What Should I Charge For My Speaking Fee?

I just got an email from someone asking what they should charge for their speaking fee. In response I wrote up the information below, and I thought some of you may benefit from reading this as well:

Question: What should I charge for my speaking fee?

Answer: Happy to share my experience. Generally I have found that speaking fees vary based on # of years experience, # of years of speaking experience, the industry, and # of books the person has authored. I don't think all of these things have the same level of impact on price but generally the more the person is an authority or "industry celebrity" the more they will charge.

1-3 years of speaking experience: Free-$1,997 per speech
4-7 years of speaking experience: $2k-$5k per speech
7+ years of active speaking experience: $7.5k-$10k per speech

I have found that speakers can skip a level if they have an industry leading blog or a number of published and well respected books. Hope this helps.

- Richard

Influence Yourself

Influence Yourself

As explained within our 3 levels of influence blog post, influencing yourself is one of the most important ways to leverage the power of influence and persuasion. If you cannot first control and direct your own energies you will never learn how to use these techniques to ethically and effectively change the direction of others.

The following are articles about influencing yourself:

How to Become a Public Speaker

How to Become a Public Speaker

Many times people think it is talent or a gift to be able to speak in front of a crowd, but it is not. It is really not very hard, it is just an iterative process of moving out of your comfort zone and trying things out. Within this article post I will provide you several tips on how to become a public speaker yourself in just a few months.

Here is my advice based on my own experience of speaking at conferences, workshops, and seminars:

Start by recording yourself speaking, get good at recording short 5-10 minute videos on topics you know well before speaking in front of a crowd. This allows you to review how you look, speak, and it will help you communicate more effectively.
Speak anywhere you can. Start out slow and speak at colleges, associations, networking clubs, and breakfast groups. Get experience by speaking 25 times for free in front of any group that will accept you as a speaker.
Call yourself a speaker. Many people do not like to speak, or can't. Once you start labeling yourself as a speaker you will begin to grow a reputation for having this ability and others will seek you out and hire you for events.
Write like the devil: Writing improves your speaking, it improves your idea flow and gives you tons of content to pull from while speaking. I am awful at grammar yet I have written many books and over 10,000 blog posts so I know you can too.
Choose 2-3 niches and dominate those in your marketplace with books, blog content, and speaking engagements. Be the #1 go-to person for your niche subject if someone wants a great speaker.
Monetize Your Speaking: Eventually speaking for free will become less exciting because you will get more busy. It is important that you have a $700 product, $30 book, or coaching program to sell while you are speaking so you can begin to learn how to sell from the stage and earn more every time you speak.
Getting Paid Per Speech: While some speakers get paid $10,000+ per event, aim for getting your expenses paid at first and then move on to asking for $475 or $797 payments per hour of content provided. Over time you will learn to feel out which types of clients are going to be more willing to pay for you to speak rather than always ask for you to speak for free. Don't be short-sighted while negotiating, some speaking locations and opportunities are worth doing for 1/3rd your normal rate for the credibility it will bring you after it is completed.
Become a student of speaking: Start going to workshops and seminars in your field, but also outside your field be presentation experts such as Jack Canfield, Tony Robbins, Eben Pagan, Joe Polish, and Brian Tracy. These are people who have presented 1,000's of times and you can learn dozens of tricks, speaking styles, and methods at every event. The best way to learn speaking after doing it, is watching others doing it. Books can help you speed up your success for less money, but nothing replaces being able to see many great speakers speak.
Record every speech you ever give. To come full circle, ask permission ahead of time whether you can have each of your own talks recorded. This way you can not only constantly improve based on this digital feedback but you can leverage this content as an info-product or show it as proof to others who may want to hire you as a speaker.

I know FOR SURE that these tips work because they are what I have used to speak around the world over the past three years. Thanks for visiting.

- Richard

Tags: Become a public speaker, become a paid public speaker, how can i become a public speaker, how could I get started at public speaking

Marketing Keynote Speaker

Marketing Keynote Speaker

I have now been asked to be the marketing keynote speaker at several workshops, conferences, and seminars in Belgium, Russia, Japan, Hong Kong, America, and Brazil. To date my books and articles have been read over 5 million times, and I have personally provided training to over 3,000 professionals through my events, live full day workshops and training programs.

