Month: April 2016

There is certainly a lot of buzz about the end of the world as we know it, as well as its literal end.

Why are we visited by so many predictions of the end of the world? Traditional scientists and historians report the world has gone through the cosmic control-alt-delete hardcore reboot as the result of impact by a huge meteor hurling our planet into the ice age. It stands to reason that a similar event could revisit us at some time.

But then there’s the Star Wars program to help us thwart any attack of meteoric significance, looks like we’ll dodge that one.

Then there’s the religious folks who propose our impending doom will come in the form of everything you can think of from natural disasters (wielded by God Himself) to the rise of Satan and the return of Christ.

Not to mention potential zombie apocalypse… and what does it matter when the earth is moving closer to the sun every day with impending collision is inevitable?

Even if we avoid being distracted by the threat of destruction of the entire human race, if nothing else our own sense of limited mortality looms over us, as we age we continue to see the lives of friends and loved ones come to their respective ends.

The fact remains, whether we like it or not, the world may come to an end but the end of our own life is inevitable. It is commonly reported that it is one of the two things that are certainties in this life: 1) Death 2) Taxes.

What if your world ends tomorrow?

They say we don’t know when the end of the world will be, likewise, we don’t know when we will take our last breath.

Having been there with many people in their last moments, many people (even the one’s that you couldn’t possibly imagine) have a host of regrets. It is my intention to avoid regrets by embracing this life enthusiastically. What about you?

Are you ready?

When I think about my own mortality, I ask myself three questions:

1. Did I love greatly?
2. Did I enjoy my journey?
3. Did I leave something behind?

I have always held fast to the idea that love is the most important component in this life. Loving others has been the most significant driving force in my daily life, preceded by my love of God (and both can be quite confusing).

I love expressing every last savory drop of experience while on my life’s journey. I have tasted the many flavors of life’s experience and continue to cherish every moment (even those moments that others may have viewed as less desirable).

I have picked up many tools along the way enabling me to find more and more joy from everything this life has to offer each and every day.

My desire to leave something behind sometimes creates conflict with the enjoyment of my journey because the creative process requires a certain level of commitment and dedication to follow a thought – or project – through to its completion.

Having an accepting degree of tolerance of my own limitations helps to keep me moving forward at a pace that is comfortable enough for me. I don’t let any lack of expertise to decelerate by momentum.

Case in point: Here’s a little ditty by my alter ego, If the World Ends Tomorrow.

What are your thoughts about

The End of the World

?

Every day my clients get waylaid by a barrage of unsolicited “experts,” with the latest and greatest wiz-bang promotional doo-dads designed to rocket-launch their business into the stratosphere.

It’s free, a free-trial, a one time offer, specialized training, books, videos, streaming classes, free seminars, email tips, on and on and on ad infinitum…

At some point, you just have to let your clients take their own reins and responsibility for their own decisions. So, let go and support my clients as best I can with whatever they choose to do is the best I can do.

I can’t compete with the constant promotional efforts of those whose mission in life is to fleece individuals, promising unrealistic results and impossible guarantees based on improbable expectations.

That said, it is also a part of my job to stay on the leading edge of technology in particular areas within my realm of expertise. That means, that I, too, must subject myself to all the claims of latest and greatest tools and techniques, being careful not to be distracted by meaningless bells and whistles.

What it comes down to – the bottom line – is

What creates the best lasting results with the least amount of effort or expense?

Although much can be helpful – and not harmful – in your marketing efforts, but is it worth the effort or expense?

Marketing one’s business is important – it is likely more important than having the best product or service in the world – because what good is it to be or have the best if no one knows about it?

This is one of my areas of expertise and is why people seek me out to be a member of their team, but I am only a team member not the prime source of their marketing program.

Unfortunately, there is no black and white, step by step, marketing approach that works for every product or service every time. Marketing is a moving target that takes a lot of trial and error, experimentation and tracking costs and results.

