Hi — I wanted to let you know about a new company called My Millionaire Friends that is launching on January 1, 2008. This monthly coaching and networking program offers a lot of tangibles on a monthly basis (CDs and printed books and newsletters to name a few). They are running a special prelaunch price. Check it out at:
http://www.successcoachrecommends.com/millionairefriends.

And even if you can’t join right away–they have a great “How to Become A Millionaire Diagram and Checklist” you can download for free.

Becoming the center of influence in your chosen niche is an excellent way to build your brand as the expert of choice. An underutilized strategy by many leaders in professional services is establishing your own membership-based business. Find out why the membership-based business model is a smart way to generate more profits and position yourself as the expert in your industry almost immediately.

Wednesday, November 14th 2007 at 11:00 am PST

Together with Sheri McConnell, the President and Founder of the National Association of Women Writers and the Association of Web Entrepreneurs, we’ll be sharing:

• The many benefits of the membership-based business model including free publicity, immediate platform, and more
• How to leverage your position as a gatekeeper
• Core elements to consider before creating your own membership-based company
• Key roles as the leader
• How to select your team of professional experts
• What systems you need to implement to run a profitable membership-based company

This class is available to all members of the ULTIMATE Wealth & Success Circle, with the option of attending the call live or enjoying the recording on CD delivered straight to your mailbox.

Not yet a Member? Join today for just $9.95 the first month. You’ll get instant access to this class along with coaching, support and resources to transform your overwhelm into simple, easy to follow success strategies!

http://www.ultimatewealthandsuccesscircle.com/register

See you on the call,

Tuesday, October 30th 5:00pm Pacific 

Join me as I interview Garrett Sutton and Gerri Detweiler, co-founders of Business Credit Success, on the topic of how to leverage your business to save money on taxes, protect your personal assets, reduce your risk of tax audits, get business credit, avoid risky personal guarantees, and get fabulous employee benefits — even if you are the only employee in your business! During this call you will learn:

• Why one misstep can cost you everything you own in your business and personally… and why even a good insurance policy is not enough.
• How to cut your risk of a tax audit by 80%!
• How to get business credit if your personal credit isn’t great.
• How to leverage business credit to make your business extremely valuable when you decide to cash out!

This class is now available to all members of the ULTIMATE Wealth & Success Circle, with the option of attending the call live or enjoying the recording on CD delivered straight to your mailbox.

Not yet a member? Join today for just $9.95 the first month. You’ll get instant access to this class along with coaching, support and resources to transform your overwhelm into simple, easy to follow success strategies!

A friend of mine, Rob Schultz, was cleaning out some old files when he ran across an old flyer of mine from 2001. Wow, what a blast from the past.

Here it is:

melaniesgreatesthits.pdf

I hope you have a good laugh with this oldie but goodie. Of course, I had to share it with  my marketing team. The roar of laughter from Michele (my copywriter, www.michelepw.com) said enough. As we giggled at the massive transformation I’ve undertaken in the last 7 years, a few things really stand out.

• My old “Glamour Shots” picture. Especially after just investing a pretty penny in some new headshots, this old look really was a hoot.
• My $100 a month coaching program. It’s been a LONG TIME since those rates were available for one on one coaching programs, especially since my Platinum Elite program for 2008 is going to be limited to earners over $200k/year. That’s why I offer the ULTIMATE Wealth & Success Circle program — no matter where you are you can still get coaching support for just $9.95 the first month.
• The old “graphics”. Ugh. A bridge? Really?  I had no idea how much space I was wasting. It’s probably why I didn’t get a lot of clients from this old flyer!
• My very old…and no longer used…yahoo account! Nothing screams “novice, hobby business” more than a generic email account. I know some people are still using their AOL accounts but if you want to be considered a professional, you’ve got to get a professional email address.

Anything else that bears pointing out? Feel free to share it in the comments. I must say that looking at my old marketing materials just makes me smile and feel grateful for having made some excellent choices to surround myself with experts who helped me see the light!

Last week I saw a news post claiming that Donald Trump may have lost his key publicity machine, The Apprentice. I guess last year the show’s ratings were so low that NBC didn’t offer them the same time slot again. Wondering if Donald threw a fit, got bummed out or simply moved his focus to another project? Yeah, me too.

So what does a multi-millionaire do when a “cash cow” product loses its steam?

