6+1 Digital Marketing Strategies for Businesses Growth. Grow 10X

6+1 Digital Marketing Strategies for Businesses Growth. Grow 10X

by | Dec 14, 2022 | Blog

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all of your online marketing efforts. It includes everything from your website to your social media to your email marketing. And it’s more important than ever for Businesses for growth.

Think about it. With more and more people turning to the internet for information, it’s more important than ever for business to have a strong digital presence. A good digital marketing strategy can help you reach more potential clients, connect with your current customers, and boost your bottom line.

Here are some of the things you can do:

  1. Create a website that accurately represents business and makes it easy for potential customers to learn more.
  2. Optimize your website for search engines so that potential customers can easily find you.
  3. Develop a social media marketing strategy that helps you connect with current and potential customers.
  4. Increase your email/SMS/WhatsApp marketing reach to boost sales efforts.
  5. Conduct a website or social media audit to identify areas of improvement.
  6. Build communities to engage current clients/customers and help them learn & grow together
  7. Build online lead generation systems to generate consistent qualified leads and sales.

Let’s Deep dive into the strategies and how they can be Implemented.

What is a digital marketing strategy?

A digital marketing strategy is a plan that outlines how you will use digital technologies to achieve your marketing goals. Having a digital marketing strategy is essential if you want to make the most of online marketing opportunities and ensure that your marketing efforts are effective.

Digital marketing is all about using digital technologies to reach and engage customers. There are many different digital marketing strategies, but some of the most common ones include email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, content marketing, Lead Generation Systems, Community Building, etc.

How to create a digital marketing strategy?

 

  1. Define your brand: Outline or use your brand guidelines to define your brand and how it’ll come through in your online campaigns. Think about your unique selling points (USPs), brand voice, and value proposition.

     

     

  2. Build your buyer personas: Determine who your business wants to reach with custom buyer personas. Think about user demographics, as well as the motivations that drive people to choose your company, products, and services.

     

     

  3. Create your S.M.A.R.T. goals: Use specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals (also known as S.M.A.R.T. goals) to guide your strategy. Think about your organization’s short- and long-term goals for growth.

     

     

  4. Choose your digital marketing strategies: Pick the best strategies for your business. Focus on the techniques that offer the most value for your business domain, versus trendy strategies. Plan according to you short term and long term goals.

     

     

  5. Set your digital marketing budget: Research digital marketing pricing to build a realistic budget for your business. For reference, most businesses spend ₹ 1 Lakh per month (startups) to ₹ 10 Lakh per month (growth stage companies) on online marketing.

     

     

  6. Brainstorm your strategy: Guide your strategy to success by planning your strategy. If you’re advertising, determine your ad spend. If you’re publishing content, build your content calendar.

     

     

  7. Launch your campaigns: Following your planning, launch your campaigns across channels. Ensure all your channels feature the appropriate tracking information. Your website, for example, should feature your Google Analytics tracking code.

     

     

  8. Track your results: Monitor and measure the performance of your strategies by tracking their performance. Use Google tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Ads to keep a pulse on your strategies and their return on investment (ROI).

6+1 digital marketing strategies for your business.

  1. PPC / Google Ads / Search Network Ads

Google search ads help you connect with customers who are looking for your products and services. With search ads, you can reach people when they’re actively searching for what you offer. The leads you get is from people searching for your product / serivices, therefore the sales cycle is shorter and the lead is in buying mode. Google Search Ads (PPC) is the best way to get started ASAP.

Below are the results of one of our Client where we have spent over 17 Lakhs and generated over 4.8 K leads.

education

2. Social Media Marketing – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn

Social media marketing is the process of promoting your business through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. It’s a great way to connect with new and existing customers, build brand awareness, and drive traffic to your website and generate leads by pin point targeting to your Niche Audience.
Facebook & Instagram are the top platforms where your potential customers hangout and running them with all the detailed targeting options we have, social media can scale our marketing efforts 10X.

Facebook ads results where we have generated over 50K leads and spent over 25 Lakhs in 3 years.

3. Google My Business for local traffic:

Google My Business is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses of all sizes to connect with customers on Google.

Google My Business makes it easy for customers to find your business on Google, including Maps and Contact details. Add information about your business, such as hours, contact info, and website. Plus, post updates and photos to show your customers what’s new.

The advantages of using Google My Business are:

1. Increased visibility on Google – When customers search for your business on Google, you can appear in the search results, along with your website, direction and phone number.

2. Connect with customers on Google – Customers can leave reviews, post questions, and follow your business.

3. Manage your information – Add or update your business information, such as hours, contact info, and website, whenever you want.

