Click here to download the show

Elizabeth answers a listener question of the week about how to get systems in place in your business and shares her Entrepreneur’s Success Tip of the Week: You Will Never be “Ready”.

Click here to download the show!

Click here to download the show!

MaryPat created a special Social Networking Program offer just for our listeners visit Strategic Results Marketing JV Special to learn more.

Click here to download the show.

Elizabeth answers a listener question about the difference between trademark and copyright; and which you may need, when and for what. She also shares her Entrepreneur’s Success Tip of the Week: Taking Time! 

 Click here to download the show!

 Blue has a special offer for listeners of The Wealth Spa Radio Show check it out – Be Crash Ready

Click here to download the show!

Elizabeth delves further into developing your own affiliate program in her answer to this week's listener question and shares her Entrepreneur's Success Tip of the Week: Take Time Off for Yourself.

Click here to download the show!

Grow Up! Strategies The 7 Legal & Financial Strategies to Up-Level Your Small Business is available!  Visit Grow Up! Strategies for more information and the special offer for everyone who orders during the pre-sale event.

Click here to download the show.

Elizabeth welcomes MichelePW, one of the Hottest Marketing Strategists with a reputation for creating campaigns that get results. Michele shares her 7-step strategy for attracting more traffic, her favorite tactic to gain leads and secret strategies the super successful do to build a 6 and 7 figure income. Elizabeth answers a listener question about the kind of business entity you should have and offers her Entrepreneur’s Success Tip of The Week: The Power of Being.

Click here to download the show!

Click here to download the show.

Tracy offered listeners of The Wealth Spa Radio Show a special, limited time offer!  Visit www.compellingcomm.com/wealthspa for more information…but hurry the offer won't last long!

Transcript: 

Elizabeth:     Welcome everyone this is Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein, your host for thewealthspa radioshow and this week we got a couple of different things     going like usual, first our guest is Tracy Needham of Compelling Communications and we’re gonna be talking about the three steps to creating compelling copy that speaks to your client’s language. Then as     we get closer to the second half of the hour, I’ll be answering my questions for the week from you guys and this is actually kind of more of the response to a gazillion different questions that I get –and the over-all answer specifically about incorporating trademark copyrights – all those     kinds of legal bits and pieces when you’re starting a business or taking it to the next level. And then as we get close to the top of the hour, I’ll be sharing with you my entrepreneur success tip of the week which is learning how to let go and live in the now.

    Alright so before we get started on to today’s content, I’d just like to remind you that if you’re gonna miss any part of the show, or if you want to  automatically get featured show delivered to you, you can always go to the website for this radioshow which is thewealthsparadioshow.com and I’m gonna talk a little bit about  this at the end of the show but I wanted to let     you all know that we’re gonna be transcribing all our shows and the shows     or the transcriptions of future shows and even some of the past shows will be up on our website. If you’re the kind of person who likes to read as opposed to listen, transcripts will also be available for purchase and you could even sign up to purchase CDs of the shows. If you can’t, you know, deal with the technology of downloading stuff and RSS feeds and all that jazz, you can also buy CDs of future shows and you get them automatically delivered to you as well as specific half shows. Again the website for that is thewealthsparadioshow.com.

    Okay, let’s get back to today’s stuff. Tracy Needham is on the (inaudible) and she has launched her business back in 2003 after a decade in marketing communications and her business is called compelling communications and what they do is she bridges the communications gap between small businesses and their clients with compelling copy as marketing copy and creative marketing and public     relations strategy that makes the best use of our limited time and money or time (inaudible) feels is limited. Thank you so much for being on the show for today, Tracy.

Tracy:     Thank you for having me, Elizabeth

Elizabeth:     Great!  So your first of (inaudible) into what we’re talking about specifically with writing compelling copy, I know of some people who     might be listening to the show who don’t have a business and have no - nothing about marketing and they might not even know what we mean by copy. So you need to tell me about what are we talking about with copy?

Tracy:     Sure! Copy is anything basically any words that you use to market your business; it’s not so much words that you speak but anything that’s printed on your website or in your brochures, so copy encompasses basically anything along those lines.

Elizabeth:     Right. So Yes. And you know why I said that – before I started my business, I didn’t know what that was. I was like, you know…so now…     (inaudible) what you’re talking here about. Speaking to your clients’ language and that really is an issue is some of the people who listen to the show are people who, you know, still work in a corporation who didn’t have nothing to do with marketing or any of that stuff and y’know if I just start talking about copy, they have no idea what we’re talking about. So that, part of the issue is just to see or we’re using jargon     that some of the people don’t know.

    Yeah so let’s get into why is it—we talk about budding into (inaudible) marketing, you know, website or brochures, you know, a thousand million things we communicate in written language to our clients and prospects and customers. So you know why is it important to really worry about speaking your client’s language. Is it good copy, good marketing communication that’s good, I mean, it doesn’t have to be —what’s here     making it different?


