The following text and audio resource is taken directly from our web page which describes our internet marketing certification program.

Sample Expert Audio Interview: The following is an expert audio interview we completed with search engine optimization superstar Aaron Wall of SEO Book. This is just a sample of the great expert audio interviews included within this internet marketing certification program.

Aaron Wall: Aaron is a top 3 search marketing expert who has grown from offering a single e-book to managing a team, growing several products and service lines, and managing a complex fast moving technology business. Within this interview Aaron shares what he has learned through overcoming his own business growth, product funnel creation, and management challenges. (Download in Mp3 Format)

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Also – if you work with SEO you probably also do some pay per click advertising as well. If so, make sure and check out Aaron’s other website: PPC Blog

If you are like me than even a 5% improvement in your PPC click through rates or ROI could mean $1,000 more profit every week eventually…so check out their blog for free resources and a training program that may help you get to the next level in your internet marketing.

- Richard Wilson

CEO, Founder of BusinessTraining.com

Why you should apply SPEED of Implementation starting now…

In mid 2009 I attended a business conference where over 10 guest speakers, all of which were self-made millionaires and business owners spoke.  I took over 15 pages of notes and condensed those down to just one single page. While reviewing common themes from the 30+ hours of advice from these professionals the only piece of advice which each expert mentioned and emphasized was “speed of implementation.”  Since that conference I have developed a deeper understanding of this concept, figured out how to apply it to my business, and why it is so important.

In short focusing my attention on increasing my speed of implementation has brought my productivity, motivation, and sense of progress to another level.  Increasing your speed of implementation means making decisions faster, receiving feedback faster, and adjusting and growing further more rapidly as well.

With everything in life we move through learning curves whether it is starting a new career, starting a new business, or launching a new product.  Speed of implementation is about moving up that learning curve 3x faster than your competition so by the time they have reached the top of that first curve you have conquered three new areas of knowledge or ability.  That may sound very loose and non-exact but stay with me here and I will provide some examples below.

In short you can speed up the success that you realize but analyzing what actions you know will need to be taken, whether you know what the following steps are or not.  Many times in life we cannot see the full path to success, only a few steps that we could be taking right now.  If you seize those first few steps more quickly than others additional paths of actions will unfold that others who are contemplating the risks of the unknown will never be able to see.

Iterative Processes

Applying speed of implementation requires a fundamental understanding how it will help you reach a level of breakthrough success that surprises even yourself.  Within the diagram below you see four letters: A,B,C,D, followed by a single letter T.

A –> B –> C –> D –> T (Breakthrough Success)

Steps A, B, C of most projects are obvious, you know what first steps you need to take…yet step #20 which is T is so far removed from the knowledge and foresight you have now that the project seems unachievable, unrealistic, or risky.  The result? Typically we enter gathering more information and  asking others for their opinion mode.  This has its time and place but 99% of the time if you would just start on Steps A, B, and C, by the time those are complete you would have a much better vision and more clarity on exactly what steps D, E, F, and G are.  Once you get those next steps complete through G you may even be able to see all the way to step L, etc. Eventually you will get to T, step #20 but there is no way that you can get there without first going through the iterative process of taking the first steps that are clear right now.

In short you can evolve faster, meet your goals sooner, and over a short period of time out-pace everyone around you in your industry by just taking massive action within the areas where you have identified the next 1-2 steps to take.

Happy implementing!

- Richard Wilson, CEO & Founder of http://BusinessTraining.com

p.s. I will soon be releasing details on my just-written book on speed of implementation, stay tuned.

Tags: Speed of implementation, how to use speed of implementation, speed of implementation theory, speed of implementation book, book on speed of implementation, marketing and speed of implementation, speed of execution, massive action, taking action

Below is a transcript of an interview conducted between Rafael & Kevin from Investor Databases and the Global Training & Certification Institute. The point of this interview is to provide clarity and transparency in what websites, services, and training programs are being ran by Investor Databases and GTC Institute.

Rafael:  Kevin, can you explain in detail all of the program and services offered by the Global Training & Certification Institute?

