An early mentor of mine once asked me to close my eyes and daydream with her. I was maybe 19 years of age at the time and thought this was the silliest thing I was ever asked to do. She asked me to visualize what I wanted out of life, the places I wanted to go to, the things I wanted to do, the houses I wanted to own, etc.

Thinking she had me daydreaming, she asked me to describe various aspect of this “ideal” life of mine, and truth is, I don’t remember much of it, except one detail, and that was: I would own a bright red Miata, Mazda.

I had taken a ride in one once and – in my limited imagination at that time – thought owning one would be the coolest thing ever.

After relaying this dream of mine to her, I remember her asking:  “Just a Miata? Not a BMW or Ferrari…?”

My response was “nope, just a Miata!”

2013 Miata (aka MX-5)

I think she found me hard to work with. Or maybe she felt I was wasting her time – I don’t know. Either way, that was the last daydreaming session I had with her. It almost sounds perverse, but I learned a lot from that experience.

Dreaming Too Small

Another mentor fired me a few months later because my income goals at that time were $2000 – $3000 USD per month. He says “You are a waste of my time, I only work with go-getters… people who dream of 5 figure monthly incomes!”

Wow!

I thought my dreams were reasonable – especially for a 19 year old kid.

Truth is: There would have been nothing wrong with that kind of an income or with owning a little red Miata, but that wasn’t the issue. The real problem was MUCH bigger. It was – that all these goals were set within my comfort zones.

In other words, realistically looking at it now, achieving any of those dreams would have been nothing special. I could have continued on the path I was on and achieved those goals without really trying. There was absolutely nothing earth shattering about it.

Nurturing Bigger Dreams

After years of personal development – I finally started dreaming bigger. Not just in “accumulating” things (or earning certain figures every month). No – much more than that.

I started dreaming of all the places I wanted to visit in the world, all the people I wanted to meet, the good I wanted to do by contributing to charity (or starting charities of my own), etc, etc.

Here is the thing: the world needs dreamers. It needs people who see the bigger picture before it exists and pursue it until it does exist. Look at industry leading businesses, charities, or any other successful movement for that matter, and you will find that it all started with a dream.

Maybe those were small dreams to begin with – but they did not stay small. Those dreams grew and expanded exponentially over days, years, and decades.

Food for thought: It is my honest belief that if just an extra 1% of this world’s population were to dream bigger (and put legs to these dreams) – there would be plenty of jobs to go around for everybody.

The World Needs Dreamers

The world needs more dreamers who are not afraid to think outside of the box – visionaries who get others on board – and massive action takers who power through the dream-killing obstacles that present themselves.

One can not live life on the edge unless one actively pursues big dreams first.

Which poses two questions:

1. What am I doing to continually expand the horizons of my dreams?
2. What am I doing continually to bring my dreams into reality?

Going back to my Miata story: After doing extensive research and visiting various sports-car dealerships, my taste in cars changed quite a bit. In fact, I went to a Mazda dealership a few years ago just to sit in a Miata (again) to figure out why I used to loved it so much, and found that it was nearly impossible for me to get in and out of that car.

I found that my long knees and elbows constantly rubbed against each other while steering and sitting just wasn’t as comfortable as I remembered it being. It definitely was no dream car for a tall guy like myself – but it took continuous exposure to greater and better cars before I was able to dream bigger.

In fact, as a direct result of my dreams getting bigger, I ended up buying a late model Porsche 928 (V8) in 2010. After having owned that one, I think my ideal sport-cars will forever be biased in favor of Porsche but that goes for another post :).

This was my baby… Porsche 928 S4

Dream. Action. Result!

It was a dream at first – and then I brought that dream into reality (I still sometimes wonder how that all happened). My current dream car is of course the Porsche 911 Turbo S and I plan on picking one up before I hit 30. A big dream, I know, but massive action will see to it that I get it sooner or later.

That is just an example though. Life is not all about the material things and to think so is shallow. The principal is the same in everything though: plant the seed – water it faithfully, and in due time you will see the harvest. First the dream, then the action, and then the result!

It could also be said: Massive dreams lead to massive action, and massive action leads to massive results. It ALL starts with a big dream though.

