BEHIND THE SCENES OF A THRIVING BUSINESS

by Sandi Krakowski

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Sandi Krakowski on Smashwords

Behind the Scenes of a

Thriving Business

Copyright 2010

by Sandi Krakowski

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BEHIND THE SCENES OF A THRIVING BUSINESS

Today you’re going to hear that I am not only passionate

about business, but I’m passionate about having a real life. That

means there are certain areas in a thriving business where you

must duplicate yourself.

Now, sometimes my staff teases me and thinks I have a

clone. No, I’m not into cloning. I don’t want a clone. That might

not be a safe thing for the earth to have two energy balls like

this. I am interested in duplicating myself, in duplicating the

things that I have learned.

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I have been so blessed to be able to work with Amity, my

Happiness Engineer, for the last six months. When I did my very

first WordPress class a year ago this week, I had no idea what

was going to transpire over the next year. Let me quickly take

you on a little journey. Just about 14 years ago, I built my very

first business. Some of you have heard this story before, and

some of you wonder why I give so regularly. I’ll tell you why,

and write this down, because it’s good business training, if I do

say so myself.

Every week we have over 25% of people on our Monday night

calls who have never heard this crazy wild lady before. It’s a

dishonor to them for me to speak to our guests as if they already

know me and know my story. As a matter a fact, a gentleman on

Facebook said to me, “Sandi, have you always thought this

positive? Have you always brought God and spiritual things into

massive wealth production all at the same time?”

The very first question I had for him was, “Have you heard

my story where back in 2001 they gave me a year to live? Where

back in the 90’s, I was a struggling stay-at-home mom who was

completely overwhelmed with doing my own laundry.”

Don’t ask me why I thought I could do this, but I got this

cockamamie idea of running a business. The only other business

I had ever run was a cleaning business when I was a single mom

back in the late 80’s.

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I got this idea because I didn’t have enough financial

resources – in plain English, there was no cash. There was some

high-end kitchenware that I wanted, and I thought, “What if I

was to wholesale it?”

I had business in my genes. I wasn’t really groomed for

business, pray tell, but my father was a Dale Carnegie graduate

when Dale Carnegie taught live. So I did have something

groomed in me.

If you want to hear more about grooming people for success,

you should look up the title of the book, Grooming the Next

Generation for Success, by one of my mentors, Dani Johnson.

The grooming that I had in me was two-fold. It was a split

message. On one hand, my daddy was telling me, “There’s

nothing you can’t do. There’s nothing you can’t learn. There’s

nothing you can’t recover from.” My daddy taught me that the

worst that could happen is you’ll fail, and then you can get back

up again.

He literally groomed in me, massaged my conscious and

subconscious mind, that I could do anything. When I was nine

years old, I said I wanted to run a million dollar company. That

was the early 70’s and I remember being looked at like, “Girls

don’t do that kind of thing.”

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On the other side, and I’m very thankful for the relationship I

have with my mother now, but when I was growing up, the other

message was “Don’t work so hard or you’ll get sick. Don’t do too

many things or you’ll get too tired. Don’t go on TV where all

those rich people are, because they’re probably a bunch of liars

and deceitful people anyway. Don’t go near millionaires because

they’re the kind of people who rob you.” Great recipe for

success.

So I brought both of those messages into my very first online

business and had some huge success. Again, I have no idea

what made me think I could do it. I didn’t have a mentor. I had

no one telling me how to do it. I put up a website that looked

pathetic, and yet I had a newsletter client base of 300 families on

back-to-basic principles for families.

I wanted to create a family for my kids that was completely

different from the family I grew up in. In the home that I grew

up in, my father with his Dale Carnegie principles, was a

workaholic. My mother, with a lot of trauma that she suffered as

a child, was in and out of psychiatric wards.

What a massive dual message. I brought that into a

business, and the first thing I did was kind of mentoring other

families how to bring holistic health into the home, how to cook

from scratch, and how to make the family dinner table important.