4. Get insights – View insights about how your business is performing on Google, including how many people have viewed your page and how many people have clicked through to your website.

5. Free traffic and leads from local customers once you optimize your Google My Business listing and get in the top 3 positions. Best for Local businesses/traffic.

Below is the result of one of our clients getting free admission enquiry calls, school visits and leads.

goldenbee btm GMB traffic

4. Search Engine Optimization:

Search Engine Optimization is the practice of improving the ranking of a website on search engines. The higher the ranking, the more likely people are to find the website.

The best way to improve ranking & avoid being penalized by the search engines is to use white hat techniques, which are techniques that are approved by the search engines. These techniques include:

  • Optimizing your website for humans, not search engines
  • Using high-quality, original content
  • Optimizing your website for fast loading times
  • Creating a website that is easy to navigate
  • Using keyword-rich titles and descriptions
  • Optimizing your images
  • Using social media to promote your website, etc

By using these techniques, you can improve your website’s visibility and ranking in the search engines, and attract more visitors.

Organic Traffic boost of one of our client (from 5K to 36K+) after working on overall website and content optimization for Search Engine.

utaxi organic traffic

5. Online Community Building

If you’re a Business in 21st century, then building a community is the best thing you can do to engage with your customers. Create communities to share work, learn from one another, and connect with others who share their passion.
Community feeling drives passion that make community members accountable and more connected. This also help members resolve issues, share information, ask questions.

Facebook community of our client where students connect and grow together. This also help the company run referral capaigns to attract more enrollments.

utaxi organic traffic

6. Content Marketing:

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.

Content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain an audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media. This approach establishes expertise, promotes brand awareness, and keeps your business top of mind when it’s time to buy what you sell.

Content marketing works well when you focus on building a community around it at different stages of your marketing.

Share content related to your product, services, reviews, team, etc

utaxi organic traffic

7. Marketing & Sales Funnel for growing companies

A sales funnel is a marketing tool that helps you visualize the customer journey from awareness to purchase. It also helps you track your progress and measure the results of your marketing efforts.

The sales funnel allows you to see how many people are visiting your site, how many are subscribing to your email list, and how many are buying your product.

Building a sales funnel may require to setup landing pages, signup forms, create videos, lead magnets, email automation tool, WhatsApp automation API, and an automated lead qualification process to scale marketing faster and efficiently.

utaxi organic traffic

3 Benefits of digital marketing strategies

With digital marketing strategies, your business can reach — and exceed — its goals, which may include:

1. Increasing website traffic and leads

With all digital marketing strategies, one of the main goals is to increase traffic and leads to a company’s website.

2. Boosting brand awareness

When you use digital marketing, you get your brand in front of more potential customers, whether through search results, email inboxes, social media platforms, or another outlet. As a result, more people become aware of your brand.

They’ll get to know your branding, your products, and what sets you apart from your competitors. Then, when they need the products or services you offer, they’re more likely to remember your brand and make a purchase.

3. Raising revenue and conversions

The biggest and most important objective of any marketing strategy is to increase revenue.

With our personalized and results-driven strategies, we can have a significant impact on your company’s bottom line.

 

Want more clients/customers in your Business?

Let’s connect on a Strategy call for your Business Growth!!

6+1 Digital Marketing Strategies for Education Businesses. Grow 10X

6+1 Digital Marketing Strategies for Education Businesses. Grow 10X

by | Jul 12, 2022 | Blog

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all of your online marketing efforts. It includes everything from your website to your social media to your email marketing. And it’s more important than ever for educational institutions.

Think about it. With more and more people turning to the internet for information, it’s more important than ever for your school or college to have a strong digital presence. A good digital marketing strategy can help you reach more potential students, connect with your current students, and boost your bottom line.

Here are some of the things you can do:

  1. Create a website that accurately represents your school or college and makes it easy for potential students to learn more.
  2. Optimize your website for search engines so that potential students can easily find you.
  3. Develop a social media marketing strategy that helps you connect with current and potential students.
  4. Increase your email/SMS/WhatsApp marketing reach to boost enrollment efforts.
  5. Conduct a website or social media audit to identify areas of improvement.
  6. Build communities to engage current students and help them learn & grow together
  7. Build online lead generation systems to generate consistent qualified leads and enrollemnts.

Let’s Deep dive into the strategies and how they can be Implemented.

What is a digital marketing strategy?

A digital marketing strategy is a plan that outlines how you will use digital technologies to achieve your marketing goals. Having a digital marketing strategy is essential if you want to make the most of online marketing opportunities and ensure that your marketing efforts are effective.

