Jacob S. Paulsen.com

Had a good time at my first ever 10K race last Friday. This was a good prep race for my 1/2 marathon on the 8th of August.

So I’ve been having this conversation with other Internet Marketing buddies. When it comes to twitter its important to start a conversation and interact with people in a genuine and sincere way but what about just the general effort to get twitter followers?

It seems that people judge your credibility based on the number of people who follow you on Twitter but with that having been said you have to be really famous or previously successful to have thousands of people start following you spontaneously. Most of us despite our desire to be honest and and contribute quality information; we have to go to considerable effort to get enough followers for anyone to think us credible.

What are your thoughts? Is this constant effort of everyone to get more followers a fake and counter-productive effort or is it simply necessary to build a following in order to have any influence at all?

Jacob S Paulsen

The basic concept of social networking and online marketing is the same as traditional offline marketing. Meet people, build trust, and expose them to your product/opportunity. The reason the internet is getting so much attention is because of the ability to meet so many people at once. Building credibility is made a little more difficult but can be done over time.

While there are now thousands of different social networks popping up online there are 3 that have set themselves aside as the big dogs. The Holy Trinity of social media consists of Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter.

Each is clearly different in it’s own right and can be used differently in your overall social media marketing plan. All three are about community building. When setting up your profiles on these three sites make sure you are consistent. Try to use the same username on all the sites and don’t forget that your username should be some kind of combination of your name or initials. Using the same profile pictures on all your social media sites also helps people identity and remember you.

Your approach should be the same with all three. Create a professional and personal profile, find a niche, and add targeted friends. Its not enough to connect with people in only one place. Make it your goal to connect with the same people in all 3 places.

Other potential big hitters…

www.goodreads.com

www.friendfeed.com

www.flickr.com

www.orkut.com

www.myspace.com

Jacob S Paulsen

Sometimes we keep ourselves from ever achieving success because we forget the priciples that govern that very goal. Here is a reminder:

Only by focusing on serving others can you obtain any success. Most people wake up in the morning and wonder how they can get more from the world. The irony is in the fact that the only way to get anything from the world is to give more to it.

As much as we focus on external factors such as cash-flow, economy, market, etc; the overwelmingly largest factor in our success is us. Yep, we are the authors of our own reality. Everything that you have around you is a result of you.

Inevitably your human life value and your wealth will rise and fall at an equal pace. Despite our tendancy to neglect ourselves on the path to treasure no lasting value can be achieved but upon the foundation of personal worth.

Our greatest assets are not our credit, cash, or property… its our relationships with those who trust us. The addage its not what you know but who you know could be improved by saying its who you know that would trust you.

As much as you truly belive that you are willing to work for money it never fails to be the single poorest motivation in the world. Ironic that money can only be achieved as a bi-product of some other deeper and more meaningful dream. What is your why?

Jacob S Paulsen

The first weekend of June I had a unique opportunity to do some executive protection work (bodyguard) for some well known people visiting Salt Lake City for a convention. Many of you may not know that while I’m an internet marketer and a network marketer, by trade I’m a security professional.

The company convention was that of a relatively new MLM named Zrii. The CEO and owner is Bill Farley, owner of the White Sox and he and his family’s safety were my primary concern throughout the three day convention but we also had a guest visit from both Deepak Chopra and Anthony Robbins for whom we were also responsible.

While I of course don’t mean to promote Zrii in this post I do want to share some insights that I learned from these great speakers and people both on stage and backstage.

Deepak Chopra. Deepak when you see this article in your google alerts email on your blackberry you will remember that I’m the guy that followed you around in Salt Lake that weekend. The content that Deepak delivered was great and I admit that even though its my job to not pay attention to him but instead the crowd, I struggled.

I think the general theme of his speech was understanding the “soul” of the man and how it is connected to the mind and body. Very intriguing and and I must say very original. There was no question to his credibility and while he wasn’t exactly full of energy I still felt like the audience was very connected and aware. It made me want to buy some of his books!

What was he like backstage? Deepak was very in the zone before he went on stage. He wasn’t annoying or stuck up but just focused. Despite him wanting to be truly alone he accepted every visitor who came back to make his acquaintance. That having been said he was generally quiet and reserved.

I think I would have seen a more lively side of him if he hadn’t had a cold. He wasn’t able to stay on site very long and on the way back t

o the hotel from the venue he spent most of the time reviewing his google alerts on his blackberry. When he finished he asked me about Salt Lake. He either was sincerely interested in Salt Lake, felt awkward in the silence, or just wanted to chat with me a little. Either way we had a nice little chat on the way back to the hotel and I felt his transparency in his character. I liked him.

Anthony Robbins. Anthony Robbins does somehow seem to live a life of the constant passion for which he is so well know for on stage. He doesn’t travel alone and on this trip had his own stage assistant, sound manager, and “handler.” I also understand that he is rarely away from his wife but this was one of those rare occasions.

On stage he did a great job of delivering what I suspect he normally would consider his 3 day signature seminar in about 4 hours. Once again I wasn’t supposed to be paying close attention but a couple of the key things I will remember were his phrase, “motion creates emotion,” which effectively means that we can control how we feel by our own body posture and movement. He demonstrated this by inviting the entire crowd to do several 90 second role plays.

What was he like backstage? Best put, he was friendly. He just seemed to like people and everyone around felt that. He agreed without question to take a picture with me and the other security guys and that was super cool.

In talking to a member of his staff I also learned that his travel schedule is extreme. He is constantly going from one place to another and due to his tendency to stay on stage until he feels he is done he is often cutting it really close to the wire. To be quite frank I don’t know how he keeps it up. It seems exhausting.

Oh and also just a quick note that I met Thurl Bailey at the convention and he is AWESOME!!!