Archive | April, 2021

I just read an article over at HubSpot that touts the ‘10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint’ as created by Guy Kawasaki. I want to state up front that I have nothing against Guy. I’ve read his books and he gives great advice on many topics. But I suspect that one day Guy needed something to write about and was fresh out of ideas. That’s when he decided to share his own 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint with readers, and now it’s gospel among speakers and video creators.

It’s also, in my opinion, nonsense.

The rule says that you must never use more than 10 slides in a presentation, you must never go over 20 minutes and you must never use fonts smaller than 30 point. Even if you don’t do PowerPoint presentations or make slideshow videos, you can tell at one glance this rule is wrong. The clue is a certain phrase that appears not just once, but three times. Go back now and see if you can spot it.

That’s right…

“You must never.”

You must never do this and you must never do that, and it’s all rubbish.

Very few rules apply all of the time. In fact, the only hard and fast rule I can think of right now is that if you want to keep living, you have to keep breathing. But I can even think of an exception to that rule, too.

And yet I see new marketers make this mistake time and time again. Their favorite expert-guru type says they MUST do this and this and this without deviation, and the new marketer will struggle to follow those rules until they collapse in frustration.

Never mind that the expert-guru works in internet marketing and the new marketer works in hobbies. Never mind that the expert-guru has a following of 100,000 with huge name recognition while the new marketer has neither. Never mind that the expert-guru has a staff of 5 with 20 outsourcers at his beck and call while the new marketer is trying to do it all herself.

Almost no rule applies all of the time. While it makes perfect sense to follow the guidance of someone wiser and more seasoned than you, it makes equal sense to adapt their advice to your situation, to your niche and to your audience.

There will be times when you need more than 10 slides, when your talk might be a lot longer than 20 minutes (especially if you are teaching) and when your font might not be 30 point. And that, my friend, is okay.

One last thing… when you become a big shot in your niche, or if you already are a big shot, please do everyone a favor and teach others not to work in absolutes and to instead think for themselves.

And the next time you catch me saying “you must” do anything, be kind. I make this mistake myself from time to time, but I’m working on removing words like ‘must,’ ‘should’ and ‘never’ from my vocabulary.

Emojis aren’t just for friends; they’re also dynamite at capturing your customers’ attention, increasing user engagement and even helping to close sales. The funny thing is that most businesses think emojis are best left to 16-year old girls: “We want to maintain a professional appearance to our customers which is why we will never use emojis in any of our communications,” said the out-of-touch company executive to the marketing team struggling to increase lackluster sales.

In the last 100 years of advertising, there has NEVER been a time when the personal touch didn’t increase the value of business to consumer communication. It doesn’t matter if it’s an email, a social media post, an article or a sales letter. Giving all of your communications a personal touch with emojis just makes good marketing sense.

What are emojis? 👀

Emojis are small icons and images using Unicode Standard. They’re used in all forms of digital communication. Emojis can be yellow smileys or represent common objects such as food, animals, sports, transportation and more.

In marketing, the vast majority of the emojis you use will be emoticons – emojis that represent emotions with facial representations. 😍 And it’s emoticons we’ll be referring to in the rest of this article, even though we’ll still use the term emoji.

Why do emojis enhance your marketing message?

There are many reasons emojis improve marketing, and here are a few:

They capture attention. You receive a hundred new emails. 99 use 100% text in the subject line while one uses a smiley face or a heart. All else being equal, which one do you notice first?

They convey meaning. A text message that ends with a period gives a slightly different feeling than one ending with an exclamation point. Let’s see what happens if we use an emoji, too.

“I’m excited about this.”

vs

“I’m excited about this!”

vs

“I’m excited about this!😁”

The sentiment is the same but the conveyed feelings vary between the 3.

Visual is faster than text. Your brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. And since emojis are images, the brain can process emojis in a flash.

More likes, more shares, more comments. Based on multiple studies, emojis in Facebook posts lead to 57% more likes, 33% more shares and 33% more comments compared to Facebook posts with no emojis. Do you use emojis in your Facebook ads? If not, you might want to start.

Your brain sees emojis as an actual face. A study from the School of Psychology in Flinders University, Australia shows the brain behaving the same way regardless of whether it’s seeing a human face or an emoji. That’s why emoji user engagement is higher than plain text user engagement.