The fact of the matter is: We get out of life what we ask of it. If we are not happy with the results we are currently getting, the best place to change that, is by asking bigger questions, developing bigger dreams, and continually expanding our (limiting) mental horizons.

The post Nothing Great Happens Without Dreams appeared first on Kobra Dynasty.

Contrary to Western traditions, I don’t believe in waiting for New Year’s Eve to make my “life changing” resolutions.

My philosophy is that if I see the need to change something and it is within my means to do so, I make the resolution on the spot to make it happen. No waiting for that once in a year moment.

It’s like getting to celebrate New Year’s Eve every day of the year. Pretty cool, huh?

Think about it: If we all lived to be a 100 and started making New Year’s resolutions at the age of 10, we all would get to make a resolution approximately 90 times in our lifetime.

Miraculous things have happened to people who made a one time monumental resolution (that they followed through with), but the treasure of a great life lies in the small resolutions people make and follow-through with on a day to day basis.

It might be a little too philosophical for the average person, but when I study historically “great” people, I find this to be true.

Another way of looking at it: A ship on open waters does not need to make drastic changes in the direction it is headed once the course is set, but it does need small adjusting every so often to successfully arrive at the intended destination.

The Ultimate New Years Resolution

My challenge to you is this: If you haven’t done so already, make this New Year’s Eve your last New Year’s resolution. And may that one be to make and to act upon new resolutions daily.

In my case, 2012 was the best year of my life – in my personal life as well as for my business. I made some major changes at the end of 2011 in regards to my business and the new direction I was taking it. It was quite challenging at first – but it turned out to be a really wise move.

In case you were not on my list at that time, I got rid of all search engine marketing services I had provided up until then and focused primarily on affiliate marketing. I also did a handful of my own product launches (guides, plugins, etc) – which is probably how you came to know me.

Either way, discontinuing to provide SEO services was – for me – a monumental decision at that time because that is where 80% of my income was coming from. No regrets though!

Big changes hit the SEO industry just a few months later (in 2012) – at which point I was SUPER happy that I followed my gut instincts and got away from providing services. Talk about perfect timing.

Since then, my main obsession – as I already noted – has been affiliate marketing – with SEO being my main marketing vehicle/source of traffic.

This move was especially rewarding in the sense that it gave me a LOT more flexibility and time freedom. I had periods where I worked like a maniac (I sometimes can’t help myself when I get into the “zone”) for a week or two, but for the most part I can’t say I ever work more than a few hours a day (when I actually work).

In fact, my wife and I had family members and friends visit us – here in Krabi, Thailand – at different times throughout the year. Meaning that while they were around, I didn’t do a whole lot more then check my emails once or twice a day – and that was for a total of over 6 weeks in 2012 alone.

I could have never separated myself to that degree back when I provided those SEO services. So again, getting away from providing services was a good move on my part.

And just for the record, that does not include all the time my wife and I take off to do cool things all across SE Asia. Like tanning on the beaches of Thailand, snorkeling the coral reefs of Bali, or going shopping in Malaysia, etc, etc.

Let me get back to my point though: I believe I set my business boat in the right direction last year, so all that I need to do this year (2013) is to continually re-adjust the sail.

Increasing Life by Focusing More

If there was just one thing I would take away from 2012, it would be this: to focus most of my time on the few tasks that bring about the biggest results.

I am sure you have heard of the 80 / 20 rule. It basically says that 80% of the results will come from just 20% of the work being done. As basic a concept as it is, figuring out how it applies to business (and personal life) allows one to scale for massive improvements very quickly.

For my business this means that I sit down about once a month and look at what brought in the most income the month before, and once I figure that out, I resolve to focus 80% of my time on that and leave the 20% to the other tasks that are – really – secondary.

Naturally there are limits to everything – but it is a solid exercise I like to go through at least once a month.

Another (similar) exercise I have gone through a couple times in 2012 is this: writing down everything I am doing in my business right now. Once done, I go through the list again and put a check-mark next to everything that is proving to work, and put a line through everything that didn’t work. Once done, I resolve to stop doing the things that don’t work anymore, and commit to putting more energy and resources towards the things that do work.

