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I’ve got a neat story for you about my son and ten and under football. See, eight and under football, he was pretty much the fastest kid on the team.

He scored touchdowns and man he was great. He loved it and he was able to run the ball a bunch and you know kind of with the football where if you ran right at a kid, they would kind of jump out of the way and work to grab your flag.

Or, if a kid was coming right at you, they would try to juke around you in order to avoid you pulling their flag. Well, ten and under football is completely different. Now, it’s still a flag football game, but the players, the ten year olds, are so much bigger than the nine year olds which is where my son was. They don’t need to slow down or go around the player. They can just run right over him and it is kind of short you know, he’s not as tall as some of the other kids. And they didn’t think anything of just bowling over him.

And when he is lying on the ground he can’t pull their flag. Well, it didn’t take but a couple of these and he hated football. And I’m sad to say he just despised it because they were just running over him. He was like, “But I don’t understand. They are supposed to go around me and not through me.” Well, no it’s part of the game. They can go through or around, it’s a choice and they choose to go through and you’ve got to be able to pull the flag in spite of that.

But then he wasn’t getting to play when he wanted to play. He was running back before and now all of a sudden he’s not running back and he’s like, why when the coach is supposed to rotate us around. No, you know ten and under football is about winning. And it’s not fair to the good players to put the good players in less important positions because then the team wouldn’t perform as well.

He’s got to put the good players in the best positions so that they can get the best results for the team overall. But everybody is supposed to play. It’s all about having fun. No, eight and under football may very well be about having fun. Ten and under football is about winning and success. And as I worked through that with my son and had that experience, I remember vividly sitting at the kitchen table and having that discussion.

And then just a few minutes later, I was sitting out on my back deck thinking about that. I was enjoying a cigar and thinking about that experience and going, you know what? I complain all of the time and it shouldn’t be this hard. I should be able to generate more customers in my business. I should be able to do marketing and it generates results. Or, I should be able to tell an employee how to do something provides instructions, and they follow the checklist. I should be able to give a project to a vendor and they deliver it finished.

Well, that may be in some other world but not in this world. This is the equivalent of ten and under football. It’s about success. And people bow you over. Coaches put the best players and even when you do your best, sometimes you don’t get the results that you think you deserve. That is life. That is ten and under football. And we have to suck it up just like my son did. Even though we don’t like it, we still have to deal with what it is. Not with what should be or we wish we were or what it happened to be or what we would like it to be.

This is the real world. And unfortunately, it’s not fair. And a lot of times, it’s damn difficult. But, success comes through persistence through that and making it happen anyway. Entrepreneurs break through and employees allow those types of obstacles to stop them. And that is the difference. This is your entrepreneurial moment.

This is a time where you can succeed. Don’t take no for an answer. If you get knocked down by a bigger bully, you jump up and beat them next time. If you don’t get the results you think you deserve from this speech, you make it better and give it again. If you don’t get the results you want from a sales presentation, do it again. Make it better, rehearsed. Get a new approach. Improve and win. That is where success comes from. And that is how you can break through no matter what.

Robert Skrob is president of the Information Marketing Association with members marketing products in hundreds of different business categories. For a free video that reveals The Number One Secret to Creating Quick Sustainable Wealth In Your Life, visit quick sustainable wealth at http://www.quicksustainablewealth.com.

Few musical artists have made more money or had as long a career as Jimmy Buffet. I went “undercover” at Jimmy’s concert this month to uncover his secrets for you.

By 11:00 a.m. the parking lot was slammed. It was impossible to find a parking place … for an 8:00 p.m. show! Don’t worry about me; I was deep undercover, so I was there by 7:00 a.m. with the gas powered blender. To battle the cold weather, we mixed coffee drinks until 10:00 a.m. I brought the cigarette lighter plug-in coffee pot I bought at the truck stop.

O.K., so I was deep undercover. I looked like a crazy Parrot Head, as Jimmy’s fans call themselves. But, it was all for you. Here is what I learned:

One of the most profound choices Jimmy has made in his business is to give his fans exactly what they want. Every album follows the same template: a couple of party songs, a sad story, a ballad and a couple of middle of the road songs. With rare exception, every song tells a story. About the 4th album he discovered the formula, and the template was cast. His concerts for the last 15 years always include eight specific songs, because those are the songs his fans want to hear.

