In fact when the internet was developed many thought that only large companies would be able to utilize what it had to offer as they had huge marketing budgets. However this wasn’t certainly going to be a very viable business model initially as the internet in its earlier years simply wasn’t growing fast enough to be able to accommodate the kind of money that big companies could afford to spend.

During the last few years things have changed dramatically with improvements in technology now the internet has become even more popular. We are all using the internet today and have therefore become familiar with browsers and search engines. Due to this any online business does not need to be a household name to be getting customers to your site all that is now required is to have a much stronger online presence.

Certainly as more and more people look for local businesses online instead of the better known larger companies then as long as you have a good online presence there are many opportunities to improve the prospects of your business.

When it comes to building the right sort of online presence in order to help with the way that the internet is changing how consumers find local businesses there are numerous different marketing strategies that you can employ. All of which have been developed to ensure that you are able to take your business to the next level. As you will soon discover there are hundreds or even thousands of people who want to find the product or service that you offer and it is through use of the internet they have discovered this is the best way.

If you are willing to make the effort to improve your online presence because the internet is changing how consumers find local business to use then you are going to claim more of potential customers from your competitors. As a result you will then begin to see your company grow and of course reap the benefits of increased profits.

For any small business today in order to be successful it needs to have an online presence. As well as helping you to build up a customer base it provides you with an opportunity to establish credibility. In fact today you will find that most businesses (large and small) will have an online presence as they know that most customers are now turning to the internet to obtain what they want. One of the ways how small businesses can build an online presence is through them engaging in online communities.

As part of an online community you will not only be able to reach those people close to you but also many around the world. As well as allowing you to market your business much more easily it also allows you to do several other things that may be connected to your business. However when you are part of these online communities remember to share information with others within it they will find valuable. If you try to sell them something they are going to immediately turn away from you.

Through online communities you are offer chances to learn about new ways in which you can market your business through advice from other marketers. Wherever possible take advantage of any advice that these type of people who are members of the same community as you are giving and where it is appropriate put into practice what they recommend.

As you can see from above online communities can prove very effective as a way how small business can build an online presence. If you don’t believe me then give it a go.

Simply putting the practice of link building in operation, provides you with an opportunity to get other websites that contain similar or the same content as yours to link back to your own website. Although it may look a long winded task you could actually be causing a huge disservice to your business if you decide not to take what is an absolutely vital SEO step.

So what are the benefits?

1. It helps to ensure that your business starts to appear in search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. However when attempting to appear in such search engines it is more important that you appear among the top 10 in relation to the targeted keywords you are using rather than to have loads of pages appearing in their results. Research carried out shows that most people will click on the first website in the list of results as they believe this one will offer them the most relevant answer to the question they have. There is a saying around here among our account executives, “Most decisions are made on page one,” and research proves it.

2. Links will help any potential customer to trust you more. If they should see a link for your business on sites that are popular or well respected then of course they will trust what you have to say or what you have to offer is going to be good. It offers social proof.

There are a number of automated programs to assist in building links, however, many of these will get a business in trouble with their Internet Service Provider, as well as the search engines due to an overaggressive algorithm within the software, or an inexperienced user. And as usual, keeping things real and following the laws of nature and what is natural will prevail. It is not normal for a website to go from zero to a thousand backlinks in a short period of time.

1.     We all know how important good quality content on a website is if you want to see yours being placed high in the search engine rankings. However what many do not realize is that building a network of good quality back links to your website can prove very effective for any online business. But make sure that you use your keyword phrase in the text of your actual back link and also only link to sites that pertain to your business. Google’s new algorithm can fairly easily detect link farms, paid link sites, and of course, sites that do not pertain to your site. Think of it this way, Google is all about the user experience and what is “natural.” For example, it would not make sense, naturally, for a weight loss website to link to a website about first time home buying. Additionally, speaking of “weight” links from .edu and .gov wedsites carry much more weight than .com, .net.

2. When creating your website so that it brings in more customers for your real estate business you shouldn’t become too obsessed about where your site is ranking on the pages of search engines. This is only a small part of what will help your business and a site with a lower PR can sometimes outrank those with a higher one.  Rather what you should be concerned with more is the quality of the content that you have included within it. In the long term, sites with quality content will continue to grow and rank.