Kevin: Sure. First off though, our programs were created because of the lack of niche knowledge and practical training provided at community colleges, universities and college in Europe and the United States.  We do not aim to be the largest, cheapest, or most popular within any single country, all of our programs all aim to be the most practical, challenging, and globally accepted programs within their respective industries. Over 1,000 professionals have completed our various online training and certification programs from around the world.  With that said here are the programs we currently offer:

Hedge Fund Certification Program: Our business actually started within the training and certification niche by launching the Certified Hedge Fund Professional (CHP) Designation Program. This program is the #1 most credible, well recognized, and trusted hedge fund training and certification program. In fact it is the only hedge fund certification program which is international, 100% online, and built exclusively by and for hedge fund professionals.

Online Business Training Programs:  We offer over 20 online business training programs at BusinessTraining.com. These programs may all be completed in 5 months or less and are very practical and challenging.  Currently the program we are offer include a Business Analyst Certification, Business Development Certification, Business Broker Certification, Business Coaching Certification, Business Fundamentals Certification, Business Management Certification, Business Consultant Certification, Copywriting Certification, Customer Service Manager Certification, Facilitator Certification, Financial Analyst Certification, International Business Certification, Internet Marketing Certification, Project Management Certification, Public Relations Certification,  Purchase Management Certification, Recruiting Certification, and Supply Chain Management Certification.

Private Equity Certification Program:  The private equity industry is unique in its size, investment horizon, and the training needs of its employees and managers.  The Certified Private Equity Professional (CPEP) program was started by our team to help private equity executives, professionals, fund managers, and students learn about private equity industry fundamentals, challenges, trends, and terms.

Translator Certification Program:  The Certified Translation Professional (CTP) program is a 100% online translator training and certification program. This program helps those which speak multiple languages or already work as professional translators earn a designation which shows that their ability to translate has been tested and they hold knowledge on translation industry best practices and ethics.

Customer Service Certification: Our Customer Loyalty Specialist (CLS) program was built for heads of customer service and those who want to quickly move up to customer service management roles within their organization. We speak with many teams of customer service professionals each quarter who are completing this program.

That summarizes most of what we are doing at the GTC Institute. Our mission is to provide practical, challenging, global training and certification opportunities for hard working professionals who want to get ahead. We are constantly improving all of our educational programs and we have one team member who does nothing but research best practices being put in place by our competitors and then adapting those to our programs, some of his research can be seen at CertificationIQ.com.

Rafael:  Sounds like your team is keeping very busy.  I know from reviewing these programs and working with your team that a lot of time goes into the video resources and study guides behind each of these programs listed above.  Thank you for sharing all of that with us and clearing that up.

Rafael: Is your team launching any new websites in the next year?

Kevin:  Richard will be launching a website on CEO Training to share what he has been learning while growing his company, but other than that we are sticking to the line of websites we already are managing – that is keeping us very busy.

Rafael: I have read one of your books, can you list out some of the books and smaller websites that your team also runs?

Kevin:  Sure. Our books can be found through these links: Family Office Book, Hedge Fund Book, Hedge Fund Training, Prime Brokerage Book, Start A Hedge Fund, and Public Relations Book.

Rafael:  I know that most of your training programs grew out of industry leading blogs which lead to 1,000′s of professionals emailing you about their desire to complete such programs.

Kevin: Yes. Our company was actually started by Richard Wilson who started a single blog which grew to 10,000 pageviews a day and then led to the launching of our first online training and certification programs. Right now our team runs the following network of blogs:

• Business Training Resources
• Hedge Fund Blogger
• Marketing & Sales Guru
• Prime Brokerage Guide
• Fund Administration
• Hedge Fund Startup Guru
• Customer Service Reference
• Commodities and Futures Guide
• Third Party Marketing
• Become A Translator
• Public Relations Blogger
• Family Offices Group
• Business Vocab
• International Business Training
• Investment Banking Training
• Translation Training
• Private Equity Blogger

We also have a few independent websites which just help web visitors navigate what we offer:

• Business Certifications
• Investment Training
• Business Association
• Business Designation

Rafael: That is great. Our team runs several blogs and connected websites as well.  Some of our most popular websites include:

• Angel Investor Guru
• Venture Capital Blogger

Kevin: What about your websites where individuals can gain access to your firm resources, can you list those out for us below?