Typically I am hired due to my ability to transfer influence and persuasion techniques and strategies into practical marketing or capital raising processes that can be followed by others. I currently run a successful business with over 20 employees which includes BusinessTraining.com and the G.T.C. Institute, LLC. I have spoken a great deal on the topics of educational marketing and speed of implementation.

I speak to audiences on the topics of:

Speed of Implementation: Specific Tactics for Moving, Learning, and Evolving Quickly
Unique Marketing & Sales Tactics to Be Everywhere in Your Niche Market
Influence & Persuasion Best Practices Applied to Marketing
Educational Marketing Tactics
Capital Raising or Investment Fund Marketing
Building Blocks of Authority
Conscious Neuro-Channeling (CNC) for Marketing & Sales

Book Me: If you would like to book me as a business or marketing keynote speaker at your upcoming event, or just talk about the possibility of working together you may reach me at Richard@BusinessTraining.com.

Tags: Keynote speaker, marketing keynote speaker, hire a keynote speaker, business speaker, conference speaker, convention speaker

3 Levels of Influence

3 Levels of Influence

There are three levels through which you may influence the world around you, they are:

Influencing Yourself
Influencing Others
Influencing Profits

1) Influencing Yourself: Nobody talks about self-influence yet all of the tactics which can be used to influence others can be used to help improve ourselves. The more you know about psychological triggers and how our subconscious minds work the more you can positively manipulate yourself into taking massive action on your most important projects. Influencing yourself includes knowing how to enter a state of flowing, knowing what motivates you, making some resources seem more scarce (like time) so you will value them more, developing habits, motivating yourself with images, and focusing your mind on your goals. This is a topic that I discuss within my upcoming book, Speed of Implementation which is being released next month.

2) Influencing Others: Influencing others is what pop psychology and scientific studies focus on when you talk about influence and persuasion. The studies always examine how others may be influenced by using influence principles of authority, oscillation, or momentum. If you want to learn more about this area you may by picking up one of many of the 100's of books on influence out there, I think Cialdini's are the best.

3) Influencing Profits: This is the third and final level of influence that is rarely discussed, it is the leveraging of influence principles so that your business systems naturally and consistently influence the marketplace and at the end of the day, your profits. It is the focus on how CEO's and business owners can leverage influence within their marketing, sales funnel construction, hiring, and processes to maximize the impact of their actions. This topic is so valuable and overlooked we offer a full day live workshop on this very specific topic, and soon we will have a HD recorded version of this workshop available as a training program on CEOTraining.com.

I hope that this discussion of the three levels of influence helps open your eyes to how many 1,000's of ways influence may be used on yourself, others and your business. We will be writing more on each of these topics in the future here on this blog.

Speed of Implementation

SPEED of Implementation

Why you should apply SPEED of Implementation starting now…

In mid 2009 I attended a business conference where over 10 guest speakers, all of which were self-made millionaires and business owners spoke. I took over 15 pages of notes and condensed those down to just one single page. While reviewing common themes from the 30+ hours of advice from these professionals the only piece of advice which each expert mentioned and emphasized was “speed of implementation.” Since that conference I have developed a deeper understanding of this concept, figured out how to apply it to my business, and why it is so important.

In short focusing my attention on increasing my speed of implementation has brought my productivity, motivation, and sense of progress to another level. Increasing your speed of implementation means making decisions faster, receiving feedback faster, and adjusting and growing further more rapidly as well.
With everything in life we move through learning curves whether it is starting a new career, starting a new business, or launching a new product. Speed of implementation is about moving up that learning curve 3x faster than your competition so by the time they have reached the top of that first curve you have conquered three new areas of knowledge or ability. That may sound very loose and non-exact but stay with me here and I will provide some examples below.

In short you can speed up the success that you realize but analyzing what actions you know will need to be taken, whether you know what the following steps are or not. Many times in life we cannot see the full path to success, only a few steps that we could be taking right now. If you seize those first few steps more quickly than others additional paths of actions will unfold that others who are contemplating the risks of the unknown will never be able to see.

Iterative Processes

Applying speed of implementation requires a fundamental understanding how it will help you reach a level of breakthrough success that surprises even yourself. Within the diagram below you see four letters: A,B,C,D, followed by a single letter T.

