 16 2007
- 208 Comments
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My last blog post was about the myth of retirement, and how it robs most people of the happiness they hope for. It really struck a nerve with many of my readers.
If you’ve been patiently waiting for my solution… your wait is over, the cavalry is charging ahead. And if your current situation seems hopeless, you’re in luck, because when we’re done you’ll have an answer that will definitely work for you.
How can I be so sure? Because what I am about to layout for you are the very same strategies guiding me and many of my famous clients.
But before we blitz down the trail together I need to point out a few of the more obvious signs along the way. You see, right now most people have a false sense of certainty about what they believe will be their likely future. Truth be told, most entrepreneurs’ envisioned future isn’t much different from an infant’s security blanket – they both don’t serve any real purpose other than providing a false sense of safety.
I know what I just wrote sounds cold, but think about it. Could you have predicted you current situation (good or bad) 5 years ago? How about 10 years ago? For anyone with even an ounce of ambition cycling through their veins the answer has to be “no.”
From what I gather, the single biggest reason for the gap between what we want and where we end up is perspective. Most people seem to be sleepwalking through life, with little awareness of where they are really heading and even less recognition for what’s going on around them.
So, before you can predict anything, you need to have a clue about the overall context - meaning the environment you currently operate in. You see, one of the biggest factors influencing your future will be how you interact with everything that’s going on around you. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Of course it does. So, let me ask you a question…
“Have you noticed how everything around us is changing so fast these days?”
Think about it. Just compare where the world is today to where it was just a few years ago.
Today, the best selling rap artist is white (Eminem), the most successful golfer is black (Tiger Woods), the tallest basketball player in the NBA is Chinese (Yao Ming), the French have been accusing Americans of being condescending and not caring about the views of foreigners, we now pay for water (bottled water is $9 a gallon) while music is free (sort of), and you need 9 different phone numbers to reach any two of your friends. I could go on and on…
Don’t make the mistake that the business world is somehow immune from the snowball of rapid change. I first noticed how uncertain the future is in the business world after reading Tom Peters’ and Robert Waterman’s book In Search Of Excellence. Peters and Waterman celebrated “excellence in companies that broke the mold”... Years later, these same companies were no longer excellent and the only thing that these excellent companies broke was their ability to survive and thrive.
Celebrated business guru Jim Collins author of bestselling books Built To Last, and Good To Great hasn’t been immune from the hyper-speed of business change either. The companies he profiled in Built To Last, did indeed last, although they weren’t exactly built to emulate.
Over half of Jim’s “visionary companies” have slipped dramatically in performance and reputation since the book’s release. These companies’ visions could now be better categorized as blurry rather than guiding. And chances are good that if he were to rewrite the book today companies like Ford, Sony, Boeing, Nordstrom, Merck, Motorola, and Disney wouldn’t even make his runner’s up list.
Just in case you mistakenly believe I am taking a shot at either Collins or Peters, I’m not. I wouldn’t even dare. These two men rank among my top five business heroes. But the point is obvious nonetheless. With everything changing so fast these days our futures are lot less predictable then ever before.
That’s why it’s no longer safe to assume that your tomorrow will be like today or yesterday, no matter how excellent you’ve been or how long you’ve been around. Moreover, the further you go out into the future the more your vision resembles a fairy tale.
Now before you go any further please read the prior paragraph again. Because when you face up to the hard cold reality that you really cannot be too certain about your future, you realize sacrificing everything for it (the whole retirement idea) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Of course you and I both realize the future is going to come. And we all believe certain actions taken today will improve our future.
So how do we balance the two?
If we live completely for today we might find our future somewhat unforgiving and very unpleasant, yet if we live completely for the future we might find we sacrificed our best years for nothing more than a mirage. Either way you end up with a heap of regrets.
Let me remind you that what got us on this conversation in the first place was the scary fact that my masseuse “GP” had not taken a day off in over 180 days. But I never told you why...
When GP first told me about her grueling schedule I asked her when she made time for fun. Initially she tried to feed me some line about making time “here and there”. I would have challenged her on her answer but I could tell by her tone she honestly believed what she was telling me.
My experience coaching so many successful marketing gurus taught me not to challenge closely held beliefs head on. If you do all you meet up with is a lot of resistance, because one of the reasons these people are successful is they’re not easily swayed from their own positive self-affirming beliefs.
I used to come across this all the time when I was coaching. GP like many of my clients had already convinced herself that she actually did have fun. If I challenged her belief she would have gotten defensive and more committed to the belief.
Instead, I asked for the details (which by the way is always the best way to covertly challenge any belief). “Well, tell me, what do you like to do for fun?” I asked. “Lots of things” she replied. “Tell me some of them” I challenged. She thought for a minute or two, and then told me she “used” to have fun by going rollerblading, playing with her dogs, or going to the beach.
Sure, she had things that she “used to do” for fun – but when I pressed further by asking her to tell me some of the things she’s done recently for fun, within the past 4 months, she didn’t have any answers.
GP then admitted to me (and more importantly to herself) she really didn’t make time for fun. It’s sad yet I see it all the time. I got the feeling that GP was hiding. Life was passing her by so fast and she just kept her head down clinging to the certainty of work over the uncertainty of her achieving happiness.
And while this won’t be popular to write I’ll write it anyway because the more I live the more I am convinced of its truth.