Rafael:  Sure, our sites have taken us three years to launch and develop and they now include sites that provide a Family Office Database, Hedge Fund Directory, Private Equity Directory, Angel Investor Directory, Venture Capital Database, Family Office Directory, Endowment Directory, Pension Directory, Film Funding Sources, Bank Database, Investment Banking Directory,  Family Office List, and various other Investor Databases.  Each of these directories and databases provides the full contact details for investors or investment companies in Excel format delivered within one business day.

Kevin: Why do individuals acquire these investor databases? What is their motivation?

Rafael: The #1 reason is that it takes 20-25 minutes to find the complete phone number, email address, and physical address for the average investor, so if the potential client looking at our database makes more than $4 hour they are going to benefit from purchasing our database of investor contact details and saving all of that time of finding these same contact details.

Kevin:  How much work does it take to keep these databases updated? Does your team provide free updates to clients on their databases that they purchase?

Rafael:  We have two full time employees who do nothing but help keep these databases current, updated and very high quality. We are constantly expanding the coverage within our databases and we now offer the best refund policies and quality guarantees of the data because we have put in this hard work in building the product.

Kevin:  I understand, thank you for sharing all of this and thank you for your time today.

Disclosure:  Kevin & Rafael both work for the Investor Databases, LLC and Global Training & Certification (GTC) Institute, LLC and this interview was conducted between these sister companies to provide more transparency and clarity on their services offered.

Tags: Investor Databases, Investor Directories, Investor Database, Training, Training and certifications, certification programs, training programs online, certificate programs, certificates, online certificate programs, 2QUTGCSCCHQM

Fund of Funds List

Hedge Fund of Funds List in Excel

Part of our team runs the largest hedge fund networking association in the industry and they have just finished updating a new version of our Fund of Funds Directory.  This resource was created after our team received dozens of emails from industry professionals looking for lists of fund of funds, digital fund of fund databases, and excel-based hedge fund of fund directories.

This Fund of Funds Directory is Excel-based and provides full contact details of private equity firms including the following information:

• Contact names
• Job titles
• Phone numbers
• Email addresses
• Physical addresses
• Website URLs. 

If you are interested in learning more about this resource, getting a sample of our fund of funds list or contacting the creators please see Fund of Funds Directory.com. You may also navigate this same site by following one of the links below:

• Buy Fund of Funds Directory
• Benefits of Owning the Fund of Funds Directory
• Fund of Funds Directory FAQ

This list of fund of funds contact details is updated twice a year and when you purchase a copy of it you will get free updates to it for a period of 12 months after your purchase.

Related to this blog post: Hedge Fund of Funds List

• Fund of Funds Directory
• Private Equity Directory
• Family Offices
• Angel Investor Directory
• Hedge Fund Directory
• Family Office Directory

Tags: Hedge Fund of Funds List, Fund of Funds List, List of Fund of Funds, Top Fund of Funds, Directory list of fund of funds, fund of fund directory, fund of fund list, hedge fund of fund list

Part of our team runs the largest private equity networking association in the industry and they just finished updating Version 2.1 of our Private Equity Directory.  This resource was created after our team received dozens of emails from industry professionals looking for lists of private equity firms, digital family office databases, and excel-based family office directories.

This Private Equity Directory is Excel-based and provides full contact details of private equity firms including the following information:

• Contact names
• Job titles
• Phone numbers
• Email addresses
• Physical addresses
• Website URLs.

If you are interested in learning more about this resource, getting a sample of our private equity directory or contacting the creators please see Private Equity Directory.com. You may also navigate this same site by following one of the links below:

• Buy Private Equity Directory
• Benefits of Owning the Private Equity Directory
• Private Equity Directory FAQ

This directory is updated twice a year and when you purchase a copy of it you will get free updates to it for a period of 12 months after your purchase.

