The entrepreneurs I see who are the most successful are the ones who have an extensive sales and marketing background OR those who have become extremely literate when it comes to the art and science of selling and marketing. If you have little sales background, commit to reading (or watching or listening) to at least 1 book a week on sales and marketing.  Anyone can get good at this stuff, It is really just a matter of applying yourself. I am positive after working one on one with over 400 people and by speaking to nearly 1000 groups that anyone can learn to be good at this stuff, it is not a trait that anyone is “born with” we all can find a style of sales and marketing that works for us.

I am a great example of this myself. I have never liked “hard selling” anyone on anything. It just goes against my grain. So, I found a ton of books on “relationship selling” and found it suited me much better to consult for people and help them find the best solutions for them, even if they didn’t involve hiring me or buying from me in any way. I found that if I was in front of enough people I didn’t have to squeeze the 6 people I had as prospects into paying me, I could simply let the people I helped over a period of months and years do my selling and good rumor spreading about me and the work started to come fast. Your job is to find a form of marketing that you can do consistently that you actually like. (I love to help people, so speaking and coaching and giving away helpful information is always going to be my best “free sample” marketing, and besides I love doing it!)

This is the single most powerful tool I have seen for your success. Famous motivational speaker and author Jim Rohn (he taught Tony Robbins and a few million other people how to be successful) said, “The book you don’t read can’t help you. If you want to be successful read books on success, if you want money there are plenty of books on money, a great relationship, you name it… but the book you don’t read can’t help you.”

Now, my favorite cool tip for people who are on a budget (hey, if you are an entrepreneur cash is king—you are always on a budget!) is to go over to your local library (they are so much more user friendly these days, really, and they are nice too) and assuming you already have a library card, ask for a pass code (usually the last 4 digits of your phone number or something easy like that) and the address of the libraries website that will allow you to access the entire library catalogue. I am not just talking about accessing the catalogue for that little tiny library you are standing in front of; I mean they give you the site for the entire region of libraries.

So, then you can go home and whenever you are on your computer you can use the catalogue just like you would if you were ordering a book from Amazon.com. Ask the site for a list books on selling, a list of CD’s available, or audio books by Brian Tracy on the psychology of sales or success, or books by Suze Ormand on money, or audiotapes of Jim Rohn, or Barbara D’Angeles on finding the right person to marry! (the list goes on) You then put a “hold” on the book and the library has a little mini post office system that goes around and picks up and drops off the books each day at each library in the system, so within a day or two all of your hold choices are sitting behind the nice librarian’s head at the library for you to pick up. (for about 2 dollars each they will even ship them directly to your house for you!) 90% of the new books I am looking for are already at the library, and if not mention it to the librarian and she will often purchase it for the library, if you think it looks interesting.

I often search Amazon for cool books on a subject and then open another browser to see if the book is available on the library system, if it is I order it with my “hold”.  (Then if I love the book I can go back and order it from Amazon later, but I am not stuck with thousands of so-so books that I got one idea out of and now need to find a place to shelve!) Your taxes are paying for this library stuff take advantage of it!

I order about 14 books and tapes and magazines every two weeks and pick them up and then make sure to return them in 14 days. That way, I read a book a day.

How, you say, can a girl with dyslexia read a book a day? Yes, a lot of my clients are cool authors and I do get to read all of their books and audio materials and, I took speed-reading and am now totally over compensating! But, it was a great thing to learn. Speed-reading is to reading what Fed-X is to mail. You know how Fed-X has that system where ALL the mail goes to one central location and is shipped out from there fast. Yet, it seems counterintuitive that that step of sending it all to one place first would speed things up, you would think it would slow them down or that it would be less accurate. But, that is what speed-reading is like. You aren’t just skimming the words you are taking them all in fast when you want to, and you can always read the old way when you feel like it too. Just like the post office is quite convenient when you don’t need it there over night.

Speed-reading gives me options, and it helps with the problem I have of the words jumping around on the page for me. Now, I can take in all the words and the order is less important, because my brain arranges them once I have taken in the whole page.

There is a great book by Mortimer Adler called How to read a book. (Remember how I said there was a book on everything) It taught me many things. It was particularly great for reminding me that there is no law that in order to read a book you must read every single page of the book, you can pick and choose the parts that are relevant to you right now. You can always get the book again later, but even if you just read the headings you would be smarter a year from now than you are now!