Many artists get bored with what works. Certainly the music critics have blasted Jimmy’s simpleminded style. But that is the entire point-it isn’t simpleminded. It’s a deliberate choice to provide a target market with exactly what that market wants.

About his restaurants, Jimmy has said, “All people want is a good hamburger and a great margarita, and that’s what we give them.” Yes, it would have been a lot more interesting to create a restaurant with fancy dishes and gourmet meals; however, he understands what his market wants, and he provides it.

Jimmy became the leader of his first band because he was the only one responsible enough to have credit. With that credit he could buy the equipment, so that made him the leader. From then on, he understood that business smarts are required to make money at anything, including playing music.

After his records became popular, he noticed other people selling T-shirts with quotes from his songs on them. His copyrighted song lyrics. While he did make efforts to stop them, he figured if others were making and selling shirts, maybe he should create shirts, too. That’s how Jimmy’s current merchandising empire was born.

Now he manufactures, sells and licenses his song lyrics, images and Margaritaville trademarks and sells thousands of products. These include flip flops, frozen shrimp, blenders, glassware, auto accessories, plush toys-you name it. That’s not all. In the last year, he released a studio album, a live concert album and a live concert DVD; opened a resort hotel, had a 40-show concert schedule; and ran his restaurants.

Jimmy has proven there is no end to customers’ willingness to buy, once they have bought into you. How can you leverage your relationship with your customers? Are there additional ways you can recruit others to create products and services for your customers that you can license and make a profit from? Your customers are buying products from someone; it might as well be you.

I asked Parrot Heads at the concert what Jimmy’s life was like. They told me he flies his planes around, lies in a hammock at the beach and parties every night. I asked where his main home is, and I got answers from Fort Myers to Key West to St. Barts.

Jimmy actually lives in Long Island, N.Y. Fact is, Jimmy is busy working. He puts in a ton of hours behind a desk, on the phone with show promoters, working with restaurant managers and selling every manner of product. However, all of these sales depend on him perpetuating the myth that he lives at the beach and sleeps in a hammock.

Of course, Jimmy did live in Key West and had his share of fun. But, while he lived there he supported himself by working as a first mate on a fishing boat. Every day, at the dock at 6:30 a.m. so he could spend his day in the sun cutting bait, baiting hooks for tourists, taking their fish off the hooks and cleaning fish for tips. Then, to build his music career, he sang in local bar until 2:00 a.m., grabbed some sleep and started all over again. His experience was not as romantic as it is publicly portrayed.

The myth is Jimmy enjoys a life of leisure. He does enjoy his life, but it’s because he’s working hard at something he loves. When you are giving people what they want and they praise you for it, it makes work a lot of fun.

Take time to enjoy the fruits of your business, but more importantly, enjoy the work. You have the opportunity to positively impact thousands of people with the information you possess. Thousands of people who will gladly support you in style if you do it right. You have a rare opportunity to escape to the good life of Information marketing.

Robert Skrob is president of the Information Marketing Association with members marketing products in hundreds of different business categories. For a free video that reveals The Number One Secret to Creating Quick Sustainable Wealth In Your Life, visit quick sustainable wealth at http://www.quicksustainablewealth.com.

I’m really good at paperwork, I’ve always been really efficient at getting it done. I’m a CPA, I do all the continuing education to maintain my license even though I haven’t practiced public accounting since 1994.

For years I found myself getting paperwork done at my office. After all, it was a lot easier for me to get it done myself than to have someone else do it. Besides, it’d take almost as long for me to explain what needed to be done when I could just get it done myself.

It took me a long time to realize that this was a trap I’d set for myself that was keeping me from achieving my ultimate goals, becoming the owner of an extremely profitable business.

But, how could it be a trap, I had a great skill. I could see what needed to get done, complete it and move on faster than anyone else I knew. In fact, it was something of a “gift.”