Digital marketing is all about using digital technologies to reach and engage customers. There are many different digital marketing strategies, but some of the most common ones include email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and content marketing, Lead Generation Systems, Community Building, etc.

How to create a digital marketing strategy?

 

  1. Define your brand: Outline or use your brand guidelines to define your brand and how it’ll come through in your online campaigns. Think about your unique selling points (USPs), brand voice, and value proposition.

     

  2. Build your buyer personas: Determine who your education business wants to reach with custom buyer personas. Think about user demographics, as well as the motivations that drive people to choose your company, products, and services.

     

  3. Create your S.M.A.R.T. goals: Use specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals (also known as S.M.A.R.T. goals) to guide your strategy. Think about your organization’s short- and long-term goals for growth.

     

  4. Choose your digital marketing strategies: Pick the best strategies for your business. Focus on the techniques that offer the most value for your business domain, versus trendy strategies. Plan according to you short term and long term goals.

     

  5. Set your digital marketing budget: Research digital marketing pricing to build a realistic budget for your business. For reference, most education businesses spend ₹ 1Lakh per month (schools) to ₹ 10 Lakh per month (edtech startups) on online marketing.

     

  6. Brainstorm your strategy: Guide your strategy to success by planning your strategy. If you’re advertising, determine your ad spend. If you’re publishing content, build your content calendar.

     

  7. Launch your campaigns: Following your planning, launch your campaigns across channels. Ensure all your channels feature the appropriate tracking information. Your website, for example, should feature your Google Analytics tracking code.

     

  8. Track your results: Monitor and measure the performance of your strategies by tracking their performance. Use Google tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Ads to keep a pulse on your strategies and their return on investment (ROI).

6+1 digital marketing strategies for your business.

  1. PPC / Google Ads / Search Network Ads

Google search ads help you connect with customers who are looking for your products and services. With search ads, you can reach people when they’re actively searching for what you offer. The leads you get is from people searching for your product / serivices, therefore the sales cycle is shorter and the lead is in buying mode. Google Search Ads (PPC) is the best way to get started ASAP.

Below are the results of one of our Client where we have spent over 17 Lakhs and generated over 4.8 K leads.

education

2. Social Media Marketing – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn

Social media marketing is the process of promoting your business through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. It’s a great way to connect with new and existing customers, build brand awareness, and drive traffic to your website and generate leads by pin point targeting to your Niche Audience.
Facebook & Instagram are the top platforms where parents and students hangout and running them with all the detailed targeting options we have, social media can scale our marketing efforts 10X.

Facebook ads results where we have generated over 50K leads and spent over 25 Lakhs in 3 years.

3. Google My Business for Schools / Colleges:

Google My Business is a free and easy-to-use tool for businesses of all sizes to connect with customers on Google.

Google My Business makes it easy for customers to find your business on Google, including Maps and Contact details. Add information about your business, such as hours, contact info, and website. Plus, post updates and photos to show your customers what’s new.

The advantages of using Google My Business are:

1. Increased visibility on Google – When customers search for your business on Google, you can appear in the search results, along with your website, direction and phone number.

2. Connect with customers on Google – Customers can leave reviews, post questions, and follow your business.

3. Manage your information – Add or update your business information, such as hours, contact info, and website, whenever you want.

4. Get insights – View insights about how your business is performing on Google, including how many people have viewed your page and how many people have clicked through to your website.

5. Free traffic and leads from local customers once you optimize your Google My Business listing and get in the top 3 positions. Best for Schools & local institutes.

Below is the result of one of our client getting free admission enquiry calls, school visits and leads.

goldenbee btm GMB traffic

4. Search Engine Optimization:

Search Engine Optimization is the practice of improving the ranking of a website on search engines. The higher the ranking, the more likely people are to find the website.

The best way to improve ranking & avoid being penalized by the search engines is to use white hat techniques, which are techniques that are approved by the search engines. These techniques include:

  • Optimizing your website for humans, not search engines
  • Using high-quality, original content
  • Optimizing your website for fast loading times
  • Creating a website that is easy to navigate
  • Using keyword-rich titles and descriptions
  • Optimizing your images
  • Using social media to promote your website, etc

By using these techniques, you can improve your website’s visibility and ranking in the search engines, and attract more visitors.

Organic Traffic boost of one of our client (from 5K to 36K+) after working on overall website and content optimization for Search Engine.

utaxi organic traffic

5. Online Community Building

If you’re a Education Business in 21st century, then building an community is the best thing you can do to engage with your community. Create communities to share work, learn from one another, and connect with others who share their passion.
Community feeling drives passion that make community members accountable and more connected. This also help members resolve issues, share information, ask questions.