Human faces – and now emojis – increase engagement. For decades we’ve known that people will look at human faces longer than at almost any other image in an advertisement. And now that we know the brain sees emojis the same way it sees faces, it’s pretty obvious we need to use them in all of our written communications.

Emojis make your customers happy. 😊 Not only do your customers feel happier when they use emojis, they also feel happier and like the sender more when they receive emojis, too. And happy customers are almost always more likely to convert, whether it’s to join your mailing list, forward your message or buy your product.

Humanizes your business. Emojis can be the perfect way to convey the fact there is a real live person sending the message, rather than some faceless company.

Better connections. According to the Emoji Trend Report, emojis help users better communicate their thoughts and feelings and connect to people.

How to Find Your Emojis

Because you can’t create most emojis using your text keyboard, you need to download or open a separate one.

Here’s how:

iPhone and iPads

iPhones and iPads have the emoji keyboard built into the operating system. To add the keyboard…

•    Open Settings
•    Tap General > Keyboard > Keyboards
•    Tap Add New Keyboard > Emoji

To access the keyboard, open your Messages or Mail. Tap the 🌐 next to the microphone, which should change your keyboard. If you have any other keyboards added, you might have to tap the icon a couple times.

Android

Newer Android phones have emojis built into the keyboard. But older models require you to download a third-party app like Kika, SwiftKey, or Textra.

From there, apply the new emojis to your keyboard like this:

Settings > Language and Input > Virtual Keyboard > Manage Keyboards

Now select the keyboard you’d like to download.

Mac

On both Mac and Windows you can Google an emoji and then copy and paste it into your message. But there is an easier way to do it:

When you’re typing on your Mac and want to insert an emoji, simply tap Control + Command + Spacebar to pop open the emoji keyboard. 😉

Tap the emoji you want to use or drag and drop if it doesn’t insert automatically.

You can also turn on the emoji keyboard on your Mac by tapping the Apple icon in the top left corner. Then, open System Preferences > Keyboard and click Show Keyboard and Emoji Viewers in Menu Bar.

This places a shortcut in the menu bar, and with one tap you can access all emojis and symbols.

Windows

Again, you can copy and paste if you’re so inclined. You can also use the keyboard shortcut for Windows which is…

Windows Key + Period or Windows Key + Semicolon 😎

This shortcut brings up the built-in keyboard from which you can tap the emoji you want to use.

Most Popular Emojis and When to Use

Laughing Emoji 😂 is the most commonly used emoji on Twitter, and also the most popular according to Apple’s data. Use this in conjunction with humor, such as when you regale your readers on the stupid thing you did last night.

Red Heart Emoji ❤️ and Heart Eyes Emoji 😍 can be used when you are referring to something or someone you love as well as how much you appreciate your customers. A little trickier but worth trying: Use it to indicate just how much your prospect will love your product.

Embarrassed/Flushed Face Emoji 😊 can demonstrate your humility and gratitude when receiving praise or an award.

Side Eye Emoji 😏 is good to use if you want to show the playful side of your brand or if you’re making a joke and you want to indicate that you’re kidding.

Eyes Emoji 👀 can be used to draw attention to a link or image.

Thinking Emoji 🤔 shows you are deep in thought, such as when you’re not sure about a controversial issue, or when you’re explaining the thinking process you went through to arrive at your conclusion.

Sweat Emoji 😅 is used to express a close call. “Whew! That could have been bad!”

Hand Up Emoji 🙋‍ is great for getting social media participation. For example, you could post, “Who thinks smooth peanut butter is better than crunchy? Give me a “🙋‍” if you agree!”

Tips for Using Emojis in Business

•    Let your customers use emojis to give you quick feedback. The preferred choice of customers to let a brand know they’re doing a good job is the thumbs up, 👍 followed by a star ✨ or a smiley face. 🤩

•    Avoid anything cryptic or ambiguous. If the emoji doesn’t clearly communicate your intended message, don’t use it. 🍕 (Pizza, anyone? You see what I mean.)

•    Emojis are for complimenting your message, not replacing it.

•    Since women 👩 tend to use emojis more than men 🧔, consider your target market when deciding how often to use emojis.

•    Don’t think that only young people use emojis because they are popular at all ages, although the meaning of certain emojis can be slightly different for a 20-year old and a 60-year old.

•    Use emotional emojis to break down barriers and humanize your brand.