And here it is…
Most People Consistently Choose Unhappiness Over Uncertainty.
I know you want to disagree with that statement, don’t you? I know I did. Because if you can prove it’s not true then you’ll never have to inspect your life under that standard.
Let it stew for a few minutes… "Most People Consistently Choose Unhappiness Over Uncertainty".
If you’re up for being real honest with yourself - couldn’t you identify areas of your life where you are currently making that choice. If you ever answered a dream with “Sure, I’d love to, BUT WHAT IF...” What follows next is usually an uncertainty that is dominating your life decisions.
But I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves here. I’ve got a lot more to share with you about this, but let me tell you what I asked GP to do, because I want you to do the same. I asked GP to put together a list of 20 things she really enjoys before my appointment the next week.
What about you? Can you do it?
Sadly, many of you will not be able to come up with 20 fun things you enjoy. But if you can come up with even three it’s a start. No matter how many you come up with I want to invite you to post your answers here.
This way we can learn from each other’s lists. My hope is if there are enough people posting we can help the GPs of this world put together a great list for themselves. And like I said, it doesn’t matter how many you have now, just go ahead and share them here.
In my next post I’ll tell you what’s on my list, and how to use this list to dramatically boost your productivity and be a lot more successful a lot sooner.
But first, you’ve got to make the list… So have at it by commenting here.
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- Mar 09 2007
- 65 Comments
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Hey Guys,
There have been 1536 comments on our blog over the last few weeks.
Most of those comments have been overwhelmingly positive, and the number one thing that keeps coming up is WHY am I giving away so much incredible free content.
Here's the 100% true no-weasel-word answer...
Because I am just about to launch my new Business Growth Systems coaching program.
Actually, that's only part of the reason. The OTHER part of the reason is that this is going to be a limited program. The program is NOT for everyone.
And that's the real reason I've been putting out non-stop content... because I want to pre-qualify people before we get to the launch.
I figure, the more education I do upfront, the fewer people we will have to turn away on launch day.
In other words, I want the RIGHT kind of people.
I'm not looking for people who are lazy, or whiny, or think there is some kind of miraculous piece of software that will make them rich.
I run a very exclusive coaching club, and the members of my program take their businesses very seriously. And I've got to keep it that way.
By making sure the right kind of people get into my program, it helps to elevate the level of discussion to a quality that is not attainable anywhere else. Not only that, but it increases the quality and number of joint venture opportunities for clients to participate in.
I know this may UPSET some people... but that's just the way it is. I think you have seen in my videos that I am a straight shooter, and I am not about to change.
We are just about one week out from launch right now... and I am going to continue to pump out more content - I figure that's the best way to make sure we only get the right kind of people get into the program.
So I've asked my team to put together a collection of my documents and videos that I've released over the past few weeks... it's called the "Profit Vault"... and this really is a massive collection of business-building content. Even though these documents will cost you nothing, be aware that they've created more Internet millionaires than most paid and high priced products could ever lay claim to.
You can access it here:
Visit the Profit Vault
What I'd like you to do is visit the Vault - you will find an EXTREMELY potent collection of my recent work. I'd like you to go through it all. I want you to dive in and absorb the concepts.
And if you ARE the type of person who identifies with my message, what I'm all about, and if my videos resonate with you, well then you are going to want to mark your calendar for March 15th at 3PM EASTERN.
To Higher Profits,
Rich Schefren
P.S. When I see everything all together on one page, well... even I was stunned by all the material in the "Profit Vault":
Visit the Profit Vault
P.S.S. After you explore my vault, please let me know how you'll be implementing the ideas in your business. You can do this by posting your thoughts right here.
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- Feb 25 2007
- 546 Comments
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Hey Guys,
I have a quick favor to ask of you.
But before we get into that I just want to point out that, in the last 24 hours alone, roughly 6,231 people have watched my latest video, "Startup To Freedom". I seems as though people are starting to send the video to their friends and family.
So not only could you learn a lot from the video, but you could also look at it as a lesson in viral marketing! Cool.
Now since my inbox has been flooded with questions and comments about momentum, I want to try and answer them the best they can. But before I do that, I want you to submit a question to my blog so that I can have a clear picture of the common obstacles that are preventing people from gaining momentum.
Here is the question I'd like you to answer:
What is the biggest obstacle that is preventing you from gaining the momentum you need to bring your business to the next level?
Submit your answer on this post...
And yes this means you!
It will only take 30 seconds, and it will help you identify the constraint that is preventing you from growing your business.
Then, later on this week, I'll be releasing something that will address the common obstacles you're facing. I already have some ideas, based on the feedback so far, but I'm very interested in hearing from you.
I'm looking forward to your feedback.
To Higher Profits,
Rich Schefren
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- Jun 28 2006
- 5 Comments
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Since I'm about to launch another coaching group, and I won't be around for a while, I'm releasing an extensive report that outlines some of the basic principles I teach.
Many of you will not be able to afford my coaching services, none the less, I want to point you in the right direction and give you an idea of what you should be thinking about on a day to day basis when it comes to your business. If you're interested in learning more about what goes on "behind the curtain" in my elite coaching groups, please visit the following location: http://www.strategicprofits.com/manifesto/
After you take a look at this report, please let me know your thoughts by posting a comment on the blog.
I think you'll find a perspective that you've never see before, and it just may create a radical shift in your business.
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