But, that “gift” that was allowing me to get paperwork done was preventing me from learning a new skill, business planning and delegating properly.

I spoke with a home remodeler a couple of days ago. He told me he’s stuck working towards putting enough money into the checking account by Friday to cover his bills for that week. He told me he’s busy from 5:00 am until 7:00 pm running to job and seeing clients. Then, he has another two hours of paperwork to do every evening. But, because he’s so busy he doesn’t have time generate new business.

He has a great skill, his is running projects. When he was an employee he was the best project supervisor of the company. He could visualize how the project was coming together and get projects done on budget, faster than anyone else. He decided to go into business for himself and the first couple of years he saw his income increase.

However, when ever he gets into trouble he relies on his best skill, his gift, and that’s project management to get him out of it. The moment worry or fear creeps into his mind his first reaction is to manage projects better.

The skill that had become his greatest strength has become the thing that’s holding him back from growing his business.

Same with my skill with paperwork. Every time I get a little panic or fear I find myself digging through paperwork, “gotta make sure those tax forms are in good shape.” My greatest skill actually prevents me from doing the things that would really grow my business.

Did you know that there is a more efficient keyboard layout than the standard “QWERTY” layout on your current keyboard? Yes, it’s called the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard. With it you can type twice as fast. Imagine, getting everything done in half the time. Best news of all, it’s programmed right into your computer right now, you only have to go to your keyboard options, select it and you are ready to learn a completely new keyboard layout that’ll double your speed. What? You don’t want to? Believe me, I feel the same resistance. My skill with the current keyboard layout prevents me from wanting to learn the new layout. I’ll have to learn an entirely new skill, it’ll be a struggle and I can’t be sure how long it’ll take for me to catch on. Those feelings you and I have about our current keyboards are the same feelings that hold us back from acquiring the new skills we need to achieve real success.

Many times we instinctively cling to skills that have gotten us through in the past, but are not serving our future. For me, when I made the decision to give up the administrative details of my businesses it was like saying “good bye” to an old friend. I actually mourned a little. But, it was so I could meet new friends, business planning and delegation.

I made the decision that rather than be the best person at business administration I was going to become the best delegator. And, it was hard. At first I blamed the vendors and employees for not ‘getting it.’ But, I learned it was me that didn’t get it, delegating is a skill that has to be learned. And, just like riding a bicycle there will be some scraped knees and elbows along the way. It wasn’t fun and I’m skill learning how to improve.

I found relying on my greatest strengths actually prevented me from moving forward in my business. Instead, I had to dedicate myself to acquiring new strengths and new skills to accomplish the goals I wanted to achieve.

What goals do you want to achieve? Do you need new skills to achieve them? You can leave your comments here Your Strengths Can Be Holding You Back.

Robert Skrob is president of the Information Marketing Association with members marketing products in hundreds of different business categories. For a free video that reveals The Number One Secret to Creating Quick Sustainable Wealth In Your Life, visit quick sustainable wealth at http://www.quicksustainablewealth.com.

The constant struggle to produce marketing campaigns and run your business makes it difficult to get everything done. But planning is the only true shortcut to running a business that will generate millions of dollars for you.

Once you have completed your planning, you’ll be better able to stay on task, monitor your results, and implement new ideas that may come up during the year. Without a planning calendar, it’s easy to get distracted by a great new idea and forget about the ideas you had already planned to implement.

Planning doesn’t have to be a long, ugly process. Instead, here is a four-hour planning success template. Use a wall calendar, so it’s easy to see the entire year at a glance. In one afternoon, you can create your operations plan for a year. Set aside just four hours to work through this easy, step-by-step process, and you’ll have the shortcut to success.

1:00 – 1:30 p.m. A Candid Review of the Year One of the most important parts of planning for the future is to reflect on the year that has just passed. Open your calendar and review your activities for the year.

Take a look at each month for two minutes or so. Write down a couple of successful activities from each month that you want to repeat in the next 12 months. Also, consider the activities that generated disappointing results and write those down, so you can remember to avoid them. It’s also good to make a note of the seminars and events that were productive for you, so you can attend them again.