•    Consider creating your own emojis for your brand. For example, they might look like other emojis except they are wearing something like a hat or bowtie that identifies them with your business.

•    If you are communicating with an individual in business and you are unsure, use social mimicry for clues. If they are using an informal tone or if they use an emoji themselves, then it’s fine to send your own emojis.

•    Use only common emojis that are easy to understand or already universal. The idea is to improve your communications, not bewilder your audience.

Know that a small segment of your audience will be totally clueless about emojis and another small segment will take emoji use to an artform. For example, Cosmo published a 2,200 word article on the importance of choosing the just right color and style of heart emojis for the right occasions.

It’s all the people in between those two extremes that you are targeting with your emojis, so don’t sweat it if you don’t always get your emoji usage exactly right – almost no one does.

Emoji Pop Quiz:

One: What year were emojis invented? Bonus points if you can name the country that originated them.

Two: What year were emojis incorporated into and standardized by Unicode, which allowed them to be used outside of Japan?

Three: How many emojis are on the Unicode Standard list? (Hint: It’s probably a LOT more than you think.)

Four: What were the 3 most popular new emojis in 2020? If you can name just ONE of them, we’ll consider you an advanced emoji user.

Five: Which emojis, according to user votes, best represented the year 2020?

Answers:

One: 1999 by a coder employed by NTT DoCoMo, a Japanese mobile service provider.

Two: 2010. Yup, believe it or not, emojis have only been worldwide for over a decade.

Three: +3,300. Seriously.

Four:
•    First place: The White Heart.
•    Second place: The Yawning Face.
•    Third Place: The brown Heart.
Winners were determined by which were most used on Twitter.

Five: The winner was the Raised Fist with Dark Skin Tone ✊🏾

And the runner up was the Microbe 🦠

Frankly, I thought it would either be the ‘Screaming-in-Terror’ emoji (if there is one) or the ‘Pile of Poo’ emoji. 😉

This isn’t about selling t-shirts, but rather the lesson we can learn from t-shirt sellers that will put money in our pocket before we even create the product.

When you sell shirts on T-Spring, you’re not committed to investing any money until you have the orders in hand. Let’s say your goal is to sell 50 t-shirts at $15 apiece. You advertise on social media and buyers commit to purchasing the actual shirts.

But until you reach the 50 order mark, or whatever number you’ve specified, you’re not obligated to pay for any shirts. Once you hit 50, the customers are billed and the lot is created and shipped. But if only 49 people pre-ordered, then the t-shirts are never made.

Why don’t more marketers use this business model for their own products?

You could open a course for “x” number of people and presell it. The course will start in 3 weeks time, but only if all the seats are filled. Or you could outline a product and presell it. If you get enough orders for it (whatever number you deem that to be) then it will be delivered on the date you’ve specified.

The point is, you are charging for a product prior to creating that product. And if you discover there isn’t enough demand for the product, you simply refund the orders that you’ve received and try it again with a different product.

The benefits to launching this way are two-fold: First, you find out up front whether or not people are willing to pay for the product you propose to create. This way you will never again create a product only to discover no one wants to buy it. Second, you get operating capital up front. If you need to outsource the creation of the product, you can simply use the money from your advance orders to get it done.

Of course, the one thing you need for this business model is a good reputation for delivering on your promises. If you’re completely unknown in your niche, this might not work for you. You’ll need to at least put out some great content and create a following before you use the T-S method for pre-launching your first product, but it will be well worth the effort.

Two more benefits of this business model are the ability to head off problems before you do a full-blown launch, as well as getting proof that your product works. By doing a pre-launch to a smaller number of buyers, you can get feedback on what your product lacks, what might be confusing or anything else you need to improve your product before doing the full-scale launch with affiliates.

And you can ask your first buyers for their testimonials as well, which will help you to sell more of your product once you launch it full scale.

I can’t see any downside to using the TS method to launch any virtual product, while there are tons of benefits to doing it this way. And yet, most marketers won’t do it. Why not? Maybe it’s because they have a belief that things can only be done a certain way because ‘that’s how it’s always been done in the past.’ Which is nonsense.

Just because most everyone else spends a month or two creating a product before they even know whether or not it will sell doesn’t mean you have to be brain dead, too. (Too rough?)

Let me tell you a quick story and then I’ll close with one last thought:

When my cousin’s daughter turned 16, she wanted to get a part time job to make extra money. I suggested a method that I knew for a fact would get her a job in 48 hours, but she flat out refused to do it because, “No one else does that.”