I our society, we are always looking for immediate results, and I suppose there is nothing wrong with that, however, some things in life are worth the wait and like a good wine (and my wife) get better over time. Search Engine optimization is one of those things in life.

It is well known that most website designers do not know much about SEO, and the ones that do, when questioned, usually fall short. It is no wonder considering all of the mis-truths and outright lies regarding the subject of SEO. What we recommend for most business owners starting out, and with a limited or no budget, is to have their website designed using WordPress as the back-end and then employing a very powerful SEO Theme like WordPress SEO Theme Talian or a suitable plugin, like the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. The Yoast SEO plugin, no matter what the so called SEO “experts” and “gurus” have said in their usual unforgiving reviews, has out performed in the “real world” the on page efforts of every SEO company we have tested against.

Of course our own website clients receive a complete website solution that allows them to control and manage their website 100% yet behind the scenes all of their “on page” SEO is managed perfectly. We also include powerful tools, like the ability to create unlimited optin pages, including video optin pages, sales letters, etc.. Our solution also includes training videos and an online manual that are both updated with each update/upgrade. Our goal is to allow all of our clients the opportunity to edit at will, or create pages anytime they wish, no matter their skill level, and all at an extremely affordable price.

So what are the reasons why as a business you should be looking to make sure that your website is mobile friendly?

Below we take a look at just a number of these.

Reason 1 – Year by year the number of people who are choosing to use the internet has a source for information is growing. During the last ten years there has been a huge rise in internet usage.  In fact in the USA alone it grew between 2000 and 2010 an amazing 150%.

Reason 2 – Around 40% of all people who own a mobile phone today will go online and around half of these will actually be spending time online at least once each day.

Reason 3 – The creating of a mobile website for your business is relatively inexpensive. However how they are designed is different from the way in which a traditional website will be designed because of the screen size and resolutions that need to be worked with. Plus you will find that creating such a site doesn’t take up as much time.

Because we feel a mobile website is so important, for all of our website design clients, we now include a mobile version of their website at no additional charge.

Lastly, regarding videos and mobile users. Whether you know it or not, simply uploading your video to your server and embedding a video player to your website might be fine for most Internet users, however, your video will likely be of no use to the majority of smart phone, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Android users.

Fact: Access to the internet on mobile devices will exceed computers sometime this year

Fact: People still respond to video whether on web, Iphone or Ipad

Fact: QR codes to video is in its infancy, and this is the ground floor

Fact: My customers and I want our videos to play on iPads, iPhones and Androids!

We have done extensive research and development in this area in order to assure our clients videos can be viewed in most every mobile device. We have discovered that each video must be compressed into 5 different versions. Then you must have a player that is capable of determining which device is accessing the video and play the appropriate version.

In order to simplify delivery of your online videos to every kind of device, you need a service that provides mobile-ready video encoding, robust software development kits, intelligent device detection and powerful mobile web player templates that make it dramatically easier to reach mobile audiences via the mobile web and mobile apps.

The usual solution is going to cost you a minimum of $100 per month, plus per gigabyte charges above any included bandwidth.

We include this service with all of our clients, saving them not only money, but the headaches associated with finding a suitable solution and then the learning curve to implementing that solution.

Marketing a business using email and text messaging comes with a number of benefits that other types cannot provide.    Firstly any email or text message sent will be received by the recipient almost instantly so this can prove effective when you are providing a time sensitive offer.    Secondly you will find that around 94% of all text messages sent today will be read and nearly everyone who subscribes to your SMS program will then see it.

Since the introduction of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace of course the way we interact online today has changed forever.    Certainly the number of businesses who are choosing to invest in this new viral trend has grown substantially and now is the time for you to do the same with your business.   However using email and text messaging to build your customer base is something that should not be ignored.

Marketing a business using email and text messaging comes with a number of benefits that other types cannot provide.    Firstly any email or text message sent will be received by the recipient almost instantly so this can prove effective when you are providing a time sensitive offer.    Secondly you will find that around 94% of all text messages sent today will be read and nearly everyone who subscribes to your SMS program will then see it.

As you know that those who have subscribed have chosen to receive your offers or promotional messages then you know that they are actively interested in your product or business.   So of course there is the bigger possibility that they will choose to make a purchase from you.

