The only one holding you back is You. If you want to be successful in life or in business, you must have the proper mindset. You need to think positive and don’t buy into all of the negativity in the media. Yes as a nation we are going through some rough times, but with the proper mindset you can overcome anything.

If you think negatively then negative things will happen. If you think positively then positive things will happen. I believe this because I have seen it in my own life. I even have some friends that I do not see very often anymore because they are too negative and I choose not to be around it. I try to surround myself with positive people and influences. It does make a difference.

Worry and fear are a total waste of time and emotion. When something bad has happened to me in my life. I ask myself “Is worrying about it, going to change it?” No. “What is?” Taking action. The only person who can change their current situation is you.

You must believe in yourself if you want others to also believe in you. I was very fortunate that as a child growing up, my parents always told me “You can do anything you put your mind to” and I truly believe that. Most everything I tried while I was growing up, I believed that I could do these things and I did.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying I started out great at every one. Some took a bit of practice and some took learning different techniques but I believed I could do it and did not give up.

Never give up on anything you truly want to accomplish. Remember the old saying “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. It is true. We all make mistakes. We are not perfect. We are human. With persistence and an understanding of what went wrong on our first attempt, we can change our methods and techniques to improve the results.

Most successful people paid their dues and had some failures but they did not give up until they reached the desired results. Once you have obtained the results and reached your goal, the next step of course is to raise the bar. You have to always have some sort of goal to strive for. A motivating factor.

What are your goals in life? Analyze your goals. Write them down and add the reason you want to obtain those goals. Now break them down into smaller goals or tasks you need to accomplish to work toward that goal.

Most large goals seem unobtainable when you look at the big picture. That is why you need to break them down into smaller goals. Little bite sized chunks. You see, if you only look at the big picture and have no plan for how to obtain that large goal, than not only will it seem impossible but it will be impossible.

After you start accomplishing the smaller goals and tasks that get you closer to the larger goal. You start to feel like you can get there. You start to feel like maybe it isn’t impossible. You start to believe in yourself and build more self confidence. You start to believe that NOTHING is impossible.

This is the mindset you need to have if you want to be successful. We all have it in us, but when we are surrounded by constant negativity (like all the Doom & Gloom the media reports), we let the “fear factor’, the worry and the self-doubt take over our mindset and distract us from what truly matters.

I know there are set backs in life. As positive as I am, stuff happens that we have no control over. Like a failed marriage or a death in the family or losing your job due to the economy. The difference between your success or failure is how you react to these changing conditions or situations in your life.

A great example would be the loss of income due to the economy. There ARE things you can do. Yes it sucks to get laid-off but it is not the end of the world. Before the economy changed did you like your job or did you hate it. Were you excited to go there everyday or was it just a paycheck. Was your boss the coolest person to work for or was he or she just an asshole.

Lets put it all into perspective here. You see it IS all about perspective.

You perceive that losing your job was negative but you in fact hated being there.

Seize the opportunity. Work for yourself. That is what I did.

I was tired of not being appreciated for doing quality work. Instead of  getting mad I decided it was time to quit making them a bunch of money and taking care of their problems without proper compensation.

There are plenty of opportunities out there! If you lost your job and are looking for another, think about this.

There are plenty of existing businesses that need your skills and outsource a lot of work.

Go get your business license and join some local business networking groups in your area.

A great source is meetup.com and here is the url.   http://www.meetup.com

Join these groups and you can find work through other businesses in your network.

You can also find freelance work online at:

• http://www.elance.com
• http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/DotNet/Default.aspx
• http://www.guru.com
• http://www.odesk.com/w/

There are other places online to sell your services as well. Run a classified ad in Craigslist or use Ebay’s classifieds format.

Small companies may be more receptive to outsource your work rather than hire you because they will save money on medical benefits, unemployment taxes, etc…

Just remember that every setback offers an opportunity. By taking action on that opportunity, it could mean the difference between your success or failure.

Seize the opportunity and make it happen. The only one holding you back is you!

To Your Success,

Randy Drummond

Tags: business, Business Building, entrepreneur, home based business, inspiration, mindset, motivation, Niche Marketing, niches, success, success secrets

There are plenty of places to find your next niche. They may even be right in front of you. In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned when you are choosing your first niche, to pick something you are passionate about. If you are in a niche you are passionate about then a good source for new ideas may be  within your niche.

Just think back in time when you first started learning about that niche. Put yourself in the customers shoes. What were the first things you wanted to learn? What were the first questions you had? What were the stumbling blocks or things that just stumped you? What were the next things you wanted to learn? Take notes as you go back in time and relive the journey of how you got to be so knowledgeable about that niche. I’m sure by the time you are done you will probably have your next product or two picked out.

Another good source is your customers. Have you ever polled or surveyed your actual customers to see what they want to learn? Most would answer no, and my question would be “why not”? Most peoples response would probably be something like “I know what my customers want” or “They keep buying my stuff so I must be doing something right”. Well, your customers answers may surprise you.

Your customers may like you, and your customers may have built up some kind of a relationship with you BUT if you cannot answer their next big question or get them past their next stumbling block, who says they will stay your customer. Who says they won’t jump ship and go check out some other expert who’s sales letter is very good and they say they “Have the answer I have been looking for all along”, plus bonuses. Get it. Unless you KNOW what your customers REALLY want, they WILL be buying elsewhere.

The ONLY people who have the skill to think just like their customers are all millionaires.

Another great source for finding your next niche market is your local grocery store or book store. Whichever has a large selection of magazines. Look through the popular magazines in your niche and note all of the current ads. Most of the ads that appear on a regular basis, month after month are all for a specific product or type of product within that niche. A micro-niche. If that product or ad remains in the magazine month after month than people are buying that product and their IS a market for it.

Now you have some ideas to research. Go online and check out how much competition their is in that micro-niche. Do the keyword research to be sure that the keywords you are targeting are going to be keywords you can dominate or at least get a high page rank for. If it looks like a good micro-niche than you need to create a product for it, or see if their is a good affiliate program already in existence that you can promote until you can create your own.

Another way to find your next niche is to go to Google Trends and note the top searches. Then go to Ebay Pulse and see what is hot and write that down too. Now go to Clickbank, Commission Junction or any other affiliate marketplace you can think of and see what the hottest selling products are on each. Is there any common factors between all of these sources? Write that down.

Get on Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool and see what keywords people are specifically searching for in the notes you made. See if there have been any good search terms that have a high volume and low competition. Just because there are some hot items out there doesn’t mean all of the best keywords are saturated with competition. Sometimes they are and that means you look for more micro-niches or a twist on what ever is already there.

If you are an expert in any of those niches and somebody else has a hot item out there, you can either become an affiliate and promote theirs or study their offer and see if you can improve it. Take the customer’s perspective and see if something is missing. If they are not hitting the mark, or you think you can do better, than do it. You have your next product idea.

Take action and make it happen. Remember that any idea, whether it is good or great, is useless unless you take the steps that are necessary to bring it to the marketplace, before somebody else does !

To Your Success,

Randy Drummond

Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Business Building, entrepreneur, home based business, make money online, Micro-Niches, Niche Marketing, niches, Product Ideas

Generating leads is a vital part of your business. This article will touch on 5 ways to generate leads in a cost effective, but highly efficient manner. The best leads are those which are very targeted and as such, we will talk about strategies which give your business the best chance of gaining the most benefits from your leads list – whether that is an online email list or an offline list of prospect leads.

Tags: business, Business Building, business leads, Email Marketing, leads, make money online, niche traffic, niches, traffic generation