Think & Create

Can I really make some money from internet marketing?

I thought it was impossible. After all, there are so many people doing it, but are they all successful?

When I say many people, I was also one of them. I plunged into internet marketing 4 years ago.

And I sank.

I spent close to USD2000 on ebooks and training courses and nothing came of it. Well, I did get around USD4 per month, if that’s any consolation. But what happened to the thousands of dollars all these internet marketing courses promised??

There are no short cuts to success!

When you see all those emails, some even from well known marketers, about how fast you can make money, DO NOT BELIEVE THEM. What their selling is a solution for those who already have a strong base. Its not a solution for new comers. New comers do not have a large base of subscribers to make any use of those solutions.

What new comers require is a step by step course, with a FULL MONEY BACK GUARANTEE, that will teach all of us the fundamentals of internet marketing. And among all the courses that I have spent my hard earned money, this is one course that I am glad I really did invest my hard earned cash into.

I initially signed up for Patric Chan’s Internet Marketing course, which then morphed into The Chan Do Chartered Membership. Upon signing up, you will receive all the course modules, in e-books and video. I study better from ebooks, but some prefer videos. What helped me the most, compared to all the other courses, is the FORUM for members. Nearly all my questions were answered in the forum.

Every month you’ll get a new topic, something that members vote for the month before, and Patric talks about it. He holds a live call in. If you miss the call in, you can get the recorded version online. What’s good about this call is that you can listen in and ask your questions.

And here’s the best thing about Patric Chan’s Chan Do Membership – you get a FREE AUTORESPONDER with your membership. This means you do not have to fork out money for a autoresponder service. In fact, you get more than an Autoresponder service, its also a means of having your own affiliates under you and much more. This service itself is worth the price of the membership itself when you compare against other pure Autoresponder services.

This is one course that I RECOMMEND WHOLE HEARTEDLY. You will not regret your investment, my membership paid itself over many times!

kennethg Internet Business, self improvement Internet Business, internet marketing, make money on the internet, online business, online marketing

1. Develop a desire to break away from the crowd. You need to have the courage to make use of your ideas.

2. Find your niche. This should be something you are knowledgeable and have an interest in.

3. Persevere through setbacks. If you let little roadblocks deter you, you will never make it in life.

4. Learn from your mistakes, and avoid repeating them. Treat every crisis as an opportunity to learn and perform.

5. Maintain self discipline. Some people become complacent after owning a business. Your business only survives if you buckle down and work on it.

6. Commit to your business idea and all those who are part of your plans including your employees, friends and family members.

7. Be patient. No tree bears fruit overnight. You need to be patient to reap the fruits of your labour by being steady and focused.

8. Be flexible. A brilliant idea alone will not ensure success. You need to adapt your idea to the present day needs and reach maximum customers with ease.

9. Be prepared to answer any questions from the customer, i.e. “What is there in your product or service that other people do not have?”

10. Realise that all business involves a certain amount of risk. Never invest your entire fortune in a new business. It is wise to take the advice of professionals in financial matters.

kennethg Business, Goal Setting, success Business, flexible, idea, niche, persevere, self discipline, succeed

By Brian Tracy

Everyone has critical skills and knowledge that are important to many other people in the company.

Use Better Titles for Each Person

Some years ago, when I started in business, the job of the receptionist was to answer the telephone and direct the callers to the appropriate people. Today, however, her job is far more complicated and, therefore, more important. Since she is the first contact that most customers have with our business, her personality and temperament are extremely important.

Think About Your Customers

The prospective client who telephones begins forming an impression of us the instant that the telephone is answered. Then, because our companies are doing so many things, she must tactfully ascertain exactly how the caller may be best served and who is the best person in the company to direct the telephone call to.

One Person Can Make the Difference

In many cases, there are requests for further information, and follow-up telephone calls go through our front-office manager. Her ability to handle these calls effectively, to direct calls to the right people, to take accurate messages, and to act as the core person in a network of communications makes her job so important that it is essential that she sit in on all staff meetings and be aware of everything that is going on. 