1:30 – 2:00 p.m. Create Your Business Targets Before you can plot out your year, you have to give careful consideration to where you want to be when the year ends. Determine your revenue and customer acquisition goals for the year.

Do you have a customer list that you communicate with on a regular basis? How many names do you want on that list one year from now to allow you to accomplish your goals? From that number, subtract your current customers less expected drop-outs, and that will tell you how many names you will need to add during the year to meet your goals.

How many customers do you need to have to accomplish your profit goals? If you have more than one product, list them out and write down your goal numbers. Now, deduct the number of existing customers you already have less your expected attrition. This will give you the number of new customers you need to generate during the year to meet your goals.

If you are worried that all of these numbers are inaccurate guesses, that’s O.K. You can add a task for the coming year to create a better business statistic tracking system. These are all difficult questions to answer; just do the best you can and feel free to revise the numbers as you go.

You’ve worked for an hour, and your calendar is still blank. Twenty-five percent of your time is up, and you have “nothing” to show for your effort. While it may look like you haven’t accomplished anything, setting your goals now will make the next 12 months a lot more successful. Although you haven’t yet planned a single event or activity, you’ll be better for the time you have spent reviewing the past year and creating your business targets.

2:00 – 2:30 p.m. Customer Acquisition When you get embroiled in running your business on a daily basis, it’s easy to become focused on the operational deadlines. Handling customer paperwork, monthly reports, employee meetings, and vendor telephone calls can dominate your time. It’s much easier to have success and to generate profits by selling products to your existing customers, and a lot of business owners focus the majority of their marketing efforts there because they enjoy those activities. However, customer acquisition is critical to the long-term success of your business.

No matter how loyal your customers are today, eventually they won’t be your customers. It is critical to add new customers every month, so you can increase your business and also maintain it.

In the last planning step, you listed your customer acquisition goals for each of your programs. Now, you need to outline the marketing work for the year to generate those customers. For each month, map out customer acquisition offers, events, and marketing campaigns.

Consider if there are new marketing lists you can use for direct mail campaigns, joint venture partners, or new offers to try. The key is to make sure you continue your customer acquisition efforts throughout the entire year.

2:30 – 3:00 p.m. Sales to Existing Customers As your business grows, you’ll discover customer acquisition increases in cost. Perhaps this year, if you spent $3,800.00 on a marketing campaign, you could get 42 new customers. In the coming year, you may discover that same $3,800.00 delivers only 33 new customers. These increasing costs require you to focus a lot of attention on selling additional products and services to your existing members.

Plan activities that will generate additional revenue from your existing customers in two ways: 1) maximize the average amount your customers purchase; and 2) increase the frequency with which your customers purchase from you.

How can you increase the amount customers spend with you during each transaction? Are there little items you can add to give customers small options? What “premium” versions of your product and services can you create for those customers that want more expensive options?

What promotions, new product launches, and communications will you do each month to encourage your current customers to purchase more frequently? Is it smart for you to implement a points program that rewards your best customers and encourages all of your customers to buy from you more often?

3:00 – 3:20 p.m. Fulfillment/Customer Relationships Once you acquire a customer, the most important thing you can do is to keep your promises. If your marketing told the customer you would deliver a product that would solve a particular problem, you better deliver that product. Providing high-quality products helps you retain customers longer, makes them want to buy more, and encourages them to upgrade to higher level coaching programs.

Map out the activities you need to do to prepare your customer fulfillment. What are you going to do to make sure customers receive what they purchase? Also include time for product enhancements. What are you going to do to increase the value of your products to your customers?

3:20 – 3:40 p.m. Administrative Improvements Take a few minutes to note any administrative improvements you want to make during the year. It’s easy to leave administrative priorities off of planning calendars and then take care of them as they become important to you. However, planning for them makes it easier to execute your marketing because your momentum isn’t getting interrupted by emergencies that could have been avoided.

Do you need to add people to your team? Are your employment policies up-to-date? Do you need to create some educational materials for your team, so they have a better understanding of your goals and activities to help them do their jobs? Do you have scripts to handle in-bound customer calls? Are there problem vendors that need to be replaced? Do you need to set up an investment program to maximize cash you receive from your business?