Common in Japan, where it was created by Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave in 1994, the QR code is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional barcodes. QR is the abbreviation for Quick Response, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. The technology has seen a large uptake in Japan and South Korea. However, in the West there has been a slower adoption of QR codes, but that is changing now.

A QR code (short for Quick Response) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data.

Common in Japan, where it was created by Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave in 1994, the QR code is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional barcodes. QR is the abbreviation for Quick Response, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.

The technology has seen a large uptake in Japan and South Korea. However, in the West there has been a slower adoption of QR codes, but that is changing now.

Here are some ideas on uses:

1. Put One On Your Business Card
Put a code on your business card containing all of your contact information.

2. Put It On A T-Shirt
Then people get sent where you want them to go.

3. Put It On Price Tags In A Store
Taking them to a specs page online. (Best Buy does this quite effectively.)

4. Put It On Your Website Contact Us Page
People take a picture of your page on the screen, put you in their contact list.

5. Put It On Your Instruction Sheet
People scan it to get step-by-step instructions or maybe an instructional or demonstration video.

6. Put It In Print Ads
People scan to be taken to a specific landing page on your website (also allows you to put tracking codes into your print ad analytics, something that’s difficult to do otherwise in offline advertising.)

7. Put It On A Campaign Sign
Taking people to your website.

8. Put It On A For-Sale Sign
Take them to a website with video and information about the item being sold, i.e.: house for sale (or rent), automobile, boat, jetski/waverunners, etc.

9. Put It On Your Luggage
If your luggage ever gets lost, very easy to find you.

10. Create One That Automatically Sends a Tweet
Scanning it sends out a tweet.

11. Do A Location Login
Put on every table and the walls of your restaurant, does a foursquare login or a Facebook location login.

12. Add To Your LinkedIn Page
Passes your contact information or website or a special offer.

13. Call Us To Place Your Order
Scan dials their phone.

14. Send a Teaser Postcard
Send a QR code to a potential client, which takes them to your website.

15. Put It On Your Conference NameTag
Contact information or website.

16. Put A Backsell On Your Invoices
Taking them to a landing page making a special offer.

17. Put One On The End Of A Video
Takes them to a landing page, can pass source codes.

18. Paypal Buy Link
Scanning takes them to Paypal to buy your item.

19. Promote An Event
Scanning the code puts it on their calendar.

20. Announce Your Free Wifi
Scanning logs them into your wifi account automatically.

21. Put It In Your Powerpoint Presentation
Build your list by sending your audience to a special bonus offer if they sign up.

Truly, the possibilities are endless.

Every day of your life you will come into contact with ideas, both good ones and not so good. Through reading, talking with others, seminars, workshops, webinars, and just plain old thinking, your mind processes thousands of thoughts—even while you’re asleep. There are enough ideas floating around to make everybody in the free world successful, if they would just use them. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for most people because they are not well supplied with good ideas that can be used effectively.

I bet you’re thinking “wait a minute.”

So, what’s the contradiction?

Well, the biggest problem is that people let ideas come and go without digestion, decision, practice, retention or even a conscious thought. They never let themselves become acquainted with great ideas in the first place. They haven’t established a system for preserving, classifying, digesting, or using the ideas they encounter. They have no idea vault in which to save the ideas that come to them in the first place. And as a result, their minds exist in a constant state of famine, the creative part of their brains is starving because there are no new ideas feeding them.

Avoid the Idea Famine

One of the most important possessions a successful person has is an effective idea bank. That’s the easiest way to avoid the idea famine. A workable idea bank may be in the form of note cards or stored in binders, in journals or kept on a PDA, Blackberry or computer database. For example, a fiction writer may clip newspaper articles and save them in alphabetical order according to their subject matter. That way, they can be referenced later to fill in gaps in story lines.

The form doesn’t matter. What does matter is that a systematic and uniform method of retaining ideas is in place. Every successful person learns early on to warehouse their ideas somewhere, and to keep them in a form that is easy to access when they need to.

It is an old axiom in the newspaper business that a good file and a poor memory is a lot more efficient than a poor file and a good memory. It is also said that even the dullest pencil is a better instrument for preserving ideas than the sharpest memory. You’ll find that somewhere, every successful person has a large and extensive paper memory, whether they will admit to it or not.