Tracy:     Well the problem is that we live in a very crazy ADD type of world and everybody has too little time and too many distractions and so people—they won’t take the time to stop and figure out what you mean. If they’re confused by something you’ve said, then you’ve pretty much lost them. You know, the phone is gonna ring, another email’s gonna  pop up tells us the sign that they don’t have the time right now –just go back and look at it again later. But how often do you think “later” comes. It’s also important for what we called the KLT factor which is the Know, Like and Trust factor and this is y’know marketing phrase – pretty much talked about the fact     that people buy from those they know, like and trust, especially when it comes to services because you don’t have a tangible product to really     evaluate. So the people reading your copy have to feel that you     understand their needs and part of doing that is using words and phrases     that they get, y’know, and when you do just the opposite, they don’t feel that you understand their needs and some on the worse case, they may not even understand that you have the solution to their problems, so     they’re not gonna buy it at all.

Elizabeth:     yeah I think what it is she says is that –back when you were doing business, you’re face to face. You can kinda feel people out and you can see their body language and the look in their eyes, whether or not they don’t understand intuitively will change our language and respond to that.

Tracy:     Yeah

Elizabeth:     y'know with the stuff on your website or your brochure or whatever, that two-way communication doesn’t happen but you have to kinda read their minds to find out how wrong this is gonna be.

Tracy:     Uh-huh that’s definitely true and it’s so much easier to lose them.

Elizabeth:     And to really make sure that you’re having that relationship, (inaudible) it’s easy that if you’re looking at something face to face, you know, you can build that Know, Like and Trust factor, coz you know, you’re interacting with them one on one in a personal as well as in this way but you know, websites are the most impersonal thing.

Tracy:     Yes they are but you know it’s funny when you use their language; your message becomes so much more powerful. You know, they say that the     biggest trigger for selling is creating some kind of emotion within the     person even if you’re buying you know something very technical, you know, you have some kind of emotional relief of getting the solution you need or what not and you know, using their language just makes it so much more powerful, you know I’ve looked at, you know, on your website, you’ve got it down , you know, you could say on a group strategy’s website, you know you could say learn money management in just 15 minutes per week. But instead you say take control of your cash flow in just 3 minutes a week. Coz you know, it’s the same thing but no small business on their way (inaudible)  hey I need somebody to help me with money management, y know…they say hey I need somebody help me get a grip on this cash flow—figure out what’s going on.


Elizabeth:     yeah and it’s coast to coast to – I mean there’s a little bit of that that’s     also you know, talking about the results still – you can talk about our solution in a technical way but maybe that’s not—you know, you don’t go     in looking for (inaudible) dentist wanting some technical thing to be done to your teeth. (inaudible) it’s not hurt, you know..

Tracy:     Right

Elizabeth:     and people forget that , I think, you know, specifically, I’m a lawyer too so you know, you could imagine the stuff I wrote the first time I went to create a website and talking about really financial stuff when you know, clients are human beings. They’re not someone who’s in the same profession as you (inaudible) coming to you

Tracy:     Right. And we see this a lot when people try to talk about the process of how they do things. People are not looking to buy the process. They wanna buy relief from their pain or whatever it is that you’re selling the ultimate. The ultimate solution they’re looking for

Elizabeth:     So let’s say, you know someone who’s listening and they have a website or they’re trying to create a website  or they’re gonna start creating the marketing (inaudible) of the business, and they     wanna be able to do this. They want to start writing their copy directly towards their (inaudible) client. So where do they get     started?

Tracy:     Well the first thing you need to do is  really sit down and figure out who it     is you’re speaking to and it’s not everybody, which some people like to say. You know, even if you’re not doing (inaudible)’s marketing, it’s not everybody who’s buying your product or services. And really you could just look     over your clients’ list and figure out, there’s probably certain types of people that buy from you again and again. Or who often refer     people your way. And so you really gotta get a grip on who is that –who     those people are – so you can focus your message on in their language.     The second step would be then, once you know that, is to crop your messages to them based on what’s important to them so you know, you figure out  who those people are and you look at  why they’re buying from me. And you wanna create pretty much no more than three key messages to include in – throughout all of your marketing. You know-    three  core messages as to why  they buy from you –what they’re looking for or what they get from marketing with you and one of the easiest ways I     found to do this is just to look back  at the testimonials clients have given you or surveys  that you’ve done them or you could even send them short survey out and just ask – you know, what was the most important     factor and your decision to hire me or what did you like most about working with     me – very often, it’s not gonna be the answers that you think – but it’s very important that you know that.


