Deb and Amy talk about Thinking Bigger, how to Start Your Own Business without an MBA, how a Business Coach can speed up success, and much more in this final 3-pound mafia podcast.

If you missed it: Part 1 interview on Business Ownership
Part 2 interview on Business Ownership
Part 3 interview on Business Ownership

Deborah Cole Micek, (the Motivation M.D.) and her partner John Paul Micek (the Commando Capitalist) are founders of the business coaching company RPM Success Group ® Inc.

Deborah is an expert in negotiation, team building, and leadership. With over 17,500 hours of research and study working with thousands of business owners around the world — Deborah and John Paul have created a simple scientific system that maximizes your performance, persuasion, and wealth in just 60-Seconds. They both are in demand speakers, published authors, and certified trainers in persuasion and Self Influence™, and experts in Marketing with New Media. Their latest book ‘Secrets Of Online Persuasion’ is the definitive guide on getting more customers and cash online with New Media. You can reach Deborah by contacting [support@rpmsuccess.com]

	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.
Attribution (text and links) must be given to RPM Success Group Inc.and Business Owners Coaching Club. Full copyright is retained by RPM Success Group Inc.

Deb and Amy talk about Women in Business, Work at Home Parents, following your destiny, and much more in Part 3 of our Business Ownership Interview with Amy from Hello World.

If you missed it: Part 1 interview on Business Ownership
Part 2 interview on Business Ownership

Stay tuned until Monday for part 4 of our Las Vegas Show Girl turns Business Owner series…

Deborah Cole Micek, (the Motivation M.D.) and her partner John Paul Micek (the Commando Capitalist) are founders of the business coaching company RPM Success Group ® Inc.

Deborah is an expert in negotiation, team building, and leadership. With over 17,500 hours of research and study working with thousands of business owners around the world — Deborah and John Paul have created a simple scientific system that maximizes your performance, persuasion, and wealth in just 60-Seconds. They both are in demand speakers, published authors, and certified trainers in persuasion and Self Influence™, and experts in Marketing with New Media. Their latest book ‘Secrets Of Online Persuasion’ is the definitive guide on getting more customers and cash online with New Media. You can reach Deborah by contacting [support@rpmsuccess.com]

	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.
Attribution (text and links) must be given to RPM Success Group Inc.and Business Owners Coaching Club. Full copyright is retained by RPM Success Group Inc.

What do your days rate? Are you content with a 5 or a 6 day after day? Or are you willing to have a 1 day in order to shoot for those 10 days?

Some interesting Business Owner Mindset gets revealed in this Part 2 Interview:

If you missed it: Part 1 interview on Business Ownership

Stay tuned until Friday for part 3 of our Las Vegas Show Girl turns Business Owner series…

Deborah Cole Micek, (the Motivation M.D.) and her partner John Paul Micek (the Commando Capitalist) are founders of the business coaching company RPM Success Group ® Inc.

Deborah is an expert in negotiation, team building, and leadership. With over 17,500 hours of research and study working with thousands of business owners around the world — Deborah and John Paul have created a simple scientific system that maximizes your performance, persuasion, and wealth in just 60-Seconds. They both are in demand speakers, published authors, and certified trainers in persuasion and Self Influence™, and experts in Marketing with New Media. Their latest book ‘Secrets Of Online Persuasion’ is the definitive guide on getting more customers and cash online with New Media. You can reach Deborah by contacting [support@rpmsuccess.com]

	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.
Attribution (text and links) must be given to RPM Success Group Inc.and Business Owners Coaching Club. Full copyright is retained by RPM Success Group Inc.

Amy was a Las Vegas Show Girl working in one of the most famous shows on the strip, until… “You never know when the tiger’s gonna bite ya!”

Deb and Amy talk about starting your own business, getting paid for your passion, and the freedom of business ownership.

This 3 lb Mafia Podcast was filmed on: March 21, 2007
at the TV set of: LOST Beach - on the famous North Shore of Hawaii

Stay tuned until Wednesday when our Las Vegas Show Girl turns Business Owner series continues…

Deborah Cole Micek, (the Motivation M.D.) and her partner John Paul Micek (the Commando Capitalist) are founders of the business coaching company RPM Success Group ® Inc.

Deborah is an expert in negotiation, team building, and leadership. With over 17,500 hours of research and study working with thousands of business owners around the world — Deborah and John Paul have created a simple scientific system that maximizes your performance, persuasion, and wealth in just 60-Seconds. They both are in demand speakers, published authors, and certified trainers in persuasion and Self Influence™, and experts in Marketing with New Media. Their latest book ‘Secrets Of Online Persuasion’ is the definitive guide on getting more customers and cash online with New Media. You can reach Deborah by contacting [support@rpmsuccess.com]

	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.
Attribution (text and links) must be given to RPM Success Group Inc.and Business Owners Coaching Club. Full copyright is retained by RPM Success Group Inc.