These activities need to be planned out for the year to make sure you allocate time to complete them. There is no sense worrying about them or feeling guilty because you don’t get them all done. Plan some time each month during the year to get a few of these items completed. By the end of the year, you’ll be a lot better off than if you had tried to fit them in as you went along.

3:40 – 4:00 p.m. Add Date Commitments In the first step, you noted some conferences and programs you would like to attend in the next year. Go ahead and make a note of any of those dates that are available.

Note any dates for mastermind groups or coaching programs you participate in. Look for conferences within your niche that you should attend. Plus, this is a good time to note events you’ve wanted to attend, but haven’t found time for in the past.

4:00 – 4:30 p.m. Big Picture Planning Take a quick look at that list of successes and disappointments you created in the first phase of your planning. Are there any successes that need to be included in your calendar for next year? Are there any disappointments from last year repeated on your calendar that need to be removed?

Also, look at the work distribution. Did you load up too much work in any given month? Are travel commitments reasonable to maintain your workload? Are there ways to redistribute activities to make projects easier?

Look at the year. Are there ways to move activities around for efficiencies and to make sure you don’t create impossible deadlines for yourself?

4:30 – 5:00 p.m. Update Your Personal Calendar Open your personal calendar and put all of the dates and work you mapped out on the wall into your personal calendar. If you are running your business in addition to a job or another business you operate, plan around the work you have to do for that company.

But go through and set aside appointments with yourself to make sure you have the appropriate time to execute your business needs. Save some time for other activities that may pop up as you go along. Something always comes up unexpectedly, so give yourself several hours of flexibility per week at this stage of your planning.

Shortcut to Success While it’s good to have your planning calendar up where you can see it, you may not want it on your wall all year long. If not, set aside an hour or two each month to pull out your calendar and see if you are on track with the shortcut you laid out at the beginning of the year.

If you discover you are behind on a couple of activities, it’s a lot easier to get caught up if only a month or two have gone by. If you remember four months later that you were supposed to do something to generate an activity or revenue, chances are you’ve lost that opportunity for the year.

Use this planning time as a year-round tool for success.

Tools of Success Before you begin your planning process, collect these tools that will help you map out your activities for the year:

■Jumbo yearly wall calendar (erasable) Essential to the project, one of the 2′x3′ dry erase posters made by the At-A-Glance company will work. It allows you to see the year as a whole and how the weeks/months flow together.

■Dry erase markers When you buy your calendar, make sure you ask for dry erase markers. If you buy one of the eight-color packages, you can code each color for a different business function. You are free to come up with a color coding system that meets your needs; here is one option: Black – Business deadlines, tax filings, administrative requirements of running your business Red – New customer acquisition activities Blue – Increasing your customer value (average purchase size/purchase frequency) Green – Customer fulfillment and relationship activities Yellow – Seminars/meetings/coaching programs you are attending Orange – Personal activities/holidays/birthdays Brown – Administrative improvements in your business that you should schedule in advance Purple – Events you are producing

■Post-it notes These are nice to have in case you want to write a little more than you can with the dry erase markers. Also, it’s easier to move a comment to a new date if you change your mind. The small 2″ square ones in multiple colors are best. However, don’t try to use these small notes instead of writing directly on the calendar. The notes tend to fall off after a couple of hours, and you’ll find some of them on the floor the next day.

■Round stickers One-inch round color coding stickers are good for noting recurring deadlines, such as writing your newsletter. Just write a quick note on the sticker and put it on the correct date.

Robert Skrob is president of the Information Marketing Association with members marketing products in hundreds of different business categories. For a free video that reveals The Number One Secret to Creating Quick Sustainable Wealth In Your Life, visit wealth.

The one factor that separates millionaire business owners from all the rest is their willingness to promote themselves. Too many entrepreneurs hide behind a corporate faade, trying to make it look like they have big corporations; however, people want to buy from people, and the business owners who put themselves and their personalities into their marketing attract more customers than those who don’t.