Adapt Ideas to Your Situation

Often when you get an idea it is not immediately adaptable to your situation. It needs to be remodeled to fit your circumstances and personality at the time. Most ideas, in fact, are stillborn to begin with, and because of lack of  care pass into oblivion before they’ve had a chance to develop at all That’s why you MUST get in the habit of writing ideas down, and then, when that idea’s time has come, molding it to fit specifically your needs of the moment.

Far too often people cast aside ideas that are not ready-made for them. “That doesn’t fit my circumstances, so why should I bother with it?” is a common thought process. That, of course, is a mistake. Some of the greatest and most successful ideas in history have come about because someone was trying to develop or adapt another idea. Thomas Edison proclaimed to his investors that he could develop and market a working light bulb in six weeks. It took him many months and tens of thousands of ideas before he was successful, and in the end, the solution had been right there in front of him since the very beginning. He simply would not allow that idea to fit his situation at the time, and that was almost a very, very costly mistake.

Give Your Idea a Face Lift

Quite often, an idea requires a complete face lift to be useful. Such an operation can be profitable if you aren’t afraid to try and can do it well. What you start with is just the basic idea. You do some research on it to “flesh” it out, then the accumulation of ideas and problems are submitted to your subconscious mind. There, they can then incubate in the depths of your mind where a workable and usable idea can be better molded and refined. The end result may look something like the original idea, but have completely different results than you had anticipated. That’s okay. Face lifted ideas frequently become the strongest concepts because they are forged from many concepts, somewhat resembling metals molded from different materials in order to gain strength.

Gear Up For Ideas

So how do you get ideas into your bank? Well, it’s not enough to simply write down what seems to be usable ideas. You have to learn to be systematic and uniform in your banking process. The method I’ve found to be the most effective has five simple steps. First take notes; second, mix the ideas; third, put them into your subconscious mind; fourth, put the results into a reservoir to save for later; fifth, use the ideas that are immediately applicable to your situation.

Think Between the Lines

The birth of ideas occurs at no particular time or place. You are constantly getting little flashes of inspiration. They come and go, usually staying with you for only an instant. Always be prepared to capture them when they happen. If you don’t have a pencil and paper handy at all times, you’re going to lose some of the very best ones.

Once you are “in the groove” of capturing ideas, you will get them from people, from events, from circumstances, from most anything occurring all around you. When you read a book you often get more ideas from what you think between the lines than from what is actually printed in the book. That’s why most publishers of learning aids put wide margins in their books-so you can write down ideas before they disappear forever!

The ideas that come to you between the lines are often more valuable than the ones you read in a book because they are ALWAYS your own. They have characteristics only you are familiar with and are more likely to be ready for immediate use than any others.

The same thing is true when you listen to a speech or attend a seminar. Take notes on the things you hear that impress you the most. But also, and more important, take notes on what you are stimulated to think as a result of what is said. Those are YOUR ideas coming out of your collected wisdom. Those kinds of ideas always relate better to your own particular situation.

Stir the Pot

Most of you know enough about computers to realize that a disk drive without a processor is as useless as a screen door in a submarine. But put the two together; add a monitor and a program and you really have something. The same thing applies to ideas. Alone, they may have little power or value. Mix them with other ideas and you may have a concept that can change the world. A spark is just a spark that dissipates immediately unless you let it fall on something flammable. Then you not only have light, but you have heat and a chemical reaction. Let your ideas unite that way. Always have some paper or a little note pad for those little sparks to fall on. Then your idea will really become something valuable if you get into that habit.

This process has been likened to establishing a kind of research department in your head. You can learn to do idea combinations, once you get in the habit. It’s like adding dynamite to that little spark of an idea. Just be careful, you might blow the roof off with the right combination.

Put Your Subconscious to Work

Once you’ve mixed those ideas, let them tumble around in your subconscious mind. The subconscious works something like a cement mixer, constantly turning over the thoughts you’ve put in there, allowing ideas to mix further. This works even while you’re asleep. It can also be working on ideas when you’re thinking about something totally unrelated. Believe it or not, it even works when you’re watching television.

Remember, too, that you have a powerful set of instincts and intuitions that are constantly interacting with your subconscious. Very little is known about how these processes actually work, but be aware of them. They also help ideas to mix and match.