A –> B –> C –> D –> T (Breakthrough Success)

Steps A, B, C of most projects are obvious, you know what first steps you need to take…yet step #20 which is T is so far removed from the knowledge and foresight you have now that the project seems unachievable, unrealistic, or risky. The result? Typically we enter gathering more information and asking others for their opinion mode. This has its time and place but 99% of the time if you would just start on Steps A, B, and C, by the time those are complete you would have a much better vision and more clarity on exactly what steps D, E, F, and G are. Once you get those next steps complete through G you may even be able to see all the way to step L, etc. Eventually you will get to T, step #20 but there is no way that you can get there without first going through the iterative process of taking the first steps that are clear right now.

In short you can evolve faster, meet your goals sooner, and over a short period of time out-pace everyone around you in your industry by just taking massive action within the areas where you have identified the next 1-2 steps to take.

Happy implementing!

- Richard Wilson

p.s. I will soon be releasing details on my just-written book on speed of implementation, stay tuned.

Tags: Speed of implementation, how to use speed of implementation, speed of implementation theory, speed of implementation book, book on speed of implementation, marketing and speed of implementation, speed of execution, massive action, taking action

Why is Copywriting Important? Top 4 Reasons

Why do some copywriters get paid $100,000 retainers and 40% of gross sales for spending just a few days writing copy for a product? Why do those who write headlines for major magazines get paid 10x more than those who write the actual articles inside of the publication?

Here’s another question: What is the difference between a $1 bill and a $100 bill? The answer: The message on the paper is the only difference, this is proof that a small change in the message can make a piece of paper be worth over 100x as much as it may otherwise be.

and now the most important question…What are your messages worth? $1,000 or $100,000 each?

If you are ignoring the copy within your sales letters, emails, opt-in pages, or website you are probably only realizing 3-5% of the response that is possible with the use of the right words. Studying and investing in your copywriting skills could be the most important decision you make while either improving profits of a company or launching your own small business. We have personally seen products which were producing $15k month start producing $30k+/month after implementing some proven copywriting techniques.

Top 4 Reasons Copywriting IS Important:

Most of your competitors ignore or underestimate the importance of writing great copy
The majority of copy, once formed may be used hundreds if not thousands of times – you get a great bang for your buck vs. other short-run expenses such as a TV promotion or banner ad placement agreement
Every company needs great copy, no $1M companies operate without sale letters, email blasts, newsletters, or written communications of some type
If done right you can lower your refund rate and increase potential cross and upsells by connecting directly with the fears, needs, and goals of your clients

Tags: why learn copywriting, the importance of copywriting, why be a copywriter, why hire a copywriter, is copy writing important? the importance of great written copy

William Edwards Deming

One person who has affected me in business has been William Edward Deming. He has a quote that says "If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you are doing"

I think this also goes along with another popular business quotes "What gets documented gets improved"

Most businesses that I have worked with do not have an investor or customer cultivation process or pipeline drawn out as a process. They do not have their ongoing client communication strategy documented, and in many places the only documentation of their investment process is at a very high level within their marketing materials. I think many small business owners could benefit from using PowerPoint or a free program such as Bubbl to document their processes.

This documenting of critical processes takes little time and costs nothing to do but allows you to step back from the process and evaluate it, improve it, or delegate where appropriate. Our firm recently used Bubbl and PowerPoint together to describe a business process we were completing ourselves and we were able to not only use this internally but also externally as we trained a third party that we decided to outsource some of this work to.

The processes I have found to be valuable to document are:

Customer Acquisition Process
Current Customer Communication Strategy
Hiring New Employees
Managing your product development on an ongoing basis

Tags: William Edwards Deming Quotes, Quote by Edward Deming, W. Edward Deming, Quality Management and process improvement tips, documenting business processes for improvement

Kick Your Own Ass

At our Chicago networking event last month a fund manager brought up my recommendation of reading Jeffrey Gitomer books. We were discussing how making sales is tough right now, nobody wants to spend time discussing expenditures. The individual was looking for a new technique that would allow him to do well despite the poor economy. I think in tough times the principles of sales gurus like Jeffrey Gitomer are more true than ever.

Tags: Kick Your Own Ass, kicking your own ass in sales, sales advice, marketing and sales tips for investment marketers, third party marketing capital raising tips and strategies

Power of Focus

Below is a quote I used while speaking with an investment fund manager last week that was looking to raise capital, they were doing so by approaching every investor they could possibly speak to. They were explaining how their firm has so little resources compared to their $1B competitors.