Does the idea of self-promotion create a sickening feeling in your stomach? A lot of business owners are shy because they don’t feel worthy of promotion. If you’re starting out in business and you are working out of your garage or at the kitchen table, it’s easy to assume that no one wants to do business with you. It’s easy to undervalue your own skills. So, your first impulse is to create a big, fancy corporate name and to put up a website with an eye-catching logo. That’s the opposite of what you should do.

Put your personality into your marketing and make your business look small. Customers love doing business with the owner, not some faceless corporation. Many of the most successful (and smart!) big companies use a personality, or an individual, as the front person to build a relationship with customers.

For instance, the Wendy’s restaurant chain. Years ago, Wendy’s had a famous commercial campaign where a woman said, “Where’s the beef?” Funny as those commercials were in the 1980′s, and as well-known as they became, they did not generate sales for Wendy’s restaurants. The campaigns that outperformed those entertaining commercials were those featuring Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s. Each time Wendy’s introduced a special sandwich, Dave would go to the studio and shoot a commercial. Now, this was painful for Dave and everybody else involved. He had never performed in front of a camera. It took him dozens of takes just to say his name right. But he stuck with it because these commercials generated more customers than any other advertising approach.

Even for a large business, having an individual become the “face” of the company is better than trying to look like a big, fancy corporation. In fact, one of the huge shortcuts to making your business more popular and generating new customers and trust in the services you offer is to incorporate your personality into the marketing and to make yourself part of what people are buying.

One of the most famous examples of this is Lee Iacocca and the Chrysler Motor Company. Chrysler was in turmoil; it was about to go bankrupt and had to borrow from the federal government to stay in business. The most important thing Iacocca did to revive his ailing company was to appear in the company’s television commercials. Rather than doing a voiceover or using a professional celebrity, Iacocca became the celebrity for the corporation. The commercials featured Lee speaking to the viewer, saying things like “Everything you have heard is true; however, our corporation is battling back, and we are delivering high-quality products at fair prices to our customers. If you trust in me, you will receive a high-quality product.” Well, the American public identifies with an underdog. Iacocca’s sincerity and the fact that he and his company were battling back endeared him to his potential customers, and Chrysler’s sales soared because of it.

A third example is Donald Trump. Now, a lot of people do not like the Donald and are turned off by the amount of self-promotion he does. Donald is shameless; in every interview, he mentions how the next building is going to be the best building ever created, or a particular golf course is going to be the most popular golf course ever, the most beautiful, the most fun to play. Every building he has is going to sell out, and everybody involved is going to make more money working with him than they could with anyone else. Well, by saying these things over and over, even though he irritates many, he makes all of his boasts come true.

What holds true for Dave Thomas, Lee Iacocca and Donald Trump is also true for you. You may be shy, feel you aren’t worthy, or have been trained to be humble. All of that is fine-but not in business. In business, you will get paid to the extent that you are willing to promote yourself.

You earn new customers by telling the world that your products and services are the best and that doing business with you is the most pleasurable and worthwhile experience the customer can have. You will make a profit to the extent that you raise prices and encourage customers to compete with each other in order to have the privilege of doing business with you. And all of this will come to you only if you are unabashed, only if you suppress fear and promote yourself. Now, what are some of the ways you can promote yourself within your business?

In the Name of Your Business – In the early 1990′s, Harley Davidson Motor Company encouraged its dealers to name their dealerships based on their locations, for example, Atlanta Harley Davidson or Las Vegas Harley Davidson. What Harley Davidson discovered changed its philosophy. Now the company encourages Harley dealers to incorporate the name of the dealer principle, the owner of the dealership, into the name of the business, and to make the dealer principle into a local celebrity. For instance, Bruce Rossmeyer owns the Harley Davidson dealership in Daytona Beach. It used to be called the Daytona Beach Harley Davidson; now it’s Rossmeyer’s Daytona Beach Harley Davidson. And for years in South Florida and Miami Florida, there was Peterson’s Harley Davidson. Harley Davidson knows how to sell motorcycles, so you should borrow a page from its playbook. Use your name within your business to encourage folks to say, “You know, I trust him; I’m going to buy from him.”