If you have the following basic components, you will have a firm foundation on which to build your marketing campaign.

7 Steps to Effective Marketing

#1 Consistent Brand

You must have a consistent and brief summation of your product or service, something that reduced to its simples form communicates what it is you or your company is all about.

#2 Web Presence

You need a web site, or family of websites that creates a picket fence of protection for your product, idea or main marketing theme, message or product. (Remember brand comes first, domain name second, but they go hand-in-hand [Masters Branding 101]… Do not commit to a brand that you cannot protect with a dot-com.)

#3 Think SEO Google

At least for the time being Google is the best cost & effort for the results deal outperforming all the other methods of marketing. Focus on having some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) including keywords, images and best use of your family of domains offering regularly valuable content for Google’s spiders when they come by to scan your site. Add some AdWords campaigns and you’re good to go.

#4 Email Marketing

Create collection methods to get the emails of individuals interested in your product(s) and/or service(s). Offer them something significant in exchange for their email address and their permission to contact them at a later date via email. This is of vital importance to your marketing efforts, creating a relationship with your clients/potential clients. Be careful not to over-market to your email subscribers.

#5 Participate in Social Media

The strength and payback of social media ebbs and flows for each business independently. Only participating and tracking individual results can determine what will work best for you and your product or service. At the time of this post the bulk of my clients are getting their best results for their Facebook pages; plus Facebook offers advertising and promotional programs for a fee that can be quite effective.

#6 Multimedia Marketing

There are many ways to offer value with audio and video content making it available to your audience, via iTunes, podcasts, webcasts, vblogs, LiveCast (via cellphone), Skype (one-to-one live interaction & classes), Periscope, Vimeo and the king of all multimedia marketing (accounting for 99% of the results) is none other than YouTube.

#7 Expanding Sales Funnel

What good is it to market your product or service if you have nothing to sell… and always something more to sell your buyers. The fact is, if you give them something to buy –and they opt to buy – there is a good chance they will buy more, if you give them the opportunity. Expanding your sales funnel includes always have another upsell for your clients; ever give your people another way to invest with you, always.

There you have it.

The seven basic tools that you need to safely and effectively start your marketing efforts… The rest is research and development conducted on-the-fly tracking results meticulously.

In the disposable society where we throw everything away when we’re done with it, it’s no surprise that we might take the same approach to dealing with other people in this manner.

In our society we are trained to accept the idea that all of our relationships are temporary; the teachers who instruct us, the sales people to help to provide us with what we need or desire, our friends, acquaintances and even our parents and other relatives.

Especially these days, we all have more independence than in the olden days. In the olden days (not that long ago) if you did not have a family to help protect and support you or part of a community that would help you to survive in a more primitive world, it was likely that you would not live very long.

In as little as 150 years ago, we were a more communal society; today, for the most part, we are all individual units fighting for survival one against the other. This individualism is being promoted 24 hours and day, 7 days a week in every type of media that we are exposed to.

As active members of this society we do our best to keep our relationships superficial enough to stay somewhat reserved or disconnected enough to be able to move on at the first sign of an open door leading to a new experience.

Yet, with all this programming, every once and a while, our conscious is awakened by being deeply moved by another human being; additionally, this part of our psyches can become energized by separation from a non-human interaction, possibly an environmental form of nature, like a plant, a particular view or activity in nature or even an animal.

In that moment, we acknowledge a deep sense of love and suffer varying degrees of sadness or depression from the separation, grieving from the loss. All making one consider, “Is there something more?” Only to be followed by the prayer, “Oh, dear God, please, no.” Begging the deity for protection from this type of connection again because the loss is too much to bear.

There is one relationship that society will nod a blessing to that is allowed to survive the test of time, if it’s possible. If you dare attempt such a relationship; and this is represented by the institution of marriage.

Till death do us part

I have been in the business of uniting people in holy matrimony, and I still perform this ceremony on occasion under the right circumstances. How romantic it is to see two people standing before family, friends and the community at large pledging their love one to the other and promising to honor, love, cherish, respect and protect each other for life.

