From Mark Ford, founder, Palm Beach Research Group: In my career I’ve tried dozens and dozens of ways of making money. Some worked well. Some were just okay. And some were embarrassing disasters.

When I look back at how I grew my wealth, two things stand out above all the others.

One of them is real estate investing. Not flipping houses or the zero-down crap you see advertised on TV. But a simple, income-based strategy that has never failed me. I’ll talk about real estate in a later essay. Today, I want to talk about the single most important way I got wealthy. I’m talking about starting or investing in entrepreneurial businesses.

In fact, if you want to (or need to) become wealthy in seven years or less, you have to seriously consider starting a business.

I can’t possibly begin to tell you just 1% of what I’ve learned about successfully starting a business in one essay. So let’s start with just one thing—one of the most important things.

Recommended Link

"So far this year I have made over one million and counting. Five months still to go."—AP

"My net worth over the last 15 months has increased by $63,762."—JS

"We’ve increased net worth by $345k."—AB

If You Can’t Get Rich…

No Matter What You Try…

Watch This>>

Today, I’ll be discussing “selling.”

Not the realm of selling, but the challenge of identifying your market and figuring out how to sell to them.

To help you understand what I’m talking about, take a look at this email I got from Lynn, a reader. She wrote:

I’ve worn many hats, juggled them off and on in my years as mother, grandmother, realtor, concessionaire, and artist retailer/wholesaler. Love, divorce, custody issues, death, inheritance, bankruptcy, accidents, health issues, friendship, betrayal.

I’ve either been through it or carried someone through it.

What I seem to do best is calm nerves and give good advice, to the point where it often interferes with other endeavors. I’ve seriously thought about copywriting/internet ideas, but I’m wary of selling things.

It seems that, among family and friends, at least, I am the oracle of issues, the witchy-woman matriarch with the final answer. The trendy term “life coach” isn’t quite it. I want to be like an email comforter. A listener of last resort. A sounding board.

It’s the only thing I think I’m really quite good at. Could this be a business?

Yes, it could be a business. But not if you are leery of selling.

Being in business means doing several important things. One is developing a product. Another is providing value. But the third—the only one that is a sine qua non—is selling. You can’t make money unless you sell something. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, “I find it useful to remember, everyone lives by selling something.”

So the first thing Lynn needs to determine is what she’s going to sell.

She might think that she is providing “good advice.” Or perhaps she believes she is “solving problems.” But if you understand the inside reality of selling the sort of service Lynn wants to provide, you will understand that it is all about providing comfort.

People will pay for advice and they will pay for solutions but unless you also give them a trusting, comforting experience, it will be very difficult to attract and keep new customers.

There are certainly therapists and life coaches that deliver discomfort. And there are in every universe of buyers a small percentage of masochists that will pay for it. But unless you are skillful and finding and speaking to that 10%, you’d be smart to deliver comfort and security.

Of course, if therapists said that they were in the business of comforting their clients, no one would take them seriously. And no one would pay them lots of money for this advice.

Rather than advertising what they are really selling, therapists advertise their methodology (Freudian, behaviorist, etc.). Or they sell the type of “problems” they deal with (addiction, various disorders, etc.).

Since Lynn isn’t a trained psychotherapist, she can’t honestly advertise those sorts of things. So she will have to come up with her own ideas about why people get themselves into trouble and how they can find solutions.

These ideas will eventually form into a unified whole—a sort of system of coaching that is unique to Lynn. This unified whole is what my partners and I call an “intellectual franchise.” An intellectual franchise is a territory of ideas, strategies, and techniques that are not just effective but in some way unique.

So, if you are in Lynn’s position—looking to turn your idea into a profitable business—the first thing you need to do is shape it into your own personal intellectual franchise.

The next thing you must do is turn yourself into a seller. For some people, this is as natural as breathing. But for most of us, it is—at least in the beginning—as difficult as breathing underwater.

Lynn is “wary” of selling. But now she knows she has to get past that. Even become enthusiastic about it. How can Lynn do that?

When I’ve coached people like Lynn, I began by pointing out is that there are really two kinds of selling. One is the skill of pushing people to buy things they don’t want. The other is helping people to buy things by showing them how those things might please them.

(In providing these essays to you, I’m trying to prove that the Wealth Builders Club will help you and that it is something you want to buy if you want learn to grow rich.)

Recommended Link

The MASSIVE Anonymous Trades Behind Major Stock Moves
He whispered… "Imagine knowing today… what’s going to happen next week in the stock market. That’s what we’re talking about here." Following trades in this "Dark Market" can help you PREDICT, several days in advance, which stocks are setting up to soar in the regular stock market. Here’s how YOU could grab $80,100 in this dark market…

Pushy salespeople—the telemarketer who calls while you’re eating dinner, the broker who calls on the weekend with a “hot deal,” the proverbial used-car salesman—love persuading you to do what you don’t want to do.

Such salespeople see selling as a kind of battle. They bully and beat you into submission. It’s an ego game, and your acquiescence—even if you really do want the product—indicates submission.

Such salespeople should be tarred and feathered, run out of town, dunked, and pilloried.

They are the same people who delight in not letting you merge in traffic and cutting ahead of you in the supermarket line.

Helpful salespeople are actually more common than their obnoxious cousins.

If you understand that the job of a salesperson is to solve a customer’s problem or help him meet a need, selling won’t seem so odious to you.

Let’s say your prospect’s main concern is the future of his marriage. What you would do, in this case, is ask him questions and find out, in as much detail as you can, what his worries are. You’re then in a great position to address each concern—to explain how your product (in Lynn’s case, her advice) can give him effective solutions.

By driving home the benefits of your product that the prospect cares about, you make a strong sales presentation. You are telling him exactly what he wants to hear.

Remember—your prospect wants to be sold. As long as you help him understand how your product can help him achieve his desires or solve his problems, he will be prejudiced in your favor. You lose your prospect when you start talking about other things—product features he doesn’t really care about.

So don’t sell him. Help him. Begin by finding out what he wants and needs. And then (if and only if you can really help him), make the strongest, most specific case you can. Convince him that, with your help, he’ll achieve his desires and solve his problems.

Once you’ve figured out how to sell your product and have gotten over your distaste of selling, you need to start testing… preferably on the internet. Don’t spend a lot of money building your business or idea before you know it works. Keep testing until you find some way to position the product that catches on.

And then, to grow your business, you will have to produce lots of products that tie into your initial business idea. And you’ll need to send lots of sales letters to convince people to buy them.

Does this sound like something you can do? If so, you are on your way!

Your Optimum Selling Strategy

You should know by now that selling is not optional for your business; it’s essential.

When your business is just an idea, it is impossible to know with certainty what specific selling strategy will work best.

Should you advertise on local radio programs? What about television? Should you buy space ads in local newspapers? How about internet strategies such as pay-per-click advertising or search engine optimization?

These are questions you may be asking right now.

To determine the optimum selling strategy for your business, you need to answer four questions:

  1. Where are you going to find your customers?

  2. What product will you sell them first?

  3. How much will you charge for it?

  4. How will you convince them to buy it?

Four answers to four questions—very simple, or so it seems. There is a catch, though: You need to answer all four, not just some of them…

In the full version of this essay, I show Club members how to do just that… (You can learn how to get your copy of the full essay right here).

Recommended Link

For The Man Who Has Everything…
This award-winning luxury-curated gift set makes a perfect holiday present for the hard-to-shop-for son, father, or husband. For a limited time, enjoy 30% OFF with FREE shipping and an extra-long 100%-money-back return policy. Get yours before they sell out.