So you want to create more money in your bank account, connect with dreamy ideal clients, find your soulmate, and generally have more of everything else that brings you joy, peace and fulfillment?

But it seems like no matter how hard you try to get everything just right and make it turn turn out like you hope it will, something goes wrong and you end up with a result you decidedly do NOT want. It might look like…

• You worked your bum-bum off to create and launch a new program or product you’re SO excited about… but when you do, the sound you hear isn’t the cha-ching of you bank account filling with sales but rather the sound of crickets chirping along to the sound of no sales at all.

• You’ve been angling for a promotion at work, you’ve put in the long-hours, kicked butt on all of your projects and when it came time to hand out the accolades and bump in pay, you were passed by like the fruitcake Grandma Besty brings to Christmas dinner.

• Hooray! You just signed up a new client! But then over the next few weeks, your celebrating grinds to a halt as this awesome new client turns into your worst nightmare, missing appointments, skipping payments and rejecting your best efforts at every turn. “Another one?? How?? Why??”, you whimper to yourself as you try and figure out how you’re going to tough it out because you need the money.

You deserve better… and you deserve a lot more of all the good things in life… and deep down you know it. Yes, it’s time to stop self-sabotaging your own success.

So what’s up with all the problems actually getting all the amazing things you want?

I’m talking about not only more of the material stuff… boatloads of money, a swanky house in a primo location or a luxury car… I’m talking about:

• Having amazing relationships that nurture and uplift you

• Doing work that totally lights you up… and make a generous income doing it

• Embodying true well-being in the most holistic sense of the word - mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually

• Having the freedom to live your life in the way that feels most soul-aligned for you

Wanting more… desiring to be, do, and have something different than what you already have (when it doesn’t involve harm to others) is the way that our Higher Self / the Universe / God steers us to the next step and next level of growth. So, desiring more isn’t wrong or bad at all. Far from it!

But so many people wrestle with feeling guilty or wrong for wanting more of whatever it is they want.

Or they feel they have to justify why they want it (and if it’s not a “good enough” reason, then they harshly judge themselves).

Or they’re going about trying to create the life of their dreams unconsciously… but consciously creating your life is the only real way to have all those amazing things you want.

In reality, most people in the world are just trying to get through the day without too many headaches. They’re thinking about how to avoid what they don’t want instead of consistently focusing on what they do want for their lives. They’re unconsciously reacting to what happens to them based on ingrained beliefs and patterns, instead of consciously responding to events based on what they want to create.

The truth is that you are constantly co-creating your life with everyone else on the planet and with the Universe. Your life is a direct result of your whatever your co-creation process is, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, by design or default. The beauty is that in every moment, you get the opportunity to make a new choice:

Am I going to let unsupportive beliefs and patterns run the show and sabotage my dreams?

Or am I going to do what I need to do to consciously take the reins and steer my life in the direction that I want it to go?

Since you’re reading this article, I’m betting you’re the kind of person who wants to consciously, intentionally create your life in the easiest, most joyful way. Am I right? So let’s talk about how to do exactly that.

Step 1: Leverage your power to create by first accepting full responsibility for all of your outcomes

If what you have right now isn’t exactly what you really desire - or you simply are ready to go even bigger with your life - the first step is to acknowledge, accept and fully embody that YOU are the creator of your life.

If you can’t get on board with the fact that either consciously or unconsciously you create the circumstances of your life, then you may as well stop reading now.

Still reading? Good.

Whether you look at it through the lens of “conscious response vs. unconscious reaction” (like NLP does), or simply a go-getter / hustler attitude of “I make my life happen”, or from a more spiritual perspective of your oneness with Source and the co-creative power that comes from it, all roads point to this:

You will get far more of the kind of results you desire (from biz / life / people) when you accept full responsibility for your thoughts, energy, beliefs and actions and you consciously choose to direct them.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? You’re either making choices and shaping your life “on purpose” or living by default and reacting to outside agendas.

The problem is that many people THINK they’re operating from “conscious creation” most of their waking hours when they’re really not. Our human brains are oh-so-wonderful at creating patterns of thinking and habits in order to conserve energy, not become overwhelmed and to establish what’s safe for us or not (i.e., the comfort zone).

Here’s a quick way to know if you’ve REALLY accepted full responsibility for your life’s outcomes and if you’re operating from conscious creation the majority of the time:

• Do you catch yourself complaining about your circumstances?

• Do you often blame others for things that happen to you?

• Have you been feeling frustrated about what’s happening in your life, business / work / career, relationships and health, but you haven’t done much to change it?

If you answered “yes” to the above, then you’re probably operating more from unconscious patterns than you realize, and you definitely want to pay attention to Step 3. Rest assured, though, we ALL have room for improvement in this area!

Step 2: Get specific about what you want and then ask for it

The second step is to get really, really clear on what you want to create and then ask for it. What do you want more of in your life? You can’t just go out and manifest what you want if you don’t know what you want. And frankly, so many people don’t know what they want. They don’t sit and take the time to really think about specifically what it is they want. (It’s the same reason most people either don’t have goals or don’t write them down.)

So if you say, “I want more money, what the specifically does that mean? “More money” to me probably means something different than “more money” to you. If you said you want more money and you then find a dollar on the street… well, you now have more money, but that probably wasn’t really the amount you were aiming for. So, you need to be really clear and specific and then ask for it.

How do you “ask” for what you want? Depending on your set of beliefs, it could look like:

1. Literally asking someone for the thing you want, i.e., the promotion, the business, more affection, the vacation you’re dreaming about, etc.

2. Asking yourself empowered questions that put your human mind into “find and seek mode”. Our brains are wired to find answers, so when you ask yourself the right questions, your brain will start looking for the answer in your environment and lead you to it. For example, if you wanted to get in front of more of your ideal customers, you could ask yourself, “What are three ways that I can get in front of my ideal customers today?”, or “What platform would be the best way for me to get in front of 200 more of my ideal customers within the next 10 days?”

3. Sitting in meditation or going into your Akashic or Soul Records and asking for guidance. Doing this has been so profoundly powerful for me that it’s now the first thing I do every weekday morning. Questions I often ask are, “What is my next, most aligned step to take to have X?”, “I desire to create X. What am I not currently aware of that I need to know about how to do this?”, or “What do I need to release and what do I need to align with in order to create X in the fastest, most fun and joyful way?”

And don’t forget about also getting clear on what you want to let go of or change. Most people skip over this part because we all hear “focus on the positive!”. But knowing what you DON’T want can be really helpful. When you ask yourself, “What do I want to release? What am I no longer willing to have in my life?”, you’ll come up with a list of things about which you can then ask, “If I didn’t have this anymore, then what would I want to replace it?”, which will help you get even clearer on what you DO desire to create.

(You can read more about these steps here.)

Plus, when you let go of what’s not supporting or serving you, whether that’s beliefs, relationships, possessions or anything else, you create the space for something new that IS in alignment with your desires to come in. After all, you can’t pour more into a cup that’s already full.

Which brings us to Step 3...

Step 3: Clear out or transform what’s getting in the way

Some manifestation and spiritual teachers argue that you don’t need to bother with clearing out unsupportive beliefs, healing old traumas or transforming your energy and perspective on a situation that’s got your knickers in a wad. And I see their point: It’s not helpful to dwell on all the junk that’s clogging things up because you just energize it more and it sucks your time and attention. I totally agree with the “not dwelling or focusing on it” part.

But we’re souls having a HUMAN experience and filtering our experiences through our HUMAN minds, and our human minds and the unconscious beliefs and patterns that have been established there control the show for the most part. So unless you deal with the human mind elements that are getting in your way, you can think positive and read affirmations until you’re blue in the face, but you’ll still find yourself avoiding following up with a hot prospect because you don’t want to feel rejected, or you won’t go after the promotion because you don’t feel 100% qualified yet, or you’ll go out and treat yourself to a nice meal even though your bank account is overdrawn, or you’ll buy and eat a bag of potato chips even though you’ve resolved to drop 50 pounds. These are just a few examples of how our human minds sabotage our best intentions and plans.

Time and again I’ve witnessed this in my own life and in others’ lives, too: When you DON’T do the clearing out, healing, releasing and/or transforming step, you end up sabotaging your best efforts. Decision, intention and willpower can overcome some unconscious patterns for a little while, but without doing the deeper inner work, results will be short-lived. This is the main reason that I include the deeper mindset, energetic and spiritual work in the business coaching and programs I offer, even though some view “business / career success” and “personal success ” as two separate categories. In my opinion, they’re not separate because you’re ONE person and without doing the inner work, it’s much harder to succeed and get the kind of results you want with your work.

Again, if you’re now realizing you have a lot of inner “junk” to clear out, this isn’t something for you to judge or shame yourself over! No matter how practiced you are in releasing and clearing, there’s always more to do as you up-level yourself and your life. This is simply an opportunity for you to become aware of where your humanness isn’t supporting your big dreams and desires, where it’s undercutting your efforts, and where it’s straight-up blocking you from moving forward so you can do something about it. Awareness of this allows for you to start making different decisions and conscious choices right now.

Step 4: Receive the way to what you want while staying open to getting something even better than you can imagine for yourself right now

Then, the last part I’ll share here is maintaining an attitude of openness to what you want coming to you in ways you can’t even imagine. It’s the “this or something better” approach. In Step 1, you got really clear about what you want, but one of the things I’ve learned is that sometimes we tend to think a little too small. We can’t help but view life through our own beliefs of what’s possible and possible for us. Even when we try to think “bigger”, there is only so much we can actually think up because we’re limited in our knowledge.

For example, let’s say you’re trying to think of all of the ways you could create an extra $5,000 within the next week. You put pen to paper and come up with 30 ways. That’s a great start, for sure, but there are certainly far more ways that the $5,000 could come to you than what’s written on your paper and you’re simply not aware of them. You literally don’t know about all the opportunities. That’s why you want to leave the door open to receiving what you want or something better in ways you can’t even currently conceive of.

A perfect, real-life example comes from a very tough time in my life over a decade ago when I was employed as a financial planner. The short story is that I loved my clients but hated the work environment and was totally miserable. I desperately wanted another job, so I wrote down as best I could what I wanted that job to look like. I got really clear on how I felt in the job and the overarching qualities of the job, but I had no idea what that kind of job was or how I could possibly find such an amazing dream job, especially since I didn’t even know what to call it. So I left the door open to something better coming in while following the divine breadcrumbs I received.

A job opportunity far more amazing than I ever could’ve imagined for myself came into my world about a month later. Of course, I followed through with the practical action steps to get the job while working to overcome just about every fear I had about feeling unqualified, not capable enough to handle such a big opportunity and doing something I’d never done before in a very public way. But doing both the inner work and taking the practical, “real world” action is how I landed the coveted opportunity to work side-by-side with personal development and business guru T. Harv Eker to launch and manage four of his blockbuster programs (including a $20,000 per person retreat program).

What the Universe has planned for you and me is a whole lot bigger than what we can imagine for ourselves when coming at it from our human perspective (another reason I love working in the Akashic Records). When we have our heart set on manifesting something, whether it’s a certain amount of money, a new relationship or a particular job, the Universe often has something much better in store for us when we stay focused on our desired outcomes, root ourselves in the faith that the Universe always has our backs (even as we do the parts that are ours to do), and align ourselves to allow all kinds of possibilities to flow to us. The trick is not to disregard or disqualify the guidance we receive, and in the process, fall back into unconscious patterns that undermine our ability to consciously create what we want.

So, what is it that you want?

What do you desire deep down in your heart and soul to do, be and/or have?

And what beliefs, patterns or habits have you noticed that you fall back into that sabotage your efforts? (If you’re not clear on what those are, take a look at where you’re stuck or keep encountering undesired results in your life.)

Share in the comments!

Ready to finally clear the path to your Divine Abundance? 

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What’s it really take to have what you want in life? To create the life you see others having that you wish you had? 

When you’re in caught up in the craziness of everyday life, it can be easy to slip into a rut and let a big dream slowly fade away.

If you’ve been working really hard to create the kind of life that you’re dreaming of, it can feel really frustrating and disappointing when things don’t seem to change. Sometimes the gap between your current circumstances and the where you want to be can look so huge that you miss the opportunities and gifts you have right now.

The funny thing is that when you hold a big goal in mind, but you’re still at peace with where you are right now, turning the vision you have for your life into your reality becomes a lot easier.

So, how can you do that?

Keep reading and watch the video for five simple steps that will help you reach your big goals while enjoying life more, no matter where you are in your journey.
 

Step 1: Work with what you’ve already got

The first strategy I want to share with you is you’ve got to work with what you got. Now, there are people who are out there struggling right now and living paycheck to paycheck, and you may feel like you may never get to the vision you hold for yourself. But if you are trying to build a business doing something you enjoy and around the work you love, but you’re feeling frustrated because you don’t have the resources or tools that you need, you’ve got to work with what you already have right now.

Instead of just focusing on, “I can’t do it because I don’t have the perfect backdrop for my video livestream” or “I can’t afford the fancy tools to launch my business or grow it” or “I only have a few hours a week to grow my business because I’m staying at home with the kids", you’ve got to work at what you got. And I promise you that when you start taking an inventory of the resources you already have around you, then you’ll be surprised at the number of things that you actually have access to.

For example, what kind of network do you already have? Your personal network, your friend network, your community network, and your online network.... How can they be a resource and an asset for you?

Another example: Your creativity. Nobody can take your creativity from you and it’s an infinite resource. Challenge yourself: how can you get creative about growing your business, launching your business or doing the things that you want to do in your life and managing your time so you can do them? What kind of options and solutions can you come up with?

So I ask you: What resources do you have access to that maybe you’re not using fully or at all? Maybe you’re in a job that you really don’t like and you want to change jobs or you want a promotion that you want but you think you’re not qualified for. Think about the ways in which you are qualified. 

The reality is that YOU are the only person who’s keeping you from going after what you want. All you have to do is look at the people who’ve started big companies. Take a look at Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman when they started Nike. They didn’t have a lot of resources. They started Nike by making the shoe outsoles in a waffle iron! Literally. But that was what he had available at the time and look at how big a company Nike is now. There are countless examples of people who started with nothing. All they had was a vision for where they wanted to go and a burning desire, so they simply started with what they had. 

Nowadays the internet gives you access to virtually unlimited free resources that can help you start and grow your business, reinvent yourself and transform your life if you’re not yet where you want to be. It’s rarely for a lack of access to information but rather a problem with implementing that information. Put your creative thinking cap and start coming up with ways you can use the resources you’ve already got, even if you feel like you don’t have a lot of resources. 

Step 2: Hold a clear vision for what you desire

In order to focus - and take aligned action - to create the kind of business and life you want to have, you have to have a clear vision of what that looks like for you.  As the famous Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, then you’ll end someplace else.” And isn’t that so true? If you don’t have the vision for what you want to create - for the kind of business you want to have and what you want your life to look like as a result of that business or just in general - you’re just going to end up kind of wandering through life.

My question for you is, are you kind of wandering through life? Or have you sat down and actually given some thought what you want your life to be like? 

When you hit 90 years old and you’re looking back at your life and the things you’ve done, what do you want to see? If you were to write a book about your life, what do you want to be in that book? What’s your vision for the life you want to have?

Now, some people will say, “Well, you never know what’s going to happen in life and there’s no point in setting goals because things happen and goals change.” Well, yeah, they change, but that doesn’t mean you don’t aim for something to begin with. You start with a vision for where you’re going, get into action that takes you in that direction and maybe somewhere along the way you learn something that changes your vision a little bit, so you simply adjust course. You change the things that you’re doing to get to that new vision.

Frankly, if you’re living life and you’re interested in expanding yourself and your soul’s experience here, then your vision will change. It will evolve - it’s supposed to. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a vision for your life at all. Without a vision for the kind of life you want to lead, one day you’re likely have a moment when you think, “How did I get here? How did my life turn out this way?” and feel quite disappointed with what you’ve done with your life.  With a clearly defined vision, even if life doesn’t go exactly according to plan, you’ll be headed in the same general direction and you just may create something even better than the original vision you had for yourself.

Step 3: Don’t be attached to the “how”

Have you ever heard the saying that goes, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans”?  But I think people misinterpret this to mean “don’t make plans at all”. It doesn’t mean you don’t make plans… just don’t get super attached to those plans or how that vision that you’re holding is going to happen.

That’s what holds a lot of people back and what keeps a lot of people from investing the time to think about the vision they have for themselves. They get very attached to the “how”, like, “I have this vision for my business. It’s going to be a million-dollar business and it’s gotta happen this way and at this time.” When things don’t happen like they envisioned, then they toss the entire vision into the trash can, when a more supportive approach would be to hold the vision for where you’re going, but if something else happens that supports your overall desire, make room for it.

Your life may end up being taken in a completely different direction and one so amazing that you couldn’t conceive of it. That’s what happened to me. When I was working in corporate, I was totally miserable and I eventually quit my job. What happened after that and how I got to be doing the work I’m doing now, I literally never could’ve imagined if for no other reason than I didn’t know that people actually got paid to do the work I ended up doing and the work that I’m doing now. The “how” that showed up enabled me to turn a far better vision for my life into reality. So, allow your vision to evolve and be open to wonderful things coming into your life and changing that vision, but still start off with an initial vision, so at least you have something you’re aiming for.

If you don’t have a vision for yourself right now, spend some time writing down your vision for yourself. Just let it flow. Get it out of your head. What do you want your life to be like? What do you want your business to be like? How do you want to deliver your heart-work into the world and make your impact on the world? Write it down.

Step 4: Be at peace with where you are now

When you stuck in frustration or overwhelm, or you envy the life that you see other people having that you want, you become a magnet for more of what you don’t want. And the opposite also applies: when you’re at peace with where you are right now and you’re not in that space of pining or feeling frustrated by the distance between where you are and where you want to be, then getting to that vision you hold is a lot easier, happens faster and is a more enjoyable journey. Staying in high-vibration energy will help you manifest what you desire.

You can choose to come from the place of “this is where I am, and I know I want to be here” without attaching negative energy to it. Instead, focus on the excitement and happy anticipation of what you’re calling in and creating. That’s when things are really going to click for you. 

Step 5: Consistently take aligned action

We’ve already established that you must hold the energy for that vision you want to bring in and create, but you also have to action and take action consistently towards creating that vision. I look at the process of manifestation whatever it is that you want as a partnership between us and the Divine / the Universe. Each of us must do our part. Yes, you need to be open to intuition and being guided in the direction to your soul’s journey in this lifetime, but you also have to actually act on that guidance by taking consistent action.

For example, if you’re launching or growing a business around doing work you love, there are certain things you should be doing to grow your business from a practical standpoint. You should be engaging in marketing activities that make you visible so that your potential clients can find you.

Don’t make it hard for them to find you. You have to make it easy. Do livestreams. Get on Facebook. Create posts. Go to meet-up groups and tell people about what you do. Share from a place of your passion and that’s how it feels good too, when you’re sharing from your excitement and your passion for what you’re doing. People love excitement and passion that’s authentic, but then you have to take the consistent action.

Even if your blog post doesn’t get any comments. Even if your livestream has only a handful of view. Even if you’re not seeing the kind of results you want to see after months of trying, taking consistent, aligned action pays off over time (assuming you’re taking the kind of action that supports success). 

What is one step that you can take right now that you will commit to doing consistently? Is it going to be doing livestreams to help grow your business? Is it going to be blogging on a regular basis? Is it going after a job you really want by throwing your hat in the ring and applying for it?  

What will you do that will put you a step closer towards that big vision that you hold for yourself? 

Share your thoughts!

• Do you find it difficult to stay focused on where you’re going instead of your current circumstances?
  

• What’s one action you can take right now for creating the life and business you want to have?

Share in the comments below!
 

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Have you ever been faced with making a tough choice and felt overwhelmed by the process of simply making a decision? If you're feeling stuck in indecision, sometimes making a decision at all can feel like the hardest thing.

But why is that? And how can you make the right decision quickly?

Follow this simple decision making process to identify your options, get clear on the best choice and move forward fast without regret.

Why people are afraid of making a decision

Our society places a lot of emphasis on making right decisions. It only makes sense then that one of the biggest fears around making a decision is the fear of making the wrong one. We’re often afraid a decision is going to somehow turn into an unmanageable disaster. Then we’d have to deal with the terrible consequences, plus feeling ashamed and embarrassed that we made the “wrong” choice.

Realistically, some decisions are more difficult to make and have bigger repercussions than others. You might be the leader of a company where your decision impacts the lives and well-being of hundreds or thousands of employees. Or your decision might make or break your entrepreneurial startup. Or making the wrong decision could have dire consequences for yourself and your loved ones.

But letting fear rule your decision making process can lead to unnecessary procrastination and last-minute decision making, which often leads to less than optimal results.

Years ago fear is exactly what held me back from making a much-needed life change for a long time… until I followed the steps I share below to make a decision that was right for me so I could confidently move forward. Unlike typical decision making processes, my approach helps you overcome the root of decision paralysis: the fear of making the wrong choice and suffering the physically, emotional, or financially painful consequences.

Before we dive into the steps of how to make a decision a lot more easily, there's something really important you need to understand first:

Staying stuck in indecision is a choice and it's a disempowering one.

