Starting a business is not that difficult; however, maintaining the vision for a business in your mind and heart is needed to keep you motivated towards your goal.  A vision is a mental picture of how you want things to be.  For instance, you would carry a mental picture of what being a success means to you. 

• You can see people coming to you saying “Yes” I want what you have to offer.   
• You see your products or services being purchased and your cash register full of cash.  

But keeping a vision alive is not the first step to building a successful venture.  The first step is to ask the most important question you will have to answer prior to being a success. That question is, Why? 

• Why are you doing what you do (or want to do) in business?  
• Why have you chosen (or will choose) to focus on a particular field, discipline, idea, etc.? 

It’s important to know why you intend to do something as intense as operating a business.  Starting or operating a business based on the wishes and dreams of others or based on the traditions within a person’s family. Perhaps you grew up in a family business and felt obligated to carry it on. But now, you might feel discouraged and unmotivated.  The business could have great potential but your lack of enthusiasm makes the marketing lackluster or almost non-existent.  When, you think about why you are in this particular business, its not because of your personal passion but because of the dreams of others. 

Working in a business because of the expectations of others is not always enough to motivate you to go through the ups and downs of business. You must have a passion for what you do.  It’s when you love the work, and want to do the business, that you are in the right field. 

This brings you back to why answering the question “Why” is an important first step to create a vision for your business. 

• Why do you even want to serve a certain target community, locally or online, in this manner?  
• Is this something you would choose to do on your own, or do you feel forced to go into this business or service?  
• Do you know that this business is the best use of your talents and skills?  
• Are you honoring your personal and business values through this business?

Answer the why and you’re on your way to understanding what you need to be doing in your life through business. 

Take time to find your true heart’s desire in business and pursue your true dreams. Then you will be a business professional who is ready to continue building your business in a way that enhances your quality of life and motivates you to continue on to success, no matter what obstacles you will inevitably face along the way.

Adding audio to your websites and blog is a great way to increase the content your offer visitors. Audio provides a new communication strategy that broadens your product offerings and marketing tools and motivates purchases. Here are seven top ways audio can help to motivate purchases as an internet marketing tool. 

Audio in Internet Marketing 

1. Audio is one of the best ways to let people you may never meet in person get to know your personality. This is one of your biggest assets as the owner of a small business and audio makes it extremely easy to communicate your personality to your audience and target market group.  By listening to you, people can come to like you as a person.  Psychology shows that people will be more likely to purchase from you as a result. Use audio messages to connect with your audience and influence them to get to know and like you. Even a simple welcome message is a great start. 

2. Audio helps promote you as an expert in your field. People buy from people or companies they consider to be an authority or expert in the industry. Audio is an exceptional tool for you to use to demonstrate your authority on your niche topic as it lets you provide extended information in a short period of time.  Even 5 minutes of hearing you speak with authority has a lot of impact.  Produce how to audio messages, interviews and lessons as tools to demonstrate your authority on a topic. 

3. Audio Adds Proof.  People often make purchasing decisions based on the opinions of others. This is called using social proof. This opinion is particularly important if those “others” are people your target market respects, admires, or desire to be like. Easily tap into this social proof trigger by interviewing experts in your field and posting audio testimonials on your website. 

4. Audio is easy to produce.  Nothing beats the ease of producing an audio product.  You can use free audio software such as Audacity or purchase audio recording software to use.  Normally all you need is a good microphone that hooks right into your computer to start recording audios.  You can write out a script or talk about what you know without one.  An audio can be completed in a few minutes and uploaded to your website for your target group to hear. 

5. Audio is versatile.  You can easily take the audio you produce and create other information products.  Get the audio transcribed and you can have an ebook, book or home study program.  That means, you do the audio once and recreate it into many different, effective formats.  Learning to work with audio is a valuable tool in this modern business world. 