Elizabeth:     yeah I remember when I was doing personal financial planning, one of my best testimonials came from (inaudible) and said Her and her husband     don’t fight about money anymore – and you know, that     wasn’t in my copy     at all –    in my copy I was talking about, you know —    investment, return of investment, blah blah blah . But really that was, and that was –the most powerful result is you  don’t worry about money or you know, you and your     husband don’t fight about money, instead taking it from this technical result to (inaudible).

Tracy:     Right. Exactly and I have a previous client who’s a perfect example of this. You know, he installed new cable for a small company’s phone in their data line and he’s been running this ad over and over and whether or not getting much response and when I looked at it, I could totally tell why – it was basically just listing their services and there was what I call down gig speak and all the C++ stuff , but you know (inaudible) and they hadn’t do anything to differentiate him or why anybody would hire him .you know, especially when you think about     techies, they do, you know the type of work he does, they do it themselves. He definitely wasn’t trying to speak to them.  When I asked     them, the people who always called his office were always office     managers or property managers and they were looking to move to a new location. You know so they were really hound in all that. We ended up     totally revamping the ad and based on things that you know his previous clients have always said they want from him, you know, someone to just     move their phone system to a new office who really explains what needs to be done and not just (inaudible) them when they come in. You know who,     someone who’s handled everything while doing it neatly and professionally and who will have it all up and running on day One.  And it was so much more of a powerful ad and just made so much more of a difference because  he was actually saying back to them what there was that they had been saying that they had been looking for when they came to him.

Elizabeth:     I could really see that there he’s telling a story and the people who are reading the ad can identify that because that’s my same story, you know what I mean.

Tracy:     Right.

Elizabeth:     It also makes it more fun to read.

Tracy:     Yeah—I mean these are all bullet points –it wasn’t a very long copy but like you said it’s the story that people understand right away—ohh that’s what I need and that’s why I should call him

Elizabeth:     Yeah I heard people say too that copy is—you wanna enter into that conversation of people are in or are already having in their brain

Tracy:     Right

Elizabeth:     Like we all have these little conversations like here’s my problem, here’s my problem, so – with that little conversation and get ourselves right in the middle of that.

Tracy:     Exactly, exactly

Elizabeth:     Yeah. We’re about ready to go to our first break and after the break, we’re gonna still have Tracy on the line with us talking about creating compelling copy that speaks your client’s language and we’ll go through –    some more about how you actually take your copy and translate it into the language of your clients or customers or prospects. So we’ll talk about all that after the break.

BREAK
 
Elizabeth:     welcome back everyone, this is Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein—your host of thewealthspa radio show and who we have on our show today with us is Tracy Needham who is talking with us about creating compelling copy     that     speaks to your client’s language. And before the break, we were talking about, you know, looking at your clients or prospects or customers and finding out, you know, who are these people and what is the language they speak and cracking your key messages to them. So you know, what the steps you actually use to do that?. Let’s say someone  has a website that has a whole bunch of stuff on them already, how do we make that translation from that technical stuff, or that you  know,     process –related stuff into client language?

Tracy:     Sure I mean, pretty much the third step of the process is to translate these messages into their language and once you’ve honed them on key     messages that you believe are important to them, you can just go back to it – those testimonials, those survey responses and use their exact language – use their exact words. You know—don’t put it into your own words, use the words that they use – you know, correct any misspellings,     of course but use those words to write your copy and you can also look at prospecting (inaudible) that you’ve gotten, what has people sent to you and what were they asking for.  And another thing you can do is you can look at websites of competitors who maybe large enough to have paid for very expensive market research into this area and see what they use. But I would be careful with that because, you know, you never know who actually  has done the research or what not.

Elizabeth:     yeah. They might be worse that you.

Tracy:      Right. But it is still good. I always think that you should know what your competitors are saying, at least.

Elizabeth:     And you could also go like one place I do sometimes is I go to forums of whether websites—there are places where  your target market lives     so—I might go the web looking for (inaudible) copy for a program for small business owners I might go to startoffnation.com and they have all these forums where people post all the questions that they have about starting their own business and then I can see , you know, what     is it they’re writing. It’s like a survey without taking a survey.

Tracy:     Right. Yeah that’s a great way to do it.

Elizabeth:     Yeah I was like just on it before the show and we’ll talk about it  later on the show – but it was interesting seeing you know, how do people explain things in their own words and it’s not how someone expert would     write it at all.

Tracy:     And that’s what I think is really key. You know because you can sit down     and just write out  what is in your head but again it’s –they don’t recognize  it as the same thing that’s they’re looking for—does you no good.

Elizabeth:     yeah and you know one thing I recommend for people too is , you know, specifically about - I have a book coming out and one of the things     they tell you when you write a book is to have other experts in your field      review the book. but what I also did was  I had people in my target audience review the book because, you know it’s all nice and good for another expert to understand what I said but if someone who’s not  the target for buying this book doesn’t understand it, then  you know, what’s the point?  And that’s a real big issue. You know—having –finding     someone who’s. Or multiple people who you already know who would be     the people who will be going on your website to theoretically buy your stuff is more important than your colleague. You know, who is someone who thinks with the same brain as you going on there and telling you what they think.