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So I got the idea, “Why don’t I just sell kitchenware. I don’t

have enough money for the kitchenware, so I’ll just buy it

wholesale. I need to sell three mixers a month, and then I can

get mine for free. If I sell two mixers per month, I can get all my

baking supplies for free.” Well, the very first time I put a little ad

into my newsletter to those 300 families, we sold $8,000 worth of

kitchenware and I just about blew a gourd.

My husband was the one with a college degree and working in

corporate America. I’m the stay-at-home mom. How the heck

did I just do that? At that time, it was almost three times what

my husband was earning. So I went on to produce what I

thought was a great presentation of a catalog with 17 products

created in Microsoft Word and mailed it. I didn’t know that was

called direct mail. I then took my offline newsletter and put it

online.

Over the course of the next six months, I contacted various

kitchenware businesses. You may know some of them. Blendtec

of the Blendtec blenders. Back-to-Basics, one of the most

amazing companies out of Utah that teaches and sells canning

products and such. Bosch International, where we sold

kitchenware mixers and some of the best mixers in the entire

world to this day. Magic Mill grain mills and pasta machines.

The list went on and on, and before I knew it I was hooked,

and not only to all the fun toys I had in my kitchen, but the

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interaction with people and, my gosh, we did $31,000 in profit

our first year. I was hooked.

By the end of our second year, we had gone on and had over

400 products. We were drop-shipping and shipping through UPS.

During this time of the year, it was really getting crazy because

people started buying Christmas gifts. We would send out 30,

40, or 50 packages per night. The last couple weeks before

Christmas, we’d stay up all night long drinking coffee out of our

Capresso coffeemaker that we also sold, and had a blast.

We made a ton of money. We did over a million dollars in

sales that year. We later went on to have some people work for

me virtually and went on to build a $4.5 million dollar company.

But remember, I started out with two systems of belief that

were in conflict with each other. Some people look at me on

Facebook, Twitter, and my website and say, “Wow, things just

seem to come easy for you.” I beg to differ. I have worked very

hard to get to where I’m at today.

So when I talk to you about a thriving business, I need to talk

to you about a business that looks successful on the outside as

I’ve experienced at $4.5 million, but it’s massive stress on the

inside with 90 hours of work.

I currently work around 30 hours a week.

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So no, I don’t work all those hours anymore. So when I talk

to you about a thriving business where I work 30 hours a week,

Amity works 20 to 25 hours a week, Anna works anywhere from

5 to 10 hours a week, Tiffany will work anywhere from 10 hours a

week to 5 hours a week or maybe 15 hours when there’s an

event, you get my drift. We’re not people who work 90 hours a

week.

I built a business that looked like it was thriving, but I wasn’t

sleeping and I was constantly terrified there wouldn’t be enough

money. I don’t have that fear anymore. I can say that with

100% confidence. I don’t fear lacking money anymore. That has

been broken off for me, and I’d love to pass that on to you.

I don’t build my business lying on the floor begging God to

help me pay off my 30-day net and all my debt. Before some

seven years ago, we were running businesses that were

constantly built on debt and 30-day to 90-day net credit, and

eventually I got so sick they gave me a year to live in 2001.

We had to sell all our assets just to get rid of the debt. We

had to deal with selling as much inventory as we could to get rid

of six figures of medical debt.

Some of you are going to fall off your chair, because you

thought everything came easy to Sandi Krakowski. Let me throw

this set of dice into the game. Not only was I raised in a home

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where my mom spent half my childhood in a psych ward, I was

gang raped by four men in my early 20’s.

According to psychiatrists, I should not be able to do what

I’m doing today. I was given a year to live in 2001, told I would

never have any children, and if I did have children and survived, I

wouldn’t thrive.

Aren’t you glad – and you’ve heard me say this before but

I’m going to say it again – that you don’t have to listen to

professionals who don’t have a clue about your destiny.

I built a business in all the wrong ways and broke even after

that one. I had nothing to show for it other than a lot of stress. I

swore I’d never do it again, but I do believe God wrote it in my

DNA and this is a part of my destiny, so here I am. I do believe

the blessing God equipped me with, what He designed way before

I figured it out and got a little clue, that He wanted it released

through business.