Facebook community of our client where students connect and grow together. This also help the company run referral capaigns to attract more enrollments.

utaxi organic traffic

6. Content Marketing:

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.

Content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain an audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media. This approach establishes expertise, promotes brand awareness, and keeps your education business top of mind when it’s time to buy what you sell.

Content marketing works well when you focus on building a community around it at different stages of your marketing.

Share content related to your courses, studnets placed, questions related to courses, etc.

utaxi organic traffic

7. Marketing & Sales Funnel for growing companies

A sales funnel is a marketing tool that helps you visualize the customer journey from awareness to purchase. It also helps you track your progress and measure the results of your marketing efforts.

The sales funnel allows you to see how many people are visiting your site, how many are subscribing to your email list, and how many are buying your product.

Building a sales funnel may require to setup landing pages, signup forms, create videos, lead magnets, email automation tool, WhatsApp automation API, and an automated lead qualification process to scale marketing faster and efficiently.

utaxi organic traffic

3 Benefits of digital marketing strategies

With digital marketing strategies, your education business can reach — and exceed — its goals, which may include:

1. Increasing website traffic and leads

With all digital marketing strategies, one of the main goals is to increase traffic and leads to a education company’s website.

2. Boosting brand awareness

When you use digital marketing, you get your brand in front of more potential customers, whether through search results, email inboxes, social media platforms, or another outlet. As a result, more people become aware of your brand.

They’ll get to know your branding, your products, and what sets you apart from your competitors. Then, when they need the products or services you offer, they’re more likely to remember your brand and make a purchase.

3. Raising revenue and conversions

The biggest and most important objective of any marketing strategy is to increase revenue.

With our personalized and results-driven strategies, we can have a significant impact on your company’s bottom line.

 

Want more enrollments in your institute / course?

Let’s connect on a Strategy call for your education Business Growth!!

Make Your Bed summary

by | May 28, 2020 | Book

The author of the book Admiral William H. McRaven gave the commencement address at the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. His speech included important life lessons. These lessons were the result of his Navy seal training. He later on published his speech as book entitled “Make your Bed”.


Start Your Day with a Task Completed

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed

Making your bed works as a reminder that at the end of the day you have accomplished a task, no matter how small. It is a task that you should be proud of with a sense of satisfaction.
Completion of one task gives strength to proceed with other tasks also.

You Can’t Go It Alone

If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.


Admiral says that you need people in life to deal with difficult times. During his training in the small rubber boat he realized that no man could make it through training alone, and no seal could make it through combat alone.
A team of good people is all you need to reach your destination. For this find someone to share your life with. Make as many friends as possible and never forget that your success depends on others because you cannot paddle the boat alone.

Only the Size of Your Heart Matters

If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart.


He realized that the Seal training was always about proving something. Proving that size didn’t matter, that the color of your skin wasn’t important, that money didn’t make you better. Your determination and grit are always more important than talent.

Life’s not Fair. Drive On.

If you want to change the world, get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.

The one thing that defines each and every individual is how they deal with life’s unfairness. Be it a common person or a great person, your dealing ability distinguishes you from others. Don’t blame your misfortune.

Failure Can Make You Stronger

If you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the circuses.

In Navy SEAL training, “The Circus” is another two hours of additional calisthenics, combined with non-stop harassment by SEAL combat veterans who want only the strong to survive the training.

You Must Dare Greatly

If you want to change the world, slide down the obstacle headfirst.


Nobody on this planet is sure about his limits. You need to muster your courage and dare greatly because without pushing your limits you will never know your worth. Staying in the boundaries of failure and embarrassment will never let you achieve your potential.

Stand Up to the Bullies

If you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks

On your path to success you will encounter many sharks or personal fears. But if you stand strong enough you will definitely sail through.

Rise to the Occasion

If you want to change the world, be your very best in the darkest moments.

Death is inevitable. No amount of mourning and screaming can bring back the loved ones.
So try to muster courage to deal with the darkest moments in life.

Give People Hope

If you want to change the world, start singing when you are up to your neck in mud.

All it takes is a little appreciation or a pat on the shoulder. Sometimes, singing a song can do wonders.
During the dreaded seven-day endurance test one of the guys was about to quit, when another started singing a song and soon everybody joined him. It was a silver lining in the cold mud at midnight.