Related to this blog post: Private Equity Directory

• Private Equity Directory
• Family Offices
• List building training
• Angel Investor Directory
• Hedge Fund Directory
• Fund of Funds Directory
• Family Office Directory

Tags: Private Equity Directory, Private Equity Firms List, Private Equity List, Directory of Private Equity Firms, Private Equity Database, Database of Private Equity Firms, Private Equity Funds List, List of Private Equity Firms, Private Equity Companies List

For those who seek free legal advice, the site known as freeAdvice.com could prove highly beneficial. The section located at:  business-law.freeadvice.com, offers specific pages that teach you about business law in general terms, as well as about other issues of importance such as insurance and how to get a lawyer. The site’s business law page provides numerous topics, including:

• General questions
• Aliens
• Business insurance
• Business licenses and permits
• Disability insurance
• Dissolving a business

There are many more topics with readymade answers for those needing quick legal advice. In addition, the site offers a community of lawyers who make themselves available to answer questions. In order to ask a question, you can choose from among many forums that include such topics as:

• Accident and injury law
• Bankruptcy and consumer credit
• Business and financial law

When you ask a question, it will be forwarded, through the site, to a lawyer who specializes in that topic. Your question and its answer will then be posted on the site along with all of the others who have asked questions. This is a wonderful way to get legal information and for those with legal problems to help one another benefit from the advice distributed through freeadvice.com.

There is no better business advice I can give you than to blog as much as you can. Every time you blog you help to spread your name and the name of your business throughout the blogosphere. A regularly maintained blog will garner members and fans who check it for advice. They’ll even begin to comment on your blogs and write in with questions and issues for future blogs.

When you engage customers and potential customers by blogging, it serves two purposes. It demonstrates your vast knowledge of the industry you are a part of. It also helps to brand your business. Your business is no longer one of many businesses competing for the same market, but rather it is the one “with the guy who gives advice.” Every industry has some sector where readers want some do-it-yourself advice. Everything from gardening to investing has some element of do-it-yourself, and that is where your blog will appeal to readers and draw them to you and your business.

Your website should showcase any press coverage that your business receives. Press coverage is such a valuable tool for establishing your business’ credibility and importance to the community, that no item should be overlooked, no matter how small.

After all, restaurants showcase their positive review by framing them and displaying them, don’t they? Think of any press coverage your company receives as the same type of thing. Your website is nothing less than an online storefront, and any press coverage you receive should be proudly displayed. Studies have shown that web sites with numerous links to published articles about the business receive more hits and within one year, business is seen to improve in businesses that post new articles on a regular basis. Don’t let your business fall behind—be sure to showcase all of your good press on your web site.

Every business must have a web site. It doesn’t have to be a site where customers can shop online, and it doesn’t have to be interactive. All it has to do is provide a storefront online with your basic contact information. But if you really want your website to work for you, one thing that really helps is to consider the name of your business in terms of the web.

Even if your business is mostly a physical storefront and its web presence is minimal, it still helps to consider adopting a name that is highly searched online. You can research keywords online to find a company name that many will search for when they are in need of your product or service. Be sure it is easy to remember and to spell as well as relevant to your business.

When writing your business plan, be sure to project the revenues and expense totals for both the upcoming five years as well as the past three years. Growth assumptions are an important part of any business plan, but they can’t be made realistically without these past and future projections. But don’t clutter your business plan with too many details. Make these details available in an appendix, not in the body of the plan.

By and large, investors are seeking high-growth opportunities. They want to see your project or business in terms of a large, scalable opportunity. Double-digit growth will attract them, and revenues at twenty million or more within five years, if they can be proven, will definitely attract investor interest.

When writing your business plan, don’t neglect to carefully discuss funding requirements. This aspect of the business plan is one of the most crucial for attracting investors. You will not only need to show what the funding requirements are, you will need to show how you arrived at these numbers. Detailed information on how you plan to use the funds is essential.

Before detailing what you will need in terms of funding, first quantify what you have got already. Even if you haven’t got money, you have your own sweat equity. When seeking investors it is crucial to include a current estimate of value in the business plan. That way they know what the starting point is and can consider funding from there.

If you are in business and looking to take your work one step further, starting a business advice column may just be a good idea. One way that business men and women manage to improve their standing and profits is by publishing a book based on their expertise. Writing a business advice column can be a gateway to publishing a book.

