Three Secrets to a Happy Life as an Expat
Adventure drives possibilities.
Wide-eyed and full of courage, at 17 Cécile decided to spend a year in the USA. She sampled life at an American high school in Pennsylvania. She had a taste of life abroad and couldn’t wait to do it again. After graduation, she returned to US soil to begin her career. “I had a thirst for knowledge because it always precedes clarity. I was eager to work with as many different departments as possible so that I could find my true calling,” she explains.
Vacation creates time for reflection and insights.
After spending two months in Costa Rica, she realized she needed a career change. So she embarked on a new journey in France enrolling in new studies. Right before she started, she heard about New Caledonia and learned about a new southern mining plant project, so she changed her mind. She arrived in Noumea in 2007 and never looked back!
When we asked her what the key to success was for expat life, she shared 3 secrets.
Keeping family values close to heart. Did you know that 1/3 of international assignments fail because of family issues? As it turns out, family is critical for success. Cécile always prioritized her relationship with her family throughout her adventures. “When I first left in 1992, we relied on the postal service for letter communication. Thankfully technology has evolved to make staying in touch so much easier, » she states. Although the pandemic has hindered her ability to travel home right now, Cécile is relying even more on online communications with her friends and family. Work-life balance is necessary to thrive. When surveying our workforce, work-life balance was ranked as one of the top two career goals. Cécile agrees wholeheartedly that achieving a high quality of life is the secret to creating a life worth living. Having amassed an impressive list of professional achievements, she’s now focusing on personal goals and family life. “Life goes by in the blink of an eye. For me having a well-rounded life includes achieving success in both professional and personal aspects of life, the latter of which is too often overlooked in the pursuit of career success,” she shared. A strong person-organization fit. When your alignment is off, it’s like having unbalanced wheels. The car drives funny and will eventually break down. When it comes to work, it’s the same. Alignment between the person and company is not optional. You need to feel the fit in your gut and trust your instincts. “I’ve found a challenging workplace and this makes my work life better. My personal style is a perfect match for the company’s values. Having work synergy is the key to be successful,” confessed Cécile.
Keeping an open mind allows you to seize opportunities. It was this very sense of adventure that created an appetite for life as an expat and is the reason she’s still in New Caledonia. “It’s been an exciting journey to grow with the company and be a part of its evolution. Even after two years and I’m still learning new things every day, which keeps me happy,” she exclaimed. We’re delighted she took that first step to try life out in the USA. Sometimes it’s one small seemingly insignificant decision that can change your whole life.
3 Secrets to Sales Funnel Success
Intro to Adam Bensman: The following article is written by a contributor, Adam Bensman from Brain Hickey. Adam is a master copywriter, who knows how to grab an audience’s attention by creating fun-to-read, conversion-focused copy. He and I have worked together on several projects and he’s one smart guy worth listening to.
You’re about to learn the secrets behind high converting sales funnels.
Successful sales funnels have 3 ingredients. Master all three ingredients and you’ll have a high converting sales funnel.
Miss the mark on any one of these ingredients and your conversion will drop dramatically. You’ll slowly sink like a ship taking on water.
Think of it like this… a well designed, well-executed sales funnel acts like a set of blueprints. Master it once, and it becomes easier and easier to replicate in the future.
The general flow of a sales funnel looks like this:
There are several ways to work visitors through your sales funnel. You can use a combination of landing pages (squeeze pages), video sales letters, email, or retargeting. But today, we’re less focused on the structure of the sales funnel, and more focused on the finishing touches of the sales funnel.
Truth is, your sales funnel could be set up perfectly and still fail. Why? Think of it like this. Imagine walking into a brand new custom home, but the house is still just bare wall studs.
Does it have the same wow factor and appeal as the fully finished home? Why not? It’s the same house, the same structure, and the same floor plan?
Your sales funnel is built into the studs of the fancy custom house… it’s the bones… the structure… the integrity of the flow, but visitors can’t see that once the house is finished. People don’t care much about how the house is built, they care about what they can see, touch, and feel.
Since the only thing visitors see is the finished product, it’s all that matters… not what’s in the walls.
Focusing first on the 3 secrets to sales funnel success allows you to build your sales funnel around it. Using the house analogy – sketch your dream home layout first, then draw the blueprints.
Let’s hop to it. Here are the 3 secrets to building a successful sales funnel.
1. POSITION your offer to your prospect’s greatest desires.
Focus everything you talk about on the number one greatest benefit to your target market. What do they want? ← Fulfill that, and you’re golden.
People don’t really care about the why, they care about fulfilling their own desires. Do most people care how fresh, clean drinking water made it to every tap in their house? NO. They just want fresh, clean water on demand.
Position your product around what people want from your product or services. How does it make their lives better?
2. CONTINUITY of message. Build upon the story through each stage of the funnel.
Failing to have continuity will destroy your conversion. This is probably the most important part of your sales funnel… continuity of message.