What if nothing comes of your latest idea batch? Don’t throw the ideas away. They may just need a little more time to develop. Successful people have a lot of ideas in process at the same time. Thomas Edison always had people working on ideas that he came up with, no matter how unrelated the concept was to his latest project. That’s how the phonograph came into being. You can do the same with the same results, if you’ll just follow the laws of success I’ve been outlining for you in this blog posts.

Build an Idea Reservoir

Once you’ve let your subconscious mind do its work and have a result you like, build a mental reservoir to put it in. This is different from an idea bank, which holds only raw and undeveloped material. While the idea is in the reservoir, related ideas will come to you. Or you may think of other applications of the concept. Edison was particularly adept at developing several applications of the same idea. He already had the power plants, distribution systems and electric poles designed for his light bulbs before he ever had a working bulb. That’s because he knew his basic concept was sound. It was just a matter of application. I mean think about that for a moment and the implications. Imagine thinking that far ahead before you’ve even tackled the initial invention at hand that is totally necessary for the other to exist.

That’s a lot how my mind works, and for years I seriously thought I was broke, but it works for me and my companies.

Apply Your Ideas

When an idea is mixed thoroughly, like good concrete, it’s time to put it to use. That’s the final and ultimate test of an idea. Victor Hugo once said that nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has finally arrived. An idea’s time comes when you get to pour it out so that you can use it productively.

Unfortunately, many people are willing to work with and develop an idea in their head, but they stop there, being afraid to put their idea to the final test That’s like leaving concrete in the mixer. Sooner or later it will just get hard, crack and be of no use to anyone.

Turn Those Ideas into Cash

Using this five step approach to developing ideas can put cash into your pocket. An idea in action has tremendous power for building wealth. As a good example, I had an associate who had a great idea for building wealth through a whole new concept in the travel industry.

This man had no clue as to how he was going to develop his new concept. He didn’t have an idea bank, and he had never really worked toward something totally new before. He was starting from scratch. Then another idea came to him and he wrote it down. He thought about it for weeks. He let it tumble around in his head. Then he did some research on travel. He let his subconscious mind work on it some more. He looked at all the applications.

Finally he was ready to put the idea to the test.

His idea was a brilliant marketing concept, a whole new approach to selling travel nationwide. Marketing is this man’s field. He’s an expert in it, but he had no experience in the travel business, and had never thought of this particular concept before, even though he traveled every week.

To make the idea workable he had to invest most of his savings. But he believed in his idea and was willing to take a risk. Today, that idea has not only turned into cash for him and others, but sparked an entirely new field in the travel business Without his diligence—and confidence in developing it, that idea might have been thought of by someone else. If he had read this blog a year earlier, and put the five steps into practice, his idea might well have made him a deca-millionaire by now, instead of just very wealthy.

Can It Work For You?

Contrary to what many “average” folks might believe, nobody has a corner on ideas. Henry Ford had no corner on the manufacturing and marketing of automobiles. He simply had a concept on how to put them together cheaper, faster and more efficiently than anybody else-and he acted on that concept.

It didn’t hurt any that he had access to financial resources, but he did have to… ACT.

Every great success in the history of man has come from the development and application of new ideas. That doesn’t mean you have to create all your ideas yourself. But you do have to make them your own. You have to develop them yourself, so that you can apply them in ways that nobody else has thought of, and that can work for you.

Can you become successful?

Of course you can.

Can you turn ideas into cash?

Absolutely!

Can you think?

Can you write?

Can you follow instructions?

When you can answer all these questions in the affirmative, you won’t have any doubt about the answer to that first big question.

Good formulas work just like good recipes. Take out a cookbook and follow the directions and you can make spinach quiche as good Gordon Ramsey or whoever who wrote the book. Follow a different set of directions and you can make an apple pie. If you’re careful, both the pie and the quiche will come out perfect, even though they are very different.

So what’s the point?

The kind of formula you follow determines the outcome you’ll have. Formulas, of one kind or another, apply to nearly every aspect of your life. A tailor followed a pattern to make that dress or suit you’re wearing. A builder built your house from a set of plans that were based on sound formulas and methods. A programmer employed a set of formulas to design the computer program you use to access this blog. But for all those formulas to work, and give good results, (to be successful) they had to be followed to the letter, very carefully and with purpose.

There’s an old joke about a pharmacist who was grinding a prescription that called for as much strychnine as you could put on the face of a dime. He didn’t have a dime at the time, so he used two nickels.