So now, let me fast forward. After I built copywriting

businesses and had marketing firms, last November I looked at a

half million dollars in retainers that were coming in from regular

client jobs and various non-regular retainers coming in. I looked

at what was out in the industry and had a lot of people asking

me, “How do you do this? How do you do a website? How do you

write good copy? How do you really run a thriving business?”

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My conviction had always been, if you want to run a thriving

business, first of all, you had better have a good platform to run

it on. Sometimes I make predictions in business, and some of

you are going to think that’s really cool and some of you are

going to think, “What the heck’s up with that?” I’m just going to

tell you how I build businesses, and you can decide.

So a couple years ago, I said, “If you’re not in WordPress,

you’re not going to be WordPress compliant and Google’s going to

snuff you out.” Well, just this year, several hundred thousand

websites that were not built within the WordPress structure and

what Google is looking for, literally, they just kind of disappeared

from the web. So I made it my mission last November to teach

people how to use WordPress. I was going to show them how to

do SEO and keyword research where they don’t have to hire

thousands of dollars of staff.

I got very passionate about that. As a matter of fact, I got

ticked off at the tens of thousands of dollars that web designers,

SEO specialists, copywriters, and all these other people were

making to quite frankly make it nearly impossible for people to

start a business.

It wasn’t unheard of for people to hear, “You need a small

business loan for about $25,000.” I’m here to tell you, no you

don’t. You don’t need a small business loan for $25,000 to build

a thriving six or seven business online.

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I started my very first WordPress class with 23 people. We

had some great results. Their testimonials are still on our

website. That began to compound itself. People began to ask me

for another one, and the next thing I knew, Early To Rise asked

me to do one for their people. That really blew me away at

800,000 people on their list, and they want me to teach

WordPress. Then I had people ask me for copywriting and

autoresponder courses. You can go on our products page and

see what all was birthed out of that.

Let me back up just a little bit. For seven years, all of the

diseases I had including lupus, Crohn’s disease, all manners of

depression, forgetfulness, and anxiety have left my body. I stand

before you today building a different kind of life and a different

kind of business. That’s in my mission statement.

I don’t want to teach you WordPress so you can work 90

hours a week. I don’t want to show you how to write emails that

produce $100,000 in profit from one email so you can go work 90

hours a week. I’m not interested in teaching you, mentoring you,

in how to be successful in business so you can end up in divorce

and with kids that hate you.

My mission, and the mission of the people who work for me

and the one who works with me the closest, Amity, is that we are

committed to helping people create an extraordinary life,

business, and income with ordinary tools and being excellent in

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everything we do. You, my friends, are our focus. This has

proved to be hugely profitable.

Over the course of the last seven months we’ve been able to

create a list of over 64,000 people. Google says we’re in 107

countries. We’re shipping out to nine countries that I know of.

I’ve seen the shipping and taken some of them with my kids to

teach them how to run a shipping department through the post

office and UPS. We’re just now clearing a million dollars in sales.

Maybe that’s something you’d be interested in. Running a

business that is thriving is what we’re going to talk about. It’s a

business that requires different steps, and these steps are the

ones that people rarely talk about. If they talk about it, it’s in a

$100,000 a year coaching program.

I’m not passing judgment on anyone, but I’d rather offer you

a coaching program that, depending on what level you’re at, I

can help you increase, whether it’s a low $0 to $50,000 or

$100,000 to a couple million.

I’d rather you take the rest of that money that you’re not

paying me and go sow it into some orphanages, help some

people in the slave trade, help some kids in America who have no

parents and need some help, help some single moms and dads,

feed the homeless – go do something that is bigger than yourself.

I hope you’ll partner with me in that.

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My 2011 goal is to reveal what it really takes to a select

group of people, how to build a business. The first aspect, and I

know this sounds elementary but some of you don’t know the

answer, is, “What are you selling?”

Key #1 – What Are You Selling?

I certainly don’t deal with entitlement or control, but if

someone says, “I want to do this,” and I’m like, “Wait, you could

probably go make $500,000 doing this. Have you every thought

of this?” - that’s something I love.

