Freedom Lifestyle Insider

Published by Musemancer Sdn. Bhd. A-09-01 Plaza Taragon Kelana Jalan SS 6/6, Kelana Jaya, 47301, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia Email: [email protected] Tel: 03-78873215 Cover design by Joey Lim [email protected]

Copyright © 2014 by Edmund Loh All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any or any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from the author.

CONTENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR…………………….i PART I: Freedom Lifestyle Redesigned...…1 86,400 Reasons to Read This Book……....2 Why Internet Marketing Sucks………….5 What Most People Are Doing Wrong…..6 Designing Your Ideal Lifestyle……….....20 PART II: Reconditioning Your Being For Abundance………….23 Everything Is Energy……………………..24 7 Keys To Unlocking Your Full Potential………………………....32 PART III: Make It Happen………………….41 Giving Birth to Your Brainchild………....42 How to Sell Without Selling……………..51 How to Test Your Idea’s Profitability…..55 Go BIG: The 3 Big Traffic Methods……...57 PART IV: Automation……………………....65 Earn In US Dollars, Spend in Pesos….….66

How to Amass Your Work………………..72 BONUS CHAPTERS…………………………81 David VS Goliath………………………......82 Things to Do Before You Die……………..88

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  

Starting off as a self-learner in 2005, Edmund Loh went from a mere reseller to becoming the top Private Label Rights producer in the Internet Marketing arena, with hundreds of titles and products tracing back to his works. Edmund is the co-author of national bestselling book “Secrets Of Millionaire Students” with fellow Bestselling Author “Secrets Of Internet Millionaires” Stuart Tan and ClickBank Maestro Dylan Loh. Considered to be one of the top Internet Entrepreneurs in Asia, he had spoken at events for Success Resources, MindValley and many more entrepreneurial conferences. He has shared the stage with some of the world-class speakers and entrepreneurs including Robert G Allen, Peng Joon, Jonathan Quek, Azizi Hadi (VP of Telekom Malaysia), Chan Kok Long (founder of iPay88) and more.

PART I: FREEDOM LIFESTYLE REDEFINED

FREEDOM LIFESTYLE INSIDER

86,400 REASONS TO READ THIS BOOK If you compare the time in a day with money. 86,400 seconds is like 86,400 dollars. Imagine being given 86,400 dollars everyday. Every morning, that money is gone and replaced with another 86,400 dollars. With all our might, we would try to finish spending all the money because it would be unwise to do it. By perusing this book, you will not only acquire the knowledge of starting an online business and be good at it, but you will also learn to make every second count. A 9 to 5 job can drain your energy in an unimaginable way, squeeze the life out of you, demoralize, and will leave you bereft of free time. All those time wasted on just getting though traffic jams, commuting, and just waking up extra early to get to work. And this doesn’t count the time you spend on regretting the opportunities you’ve let go and the time lost on wishing you had more time. Oh, the irony. What a nightmare it would be if one day you were to find your older-self staring back at you in the mirror and wonder how you got there so fast. “Time flies above us but leave its shadows behind.” Nathaniel Hawthorne 2

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The significance of a single second in your life is immeasurable. Anything could happen in the blink of an eye. Each second is a gift. Each moment is an opportunity so why would you squander them away? By constraining yourself to time-wasting routines, you’d deprive yourself of precious opportunities. Why spend a huge chunk of your time in front of the television? On your couch? On commuting to work? On the things that make you unhappy? Home-based work can liberate you from the shackles of time. It will set you free from formality, give you the freedom to wear anything comfortable while you work, and the freedom to organize your life in any way that befits you. Imagine how great it would be to spend a huge part of your day doing what you love. You can even improve yourself by learning new language, picking up an instrument, travel to new places, be around your loved ones, or just simply lounge in your living room. All the things that you’ve always wanted to do can be achieved. “It’s really clear that the most precious source we all have is time.” Steve Jobs What is the point of having wealth without time?

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The benefit the Internet has bestowed on us is listless. One of which is the chance to earn income without no longer wasting the 86,400 seconds you’re given everyday. Let this book be your guide.

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WHY INTERNET MARKETING SUCKS & WHAT MOST PEOPLE ARE DOING WRONG There is a dreadful connotation that goes with Internet marketing. Many users would find it annoying. This is because of some Internet marketers who don’t do it the right way. I’m sure that even you have found yourself faceto-face with a pesky pop-up advertisement that appears out of nowhere. More often than not, Internet marketers think that spamming is a great idea, which is why you see a lot of updates that are too frequent on Twitter and Facebook, and they don’t say anything of substance. These are all the wrong approach and amateurish. They give a bad name to Internet marketing and we have to make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes. A lot of online business fell flat because they do not know the tips and tricks of it. They thread courageously through a land unknown to them without the proper knowhow that resulted them on being unsuccessful. And, believe me, it’s easy to fail. With the proper tools and knowledge, you can make the odds to be in your favor. It’s important to learn what doesn’t work first before learning what does work. We learn from mistakes but let’s spare ourselves 5

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the time and the emotional torture by learning from other people’s mistakes. For this chapter, I will tell you about what the novices of Internet marketing are doing wrong so that you can avoid committing the same sins.

WHAT MOST PEOPLE ARE DOING WRONG 1. EXPECTING FAST RESULTS There’s no denying that Internet made our lives easier by speeding up the time it takes for us to do things. We no longer have to line-up to buy movie tickets, book restaurants, and purchase books, and no more trips to the library to settle a debate with a friend. And now, with smartphones, the access to Internet is on the tip of our fingers. However, that does not mean you should expect fast results from your Internet marketing endeavor. The Roman Empire was not built in one day. Like traditional marketing, your campaign will take time and it’s important for you to be patient.

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A successful campaign may take months for you to truly see the results. You won’t make your product popular just by putting it out there. Don’t expect your promotional video to go viral and sales to skyrocket overnight. There are still lots of hard work needed. This is where you come in. Your job is to make a brand conspicuous and speaks for itself. Amateur Internet marketers would usually be impatient in getting results, forcing them to take unnecessary aggressive actions like spamming that only annoy and shy away prospective customers. There’s no denying that promoting through Internet is a much faster and easier way than traditional marketing. If you were to make a promotional video, for example, you don’t have to wait for the time slot you purchased from the TV broadcast. Instead, you just post a video on Youtube and people could view it anytime you want. However, it’s your job to make sure it circulates the web. You still have to get you hands dirty. 2. BEING UNORGANIZED Proper planning is crucial. Nothing could screw up marketing more than poor planning. Any marketing plan takes a

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huge amount of time and energy to organize (Remember what I said about being patient?). A good plan demands a lot from you, not just energy, but creative thinking as well. There are a lot of things that have to be taken into account. You need to figure out the best timing, the best outlet, the best audience, proper budget, etc. Even with immaculate planning an error in judgment could happen, imagine the colossal damage poor planning could do. Take every step mindfully when devising a master plan. Understand your plans, thoroughly, and work out what kind of outcome can and should be expected. Always delve into the specifics, not just the general idea of it. Meticulousness is needed and, in fact, encouraged. “A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.” Confucius 3. ALL EGGS IN ONE BASKET Just like the first mistake, people expect a lot more from the Internet than it can offer. It’s true that you can reach each and everyone in the world who has an Internet connection but never expect an unrealistic sure-fire outcome from it.

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Not everyone who has viewed your advertisement would buy your product and not everyone who clicked on the link to your website would be bedazzled right away. There’s no reason for you to not expect the conversion rate of online marketing to be almost the same as traditional marketing. When you hand out pamphlets, you should only expect 1-3% conversion rate. Imagine yourself organizing your concert and you have to hand out pamphlets. Out of 100 given away, one to three people would actually show up. If you prepare only 100 pamphlets, don’t be surprised to have a concert with just three attendees. Of course, it’s best if you have a high conversion rate and we should try our best to have that, but to achieve that requires a lot of effort. The Internet is vast and saturated at the same time, meaning that even though there is space for you, the competition is still quite fierce. Set a realistic goal. To know what goal is achievable, you have to know the market and the business in and out. Sadly, some companies don’t even have goals. A campaign is done just for the sake of it.

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4. NOT EVALUATING OWN PERFORMANCE Experienced and successful marketers would know the importance of evaluation. Imagine your online marketing miraculously triumphs even though you’re still new to the field. Your clients deliver a toast to your name and you see a bright future where you get to guest-talk in a business program on television as a revered marketing mogul. But, without evaluation and self-assessment, that would be your only success. There is no point in succeeding without knowing what actually worked and what didn’t. Surely, you would want to perform well again in the future but that is not possible if you don’t know what you did wrong and what you did right. What about mistakes? What if you fail and learn nothing from it? If you learn nothing from failure then all you’d have ended up with is purposeless failure. There is no point of making mistakes if you can’t learn from it and the same goes to success. Always keep track of your actions and know how to assess and reassess them.

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5. FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THE TARGET MARKET Even though the Internet allows you to have a broader audience with less expenditure, you still need a specified target to have a higher chance of sales. To know marketing is to know the people you want to approach. You have to have a specified target than just generally shoot in the dark hoping you would hit a few customers. This is not the right way. We are living the age of niche where people can now choose what they want to see. Disregarding an advertisement is easier now than the past. With the Internet, however, various methods have made it easier to locate and approach your target market. You have to know who your target market is. You have to know their way of thinking, their preferences and what ideas appeal to them. 6. NOT MARKETING Amateurish marketers are prone to be lacking in confidence and therefore doesn’t self-promote because they don’t feel they’re big enough to do so. This can best be described as a marketer who doesn’t do marketing.

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If you do not promote yourself, how would people know you even exist?How can your clients trust someone quiet to amplify their brand? Confidence should be your drive. If you do not have it, then you have no business being in business. Even Donald Trump talked about the importance of handshake, in which he said that the person with the firmer handshake is the one with control. Something seemingly unimportant like that is taken into account when it comes to presenting yourself. In the realm of the Internet, you can’t really demonstrate how strong your handshakes are, which is why you need to self-promote. Tell the world about your abilities, experience, achievements, and don’t be shy to show your face. Remember that you are selling your service to prospective clients. Establish a brand of yourself and uphold it. 7. NOT SELLING Marketers tend to forget that their job is to generate sales and not just gain popularity. Of course, popularity is not necessarily a bad thing and quite often it helps with sales. But it shouldn’t be your priority.

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Your priority should be with sales and not just spreading awareness of your brand’s existence. Awareness is still important but let’s not put it as top priority. It’s good to have a credible brand that is well known, but what good is that if the sales were horrendous? Nothing spells failure more than a large amount of expenditure spent on a plan that doesn’t bring any benefit to the company. Or worse: when a gimmick backfires like Walmart and Pitbull (the singer/rapper) campaign in 2012. The deal was to send Pitbull to the Walmart with the most ‘likes’ on Facebook. What happened was an insurgence of people who didn’t like Pitbull starting the #ExilePitbull campaign. It was a group of people who voted for the least glamorous place they could find on Walmart’s Facebook page. Pitbull was sent to Kodiak, Alaska. Sorry to digress but that’s a horror story worth sharing. The approach on potential customers is key. Amateurish marketers do not approach people intending to sell something but just instead to distract and divert their attention to the marketers for a moment, making the customers more annoyed and lose interest.

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Remember to sell. Marketers tend to forget that this is what they are paid to do. 8. MAKING MISTAKES A HABIT Every time I see a typo in an online marketer’s website, I’d cringe. It’s embarrassing, even though it’s not my site. It shows a lot about a person, especially a marketer, to have mistakes like this. Always be wary of these little mistakes as they can cause a disaster in your career. A client wants someone they could trust. How can they trust someone who lets mistakes like a typo in an official page to happen? They would start thinking about the bad results the marketer would bring. One

big

disaster

that

happened

because

of

carelessness was Pepsi and Aape’s, a Japanese clothing brand, campaign collaboration in 2013 that resulted a furor. The font chosen by the designer made the text ‘Aape’ looked like ‘rape’. This isn’t a typo, of course, as it did say ‘Aape’ but it resembled the word ‘rape.’ This is an example of the small, inconspicuous careless mistakes that might cause epic trouble for your marketing. As a marketer, you must always strive for perfection. As mentioned, you need to always assess yourself so

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that you can see your strengths and weaknesses to learn and correct yourself. A marketer who doesn’t do that is a marketer who doesn’t sell. Image is not everything but it is still truly a vital part in the marketer’s arsenal. 9. HOLDING BACK INFORMATION People are afraid to share their strategies to potential clients. What is there to be afraid of? You’re not selling your grandmother’s secret recipe that you swore you’d keep to the grave. You’re not selling nuclear launch codes. Don’t be afraid to tell your clients the general idea of your plans. Show them step-by-step what you plan to do. It’s just like pitching a project. Would you hold information back when you are pitching something? Your clients won’t appreciate obscurity. I share a rough idea of my campaign on my website so that the clients could see what I plan to do if they were to hire me. I provide the gist of what’s to come if they were to hire me to show them that I know what I’m doing. On top of that, I even provide a free one-hour consultancy session to discuss the course of our potential marketing plan. It’s like giving a free sample at the supermarket.

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This is where they give me a chance to show them how good I am. When I allow them to see my plans, they allow me to prove myself. Remember that confidence is a big part of selling something on your part but also on your potential clients. They’re going to place their confidence on you so you must give them the reason to do that. If you hide your plans from them,

and

your

competitor

approaches

them

with

transparency, you’re going to lose business. No one, especially in business, is interested in the obscure. 10. NOT NETWORKING In business, it’s important to establish and keep on expanding your network. Novice marketers easily confuse confidence with arrogance. When they become too confident, they’d think they’re too good for some things. This is not the case. You should always be active in interacting with people. One good place for you to start is to go on forums and various message boards. Relationship with others who are in the same trade could most of the time open up new opportunities for you and you’ll learn new things. Blogging is a good way to establish a community on your site to make your site popular.

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It’s best to start a blog on your own domain, for example, yourdomainname.com/blog. Not only you have to blog, you also have to reply to the comments. Interaction is important and you have to always answer their queries (while ignoring and deleting the hateful comments… Unfortunately, they will inevitably invade). This is a great way to establish yourself as an online marketer and at the same time, shaping a community of people frequenting your website. Even in blogs, there shouldn’t be a one-way communication. Also, don’t forget to comment on people’s blogs. Do not snub other social media platforms, though. It’s best that you get your hands and be active in every one of them. Do not eliminate any opportunity that might be beneficial to you. Having a Facebook page, for instance, goes without saying. Everyone has a Facebook page and Twitter account nowadays. Use these social media tools to interact with people. However, be warned that if you are not careful, using social media could backfire devastatingly and you will be preyed on. A good example of a company receiving stint from the public is Epicurious, a site about cookery and food, took

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advantage of the Boston Marathon bombing incident in April 2013 to tastelessly gain popularity. They tweeted, “In honor of Boston and New England, may we suggest: whole-grain cranberry scones!” It resulted disastrously with a swarm of negative feedbacks on their insensitive remark and now, they are featured in this book as a bad example. While it’s good to be talking about current issues to add a little personal touch, there are certain sensitive subjects you have to steer clear of. Any unfortunate or grim events should not be associated in your social media post. Frankly, this was an inexcusable amateur mistake. Conferences are also gainful. I was invited to give a talk at the E-Commerce Conference where I rubbed shoulders with the big guns of Malaysia’s IT and communication industry (more of this later in the chapter David vs. Goliath). Not only I learned a lot from that experience, I also got my first two online marketing consultancy clients from that speaking engagement. It was an experience that I treasure. It had taught me a lot about the business, the people, the community, and my strength. I’m appalled to find out that there are still marketers out there who are naïve enough to think that they don’t need to attend speaking conferences.

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Speaking conferences is an opportunity for you to really get yourself out there. It’s the only place where you can show a huge number of people what you are capable of and what you know. It’s a gathering of business opportunities. Even if you think you are still too green to give a talk, at least attend these conferences. It will broaden your view and knowledge of this ever-evolving industry. There are always new things to learn out there. While I highly recommend Warrior Forum, it’s best that you go to these conferences where you can actually interact with and learn from experienced players of the marketing game. Ask questions and interact with the speakers. You have to have the eagerness to acquire knowledge. Great thing is you don’t have to wait a few days for their uncertain replies like online. More to that, you will also widen your network and make a few contacts at the conference where you meet people of similar trade. Knowing a lot of people is a great advantage in business. One of those things never taught in school: the importance of networking. Networking goes a long way in any profession.

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DESIGNING YOUR IDEAL LIFESTYLE Lifestyle design was made famous by Tim Ferriss’s book, 4Hour Work Week. He was the person who reintroduced home-based work in style. You can follow Tim Ferriss’ footsteps and become a globetrotter, working and setting up networks all over the world. He describes the idea lifestyle design as the lifestyle of “the new rich”. If you are a mother like Jana Kingsford, you can always use the time to take care of your children. She designs her ideal lifestyle by making a “to-do list sort of like a bucket list” that includes “write 1,000 words per day for 30 days”, “appear on TV”, and many others. She even lists out things to do with her family such as, “read stories to kids every night” and “join gym with husband.” The beauty of designing your ideal lifestyle is that you can live your life however you want. There are no restrictions. If you’re not the kind who likes to travel the world, preferring the peace and comfort of your home, then you can choose to live that way. If you do everything right, then you earned it. Remember, you’re doing this so that you don’t have to force yourself to commit to things that make you unhappy.

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If you worry about life expenses and feel that quitting your job is too big of a leap to take, then you can start slowly. Internet marketing allows you to work anytime you want, even when you still have a day-job. Perhaps you can moonlight your online business first. Spend this time developing, sculpting and establishing your brand. All major life transitions need a smooth segue, right? Once your brand solidifies and you’re generating the formulized income you desire, you can quit your job. It doesn’t matter how slow you choose to take it. Here’s a little step-by-step guide if you still feel unsure: 1. Learning About Design This is where you learn about lifestyle design, how to achieve it and, hey, you’re halfway done through the first step already! 2. Setting Up Shop The launch of your brand online. This is where you begin. But you can still keep your day-job if you’re not confident and your online business hasn’t soared yet. At this stage, you must grow your business. Don’t worry, what you need to know about this stage is all in this book.