What indecision means is that you are making a default decision of “no choice”. And, when you avoid proactively making a decision of your own, then you end up reacting to others' decisions. It's "decision by default", and it's far from the best decision making process to use if you want to achieve your desired outcomes.

What it comes down to is that you can either choose to proactively make a decision that hopefully goes your way… or you can reactively deal with the consequences of not deciding. Either way, you’re still responsible for the outcomes.

Here’s the mindset you need to adopt:

Making decisions is empowering.

But I understand how hard procrastination and indecision can be to overcome, especially with big decisions.

The first blog post I ever wrote was inspired by my own struggles with feeling stuck in indecision with a part of my business. Not making a decision fast cost me a ton of time, energy and money.

My utter frustration with my inability to make a decision and move forward finally ended my analysis paralysis, but in hindsight, it didn't have to be so hard. Making decisions from a clear and empowered place within yourself is a critical skill to learn how to do.

Step 1: Identify the main problem or challenge and your desired outcome

The first step you need to take is to get clear about the problem or challenge and what the desired outcome is. This step is often quite easy, as you may be right in the middle of the problem state or be experiencing the consequences of the challenge right now. If the problem were solved today, what would things be like? What do you wish were different? Now you know your desired outcomes.

Write down in a concise phrase or two:

• What's the main problem or challenge?

• What's the desired outcome?

Your decision is what you hope will get you from the main problem state to the desired outcome state.

Step 2: Make a list of your options

Given the information you have available to you, what are your options? What possible avenues are you aware of? What resources do you already have access to that could help you?

Make a list of all the possibilities that you can think of while trying not to judge which ones are "good" or "bad" at this point. More often than not, there is more than one way to create the result you desire.

Step 3: Face your fears about making a decision

This is where the mindset rubber meets the road and you do the important groundwork of facing your fears. If you don't, the fear of making the wrong decision or not knowing what will happen can keep you paralyzed or second-guessing any decision you eventually do make. So you're going to go at these fears head on and list out the worst case scenarios that could happen as a result of choosing each option from step two.

I'll give you an example from my own life and why this step was such an important part of the decision making process I developed.

When I was a financial planner many years ago, at a certain point it became very clear to me that it wasn't the right career for me. But I felt stuck and didn't know how to quit a job that give me the safety and income security that came with it. For a long time I was too scared to make the leap to doing something else because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So I kept slogging through my days as I wrestled with what to do.

I soon reached the point where I felt completely burned out and exhausted. I couldn’t stomach the thought of going into work and I couldn’t bear feeling so miserable any longer. That’s when I developed this process. It starts with getting your fears out onto paper where you can see them in black and white and start to dispel them.

I thought, “What if I did quit my job without knowing what's next? What are the worst possible outcomes?” I started listing out all the terrible things I imagined could happen as a result.

These are some things that were on my list:

• I won’t have any income and so I'll end up homeless.

• I won’t be able to feed myself.

• I’ll feel so embarrassed and ashamed.

• People would think I’m an irresponsible loser.

I listed as many fears around quitting my job as I could think of. That gave me the opportunity to get some perspective and see the truth about how likely it was or wasn't that each fear would come to pass. For some people, quitting their job would actually result in them to become homeless. In my case, I felt like that wasn’t going to happen because I had enough friends and enough family who would lend me a hand if I needed it. I went through my list and started addressing each fear I had. (If you find the fears you list particularly triggering or overwhelming, you might need outside help dealing with them).

Step 4: Imagine the best possible outcomes

Now that you've faced your fears, look at the flip side. What are the best possible outcomes that could happen as a result of each option you listed in step two?

Continuing with my own example of quitting my then job, this is what I listed:

• I could find work that I love.

• I could feel fulfilled by my work every day.

• With the right work, I’d feel like I was making a real difference in people’s lives.

• I might find a career that felt more in alignment with my values.

• I’d be able to inspire people to go for their dreams, too.

Even though I didn’t know what to call the job I wanted, those are the feelings and the qualities I wanted for whatever work I’d choose to do.

Go ahead and add to your own list now.

Step 5: Make a decision and stick to it for at least 72 hours

One of the huge costs of staying stuck in indecision and overwhelm is the toll it takes on your personal energy and well-being. Not making a decision keeps you from channeling that energy to something that’s more productive, not to mention the emotional stress it leads to.

That's why this step involves quickly looking at what you have listed out so far, making a decision and committing to sticking with it for at least 72 hours. Sit with your decision. See what it feels like when you’ve had a chance to breathe and start to feel unstuck. What does it feel like? What’s the feedback you’re getting? Does it seem like the right decision for you after all?

Important, far-reaching decisions sometimes need more time to see what the outcomes are and for you to get the feedback that you need... or the results may happen almost immediately. You want to let your fears settle down so you don’t throw yourself back into a spiral of indecision by second-guessing yourself too soon, which is why I suggest you stick with your decision for a minimum of 72 hours (longer is better).

In the story I've been sharing with you, just simply making a decision moved me out of overwhelm and helped me to finally move forward. The really amazing part is that less than two months after I quit that job, the opportunity for my dream job showed up (and I got it).

Just like it says in the old story about a reporter and a monk, "You can’t fill a cup that is already full."

Step 6: Be compassionate with yourself

There's an axiom in Neuro-Liguistic Programming (NLP) that says:

"At every moment, everyone is doing the best they can."

Basically that means that given the information, circumstances, mindset, belief systems, resources and options you're aware of the time you make a decision, the decision you make will reflect the "best" you're capable of. Always.

When you think about it, it makes sense. No one sits around thinking, “What is the worst decision I can make here? Let me do that so I can totally screw up and suffer the consequences.” We are all making the best decisions we can at any given moment, even if in hindsight some of them seem like bone-headed decisions.

Belief systems, mindset and perception are what primarily determine what seems like the "best" or "right" decision to you (which is why working with people on these things is such a passion of mine). And we're bound to make some "wrong" decisions. That's why it's so important to be forgiving and compassionate with yourself if a decision doesn't turn out the way you thought it would. You have the opportunity every day at every moment to learn and choose differently again.

Step 7: Review, and if needed, revise

After you've let enough time pass, take stock of your results. Did you solve the problem? Did you achieve your desired outcome or goal or at least come close? What were the unintended bad outcomes you didn't expect, if any? Where is there room for improvement?

Lastly, what did you learn from going through the decision-making process? Use your discoveries to revise your decision-making process to make it work optimally for you.

Share your thoughts

Use this process for how to make a decision for yourself... I'd love to hear how it works for you.

And, have you ever faced a situation where you didn't know how to make a decision?

How did you get unstuck, make a decision and move forward?

Leave your comments below!

If you liked this article, please share it on your social media or with your friends. It might be exactly what they need. Thank you!

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Which is the best e-commerce for services, digital marketers and online product sellers?

SamCart vs. ClickFunnels vs. Shopify vs. PayPal

When you enter the online business world for the first time, you may feel overwhelmed by the number of tools, apps, and digital services available for selling your products online. I’ve been there, drowning in a sea of information trying to decide which one was right for me. Entrepreneurship is hard enough… getting started with selling your services, programs and products online shouldn’t be, which is why I’ve cut through the fluff and put together everything you need to know to choose the right online shopping cart for you right here.

I’m saving you tons of time with this in-depth feature comparison of the top shopping cart contenders for entrepreneurs selling digital products, online courses and physical products shopping cart platforms: SamCart, ClickFunnels, Shopify and PayPal. No matter where you are in your business - from newbie to seasoned online entrepreneur - you can find the solutions you need with one of these sales platforms.

SamCart Review: E-Commerce for services and product sellers

The powerful yet affordable solution for small business newbies to online business mega-sellers

What is SamCart?

Let’s start off with the relatively new kid on the block, SamCart. Originally created to provide an elegant alternative to the ugly PayPal checkout page, SamCart started off as an e-commerce for services platform but has expanded to comprehensive drop shipping services for physical products, as well. This e-commerce platform has continued to evolve and further its mission of helping you cut-down on your abandoned shopping cart rate, close more sales and increase the amount you sell to each customer.

The great thing about SamCart, especially for those who consider themselves “non-techy” (like me) is that they’ve made it really easy to get your account up and running quickly. Their platform is simple to use and has full library of tutorials and helpful instructions to assist you. Because of its simple interface, comprehensive support features and stellar customer service, SamCart is the best platform for beginners in the digital product industry.

With SamCart it’s easy to get your checkout pages created. Simply click “New Product”, enter your product’s name, choose a payment price and frequency, select your checkout page template, insert the appropriate description and set up integration with your Stripe and/or PayPal accounts you’re ready to go. If you have other tools, like an email service provider or membership platform, you can set those up in less than 60 seconds and your buyers' information will be sent over. (Note: you have to also set up the integration on your email service provider's end, too.) Once you hit save, you can start sharing your checkout page URL, which will take your customers directly to your beautiful new shopping cart page.

But even though SamCart is easy enough for complete online selling newbies to use, it still offers a full suite of options that seasoned professionals doing millions of dollars in sales every year may need… all without becoming overly complicated. For example, you probably know by now that if you’re selling online, one of the fastest ways to grow your sales and business is with an affiliate program, but maybe you’ve shied away from complicated and cumbersome stand-alone affiliate tracking tools so far. SamCart makes things easy for you with its fully integrated affiliate platform that allows you to control who joins and even set up special “VIP affiliate” commission structures. You can also allow your affiliates to promote all or only some of your products and customize the commission pay-out for each.

SamCart’s full suite of features, ease of use and reasonable price tag even at the Premium level is a big reason so many six- and seven-figure entrepreneurs and online marketers use them.

SamCart Features

Let’s now take a look at some of the stand-out features and many things you can do with SamCart:

• Deliver digital files your customers purchase with a link that automatically expires after they’ve downloaded the product, eliminating the need for having a website, complicated plug-in or membership site. SamCart hosts the uploaded product directly so you don’t have to do it somewhere else.

• Use their revolutionary 1-Page Website sales method page that takes all of the best elements of a complicated sales funnel puts it on one simple page which makes it easier for you to launch products and for customers to say yes

• One-click order bumps that can instantly double or triple your total sales per customer

• Easily create multiple payment options, free trials, expiring trials and subscription payments for every product you have.

• Choose from 18 checkout page templates proven not only to make your brand look great but to also help you increase your conversion rates.

• Don’t like the checkout page templates like they are? You can customize them to reflect your own brand using HTML and CSS or use the built-in fields to change font, background and button colors, for example.

• Insert custom content on your checkout pages with images, tables, special symbols and more.

• Add design elements proven to increase sales, like testimonials (with images) and guarantees.

• Sell in major currencies and automatically support sales in different languages.

• Easily split test different designs to see what works best.

• Customize your checkout page URL to make it easier for your customers to find and remember you.

• Test your checkout process in “sandbox mode” to make sure everything is working correctly before going live. This eliminates the need to spend your own money purchasing your products and lose money on the credit card transaction fees (something I’ve done a lot of in the past) in order to make sure everything is ready to go for your customers.

• Quickly add more products and services to your customers’ orders without requiring them to fill out a long checkout page again with the “Add to Order” feature. Your customers will receive an updated receipt and it works with PayPal, too!

• 14-day free trial and then $39 - $199 / month, depending on your plan (see SamCart Pricing section below)  

Advanced Features

SamCart also has the following features:

• Unlimited product set-up and sales

• Digital product sales and delivery

• Physical product sales

• Subscription product sales

• Multiple language support

• Customizable shipping charges for physical product sales

• Sell in any currency

• Built-in affiliate center

• Detailed sales reports supported by snapshot visuals

• One-click upsells and upsell funnels

• A/B Testing

• VAT tax tracking via integration with Taxamo

• No additional sales fees above what Stripe and PayPal charge with the Pro and Premium Plans

• Integrations with programs like ActiveCampaign, AWeber, ConvertKit, Drip, GetResponse, HubSpot, Infusionsoft, Kajabi, MailChimp, MemberMouse, OptimizePress, Paypal, Stripe, Zapier and more.

• Try it with a 14-day free trial and 45-day no-questions-asked, money-back guarantee.

Profit Center Dashboard

Inside your account you can look at your company performance from a bird’s eye view with SamCart’s Profit Center dashboard. Here you can find live information on:

• Total sales, orders, profit, refunds, page views, conversion rates and more

• Custom reports to find the information you need

SamCart Integrations

The great thing about SamCart is you can continue to use your favorite business tools with dozens of built in integrations, plus virtually unlimited integration possibilities using Zapier. Some of the most popular purchase-related integrations include:

• Send purchaser information to email services like Drip, ConvertKit, Aweber, InfusionSoft, ActiveCampaign and MailChimp.

• Landing page platforms like Leadpages and OptimizePress.

• Create automatic membership access in tools like WishList Member, MemberMouse, Kajabi, Teachable, Zippy Courses and more.

SamCart Pricing

Here’s the breakdown of their current plans, based on annual pay:

• “Launch” plan (works well for most new and established businesses, but may be too limited for more sophisticated sellers), currently $39 per month

• “Grow” plan (provides everything that Launch plus more customization, upsell/downsell capabilities, and management options), currently $79 per month

• “Scale” plan (includes advanced features suitable for companies with multiple products and delivery methods), currently $159 per month

You can view the full list of features and how the plans compare on the SamCart pricing page.

Why get started with SamCart?

Many SamCart users have attributed their uptick in sales and profit per customer to the platform’s ease of use and elegant design. Because each customer’s buying experience vastly improves when you have a highly-effective sales process in place that also supports the value of your brand, you can sell more to each customer that lands on your page. Whether you’re selling a $297 online course, a $12 e-book, or a $5,000 coaching program, SamCart is a fantastic platform with which to sell your products and services.

SamCart also developed a profit-boosting checkout page template called the 1-Page Funnel that eliminates the need for developing complicated sales funnels with many different pages. The #1 reason people don’t put sales funnels in place is because it takes a lot of work… but the 1-Page Funnel model cuts out all of that. And, with the sales conversion bonus trainings that SamCart gives you to create your own 1-Page Funnel in record time and drive sales of your product or service, it’s hard to see why you’d ever need a complicated sales funnel ever again.

But one of the most compelling reasons to sign up for SamCart beyond its amazing features, in-depth training library and stellar customer service is their affordability. With a free 14-day trial and prices starting around $40 per month, their plans makes it super-affordable for any entrepreneur to get started selling online, close more sales and make more money at the end of every month. And to solidify the case for SamCart being the undisputed ecommerce choice for online entrepreneurs, they offer a 45 day, no-questions-asked, money-back guarantee. That’s a tough combo to beat!

ClickFunnels Review

All-in-one e-commerce for services and builder for marketing funnel fanatics

What is ClickFunnels?

ClickFunnels is an all-in-one online marketing tool that you can use to create marketing funnels, landing pages, track affiliates and set up simple membership sites.

If you’re not familiar with exactly what a marketing funnel is, here’s a simple explanation: It’s a series of pages your client goes through before landing on your checkout page. The funnel starts with marketing campaigns, then moves down to client engagement, targeted content, email blasts and culminates in a sales transaction (at least, that’s the goal!).

ClickFunnels is all about funnels and has a variety of pre-built ones for you to choose from. If you’re an author, ClickFunnels has a Bestseller Book funnel. If you’re a local business owner, use the Fishbowl Funnel, which is a page where people put their contact information on your page to win a prize.

They also have the pre-built…

• Product Launch Funnel if you have a product you want to get out there.

• Perfect Webinar Funnel for launching and monetizing your webinars.

• And If you’re selling on Amazon, you can subscribe to their “real stuff” funnel to market your physical products.

In ClickFunnels, you can create:

• Optin or lead capture funnels that are used to get the email addresses of your potential customers

• Sales page funnels that leads your visitor to an upsell or downsell page depending on whether or not he or she chooses to purchase your product

• Membership sites to create your very own community of subscribers

ClickFunnels Features

• Custom domain names

• A/B testing

• Email integration

• Optin funnels

• Advanced funnels

• Sales funnels

• Membership funnels

• Webinar funnels

• Automated Webinar funnels

• Order Pages

• One-click upsell pages

• Downsell Pages

• Mobile responsive

• Professional themes

• Clone, drag and drop, and advanced website editors

• Major payment integrations like PayPal, Stripe, and Infusionsoft

• 14-day free trial and then $97 per month for the Standard features or $297 per month for the full Etison Suite

ClickFunnels Pricing

ClickFunnels makes it somewhat hark to find pricing information. There's no “Pricing” link in their navigation on their main website. But I’ve done the research for you, and at the time of writing this article, ClickFunnels pricing includes three different levels:

• $97 per month (basic)

• $297 per month (Platinum)

• $2,497 per month for their Two Comma Club level

There are some significant differences between the plan levels, including the number of payment gateways, pages included, number of funnels you can build, and support options.

For example, you only get access to their affiliate platform, Backpack, at the Platinum level and above (which means that if having an integrated affiliate program is important to you, it will cost you about $140 per month more than SamCart’s top plan). The top two options (Platinum and Two Comma Club) also come with additional bonus trainings, as well, much like SamCart’s extra training library that’s included with all their plan levels.

For in-depth details on ClickFunnels features, read this SamCart vs ClickFunnels article.

Why get started with ClickFunnels?

In the past, you’d need a team, a lot of time and several different tools to put together your own sales funnel. You’d have to think about website hosting, landing page software, an email autoresponder, split testing software, automated webinar software, affiliate software, membership site software and design. But with ClickFunnels, you can find all that on one platform, although it also comes with a higher monthly price tag to get access to the full suite of options.

If you have no idea what a marketing funnel is or haven’t yet got one in place, ClickFunnels is the perfect place to learn all about it. Because its interface is so easy to navigate, you can easily build your landing page and optin forms to grow your email list. You only have to drag and drop widgets in order to create your pages.

They also have proven templates you can choose from or you can customize your own with HTML. You can make your sales page look exactly like you want by dragging and dropping information, logos, images, testimonials, and guarantees.

One advantage ClickFunnels has over other ecommerce platforms is their integrated membership site and course delivery capabilities. Whether you’re selling tea leaves, dog food, weight-loss powders, fitness programs, or parenting advice, ClickFunnels will show you how to create a monthly membership site where you can generate income from your members. Although I personally find the design of ClickFunnels-hosted membership sites and courses to be more basic and less user-friendly than than well-known stand-alone membership and course platforms, like Teachable, Kajabi or Thinkific, it’s enough to get you started if you don’t want to add on separate tools for those.

ClickFunnels vs. SamCart

Before moving on to Shopify and PayPal, let’s sum up what we’ve covered so far with ClickFunnels vs. SamCart. Both platforms have their strong points.The number one difference between SamCart and ClickFunnels is that they focus on different parts of the sales process.

The number one difference between SamCart and ClickFunnels is that they focus on different parts of the sales process.

SamCart is an ecommerce platform that’s specifically designed to help you make more money from each customer that lands on your checkout page.

ClickFunnels is a marketing funnel platform and email marketing tool to nurture customer interest when they’re not yet convinced enough to buy your product or service, and once they do buy, ClickFunnels helps you maximize the amount you earn from each sale with upsells and downsells (much like SamCart does).

When choosing which ecommerce platform is right for you, also consider what other tools you already have in place. For example, if you’ve already set up dozens of landing pages with LeadPages and have email automations already established with a service like Drip, simply adding on SamCart might be the way to go versus ClickFunnels, especially given ClickFunnels’ higher starting price. But if you’re just starting out or looking for a true all-in-one platform, then ClickFunnels may be your better option.

Shopify Review

Eye-catching virtual storefronts for physical products and e-commerce for services

What is Shopify?

Shopify is one of the biggest e-commerce companies in the world and processes billions of dollars in sales for their customers every year. Shopify is an e-commerce platform that helps you create a website and use their shopping cart solution or POS service to manage, sell, and ship your products.

Shopify clenched their position as the physical product storefront of choice when in early 2020, it was announced that Walmart would give Shopify sellers access to their Walmart Marketplace (watch out Amazon!). In a word, Shopify is at the very top if you’re a brick-and-mortar retail shop or business that uses drop shipping to sell physical products.

Although you can sell services and digital products using this ecommerce platform, Shopify excels at serving sellers of physical goods, offering extensive inventory and purchase-tracking capabilities using their Liquid short-codes. With over 100 professionally-designed. Mobile-friendly and fully-customizable storefront themes to choose from, you can make your brand pop and catch your customer’s eye.

If you mainly sell physical products, have inventory to manage or extensively use drop shipping, Shopify is likely your best choice of ecommerce platforms.

Shopify Features

• Unlimited number of products you can sell in your store

• Fraud analysis

• Discount codes

• Staff accounts

• Customer product review capability

• Sell on Facebook without fans having to leave Facebook to make a purchase

• Social media integration - All Shopify websites include social media integration, such as Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and more.

• Gift cards

• 24/7 live and email chat support

• Unlimited bandwidth and online storage so you won’t be charged based on how many online visitors you have or how many files or photos you upload on your store

• Shopify POS that allows you to sell in a physical store or pop-up setting. It comes in the form of an app that lets you process orders in person, take payments, swipe credit cards, and control it all from your iPad or smartphone.