It’s funny too - isn’t it interesting that even though I’ve been

successful before and had a lot of junk in my head, it was a whole

lot harder. It wore me down, and I worked a ton of hours to

block a bunch of stuff out. I was constantly in fear.

Now that Amity and I have been working together for six

months, it’s like it restores us. It’s like we’re getting healthier.

It’s not like, “Oh my gosh, it’s Friday. I don’t want to talk to

anybody. I’m exhausted.”

But how many times do we say to each other, “Self-control.

We don’t run a business 24/7. We can answer that on Monday.

They’ll know we love them.”

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We have to, because we lead by example. Isn’t that funny

that it’s not, “I don’t want to talk to my customers on the

weekends because they’re driving me crazy.” That’s a horrible

way to build a business. “I know I can help out with this, but this

has to wait until Monday.”

If you’re in a direct sales business, what are you selling? Are

you selling vitamins or are you selling a lifestyle? If you’re

marketing copywriting, you’re selling a skill. However, here’s the

deal, a thriving business understands the skill of copywriting is

not really what people want. What they want is the ability to

write or speak words, because, yes, copy can be spoken. I’ve

written all kinds of scripts, podcasts, and commercials.

You write words that create easy business, increase profit,

the combination of good will and good fortune where you can

market things and service people. A place where you can really

sell what you have, because quite frankly, some of you have

products and services that could change the world if people use

them. So you have to be able to write good words so people

want what you have. In fact, you have to make it so it’s nearly

impossible to resist it.

People in some faith-based communities can learn this

because sometimes they are so silly with their marketing that

nobody wants it. No small wonder. When you’re selling

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something, it’s really important to focus on, “What am I selling,

and what need or problem am I really serving?”

For those of you who heard we were going to talk about a

thriving business if I was a betting woman, I’d put a million

dollars on it that you didn’t really read this because you were

ready to write seven points of a thriving business.

I’d be willing to bet that what you wanted is to learn how to

build a profitable business, make the cash and finances that you

know not only will change your life but all the lives you’re

concerned about, and you’d be able to do it without losing your

joy, your family, and your mind.

Here’s another one, making sure you do it without separating

who you are in the marketplace from what you do. That, my

friends, is thriving. It’s when all your businesses thrive together.

Amity has talked to me at 7 a.m., at 10 p.m., and she’s seen

me without makeup and talked to me under every situation of

life. Does a different person show up on with clients, or on our

Monday night calls?

No, not at all.

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I really don’t care that anybody knows we were trying to find

ways to wash the pink and the non-pink of my hair. I really

don’t.

I got to Indy and it’s like, I usually have this little attachment

on my hose so I can wash the pink separate and wash the blonde

separate. The hose is not fitting on the sink, so I’ve got to figure

out how I’m going to do this separately in the shower. Amity and

I sat there for 15 minutes figuring out how I was going to lean

my head back and wash the pink separate, so I didn’t end up with

light pink hair all over my head. No, I really don’t care that

anybody knows that.

That’s a real business, where you can just be yourself and

thrive. So write this down – What are you selling and how

are you getting your message out there?

Key #2 – You Need a Website

The second thing is obviously elementary, but you’re going to

need it for running an online business. It’s disturbing to me when

people say you can make millions of dollars without it in this

economy. I’d go head-to-head on that one. Unless you’ve got

some specialized skill that you don’t need it, which is extremely

rare, you need a website.

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If you look in Forbes Magazine this month or last month, or

Inc magazine, of all the number one millionaires in our nation and

in the world, the top companies, the fastest growing companies,

are all connected to the internet.

My friend, the stock market is no longer where millionaires

are made. They are going to be made online. I’ve been playing

in that playground for 14 years. I was here when Google first

started, and I plan on being here as long as I can talk and type.

You need to build a website that’s not dependent on a ton of

people to run it for you. You need to be able to build a website

that’s going to get you fast results in getting you into all the

search engines. You need to be able to do SEO without getting a

masters degree, for crying out loud, in search engine

optimization. You need to be able to do this in a way that you

can personally update it yourself.