Tracy:     right you know, especially finding people who will be honest with you and who aren’t afraid to say what’s good and bad

Elizabeth:     yeah coz some people are just trying to be nice.

Tracy:     Right and at that point, you don’t want them to be nice. You wanna save yourself some time and money by making sure that you get honest feedback

Elizabeth:     yeah or they won’t just tell you it’s pretty.

Tracy:     Right. Exactly.

Elizabeth:     And that’s a big issue with creating any marketing material. A lot of people would spend all this time and money creating things that are pretty. Well there’s  important things about creating things that are visually compelling to people to start reading it – that’s what not people are gonna buy. They’re not gonna buy just because it’s pretty. That might be what     they look at for not more than a second – that’s not what ‘s gonna sell them.

Tracy:     yeah and you know, I mean,  some marketers go so far as to take the design element totally out of it and they said that that increases your response even more. I mean if, you know, I’m sure you’ve seen sales letters that look like they’re ransom notes – it really does come down to  the actual words on the paper convincing the people that you have what     they’re looking to buy.

Elizabeth:     So—you know ,what if someone has more than one niche market? You know—maybe that they’re – let’s take a –someone who does personal financial planning for example. Coz I—usually I know a lot of people who do that where they say, okay well I have clients who are in     their seventies, they’re retired. Then I have my baby boomer clients they’re in their 50s , then I have some, you know  young families who’re in their 30s and they all just speak a different language – and have different results. How do you write your copy for those different –when you have different kinds of targets?

Tracy:     Well it depends, I mean, if you’re writing copy – you know ideally, you’re writing copy for each of those targets – because that’s gonna be the best way to get resonance with the people who are reading it. You know, if you     are in a general situation like that then, then you can look at – the common denominator is –what – you know, what people, in general seem to     understand. You may have to not point go with you know,  what more than 50% has of the different target markets think when they’re looking at it or you could just go with somebody you know I use someone in general I call the mom test – you know, I’m not knocking my mom – she’s a very smart person but she, you know, spending years in a police department, she’s     pretty much an outsider to anything  and I figure if she’s not gonna understand this, most other people won’t either. You know—so you could just use someone in general like that or I know some business centres who have their kids read it – you know, because he’s gonna be more honest than your teenager and they are actually pretty sophisticated. You     know when it comes down to it , but the point is having people who aren’t familiar with it read it over –in that case, if you had to write for everybody,     they’re obviously not gonna be able to – you know—to get it perfect. But you wanna go with a copy that, you know, resonates with the highest, you know, the highest percentage of the people.        

Elizabeth:     But should you be worrying about –like the –let’s say your clients who are companies or corporations and even small businesses. And should you be worrying about speaking the language of their industry or what about kind of the demographic of the human being who makes the decision. Or should you be kinda looking at both?

Tracy:     Well, you kinda look at both.  And that, you know, that can get very  extensive and detailed. Usually if you go for a you know, a common denominator  general audience, then you’re doing pretty good. You know, because they may not have the exact words that they’re looking for,  you know, technical words that they’re looking for but they’re going to at least understand it. I mean that’s the minimum you want to get. If you can take that time and go through, you know, trade journal for that industry or you know go to association  websites for that profession and use words, you know that they specifically use, I mean, that’s incredible. That’s so much better. Because it will resonate that much more—it will make them feel like you really do get their industry and their business.

Elizabeth:     yeah, I know, I know people who have – had a target market and then wanted to expand to other target markets so they could make more money     and then what they actually did was to go to the industry conferences for those other things you know. If you sell everything to dentists then you want to sell the same stuff to accounting firms, you go to the association of     accountants or whatever that thing is and you’re going to listen to these people talk and ——– you know it’s … Yeah it doesn’t have to be ______ you could be (inaudible) as spying on them     


Tracy:     right, anything that you could do in that area will you know, increase the chances that that specific audience is going to read your copy and most importantly, buy.

Elizabeth:     Yeah. And one of the issues too is, going back to writing copy and marketing, sometimes, the best- the only testing really is having to put it out there and see if it converts people to buying your stuff. You know—I     found that I would create it’s this really what you do with a webpage—I’d create a webpage like the sales page – to sell something. And, You know people will tell me all kinds of different things, give me their opinion  but     maybe those are people who would never would  have bought it in a     million years anyway.  They’re. You know, not my (inaudible) market for that particular thing and really, you know, whether or not people buy it that’s really the best answer of all.

Tracy:     Right. It is, that’s the final answer, as they say.

Elizabeth:     Yeah. It’s a difficult. you know.. it easiest to do that website stuff or things like that – you can trust

Tracy:     And ads, you could do that sometimes – you know if you are gonna test, if     you wanna make sure that you only change one element at a time, but you’re not going to know, you know, which phrase it was that really made the difference.