Here are 3 suggestions:

1. Retool. Can the product be saved by changing what isn’t working? Did America just get bored with the same contrived drama every week? Can the programming be changed to get people interested again?

In my own business, I found that one of my products wasn’t performing the way I wanted. There was a bunch of reasons why, including that some of the audio CDs included were of old teleclasses that were kind of dated. We took 4 months and repacked the entire program, took out what wasn’t working and re-released it. (You can see it at www.ultimatesuccessgenerator.com.)

2. Redirect. Sometimes it’s a case of the right idea but the wrong timing or group. What if The Apprentice works but just not on American TV anymore? Could the program be moved to Australia or Europe and pick up steam there?

Awhile back when coaching one of my clients, it appeared that he had hit a wall with one of his flagship products. Desolate and depressed, he was ready to throw in towel. I asked him to make a list of what did and didn’t work. Then we identified that he needed to shift his offer to an audience that was more closely aligned with what did work. Within 3 months, his revenue had tripled.

3. Regroup. Here is the bigger truth. Sometimes you have to let go of the old to make room for the new. If we just say comfortable with what has always worked then we miss bigger and better opportunities. What if The Apprentice didn’t continue and Trump focused his energies on something new?

Back to my own experiences again. For quite a few years I was known as the “Get Out of Overwhelm” expert. I was sought after on stage and for many teleclasses to help people get out of overwhelm while running their business. But many people began to talk about similar issues and the offers began to subside. After a brief pity party I realized it was time to find a new niche. That is when Virtual Team Building Secrets was born. (This is my interview series of 7 figure entrepreneurs who built their business using virtual assistants.)

If I hadn’t experienced the “shortage” of opportunities I would not have been tempted to find a new solution. Find your silver lining in every dark cloud.

We will have to wait and see what the final decision is on The Apprentice. Last I heard they were deciding what to do….I’ll keep you posted.

It’s with much sadness that my family has decided to move on from our beautiful little home outside of Los Angeles. It’s going on the market tomorrow.

My house in the “burbs” of Los Angeles

Even though we love this home, we ran into some very interesting obstacles that have proved to be insurmountable. As a success coach, I routinely advise people to identify the areas of their life that have tolerations, release things they are putting up with, or handle stuff they get distracted by because it isn’t the way they need it to be. This decision is the ULTIMATE in taking my own personal “Clean Sweep Challenge” so I thought I’d share with you my decision process.

1. My Home Office Needs

When we bought this house, we were told that DSL had just come to the area. Being slightly ignorant about the area we were surprised about the comment. What we quickly learned was it was “satellite DSL”. I had no idea how painful satellite is. Let’s just say that the first company was down as much as it was up. The 2nd company was five times as expensive and almost as slow as dial up. As an information marketer who uses the internet on a minute-by-minute basis, this has been one of the biggest tolerations in my life!!!!

To truly be as efficient and effective as I desire, the need for a fast, reliable DSL connection has won. I’m counting down the days till I can jump on my computer and visit web pages as quickly as I can blink my eyes (I can actually make a sandwich with the time it takes to load some pages!!!)

2. The

Oy Vey! When we looked at the house originally, the woman said, “Oh and you will love the peacocks, they are so beautiful. They make this really interesting noise too…kinda like a woman screeching.” Again, being ignorant to the daily life of peacocks, this didn’t phase us until….mating season!Imagine all around you, in trees, tops of fences and even your own yard are wild peacocks that are screaming louder than a bull horn. We later learned that no one will do anything to relocate them so the neighborhood is just screwed.

Again, the clean sweep challenge won in my heart. They are beautiful but highly annoying. They have ruined my lawn furniture with their big claws and decide that 3 am is a great time to start talking to each other — meaning I don’t get good sleep in my own bed. It’s just become unacceptable!

3. The neighborhood.

Have you ever heard the saying “You are as successful as the five people you spend the most time with.” Well, I’ve decided you are as sane as the sanity of the five people who live closest to you. Let’s just say that being out in the “country” give the freedom of keeping roosters, riding motorbikes past your front door and other undesirable behavior that I’m done putting up with. We also seem to have a lot of construction in our area so we regularly have big trucks, lots of dirt and noise, ……don’t mean to complain but I guess it’s just gotten under my skin!

It is truly amazing how when you have a certain standard of living and your neighbors choose not to live by it, how it affects your focus, energy and sanity. I probably would not have made the choice to leave on this issue alone, but it added up with the other 2 and, well, it’s just time to go.