Keep Yourself Informed

Your job in your company also requires that you know a lot about what is going on everywhere else, as well as being thoroughly conversant with what you do. And the fastest and most accurate way of keeping current with what is going on is to develop and maintain a network of contacts, an informal team of people within your workplace who keep you informed and who you keep informed in turn.

Encourage Participation and Involvement

The old methods of command and control now exist only at the old-line companies, many of which are fighting for their very survival. Today, men and women want a high degree of participation and involvement in their work. They want an opportunity to discuss and thoroughly understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. People are no longer satisfied to be cogs in a big machine. They want to have an integral role in achieving goals that they participated in setting in the first place.

Build a Top Team

Being a team player is no longer something that is optional. Today, it is mandatory. If you want to achieve anything of consequence, you will need the help and cooperation of lots of people. Your main objective is to structure everything you do in such a way that, because you are constantly cooperating and working well with others, they are continually open to helping you achieve your goals.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, recognize that every person in the company is essential to the smooth functioning of the organization. Take time regularly to discuss their jobs with them and understand what they do.

Second, identify the things that you do that can really affect the work of others. Then, look for ways to do your job so that you help others in every way possible.

kennethg Business, management brian tracy, Business, managing people, people

By Bob Bly

What products and services sell best in a recession?

Hint: This is not a trick question. The answer is the one that immediately popped into your head when I asked it.

Before you started over-analyzing this…

The products and services that sell best in a recession are the cheaper ones. That’s right – the ones that cost less.

I recently read in a biography of Milton Hershey that he believed his business was recession-proof and depression-proof because he sold an affordable product. He reasoned that, even if a person couldn’t afford new shoes or a new car or a vacation, they could always afford a nickel for a Hershey’s chocolate bar. (That was the price in those days.)

Milton Hershey was right.

According to an article in Ad News, as the economy continued to tank in the fourth quarter of 2008, the Hershey company increased its advertising budget by 23 percent. And as consumers switched from expensive premium chocolates they no longer felt they could afford to Hershey’s, the company’s net income for the fourth quarter of 2008 rose 51 percent to $82 million.

Similarly, with the restaurant business in its worst slump since 1991, McDonald’s worldwide sales rose 7.1 percent in January 2009. Diners may not be able to afford steak anymore, but they can still afford a Big Mac.

I have found the same thing – consumer preference for lower-priced goods and services during an economic downturn – to hold true for the two little businesses I run: information marketing and freelance copywriting.

In my online publishing business, my low-priced products are e-books selling in the $19 to $79 range. My mid-range products are DVD and audio CD albums selling in the $100 to $150 range. And my high-end products are multimedia programs selling in the $300 to $1,000 range.

In recent months, my customers have clearly been telling me that (a) they are worried about money, (b) they really appreciate my reasonable prices, and (c) for now, they prefer offers for low-priced products.

They are not asking for special discounts or “recession sales.” They just want me to focus on offering products that sell for under $100, which seems to be the magic recession-proof price point for my market.

Whenever I advertise mid-range or high-priced products to my customer list, I always get at least one e-mail from a reader telling me she wants to buy the product… but can’t because she has lost her job!

If you are an information marketer, I suggest that, rather than fighting this trend, you accommodate your customers by:

Expanding your product line, especially with the lower-priced products (like e-books).

Offering your readers more free content (such as special reports and teleseminars).

Bundling products into packages that enable customers to get related materials at handsome discounts (e.g., buy two e-books, get the third one free).

I am also finding that offering low-priced service options works for my freelance copywriting business.

To make $10,000 as a freelancer, you can either do one $10,000 project or five $2,000 projects. These days, I am doing a lot more $2,000 projects for clients who want to continue their marketing but are focused on controlling costs.

For instance, I am saving my clients money by helping them do more marketing online and a bit less offline. We are also using marketing methods that can be tested at minimal cost before rolling out the campaigns (e.g., small test mailings of 1,000 instead of 10,000).

