​Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach
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There are many different types of inner circles that you can create in order to expand your business. But, the idea is that you offer great value to a few people for less work than one-on-one work. You can use inner circles for group coaching, teleseminars, webinars and more. However, you need to know how to get started.

1. Grow Your Business – First, it’s important to focus on growing a client base, an email list, and a following on social media. You want to have a good number of clients / customers that you service before you start an inner circle.

1. Increase Your Credibility – Work on your credibility factor by participating in your social media networks, responding to emails quickly, and improving your profiles. Write more guest posts, get your name out there and show yourself walking the talk.

1. Build Your Authority – Guest blogging, blogging on your own website, being interviewed on radio or for print publications, and getting your name known as an authority within your niche are important ways to build your authority. You can also write a book and publish it.

1. Create a Private Community – You can start with a free private Facebook group to test out your draw. If you get enough people onto the free group, you can start marketing a paid inner circle with more benefits than just discussions.

1. Develop Content for Your Community – Decide what type of content you’ll deliver in your paid inner circle. Will you offer webinars, teleseminars, group opportunities? And how often? How much work are you going to put into this part of your community?

1. Offer Tremendous Value – When you start a paid inner circle, it’s imperative that you offer a lot of value to the subscriber. People expect a lot for something called inner circle because they want to get as close to you, the expert, as possible.

1. Charge the Right Fee – Put together how much work it’s going to take to offer the inner circle, how much effort you want to put in, and then charge accordingly. If it’s going to take you 20 hours a month working on the community, then you need to charge the right amount. Granted you will be spreading the offer out to multiple people, so the fee each individual is charged won’t be as high as one-on-one time.

1. Make the Offer Limited – Don’t allow just anyone into your inner circle. If you decide that you’ll limit the group to 50 people, stick to that. Price your group accordingly. If it fills super-fast you can raise the price later.

 
Creating an inner circle that feeds your audience and you can be a challenge. But, once you do it, you can learn so much from your inner circle. This will help you with product and service creation, make your current offers better, and increase the lifetime value of each customer.
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Did you like this post?  Was it helpful?  If you have a question or a comment please let me know.   You can put them in the feed with my blog post or email them directly to me at doreen@doreendilger.com.   You’re feedback would be greatly appreciated! 

​Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach
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Creating an inner circle is almost a no-brainer when it comes to generating income for your business. You can charge for the inner circle, or you can use the inner circle as a product-generating test audience. It’s up to you how you choose to conduct business, but one thing is for sure - inner circles can increase your income substantially.

1.    Offer Exclusive Webinars – When you have an idea for a webinar, try it out on your inner circle first. If you have a paid group, offer them a steep discount, or offer the webinar free as part of the monthly fee. You can then sell the recording of the webinar as a product to others, or use what you learned to improve the webinar content for a wide open audience in general sales.

2.    Offer Private Training – A really effective inner circle often offers training either included or at a discount to members. Training can be anything from an email course to a video drip course, depending on the technology you offer. It can be an add-on to the initial membership or it can be offered for free or for a low price to the inner circle.

3.    Have Members' Only Sales – When you have members, push out everything you ever sell to them first, with a members’ only price, for a limited time. This is a great way to get testimonials, feedback and ideas for improvement before general release.

4.    Host Value-Packed Teleseminars – A great benefit for a paid membership is a monthly teleseminar based on a particular topic of interest for your audience. Let’s say you’re an organizational coach. You could have a call that is all about the best ways to organize a closet. You can even have special guests.

5.    Send Special Offers to Members – Your members want to feel special. If you know about a product or service that is exceptional and relates to them, you can promote it to them even if you will make affiliate income. It’s okay; if you are a high producing affiliate, talk to the product creator and ask for a special discount for your audience.

6.    Host Elite Small Group Coaching Sessions – You can upsell your inner circle members to a smaller inner circle, such as a mastermind session with a small group of five or less individuals. You can lead the call and charge a premium for your time. Say the session is for one hour on FreeConferenceCalls.com, you allow five in a group, and you can offer a limited availability of four groups a week charging each person $29.97 or more each week to attend. This will increase your income by $600 or more a week.

7.    Offer Special One-on-One Coaching - Your most expensive asset is your one-on-one time. In the example above, you’re making $149.85 an hour. For private coaching you should at least double that fee for one-on-one access to your expertise.

8.    Create Products Especially for Members – Periodically ask your members what types of products or services they need. Then work hard to produce at least something that they’ve asked for. If you’re not sure what to go with, just send out a survey and let them pick one thing from the other.