“You can take a $5 disposable camera and take it out of the box, stand 10 feet from a building and take a great picture that will be developed and look good if not great. You could stand in that same position with a $10,000 camera with every gadget, lens, and a tripod and it will not take as good of a picture if you do not do one thing, focus.”
- Brian Tracy

The Point: You can beat your competition with a smaller staff, with less financial resources, and less experience if you just learn to focus. Focus on your top prospect investors, focus on local potential investors, and focus exclusively on the types of investors which are most likely to make allocations to your fund. If you can dial-in on these three areas your hot prospect list, local investors and the right investor mix (family offices, wealth management, pension funds, etc.), than you can really cover a lot of ground quickly.

Tags: The Power of focus in sales, Sales Focus, focusing on the right customers, time management and focus

Presuppositions: How to Use a Presupposition

Today we are going to talk about presupposition, this is something from the world of Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP) and it is very applicable to day to day business marketing and sales activities.
Presupposition can be defined as the way of marketing in which you assume that the audience is going to be buying your product. For example we are coming out with a Influence Skills Training program next year which we haven’t named yet, below is a marketing pitch for this using the presupposition approach”

Example: The Influence Skills Training DVD product consists of 6 DVDs, a workbook, a cheat sheet, 2 audio CDs and flash cards. After you have purchased the product we will email you your membership details and you may begin using our training materials online. It will then take approximately 6 days to receive your box of training materials in the mail. Once these materials are received you will have the option of using the hard copy materials or the digital copies available online.

Many times in the paragraph I referred to actions the person “would take,” I did not refer to actions that the person might take or “might take if they decide to purchase.” The importance here is assuming they will be purchasing your product, if you have something truly valuable then you will be speaking directly to individuals who will in fact buy your product. The power of this thinking is that it helps build momentum towards making the sale, it moves them closer to completing the order form.

Warning: If you do not have a good relationship with your list or are you brand new to the industry the over-use of this tactic can come off as cheap and look like hucksterism, use it lightly. Also, this tactic is not a magic bullet which when used means you can ignore standard copywriting, risk removal, product samples, and testimonials. This is one of 20-30 tactics which when all used together raises the response you may receive from traffic on a website or mailings sent to a list.

I hope this post helped, we will be writing many more like this over the next few months.

Tags: Pressuposition, Presuposition, presupposition, How to use presuppositions, copywriting help, how to be a copywriter, copywriting examples, training on copywriting, NLP training, NLP tips

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Perfect Imprints

Influencing your Business and Self through Creativity

Being more creative is an important and valuable part of influencing oneself. One of the best ways to be creative and more effective in improving your business or career is to do the exact opposite of what would seem logical.

If you run a small business, try looking at how the airline industry or how Google advertising and obtains new clients and try emulating those models. Applying diverse ideas and applying it your industry may allow you to come with unique sets of customer acquisition strategies which are hard to detect and replicate.

If you are stressed out from working 15 hours a day try working 3 hours a day for a full week. You will freak out the first two days, but then mostly likely realize there are a few tasks which are absolutely critical while many others are not. By the end of the week you will be completing your most critical tasks within that three hour work period. Tim Ferris, author of the 4 Hour Workweek suggests a similar tactic for tackling an over-ruling Email Inbox, he suggests only checking your email twice a week. This may be extreme to some but would only checking your email once or twice a day kill you? It may save you hours/week in distractions and non-emergency urgency tasks.

If you are looking for new business opportunities consider taking an industry where something has always been very expensive and time-consuming to create and create a way to make it the opposite experience. Industrialize and streamline a relatively complex process into something more easy to implement or understand. Select an industry which is stuck in a traditional expensive approach to completing a complex process and streamline it, document it, refine it, and use this for consulting, your own business, your position at work, or your future business plans. Most professionals will not take the time to do this and many will tell you it is not possible. I did not realize it 2 years ago but this process alone is the #1 reason why my own business has become profitable with an over 150% growth rate for the last two years.

If you are looking for more ideas on how to be creative checkout ThinkerToys by Michael Michalko, the absolute #1 best book you could buy on being more creative. It costs less than $20.

