List Building Guide: your Dash to the Profit Zone!

Your Dash to the Profit Zone

Day 1: Introduction – Day 1 is about taking stock of everything you currently have and where you are looking to go. You can use this information over and over again for all of your business ideas. It is about changing our mind frames from a position of scarcity to a position of abundance. The name of the game in any business is give until it hurts. Two of the most successful companies, Walmart and Microsoft are great examples of this.

These companies found ways to give more than any of their competitors. Walmart generally has the best prices. Early on, they went directly to the customers that loved them to offer their services. They made it very easy for their customers to buy from them. They did this even though it had never been done before. They were innovators. They faced risk even though profit was uncertain. They gave and they gave until it hurt. This spirit of “giving” allowed them to decimate K-Mart when they were barely a blip on the map. Why? Because they gave more value and services to their clients than K-Mart was willing to do.

Microsoft brought the computer to the masses. In the old days, before Windows was developed if you didn’t understand what a root directory was the computer was a foreign alien to you. Microsoft uncovered the alien love in all of us by creating a “GUI” interface which is basically point and click. Microsoft gave many of us the computer which brought us into the Internet Age. They continually strive to make their products better and better creating more value and service. This is the true essence of Microsoft’s success.

These companies do not have to stand alone. They are not different or better. They just provide more value and service than any of their competitors. True success in business starts and ends at the value and service you provide. What value and what service can you provide for your clients? Not sure? Your resources are endless. You can give more than you know possible.

You see, there is a general misconception that rich people are greedy and poor people are not. I disagree with this platitude I believe that rich people are not greedy, at least not in the traditional definition. The reason why they are rich is because they give and provide services and products. Yes they have business reasons for doing so, but here is an interesting question, are the rich greedy or are the poor? The rich pay themselves last and their business’ first. The rich create products and services with their time and money.

Generally, the poor have “better” things to do with their time than create a product or service for another person. I’m sure they have their reasons, but at the end of the day how much value and service are they providing? Are they leveraging their time and money to help millions of people? The poor have great talents and abilities, but in their fear they do not reach out and help their fellows. They are too afraid that they “won’t get paid” for their efforts. I believe that any person can find the time. Even if they work 80 hours a week to be able to create a product, service, and business that will help their fellow man. Furthermore, if this product truly does provide service and value it will be successful because that’s why the rich are successful.

Regardless, if you agree with me or not. You will need to do what the rich do. You will need to provide amazing value and service for your clients. In order to do this we have to figure out what you have to give. We need to take an inventory of what you currently have. This inventory will allow us to focus your efforts towards creating a product, service, and a business towards solving a problem and creating value for others. This is Day 1.

The first step is take inventory of what we currently have. I guarantee you have more inventory than you could possibly imagine and right now it is probably doing nothing for you. Let’s change that now. Don’t wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow’s never come. Only today’s. Grab your pencil and paper and let’s start the list.

I don’t want you to do any thinking at this point. I just want you to get your stuff together and compile it together on a list. Why you may ask. Why do I want to do this? Simple. All the stuff you have on your hard drive right now is doing nothing for you! Especially if you have no idea what you have! The goal of Day 1 is to accurately determine what we have to use towards our goals.

THE DIGITAL INVENTORY LIST

1. Do you have thousands and thousands of dollars in digital inventory? Write them all down. Ebooks, courses, videos, interviews, memberships, audio, I mean everything. Write it all down. Write down the titles, a general summary, who they are by, and rating next to them in terms of effectiveness and usefulness. We will be going back to this list later.

2. Do you have hundreds of dollars of domain empire? You may have just one domain either way it’s okay. Write then all down. Let’s do something with all these domains collecting “virtual dust”.

3. Write down anything else you can think of that is collecting virtual dust. Let’s finally use all these resources. Maybe you are a member of several PLR membership web sites. Seriously, take the time to write down everything that you have available to you. You will need it later.

THE RESOURCE LIST

Now that you have your digital inventory list we can begin to analyze the resources you have around you and how we can use them to towards your goals. And yes you do have many resources around you. Let’s take a moment of quietness together and contemplate on what we do have.