An inner circle can earn money in so many ways. Just staying connected with your target audience in a close way will help you create so many more products and services for your audience that you may not have considered. You’ll have, right at the tip of your fingertips, the ability to ask your audience in a direct manner what type of products or services they want. Then you can test them on that audience first before opening them to the general public. Inner circles are a win-win for you and your audience.

Did you like this post?  Was it helpful?  If you have a question or a comment please let me know.   You can put them in the feed with my blog post or email them directly to me at doreen@doreendilger.com.   You’re feedback would be greatly appreciated! 

 Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach
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Today, a social media profile can either make you or break you. If you haven’t given a lot of thought to your profiles, then it’s time to pay attention to them. Most people, before following, liking, or friending you on social media will click and look at your profile to ensure that you’re the type of person they want to follow. 

Not only that - potential clients, customers, and employers look at social media profiles to determine whether or not they want to do business with you. Thankfully, it’s not that hard to make a good profile and you can use components of any profile on one social media network, tweak it and use it on another. After all, you want your profiles to be cohesive across all channels.

1. It Starts with a Great Photo:  If you’re creating a personal profile to represent yourself as a business owner, then you need a great headshot that represents the professional tone of your industry. Set up a good photoshoot with changes of clothing. Make sure to get your hair and makeup professionally done for a photoshoot. Great places to find people to take pics and do your hair and makeup at a low price are local colleges and university photography and cosmetology students.

2.Provide Directed Information:  You don’t need to put everything you’ve ever done on your profiles. Instead, pick and choose what you put on the profile based on what you’re trying to accomplish. Remember to phrase everything toward your audience. They should read your profile and immediately understand what you do, who you do it for, and why you do it. 

3.Distinguish Yourself from Others: Depending on the platform you’re using, outside of your picture you probably have other things that can showcase what you do for people. Some social media networks like LinkedIn allow you to put video, slide shows, PDF documents and more for your audience to be able to review what you do and the results of what you’ve done.

4.Keywords Still Matter:  If you want to position yourself as an expert and authority in your niche, learn the keywords and terms that are used to find those experts. That way, when someone searches for someone who does what you do, they can find you because you’ve used the right keyword phrases and words in your descriptions, summary, and experience.

5.Keep It Up-to-Date:  You want to try to at least update your profile on a monthly basis. Update your status as often as the network average. For example, they say to update Twitter three to five times a day, Facebook about three or four times a day, Instagram once a day, and LinkedIn once a day. If there is no activity on the profile it will seem as if you aren’t active in your business. People might pass you up. 

6.Don’t Keep Professional and Personal Separate:  I am a big believer that your potential clients need to know and trust you.  What better way for them to know and trust you by seeing your personal side not just your business side.  

Making an awesome profile is an important component in being active in any community. Creating a stand-out profile requires just a little effort and can be done over time in just a few minutes a day. Take the time to work on one aspect on one social network each day and your profiles will truly be wow-worthy.

Did you like this post?  Was it helpful?  If you have a question or a comment please let me know.   You can put them in the feed with my blog post or email them directly to me at doreen@doreendilger.com.   You’re feedback would be greatly appreciated! 

Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach
One of the ways to get more things done is to simply make it harder to procrastinate. There are tricks that you can use to help your mindset work for you instead of against you. It helps if you understand what you’re supposed to do and the expectations of the project, as well as your own personality.

1. Outline the Entire Project – The only way to set a realistic deadline is to totally understand everything that needs to be done for the final result to be complete. It doesn’t matter if the project involves building a website, writing a business plan, or losing weight. Outline all the steps that it takes to get to the end result.

 

1. Understand the Scope of the Project – If outside parties are involved, you need to ensure that you understand the full scope of the project. Learn to ask the right questions so that you can get a complete understanding of the final result of the project.

 

1. Know What Resources You Need - Once you get all the information, you can determine what resources you need. Will you need outside help? What will their timeline be? How does that affect yours?

 

1. Set Smaller Mini Goals with Deadlines – This is one of the most important aspects of any deadline. Don’t just set a due date for the project; set mini goals with deadlines, for each aspect of the project. For example, if you are a writer who wants to finish an 80,000 word young adult novel, how much can you realistically write in a day? Do you really want to write every single day? Be realistic; set a deadline to write 500 words a day three days a week from 7pm until 10 pm each evening, skipping your Thursday must-see TV night.

 

1. Determine When, Where, and How – If you have everything set up and you know when you’ll do it, exactly where it will happen and what tools you’ll use to do it, it’s more than likely you’re going to do it. Don’t leave things to chance. Have contingencies. What will I do if the power goes out? If there is an emergency, how will I flip my schedule?