The number of businesses owned by women grew nearly 20 percent between 1997 and 2002. Of course the U.S. Small Business Administration is woefully slow in their data collection and analysis, but the trend is clear now. This confirms somethign we’ve seen with our business coaching clients and new members of the Business Owner’s Coaching Club.

Women make more than 3/4 of all buying decisions — in and out of the boardroom

Women are directly and indirectly making 85% of the buying decisions in and out of business. That’s a major point to understand when planning your marketing. And women are running more and more of the small businesses in the US. Another trend that b-to-b marketers better wake up to.

During the five year period women-owned firms grew by 19.8 percent while all US firms grew by seven percent. A good number of those firms were in professional, scientific, and technical services, and in health care and social assistance.

Understanding how all this estrogen is tranforming the way business and marketing is done is essential to being successful in the marketplace of the New Millennium. (Just one more reason why you should grab your free excerpt to our book due for release in October Secrets Of Online Persuasion.)

The U.S. SBA report

Women in Business: A Demographic Review of Women’s Business Ownership uses newly released Census and other data to reveal some intersting trends including:

In 2002, women owned 6.5 million (28.2 percent) nonfarm US firms with 7.1 million employees and $173.7 billion in annual payroll.

Women-owned firms accounted for 6.5 percent of total employment in U.S. firms in 2002 and 4.2 percent of total receipts.

Of all women business owners in 2002, 85.95 percent were White, 8.43 percent African American, 8.33 percent of Hispanic heritage, 5.25 percent Asian, 1.23 percent American Indian and Alaska Native, and 0.18 percent Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander (total does not add to 100 due to some double counting across ethnic groups). This means that on average the number of women business startups mirrors the general population.

Here’s where you can grab your own copy of Women in Business: A Demographic Review of Women’s Business Ownership.

Deborah Cole Micek, (the Motivation M.D.) and her partner John Paul Micek (the Commando Capitalist) are founders of the business coaching company RPM Success Group ® Inc.

Deborah is an expert in negotiation, team building, and leadership. With over 17,500 hours of research and study working with thousands of business owners around the world — Deborah and John Paul have created a simple scientific system that maximizes your performance, persuasion, and wealth in just 60-Seconds. They both are in demand speakers, published authors, and certified trainers in persuasion and Self Influence™, and experts in Marketing with New Media. Their latest book ‘Secrets Of Online Persuasion’ is the definitive guide on getting more customers and cash online with New Media. You can reach Deborah by contacting [support@rpmsuccess.com]

	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.
Attribution (text and links) must be given to RPM Success Group Inc.and Business Owners Coaching Club. Full copyright is retained by RPM Success Group Inc.

In part one of this business coaching article we looked at why confidence, courage, and certainty must go hand-in-hand if you are to succeed in your role as a business owner. You know that courage is the inner power and ability to face difficulties. And you now know that courage is rooted in confidence, and confidence is rooted in the mindset of certainty.

So today with that in mind, let’s look at some practical steps you can take to begin increasing your certainty and confidence?

Four proven ways to boost your certainty and confidence as a small business owner.

• Know your strengths — and continuously listen, monitor, and adapt

Each of us has a unique communication style and behavioral strengths when it comes to business ownership. No two business owners are the same. You must first assess your strengths (and by default, also your weaknesses) so that you can quickly identify areas you can and should be more certain in naturally. This is the foundation for accelerated success — no matter what your industry or profession.

Only then can you listen critically in all areas and be ready, willing, and able to adapt your approach. When you do that and then monitor results — this further increases certainty. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle. Each and every time it happens, certainty and confidence increase.

This may seem a little difficult at first glance, but I assure you that there is a proven scientific system for making this process a snap. In the Business Owners Coaching Club we coach business owners to identify and master their unique personal style in all four dimensions of performance. (Action, Motivation, Focus, and Psychology.)

Armed with this knowledge they are not only able to exponentially multiply the results they get in marketing, sales, and systemization – but these men and women are infinitely more certain and confident in every business move they make.

• Complete your due diligence, study and research

In order to be certain and to be right more than you’re wrong you’ll need to have a solid knowledge and understanding in your area of expertise. You can be as confident possible and you can run as fast as you can to the east - but if you are looking for a sunset you’ll never see it.

