If you talked with the successful person they would be delighted and full of praise for the business system. Yet the failed individual would usually be bitter and full of recrimination – about the same system.

Possibly The Single Biggest Obstacle

This observation, and after talking with hundreds of prospects, convinced me the main difficulty for the average home business entrepreneur is likely to be the person in charge. Themselves. Who wants to hear that?

The solution is also NOT the obvious one.

The straightforward solution seems to be to model the patterns and behaviour of successful entrepreneurs. There is some validity to this argument, but hands-on experience came up with a far more important aspect.

The Hidden Reason

Something I believe to be a major – if not THE major – player in this game is temperament or unlearnt tendency. I made the connection after listening to a young millionaire marketer. I realised that what he was using to increase his sales massively, would also be a hidden reason for success or failure for any home business entrepreneur.

This was a revelation and the more this was explored the more it became an unpleasant reality. Unpleasant because people are born and die with their own temperament. And as such all the self-help books and guides that are written can NEVER, ever, be used the same by people with different temperaments.

An Unprofitable Truth

I knew instantly that this was a massive obstacle. And also that it was not something people want to hear – or for that matter buy. Also there is no doubt success will be easier for some temperament types than others. However if we are aware of these traits then we can do something about them. In particular by acknowledging and compensating for our weaknesses. We then dramatically alter our chances of seeing success.

Luckily every temperament has a set of characteristics that are suited to at least one of the recognised business categories.

Reality Bites

I believe it is worth any prospective home business entrepreneur taking the time to assess themselves – their ability, their weaknesses and strengths.

Aside from temperament there is each individual’s experience, expertise, specific talents or skills that every person has acquired. These may or may not be of benefit to one or more of the business models. The most important thing to consider is that you have a unique set of, and combination of, characteristics.

If you can assess the above impartially you will then be able to judge to which business category you are naturally suited. This is in my opinion the single most useful exercise you can do. And the very first exercise you should do. It could save you a fortune.

To paraphrase JFK:

‘Ask not what a home business can do for you – rather what can you do for a home business?’

By now you’ve figured out that marketing yourself as a consultant requires specific action – it’s definitely not a case of, “If you build it, they will come.” Never fear, I have some ideas to help you establish your reputation as an expert, get your name out there, and begin building your consulting business by the end of the week!

Day #1 – Your Marketing Plan

You don’t have to spend weeks putting together your business or marketing plan, and you don’t have to pay someone to do it for you. The real value of putting together a solid plan is the way it makes you think through different scenarios, the competition, and the product you will be offering. A really great plan will also keep you on track as you build your business and it should be considered a working document – edit and change it as frequently as necessary.

Answer each of the following questions in writing and please don’t take more than 15 minutes per.

Who is your ideal client? Consider size of company, industry, for profit or not. This is your absolute ideal, not a listing of any type of company that might be able to use your services. Describe who you want to work for. Focused marketing will pay off far greater than a shotgun approach.

What work do you want to do? Similar to the first question, describe your ideal work. If you would like, you can create a separate description for secondary work.

How do you want to work? Telecommute, onsite, or a combination? Do you want to travel?

Why does your ideal client want you? Describe your core competencies and how you are different from the average consultant.

Now you need to flip it over – What type of client business do you not want to work for? What work do you not want to do? How do you not want to work?

Day #2 – Your Resume

You do need to put some time in to presenting your experience and core competencies in a couple of different ways. First, start with your standard resume. There is much material available on creating a great resume so I’ll not spend time on that topic. Once your resume is complete, create the following three complimentary items:

One Sheet
Online Bio
Elevator Speech

A One Sheet is marketing collateral about your consulting business, designed to pique the interest of the reader. Where your resume is a professional, legal document that describes in detail where you have been, your One Sheet summarizes where you are going. Use present tense, bullets, lots of white space. Your One Sheet should be able to be read or scanned in a very short amount of time and provide a brief overview of your talents.