• Online sales channels where you can set up an online store that is linked to Amazon, Facebook and Pinterest, with shopping buttons to make purchasing easy. Each sales channel connects to your sales page, so you can keep track of your orders and customers on various platforms.

• Manual order creation that lets you create orders that you took over the phone or in person and then just email your customer the receipt with his or her order details.

• Full integrated blogging platform

• Finances report to see an overview of your sales, payments, and pending sales data. You can also view your full finance report.

• 14-day free trial, then $29 - $299 per month, depending on the features you want.

Checkout features

Shopify’s checkout features are quite diverse, and it comes with lots of different options. Of course, not all of them will be available with the Basic plan, and even the ones that will might require an upgrade. So be sure to do some additional research before you decide which Shopify plan you go with.

In terms of the checkout itself, we can display it in 50 different languages. Considering how large the service already is, that number does not surprise me. This platform is present in over 175 countries worldwide. Then, there’s also the guest checkout feature. Non-members can make a purchase for a limited time without actually making an account. 

Shipping rates will vary with Shopify. For instance, let’s cover all the supporting mailing services. If you use DHL, Canada Post, USPS, and UPS, you will get automatically calculated shipping rates. These get reduced based on which plan you’ve subscribed to. But you can also select different factors that can directly affect the cost of shipping. 

By far, the best checkout feature is the Abandoned Cart Recovery. If I were to leave my cart without making a purchase, Shopify would let me know about it via email. It’s a handy reminder to continue or abandon any purchase.

Product Management

Categorizing and keeping track of products in Shopify is as simple as using the dashboard. For instance, I can sort my products based on color, shape, size, and material. More importantly, the number of products I can sort in the inventory is quite literally unlimited. 

Sometimes, product management will involve migrating products from one platform to the next. If that happens, I can use Shopify’s Bulk Export/Import function and get the job done in no time. Additionally, this feature can help with bulk edits to product catalogs.  

Store Management

Shopify offers a whole host of store management services, including: 

• Customer segmentation based on user information

• Mobile store management

• Options for fulfillment centers such as FBA and Rakuten Super Logistics

• Drop-shipping apps (including Inventory Source, Ordoro, and HubLogix, among many)

• Point of Sale in-person selling system

• Multilingual admin

• Web Hosting

Importantly, with Shopify you don’t have to worry about your online store going down. Shopify boasts 99.98% uptime, even during the busiest online traffic times.

Marketing and SEO

Shopify relies heavily on modern marketing practices and proper SEO content. In terms of marketing, the platform has fantastic social media integration, as well as the ability to link to multiple third-party online marketplaces. Moreover, using the blog editor, you can create and run your own blog for additional brand engagement. Email templates and integration with MailChimp will also come in handy for email marketing.  

In terms of keeping your store in check, the service provides built-in analytics for various reports. Alternatively, you can link up your Google Analytics account, thanks to the platform’s compatibility with Shopify. In addition to analytics, you also have the so-called Burst library, the platform’s own repository of stock photos and images. 

And, of course, Shopify enables you to use some old but proven sales incentives, like offering coupons and discounts. With Shopify, you can even create various discount codes and, with higher plans, gift cards for loyal users. 

Shopify relies heavily on modern marketing practices and proper SEO content. In terms of marketing, it has fantastic social media integration. In addition, it has the ability to link to multiple third-party online marketplaces. Moreover, using the blog editor, you can create and run your own blog for additional brand engagement. Email templates and integration with MailChimp will also come in handy for some email marketing.  

In terms of keeping your store in check, the service provides built-in analytics for various reports. Alternatively, you can link Google Analytics since the platform is compatible with Shopify. In addition to analytics, you also have the so-called Burst library. This library is the platform’s own repository of stock photos and images. 

Expanding the trade also requires some old but proven methods like offering coupons and discounts. With Shopify, I can even create various discount codes and, at higher plans, gift cards for loyal users. 

Shopify Pricing

Shopify’s checkout features are comprehensive and geared toward making marketing and selling products easy for sellers and buying them a breeze for customers. Naturally, Shopify offers different plans to fit various business needs.  

• Their “Basic Shopify” plan starts at $29 per month

• The “Shopify” plan is $79 per month

• The “Advanced Shopify” is $299 per month.

I suggest you do additional research before you decide which plan you’ll settle on; especially with the recent announcement of the Walmart partnership, features and pricing may change.

Why get started with Shopify?

If you run an online business that has a lot of physical inventory to manage and ship, Shopify is your top choice among these four e-commerce platforms. Get started with a 14-day free trial to see how it can work for you.

PayPal: E-commerce for services and physical products

Few people on this planet haven’t heard of this brand. Ever since 2002, this giant has been providing regular services to millions of people across the globe. Right now, there are over 270 million regular users worldwide. In addition, 19 million registered merchants and business owners are on this platform. Calling it popular would definitely be an understatement.

What is PayPal?

But what exactly is PayPal? Simply put, it’s a massive online money transfer service that doesn’t require any paper money to work. Everything done using this service is digital, and thanks to its success, competitor companies have been popping up ever since it came to the forefront.

PayPal Features

Online Payments 

Although PayPal offers certain of the more robust ecommerce platform capabilities that SamCart, ClickFunnels and Shopify do, PayPal is at its heart an online payment gateway, i.e., a way for your customers to transfer their money to you – and a hugely popular one. In fact, some people will only buy your products if they can check out using PayPal. This means that if you want to capture more sales, PayPal really is a must-have for any online seller, even if you use another ecommerce platform and your main payment gateway is Stripe or Authorize.net, for example.  

PayPal makes it incredibly easy for you to set up an account and get it integrated with whichever other ecommerce platform you might use.  As a business owner, you can subscribe to one of three web payment options: 

●    PayPal Checkout

●    Payments Standard

●    Payments Pro 

If I were to have a business that already accepts credit card payments and just wanted to add a PayPal option, I’d go with the basic Checkout. This option covers PCI compliance evasion, contextual checkout buttons (based on the field of work that uses the platform), and localized methods of paying. 

Payments Standard is a bit different. While it also avoids PCI compliance, it does provide the business owner with additional options and customization. Customizable pay buttons are a huge part of this feature. We can make and customize an entire shop using these, and even change some of the checkout aspects.  

Finally, there’s the Payments Pro option, which we can fully customize. Though you submit to some PCI compliance, you can host and customize your very own checkout page. There’s also the Pro’s Virtual Terminal, which allows paying over the smartphone. Finally, for an additional fee, you can use the recurring billing feature. 

Additional PayPal Features 

The fantastic thing about this brand is just how quickly it’s growing and adding new features. In late 2019 alone, they added some options that I think we should go over. Not only is this set of tools decent, but it also shows just how innovative and growing this business still is. 

First, there are a few features that cover using the service in taxation and instant money transfer. U.S. residents can use it to either pay their taxes (directly or indirectly) or to send their balances directly into their bank accounts.

Next, there’s the PayPal LoanBuilder, which allows us to easily loan money when needed. The impressive Checkout on Instagram feature allows a business owner to sell a product directly through their Instagram profile page.

Finally, we have the PayPal Invoicing API. As a business owner, you’ll want to send multiple invoices to all of your employees at once. This feature can send invoices in up to 25 currencies across more than 200 markets, and you don’t need to pay any fees. Considering how large the platform’s fees already are compared to the competition, that last bit was something I personally liked the most.

Additional PayPal Products and Services

Aside from the basic online paying options, PayPal has a host of other additional products and services. Some of these include: 

• Online invoicing with quick and interactive invoice forms

• POS system integration in case you use something other than this platform

• PayPal Here, the native mobile app

• The Payflow gateway for other services

• Mass Payouts for multiple payments

• Marketing Solutions, the native analytics section

• PayPal.me, a type of personal pay request tool 

Developer Tools

Over the years, the company has invested time and money into perfecting their developer tools. They would definitely come in handy if I wanted to open a PayPal-based business. 

The latest of these tools is the Commerce Platform from 2019. Every business can create customized solutions for online payment by using it. In addition, they will be able to receive their returns in over 100 different currencies. Whether you’re selling physical products or online services, this tool will be a valuable asset for you. 

Other tools include: 

• Checkout

• Invoicing

• Subscriptions

• PayPal Here SDK

• Payouts

• Connect with PayPal

• White Label Wallet 

I won’t go into detail about what these tools can or can’t do in this article. But because PayPal is so transparent with its users, this company has provided detailed explanations for each and every tool on its official website.  

Shopify vs. SamCart, ClickFunnels vs. PayPal

Comparing the four e-commerce platforms

Looking over these four, which e-commerce platform is the “winner” depends on what kind of business you have and the features you want.

SamCart does have amazing checkout templates and integrations. However, it simply doesn’t support as many payment gateways as other options on this list.  

ClickFunnels does a few things better than SamCart — it offers more gateways and a straightforward interface to work with. However, it suffers from the same problem that PayPal has, which is subpar customer support.

Shopify is a great platform if you need an online store to showcase many different physical products where people can just click on it to add to their cart. Even though you can sell physical products via SamCart and ClickFunnels, there’s no elegant multi-product storefront for retail product sellers like there is with Shopify. This making Shopify the go-to choice when buying decisions hinge on easily browsing through stunning visuals of your inventory.

PayPal is unique in the invoicing services it makes available to its business services customers. And it's the only one you can use to send money to others, as well.

Certainly setting up Shopify, SamCart or ClickFunnels is a huge step up from using only PayPal to sell your digital products or services. Why? Because when customers see that you only use PayPal as the checkout page for your business, they tend to regard you as only a small-time business, even if you’re an established expert in your field… and especially when it comes to selling online courses, coaching programs and consulting services costing hundreds to thousands of dollars.

In addition to the lack of aesthetics, sellers using only PayPal force would-be buyers to either already have a PayPal account set up or register for a new one in order to make the purchase. This adds an additional step to your sales process, leads to higher abandoned cart rates and in the end hurts your sales and conversion rates. Offering PayPal as a payment option is important, though, as studies have shown that you’ll miss out on a significant number of sales if you don’t, but you don’t want PayPal to be the only payment option. SamCart, ClickFunnels and Shopify all integrate with PayPal.

Using either SamCart, ClickFunnels or Shopify will give you more credibility as an online seller. It gives you a professional image that can increase your sales and allow you to charge more for your products and services, benefiting your bottom line in both the short- and long-term. Ultimately, it boils down to what we need out of an online shopping cart. For example, if I require transparent pay with a navigable interface, I’ll choose PayPal or Shopify. SamCart, on the other hand, is incredible for integrating many different elements. In addition, SamCart pricing is quite low when you compare it to other popular options. Finally, there’s the ClickFunnels’ method of page building. It’s fantastic to make an entire business platform by merely toying around with funnels. More importantly, it saves a lot of time and money.

The best way to pick the right service is to know what kind of business you want to run. Take everything into account: what product you’re selling, which services you provide, and who your target audience is. In the end, even if you don’t decide to stick with the platform you start out with, starting with any of these four e-commerce platforms is a good place to begin.  

Which e-commerce platform is right for you?

If you want to succeed in the online product and services business, SamCart, ClickFunnels and Shopify are just the right time- and effort-saving e-commerce platform tools you need. Remember that a good investment used right more than pays for itself. It’s all in the way you make the most out of them.

Here’s how I see it:

Both SamCart and ClickFunnels are great e-commerce for services platform choices, especially if you sell online courses, coaching or membership programs, downloadable digital products and individual services. Yet they both still offer enough features to sell a limited variety of physical products, as well.

SamCart is the #1 ecommerce platform for new entrepreneurs just getting started and also already-successful businesses looking for an easy way to sell more with one-click upsells and simplified funnel options but without the complication of a complex funnel system.

Get started with a 14-day free trial, complete with a library of bonus sales and conversion optimization trainings. Then continue for as little as $39 per month for the Launch plan, you can have a high-converting checkout page up and running in minutes.

You get to keep your favorite tools, like your landing page and email service providers, without paying again for those features already built into ClickFunnels but which you’re not likely to use. And, it's 100% risk-free to try SamCart with their no-questions-asked 45-day money-back guarantee.

However, if you’re looking for an all-in-one solution, don’t have a website, or want to create and automate a lot of different sales funnels, then ClickFunnels is your best bet. With ClickFunnels, you can get started with a 14-day free trial. After that, their monthly fee is either $97 for the Standard subscription or $297 per month for the Etison Suite (full suite) of features, making it a bit more of a stretch for online entrepreneurs getting started.

Shopify is the clear winner for online physical goods retailers, with their beautiful storefronts and robust inventory tracking capabilities. You can also get started with a 14-day free trial and then upgrade to Shopify Basic for $29 per month, Shopify for $79 per month or Advanced Shopify for $299 per month.

No matter which ecommerce platform you choose, the key is to get started, take advantage of the training each company provides and start selling more so you can have the kind of freedom and income you started your online business for in the first place. So, what are you waiting for? Get going!

PayPal is a must for anyone selling online, even if you use another e-commerce platform or storefront for your customers to buy from you. And, if you have business invoicing needs, PayPal is the only one of these four e-commerce companies that can help you with that.

No matter which ecommerce platform you choose, the key is to get started, take advantage of the training each company provides and start selling more so you can have the kind of freedom and income you started your online business for in the first place.

Share Your Thoughts!

Have you used SamCart, ClickFunnels, Shopify or PayPal in your business? Why you chose that particular ecommerce platform? What do you like or dislike about it? Leave a comment below! 

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Can’t create the kind of money you want even though you’re doing everything “right”? Are you working really hard in your business but still can't get any traction? Or you've been stuck at the same small income level for way too long? 

Find out the not-so-obvious causes of a lot of your money struggles! These 5 areas may be what are causing your problems ...and, thankfully, they're rather easy to fix.

Problem #1: Your energetic money bucket is full of holes.

The first reason that you’re not creating or keeping the kind of money that you desire and is because you probably have a lot of energetic leaks and money leaks you’re not aware of. When you act in ways that cause energetic misalignments in yourself, your money bucket ends up being more like a sieve so you can’t hold any of the money that comes in.
 
One of the most pervasive energetic money leaks is cheating on your taxes by underreporting your income. For example, if you’re in business for yourself, do you take more deductions than are warranted?  Let’s say you work from home and regularly take a home office deduction. Have you ever claimed an office space that was twice as big as your real home office, thinking, “Oh well, everybody does it and I won’t get caught”? That is an energetic leak because it violates your self-integrity. 

Even when you get away with taking an extra large deduction, there’s always the fear in the back of your mind that you’ll get caught and that’s a big energy drain. Small energy leaks quickly add up to have real, negative consequences on your ability to attract and receive money (which is just another form of energy). 

Another example of where people leak energy and money is by ignoring their bills. You know what I’m talking about: That giant stack of unopened bills still sitting on your desk or kitchen counter or stashed away in a bottom drawer because you’re thinking, “I don’t have the money to pay the bills” or simply “I don’t like paying my bills.” Here’s a another, more empowering way to think about bill paying: bless the fact that you have the money to pay them. And if you don’t have the money to pay all your bills, then bless the money you do have, the electricity that’s still on in your house and that money will be coming to you that will allow you to pay the bills.
 
I want to share with you one last example of a common way people leak energy is committing to things that you actually don’t want to commit to. A perfect example is if you have kids. There are a zillion school volunteer opportunities, like being classroom mom, working on a play, or coaching the soccer team. Parents get asked to participate in these school activities, but don’t really want to do it. If you say yes out of a feeling of guilt or obligation, you’re setting up an energetic leak for yourself because now you’ve just committed to something you resent spending your time doing.

If you do want to say yes to something, then say yes to it because it lights you up, fills your heart with joy and you’re excited about it. But if you don’t, then say no in integrity, so that not only are you not extending your energy to somebody or a situation to which you’re really not committed, but that you are giving the other person the chance to find somebody who is excited and fully committed. Think about that. This is a total reframe on the whole saying “yes to things out of guilt” scenario, whether it’s helping a friend or participating in the school play, and it’s very freeing.

So, what do you do about these energetic and money leaks? You plug them. You fix them. You seal them up by correcting the situation. Let’s say you’ve committed to being a classroom mom and you didn’t really want to do that. Find a way to de-commit or get in energetic alignment with your commitment. It may be that you find somebody else to replace you. Or you bring your energy into alignment and really come from a place of service, generosity and contribution in being the classroom mom. You need to do one or the other or you will continue to leak energy around the situation, which will affect not just that one thing in your life but all areas of your life (including money).

Problem #2: You’re not taking aligned action.

When you’re an entrepreneur, no matter what kind of amazing spiritual or energetic work you do around manifesting your desire, if you don’t take aligned action, you’re not doing your part to bridge the gap between the energy of money and bringing it into your reality on the physical plane. 

Given your current situation, the business that you’re in, and the things that you want to accomplish with your life and business, what is one aligned action that you have been putting off? It might be creating a program. It might be getting your marketing strategy developed so you’re not always trying to do things last minute and just posting any old thing up on social media. 

Feel like you don’t know what your next right aligned action is? The thing is, deep down you do you know what it is… and it’s probably the thing that you feel a lot of resistance around. Your next right aligned action is the thing where you’re like, “Oh please, I don’t want to have to call people! I don’t want to be on Facebook Live! I don’t want to write this guest post or be a speaker at an event… because it scares me.” That is the very thing that will help you create the money you want.

Problem #3: You’re not trying to succeed. You’re trying not to fail.

There are a lot of entrepreneurs in all kinds of fields who are “trying” to succeed. That’s what they say: “I’m trying. I’m doing everything I can. I’m really trying hard.” The problem is that deep down, they don’t truly believe they can succeed. They’re not trying to succeed; they’re trying not to fail. Do you see the difference? There’s a massive mindset and energetic difference between “trying to succeed” and “trying not to fail”. This difference profoundly influences your ability to create money, attract clients and create abundance in your life.
 
If you’re approaching whatever it is that you’re doing from an energy and a standpoint of “I’m trying not to fail,” that is a very different energy than an energy of “I am going to succeed. I’ll keep at it and I know I my efforts will pay off.” If you’re trying not to fail, then you’ll have a really hard time growing your business and being successful because you’re constantly focusing your energy on avoiding failure instead of doing the things you need to do to succeed.

Problem #4:  You’re over-complicating things.

At the heart of it, being a successful online entrepreneur isn’t complicated. Getting clients is not complicated. It is as simple as reaching out to somebody, inviting them to work with you, having a conversation and then being unattached to whether they say yes or no. With the right offer that connects with your ideal clients and the right energy during the conversation, when you consistently ask enough people, you will hear enough yeses to create the kind of money you want.
 
Where people get tripped up is that they overcomplicate things. They add on all the fancy new strategies and feel like they must have all the tech bells and whistles in order to book clients. Although tech and automation can certainly help you reach more people, the tools don’t make the sale. You do... with your offers, energy and authentically showing up in your marketing. 

People often hide behind technology, busywork or the “need” to implement complicated business-building strategies when they don’t feel confident about sharing their work or asking for the sale. I get it. Having conversations with people and inviting them to work with you risks you getting rejected. It feels safer hanging out behind the buffer of “anonymous” marketing strategies like Facebook ads that promise to get you clients without you having to talk to anyone. And then if you still don’t get clients, you can blame the ads and not feel like you failed. 

If you’re new in business and you’re not clear on what your message is, you don’t have a compelling core offer, you can’t explain what how you help people in under 30 seconds, you don’t really know the struggles and hopes of your ideal clients, you don’t know your pricing, and you don’t have rock-solid confidence in the value you provide, and a defined path for how the ads will help you put money in your bank account, Facebook ads and any other complicated marketing strategies are not going to work for you. Sorry, but it’s the truth. You’re going to see little return for all your time, money and frustration. The bottom line is that you need to have a lot of foundational pieces in place before you start complicating your business with tools and strategies you really don’t need to be successful.
 
Do an audit on yourself: Where are you unnecessarily overcomplicating things in your business or even in your life? Are those things truly necessary? What would you stop doing if you didn’t feel like you had to do it in order to get clients or make sales?

Problem #5: You’re not taking advantage of the opportunities all around you to create the money you desire.

I’m going to give you a really perfect example. There are an infinite number of opportunities around all of us all the time to create more money and more of everything we want. You probably have an intuition about which opportunities are the right next moves for you. When a certain thing keeps showing up in your life over and over again, it’s a sure sign to pay attention.

But here’s the tricky part: you need to pay attention from a place of non-judgment. We all tend to believe that getting that thing we want, like creating more money, has to happen in a certain way and we tend to dismiss opportunities that fall outside of that box because they look different than you wanted or expected them to. That way of thinking severely limits your ability to create the money you deserve (or anything else, for that matter).
 
When an opportunity comes up in an unexpected way, ask yourself, “ Am I going to pass up this opportunity to get what I want simply because it’s coming to me in a way that I didn’t expect? Or am I willing to approach this with an open mind and explore the possibilities here?” If you’re not creating the kind of money and business results that you want, you need to look at where you might be letting your judgments and unsupportive beliefs get in the way of you seeing all the amazing opportunities to create what you want that are already all around you.