1. You are alive.

2. You have millions of dollars in physical inventory. Don’t believe me? Would you give me a leg for 50 thousand dollars? How about an eye? 100 thousand dollars? I’m willing to bet if you take the time and really analyze what you *DO* have you will pleasantly surprised. You easily have over a million dollars in inventory right now.

3. Your forums. You are surrounded by people who have talent and abilities that you are going to need. They are an invaluable resource! Surrounded with potential JV partners. They are worth potentially millions of dollars. Treat them like the gold that they are.

4. Google. This service is bar none the best research agent out there. What niche do you want to sell in? Laptops? Type in laptops +reviews to figure out what people like and don’t like about laptops. Write a couple articles, put up some PPC ads about benefits that really catch people’s interest. Type in laptops +forums and personally read through all of the forums and write down all the problems that people are currently having that they need solved. Write a guide that walks a user through the laptop buying process, contact all of these people as potential JV partners. Google is the most amazing resource ever. Use it and love it.

5. Your hard drive of untapped potential. Refer back to the list that you better have done for evidence of this one.

6. The Internet. You are in the best age right now to make Internet marketing work for you. More and more businesses are going online and riding the wave of Dotcomerism. This is nothing like the huge bust that occurred several years ago. This a completely different animal. Profitable businesses are being built every single day. Malls are losing more and more traffic to the Internet. Local stores are losing profitability as days go on. Why? Because all the traffic is going to the INTERNET. E-commerce is breaking record after record. You can’t even repeat a statistic about the Internet before it’s changed the next month. Right now it’s easily into the billions of dollars. What does that mean for you? It means get ready to rumble. You want a piece of that pie and I’m going to do everything in my power to get you there. Why you may ask? It’s because I understand business, but we’ll get to that later.

Now that you have your list of digital and physical inventory. And an incomplete list of all your resources (incomplete because you are going to be adding to it every day!)

Let’s figure out where we want to go. Why? It’s simple. If I drop you off in the middle of nowhere. Where are you going to go? Nowhere. You have no idea where you want to go. So you’re going to walk around aimlessly looking for the next bright and shiny lights. This store and that. Doing circles over and over. Until. Eventually, you’re right where you started. I know a lot of us are there right now. Chasing our tails, succumbing to the next hot sales letter and “secrets” to the path of fame and fortune.

Let’s be honest though we need our own destination and until we do we are walking around in circles. So let’s do this now. Let’s define what our destination looks like. I want you to write down as descriptively as possible. What your destination for your life is. First describe your perfect day. Then describe your goal for your life. Now describe your goals for your business.

Do you want to work from home?

Be able to travel?

Do you want to explore the world?

Would you like your business virtually automated?

Would you like to sleep in until Noon and wake up to a full Pay Pal account?

Would you like to have time to spend with your kids? See them grow up? Maybe teach them from home?

Maybe you would like to be able to afford the newest cars because that’s your passion?

Maybe you would like be able to go to all the 5 star dining experiences around the world?

Or maybe you just want to pay off some bills?

Maybe you love what you do now and you really just want to get out of some debt.

Maybe going back to zero is what you are after.

What ever it is for you. Write it down. Write it down now! I’ll wait..

Okay done? Good. Have you completely and irrevocable designed what you want your future to be? This is a very important step that you will refer to constantly. You need to know where you are going in order to be able to get there. Once you have this done we can continue. I want you to go through your lists for the next couple days and figure out exactly what you currently have. Write down your resources. Maybe you have the ear of a guru with thousands and thousands of people on his list. Maybe you have the ability to design web sites from scratch before breakfast. Maybe you are a budding copywriter and can write ebooks while watching MTV. Whatever it is. Take a COMPLETE inventory and in the Day 2 installment we will talk about creating the ROAD MAP to getting to your DESTINATIONS.

Until we “meet” again. Right now go join us at the ListLair for updates on future installments of “Your Dash to the Profit Zone!”