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3. Maintenance Once you have the business optimized and it generates the income you desire, you have to make sure it continues and maintains to be that way. You will face trials and errors at this stage, but it’s okay as long as you keep your business afloat. 4. Begin The New Life Now, when you’re sure that your online business can support you, it’s time to say goodbye to your old job. You don’t need it anymore and you’re free to do whatever you want while manning your online business. This is where you can take your online business to greater heights. What I would recommend for you to do during your free time once you’ve achieved the goal is to further improve yourself by learning new things, improving your skills, and workout. When you have the time, nothing can stop you from moving forward. “There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” Aldous Huxley

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PART II: RECONDITIONING YOUR BEING FOR ABUNDANCE

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EVERYTHING IS ENERGY I believe most of you have heard about Law of Attraction, but how many of you actually fully understand and apply it in your life? The Law of Attraction explained that everything is made of energy, including your thoughts. Your thoughts create an invisible force that brings impact not only to you but the people around you as well. We are experiencing all kinds of energy every single day, in both positive and negative. You feel happy; you feel sad; you feel angry; and there are so much more other emotions you experience every day – that is all energy. The energy is generated and created by you; you are the master of all these energy and were empowered to control them. The things you say, the things you do, the things you think, they are the ‘ingredients’ to generate energy; sometimes even the things you didn’t do can ruin the whole ‘recipe’. All in all, it is fair enough to say that everything is energy. What is Energy? Energy is everything that invokes a reaction inside you – yourself included. In fact, you are the most important key to affect the energy flow inside you. If you have a positive outlook, you gain the positive energy. Likewise, negative perception attracts negative energy. Do not underestimate the energy flows inside yourself; it is powerful enough to create an impact on you and the people around you.

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The energy can be in all kinds of different forms. You can see and feel them if you look within yourself. Some of them are strong and powerful, but some are passive. The powerful one is like the extroverts; they have strong characters and love to present themselves in front of the crowd – that is why you can recognize them easily. On the other hand, the passive one is the introverts, they rarely show up but doesn’t mean that they do not exist – they are inside your subconscious or the sub-subconscious that you need to dig deep to find them. Some of the positive energy might be hiding somewhere deep inside you, waiting to be discovered. As mentioned, do not underestimate the power of energy. One famous saying about the like attracts like. We are like malfunctioned magnets; we attract things in the same magnetic field. You attract negative crowd when you emit the negative energy, likewise to the positive. The flow of energy moves from one region to another, you can spread the positive energy to your environment and that, in turn, benefits you too. You can control the energy, the power of the energy is in your hands; it can be different and it depends on how you deal with it. The energy can be learned. You don’t need to complicate yourself with all the reasons and emotions behind the feeling – It’s too much to understand. Simply categorize them into good and bad feelings.

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The negative energy will weigh you down, but the positive energy will free you. When you generate negative energy, you are a creating a prison cell around your inner self. You trap your inner self inside with four walls around you. You must generate the positive energy. Break the wall and get out from the prison you have created. Open up to the freedom that everyone, including yourself deserves to receive. “Negative energy brings emotional burden; Positive energy brings emotional freedom!” How the Energy Will Affect Us? Now that you know about what energy is all about, it is time to share a little bit about how the energy will affect us in our daily lives. Law of Attraction clearly states that everything happens because we attract it; the negative energy attracts negative emotions. If you visualize a negative reality, you are setting your mind to believe that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong; and whatever can go right, will probably go wrong too. Our surroundings depend on a reflection of what we feel. It is important to feel good; when you feel happy, you can attract more happy circumstances. When we refocus on things, see them from a more positive angle, you can change your emotions almost immediately. The same goes to your negative outlook. You can take control of your feelings by making a choice.

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When a person immerses in negative energy for a long period time, it brings negative effects to our health mentally, emotionally

and

physically.

Our

body

releases

different

chemicals when we experience various things in our daily life, each chemical has its own function to create a different mood. For instance, serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin are the chemicals released from the brain to make you feel good. Our bodies are miraculours. We don’t really know its capabilities and limitations. It surprises us with its resilience, and at the same time, it’s vulnerable. A happy mind can do wonders to your body. You’ll be healthier. We have the power to define what is positive and negative. Something may be happening badly to you, but change your perspective, buck up, think about the positive things you can gain through the scenario, no matter how little your gain is. Small things can make a huge difference. How to Attract Positive Energy? Remember the like attracts like from the Law of Attraction? To attract positive energy, the first thing you need to do is generate positive thoughts. Make a list of everything that makes you feel good, and make it the guidance for you to learn how to think positively. Every time when all you can think of are negative things, take your list out and start reading it. Here is where the magic happens! Your body will then generate the good chemicals and make you feel good and happy. The negativity will dissipate.

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Make the gratitude exercise your habit. The gratitude exercise is when you think positively towards a result; count your blessings instead of allowing the bad things to overpower the good ones. It makes a really big difference in your life. Third, do something you love. If being with nature makes you feel good, you should plan a trip to go to the woods on the weekend. Go for something outside to get yourself some sunlight, which can actually fight depression. Sunlight can boost the serotonin – the chemical that makes you feel good and happy. Plus, it won’t hurt to get some exercise. In my case, I love reading. I have a tower of books on marketing, business, lifestyle, and many others. So, I will always make time to read, no matter how much time I have left, I’ll squeeze it in. I not only enjoy it, I get to learn and also sharpen my mind. Apart from reading, yoga and meditation are good choices as well. If you find yourself under too much stress, it’s not a bad idea to do a breathing exercise. There are various breathing exercises you can try and experiment. It will also help lower your blood pressure, increase awareness, and mindfulness. Last but not least, love yourself – the most vital activity to attract positive energy. You need to love yourself first before the others can love you. If you do not love yourself then you’d have low confidence, which makes it easy to break your spirit. You have the control over your thoughts. Don’t let yourself be controlled by them.

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How to apply energy into your life Now, you’ve learned all the good things about positive thinking. So, how do we put it into practice? First of all you have to make it a habit. Short-term application is not going to work; long-term application is the best solution. In order to do that, you have to make positive-thinking a habit. Turning it into habit is no easy task. It requires patience and determination. You have to keep practicing and make it your second nature. Keep striving for improvement in yourself to be a better person in your life; this is your life, not anybody else’s, no one can help you but yourself. Free yourself from the past, and move forward to a better future. Visualize the future you want and do anything to achieve that! Success doesn’t come without hard work. Determination is the key to success. Don’t give up easily and give yourself an excuse to start over again. Change yourself first before you capable to change anything else. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the one we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” Barack Obama Why Positive Energy? There are thousands of reasons to choose positive energy over negative one. I will share a couple of reasons with you.

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According to The Nun Study, those who are regularly exposed to positive emotions live on average 10 years longer. The positive energy reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases, thus keeping your heart healthy. The benefit of positive energy is not just this; it helps to lower your blood pressure as well. See? This is how our thoughts influence our body, which is enough reason for us to take control of them. Moving on, the positive energy keeps your mental health in equilibrium as well. Researches have shown that positive people are more resilient against stress, challenges and adversities. Barbara Fredrickson, the author of Positivity (2009), said that the positive people are able to maintain a broader perspective and see the bigger picture, which helps them to overcome obstacles easier. A person that works in positive work environments outperforms negative work environments. A negative work environment leads to negative employee; negative employee leads to the drop of performance, which will affect a team, and the drop of performance leads to the drop of profit. That is just the general idea and one of many consequences of negative work environment and how it affects us. John Gottman, psychologist researcher, mentioned that in marriages, couples must maintain a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions. Positive energy is key to healthy and longlasting relationships.

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I totally understand that this is easier said than done, everyone knows exactly how to attract the positive energy; but sometimes they just can’t help but to think negatively. Just as mentioned, the energy flows from a one region to another. You can take baby steps. Start with the small positive changes and it will grow from there. Before you know it, you can become the source of energy for people around you.

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7 KEYS TO UNLOCKING YOUR FULL POTENTIAL “Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.” Bruce Lee One of our ultimate duty as a quality human being is to find out and unlock our full potential. Maybe you’ve heard all the quotations on potential from spiritual leaders or an Instagram post. But did you ever take them seriously and think of ways to unlock your true potential? Why is it so difficult for us to realize our full potential? What is blocking us from it? Maybe on some levels, you do find a small piece of our potential. You don’t know how to go further from there, so you stop and settle for what you have. These are the 7 keys that will help you to move further: Key #1 – Evaluate Priorities First thing’s first, ask yourself three important questions to evaluate your own priorities. First question is: “What is most important to me?” The first thing that comes to your mind is the most important to you, no matter how small or how silly it is. You choose that answer because it’s already embedded to your mind as something you would never let go.

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Second question to ask yourself is: “What makes me happy?” Go for the things you think is precious for you that you will definitely regret in the future if you stop yourself from doing it. “Give a chance to take the risk, maybe it doesn’t work all the time, but worth to take the risk.” Above is quoted from the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist – Nicholas Kristof, who was willing to fight for human rights and social injustice. He took the risk to make a difference, because he believes that there is hope to transform and make a change in people’s lives. Do not give up on things that matter, you can make a difference if you choose to. Third question is: “What would you do for free?” Think of few things that you are willing to do even though you can’t get any pay for it. Is it worth your time to do it without asking for any form of payout? Evaluate all the priorities in your life and start making the changes in your life. Key #2 – Let Go of the Things that Don’t Serve You Keep away all the other things that will distract you, and start thinking of the things or person that doesn’t serve you for any purposes. Ask yourself, “Does this energize me? Helps me to move forward? Provide opportunities for learning and growth? Play a positive role in my life?” If all the answers is no, there is no need to keep all those

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things in your life. Those things drag you backward instead of forward. You need to let it go, cut them off from your life to move forward to a better future. One of the hardest things for you to let go is, comparing yourself with others. Don’t compare yourself with others. It’s great to find inspiration from others if it helps you. But at the end of the day, your benchmark of success should be yourself, because you are the only one who defines your own success. Think of yourself as the only real competitor you need to defeat – the person you were yesterday. Before you go to bed, ask yourself: “Am I a better person today?” But how can you let go? I know it is not an easy job to get rid of the things you are familiar with and start all over again. But if you want to move forward to a new life, you must ‘restart’ your life. Don’t focus too much on the past and future, but focus on the present. You have no control over the past or know what exactly the future holds, so why do you want to waste your time on something you can’t control? Key #3 – Commit to 3 Priorities I need to quote the author Jim Collins for this section. He said, “If you have more than three priorities, then you don’t have any at all.” Being too ambitious can be dangerous sometimes, because you don’t know which goal to focus on. The perfect number of goals you should have is three at a time; focus on the first three main priorities before you can proceed.

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You must learn how to walk before you learn how to run. List out the three main priorities you want to commit in this period of time. Break down the priorities into simple components. When you are listing down the three main priorities mentally or, better, on paper, it seems impossible to you – as if it is far beyond your reach. But with all the simple components listed down under the main priorities, which are easier to accomplish, the ‘big’ dreams doesn’t seem that farfetched anymore. Once you’ve completed the first three, go for another three, all that you need to do is to keep this cycle going. Every time you completed the priorities, you are taking a big step forward to your dream. Just make sure you are always keep tab of your three priorities. Key #4 – Create a Schedule Structure that Works Best For You This is meant to be unique to each one of you; there is no right or wrong way to do this. You just need to create a schedule that is tailor made for yourself, you don’t need to follow how others are doing it, just focus on yours. Most studies suggests, you should start your day by listing down all the tasks you need to do for the rest of the day, and then focus on the things one by one – this is how to start a day. You can list down every task and schedule your time effectively. This can be a tough task at the beginning, because it is not easy to breakdown everything into order. You have so many things to do, that you can’t even decide which one to begin with.

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This is a task that requires mastery. As time passes when you do this every day, you can figure out what works the best for you and cut off those doesn't work for you. Everything will be different than the past few days when you start changing yourself. But as you draft the schedule, don’t forget to make time for yourself. Whether it is just 5 minutes or 30 minutes and gets yourself some time to evaluate and assess your day. Keep away the things that distract you from this, including your phone, emails. Stop for a while to refresh your mind before you continue to work. Key #5 – Plan for Inspiration I personally think that it is important to plan for inspiration, because inspiration is the most important key for a person to move forward. Plan some activities that can inspire you to move towards a better future. You need to find someone who shares the similar goals. Companion in your long journey is needed; they are there to inspire you. They are someone to share experience with you, guide you towards the right path and avoid the mistakes they did before. They are someone who motivates you to do better. It’s important that you do the same for them. Find an outlet for your frustration to clear the negative thoughts and energy out from you. As mentioned earlier, you know how a person with negative thoughts creates impact to the people around. You need to attract the positive energy.

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“With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.” Dalai Lama Apart from this, exercise regularly. Working too hard can be tough, both mentally and physically. The productivity drops when we continuously work under negative circumstances; hence you need to workout to keep yourself healthy. Exercise regularly helps you to keep your mind clear as well. You can try various exercises at home such as yoga, meditation, and breathing exercises. Don’t eat bad food. Did you know that your brain uses the glucose derived from the food you eat as their fuel? In order for your brain to perform in maximum capacity, you need to be aware of what you eat. Keep your mental and physical health in good condition in order to keep yourself inspired every day. Key #6 – Pay Attention to Your Surroundings Opportunities can arise any time of the day, more than we can imagine. It happens everyday, and everywhere, without you even realizing it. Focus on what you are doing now; because the more you focus on the goals you want to achieve, you will be more aware of the opportunities around you. All you need to do is always be curious. And be resolute in seeking answers. Don’t be mediocre in everything, but be an expert in a particular field. Don't take things only in face value; make sure you thoroughly understand.

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So that you will be able to fully utilize the information you have learned. The world supplies us with infinite possibilities, but yet we only see a small part. We always think that we don't have enough, and deserve to receive more; but we take things for granted. You spend hours skimming through the newsfeed on Facebook, and complain that you don’t have enough time for your assignments. All you need to do is just stop for a moment, and pay attention to your surroundings. You will see things that you’ve never noticed before, because you are too busy spending time and energy on mundane things. When you stop and look around, you will be surprised on what you had missed all this while. Key #7 – Never Give Up! This will be a journey that is tough, exhausting, and tiring, there are plenty of obstacles waiting for you in the road. But never give up in doing what you think is important for you. The winners never quit and quitters never win. There are only two choices, to be the winner that you finally reap what you sow with joy; or the quitters that stuck in the middle of the road and shy away from hurdles. To give up on everything and go for a new journey isn’t easy, but you need to have the courage to go all in, because if you are determined to have something, you can overcome anything. Change your perspective when you’re navigating through

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a tough situation. You need to see every challenge you encounter in your journey as a way to learn and improve yourself. What’s ahead will only be tougher. It will never get easier. That is the reason you need to strive for self-improvement. Imagine yourself climbing up to the mountain, the path is smooth in the beginning, but as you keep going, it becomes steeper and harder to climb. But when you finally reach the top of the mountain, you feel the breeze in your hair, you see the horizon laid in front of you and you will forget about all the difficulties on the way up almost immediately. Do not give up if you fail once. Akio Morata co-founded a company that sells mainly electronic products. Their first product was an automatic rice cooker that was not successful as it caused rice to burn instead of cook. It was a big failure. What a blow it was for a company’s first every product. The company was Sony. And imagine a big hole we would have if he had given up on his company then. “Whenever you have taken work in hand, you must see it to the finish. That is the ultimate success of success. Never, never, never, give up.” Dada Vaswani

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PART III: MAKE IT HAPPEN

FREEDOM LIFESTYLE INSIDER

GIVING BIRTH TO YOUR BRAINCHILD Before  we  get  into  the  idea  of  starting  your  online  business,  let’s   take  a  step  back  for  a  moment.  Let’s  say  I  show  you  everything  I   know  about  having  a  successful  online  business  but  will  it  be  the   same  for  you?    

It  only  boils  down  to  one  thing  at  the  end.  Taking  massive  

action.  There  will  be  obstacles  but  you  need  to  take  baby  steps,  as   long  you  keep  progressing,  you’ll  be  fine.      

When  you’re  feeling  down  or  things  are  not  going  the  

way  you  planned  it  to  be,  always  ask  yourself,  why  did  I  start  this   business?  Who  am  I  doing  it  for?  If  you  keep  going  at  it  and  take   massive  action,  nothing  can  stop  you  from  reaching  your  goals.      

Now,  let’s  dive  into  this.  

1. Find Your Passion/ Niche So you know you need to start an online business to get out of your current lifestyle, how do you go about it? So how do you come up with a business or startup idea that's going to be profitable and fulfilling at the same time? When was the last time you did something, you enjoyed so much that you lost track of time? Find something that gets you in FLOW.

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Being in flow is the state of mind where you're so focused at the task in hand that you forget about everything else around you. When do you feel you're in flow? You can keep working on this one single thing whether you get paid or not. There are few ways to rediscover your passion. Ask yourself: “What did I enjoy doing when I was young?” It's funny how when we were young, we are so care free and do what ever we like. The only thing that matters to us is whether it's fun. The pure joy you get from playing catch with your friends in school and laughing about. Playing games, tennis, basketball or you prefer to paint throughout the day. You could've have been playing the whole day but you never felt tired or exhausted. Probably your parents would have had a hard time keeping up with you, running after you. We tend to forget sometimes that we have an inner child in all of us. As we get older we don't nurture it, and as you get busy with your daily lives, your inner child just goes off with time. Do you notice how excited you get when you're in a theme park, going on those crazy roller coaster rides? You can't stop giggling or smiling, that's your inner-child. Disneyland is known as 'The Happiest Place on Earth" for a reason. Our inner child are unleashed once we're in there. Take care of your inner child and find out makes you smile.