A column, once you get some loyal readers, makes you “slightly famous” in your field. Numerous individuals will know who you are and respect your knowledge. This will draw more customers to your business and also attract them to any book you write or other product you may put out in the field of business advice. There are a lot of different directions to go once your business is successful—you could expand the business itself, or branch off into giving advice about business. Writing a column can help in any case.

When you seek loans or investment in your business, one of the best things you can do to lure investors is to convince them that you have the best executive team around. Remember that venture capitalists don’t just invest in ideas, they invest in people too. If you are able to show that your executives have been successful in numerous businesses before, this will give the potential investor quite a bit of confidence.

In addition to your executive team, you can add advisory board members who are key connections in the industry. Basically, if you know anyone with a big name or impressive resume, try to find some way to get him or her involved in your business. Investors will be very impressed with your initiative and with the list of hot-shots associated with your firm.

When writing your business plan, it is a great idea to focus on your market, your sales channels, and your strategy for penetrating that market. Pricing and strategic partnerships are essential aspects of that market strategy.

Your market strategy should not be vague. It should include a specific timeline with key milestones. This way investors will see that you have considered your sales channels, strategic partners, and a viable strategy already. You don’t want to depend on chance or good luck when it comes to investing thousands, perhaps millions of dollars in a business, so define the milestones you expect to reach and how long it should take to achieve each one. This shows investors that you have your feet on the ground with your business.

When you are writing a business plan intent on showing how you can take over a large part of the territory of any given market, it is essential to realistically describe the competition and to show your sustainable advantage. Competition comes in the form of direct as well as indirect competition. This later category includes customer alternatives to the product itself. There are always ways that potential customers can get out of buying a product. They can find substitutes. Those substitutes and lesser options are your indirect competition and must be addressed.

Once you have identified the competition, you must convincingly show the sustainable advantage that your business model offers. What barriers does your business put up against competition? Be sure not to underestimate the competition. Investors will not be impressed by you overlooking a major multi-national corporation with the assumption that it will not have an interest in competing for your market. Most likely, it is already planning how to take over that segment, so be aware and do your research in order to establish the territory your business plans to cover.

When you are planning a technology business, your plan must precisely describe your business model. Your business model is made up of factors such as where the money is coming from, who will pay you, who you will have to pay, and the gross margins needed to keep the business running. When writing the business model section, be sure to be very specific about revenue, profit, and volume growth.

Be sure, when describing your business model, not to underplay the difficulty of getting your initial share of the market. Your business model should not be geared toward capturing one percent of the market, it should aspire to become a major player. You must walk the fine line between appearing overconfident and seeming unambitious. The key is realism paired with plenty of research.

When writing a successful, investment-grade business plan, you must have a keen knowledge of the market. Investors love to know about the evolution of an industry, its market dynamics, and its customer landscape. They love to see double-digit growth rates based on data from accredited research groups.

Once you have determined the size of the industry or market, be sure to realistically assess the competition. If the market is large, your investors will know that your competition is also be formidable. How you plan to handle that competition and why your product or service solves a problem that the others don’t is the key to overcoming competition. You must convince investors that you, and you alone, hold the key to solving an important, and expensive, problem.

When writing a great business plan, you must keep in mind that investors are looking for some very specific things. They don’t want to be convinced that you have a great business idea or a winning personality, they want to know that your business solves an important problem. They must first be made aware that the problem exists, and then that you have a foolproof way of solving it.

Investors want to see not a business idea of a problem solution. You must be specific in your description of how your solution works and why. In this part of the plan, reveal your secrets. Don’t hold back. As long as you stay focused on a specific problem, a specific solution to that problem, and the benefits to utilizing the solution, investors will have to realize that your business is important and worthy of their money.

Who needs to see your business plan more than anyone else? You do. You think of writing your business plan for investors, but aren’t you the ultimate investor? You have got to be able to use this plan to keep yourself focused and prevent yourself from getting discouraged. After all, your investment isn’t a one-time thing. It is something you renew every single day when you get up to go to work.