The number two ingredient, I believe, in an online business is

WordPress. I believe that with all my heart.

So, number one is you need to know what you’re selling and

how you’re going to get your message out there. Number two,

you need a website, WordPress.

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Key #3 - Mindset

Number three. This is a big, big, yes big, issue. I built a

business that looked like it was thriving on the front, and it was

imploding on the back. I’m going to give you the secret sauce of

why, as our company grows as it has in the last seven months,

it’s not imploding on the backend. I don’t have a stack of three-

months-behinds, and neither does Amity.

People aren’t fighting with each other. We’re not at each

other’s throat and whining to each other over cocktails how we

hate our husbands. No, actually we laugh all the time about how

we’re having a great time. My husband is actually coming to be

the COO of my company in 2011.

That was something that was more work for me to work on

than even my website, than even grueling copywriting classes,

than even learning how to do marketing, tracking, and all the

analytical aspects of business. What I’m talking about is mindset.

This is a big issue.

Some women like me that are reading this have held

themselves back because they’re afraid of making more money

than their husband. This was a big issue for me over and over

again. Boom, I’d pop up to six or seven figures and instantly I’d

think, “Oh, is this okay?” Because of the lies that I’ve told myself

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and the lies that other people have told me, I would literally

change the path of direction and go backward instead of forward.

I have to tell you, this is the fastest growing company I’ve

ever built in 14 years. I’ve not grown this big, this fast, this

strong with no fallout, and my marriage is stronger than ever. I

have my kids working for me. I’m as happy as can be. Sure,

there are challenging moments. It’s called life. Nobody gets out

alive.

The reality is when your mindset is where it should be, your

business will prosper, even when you make mistakes. When your

mindset is not where it should be and you’re believing things that

are not true, such as “I don’t think I deserve success,” it doesn’t

matter how much you study customer service, how many

WordPress classes you go through, or how many copywriting

classes you take, it’s not going to pay. It just won’t. You have to

believe that you deserve success, and I’m here to tell you that

every person deserves to be successful.

You’ve heard me say it before, one thing that God said,

amongst many things about your success, is that, “I would wish

you would prosper and be in good health even as your soul

prospers.” That means the core of who you are. It’s who He

created you to be in direct relationship with Him.

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I don’t know any better platform to help you work on your

personal growth, who you are and what your beliefs are, than

business. School doesn’t do it. Even raising a family doesn’t do

it. It was in business where I really felt like I got a lobotomy

from heaven, where all the yuck I was raised with got sucked out,

and I got a new mind. God is the only one who knows how to do

that.

I learned to love people who before I couldn’t get along with.

I learned how to serve people I may disagree with. I learned that

it’s a beautiful world when we’re not all alike. I also learned that

a business is designed to profit and profit hugely.

I’m willing to bet that for over 96% of you reading this, one

of your requests of God is more money.

I’m here to give you a huge revelation, that’s not an evil

desire. That desire has nothing to do with you. That desire is

from His heartbeat to yours, trying to get done on the earth what

needs to be done.

Ladies and gentlemen, we need money to feed the hungry.

We need money to help the homeless. We need money to help

people out of the slave trade. We need money to help babies.

We need self-control and a right mindset so we can make that

money.

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One of the missing keys to a thriving business is to have a

mindset that’s allowing you to ask for money and then receive it.

I believe with all my heart the moment you ask, all of a sudden

everything starts moving in a direction to bring it to you. As soon

as you put out the request, instantly things start moving in your

direction to bring it to you.

Sadly, what happens is we block it with, “I don’t think I

deserve it.” We block it with, “This is going to be too hard.” We

block it with, “I’ve got a bunch of kids. I don’t have the hours.”

We block it with, “I don’t think I can do this.”

We ask and an opportunity comes up and we go, “I think I

need to think about it for awhile,” or if we’re really spiritual we

say we need to pray about it. You asked, and I hate to be bold,

but there’s nothing to pray about. If it’s not immoral or

unethical, you asked and it showed up.