In that moment we all send as much support as we can muster in support of these two individuals… which, sadly, is not much.

Behind the soon-to-be-husband’s back, the bride is coached by friends and family to, do this, don’t do that; don’t let him make you do this, don’t let him think that’s going to last forever, and for god’s sake make sure you get the word, “obey,” removed from you vows.

Likewise, the groomsmen and coaching the soon-to-be-married groom, “You can back out now, there’s still time,” along with a litany of caveats and last-minute-romp offers from exes and others.

Not to worry, if you change your mind in time, you can get an annulment.

And divorce is a larger industry than marriage ever thought of being, so your word? It’s not worth much.

Then, as if the result of a miracle and against all odds, couples make it for the long-haul.

Unfortunately, as the officiant, I would like to think that all of the marriage ceremonies I performed lasted forever, when in fact, half of them ended in divorce.

To all the divorcees, I lift you up in admiration and thank you for being willing to play all in against the odds and assure you that

You are not disposable

And I pray that you find that everlasting love both within yourself and with the person with whom you can join for the remainder of this life’s journey; if that’s what your heart desires.

Love endures

I believe that an evolution is underway and as we evolve, we will return to love, loving each other and a tendency to begin to practice a love so great that in retrospect, the greatest loves we have known thus far will pale in comparison.

And we have loved… Oh, have we loved.

Okay, just for the sake of this exercise, let’s say that I have a philanthropic billionaire who wants to give you – yes YOU – $20 million.

Of course, there’s a catch.

The billionaire wants to see that his $20 million goes to a good cause and will help to make the world a better place.

There are no educational or experience requirements to receive the money, just a good heart and a good idea.

You are not allowed to simply donate it to an existing organization. You must create a new non-profit organization that will help the make the world a better place.

This is not a contest, and there is not simply one block of $20 million, there are hundreds of blocks that he and his friends want to donate to regular people, just like you, who are in the trenches of everyday life.

So, you – if you decide to participate in his generous offer – must submit a simple one page description of how you would use his monetary gift to help make the world a better place.

The question is:

What Would You Do with $20 Million Dollars?

To help make the world a better place?

You might ask what how you will be compensated for your efforts of managing his financial gift?

What do I get?

You may hire yourself to work for your organization, if you like – but if you do – you will have to perform specific job duties from the office of your organization and you must work a 40-hour week, without benefits and/or vacation for a modest wage of no more than $1,200.00 a month. The salary limit applies to everyone in your organization; no one may ever be paid more than $1,200-a-month.

What’s in it for me?

The satisfaction that comes from doing a great service for both this philanthropist and the world at large by creating something amazing, that someone else may not have been able to accomplish without the combination of his money and your heart-centered vision… not much else.

So, to recap:

1. You submit your idea.
2. You get $20 million to manage.
3. You can choose to hire yourself (or not) to manage the $20 million. If you do, you may only receive a $1,200 monthly stipend and you must work a 40-hour week without benefits or vacation time.

Question #1

Would You Do It?

Question #2

What Would Your Project Be?

Observation:

With my clients, every one of them immediately has an idea already in mind and enthusiastically produces a one-page description of their project… Just in case there is a philanthropist (and there may be) that wants to support their efforts to help make a better world, both in the now and for future generations.

I have also offered the scenario to strangers – people I don’t know and who don’t know me – and their reaction is very different indeed.

For all they know, I could be the philanthropist with a $20,000,000 check in my pocket (and when asked, I’ve neither confirmed, nor denied, such an idea).

Most of them shrug off the offer as a ridiculous proposition.

Many say, “I wouldn’t even waste my time thinking about it for that!” (referring to the $1,200 a month.)

Also, a very large percentage, have a response, like:

“I can’t think of anything that could help make the world a better place.”

And indicating that their life is okay, so what does it matter about anyone else?

What would you do?