To ensure that your business plan is investment-grade, you must be sure that your business solves some problem. After all, if something isn’t broken, your product or service won’t be needed to fix it. So begin your plan not with a description of the company you envision but with a description of the problem you are solving. Quantify the cost of the problem in dollars and time units, and note how your company will solve the problem, also using quantifiable data.

Too many cooks can spoil the broth, so they say. The same is true with business planning. When you have an extensive management or ownership team to involve in the business planning process, it can become very complex and frustrating if everyone has something to say about every aspect of the plan. You can never get anything done that way. What you must do is appoint one individual to write each section of a plan, but allow the other team members to assist in brainstorming ideas for that section of the plan.

To do this, you must understand how brainstorming works. Follow these 7 parameters and you can’t go wrong:

1. First, define the objective and ensure all participants agree.
2. Next, come up with as many ideas as you can within a proscribed time limit.
3. Then categorize and refine the ideas.
4. You’ll need to analyze your results for feasible ideas.
5. Rank feasible ideas.
6. Then all participants must agree upon which action to take an a timescale to utilize.
7. With that agreement made, the business plan section can be written and reviewed in a follow-up meeting.

Those planning new businesses often rely upon business planning books, business planning software, and even hire business planning companies to take care of it all for them. But one of the most helpful items business planners have access to is a business planning template.

These templates, available for free on numerous business websites, enable planners to see exactly which areas of their plans are lacking. When you have done a certain amount of research, you can plug that into the template. That done, the sections of the template that still show white space are going to be indicators of work that still needs to be done. The satisfaction of gradually filling up an empty template with the research and analysis necessary to begin your new business idea is immeasurable, so try a business planning template when putting together your business plan. It could be a great help.

When you are going online, looking for advice in planning your business or building sales and marketing plans, try businessballs.com. For help with keeping all your business balls in the air, this web site is unparalleled. You’ll see help on everything from brainstorming to business networking and marketing to project management.

The site offers free business plan and marketing plan templates to help you get started, and a page of simple business start-up principles. When your essential business questions lie in the area of your personal direction, your vision, and your plans toward change for more fulfillment, this site can also help you there. It offers a passion-to-profit exercise that can help get you back on track with your business planning and improvements.

When planning your restaurant business, be sure to understand how a restaurant business plan differs from any other business plan. It should explain to potential investors how the restaurant will succeed with a nod to the extremely competitive nature of the restaurant industry. You must make the case that a need for your restaurant exists among all the restaurants currently existing in your area. Since most towns already have plenty of dining options, this argument is a particularly important and difficult one to make.

To accomplish this you must first establish the need, which means doing customer analysis. You will describe who your customers are, including their age, income, family type, marital status, and so forth. You will describe what they value when it comes to food (such as low cost versus organic ingredients). In doing so, you will paint a complete picture of the need that exists. When you are able to do that, you are well on your way to establishing a successful restaurant business plan.

If you want to write your business plan like a pro, then don’t overly complicate things. There is a temptation for many new entrepreneurs to try to delve into every complexity imaginable. This is not only unnecessary, it could be detrimental. Too much extra language will bore a reader and may actually hide the true import of your statement.

In addition to keeping it simple, be sure that your simple message is organized around a comprehensive vision. Your vision statement is one way of simplifying the message and intent of your business and putting it into words for all to see. If you are having trouble writing your vision statement, then chances are you don’t have a clear idea of what your business should be. Take the time to conceptualize that and write it out.

Poor business planning results from unnecessary risk as well as unnecessary conservatism, so follow the following clever tips to ensure that you learn to walk that fine line properly:

• Do the research first. Taking a “wait and see” approach is just a lazy way of saying you don’t want to research your market. It won’t do you any good.
• Write down realistic numbers. It’s good to dream, and even to dream big, but when it comes to writing down the numbers, base them on what is feasible, not on a fantasy.
• Have a mentor. Whether you get advice from a school business counselor, your local small business association, or a personal mentor, don’t try to go it alone.
• Think twice about the advice you get. You should seek out advice from qualified professionals. That said, you should also think twice about it. Others do not always see your vision the right way, so don’t assume that “expert advice” will serve you particular goals.
• Don’t rush. Take your time with your business plan and all the research it entails. In the long run, this investment will pay off.