Fixing the underlying problems first is essential to making your efforts pay off

So often when something isn’t working in our businesses or lives in general, we try to do more, work harder and pile on new strategies in attempt to fix the problem. When you’ve tried just about every practical strategy under the sun to create the money you deserve and it hasn’t worked, it’s time to consider that the problem isn’t always just “out there”. And what’s called for is a combination of smart business strategies and supportive mindset principles to finally cure the not-so-obvious causes of your business and money troubles.

Share your thoughts!

Where have you unconsciously been leaking energy and money? 

What opportunity keeps showing up that you haven’t taken advantage of? 

What steps will you be taking to create the money you deserve this year?
 

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SamCart vs ClickFunnels: Which is better?

Last updated: August 2020

This Samcart vs ClickFunnels review article covers their important features, the pros and cons of each, and why one or the other might be a better fit for your business.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching, testing and sometimes becoming a paid customer of the top ecommerce platforms and “online shopping carts” to find out what works the best. As an online business owner, you need e-commerce platform that meets your needs, includes the features you want, grows with your business, and gives you the best value overall.

Two digital marketing companies seem to be on every top list out there and made my cut for this ecommerce platform comparison article — SamCart and ClickFunnels. But which one is a better fit for your business? If you’ve been struggling to answer this question, keep reading - you’ll have the answer by the end of this article.

Note: Although I periodically update this article (recently in August 2020), as with any tech tool, these online sales and marketing platforms often come out with new features, update pricing tiers or add in special bonuses, so please visit the links below for the latest.

With that out of the way, let’s see what makes these two ecommerce platforms worth checking out and how they stack up against each other.

SamCart Review

SamCart Overview: The powerful yet affordable online shopping cart and funnel builder for newbies to mega-sellers.

Ever since 2013, SamCart has been a stable checkout platform and one of the best online shopping carts still active today. The great thing about SamCart, especially for those who consider themselves “non-techy” (like me), is that they’ve made it really easy to get your account up and running quickly.

Their platform is simple to use and has a full library of tutorials and helpful instructions. Because of its simple interface, comprehensive support features and stellar customer service, SamCart is one of the top platforms for beginners and technophobes. With their easy to use drag-and-drop builder, you can create a high-converting and fully functional checkout page in about 30 minutes; that’s just how efficient it is.

But even though SamCart is easy enough for complete online selling newbies to use, it still offers a full suite of options that seasoned professionals doing millions of dollars in sales every year may need… all without becoming overly complicated. 

For example, you probably know by now that if you’re selling online, one of the fastest ways to grow your sales and business is with an affiliate program, but maybe you’ve shied away from complicated and cumbersome stand-alone affiliate tracking tools so far. SamCart makes things easy for you with its fully integrated affiliate platform that gives you control over who joins. Your affiliates can promote all or only some of your products and you can customize the commission pay-out for each. And, you can even set up special “VIP affiliate” commission structures.

SamCart’s full suite of features, ease of use and reasonable price tag even at the Premium level is a big reason so many well-known online marketers switched over to them.

Not bad for a platform that began as an alternative to PayPal’s checkout page.  

Three features worth mentioning up-front are:

#1 - Mobile payment optimization is key nowadays, and SamCart supports Apple Pay, Google Pay and Microsoft Wallet (more on that below).

#2 -  SamCart supports the sale and delivery of both digital and physical products, which is one of their stand-out features (watch out, Shopify!)

#3 - Their robust knowledge base and training library is full of extensive training on how to maximize your online sales, reduce shopping cart abandonment, how to design high-converting checkout pages and more. As an online entrepreneur, even a 10% difference in your sales conversion rate can mean thousands more in sales for you, so these trainings are a valuable “bonus” they include for their customers.

Overall, SamCart is a fully-integrated, elegant and dependable online shopping cart solution for most online businesses, service providers and now even physical product sellers.

Want a visual walk-though? You can view the SamCart demo here.

SamCart Pricing

There are plenty of features to cover when it comes to this online shopping cart. Like most ecommerce platforms, the features you get will depend on which of their plans you choose.

SamCart pricing is now more competitive and affordable for the average entrepreneur, and they currently offer three different monthly plans - called “Launch”, “Grow” and “Scale” - ranging from $39 to $159 per month with annual billing (and a bit more if you choose monthly billing). 

Here’s the breakdown of their current plans:

• “Launch” plan (works well for most new and established businesses, but may be too limited for more sophisticated sellers), currently $39 per month

• “Grow” plan (provides everything that Launch plus more customization, upsell/downsell capabilities, and management options), currently $79 per month

• “Scale” plan (includes advanced features suitable for companies with multiple products and delivery methods), currently $159 per month

Most of the elements I list in this article are available in the Grow plan. The advanced features will be covered in their own, separate paragraph below, in case you’re looking for more robust features like the Scale plan has.

You can view the full list of features and how the plans compare on the SamCart pricing page.

SamCart Features

Payment Options and Gateways

SamCart's integrated checkout works with four payment gateways currently - Braintree, Stripe, Authorize.net and PayPal. Importantly, they also offer Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Microsoft Wallet to make purchasing your products via mobile phone even easier for your customers (making it even easier for you to sell more, too!).

Of course, it’s not about the number of gateways that your platform connects to that leads to a successful online store and extra sales. What counts more is the quality of your customer's checkout experience and how easy you make it for them to buy your goods and services.

And when it comes to that, this software excels. Its wide variety of payment options includes:

• Subscriptions

• Split-Pay

• One-Time single price offers

• Free trials

• Pay what you want option

• Controllable payment structure based on a time frame (weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, custom)

• Quality limitations

• Shipping options

• Test payments

• A choice of eight separate currencies

Features that Lead to Higher Conversion Rates and more sales

What’s one of the easiest ways to increase your sales? Increase your sales conversion rate, i.e., make more sales from the same amount of visitors to your checkout page. SamCart provides a comprehensive template library with more than 18 ready-to-go, high-converting checkout templates to choose from.

They also make customizing them a breeze with their easy-to-use drag-and-drop page builder added in 2019. All of the SamCart templates are specifically designed to optimize your customers' checkout experience. The SamCart has tested their templates have to improve sales conversion rates - sometimes by more than double - and, by extension, grow your sales revenue.

SamCart also developed a simple, profit-boosting checkout page called the 1-Page Funnel that eliminates the need for developing complicated sales funnels involving a lot of different pages. The number one reason people don’t put sales funnels in place is because it usually takes a lot of work… but the 1-Page Website funnel model eliminates all of that.

And, with the bonus trainings that SamCart gives you to help you create your own high-converting one-page website funnel in record time and drive sales of your product or service, it’s hard to see why you’d ever need a complicated sales funnel ever again.

But perhaps most importantly, SamCart’s Smart Conversion Tracking helps you to track every transaction back to your marketing campaigns on Google, Facebook, or anyplace else. Knowing if your marketing efforts are paying off is critical, and SamCart makes it easy.

Easy Order Bumps, Coupons, and Up sellING TO Increase Sales

With SamCart, both bump offers (featured on the main product’s checkout page) and one-click up selling (featured on the checkout page after purchasing the main product) behave similarly.

A bump offer will inherit the pricing of the main product it's added to.

On the other hand, an up sell will inherit the price you give it via your dashboard.

Featuring a bump offer or up sell to your main product significantly increases the final sale total and your average sale amount by up to 68.1%, according to SamCart’s statistics.

If you’re not sure why adding a bump or up sell offer would benefit you, think back to the last time you bought a car. If you bought the car new or certified pre-owned, I’m sure the dealership offered you an extended warranty on the car, and if you bought it, you probably paid an extra $1000 - $2000 or more for it. That extended warranty is the auto dealership’s up sell offer and without much extra effort, they got to put some extra cash in their pocket.

That’s what you can do with bump offers and one-click up sells. And, if you buy much online, you’ve certainly been on the receiving end of bump offers, up selling and even cross-selling (think Amazon’s “You’ll also like this” suggestions).

SamCart also makes it easy to entice more people to buy your stuff with coupons and discounts. What I love about this service is that adding a coupon is simple. You use the same product dashboard as bump offers and upsells. All you need to do is enable the coupon adding feature, set up what type you need, and you’re good to go.

New Feature Added in July 2020

With the announcement that SamCart users can now edit the automated individual communications sent to your customers (think: receipts, emails, payment reminders, etc.), they’ve taken one more step toward becoming an all-in-one ecommerce platform. Depending on how you structure your business, you may not even need a separate email service provider with this new SamCart feature addition. And it certainly makes them even stronger in the comparison battle between SamCart and ClickFunnels (more on that below).

SamCart Integrations

There are quite a few integration capabilities that SamCart offers for both new and existing entrepreneurs. They include direct integrations with the most popular autoresponders, marketing automation, and membership platforms. If you use another tool in your business, you can integrate it using Zapier. Simply navigate to the “Integrations” page from your SamCart dashboard.

Marketing Automation Integrations

Samcart provides integration with just about any email and marketing service you could want, either directly or via Zapier. Direct integrations include:

• ConvertKit

• Drip

• Kajabi

• Leadpages

• Constant Contact

• iContact

• AWeber

• GetResponse

• ConvertKit

• MailChimp

• Maropost

Be sure to check their Features page for the current list of integrations.

Membership Integrations

Membership-based services are becoming ever more popular in the online space, as entrepreneurs seek to create recurring revenue streams. SamCart makes on-boarding new customers into your membership easy with direct integrations with:

• Kajabi

• MemberMouse

• WishList Member

• Thinkific

• OptimizePress

• MemberPress

• Digital Access Pass

Extra Training & Customer Support 

Any company worth its salt needs excellent customer support, and it needs to cover as much “ground” as possible. For example, I use Facebook a lot as a businesswoman. So I was quite happy to discover that the SamCart has an active Facebook group to provide even deeper customer service above and beyond the typical chat and email support features of most companies.

On top of that, SamCart provides its customers with a robust online support center and free bonus trainings – even including in-depth training on sales conversions and more - to help you grow your business. Even if you never sign up for SamCart, you can still learn what over $1 billion in processed sales has taught SamCart’s founders from free trainings they offer, like the latest from SamCart’s founder on his 10-step system for building an online business from scratch.

Get Advanced SamCart Features with the “Scale” Plan

All of the features I’ve talked about up to this point are a part of SamCart’s Grow (middle tier) plan. But if you opt for the Scale plan, you’ll get access to a few more really powerful sales growing tools, plus a host of other features. Here are the highlights of the extras:

Split Testing for Best Results

Split testing, also known as A/B testing, is an essential part of optimizing the results from your ecommerce platform. It allows you to consistently improve your conversion rate and figure out what leads to the best results for your business. Remember, higher conversions equal more money in the bank from the same amount of marketing effort and traffic. Luckily, SamCart has an whole section dedicated to this feature in the “Advanced Settings” tab.

Affiliate Management Made Easy

Having affiliates promote for you is one of the easiest ways to grow sales, but managing affiliates can be a lot of work. SamCart has a beautiful affiliate management system included with their Scale plan that makes it easy for you to keep your affiliates promoting your products and referring you sales. Or, you can integrate SamCart with some of the most common stand-alone affiliate management tools. But even if you’re not quite ready to have your own affiliates, it’s nice to know you won’t have to add yet another online platform into your toolbox to manage them when you are.

Dunning for Saving Failed Payments (aka, Subscription Saver)

Dunning is a must-have feature if you sell subscription-based products, memberships or products with payment plans because it saves failed payment attempts. SamCart states that as of July 2020, their Subscription Saver feature has saved more than $76 million in otherwise lost sales for their customers. If that doesn’t drive home the importance of built-in dunning, I’m not sure what would!

There’s a wide variety of reasons a customer’s credit card might fail to fulfill a payment, but they all result in one thing: lost sales for you. The good news is that by using an online payment platform with built-in dunning, you can recover a lot of those otherwise lost sales and customers. More importantly, SamCart does this automatically and in a timely manner, saving you precious time and customer service headaches. 

Additional Features You Get with the SamCart “Scale” Plan

• Customer Self-Cancellations

• Cart Abandonment

• Admin User Roles

• CRM Integrations

• Custom Integrations (webhooks) 

Why SamCart Users Love Them

SamCart users benefit from the platform’s high-converting checkout page designs, ease of use, and automated payment saving features and see increased overall sales and profit per customer. Because each customer’s buying experience vastly improves when you have a highly-effective sales process in place that also supports the value of your brand, you can sell more to each customer that lands on your page. Whether you’re selling online courses, services or a mix of digital or physical products, SamCart is a powerful, proven ecommerce platform with which to sell your products and grow your business.

And now with the new SamCart pricing that’s more affordable than ever, it’s easy for any entrepreneur to start selling online, close more sales and make more money at the end of every month. You can check out if this online platform is the right fit for you and your business by starting a SamCart free trial.

ClickFunnels Review

ClickFunnels Overview: The all-in-one tool for marketing funnel fanatics

Often counted as one of the SamCart alternatives, ClickFunnels launched just a year earlier than SamCart. ClickFunnels founder, Russell Brunson, has since gone on to share his funnel and traffic expertise in his best-selling books, Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets and Traffic Secrets. As a result, ClickFunnels has developed into one of the biggest competitors for digital marketers’ business.

So what does the ClickFunnels software have to offer to digital marketers and other online businesses?

As its name suggests, this ecommerce platform helps its users create a lot of sales funnels with ease and aims to be an “all-in-one” platform for those funnels, from opt-in to sale to even course delivery. ClickFunnels calls itself “a website and sales funnel builder for entrepreneurs.” The platform offers its users a wide array of pre-made funnels and templates for landing pages. And with a huge online following of raving fans, the good people at ClickFunnels are obviously doing something right.

One quick note… “all-in-one” can have its drawbacks. I’ve personally purchased a few courses from well-known brands that were housed on ClickFunnels' built-in membership platform, and I found the experience of navigating through the course to be clunky and the user interface hard to use. And, I’ve also been on the receiving end of ClickFunnels payment processing hiccups, like multiple charges for the same item (I incurred 37 back-to-back charges for one item I purchased!).

As with any platform, app or tool you may choose to use, be sure to do your own thorough research ahead of time so you know what you’re getting. No ecommerce platform is perfect, but sometimes trying to be everything to everybody results in subpar performance of certain features. Still, ClickFunnels offers a lot of features for the price, and if having a one-stop shop for your digital products business is what you’re after, it’s the top contender.

ClickFunnels Pricing

One of the slightly annoying things about ClickFunnels is that they make it difficult to find pricing information. You won’t find a “Pricing” link in their navigation bar on their website, like you normally do with other products. But I’ve made it easy for you to understand ClickFunnels pricing by including it here for you (you’re welcome, *wink*).

At the time of this writing, ClickFunnels pricing includes three different levels:

• $97 per month (basic)

• $297 per month (Platinum)

• $2,497 per month for their Two Comma Club level

There are some significant differences between the plan levels, including the number of payment gateways, pages included, number of funnels you can build, and support options.

For example, you only get access to their affiliate platform, Backpack, at the Platinum level and above (which means that if having an integrated affiliate program is important to you, it will cost you about $140 per month more than SamCart’s top plan). The top two options (Platinum and Two Comma Club) also come with additional bonus trainings, as well, much like SamCart’s extra training library that’s included with all their plan levels.

ClickFunnels Features

eCommerce Support and Payment Gateways

In the past few years, purchases made via mobile phone have skyrocketed, and any ecommerce platform you choose really should include ApplePay and GooglePay. If it doesn’t, you’re making it a lot harder for your customers to buy from you. ClickFunnels also offers these two payment gateways, as well as the old standbys, like Authorize.net, Stripe, Paypal and a few more. 

Clickfunnels Templates

When you enter ClickFunnels, you’ll see a large selection of landing page templates, both free and premium. ClickFunnels experts built them to drive more sales and know what we users like, as well as what people tend not to click on. Using one of these templates will give a business owner an attractive, interactive landing page.

You also get a vast selection of preset funnels to use. Each of these is grouped based on the industry they serve and the goal they need to achieve. More importantly, each of them comes with an easy-to-understand instructional video.

Naturally, you can create our own custom funnels using the tools that this service provides. These can cater to any of your needs, whether you want to sell a product, generate leads, or create events. Unfortunately, you are only limited to creating 20 sales funnels with the basic subscription level. In order to build an unlimited number of funnels, you have to upgrade to Platinum, which costs almost three times as much.   

The ClickFunnels Editor

As I mentioned in the SamCart review section above, having a drag & drop editor is undoubtedly a plus. These editors help users add or move objects without actually entering any code. It’s a little like moving items around in an image editor — all you really need is a functioning mouse and some creativity. ClickFunnels also has a drag-and-drop page builder included so you can customize any of the templates they include or build your own from scratch. At this point in time, you really shouldn’t consider any ecommerce platform that doesn’t have a drag-and drop editor.

Replete with lots of useful tools, the native editor gives you everything you need to make your landing page look great. Some of the tools include:

• Font editing

• Insert media

• Content blocks

• Embed forms

• Edit the background

• Create pop-ups

• SEO

• Custom CSS option

ClickFunnels Backpack Affiliate Marketing Platform

Backpack is the affiliate management platform native to ClickFunnels. With it, you can sell your products or services with the help of affiliates you recruit. Serious affiliate marketers can use Backpack to create and manage different affiliate types, draft custom affiliate plans, and create a two-tiered program that lets affiliates recruit other affiliates.

As mentioned in the above ClickFunnels Pricing section, you only get Backpack with subscriptions to the top two pricing plans. 

Actionetics, the ClickFunnels Email Marketing Platform

Interestingly, ClickFunnels comes with its own email service, Actionetics, but it’s only available on the top tier plans. Or, if you already use an email marketing platform you love, it may be able to integrate with ClickFunnels.

ClickFunnels Integrations

When researching for this article, I once again found the lack of ClickFunnels transparency making it difficult to get a full list of ClickFunnels integrations. There is no “Integrations” link or tab on their official website. To find out which services ClickFunnels integrates with, you’ll have to wade through a lot of third party blog posts or hunt through the ClickFunnels support pages.

To help you out, I’ve listed the email integrations I found listed inside their support pages, as you may very well decide to use a third-party email provider.

• Active Campaign

• Aweber

• Constant Contact

• ConvertKit

• Drip

• GetResponse

• Hubspot

• Keap (formerly Infusionsoft)

• MadMimi

• MailChimp

• Market Hero

• Ontraport

• Sendlane

Training & Customer Support

ClickFunnels offers dozens of videos, articles, and instructions on how to deal with some common funnel-building problems, an online support center, and customer support during standard weekday business hours. Your level of customer support (email only vs. chat support) will depend on your subscription level. You can also find extra tips by following their Facebook page.

Samcart vs ClickFunnels - Which one is better?

The number one difference between SamCart and ClickFunnels is that they focus on different parts of the sales process. Deciding which of these two ecommerce platforms is likely the right fit for you is going to depend on a few factors, including:

• Which part of the sales process you need the most help with

• What your main business needs are and what stage of businesses you are in

• What other online tools or platforms you already have set up

• How tech savvy or tech averse you are, or if you have a team to help you (SamCart is simpler, ClickFunnels requires more “tech ability”)

• Which features and capabilities are most important to you

Both platforms have their strong points. In general, when choosing which ecommerce platform is right for you, you want to also consider what other tools you already have in place.

For example, if you’ve already set up dozens of landing pages with LeadPages and have email automations already established, simply adding on an easy-to-use ecommerce platform like SamCart might be the smarter way to go, especially given ClickFunnels’ higher starting prices for similar features.

The best way to pick the right service is to know what kind of business you want to run, what needs you have now, and what your anticipated business needs will be in the future. Ultimately, you want to choose an ecommerce platform that is the right fit now, but one that can also grow with your business, too. With the free trials offered by these platforms, it’s easy to road test them and try out their capabilities and ease of use for yourself.

Why you should choose SamCart

SamCart is an ecommerce platform that’s specifically designed to help you make more money from each customer that lands on your checkout page and then get them to increase their total purchases through upsells and downsells. SamCart helps their users optimize the overall checkout experience and leverage the post-checkout process to maximize sales revenue.

SamCart is a great all-around fit for online business newbies to sellers who process millions of dollars in sales each year. With SamCart’s updated features and newest pricing tiers, it’s also one of the most affordable ecommerce platform for digital product sellers and service providers.

You can sign up for a SamCart free trial and check it out for yourself.

Why you should choose ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is an integrated marketing funnel platform. You can use their Actionetics email program to nurture customer interest when they’re not yet convinced enough to buy your product or service. Once they do buy, ClickFunnels helps you maximize the amount you earn from each sale with upsells and downsells (as with SamCart).

Overall, ClickFunnels is more about creating a multi-funnel, beginning-to-end marketing ecosystem for your business with everything under the ClickFunnels roof. ClickFunnels may be your best bet if you’re a sales funnel fanatic and want a truly all-in-one platform. Although SamCart is getting close to being an all-in-one platform, it’s still lacking the built-in email service that ClickFunnels has. But “all-in-one” has certain drawbacks, as discussed above, and comes with a higher price tag.

And, while ClickFunnels probably currently has a slight edge at comprehensive funnel design, the gap between them and SamCart is narrowing. Ever since SamCart introduced the “1-Page Funnel” designs that drive massive sales with high conversions, bump offers, upsells and downsells, SamCart has become one of the stronger ClickFunnels alternatives for digital marketers.