Even General Patton, who had been accused of making snap judgments said in his defense, “Honestly this is not the case because I am a profound military student and the thoughts I express, perhaps to flippantly, are the result of years of thought and study.”

• Eliminate hesitation at every turn

Whenever I become concerned with taking action on something no one else seems to see, instead of allowing myself to feel like I’m wrong, I’m always reminded of an interview I saw years ago with championship hockey player Wayne Gretzky.

The host asked him how he had become such a great player. Gretzky simply replied, “Most other players tend to skate to where the puck is. I skate to where the puck is going.” That certainty and confidence to make a decision in an instant allows him to act without hesitation. This puts him in position where he is often the only player where the puck is.

I see myself making the same moves in business and real estate. Sure, sometimes I may be wrong even though I’m certain. But ahhh… those times when I am the only one there and the opportunity is right in front of me. Those are the distinctions that allow me to leapfrog ahead in life and save years of hand wringing.

You can do the same for yourself… if you eliminate hesitation.

• Certainty is not “Cockiness”

Being certain and confident of the direction that you want to go does not mean that you have to be cocky or arrogant. As a matter of fact, if you don’t take time to listen to the viewpoints of others and analyze where your plans may be flawed, you will fail more often than you prefer. As King Solomon wrote, “With the abundance of counselors there is victory.” (Prov 11:14b)

As your business coach I need to remind you that certainty and confidence are not ignorance of your own weakness. Rather it is the recognition of those weaknesses along with the dedication to overcome them or turn them to your advantage that will help you succeed.

In closing, I feel compelled to issue one warning note for you as you begin to move forward toward your goals with certainty and confidence. Sometimes people are uncomfortable with themselves when they are exposed to a man or woman who is unabashedly confident or certain. In reaction they may try to make themselves feel better and take away that discomfort by placing you in a safe little “box” with negative words.

When some people (especially if they’re not business owners) try to label you with terms like arrogant or cocky, it doesn’t always mean that you are. It may just mean that you’re making them feel uncomfortable with their lack of action in fulfilling their dreams. If you hear those words, use it as an opportunity to double-check your attitude, see if there is any truth that you can use to improve, and then move on.

Above all, remember that confidence and certainty do not magically appear on their own. They are the result of hours, days, weeks and years of constant thought, practice and dedication built on a through understanding and mastery of your individual strengths.

Do as we coach business owners all around the world to do. Put this power team at the base of your entrepreneurial pursuits, and you too will be able to leapfrog barriers, obstacles and competitors with greater ease.

John-Paul Micek is known as the “Click-and-Mortar Business Coach” by business owners around the world thanks to members of the Business Owners Coaching Club™. He’s a published author and weekly columnist for the business section of the Honolulu Star Bulletin, and a managing partner with the international small business coaching company RPM Success Group Inc.®

The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc.® and licensed under a Creative Commons License.

“There can be no great courage where there is no confidence or assurance, and half the battle is in the conviction that we can do what we undertake.” –Orison Swett Marden

Confidence, courage, and certainty… succeeding in business and in life requires that they go hand-in-hand. Courage is the inner power to face difficulties. Yet courage is rooted in confidence, and confidence is rooted in the mindset of certainty.

Real life examples of confidence and certainty in action

General George S. Patton was the poster child for confidence and certainty. He was a remarkable leader who trained and motivated his men to achieve astounding results. With an unwavering certainty and emphasis on mission, he transformed an utterly demoralized American force in North Africa into an army capable of defeating the Nazis’ much-feared General Rommel. Later storming across France into Germany at a breakneck pace, his unit conquered more enemy troops and liberated more civilians than any other in World War II.

Helen Keller (a model for certainty, confidence and encouragement) once said, “face your deficiencies and acknowledge them. But do not let them ever master you.” Both General Patton and Helen Keller both realized that in order for a person to succeed he or she must routinely overcome personal failings, or turn them to his or her advantage but never to doubt him/ her self.

Certainty, confidence, and successful business ownership

For myself, I have always made the connection between a relative level of confidence or courage and its direct proportional relationship to success in business. (Success having different definitions for each person.)

But until the other day, I never realized what a powerful role the attitude of certainty has had in helping me achieve all that I have so far in life. My wife said to me, (admittedly in frustration) “You’re always so darned certain, but you’re wrong sometimes you know.” Her comment at first got me a little concerned. But then as I took it to heart it made me realize a couple of things I knew were critical for me to share with you for creating a successful business and living the ideal business ownership lifestyle.

First it called my attention to the fact that I need to parse my words at times and listen more openly to feedback when conveying a vision I have or a possible plan of action.