I’ll keep you posted. With the real estate market the way it is this transition might take a while. I’m keeping my attention and energy on the perfect right timing for me, my family and the world around us. I know there is someone who would love the energy of this neighborhood…we have plenty of neighbors who love it here!

P.S. Want to do your own Clean Sweep Challenge and release things that are holding you back? Join us for the next one on October 5th at www.cleansweepchallenge.com. 

Well I finally went to my first real hollywood party. It was quite an experience as this was a unique Hollywood crowd….a blend of the spiritual, “make a difference crowd” with the industry scene and a big mansion in the Hollywood hills. Here are a couple of pictures of this house. The pool actually has a boat in it and the whole house was just outrageous in a modern-art deco kinda way. If you want to see more pictures of this house, you can go to http://www.mansion11.com/.


I had no idea what to expect. My friend and client Tracy Monteforte invited me as she was one of four presenters who were helping to kick off a spiritual movie to the industry. About half way through the evening, Tracy’s husband Pat sat down next to me and said, “You know this party is because of you.”

I sat there dumbfounded for a moment, trying to figure out what he was saying when it hit me. Pat said, “Yeah, remember when you called us in Hawaii about Chris Howard?”

It starts with Tracy & I. I coached Tracy and Pat a couple of years ago and we’ve stayed friends ever since. Last year, an opportunity came up to introduce Tracy to my mentor Chris Howard’s organization through Triscka Mallia. Triscka was working for Chris Howard as his Joint Venture coordinator. So I introduced them and Tracy attended all of Chris’ training and became one of his coaches. A woman named Pam Tam became Tracy’s client through the Chris Howard coaching programs. Pam had a dream to make this movie and it was through her coaching with Tracy and the support of her other mentors (including Jairek Robbins, Tony Robbins’ son) that this movie became a reality.

Did you track all that? Here is the bottom line. Without realizing it, and simply to help mutual friends make a connection that I thought would be mutually beneficial, a powerful, positive ripple effect occured that aligned the right people at the right place at the right time to help Pam get her movie out.

This party was the culmination of all of these ripples coming together for one big splash! Here are some pictures from the evening — the house was a blast and it was great to connect with some fun friends from the past.

Tracy Monteforte, Beth Schnieder, me and Triscka Mallia at the Hollywood shin-dig.

This is me trying out the groovy floating chair!

My friend Ian Rich, the “audio guy”. Ian now spends most of his time living in
Hong Kong so we were very blessed to have him with us.
Christopher Howard, my friend and mentor. Chris’ programs are
outstanding — I trained in NLP with him.
Tracy, Beth and I checking out the indoor Jaquzzi tub with a movie theater behind it!
This is Pat Monteforte’s (Tracy’s husband) dad. This is Kandy and myself cheering him up. =-)

Have you ever had one of those weeks that you felt like you were ready to give up? Maybe you felt the weight of the world on your shoulders, things aren’t going so well, lots of challenges to deal with and you start to wonder why you do what you do?

That’s how I was feeling early this month.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE my work but hey, every relationship has it’s ups and downs, right? I was definitly on the down swing. And I had two trips coming up and quite frankily , I was not that crazy about having to travel twice in one week.

But being the kind of person I am, I talked myself into my “coach” space, got my game face on, packed up and headed to the first of two of my mastermind retreats near the airport in Los Angeles, CA.

To kick off properly and really get reconnected to my purpose, Therese Skelly (the coach for the Business Accelerator Mastermind) and I got together on Sunday and attended Rev. Michael Beckwith’s Agape church service. If you haven’t had an opportunity, I highly suggest getting juiced up with Michael - talk about a mood change!

The Business Accelerator Mastermind

Michelle Dettman, Therese Skelly (the coach), Adam Hommey,
Mary Headley, Mary Kelso, Sheri Menelli, me, Stephanie Graziano.

The first two days were amazing. I watched these 6 people in the Business Accelerator Mastermind have their issues, doubts, frustrations and challenges melt away as the coaches and their mastermind partners (the rest of the group) brainstorm and sort out the fastest, most direct path to achieving their goals.

A few of the most powerful breakthroughs were:

1. Finding an easier path to the six-figure goal.
2. Realizing how “doing your own audio editing” was sucking up tons of time and commiting to give it to a professional.
3. Mapping out the “target audience” to make marketing message pop to attract lots of clients.
4. Identifying a new source of clients that were “right under our noses” and lining up an immediate gig.