You can sign up for a ClickFunnels One Funnel Away Challenge for free.

Considering Shopify or PayPal for your ecommerce platform?

Yep, I’ve researched both Shopify and PayPal, too. To see how SamCart and ClickFunnels compare to Shopify and PayPal's newest e-commerce and business features, read my SamCart vs ClickFunnels vs Shopify vs PayPal comparison article.

Share Your Thoughts

Have you used SamCart or ClickFunnels in your business? Why did you choose that particular ecommerce platform? What do you like or dislike about it? Leave a comment below! 

And if you found this article helpful, please share it on your social media accounts so others can benefit, too.

Welcome! I’m Christine Parma. I’ve helped thousands of purpose-driven entrepreneurs, thought leaders and changemakers joyfully transform themselves, their businesses and their "real world results" in ways that align with their values, increase their impact, and achieve the bold visions they hold... and I'd love to support you, too!

As a results-focused trainer and coach, I help you craft both a wildly successful professional life and deeply fulfilling personal life. By combining highly effective coaching methods, smart strategies, strategic systems, and powerful personal transformation modalities, I support you with moving past what’s been limiting you, map a clear path forward to achieving your boldest goals and achieve your fullest potential with joy, grace and flow.

Ready for Extraordinary Results? Learn more about how I can help you or read some of my clients’ success stories.

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What’s the best CRM for small business? Dubsado.

In this article, you’ll learn why - after exhaustive research and testing - I chose Dubsado CRM for small businesses over Dubsado alternatives, and why it might be the right fit for your small business. Plus I share how to get the best Dubsado pricing at 20% off! And, you’ll also get an honest and in-depth review of Dubsado features and how I use it in my coaching business.

Be sure to watch my Dubsado tutorial video at the end of this article, too! I give you an in-depth walk-through of Dubsado features and share important insights and tips I’ve learned from using it to manage my business.

Why I chose it over Dubsado alternatives

Now let’s dive into why Dubsado is such a great client relationship and business management software, especially if you’re a smaller service provider.

It comes back to a basic business question I often ask myself: How can I make this simpler and easier?

Have you ever felt like just too many things are falling through the cracks in your business, even though you already have some systems in place?

Yep, that’s how I was feeling a back in early 2019 - like a lot of money and precious time were needlessly slipping through my fingers. And, oh-my-gee, the unnecessary added stress and overwhelm I was putting up with simply because I’d been procrastinating about putting a true business management system in place.

As I looked at my pile of Post-It Notes with all my to-do’s jotted on them and was scrolling through my overfilled inbox looking for an important email once again, I vowed to do something about it. I spent dozens of hours researching CRM software, business management systems, comparing all the options, polling people in Facebook group about which ones they liked best and why, and signing up for free trials and testing them out.

And while some Dubsado alternatives, like 17 hats or Satori have their own fans, after I tried out seemingly all of the top contenders, time and time again, all roads pointed to Dubsado as being the best CRM for small businesses, including mine.

Dubsado pricing and review

If you don’t know what Dubsado is, think of it as your business’s command center that can either be the one tool you use to do and track just about everything in your business, or it can enhance the systems you already have in place while solving some painful problems (in my case, not missing important emails because doing so can cost me a lot of $).

As a company, Dubsado also does cool things like celebrating its birthday every year by giving away great prizes like winning their Forever Plan. Even if you sign up for Dubsado at another time, you’ll be eligible to win, too. (Pretty cool, eh?)

The top reasons to use Dubsado

Plain and simple, the top reasons to use Dubsado:

• Make it easy to manage your business all in one place, instead of DIY spreadsheet tracking or duct taping together various tools and software

• You can stop being overwhelmed and letting things slip through the cracks (costing you precious time and money!)

• Close more sales and make more money in your business via greater organization

There are a lot more reasons, but I see these three as the core of what Dubsado can do for your business: bring much needed order, sanity and profitability through smart business and client management. Plus, they have everything you need to do that all in one place!

That’s how I see it. The reality is that if stuff is falling through the cracks and you’re not following up with people like you should, that’s money you COULD have otherwise had your bank account.

And here are a bunch of other reasons why you should seriously take a look at Dubsado (these are what won me over):

• EMAIL TRACKING!! This was the #1 thing for me… No more important emails getting lost in my inbox in a sea of lower priority emails.

• Dashboard that gives you an at-a-glance snapshot of how your business is doing, plus ability to run more in-depth reports

• Integrated payment processing (no extra fees)

• Online scheduler (like Calendly or Acuity, but you don’t have to pay extra or use yet another tool)

• Workflows (OMG… automation heaven for stellar customer service and lead follow-up!)

• Automated billing and auto-deduct payments

• Client portal where your clients can go to access invoices, forms, proposals, documents, etc.

• Embeddable lead capture forms

• Integrations with a zillion other useful tools you’re probably using (or should be)

• Task management (Think of it as a super-charged to-do list that allows you to assign tasks to a client, job or even one of your team members. They even have Boards, just like Trello!)

• Embed your proposals on your website. Have clients pick packages, sign the contract and pay the invoice all without leaving your site. Making sales easy = more money for you.

• Stellar customer support. If you’ve ever hit a snag using a tool, you know how important this is (and how much it sucks when a company has bad customer support!) They'll even help you migrate over from another CRM and set up forms for you! #awesomeness

This is just scratching the surface of what Dubsado can do for you - and it’s ALL IN ONE PLACE (can I get a hallelujah?) - and their team is constantly adding new and helpful features.

How to get the best Dubsado pricing

Why you should check out Dubsado NOW… You can lock in a crazy low rate forever!

Sign up for their free trial (no time limit!), and when you upgrade to a paid plan, you lock in the that rate for life. No fee hikes… nice! And, when you use this link and Dubsado coupon code ‘christineparma’ (without quote marks), you’ll get 20% off, too!

As of this update (July 2020), the monthly Dubsado price comes out to less than $30 per month (before any discounts or special incentives they may be offering). But even more importantly than the price is how much of your time and sanity you get back. At least for me, that was truly priceless!

Watch my Dubsado tutorial

If you’re curious what Dubsado looks like under the hood and how to get started, wonder no more! I created this Dubsado tutorial to help you. I also share some of the most important features I use to manage my coaching business, plus insider tips on things I’ve figured out through trial and error.

I walk you through the Dubsado login and set up, an in-depth tutorial on the Dubsado scheduler (important tips included!), using templates, how to create canned email responses, setting up a new project and client, what the Dubsado dashboard looks like, invoices tracking, and more. Get ready to take notes! :)

Watch my free Dubsado tutorial and get insider tips I’ve learned from using it in my business.

I’m so happy I made the choice to use Dubsado. It’s helped me be way more organized in my business and it’s made staying on top of clients easy…. which has meant more money in the bank, too!

Give Dubsado a try for free and let me know how it goes by leaving a comment below!

Did you find this article helpful? Spread the love by sharing it on your social media. Thanks in advance!

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means we may receive a commission for any purchases tracked back to the affiliate link, but using these links will never cost you extra. We only recommend trustworthy brands and products we use ourselves, believe in and recommend. We value your support and trust in us - thank you!

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Are you feeling stuck in your career, wanting a career change or even thinking about starting your own business? Deciding if you should quit a job you hate or just stick with it can be tough. In this article, you’ll learn the five big fears that keep people from quitting a job, how to overcome your fear of change and how to take action to find a career and work you love.

The biggest reason most people aren't quitting a job they hate

If you type into Google any of the main words around work, career or a job, some of the first matches return have to do with quitting a job you hate and how to give two weeks notice in the best way. The phrase "i hate my job" is searched for over 12,000 times a month!

When SoulPancake asked 11,000 people what stood between them and where they want to be, they were expecting the usual suspects: time, money, health, stress, even laziness. They were surprised when the top reason was fear… but I’m not. Years ago fear is what kept me from quitting a job long after I knew it was time to move on.

Over a decade ago I had a high-pressure job at a major financial services company as a financial advisor. I wanted to be “the best”, so I pushed myself to earn the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ (CFP®) designation in six months (it normally takes two years). It was an incredible amount of work, sweat and tears, not counting all of the hours I’d put into building client relationships and the responsibility I felt to them. So even though I was feeling dissatisfied, disillusioned with the financial industry and unfulfilled by my work, I felt stuck in place by fear.

People often wait until circumstances are unbearable until they make a change, but why? I talk about these fears in regards to professional work, but they also apply relationships and many other areas of life. When the change will be dramatic, whether simply perception or reality, it activates our primal brains (the amygdala), which is not governed by logic but by emotion. The primal or reptilian brain, as it’s often called, is responsible for keeping us safe and alive. It’s all about survival… and that’s a good thing if you’re being chased by a bear, but not so great if your primal brain is getting in the way of your happiness.

These five big fears about quitting a job can keep you stuck

Here are five of the biggest fears that people commonly struggle with when they think about quitting a job. I give you examples from my personal struggle so you can see how these fears may be showing up for you and keeping you stuck. Which of these fears can you identify with?

1. Fear of the unknown

I had no idea what would happen if I let go of what I had (a stable, well-paid job). I imagined all sorts of terrible scenarios: bankruptcy, homelessness, ostracism by friends and family chanting “I told you so”, that I would never be able get a job – or a “good” one – again.

Fear of the unknown can serve you well if you’re contemplating doing something physically perilous, like jumping off a cliff. But our brains can go on worry binges and elevate a concern or decision point that can be logically thought through to the level of primal fear, which compromises your ability to think clearly, make smart decisions or move forward into taking positive action.

What terrible things do you fear will occur if you quit the job that’s making you miserable?

2.Fear of financial disaster

I was leaving a well-paying job with no prospects of another. My mind offered up this association: No job + no income = financial instability = threat to survival. This fear is also a particularly deep pain point for me from childhood. In our society where money not only equals opportunity and status but whether or not you can put food on the table, quitting a paying job without the next job or income-producing path lined up can feel life-threatening.

But people are often far more resourceful than they give themselves credit for. You have the ability to discover what you are good at, look for work you love and find creative ways to make money when you’re really motivated (like creating an online course, digital product or consulting in your area of expertise). That might even mean you start an online business around what you're passionate about that will provide you with the kind of financial security and earning potential you want, even while you’re still in your current job.

(Read more about how to create the kind of money you deserve by fixing some not-so-obvious problems.)

What’s your worse-case financial catastrophe?

What are opportunities for you to create income right now that you haven't yet taken advantage of?

Which jobs or businesses that are in alignment with your values could provide you with the kind of income you want?

3.Fear of social criticism or backlash from family and friends

Quitting my job and profession seemed illogical to work colleagues, friends and family. I received a lot of negative feedback, usually sounding something like: “What?! Are you crazy? You worked so hard to get where you are and now you’re quitting?? You don’t have another job lined up? How will you support yourself?”

Family pressures and social norms can keep people from moving forward with change, even if current circumstances are painful, especially if you already struggle with self-esteem or feeling like you’re not enough.

Who do you fear a backlash from?

Who might feel threatened by your decision?

Whose love do you fear losing?

Are these fears real or mostly (or totally) unfounded?

4.Fear of changing how you self-identify and losing your sense of self-worth

I didn’t want to be labeled a quitter, much less feel like one. I’m very ambitious by nature. I drive myself hard to achieve my goals and quitting isn’t in my DNA. I had also identified myself as a financial advisor and CFP® and letting go of that identity meant I had to rethink who I was and redefine myself with no supporting structure to guide me.

Self-worth is closely tied to how you identify yourself. I admit that I derived a feeling of self-importance from making it to CFP® status and in record time. CFP®’s make up less than 2% of financial advisors because it’s a very difficult professional designation to get. I felt a bit special that I’d made it into the club and felt it gave me standing in a male-dominated profession.

And even thought that job and work environment was no longer in line with my personal values or the kind of life I wanted to have, leaving financial planning meant giving up my “special status”, which meant that the self-worth I'd attached to it would also disappear if I quit my job.

Where in your life do you define yourself by accomplishments?

What are your core values that aren’t being reflected by your current work?

What kind of work is in alignment with your core values and the kind of lifestyle you want to have?

5.Fear of making an irreversible mistake

I had an immense amount of fear that I'd be making a huge mistake by quitting financial planning. I was on a career path with a lot of promise, earning potential and that had some of the qualities I cherish, like self-direction and helping others in an area that is really important for themselves and their families well-being. I had to do a reality check and admit that I could go back to financial planning if I ended up regretting quitting my job, I didn't find another job I really loved or if I tried to start a business but failed. I would just have to start over with building my client list, but I’d done it before and I could do it again.

And the truth is that even if the shizzle does end up hitting the fan and the repercussions are really hard to get through at the time, you can overcome just about any failure in life and turn a defeat into success.

If you quit your job, could you truly never go back to it or never find another job in that field or a related one?

What would you do if you quit and you couldn’t go back?

Could you start your own business?

What is your Plan B?

How to overcome your fears and move forward with confidence

Now that you’ve pinpointed your fears around quitting your job or changing careers entirely, how do you move forward and take the leap into the unknown or what feels scary? If you Google “overcoming fear” you’ll come up with thousands of articles with techniques ranging from psychotherapy to envisioning your life’s purpose, but here is a quick and easy exercise you can do to take the first steps:

Write out your fears in order to get them out of "hiding"

Literally write (or type) them out on paper. Get it all out. What are the worst-case scenarios? Describe your Financial Armageddon, negative family reactions to your decision, the feelings you have around letting go of your old job, what it means to how you think of yourself.

Next, look for what's true or false about these fears.

Go back to each of those fears and ask yourself:

How realistic is it that things will happen like this?

Does this fear really have any basis or foundation in reality, or am I allowing my mind to make a mountain out of a molehill?

For example, will my spouse truly leave me? Will I really end up homeless?

Create a practical action plan that supports you quitting your job and taking steps in the right direction

For the fears that you identified as being unrealistic and unlikely to actually occur, you can probably easily let those go with some inner work.

If any of your fears got a “yes, this is a real possibility”, then you need to ask yourself a second question:

What could I do about this situation to make a positive difference?

Then list out the possible solutions and steps you need to take.

For example, if you feel you can’t quit your job because you have no savings and you could truly end up homeless, or you can't quit because you have a family to support, go ahead and calculate the amount you’d need to have as a financial cushion to carry you through. Then create a savings plan - or better yet, a "job freedom plan - to go from where you are to the place of enough financial cushion that you can meet your needs or obligations and still change jobs or careers.

Or, if you’re considering starting an online business, you can begin by doing it on the side until you have sufficient income to quit your current job.

Of course, you always want to quit your job in the most professional way possible, even if you’re very unhappy at it. (Here are some tips on what to say when quitting a job.)

Also, it’s a really good idea to give two weeks notice, not only from a personal relationships standpoint and feeling good about how you conducted yourself, but adhering to the rules of your employment contract also makes good legal sense, too. There’s no sense in burning bridges, creating ill will or creating more problems for yourself, if you can avoid it.

Envision and connect with the new career or possibility you want to have

Begin to envision yourself in your new job, doing what you love, feeling fulfilled by the work you do. If you, like I did, don’t have a clue as to what you want to do next for a profession, list the things you personally love doing. Do you love working with people? Being outdoors? Yoga? Coding? Then really connect with how you feel when you’re engaged in those activities - write out how you feel, what you’re doing, what makes you feel alive, what gets you excited about these things.

When I wrote out the “job description” for what I wanted to do next, it was all about how I felt, the connections I had with people, being of service to others, helping to inspire and empower others. I didn’t know the job title, but I knew the qualities of the career I wanted.

For additional help on getting clear on your motivation, making difficult decisions and moving forward in spite of fear, see my blog posts Stuck on Stuck and Get to the Root Cause with the 5 Why’s.

I got to the point where all the signs pointed to “leave now” and the stress of staying in a career I didn’t enjoy was taking a big toll... but it's far better to take action before you get to that point! Know that you can overcome your fears and move into a job that is fulfilling, supports the vision you hold for your life and is integrity with your core personal beliefs.

Share your thoughts!

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you!

Have you ever felt stuck in a job you hate?

What kept you from making a change?

If you’ve already taken a big leap into another career, how did you overcome the fears about doing so?

Please share your thoughts in the comments.

If you found this post helpful, please share it with your friends and sign up to receive weekly insights for heart-centered entrepreneurs and changemakers, inspiration to keep you motivated and empowering strategies for living your greatest life.

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Imagine having a private beach-front, 7-casita retreat home + yoga room with staff of 5 and a private chef on one of Thailand’s premier vacation destinations… all for your family’s vacation.

Sounds dreamy, doesn’t it?

Wouldn’t you love to manifest something like that for yourself? Yeah, I wanted to, too.

And so I did. :-)

But, first, let me back up. 

Want more details on how to increase your manifesting success? Watch the video.

It all started with my sort-of last-minute vacation planning.

Four months ahead of time is VERY last-minute when you’re trying to plan a trip to Thailand over the Chinese New Year and everything’s booked a year ahead of time.

My husband and I scoured the internet for days looking for some place… any place… that wasn’t a typical hotel resort and didn’t cost $2,000 a night. 

Let’s just say the pickings were REALLY slim… as in, only 4 rental beach-front homes in all of Thailand in our price range during the week the kids are off school... and they were going fast.

But, you see, I’ve been really focusing a lot more attention and INtention lately on practicing certain spiritual and manifesting principles. I’ve been reading A Course about Miracles (again) and I put what I know works to work in this situation.

And then the synchronicities started happening… and I ended up with the contact info for a famous LA film producer and photographer whose bestie is Jeff Bridges. (Yes, THE Jeff Bridges).

I had the contact info… My mind wavered momentarily… Should I call him? Wouldn’t I be bothering him? I mean, he’s famous and a bazillionaire… and I’m, well, me! 

All the doubts and fears rose to the surface and I just let them pass… and then I contacted him. Long story short, he was super-friendly, his villa was available for the exact week we wanted it and he’s giving it to us for less than the price of a 2-bedroom hotel room.

*Jaw drop*

There are quite a few lessons I got from this experience, but I want to highlight 3 of them that are particularly important for YOU to manifest success in your life.

3 Critical Lessons (Steps) I Learnt to Manifest Success In Life

Lesson#1 - Intentionally build an environment of learning and growth around you.

Surround yourself with the people and learning that help you become the person you need to be in order to have what you desire most.

Shortly before this opportunity came up, I’d enrolled in a fantastic program that had an incredibly supportive community of like-minded people focusing on growing themselves and their success in aligned ways, and it was been a game-changer for me. The deep inner work I did in this program is what cleared the way for me to be able to manifest this amazing vacation by helping to get myself out of the way.

A critical step to getting more of what you want is to be on board with the growth that is required. You have to grow into and become that person first, and getting involved with the resources and people who can help you do it is the fastest way to start creating more of what you want in your life. For me, it was the manifesting program… for you, it might be something different. You’ll know what’s right for you, but you have to change YOU in order to change your outer world reality.

ACTION STEP: What is one way you feel you need to change in order to have what you want most? 

Lesson #2 - Excuses rob you of opportunities.

Opportunities are all around us to get what we want all the time. But how many times have you had an amazing opportunity come up only to let it pass by because you thought, “Oh, I couldn’t do that” or “I’m not rich enough/ famous enough / skinny enough [insert excuse]”? 

In the case of manifesting this vacation house, I knew I wanted to take my family to Thailand for the Chinese New Year, but I was soooo late with booking anything. I’d done some searching online and picking were more than slim or not in our budget. So I started talking to people about this vacation I wanted to go on. I knew I wanted to be beach-front and in a house at a price we wanted to pay. And low and behold, I was talking to my acupuncturist, and she said, I know a guy with a house - she said it was amazing - … and that’s how it got started.

Even if it scares you… even if it seems impossible or a foregone conclusion that you’ll fail… you must move forward into action before the opportunity is gone. 

So I ask you: What’s one unexpected opportunity that has come up for you to have what you want? Or, what’s one opportunity that you intuitively know you should act on but haven’t yet? 

But keep in mind, the opportunity that will give you exactly what you want may not look like what you thought it would.

In fact, most times it won't and that’s actually a good thing because our minds can only perceive opportunities that fall within our current perception and beliefs (and these aren't the same ones that will get you what you want or you'd already have it).

Here's a perfect example: I just had another opportunity come up that supports the financial goals I’ve set for myself and it looks nothing like I thought it would. In fact, it’s something I thought I’d never ever do.

But I believe that (1) when something keeps showing up in your world, then you need to pay attention to it because there’s something there for you, and (2) when you get the opportunity to have what you want, but it comes via an unexpected way, you have to a decision to make:

• You can be judgmental about the “how” of getting what you want and let the opportunity pass by

• Or you can do a quick reframe on yourself and be open to the fact that maybe that unexpected opportunity is exactly what you need to create what you want most. This is the choice I made in this instance.

Right-and-perfect-for-you opportunities can show up in all kinds of ways. When you start to let go of your judgments of what your opportunities to get what you want “should” look like, and you will start to see all the possibilities for you to have what you want that are already all around you.

Lesson #3 - Ask for what you desire and then take aligned action in spite of fear.

