Archives for January 2009

Ethics and Building Your Online Business

January 24, 2009 by Doug Mcisaac

In Seth Godin’s post today he touched on ethics in our increasingly transparent world. I’ve had issues for years with people who believe that “business is Business” and that they can be unethical in their business dealings and still be ethical.

One of my favorite books on this issue was “There’s no Such Thing as Business Ethics” by John C. Maxwell. Several people commented when they saw the title because many people believe that you can live your life in two parts. Then I had to explain to them that the point of the books was that there are only ethics, period. There aren’t personal ethics and business ethics.

Now with the increasing transparency of the internet it is becoming harder for people to hide:

“The Net enlarges the public sphere and shrinks the private one. And black hats require the private sphere to exist and thrive. More light = more success for the ethical players.”

The news is filled with stories of businesses who have tried to manipulate online social and video networks and have received far more backlash from their efforts than they ever could have received from the initial efforts.

I believe that in today’s increasingly transparent business climate those that provide real honest value will win in the long run. What are your thoughts?

Wanna Be’s

January 19, 2009 by Doug Mcisaac

I’ve been entrepreneurial my entire life, but have had various levels of success. The more successful you are the more you are hounded by “wann be’s” to find out the “the secret.” But most of them really don’t want to hear the real answer. We’ll discuss that in another post for today I want to line out the different types of “wann be’s.”

1. Lottery Wanna Bes

They watch all of the “Rich and Famous” shows and dream of living like the stars. But do nothing to move themselves towards their dreams except to complain about their jobs and talk about winning the lottery to solve all of their problems. It won’t, it’s been shown over and over that even if they win they’ll be broke in 3-5 years.

2. Late night Wanna Be’s

The next big group buys all of the late night infomercial products and other “how to get rich by selling programs to people like you” programs. Then they allow these books and programs to collect dust quite often without even cracking the cover. Studies have shown that 90% never make it past the first chapter/tape/CD.

3. Meeting Wanna Be’s

These folks talk the walk. They make plans, they go to the meetings and talk big dreams but still don’t do anything with their new knowledge. We all know someone that has been through a dozen different Network marketing organizations, but never seems to do anything.

5. Perfect Wanna Be’s

This is the “paralysis by analysis syndrome.” These people are just afraid to commit. They just plan and plan and plan. A good example is guy who’s come to me a dozen times over the last 8-10 years talking about opening a hydroponics greenhouse. Every time he sees me he talks to me about his plans. How he could make so much money if somebody would just give him the $10 million that he needs to get started. When I ask him what he’s done to show that he’s the right person to run one of these he never has an answer. The conversation ends when I ask him how many years experience he has running a greenhouse and tell him that the 8 years of talking about it don’t count. Ironically I believe that it’s a good idea, but he has done nothing to prove that he really is committed to doing it..

6. Wrong system Wanna Be’s

These are the toughest to be annoyed with. I feel their pain because I’ve been right where they are. They actually are working. They are following the systems that they were taught. They are doing the affirmations, they are walking the talk. BUT they keep choosing the wrong system for their talents and abilities or they get to where they are almost over the hump and they listen to all of the voices of negativity that they are surrounded by and give up. I spent a lot of my time in this category. I tried MLM and gave up when I was probably 3 months away from being able to go full-time. I’m sure everyone who’s reading this has tried something online or offline to make money. For these wanna be’s the main thing to focus on is their own knowledge and skills. We are not all Yanik Silver, Perry Marshal or Dan Kennedy. We need to be honest with ourselves and take a real assessment of our strengths and weaknesses. Stay tuned to discover the process to discover your strengths.

Don’t be embarrassed if you see your self in one of these categories we’ve all been there. Now is the time to focus your energies. I’ll cover some good ways to find your calling in the next post.

Truth about Making Money With teleseminars Recording

January 8, 2009 by Doug Mcisaac

After some connection issues on my side I ended having a great interview with Kathleen Gage. She had some great pieces of advice for anyone marketing online, my personal favorite is “become a resource before you become a vendor” I think that too many people try to sell before they’ve established a sold relationship. One of the best ways to establish a relationship is to provide information that solves your target markets problems or helps them achieve their dreams.

Kathleen wanted me to make sure that everyone downloaded her free teleseminar report which you can access here

The Truth about Making Money with Teleseminars recording can be downloaded here http://budurl.com/KathleenGage

I hope you enjoy the recording as much as I enjoyed the interview.

Doug

Remove the YouTube Search Bar

January 8, 2009 by Doug Mcisaac

I was going through my embedded videos manually changing the code when I said to myself, “I bet there’s an easier way” So I emailed a programming buddy of mine,and asked how much effort it would take to write a script to add the code to remove the search bar. I included a link to my earlier post about the tweak I learned from Jason Moffat.

I expected an email telling me how much time it would take and what it would cost. He emailed the script and told me not to worry about it. So I put up a site where anyone who wants to use the script can use it and if you would like a copy simply sign up and I’ll email it to you.

The script is live at Remove the Search Bar