Today’s success tip comes from Michelle Bowden.

At 28, with a baby and a huge mortgage, Michelle opened her training business, with AMP as her first client. She is an accredited NLP practitioner and master trainer in presentation and influencing skills. She works with CEOs and their teams to help prepare them for presentations at company meetings, conferences and sales pitches.

What are your top tips for influencing others in a positive and empowering way?

Rapport, rapport, rapport! Before you can influence others you must build rapport with them. My advice is to:

* Understand the person’s personality filters - the way they experience, respond to and manage their environment.

* Make a plan - what do you want to achieve?

* Use pacing and leading - pacing involves being like your audience in your dress, body language, eye contact, vocal variety, style, language, interests and attitudes. Some people call this matching or mirroring. Leading is taking the audience where you want them to go. Your audience won’t follow you or give you permission to lead them unless they feel an affiliation with you. You really can’t ask for anything until you have first built rapport.

* Show them what’s in it for them to change - we know this as the WIIFM or ‘what’s in it for me’.

* Cialdini’s influence patterns help you identify the other strategies to use - for more information I recommend you read Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini.

For more great tips and advice stay tuned for next week’s success tip.

Until then,

Allan Poole

Today’s success tip comes from Amy Lyden.

Amy is the Managing Director of Bow Wow Meow, which today is a leading producer of fun and functional pet tags. Its products are distributed through more than 1,500 pet shops sold throughout the world via the internet.

What advice would you give to an aspiring entrepreneur who wants to get started in a business of their own?

First things first, put together a great support team of other people in business that you meet with regularly and help each other out. Surround yourself with people whom you admire or can learn from. Create your own personal cheerleading squad - people who only want the best for you and who are prepared to help you shine and be the best you can be.

Next, consider what you are going to do. Try to think of things that makes people’s lives easier. Life is getting more and more complicated, how can you make it easier? Also, as a consumer, what are some of the products and services that you want that others might too? This is how I got the idea for my business.

Then, start researching. One of the key areas that I find people need to do extra research in is understanding the financials. This is absolutely essential. Often, new business owners underestimate or don’t understand cash flow. I highly recommend a course called ‘Beyond Survival’. It’s a two-day course put on by the Westpac bank. It is a highly practical, hands-on course designed to help business owners understand a profit and loss statement, balance sheet and the key ratios that determine the health of a business. Numbers do not lie, and if one doesn’t understand what they mean it can be a serious disadvantage.

Many people block themselves in this area by saying, ‘Numbers aren’t my thing’ or ‘I was never good at maths’. This is very damaging talk. It is critical to understand the financial aspects of your business - this is one area that should not be abdicated to the bookkeeper or accountant.

The bottom line is that no one knows your business better than you, even a CPA. I’m not suggesting that you micro-manage the financials, but you should at least understand the financial statements and cash flow of your business.

Until next time,

Allan Poole

Today’s success tip comes from Chris Gray.

Financially retired at the age of 31, today Chris is a multi-millionaire, and capital growth property investor. He is also a self-confessed lifestyle junkie.

What do you look for when you’re ’shopping for property’?

Ultimately, I am looking for suburbs that will have high long-term capital growth. That means there has to be a lot of employment in the area from lots of different types of industries, plenty of leisure and recreation for the people that live there and good transport links. However there are other things I look for such as:

* Aspect - I always look at light and heat. I check that the main living areas are facing North. No matter how great the property is, if it is not well lit I am turned-off immediately.

* Rent consideration - Receiving rent for your property is very important because it is the rent that will pay the mortgage. As a general rule, the more capital growth you want for wealth appreciation, the less rent you’ll get. It’s a fine line to find the right balance. I’d rather 10% growth and between four and 5% rent, than 10% rent and four to 5% growth.

* Median price - I recommend buying property around the median price so you’ll always have a tenant, there will be lots of comparisons if you want to get the bank to refinance it and there will be lots of interest if you do want to sell.

* Not pristine - I don’t want to buy property that is perfect because the seller will charge a premium if everything’s already done. I look for places that are livable to rent out straight away but may need some work, such as new carpet or a new kitchen. If you have an eye for improvements you can create additional equity, which is the difference between what you pay and what you can make it worth.

* Equal-size bedrooms - If you’re letting out a two-bedroom apartment to two single people you need two equal size double bedrooms.

* Built-in wardrobes - People don’t want to cart around a wardrobe. I check for built-ins or space to potentially add one to the room.

* Toilets, bathroom and en-suite - An additional toilet is always useful, toilets that are separate from bathrooms are good, so is having one bathroom and an en-suite off the main bedroom.