Be bold in declaring what you want and asking for what you want, and then take aligned action. 

Had I not asked the Universe for what I wanted and then started talking about it with others, I never would’ve manifested this amazing vacation for my family. And, yes, I’m saying talk to others about it because the Divine works through others to deliver your good to you.

You can think positive thoughts all day long, but not much will change in your life until you act.

What's once aligned action you could you take today to move you closer to having what you want most?

Here’s another great example of being bold and making a dream happen through aligned action:

Last night I was flipping back through an old journal of mine and reading an entry from October 2006 in which I was talking about what I wanted to create in my life. At the time I had just quit a job I hated, was feeling really lost and I’d started taking some of T. Harv Eker’s programs. He’d recently made an announcement about a job opening I was in no way “logically” qualified for. Long story short, even though I wasn’t “qualified”, I took massive action toward going after that job I wanted, and in May 2007 I started working with him on creating his high-end retreat program. Without being bold in going after what I wanted, I would have missed out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that turned into one of the best times in my life.

I’ve intentionally dived back into deep inner work even more so than before. I’ve started re-reading A Course In Miracles, which has really been blowing me away with all the insights and a-ha moments I’ve had. I’ve felt pulled to learn even more about energy, self and the human mind works. I know from past experience that when I honor the guidance I receive, my life and I change in profound ways (like when the Akashic Records showed up in my awareness).

When I feel I want certain changes and growth in my life, I ask the Divine to show me the way, and then I notice what shows up and move into action on the ones that feel aligned for me. What has happened in my life as a result of following this strategy has been nothing short of amazing, and I highly encourage you to try it out for yourself.

So, what is your intuition guiding you to do?

What opportunities have popped up in your world that you haven’t yet acted on out of fear or doubt?

What actions can you take today that will get you a step closer to your goals and dream life?

Here’s to YOU taking courageous action to manifest success you desire and make your dreams come true!

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So you want to create an online course or digital product or even offer a new kind of service to your clients. You’ve got the idea and have mapped out a plan for your product launch. You’ve even figured out if you’ll be using an online course platform like Teachable, Thrivecart’s Learn or deliver your new digital product DIY-style with the help of a service like Dropbox.

Not so fast. Before you start creating, marketing and selling your new course, product or service, you’d be well served to first validate the idea and then to create what I call a Product Offering Plan. Creating your Product Offering Plan right now – instead of after you’ve created and launched a couple of new courses, products or services – will help you grow your online business a lot faster and with a lot more ease.

In this article I explain why having a Product Offering Plan is an essential part of smart business planning for any small business or online entrepreneur and how it helps you to sell more with ease. Then I walk you through the steps of how to create a plan of your own. So grab a few sheets of paper and let’s get started!

The reasons to create a Product Offering Plan before you create an online course, launch a digital product, or offer a new service

There are several compelling reasons why you want to create a Product Offering Plan for your business:

1. It’s simply smart business strategy.

When you map out how each course, product, program and service offering first, you can see how they fit together to form a suite of offers that not only serve your clients but which also make sense for your business. You’ll also be able to see where a product or service may be off brand for you or not within your business’s sweet spot. And if your ambition is to grow your online empire, mapping out your offers becomes an essential step to quickly growing your business to 6-figures and beyond.

2. Mapping out your Product Offering Plan helps you to always know what to offer customers next.

The feast or famine cycle is a vicious rollercoaster that results from not properly planning out your offers and revenue streams. Creating your Product Offering Plan helps you avoid huge swings in your sales and create more stable income in your business by allowing you to structure your offers in such a way that you anticipate the needs and desires of your customers. Instead of trying to come up with something to offer them, you plan out your offers so that they create a value and price ladder that makes sense for both your customers and your business. Even more importantly, a Product Offering Plan puts each thing you create into context with regard to your overall vision for your business and lifestyle.

3. You can create a more natural feeling sales funnel experience for your customers, which leads to more sales and happier customers.

Before you invest a lot of time, energy and possibly money into creating and launching a bunch of new products and services, you want to make sure that you have a game plan for how and when you’ll offer each one to your potential customers. You want to construct your Product Offering Plan in a way that one purchase naturally leads into the next one. If you don’t, your customers may feel like you’re coming out of left field with unrelated offers that aren’t important to them. Even worse, when you randomly offer whatever you’ve happened to create at the time, your customers may decide that you’re not a brand worth buying from because they feel you don’t understand them and their needs.

Your Product Offering Plan is the road map for everything you create and helps optimize all of your offers for long-term business growth.

One of the most important outcomes of your Product Offering Plan is that you will have a precise way of organizing everything you create now or in the future to produce optimal, long-term revenue and client flow into your business, whether that’s from your premium programs, evergreen online courses, digital products or services.

I’m sure you’re aware that it takes far more time, energy and money to find and enroll a new client than it does to offer a program or service to an existing client. By creating your Product Offering Plan, you continually leverage your current clients to grow your business even more quickly and sustain that growth over the long term. Instead of launching programs, products and services haphazardly, you’ll have a plan to guide you for the next couple of years. If you want to make a great living as an online content creator, coach or digital marketer, then completing this step first and revising it as you get insights into what your customers really want will help you immensely.

Your Product Offering Plan acts as a road map for creating your series of offers and is based not on what you feel like offering or what seems like a good idea to offer when you hit that “Oh, I’ve got to come up with something else to sell” point in your business, but rather the plan is based on solving your ideal customers’ problems and providing them solutions in a natural and logical sequence. By doing so, your offers will naturally be more enticing to new customers and your current set of clients will be more likely to keep buying from you.

A big mistake businesses often make when creating and offering a new course, product or service

This leads me to one of the biggest mistakes so many entrepreneurs make when trying to decide what to offer and when to offer it, which is that they focus on themselves or the features of their product instead of the needs of their clients.

You might be tempted to think, “Wow, it’s been a while since I offered my clients anything new. Hmmm… what could I teach them or sell them next?” or “Yikes! I really need to create some income! What can I offer to my email list and clients that will put some money in my pocket quick?!”

Instead of thinking of your offers first from a “What can I sell?” perspective, ask yourself, “What’s the next piece of knowledge or skill set my clients need in order to be even more successful?” or “After my clients finish this first program, what problem do they need solved next?” If you focus on your needs instead of your clients’ needs, your offers are going to fall on deaf ears and you’ll find yourself frustrated that very few people – if any at all – take you up on your self-proclaimed amazing offer.

Of course, as you and your business evolve, you’ll likely make some changes to the plan, but you’ll have done most of the work ahead of time by laying out your framework of courses, products and services. That puts you light years ahead of most solopreneurs and some small businesses that simply throw out offers randomly to see what works.

A lot of the reason many well-intentioned, heart-centered entrepreneurs fall into the “self-focused” trap is that they fundamentally misunderstand what it means to be in business and how to build a profitable small business. Many solo businesses are launched from a place of passion, which is fantastic because it can be a huge motivator to keep going when the road gets a little bumpy.

At the same time, if you base your business on offering only what you want to teach – instead of what your clients want and are willing to pay for – then in reality you have embarked on pursuing an expensive hobby instead of launching a business. A hobby is an activity or interest pursued for one’s own pleasure or passion. A business, on the other hand, survives by solving real-world problems for its ideal customers or target market and doing so at a profit.

How a business solves problems for its clients is through:

1. Being informed about buyer psychology, which is essentially knowing its clients and their needs, desires, motivations and buying criteria intimately, and

2. Providing customers with what they want: solutions to their big problems or pain points at a price that is less than the value they perceive that solution to hold

Product positioning is a key consideration when mapping out your offers and marketing strategy

The next principle to understand is that a new set of problems surfaces with each solution. Meaning, once your client has obtained a solution to her current problem, she will logically face a new one that you can help her solve. Your Product Offering Plan helps you create a logical offer pathway - and the marketing that goes along with it - that is clearly sequenced and informed by what your ideal customers need and in the order that they need it.

The general formula or flow for the client’s journey and your Product Offering Plan goes like this:

Problem 1-Solution 1, Problem 2-Solution 2, Problem 3-Solution 3 and so on.

When you create offers and market them in ways that position your product or service as the natural next step for your customers to take based on the needs or desires they still have, you won’t have to try so hard to sell people on the value of what you’re providing. Your product or service will be simply become the logical follow-up solution to the problem gap that was created or still remains as a result of the previous problem being solved.

This may be a little counter-intuitive at first. So, let’s walk through a concrete example from my own business.

Your Product Offering Plan: How to identify the problem-solution sets to attractively position your products

Here’s an example that walks you through the problem-solution “ladder” so you can understand it a bit better.

If you’re in business, your operational needs fall into three basic categories: product, people and profit.

First, you need something to offer folks – that’s your product, program, online course or service (all referred to as “product” in this example).

Second, you need people to buy your product. Those are your target audience, ideal customers and current clients.

Third, in order to stay in business, you need to create a profit.

At its core, business is really this simple in concept. It’s in the “how” and “doing” that things can become more complicated.

To continue with this example, let’s look at the Profit Now with Premium Programs private coaching program I offer. As I said, a business needs a product to offer and, in this case, it is a program that teaches my clients how to offer their services packaged as premium programs.

Problem 1-Solution 1

Well, a lot of people don’t know what to offer or how to create a premium program that is enticing to their target audience. So, Problem #1 from my ideal client’s standpoint could be stated as “I don’t know how to create my own premium program that people will want to buy at a higher fee”. Logical Solution #1 is to show my clients how to create their own premium programs based on solving the urgent problem of their ideal customers.

Problem 2-Solution 2

After my clients leap over that hurdle, the race is not over, though. The next hurdle is people… namely, finding and enrolling clients into their programs. That’s Problem #2. So in the Profit Now with Premium Programs curriculum, I show my clients a specific method that they can easily implement to find and enroll their ideal clients.

Problem 3-Solution 3

Then we move on to Problem #3, which is profit. How do you price a premium program so that you make a profit? Profit is what sustains a business, which is why I dedicate an entire module in my program to pricing and value positioning.

That’s the product-specific “micro view” of the problem-solution flow in a nutshell.

How to use the problem-solution ladder to guide your online course, product or services creation and overall business marketing strategy

Now, let’s take it up a level to viewing my Profit Now with Premium Programs coaching as Big Solution #1 within the context of my business’s overall Product Offering Plan.

If we consider that my coaching program solves the specific problem for my clients of knowing how to create, launch and enroll clients into their own signature premium or high-end courses, programs and services (we’ll call it Big Solution #1), what is the inherent Big Client Problem #2 that arises from Big Solution #1? Can you guess what it is?

The next logical problem is how to systemize client acquisition for your premium or higher fee courses, programs and services. For example, let’s say you, too, create a high-end coaching program. Once you have your one-on-one premium coaching program created, you’ll start by enrolling clients in it on a one-on-one basis.

But enrolling clients in this manner can be time-consuming with lengthy application processes and enrollment conversations, but they provide a lot of value feedback for your and your business when you first create a high-end offer. If you’re offering premium products or services, you need to know how to have client conversations that are authentic, non-salesy, compelling and position the immense value of your product or program at the same time because any leveraged client acquisition strategies you use later will be based upon the insights you get from having these first client enrollment conversations. They are a chance for you to really pinpoint what connects deeply with your ideal clients versus what is ineffective.

Eventually, as you enroll more and more clients into your program and you’re actively working with them, you’ll find that your time and energy get squeezed. Many entrepreneurs eventually fall into the feast and famine cycle of enrolling enough new clients to hit their income goals, but it ends up resulting in a major time crunch with the majority of their day being taken up by client sessions. As a result, these business owners don’t consistently engage in client acquisition activities… and I’m sure you can predict what happens next. That results in a major lack of clients and income for the next sales cycle or month as their current ones finish up… hence, the famine. Unfortunately, this cycle can be hard to break.

Therefore, Big Client Problem #2 is “I don’t know how to find and enroll more clients using less of my personal time to do so” or “I don’t know how to systemize my client acquisition.” Big Solution #2 is to learn and implement client acquisition strategies and systems that either don’t require your personal time or require much less of it so you can still grow your business and have consistent income coming in while you focus the majority of your time on serving your clients (or whatever you love doing most in your business).

But, once you’ve got your client acquisition system up and running, inevitably you’re going to hit the point where you max out on how many private clients you can fit into your day. Big Client Problem #3 quickly surfaces as “I don’t know how to leverage my time and effort to serve more clients and create more income with less effort.” Big Solution #3 is to offer group programs or courses, meaning group live programs like seminars, workshops, events and retreats and virtual group programs such as premium group programs, masterminds and/ or more self-paced online courses.

Each problem-solution pair can be the basis for a stand-alone premium program, online course and/or supporting “side” services and products, if you want to create a premium program yourself around solving each problem. However, even if you don’t create the next logical solution for your client, your client will still face the problem and seek out a solution from someone, which is why you want to be aware of what the problem is at each stage.

How to start creating your own Product Offering Plan

Once you have the content outline for your product, course, program or service, think about your product in the overall context of what your ideal clients need solved first, second and third. As you outline your Product Offering Plan, where do your current products - or the ones you plan to create - logically fall in the sequence? What other products or services would support your customers’ success in the product that comes right before it and right after it? Are these things something you want to offer? If not, who could you partner with to offer those additional support systems as a bonus or extra resource that your customers can purchase at a special rate?

For instance, is there something which would be beneficial for your customers to know or be able to do as a preceding step to enrolling in your current course, coaching program or before downloading and using your product? What’s the foundation or knowledge they should have in place beforehand so that they will get the most out of your current or planned course, product or service?

And, after your customers complete your course or program or are using your product, what problems do they face next? What solution must they obtain in order to keep progressing? Or what new desire arises from using your product (for example, your product may have opened up new possibilities for them so that they now have different desires).

Then, if you want to help your customers solve those next problems or new desires, how do you want to go about doing that? For example, would they benefit from another entirely separate course or product, additional private or group coaching or an intensive or retreat? What problem would you be solving and what delivery method would fulfill your customers’ needs and desires the best?

When deciding what to position or offer next in your Product Offering Plan, you must always ask yourself this question:

“What is the problem inherent in the solution I just provided?”

The answer to that question is what you base your next offering on. That way, you are always offering something that your clients actually want and need!

Avoid this big mistake when implementing your plan

Now I want to make a very important point: Even though you’re creating your Product Offering Plan now, you are NOT going to go out and start creating everything in your plan at this very moment! That would scatter your energy and efforts so much that, more than likely, you’d become completely overwhelmed and not even one of your new offerings would find much success.

The purpose of the Product Offering Plan is to have a vision and a road map for where you want to go so that when your clients say (even if only to themselves), “I absolutely LOVED your course! Your product is amazing! What else do you have?”, you’ll have anticipated their needs and desires and can guide them to those solutions, making the sales process a lot easier overall.

Remember, even if you haven’t yet created a course, product or program, you can still pre-sell it. In fact, it’s the smartest approach to take! For example, if you have current coaching clients who you’ve helped solve a big problem they had, but who are still facing the “follow-up” problems, you can position a new coaching engagement like this: “I’ve got a coaching program that solves X problem with Y result, but I haven’t yet opened it up to the public for enrollment. As one of my clients, I’d be happy to offer you preferential pre-enrollment in the program so you can be sure to get a spot before they’re all gone. How does that sound?” Your client is already happy with the results she’s gotten from working with you, so it’s the perfect time to offer your next program (or course, product or service). She’s almost guaranteed to say yes!

The secret to client success with your online courses, products and services and continuing sales

Now that you’ve learned about the concept of creating your Product Offering Plan, is there any content you should go back and remove from a current courses, programs, products or services (or ones you’ve already planned to offer)? As you create your plan, you want to keep in mind that you should save some of your great content and expertise for future offers. You can take the “extra” information and include it in another course or product, if it makes sense to do so.

Even if you feel that you’ve structured your program correctly, it’s always a good idea to go back and look at your program within the context of your offering plan, as well as from your customer’s perspective. Overstuffing your courses or programs with too much information that instead of helping your customers or students solve a problem, actually can overwhelms them, keeps them stuck in the problem state and results in them not finishing your course or not using your product (after which they may conclude it wasn’t worth the money). Instead of having happy, successful customers who love your brand, you may end up with unhappy people who ask for refunds and never buy from you again (yikes!).

“You Incorporated” is a business and, therefore, you need to do some planning. Your Product Offering Plan is an essential part of that. Expect that you’ll make adjustments to your plan as you get feedback from your clients and you start to see what people love and want more of and what they couldn’t care less about. And, you’ll most likely tweak your plan as you find out more about which methods of sharing your brilliance you love or hate to engage in.

Your Product Offering Plan will help you to make smart business decisions, give you a vision for what to move forward with for new products or services and help sustainably grow your brand and business with a lot more ease.

Share your thoughts!

Did you find this article helpful? I’d love to hear about it!

And please let me know what your Product Offering Plan looks like as you map it out.

Feel free to post questions in the comments below. Thanks!

Some of the links in this article are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you choose to purchase a product. It helps support my health food addiction… so thanks! ;-)

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The biggest influence on your success that you might not suspect

If you’re feeling stuck and struggling to make the progress you want, but you haven’t quite been able to figure out why, take a look around you… Are you spending time with the right people who could help you achieve your goals, your vision, your dream of success?

Interesting social psychology research explains how people normally choose their peers. A majority of children, teens and even adults select their friends based on proximity over other factors (which is aptly named The Proximity Principle), which may or may not end up in relationships that support you and your ambitions.

For instance, in a classroom, who are you going to make friends with? You normally choose the one beside you. You do, not because you have the same interests, likes, dislikes, favorites… but because that one beside you is the one nearest to your proximity. It is even easier to start a conversation and make friends, right?

As preeminent business thought leader Jim Rohn says: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

To put it simply, who you hang out with (professionally and personally) plays a huge role in the outcomes in your life.

If you’re feeling like you are not getting anywhere, then take time to look around you. Who are the people influencing you and the direction of your life? Who are the ones who contribute to your reasoning and your mindset, either intentionally or by default?

Questions to help you uncover who’s influencing you

• Who are the people you spend the most time with?

• How did they become close to you?

• Was it on purpose or based solely on convenience?

• Do you share the same visions, goals and aspirations in life?

• Do these people hold you to a high regard? Or do they undermine you and your efforts, even if not done intentionally?

Make friends with those who are a few steps ahead of you to become more successful even faster

If you want to see huge changes in your life, and thus achieve your definition of success, you need to surround yourself with people who hold an even bigger vision for their own lives than you are currently imagining for yourself, who have a higher level of skill in areas you want to or need to master, and who see possibilities where you might not be able to yet.

Remember that your life is a reflection of your internal vision, priorities and values… and the people you surround yourself with reflect what those are. So start today and exert more effort in choosing the right people who will support your aspirations and challenge you to grow beyond your comfort zone.

Below are some positive affirmations to inspire and motivate you in changing how you choose the people around you. Enjoy! Go ahead and pin these and share them to help inspire others, too!

“Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.”
- Mark Ambrose

“You become like the five people you spend the most time with.
Choose carefully.” - Jim Rohn

“Bad company corrupts good character.” - 1 Corinthians 15:33

“Surround yourself with those who only lift you higher.”
- Oprah Winfrey

“Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground.” - Wilfred Peterson

“If you surround yourself with positive people who build you up,
the sky is the limit.” - Joel Brown

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Has this year been an amazing year in your business for you… or maybe not-so-great? As we get close to the end of every year, a lot of entrepreneurs go into cruise mode or panic mode, but neither of these will help you bring more sales in the door. If you find yourself thinking, “Ugh! How can I make next year better?”, your first step is to get more clients and make more money during the rest of the time that’s left in this year!

There’s still plenty of time to create thousands of dollars and turn your year around… or simply boost your bottom line! Follow these five steps that practically guarantee more clients now and create the kind of money you desire and deserve before the year is over.

Watch the video below to get more!

(Get current information about the Make $10K in 10 Days Challenge course here.)

Step #1: Get really clear on the kind of business you want to create.

If you’re not really clear on who you’re serving and how you want to serve them, then your messaging and your ability to connect with clients will be wishy-washy and you’re probably going to end up building a business that isn’t what you intended. You want to get really clear on who you’re serving and how you want to serve them because how you want to serve them has everything to do with what you’re going to do in your business to bring in more clients and create more money. Makes sense, right?

So, if you’re not clear about how you want to serve them, then it’s going to be much harder for you to figure out the methodology or steps you need to follow.

Step #2: Clearly communicate your value.

Do you believe that you have something valuable to offer? Or that what you’re offering is valuable? You must first know your value and be confident in the value you’re offering in order to clearly communicate it to your potential customers. If you’re not sure that what you are offering is of value to people, then you’re going to have trouble selling it, especially in an authentic way that doesn’t leave you feeling like a used car salesman.

The truth is that you can have the best marketing copy in the world, but if you don’t believe in yourself and what you’re offering enough, then it’s going to be really, really hard for you to get clients or make money in your business. One of the big reasons why I integrate mindset and spiritual principles into the work that I do with my clients is because you could be doing all the right business things, but if you don’t have the confidence and value parts nailed, you’re going to find selling to be a really frustrating, stressful and unsuccessful experience.