Sound like something you would do?

Unfortunately, that’s about how carefully some people follow the success formulas they’ve learned. I bet you’d hate to be the one taking that prescription, wouldn’t you?

“KA$H”ing In On Success

If you will follow what I like to call the KA$H formula, success will come to you. Notice I didn’t say success might come, I said it will come. How can I be so sure of that? Because the KA$H approach utilizes only natural laws, and natural laws (as you now know from my previous posts) are totally predictable.

So what is this KA$H formula?

Simple:

Knowledge + Attitudes + $kills + Habits = $uccess.

I know, the dollar $ign is kind of annoying, but hey, I’m having $ome fun with it.

Continuing…

It’s simple to understand this formula, but implementing it may be another thing entirely, for some people. It may require a radical change in some of your lives in order for KA$H to generate “ca$h” for you, if that’s your objective. And if the formula isn’t effectively and rigorously applied over time through these changes in your own personality, you will never receive its full benefit.

Before going on, it might be a useful exercise for you to evaluate yourself and your present situation in relation to the KA$H formula.

Right now, ask yourself:

What additional KNOWLEDGE do I need to be successful?

How can I improve my mental ATTITUDES to be successful?

What additional $KILLS do I need to be successful?

What new HABITS should I develop to be successful?

How can I improve my success personality?

Write your answers down on something, and then keep them handy as you read through the rest of this post. You may want to clarify your answers as you read along, and that’s okay. You may even have to make some radical changes in the changes you’ve determined to make.

Knowledge Is Job One

Knowledge is job one in anybody’s success program. If you want to make big money selling hog futures, you better know all there is to know about hogs and what increases hog yields. Then you’d better learn as much as you can about hog farming. And it wouldn’t hurt to know all about futures in general, right?

That’s not to say you have to be THE expert in your field to be successful.

Remember the Mayan chiefs?

They didn’t know all there was to know about the stars, but they knew enough to make them seem a lot smarter than the rest of the people, and that gave them the power they needed to be successful.

Like the Mayans, you only need enough knowledge to know when to follow someone else’s advice or when to forge ahead on your own. After that, your knowledge level continues to grow as you learn more of the things you need to know to become an expert in your field.

There’s a lot more you have to do to reach your success goal with KA$H, but you have to start somewhere. And don’t try to implement this formula by using only one or two of its ingredients. It’s all or nothing here. An apple pie recipe won’t taste much like an apple pie if you leave out the sugar and the apples, now will it? All you’ll end up with is a dish full of crust, or maybe worse.

What Kind of Knowledge Do You Need?

The knowledge we’re talking about here is very specific, in a fairly limited field. If you’re getting into income producing real estate properties, then you really don’t need to learn a lot about life insurance, except for maybe liability policies.

And if you want to buy a hog farm, you don’t need to worry about apartment dwellings. But what if you don’t know what you’re interested in besides money (or security, which is essentially the same thing)?

If that’s the case, you’ve got some studying ahead of you. Learn all you can about the different ways to make money. Give yourself a general background. Then decide which area you want to specialize in. Once you’ve picked your specialty learn all there is to know about it If you want to become rich through hogs, learn all about the different breeds. Learn which area of the country produces the best hogs. Learn about feed. Learn about management. In short, learn as much as you can.

So Where Does The Knowledge Come From?

There are hundreds of ways you can gain the knowledge you need for your particular field. The first source is a good library or bookstore. Suppose you want to invest in income properties like I previously mentioned. Where do you go? First you can pick up one of the many good books on how to be successful with income properties.

Barnes & Noble and online, Amazon has several available for you to choose from, but there are many available.

What if you’re interested in starting or buying your own business? Same thing, there are tons of excellent books on business. Maybe start off learning all you can about marketing and salesmanship. That would be useful no matter what you decided to do.

After you’ve read and made notes about that first book, see if it recommends any others. Is there a bibliography? Many authors will indirectly recommend other authors by quoting them directly or by citing their books.

Find the Experts

Reading is only the beginning. Talk to the experts in your area. What’s the situation where you live? What approaches have been tried that worked?

What other experts would they recommend you talk to?

Some experts require a fee for their time, and this may or may not be worth it to you. Many will help someone just getting started without charging anything. These experts will go a long way toward supplementing the information you’ve picked up from books. Some may be willing to trade you some of their time, in exchange for you providing services you are good at or can quickly learn to do. I’m sure you get the idea.