Next, continue to distill your marketing message down to a 30-second statement that speaks to your value proposition. Your elevator speech is not your job title. When someone asks you what you do and you answer, “I am a consultant,” you’ve just missed an opportunity to market yourself to an interested party. Your elevator speech should tell a story about who you are and what drives you.

I am on a mission to assist microbusiness owners in using the Internet to grow their business, interact with customers and clients, and level the playing field against much larger competition. The term “small business” is a misnomer — there is a vast difference in resources between a small-business with as many as 500 employees, and the entrepreneur who is going it alone. I have first-hand knowledge of the challenges that face these solopreneurs and I help them use Web 2.0 technologies to reach huge audiences with nothing but a great product, a laptop, and a pile of creativity.

Finally, create an awesome online bio to be used primarily on LinkedIn and your blog.

Judi Young is a writer and entrepreneur on a mission to assist small and micro businesses worldwide in joining the online conversation. Follow her blog at …, where you can also link to her on Facebook and Twitter.

Day # 3 – Social Networking

Social etiquette

How successful would you be at a live business networking event if you came in like a politician 10 minutes late to a campaign stop — in a mad hurry to shake every hand and pass out brochures and free pens, spieling off your top three campaign promises, not interested in chatting with and getting to know people, only in talking about yourself, your services, your consulting business. Believe it or not, there are people right now treating social networking as a campaign stop. It’s the biggest mistake you can make.

Instead, treat your online socializing and networking connections as you treat real live people at networking events:

Listen 80%, Talk 20%
Always be polite and respectful
Offer and provide assistance, advice, information
Provide your online business card (web or blog address) for more information

If you connect with someone who likes and respects you, and has a need for your services, they will seek you out.

Facebook

You may already have a personal Facebook page. It is acceptable, even encouraged, to provide your professional contacts a glimpse into your personal life—to a degree. If you use Facebook regularly to keep up with friends and family, post pictures, and make political statements, you may want to consider whether your Facebook activity puts you in the best possible light with your clients. Maintaining a Facebook page is not critical to your success as a consultant, so you may wish to continue using Facebook as your personal site and rely on LinkedIn to socialize professionally. Tip: Farmville, MafiaWars, and other Facebook applications are generally considered to be in bad form in a professional environment.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the most important site for a consultant to be active on. How did we connect with past colleagues, current business contacts, and other professionals prior to LinkedIn? Once you have your resume and marketing plan completed, sign up for a LinkedIn personal account (free) and start connecting. The initial LinkedIn process will walk you through connecting to colleagues already in their database. You cannot have too many connections on LinkedIn, so reach out to everyone you have worked with no matter how long ago. Next, connect to everyone you currently do business with—your real estate agent, your insurance agent, your lawyer, baker, and your children’s teacher.

Now comes the tough part: You must get recommendations in order to build Social Proof. Ask for 20 recommendations via LinkedIn today. Right now. LinkedIn makes it very easy. Just locate the Recommendations selection under Profile and select as many as 200 of your contacts. You can use the standard LinkedIn text in your request or customize it with your own words. LinkedIn sends out an individual message to each of the contacts you specified with your request for a recommendation. Now return the favor. Without being prompted, write recommendations for people you’ve worked with. View a few recommendations first and simply follow the format.

LinkedIn groups are an excellent way to begin to establish yourself as an expert in your field and to provide assistance to your new connections worldwide. Search out and join all groups that are interesting. You can find groups based on your industry, hobbies, geographic location, alma mater (don’t forget high school), and so on. For the purposes of networking for your consulting business, select groups with more than 1,000 members. LinkedIn limits the number of groups to which you can belong to 50, and some groups require approval by a group manager so there may be a bit of a wait before you can join.

Once you join groups that are interesting to you, spend a bit of time perusing active discussions for the group before you dive in and begin answering questions.