Tags: creativity, creative business ideas, creative business development ideas, creative marketing ideas, creative sales ideas, building a business based on creativity, influence, persuasion

Quick Tips on Becoming More Influential

I believe there are a number of ways in which you can become more influential in everything you do. One of the benefits of reading 15-20 books on the topic of influence and persuasion is that you start to ingrain these lessons into your ever day decisions without having to think of them. Here are a few ways to become more influential:

State both the negative and positive sides of any argument, sometimes over-stating the negative upfront and then balancing that with the positive aspects can show that you have done your research, realize that you are not the cure to all cancers and trouble in the world and it adds a sense of trust or legitimacy to what you are suggesting.
Always act with integrity and be genuine, it is more simple than trying to act a certain way or act "the right way."
Think Long-Term: You will influence more decisions and long-term outcomes by thinking long-term. Try to act and treat others as a long-term investor might, not as a day trader. In other words can increase your ability to influence decisions by thinking of both your long-term interests as well as those you are attempting to influence.
Interview, Quote and Associate with Experts. There is no substitute for the knowledge, wisdom and benefits received from networking, being mentored by or working with a group of absolute experts in your field. Don't have access to them right now? Write a book by interviewing 10 of them and analyzing the common ground between their stories. Don't have a book offer on the table? Self publish.
Read and Invest in Your Brain 1 hour a day. When you work hard 50 hours a week you feel like you deserve an hour or two of movies, ice cream or intoxication. Sometimes this is needed but if you really want to break through and be more effective you should spend at least one hour each day learning more about time management, self improvement, positive psychology, influence and persuasion and specialized knowledge related to your field. If nothing else, who does not have the time to learn more about time management?
Do the hard work. Ideas are cheap, hard consistent work is rare. Speak with your actions and invest your time in taking actions towards meeting your goals, stop planning and start failing so you can learn and improve on what you have started.

Tags: tips on how to be more influential, influence, influence and persuasion

Dr. Robert Cialdini Interview Video

Here are some good questions and answers about the psychology of influence and persuasion. This interview was completed in London in 2009.

Tags: Robert Cialdini, Dr. Robert Cialdini Interview, Interviews with Robert Cialdini

Dr. Robert Cialdini Questions & Answers

Below please find a video of Dr. Robert Cildini answering some classic questions on the psychology of influence and persuasion. He is a great speaker and his points review several of the most important questions asked and answered within his previous books on the topic. Here are the videos:

Tags. Dr. Robert Cialdini, Robert Cialdini Video, Interview with Dr. Robert Cialdini, influence, influence and persuasion

Influencing Others Through Focus & Expertise

Influencing Through Focus & Expertise

Today's business world is competitive, most professionals and companies do not want to spend money on generic resources, generic tools or generic consultants. They do not need generic education and training or generic solutions. The future of influencing others is through provide very niche focused products to clients. Most business professionals already know this but I believe that they don't take it far enough.

I believe that many companies could become first movers within the smallest of niches if they look to become more granular than any of their competitors have been in the past. For example a California based company that I know provides hard copy books or directories of contact details to their clients for $477 to $1,400 a piece. Their competitors have all provided generic resources which cover 8-12 niches within a single solution, but this company has recently seen a spike in sales by catering to each of these 8-12 niches with separate websites, distinct focused products and separate launches. There is something to be said of making the high dollar sale and up selling customers but if your firm is seeing stagnant growth I would recommend looking into positioning your firm as THE expert resource or guide on a very small niche topic, doing so may be easier than you previously thought.

How could you be more influential by being literally 10X more focused than your competition?

Tags: Influencing Others in Business, Earning Expert Status, Marketing to Niches, Influence, persuasion, influence and persuasion

Influence Skills Training Program | Details

Influence Skills Training Program

Below please find various articles related to our upcoming Influence Skills Training Program:

Tags: Influence Skills Training Program, Influence Skills Training, Influence Training, Persuasion Training, Persuasion Skills Training, Online influence and persuasion program, influence certification

Influence and Persuasion Psychology Research

Below please find reviews of important historic as well as recent scientific research on the psychology of influence and persuasion. Sometimes these studies will discuss things such as compliance, social influence, persuasion, or principles of influence. Please see our definitions page first to learn more about what these terms mean.