Knowledge Is Everywhere

Knowledge is where you find it, and that is practically everywhere. Again, if income properties are what you’re interested in, start studying the income properties in your area. Watch the classified ads in the newspaper. Go out to the properties and compare their location, their condition, their price. You’ll probably be surprised to discover how much you can learn in a short period of time from the six blocks around your own home or office. All it takes is the desire and a little bit of leg work.

The Best Kind of Knowledge

So, after you’ve investigated the sources above, you’re ready to move into the best kind of knowledge there is, experience. This is where real knowledge comes from. When you begin to try out your new ideas, more than likely, you’ll discover how much more you don’t know, but that is knowledge also.

So when you start to act on your plan, you may want to go back and repeat the knowledge cycle: read the books again; see the experts again; try, try again.

My wife and I have a 17 year old daughter and guess what she has been doing a few hours each day after school most recently?

She has been interning at a real estate office. And where we live, Newport Coast, California, the low end houses sell for a million or two, all the way up to twenty million and more. And because it is something she is interested in, and my wife and I encourage both our girls to follow their dreams and play an active role in “ceasing the day,” she made a phone call to a broker we know, and next thing you know, she’s doing home walk thrus, observing sales meetings and helping with the marketing collateral and paperwork.

What an experience!

Again, knowledge is everywhere, why don’t YOU cease your day?

If you were to jump off a chair right now, you’d hit the floor, right? You can jump off that same chair a thousand times, or a million times, and you will always hit the floor. Jump off it backwards and you still hit the floor. That’s because gravity is a law of nature. With natural laws, the same effect always results from a similar action. It is always predictable. You can always depend on it.

Unfortunately, manmade laws don’t seem to work quite that well. They may be changed on a whim, compromised, customized, justified, or even forced upon you. They may be arbitrary and even unfair. But natural laws, in most cases, can’t be changed or altered. Man did not make them; man cannot change them. If they seem arbitrary in their effect at times, at least they’re constant. They’re always reasonable and always predictable. Those who learn their power can harness and use them for their own benefit.

Turning Laws into Prophecy

When humans began to learn how to use natural laws to their benefit, they were not only able to predict events in advance, but they also began to change their way of doing things to bring about those events. The ancient Mayan Indians learned to watch the moon and the stars to know when to plant their crops. They paid attention to all the natural laws as they observed them over hundreds of years. They even made a calendar, which, by the way, is still accurate to within a few hours of our current ones.

With this calendar, the Mayan priests could predict all kinds of natural events. Knowing when a solar or a lunar eclipse was about to occur gave them great power over their people. More importantly, knowing the phases of the moon told them when the seasons were changing and that in turn, told them when to plant their corn. Corn was power, then, just like money is today.

Success is Like Planting Corn

If you want to be successful in any endeavor, follow the lead of the Mayans. Learn the laws of success in your “field” whether it’s a cornfield, or the outfield. Then follow them diligently. Don’t just sit back and wish for success. That’s like waiting to win the lottery. Enter it if you want to, but never count on it. That’s the chance world approach. If you live with unearned wealth as your goal in life, you’ll end up with only dreams in the bank. You can’t spend dreams.

How much corn do you think the Mayans would have grown each year if they had depended on luck to give them a crop? Probably not much, and in those days, the price of failure was your head, literally. Napoleon said luck was the ability to exploit accidents. Very few people become successful accidentally. Try to think of one you know right now. Can’t, huh? That should be no surprise.

You must understand that every success is governed by a set of recognized success principles, not by chance or luck or the stars that were shining when you were born. Master the laws that apply to the area you want to succeed in and you never have to depend on luck. Pretty simple, huh?

Failure Has Laws, Too

Even in failure people are totally predictable. The laws of failure are just as immutable as the laws of success, and, unfortunately, just as powerful. If your goal is failure, you can discover the laws and follow them to reach that objective. It’s far more likely, though, that you’re living those laws by default because it’s easier than working toward success.

Success is a science and an art. Everybody has to develop their own style of attaining it. You can’t buy it, you can’t inherit it and you can’t steal it. It knows no divine right. Success is “nontransferable.” It can only be acquired by the personal mastery of its rules by each person individually. And most important of all, it can never be acquired by wishing and hoping. Wishing and hoping are the currency of fools, and the first laws of failure.

