We all have a comfort zone and all of us are very fond of our personal comfort zone. It is very, very tempting to just stick with doing the things that we have always done and doing them in the same way we have always done them.

However, staying in your comfort zone and refusing to expand your mind and your horizons can cause you and your internet business to fail.

There is an old saying (probably made up by someone who was afraid of trying new things) that says, “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, ‘it’ doesn’t have to be broken in order to be improved upon whatever ‘it’ is.

Candle light wasn’t broken but we are all glad that electricity was harnessed. Electric light is still light but it is certainly a big improvement over candle light.

New ideas come along every day in the world of internet business. Some of those ideas are even good ones even if they do reside outside of our own personal comfort zone.

In order to continue to invest in yourself, you must be willing to leave your own comfort zone. Just because what has worked is still working it doesn’t mean that there are not newer, better and more efficient ways of doing things.

Nobody is saying that new is always better. New is not always better but sometimes it is and the only way to tell which is which is by investigating new ideas yourself and then adapting the ones that can help you to your business.

Invest in yourself by increasing your knowledge and don’t be afraid of trying new things and new ways of doing things. These things really are the secrets of success and not just in the world of internet business but in life itself.

Tags: Increasing Your Knowledge, Comfort Zone, Success Mindset Series

It is absolutely true that time is the one commodity that most internet entrepreneurs have a very, very short supply of. Still there are ways to use time that would otherwise be of no value to invest in yourself. Here are a few tips that might help:

• Use travel time to invest in yourself. By using your iPod or your MP3 player you can use your travel time to expand your knowledge.

• Set your clock for a half hour earlier and use that time to read and learn.

• After you stop working in the evening, use your computer to search for new information and ideas.

Of course there are some things that are just going to take your time but you can choose wisely.

• Attend webinars and teleseminars that are directly related to your niche or your business.

• Attend real world seminars that are closer to your home and will require less travel time but will provide you with the information that you need.

Tags: Self-Investment, Success Mindset Series

I watch most of the Formula 1 races, I have for years and years, its one of my favorite sports. But recently I have begun to loose interest in the ITV coverage of the F1 Season. Overall they have done an ok job of covering it, I can’t say I’m unhappy to hear that it will be moving back to the Beeb next year though. Have you ever noticed how painful Martin Brundle’s pit walk’s are?

He generally gets his massive head phones on about half an our before the race begins then takes to the grid to mingle. He always looks like he is trying to do it in the fastest time possible, he always stands too close to the people he is talking to, you can tell he is being given the questions to ask in his big MASSIVE HEADphones as he never seems all that interested when he gets the answers. Yes he has a lot of F1 experience and yes he does add to the commentry while the GP is taking place, but seriously ITV he is not a good interviewer, get someone else to do it please!!!

Tags: Formula One, Martin Brundle, ITV, Numpty

Barnsley may still be musically best known for pedestrian hard-rockers Saxon of ‘Denim and Leather’ infamy. All available indicators and graphs, however, suggest that their place at the top of the town’s rock tables will soon be occupied by SUPERfreak.

Behind the sleepy South Yorkshire town’s unflattering façade of closed pits, pound shops and warm bitter lies a surprisingly fertile music scene, with SUPERfreak as its brightest proprietors. The local college’s array of music courses bring dozens of aspiring musicians to the town every year, and these educational opportunities were the catalyst that brought SUPERfreak, the Anglo-Finnish federation of funk, together.

The nucleus of the group – singer Baggie, bassist Dave and drummer Bob, all from Bradford – had been chiselling at the coalface of groove in ever-evolving line-ups for a good couple of years, writing and demoing bewildering piles of original material but plagued by a lack of compatible compatriots to complete the ideas into fully fleshed-out songs. When the trio bumped into guitarist Ari, who, being from Helsinki, represents the Baltic region in the band, and keyboardist Chris, both music students with a background of playing in innumerable outfits, in jam sessions and various impromptu projects around the town it soon became obvious that the missing links in the band’s evolution had been located. Baggie remembers the celebratory moment in early 2003 when the band’s sound clicked vividly.

The Neptunes’s nasty funk-rock incarnation N.E.R.D. in particular is an outfit Superfreak feel they share some common musical goals with, although veterans such as diminutive funk-rock dynamo Prince and soul genius Stevie Wonder also get the band’s collective seal of approval. According to Ari, the band’s wide array of influences with variable personal favourites leads to some interesting and unpredictable outcomes during the writing process.

“We all have our individual preferences that come out when we work on stuff. I want dub with marimba, Dave goes for a Beck meets Squarepusher ballad, Chris opts for drum ‘n’ bass polka whilst Baggie wants to dance to it. It’s a mess, basically.”