Realizing that connecting with other brilliant business owners is essential to pushing yourself past comfort zones and achieving massive results!

This is just the tip of the ice berg…I’ll share more in my next post from the Platinum Mastermind experience too.

It is a Monday at 8:15 am and I’m half way through my workout. My personal fitness coach, Matt, is kicking my butt (again.) I’ve just stepped onto a machine that I hate — it’s a pull up machine. Matt is standing next to me saying, “Come on, you can do it. Breathe Melanie, breathe!” Every time Matt putts this machine in my workout I grumble because it is hard, uncomfortable and totally infuriating.

But as I laid down on the mat for another round of abdominal crunches, it dawned on me…my coaches are the reason I accomplish such huge results in my life. I have a coach for my mind and a coach for my body. Both of them challenge me to do and be more than I ever would for myself.

Today, Matt gave me a reward. We did my measurements and body fat. In the last 30 days I’ve lost 2 lbs of body fat and gone down more than an inch in my waist (that’s good progress for me!)

I was ecstatic and pumped so I jumped on the elliptical machine for another 20 minutes of cardio. When we feel like we are accomplishing results, we naturally want to do more!

Why am I telling you this?

Because this is why successful people hire coaches. Coaches challenge you to do more, work harder and accomplish greater results than you ever could on your own.Now, I’m not someone who likes to work out but the benefits are tremendous. Left to my own devices, I may muster up the stamina for a 15 minute walk around my neighborhood. With my fitness coach, I have accountability, focus and the drive I need to truly accomplish my desired results. With my personal coach, I work on blind spots, challenges and obstacles that I might just as soon not address.

The combined results — I have more energy and stamina. I am focused and clear on my high payoff activities. I accomplish major results in my life and my business.

On the days I don’t want to exercise are the days I’m most grateful for my fitness coach. These are the days I really don’t feel like doing what is best for my body. I’d rather cozy up to my computer and just work my buns off all day. But when you have accountability to someone else, you show up, you do the work, and you reap the rewards!

I’ve also noticed that I will accomplish more with my coach’s challenge than I would do on my own. It’s quite easy to fall into a comfort trap — doing just enough to get by. But with my coach challenging me to do a few extra repetitions and pile on another 5 lbs, I catapult my results forward.

One more thing. There have been months that I felt like I couldn’t afford my fitness coach (I also have a personal coach too.) In the beginning it was a HUGE stretch to commit to a big monthly “expense.” I realized that successful people hire coaches to challenge them to accomplish more. It is not an expense — it is an investment in my health, sanity and desired results. Without my coaches, I would not be able to perform at the top of my game consistently.

How about you? Do you have a coach that challenges you to achieve more? Share it in the comments.

Do you need a coach? Maybe one of our coaches will be a good fit for you. Visit www.successconnections.com for an overview of our coaching programs.

This last weekend I attended an event with Michael Gerber, author of the E-Myth Revisited. The event is a huge departure from his past ventures of teaching entrepreneurs to systemize and automate their businesses but let me explain why…

A few months ago when my friend Mitch Meyerson and I interviewed Gerber on the “In The Dreaming Room” concept. The interview (which you can access at www.successconnections.com/gerber) really compelled me to rethink my own vision so I signed up for his 2 1/2 day event.

The appeal for me was the focus of “Dreaming” based on Walt Disney’s “Dreaming Room” concept. The idea is that to truly create a world of meaning AND profit, we must connect with our most authentic and truthful vision of real success. And most of the time, the current vision we have been creating is just a smoke screen — something we created based on a limited understanding of who we really are in this world.
So here is my personal experience of the workshop.

1. I met some awesome people.
2. Being with business owners who study and implement Gerber’s E-Myth model really opened my eyes to a whole new dimension of possiblities.
3. My”hot seat” really got me thinking. I was one of the first people to get a hot seat so I had the disadvantage of not really having 2 days of watching others. I shared my vision for wanting to build an entrepreneurial education system for young adults. Gerber challenged me to really think through my business model. Then he went into coaching mode and completely lost me. Not sure I liked that part (nor did most of the people there) but the overall experience was worth every uncomfortable moment. =-)

I’d love to know if you decide to attend…the event is very provacative…very insightful…and very different than anything Gerber has done before. You can find upcoming dates available at www.meetmichaelgerber.com.