For example, I see this a lot in direct marketing. People believe that the product works. In fact, they know it works because they use it themselves and they love it, so they have confidence in the product itself, but they don’t feel confident telling people about it because they feel like they’re intruding or bothering people. That lack of confidence comes back to the personal belief systems you have around selling, money, and being visible, to name a few.

[Learn more about how to bust through your blocks and activate your abundance now.]

Another piece to this puzzle of how to clearly communicate value has to do with your messaging (aka, what you speak and write). Your messaging has to be really spot on with what your ideal clients want and need. And if you’re not clear on that, you’re not going to be clear on how you’re helping people and solving their problems, which is a critical piece of any compelling offer’s structure.

Step #3: Implement an effective marketing and visibility strategy to get in front your dream clients.

People get tripped up on visibility all the time because they are afraid to market or “sell” themselves, which is intimately connected to mindset and confidence.

Or they feel overwhelmed by all of the options for how to be visible and how to market themselves and their business, so they kind of do a little bit of everything here and there, which leads to very few results.

Or they get completely overwhelmed by all of the steps that people are saying they need to do in order to be successful, which just puts them in a state of business paralysis where they don’t do anything or they spend way too much time trying to learn it all before they actually make an offer.

All of these are big mistakes that are too easy to make.

An effective marketing and visibility strategy…

• Includes two to four proven visibility activities you’re excited about doing so that you’ll actually do them.

• Should be simple enough for you to be consistent and do repeatedly with success.

• Fits into your schedule so that you don’t fall into overwhelm, get stuck or work your way into a state of burn out.

Step #4: Take consistent, aligned action.

Now, this may seem like an obvious step, but you’d be amazed at how many people don’t take consistent, aligned action and instead fall into the unconscious habit of haphazardly putting out fires in their business or doing the things they feel they have to do based on what they read somewhere (instead of what’s a best fit for them and their business).

For example, if you’ve made your marketing and visibility strategy so complicated that you can’t consistently take action on it, it’s going to be ineffective for creating the kind of money that you desire. Taking consistent, aligned action (and this is where I’m going to get a little spiritual) means tapping into your intuition, your higher self, and your inner wisdom, about what that next right step is for you. When you do this, you’ll become aware of ways for you to get clients, make money and market your business in ways that you never imagined and which feel great to you.

So, my question to you is this:

When you really tune in, what is the right next step for you that will help you get more clients right now or grow your business the most? It’s likely the thing you’ve been resisting and scares you a little bit. It might be calling somebody up, doing Facebook livestreams, adding much-needed system and organization to your business or posting on social media about your business opportunity or product. When you have a feeling that you need to do it and you’re scared to do it, that’s a big clue about what the next right aligned action for you is.

Step #5: Magnify your results!

When you do steps one through four, you’ll have set a strong foundation on which to continue to grow your business and income. The final step is create an environment around you that helps you magnify your desired results. This includes surrounding yourself with a supportive, like-minded community, as well as upgrading your mindset and expanding your ability to receive more clients and money.

To help you determine what areas you may want to work on in order to clear the path for more clients and money to flow in with ease, ask yourself these questions:

• Are your friends and family supportive of your dreams, ambitions and who you are? Or do you find yourself not telling them about your business or ideas because you’re afraid of their reactions?

• Who are the people you spend the most time with or hang out with? What are they like? What kind of things to they talk about? Do they blame others for their hardships, bad-mouth people or talk poorly about themselves? Or do they mostly speak positively about themselves and others?

• In what areas of your life or business have you been feeling frustrated, stuck and/or like nothing seems to go right no matter what you try? Why do you think that is?

• Do you consistently engage in practices and habits that grow your skillset, expand your ability to receive and handle money and keep you focused on where you’re going? If not, why not? And, what would it look like if you did?

Comment and Share!

I’d love to hear what you discovered about yourself and/or your business! Please share in the comments below.

And, I love giving value and helping others to create big breakthroughs. If you liked this article, please share it with your friends and followers so you they can have their own big breakthroughs, too. Thank you!

Ready to finally clear the path to your Divine Abundance? 

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]]>5 Steps that Practically Guarantee More Clients NowBusiness SuccessMarketing & SalesChristine ParmaThu, 11 Oct 2018 19:35:45 +0000https://christineparma.com/blog/how-to-effectively-communicate-with-your-audience-on-the-internet55663565e4b0e7726c42b349:5567945de4b0e2f8eabeca69:5bbfa60e085229af3d4e5291

Effective communication on the internet depends on a number of different factors. It’s arguably one of the most important steps to getting your business ideas across to your audience. Whether you’re a solopreneur, a small business or a startup that’s failing to garner a loyal audience, we’ve put together some ideas on how you can effectively communicate with your audience over the internet. This will help your brand grow, it will draw in more qualified leads and it will ultimately improve your image.

Engage Your Customers

If you’re not doing your part to engage with your customers, then you’re not effectively communicating with them. Social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, when used effectively, can raise your brand awareness and bring new customers in the door. But don’t just use those platforms to only showcase your new products or services or make it all about you. Leverage your efforts by getting to know your ideal customers’ buying criteria so you can sell more by genuinely providing the solutions they want and need.

And, most of all, be responsive! If you’re wearing all the hats in your business, simply getting back to people can fall through the cracks, but if people tag you, ask you for support or submit a question to you, these are your hottest prospects! Show that you care by responding to them and you’ll be on your way to having a lifelong fan.

Have Multiple Points of Engagement

Just being on one social media may or may not be enough to get you in front of your ideal customers, unless you’re dedicated to totally slaying it on that platform. You want to look at all the options - Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, among the most popular - and determine on which ones your audience is most active. Not everyone uses Twitter and not everyone uses Facebook. Different audiences will use different social media platforms and focusing your efforts on the one to three best platforms for you will ensure you get maximum visibility with your ideal clients, while you avoid overloading and overwhelming yourself by trying to be on more social media platforms than you can effectively handle (at least until you outsource or hire someone to help you with your social media presence).

Leverage the Power of Customer Insight

Whether it’s relying on analytics to see when your audience is most active or relying on a third party to help you grow your exposure, it’s important to get some marketing help whenever possible to ensure that you’re focusing your efforts in the right place. How you communicate with your audience should rely heavily on their behavior and patterns, so make sure you’re doing everything you can to learn about how they act on social media, how they use the internet and how they engage with your company or brand.

If you don’t know these things about your audience, you can waste a lot of time, money and effort putting out great content that no one responds to. Knowing your ideal customer, what drives their buying decisions and how they like to be engaged can make the difference between mega-sales and hearing crickets. This is especially important if you’re launching a new product, program or service or changing target markets. Investing in some up-front research and monitoring real-time feedback can be what makes the critical difference to your launch success.

Connect through Good Content and a Compelling Story

One of the most underrated ways to communicate with your audience is to create good content that they can engage with. For instance, if you’re a business that focuses on helping entrepreneurs set up their back-end tech systems, websites or online tools, then creating blog posts or video tutorials can go a long way in helping you engage your audience. Or, if you sell a physical product, create content that allows your potential and current customers to discuss the products and leave reviews. You can talk about how your product fills your customers’ needs or desires, the outstanding qualities of your product and/or the story behind it. (Side note: It’s been shown that people will pay much more for a product that has a compelling story behind it.) And, you might even receive some honest suggestions on how you could improve them or make them suit the customers better.

As you can see, effective communication and authentic engagement are critical to selling more, creating raving fans of your brand and gaining valuable insight into what your customers really want. And, as I’m fond of telling my kids, the best way to really get to know someone is to interact with them. For online entrepreneurs and any business that really wants to grow, this is key.

So, how are you engaging and interacting with your ideal customers? What strategies have been most effective for you? Where are you still struggling with engagement or effective communication?

I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

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It was 2006 and I was totally miserable. I was working as a Certified Financial Planner at a big financial services firm, and although I loved working with my clients and helping them to understand how to best save and invest to reach their financial goals, I couldn’t stomach the environment. If you think back to the crash that started in March 2007, I’m sure you can imagine the shenanigans I saw going on behind the scenes in the financial world.

Although I wanted out, what kept me from leaving for a long time was that I was making good money. In fact, I was making the most I’d ever made. But I was letting fear keep me stuck in a job I hated, plain and simple. What I didn’t realize at the time was that by staying in that stomach-churning environment that had me white-knuckling through each day, I was keeping myself from earning even more money doing something I actually loved (which came shortly after I quit).

Right now if you’re not really earning the money that you wish you were earning or you feel stuck doing work that makes you want to poke your eyes out, I totally get where you are. There’s something really awful about not being in the place that you want to be, and the amount of money you’re earning (or not) is a huge part of that. We all have dreams and ideas and big desires we want to see happen, and, unsurprisingly, a lot of them involve money because in our society, money represents freedom… and who doesn’t want more of that?

So, of course, when you’re not in the financial position that you want to be in, you may feel unsettled. You may even feel as if you’re not living up to your potential. It can make you feel stuck and unhappy. But the great news is that you can change your situation more easily than you may think and it all starts with taking a look at what’s getting in your way.

Time

Maybe the reason is time? Do you feel as if you just don’t have the time to earn more? Whether it’s that you’re a mompreneur juggling carpools, kids and school holidays, you’re trying to launch your entrepreneurial business as a side-hustle to a full-time joy, or you simply don’t have the time to put into yourself and your growth to get a promotion at work, a lack of time is the number one reason most people give for not launching a new product, succeeding in business or reaching their goals.

The truth is that people make time for what’s most important to them… and how you’re spending your time will tell you what you feel is most important to you right now. (Side note: this also applies to how people spend their money.) So if earning more money is truly important to you, then you’ll make the time to do it. “Easier said than done, Christine,” I hear you saying. Look, I know if you’re reading this blog, it’s not likely that you’re spending your time watching three hours of TV in the evenings. You’ve already got way too much on your plate to do that and you’re probably searching for a way to find more time and conquer your overwhelming to-do list.

Here’s a simple formula to get you started:

1. Get clear on your priorities. What’s truly important to you? Schedule those things into your calendar first.

2. Look at where else you have time commitments. Where do those rank in importance? What can you let go of or hand off to someone else in order to find more time for your true priorities?

3. Go easy on yourself. While it’s awesome to have big dreams and goals, sometimes we can become prisoners of our own ambitions and instead of being more fulfilled, we end up a hot mess of stress and self-neglect.

Start with these and I’m confident you’ll be surprised at how much time you suddenly “magically” have to focus on bettering your financial situation.

Knowledge

Sometimes a lack of know-how is indeed what’s holding someone back, but with billions of articles, courses and tutorials at your fingertips, this is hardly an excuse for anyone who has access to the internet. When it comes to growing your income, particularly if you’re an entrepreneur, it’s not lack of knowledge that’s standing in your way… rather, it’s implementing that knowledge in a way that leads to more money in your pocket.

When I first started my business, I went crazy with taking course after course, investing in programs and reading blog posts until I felt my eyeballs were going to fall out. Even though I got a lot of value from doing these things and grew my skillset immensely, I never felt like I knew enough… and if I didn’t know enough, then I’d fail. I’m a huge advocate of continuing to invest in yourself in various ways throughout your life because that’s what’s led to my biggest leaps forward, but when it stems from a lack of self-confidence or fear of failure, you’ll never feel like you know enough.

So how can you tell if you’re truly lacking know-how or a certain skill and that’s what’s keeping you from earning more, or if it’s really fear getting in your way? Ask yourself these questions:

• Given my big dreams and goals, do I personally need to learn something new right now in order to earn more? If the answer is yes, then specifically identify what that next step or piece is, create a plan of action and then do it.

• If you have the intuition that it’s really fear that’s holding you back because you’ve already taken a gazillion courses or you’re well established in your field, what are the fears and what are they about? What are the consequences (as evidenced in your life) of continuing to let those fears get in the way? When you list out what fear is costing you, you’ll probably be far more motivated to find a way to quickly move past what’s holding you back from greater abundance.

Resources

Once you’ve moved past the first two hurdles, you may feel as if you just don’t have the resources to do it. If you’re looking at entrepreneurship as a way to bounce back from losing a job, you may be rather short on cash to invest in a new startup or the manpower to make it happen. Or maybe you launched your solopreneur gig awhile ago and have just been making ends meet.

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is feeling like they need tons of fancy or complicated tech to make money, when that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The truth is that you probably don’t need a lot of capital to start you’re business (unless you’re some fancy high-tech startup) and you can use a multitude of free methods to get clients or sell your product. Inside my Passion, Launch, Profits! program, I show service-based entrepreneurs, like coaches, creatives and consultants, how to use highly-effective marketing and visibility strategies that don’t cost a dime and some simple, affordable online tools to sell more and even land high-dollar clients. Because what matters most isn’t how much money you pour into your business, or what tools you’re using, or even if you have the best looking website. What matters is that you get in front of your potential clients consistently, genuinely connect with them and offer a solution they want or need in a way they find virtually irresistible.

But if you’re really convinced you need more cash to get started, what’s a resource-strapped go-getter to do?

1. Make a list of all the resources you really need. Look at areas like time, money, people, and knowledge.

2. Next, think about who you already know or who you could approach who could potentially help you or point you in the right direction? This is where past networking efforts really pay off.

3. Or, given your business or idea, is crowdfunding a viable option? Launching your dream into reality with the help of hundreds or thousands of people is becoming more and more popular, but be sure to read up on the pros and cons involved with using something like a Kickstarter campaign to fund your project.

Yourself

This can be the hardest one to swallow. More often than we’d care to admit, it’s not someone “out there” who’s keeping us from being successful, earning more money or living our dreams… it’s ourselves. I speak from experience here. I felt like I was drifting through life for years without any real direction. You may be feeling that way, too. It could be that what’s keeping you from earning more isn’t time, knowledge or resources, but something far more personal that looks like not knowing what gifts you’re meant to share with the world or a deep-seated fear of failing that stems from childhood.

No one gets through this life without going through at least a few experiences that mess with your head and your heart. And those experiences and the resulting beliefs and ways of being can really get in the way of you manifesting more of what you want. That can show up in all kinds of ways, such as self-doubt, procrastinating about taking the necessary steps to improve your situation or prioritizing the wrong things. Ultimately, your success or failure comes down to you taking full responsibility for yourself, your decisions and the resulting outcomes in your life.

This is where tuning into your inner guidance, becoming incredibly self-aware, or even taking a more spiritual approach by accessing your soul’s Akashic Records can give you insight into what needs to change. But, the cool thing is that you are in control through the decisions you make from here on out. You get to decide how long you allow past experiences, unsupportive ways of being or your fears to get in the way of what you want to create for yourself.

Because if you really do want to move forward and make the kind of money you want, you have to allow yourself to believe you can, change what you need to and then consistently put yourself out there in all your unique awesomeness. That’s when you’ll start to see the money you want roll in.

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When you’re in debt or struggling with money, it can nearly consume you. Your money struggles can become what you think about morning, noon and night. And while you need to be financially responsible by dealing with the negative situation you may be in, if you want to break free from a tough financial situation, you can’t let it trap your focus to the point you aren’t able to focus on building prosperity.

Far too many people are so focused on reducing their debt and trying to save money that they give little positive attention to increasing their financial abundance, and, thus, the downward spiral continues. Let’s look at how to shift your focus fast and finally turn things around so you can have the kind of financial abundance you desire and deserve!

You’ll have probably heard the concept of “where attention flows energy goes”, meaning, whatever you focus on, you attract more of this into your life.  And this is where so many people make a big mistake when it comes to attracting more abundance in their life. They are so focused on the feeling of being trapped in their financial situation that their energy is too depleted to focus on taking the action required to remedy this situation.

In some ways, this could be likened to someone looking down at the floor rather than up the stars; it’s very easy to focus on the “woe” in life rather than the possibility to make your situation better, and this is particularly true when it comes to financial matters.

Be Financially Responsible

Many years ago, I made some really dumb financial decisions in the wake of a traumatic personal loss. Like REALLY bad decisions. So bad, in fact, that a few years later I found myself in deep financial doo-doo. I tried everything I could think of to fix it, but it was a problem so big and a hole so deep that I was considering bankruptcy as a last resort. Believe me when I say I did all the research and looked at how long bankruptcy stays on your credit report because I was so worried that taking that road would mean financial disaster for the rest of my life. As it turns out, I didn’t have to file bankruptcy, but it wouldn’t have been the end of the world, either, if I’d had to go that route.

Most important to note here is that you can be financially responsible by taking the practical steps you need to without letting your money problems ruin your life. That’s what I was determined to avoid. How I ended up avoiding bankruptcy, keeping my stellar credit score, paying off all my debt and going on to have earn the most money I ever had the following two years has everything to do with where I decided to place my focus, which was on the people and things that would uplift, empower and support me to create a better future for myself.

Focus On What You Want Not On What You Don’t Want

This article therefore challenges you to shift your focus when it comes to your finances under the paradigm of what we focus on, we tend to attract, and therefore it’s important to focus on what we want in financial terms rather than on what we don’t want. You may not have full control over your financial situation, and certainly, you can’t control the actions of other people or organizations, but you always have control of what to focus on - so start shifting your focus to that of building prosperity.

Have you ever noticed how some people will spend hours upon hours searching for cost saving coupons in order to save a few cents at the grocery store?  Of course, there’s nothing wrong with cost-saving strategies, but sometimes this can create such tunnel vision that the focus becomes too much on saving money (i.e. lack on the basis they don’t have “enough”) rather than focusing on creating and taking advantage of opportunities for making money.

Attitude is everything, as many personal development gurus will tell you. The mind is an incredibly powerful tool that wealthy people spend time conditioning in order to bring about the financial abundance they seek.  After all, the millionaire mindset is something that can be taught and adopted.

Indeed, often, it’s a case of unlearning what you were taught previously and shifting to something much more empowering.

So what is it you need to unlearn?

What needs to shift or change within you in order to allow in more money, joy and abundance of all kinds?

And if you don’t know, ask yourself, “If I did know, what would the answers be?” Your subconscious mind will give you answers… write them down! This is the first step in the right direction.

If you want my help in shifting into greater joy and abundance, you can find out more about how I help my clients here.

Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

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If every startup or entrepreneurial venture were a success, then the world would be full even more weird and wonderful businesses than it already is. However, it’s a well-known fact that the chances of a new business failing are higher than those of it succeeding, but that doesn’t keep tens of thousands of people from giving entrepreneurship a go every year. With that being said, it kind of makes sense to know what happens when a business goes bust - and what you can do to save your sinking business in the first place - so that if you ever find yourself in either of these situations, you’ll know what to do so it doesn’t destroy your life and ruin the chances of starting any future businesses.

Let’s start with what happens when a business starts to go bust and then we’ll hit on what you can do to stop the financial bleeding and turn things around.

You Stop Making Money And Start Owing It

A clear difference between entrepreneurs that do well and those that don’t is that a failing businesses isn’t bringing in enough money or turning a profit. Seems pretty obvious, right? Yet if you’re an entrepreneur or taking a swing at launching a new startup company, sometimes the facts can get blurred a bit. There’s a big difference between making sales and having cash come in the door and actually turning a profit - a fact that often gets overlooked by entrepreneurs who start their businesses as passion projects.  

They may still make sales and see money enter the business, but this pales in comparison to the money they’re spending or may even owe. In the excitement of following their passion and truly desiring to make a big impact in the world, some entrepreneurs overspend on tech tools, back-end operations and even consultants. Their new business can quickly turn into an expensive hobby or even financial drain instead of being a money-making enterprise. The simple fact is that if your business isn’t making enough cash to pay for all your expenses, you can quickly ramp up some significant debt to various people - which lands you in a pretty sticky situation.

Your Personal Finances Take A Hit

When you first start off (and possibly for the duration of the business), it’s likely you’re putting in your own cash. Or you may have even taken out a loan to get your business going or to help keep it afloat. This mean your personal finances are on the line and take a hit every month that your business profitability is in the red. This could potentially lead you towards everyone’s least favorite B word: bankruptcy. Of course, you want to avoid bankruptcy if possible, and I share some tips on how to save your sinking business in just a bit.

Your Confidence Takes A Beating

Aside from your business losing money and causing your personal finances to deplete like crazy, your confidence also takes a beating. There could be so many reasons that a particular startup business is doomed to fail, like when an economic recession hits a year into your new business (remember 2007 - 2009?).  It’s easy to feel like a personal failure if your business fails, but that’s miles from the truth.

No matter what bumps happen along the road to launching and growing your business, YOU are always enough… even if you may make a few missteps for lack of information and know-how.

What to Do if Your Business Isn’t Making Money

I’ve already covered five not-so-obvious problems that cause businesses to struggle and fail and what you can do to fix them. In this post, I’m going to add a few more things you need to look at if you want to turn your business around and start banking profits.

#1 - Identify the Sources of Financial Bleeding + Stop Them

If you’re struggling to make ends meet in your business, you’ve got to identify what’s causing you to lose money so you can stop it. For example, have you invested in a bunch of tech tools or software that you don’t need or can’t fully utilize yet?

Take online shopping carts. You may have signed up with a provider that has all the bells and whistles and costs a few hundred dollars a month when all you really need right now is something simpler. (Read an in-depth comparison of top online shopping carts.) It’s a very smart practice to keep a spreadsheet of all of your recurring business expenses and audit them regularly to see what you’re not really using, where an upgrade would be worth it or what you can eliminate altogether to save some cash.