I believe with all my heart that in 2011, I’m going to have –

yes, I’m declaring – that I’m going to have a group of people who

will go to six and seven figures just as fast as I did. They will see

huge breakthroughs in their mindset. They are going to work

with some of my best business partners like PJ McClure, who is a

master at mindset.

They’re going to get skills, get development, and get their

website up and working. They’re going to get what they’re selling

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clear. They’re going to get their copy clear. They’re going to get

their mindset right and start walking away from addictive

behaviors. They’re going to have freedom. They’re going to be

saving more and giving more. They’re going to be able to ask for

help and for more money.

These are the kinds of things that are required in a thriving

business. They’re going to realize that they are not the number

one focus of the business. For some of the tenderhearted people

listening, I want to tell you that I’m not being harsh, but I’ve got

to call it like it is. When we say, “I don’t deserve success,” that is

an ego pride statement. Please, go here with me.

That statement means “I” am more important than the

success that God designed me for. Because “I” don’t have value

of “me,” I don’t value who God created. I don’t respect, honor,

and value who I am, therefore, I believe “I” (me being the

biggest focus) don’t deserve success.

Man, I’m going to ask God that some people get set free right

now from that thing.

When you look at it like that, like the egotistical thing that it

is, to be completely consumed with, “I don’t think I can do this. I

don’t think I deserve success. I’m going to fail. I’m walking

forward, but I’m going to fall on my butt as I walk backwards,”

that is such an egotistical statement.

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Ladies and gentlemen, you were designed by God for risk.

Your DNA thrives with risk. Your DNA craves risk. It’s better to

risk and make 100 mistakes than to hold back and not even try

one. You’ll be a whole lot healthier with that.

So number three is mindset. These are things I’m going to

talk about in depth in our 2011 coaching program.

What are we selling? How are we getting our message out

there? How is our website being built so it’s thriving? One person

doesn’t have to be the center of it all. There’s a team. Where is

our mindset?

Key #4 – You Need a Team

Businesses were not created to be run by themselves.

There’s no way I could do what I do today without Amity. Oh,

maybe I could if I worked 65 hours a week, but that is in direct

conflict with what I’ve been created for and what my goals are,

so it becomes a no-brainer.

It’s also interesting that when you have a team, for some of

you, your breakthrough would come if you had even one or two

people to work with. Why? Because when two walk together,

they hold each other up.

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When we first started out, one of Amity’s first roles was to

intercept email. Even if only 27 emails were coming in out of the

3,500 on the list, how many times did I say, “Add two zeros to

that.” Not to mention, if the CEO is answering all the emails and

is available for every inbound phone call, the CEO will have no

creativity. They will be a crabby CEO.

Amity handles things a whole lot better than I would. I

seriously believe that. That’s why she’s the Happiness Engineer

and that’s why I’m the CEO. Our customers love her.

Some of the people on the call need to realize that you have

to have people working with you. It’s not that Amity can’t handle

it or devalues the answer to give people direction. She’s totally

capable. In fact, she manages all that beautifully. There is a

place where I go, where I can be found, but you can’t find me

just by shooting me an email. You can’t really get me just by

calling the office.

Nobody reading this, even if you only have 50 customers, you

shouldn’t be able to get the CEO with just a drop of the hat.

Otherwise, you’ll never have 50,000 customers because

subconsciously you’ll block it. You’ll think in your mind, “Okay, I

have to do this but times 100? I can’t do that.” No.

So when you have 50, you have somebody else helping with

it, whether it’s a VA or somebody who works with you like Amity

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does with me on regular hours. Then where the CEO shows up is

through social media.

Even then, Amity and I answer those together. Amity

answers most of what comes to me through my Facebook. She

actually chuckles when she reports to me, “This person wrote you

a Facebook message. Then they sent you an email. Then they

sent you mail through the contact form. I also think they called

the Skype line twice. I think they really want to talk to you.”

I can’t tell you how happy I am that she found that out,

because the first thing I’m thinking is, “Goodness gracious, that

person’s got a lot of time on their hands if they can contact me

five times in five different ways.” If you write Zappos or

Amazon.com, if you write five times you don’t get a faster

response.