One thing that has worked especially well is a new service bundle I call the “Starter Package.”

Normally, I charge $500 an hour for consulting. With a 10-hour minimum, payable in full in advance, that works out to $5,000 – affordable in normal times, not so affordable during an economic crisis. With the Starter Package, I offer new clients 90 minutes of my time for a flat fee of $750.

There’s no reduction in my hourly rate. I merely allow people to start working with me for a lower initial commitment.

I picked 90 minutes deliberately. Not only is it enough time to give prospects a taste of how my advice and copy can benefit them, but it comes in at a price point under $1,000. And that is within the comfort zone of a new client who doesn’t know me all that well.

More important, the Starter Package shows prospects that I empathize with their desire to cut back on spending and have designed a service to accommodate their smaller budgets.

Interestingly, what usually happens is that, after reviewing the Starter Package offer, prospects call me to get a quote for the full service they really want. And more often than not, that’s what they choose to go with.

So while I don’t actually do a lot of copywriting and consulting under the Starter Package arrangement, it makes prospects more comfortable with me as a vendor who respects their budget concerns and limitations. And that’s been keeping my freelance business active and profitable.

kennethg Business, Internet Business best selling products, Business, freelance copywriting, information marketing, milton hershey, online publishing, recession

By Brian Tracy

Know the Right People

One of the greatest forms of financial leverage is contacts. Knowing the right people and being known by them can open doors for you that can save you years of hard work. The quality and quantity of your contacts and your relationships will have more to do with your success than perhaps any other factor.

Here are three things you can do to expand your list of contacts. First, make a list of the 25 people you feel it would be most useful for you to get to know. Develop a strategy to get to meet everyone of them over the next 12 months. Then make a list of 25 more.

List the people in charge of the major corporations that would be useful for you to know. List the mayor, list the congressmen, list the senator. List the important people that it would be helpful for you to know and then make a plan to meet them.

Network at Every Opportunity

Second is for you to network at every opportunity. Join business and trade associations. Attend meetings. Get involved. Volunteer for service on a key committee. This action alone can cut years off your career.

Once, when I was working with the Chamber of Commerce, I came to the attention of a senior executive who hired me away from the company I was working for a year later at triple the salary. Meeting people is very important. Network at every opportunity.

Get Involved in the Community

The third way is to get involved in community service organizations. The best people in every community, the people you should know and who should know you, are usually involved in public service in some way. Start with the United Way in your own city, or get involved in any charity that you care about or that you’re interested in. You’ll be amazed at the quality of people that you’ll meet doing voluntary service.

Unlock Your Creativity

Another form of leverage is creativity. Remember, one new idea is all you need to start a fortune. Everyone has the ability to come up with creative ideas and solutions if they look for them. All great fortunes begin with an idea.

Create Good Work Habits

A powerful form of leverage that can help you is good work habits. Good work habits make an extraordinary difference. In a recent study, 104 chief executive officers all agreed that the ability to set priorities and then to get the job done fast were the two qualities that most readily led to promotion and increases in pay. Good work habits will bring you to the attention of the important people in your life as fast or faster than anything else you can do. In the final analysis, you always get paid for your results. If you develop a reputation for being the person who gets the job done fast, that alone can put you onto the fast track in your career.

Your Action Assignment

Now, here are two things you can do to leverage your financial potential:

First, get involved in the business, trade, civic and social organizations in your community. Once you become a member, off er to help and serve on committees. This will bring you to the attention of people who can help you faster than any other way.

Second, develop excellent work habits. Be punctual. Plan your work and work your plan. Always concentrate your conscious energies on high priority tasks and make sure that you are doing things that are important to your boss and to your company.

kennethg Business, money, self improvement, success brian tracy, community, creativity, financial, good work habits, leverage, Networking, potential, right people

Virtually anybody can succeed with their home business, yet the majority fails. Why? Here’s three main reasons.