These exercises might sound silly, but I DARE you to try them. Sometimes the best way to figure out what works is to figure out what doesn’t.

Increasing Leverage Through Knowledge & Experience

I make it a habit to continually educate myself in the areas of my business that interest me (like affiliate marketing, SEO, etc) and always keep an open mind to trying new things/new approaches/new techniques.

If they work, super. If not, I move on to try something else. Not everything will work, but imagine having a list of 20 – 100 things that have proven to work for you. Making money online becomes easier and easier.

Again though, it is important not to get sidetracked by new/shiny ways of doing things. It is critical that we scale what has already proven to work for us, while – on a small scale – we try out new things.

New Projects for 2013

Aside from continuing to build my existing business, I will be venturing into some new territories in 2013 as well. One of them being a “how to get blogging” video series (planned for January some time) and I am contemplating to create a mastermind group to go with it. Ideas? Suggestions?

“How to become a blogger” wasn’t really an area I had much interest in teaching, but I have been getting an overwhelming amount of emails from people asking how they can get started (must be the tough economy? I don’t know), so I got some good stuff coming out soon.

I have also been getting a number of people asking for one-on-one coaching (beginners and experienced marketers alike), but I am not sure I am ready for that just yet. I have done some basic coaching in the past but aside from that it’s an area I have never given much thought. Let’s see what 2013 brings though.

There are dozens of other projects on my list as well but I will keep them for another time. This post is already a thousand words longer than I intended it to be so… I will stop typing now.

I hope you got some golden nuggets out of it and may 2013 be your best year yet!

The post May Every Eve of 2013 be New Years Eve! appeared first on Kobra Dynasty.

A problem all perfectionist product creators share is that the product is never done. And even if done, there are a million things they want to continually improve on.

I am not a perfectionist for the most part, but every time I launch a product, I get this deep down feeling that it isn’t quite up to my standards. Yes, it works great and yes, it delivers immense value for the price point I am selling it at. I just can’t help but notice all the little things I could have and perhaps should have done differently or better.

Someone reminded me recently “If Microsoft released their software only once perfect, you and the rest of the world would have never heard of them!”

There is a certain truth to that. Products do not have to be perfect right off the bat. You can always release updates later on that bring about the desired improvements.

This is especially true if the product is a software. Even if it is as close to perfect as you can get it (with your own testing and troubleshooting), someone else will find flaws in it. And that is not at all a bad thing.

Biggest Glitch to Biggest Wins

The most problematic software launch I ever did (aside from dozens of software glitches, I screwed up just about everything in the launching sequence as well), was also my biggest overnight rags to riches launch I have done to date.

Though I did practically everything wrong along the way, I did one thing right that made the big difference: I took feedback and bug reports to heart and fed it straight to my programmer the minute I got it. As a result, every few days or so (after the launch) there was an update available for the software.

It was a painful process but you know what? The end result left me with a nice chunk of cash in my wallet AND a highly sought after piece of software that customers brag about to this day.

I have gone on to do various other launches since. Some were software products, while others were information products. None of them were perfect, but that did not keep me from launching them, making money off of them, and building my list at the same time.

Again though, I took all feedback I could get and updated the products often the first few days.

Customers Love Being Involved

Sure there is going to be the odd unhappy customer but reality is, it does not matter how perfect your product is, you WILL have unhappy customers.

For the most part I found that customers I interacted with were almost proud to be part of the products’ “perfecting” process – which (I guess) gave them a sense of “ownership” as well.

It’s been over a year since I launched my first major software product and just the other day I went over it again and realized that “it truly turned out to be a solid product!”

So I went over it again and decided that I will update it one more time this year and will add a few more bells and whistles to it while I am at it. I want to take it from being a “great” product to being a “mind-blowingly awesome” product.

And the best part? When I relaunch it, I will double the price for it as well… and it will be worth every penny of the new price!

I will be doing the same thing with all the other products I have launched to date. For the software products, I will update all the coding to make sure they are all 100% up to date, and I will once again add a few features that they did not have before just to make them even more valuable.