Here are some areas of your business to examine and where new - and even experienced - entrepreneurs spend money in ways that strain their finances:

• Technology and software

• Staff and contractors (read more about who to hire first)

• Marketing and advertising

#2 - Take Another Look at Your Offers and Sales Page Copy

You’re really amazing at what you do. Or you’ve got a truly awesome product that helps people. But your sales are next to nothing and you can’t figure out why. This is the time to take a look at your offer itself and the sales copy. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at sales pages that simply suck.

And by “suck” I mean that the copywriting on the page actually un-sells readers with what’s said (or isn’t said) about the product or service. Even if you’ve got killer sales copy, it may be that you’re not offering your products or services in a way that your dream clients really want.

Either way, you’ve got a big problem. At the end of the day, sales is what keeps your business going. And whether you’re selling online or through personal conversations, there are some big offer mistakes that kill sales that you must avoid.

But how do you know if you’ve got a problem with your offer or sales copy?

One of the ways you can tell that you have a problem with your offer and/or sales copy (whether for a paid offer or for a free offer (like a freebie or online challenge) that leads to a paid offer) is if you’re getting a decent amount of traffic to your page, but you’re not making very many (or any) sales or no one is opting in for your freebie. You can look at how many people land on your page versus how many take a further action, like purchasing or opting-in. In the online entrepreneur world, a landing page for a freebie that converts at least 40% of page viewers is considered “good”. (My landing pages consistently beat that with opt-in rates of 50 - 85%.)

Once you’ve identified if your offer or sales copy needs tweaking, you can take the steps to fix them by aligning your offers with what your target audience wants and communicate the value of what you’re offering with amazing copy.

#3 - Create an Action Plan for Saving Your Business

You may feel a bit overwhelmed by all the things you’ve listed out to fix or simply frustrated that it’s been so hard to make your business work. But once you’ve identified where you’re overspending in your business, any places that you can simplify your business’s back-end expenses and operations, and how you might be inadvertently repelling sales or making it harder for your customers, you’ve got a solid place to start. The next step is to pull it all together into an action plan and then follow through with that plan while allowing for necessary adjustments along the way.

Your action plan can be as straightforward as prioritizing what needs to happen first, either based on true urgency (versus perceived urgency) or by tackling the lowest hanging opportunities for improvement. I give you the step-by-step breakdown of how to tackle big projects and be successful in reaching your goals in this post, The Easier Way to Reach Your Big Goals.

This is also where your mindset is critical. It’s really easy to allow feelings of frustration, overwhelm and even hopelessness to take over if you’re on the brink of losing your business or have been struggling to make it for a prolonged period of time. You may second-guess yourself and wonder how to make the right decisions and move forward in spite of how you’re feeling and the fears that come up. I’ll leave you with a last few words of wisdom to help you:

• You get to choose how you look at any given situation and how you respond to any situation, which is extremely empowering. When you make conscious choices, you’re much more likely to make the ones that lead to better outcomes.

• Any conscious, intentional decision or action is better than no decision or action. If you take the road of “I can’t decide!” and don’t make a decision, the Universe will make one for you. Not making a decision IS making a decision by default and one with which you have no influence over the outcomes. So, even if you’re afraid, make a decision, assess the results, adjust and keep going.

• Support yourself through the process, whether that means creating a few extra minutes a day for self-care or seeking the support of someone who can help. When you feel more centered, calm and in alignment with abundance and the essence of who you are, you’re much more likely to get to where you want to be… and you’ll enjoy yourself a lot more along the way!

Some factors that cause businesses to fail can’t be controlled… but others can.  Even if the worst comes to pass, don’t feel like this means you’re a terrible entrepreneur or a failure. Keep your head held high and don’t be afraid to try again. Hopefully, though, if you follow the steps in this post, then you’ll never have to worry about this happening to you!

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“There’s NO WAY,” I thought to myself. “Absolutely no way I’m going to do it.”

I sat there with my mind chattering away with all the reasons I SHOULDN’T say yes to an $11,000 package of programs:

"I'm already teetering on the brink of bankruptcy... It would be SOOO irresponsible of me to buy this!"

"What will people think?!" (I could hear my mother's reaction already…)

"When will I have the time to fly all over the country to take these programs anyway?!"

And all the while my mind was shouting, “NO!”, my heart was saying “YES! This is exactly what you need, Christine.”

It wasn’t a desperate kind of yes, but a yes of deep understanding that the me that felt broken and beat down at a soul level and who had made the decisions that got me into the mess I was in wouldn’t be the me that could turn things around unless I got some help. Like, A LOT of help.

Maybe it was the hope that these programs represented for me that pushed me to the back of the room where I plunked down my credit cards to pay for the programs. 

I literally felt like throwing up, I was so scared. 

Whatever the reason, I thank God I did because those programs were exactly what I needed to completely change my life.

It would have been far too easy to let that opportunity to get exactly what I needed slip away because I “didn’t have the money.” And, truly, I didn’t. My net worth was negative many tens of thousands of dollars.

But one of the most valuable things I got from those programs was learning to have faith in myself. The truth is that when you invest in a program or with a coach, you’re really investing in yourself. You're investing in someone who can hold a bigger vision for you than you can at the time. You're investing in someone who can see the Truth of who you are and all your potential when you may doubt yourself. And you're investing in the structure and support that will help you dramatically change your circumstances.

If you use the excuse of “But I don’t have the money” to turn down an opportunity your heart is saying YES to, more often than not, the real reason you don’t invest in that program or coach isn’t because of the cost. The same goes for the people who say to you, "You're too expensive" or "I can't afford it" or "That's a lot of money" and then don't sign up for your program, course or to work with you.

It’s really not about the money at all. 

It’s that you doubt yourself. (Or your potential clients doubt themselves.)

You doubt that you will show up for yourself fully in the program.

You’re afraid that you’ll invest in yet another program and only get part-way through it before “life gets in the way”, you won’t complete the program and then you’re left with very few results to show for the money you spent.

You lack faith in yourself and your ability to make your business work or work a lot better than it already is.

It shows up as, “I should pay off my debt or save up before I invest in myself or my business.” I know… I’ve thought that so many times. 

Because if you take the risk on yourself - if you invest in the program - and then if you fail, well… then there’s the guilt, the shame, the judgments of others and the beating yourself up… and THAT is what you don’t want to face. 

THAT is why you use “I don’t have the money” as an excuse not to do the very things that will help you have what you say you want. 

When you’re honest with yourself, isn’t that really closer to the truth? Tell me if I’m wrong. 

I’m saying all this because I know this struggle first-hand. It’s not like I don’t battle the same demons of doubt and insecurity like everyone else. I’ve just gotten a lot better at winning those battles and doing it really quickly. :-) 

And it’s not just when you’re starting your business that this self-sabotage happens. It happens at EVERY LEVEL… New level, new devil.

Feel the fear... and do it anyway.

Right now I want to give you permission to feel the doubt, the guilt or the fear… and invest in yourself anyway in ways that align with your values, support your dreams and empower you to step into the highest version of yourself. It's by doing the stuff that scares you the most that you will grow immensely as a person, causing the kinds of results you get to transform and grow, too.

Just think back over your own personal experience... hasn't this been true? Isn't it the times when you were so scared to do something you almost didn't go through with it, but then when you did, you not only felt incredibly proud of yourself, but you grew immensely from the experience? (And also when you didn't go for it, you kick yourself later for not doing it.) That's been my experience time and time again.

My wish for you is that you find a rock solid faith in yourself and your ability to create the amazingly abundant business and life you desire because you deserve all of that and more. #Truth

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Getting clients. Making sales. It’s the cornerstone to making any business work.

Yet so many businesses are getting the key piece to doing this totally wrong. Or they’re doing it poorly but don’t recognize what’s causing them to struggle to bring in new clients.

What’s this key missing piece? A compelling offer (aka, your messaging) that grabs your dream clients by their eyeballs.

Whether you’re making your offer in person, over the phone or via your website, there are three big offer mistakes that cause dream clients to click away, say “no” or run screaming in the other direction (or all three). If you’re having problems booking clients or selling your products, the first thing you should look at is how you’re communicating your offer.

In this article you’ll learn what to focus on in your offers - whether you’re communication them on sales pages, emails or over the phone during sales conversations - so that your potential clients will be motivated to buy whatever it is you’re selling. Plus, you’ll discover how to connect with what your clients need from you and how to communicate with your clients so they’ll be more than willing to pay for your services, even at higher fees.

#1: You’re focusing on the “how” instead of the transformation

The first big mistake that you might be making with your offer is that you’re focusing too much on the “how” of how you help people change or get results. This is the part of your sales process that talks about the number of sessions they get with you, how long those sessions are, how many modules they get in your program, how many DVDs or CDs, or how long the things are. That’s the process of how you help your clients and not the transformation you provide.

For example, if I’m your client and you’re going on and on about the number of sessions I get when I sign up with you, I may be sitting there thinking, “Oh my gosh 12 sessions, I don’t have time for 12 sessions.” Or I read your sales page and it touts how your program has over 40 modules in it, I’m certainly thinking, “Whaattt? How am I going to get through all that?!” (That’s a true story about a program from a marketing guru I was considering investing in and didn’t for exactly that reason.)

As the person who is providing the service or product, you may thinking that packing more in and highlighting how much stuff your clients get is a great strategy, but the “stuff” isn’t really what your potential clients care most about. What they care most about is the transformation that’s going to happen from working with you , i.e., the results they’ll get, like how their business is going to improve, how much happier they’ll feel, and how much easier something will be. Instead of focusing on how many sessions that somebody gets, how long they work with you, focus on the transformation you’re going to give them. 

If you’re a health coach for example, focus on how much healthier is the person going to feel, how much more energy they’re going to have, how much weight they can lose, how they’re going to feel great about being a great mom because they’re feeding their kids healthy and nutritious that they can make in less than 10 or 30 minutes for example. That’s what your best clients really care about, not the process or how many sessions or how long the sessions are.

Do your sales conversations or online sales pages focus on the details of how you deliver the results instead of the results themselves? If so, make sure you change that right after you’ve finished reading the rest of this post. 

#2: You’re not solving a big problem that your dream clients feel they have

Another huge messaging mistake that entrepreneurs make is focusing on solving a problem that your ideal clients don’t think they have and/or solving a problem that they don’t feel is really important to solve. When creating any offer or messaging, you must first and foremost think from your dream client’s perspective. What do they think are their really big problems? Which ones do they want fixed NOW? Which problems are so urgent or painful that they’ll do just about anything to solve them? These are the real problems your ideal clients feel they have… and they may be different than the ones you as the expert know need to be solved. That’s where many people get tripped up with creating their offers and messaging.

I’ll give you an example of focusing on the real problem of your clients. When I was working with T. Harv Eker, his introductory live program was called The Millionaire Mind Intensive. The hook - the motivator - that got people to travel from all over the world to attend his events was the dream of being a millionaire and having no more money problems. When people read the sales page for the Millionaire Mind Intensive or heard about it, they’d think, “I want to be a millionaire.” And, the message appealed to a primal internal desire everyone has: the need for safety and security (in this case, financial security). If Harv had called the event The 3-Day Personal Development Extravaganza, no one would have showed up!

But, the interesting part is that The Millionaire Mind Intensive wasn’t about the latest investment strategies or business methods. It was all about mindset and personal development. It was about the inner changes you have to make in order to become a millionaire. As the expert Harv knew that if you have belief systems that keep you from feeling good about being wealthy, they’ll stop you from consistently making or accumulating a lot of it. The “promise” of learning how to become a millionaire got people in the door so people could get the transformation they actually needed to do that.

Ask yourself: “Do my offers focus on a big problem my dream clients feel they have?” If not - or you’re not sure - you need to fix that, pronto!

#3: Your offers are drowning in jargon

One other mistake that I’m going to share with you today that people make when creating their offers and messaging is loading them up with industry jargon. For example, if you’ve been in the personal development world for awhile, or you’re a coach, healer or transformation expert, you’ve been steeped in the language of empowerment, inner balance, feeling peaceful and being inspired. But those words are all industry jargon and they’re not the words your ideal clients are most often using to describe their problems and desired solutions. 

You may not think what you’re saying is foreign to your clients, but it is. Jargon can be really hard to spot because we’re all so used to using terms common in our niche or market (and why it’s so helpful to get an outside set of eyes on your offer). 

In the coaching industry, for example, your ideal clients don’t walk around saying, “I wish I was more empowered and inspired to build a profitable business and get my life more balanced with kids and work.” They don’t say that. What they do say are things like “I wish I can just connect with my dream clients” or “I wish I could just get booked,” or “I wish I could make more money in my business,” or “I wish I could have a business and do the work that I really want to do and feel like a great mom, too, and not feel like I’m sucking at both of them.”

So you have to think, “What words are your dream clients using when they’re talking about their problems in their heads or when they’re talking to their friends about their problems?” That is how you start getting clear on the language you should be using in your offers and throughout your brand messaging.

If you’re struggling to attract and book loads of your dream clients, grab your offers and go back through this post to find out where your messaging may be off.  

Share your thoughts!

After reading this article, what changes do you need to make to your offers? What are you already doing right?

Drop a comment below!
And if you liked this article, I’d be honored if you shared it. <3

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“It’s better to give than to receive.”

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

“Rich people are greedy / bad / selfish.”

I bet you heard at least one of these common sayings growing up, and maybe you even believe it.

But that’s a BIG problem if you’re an entrepreneur or you simply want to attract more money and abundance into your life. Associating money with greed, selfishness or general “badness” puts you at odds with the inherent urge you have to be a “good” person. And where there’s inner conflict, there are muddled outcomes.

It’s my belief that it serves the world when you charge enough money for you to not only stay in business but also thrive. 

Otherwise, your business won’t be around to help the people who want and need want you offer.

The truth is that you are not selfish or greedy for charging more in your business. In this article I cover why you deserve to be paid high rates, why it’s important to be charging more than less, and how to position yourself in the market so you can attract your dream clients, even at higher fees. 

Let’s dive right in!

You deserve to make a great living doing the work that you’re meant to do in the world

If you’re struggling to earn enough to keep up with your bills or live the kind of life you desire, the first thing you need to look at is how you feel about charging for the services that you provide to other people.

Do you feel bad asking for more money than your clients make per hour?

Do you feel guilty or greedy charging higher fees? 

Do you sometimes feel like you really don’t deserve to earn more?

These beliefs and emotions really get to the heart of why a lot of people (and women, especially) think they can’t charge higher fees. The truth is that you can charge more… you’re simply making the choice not to because of this inner conflict. 

You’re actually being of service to your clients by charging enough money for you to not only survive in business but to thrive.

When you’re stressed out and struggling in business, it negatively impacts every area of your life, including how you show up to serve your clients, your personal relationships and health. But when you charge enough to do more than just make ends meet, you’ll be able to show up as your best self and give your clients 100% of your attention and focus to help them get the results that they want from working with you.

People will be more committed to doing the work that they need to do to get results when you charge higher fees

Sometimes this really comes down to a life or death situation. Let’s say you’re a health coach and you’re working with people who are really overweight and they’re struggling with the associated health consequences like diabetes, high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis. 

It can be really hard to change old habits, even in a life or death situation, because the prospect of doing so can feel overwhelming. Only a really strong motivator will move that person out of their “comfortable discomfort zone” and get them to do the things they need to do to get healthy again.

Money is a big motivator for most people. The more skin you have in the game, the more motivated you feel to see a return on your investment.

Looking at how much you charge clients to work with you from this perspective, you can easily see that when you charge lower fees, you actually reduce motivation and increase the odds of people failing to get results. When you charge less to your clients then they don’t have much skin in the game to get the change they need. You’re not helping people when you make it easy to let themselves off the hook. 

Of course, I’m assuming that if you’re charging higher fees, you’re also delivering massive value. You must find the balance between pricing your services so that people feel committed and they show up and do the work and the level of service and value you bring to each client. Most of all, what you’re able to successfully charge and get paid has to do with your capacity to hold the energy for successfully receiving higher fees (as in, your inner confidence, belief systems and mindset). 

The caveat to this is that in any audience of people, there are always people who are willing to pay more for more access, more attention, more help, and there are people who aren’t willing to pay quite as much. When you come across someone who’s not willing to pay what you’re asking, that’s your opportunity to stand firm in your value and/or offer your services in a different way and at a different price commensurate with the level of personal attention they’ll receive. 

The prices you charge either support or take away from your brand 

One of the best parts of being your own boss is that you get to choose how you position yourself in the market. In any given industry, throughout the entire world, there are people, products and companies that price themselves at the high end of a market and there are those that price themselves at the low end of the market. You have the freedom to choose how you want to show up and serve people and how you want to position yourself in the market: low price and high volume, high price and lower volume or somewhere inbetween.

I’ll give you an example. Let’s take a look at Walmart and Neiman Marcus. If you go to the beauty supplies counter at Walmart, you’ll find a ton of $7 make-up. But hop on over to Neiman Marcus and the prices rise dramatically. In truth, the make-up is probably similar stuff, but Neiman Marcus has positioned themselves as high-end and high-quality, so no matter what someone buys from them, they’re going to assume it’s better than what they can get at Walmart. 

This is where the common saying, “You get what you pay for” comes in - people are conditioned to think that the more they pay for something, the better it must be. Of course, that’s not always the case, but it doesn’t really matter if it’s true that it’s better or not. Perception is reality for customers. By positioning yourself at the higher end by charging higher fees, you leverage people’s natural belief to your advantage, as well as providing more motivation to actually do the work they need to do to get the change they desire. 

More reasons why you’re not selfish or greedy for charging more

• You can give more to charity or your favorite causes when you have more money.

• You can afford to hire team members to help you, which provides employment for others.

• You’ll be able to do more self-care and invest in your own health and well-being so you can be around for your loved ones for a long time.

• You are modeling for your clients (and everyone around you) that money and meaning are not exclusive, as in you can do meaningful, heart-centered work and be an amazing human being and make a lot of money, too.

Charging higher fees doesn’t make you greedy or selfish, but it does allow you to be of higher service to your clients and it serves the world for you to be out there doing the work that you’re meant to do. That’s how I see it. :-) 
 

Share your thoughts!

1. What has been your experience with charging higher fees?

2. What are the things that hold you back from charging more?

Share in the comments below!

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Do you ever feel like you’re not enough? As an entrepreneur, as a parent, as a person?

That used to be one of my biggest struggles. 

What held me back from really putting myself out there as an entrepreneur and taking the steps to make myself visible was that I felt like I didn’t have enough to say. I struggled with feeling like my ideas weren’t good enough or original enough to share. And, I often second-guessed myself and wondered if  people would actually find value in what I say and how I help them. 

Then I called B.S. on myself. When I reached the point that my desire to help others was stronger than my fear of what others would think, I stepped into fully owning my value, no matter what.

I feel like this is so important to talk about because when you feel like you’re not good enough (in whatever way that is), then you beat yourself up all the time and you take away your own power… and you feeling disempowered benefits no one. Sometimes you may feel like other people are out there taking away your power.... 

But the truth is that we take away our own power when we feel like we’re not enough…

And some of us are doing that to ourselves A LOT.

We may fear that we don’t have something that’s “good enough” to share with the world.

In the context of the entrepreneurs I work with, the mental struggle that often goes on is: “Will people pay me to work with them?”or “I don’t think people will pay higher fees to work with me because I’m not a well-known expert. I’m not an expert at all!”  

So much of what we see in the news media and in underlying societal beliefs is that if we’re not the superstar, then that means we’re not enough… and that puts us in the position to “compare and despair.” All the self-doubt is exhausting! 

We’re always on the losing end of what we imagine their perfect lives to be.

If you’re feeling like you’re not enough, or that the message that you have is not valuable enough, or that you’re not enough of an “expert”, or you don’t have enough letters after your name before you start sharing your work with the world, then stop.

Stop beating yourself up that way. You are already enough.

Another layer of this “not enoughness” can show up if you’re also a parent. I’ve resolved to not fall into the “mom guilt” trap, and yet the little voice in the back of my mind sometimes chimes in and tells me that I’m being a bad mom because I’m working on my business instead of spending my time with my kids at that moment. It’s the mom guilt dilemma. 

There can be a lot of judgement from others and yourself around wanting to pursue your dreams if you’re a mom, especially if it’s considered to be an irrational dream to those around you. Even your family, spouse, and friends might perceive it to be kind of weird and non-traditional to want to start your own business instead of having a corporate job. But I believe that if you’re feeling pulled to do something - if you’ve got a fire burning in your heart to serve the world in a particular way - it’s a sign that you’re meant to do it. 

Even if you feel like you only have a few followers in the beginning, you never know how important what you say and what you do may be for somebody.

You don’t have to be a top expert to make a big impact in the world. You never know how important what you share may be to somebody. It might literally be life-saving and life-changing. 

I’m working on really integrating this and living it each day and I encourage you to do the same.

Share your thoughts!

Do you struggle with not feeling good enough? When you do, what strategies do you use to move past it?

Share in the comments below!

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