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Through 26 business failures, I tried my share of network marketing opportunities. 

Aside from Primerica and Legalshield, I wasn’t good at any of them. And even with those two, I was mediocre at best. I just happened to love the insurance products from those two companies, so they were easier to talk about.

And that ended up being a huge realization for me. 

I’d get so enrolled with the vision, falling in love with the potential of the opportunity (a total reflection of my dating life at the time too), and daydreaming about:

• Having freedom and flexibility to do what I want, when I want;
• Making unlimited income, easily;
• And finally being able to call myself a successful business owner. 

And then reality hit. 

The top three reasons I failed at network marketing:

1. I tried to sell stuff I didn’t really believe in, so I shied away from talking to anyone about them.
2. And, even if I loved the product, I...

The video above is the replay of a training I did on Tuesday, December 27, 2022. You can watch the whole 90 minute event right here. 

Artificial Intelligence is the new frontier and it's barreling down upon us.

Not everyone is happy about it. 

Some people are terrified about it. 

And others...they see opportunity. 

Aside from personal opinions, here's what is real:

The new artificial intelligence (AI) tool called ChatGPT is disrupting the world. 

You may not have heard of it yet, but you will. 

It will take away some jobs. 

It will create other jobs (and businesses). 

It will make your life and business easier. 

Victor Hugo said, "there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come." 

And ChatGPT's time has come. 

There's no stopping it. 

There's no running away from it. 

There's soon going to be no way to ignore it. 

So I've embraced it. 

And I led a deep training today on exactly how to...

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A friend and I bought a liquor store we found listed on BizBuySell.com in the early 2,000’s. It was just a small mom-and-pop shop, or more accurately a pop-and-son thing, and the son had lost interest so pop was selling cheap. 

It was located in a pretty busy shopping center with a Home Depot as an anchor, so I was confident I could boost revenues and quickly grow to a second location. 

My strategy? 

Offer a compelling “lead magnet” and capture email addresses of my customers so I could communicate value on my terms. 

Tapping into my experience with another business I was in, we bought a badass poker table and set it up in the store as a display and ran a promotion to win it. 

The rules were simple:

• Register with your email address.
• Earn additional entries for every $10 you spend. 

The strategy was a hit, garnering over 1,200 email addresses of local imbibers of booze. 

Following a...

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We work so hard to fill our pipeline with appointments. Think about all the energy, money, and effort we put into:

• Cultivating referral relationships
• Building websites
• Having social media pages
• Adding more directory listings
• Signing up with hiring companies
• Creating a Google Business Profile
• Networking meetings and events
• Creating and distributing content
• Training (so we’re good at what we do)

All this work to get our phone to ring and ding, and then what? 

Most notaries finish an appointment and then just hop right back on the hamster wheel again and start all over, hustling for their next customer-another new customer. 

Now, there’s nothing wrong with new customers, don’t get me wrong. But they're expensive to acquire. The Harvard Business Review suggests that it is 5-25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to sell your services to an existing client. 

Your database of previous notary...

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With a population of around 1,000 people, La Conner is the 386th largest city in Washington. And located on Morris Street, right next door to the best Mexican food in Washington, sits Rowdy Dog Antique Lighting.

Even in a charming town, such as La Conner, it was hard for me to picture myself even entering an entire store committed to antique lighting. As it is when shopping (which is rare for me), I feel like a crotchety old man, calculating the rent and labor expenses, judging product displays, and evaluating employee performance. I just wander around muttering, “How do these guys stay in business???”

Yep, I am turning into my grandmother.

But the allure of Rowdy Dog’s beautiful lamps, flirting, twinkling their little lights through the shop window was too much to deny, even for me. I found myself actually waiting for them to open up shop one Thursday morning at 11. I practically camped in the parking lot, like it was an...

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As of this moment, I am the self-published author of three best selling books in the micro niche industry of the Notary Public, and I am working on the fourth with my esteemed colleague, Laura Biewer (The Notary & Motivation G.O.A.T.). 

Once I published my first book, Sign & Thrive: How to Make Six Figures as a Mobile Notary and Loan Signing Agent, my life, and business, changed forever. It has sold over 30,000 copies (and rising). Here’s what that first book did for me:

First, I checked something pretty major off my bucket list. I had dreamed of writing and publishing a book since I was six years old. Actually doing it was a priceless contribution to my own esteem and confidence level. 

Second, having a book that I wrote and published gave me something to talk about, leave behind after meetings, and kick down doors that otherwise would have remained sealed. When done correctly, a book can add credibility to...

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I’m sure it was quite the hullabaloo back in the day as Thomas Edison and Alexander Bell argued the best way to answer the newly invented telephone. To think we were just one creative ad campaign away from answering the phone as, “Ahoy!”, a nautical term Bell petitioned for. 

Alas, “Hello?” won the day and Thomas Edison had yet another big win to brag about. 

For 150 years people have been answering the phone the same way. 

Might it be time for a change? I think so. Especially for business owners like you and me. I am surprised at the number of notaries we call for jobs that still answer the phone with a simple hello. Nevermind that they’re using a greeting that has celebrated its centennial, but when I hear it I immediately wonder if I’ve dialed the right number. 

• Did I just call a professional business? 
• Can this person actually help me? 

I’d rather hear a...