Never Ever Quit

If you want to change the world, don’t ever, ever ring the bell

Admiral quotes an instance from his SEAL training and state that during training the drill instructor told everyone that if they quit, they will regret it.
You will always encounter with circumstances wherein quitting would seem an easiest option. So, it depends upon you. Either change the world by not quitting or else regret for the rest of your life.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People summary

7 Habits of Highly Effective People summary

by | May 20, 2020 | Book

The book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” outlines a habit-based approach to be followed to attain your goals.
The book opens with an explanation of how many individuals who have achieved a high degree of outward success still find them struggling with an inner need for developing personal effectiveness and growing healthy relationships with other people.
In order to change a given situation, we must change ourselves, and in order to change ourselves, we must be able to change our perceptions.

The way we see the problem is the problem.

In order to achieve true change we must allow ourselves to undergo paradigm shifts to change ourselves fundamentally and not just alter our attitudes and behaviors on the surface level . For this, Covey explains seven habits.

1. Be Proactive

The first habit is being proactive. Our inherent ability to examine our own character, to decide how to view ourselves and our situations and to control our own effectiveness distinguishes us as humans from all other animals.
Reactive people take a passive stance – they believe the world is happening to them. They say things like:
• “There’s nothing I can do.”
• “That’s just the way I am.”
They think the problem is “out there” – but that thought is the problem. On the other hand, reactivity is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and reactive people feel increasingly victimized and out of control.

Proactive people, however, recognize they have responsibility — or “response-ability,” which Covey defines as the ability to choose how you will respond to a given stimulus or situation. In other words, we must work on the things we can do something about.
Reactive people held responsible external factors and negative energy. As a result their Circle of Influence shrink because they focus on circle of concern instead of circle of influence.
Lessons:
1. Start replacing reactive language with proactive language.
Reactive = “He makes me so mad.”
Proactive = “I control my own feelings.”
2. Convert reactive tasks into proactive ones.

2. Begin with the End in Mind

We work hard to achieve victories, promotions, higher income, and recognition. But we don’t often stop to evaluate the meaning behind these victories
Habit 2 suggests that we should start with a clear destination.
It is also important to identify our center because the center will be our source of security, guidance, wisdom, and power.

Our centers affect us fundamentally – they determine our daily decisions, actions, and motivations, as well as our interpretation of events. However, these centers are non-optimal. So we should strive to be principle-centered.
Lessons:
1. Visualize in rich detail your own funeral. Who is there? What are they saying about you? Think how your priorities will change with shortage of time?
2. Break down your roles of being professional, personal, or community – and list three to five goals you want to achieve for each.
3. Define what scares you- Public speaking, Critical feedback after writing a book. Write down the worst-case scenario for your biggest fear, and then visualize how you’ll handle this situation.

3. Put First Things First

We must posses the discipline to prioritize our tasks. To maintain discipline and focus, we require willpower.
All our activities can be categorized based on two factors: Urgent and important.

We react to urgent matters. If we spend our time managing crises and problems, it keeps getting bigger and bigger until it consumes us.
If we spend most of our time reacting to matters that seem urgent, when the reality is their perceived urgency is based on the priorities and expectations of others. We are leading an irresponsible life if we focus things which are drowning your energy.

The best effective management is a way that deals with things like building relationships, long-term planning, etc.
In order to focus our time on this aspect, we need to learn saying “no” to other activities. We also need to be able to delegate effectively. In addition, it means we’re thinking ahead, working on the roots, and preventing crises from happening in the first place! This helps us implement the Pareto Principal – 80% of your results come from 20% of your time.
Lessons:
1. Identify the activity you’ve been neglecting. Write it down and commit to implementing it.
2. Create your own time management matrix to start prioritizing.
3. Estimate how much time you spend in each type of activity. Then log your time over 3 days. How accurate was your estimate? How much time did you spend in the required and most efficient activity?

4. Think Win-Win

In order to establish effective interdependent relationships, we must focus on creating Win-Win situations.
Covey explains that there are six paradigms of human interaction:
1. Win-Win: Both people win means it is mutually beneficial to both the involved parties.
2. Win-Lose: “If I win, you lose.” Win-Lose people are prone to use position, power, credentials, and personality to get their way.
3. Lose-Win: “I lose, you win.” Lose-Win people are quick to please and appease, and seek strength from popularity or acceptance.
4. Lose-Lose: Both people lose.
5. Win: People with the Win mentality don’t necessarily want someone else to lose — that’s irrelevant. What matters is that they get what they want.
6. Win-Win or No Deal: There is no deal if you can’t reach a mutually beneficial.

