Project FED Nigeria

It's been 4 months since my last blog post for Project FED. I had some personal issues to deal with in my life and those took my attention away from the Project. As a result, I wasn't showing up.  Not surprisingly, the Project languished without my presence. When I reflected on what was the lesson that I could share out of that experience, I realized that the most important part of success in anything in life comes down to showing up. Monday: How We Show Up Matters Of course, just showing up isn't enough. If we show up with the wrong intention or in the wrong way, we'll end up being overlooked, ignored, or even make it so that other people wish we'd never showed up in the first place. For Monday Marketing, we'll talk about the importance of how we show up especially when it comes to marketing on social media and when networking. Tuesday: Making Time To Show Up For Time Management Tuesday, we'll discuss the importance of finding time to show up and how we can...

Marketing is about delivering a Message to a specific Audience that is Relevant to them based on  Knowledge of who they are, Empathy with their Troubles , Insights into their Needs, and a  Genuine  desire to help them. In order to deliver that message effectively, it's important to meet them where they are physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Delivering the Message Takes Strategy and Planning No matter how good the message is, without the right strategy and the right planning, it won't be received by the right people to help it get the widest reach possible. There are 5 keys to developing the strategy and creating an effective plan to deliver the message for maximum effectiveness. 5 Keys to Delivering the Message 1. Know Who They Are Preparing a marketing message begins long before the first conversation is had with the target audience. That marketing message needs to show the audience why the product or brand is relevant to their needs, which requires p...

This week has been a challenging time for me and my family. Financial reserves are tapped out and we are running on fumes. Without the help we received from family, we would be homeless today. Things must change, and soon, so I brought my struggle to the Lord and sought His wisdom. I've been struggling with feelings that what I post doesn't matter and that what I'm going through isn't valuable to Him. I have been concerned that my lack of success in selling anything means that I'm not truly pursuing His will and am just wasting my efforts. What You Say Matters. What You Do Matters More. I was tempted not to worry about writing this post. That's why it's getting posted so late. I was tired. Tired of fighting a battle that never seems to end. Tired of doing work that doesn't seem to go anywhere. I told myself it didn't really matter. The Lord corrected me. He told me that what I am doing in the face of my discouragement is my witness to what it means t...

Yesterday, I talked about my discouragement over Project FED's failure to make any financial progress. Today, I was given some inspiration in how to start turning things around by being reminded of what great marketing does. It captures people's attention and their imagination. It makes them think, it makes them laugh, it makes them feel something. It's creative, it's innovative, and it delivers the unexpected. Marketing Is a Creative Business While many people think of marketing as boring and dull, nothing could be further from the truth. The best marketing is creative, innovative, and delivers the unexpected. That spark of creativity makes it memorable while the innovative and unexpected aspects of it grab people's attention. The best marketers are great storytellers. Stories stick with the brain because we're wired to remember them. If you grabbed your copy of Fairytale Marketing during our Freebie Friday a couple of weeks ago, you've discovered exactly ...

During this past week, I spent some time going back over my marketing training from North Node Solutions. It covers copywriting for Facebook and other social media platforms. In it, I was reminded of the importance of marketing with integrity, about being an honest representative of any product, service, or company that I am marketing. Making Money without Integrity Will Steal Your Peace of Mind Marketing is powerful. It can persuade people to do things that can destroy their lives, such as smoking cigarettes or drinking sodas, or it can persuade people to do things that will save their lives and preserve their health. It's important to understand that power and to respect it. As Chris, the head of North Node Solutions, pointed out, marketing without integrity is a fast way to destroy your own peace of mind. You'll end up wasting time worrying about when people will find out that you're a fraud or that you've been selling them out and whether they are going to come afte...

Today I promised that I would be providing you with some extra special freebies, and so I am. Way back on the first Friday Freebies, I gave you a list of the first five tools you needed to start making money online. On that list was Blogger , Google’s free blogging platform. I explained that the reason I recommended it was because Google owns it and will promote your blog above other blogs if you use it. However, I didn’t give you any tools or tips to help you start taking advantage of that blog. Introducing the Better Blog Toolkit That’s what today’s post is going to do. I’m going to give you 5 free tools to help you get your blog going and write blog posts that people will enjoy reading. 1.       The 8 Question Blog Outline This is an 8-question format that I use to put together my blogs. I also use it to write full-length novels and non-fiction books.  It’s designed to lead your reader through the “hero’s journey” from needing a solution to fi...

Last Marketing Monday, we covered the  basics of marketing . The first part of that is meeting your audience. Saturday’s Sales and Systems post discussed understanding why people buy and how to identify the kind of  needs that drive people to buy  from a site like Zazzle in the first place. Today, we are going to cover the steps to take in order to take what you’ve learned, identify a specific audience that you are ideally suited to serve, and the steps you need to take in order to connect with them and begin serving them. Identifying Your Specific Audience On Saturday, I mentioned that people who buy from Zazzle fall into one of three categories: People who are looking to stand out from the crowd and feel more significant, people who want to feel like they belong to a team or a family, and people who want to connect with someone else on a more personal level. The key to identifying a specific audience that you can serve is to think back to a time in your life when you wa...

On Monday, I talked about the Basics of Marketing . Today, I'm going to demonstrate that it does NOT "take money to make money" by letting you in on the first five tools you need to get started. These are completely free and will help you start making money online supporting orphans in Nigeria today with Project FED. 1.       Get a Free EMAIL address from Google Zazzle, Pinterest, and Hubspot – which we will talk about later - allow you to use your Google email address to register. That means all of the accounts you need to run your business can be managed with one email sign in, so that creates added convenience. If you already have a personal Gmail, that’s great, but DO NOT USE IT FOR YOUR BUSINESS . Create a new email just for this business. Keeping your business totally separate from your personal accounts will make your life so much easier when you start making money and you have to worry about taxes, income reporting, and other issues. 2.  ...

  On Friday, I mentioned that I'd found a way for readers of this blog to  make money promoting the products  offered by  Project FED  which will also support the Nigerian orphans. During my  Sunday Strategy post yesterday , and in today's  YouTube video tutorial  of how to sign up for Zazzle's affiliate program so that those who are interested can make money promoting the products, I promised I would start teaching the basics of marketing so that those who are interested are supported in their efforts. Marketing: The Right Way Many people THINK they know what marketing is, and most of them are wrong. Most people, when they picture marketing, think of Don Draper from  Mad Men . They think of a sleazy guy who will tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear in order to get you to buy a product you don't need and that may not even be good for you. They also think of ad campaigns on TV and Radio, Superbowl commercials, and billboards. Those are...

  The Story Behind the Project I met Father Lucas through some Facebook friends more than a year ago. He lives in a small village in northern Nigeria. Part of his parish includes 3 orphanages filled with children of many different ages. He struggles to get the funding to care for them. At the time, I was working a reliable freelance marketing contract and was making decent money doing it. I sent him money from time to time to help support his ministry. Toward the end of April, I got an idea. What if I had him collect some art from the children at those orphanages and I used my design and marketing skills to help him raise the money by creating products such as fabric designs and housewares and t-shirts that featured the artwork?  I made the suggestion to Father. He told me he'd work on it.  Life-Changing Circumstances In the meantime, on May 11th, I got quite a shock. The contract I'd been working on for the past three years ended suddenly and without notice.  That w...