Imagine clicking on an ad: “Free Template To Increase Sales Using Email!” and the next offer you see is trying sell you a $400 class on logo design, you’d probably scratch your head in confusion and leave, right?
Unfortunately, I see this time and time again. What you need to do is this. Build your story along each stage in the sales funnel. Example:
See how the message is linear and consistent? Each stage builds upon the previous stage offering more and more… providing solutions for the visitors desires. If a visitor wants to increase email sales they are going to walk themselves through the buying process.
3. AUTOMATION of follow-ups using email autoresponders.
Every single sales funnel should be using email automation. Period.
When a visitor clicks to download the free offer, you need to send an email instantly.
Subject: CONFIRMATION: Your Email Sales Template
Remind them of what they downloaded, link to it again, build trust, and explain the problems your products or services solve.
Of course, this is just the first email from an entire series. Remember, these are pre-written emails that are in cue to send out automatically at predetermined times. You’ll want to stay in touch with your prospect via automation for about 30-45 days.
This is the golden ticket to automating your online sales. Do it.
Of course, sending the right emails at the right time is essential. I walk you through how I do it in my Podcast Episode 005 (it’s free, obviously).
Wrapping It Up
Now it’s your turn. You have, or are going to build, a sales funnel. It’s the only way to thrive in online sales and lead generation.
It’s time to build your custom house. Start sketching your floorplans before putting together the blueprints. After all, you wouldn’t want to put the doorway in the wrong place. No one likes dueling doors.
Start with the 3 secrets to sales funnel success. Positioning, continuity, and automation. Now that your floor plan is sketched, you can build your funnel around it.
Start with the end in mind. Take your upsell and ask yourself,
“What free or low cost offering could I make that someone who buys my highest end product would want?”
Boom. There is your free/low cost entry opportunity. Now build your call-to-action around enticing your reader to redeem your offer.
Now build your landing page, blog, or copy around that concept.
Secrets of Success in 8 Words [VIDEO] Richard St. John
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What are the secrets of success?
Why do some people succeed seemingly overnight?
Is it because they’re smart, or are they just lucky?
Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews into an unmissable 3-minute presentation on the real secrets of success. The video is based on his book.
Watch this insightful 3-minute video about what are the critical success factors? Seven years and 250 interviews to find out what makes TEDsters tick helped to uncover the following key points. Now, what are the secrets of success?
8 Secrets of success summary
Create processes in your life that help you succeed. Processes become habits, and habits bring you results. Focus on what you are putting in every day, and the results take care of themselves. I added success quotes to the points to help you better understand the standards for success.
Tony Robbins: Ultimate Edge Your guide to getting the most out of life regardless of the circumstances that confront you and achieving the results you want. Be it your finances, relationships, body, emotions, time—everything that matters to you most. Take a look at the tools necessary to make your life extraordinary
1. Passion
You do it because you really really want to do it.
Passion can come from within when you want to grow yourself. Maybe you want to become a better writer. Or it may be something you see that you think needs changing. Clean up the world oceans or put a man on Mars. Sometimes you want to help others. Educate kids or give shelter to others.
Go out into the world with your passion and love for what you do, and just never give up. ~ Dianne Reeves
But sometimes you don’t have the passion to begin with. Just put in the work, and as you get better, you will find the passion.
2. Work
Hard work and having fun doing it.
Some work is fun. I sometimes lose myself in my work for hours. Sometimes it’s not! When the going gets tough, take it as a willpower exercise. The hard feeling is in your head. Learn to deal with it, and you can do anything. Hard work may also mean long hours. Build up your stamina to last longer than others.
I have tried to make work more palatable by taking it as a willpower exercise. As when you go to the gym and work out to put on some muscle, the individual reps may not be especially enjoyable. But you get the feeling of accomplishment, and you know you took another step towards your goals.
2A. Good
Being damn good about the thing you do. Practice, all the time.
The only way you will get better is repeatedly doing the things that are hard to do. Practice the things you struggle with. Deliberately challenge yourself until you master the skills you need. And then keep going to achieve true mastery.
If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all. ~ Michelangelo
3. Focus
Make up your mind and do that one thing with all you’ve got. Always single-task.
I’ve had the problem of doing too many things at once for a long time. I still have problems focusing. Everything is so interesting. But focusing on one thing will get you results faster than you can imagine. On a smaller scale, do one thing at the time.
Don’t multitask!
Avoid distractions.
Turn off notifications.
Take time to focus.
You can’t foucus in 5 minutes. Find ways to do deep work, where you can put your head down and work on something for several hours. The results you will get are incredible.
Check out the book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide a sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship.
In short, deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive 21-century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep, spending their days in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.
4. Push
Make yourself go. Don’t stop mentally, physically. Through doubts and shyness.