Finally, status updates—it is important for you to begin posting your status at least three times per day. You can reference a good article you read online (use bit.ly/ to shorten URLs), tell everyone what you are working on, or talk about what you had for breakfast. The important thing is that you provide some insight to your day, show that you are being productive, and stay connected.

Twitter

Unless you want to consult in social media, it is not necessary that you become a twitterer. Tweeting regularly could help you up your social cred and increase contacts, however it is something you can undertake on day five and beyond.

Day #4 – Article Marketing and Your Blog

LinkedIn and Article Marketing are the one-two punch of your marketing strategy. You will begin writing industry-specific articles that establish you as a thought-leader and a subject-matter expert and you will publish them to your blog. You will also blast them out to Article Marketing sites and to Digg.

Article Marketing simply means publishing  your original article to the Internet via sites that are dedicated to distributing such articles. Effective Article Marketing increases your overall exposure and establishes you as an expert in your field.

Your blog primarily exists as a landing place to hold your articles and allow your community to connect with you. Yahoo, Google, and Posterous are very quick and easy blogs to set up. I use and love Wordpress.com, but will admit that there was a learning curve in understanding the interface, setting up widgets and so on. I recommend you set up a very easy blog to begin and roll that in to a more advanced platform down the road.

Writing and publishing articles for mass consumption is a bit daunting, so I’ve come up with this quick exercise to help. Find a kitchen timer and set it for 2 hours.

Create a free account on EzineArticles.com.
Create a free account on Digg.com
Write an industry-specific article, in under 90-minutes.
Unless you regularly write for your industry, you might have a problem getting started. I personally stared off in to space for two days trying to think of a topic. Just pick something, anything, to get you started. Your second article will be much better, and the third better than that. How about the top 5 things I need to know about your industry? Or top 5 things to consider when hiring a consultant?
Publish your article on EzineArticles and Digg.

Whew. You did it. Ok, so I rushed you and this first one probably won’t get picked up, but the publishing process should no longer be scary. Pretty soon you will be jotting down article ideas on gum wrappers while stuck in traffic.

There are many other Article Marketing distribution sites that you can use; a quick google search will produce many hits. Try businessknowhow.com and buzzle.com, and then find more on your own.

Each time you write a new article, spend a few minutes searching discussion forums for appropriate conversations. Quote your article as an answer to a question and be sure to provide a link to your blog.

Day #5 and Ongoing– Use Your Resources

Just as you will be giving away some of your key knowledge in order to establish credibility, so are others. There is much free, valuable information on the Internet. Check out my blog for a sampling of sites aimed at small and micro business owners.

Though some people seem to have the Midas touch and easily turn everything to gold, most of us have to give our endeavors lots of time, effort and the sweat of our brow before seeing things come to fruition. The simple truth is that the majority of us are simply not born leaders, but become leaders by who we are and the actions we take. Consequently, whether or not you’re an established entrepreneur or just starting out on your journey, there are particular traits you’ll usually find operating within the exceptional women entrepreneur. In fact there are 7 particular traits you’ll generally discover deeply embedded within the exceptional and successful businesswoman.

If you’ve already taken the plunge as an entrepreneur, you know that it takes a great deal of planning, development and strategic marketing to succeed. At any given time, there are changes to be considered and new directions to examine. In which case, whether you’re the CEO, CFO, Chief Marketer or Chief Solutions Officer of your company, your journey to success is probably full of trials and tribulations.

To support you in your journey to success, be willing to open your mind and sense of reasoning as you consider whether these traits are part of your driving force. If they are not yet ingrained within you, I recommend that you give them some thought.

THE 7 TRAITS TO SUCCESS

1) Successful Entrepreneurs Gain the Respect of their Peers

One of the first and most obvious characteristics you’ll see operating in an exceptional entrepreneur is an equitable and unbiased disposition . Plain and simple the successful entrepreneur recognizes that no one is above or below. With an attitude of respect for others, the successful entrepreneur gains the respect from everyone they encounter. Strategies, attitudes and methods filter down to each person and reflect on all actions and activities. A successful entrepreneur gives everyone the space to be great. No matter how effective or beneficial your expertise, becoming a successful entrepreneur requires building up of your character muscles, traits and habits, which correspondingly make your dreams a reality.