* Lock-up garage - People who can afford $400-plus rent don’t want to park their car in the street. Some people won’t look at your property if it doesn’t have a garage.

Hi, Welcome today to my blog. Today we are looking at one of our experts from the iLifestyleClub web site, Daniel Kertcher.

We recently had the pleasure of attending a seminar run by Daniel. Daniel is an expert in the field of trading Options and CFDs on the Australian and US stock markets. For over 10 years now, Daniel has been actively investing in the stock market.

He now not only continues to actively trade, but also has become a trainer of many thousands of people worldwide who want to learn about the stock market. He began learning about trading Options and more recently has branched out into CFDs – which is now his preferred method of trading on the stock market.

Daniel also teaches his clients about trading Gold, Silver, Oil and other commodities.

Even when the stock market is at its worst there is money to be made. Daniel says, “It is important to remember that money never disappears from the market, it is just transferred from the people who used to have the money to the people who now have it!”

It is important to learn before jumping into any trading strategy on the stock market.

I heard a saying recently that “the stock market was created to transfer wealth from the uneducated to the educated!” Hence it is important to remember that knowledge of the market and financial and emotional intelligence are important to learn BEFORE beginning to trade.

Here is a photo of Greg and I with Daniel at his seminar.

Until next time.

To your success and fulfilment in life!

Leanne Annett

Today’s success tip comes from Nik Halik.

Having completed a doctorate of music in the USA, Nik went on to develop a career as a stock market trader. Now he is a teacher and educator and spends his time climbing mountains and training with the Russian Orbital Space Program.

What are your top six stock market trading psychology tips?

To trade successfully, we need to dial into a frequency, or zone, of higher consciousness and prosperity. There are six important prerequisites to allow entrance into this zone:

1. Confidence - as a trader you must be confident in your trading method and believe that you will succeed if you implement your trading plan. This allows you to place your entries and exits promptly and thoroughly.

2. Focus - a narrow focus on the task at hand is required to get into the zone. Fears about the outcome and regrets about past losses do not exist here.

3. Visualisation - a successful trader pictures what success looks like and gets in the zone through a visual processing of data. Verbal cues can take a trader out of the zone.

4. Pleasure - those who view trading as work will struggle to find great trades, while those who love trading will feel in harmony with the markets and find opportunities more easily.

5. Relaxation - fear tends to take you out of the zone. Stay relaxed in order to stay in the zone.

6. Excitement - some tension can help performance, but too much intensity will create undue stress, and hurt performance. Remaining excited about what you are doing can ease that tension.

The other element traders need to dial into the zone is preparation. Larry Bird hit key shots under pressure in basketball games because he had practised dealing with this pressure; it became automatic for him and increased his confidence. Traders must do the same thing and spend time making trading skills ‘automatic’ and creating winning trading habits. Preparation and practise allow you to develop the skills you need to stay in the zone.

Until next time,

Allan Poole

Today’s success tip comes from Adam Davis.

At the age of 20, Adam has grown his consultancy into one of the most recognised traffic generation consulting services in the world, with over 500 clients in four countries. He has spoken in front of crowds of over 1,500 people in Singapore, Australia, the UK, Indonesia and Malaysia on how to effectively send traffic to any website and make a profit.

What is the most important thing you have learnt about succeeding on the internet?

As funny as it may sound, the internet itself has very little to do with whether or not you become a successful internet entrepreneur! Instead, it is about who you are and the mind-set with which you approach the concept of the internet. In order to succeed you need to stay focused and committed to both the immediate task and the long-term vision.

But perhaps the most important thing I have learnt is that the internet is nothing more than a medium; one that can distract a potential entrepreneur to the point of destroying their business. Let me explain:

The very nature of an internet-based business means that you will often spend long periods of time in front of a computer screen (unless you have employees to do this for you). There’s little interaction with people and it can become distracting if you do not have good motivation and concentration.

It is not uncommon to have wandering thoughts about random topics far removed from your business. Your unfocused mind tempts you to Google irrelevant topics and then you start following links. Before you know it, you’ve wasted many hours that could have been spent furthering your online business and increasing your profits. You then fail to approach your tasks with as much enthusiasm and vigour as you previously did, thus starting a downward spiral that can spell the end of a potentially successful internet entrepreneur.

My work has allowed me to witness people succeed and fail with their internet businesses. Based on my experience, I have learnt that the most important ingredients for success are:

* determination

* motivation

* focus

* clarity.

To succeed as an internet entrepreneur you need to be completely committed to your business and determined to succeed regardless of the obstacles that befall you.

Tune back next week for more success tips.

Take care.

Allan Poole