I dutifully drove her around anyway and she put in applications at a dozen or so businesses. A month later, not a single one of them had called her in for an interview, much less offered her a job. I asked if she was now ready to use my method, and she reluctantly said yes.

That’s when I helped her write out a letter that told a little bit about herself and her qualifications. Then we added something like this (I don’t remember the exact wording we used):

“I realize that since I’ve never held a real job, it might seem like a gamble for you to hire me. That’s why, to prove my worth, I want to work for you for 2 weeks for free, to demonstrate to you what an asset I will be to your business.”

I again drove her to about a dozen businesses, where she filled in the applications and attached a copy of the letter. Within 48 hours she had 5 interviews scheduled, and within 96 hours she had 5 job offers and requests for 3 more interviews.

That is the power of doing things differently from everybody else.

If someone tells you that you MUST create the product FIRST before you launch it, just know they have been as brainwashed into ‘right’ thinking as my second cousin.

Frankly, I think it is often best to ignore ‘established methods’ so that you can find a way that reduces risk, increases results and in this case, saves you from creating a product that won’t sell.

A few tips on selling your product prior to creating it:

•    Choose a topic you’re familiar with so that you can make the product quickly.
•    Outline the product prior to offering it for sale. This will make it super easy to write your sales offer.
•    Include plenty of enticing bullet points in your offer.
•    Make it super clear that the product has not been created yet but will be available on “X” date.
•    Also make it clear that if there is not enough response, they will be refunded and the product won’t be made.
If possible, promise to have the product ready no more than two weeks ahead of when you’re making this offer. If you have a list of your own and you’re fast at making products, reduce this to one week. For example, you make the offer on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, with the product becoming available the following Tuesday.

If you offer something like group coaching with one call a week for six weeks, you only need to get the first call ready.

Let them know they are your beta group and you’ll be looking for feedback from them, as well as offering more personalized service. Solicit their questions and comments so you can improve your product prior to doing your full launch.

One last thing… Oddly enough, tests show that conversions for lead magnets are generally HIGHER if the lead magnet is not yet created. I don’t know if this is also true for products, but it may be. I think it’s the allure of a brand new, totally up to date product (or lead magnet) that no one (NO ONE!) had yet to get their hands on.

Action Point: Make a list right now of products you’ve considered creating but you weren’t sure they would sell. Choose one and write an outline for the product and a simple sales page. Then send an email to your list and see what kind of response you get. Start to finish, you can probably do this in less than two hours and begin to see orders come in shortly thereafter.

I’ve seen three different marketers doing a variation of this business, all with the same result – they earn a bare minimum of $5,000/month and usually 2 to 3 times that much.

Two of them are completely unknown marketers who are quietly doing this in their spare time. The third marketer is a fairly big name, and odds are you’ve heard of him. He doesn’t do any of this work himself. He simply outsources the whole thing and brings in over $10,000 a month in profit doing it.

All three of them do this business in the online marketing niche. Essentially, they are helping new marketers to quickly have a money generating business of their own by building it for them. No doubt you’ve seen these ‘business in a box’ packages you can purchase that contain a product, a sales page and so forth, right? You put your own name on them, upload them to your site and start promoting.

There’s nothing wrong with these, and if you have your own list, you can often make good money with them. But these marketers have taken things a step further by creating a unique business in a box for each customer. These are genuinely one of a kind and even include a list.

Here’s how it works:

They start by creating a unique funnel complete with a squeeze page, high-value free gift and unique upsell product. The free gift is usually a plugin, because they have a higher perceived value than a report. You can find plugins with giveaway rights available all over the internet. Buying the rights is usually about $37-47 and then you are free to give it away to your heart’s content.

You can get a coder to rebrand, tweak and/or rename the plugin, usually for $100 or less. This is optional but again, it makes your package unique from anything else out there.

The upsell product is made from good PLR that’s then reworked and rebranded, complete with a new name, new graphics and so forth. It’s important here to use truly quality PLR – don’t skimp on this.

The cost of the content will be perhaps $150 if you rework it yourself, and twice that if you hire someone to do it for you. Since you’re going to price the upsell at around $47, you want the product to look and feel like it is worth at least that much if not more. In other words, make sure it doesn’t look like PLR.