Not Really Getting Started

Often people sign up for some programme or another and think that is all there is to it, and that the money will come rolling it – WRONG!

As with anything, getting started is the hardest part, requiring planning and organization. Get this part right and the momentum you create will push your business forward in leaps and bounds. Any reputable programme will have all the information you require to get your home business off to a flying start.

Half Hearted Approach

Many people fall into this category. “Oh well, I gave it a try a while ago, but it didn’t not work out for me, did not really expect it to work anyway.” These people are just looking for an excuse to fail. This is an attitude that we acquire as we grow up, as child failure was not part of our vocabulary.

Take learning to ride a bicycle. You probably fell off more than once, and it did hurt, but that did not stop you did it? you’d get back on it until you mastered the skill.

It’s the same with your home business as you will have falls. It is all part of the learnig curve. You will learn a lot more from these slight setbacks.

Belief

This is probably the most common category, and also the biggest difference between successful people and the vast majority of people – no matter what walk of life they come from.

Everyone has dreams and ideas.

The differenceis that successful people have the belief and conviction to make thei ideas happen, doing whatever is needed to fulfill their dreams.

If you do not really believe in your home business, you cannot convince anyone else. Believe in your business and other people will believe; and your business will thrive.

Getting Started

This can seem a pretty daunting task and this is where most people fail, but dont worry. Even if you know absolutely nothing about home business, all reputable programmes will supply you with help, information and support that you require to ensure that your business is a success

Once you have made the decision to start your own home business, keep focused on what motivated you to start in the first place. This will provide the drive to push your home business forward.

A final thought – What if you were to take the action required today? What might your lfestyle be like in a year?

kennethg Business, Internet Business, self improvement, success Business, home, successful home business

By Noah St. John

I had just gotten off the stage at a major marketing conference when the founder of a nationally known software company (you’ve seen their commercials on TV) came up and said something that stopped me in my tracks:

“Noah, one thing you just said on stage changed my life. I never realized that I’ve been living my life with one foot on the brake. And if I just get my foot off the brake, I’ll be much more successful.”

He told me that his company had been “stuck” at $4 million a year for the previous four years. (My first thought was: “Gee, a lot of people would like to be ‘stuck’ at $4 million!”) He asked if I would coach him on how to stop holding himself back from success. Since I’ve been doing that for companies and individuals since 1997, I said “Sure.”

What I coached him in is what I call it The Secret Code of Success. I call it a “Secret Code” because even the people using it don’t know what they’re doing!

It’s like asking Tiger Woods to explain how he got so mentally tough or Bill Gates to tell you how he made so much money. These highly successful people do certain things that they’re totally unaware of, because they are unconsciously competent at allowing themselves to succeed. They might be able to tell you some of the steps they took to get there – but because they’re unconsciously competent at letting themselves succeed, there will always be something missing in their explanation.

Let me explain what I mean by “unconsciously competent.”

To become unconsciously competent at any skill, you go through four levels:

Unconscious incompetence - when you don’t know that you don’t know how to do it

Conscious incompetence – when you know that you don’t know how to do it

Conscious competence – when you know that you know how to do it

Unconscious competence – when you do it without any conscious thought

Happy, wealthy people – whom I call the Naturals – are highly successful for the precise reason that they are unconsciously competent at allowing themselves to succeed.

Which brings us back to our software entrepreneur. When I walked him through what the Naturals are doing (without being consciously aware of it), he began to understand why, even though he’d spent a lot of time and money taking “how to succeed” programs, he couldn’t move forward.

Here are the three essential steps he took to get his foot off the brake:

1. Show appreciation for those who have made a difference in your life.

Human beings are starving for attention, appreciation, and acknowledgement. Research has shown that people will do more for acknowledgement than for money, because appreciation is the true currency of human interaction.

There are dozens of ways to acknowledge the people in your life, but what it really comes down to is your willingness to do so. That’s because everyone is wearing an invisible sign that says “Please make me feel important.” The problem is, you’re wearing that sign too!