Research on Psychology of Persuasion and Social Influence

Tags: Persuasion Psychology Research, Social Influence Psychology Research, Psychology Research, Influence and Persuasion Psychology Research, Research on the psychology of influence and persuasion

Books & Movies on Influence and Persuasion

Below please find links to articles we have posted on books and movies related to the psychology of influence and persuasion:

Tags: Books on persuasion, books on psychology of influence, influence and persuasion books, influence books, persuasion book, influence book, influence persuasion book, cialdini book, persuasion movies

Influence & Persuasion Techniques and Strategies

Influence & Persuasion Techniques

Below please find links to numerious articles which explain how to use and apply influence and persuasion techniques to business and sales situations:

Tags: Influence Techniques, Persuasion Techniques, Persuasion strategies, influence strategies, how to use influence and persuasion, influence and persuasion strategies, influence and persuasion techniques

Business & Sales Case Studies Persuasion & Influence

Business & Sales Case Studies

It can sometimes be hard to apply examples of influence and persuasion techniques from books or experiments to real life. Below please find various articles by our team which explain various practical applications of influence principles to real life business and sales situations:

Tags: Business Case Studies, Persuasion Case Studies, Influence Case studies, Sales Case Studies, Sales Case Study, Business Case Study, Persuasion Case study, Influence Case Study

Persuasion & Influence Movies and DVDs

We are collecting a list of influence and persuasion related movies and DVDs that are available for purchase. If you have a favorite movie related to these subjects please so send it to us and we will post a link to it here for everyone to benefit from. For now please see the resources collected below:

Tags: Persuasion movies, Persuasion DVDs, influence and persuasion movies, influence and persuasion dvds, psychology of persuasion and influence videos, movie on influence and persuasion

Research on the Psychology of Persuasion & Influence

Influence & Persuasion Psychology Research

There are hundreds of easy to understand books on influence and persuasion. At the same time there are hundreds of harder to read journals, scientific reports and seminars based on the primary research related to this field.

So why read journal articles and reports of the latest scientific research within these fields? Why should professionals who are serious about implementing tactics of influence and persuasion case about the granular research done on various techniques and strategies?

Reading the latest reports on persuasion and influence research is the only way to gain unfiltered insight into what has recently been confirmed or rejected through rigorous scientific studies vs. someone's intution or guess on how things work.
What makes the areas of influence and persuasion so interesting is that so many things work on an unconscious level in ways we would not have expected. If we only relied on our guesses on how things worked based on personal experiences we would be decades behind on what tactics and methods actually work.
Combining lessons from research with mainstream books and articles will lead to the most complete and comprehensive understanding of the industry.
If you are in the business of training or coaching within the areas of influence or persuasion you owe it to your students to read the primary sources on on related research so you can be assured that you are instructing professionals using the latest knowledge, discoveries and theories which are supported by rigorous research methods.

Tags: Persuasion Psychology Research, Influence Psychology Research, influence and persuasion research, scientific research on influence and persuasion, graduate degree level research on social influence

Influence Course Offered Online

Influence Course

As you may have already read here within other areas of the website our team is developing a home study influence course for sales professionals, business owners and business professionals. In the past our team has created a business analysis matrix for analyzing the effectiveness of businesses in applying lessons of persuasion and influence to their business practices. We are starting with this framework and including various other influence best practices to create something which is relatively easy to learn and implement within many businesses and industries.

The details of the course to date include:

Training and best practices collected from our development of a 50 point influence and persuasion matrix tool
100 hours of required study need to complete the program, read the required materials and pass the exam that will be included within this course
Our team will be providing a certification to those who do pass the program, certifying their knowledge within these areas of influence and persuasion.
To complete the program you will have to complete a project where you apply these principles to your own sales practice, business operations, marketing plans or strategic plan for your own career or organization.

Tags: Influence Course, Home Study Influence Course, Course on Influence and Persuasion, Influence Skills Course, Influence Courses, Persuasion Course, influence training program

Setting up a Goal | Tips and Experiences

Setting Up a Goal

Through InfluenceGuru.com I have spoken in the past about how to influence others you must first influence yourself. If you read enough self help, positive attitude and goal setting books you will come across the theme of setting goals and specifically setting one specific chief goal. I believe one the best ways to influence yourself immediately is to decide on one main goal which if you reached would move you forward towards your other goals and fulfillment more than anything else. This has worked for me in many cases, here is an example:

