Bad things always happen to other people, right? “It’s not going to happen to me”, are sometimes the last words we speak. ” I know I should backup my WordPress blog”, that’s one thought that came to my mind this week. And besides, I had never ever heard about “brute force attacks.” But let me start from the beginning…

If you were visiting my blog recently, you may have noticed that it was offline for a few days. Well, 3 days and 15 hours to be exact. I am truly sorry and I apologize for any inconvenience.

I was first alerted to this matter by a Facebook friend who told me that she gets a “Forbidden 403″ error when she visits my site. From there it went to “Emergency Maintenance” … “503 Service Unavailable” … “Error 404 – Page Not Found” and a couple of others.

Do you dare to dream and do you really know what you want your future to look like? Or do you have no idea and you just know what you don’t want?

Gee, loaded questions,  but that’s exactly how many people are. They don’t know what they want exactly. They have kind of an idea, but it’s not specific. But only if you have a clear picture of your goal or dream can you move in that direction, isn’t that right?

If you don’t know what your target is
how are you going to hit it?

For example saying, “I want financial freedom,” or, “I want to make lots of money” or “I want to be rich.” These are all very broad goals, aren’t they? What does that entail exactly?

What happened to the American Dream? Well actually, let’s look at what it is first. According to Wikipedia…

The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.

The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that “all men are created equal” and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

You will be surprised what will happen with your network marketing business when you finally stop being afraid and start believing in yourself.

I was asked the question recently what has made some of the biggest differences for me and my business.  If I had any breakthrough revelations or actions that altered my destiny radically. (Thank you Dave, for giving me the idea for this blog post!)

Oh, YES, I sure have!

The biggest difference was probably when I stopped being afraid. I was afraid of so many things when I started out in the network marketing industry. If you have been reading my blog for a while then you probably remember that I was one of those people who are totally anti MLM. I didn’t want anything at all to do with it. I thought it was one of these illegal pyramid schemes and selling pyramids wasn’t my thing. As a good friend of mine pointed out once: “Not only is selling pyramids illegal, but the Egyptians have tried to sell theirs for over 3,000 years and haven’t sold a single one.” By the way, this is a great ice-breaker if someone gives you the line, “Is this a pyramid?”

So what all was I afraid of?

Ah, you know me, when I learn a cool little trick that makes marketing my business easier for me, I just can’t help but pass it on to you guys.

I have been posting my blog posts to Facebook for a couple of years now. It’s done automatically actually through Networked Blogs. Whenever I hit ‘publish’ on my posts a short while later the post gets published to Facebook and Twitter automatically. Which is kind of cool, however, I haven’t seen many clicks, or comments or shares from Facebook that way.

It hasn’t bothered me that much because I didn’t realize what I was missing and I get lots of traffic from other sources anyway.  But now, that I found out about this little Facebook trick from a gentleman who’s opinion I value a great deal and who has taught me a lot about internet marketing and some other cool Facebook tricks before, I just had to try it out. (You can check out Chris Farrell’s Membership Site here. {Aff} I know you will be impressed.)

Next to fall, spring is my favorite season of the year. I love to watch the crocuses and snowdrops peeking through the snow. I look forward to this every year.

We still have a few of them in our backyard that  Georgi, our boxer, hasn’t managed to kill off yet. These tiny, though very hardy flowers are the first signs heralding spring. But soon there will be many more. Daffodils, tulips , hyacinths and primroses, a whole carpet of beautiful flowers will be everywhere. Hanging baskets and flower pots bursting with nature’s miracles will make their appearances all over our neighborhood shouting …. Yes, spring is here!

Since the birth of Social Media people have been connecting with each other, especially on Facebook.

Since its launch in February of 2004 over one billion people have joined to connect with friends, family, high school classmates, colleagues, etc. But a high percentage of members are also using this social network to reach out and connect with potential business partners or customers.

I can’t remember who invited me to join Facebook, but I’ve been there since 2008 and at first I primarily connected with friends I knew from other social networks. Facebook seemed to be a better platform for us to keep in touch than the one we had used at the time. And ever since then I’ve been adding new friends on a weekly basis. Friends I knew and people I wanted to get to know.

This great video I am about to share with you landed in my inbox last weekend and since then I have watched it a few times already. I also bookmarked it right on top of Chrome so I can see the link every day and watch it again and again. Yes, it’s that good and inspiring.

Anthony Robbins is interviewing two of the top internet marketers, Frank Kern and John Reese. These guys are still so young, yet, they are raking in millions of dollars. Why, because they were focused, they believed in themselves and their abilities and they followed through taking massive action.

They were sick and tired of where they were, they envisioned where they wanted to be instead and they went for it.

You may have noticed that my posts have become a bit irregular and that I seem to be MIA at times. My sincerest apologies, but I have been quite busy lately. As I shared not long ago I have joined my husband in his business and we are building a dynamic team together.

Ever since we entered the field of network marketing, many years ago, we have taken being good sponsors very seriously. We are far from what some may call ‘hit and run sponsors’, who bring them in and then leave them. Or like one of my personal sponsors earlier in my networking career used to say …”Throw them against the wall and see who sticks.” I think that is just so wrong. That’s recruiting, but not sponsoring. We are talking about REAL people here. Always think, …”Would I want to be treated that way?” If it’s not right for you, then it’s not right for the person you are bringing onto your team.

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”  - Paul Newman. Maybe you have heard this quote from 1967 movie, “Cool Hand Luke” before.

Not everyone has great communication skills, some of us are better communicators than others. But thank goodness effective communication is a skill that can be learned.

To be successful in network marketing you need to have at least the basics down. You need to be considerate of your potential customer or team member. Don’t ‘throw up’ on them, in other words don’t dominate the conversation by overloading them with facts and details about your opportunity. Ask questions and find out if there is a need for what you have to offer instead.

And then….LISTEN!!!

With all the beautiful weather we have been having here in Colorado recently with the temperatures in the high 50ies and lower 60ies I had been feeling like starting Spring Cleaning early. Of course it never fails as I am finishing this post up today we have 3 inches of snow on the ground and it looks just beautiful in the morning sun.

But anyway,  sorry for getting carried away. So for the past few weeks now I have been cleaning out the cob webs in my Twitter account. It was really about time too. You wouldn’t believe how many dormant accounts, egg avatars and spammers I had accumulated over time.

Flushing the Non-Followers

One thing that’s as certain as taxes or the ‘Amen’ at church is, that there will always be changes. Facebook is really good at constantly changing.

You may have heard about the new Graph Search that Facebook is slowly rolling out. As a matter of fact you may have opted in to the waiting list and might be using it already, like I have been the last two weeks. If you still have the old search function, you may want to still keep it for a bit because once you switch over there’s no going back. Some people don’t like it, but I really love it.

What is Facebook Graph Search?