For the ebooks and pdf guides, I will go through all of them and update them. Yes they are all still great and the information in them is still applicable today, but I have learned a lot since I first wrote them so it is only fair that I raise the bar on them too – after which I will of course raise the price for them as well.

What I am getting at is this: It takes time to build something phenomenal. This is something I have been learning more and more about in the last few weeks.

Wax on, Wax Off!

I see top marketers in the Internet Marketing niche whose products easily sell for $997 to $2497 each. These are oftentimes information products!

The question I ask myself is “who in the right mind would pay that much for a product?” but truth is, they have people buying their stuff – right, left, and center – every single day.

My next question is “how in the world can they pack enough value in to a product that people will pay so much money for and be happy with it?” and that is when it hit me: They have been selling these exact same products for years and yes, there often times was a point where they sold the product for no more than $37 when they originally launched it.

The difference in price between then and now is a direct result of ongoing polishing and tweaking. In fact, this is also how trustworthy brands are built.

The question we need to ask ourselves is: do we want to continue making low price-point products and sell them to the masses or do we want to create few – but mind-blowingly awesome products and make significantly more (up to 100 times more) every time we sell one copy?

I myself am trying to get away from creating new products every month. I’d rather focus that energy on perfecting what I have (that did well) than fall in to the trap so many marketers fall in to of having to create new products every single month just to pay the bills.

Some people prefer things that way, but in my opinion, we got to evolve. Our time, energy, as well as our products, need to increase in value the longer we are online. And as we all know, more value should equal more cash in our pockets.

Finding Your Ideal Customer

Who do we want to cater to? Those who never have money or those for whom money is not an issue?

There really is no “right” or “wrong” answer to these questions, but I think they are important questions we as product creators need to ask ourselves.

What are your thoughts? Do you prefer creating many low-price products or few high-priced products?

If you are not a product creator, which ones would you buy rather: a decent low priced one or a perfected, high-end, high priced one?

The post Evolving Online & Increasing in Worth appeared first on Kobra Dynasty.

Here are a few rules that have proven to do wonders for me!

Rule #1: Be Prepared

How could you possibly prepare for opportunities you don’t know will strike? The short answer is: Look at the common denominator.

In the area of life you want to take advantage of more opportunities, what are they all tied to? What would you need to take advantage of that dream opportunity if it was here today? In other words: what is the one thing you can do today to take advantage of rare opportunities tomorrow?In the world of making money, this often times means having our finances sorted and having some savings set aside that allow us to jump on opportunities quickly when they present themselves.

In the world of relationships, this might mean becoming more confident, letting go of the emotional hurt of past relationships, or getting out of your comfort zone more by going places, etc. Main thing is: find out what would open you up to that ideal relationship opportunity.

In the world of business, if you want to land that perfect six-figure-a-month client, get your business into a position where it can quickly scale to handle such client. Or if you’re looking to increase your business drastically in volume, get into a position where you can quickly scale to handle large volumes.

There are plenty of opportunities. The question simply is: What kind of an opportunity are you looking for exactly? Once you figure that out, prepare to get into a position where you can handle such an opportunity should it present itself.

Let me give you a current example:

Have you ever heard of a social network known as Parlor? They have for a long time been trying to become a world recognized social media platform, yet were ill prepared when the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself.

A world renowned internet security expert (with a TON of relevant experience and a huge following) explained to his audience his reasons for not joining Parlor. Basically stating that Parlor had let someone impersonate him for months despite his continuous complaints to the company, that they were extremely vulnerable and unsafe due to the hosting they were using, etc.

Instead if appreciating his insights and acting on them, one of the founders of Parlor took to twitter with name-calling. It was definitely something you would expect from an arrogant teenager, but not from a grown-up business man.

The security expert responded with something like “hey, give me an hour and I will walk through your system with you and show how you can future proof the network” etc, etc, but the Parlor representative once again took to name calling instead of taking him up on his offer.

Now, I get that none of us like unsolicited advice. Unless asked for, advice is rarely welcomed. But this constructive criticism should have been welcomed with opened arms. Especially seeing who it was coming from.