2) Successful Entrepreneurs Believe and Trust in Themselves

The savvy entrepreneur is good at trusting her own ideas and instincts. Starting out as an entrepreneur requires persistence, determination and a high level of self-discipline. Continuing as a successful entrepreneur requires even more persistence, determination and self-discipline. The wise and successful entrepreneur knows this and works hard at developing their level of confidence. If you have a strong code of ethics and believe in yourself, then your ideas can work. Having the desire and passion are the first steps on your journey; getting there requires believing in yourself.

3) Successful Entrepreneurs Follow a Plan

The successful entrepreneur follows a plan. Haphazard or trial and error have no place for the triumphant entrepreneur, for no one gets to her destination without a map or a guide to follow. That doesn’t mean you won’t go off course if another road seems better, but it’s still more effective to have a plan in place. Most successful entrepreneurs start out by writing a basic business plan that acts as the impetus and guide for their endeavors. It doesn’t have to be fancy or lengthy but it should include marketing strategies, goals, intentions, ideas and why you can do better than your competition. A business plan should be reviewed and updated periodically for each new idea stirs and inspires other ideas.

4) Successful Entrepreneurs Think Creatively

Successful entrepreneurs are not afraid of thinking creatively. Whether a business idea has already been tried makes no difference to the exceptional entrepreneur. She sees better ways of doing things and knows that every idea can be expanded upon, made better, enhanced or broadened . The successful entrepreneur is willing to think outside or the proverbial box, which means using imagination, trying new things and expanding on a vision. The savvy entrepreneur pays careful attention as to whether a particular strategy is working. If after giving it her best shot the entrepreneur realizes the particular strategy isn’t working, they know there’s no point in continuing to invest energy, time and effort in the strategy. They move on to another approach and idea.

5)Successful Entrepreneurs Explore Their Exceptional Skills

Successful entrepreneurs realize that we each have our strengths and weaknesses as well as a multitude of skills and talents. Successful people ask themselves often what skills they have that no one shares in quite the same way. An exceptional and successful entrepreneur explores their particular skills until they find the ones that match most closely with their ideal. They don’t try to be and do everything. If the successful entrepreneur needs help, they’re willing to find someone who can do it better, and allows in the support. The successful entrepreneur stays open to change for they recognize that as they move forward, doors open in unexpected places that carry them to their next level of success.

6) Successful Entrepreneurs Envision Their Success

The successful entrepreneur gives time to envisioning how they want their business to look and how they want it to be. Intention is a powerful and dynamic tool. For those who are not inclined towards intention and visualization, talk to a successful athlete and you’ll discover that before each sporting event, the successful athlete envisions exactly how he or she wants things to turn out. Imagine what it will feel like when you’ve reached a particular set of goals. Get in touch with the feelings, you’d have as a successful entrepreneur. Practice and conceive of the sense of empowerment and the joy of having succeeded. The successful entrepreneur knows they have the power to live life the way they want, but to make it a reality, they know it has to be seen first.

7) Successful Entrepreneurs Never Give Up

Giving up is never in the vocabulary of the successful woman entrepreneur. Of course there may be days when a successful entrepreneur feels discouraged or disappointed, but giving up is not an option. Having faith, trust, confidence and determination are the qualities needed for the successful entrepreneur. To keep their focus on track, they seek out the support of those that know them, encourage them and bring out their natural enthusiasm. The smart and successful entrepreneur realizes that there will be good days and not so good days.

Being a successful woman entrepreneur requires accepting the ebbs and flows of business for it is in fact what separates the exceptional and successful entrepreneur from the one who gives up far too soon.

However, as with any worthwhile marketing program, the investment of time, money and effort to achieve success is absolutely necessary.  This system offers the potential of very attractive long-term financial returns for the person who actively commits to the process.