There’s usually a person who shows up in my class who later

goes, “Oh my gosh, I don’t want 100 customers like that.” This

comes from a point of fun and not a point of negative.

It’s interesting because Amity is usually able to get people

the answer. Then when I show up on our Monday night calls, I’m

not trying to weave through all the questions and all the

administration that she handles. We are a team.

No one creates a business all by themselves. You’ve got to

have a team. That can be a virtual assistant.

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www.AssistYou.com is a great place. You can find people through

Elance.com. You can find people through Guru.com. Personally,

You can place an ad through the American Writers and Artists

Institute (AWAI), but I also looked for people who came out of

there. I want people who have a basic understanding of

copywriting.

Amity doesn’t write any of the emails, although occasionally

she will sneak in there and you’ll get an email that says, “This is

from Amity.” I wanted my people to have a basic understanding

of what I do.

For a web person we’ve got my son, Justin, who helps

facilitate our classes behind the scenes. He listens in on all the

classes. He’s 17 and this is part of his homeschool education,

which is exactly what I did with my now 22 year old, Jeremy.

Jeremy runs his own business, works full time for another

business, and even DJs on the weekends. He is completely

financially independent at age 22.

How did I bring the family together? Well, you bring your

teenager on a call. You have them be your assistant. You have

them take notes. If you’re in the middle of a training call or a

group coaching, I’ll say, “Hey Justin, don’t forget to remind me of

this. Make sure you get that information to Angela. Get that

information to Mark.” There’s class help and event preparation.

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There are people reading this who have begged God to

increase their business, but they refuse to get any help by using

these words: “I can’t afford it.” You can’t afford not to get help.

I’m telling you, when you pay somebody a couple hundred dollars

a week to help you, your sales will increase. 100% of the time,

of my clients who have done this, their sales have increased.

People who come into my class, like Carole Douthitt, who

went through some coaching with me. She started getting some

people to help. She invested into that and bam! She launched

her own coaching program - $4,987 in her first email. Isn’t that

interesting? What she put out came back even bigger.

Dr. Scott, working on building his site, realized he couldn’t do

everything by phone one-on-one. He got himself a merchant

account. The very same day he put that out there and invested

those couple hundred dollars to get his account set up, his

shopping cart set up and email, bam! $1,997 the very first day.

That was an investment of his time and money on his part.

Sometimes you’re going to feel like you’re walking across a

tightrope. People like Gina invested $2,700 coaching with me

over 90 days. She made $140,000. Do you think it was worth

it? She has continued to increase her business and continues to

build a bigger warehouse. She now has 300 purse parties with all

of her consultants all over the US using some of the Skype and

teleseminar things that we’ve taught her in our coaching. She’s

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not the one doing all those parties; she’s duplicating herself.

Make sure you have people helping you.

Obviously, there is much more to running a business than

just “What is my product? What is it that I’m selling? How is my

website working? Is my mindset right?” You need a team. I’m

amazed at how many people don’t have this. Sometimes it

makes me a little irritated and sometimes it makes me cry.

I get irritated not that people don’t understand this, but

because there are people out there mentoring people and telling

that if they just get a website they can sell anything and make

lots of money. They tell them if they take their $500 class, they’ll

make six figures.

You’ll never hear that from me. If you take one of my

classes, my goal is that you’re going to get your investment back

fast. You’re going to multiply your skill as you do it over and

over again.

That’s another reason why we make our classes absurdly

affordable. If somebody can’t afford $109 for six hours on how to

make six figures in WordPress, they should seriously wonder

whether they should be in business.

The average college debt right now is $24-30,000 on a four-

year BS program. If you go into a Master’s degree, now you’re

looking at $60-110,000. If you go into the medical community

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where you make the kind of money my company is making, you’ll

end up with a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt.

People come out of college and if they’re fortunate they get a

job right away. That doesn’t happen very often. They’re $24-

100,000 in debt and if they’re fortunate, they’ll be above the

national average and make $50-55,000 a year. You and I both

know $55,000 a year is not going to pay off their college debt.

It’s going to fund the new house that they want, the car they

want, paying off a few bills, and maybe a few fun expenses.