Secondly is that “certainty” is the gasoline that fuels the engine of massive forward momentum. In every area of business, from entrepreneurship, to marketing, to leadership — certainty is the crucial ingredient required to overcome obstacles and achieve outstanding results.

An example of certainty in business ownership

Let’s look at small business marketing as an example. Once you are certain that you have a product/service that people really want, then you will want to exude confidence and unabashedly market yourself. Marketing is not the place for uncertainty or, do I dare say — humility.

As a matter of fact, most business owners equate humility with silence or lack of self-promotion. What they don’t realize is that this attitude actually drives prospects and clients away because what they are looking for is security in knowing that you will deliver what you say you will.

If you’re not certain or confident about yourself or your product/service, why should anyone else be confident to do business with you?

The same is true in entrepreneurship and leadership.

Certainty, built upon dedicated thought and study, allows you to make decisions quickly, confidently and efficiently. Does that mean you’ll always be right? Of course not. But it does mean that you are in a state of constant growth. Whether your decision takes you two steps forward, or one step back — the wise person is always learning and growing no matter which direction they’re moving at the time.

In part two of this article I’ll act as your virtual business coach and share with you four proven ways to boost your certainty and confidence as a small business owner.

John-Paul Micek is known as the “Click-and-Mortar Business Coach” by business owners around the world thanks to members of the Business Owners Coaching Club™. He’s a published author and weekly columnist for the business section of the Honolulu Star Bulletin, and a managing partner with the international small business coaching company RPM Success Group Inc.®

The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc.® and licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Part 10 — Small business marketing success all comes down to incremental improvement!

I saved this principle for last in this series because it reinforces all the others. When most of our business coaching clients join the Business Owners Coaching Club, or participate in one of our click-and-mortar marketing courses — they come in with the misconception that they need to overhaul their entire marketing operation in order to produce powerful results. The plain truth is, most of the time that’s simply not necessary.

Principle 12. A slight marketing edge is all it takes to exponentially increase your profits.

Actually,
all you need to outperform your previous efforts, and your competition, is a slight edge. I’ve seen explosive results from simply changing a headline or restructuring a guarantee. The copy, design, and medium of delivery remained exactly the same – but the advertising pulled three, six or even eight times the previous way. On occasion a major revamp is called for, but most often, this is simply not the case.

The principle in practice

Look, it’s quite simple. If you can increase the number of clients you serve by 8%, increase your average sales amount by 10 or 20 dollars, and make just two additional repeat sales to each of your clients every year, you can realize very real net profit increases of 35% or more.

And better yet, you can do it safely, with very little effort, and almost no additional expense. To do that, just remember the RPM Principle Of Compounded Business Growth: small, prioritized gains carried out with consistency over a period of years will grow your business to astounding levels.

So leave the flashy, wildly creative, costly and “cutting edge” advertising campaigns that produce little or no action to the “Big Boys” with “Big Budgets” whose focus is more on winning awards than on winning clients. You can be content knowing you’re on your way to making BIG profits with hi-impact marketing in your small business — not a big impression.

Follow the twelve principles that have been laid out in this eight part series, apply what you’ve learned, and I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon in the winners circle too!

And if you’d like to put all these 12 laws into practice and start profiting in less thatn a third the time it would take on your own — you definately want to join the Business Owners Coaching Club.

Aloha, enjoy — and I’ll be speaking with you soon in an upcoming article, podcast, or teleclinic.

John-Paul Micek is known as the “Click-and-Mortar Business Coach” by business owners around the world thanks to members of the Business Owners Coaching Club™. He’s a published author and weekly columnist for the business section of the Honolulu Star Bulletin, and a managing partner with the international small business coaching company RPM Success Group Inc.®

The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc.® and licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Part 9 – Marketing Without Action Is Dead

I hate to see money wasted. And I hate it even more when it’s the money of hard driving small business owners or professionals. And no where is this waste more prevalent than in marketing, where these business owners try to emulate institutional marketing. Here’s a quick example to illustrate my point.

The other day I was watching a tape of CSI. As I was fast-forwarding through some commercials, a beautiful scene in one of the ads caught my eye. I even skipped back on my DVR to watch the entire commercial on the hard drive. That’s unusual since the whole reason for recording the show to begin with is to save time not watching commercials.

Pretty powerful commercial you might think. But, that would depend on your perspective.

You see, as a viewer, the ad was a visual delight. There were gorgeous mountains in the background with rolling fields of grass waving in the wind in the valley below. Then a thunderous sound became louder and louder as the camera panned across to focus in on a herd of wild mustangs galloping across a field.