Elizabeth:     Yeah that is true – like I have – I use Google ad words, which is a, for those people who don’t know, whenever you go on Google, you type in searching something, of course on the right, in the middle you get the, you know, results, and on the right . sometimes on the top you’d get ads and the neat thing about it is, if you can change those and it’s like it     appears almost instantly when you wanna tweak your ads but have to be really careful that you only tweak them a little bit at a time . coz if you change one of those things – you know – it’ll be better, you’ll get more people clicking on it and then like oh – I don’t even know what works.

Tracy:     Right. Yes.

Elizabeth:     And some of this literally, like tiny, tiny things, it’s you know, changing the phrase of one word, or – and I see it as a great place to test copy is on Google ad words, because you can get really immediate results that way.
    
Tracy:     Yes you do and it, you know, it does, sometimes it does come down to one word can make a huge -200- 300% response difference

Elizabeth:     And I don’t find like a question mark – I mean, it’s just amazing how Google (inaudible) things and sometimes it’s not the things I thought – like talking about the Google ad words, and that my (inaudible) program where I thought the whole taking control of your task within 50 minutes a week  would pull the best and actually saying that fast and simple – pulled better, convert to saying it only takes 50 minutes – which I thought was the opposite of what I would     think. I would think 15 minutes could draw specific and has the number always wonderful reasons why that’s good—but the other one pulled better. Like okay!

Tracy:     Maybe they’re hoping it could be five minutes

Elizabeth:     yeah I guess so, but it seems long, but who knows, but you know, sometimes, when it comes down to that (inaudible) just testing and that’s the nice part about website and like Google ad words—things like that – it’s like printing up  a thousand brochures which is     gonna cost you a bunch of money.

Tracy:     Right and you could do it pretty simply by just changing a word and tracking your normal web stats, if you had to, you know, for a good enough period of time, at least a week – to make sure that its not just, you know, a fluke.

Elizabeth:     Yeah and I did that also with websites sometimes. I’ll put websites up, let it go, for even a couple of months and then go in and change, change you know, (inaudible) and then see how it does. If it gets better or gets worse. Coz yeah you know, the experts, and people in the industry and even people you survey can tell you all kinds of stuff, but fundamentally, testing     is the only way to really know what’s gonna     happen. If people are spending money or not.
    
Tracy:     Exactly

 Elizabeth:     So if people want to find out more about you or get to learn more about this, where should they go?

Tracy:     Sure, my website is compellingcomm.com—a little bit confusing – to get more information about in general and I did want to let you know about a special offer that I’m making for wealthspa listeners

Elizabeth:     okay, great!

Tracy:     I’m actually going to be launching a e-book on the same topic –three steps to compelling copy that speaks your language and puts more money in the     bank. And I’m going to offer a pre-sale price to people who hear this and go to the website within 48 hours of when they air it next Wednesday and for that, for you, you just go to compellingcomm.com/thewealthspa.

Elizabeth:     And thewealthspa , not just a… just thewealthspa

Tracy:     Correct

Elizabeth:     Okay, I want to be sure because I’m gonna say it later too

Tracy:     And there will be a special pre-sale offer for that

Elizabeth:     Okay, great.

Tracy:     and we’ll just give you more details and walk you through a little bit more and things like that

Elizabeth:     and be a great example of compelling communication

Tracy:     Yup.

Elizabeth:     everyone can read and look at and then they’ll tell you what’ they’re talking about. Okay, great. So that’s compellingcomm with the two m’s dot com slash wealth spa. (compellingcomm.com/wealthspa)

Tracy:     Correct.

Elizabeth:     Okay Great. Well, thank you so much—for that offer for all of our listeners, Tracy and thank you so much for being on a (inaudible)

Tracy:     Great. Thank you for having me .

Elizabeth:     Great. So Everyone we’re about ready to go to our next break, and after this break, I’m gonna be answering your questions this week, which     is actually a answer to a whole bunch of questions about incorporating what kind of corporations you  should have – about trademarks, domains, all these stuff that people get bogged down in when they start a business or take it to the next level. And then as we close with this top of the hour, I’ll be sharing with you my entrepreneur success of the week – it’s about     learning how to let go  and enjoy where you are right now. So we’re talking about all that – after the break.

BREAK

Elizabeth:     Welcome everyone –welcome back from the break this is Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein, your host of the wealth spa radio show and – the first part of the show, we had Tracy Needham on who speaks with us about how to create compelling copy that speaks your client’s language. And she has a     special offer for all of you and I’d give you that website link one more time and she has a new e-book coming up on this topic you can have this special offer if you order it before the book comes out. So the website for that is compellingcomm.com/wealthspa not the radioshow or anything, just wealthspa – go  ahead to that link to get that special offer from Tracy and if you miss any of the first part of the show you can always go to the wealthsparadioshow.com to listen to an archive of the show and get future shows delivered to you automatically. Alright let’s get into these questions this week.