Imagine Warren Buffet personally offering to show me how I can invest my retirement savings so I retire ultra wealthy instead of broke and poor. Instead of taking him up on his offer, imagine me resorting to name-calling him a “Coke drinking hog” instead.

Pretty dumb right? Yet that is exactly what was happening here!

Fast forward a month, and Facebook and Twitter both starting their censorship charade. Parlor starts to blow up. Hundreds of thousands of people started joining them. All was well for a couple days, until Amazon (Parlor’s hosting company) joins the censorship-train and – almost exactly as predicted by the security expert a month prior – banned Parlor from using them.

So not only was Parlor banned from the Android marketplace (by Google) and banned from the Apple app store (by Apple), but was basically erased from the internet by Amazon. And just like that Parlor was dead. OUCH!

Had Parlor listened to the security expert and migrated their hosting to a non-politicized host (among other things), they could have blown up to – eventually – replace Twitter. Whether they ever would have done so is debatable, but they had a really good shot at it, but alas… the opportunity of a lifetime struck and found them ill-prepared.

Gab.com (Facebook competitor) on the other hand took all these precautions ahead of time and look at them now: blowing up like there is no tomorrow. Thanks to Andrew Torba (Gab.com CEO) having the foresight to prepare for the opportunity of a lifetime, he was ready to “cash in” when the opportunity struck.

Moral of these examples:

1. Always listen intently to wise council
2. Always assume your dream opportunity will eventually strike, and do everything in your power to prepare for it.

In the words of Sir Winston Churchill:

To every man there comes in his lifetime that special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered a chance to do a very special thing, unique to him and fitted to his talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds him unprepared or unqualified for the work which would be his finest hour.

Rule #2: Think Quick

Many pride themselves in foreseeing events, and yet fail to cash in when those events play out. Thus ultimately making their predictions worthless.

On the other hand, those who are able to think on their feet and see opportunities behind a changing tide – tend to get lucky.A story is told of a mute accountant who was hired by a big-time drug-lord. The drug-lord figured that since the accountant couldn’t speak, chances of him blowing his illegal operation wide open would be slim.

Things went well until one day the drug-lord noticed hundreds of thousands of dollars had gone missing.

He had the accountant brought before him and started questioning him, but the accountant pretended to not understand what the drug-lord was saying. The drug-lord figured he’d give him a chance, so he brought in a translator who was going to be translating between the two using sign-language.

The lord once again asked the accountant where the missing money went, and the accountant again played innocent and told the translator “I don’t know what he is talking about”.

This went back and forth until the drug-lord got so fed up that he pulled his pistol and held it to the accountants head and told the translator “Tell him I will pull the trigger if he doesn’t tell me where my money is!”

The translator signs to the accountant exactly what the drug-lord had said and he signs back “Okay okay, I hid the money under my bed. It’s all there, I promise. Just let me live!”

The drug-lord is getting impatient and asks the translator what the accountant had said. The translator – seeing his once in a lifetime opportunity for an easy fortune – says “He said, he doesn’t think you have the guts to pull that trigger!”

Brutal story, I know, but still a great example of what it means to be quick thinking when rare once in a lifetime opportunities present themselves.

Rule #3: Act Quicker

Jumping on opportunities is like trying to surf that perfect incoming wave. Act quick and you catch it. Hesitate too long and you’ll miss it.Did you ever see the Youtube video where a dad shot a few rounds through his daughter’s laptop to teach her a lesson? I remember watching it back in 2012 when it had about half a million views.

I was thinking to myself “he should monetize that video… that way he would get at least some money from this viral video of his.”

A week after he uploaded it, he had over 24,000,000 views on that video and guess what? Still not monetized!

UPDATE: He has done some monetizing since (created a blog, etc) and the video has since gone on to generate over 42 million views. Just CRAZY!

I won’t comment on the content of the video, but I’ll say this: An opportunity struck, and he missed out by not – immediately – jumping in with both feet.

I don’t care much for Adsense and as such I am not a heavy earner with them but I do make a few bucks off of my monetized videos every month and just taking my average Adsense earnings (from my videos) and spreading the formula over 24 million views, I conservatively estimate he should have easily earned at LEAST $50,000 in Adsense revenues alone (just in the first week alone).