I used to work for a boss who was always upset, paranoid and mad. He lived a mad life and working under him made me nervous and on edge. I decided while working for him that I should work for myself so I would never be trapped under such a tyrant ever again. While making this decision I realized there were several ways in which I could start a new business so I narrowed these down to two ideas, starting an online business and performing consulting and pursued both in any way I could. I sent out cold emails, contacted past consultants that I knew, applied for positions, wrote daily on niche industry blogs that I started myself and found ways to make at least enough income to pay my bills in case I wanted to quit my job. I wanted to run a business more than anything else so all of this work paid off, within 6 months of starting this process I was making $1,800/month from my part time side activities and I could see the light of making a full time living off of this same work for myself if I quit my job. It so happened that at this same time my boss discovered one of the websites I was building and asked me to delete it or quit my job, I happily quit and never looked back. I don't believe that I would have been able to achieve this goal of working for myself if I had only half-heatedly pursued the goal, been going after 5-6 other goals such as writing a book, running a marathon, or volunteering 20 hours/week for a homeless shelter. There are many great things you can do with your time, but what one thing should you be looking to tackle right now that will change your life in 6-9 months?

What if you:

Started your own business
Doubled your sales
Grew a top 3 most respected niche industry website for your business?
Wrote a book
Gave 20 speaches around the country to industry associations and clubs?
Surveyed all of your customers for new product ideas and launched an outsourced product which took only 3 hours of your time a month to maintain?

Tags: setting up a goal, goal setting, Goal setting theory, Goal setting tips, how do I set a goal, what is a goal setting plan, steps to setting a goal, goal setting ideas, motivational goal setting

Influence Theories Explored |

Influence Theories Explored

There are a number of leading theorists within the field of influence and persuasion. Some are introduced to the topic through Michael Hogan, others through Robert Cialdini and many more through the field of NLP. If you have been brought up on influence and persuasion from a little known author or expert who you believe truly offers something unique please do email us.

We are completing book reviews and adding components to our business tool which helps us evaluate businesses and their effective employment of influence and persuasion methods and techniques.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Tags: Influence Theories, Theory of influence and persuasion, Michael Hoan on influence and persuasion, Influencing others through NLP, NLP Techniques, Influence and persuasion tactics

Influence Skills Training | Register to Learn More

Influence Skills Training

I am starting to build a list of professionals who would like to receive business oriented influence and persuasion training. I am working with a small team of professionals on a project related to this and would like to see how much interest there is in the market for such a program.

If you would like to

Increase how your business influences other through the internet
Increase the impact of your marketing materials
Learn how to become more visible in ways which will influence others to do business with you please complete the form below:

The Ability To Influence Others | How To Do It

The Ability to Influence Others

What has been interesting about working with influence tactics and earning my graduate degree focusing on psychology of influence and persuasion is the theme of first changing yourself before changing others.

Here are some examples I have seen over the last 5 years:

In sales many teach to be confident in yourself, being sold on yourself and your product before you can sell others.
In a positive psychology course we learned that to make others happy you generally need to make yourself happy first.
My favorite sales author Jeffrey Gitomer stresses that to have a positive attitude and work successfully with others you need to first serve yourself well and meet your own needs.
What I have found with influence and persuasion is that you need to first be able to influence your own actions, influence yourself before you will be able to effectively influence others in many areas.

Are you ignoring yourself while trying to sell or influence others? What could you do to develop more self discipline, control and enjoyment at the same time which would lead to a snowballing effect in influencing others? You could create a list of 5 things you need to complete every single day, write a book over the next 4 months, travel to places you have always dreamed of going, or commit your time and money to launching your new business on a small scale right now.

Tags: Influence Others, Influencing others, How to Influence others, how to influence others in business, how to influence others in sales, The Ability to influence others, influence over

How to Have a Positive Attitude

Positive Attitude

How to Have a Positive Attitude

Here is a short video by sales trainer Jeffrey Gitomer on sales and positive attitude. Gitomer is one of my favorite sales trainers and in this economic environment I thought this was a great video. Gitomer suggests:

Surround yourself with positive people
Expose yourself to positive books, magazines and movies
Say all things in a positive way
Start now and work on it every day

I've read five of his books and met him in person while in Boston. The best tip I have gotten from Gitomer on positive attitude is to read 15 minutes worth of positive reading every morning right after you wake up.

Tags: How to Have a Positive Attitude, Positive Attitude, Power of positive attitude, power of positive attitude, positive mental attitude, positive attitude quotes

Richard Wilson

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