Hello World!

Normally a new website will stick up a default page titled “Hello World!”. It does this to prove that the site is installed and everything is working, only to be manually deleted immediately after. As I hovered over the “delete” button to send this very post to the trash – I paused. After hundreds – maybe thousands – of “Hello World!” posts I have slain in my life, I realized that this title summed up exactly what I wanted to write about.

Living In A Marketing Cave

I have been running many different successful companies, mostly at the same time, for many years now. Because of this, a great many people ask both my executives and myself for marketing and business advice. Our standard answer was always: “No, sorry. Bill is running 27 different businesses right now and he doesn’t even have time to eat lunch. Maybe next year he’ll have time to call you back.”

This never sat well with me. I really like to help people and turning them away never made me feel good.

Over the last few years, a few of my top executives have been asking me to teach many of my cutting-edge, insider marketing tips to others. It sounded like a good idea, but unfortunately I never had the time to do it.

Finally I gave in, but decided to do it as an experiment:  I wanted to see if I could teach my staff Internet Marketing. It’s one of the more challenging types of marketing to do and there can be big technical barriers for some people.  So I exchanged some of my less productive hours (sleeping) with instructional meetings. I met with them over three months to teach them both the Internet Marketing basics and some of the new technology I was learning and developing daily.

After I saw them learning and applying their new skills – it made me feel really good. It was a hurdle getting some of our non-technical staff to understand the more advanced concepts, but watching them “get it” and then “win” using the technology was very rewarding.

Entrepreneurial Barbarians at the Gates

But now that I had many executives that were practicing their new marketing skills – they were talking to even more people about it. They were excited with their newfound knowledge and wanted to share it.

This created a circle of people knocking on my door wanting help, me saying “no”, followed by people running to my executives asking for help, and then my executives clamoring for me to help them.

This all culminated recently when I was studying the writing of one of my most trusted mentors. I read that a person’s wealth and happiness directly correlates with the amount of help he gives to the world. When you exchange valuable help with your fellows you tend to attract money and personal satisfaction.

Now I know what some of you may be thinking, but this concept isn’t some off-the-wall, mystical, mumbo jumbo. There is definitely a practical side to how this works which you can see happen. How expert one is in marketing his help and in obtaining payment for the services he provides is critical. However the central and most important action is in exchanging valuable help with others.

Sometime shortly after reading this, it hit me like a ton of bricks!

My real value to the world was in helping other entrepreneurs and business owners grow their businesses! This has a compounding effect; because not only do I help them, but as their business grows it helps their employees, their future employees, their families and the economy all at once.

That’s also when I had the rather sobering realization that the actual “help” my businesses were delivering was negligible next to this greater goal.  You see, I’ve spent a tremendous amount of my time in business selling things like software downloads, membership site access, online “E-books” and advertising of various kinds. And these are the activities I’ve been devoting 90% (or more) of my time on!

Walking Towards the Light

So, “Hello World!”. I am officially out of my “cave” – as some of my executives like to call my closed door office – and the light isn’t that bad at all!

Starting today I will no longer be turning away requests for help. If you want my help in growing or creating your business, I’m here to help you!

Over the coming days I’ll be posting more about who I am, my achievements, exactly how I can help you and about my amazing staff (who are all also extremely ready, willing and able to help you too!).

I’ll also be asking each of you to tell me what specific areas you want help in – such as business expansion, personal achievements, income, etc.

Until then,

To your prosperity

PS: Feel free to comment below and send me some feedback. I’d love to hear from you!

(Images courtesy of Steve Deger & Marecky)