When I’m preparing for the show, I look over the questions that I get from the shows, from people who read my ezines, you know, friends from facebook, I also go look around different forums and  things and get ideas for what questions you all have –what were the most important questions that are you know, bogging you down and keeping you from  making progress in your businesses. One of the place I went to ,earlier today was on startupnation.com . Startupnation.com is a website with all kinds of information and resourses for who’s starting a business and they have a forum where people ask questions about  gazillion different kinds of topics about starting up a business.

And it was really amazing what people get bogged down in (inaudible) but there are some more questions that I get by email and  messages and things  but what really struck me on startoffnation , people ask me all these questions about what kind of corporations should I have – should I be an S corp, should I be a C corp , should I be an LLC, LLLC, should I be a C corp and an LLC – should I     — what should I trademark –what do I need to copyright—when do I need to file a trademark or a copyright and what domain names do I need and do I trademark the domain names –and dadadadada… –it was just –you know, just people going wacky wild with all these detail –and in some of the post, I couldn’t even respond too because they were so convoluted. Confused questions—you know, and these businesses’ structures that people wanted to create were so complicated — so many details—and so that’s really the questions I wanted to answer to you all today.

And the suggestion I wanna give to you all  which is that it’s very easy to get bogged down  in the thousand details of starting a business, especially those of you who want to start a REAL business. You want to start it right. You don’t just wanna have the default  sole proprietor rules apply when actually the real business entity you want to do things the right way. Now I see it happen over and over again.

Most of the people I work with individually and groups as well as reading forums and things – is that there’s a lot of business owners out there, who, well (inaudible) and business owners – yes – who  are so bogged down in all these decisions that they lose sight  of the point .  That the business never ends up getting off the ground. That they’re so bogged down on whether or not they should have an S corp. or an LLC  or a C corp. that they don’t even have their products or their service really (inaudible) out .   They don’t even know who their target client is . They don’s even know how they’re gonna make money because  they’re sooooooo bogged down in all these legal stuff.

So  my number 1 first suggestion to all of you who are worrying about  trademarks and copyrights, incorporating and all these detail is to keep it simple.  It would be such a great tragedy if you have a wonderful business idea – you have a wonderful solution you can give to people . You haven’t knocked it off the ground because you’re frozen  by the indecision of all these things. You know, you spend months and months and months of worrying about this stuff when you could be selling your product . Its such a great shame.

Now of course I’m not recommending you just use a sole proprietor  and not do things the right way. You’re just gonna (inaudible)–so you can keep it very simple. Specifically about incorporating as an  entity, for most of you guys your first business when it first starts, you can just  be an LLC Limited Liability Company. Occasionally that’s not the right thing, but in the beginning, a lot of you of you probably is – you just file  your taxes and here in the United States you just given them your set schedule C if you’re just a proprietor or if you’re a solo person starting a business, just like a sole proprietor—very simple and easy, from a tax perspective and you can always add on complexity later. You could form multiple corporations, you can do all forms of fancy stuff when you have the money to pay someone else  to do it all for you.

Right now in my business, I’m an LLC , I have some other DBAs, doing business as names  that I use under my parent LLC and probably some other  DBAs will eventually be their own businesses  their own corporations but right now, I’m keeping it simple. And that’s what I recommend to you.

First, keep it simple.

Second, you do want  to protect the assets  that you have. One easy  way to protect things that names products and businesses  is by registering domain names. You know it would be a shame for you to come up with a (inaudible) business and see that someone else has already used that name and they already have  a domain name. And so, but these domain names, it costs $6, $10  very inexpensive thing to  play around with. And also doing research simply on the internet –seeing just anyone else using those words – you know you don’t – the first step isn’t to  hire a lawyer, the first step is to do a little bit of diligence yourself. Cheap, easy, could just spend a couple of hours , then  see whether or not it’s worth it –(inaudible) on that stuff. And if you have a whole bunch of wacky wild business ideas—register –have to have a domain name – that’s not gonna cost you so much money and put you bankrupt unlike something   more complicated. Like hiring a lawyer – like filing framework applications .

Now once your ideas start to clarify and you kinda know what business ideas you’re gonna use , what’s the names of products or services they’re gonna be your brilliant system for doing whatever – whatever those words are – then – you , most likely would wanna trademark at least one thing – not every gushed down word you use in your business. You’re probably wanna trademark the name of your business, the name of your product,  the tagline, it might be  the name of the system that you teach. Then you would wanna talk to your attorney and decide what makes sense for your trademark. But you don’t need to trademark every word that you use to describe your service or product.  Just one two three four things.