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2. Create a Vision board I don't know if you believe in law of attraction or not but have you noticed, when you buy something new like a car, a Honda for instance. All of a sudden, you notice there are so many Honda's on the road. It's as if the universe is trying to tell you, that it knows what you're thinking about. Subconsciously we become aware of it. The truth is, the cars have always been there but you never noticed it because that's not you chose to focus on. How can you use this to your advantage? Oprah Winfrey is a big believer of having a vision board, a board where you place everything you want out of life, you put it there. On your vision board, think of: a. How do you want to grow? What kind of things you haven't done before. To play the guitar, learn to swim, take painting classes; make a list of things that gets you up from the bed every morning. b. Things you want to do. The places you want to go, travel around the world. Backpacking around Asia and go to music festivals. The books you want to read. People you want to meet. Work on a project that'll leave a legacy.

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c. How do you want to contribute? Start a social project to help the unfortunate. Create a product to help with sanitization in third world countries. These are just some of the ideas for your vision board but as you start creating it, you'll realize a lot of things and learn about yourself. It doesn't mean the moment you place all this things on a board, it'll magically happen. It's just to remind you about your goals and keep you focused. As you start doing this, you'll begin to realize what you need to do achieve your goals. One

by

one

you'll

become

more

aware

of

the

opportunities that’s around you. One of my favorite ways of creating a vision board is using Pinterest but something physical works even better because it's there for you to hold and feel. It's more concrete. d. Who do you want to be? Every one of us has a role model that we adore and we wish to be like them. Have you wondered, once upon a time the person you look up to didn't know he or she was going to be that successful. They had their fair share of ups and downs. But because of their persistence and true grit, it made them who they are today. If your role model is Anthony Robbins and you just love the way he is, what are the positive things you can take from him.

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Study the way he is, how he speaks to people and helps them in any way he can. He tries his best to make a difference in every person he meets. Learn what he does every day to become a successful speaker, a businessman and an overall positive human being. Every time I'm facing a tough situation in business or in live, I always ask myself what will Tony do. At that moment, what ever that's going through my mind, it comes to a complete stop because I'm not thinking of my problems as ‘Edmund’ anymore but as ‘Tony’. I'm putting myself in his shoes and see things from his perspective. 3. What's Your Expertise? Besides your interest, what sort of expertise do you have? Have you solved any problem or done something that others find challenging. For instance, have you found a way to get the six packs you’ve always wanted? You probably know a lot about the right type of workouts, meal planning etc. Maybe you are great at getting great deals when you travel abroad. Planning a multi-city travel is a piece of cake for you and you always manage to get it for a fraction of what other people are paying for the same deal. These are skills you have accumulated over the years through your personal experiences. Now, we're getting somewhere.

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Next, find a group of people who has a problem. A friend who wants to go on a vacation but doesn't have the time to plan for it. Don't you think they'd appreciate it if you could get a great deal for them and don't mind paying you for it. There are tons of guys out there, who want to lose weight and get their dream body. Can you offer coaching and the meal plans you use for yourself. These are things you're already doing it for yourself. If it works for you, why not share it with others who are struggling to conquer this issues? 4. Help Other Businesses What if you don't have a passion or special skills? Where do you go from here? This is where you have to become a little creative and start helping others. Lots of businesses out there, it doesn't matter if they're doing well or not, they can always do better. If you're the one who can help improve their profits, get them more customers they would be more than happy to compensate you for it. How do you do this? Start contacting other businesses and ask them the "WHY" questions. For instance, ask if they're facing any problems or obstacles in the business. Go to places you visit everyday, it might be your local Pizza shop. Ask the owner, how's business? Are they facing any issues?

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He might say something like lack of customers, competition from other cafes, etc. Ask him WHY it is that way. Why they're not getting enough customers. Dig a little deeper and what you'll find is problems, issues the business is facing. This is gold for you. Now, you can start to think, how you can get them more customers. You might know how to use Facebook ads, Google ads etc. What if you spoke to 10 restaurant owners? How many problems can you help them solve? Problems that only you can solve. Think about it. 5. Make It a Commitment Having a passion or goal is not enough to make it work. What happens after your excitement and motivation dies off. What do you do? What separates the successful ones from the rest is how far they are willing to push themselves after all the initial excitement is long gone. You need to make a commitment to work on your business for at least one hour daily. Make it into a habit so no matter what happens, even if you don't see any results for months you keep doing it.

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If Howard Schultz gave up after being turned down by the banks 242 times, there would be no Starbucks. You'll never know how close you are to the finish line. Don't ever give up. Don't think of it as a race but a marathon you've just started. It's all about the journey and the kind of person you become at the end of it. Think about it. Let's take a look at a few people who worked on their passion and started their online businesses that are successful today. Case Studies a. Tactics Time Tactics Time was founded by Tim Brennan to share his passion to help adult chess players who are trying to improve their game. His goal by having this site and newsletter is to help others improve their chess rating and win more games. He wasn't even thinking of turning into a business but he wanted to share his chess tactics in the form of an ebook. The ebook, 'Tactics Time" became a game changer because he started getting sales of 10-15 books/day from his email subscribers. By doing what he genuinely loves, sharing his knowledge he's created a business that gives him passive income whether he's working or not.

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b. SmartPassiveIncome Pat Flynn started Smart Passive Income when he got laid of from an architecture firm. Architecture was his passion. What happened next, he went on an entrepreneurial adventure by creating niche sites like Greenexamacademy.com, where he blogs about LEED exam an architectural exam preparation course for "Green Architecture". He started making sales from his ebook and that supplemented his monthly income when he first began. From then onwards he's went onto start other niche sites such as Foodtruckr.com and he shares all his affiliate marketing and strategies on his blog. His goal for the site is to be really transparent about what he does and he genuinely loves helping people.

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HOW TO SELL WITHOUT SELLING What do you do when you go to a mall, doing your usual window-shopping when someone approaches you with a registration form? Usually it'll be a credit card salesman who's trying to get a commission from his sale. Do you shy away or you listen to him patiently. Most of us would try not to go near the salesman for fear of being approached. This happens for only one reason: We don't like being sold to but we love to buy things. If that's the case, how do you sell your products to your prospects with actually selling to them? There's a way to do this naturally and if you do it genuinely they will love you for it. They will actually thank you for recommending the products. Have you ever had a friend who went to watch the latest movie, Transformer for instance, and he was so excited about it? He comes to you still fresh from the hype of the movie. He says to you, Dude, you have to go watch Transformers! It was crazy, you have to see how Optimus Prime transforms in the middle of New York City and goes against Megatron.!! How would you feel after that? You'd start to get curious and excited, right? It'll make you feel like you should go and watch it right away. What just happened here? We do this all the time without realizing but this is what happens when you like something, a product, a movie, a

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restaurant, anything at all. Then we share all the good things about it with the people we know, and you know they'd love it as well. This is actually better than selling because you hear how good a product is from someone you know, it’s powerful. Word of mouth from a trusted source is better than a salesman who is trying to convince you to get the latest vacuum cleaner. It's called teeing up. You tee up the good points about your product or offer, to your target audience. There are a couple of ways to tee up effectively. Tee about the buying benefits for them. 1. The Free Give Away Method How to do what the product does, for free: One of the best examples of this is Dropbox, they give away 2GB worth of free cloud storage to the user. What happened next was crazy; everyone wanted to be a part of it and signed up. What they did next was really smart. If you wanted to increase your storage up to 16GB for free, you only have to refer your friends to it. It started going viral after that because everyone wanted to use Dropbox to store their documents, pictures, music files. Let's say you have a book about dog training that you're selling for $20. You could give the first few chapters away for free

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to your visitors. They'd really appreciate you for that, and if they find your content really useful they'd be more inclined to purchase the actual book. Just give them a taste of it but don't reveal the whole thing. It creates curiosity. When you do this, you're giving premium content to those who are not ready to pay for it. They will at least get to see what it looks like. This helps because they will know the difference between the free version and the paid version. If the free version is useful, how would the paid version be? When you share the free version, remember to emphasize the benefits of getting the paid version right after that. Here are a few ways I've used the free giveaway method: I've shown the difference between creating a logo from scratch using tools like Photoshop, which requires expertise versus creating a logo using LogoGeniePro. They are free to create the logo's themselves but LogoGeniePro makes it a lot easier, with just a couple of steps and you can create a logo with no prior experience. 2. The Pandora Box Pandora's box is an artifact in Greek mythology, where a box was given to Pandora, which contained all the evils in the world in the myth. The concept might seem a little strange but in the marketing sense, when we talk about revealing the Pandora Box.

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Imagine you have a product and reveal it to the public step by step or do the unboxing for those wants to see it. It's actually a positive thing where the visitor will be eager to see the contents and what's in it before they purchase it. Some people just needs a little preview before they are more inclined to buy it. You basically having an open door policy and you’re being transparent with your visitors. Instead of having just an image of the product on your sales letter, you're not afraid to let your visitors behind closed doors to take a look. This will do a couple of things for you, you're building trust with your subscribers. Talk about both the good and bad so they know that you're not just hyping it up just to make a quick sale. They will respect you even more because you're not afraid to show the pros and cons of your product. Another thing, you're doing them a favour by showing them how to use it before they have it in hand. You're not even selling anything directly but just by talking about the products that will help your subscribers and how it can get them the results they're looking for, you will hook them in further.

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HOW TO TEST YOUR IDEA’S PROFITABILITY Have you ever seen the type of people who has lots of business ideas, they go out setting up a company, make business cards, creating a company site and call themselves entrepreneurs but the only problem is, nothing happens. No customers. No sales. No products This people are “wanna be entrepreneurs”. I'm sure that’s not how you’d like to do things. You want to have a solid business with revenue and sales coming in. You need to have a working business where you're getting income coming in, and you can think of the rest later. So how do you focus on the core of your business, which is the sales and profits? How do you know whether a business idea will be profitable without spending too much time on it? You need to validate your idea. It's the most important thing you can do before you go on a full-fledged campaign and spend a lot of money on your business. It saves you the trouble of finding out later on that, it’s not a very profitable business to begin with. So how do you validate it? Step 1: Create a Landing Page Landing pages are gold when it comes to validating your business idea. You don't even need much to begin with, not even a product or a full-fledged site.

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Even if you have no product to begin with, you can just create an ecover of your product, slap it on the page and have a name and email form for visitors to subscribe. Based on the response of people subscribing you can gauge where there's a need for your product. Don't worry if you have no technical knowledge on how to set up your landing page. There are web apps like Leadpages for you to get started with your own page within 5 minutes. It's just a plug and play solution that even a small child could do it. Step 2: Create a Survey/Questionnaires Another way to know what you're target market is looking for is to create a survey or questionnaire. It doesn’t have to be complicated. For instance, if you're in the dog-training niche, ask your audience what kind of problems they're having. Training problems, grooming issues etc. What kind of dogs they have? What format do they want the course to be? Ebook, podcast or a step-by-step video? Send this out to your circle of close friends and family to start with. Facebook has made it a lot easier to just share the link with a whole bunch of people. You literally don't have to walk on the streets with a bunch of questionnaires. Once you have one of this two at least, it's time to send feedbacks, lots of it. Now you're going to send massive traffic to this pages and here are three of the biggest traffic methods to do this effectively.

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GO BIG: THE 3 BIG TRAFFIC METHODS FACEBOOK ADS Facebook is one of the biggest traffic source when it comes to online traffic. What makes it more effective is the fact you can narrow down to any specific audience you're looking for. For instance you want to promote an ebook on "How to get six Pack Abs fast" You can actually create an ad for a specific demographic. Who wants to get six pack abs. Mostly, men who are between the ages of 21-40, interested in women, wants to look confident on their dates. Love watching sports, has a college degree, love eating out etc. From here, you can narrow down to any location in the world and it will show how many users you're targeting. It's one of the cheapest ways to get traffic because if you do it right, it can go down to a couple of cents. With a $100, you will know whether there's a need for your product and validate your business idea. This is much better than starting a company and to place an order for a container worth of products from China. However there are few criteria to create an effective ad on Facebook. i.

Have an Eye-Catching Image

How do you get a good image that's more likely to get a Facebook user to click on it? Take a look at the ads while you're

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on Facebook. See which kind of ads gets your attention the most. It's been proven that images of women get more clicks from both men and women alike. Make sure the images you use are copyright free so you're not infringing any one's property. ii.

Ask a Question

Your headlines are extremely important. You have a limited number of words for the ad. One of the best ways to make sure you get a user to click thru your post is to ask a question. Don't just make a general statement. It doesn't build curiosity for them to click the ad. For example, when you have an ad about weight loss, which makes you more curious? “Weight Lost Tips” or “How I Lost 3kgs in a Month”? Always have a list of swipe files for you to work with. Think about yourself, when you open an email or read an article, What made you do it? See the headline Keep a list of it and use it for yourself. SOLO ADS Online marketers always say, the money is in the list. The problem when you're starting is, you don't have a list. So how do you start building your own list in the fastest time and do it effectively. Leverage Leverage on other blog owners or email newsletters. They are

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always looking for ways to increase their income. Look for targeted email list owners in your niche and take a look at their site and blogs. Sign up to their email list. As you're reading thru their posts and emails, see if it's relevant to your target audience. If it fits your audience, go for it. You will usually pay them upfront for a series of mailings to your site or landing page. This is one of the most effective way of building your list without taking too much time. It might cost you some money in the beginning but it gets you started right away. All you have to do is create awesome content and engage with your subscribers. GUEST POSTING Guest posting is one of the best ways for you to get exposure from your target audience. When you start on day one, you start from zero visitors. You can only start posting on your site for so long before you get demotivated. So how do you generate enough traffic to your site? Look for other blogs and sites that are already established. Read their articles and posts, people who are commenting on it. Make sure they have the target audience you're looking for. Next, look for blogs that accept guest posts. Search on Google using these keywords: (Your keyword) + “guest post” (Your keyword) + “write for us”

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If you can't find many sites with those keywords, just look for blogs and contact them directly. They might have never accepted guest posts before but they might be open to it, if you actually ask them. Sometimes you just have to ask, you'll never know what you'll get. Find at least 50 blogs or sites for you to work with. However some of the bigger blogs, they'd want to see you previous work or articles. If you want to increase the chances of your guests posts being accepted. Connect with the blog owners first. Read their posts and leave comments. Don't leave comments just for the sake of doing it but constructive ones. Contribute an idea or opinion based on what they have written. Follow them on Twitter, like their Facebook page. Be natural and genuine. You don't want to come across as being aggressive or intrusive. Once you've bonded with them, they will more likely accept your guest post. Next when you write a guest post, it must be a high quality post. Get to know the readers of the blogs and understand your niche. Go through the blog and see what hasn't been written before. Find a unique topic within your niche and pitch to the blog owner. Give them a list of titles or topics to work with. Do this with a few blogs at a time so you're not just depending on any one blog. Otherwise you'll be frustrated. It takes time and the more you do it, the better you become. Get connected with other bloggers and let them know who you are.

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Guest posting helps you build relationship across your blogging community and your readers. This will actually help you with search engine rankings. Instead of blindly building links, when you have guest posts across few blogs, it will improve your search engine rankings organically. If you do this right, you'll have massive surges of traffic and visitors to your site. What you do next is very important. How can you make sure you have a list of subscribers before you have a full-fledged blog? Most people think they should have a blog with hundreds of articles before they start to guest post. One of the most effective things you can do for your site is to build an audience before you even launch your site. First, start with a "Coming Soon" Landing Page. Be clear on what your readers can expect from your site. Are you giving away an incentive for them to subscribe or just sign up on the waiting list? Lastly make sure, you have an name and email form where your visitors can subscribe. Basically, you're creating a pre-launch list for your site. You want to create a lot of buzz and get your readers excited about the launch of your blog or site. Preferably, have a free ebook but don't let it stop your from having a "Coming Soon" page. On your blog itself, have at least 3 to 4 high quality posts

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so once you launch your site, your visitors will benefit from it. They will start to follow you and see you as an authority. Always engage with them, and reply to any comments. TEST, TEST, TEST This is extremely important. You may have everything in place but how would you know what's working if you don't test it. Even if your ad is doing well, find ways to improve it. If you're having a 1% conversion from an ad, a small tweak to the image or headline might increase your conversion to 2%. That's double the amount of visitors that'll be coming to your page and you didn't pay for more traffic. With the same amount of effort you've increased the traffic and it will increase your bottom line eventually. Here are a few of things you should always test: The headline: Find out your prospects soft points and come up with a compelling headline. Call to action: The buy button, subscribe or anything that requires them to take the next step. Images: Any images you use in your sales page or landing page affects the reader. Sometimes you can even use images to make your visitors focus on your headline or buy button. Like an image of an arrow for example.

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Sales letter: Read through the sales letter and see how you feel about it. If you're prospects reads it, will they be moved to do something about their problem. There's the long copy, short copy, video sales letter etc. You will never know what works until you try. There's no right or wrong about this. This only way to know what converts is to keep testing.

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PART IV: AUTOMATION

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EARN IN US DOLLARS, SPEND IN PESOS In this chapter, you will find how to automate your business by hiring staffs from a different part of the world, where it helps to keep your expenditures low while you market your products to a global audience in US Dollars. Earn In US Dollars Once you’ve validated a profitable idea for your online business, imagine having a business where you don’t have to worry about high overheads, inventory or logistics. You just need to set up the sales page or landing page with your product and send massive traffic to it. All this things are called a sales funnel. If you do it correctly, your sales funnel can be very profitable. The only way to make it work is to keep testing it. When you start to get good response and begin to make sales, you’ll know you’re on the right track. Since you’re targeting an international market while working from the comfort of your own home, your products should be priced in US dollars. So no matter where you’re visitor comes from, you will get paid in US dollars. Next, once you have the whole system up and running, it’s time to automate it.

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How do you delegate your online business so it runs by itself? You just need to check on it a couple of hours a week just to make sure all the components are well oiled and it runs smoothly. Sound good? Let me show you how to automate your online business at a very reasonable cost. You just need to focus on scaling up the business from here. Spend In Pesos The Philippines has some of the most hardworking people who are good at what they do. They take clear instructions and most of them are familiar with online businesses. Whether you’re looking for a writer, graphic designer or web programmer. They have all the skills and for a reasonable cost as well. Moreover it’s easier to communicate with them because English is widely spoken in the Philippines. 1. What Is Outsourcing How do you earn in US Dollars, Outsource in Pesos, Spend in Ringgits? First of all, when you talk about starting a business, what's your idea of a business? Do you want to work for your business or work on your business? It makes a huge difference. If you want to work for your business, it's actually selfemployment.