Once the squeeze page and upsell are set up on a domain, it’s time to spend about $250 to purchase 1,000 solo ad clicks. Send them to your squeeze page.

Your goal here is three-fold:

→ Start building a list
→ Establish that the squeeze page and upsell convert
→ Make some money on the upsell

From 1,000 solo ad clicks you should hopefully get about 300 new subscribers. Maybe 10 of those will buy the upsell, bringing you about $470. That’s covered some of your costs right there.

Once you’ve done this, it’s time to cash in. You’re going to flip the entire funnel to one buyer. You can use Flippa, Warrior Forum or any of the site flipping websites out there.

You’re offering a proven funnel with a list, a proven squeeze page and a proven upsell page complete with the lead magnet and the product. This is VALUABLE because it’s proven and because it’s unique. Bonus points if you’ve chosen a great name for the URL, lead magnet and upsell.

Once you master how to do these things (and they’re not difficult) you can probably build 3 of these a month all by yourself and still have plenty of time to do other things, too.

And you can flip these packages for $2,500 to $7,500 each. Not bad for a part time business!

I want to be clear right up front – there is NO stealing required to do this. In fact, professionals have been doing this exact same thing forever, or at least since people have been creating stories, content and so forth.

I’ll give you some movie examples:
Bridget Jones Diary (2001) is really a modern version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Clueless (1995) is based on Jane Austen’s Emma.
Cruel Intentions (1999) is a modern version of Pierre Choderlos de Lacios’ Les Liasons Dangereuses (1792).
Pretty Woman (1990) is based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play Pygmalion, as is She’s All That (1999).
10 Things I Hate About You (1999) is really Shakespeare’s play, Taming of the Shrew, in disguise.
Star Wars is Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 samurai classic, The Hidden Fortress, only in space.
In fact, I would wager that at least 9 out of 10 Hollywood movies are based on stories from other movies or books. And yet these movies earn millions of dollars. So, the question is, is it ethical or legal to ‘borrow’ other people’s ideas?
Yes!
It’s a fact that you can’t copyright an idea. All the best artists (who are honest) will even admit they steal like crazy, which is what makes their art so awesome.
There is no need to continuously reinvent the wheel. The wheel was invented once, and ever since then people have copied that idea onto their own products, whether it was for wheelbarrows, carts, carriages or cars. Using other people’s ideas (not their work) is 100% legal, ethical and even required if we are to move forward as a society.
Now let’s say you’ve run across a 50-page ebook on how to do something. You cannot copy the actual writing, the author’s name or the cover of the book. But you can use the idea of the ebook to create your own.
West Side Story and Disney’s High School Musical used a famous playwright’s plot in their stories. Can you think what that might have been?
A little play called Romeo and Juliet.
So that book on driving traffic that inspired you to use the method yourself… you can’t copy that book and sell it. But you can write your own. Or record your own videos. Or offer a coaching program that teaches the method. As long as you do not use the author’s copyrighted stuff such as their writing, their screenshots, their images and so forth, you can write up the method as your own and sell it as much as you want to.
And if you’ve used the technique taught in the material yourself, which hopefully you have, then you can speak with authority on the subject.
If this makes you uncomfortable, then the solution is simple: Don’t do it. Instead, take something from an entirely different niche and adapt it to your own niche.
For example, you read a great book on dog training and you realize that many of the techniques in that book could work equally as well on your three-year old. So you try it out and sure enough, you’ve gotten your three year old to stop screaming when she wants attention, to eat her food when you give it to her, to follow your simple instructions without throwing a tantrum and so forth.
Yes, I’m probably going to get emails from people who are upset I equated training a puppy with training a child… 😉 The point is that what you learn in one area of life can often be used in other areas as well.
Take a look at the millions of how to books out there and find something you can adapt to an entirely different niche, and you’ll have all the inspiration you need to create unique products without having to be brilliant yourself.
Although incidentally, people will think you are brilliant.

Setting aside every self-help book out there, I’d like to propose the theory that there is ONE thing you need to be successful, and that you are already in possession of this thing. You just don’t know it yet.

Ten years ago two marketers started their online journey. They both endured similar pitfalls and setbacks. One went on to make millions. The other one failed miserably and works a 9 to 5 job. What made the difference?

The mind-flip.

Imagine you have a switch in your brain, and every time you have any kind of setback whatsoever, you flip that switch into finding the positive in it. No, I’m not talking about pie-in-the-sky rainbows and magic pink unicorn thinking. I’m talking about flipping your own switch because no one else is going to do it for you.