Third,  let me remind you about copyright rule . This is the place where I see people freaking out a lot –making things complicated for themselves. Especially on the internet  A lot of people are really worried that people are gonna steal stuff from you. Because it’s probably you think you have a brilliant idea – you’re an entrepreneur, you believe in yourself, you believe in an idea and you think it’s gonna change the world which is absolutely wonderful. You shouldn’t start a business unless you think  your product or service is wonderful or amazing. But it actually happens a lot less than you might think. You don’t wanna freak-out and spend such a huge amount of time and energy worrying about people stealing your stuff . You just gotta put in – things you need to do if it does happen , you have good ground to stand on.

First off, you simply use a copyright symbol on the things that you create. Whether it’s your website, whether it’s a special report that you write, it’s (inaudible) that you have , it’s a white paper that you hand out to people. Even just the first step of just – know..copyright 2008 in your name is a great place to start. Here in the United States, if you are here in the United States, you do have a lot of rights just by doing that. Now if you gotta have to sue someone, you got to have to register the trademark, which is relatively inexpensive –know actually I hadn’t looked at it in a  while I think it’s like $40 –well it depends on exactly what you’re doing . Pretty inexpensive to register a copyright  but you don’t wanna do it for every start thing you write and every audio file you would create , necessarily.  But for your important things, you may  wanna do that , But don’t forget, you want to keep it simple and you don’t wanna be making these things incredibly complicated for yourself and you don’t want to have yourself be unable to put yourself on a website coz it’s so worried about someone stealing it.

And incidentally, don’t forget that for copyright  issues, for the things that you create, your writings , your e-books, your audio files, your music, and photography—I almost forget about that –you can protect that under the creative commons rules. Go to creativecommons.org, I think  it is. Search creative comments under Google and you’ll find it . A whole bunch of default rules you can pick , by (inaudible) some agreements, really, you can pick to protect your creative work and there’s a great place if you –you know—a photographer , if you are running a screenplay , if you have set up a website and you maybe want people to use it certain  ways and not on others , it’s a great place to get some kind of default licensing language .

There are times I see this  with I’m sure , some people who listen to this (inaudible) and see if there’s some clients and customers , friends I have, people on this forum. You’re making things really complicated and technical much more than they  need to be. So start simple, always add  the complexity later and as long as you’re doing that minimum level of protection that you will most likely be confined with that’s all you’re going to need  for the time being. Okay so if you have anymore questions about that feel free to go to thewealthsparadioshow.com and on that there’s a forum for you to ask questions that  I can answer on the show in the future –either  you can call in and leave a message or you can type in your question. Send more questions about this stuff., feel free to go to the wealthspa radioshow.com and leave your questions there. We’re about ready to go to our last break. After the break, we’ll be sharing with you my entrepreneur success tip of the week which is about learning how to let go and enjoy  what you already have right now. We’ll talk about all that after the break.     

—————-

Welcome back, everyone this is Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein, your host of the wealthspa radio show and what we’ve been talking about this week , the first part of the show we had Tracy Needham on – an expert in writing copy that’s compelling and  speaks to your particular client’s language. And if you—She has a special offer for you all and I’ll give you that link one more time which is an eBook about this – about creating compelling copies specifically for your target clients –and that’s a special offer on her eBook and the website again for that is  compellingcomm.com/wealthspa, again that’s compellingcomm.com/wealthspa, and at the last part of the show, I will speak with you, really not answer a particular question but more addressing a whole host of questions  I get from people and what I see on forums and websites and all the places where I’m interacting with you all. A lot of you are making things really complicated and one of my big recommendations is keeping things simple in your business. 

Ok now I want to share with you my entrepreneur success tip of the week  and this is something that I’m  really going through right now. I realised in my personal  life and business, for me to take the steps  in the next level and I wanted to share  this with you all. Coz I’m sure there’s  some of you who are hitting this plane. And it’s about learning to let go and enjoy where you are right now. A lot of you, I’m sure are very ambitious successful people. And you’ve gone through life, you’re goal –oriented , you write goals down, you have to do with, you have visions for how you want your business (Inaudible) you’re always the person who’s achieving a lot, producing a lot , you’re one of those go-getters—which on one hand is wonderful . You’re able to do a lot done . You can radically make a lot of  money –you can produce a lot of  stuff, people probably look up to you. You probably got good grades, you know, there’s a lot of benefits to being ambitious, go-getter kind of person.

And that’s the category I’m in. I’m one of those goal-oriented people –who’s always looking for the next thing—always producing more and more. One of the big detriment –one of the big challenges is , if you’re one of those people, is that you’re never done. Here’s the thing, there’s always more stuff (inaudible). There’s always another level  you can take it to. There’s always someone who makes more money than you. There’s always someone who has a bigger whatever – a bigger house, a bigger boat, whatever it is. There’s always more that you could have . There’s always more that you can be. There’s always more that you can do. And while it is incredibly powerful to  have goal. While it’s incredibly  powerful to have visions of how you want  your business to be in three months or three years or 30 years, you may end up with the feeling that you’ve never arrived. Or you’re never going to arrive .