The best option is to create Win-Win situations.We can be open and really try to understand the underlying issues.Two factors viz Consideration and courage should be taken into consideration in solving Win-Win. Apart from this, it also requires an Abundance Mentality and belief that there’s plenty for everyone else. So keep the focus on results.

Lessons:
1. Write down a list of what the other person is looking for. Next, write a list next to that of how you can make an offer to meet those needs.
2. Identify three important relationships in your life. Think about what you feel the balance is in each of those relationships. Do you give more than you take? Take more than you give?
3. Deeply consider your own interaction tendencies. Are they Win-Lose? How does that affect your interactions with others? Can you identify the source of that approach? Determine whether or not this approach serves you well in your relationships. Write all of this down.

5. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

Before we can offer advice, suggest solutions, or effectively interact with another person in any way, we must seek to deeply understand them and their perspective through emphatic listening.
We prescribe a solution before we diagnose the problem. There is no definite technique to understand everyone.
To listen empathically requires a fundamental paradigm shift because we typically seek first to be understood.

When we listen autobiographically we are bound to respond in one of the following four ways:
1. Evaluate means to agree or disagree with what is said
2. Probe means ask questions from our reference
3. Advise means give counsel based on our own experience
4. Interpret means based on our own motives and behavior we try to figure out the person’s motives and behavior.

To understand is equally important in achieving Win-Win solutions.
Lessons:
Here are a few ways to get you in the habit of seeking first to understand:
1. Next time do not involve when two persons are communicating. Was one person or the other more interested in the conversation? Write down what you noticed.
2. Next time during a presentation begin by describing the audience’s point of view in great detail. What problems are they facing?

6. Synergize

Habit 6, which is the habit of synergy or “When one plus one equals three or more and the whole is great than the sum of its parts.”
Synergy allows us to create new alternatives and open new possibilities. It allows us as a group to collectively agree to ditch the old scripts and write new ones.
To introduce synergy to a given situation or environment start with habits 4 and 5.
Once you have these in mind, you can pool your desires with those of the other person or group. Both sides get what they want, and they build their relationship in the process.

Synergy allows you to:
-Value the differences in other people as a way to expand your perspective
-Sidestep negative energy and look for the good in others
– Courage to be interdependent and encourage others also.
– Build creativity and find a solution that will be better for everyone

Lessons:
1. Make a list of people who irritate you. Now choose just one person. How are their views different? Put yourself in their shoes for one minute. Does this help you understand them better?
Now next time you’re in a disagreement with that person, try to understand their concerns and why they disagree with you. The better you can understand them, the easier it will be to change their mind or change yours.
2. Make a list of people with whom you get along well. Now choose just one person. How are their views different?

7. Sharpen the Saw

This habit focuses on renewal i.e “sharpen the saw.” It surrounds all of the other habits and makes each one possible by preserving and enhancing your greatest asset — yourself. There are four dimensions of our nature which should be exercised regularly and in a balanced way.
Physical Dimension: The goal is to exercise so as enhance your capacity. To renew yourselves physically, you must:
-Eat well
-Get sufficient rest and relaxation
-Exercise on a regular basis to improve strength and flexibility.

Spiritual Dimension: This helps to provide leadership to your life and reinforce your commitment to your value system.
To renew yourself spiritually, you can:
-Practice daily meditation
-Communicate with nature
-Immerse yourself in great literature or music

Mental Dimension: The goal is to focus on expanding your mind.
To renew yourself mentally, you can:
-Read good literature
-Keep a journal of your thoughts, experiences, and insights
-Television watching should be limited to life enriching programmes.

Social/Emotional Dimension: This refers developing meaningful relationships.
To renew yourself emotionally, you can:
-Seek to deeply understand other people
-Make contributions to meaningful projects that improve the lives of others
-Maintain an Abundance Mentality, and seek to help others find success

Focus on renewing yourselves along these four dimensions and look forward to inspiring others to a higher path by encouraging them to be proactive.
Lessons:
1. Make a list of activities along each of the 4 dimensions that will help you to renew. Finally, evaluate your performance at the end of the week. What led you to succeed or fail to accomplish each goal?
2. Write down a specific “sharpen the saw” activity every week to accomplish it and evaluate your performance and results in all four dimensions.

Get your copy of "7 habits of highly effective people" from Amazon.

Think and Grow Rich summary

Think and Grow Rich summary

by | May 19, 2020 | Book

Riches begin with a STATE OF MIND. In order to attract money you must first become money conscious.The principal of subconscious mind- its application and its reward are at the heart of Think and Grow Rich. The main bottleneck between the conscious and subconscious is communication. Since, conscious – subconscious communication is constant. Therefore developing a dialogue actively in both directions is required for success.