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You still have to put in a lot of hours and you affect your bottom-line directly. For instance, you can't just take leave from work or else your business or project won't run by itself because you're the key person there. If you're working on your business, you're developing it. You have a plan, a system and you're looking for the right people or team. You can delegate what ever you don't like doing and focus on what you enjoy. This is where outsourcing comes in. In simple terms you want to hire an individual who can take care of business-related activities for you. Whether you're there or not, they will complete the tasks to get things moving. One of the best examples of outsourcing is Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin group. He has over 400+ businesses. Do you wonder how he is able to do so many things at once? He comes up with a business idea and plans it out. Most of the time, he doesn't even know much about the industry but he hires the best person who knows in and out about the industry. He learns from the experts and he picks the best of the best who are capable of running his business, even when he's not around. This is why his business still runs smoothly whether he's there or not and it gives him the freedom to do anything he choose to. 2. Why Should You Outsource There's only so many hours in a day. 24 hours to be exact.

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Even if you're the world’s best copywriter or web designer, there's only so much you can do. There will always be a limit to how much you can expect your clients to pay you. How can you duplicate your efforts without doing all the work by yourself? And what if you want to start a web agency and you love to do the marketing but you're not really good with the programming or technical skills. This is where you outsource to the experts, people who are good at what they do. What is your hourly rate? Let's say you're monthly income is $3000 and you work 5 days week for 8 hours. $3000 a month is $750 a week. $750 a week is $150 a day. So roughly, you're hourly rate is about $19 but to keep things simple we'll say $20. Once you know this, you'll think twice about wasting your time doing trivial things. For instance, if you're local cafe is giving away a free Ice cream cone that's worth $1 and you see a long line of people waiting for it. It might take you 2 hours before you get your cone. Do you think it's worth it to stand in the line for 2 hours to get a $1 ice cream cone? 2 hours of your time is worth $40. Same goes to your online business. If you're going to take a couple of hours to create your own logo, it's not worth it. You can outsource this things for $10, $20 to an expert graphic designer from the Philippines. If there's any task that's giving you less than $20, it's not worth your time. Just outsource it.

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Now do you know how businessmen like Donald Trump, go thru their day. They outsource everything, from their laundry, having a chauffeur and even a personal chef. Time is crucial for them, instead of doing all the trivial things, they choose to focus their time on where it matters the most. 3. List Down Everything Everyday, you will have lots of task to do in your business. I used to write for most of my products, formatting it, some basic design, create the landing page, write emails. Basically I was a one-man show. If you keep doing this to yourself, it's just a matter of time before you burn out. It will really help you if you list down all the tasks that you need to in your business: Project management Graphic Design Writing Social Media Traffic Generation Email Marketing SEO Blog Posts Product Creation Video Editing and so on…

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Separate the list into what you love doing and what you'd like to delegate. For instance, you're best artwork looks likes a 7th grader painting. No matter how hard you try. Outsource your design work to a graphic designer. Decide on the top few things that will make a lot of difference in your business and delegate that first. Usually for online businesses, it means writing and graphic design takes a lot of time. I personally have a graphic designer and a team of writers. I used to write a lot but then I realized I could put my time to better use by focusing on the marketing side of business. My forte is product creation and I have tons of ideas but if it was just me alone, working on every project. Things will never move as fast as I want it. You need to have speed in business and trust me, once you have a team, you'll be able to scale things up very fast. At the end of the day, you have to start somewhere. So decide on the things you don't enjoy doing and delegate it someone who can take care of it for you. Start with on person.

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HOW TO AMASS YOUR WORK FORCE (MINUS THE HIGH COST) Now you know the importance of having a team of people to help you scale your business. But how do you find the right individual for your online business. There are few criteria when you're looking for a Virtual Assistant (VA). You need to know what you're looking for in a VA. Be as specific as possible in your job description as this narrows down your pool of applicants. 1. These are some of the areas you should be looking at when you want to hire someone: Area of Expertise - what do you need them to do? Graphic design, web development, article writing; define your job scope and be specific about what you're looking for. Experience - How long have they been working in their field? You can tell by the number of hours or number of projects they've done. (request for portfolios) Working Hours - How long do you need your VA for your tasks. Some do it part time and others full time. I personally prefer to have a full time staff because they'll be committed to you.

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If it's a part time, the person might have a couple of different projects and might not put it the full effort in your tasks. Speaks English - It's crucial to know their level of English proficiency; it makes it easier to communicate. Attitude and Other Qualities – Being independent, problem solving, creative thinking, communication. You don't want to have someone who keeps coming back to you for every little thing. From the moment you give out your task, have clear instructions and they must be independent enough to figure things out. You can't be there all the time. What’s Your Budget - What are you comfortable with, based on the individual. This is a sensitive issue so be very clear on what they will be expecting from you. What are your payment methods, etc…? Outline all of these areas and more to get your ideal candidate before you go recruiting. 2. Where do you find your perfect VA? It's time to look for your perfect VA once you have narrowed down your job specifics. Don't get caught in the excitement and just hire someone right away. If you do this right, it'll save you lots of time, money and effort down the road.

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Some of the best sites to look for good candidates are freelancing sites such as freelancer.com and Odesk.com. These freelancing sites come with a range of candidates from different backgrounds and countries. I personally found the Philippines have quality workers for a relatively low cost, few dollars per hour. When you post on the job boards on this site, you write a cover letter stating the title of your job or task and requirements. How do you make sure you weed out those who don't read instructions and keep the potential VAs who are more alert to your requirements? The trick is, when you're writing your cover letter and job requirements. For instance you might have 8 requirements you're looking for in a VA. At the end of the letter after your requirements, place another line stating when the individual replies you. They should start their letter with "Keyword". It can be any keyword of your choice. ‘Wordpress Rockstar’, ‘Transformers’, ‘Apple Pie’ etc. It doesn’t matter. Why do you need to do this? You want the individual who's going through your job description read the whole thing thoroughly instead of just skimming through it. Some might not even read it. Let's say you get 50 applicants for your job. When you go through the applications, you'll notice many of them would have missed your keyword.

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It's either they missed or didn’t read your cover letter carefully. Just get rid of this who replied you without the keyword. What you will get is a handful of applicants who actually read and took your instructions carefully. It's a small test to make sure later on, when you do give them a series of tasks they take your instructions seriously, word for word. The next step is the interview. Never take this for granted. Do your homework properly and screen your applicants with the right tests. 3. The interview The interview process is very important and many people rush thru it because they can't wait to get started on their project right away. It might seem a little tedious but if you don't do this right, it will affect your business and projects in the long term. I used to have the same problem. I couldn't get the right people because I didn't do my homework properly. This is where you'll get to know your candidates a little better. Here are a couple of ways to do the interview effectively: Have a list of questions to ask them based on their skills. It's better if it's more specific. How long they've been working and what kind of projects have they done before. One of the best ways to evaluate your candidate is by going through their portfolio. Whether it's a graphic designer or article writer, you still have to take caution because they might not have done

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everything by themselves. For instance, I had an ecommerce site done for my friend but it didn’t come with Wordpress. So I hired a web developer to convert it into a Wordpress site and he placed his name at the footer. If you were to hire the same person for your project and you see his name on the site, you might assume that he did the whole thing but that's not true. To avoid this sort of confusion, come up with a few technical questions related to their field. If it's about web design and you're not familiar with it, you can search on Google the most frequently asked questions when it comes to web design. This is to make sure, your candidate knows what they're doing and pulling a fast one on you. Once you've screened a few candidates don't hire them right away. I did the mistake of getting a VA on the spot without a proper interview and found out later, what she showed on her portfolio of articles was different when she actually wrote articles for me. It was also because she wasn't familiar with the subject matter that I was working on. So I had to give her extra training at my cost. I'm sure you don’t want to be wasting time and money doing all this petty things when you'd rather focus on your growing your business. What about the rest of the applicants who got rejected? You shouldn't just ignore them but just let them know that, at the moment they don't fit in with your project. If there are any other

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projects in the future, you will let them know. This way, when you do need their help in the near future, they will be more likely to respond to because you didn't let them go in a negative manner. 4. Give a Sample Task Once you have a pool of candidates you have handpicked yourself. It's time to put them to the test. What I personally do every time before I hire someone is I'll give them some simple tasks. For instance, if they are web developers, blog writers. I'll make them set up Wordpress from scratch on a brand new site. Installing it, setting up the plugins, the theme, right until the post a blog post and basic SEO. Setting up a Wordpress blog shouldn't be a big deal for them if they're web developers and blog writers. But why do I make them jump through hoops before the get the job? If they can carry out a simple task like installing Wordpress and they carry out the instructions properly, you use judge them on how well they've performed the given task and you know if you give them anything in the future, it won't be a problem for you. Out of the few candidates you have, you'll a few outstanding ones. If you can't make up your mind, use your own judgment wisely. Sometimes you might have a candidate who's really good at what he does but when it comes to communication it might be slow to respond and he takes his own sweet time.

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Then on the other hand, you have someone who's a little slow, still gets the job done but he or she is responds fast to your messages and listens to you. Who would you pick in this scenario? There's no right or wrong answer but it's what you're looking for in your own business. I personally would go for the second candidate who responds to me. I can still train him and give him a few tools to help him out. But the first candidate I can't do much if that's his attitude. It all boils down to attitude at the end of the day. How keen is the person to work and learn from you. Once you hire your candidate, the next step is very important to ensure your longterm success of your project or your business. 5. Copy & Paste (Training) As you welcome your new employee, there are a few ground rules you need to lay down before you proceed. Send an email to your VA and state what they can expect by working with you and what they will be in charge off. Identify the key areas of your business you want to pass to your employee. Have a spreadsheet in Google or Excel and list down all the tasks. Usually I use email as my primary communication so there's always a black and white. You can always refer to it in case you miss something important. I also use Dropbox and share a folder with my VA so when any task is completed I'll tell her to just save it in the Dropbox folder.

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So everything is organized in there. I can always go back to it to retrieve the files. Remember that, your employee is still new and no matter how skill the individual is, they won't know how you run your business. Have a proper training to guide them on how to go about it until they familiarize themselves with it. One of the best ways to train your staff is by using a screen-capture software and show them how to do it. It'll probably take you a couple of minutes to do it and send the recording to your VA. Some of the screen capture softwares I use for my videos: Jing - comes with a free trial. Camstudio - is completely free. Any task that you do repetitively, outsource it to your VA. Do a screen recording or write an email and show it's done step by step. The more things you outsource, the more time you have. At the end of the day, whether you're there working on your business or not it'll still run on its own because you've start to automate it. It can get pretty addictive when you realize you can systemize everything and just tune and tweak a little bit to keep the engine running. The potential for this is endless.

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BONUS CHAPTERS

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DAVID VS GOLIATH: FEEL YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH? Most of us have heard of the story of David VS Goliath. David was a shepherd boy who went against the giant Goliath against all odds. Little David got a few stones and his slingshot, which was his only weapon against Big Goliath. The giant just laughed at him but David placed a stone in his sling and struck big Goliath on the head. Then David killed him with his sword and saved the day. Little did I know I'd have my own David vs. Goliath story to share with you. I want to share an experience that helped me break my mental barriers not long ago when I was invited to speak an ECommerce Conference. I didn't prepare much for the event as I was given vague requirements on what to present, and I did it just the night before. I drove to the hotel the next morning, only to learn it was a 5-star hotel and I was greeted by the sight of VIPs, Datuks and Datins cutting ribbons for the opening ceremony. Right away, I knew this speaking engagement was going to be unlike any I had done before. ("Datuk" is a federal title in Malaysia)

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The participants numbered no more than 100 people, but the attendance list was transparent: CEOs, upper management level from banks, and I recognize many of the company names. BIG names. Intimidating! Up to this point, I have not spoken to such high profile audience. The first roundtable talk of speakers came on stage with all

the

big,

intelligent

words

they

were

throwing

out

accompanied by statistics after statistics. I was due for the Session Two. 15 minutes before our turn, I was in the VIP Room for a quick briefing by the forum moderator. I found out who the other two speakers that I will be sharing the stage with: Vice President of Telekom, the leading telecommunications company in our country, and the founder of iPay88, the leading payment processor in Malaysia. When the mod turned to me to shake my hand, he asked, "Oh sorry, who are you?" (Did I mention that I came here not knowing anyone?) I felt like I didn't belong there. I was beginning to wonder if I was the right speaker for the right event after all. And I came here only because I accepted the invitation from someone who happen to find me on LinkedIn somehow. My mind was racing and I was planning what to say... while sitting on stage in front of the audience! I didn't have much time as the other two speakers have their go first.

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It's a no-pitch event but these guys are already renowned and almost all of Malaysia know or use their service. Me? I was just some work-from-home dude. Standing next to these giants, it's like all my achievements up to that day amounted to nothing. So what can I offer on stage? I was attacked by the 'little guy syndrome'. As I studied the situation further, I started to pick on a few things: 1. From the start, all the speakers engaged the audience in a 1way communication. There was surprisingly no interaction with the audience until now, evidenced by the lack of energy in the room and people playing with their phones. 2. All of the speakers up until now were using a lot of big, seemingly impressive words. I wonder if the audience were having a hard time digesting what they were hearing? I bet they won't catch even half of what the speakers were saying. So on the spot, I devised a plan to improvise my speech since I could not edit my embarrassingly simple slides anymore. I started off with a pattern interrupt: I asked the audience if they had a website or they don't. I realize it was a silly question, but I got their attention for starters. Then I got to the next point: "Have you ever always wondered even though you brand yourselves as leaders in ECommerce and IT, but you seem to always be the last to know?" At this point heads were turned.

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I went on with the rest of my presentation for the next 20 minutes. I did not share any statistics or 'hard facts'; quite to the contrary I added a short story behind each main point in my presentation. And I kept my presentation deliberately in simple English. After the session, I was ready to leave after lunch... when I was gradually swarmed by the participants! Even more so than the other two. Somehow, I got my first 2 clients for my online marketing consultancy from there - and that started off a new venture later! So What Did I Learn From That Morning? 1. Don't sell yourself short. Many times that morning I told myself I wasn't good enough to 'hang out with the big guns' and that I probably didn't have anything valuable to share since everyone else seemed bigger, better and smarter than me. I realize it truly is a confidence game, which leads to the next point... 2. As long as you know something most others don't, you're the expert! Sure there were highly experienced business owners in that hall, but when it comes to online marketing, I was the best person there. Bar none. 3. Look for openings. How many times have we told ourselves things like "the market is saturated?" and "the small guys cannot

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make it here because the big guys took it all?" That's limiting belief. If that was true, there should be no Google when there's Yahoo! and there should be no Facebook when there was MySpace and Friendster. By the same thought, I shouldn't have been there because there were other experts. But I found openings in that hour where audience were not "enrolled 100%" and definitely not everyone understood 'high end' English. Lastly... 4. Don't apologize for who you are. I thought of making 'disclaimers' about the simple nature of my slides and my business - then I threw that thought out of the hall. I've always ran my online business on the premise of simplicity and low-cost, and there's nothing to be ashamed of those values. There's more to the experience but you get the gist. The next time you think you're not good enough or there's no room for opportunities... take a deep breath and observe around you. Look hard enough with your mind and you will see them!

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THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE Things to do before you die. It might sound a little morbid but when you ask yourself honestly. What do you want out of life? Only when you have a purpose you'll take things more seriously and get things done. Here are a couple of questions to help you create your own list: What's your idea of success? (relationships, wealth etc.) Where do you want to travel the most? What would you want to do if tomorrow was end of the world? If money and time was not an issue, what would you do? What do you want to achieve? What do you want to experience? What do you want to learn? What makes you giggle like a child? Anyone you meet in person? (Celebrities/Athletes/Personalities) Here are a few ideas for you to get started with: Train for 3 months and achieve your optimum weight Conquer your biggest fear Do volunteer work Experience a sunrise/sunset Fall in love

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Fly First class Go around a city in a helicopter Speak in front of a huge crowd Go backpacking across Asia Spend a night camping in the woods Go on a blind date Go on a cruise around the world Learn Capoeira Learn Spanish/ Mandarin Play Chess against a Grandmaster Meet your favorite Celebrity/Athlete Set off to a random location without a plan Plant a tree and watch it grow Learn to play guitar/piano Protect wildlife See the Northern Lights Sing to an audience Start a movement on a cause you believe in Start your business Take part in a triathlon Take up hip-hop dancing Travel around the world Ask someone you've only just met to go on a date Attend a music festival Backpack around Europe Buy a round-the-world air ticket and go on a trip

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Buy your own house and create a home exactly how you want it to be Cage dive with Great White Sharks Connect with your former schoolteachers Do an extreme sport Donate Blood Donate money and put your name on something Drink Beer at Oktoberfest in Germany Drive a convertible with the top down and music blaring Experience Zero Gravity Fall deeply in love -- helplessly and unconditionally Find a job you love Float in the Dead Sea Fly in a Private Jet Go Deep-Sea Fishing Go fly boarding Go horseback riding Go on a hot air balloon ride Go on an African Safari Go scuba diving/snorkeling Go to the Top of the Eiffel Tower Go to the World Cup Go up in a hot-air balloon Have an artist paint your portrait Go to Andrea Bocelli concert Hear Oprah Winfrey speak in person Helicopter over a volcano

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Learn to skateboard Leave a legacy Let go of a floating lantern in Thailand Adopt a Pet Make a hole-in-one Make a snow angel Overcome your fear of failure Own an expensive business suit Start a Flash Mob Ride a camel into the desert Ride a Gondola in Venice, Italy Go on the Trans-Siberian Express across Asia Run a marathon Scuba dive off Australia's Great Barrier Reef Watch Wicked (A Broadway Musical) See Wimbledon in Person Go Skydiving Sleep under the stars Soak in the Hot Springs in Iceland Take a picture in front of the Hollywood sign Stay in a chalet in Bali Teach someone to read Tour Silicon Valley Visit all 7 continents Visit Stonehenge Watch a meteor shower

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Watch the launch of the space shuttle Watch the Olympics in person Watch the sunset in Santorini, Greece Go to the Oscars/ Grammys Write a book and publish it

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Get insider secrets on entrepreneurship and life hacks that I only share with my close comrades here ! http://freedomlifestyleinsider.com/blog

Copyright © 2014 FreedomLifestyleInsider.com Published by Musemancer SDN BHD Cover design by Joey Lim All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any or any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from the author.