This is something that I’ve discovered, very recently in myself  that by being so goal-oriented,  by being so ambitious in producing so much stuff , there is this feeling that I’m chasing  a goal  that I will never get to. The finish line keeps moving. And as –I’m permanently frustrated and I know there’s always more money that I can make. The business could always be bigger. You could always have more people listening to this radio show . know whatever it is , there’s always more more more . And I’ve discovered for myself is the art of practicing—the art of being – of letting go of enjoying where I’m at right now. I’ve done a number of things personally to do that – part of it is –I’ve reduced  the amount  of time my daughter goes to pre-school and not just  to spend more time with her, even though that’s part of it but because , you know, just because I want to spend more time with her because you know, she’s only three years old for a certain amount of time – those kind of things . Not just for that . Because when I sat down to look at how do I want my life to be in three years? Looking at that vision for my life . Part of that vision was I wanted to have more flexible schedule to spend more time with my daughter.

And I looked at that vision and said why don’t I just do that now? Why do I have to wait for something Why do I have to wait for something before I can actually achieve that goal  or achieve that vision. Do I have to be making a million dollars to do that? Why can’t I start doing some of that right now, instead?

Now if you’re looking at the things you currently have in your business/  You know I have my book coming out in a few weeks  and I feel we’re gonna be working on this thing forever. So there’s the whole goal I’m never gonna be able to reach –problem there. But having ever written a book , I haven’t felt a big sense of achievement because  I’m already starting to think about the next book. It’s psychotic, you know-in a lot of ways. For why am I starting to think about what’s the book’s gonna be  and what’s that be about and am I gonna look for different publisher for that one and dadadadada – you know, which, it’s important to think about the next stuff, yeah  and I do wanna have a place to write down all those  ideas I have for the next book. Yeah but  if I don’t sit and appreciate and relish and celebrate and enjoy the—what I’ve already achieved, then I will be permanently frustrated. Yeah it will make it almost harder for all the other stuff to come. Very easy to spend all your time waiting for stuff as opposed to sitting back and enjoying what you already have. And  I don’t mean it in an easy way . I mean in a  appreciative state and letting all the wonderful things to come to your life to have already come and as such, more will come because you’re in a wonderful place to be.  And going along with that is learning to let go. And I found for myself , I start over planning. Okay?

Try and attempt to be, highly successful mogul or whatever you wanna call it. I start scheduling out all the things that I wanna do every single month and for the next five years and (inaudible) amount of time and how to take this project here and these things here, I’m gonna do this show and then this event ,and this bigger event and I start planning out , you know. the rest of my entire life .

And here’s what I’m (inaudible), is that you don’t have so much energy and time worrying about all these – all of these things and stuff to do. There’s no place for making things to happen. There’s no room for missing opportunities that come into your life, There’s a lot  of decisions waiting to be made and opportunities will come into my life and I may want to do something different six months from now because of what I’ve learned in the next six months. There’s all these things that can and will happen. I’ve been spending all my time and energy in this over-planning, in this frozen  state of this is how everything’s supposed to be then  the magic can’t come in.

So if you’re like me and you’re a super over achiever, ambitious, goal-oriented person, what I suggest to you is to spend  at least part of your day just living in the moment – just enjoying what’s coming into to your life. Just accepting whatever insanity is going in on your business, just as if you’ve chosen it to go on and not  worrying about what’s on the calendar , six months, nine months, and six years from now. (inaudible) the opposite, I talk about goals and your visions for your business, But there’s some of us who actually need the opposite. If that’s one of you, that’s my suggestion per se is letting go of all that stuff and just existing in what’s going on with your business today. .

Alright we’re almost at the end of the show, I will remind you that to go to the wealthsparadioshow.com you can find out  to get the show delivered to you automatically by email RSS feeds or through (Inaudible)  . And I’m not sure what’s gonna be up next week but it maybe up there ready By the time you’re listening to this (inaudible) end you the recording I was listening to it live, the  transcripts of future shows as well as some of the past  shows is gonna be up in the website , you don’t have to pay for them , just by reading them on the website . yeah and you can get them, you can buy them to have them mailed to you and also get archives of CDs  and past shows mailed to you either automatically or on a subscription basis or just (inaudible) for show that you’ve  found to be incredibly powerful for yourself. Especially helpful if you or one of your cause is not as (inaudible). Again if you missed past shows  to listen to these shows automatically , read the transcripts, then go to thewealthsparadioshow.com.  And also you can ask questions to be answered in future shows. So again this is Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein and thank you so much for listening and I will look forward to be with you.