Instead of getting discouraged, angry or sad, find the good or the lesson in everything that normally gets you down. This is called resilience. We’re told to be resilient, to bounce back from defeat and just keep moving, but no one tells us how to do that. So, let me try, and see if this resonates with you.

You get an angry email from a customer. Yeah! This is your chance to make it right while also finding out if there is perhaps a flaw in your product. What an awesome thing to have happen! Your formerly angry customer now understands what happened, they’re thrilled with the attention you paid to them and how you resolved the issue, and you have feedback on how to improve the way customers use your product.

You have trouble with your website. Yeah! Now you get to call your host or your website builder or whoever and let them show you what awesome service they provide. You’re not happy with the result? Yeah! Now you have the perfect reason to go find a new host or webmaster who will make you happy!

You dropped that dish of spaghetti on the floor? Yeah! You’ve been meaning to clean the floor for weeks and this is the perfect motivation to get it done. Now look at it shine!

You missed the light and now you have to wait 3 minutes to get through the intersection? Yeah! If you had made the light, perhaps you would have been involved in a fatal accident that you’ve now missed!

Does all of this sound a bit crazy? Maybe. But your experience is exactly what you make it. I once went camping with a friend. As we arrived, it started to rain and it didn’t stop raining for two days and two nights. Yeah! I took it as a challenge and it was one of my best vacations ever. I sang in the rain, danced in the rain, hiked in the rain and listened to the rain on my tent as I fell soundly asleep each night.

My friend, however, decided to be miserable the entire time. He grumbled, complained, got angry, picked fights and spent the entire time wishing he was someplace else. He also wasn’t too happy that I didn’t share his attitude, but oh well! 😉 We shared the same experience, and yet it was positive for me and horrible for him. The only difference was how we chose to view what was happening.

I might be oversimplifying here, but when you boil it all down, I think the only difference between the successful person and the failure is resilience. Look for the bright side of everything. Sure it’s a cliché, but it is a fact that your experience is what you choose it to be.

Have you ever felt sad or depressed about something, and then you drank some coffee or you took a walk, and then felt 10 times better about it? The situation didn’t change – you did. And once you have the positive mindset, you can move forward and do whatever it is that needs to be done.

Here are 9 tips for flipping your mindset to the positive side of life:

Play Opposites – When you think a negative thought such as, “I hate getting on these Zoom meetings,” ask yourself, “What if the opposite were true?”

Friends – Support groups are wonderful for helping you to build this resilience. Talk it out and help each other to see the positives. If they insist on being negative – and let’s face it, some people revel in negativity – then get a new support group.

Greatest Hits – When you’re feeling down about yourself or your abilities, think about times when you did awesome things that totally worked for you.

Self-care – Get enough sleep and eat well. Exercise. All of these things will help you to stay positive and keep moving forward in your business and in your life.

Is it True? – When you notice your negative thoughts are spiraling out of control, ask yourself if those thoughts are true. 9 times out of 10 you’ll realize the negative thoughts are a distortion and out of touch with reality.

Acceptance – Instead of negatively judging yourself for being pessimistic, accept your current mindset and stop fighting it. Then set it aside and move on.

Humor – Can’t find the positive in the situation? Then pretend 5 years have gone by and you’re telling someone the story of what just happened. Find the funny in it and make your friend laugh.

Use Your Power – You always – ALWAYS – have the power to choose how you will view circumstances. Maybe right now you choose to feel bad, but realize that is indeed your choice. Try choosing to feel just 1% better and see what happens.

Body Language – Emotions follow the body and not the other way around. When you force yourself to smile, stand tall and raise your arms overhead in a victory gesture, you feel better. Even holding a pencil sideways in your mouth will activate your smile muscles and improve your mood.

Now I know that some people reading this will have a strong rebuttal for me that goes like this: “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, my life is upside down and people are getting sick and even dying. How am I supposed to mind shift into positivity?”

All of that is 100% true. But can you think of a better or more important time in your life to practice resilience and find the good in everything you possibly can?

The next time something is getting you down, go take a walk. Or play your favorite music. Or pet your dog or talk to someone. Taking a break is a good thing because it gives you the perspective you sometimes need to keep moving forward.

Practice flipping the switch in your brain each time things don’t go the way you planned. This life-skill will see you through the tough times and ensure massive success in the good times.