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CONTENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR…………………….5 PART I: Freedom Lifestyle Redesigned...…7 86,400 Reasons to Read This Book……....8 Why Internet Marketing Sucks………….11 What Most People Are Doing Wrong…..12 Designing Your Ideal Lifestyle……….....26 PART II: Reconditioning Your Being For Abundance...….29 Everything Is Energy………………………..………..30 7 Keys To Unlocking Your Full Potential………………………....38 PART III: Make It Happen………………….47 Giving Birth to Your Brainchild………....48 How to Sell Without Selling……………..57 How to Test Your Idea’s Profitability…..61 Go BIG: The 3 Big Traffic Methods……...63 PART IV: Automation……………………....71 Earn In US Dollars, Spend in Pesos….….72 How to Amass Your Work………………..78 BONUS CHAPTERS…………………………87

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David VS Goliath………………………......88 Things to Do Before You Die……………..94

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Starting off as a self-learner in 2005, Edmund Loh went from a mere reseller to becoming the top Private Label Rights producer in the Internet Marketing arena, with hundreds of titles and products tracing back to his works. Edmund is the co-author of national bestselling book “Secrets Of Millionaire Students” with fellow Bestselling Author “Secrets Of Internet Millionaires” Stuart Tan and ClickBank Maestro Dylan Loh. Considered to be one of the top Internet Entrepreneurs in Asia, he had spoken at events for Success Resources, MindValley and many more entrepreneurial conferences. He has shared the stage with some of the world-class speakers and entrepreneurs including Robert G Allen, Peng Joon, Jonathan Quek, Azizi Hadi (VP of Telekom Malaysia), Chan Kok Long (founder of iPay88) and more.

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86,400 REASONS TO READ THIS BOOK If you compare the time in a day with money. 86,400 seconds is like 86,400 dollars. Imagine being given 86,400 dollars everyday. Every morning, that money is gone and replaced with another 86,400 dollars. With all our might, we would try to finish spending all the money because it would be unwise to do it. By perusing this book, you will not only acquire the knowledge of starting an online business and be good at it, but you will also learn to make every second count. A 9 to 5 job can drain your energy in an unimaginable way, squeeze the life out of you, demoralize, and will leave you bereft of free time. All those time wasted on just getting though traffic jams, commuting, and just waking up extra early to get to work. And this doesn’t count the time you spend on regretting the opportunities you’ve let go and the time lost on wishing you had more time. Oh, the irony. What a nightmare it would be if one day you were to find your older-self staring back at you in the mirror and wonder how you got there so fast. “Time flies above us but leave its shadows behind.” Nathaniel Hawthorne 8

The significance of a single second in your life is immeasurable. Anything could happen in the blink of an eye. Each second is a gift. Each moment is an opportunity so why would you squander them away? By constraining yourself to time-wasting routines, you’d deprive yourself of precious opportunities. Why spend a huge chunk of your time in front of the television? On your couch? On commuting to work? On the things that make you unhappy? Home-based work can liberate you from the shackles of time. It will set you free from formality, give you the freedom to wear anything comfortable while you work, and the freedom to organize your life in any way that befits you. Imagine how great it would be to spend a huge part of your day doing what you love. You can even improve yourself by learning new language, picking up an instrument, travel to new places, be around your loved ones, or just simply lounge in your living room. All the things that you’ve always wanted to do can be achieved. “It’s really clear that the most precious source we all have is time.” Steve Jobs What is the point of having wealth without time?

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The benefit the Internet has bestowed on us is listless. One of which is the chance to earn income without no longer wasting the 86,400 seconds you’re given everyday. Let this book be your guide.

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WHY INTERNET MARKETING SUCKS & WHAT MOST PEOPLE ARE DOING WRONG There is a dreadful connotation that goes with Internet marketing. Many users would find it annoying. This is because of some Internet marketers who don’t do it the right way. I’m sure that even you have found yourself faceto-face with a pesky pop-up advertisement that appears out of nowhere. More often than not, Internet marketers think that spamming is a great idea, which is why you see a lot of updates that are too frequent on Twitter and Facebook, and they don’t say anything of substance. These are all the wrong approach and amateurish. They give a bad name to Internet marketing and we have to make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes. A lot of online business fell flat because they do not know the tips and tricks of it. They thread courageously through a land unknown to them without the proper knowhow that resulted them on being unsuccessful. And, believe me, it’s easy to fail. With the proper tools and knowledge, you can make the odds to be in your favor. It’s important to learn what doesn’t work first before learning what does work. We learn from mistakes but let’s spare ourselves 11

the time and the emotional torture by learning from other people’s mistakes. For this chapter, I will tell you about what the novices of Internet marketing are doing wrong so that you can avoid committing the same sins.

WHAT MOST PEOPLE ARE DOING WRONG 1. EXPECTING FAST RESULTS There’s no denying that Internet made our lives easier by speeding up the time it takes for us to do things. We no longer have to line-up to buy movie tickets, book restaurants, and purchase books, and no more trips to the library to settle a debate with a friend. And now, with smartphones, the access to Internet is on the tip of our fingers. However, that does not mean you should expect fast results from your Internet marketing endeavor. The Roman Empire was not built in one day. Like traditional marketing, your campaign will take time and it’s important for you to be patient.

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A successful campaign may take months for you to truly see the results. You won’t make your product popular just by putting it out there. Don’t expect your promotional video to go viral and sales to skyrocket overnight. There are still lots of hard work needed. This is where you come in. Your job is to make a brand conspicuous and speaks for itself. Amateur Internet marketers would usually be impatient in getting results, forcing them to take unnecessary aggressive actions like spamming that only annoy and shy away prospective customers. There’s no denying that promoting through Internet is a much faster and easier way than traditional marketing. If you were to make a promotional video, for example, you don’t have to wait for the time slot you purchased from the TV broadcast. Instead, you just post a video on Youtube and people could view it anytime you want. However, it’s your job to make sure it circulates the web. You still have to get you hands dirty. 2. BEING UNORGANIZED Proper planning is crucial. Nothing could screw up marketing more than poor planning. Any marketing plan takes a

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huge amount of time and energy to organize (Remember what I said about being patient?). A good plan demands a lot from you, not just energy, but creative thinking as well. There are a lot of things that have to be taken into account. You need to figure out the best timing, the best outlet, the best audience, proper budget, etc. Even with immaculate planning an error in judgment could happen, imagine the colossal damage poor planning could do. Take every step mindfully when devising a master plan. Understand your plans, thoroughly, and work out what kind of outcome can and should be expected. Always delve into the specifics, not just the general idea of it. Meticulousness is needed and, in fact, encouraged. “A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.” Confucius 3. ALL EGGS IN ONE BASKET Just like the first mistake, people expect a lot more from the Internet than it can offer. It’s true that you can reach each and everyone in the world who has an Internet connection but never expect an unrealistic sure-fire outcome from it.

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Not everyone who has viewed your advertisement would buy your product and not everyone who clicked on the link to your website would be bedazzled right away. There’s no reason for you to not expect the conversion rate of online marketing to be almost the same as traditional marketing. When you hand out pamphlets, you should only expect 1-3% conversion rate. Imagine yourself organizing your concert and you have to hand out pamphlets. Out of 100 given away, one to three people would actually show up. If you prepare only 100 pamphlets, don’t be surprised to have a concert with just three attendees. Of course, it’s best if you have a high conversion rate and we should try our best to have that, but to achieve that requires a lot of effort. The Internet is vast and saturated at the same time, meaning that even though there is space for you, the competition is still quite fierce. Set a realistic goal. To know what goal is achievable, you have to know the market and the business in and out. Sadly, some companies don’t even have goals. A campaign is done just for the sake of it.

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4. NOT EVALUATING OWN PERFORMANCE Experienced and successful marketers would know the importance of evaluation. Imagine your online marketing miraculously triumphs even though you’re still new to the field. Your clients deliver a toast to your name and you see a bright future where you get to guest-talk in a business program on television as a revered marketing mogul. But, without evaluation and self-assessment, that would be your only success. There is no point in succeeding without knowing what actually worked and what didn’t. Surely, you would want to perform well again in the future but that is not possible if you don’t know what you did wrong and what you did right. What about mistakes? What if you fail and learn nothing from it? If you learn nothing from failure then all you’d have ended up with is purposeless failure. There is no point of making mistakes if you can’t learn from it and the same goes to success. Always keep track of your actions and know how to assess and reassess them.

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5. FAIL TO UNDERSTAND THE TARGET MARKET Even though the Internet allows you to have a broader audience with less expenditure, you still need a specified target to have a higher chance of sales. To know marketing is to know the people you want to approach. You have to have a specified target than just generally shoot in the dark hoping you would hit a few customers. This is not the right way. We are living the age of niche where people can now choose what they want to see. Disregarding an advertisement is easier now than the past. With the Internet, however, various methods have made it easier to locate and approach your target market. You have to know who your target market is. You have to know their way of thinking, their preferences and what ideas appeal to them. 6. NOT MARKETING Amateurish marketers are prone to be lacking in confidence and therefore doesn’t self-promote because they don’t feel they’re big enough to do so. This can best be described as a marketer who doesn’t do marketing.

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If you do not promote yourself, how would people know you even exist?How can your clients trust someone quiet to amplify their brand? Confidence should be your drive. If you do not have it, then you have no business being in business. Even Donald Trump talked about the importance of handshake, in which he said that the person with the firmer handshake is the one with control. Something seemingly unimportant like that is taken into account when it comes to presenting yourself. In the realm of the Internet, you can’t really demonstrate how strong your handshakes are, which is why you need to self-promote. Tell the world about your abilities, experience, achievements, and don’t be shy to show your face. Remember that you are selling your service to prospective clients. Establish a brand of yourself and uphold it. 7. NOT SELLING Marketers tend to forget that their job is to generate sales and not just gain popularity. Of course, popularity is not necessarily a bad thing and quite often it helps with sales. But it shouldn’t be your priority.

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Your priority should be with sales and not just spreading awareness of your brand’s existence. Awareness is still important but let’s not put it as top priority. It’s good to have a credible brand that is well known, but what good is that if the sales were horrendous? Nothing spells failure more than a large amount of expenditure spent on a plan that doesn’t bring any benefit to the company. Or worse: when a gimmick backfires like Walmart and Pitbull (the singer/rapper) campaign in 2012. The deal was to send Pitbull to the Walmart with the most ‘likes’ on Facebook. What happened was an insurgence of people who didn’t like Pitbull starting the #ExilePitbull campaign. It was a group of people who voted for the least glamorous place they could find on Walmart’s Facebook page. Pitbull was sent to Kodiak, Alaska. Sorry to digress but that’s a horror story worth sharing. The approach on potential customers is key. Amateurish marketers do not approach people intending to sell something but just instead to distract and divert their attention to the marketers for a moment, making the customers more annoyed and lose interest.

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Remember to sell. Marketers tend to forget that this is what they are paid to do. 8. MAKING MISTAKES A HABIT Every time I see a typo in an online marketer’s website, I’d cringe. It’s embarrassing, even though it’s not my site. It shows a lot about a person, especially a marketer, to have mistakes like this. Always be wary of these little mistakes as they can cause a disaster in your career. A client wants someone they could trust. How can they trust someone who lets mistakes like a typo in an official page to happen? They would start thinking about the bad results the marketer would bring. One

big

disaster

that

happened

because

of

carelessness was Pepsi and Aape’s, a Japanese clothing brand, campaign collaboration in 2013 that resulted a furor. The font chosen by the designer made the text ‘Aape’ looked like ‘rape’. This isn’t a typo, of course, as it did say ‘Aape’ but it resembled the word ‘rape.’ This is an example of the small, inconspicuous careless mistakes that might cause epic trouble for your marketing. As a marketer, you must always strive for perfection. As mentioned, you need to always assess yourself so

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that you can see your strengths and weaknesses to learn and correct yourself. A marketer who doesn’t do that is a marketer who doesn’t sell. Image is not everything but it is still truly a vital part in the marketer’s arsenal. 9. HOLDING BACK INFORMATION People are afraid to share their strategies to potential clients. What is there to be afraid of? You’re not selling your grandmother’s secret recipe that you swore you’d keep to the grave. You’re not selling nuclear launch codes. Don’t be afraid to tell your clients the general idea of your plans. Show them step-by-step what you plan to do. It’s just like pitching a project. Would you hold information back when you are pitching something? Your clients won’t appreciate obscurity. I share a rough idea of my campaign on my website so that the clients could see what I plan to do if they were to hire me. I provide the gist of what’s to come if they were to hire me to show them that I know what I’m doing. On top of that, I even provide a free one-hour consultancy session to discuss the course of our potential marketing plan. It’s like giving a free sample at the supermarket.

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This is where they give me a chance to show them how good I am. When I allow them to see my plans, they allow me to prove myself. Remember that confidence is a big part of selling something on your part but also on your potential clients. They’re going to place their confidence on you so you must give them the reason to do that. If you hide your plans from them,

and

your

competitor

approaches

them

with

transparency, you’re going to lose business. No one, especially in business, is interested in the obscure. 10. NOT NETWORKING In business, it’s important to establish and keep on expanding your network. Novice marketers easily confuse confidence with arrogance. When they become too confident, they’d think they’re too good for some things. This is not the case. You should always be active in interacting with people. One good place for you to start is to go on forums and various message boards. Relationship with others who are in the same trade could most of the time open up new opportunities for you and you’ll learn new things. Blogging is a good way to establish a community on your site to make your site popular.

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It’s best to start a blog on your own domain, for example, yourdomainname.com/blog. Not only you have to blog, you also have to reply to the comments. Interaction is important and you have to always answer their queries (while ignoring and deleting the hateful comments… Unfortunately, they will inevitably invade). This is a great way to establish yourself as an online marketer and at the same time, shaping a community of people frequenting your website. Even in blogs, there shouldn’t be a one-way communication. Also, don’t forget to comment on people’s blogs. Do not snub other social media platforms, though. It’s best that you get your hands and be active in every one of them. Do not eliminate any opportunity that might be beneficial to you. Having a Facebook page, for instance, goes without saying. Everyone has a Facebook page and Twitter account nowadays. Use these social media tools to interact with people. However, be warned that if you are not careful, using social media could backfire devastatingly and you will be preyed on. A good example of a company receiving stint from the public is Epicurious, a site about cookery and food, took

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advantage of the Boston Marathon bombing incident in April 2013 to tastelessly gain popularity. They tweeted, “In honor of Boston and New England, may we suggest: whole-grain cranberry scones!” It resulted disastrously with a swarm of negative feedbacks on their insensitive remark and now, they are featured in this book as a bad example. While it’s good to be talking about current issues to add a little personal touch, there are certain sensitive subjects you have to steer clear of. Any unfortunate or grim events should not be associated in your social media post. Frankly, this was an inexcusable amateur mistake. Conferences are also gainful. I was invited to give a talk at the E-Commerce Conference where I rubbed shoulders with the big guns of Malaysia’s IT and communication industry (more of this later in the chapter David vs. Goliath). Not only I learned a lot from that experience, I also got my first two online marketing consultancy clients from that speaking engagement. It was an experience that I treasure. It had taught me a lot about the business, the people, the community, and my strength. I’m appalled to find out that there are still marketers out there who are naïve enough to think that they don’t need to attend speaking conferences.

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Speaking conferences is an opportunity for you to really get yourself out there. It’s the only place where you can show a huge number of people what you are capable of and what you know. It’s a gathering of business opportunities. Even if you think you are still too green to give a talk, at least attend these conferences. It will broaden your view and knowledge of this ever-evolving industry. There are always new things to learn out there. While I highly recommend Warrior Forum, it’s best that you go to these conferences where you can actually interact with and learn from experienced players of the marketing game. Ask questions and interact with the speakers. You have to have the eagerness to acquire knowledge. Great thing is you don’t have to wait a few days for their uncertain replies like online. More to that, you will also widen your network and make a few contacts at the conference where you meet people of similar trade. Knowing a lot of people is a great advantage in business. One of those things never taught in school: the importance of networking. Networking goes a long way in any profession.

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DESIGNING YOUR IDEAL LIFESTYLE Lifestyle design was made famous by Tim Ferriss’s book, 4Hour Work Week. He was the person who reintroduced home-based work in style. You can follow Tim Ferriss’ footsteps and become a globetrotter, working and setting up networks all over the world. He describes the idea lifestyle design as the lifestyle of “the new rich”. If you are a mother like Jana Kingsford, you can always use the time to take care of your children. She designs her ideal lifestyle by making a “to-do list sort of like a bucket list” that includes “write 1,000 words per day for 30 days”, “appear on TV”, and many others. She even lists out things to do with her family such as, “read stories to kids every night” and “join gym with husband.” The beauty of designing your ideal lifestyle is that you can live your life however you want. There are no restrictions. If you’re not the kind who likes to travel the world, preferring the peace and comfort of your home, then you can choose to live that way. If you do everything right, then you earned it. Remember, you’re doing this so that you don’t have to force yourself to commit to things that make you unhappy.

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If you worry about life expenses and feel that quitting your job is too big of a leap to take, then you can start slowly. Internet marketing allows you to work anytime you want, even when you still have a day-job. Perhaps you can moonlight your online business first. Spend this time developing, sculpting and establishing your brand. All major life transitions need a smooth segue, right? Once your brand solidifies and you’re generating the formulized income you desire, you can quit your job. It doesn’t matter how slow you choose to take it. Here’s a little step-by-step guide if you still feel unsure: 1. Learning About Design This is where you learn about lifestyle design, how to achieve it and, hey, you’re halfway done through the first step already! 2. Setting Up Shop The launch of your brand online. This is where you begin. But you can still keep your day-job if you’re not confident and your online business hasn’t soared yet. At this stage, you must grow your business. Don’t worry, what you need to know about this stage is all in this book.