To master emotional states we must first learn to create them or hijack them.

Creating emotional states

Emotional states and emotions are two different things. Emotions are color filters that alter that light. They twist and tint all that it shines on. One way to create strong emotional states (i.e., passion) is to consciously trigger strong emotions (e.g., happiness, faith, fear). It doesn’t matter if the trigger is external (e.g., events, images, objects, music) or internal (e.g., memories, affirmation, prayer, visualization). You just need to know what they are and how to find them.
We can also create emotional states without emotional triggers. We do this by altering our physical state and letting the emotional state follow. Common physical triggers include meditation, fasting, fatigue, stress, alcohol and drugs.

Hijacking emotional states

The way to master strong emotional states is to learn to hijack them through substitution and sublimation.
The first way to hijack existing emotional states is substitution. In substitution, we maintain an emotional state’s brightness while we alter its color at will by focusing intently on triggers that elicit a different, desired response. The second way to hijack existing emotional states is sublimation. In sublimation we maintain brightness and color but alter the focus of action. Like substitution, sublimation requires mastery of focus. First, we must override an emotion’s tendency to preserve and to focus on itself. Next, we must direct that energy externally and lastly refresh that energy by shifting repeatedly between trigger and target.

Emotional mastery

Substitution and sublimation are especially effective together. That’s why negative emotions, though powerful, tend to have negative effects on ourselves and the world around us. The most effective short-term approach to negative emotions is to substitute then sublimate. Doing so lets us consistently channel positive emotions into constructive outcomes.
Mastering creation, substitution and sublimation is the essence of emotional mastery.

Directing the subconscious

We use visualization to talk to the subconscious in a language it understands i.e sensation. Though visualization is a common technique in meditation and performance psychology, most of us are surprisingly bad at it. As your focus improves you’ll be able to maintain that visualization for longer and longer.
The keys to visualization are clarity, detail, and repetition. When you read the words aloud, you want to see their outcome, to touch it, to feel it. Feel your desire for that goal heighten your emotional state. Repeat the process again and again until you brand the image in your subconscious.
It puts the subconscious to work. It directs a subconscious that sees and acts with a subtlety our conscious mind can’t emulate. This half-humbling, half-liberating insight is at the heart of Think and Grow Rich’s power.

Seven ways the conscious mind can set the subconscious up for success:

1.Stepping back – Stepping back from the pointless chatter of the mind lets us work on our problems rather than in them. It gives the subconscious time and space to work.
2. Listening – The subconscious tells the conscious what it needs and thinks with emotion and inspiration.
3. Problem-solving – The conscious mind is excellent at organizing and re-organizing information in sequences and stories.
4. Learning – The conscious and subconscious both are bounded by knowledge. The subconscious learns effectively from sensation and emotion. Whereas the conscious gathers information coded in language and stored in stories and facts. This second type of knowledge is essential because it make us learn vicariously, transcending the boundaries of personal experience.

5.Training –The conscious breaks habits by repeatedly intervening in the gap between stimulus and response until a new pattern is trained. This intervention takes self-awareness, imagination and will-power.
6. Reassuring – Of all the negative emotions, none rules our subconscious like fear. According to Hill, we mainly fear poverty, criticism, and ill-health, loss of love, old age and death. The conscious mind reassures the subconscious, conquering fear through acceptance, belief and action.
7. Protecting – Our conscious constantly competes for emotional and subconscious control. Some external influences are positive, others negative. To protect the subconscious, the conscious mind must understand when and how the subconscious becomes vulnerable. To protect its control, it must then counter negative influences and eliminate their sources from the environment.

Hill’s full approach to financial success can be summarized in 10 steps

1. Decide on a definite purpose: Make it clear, specific and tangible.
2. Embed it in your subconscious and visualize this goal twice daily. Fan the flames of a burning desire to acquire it.
3. Have faith and develop self-confidence, trust and will power.
4. Make a plan and get started right away.
5. Learn what you need and identify the specific knowledge you need to acquire to achieve success.

6.Gather support by like-minded people to sympathize cooperate and share knowledge with.
7. Get help from others and maintain perfect harmony within them.
8. Set your subconscious up for success.
9. Work on your character and develop traits like self-control, focus etc.
10. Never give up. There is no such thing as failure. Look for the opportunity in every setback and remember.

Winners never quit and quitters never win.