Flip the switch. Know that resilience is your strongest defense. Find the positive. I promise you that it’s there somewhere. And smile, because no matter what it is, this too shall pass.

This is a part time business that quite literally requires no specialized knowledge, and you don’t even need a product. One thing you do need is just enough people skills to build rapport over the phone, Skype, Zoom or whatever mode of communication you choose.

I know a guy who is doing this part time and based on my own math he seems to be making about $4,200 a month doing this 2 hours a day. He charges his clients $35 a week for a 20 minute phone call, and he books about 6 clients per day during his lunch break and after work. And he takes his weekends off, too.

Have you guessed what he does? If you said coaching, you’re right. But this is a rather narrow, specialized coaching niche. He calls himself an accountability coach. He lets his clients tell him what they’re going to accomplish over the next seven days. He asks what their plan is to get it done. He points out potential problems and asks the client how s/he will deal with them if they arise. Basically, he asks a lot of questions and once in a while he gives a little advice.

Then when he calls them the following week, they have to be 100% honest and tell him exactly how much they did or did not get done. Personality-wise he comes across as a father-figure, and his clients don’t want to disappoint him so they get busy and do what they need to do.

He bills weekly automatically with Paypal because he says that when they see that money come out of their account every week, it’s a reminder that they need to get in gear. He tried billing monthly but his clients would just relax for three weeks and then get busy in the fourth week. He says he doesn’t exactly understand the psychology of why weekly billing works better than monthly but that it doesn’t matter to him as long as his clients are getting results and he’s getting paid.

He has a full-time job but he does have some flexibility. He does some calls during the day and the rest in the evening when he gets home. He’s firm about only having 30 clients a week because he says more than that is too much. And he’s got a waiting list of people who want him to be their accountability coach.

He’s strict with his clients about being ready to receive his call. As much as possible, he lets the client choose the day and time for the weekly standing phone appointment. He explains to them that they MUST be available at that time to talk to him, no exceptions allowed. He doesn’t care if their house is on fire, they better answer the phone when he calls.

When I asked him how he arrived at $35 a week, he said it seemed to hit a sweet spot for clients. At first he was charging too little ($20) and the clients weren’t taking the call all that seriously. Then he went overboard in the other direction and charged too much ($100) and the clients usually canceled after a couple of weeks, if they signed up at all.

He was once referred to a potential client who desperately wanted his help but $35 was out of reach. Obviously this person’s first goal was to make more money. Since he doesn’t charge for the initial consultation anyway, here’s what he told the new client:

“Our next call is in 7 days. Right now you’re going to tell me 5 ways you could add an extra $100 a week to your income starting this week. Then you and I are going to choose one of those 5, and you’re going to tell me your plan for making it happen.”

And that’s exactly what happened. Within a week that man had a new income stream, and within a month he was making an extra $1,000 a month. 9 months later he quit his job and opened his own small business, all thanks to having an accountability coach.

You probably need a certain personality to make this work. If people naturally look up to you or naturally want to please you, then this might be an idea for some part time income. Goodness knows there are plenty of people who just need a weekly fire lit underneath them along with some encouraging words to help them reach their goals.

Have I told you lately how much I LOVE recurring income? Here’s a case study about a guy who has not one, but FOUR different newsletters that he puts out twice per month.

These are super simple newsletters that contain all the latest stuff he’s found on the internet about the topics. How in the world does he find all the latest news, articles, blog posts, stories, video clips, photos and so forth?

Google alerts.

Yup, it’s that easy.

He creates a dozen or so Google alerts for keywords and phrases for each niche and Google spoon feeds him all of his content for free. In some cases he asks for permission to reprint a post or article. For other things he simply rewrites it into his own words. And even more often he’ll provide an intro and then a link to the video, article or whatever.

Seriously, this does not take a lot of time or brain power. His strong point is he chooses topics that he’s interested in so that it never becomes boring to him.

I asked him if I could share his newsletter topics with you, but he was pretty firm in saying no. But what I can tell you is all 4 of them are not things you might think of off the top of your head. And that makes sense.

The BIG topics are already covered on millions of websites, videos, articles, magazines and so forth. It’s the little sub-niche specialized topics where people are craving more info and not wanting or even knowing how to hunt it down themselves.