All of a sudden the herd comes to a screeching stop and the horses stare to the side. The camera pans again and there is what caused them to stop dead in their tracks. A glistening black 4×4 truck with a man working nearby. The man smiles at the mustangs, turns toward his truck, back towards the mustangs — and they rear up and gallop on.

Wow, impressive. This truck can get a herd of wild mustangs to stop and stare.

Was it entertaining? Yes. Visually stimulating? Sure, if you find the awesome Rocky Mountains awe inspiring.

But does any of that motivate you as the viewer to take action right then and there while you’re emotionally charged, if you even are? With most conventional advertising — it doesn’t.

Maybe a big Fortune 500 company with tens of millions of dollars in their advertising budget can afford that sort of creative license and not get any direct response. But I would guess that you can’t afford that luxury. Good guess, right?

All this brings us to the eleventh principle of this series, and marketing without action is dead in the water.

Principle 11. Direct response marketing is the only type of marketing you want to invest in.

Every ad, every sales letter, commercial, promotion and news release you produce should be geared to getting your prospects or clients to respond in some way. They must take some kind of action. The type of action is dependent on you’re looking to achieve. Here are four examples:

- If your goal is to generate leads, you’ll want a prospect to call to make an appointment for a consultation.

- Maybe you want an interested party to email you to request specific information.

-If your product or service lends itself to single-step selling, you’ll want them to place an order.

- If it’s publicity you’re after, you’ll want to time your press releases with the coverage of a challenging situation by the media. A challenging situation your product or service can solve.

No matter what response you’re looking for with your marketing, you must always remember that you are looking for a prospect to take some sort of action right then and there.

There are two important reasons why you would demand this of your advertising.

1. Reason number one is because action that can be attributed to one of your advertising pieces is the only way you will be able to measure how effective each area of your marketing campaign is. And to be as successful as possible, it’s essential to be able to tell precisely how well or how poorly each of your marketing efforts performed.

It’s not enough to know that your sales are up over the same period from the previous year. You must know specifically why they’re up.

· Which specific marketing methods are superstars?

· Which are so-so when it comes to being profitable?

· Which are slugs draining cash away from your business?

Without this critical information, you’ll continue to dump your hard earned cash into worthless efforts. That’s money that would be better invested in adding to your most result-producing performers.

2. Reason number two is more obvious, but equally as important. It’s because you want to build relationships with your clients or would be clients. You want to learn more about their needs, develop trust, build rapport and prove to them you have their best interest at heart. How can you do that if you never communicate with them? Quite simply, you can’t. When a prospect responds though, you have that chance.

From my introductory story you may get the impression that I think emotions and “intangibles” have nothing to do with outstanding advertising and result-generating marketing.

Perish the thought! Nothing could be further from the truth.

Drawing emotion out of your prospects through your advertising and marketing is a crucial component of successful marketing. The vast majority of people buy based on emotional needs. (Yes — even you. You might not like to think so, but watch yourself in the next major buying decision and see if emotions don’t play a major role in your decision making process.)

There’s not time to go into detail on the critical role emotions play in quickly generating action on the part of prospects. In the course curriculum in the Business Owners Coaching Club you’ll learn the critical importance of emotional buying triggers, behavioral preferences, motivational values, and a host of other influence-based factors that you must take into consideration for successful small business marketing. But for now, I do want to be sure you walk away today with some guidelines you can put into use to supercharge your marketing efforts.

There are two simple guidelines that will serve you well if you dedicate them to your long-term memory.

These “rules,” when put into practice, will assure you that every marketing effort you choose to invest in from here on out will give you solid results and business boosting action on the part of prospects and clients.

1. Each and every one of your marketing efforts must be completely measurable. Measurable means your marketing efforts that your prospects or clients take some kind of action based on your marketing. Measuring and improving the results of your advertising methods will allow you to cut your costs significantly while getting much better results for every marketing dollar you invest.

2. If you want the greatest ROI on every dollar you invest in growing your client base through marketing and advertising you must strive to constantly eliminate dead weight. If a marketing format doesn’t produce profit, either modify it and test again or drop it. Period! If you’re not measuring results, you’re wasting your own marketing dollars.

Enjoy — and stay tuned for part 10 of the 12 Laws of Small Business Marketing Success series.

John-Paul Micek is known as the “Click-and-Mortar Business Coach” by business owners around the world thanks to members of the Business Owner’s Coaching Club™. He’s a published author and weekly columnist for the business section of the Honolulu Star Bulletin, and a managing partner with the international small business coaching company RPM Success Group Inc.®

The © Copyright to all audio, video, images, and text are held by RPM Success Group Inc.® and licensed under a Creative Commons License.