If you don’t know what’s driving your Audience, you’ll never convince them to buy into your Brand. So let's talk about climbing inside the minds of your target market/target Audience.

 “A good teacher is like a good entertainer. First, he must hold his Audience ’s attention, and then he can teach his lesson.”

Those are the words of John Henrik Clarke.   

Every Brand must solve a problem for their Audience . But if you don’t know what your Audience  wants, how can you help them solve anything? And remember, you are the Visionary and the face of your Brand. You will be at the heart of all of your content - putting yourself out there. If you don’t capture their emotions, you won’t entertain them. And if you don’t entertain them, you will lose them.  

PS. If you’re not sure what we’re talking about here, check out our previous blog about Brand Emotions - you should start...

Stop scrolling…

It’s not everyday I hand out free advice. But the lack of social media knowledge in the digital space is driving me crazy.

So as usual, I’m getting raw and real on how my wife, my team, and I help our clients build 6- and 7-figure businesses by leaning heavily on social. 

Nailing a plan of action that gets your business out there — frequently mingling with the public — can feel more like a stomach bug rather than excitement-induced butterflies.  

But to keep your online business buzzing, you have to maintain a strong and consistent presence on social media. 

As a business owner you need to stop consuming social media and start producing it and using it.

So how do you get the ‘likes’ rolling in? 

To caption this: it can be overwhelming to know where to start. 

But I’ve got some good news for you, so grab a pen while you get those social apps downloading. 

As experts in the digital...

Hear me out…

I know you’re eager to arrive at your destination – the sanctuary of your thriving online business and the freedom lifestyle you always hear me preaching about. 

But if you toss the map and hop in the fast lane, you might do yourself more harm than good.

Sure, I’ve shared some secrets, shortcuts, and tricks in the past, but there’s one key ingredient that hasn’t gotten much love because, frankly, it ain’t too sexy.

Delayed gratification.

The one secret everybody ought to know about building an online business is to harness the power of delayed gratification.

I get it — not what you wanted to hear. Boring, V…

But when you transform your mindset from immediate results to “delayed gratification,” you’re making a seismic shift in your strategy that will pay huge dividends down the road. 

Delayed gratification is a hush-hush industry secret that separates the strong from the weak, the lazy...

Set your alarm…

It’s time to experience the intoxicating freedom that comes with digital entrepreneurship. 

Consider this your final kick in the pants. The last nudge — or perhaps, shove — to help you finally get online and discover the freedom lifestyle. 

Look, just 5 years ago, I was in your shoes.

I was running a brick-and-mortar fitness facility, which I thought was the be-all and end-all of my career. Sure, it was a successful endeavor, but the early mornings, long nights, and constant grind was taking a tremendous toll on me.

I’d already learned I wasn’t wired to work for someone else, and the 5-year lease on my Orange County wellness studio clearly wasn’t the answer either.

I had that dreadful feeling of being stuck. A feeling you’re all too familiar with. Stuck to a cubicle, office, commute, schedule, etc.  

Finally, the alarm rang. A wake-up call of sorts that I was determined to answer. The same wake-up...

Your mind is in the way.

(It happens to the best of us.)

Somewhere in your life you got preconditioned to think certain numbers mean a lot of money. But, those are preconceived notions, not laws, or rules.

I used to think that $1,000/m was expensive. But, nowadays when I invest over $7k/m in coaches and personal/professional development it seems like regular money.

When I was making $50,000/year it was expensive, impossible. But, once I made over $10k/m it became just another number that could be crossed by adding value to the world at a level equivalent to asking for it.

I pay $60k/year to be in a mastermind with people who challenge me to earn 10x that each year. 

I used to think that $10k/m was insane. 

But, then I hit it. 

And I asked myself can I get to $250/k a year? Then I hit it. 

And asked can I hit $500k/year? I hit it. 

Then asked $750k/year? And hit it. 

Now, I’m wondering what it takes to hit a $1M a year?

I’m going to hit...

Hey, Vito La Fata here!

I got into online business building because I didn’t like feeling I wasn’t in control of my future. 

Twice in my life I had worked for companies that had dogmatic policies I simply couldn’t agree with; especially considering I was excelling at both companies and the methods I had created were creating growth and happy customers.

But, when you work for someone else - no matter how good you are - if you have people in charge that lack vision, courage and the confidence to change when a better way presents itself, you can simply be let go.

And I was. I was fired from both companies and had my income taken away from me. 

That feeling of not having control of my ability to make money and have security was something I never forgot. 

Is that something maybe you’ve experienced in your life? 

Today, there is no safety working for someone else, no matter how long you have been there.

Those two moments, led me to say...

Hey, Mike L. Murphy here!

Ever since I was a kid I wanted to work in Hollywood.

By the time I was 21 I was working on blockbuster movies, and making more money than my dad who was the Vice President of a major corporation.

While I loved working in Hollywood (and living like a king all over the world), I felt I had no control…

You see, after 15 years I had worked my way to the top of the production pyramid.  I was directing commercials, supervising on the world’s biggest movies and winning awards for my short films.  My next step was to direct big movies.

However, I looked around at my buddies who were doing that...and they were miserable!

They were controlled by the studios and felt like a corporate monkey, instead of a creative Visionary.

To make matters worse, working on production means 12 hour days, 6 days a week (factor in traffic and you’re effectively putting in 84 hour weeks).  

I wanted to have a family, and it sure wasn’t going...

This next block in our brand-building guide is on Brand Emotions. As we’ll get into later, we recommend that you instil your brand with three key emotions which you’re going to use to define your customer’s experience. Without you defining them, the customer or user is going to define them on their own—you’ll have lost control of your own branding, which is never good.

So what we’re going to help you build today is an emotional bond with your Audience. We’re going to use an example of a visionary that we’ll return to consistently in this series, Walt Disney. Walt knew his ideal guest, his ideal movie-goer, and he knew what he wanted to make them feel. That was the metric of his success.

In the next few sections, we’ll discuss what brand emotions are, and give some examples too. We’ll also cover why exactly they’re important, how Walt used them, and what we can learn from that. 

So, without...

Let’s talk wealth.

This is always on my mind.

We run businesses. We want to live more life now.

Wealth should be on your mind.

The fact that many people are not thinking deeply, intently, and purposefully about the creation, accumulation and keeping of wealth is why they are either broke, barely getting by, need to be in a job, or are always in scarcity mode.

Ever since my days as a trainer, and studio owner I had my eye on making 6-figures. It had a ‘sexy’ ring to it. It had a “my life’s troubles” would be over feel to it.

Making 6-figures meant I would never have to worry about rent, debt, paying credit cards, not being able to go out, and I could take legit vacations.

What I like about it now; having become a serious student of money and wealth, is the percents. As in % of people who actually achieved it.

Here’s some stats for you to cement in your mind: 1% of people are basically minting money. They are the...