I’ll give you an example: Cats and dogs are EVERYWHERE. No one really needs to subscribe to a newsletter to read articles on cats and dogs. But sloths… now there’s a much smaller niche that isn’t covered nearly as much as more popular pets. Or how about iguanas? Sugar babies? Or tarantulas?

If you insist on choosing a big niche, then sub-niche it down. Instead of cats, focus on the care of cats with a certain illness (diabetes, kidney disease, etc.) or a certain breed of cat.

What should you charge for a curated newsletter? In most niches, $10 or less works well. This makes it super easy for people to sign up and there’s almost no incentive to stop the subscription.

Let your readers send you articles and photos of their own for your newsletter. Put in a classified ad section, too. People think it’s hard to create a newsletter, but the fact is you don’t even need to have an original thought to do it. Between curated content from the internet and submissions from your readers, all you have to do is assemble the newsletter, save it to PDF and send it out to your subscribers. You don’t even need a membership site to do this.

Don’t want to do a newsletter? Create a podcast or video subscription instead.

You can get new subscribers by striking deals with blogs and list owners in the niche. Because these are smaller niches, it’s far easier to get people to mail for you for a small fee or sometimes even for free if they really love your newsletter.

This is a model that will never die, takes a minimum of work and even builds you a list. You can promote products to your list above and beyond the newsletter. In many niches the money you make from promoting products will double your income from subscriptions, so why not?

And by the way, that $3,500 a month figure is from just ONE of his newsletters. Remember, he’s got 4 of them.

Make a list of topics that interest you, no matter how weird or even obscure. Choose one that has an active audience you can reach. Create a sample newsletter, contact people in the niche and get your first subscribers. This almost sounds too easy, doesn’t it? Then again, many of the best ideas are the simple ones.

Imagine a squeeze page that takes you 20 minutes to put together, including the lead magnet. Imagine this page converts at something close to 71%. And now imagine you can buy unlimited traffic to your squeeze page because the paid traffic pays for itself.

How many new subscribers would you like today? This week? This year?

The key to a high converting squeeze page is to offer something so ridiculously good, people are more than eager to enter their email address to get that prized item. You could offer an outstanding resource of some kind, or a huge bundle of books, or maybe a hot plugin or piece of software.

Or… what if you take a product you have lying around, such as a course you’ve been selling for $197, and offer a coupon for a 90% discount on that course? Of course you need their email address to send them the coupon, so it just makes sense they would fill out your form to get it.

Then you send them to the actual sales page with their coupon. They get to see that everyone else is paying $197 while they’re only paying $19. That should make them pretty happy AND immediately set you up as an authority in their eyes, since it is your course they’re buying.

Don’t have a big product of your own? Use quality PLR and a weekend to create one. The point is to have a REAL product that sells for a high price and then offer a crazy discount coupon like 90% or 95% off.

People enter their email address to get the coupon. Some of them use that coupon to immediately buy the course. Others purchase the course sometime during the following week, as you remind them that their coupon is expiring soon and they’re going to miss the deal of a lifetime.

Now you’ve got new subscribers and enough income to continue buying traffic for as long as you choose because the purchases of your course – even at 90% off – are paying for the advertising.

Just remember the deal you’re offering has to be irresistible to new subscribers. Your goal here isn’t to make money, it’s to pay for the advertising that’s building your list. Once they’re on your list, then you can start making profit when you offer them other products.

An email subject line in my inbox caught my attention because it included the phrase, “Breathtaking-Templates”. Only it was written like this…

“These B R E A T H T A K I N G – T E M P L A T E S blah blah blah”.

I can’t tell you the rest of the subject line because they had me at breathtaking-templates and that’s all I needed to know.

Because they chose the term ‘breathtaking’ and wrote it in all-caps with spaces, I knew these had to be the most wonderful website templates ever devised by modern man.

Finally, I was going to see something so revolutionary and awe-inspiring, my eyeballs would pop out and I would fall to my knees in rapture.

Sorry to say, my eyeballs and knees are fine.

When I opened the email, scrolled down and squinted at the small images, all I saw were…

… the same run-of-the-mill templates I see everywhere.

Thinking it was a mistake, I clicked the link. But no. These templates looked no different than a thousand other templates I’d already seen.

I closed the sales page and deleted the email immediately, without hesitation.

When you build up expectations to that level, you better deliver on your promise. If you don’t, you’ll lose people so fast you’ll never even know they were in the room.