Here is a quick overview of the MaxPro System:

You may have seen ads about online affiliate or network marketing programs where the marketer does not have to do much ‘sales work’ and the system automatically completes the sale.  For the most part, that is usually a simplified overstatement.

Yet, it appears that the MaxPro System comes just about as close to an autopilot system as I have seen.  Of course, with any online sales program, the marketer must generate targeted traffic to the sales website and master the learning curve to do so.

In my research, I have found that many of the ‘automated’ marketing programs are indeed flawed in very critical ways.  But, as I indicated, one of the exceptions I discovered is the MaxPro System (aka: The MaxPro MoneyMap System).  There are very few online affiliate programs that come close to the unique and successful formatting of this marketing system.

Darren Salkeld initially created this superb marketing system for a product that has successfully been in the marketplace for over 24 years and continues to be extremely well received.  Most recently, Darren and his team added additional ‘Internet marketing products’, at varying price points, for affiliates and network marketers to glean even more sequential sales.

The key to the success of the MaxPro System is the attention given to every minute detail of this automated selling system.  Clearly, thousands of dollars and man hours were poured into the precision design of the program. 

This marketing system is perfect for work at home entrepreneurs who want to earn extra money part-time or for those who want to implement a full time Internet business.  Either way, the MaxPro System provides the very real potential for immediate and long-term residual income from a home based business. 

The sales progression of this online business works identically for each affiliate.  It is a smart sequential marketing approach, the likes of which is rarely implemented so masterfully.

Once prospects are led to the system, for the most part, it is ‘hands off’ for the MaxPro marketer.  Although, the marketer can take a more aggressive role if desired.  Basically, the marketer generates targeted traffic to the website and then allows the system to work on autopilot. The affiliate training that is built into the system’s back office is tremendous and provides generous support for generating targeted traffic to each participant’s sales site.

The MaxPro System definitely deserves serious consideration by individuals who want to invest in a quality product and a solid marketing system for potentially strong residual income.

Upline365, an online magazine, is one of the many network marketing forums available to help the marketer build and promote a successful business. They offer the ready a variety of articles and tips that have been written by industry professionals. They also have an audio visual section that is being added January/February 2008, giving marketers radio like pod casts and video that covers marketing content.

The site also has a market with marketing aids available for purchase, forums for discussion, and a place for their subscribers to place their own introductory profile that others can view for promotional needs. Consumers interested in this magazine can get a five day trial subscription which can be upgraded to a three month subscription for $15.00 or a personal year’s subscription costing $45.00.

For those marketers who still like to read print, Home Business Magazine could be the network marketing forum of choice. Published by Rhyno, it offers tips and advice on business operations, sales, home office, opportunities, network marketing, franchising, mail ordering and the Internet. A one year subscription is six issues and can be purchased for $15.00.

Not to be confused with Rhyno’s Home Business Magazine, Home Business Magazine, an online network marketing forum, is another place to find marketing tips. Online versions of the magazine are free and marketers can access previous issues from the website. Print versions of the magazine are $15.00 and it is also available for shipping to other countries for an additional charge. Topics covered here include: Home Business; Home Office; HBM Community; Biz Startup; Marketing; Money; and Management. There is also a classifieds section, news and reviews, and mailing lists.

MLM Insider Online has an extensive library of archived articles that are useful to the marketer of any organization, be it their own or the company they work for. This network marketing forum offers a newsletter that can be sent to an individual’s e-mail account or read online, and it covers topics such as keeping recruits, how to make the most of the holiday season, and other pertinent topics. The site also offers links to companies and individuals who either sell or create services and tools for people involved in MLM ventures.

There are many other network marketing forums available for use by the marketer. Some are more comprehensive than others. They may also want to check with the company they work for and find out if the company itself offers some type of forum that will give them advice and support while promoting their products and boasting their sales. By utilizing the tools available to them, marketers, with time and patience, can build their business into a huge success.