If you become that one person in a million who is willing to make others feel important first, you’ll see an amazing turnaround in your relationships… just like our entrepreneur did.

2. Become aware of the ways you’re holding yourself back at the same time as you’re pushing yourself forward.

When I’m on stage and explain that most people are driving down the road of life with one foot on the brake, many in my audience tell me it never occurred to them that they could be stopping themselves at the same time as they’re driving forward.

This happens because the Why-To’s of Success are conscious, but the Why-Not-To’s of Success are subconscious. Everyone has reasons to want to succeed. (Those are the Why-To’s.) At the same time, most of us have hidden reasons for holding ourselves back. (Those are the Why-Not-To’s.) What made this concept truly life-changing for our entrepreneur (and for thousands of others who’ve learned The Code) was understanding that:

Because they’re subconscious, your Why-Not-To’s of Success are hidden even from you. No one gets up in the morning and says, “I think I’ll hold myself back from success today!”

The Naturals of Success have eliminated their Why-Not-To’s of Success. But because they’ve never had their own foot on the brake, they can’t possibly tell someone else how to get it off. That’s why there’s always something missing when they try to explain their “secrets of success.”

3. Realize the benefit of regular mentoring to achieve your goals.

While the rest of us often feel adrift and alone, the Naturals either always had, or unconsciously created, Systems of Support that allowed them to reach their goals faster, easier, and with less effort.

Having that kind of support made all the difference in the Naturals’ lives, and it can make a big difference in your life, too. One way to get the support you need to succeed is to find a mentor or coach who:

Understands and believes in you

Doesn’t make you feel wrong for wanting what you want

Gives you solid, doable action steps to reach your goals

Before our software entrepreneur heard me speak on stage, his company had been “stuck” at $4 million a year for the previous four years. But because he knew he was capable of much more, it was just as frustrating for him as it would be for someone making much less.

With just 90 days of coaching in The Code, he learned how to take his foot off the brake. His company’s revenues exploded from $4 million to $40 million in less than a year.

And now, every time I see his commercials on TV, I smile. Because his success is just one more example of what can happen when you take your foot off the brake.

kennethg Business, self improvement, success Entrepreneur, mentor, noah st. john, success, the code

By Brian Tracy

Listening is the Key

Listening builds self-esteem. It has been said that, “Rapt attention is the highest form of flattery.” When you listen intently to another person and it is clear that you genuinely care about what that other person is saying, his or her self-esteem goes up. His or her feeling of personal value increases. He or she feels more worthwhile and important as a human being. You can actually make another person feel terrific about himself or herself by listening in a warm, genuine, caring way to everything he or she has to say.

Pay Close Attention

When a man and a woman go out for the first time, they spend an inordinate amount of time talking and listening to each other. They look into each other’s eyes and hang on every word. They are each fascinated by the personality of the other. The more each listens to the other, the more positive and happy each of them feel and the stronger becomes the bonds of affection between them.

Focus 100% On the Other Person

The opposite of listening is ignoring. You always listen to that which you most value. You always ignore that which you devalue. The fastest way to turn a person off, to hurt their feelings and make them feel slighted and angry is to simply ignore what they are saying or interrupt them in the middle of a thought. Ignoring or interrupting is the equivalent of an emotional slap in the face. Men especially have to be careful about their natural desire to make a remark or an observation in the middle of a conversation. This can often cause the sales conversation to come to a grinding halt.

Action Exercises

First, take every opportunity to make the other person feel important by listening attentively to what he or she says.

Second, avoid interrupting the other person by slowing down and pausing for a few moments after he or she has stopped speaking.

kennethg Business brian tracy, customers, listening

by Jim Rohn (excerpted from Cultivating an Unshakable Character)

For a leader, honesty and integrity are absolutely essential to survival. A lot of business people don’t realize how closely they’re being watched by their subordinates. Remember when you were a kid in grammar school, how you used to sit there staring at your teacher all day? By the end of the school year, you could do a perfect imitation of all your teacher’s mannerisms. You were aware of the slightest nuances in your teacher’s voice – all the little clues that distinguished levels of meaning that told you the difference between bluff and “now I mean business”.