Just go! Self-doubt, the nay-sayers, people who do not believe in you. The times you fail at something. Every time you fall, get up! Just keep going!
Instead of letting the hard times get me down, I’ve learned to keep going at to look for the hidden good. ~ Paul J. Meyer
5. Ideas
Notice things around you, be curious, solve problems, make connections.
Become an idea machine. Make your brain work on overdrive. Getting better at generating ideas is something you can train. The first thing in the morning, come up with 10 ideas. Every day! Read about how to become an idea machine in this James Altucher blog post.
Every morning sit down and write 10 ideas about anything
Do this 100 days in a row or forever
You can toss the ideas or give them to someone who may use them
In a year, you will have 3650 ideas. Most of them are crap. The ideas are rarely worth the paper you write them on.
But you have become an idea machine. Whenever you have to come up with ideas, you have no trouble at all.
As a bonus, you may have helped a friend with your ideas.
Creative thinking inspires ideas. Ideas inspire change. ~ Barbara Januszkiewicz
6. Improve
Continuous improvement is the key to all significant accomplishments. Most people can run a marathon below 4 hours. It takes time to get there, but almost everybody can do it. It will take about 8 to 12 months to reach this goal. Step by step, improving every day. If you haven’t run in your life and you are 100 pounds overweight, then it will take a year longer, but you will still get there.
Whatever you do, when you improve:
1 percent per day you will improve 37 times by the end of the year
1 percent a week you will improve 67 percent by the end of the year
1 percent every month you will improve 12.6 percent by the end of the year and 3.3 times in 10 years
For most activities, 1% per day is unrealistic. But run 1% faster every week will get you a lot faster by the end of the year. Increase your net worth 1% per month by investing and saving. In 10 years, your net worth will more than triple.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. ~ Ernest Hemingway
7. Serve
Give others something of value.
Maybe sometimes your motivation is money. It’s OK! The first thing you have to do in an emergency on an airplane is to put the oxygen mask on, then help others.
The same applies to your personal finances. If you have nothing to give you are in no position to help. But when you start to make ends meet, help those more unfortunate.
And of course, you can always help with a kind word or lending a hand.
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another. ~ Charles Dickens
8. Persist
Go through failures, criticism, rejection, assholes, pressure, just don’t give up.
Set up your standards for success in a way that depend on you and not on the approval of others. Deconstruct your big goals in a way that you can complete smaller goals every day. Your standards will make your road to success easier as you stay motivated.
Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. ~ Winston Churchill
Above all Trust Yourself: Arnold Schwarzenegger Six Rules – Many of us are insecure. We feel like hacks. Check out 6 rules of success that help you fulfill your dreams.
To persist in the economic crisis check out the steps I used in the last downturn and follow now.
The secrets of success book is called “The ultimate guide to success.” It’s an inspiring and practical guide to achievement that makes success understandable. Richard St. John spent 10 years researching success and doing interviews with Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Robin Williams, Martha Stewart, Steven Spielberg, the Google founders, five Nobel Prize winners, and 500 other super successful people.
From that, he discovered the 8 traits of successful people, and these “8 To Be Great” are the foundation for success in any career. The so-called secrets of successful people. Check it out on Amazon.
Richard St. John – Marketer, success analyst
An average guy who found success doing what he loved, Richard St. John spent more than a decade researching the lessons of success — and distilling them into 8 words, 3 minutes and one successful book. He spent the next ten years researching success and asking over 500 extraordinarily successful people in many fields, what helped them succeed. This led to his 8 secrets of success.
“It’s so great. It’s such a boost of confidence. The secrets of success book really gives you a lot of self-esteem about who you are, and that you really can be somebody.” — Thomas Fischer, Habitat for Humanity
When you are interested in this book, then you might want to read another willpower book from this list.
Bonus 1: How to Succeed if 9 in 10 Businesses Fail?
Have you heard somebody say that 9 out of 10 businesses fail in a few years? How to succeed then? It is really that simple: to beat these odds; you have to start 10 times.
Happily, for entrepreneurs, this “fact” is total BS, and you shouldn’t worry much about that.
The real numbers from the US census show that about half of the businesses make it to year 5. What is even more encouraging is that 1/3 is still in business after 10 years. It is also important to note that these companies do not all crash and burn. Yes, some go bankrupt, but others are shut down because of other reasons.
So, go ahead, start now!
Bonus 2: The 3 Secrets of Highly Successful Graduates
The other day, I found these slides on SlideShare. A really short and compelling story about how to understand what you want to do and how to get there. The slides are not just for the people who have just graduated. Developing yourself and growing is a lifelong habit.
The 3 Secrets of Highly Successful Graduates by Reid Hoffman: Today’s graduates don’t feel ready for the new world of work. I share three things that successful professionals eventually figure out about their careers.
The presentation touches many of the tips I have written about over the last month:
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