Courage and Leadership

When I think of the concept of courage I'm often drawn towards those larger than life, uncommon examples of valor that are held in reverence and awe.
For example, Medal of Honor recipient Sgt John Basilone on Guadalcanal repelling 3,000 Japanese for three days and nights without sleep, rest, or food; or Neil Armstrong taking control away from the computer and manually flying the Lunar Module to a safer landing spot on the moon with only 40 seconds of fuel to spare.
It's easy to understand courage in this context; these "life and death" type scenarios. But what about courage in the "everyday" that we are required to exhibit?
I think most of us equate courage as fearless acts of valor that are reserved for larger-than-life scenarios. It's easy to look at these type of fearless acts and wonder if we have what it takes to exhibit courage; and therefore be a leader.
It's important to note, however, that exhibiting courage does not mean that one acts without fear. In fact fear is actually a requirement of courage. Courage is the act of being scared to death and doing what's required anyway. One of my favorite quotes comes from World War I Ace Eddie Rickenbacker where he said, "Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared."
In this context, every day we are faced with courageous choices and acts. Every time you act upon your gut instincts; every time you listen and follow your heart; every time you choose to do the right thing; you're exhibiting courage.
It takes everyday acts of courage to deal with your life situations, love, family and work.
Maybe you're required to step forward, make a fool of yourself, and lead your team in the Birthday Song for one of your employees.
Maybe you need to tell your kid no about going to the "party of the year" where all of her friends will be going.
Maybe you're the father, who for the first time ever, decides to lead his family in grace over the evening meal.
All of these acts require courage. I realize that they're not "life-and-death" type scenarios, yet there is still an element of fear involved in each. Regardless of the fear level, it's just as important that we put aside the fear and do the right thing.
Don't discount the everyday acts of courage that are required in our lives.
You need courage to hold your family together when they seem to be falling apart.
You need to have courage to not lose heart when met with failure.
You need courage to be a leader.

Richard specializes in leadership and change management. His philosophy of inspiring "everyone to think and act like a leader" is based on timeless natural principles and common sense; and from his positive and humbling experiences as a husband of 20 years, father of four daughters, professional executive, and military pilot.

Become an Advertising Agent and Make Big Money

Looking at these diverse factors in their right perspective is in real fact: name of the game. Therefore, other than business opportunities and ideas for starting up business as an advertising agent that will become available to you upon mastering them, becoming a successful advertising agent demands developing and maintaining good relations with major media players, especially those concerned with different mobile, online, and print media establishments. Furthermore, prospective advertising agents would also need to display uncanny ability to negotiate as well as secure suitable deals for their clients, who could at times be quite demanding.
To attain the status of a respectable advertising agent and make big money, you must be able to clearly determine a specific niche for yourself. For starters, select the particular kind of media placements that you would like to secure on behalf of your clients. This will facilitate you in making the job of an advertising agent far easier and also help in making big money while you are in the process of doing it. For instance, if you are not adequately familiar with the process involved in, let's say, buying television advertisements, it would hence be a better idea to consider narrowing down your specialization to online and print media. You may also narrow down your focus to purely include specific industries and target markets that are most suitable for your projected objectives, both on a short as well as long term basis.
To enhance your market image and status, you will need to introduce your business to key sales people in the media, especially those involved in selling advertisement placements which fall into your chosen niche. Additionally, you must endeavor to develop relations with prominent local as well as nationwide bloggers; sales persons for magazines and newspapers; in addition to television and radio stations. Start by sending out formal introductory letters to them, so that you can make both yourself and your advertising business interests known to them.
As regularly as permissible, make every effort to meet with various sales people associated with the media and try to get maximum information related to the kind of advertisement opportunities and benefits offered by their respective organizations. Obtain information that covers advertising pricing for 'bulk rate' deals as well as procedures related to purchase of ad space, including its ongoing availability. Basing your estimates on these advertising pricing for bulk rates, determine the precise number of placements that you will be able to purchase outright, before determining the price you can easily charge your customers. Obviously, this must also be a price that they are readily willing to pay, making the deal profitable for you. Industry experts have estimated, on an average, independent advertising agents can generally help their customers save up to 25% in advertisement costs, and yet make a reasonably good profit for themselves. Develop your own methods for measuring effectiveness of media placements purchased by you and eventually resold onwards to your anticipated customers.