And you were able to do that after eight or nine months of observation. Suppose you had five or 10 years. Do you think there would have been anything about your teacher you didn’t know?

Now fast forward and use that analogy as a manager. Do you think there’s anything your people don’t know about you right this minute? If you haven’t been totally aboveboard and honest with them, do you really think you’ve gotten away with it? Not too likely. But if you’ve been led to believe that you’ve gotten away with it, there might be a good probability that people are afraid of you, and that’s a problem in its own right.

But there is another side of this coin. In any organization, people want to believe in their leaders. If you give them reason to trust you, they’re not going to go looking for reasons to think otherwise, and they’ll be just as perceptive about your positive qualities as they are about the negative ones.

A situation that happened some years ago at a company in the Midwest illustrates this perfectly. The wife of a new employee experienced complications in the delivery of a baby. There was a medical bill of more than $10,000, and the health insurance company didn’t want to cover it. The employee hadn’t been on the payroll long enough, the pregnancy was a preexisting condition, etc,etc,..

In any case, the employee was desperate. He approached the company CEO and asked him to talk to the insurance people. The CEO agreed, and the next thing the employee knew, the bill was gone and the charges were rescinded.

Then he told some colleagues about the way the CEO had so readily used his influence with the insurance company, they just shook their heads and smiled. The CEO had paid the bill out of his own pocket, and everybody knew it, no matter how quietly it had been done.

Now an act of dishonesty can’t be hidden either, and it will instantly undermine the authority of a leader. But an act of integrity and kindness like the example above is just as obvious to all concerned. When you’re in a leadership position, you have the choice of how you will be seen, but you will be seen one way or the other, make no mistake about it.

One of the most challenging areas of leadership is your family. Leadership of a family demands even higher standards of honesty and integrity, and the stakes are higher too. You can replace disgruntled employees and start over. You can even get a new job for yourself, if it comes to that. But your family can’t be shuffled like a deck of cards. If you haven’t noticed, kids are great moral philosophers, especially as they get into adolescence. They’re determined to discover and expose any kind of hypocrisy, phoniness, or lack of integrity on the part of authority figures, and if we’re parents, that means us. It’s frightening how unforgiving kids can be about this, but it really isn’t a conscious decision on their part; it’s just a necessary phase of growing up.

They’re testing everything, especially their parents.

As a person of integrity yourself, you’ll find it easy to teach integrity to your kids, and they in turn will find it easy to accept you as a teacher. This is a great opportunity and also a supreme responsibility, because kids simply must be taught to tell the truth: to mean what they say and to say what they mean.

Praise is one of the world’s most effective teaching and leadership tools. Criticism and blame, even if deserved, are counterproductive unless all other approaches have failed.

Now for the other side of the equation, we all know people who have gotten ahead as a result of dishonest or unethical behavior. When you’re a kid, you might naively think that never happens, but when you get older, you realize that it does. Then you think you’ve really wised up. But that’s not the real end of it. When you get older, you see the long-term consequences of dishonest gain, and you realize that in the end it doesn’t pay.

‘Hope of dishonest gain is the beginning of loss.’ I don’t think that old saying refers to loss of money. I think it actually means loss of self-respect. You can have all the material things in the world, but if you’ve lost respect for yourself, what do you really have? The only way to ever attain success and enjoy it is to achieve it honestly with pride in what you’ve done.

This isn’t just a sermon, it’s very practical advice. Not only can you take it to heart – you can take it to the bank.

kennethg Business, leadership Business, Ethics, Honesty, jim rohn, leadership

By Kelly Perdew, Trump University

By plan, I don’t mean have some idea in your head about your business or your career. When I say plan, I mean have a REAL plan. A written plan… that you work on frequently.

