You’ve probably heard the old expression about all work and no play making you a dull boy or girl. It sounds all well and good, but all the play in the world won’t reduce that stack of work that’s piling up on your desk. It won’t make that deadline go away or miraculously add more hours to an already full day. No, you’ll need to keep your nose to the proverbial grindstone if you want to get ahead. Then suddenly you realize you’ve become an obsessive, grouchy shell of your formerly cheerful self.

Featured Resource this week - Digital Product Delivery

Digital Publishing for eBooks and Downloads

DPD is an easy to use digital publishing platform for selling and delivering downloadable content. Upload your products to DPD and start selling in minutes. With DPD, all sales are paid directly to you with no per-sale fees, bandwidth charges, or commissions.

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Featured Resource this week - Grammarly

Grammarly is the world’s most accurate grammar checker. 

Grammarly makes you a better writer by finding and correcting up to 10× more mistakes than your word processor.

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Nope, you’re not seeing things and we’re not crazy. Making a pie is just like starting a business and we’re going to explain how:

Determine the need for pie.

When you decide to make a pie, it’s because you’ve determined that there’s a need for a pie. Maybe it’s Thanksgiving or another special occasion, or maybe your child or spouse just REALLY wants one. The same applies when you decide to start a business: you’ve determined that there’s a need for the product or service that you’ll be offering and you commit to doing something about it.

Featured Resource this week - Copy Doodles

Handwriting and hand-drawn enhancements have been used for years in advertising and marketing because they are a proven way to grab attention and increase response and readability. There is NOTHING out there that matches the quality, expertise and level of support you get when you become a CopyDoodles member.  Their extensive library of direct-response marketing graphics features thousands of hand-drawn CopyDoodles, which can be easily downloaded to your computer and placed on any of the online or offline marketing pieces you are working on in a snap.

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Entrepreneurs are the backbone of every company ever created, and according to Chris Kuenne and John Danner, entrepreneurship professors at Princeton University, the personality those business starters have is the most important factor in determining their success.

Together, they studied the motivation and self-identity of 450 entrepreneurs whose companies made at least $3 million in annual revenue and had been around for at least 3 years. Through their work, they discovered that these entrepreneurs all had one of four personalities:

Featured Resource this week -

 One Click Upsell

If you sell products, services or entry to events, using Infusionsoft's order forms, and you are not leading the new buyer to an immediate up sell, YOU ARE LEAVING MONEY ON THE TABLE!!!

Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

In the last installment of our 6-Part List Building Series, we’re going to explain how you can use other people’s lists to build your own. And no, this does not mean buying email lists… that’s always a bad idea! However, collaborating with other businesses to promote each other, a technique known as co-marketing, is a great way to gain subscribers.

PRO tip: Always, yes ALWAYS, have a call-to-action so ‘other people’s customers’ can opt-in on YOUR list for something free or paid. That’s the secret to using other people’s lists to grow your own.

So here are five ways to collaborate with another business and use their list to build your own:

As back-to-school items fly off the shelves, they’ll be replaced by Halloween décor, Thanksgiving essentials, and finally, a Christmas/Hanukkah/New Year’s explosion. The holidays are coming, whether you are ready or not. And even if you’re not ready, your marketing plans need to be. Here are a few tips to get you started now:

Plan early.

This is the golden rule of holiday marketing. Dedicate your summer to your Q4 marketing plan and solidify your strategy now. Advertising becomes more expensive and more competitive during the holiday season, so preparing ahead of time is key.  

“I love it when a plan comes together.”

       ~ Hannibal, from the A-Team TV show

Yes, there’s nothing like the feeling of having a plan. A good plan helps you sleep at night and provides a sense of security. Sure, you can wing it, but why would you? A plan can give you hope, but hope is not a plan. With Q4 rapidly approaching, is your plan ready?

“The buck stops here.”

               ~ Harry S. Truman

By now you’ve probably heard about the importance of making a quarterly plan for your business, and you may well have a beautifully laid-out document ready to implement. You’ve probably asked yourself what assets your business has and examined the best ways to leverage those assets.

The calendar year may be slowly winding down, but that doesn’t mean your business is. Your year has probably seen its share of ups and downs, where certain aspects of the plans you laid out back in January have exceeded your wildest expectations, while other things… well, they didn’t quite go the way you imagined.

Now that Q4 is drawing near, you’ll want to finish the year strong. How will you do that? You need a plan. More specifically, you need a great one that includes certain key elements.

A good plan starts around a very basic idea. It says: “I’m going to accomplish this goal in this amount of time.” For a business, this plan might mean you want to increase sales in the next quarter. However without a comprehensive plan that details what you’re going to do to get those sales, you run the risk of never reaching your goal. A good plan should also include a timetable and milestones so you know you’re heading in the right direction.

It’s no secret that Q4 is rapidly approaching. What that means to you and to your business will vary depending on what industry you’re in, but regardless of how important Q4 is to you, there’s no point in letting an entire quarter of the year go to waste. Even if it’s not normally a time for huge sales and a major marketing push, it doesn’t mean you have to go into your shell. Here are some things you should be doing before Q4 lands in your lap.

Communication is something we do so instinctively that we often take it for granted. We shouldn’t. One of the keys to being successful in business is not only communicating, but communicating effectively. That’s doubly true when it comes to your employees. You’ll find all sorts of books and articles on what to say to them, but just as important is what you DON’T say.