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3. Maintenance Once you have the business optimized and it generates the income you desire, you have to make sure it continues and maintains to be that way. You will face trials and errors at this stage, but it’s okay as long as you keep your business afloat. 4. Begin The New Life Now, when you’re sure that your online business can support you, it’s time to say goodbye to your old job. You don’t need it anymore and you’re free to do whatever you want while manning your online business. This is where you can take your online business to greater heights. What I would recommend for you to do during your free time once you’ve achieved the goal is to further improve yourself by learning new things, improving your skills, and workout. When you have the time, nothing can stop you from moving forward. “There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” Aldous Huxley

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PART II: RECONDITIONING YOUR BEING FOR ABUNDANCE

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EVERYTHING IS ENERGY I believe most of you have heard about Law of Attraction, but how many of you actually fully understand and apply it in your life? The Law of Attraction explained that everything is made of energy, including your thoughts. Your thoughts create an invisible force that brings impact not only to you but the people around you as well. We are experiencing all kinds of energy every single day, in both positive and negative. You feel happy; you feel sad; you feel angry; and there are so much more other emotions you experience every day – that is all energy. The energy is generated and created by you; you are the master of all these energy and were empowered to control them. The things you say, the things you do, the things you think, they are the ‘ingredients’ to generate energy; sometimes even the things you didn’t do can ruin the whole ‘recipe’. All in all, it is fair enough to say that everything is energy. What is Energy? Energy is everything that invokes a reaction inside you – yourself included. In fact, you are the most important key to affect the energy flow inside you. If you have a positive outlook, you gain the positive energy. Likewise, negative perception attracts negative energy. Do not underestimate the energy flows inside yourself; it is powerful enough to create an impact on you and the people around you.

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The energy can be in all kinds of different forms. You can see and feel them if you look within yourself. Some of them are strong and powerful, but some are passive. The powerful one is like the extroverts; they have strong characters and love to present themselves in front of the crowd – that is why you can recognize them easily. On the other hand, the passive one is the introverts, they rarely show up but doesn’t mean that they do not exist – they are inside your subconscious or the sub-subconscious that you need to dig deep to find them. Some of the positive energy might be hiding somewhere deep inside you, waiting to be discovered. As mentioned, do not underestimate the power of energy. One famous saying about the like attracts like. We are like malfunctioned magnets; we attract things in the same magnetic field. You attract negative crowd when you emit the negative energy, likewise to the positive. The flow of energy moves from one region to another, you can spread the positive energy to your environment and that, in turn, benefits you too. You can control the energy, the power of the energy is in your hands; it can be different and it depends on how you deal with it. The energy can be learned. You don’t need to complicate yourself with all the reasons and emotions behind the feeling – It’s too much to understand. Simply categorize them into good and bad feelings.

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The negative energy will weigh you down, but the positive energy will free you. When you generate negative energy, you are a creating a prison cell around your inner self. You trap your inner self inside with four walls around you. You must generate the positive energy. Break the wall and get out from the prison you have created. Open up to the freedom that everyone, including yourself deserves to receive. “Negative energy brings emotional burden; Positive energy brings emotional freedom!” How the Energy Will Affect Us? Now that you know about what energy is all about, it is time to share a little bit about how the energy will affect us in our daily lives. Law of Attraction clearly states that everything happens because we attract it; the negative energy attracts negative emotions. If you visualize a negative reality, you are setting your mind to believe that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong; and whatever can go right, will probably go wrong too. Our surroundings depend on a reflection of what we feel. It is important to feel good; when you feel happy, you can attract more happy circumstances. When we refocus on things, see them from a more positive angle, you can change your emotions almost immediately. The same goes to your negative outlook. You can take control of your feelings by making a choice.

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When a person immerses in negative energy for a long period time, it brings negative effects to our health mentally, emotionally

and

physically.

Our

body

releases

different

chemicals when we experience various things in our daily life, each chemical has its own function to create a different mood. For instance, serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin are the chemicals released from the brain to make you feel good. Our bodies are miraculours. We don’t really know its capabilities and limitations. It surprises us with its resilience, and at the same time, it’s vulnerable. A happy mind can do wonders to your body. You’ll be healthier. We have the power to define what is positive and negative. Something may be happening badly to you, but change your perspective, buck up, think about the positive things you can gain through the scenario, no matter how little your gain is. Small things can make a huge difference. How to Attract Positive Energy? Remember the like attracts like from the Law of Attraction? To attract positive energy, the first thing you need to do is generate positive thoughts. Make a list of everything that makes you feel good, and make it the guidance for you to learn how to think positively. Every time when all you can think of are negative things, take your list out and start reading it. Here is where the magic happens! Your body will then generate the good chemicals and make you feel good and happy. The negativity will dissipate.

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Make the gratitude exercise your habit. The gratitude exercise is when you think positively towards a result; count your blessings instead of allowing the bad things to overpower the good ones. It makes a really big difference in your life. Third, do something you love. If being with nature makes you feel good, you should plan a trip to go to the woods on the weekend. Go for something outside to get yourself some sunlight, which can actually fight depression. Sunlight can boost the serotonin – the chemical that makes you feel good and happy. Plus, it won’t hurt to get some exercise. In my case, I love reading. I have a tower of books on marketing, business, lifestyle, and many others. So, I will always make time to read, no matter how much time I have left, I’ll squeeze it in. I not only enjoy it, I get to learn and also sharpen my mind. Apart from reading, yoga and meditation are good choices as well. If you find yourself under too much stress, it’s not a bad idea to do a breathing exercise. There are various breathing exercises you can try and experiment. It will also help lower your blood pressure, increase awareness, and mindfulness. Last but not least, love yourself – the most vital activity to attract positive energy. You need to love yourself first before the others can love you. If you do not love yourself then you’d have low confidence, which makes it easy to break your spirit. You have the control over your thoughts. Don’t let yourself be controlled by them.

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How to apply energy into your life Now, you’ve learned all the good things about positive thinking. So, how do we put it into practice? First of all you have to make it a habit. Short-term application is not going to work; long-term application is the best solution. In order to do that, you have to make positive-thinking a habit. Turning it into habit is no easy task. It requires patience and determination. You have to keep practicing and make it your second nature. Keep striving for improvement in yourself to be a better person in your life; this is your life, not anybody else’s, no one can help you but yourself. Free yourself from the past, and move forward to a better future. Visualize the future you want and do anything to achieve that! Success doesn’t come without hard work. Determination is the key to success. Don’t give up easily and give yourself an excuse to start over again. Change yourself first before you capable to change anything else. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the one we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” Barack Obama Why Positive Energy? There are thousands of reasons to choose positive energy over negative one. I will share a couple of reasons with you.

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According to The Nun Study, those who are regularly exposed to positive emotions live on average 10 years longer. The positive energy reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases, thus keeping your heart healthy. The benefit of positive energy is not just this; it helps to lower your blood pressure as well. See? This is how our thoughts influence our body, which is enough reason for us to take control of them. Moving on, the positive energy keeps your mental health in equilibrium as well. Researches have shown that positive people are more resilient against stress, challenges and adversities. Barbara Fredrickson, the author of Positivity (2009), said that the positive people are able to maintain a broader perspective and see the bigger picture, which helps them to overcome obstacles easier. A person that works in positive work environments outperforms negative work environments. A negative work environment leads to negative employee; negative employee leads to the drop of performance, which will affect a team, and the drop of performance leads to the drop of profit. That is just the general idea and one of many consequences of negative work environment and how it affects us. John Gottman, psychologist researcher, mentioned that in marriages, couples must maintain a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions. Positive energy is key to healthy and longlasting relationships.

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I totally understand that this is easier said than done, everyone knows exactly how to attract the positive energy; but sometimes they just can’t help but to think negatively. Just as mentioned, the energy flows from a one region to another. You can take baby steps. Start with the small positive changes and it will grow from there. Before you know it, you can become the source of energy for people around you.

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7 KEYS TO UNLOCKING YOUR FULL POTENTIAL “Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.” Bruce Lee One of our ultimate duty as a quality human being is to find out and unlock our full potential. Maybe you’ve heard all the quotations on potential from spiritual leaders or an Instagram post. But did you ever take them seriously and think of ways to unlock your true potential? Why is it so difficult for us to realize our full potential? What is blocking us from it? Maybe on some levels, you do find a small piece of our potential. You don’t know how to go further from there, so you stop and settle for what you have. These are the 7 keys that will help you to move further: Key #1 – Evaluate Priorities First thing’s first, ask yourself three important questions to evaluate your own priorities. First question is: “What is most important to me?” The first thing that comes to your mind is the most important to you, no matter how small or how silly it is. You choose that answer because it’s already embedded to your mind as something you would never let go.

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Second question to ask yourself is: “What makes me happy?” Go for the things you think is precious for you that you will definitely regret in the future if you stop yourself from doing it. “Give a chance to take the risk, maybe it doesn’t work all the time, but worth to take the risk.” Above is quoted from the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist – Nicholas Kristof, who was willing to fight for human rights and social injustice. He took the risk to make a difference, because he believes that there is hope to transform and make a change in people’s lives. Do not give up on things that matter, you can make a difference if you choose to. Third question is: “What would you do for free?” Think of few things that you are willing to do even though you can’t get any pay for it. Is it worth your time to do it without asking for any form of payout? Evaluate all the priorities in your life and start making the changes in your life. Key #2 – Let Go of the Things that Don’t Serve You Keep away all the other things that will distract you, and start thinking of the things or person that doesn’t serve you for any purposes. Ask yourself, “Does this energize me? Helps me to move forward? Provide opportunities for learning and growth? Play a positive role in my life?” If all the answers is no, there is no need to keep all those

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things in your life. Those things drag you backward instead of forward. You need to let it go, cut them off from your life to move forward to a better future. One of the hardest things for you to let go is, comparing yourself with others. Don’t compare yourself with others. It’s great to find inspiration from others if it helps you. But at the end of the day, your benchmark of success should be yourself, because you are the only one who defines your own success. Think of yourself as the only real competitor you need to defeat – the person you were yesterday. Before you go to bed, ask yourself: “Am I a better person today?” But how can you let go? I know it is not an easy job to get rid of the things you are familiar with and start all over again. But if you want to move forward to a new life, you must ‘restart’ your life. Don’t focus too much on the past and future, but focus on the present. You have no control over the past or know what exactly the future holds, so why do you want to waste your time on something you can’t control? Key #3 – Commit to 3 Priorities I need to quote the author Jim Collins for this section. He said, “If you have more than three priorities, then you don’t have any at all.” Being too ambitious can be dangerous sometimes, because you don’t know which goal to focus on. The perfect number of goals you should have is three at a time; focus on the first three main priorities before you can proceed.

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You must learn how to walk before you learn how to run. List out the three main priorities you want to commit in this period of time. Break down the priorities into simple components. When you are listing down the three main priorities mentally or, better, on paper, it seems impossible to you – as if it is far beyond your reach. But with all the simple components listed down under the main priorities, which are easier to accomplish, the ‘big’ dreams doesn’t seem that farfetched anymore. Once you’ve completed the first three, go for another three, all that you need to do is to keep this cycle going. Every time you completed the priorities, you are taking a big step forward to your dream. Just make sure you are always keep tab of your three priorities. Key #4 – Create a Schedule Structure that Works Best For You This is meant to be unique to each one of you; there is no right or wrong way to do this. You just need to create a schedule that is tailor made for yourself, you don’t need to follow how others are doing it, just focus on yours. Most studies suggests, you should start your day by listing down all the tasks you need to do for the rest of the day, and then focus on the things one by one – this is how to start a day. You can list down every task and schedule your time effectively. This can be a tough task at the beginning, because it is not easy to breakdown everything into order. You have so many things to do, that you can’t even decide which one to begin with.

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This is a task that requires mastery. As time passes when you do this every day, you can figure out what works the best for you and cut off those doesn't work for you. Everything will be different than the past few days when you start changing yourself. But as you draft the schedule, don’t forget to make time for yourself. Whether it is just 5 minutes or 30 minutes and gets yourself some time to evaluate and assess your day. Keep away the things that distract you from this, including your phone, emails. Stop for a while to refresh your mind before you continue to work. Key #5 – Plan for Inspiration I personally think that it is important to plan for inspiration, because inspiration is the most important key for a person to move forward. Plan some activities that can inspire you to move towards a better future. You need to find someone who shares the similar goals. Companion in your long journey is needed; they are there to inspire you. They are someone to share experience with you, guide you towards the right path and avoid the mistakes they did before. They are someone who motivates you to do better. It’s important that you do the same for them. Find an outlet for your frustration to clear the negative thoughts and energy out from you. As mentioned earlier, you know how a person with negative thoughts creates impact to the people around. You need to attract the positive energy.

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“With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.” Dalai Lama Apart from this, exercise regularly. Working too hard can be tough, both mentally and physically. The productivity drops when we continuously work under negative circumstances; hence you need to workout to keep yourself healthy. Exercise regularly helps you to keep your mind clear as well. You can try various exercises at home such as yoga, meditation, and breathing exercises. Don’t eat bad food. Did you know that your brain uses the glucose derived from the food you eat as their fuel? In order for your brain to perform in maximum capacity, you need to be aware of what you eat. Keep your mental and physical health in good condition in order to keep yourself inspired every day. Key #6 – Pay Attention to Your Surroundings Opportunities can arise any time of the day, more than we can imagine. It happens everyday, and everywhere, without you even realizing it. Focus on what you are doing now; because the more you focus on the goals you want to achieve, you will be more aware of the opportunities around you. All you need to do is always be curious. And be resolute in seeking answers. Don’t be mediocre in everything, but be an expert in a particular field. Don't take things only in face value; make sure you thoroughly understand.

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So that you will be able to fully utilize the information you have learned. The world supplies us with infinite possibilities, but yet we only see a small part. We always think that we don't have enough, and deserve to receive more; but we take things for granted. You spend hours skimming through the newsfeed on Facebook, and complain that you don’t have enough time for your assignments. All you need to do is just stop for a moment, and pay attention to your surroundings. You will see things that you’ve never noticed before, because you are too busy spending time and energy on mundane things. When you stop and look around, you will be surprised on what you had missed all this while. Key #7 – Never Give Up! This will be a journey that is tough, exhausting, and tiring, there are plenty of obstacles waiting for you in the road. But never give up in doing what you think is important for you. The winners never quit and quitters never win. There are only two choices, to be the winner that you finally reap what you sow with joy; or the quitters that stuck in the middle of the road and shy away from hurdles. To give up on everything and go for a new journey isn’t easy, but you need to have the courage to go all in, because if you are determined to have something, you can overcome anything. Change your perspective when you’re navigating through

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a tough situation. You need to see every challenge you encounter in your journey as a way to learn and improve yourself. What’s ahead will only be tougher. It will never get easier. That is the reason you need to strive for self-improvement. Imagine yourself climbing up to the mountain, the path is smooth in the beginning, but as you keep going, it becomes steeper and harder to climb. But when you finally reach the top of the mountain, you feel the breeze in your hair, you see the horizon laid in front of you and you will forget about all the difficulties on the way up almost immediately. Do not give up if you fail once. Akio Morata co-founded a company that sells mainly electronic products. Their first product was an automatic rice cooker that was not successful as it caused rice to burn instead of cook. It was a big failure. What a blow it was for a company’s first every product. The company was Sony. And imagine a big hole we would have if he had given up on his company then. “Whenever you have taken work in hand, you must see it to the finish. That is the ultimate success of success. Never, never, never, give up.” Dada Vaswani

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PART III: MAKE IT HAPPEN

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GIVING BIRTH TO YOUR BRAINCHILD Before  we  get  into  the  idea  of  starting  your  online  business,  let’s   take  a  step  back  for  a  moment.  Let’s  say  I  show  you  everything  I   know  about  having  a  successful  online  business  but  will  it  be  the   same  for  you?    

It  only  boils  down  to  one  thing  at  the  end.  Taking  massive  

action.  There  will  be  obstacles  but  you  need  to  take  baby  steps,  as   long  you  keep  progressing,  you’ll  be  fine.      

When  you’re  feeling  down  or  things  are  not  going  the  

way  you  planned  it  to  be,  always  ask  yourself,  why  did  I  start  this   business?  Who  am  I  doing  it  for?  If  you  keep  going  at  it  and  take   massive  action,  nothing  can  stop  you  from  reaching  your  goals.      

Now,  let’s  dive  into  this.  

1. Find Your Passion/ Niche So you know you need to start an online business to get out of your current lifestyle, how do you go about it? So how do you come up with a business or startup idea that's going to be profitable and fulfilling at the same time? When was the last time you did something, you enjoyed so much that you lost track of time? Find something that gets you in FLOW.

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Being in flow is the state of mind where you're so focused at the task in hand that you forget about everything else around you. When do you feel you're in flow? You can keep working on this one single thing whether you get paid or not. There are few ways to rediscover your passion. Ask yourself: “What did I enjoy doing when I was young?” It's funny how when we were young, we are so care free and do what ever we like. The only thing that matters to us is whether it's fun. The pure joy you get from playing catch with your friends in school and laughing about. Playing games, tennis, basketball or you prefer to paint throughout the day. You could've have been playing the whole day but you never felt tired or exhausted. Probably your parents would have had a hard time keeping up with you, running after you. We tend to forget sometimes that we have an inner child in all of us. As we get older we don't nurture it, and as you get busy with your daily lives, your inner child just goes off with time. Do you notice how excited you get when you're in a theme park, going on those crazy roller coaster rides? You can't stop giggling or smiling, that's your inner-child. Disneyland is known as 'The Happiest Place on Earth" for a reason. Our inner child are unleashed once we're in there. Take care of your inner child and find out makes you smile.

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2. Create a Vision board I don't know if you believe in law of attraction or not but have you noticed, when you buy something new like a car, a Honda for instance. All of a sudden, you notice there are so many Honda's on the road. It's as if the universe is trying to tell you, that it knows what you're thinking about. Subconsciously we become aware of it. The truth is, the cars have always been there but you never noticed it because that's not you chose to focus on. How can you use this to your advantage? Oprah Winfrey is a big believer of having a vision board, a board where you place everything you want out of life, you put it there. On your vision board, think of: a. How do you want to grow? What kind of things you haven't done before. To play the guitar, learn to swim, take painting classes; make a list of things that gets you up from the bed every morning. b. Things you want to do. The places you want to go, travel around the world. Backpacking around Asia and go to music festivals. The books you want to read. People you want to meet. Work on a project that'll leave a legacy.