Success Is Predictable Through Education

Human nature is very complex, but in many ways very predictable. People who let chance pervade their lives can never make predictions about the most important thing in their lives—their own future. They just go along and hope for the best, and often their best is another failure in a long line of failures. Life does not have to be that way.

People go to school for years to study medicine so they can be healthy (and wealthy) both physically and mentally. They study science to find out what makes the world work. They study history to learn from the mistakes of the past. And some study religion to gain spiritual health. Is it so difficult, then, to understand that studying success is just like studying anything else?

But people get in a rut. It’s so easy to do. There are lots of places where ruts block the road to success. And if you’re not careful, that rut in front of you can turn into a grave with openings at each end. Education is the key to avoiding those ruts. With education, you can learn to be predictable. Then, the best thing you can do with the laws of success is to be predictable with them. By being predictable with predictable laws, you will always achieve predictable results. It’s really quite simple.

Think about a brand new compass for a moment. All compasses start with no predictability. Their needles point in any direction until they are magnetized. When they’re magnetized they point only to the north That’s one of those natural laws we’ve talked about.

Another magnet, or a piece of metal may affect a compass for a few seconds, but the magnetized needle always returns to face north. People can become magnetized in a similar way—magnetized by the purpose that they have chosen in life. To be predictable, you must magnetize your conscience, your brain, and your muscles so that they constantly revert to the direction of success, no matter the distractions. When you focus yourself this way and fully support your focus with physical and spiritual powers, nothing on Earth can stop you from becoming successful.

Magnetic Power

Just imagine what can happen when your life is magnetized by a firm conviction in what you’re doing. Think how a strong conviction about your goals enhances the functions of your mind and stimulates all of the other functions of your body. When you really dedicate your life to its mission, distractions lose their power. Nothing and no one will have the power to distract you from the north your compass is set on.

But what about those people who have no magnetism? Every little problem causes their compass needle to spin. Their success, if they have any, is determined by whoever talked to them in the last five minutes, by whatever they had for breakfast, or by whichever program they watched on television last night.

Learn the Laws

The power of the laws of success will be lost in your life if you don’t learn which laws will work for you and then use them accordingly. The golden rule, “do unto others what you would have them do unto you,” is meaningless if you don’t use it as a foundation of the laws of success. Your compass will lead you nowhere if you don’t have the proper direction to begin with.

You must learn all the laws of success—and the good news is that I will include them, all here within this blog. However, you also need to learn the governing laws. If you don’t know that water freezes at 32 degrees, and live on the east coast, you’re likely to have pipes bursting under your house this winter. Likewise, even though we keep all the other laws of the universe, we may bring serious consequences upon ourselves if we do not seek to understand the laws of our own being.

The most basic of all these laws, applicable both in personal development and in business success, is the law of the harvest. It says that, “as you soweth so also shall you reap.” All the other laws rest on this single premise. If you keep all the laws of success and then sow greed, hatred, envy, and dishonesty, you will reap nothing but the same. It’s as predictable as gravity: if you jump off that chair, you hit the floor; if you sow misery, you reap misery.

Learn to Sow Success

The law of the harvest is a lot more than that to a person who seeks success. In essence, the law says, “If you sow success, you shall reap success.” Now that sounds silly, doesn’t it? If you already have success to sow, you don’t need to sow something to reap it. If you had your first hundred million dollars already, you wouldn’t need to do anything to earn it.

Luckily, we can sow success without actually having it first. You see, when you sow corn, you don’t sow whole ears of corn, you just sow the seeds. And where do you get the seeds? From somebody who has already had a successful crop, that’s where. Success seeds work just like corn, and you’ve got a whole batch of good seeds right in front of you. Sow them to reap your success.

That’s your first law of success.

Every law of success is a seed that will sprout until you have a whole field full of it. They you can reap your harvest and continue the process, because now—guess what? You’ve got your own seeds, and you can help others plant their crops, and replant your own for another yield. When you’ve helped others to succeed in their lives and their ambitions, which is when you know you have truly succeeded in your life. Nothing is more satisfying than that feeling of success. There is no finer vindication of your efforts than someone else succeeding with your help using your seeds of success, and that is what I strive for at www.TonySeruga.com.