 

1. Look at Your Schedule Every Night and Every Morning – Even if you set up reminders for yourself, it’s a good practice to check your schedule each morning and each night. Check off what you did each day, so that you feel accomplished. Remind yourself of what you’re doing tomorrow as a last act of work for the day.

 

1. Do Other Things on Your List – When there is a task that you have scheduled but you really just do not want to do that right now, and it’s not imperative that it be done that moment, you can flip your schedule. Find something else to do on the list. Even if you leave that one thing you hate doing last, and do it by day’s end, you still succeeded.

 

1. Understand Yourself – A final thing that you must know to make procrastination harder is the truth about yourself. If you find that you’re actually sabotaging yourself and missing deadlines, and it's causing problems in your life, perhaps it’s time to seek help through counseling or a life coach.

 
It’s important that you know yourself and your personality type. Some personality types are more impulsive than others and are prone to not wanting to do things that seem to be low in value. But, using these tips can help you make procrastination harder. And even if you procrastinate on certain tasks, at least you’re still doing something productive.
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Did you like this post?  Was it helpful?  If you have a question or a comment please let me know.   You can put them in the feed with my blog post or email them directly to me at doreen@doreendilger.com.   You’re feedback would be greatly appreciated! 

Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach
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There are a lot of ways to increase your income and set yourself up for success. One of them is to find ways to create multiple streams of income. What that means is that you have different ways to bring in income that don’t depend on each other. For example, you may provide a service, sell a product, host paid mastermind groups, create an inner circle, provide coaching and more. There are many things you can do that will enable you to bring stability to your income so that you don’t have all your eggs in one basket.

1. Blogging – You can earn money blogging by getting your name out there, becoming popular in your niche, and building up traffic to your blog. You can make money off ads, sponsored posts, affiliate products and more.

2. Email Marketing – Collect targeted audience information (from a form on your blog), and you can then market affiliate products, information products, training programs and more to them.

3. Information Marketing – Do you know things that have worked for you in some area of life within a particular niche? If so, you can create and sell information products, such as books and videos, which teach your audience something valuable.

4. Affiliate Marketing – This type of marketing works both ways. If you have information products or other types of products that you sell of your own, you can create a program that allows other people to promote the product and earn a small commission. Conversely, you can do the same by selling products for a commission on your website, blog, and in email marketing.

5. Training Programs – While information products are sometimes types of training products, you can go far more in depth with the training. You can create a drip eCourse for email, or by using some form of learning management system on your website.

6. Continuity Programs – One of the best ways to earn money is to create a monthly recurring program that never ends. They pay by subscription. There are many types of examples of this, such as a paid inner circle or private group.

7. Coaching Programs – If you’re successful running a particular type of business, you can actually start coaching people on the side about how to do what you’ve done. This can be a lucrative extra stream of income.

8. Online Communities – A popular stream of revenue is online communities such as mastermind groups, inner circles, and private groups that you can only enter if you pay and are part of the right audience. Typically space is limited.

These are just a few of the ways you can create multiple streams of income online. There are also ways you can do it offline such as savings, investing, rental income, and more. This will keep you from being stuck trading hours for dollars, which inherently limits your income.

Did you like this post?  Was it helpful?  If you have a question or a comment please let me know.   You can put them in the feed with my blog post or email them directly to me at doreen@doreendilger.com.   You’re feedback would be greatly appreciated! 

Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach
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One of the biggest factors in getting things done for many people is the struggle with procrastination. Procrastination, according to the dictionary means: “The action of delaying or postponing something.” When you read that definition, doesn’t it strike you as interesting? The word “action” should mean something. When you procrastinate, you’re taking an action, an action that sabotages your ability to do a good job. Why not take action toward success instead?

1. Understand Perfectionism – Many people self-sabotage through procrastination due to wanting everything to be perfect. The problem is that perfect doesn’t exist. The best thing you can do is to do your best on something, but get it done. Done is always better. People who are successful aren’t better than you; they just got it done.

2. Improve Your Self-Esteem – A big issue with chronic procrastinators is lack of self-esteem. Building self-esteem requires that you believe in yourself and ensure that the internal voices are positive. Tell yourself that you can do it. It’s bad enough if you have outside influences that are degrading your worth. Don’t allow yourself to be your own bully.
3. Move through Self-Doubt – Many times procrastination happens because you are questioning yourself and whether or not you’re the right person to do it. You genuinely feel as if you’re not educated enough, or smart enough, or the right person for the job. But, you’ve been chosen for some reason; you may as well do it and learn as you go. Most people learn as they go, even surgeons.