6. Audio is transportable. Because you can download an audio file to an ipod or other portable device, it remains one of the most popular ways to share information.  Being able to transport the audio to other areas makes it highly convenient.  Being able to listen to recordings at will when it’s convenient increases the audience base. 

7. Audio is Comforting. People love to recognize a voice.  Don’t you enjoy hearing the voice of your favorite person on the telephone? What about hearing an actor in the distance; doesn’t that peak your interest?  The same goes when people start to get accustomed to your voice.  Hearing a familiar voice can be very comforting to people.  Let people get to know you through your audios and you create a fan base, while developing and growing your business opportunities.

If you’re serious about making positive changes in your life, learn about the concept of unconscious goal setting.  The idea is not complex. It is simply that if you don’t set and work towards conscious goals you’re working towards meeting your unconscious goals.   

Unconscious goals are undefined with no specific direction.  Here are reasons why goals must move from unconscious to conscious to bring success to your life.

1. Unconscious goals are not specific. Everything you do in life is a forward motion. That is it takes you from where you are currently to another place.  If you don’t set specific goals for that movement you won’t have control over the outcome of that forward movement.  You’ll go somewhere but without consciously setting where you want to go; however, you’ll still get somewhere. 

2. Unconscious thoughts blame outside forces. Many people go through life just taking things as they come along.  If the day goes well, it’s one for joy.  If the day goes bad, it’s normally attributed to an external source such as  “bad luck” or to the activities of others people such as those that “don’t like you.” When you leave yourself open to whatever comes it’s a conscious unconscious decision.  No one is to blame except you as the opportunity to take control of your thoughts is your own.

3. Unconscious thoughts control the day. The brain doesn’t turn off simply because you haven’t consciously used it during your day.  Thoughts continue to take place. In fact, you’re thinking at all times about something.  Like other muscles of the body, a brain that doesn’t get exercised gets flabby.  Flabby brain, flabby thoughts.  Flabby thoughts don’t have the muscle tone for a firm foundation. That means your thoughts and ideas can be shifted and turned at the whim of outside forces or the attitudes of those that surround you.

4. Unconscious goals have no pattern.  Because you haven’t stopped to think specifically about what you want to do and how you intend to achieve, your life tends to go up and down with no pattern.  Because you don’t’ know what you want to achieve each day, anything you do is good enough.  Sometimes, you might have to stop to think if you got anything of importance done for the day since you didn’t plan to achieve anything.

5. Unconscious goals are vague. Goals you’re not conscious of are vague.  When you think in vague terms about what you want such as that you’d prefer to live a better life or have more money for instance, but without setting a specific goal your mind can’t create the ideas needed to guide you toward your goals.  Instead, “more money” can be a few pennies more than what you had yesterday.  A better life might mean getting through one more green light driving home than you got driving to work in the morning. Vague has no substance on which to build success.  

6. Unconscious goals waste time.  Having no pattern to your achievements or not knowing where you want to go or why creates the consistent frustration of having a starting and stopping motion in life. First you want where you’re going then you change your mind.  It’s like trying something on then deciding to change your clothes three times before being able to walk out of the house.  You don’t know exactly why you take specific actions so nothing seems to work.  This starting and stopping wastes time and lets you feel you’re taking two steps forward and five steps back with every action.

7. Unconscious goals are costly.  What are your income goals.  Unconscious goals will say “I want to be wealthy” or “ we really need to bring in some money today.”  These type of goals cost you the possibilities of actually reaching income goals. What is wealthy in your definition?  Unless you are specific about this, wealthy might be having an extra $20.00 bill in your pocket.  Now you are wealthy because you have that much more money.  Bringing in more money today could result in getting one sale but if it is the first and only sale for the month, you’ve reached your unconscious goals but could still face bankruptcy in another two months or less.  There is no reason for the mind to create ways to bring in more funds since you haven’t determined what you really need.

Hopefully these examples illustrate the power of unconscious goals for the detriment of your success.  It also gives you reasons to take the time to think through your goals and create goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable, and time oriented.