Now of course, there are different ways of monetizing a video (like links to relevant products-for-sale in the description box, etc.) but he wasn’t doing ANY monetizing at all. I think it is safe to say that he missed out on roughly $100,000 USD just by not immediately seizing the opportunity that he was presented with.

Moral of the story? When a clear winning opportunity presents itself to you, don’t hesitate. Jump in all the way with both feet!

Conclusion

We are all presented with “once in a lifetime” opportunities and the more open minded and prepared we are, the more often such opportunities will cross our paths. The trick is to:

• get ready
• think quick
• act quicker.

Only when we do those three things can we embrace more once in a lifetime opportunities because we quite literally set ourselves up to see and act on them.

It is that very process that allowed me to recently acquire a tremendously undervalued piece of property for 16% below sellers minimum price. The best part? I got them to throw a second property in on the deal – for FREE!

To do that, I had to get my finances in order, keep an eye on the market to see if my ideal property would get listed, think quick when it arrived, and act even quicker to secure it.

What type of opportunities are you hoping to attract? What can you do today to be ready to act on them when they show up?

The post How to Take Advantage of More Opportunities! appeared first on Kobra Dynasty.

Have you ever felt like you were holding on to something that distracted you from doing what you really should and wanted to be doing? I am not at all talking about things like facebook, twitter, TV or other small things like that (though those can be the ultimate distraction).

These last few months I have been giving my whole online business some thought and concluded that I needed to get rid of a lot of things that keep me “busy” but are not helping me get to where I want to be 1 year from now – or even 6 months from now.

My Profitable Distraction

One prime example is the search engine marketing services I used to provide to website owners. It was a great service – customers loved it – and I had great success with it. In fact, providing these SEO services is what allowed me to quit my offline business and start working full-time online.

I had systematized the entire service to a point where I had a virtual assistant manage the entire system for me with about 1 hour worth of work per day. And that included customer service (responding to emails, etc). It was going pretty solid – with my highest month being around $6,000 in profit – JUST from selling the SEO services.

It doesn’t really matter where you live in the world, $6,000 per month is a decent income to have coming in whether you work or not. Especially if – like in my case – it came in month after month without me really having to do anything. In fact, if I had walked away from it, it would have continued to bring me in a half decent income for months and years to come.

But getting back to what I was saying earlier: It was nothing more than a distraction to me – keeping me from what I wanted to be doing online. Sure the money was alright, but providing generic SEO services is not something I wanted to continue doing – even if it meant minimal work on my part.

Knowing Your Limits

Google was starting to make some major changes to it’s ranking algorithm and my once overnight miracle service wasn’t quite as powerful as it used to be. The service was still great, but I just did not want to continue providing a service if I didn’t full-heartedly believe in it myself anymore.

So at the beginning of this year (January 2012) I got rid of the generic SEO service completely. I cancelled all subscriptions of incoming payments and shut down the entire system – retiring it for good.

I still do a lot of SEO and probably forever will be known as “the SEO guy” but I mainly do it now for my own sites and a select few clients who have bigger budgets to work with.

It would take a few posts to explain in detail why I stopped providing SEO services, but the short version is: as long as I have customers, I will put their sites as top priority (before mine). Now that I have less than 5 client sites to work with, I have plenty of time, energy and resources to focus on my own sites.

Setbacks are Setups for Comebacks

Was letting go of a medium-range 4-figure a month income stream really a wise decision on my part? I like to think so. Here is why: If I keep pushing my own sites like I have been these last two months, I should be in the 5-figures a month range before the end of the year – and that from just a handful of my many sites.

Oh and get this: it would be without staff (or some of the other expenses that came with running the SEO services for customers) – which means more cash stays in my wallet.

So here is my challenge for you: is what you are working on today getting you to where you want to be a year from now? Are you holding on to an ultimate distraction just because it gives you a sense of security for the time being? Maybe it’s time to cut loose the safety boat you are dragging to conserve your energy, time, and resources, and bring the big boat to the shore.

The post Letting Go of Distractions appeared first on Kobra Dynasty.