We Must Take Control over Our Thoughts

A good example for the power of thoughts is the placebo effect. If you are ill and take real medication (e.g. pills with actual painkillers), then of course you will get better. That’s to be expected, right? Yet, if you’re ill and get pseudo medication (e.g. pills with sugar and water), you will also get better. It’s because you THINK you got real medication. You THINK that this medication will help you and because you THINK that, it’s what actually happens.
If we think “failure”, then failure will be transmuted into reality But if we think “success”, then success will be transmuted into reality.
If we truly want to think and grow rich, we must start to take control over our thoughts, or in other words over our mind. We must take control over our own minds.

According to Hill, we need these two things for controlling the mind:
• A major definite purpose.
• A burning desire to achieve that major definite purpose.
The point is that if we focus on achieving only one thing, our odds of achieving it are greatly enhanced.

The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.

Here are the two things that define what a burning desire should look or feel like:
1. The burning desire makes up the dominating thoughts of our mind. We constantly think about it all day long. It’s what’s on our minds 24/7 from the minute we wake up to the moment we fall asleep. We possibly even dream about it in the night. And because we keep our desire constantly in mind, it will become a burning obsession.
2. The burning desire ensures that we will do whatever it takes to achieve what we desire. We will work hard, make sacrifices, be disciplined, and persistent. We will do almost anything.

Have Faith That You Will Succeed

We must develop the faith or belief that we will accomplish our major definite purpose. Hill states that the emotion of faith is what gives life, power and action to the impulse of thought. In other words, if we want to transmute our major definite purpose into physical reality, we must have faith. So we must believe, and we must be convinced that we will accomplish our major definite purpose.

How to Create Faith

Napoleon Hill says that making repeated affirmations or instructions to our subconscious mind is the only known method to develop faith. We must perceive this idea that we’ve already achieved our purpose. This way, over time, we can convince our subconscious mind that we believe in the achievement of our major definite purpose. The concept of visualizing our desired outcomes as already achieved is something we find in almost every self-help/success book: We must see our goal as already achieved in our mind first, before it can manifest itself in the real world. We must visualize our desired future as if it was already real.

By doing that we create the necessary feeling of faith that is needed to accomplish our goal. If we constantly tell our mind that we already have achieved our desired outcome, it will gradually start to believe that it’s true. It will slowly get convinced that we can actually accomplish our goal. This is the way through which we develop the faith or belief that we will succeed. The way to create faith is through making repeated affirmations and instructions to your subconscious mind.

Napoleon Hill tells us exactly how to make these affirmations and instructions to our subconscious mind.

6 steps to transmute our desires into their physical equivalents

1.Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. Be definite to the amount.
2. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire.
3. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire.
4. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.
5. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire. Name the time limit for its acquisition.
6. Read your written statement aloud twice daily; once just before retiring at night and once after rising in the morning.

Once you’re obsessed with something, you will find ways to make it happen. Napoleon Hill emphasizes that these 6 steps must be executed persistently day in and day out. Only through persistent application can we successfully influence our mind, create faith, and let our desire develop into a burning obsession.

Create a Plan to Achieve Your Major Definite Purpose

Application of the 6 steps will kind of force your subconscious mind to hand over plans for you. It doesn’t matter if the first plan isn’t particularly good. Just get started. When the first plan fails, create a new plan. You can find out why this is important right now. Replace your first plan if it didn’t work out successfully. Keep replacing until you find a plan which does work because it is not the failure of a plan that drives failure but lack of persistence in creating new plans.

Think about Thomas Edison for example. He needed over 10,000 attempts to eventually create a functioning light bulb. In other words, he had to make over 10,000 new plans to achieve his goal. That’s persistence! After failing once, you are already in a much better position to succeed. It is because you already have feedback.

Persistence Is Key

With persistence, you will win. We can’t build muscle, lose weight, build a business or do anything else noteworthy from one day to the next. We need to be patient and persistent.

This means we must also be persistent when applying the principles of this book. We must apply these 6 steps consistently. Not just for a week or two… but consistently over a long period of time. Napoleon Hill says that this is crucial if we want to influence our subconscious mind and create a money/success consciousness. So, we must pay the price of persistence.
Create a master mind to help you achieve your one major definite purpose.
A Master Mind is a group of people who work together for the attainment of a definite purpose.

This is pretty simple and straightforward. A Master Mind brings a host of benefits that will help us in accomplishing our major definite purpose. If you want to build a business, a partner brings additional knowledge, effort, money. But that depends on the partnership. You and your partner can motivate each other when times are tough and each of you brings his or her own ideas to improve the business.
One of the most important things that a Master Mind can bring you is FAITH. If you have powerful people in your Master Mind, chances are that you’ll believe that with the cooperation of your Master Mind allies. Hence, you will achieve your definite purpose.