Your Factual Niche Market

Where a business is concerned, the pertinent question is, "How do you connect your business with consumers who you intend to serve, while still needing to perfect information concerning who your prospective customers are likely to be? To put yourself on the right track, here are some answers that will open up your mind and help you in finding your factual niche market.
If you have yet to work out the market segment you plan finally to serve, as well as the specific assistance that you intend providing your prospective customers, it could be rather demanding. Moreover, it would also be nearly impossible to conveniently approach them without a strategic plan. This is the insurmountable impasse trainers, as well as conscious and creative entrepreneurs on the lookout to convey their respective product or service message, are usually faced with in today's aggressive marketing world. You can either stand out on your own or simply lose out!
However, with rampant options available, the choice is entirely yours to make.
'Never attempt to alter the perceived worldview of others' is the marketing strategy followed by most smart marketers. Never attempt to enforce facts on others, simply for the sake of pleading your case, or ever insist that others alter their intuitive biases to appease your convincing logic. One has neither the time nor money to do it; prompt! Best way to progress is, 'just sail with the wind'. Identify a demographic that holds a particular set outlook and proceed to develop your message in applicable terms, directly relating to that perceived outlook. The field will be yours, for keeps!
In the present online, highly competitive marketplace, you need to make sure that you float with the current. Finding the right niche, and who your prospective customers are, is the basic element for each and every business enterprise. When you are placed in a position where you can largely narrow down the type of people who you can serve and solve the problems for, you will succeed in creating fitting programs. You will possess the product or service most desired by your niche.
Why Bother With a Niche
Your niche represents a focused, targetable part of a specific market segment. Imagine your niche as an intently defined customer group. Visualize a compact committee of people closely interconnected, strung to a popular leader or rigid traditions, and maybe linked very closely to some common cultural notions. For instance, it would be an extremely difficult task if you were to try and sell bread to a culture which is accustomed to consuming a diet that is predominantly rice-based, without recognizing the need for a new product development.
In simple words, a niche can be described as a large group of prospective customers who view the world only to retell a very similar story about their experience. The more fastidious you become in selecting the right niche, easier it becomes to aim your business message to your new as well as future customers. Finding a niche is central to your business plan and developing your brand, titles, domain name, descriptions, and meta-keywords; particularly inciting 'Giveaways'.

Strength and Boost Your Own Business

A business that is thriving would need to necessarily have good knowledge about leveraging its workforce strength in order to achieve maximum benefits, as well as constantly maintain its own good health; a businessman in manufacturing sector of industry would need to know how best to leverage his suppliers' strength, in order to produce high quality products and expand his business; and a service provider would need to efficiently leverage his customers' strength, which would in turn enable him to offer much wider scope of services. These are just a few among many other similarly potential possibilities.
In ongoing pursuit of increasing their respective online traffic, many active internet marketing businesses and owners of websites are now beginning to take the untold potential of social networking into proper account. They are also starting to realize how some top ranking user driven online sites such as Facebook, Flickr, and MySpace, can help them in drawing new potential customers to their own respective websites. Every single day that goes by, brings increasingly more number of users, estimated to be in their millions, freely gravitating towards these high-flying social networks, principally because it gives them the advantage of effectively connecting with new customers, building progressive business relationships, as well as sharing internet marketing content for business or self enhancement purposes. In other words, they opportunely leverage the strength of these highly popular sites for their own business or personal purpose. The obviously reason is winning acclaim.
Today, social networking presents unrestricted opportunities for instant growth in traffic for businesses as well as individuals who own, manage and operate internet marketing based websites. Nonetheless, prior to making a tactless blind thrust into this still evolving marketing arena, commonly referred to as social networking; you must first consciously become aware of reasons that enable these social networking setups to develop a potential to produce higher rate of page views for your business or private website.
Where users abound, opportunities for online marketing must abound too. Social networking can truly be termed as the place where you will never be short on action, since users by their millions regularly frequent these popular sites. In 2008, a prominent insider report claimed daily users of MySpace alone averaged about 17.7 million, closely pursued by Facebook with about another 8.6 million users on a daily basis. Now visualize, with uninterrupted increase in these statistics, where these mega networking sites probably stand today. With such consistency and incredible numbers, you as a business owner can simply not afford to stand by, without partaking in this fast moving action to leverage its strength for your own benefit. Always remember, to be successful, you need to be there where potential users commonly congregate in large numbers.
Other than a potential user base, social networks impulsively provide you unrestricted access to much larger audiences. This is the place you can leverage on others' strength and need to make determined efforts for enhancing your business, or simply your personal ego.