People always ask me how to get started on their plan. It is really quite simple. For my planning processes, I like to use what’s called heuristic, or backward, planning. I learned it in the military. Basically, you start with your objective in mind and then work back to where you are now.

Heuristic planning can be distilled down into three basic steps. Let’s take a look at each…

Step One: Identify Your Overall Objective
Hopefully, you’ve incorporated your passion into your overall objective. That objective can be anything from getting a job in a new industry or new company to owning a major league sports team. Whatever it may be, just make sure it is something you’re passionate about and that it is defined. Once you’ve identified your overall objective, you can begin the processes of achieving it!

You need to be specific about defining the objective. What constitutes success? How do you define failure? What are all of the components of the objective that you want to achieve? Truly understanding the answers to all of these questions will help you develop your plan more effectively.

Step Two: Determine Intermediate Milestones and Supporting Tasks to Reach Each Milestone
For any objective you identify, there will be many milestones. And for each milestone, there will be many supporting tasks. For instance, if your objective is to find a job in a new industry, say real estate, then you’d have many potential milestones that could include:

1. Obtaining some level of formal or informal education about real estate

2. Developing an understanding of the different jobs available

3. Conducting a self-assessment and comparing that to what you’ve learned about the industry to determine the roles for which you’d be best suited; and

4. Developing a structured network to assist you in finding, closing, and excelling in your new job.

These are just a few potential milestones. Based on your ultimate objective, there can be many, many milestones, and they need to be individually mapped out. Many milestones can be worked on simultaneously. For instance, you might be getting your formal education in real estate at the same time you are increasing the size of your network in the real estate industry.

For each of your milestones, there are supporting tasks that must be accomplished. The supporting tasks are basically all of the actions you need to accomplish in order to reach your milestone. The more specific you are in identifying tasks and timing for them to be completed, the better you’ll be able to track your progress.

Step Three: Measure Your Performance and Adjust Your Plan
Tracking your progress is critical to success. You can’t know how you’re doing if you don’t measure against your plan. The milestones act as measuring points where you can assess your development and gauge your progress. As part of the process of measuring your progress, you may find some interesting things occurring: You may learn that there are new milestones that you need to put in place to reach your objective; some of the milestones you thought you needed to reach may not really have been necessary; or you may even find out that you need to adjust your overall objective. Adjusting your plan is all part of the process and will ultimately enable you to achieve your objectives.

On “The Apprentice,” I took a lot of flak for being on the laptop a lot during the tasks. One of the interesting aspects of the show is that the complexity of each task does not come through to the viewing audience. Before we filmed the show, I remember watching a couple of episodes of season one, and I remember thinking to myself that it looked pretty easy.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it isn’t! We were given very little time and money to accomplish some very significant tasks. That required meticulous planning. Not only did we have to account for every penny, we had to manage some very strong personalities. By tracking our objective, milestones, and supporting tasks on the laptop, I was better able to lead my teammates and contribute to our ultimate success. So think about that…we created a detailed written plan for one task on a reality show. Isn’t your career, your business, your life more important than a task on a reality show!? Or course it is. Start building your plan!

Planning is one of the most critical leadership that will contribute to your ultimate success in business and in life. Remember: identify your objective, set appropriate milestones and list their supporting tasks, and measure your performance so that you can adjust your plan as necessary.

About the Author:

After winning season two of “The Apprentice,” Kelly Perdew spent 2005 as an Executive Vice President in the Trump Organization. Today, Kelly is President of ProElite.com, an online social network that provides tools for combat sports enthusiasts. He is also a Managing Director for Angel Venture Partners, a venture capital fund that collaborates with leading angel groups across the country to invest in early-stage ventures. Kelly is author of “TAKE COMMAND: 10 Leadership Principles I Learned in the Military and Put to Work for Donald Trump.” A percentage of the sales royalties from that book’s sales are donated to the USO. http://www.kellyperdew.com

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