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c. How do you want to contribute? Start a social project to help the unfortunate. Create a product to help with sanitization in third world countries. These are just some of the ideas for your vision board but as you start creating it, you'll realize a lot of things and learn about yourself. It doesn't mean the moment you place all this things on a board, it'll magically happen. It's just to remind you about your goals and keep you focused. As you start doing this, you'll begin to realize what you need to do achieve your goals. One

by

one

you'll

become

more

aware

of

the

opportunities that’s around you. One of my favorite ways of creating a vision board is using Pinterest but something physical works even better because it's there for you to hold and feel. It's more concrete. d. Who do you want to be? Every one of us has a role model that we adore and we wish to be like them. Have you wondered, once upon a time the person you look up to didn't know he or she was going to be that successful. They had their fair share of ups and downs. But because of their persistence and true grit, it made them who they are today. If your role model is Anthony Robbins and you just love the way he is, what are the positive things you can take from him.

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Study the way he is, how he speaks to people and helps them in any way he can. He tries his best to make a difference in every person he meets. Learn what he does every day to become a successful speaker, a businessman and an overall positive human being. Every time I'm facing a tough situation in business or in live, I always ask myself what will Tony do. At that moment, what ever that's going through my mind, it comes to a complete stop because I'm not thinking of my problems as ‘Edmund’ anymore but as ‘Tony’. I'm putting myself in his shoes and see things from his perspective. 3. What's Your Expertise? Besides your interest, what sort of expertise do you have? Have you solved any problem or done something that others find challenging. For instance, have you found a way to get the six packs you’ve always wanted? You probably know a lot about the right type of workouts, meal planning etc. Maybe you are great at getting great deals when you travel abroad. Planning a multi-city travel is a piece of cake for you and you always manage to get it for a fraction of what other people are paying for the same deal. These are skills you have accumulated over the years through your personal experiences. Now, we're getting somewhere.

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Next, find a group of people who has a problem. A friend who wants to go on a vacation but doesn't have the time to plan for it. Don't you think they'd appreciate it if you could get a great deal for them and don't mind paying you for it. There are tons of guys out there, who want to lose weight and get their dream body. Can you offer coaching and the meal plans you use for yourself. These are things you're already doing it for yourself. If it works for you, why not share it with others who are struggling to conquer this issues? 4. Help Other Businesses What if you don't have a passion or special skills? Where do you go from here? This is where you have to become a little creative and start helping others. Lots of businesses out there, it doesn't matter if they're doing well or not, they can always do better. If you're the one who can help improve their profits, get them more customers they would be more than happy to compensate you for it. How do you do this? Start contacting other businesses and ask them the "WHY" questions. For instance, ask if they're facing any problems or obstacles in the business. Go to places you visit everyday, it might be your local Pizza shop. Ask the owner, how's business? Are they facing any issues?

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He might say something like lack of customers, competition from other cafes, etc. Ask him WHY it is that way. Why they're not getting enough customers. Dig a little deeper and what you'll find is problems, issues the business is facing. This is gold for you. Now, you can start to think, how you can get them more customers. You might know how to use Facebook ads, Google ads etc. What if you spoke to 10 restaurant owners? How many problems can you help them solve? Problems that only you can solve. Think about it. 5. Make It a Commitment Having a passion or goal is not enough to make it work. What happens after your excitement and motivation dies off. What do you do? What separates the successful ones from the rest is how far they are willing to push themselves after all the initial excitement is long gone. You need to make a commitment to work on your business for at least one hour daily. Make it into a habit so no matter what happens, even if you don't see any results for months you keep doing it.

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If Howard Schultz gave up after being turned down by the banks 242 times, there would be no Starbucks. You'll never know how close you are to the finish line. Don't ever give up. Don't think of it as a race but a marathon you've just started. It's all about the journey and the kind of person you become at the end of it. Think about it. Let's take a look at a few people who worked on their passion and started their online businesses that are successful today. Case Studies a. Tactics Time Tactics Time was founded by Tim Brennan to share his passion to help adult chess players who are trying to improve their game. His goal by having this site and newsletter is to help others improve their chess rating and win more games. He wasn't even thinking of turning into a business but he wanted to share his chess tactics in the form of an ebook. The ebook, 'Tactics Time" became a game changer because he started getting sales of 10-15 books/day from his email subscribers. By doing what he genuinely loves, sharing his knowledge he's created a business that gives him passive income whether he's working or not.

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b. SmartPassiveIncome Pat Flynn started Smart Passive Income when he got laid of from an architecture firm. Architecture was his passion. What happened next, he went on an entrepreneurial adventure by creating niche sites like Greenexamacademy.com, where he blogs about LEED exam an architectural exam preparation course for "Green Architecture". He started making sales from his ebook and that supplemented his monthly income when he first began. From then onwards he's went onto start other niche sites such as Foodtruckr.com and he shares all his affiliate marketing and strategies on his blog. His goal for the site is to be really transparent about what he does and he genuinely loves helping people.

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HOW TO SELL WITHOUT SELLING What do you do when you go to a mall, doing your usual window-shopping when someone approaches you with a registration form? Usually it'll be a credit card salesman who's trying to get a commission from his sale. Do you shy away or you listen to him patiently. Most of us would try not to go near the salesman for fear of being approached. This happens for only one reason: We don't like being sold to but we love to buy things. If that's the case, how do you sell your products to your prospects with actually selling to them? There's a way to do this naturally and if you do it genuinely they will love you for it. They will actually thank you for recommending the products. Have you ever had a friend who went to watch the latest movie, Transformer for instance, and he was so excited about it? He comes to you still fresh from the hype of the movie. He says to you, Dude, you have to go watch Transformers! It was crazy, you have to see how Optimus Prime transforms in the middle of New York City and goes against Megatron.!! How would you feel after that? You'd start to get curious and excited, right? It'll make you feel like you should go and watch it right away. What just happened here? We do this all the time without realizing but this is what happens when you like something, a product, a movie, a

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restaurant, anything at all. Then we share all the good things about it with the people we know, and you know they'd love it as well. This is actually better than selling because you hear how good a product is from someone you know, it’s powerful. Word of mouth from a trusted source is better than a salesman who is trying to convince you to get the latest vacuum cleaner. It's called teeing up. You tee up the good points about your product or offer, to your target audience. There are a couple of ways to tee up effectively. Tee about the buying benefits for them. 1. The Free Give Away Method How to do what the product does, for free: One of the best examples of this is Dropbox, they give away 2GB worth of free cloud storage to the user. What happened next was crazy; everyone wanted to be a part of it and signed up. What they did next was really smart. If you wanted to increase your storage up to 16GB for free, you only have to refer your friends to it. It started going viral after that because everyone wanted to use Dropbox to store their documents, pictures, music files. Let's say you have a book about dog training that you're selling for $20. You could give the first few chapters away for free

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to your visitors. They'd really appreciate you for that, and if they find your content really useful they'd be more inclined to purchase the actual book. Just give them a taste of it but don't reveal the whole thing. It creates curiosity. When you do this, you're giving premium content to those who are not ready to pay for it. They will at least get to see what it looks like. This helps because they will know the difference between the free version and the paid version. If the free version is useful, how would the paid version be? When you share the free version, remember to emphasize the benefits of getting the paid version right after that. Here are a few ways I've used the free giveaway method: I've shown the difference between creating a logo from scratch using tools like Photoshop, which requires expertise versus creating a logo using LogoGeniePro. They are free to create the logo's themselves but LogoGeniePro makes it a lot easier, with just a couple of steps and you can create a logo with no prior experience. 2. The Pandora Box Pandora's box is an artifact in Greek mythology, where a box was given to Pandora, which contained all the evils in the world in the myth. The concept might seem a little strange but in the marketing sense, when we talk about revealing the Pandora Box.

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Imagine you have a product and reveal it to the public step by step or do the unboxing for those wants to see it. It's actually a positive thing where the visitor will be eager to see the contents and what's in it before they purchase it. Some people just needs a little preview before they are more inclined to buy it. You basically having an open door policy and you’re being transparent with your visitors. Instead of having just an image of the product on your sales letter, you're not afraid to let your visitors behind closed doors to take a look. This will do a couple of things for you, you're building trust with your subscribers. Talk about both the good and bad so they know that you're not just hyping it up just to make a quick sale. They will respect you even more because you're not afraid to show the pros and cons of your product. Another thing, you're doing them a favour by showing them how to use it before they have it in hand. You're not even selling anything directly but just by talking about the products that will help your subscribers and how it can get them the results they're looking for, you will hook them in further.

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HOW TO TEST YOUR IDEA’S PROFITABILITY Have you ever seen the type of people who has lots of business ideas, they go out setting up a company, make business cards, creating a company site and call themselves entrepreneurs but the only problem is, nothing happens. No customers. No sales. No products This people are “wanna be entrepreneurs”. I'm sure that’s not how you’d like to do things. You want to have a solid business with revenue and sales coming in. You need to have a working business where you're getting income coming in, and you can think of the rest later. So how do you focus on the core of your business, which is the sales and profits? How do you know whether a business idea will be profitable without spending too much time on it? You need to validate your idea. It's the most important thing you can do before you go on a full-fledged campaign and spend a lot of money on your business. It saves you the trouble of finding out later on that, it’s not a very profitable business to begin with. So how do you validate it? Step 1: Create a Landing Page Landing pages are gold when it comes to validating your business idea. You don't even need much to begin with, not even a product or a full-fledged site.

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Even if you have no product to begin with, you can just create an ecover of your product, slap it on the page and have a name and email form for visitors to subscribe. Based on the response of people subscribing you can gauge where there's a need for your product. Don't worry if you have no technical knowledge on how to set up your landing page. There are web apps like Leadpages for you to get started with your own page within 5 minutes. It's just a plug and play solution that even a small child could do it. Step 2: Create a Survey/Questionnaires Another way to know what you're target market is looking for is to create a survey or questionnaire. It doesn’t have to be complicated. For instance, if you're in the dog-training niche, ask your audience what kind of problems they're having. Training problems, grooming issues etc. What kind of dogs they have? What format do they want the course to be? Ebook, podcast or a step-by-step video? Send this out to your circle of close friends and family to start with. Facebook has made it a lot easier to just share the link with a whole bunch of people. You literally don't have to walk on the streets with a bunch of questionnaires. Once you have one of this two at least, it's time to send feedbacks, lots of it. Now you're going to send massive traffic to this pages and here are three of the biggest traffic methods to do this effectively.

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GO BIG: THE 3 BIG TRAFFIC METHODS FACEBOOK ADS Facebook is one of the biggest traffic source when it comes to online traffic. What makes it more effective is the fact you can narrow down to any specific audience you're looking for. For instance you want to promote an ebook on "How to get six Pack Abs fast" You can actually create an ad for a specific demographic. Who wants to get six pack abs. Mostly, men who are between the ages of 21-40, interested in women, wants to look confident on their dates. Love watching sports, has a college degree, love eating out etc. From here, you can narrow down to any location in the world and it will show how many users you're targeting. It's one of the cheapest ways to get traffic because if you do it right, it can go down to a couple of cents. With a $100, you will know whether there's a need for your product and validate your business idea. This is much better than starting a company and to place an order for a container worth of products from China. However there are few criteria to create an effective ad on Facebook. i.

Have an Eye-Catching Image

How do you get a good image that's more likely to get a Facebook user to click on it? Take a look at the ads while you're

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on Facebook. See which kind of ads gets your attention the most. It's been proven that images of women get more clicks from both men and women alike. Make sure the images you use are copyright free so you're not infringing any one's property. ii.

Ask a Question

Your headlines are extremely important. You have a limited number of words for the ad. One of the best ways to make sure you get a user to click thru your post is to ask a question. Don't just make a general statement. It doesn't build curiosity for them to click the ad. For example, when you have an ad about weight loss, which makes you more curious? “Weight Lost Tips” or “How I Lost 3kgs in a Month”? Always have a list of swipe files for you to work with. Think about yourself, when you open an email or read an article, What made you do it? See the headline Keep a list of it and use it for yourself. SOLO ADS Online marketers always say, the money is in the list. The problem when you're starting is, you don't have a list. So how do you start building your own list in the fastest time and do it effectively. Leverage Leverage on other blog owners or email newsletters. They are

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always looking for ways to increase their income. Look for targeted email list owners in your niche and take a look at their site and blogs. Sign up to their email list. As you're reading thru their posts and emails, see if it's relevant to your target audience. If it fits your audience, go for it. You will usually pay them upfront for a series of mailings to your site or landing page. This is one of the most effective way of building your list without taking too much time. It might cost you some money in the beginning but it gets you started right away. All you have to do is create awesome content and engage with your subscribers. GUEST POSTING Guest posting is one of the best ways for you to get exposure from your target audience. When you start on day one, you start from zero visitors. You can only start posting on your site for so long before you get demotivated. So how do you generate enough traffic to your site? Look for other blogs and sites that are already established. Read their articles and posts, people who are commenting on it. Make sure they have the target audience you're looking for. Next, look for blogs that accept guest posts. Search on Google using these keywords: (Your keyword) + “guest post” (Your keyword) + “write for us”

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If you can't find many sites with those keywords, just look for blogs and contact them directly. They might have never accepted guest posts before but they might be open to it, if you actually ask them. Sometimes you just have to ask, you'll never know what you'll get. Find at least 50 blogs or sites for you to work with. However some of the bigger blogs, they'd want to see you previous work or articles. If you want to increase the chances of your guests posts being accepted. Connect with the blog owners first. Read their posts and leave comments. Don't leave comments just for the sake of doing it but constructive ones. Contribute an idea or opinion based on what they have written. Follow them on Twitter, like their Facebook page. Be natural and genuine. You don't want to come across as being aggressive or intrusive. Once you've bonded with them, they will more likely accept your guest post. Next when you write a guest post, it must be a high quality post. Get to know the readers of the blogs and understand your niche. Go through the blog and see what hasn't been written before. Find a unique topic within your niche and pitch to the blog owner. Give them a list of titles or topics to work with. Do this with a few blogs at a time so you're not just depending on any one blog. Otherwise you'll be frustrated. It takes time and the more you do it, the better you become. Get connected with other bloggers and let them know who you are.

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Guest posting helps you build relationship across your blogging community and your readers. This will actually help you with search engine rankings. Instead of blindly building links, when you have guest posts across few blogs, it will improve your search engine rankings organically. If you do this right, you'll have massive surges of traffic and visitors to your site. What you do next is very important. How can you make sure you have a list of subscribers before you have a full-fledged blog? Most people think they should have a blog with hundreds of articles before they start to guest post. One of the most effective things you can do for your site is to build an audience before you even launch your site. First, start with a "Coming Soon" Landing Page. Be clear on what your readers can expect from your site. Are you giving away an incentive for them to subscribe or just sign up on the waiting list? Lastly make sure, you have an name and email form where your visitors can subscribe. Basically, you're creating a pre-launch list for your site. You want to create a lot of buzz and get your readers excited about the launch of your blog or site. Preferably, have a free ebook but don't let it stop your from having a "Coming Soon" page. On your blog itself, have at least 3 to 4 high quality posts

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so once you launch your site, your visitors will benefit from it. They will start to follow you and see you as an authority. Always engage with them, and reply to any comments. TEST, TEST, TEST This is extremely important. You may have everything in place but how would you know what's working if you don't test it. Even if your ad is doing well, find ways to improve it. If you're having a 1% conversion from an ad, a small tweak to the image or headline might increase your conversion to 2%. That's double the amount of visitors that'll be coming to your page and you didn't pay for more traffic. With the same amount of effort you've increased the traffic and it will increase your bottom line eventually. Here are a few of things you should always test: The headline: Find out your prospects soft points and come up with a compelling headline. Call to action: The buy button, subscribe or anything that requires them to take the next step. Images: Any images you use in your sales page or landing page affects the reader. Sometimes you can even use images to make your visitors focus on your headline or buy button. Like an image of an arrow for example.

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Sales letter: Read through the sales letter and see how you feel about it. If you're prospects reads it, will they be moved to do something about their problem. There's the long copy, short copy, video sales letter etc. You will never know what works until you try. There's no right or wrong about this. This only way to know what converts is to keep testing.

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PART IV: AUTOMATION

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EARN IN US DOLLARS, SPEND IN PESOS In this chapter, you will find how to automate your business by hiring staffs from a different part of the world, where it helps to keep your expenditures low while you market your products to a global audience in US Dollars. Earn In US Dollars Once you’ve validated a profitable idea for your online business, imagine having a business where you don’t have to worry about high overheads, inventory or logistics. You just need to set up the sales page or landing page with your product and send massive traffic to it. All this things are called a sales funnel. If you do it correctly, your sales funnel can be very profitable. The only way to make it work is to keep testing it. When you start to get good response and begin to make sales, you’ll know you’re on the right track. Since you’re targeting an international market while working from the comfort of your own home, your products should be priced in US dollars. So no matter where you’re visitor comes from, you will get paid in US dollars. Next, once you have the whole system up and running, it’s time to automate it.

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How do you delegate your online business so it runs by itself? You just need to check on it a couple of hours a week just to make sure all the components are well oiled and it runs smoothly. Sound good? Let me show you how to automate your online business at a very reasonable cost. You just need to focus on scaling up the business from here. Spend In Pesos The Philippines has some of the most hardworking people who are good at what they do. They take clear instructions and most of them are familiar with online businesses. Whether you’re looking for a writer, graphic designer or web programmer. They have all the skills and for a reasonable cost as well. Moreover it’s easier to communicate with them because English is widely spoken in the Philippines. 1. What Is Outsourcing How do you earn in US Dollars, Outsource in Pesos, Spend in Ringgits? First of all, when you talk about starting a business, what's your idea of a business? Do you want to work for your business or work on your business? It makes a huge difference. If you want to work for your business, it's actually selfemployment.