4. Disconnect – When you have things to get done, turn off all unneeded outside influences such as the TV, social media, and the telephone other than some sort of emergency. Of course, you can turn off the phone and check messages every 90 minutes. Most of the time there is nothing you can do in a true emergency anyway.

5. Get Moving – Sometimes if you’re feeling like procrastinating on something, you need a change of scenery. Or if that’s not possible, you need a bust of energy. The best way to accomplish this is to get up and move around. Take a brisk walk, jump up and down, turn on some music and dance for five minutes. Then get back to work with a timer requiring you work for a certain time before you stop.

6. Create a Realistic Schedule – Some people procrastinate because their schedule is not realistic and they’re exhausted. Be honest with what you can accomplish in a given day. People are so busy these days, especially if you have children in after-school activities, elderly parents, or other issues causing havoc on your day. Be realistic; put everything in your schedule so that you really know what you’re up against.

7. Put It in Your Calendar – Once you have everything written down that you need to do, put it in your calendar. Everything including down time should be scheduled for the procrastinator. If you have a night-time routine such as showering, shaving, brushing and reading, put that in your schedule too.

8. Set Up Reminders – Most electronic calendars have the ability to set up reminders and alarms. This can be very helpful to many procrastinators because you know that when that alarm goes off you can do something else. That makes doing the stuff you don’t want to do so much easier to get through, because you get to do something else soon.

9. Be Accountable – It can help to find an accountability partner to assist you with procrastination issues. Set up a way to check in with someone each week to discuss whether or not you accomplished the things you set out to accomplish. This can be a friend, a mentor, or a paid coach.

10. Reward Yourself – When you get through a day doing everything on your list, give yourself a reward of some sort. You can earn points and cash in the points to do something fun. It’s better to have an experience such as a massage than to reward yourself with food.

Procrastination is often really just a sign of believing you need to be perfect, fear of judgment, and doubting that you can do it right. When you set up your day to overcome those internal issues, you can stop procrastination in its tracks.

Did you like this post?  Was it helpful?  If you have a question or a comment please let me know.   You can put them in the feed with my blog post or email them directly to me at doreen@doreendilger.com.   You’re feedback would be greatly appreciated! 

Written by Doreen Dilger, The Home Based Business Coach
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The truth is, relationships are so imperative in business that without them you will not be able to create a profit. You’ll need to build relationships with many different types of people. Relationships with vendors, contractors, employees, clients and customers are all part of doing business. In fact, some will argue that relationships are one of your most important assets in your business.

1.    They Build Trust – Relationships give you time to build and develop trust so that a business deal can be made without worry. That doesn’t mean you don’t still make contracts, but it does mean that you have some assurance based on the relationship that the contract will be honored. 

2.    Increase Your Average Earnings – Most people earn the average of the five people they’re closest to. This goes to show if you want to increase your income then you need to cultivate relationships with people who earn the amount of money you want to earn. 

3.    Strong Connections Predict Success – Studies show that people who develop community connections and strong relationships tend to have a better quality of life, and become more successful than those who don’t connect with others.

4.    Managing Relationships Takes Skill – There are many different aspects of building relationships that you will need to use in business. This includes having the right mindset, as well as the ability to develop processes and the multiple skills that will enable you to manage multiple types of relationships.

5.    They Build Strategy and Leadership – When you understand that relationships are part of the strategy you use to develop leadership, you can go so much further than you ever thought. Mainly, because this is how humans thrive. Whether personal or business relationships, they’re an important component in life.

6.    Help You Manage Risk – When you build relationships before you do business with someone, it’s a great way to manage risk. You’re less likely to suffer problems if you’ve done your due diligence and taken the time to get to know someone a little before doing business with them.

7.    Relationships Create Value – When you build relationships with your audience, you can get to know them better so that you can create even more value for them. You will get an inside view of what their problems are so you can develop more solutions and value for your customers.

8.    The Right Relationships Increase Knowledge – Believe it or not, the more people you meet and cultivate relationships with, the more you can increase your knowledge. It’s all about resources. You don’t have to know everything; you can surround yourself with smart people that you can approach when you have a question. Not only that, you can also find more people to outsource to that you trust.

9.    They Improve Joint Venture Opportunities – One way to earn more money is through joint ventures. Short-term partnerships in different projects that you both offer a particular skillset to can help improve your reach, as well as your income.
These are just a few of the reasons why building relationships is so important. They can mean the difference between success and failure. 

Did you like this post?  Was it helpful?  If you have a question or a comment please let me know.   You can put them in the feed with my blog post or email them directly to me at doreen@doreendilger.com.   You’re feedback would be greatly appreciated!