“We hope that SUPERfreak gets the recognition we deserve. Recognition from everybody: friends, family, wider audience, venues, promoters, management and record labels,” Baggie summarises the band’s attitude and short-term goals, before finishing with a convincing sales pitch: “We are on fire right now. I just hope someone sees that and realises our potential.”

Find out more about SUPERfreak and their new Album on their myspace page… SUPERFreak

You have no doubt heard this refrain many times.

“Invest in yourself! Invest in yourself! Invest is yourself!” But what does ‘invest in yourself mean’? Does it mean you should go out and invest in a haircut that costs two hundred bucks? Does it mean that you should go by yourself a designer suit? What does it mean to invest in yourself?

Well, if you can afford it, go get that haircut and buy that designer suit but that is not the kind of investment that we are talking about here.

Your internet business is just you, your computer and your internet connection and you could actually operate your internet business from any commuter on the planet that had an internet connection.

So basically, your business is really only you. Your business is based only upon your own knowledge and your own ability. Those are the ‘company’ assets and those are the ones that need to grow and expand constantly so that your internet business thrives.

Here is a rule that you might want to live by to insure that your internet business is a success and continues to be a success: Invest 5% of your time and income into improving your self.

Expansion and growth are imperative to survival and expansion and growth of an internet business means expanding and growing the knowledge of the person running the company…that would be YOU.

A tiny investment of only 5% of your time and your income per year in yourself can mean that you will continue to see positive monetary returns for many, many years to come.

You might be sitting there shaking your head and still wondering what is meant by a 5% time and income investment per year in yourself. What is meant is that you must expand your knowledge.

You must stay on top of new technological advancements and you must expand your knowledge base about your own area of expertise. Things change fast. New information becomes available on almost everything under the sun every day of the week.

It is very, very easy to fall behind very, very quickly. And unless you consciously put forth the effort to stay on top of things you will most certainly fall behind. Keeping up is easier than catching up and if you keep up, you can usually find a way to forge ahead.

Yes, you are so busy right now that you could use 48 hour days but taking just about one hour per day out of the 24 that you are allotted and only $5 out of every hundred dollars that you earn and investing that time and money in yourself can increase your future earnings a hundred fold.

There are newsletters, webinars, teleseminars and real brick and mortar seminars that can provide information and cause your knowledge to grow and expand so that your business can also grow and expand but you must be willing to invest in yourself so that you can take advantage of this information…learn it…and apply it to your own internet business.

Tags: Invest in Yourself, Success Mindset Series, Self Development

Grow or die! This is one of the laws of nature that applies to all living things. All business lives by this law as well. A business cannot begin, grow to a certain point and then simply remain at that point and continue to thrive.

Growth and expansion are necessary for the business to survive and if that growth and expansion do not happen then the business will fade and die or crash and burn.

Growth and expansion of business must be controlled by the business owners or managers. If growth is too slow, the business lags behind the competition. If growth is too fast, the business can easily become over extended.

A steady controlled growth is the ideal. Of course, the ideal and the reality are sometimes two very different things.

Sometimes the terms ‘growth and expansion’ are a bit misunderstood. The most obvious meaning of both terms is to get bigger and broader but those meanings are not the only ones that apply.

Growth, for example, can mean gaining knowledge and becoming wiser and expansion can mean broadening the knowledge base from which a company operates.

A small internet based company does not have to grow and expand until it becomes a giant multi-national company in order to survive but the owners and managers of these internet businesses do have to grow by getting smarter and expand by welcoming change with open arms.

Nothing ever just stays the same. Change is the only certainty in the world. What was hot or what worked yesterday is old news today and it will be ancient history tomorrow.

Companies and company owners and managers must grow with and adapt to changes as they happen and on the internet changes happen a lot faster than they do out in the brick and mortar world.

We all agree that growing, adapting and expanding is vital to the survival of any business and maybe especially to Internet business. So the question is: What is the key to growth and expansion of internet based businesses?

When brick and mortar businesses grow and expand, they build bigger buildings and hire more employees but that isn’t exactly an option for an internet based business.

The key to growth and expansion of an internet based business is for the business owner or manager to always and continuously invest in them.

They must be willing to stay on the cutting edge of technology and they must be willing to accept and adapt to changes as they occur.

Internet businesses are not buildings. Internet businesses are people. An internet business cannot grow by investing in a larger building.

It only grows when the person who is driving that business invests in his or her own knowledge and ability.

An internet business cannot expand by investing in hiring more people. An internet business expands when the person who is driving it invests in himself or herself.

The bottom line is this: The key to continuous growth and expansion of an internet based business is continuous investments being made in the owner or manager of the business. The short answer: Invest in yourself.

Tags: Business Growth, Business Expansion, Internet business, Success Mindset Series