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You still have to put in a lot of hours and you affect your bottom-line directly. For instance, you can't just take leave from work or else your business or project won't run by itself because you're the key person there. If you're working on your business, you're developing it. You have a plan, a system and you're looking for the right people or team. You can delegate what ever you don't like doing and focus on what you enjoy. This is where outsourcing comes in. In simple terms you want to hire an individual who can take care of business-related activities for you. Whether you're there or not, they will complete the tasks to get things moving. One of the best examples of outsourcing is Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin group. He has over 400+ businesses. Do you wonder how he is able to do so many things at once? He comes up with a business idea and plans it out. Most of the time, he doesn't even know much about the industry but he hires the best person who knows in and out about the industry. He learns from the experts and he picks the best of the best who are capable of running his business, even when he's not around. This is why his business still runs smoothly whether he's there or not and it gives him the freedom to do anything he choose to. 2. Why Should You Outsource There's only so many hours in a day. 24 hours to be exact.

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Even if you're the world’s best copywriter or web designer, there's only so much you can do. There will always be a limit to how much you can expect your clients to pay you. How can you duplicate your efforts without doing all the work by yourself? And what if you want to start a web agency and you love to do the marketing but you're not really good with the programming or technical skills. This is where you outsource to the experts, people who are good at what they do. What is your hourly rate? Let's say you're monthly income is $3000 and you work 5 days week for 8 hours. $3000 a month is $750 a week. $750 a week is $150 a day. So roughly, you're hourly rate is about $19 but to keep things simple we'll say $20. Once you know this, you'll think twice about wasting your time doing trivial things. For instance, if you're local cafe is giving away a free Ice cream cone that's worth $1 and you see a long line of people waiting for it. It might take you 2 hours before you get your cone. Do you think it's worth it to stand in the line for 2 hours to get a $1 ice cream cone? 2 hours of your time is worth $40. Same goes to your online business. If you're going to take a couple of hours to create your own logo, it's not worth it. You can outsource this things for $10, $20 to an expert graphic designer from the Philippines. If there's any task that's giving you less than $20, it's not worth your time. Just outsource it.

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Now do you know how businessmen like Donald Trump, go thru their day. They outsource everything, from their laundry, having a chauffeur and even a personal chef. Time is crucial for them, instead of doing all the trivial things, they choose to focus their time on where it matters the most. 3. List Down Everything Everyday, you will have lots of task to do in your business. I used to write for most of my products, formatting it, some basic design, create the landing page, write emails. Basically I was a one-man show. If you keep doing this to yourself, it's just a matter of time before you burn out. It will really help you if you list down all the tasks that you need to in your business: Project management Graphic Design Writing Social Media Traffic Generation Email Marketing SEO Blog Posts Product Creation Video Editing and so on…

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Separate the list into what you love doing and what you'd like to delegate. For instance, you're best artwork looks likes a 7th grader painting. No matter how hard you try. Outsource your design work to a graphic designer. Decide on the top few things that will make a lot of difference in your business and delegate that first. Usually for online businesses, it means writing and graphic design takes a lot of time. I personally have a graphic designer and a team of writers. I used to write a lot but then I realized I could put my time to better use by focusing on the marketing side of business. My forte is product creation and I have tons of ideas but if it was just me alone, working on every project. Things will never move as fast as I want it. You need to have speed in business and trust me, once you have a team, you'll be able to scale things up very fast. At the end of the day, you have to start somewhere. So decide on the things you don't enjoy doing and delegate it someone who can take care of it for you. Start with on person.

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HOW TO AMASS YOUR WORK FORCE (MINUS THE HIGH COST) Now you know the importance of having a team of people to help you scale your business. But how do you find the right individual for your online business. There are few criteria when you're looking for a Virtual Assistant (VA). You need to know what you're looking for in a VA. Be as specific as possible in your job description as this narrows down your pool of applicants. 1. These are some of the areas you should be looking at when you want to hire someone: Area of Expertise - what do you need them to do? Graphic design, web development, article writing; define your job scope and be specific about what you're looking for. Experience - How long have they been working in their field? You can tell by the number of hours or number of projects they've done. (request for portfolios) Working Hours - How long do you need your VA for your tasks. Some do it part time and others full time. I personally prefer to have a full time staff because they'll be committed to you.

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If it's a part time, the person might have a couple of different projects and might not put it the full effort in your tasks. Speaks English - It's crucial to know their level of English proficiency; it makes it easier to communicate. Attitude and Other Qualities – Being independent, problem solving, creative thinking, communication. You don't want to have someone who keeps coming back to you for every little thing. From the moment you give out your task, have clear instructions and they must be independent enough to figure things out. You can't be there all the time. What’s Your Budget - What are you comfortable with, based on the individual. This is a sensitive issue so be very clear on what they will be expecting from you. What are your payment methods, etc…? Outline all of these areas and more to get your ideal candidate before you go recruiting. 2. Where do you find your perfect VA? It's time to look for your perfect VA once you have narrowed down your job specifics. Don't get caught in the excitement and just hire someone right away. If you do this right, it'll save you lots of time, money and effort down the road.

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Some of the best sites to look for good candidates are freelancing sites such as freelancer.com and Odesk.com. These freelancing sites come with a range of candidates from different backgrounds and countries. I personally found the Philippines have quality workers for a relatively low cost, few dollars per hour. When you post on the job boards on this site, you write a cover letter stating the title of your job or task and requirements. How do you make sure you weed out those who don't read instructions and keep the potential VAs who are more alert to your requirements? The trick is, when you're writing your cover letter and job requirements. For instance you might have 8 requirements you're looking for in a VA. At the end of the letter after your requirements, place another line stating when the individual replies you. They should start their letter with "Keyword". It can be any keyword of your choice. ‘Wordpress Rockstar’, ‘Transformers’, ‘Apple Pie’ etc. It doesn’t matter. Why do you need to do this? You want the individual who's going through your job description read the whole thing thoroughly instead of just skimming through it. Some might not even read it. Let's say you get 50 applicants for your job. When you go through the applications, you'll notice many of them would have missed your keyword.

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It's either they missed or didn’t read your cover letter carefully. Just get rid of this who replied you without the keyword. What you will get is a handful of applicants who actually read and took your instructions carefully. It's a small test to make sure later on, when you do give them a series of tasks they take your instructions seriously, word for word. The next step is the interview. Never take this for granted. Do your homework properly and screen your applicants with the right tests. 3. The interview The interview process is very important and many people rush thru it because they can't wait to get started on their project right away. It might seem a little tedious but if you don't do this right, it will affect your business and projects in the long term. I used to have the same problem. I couldn't get the right people because I didn't do my homework properly. This is where you'll get to know your candidates a little better. Here are a couple of ways to do the interview effectively: Have a list of questions to ask them based on their skills. It's better if it's more specific. How long they've been working and what kind of projects have they done before. One of the best ways to evaluate your candidate is by going through their portfolio. Whether it's a graphic designer or article writer, you still have to take caution because they might not have done

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everything by themselves. For instance, I had an ecommerce site done for my friend but it didn’t come with Wordpress. So I hired a web developer to convert it into a Wordpress site and he placed his name at the footer. If you were to hire the same person for your project and you see his name on the site, you might assume that he did the whole thing but that's not true. To avoid this sort of confusion, come up with a few technical questions related to their field. If it's about web design and you're not familiar with it, you can search on Google the most frequently asked questions when it comes to web design. This is to make sure, your candidate knows what they're doing and pulling a fast one on you. Once you've screened a few candidates don't hire them right away. I did the mistake of getting a VA on the spot without a proper interview and found out later, what she showed on her portfolio of articles was different when she actually wrote articles for me. It was also because she wasn't familiar with the subject matter that I was working on. So I had to give her extra training at my cost. I'm sure you don’t want to be wasting time and money doing all this petty things when you'd rather focus on your growing your business. What about the rest of the applicants who got rejected? You shouldn't just ignore them but just let them know that, at the moment they don't fit in with your project. If there are any other

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projects in the future, you will let them know. This way, when you do need their help in the near future, they will be more likely to respond to because you didn't let them go in a negative manner. 4. Give a Sample Task Once you have a pool of candidates you have handpicked yourself. It's time to put them to the test. What I personally do every time before I hire someone is I'll give them some simple tasks. For instance, if they are web developers, blog writers. I'll make them set up Wordpress from scratch on a brand new site. Installing it, setting up the plugins, the theme, right until the post a blog post and basic SEO. Setting up a Wordpress blog shouldn't be a big deal for them if they're web developers and blog writers. But why do I make them jump through hoops before the get the job? If they can carry out a simple task like installing Wordpress and they carry out the instructions properly, you use judge them on how well they've performed the given task and you know if you give them anything in the future, it won't be a problem for you. Out of the few candidates you have, you'll a few outstanding ones. If you can't make up your mind, use your own judgment wisely. Sometimes you might have a candidate who's really good at what he does but when it comes to communication it might be slow to respond and he takes his own sweet time.

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Then on the other hand, you have someone who's a little slow, still gets the job done but he or she is responds fast to your messages and listens to you. Who would you pick in this scenario? There's no right or wrong answer but it's what you're looking for in your own business. I personally would go for the second candidate who responds to me. I can still train him and give him a few tools to help him out. But the first candidate I can't do much if that's his attitude. It all boils down to attitude at the end of the day. How keen is the person to work and learn from you. Once you hire your candidate, the next step is very important to ensure your longterm success of your project or your business. 5. Copy & Paste (Training) As you welcome your new employee, there are a few ground rules you need to lay down before you proceed. Send an email to your VA and state what they can expect by working with you and what they will be in charge off. Identify the key areas of your business you want to pass to your employee. Have a spreadsheet in Google or Excel and list down all the tasks. Usually I use email as my primary communication so there's always a black and white. You can always refer to it in case you miss something important. I also use Dropbox and share a folder with my VA so when any task is completed I'll tell her to just save it in the Dropbox folder.

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So everything is organized in there. I can always go back to it to retrieve the files. Remember that, your employee is still new and no matter how skill the individual is, they won't know how you run your business. Have a proper training to guide them on how to go about it until they familiarize themselves with it. One of the best ways to train your staff is by using a screen-capture software and show them how to do it. It'll probably take you a couple of minutes to do it and send the recording to your VA. Some of the screen capture softwares I use for my videos: Jing - comes with a free trial. Camstudio - is completely free. Any task that you do repetitively, outsource it to your VA. Do a screen recording or write an email and show it's done step by step. The more things you outsource, the more time you have. At the end of the day, whether you're there working on your business or not it'll still run on its own because you've start to automate it. It can get pretty addictive when you realize you can systemize everything and just tune and tweak a little bit to keep the engine running. The potential for this is endless.

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BONUS CHAPTERS

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DAVID VS GOLIATH: FEEL YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH? Most of us have heard of the story of David VS Goliath. David was a shepherd boy who went against the giant Goliath against all odds. Little David got a few stones and his slingshot, which was his only weapon against Big Goliath. The giant just laughed at him but David placed a stone in his sling and struck big Goliath on the head. Then David killed him with his sword and saved the day. Little did I know I'd have my own David vs. Goliath story to share with you. I want to share an experience that helped me break my mental barriers not long ago when I was invited to speak an ECommerce Conference. I didn't prepare much for the event as I was given vague requirements on what to present, and I did it just the night before. I drove to the hotel the next morning, only to learn it was a 5-star hotel and I was greeted by the sight of VIPs, Datuks and Datins cutting ribbons for the opening ceremony. Right away, I knew this speaking engagement was going to be unlike any I had done before. ("Datuk" is a federal title in Malaysia)

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The participants numbered no more than 100 people, but the attendance list was transparent: CEOs, upper management level from banks, and I recognize many of the company names. BIG names. Intimidating! Up to this point, I have not spoken to such high profile audience. The first roundtable talk of speakers came on stage with all

the

big,

intelligent

words

they

were

throwing

out

accompanied by statistics after statistics. I was due for the Session Two. 15 minutes before our turn, I was in the VIP Room for a quick briefing by the forum moderator. I found out who the other two speakers that I will be sharing the stage with: Vice President of Telekom, the leading telecommunications company in our country, and the founder of iPay88, the leading payment processor in Malaysia. When the mod turned to me to shake my hand, he asked, "Oh sorry, who are you?" (Did I mention that I came here not knowing anyone?) I felt like I didn't belong there. I was beginning to wonder if I was the right speaker for the right event after all. And I came here only because I accepted the invitation from someone who happen to find me on LinkedIn somehow. My mind was racing and I was planning what to say... while sitting on stage in front of the audience! I didn't have much time as the other two speakers have their go first.

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It's a no-pitch event but these guys are already renowned and almost all of Malaysia know or use their service. Me? I was just some work-from-home dude. Standing next to these giants, it's like all my achievements up to that day amounted to nothing. So what can I offer on stage? I was attacked by the 'little guy syndrome'. As I studied the situation further, I started to pick on a few things: 1. From the start, all the speakers engaged the audience in a 1way communication. There was surprisingly no interaction with the audience until now, evidenced by the lack of energy in the room and people playing with their phones. 2. All of the speakers up until now were using a lot of big, seemingly impressive words. I wonder if the audience were having a hard time digesting what they were hearing? I bet they won't catch even half of what the speakers were saying. So on the spot, I devised a plan to improvise my speech since I could not edit my embarrassingly simple slides anymore. I started off with a pattern interrupt: I asked the audience if they had a website or they don't. I realize it was a silly question, but I got their attention for starters. Then I got to the next point: "Have you ever always wondered even though you brand yourselves as leaders in ECommerce and IT, but you seem to always be the last to know?" At this point heads were turned.

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I went on with the rest of my presentation for the next 20 minutes. I did not share any statistics or 'hard facts'; quite to the contrary I added a short story behind each main point in my presentation. And I kept my presentation deliberately in simple English. After the session, I was ready to leave after lunch... when I was gradually swarmed by the participants! Even more so than the other two. Somehow, I got my first 2 clients for my online marketing consultancy from there - and that started off a new venture later! So What Did I Learn From That Morning? 1. Don't sell yourself short. Many times that morning I told myself I wasn't good enough to 'hang out with the big guns' and that I probably didn't have anything valuable to share since everyone else seemed bigger, better and smarter than me. I realize it truly is a confidence game, which leads to the next point... 2. As long as you know something most others don't, you're the expert! Sure there were highly experienced business owners in that hall, but when it comes to online marketing, I was the best person there. Bar none. 3. Look for openings. How many times have we told ourselves things like "the market is saturated?" and "the small guys cannot

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make it here because the big guys took it all?" That's limiting belief. If that was true, there should be no Google when there's Yahoo! and there should be no Facebook when there was MySpace and Friendster. By the same thought, I shouldn't have been there because there were other experts. But I found openings in that hour where audience were not "enrolled 100%" and definitely not everyone understood 'high end' English. Lastly... 4. Don't apologize for who you are. I thought of making 'disclaimers' about the simple nature of my slides and my business - then I threw that thought out of the hall. I've always ran my online business on the premise of simplicity and low-cost, and there's nothing to be ashamed of those values. There's more to the experience but you get the gist. The next time you think you're not good enough or there's no room for opportunities... take a deep breath and observe around you. Look hard enough with your mind and you will see them!

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THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE Things to do before you die. It might sound a little morbid but when you ask yourself honestly. What do you want out of life? Only when you have a purpose you'll take things more seriously and get things done. Here are a couple of questions to help you create your own list: What's your idea of success? (relationships, wealth etc.) Where do you want to travel the most? What would you want to do if tomorrow was end of the world? If money and time was not an issue, what would you do? What do you want to achieve? What do you want to experience? What do you want to learn? What makes you giggle like a child? Anyone you meet in person? (Celebrities/Athletes/Personalities) Here are a few ideas for you to get started with: Train for 3 months and achieve your optimum weight Conquer your biggest fear Do volunteer work Experience a sunrise/sunset Fall in love

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Fly First class Go around a city in a helicopter Speak in front of a huge crowd Go backpacking across Asia Spend a night camping in the woods Go on a blind date Go on a cruise around the world Learn Capoeira Learn Spanish/ Mandarin Play Chess against a Grandmaster Meet your favorite Celebrity/Athlete Set off to a random location without a plan Plant a tree and watch it grow Learn to play guitar/piano Protect wildlife See the Northern Lights Sing to an audience Start a movement on a cause you believe in Start your business Take part in a triathlon Take up hip-hop dancing Travel around the world Ask someone you've only just met to go on a date Attend a music festival Backpack around Europe Buy a round-the-world air ticket and go on a trip

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Buy your own house and create a home exactly how you want it to be Cage dive with Great White Sharks Connect with your former schoolteachers Do an extreme sport Donate Blood Donate money and put your name on something Drink Beer at Oktoberfest in Germany Drive a convertible with the top down and music blaring Experience Zero Gravity Fall deeply in love -- helplessly and unconditionally Find a job you love Float in the Dead Sea Fly in a Private Jet Go Deep-Sea Fishing Go fly boarding Go horseback riding Go on a hot air balloon ride Go on an African Safari Go scuba diving/snorkeling Go to the Top of the Eiffel Tower Go to the World Cup Go up in a hot-air balloon Have an artist paint your portrait Go to Andrea Bocelli concert Hear Oprah Winfrey speak in person Helicopter over a volcano

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Learn to skateboard Leave a legacy Let go of a floating lantern in Thailand Adopt a Pet Make a hole-in-one Make a snow angel Overcome your fear of failure Own an expensive business suit Start a Flash Mob Ride a camel into the desert Ride a Gondola in Venice, Italy Go on the Trans-Siberian Express across Asia Run a marathon Scuba dive off Australia's Great Barrier Reef Watch Wicked (A Broadway Musical) See Wimbledon in Person Go Skydiving Sleep under the stars Soak in the Hot Springs in Iceland Take a picture in front of the Hollywood sign Stay in a chalet in Bali Teach someone to read Tour Silicon Valley Visit all 7 continents Visit Stonehenge Watch a meteor shower

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Watch the launch of the space shuttle Watch the Olympics in person Watch the sunset in Santorini, Greece Go to the Oscars/ Grammys Write a book and publish it

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