Then what happens?

This is the difference with a thriving business. We have a

nation and a world full of people who go to work because of the

debt that they owe while they were trying to learn a skill to

improve their life. Working through the internet with a viable

business, training with someone who really knows what they’re

doing – if it’s not me, find somebody who it is. I’m not

egotistical. It doesn’t have to be me.

There’s a message out there that you can just sell a few

vitamins and make a six-figure income. I made over a million

and a half dollars in direct sales in two years and it didn’t happen

without a website, and it didn’t happen without having masterful

skill. I invested in myself to know how to do it.

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There are two choices. You can go to college and hope they

teach you the right thing that’s relevant today. Most of what I

see coming out of college is irrelevant. Even their internet

marketing courses are not taught by people who have made

millions of dollars on the internet. They’re taught by professors

who have memorized a curriculum. It’s a joke.

People stay in debt for more than 10 years before breaking

even. By the time they get out of college, they’re now 31 years

old and still in debt. Wouldn’t you rather invest a certain amount

of money every month and improve your skill. Wouldn’t you

rather earn and learn and pay off your investment. That’s the

kind of thing I always mentor my clients with.

Learn how to do marketing, and we’re going to talk about

that in Dallas, where you put out $500 in advertising and the goal

is to break even instantly. Then you’ve got to go into the $500 of

profit and cream. Then you’ve got to go into $1,500. Then you

buy more ads and go into $2,000. You don’t just put an ad out

there and all of a sudden you make $5,000 and, “Woot woot!”

That’s not how it happens.

It’s step upon step, line by line, giving extraordinary attention

to what you’re doing. It’s giving extraordinary customer service.

It’s making sure you’re building a thriving business that you love.

30

I can’t tell you how many people I talk to who come out of

college, and they absolutely hate what they went to school for.

They bought into the whole message of go to school and get a

great job. Going to school doesn’t guarantee you a great job

anymore than building a $50,000 website guarantees you a

profitable business.

Use the skill that you have and multiply it, master it.

Sometimes you need to ask yourself, “If I wrote a book,

would it be possible for me to make $10,000?” Occasionally, but

that’s not typically what happens. That’s why there’s a bunch of

scams online. My goal is that I’m going to give you a reading list.

I’m going to tell you what I’m listening to. We’re going to work

on mindset. We’re going to work on the intricate parts of

business.

How about expenses and making sure you don’t go into debt.

Your marketing calendar. You set it and forget it. It markets

itself. You just refine it.

You have people working with you who are rock stars on how

to increase your profits so those profits are coming in to fund the

help that’s coming in, and it’s a beautiful way to build

momentum.

This doesn’t happen by just going through one four-hour

class. It’s line upon line, step upon step, and building the skill.

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It’s the same kind of thing you do in college, but you spend 10

times as much money in college, and all you do is learn, learn,

and learn and eventually hope you can activate.

I’m talking about learning a skill, some through self-taught,

some through mentoring. I have never been able to achieve the

goals that I want to financially and in my own personal life

without having a group and a mentor to connect to. I have one

right now, two of them. This is what makes the biggest

difference. I’m investing in my own skill.

That’s the kind of stuff I want to teach you. I want to teach

people not only how to make money but how to keep it. I want

to teach you how to make wise decisions with your money. Some

of the women out there who are equipped to make six or seven

figures, you’ve got a husband who would make a great manager.

You bring your different skills together and make a whole lot of

money.

Some of you husbands who are equipped to make six and

seven figures, you’ve got mindset issues as well that we need to

get pass so we can bring things together to not only build a

thriving business but a thriving life as well.

It’s amazing when you’re building your business and you’re

staying out of debt. You’re not going into debt for 10 years like

college. Sure, you might go into debt for 30 days, 90 days, but

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then you activate. You have a mentor, some mastermind groups,

and not a bunch of groups of people who are all trying to do what

you’re trying to do.

That’s not mastermind, my friends, in the truest form of the

word. A mastermind is when you’re with people who have done

and are doing what you want to do. They’re moving you

forward.

*****

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Sandi Krakowski

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