In Your Marketing – Rather than include your logo all over your business marketing, it’s more important to include your image. Use your photograph, so people can see you and say, “Oh, yeah, I want to do business with him,” or “I want to call him.” Some business owners are concerned that if they use their photos on all of their marketing, they are going to have a terrible time trying to sell their businesses later. Well, the fact is, people want to buy businesses that have lots of revenue, not businesses that have pretty logos. So, if putting your photo in your marketing and characterizing yourself as a celebrity is going to generate more revenue for your business, then that is the fastest ticket to a high sales price for your business. You should do everything you can to include yourself in your marketing. Tell your story about how you got into business in as many of your marketing pieces as you can. That way, when your potential clients are reSearching which vendor they want to do business with, they can look at your story, consider who you are, and get to know you a little bit.

In a Monthly Printed Newsletter – Marketers who publish a monthly newsletter to keep in contact with their current customers and referral resources generate more revenue, better customer loyalty, a higher average purchase price, and a higher average purchase frequency than businesses that do not. A printed monthly newsletter is one of the most important tools any business owner can use to grow his business. Use this monthly newsletter as a tool to tell customers about yourself. If you have an opinion about something going on in business, in your community, or in your industry, tell customers how it relates to them and share your opinions on the subject. There may be some customers that get frustrated or upset with you, but you will attract in greater proportion the ones that agree with you. These customers will be good customers for you and will be more loyal to you because they will feel like they know you better. You can promote yourself and build a relationship with dozens or hundreds of customers all at one time through your monthly newsletter.

In Your Email List – In addition to the monthly newsletter, many business owners communicate with their customers through an email list. This is a great way to send out bi-weekly, weekly, or daily updates about new products or new information about your products and yourself. It can be as simple as the business owner’s calendar (where are you traveling this month?), the types of customers you are dealing with, or success stories. All of these ideas are great materials to send to an email list.

In Your Blog – Blogging is new in the world of marketing, but it has become very popular for young people. Since more and more young people are making buying decisions, blogging is going to become more important in a company’s marketing mix. Blogs are easy to create. Go to www.Blogger.com and create a free one. If all you do for now is make a monthly posting on your blog with content from your newsletter, then that is a good start. If you like, you can take your monthly newsletter content, break it up into four pieces, and post it each week. That way, you are able to recycle the same Information that you are sending to your customers. Post the information on your blog, and put a link to your blog on your website. Customers considering doing business with you or researching your company will be able to get to know who some of your customers are, they’ll see some of the things you are talking about with your customers, and they’ll be able to identify with you and say, “You know, this one’s for me. I can see that this person is going to deal with me fairly and is able to do a good job since he has all these other customers.” Providing ongoing communication via a blog can be a great way to promote yourself.

Self-promotion is a great way to keep your marketing up-to-date. We all know how easy it is to create a website and allow the content to grow stale. It takes so much work to get a website set up, that when you put it online, the first inclination is to just leave it alone and go on to other things. However, through blogging and posting newsletters, you will be able to keep your site’s content fresh and changing. So, when somebody comes to your website a year from now, there will be 12 months’ worth of new information, even if it’s just monthly posts on your blog. If you keep your customers informed of what’s going on, of new products, of new things, visitors to your site will see a vibrant, successful business with lots of activity and lots of customers.

As much as I don’t like to do it, self-promotion is one of the most important things I can do as a business owner. And the same goes for you. I understand that self-promotion doesn’t feel comfortable. I would rather speak through my actions than through my words. However, no one will know about my actions if I don’t tell them about it.

The extent to which you are willing to promote yourself will determine the number of customers you get and their willingness to pay you premium prices for the products and services you sell. Although you’ve been trained that self-promotion is bad, self-promotion is one of the most important skills you can have as a business owner. Self-promotion equals new customers in your business.

Robert Skrob is president of the Information Marketing Association with members marketing products in hundreds of different business categories. For a free video that reveals The Number One Secret to Creating Quick Sustainable Wealth In Your Life, visit wealth.