It’s important that you begin to take a look at higher priced products or services that create value for your clients, that you can add onto. This is the best way to serve your clients on a better and bigger level and to make a lot more money while creating a lot less sales. Enjoy the process. It works.

One loan program that I’m familiar with is the SBA Loan Queue. What is that? It’s money that President Obama signed in, I believe it was September of 2010. It’s the Small Business Jobs Act – and so there’s money there with the Small Business Administration helping to finance small businesses.

The second one that I know about is 7(a) Loan Program. That’s financial help for your business, and it does have some very specific requirements.

The third loan is one that has been around forever; it’s called the CDC/504 Loan Program. What is that? It’s long-term financing, and it’s to develop the economic growth within a community. Lots and lots of my clients and people that I have coached over the last 30 years have gone in that direction.

Then the fourth is a microloan. If you don’t know what a microloan is, it’s a smaller, short-term loan to a business that certain businesses can qualify for.

Again, I want you to go to http://www.sba.gov and check these out. I just want to familiarize you with the options for small business loans. These are four very, very available for you, and you ought to check them out, get some information and see if having a loan is right for you.

What I recommend you do is go for referrals. Go off of personal referrals, business referrals of other people who have used attorneys that they’re pleased with. You may also get referrals from your local or state chamber of commerce, and if you belong to any organizations or associations with your particular industry, that’s another good place to get referrals.

And finally, if you belong to any networking groups, I would ask the other business owners for folks they’re satisfied with. When choosing an attorney, choose someone whose personality also matches the kind of person that you want to work with. Hope those tips are helpful.

It’s okay if you can’t answer those questions positively, because there’s so many other things you can do. It’s much better when you match your expertise with your passion in an industry where you have credibility. It makes it easy and effortless to grow your business. Right now, do a check in. Are you an expert in the field or do you have expertise in the field, where is your passion, and do you have people that you know in the field that you can contact.

The other thing is you can get free legal advice and free business advice. How can you do that? You can barter with people who provide those services, or you could go to http://www.score.org.

The other thing that you can do is run a business online. It’s very easy to not spend a lot of money. For starters, you can get a domain name, set up a blog for free with WordPress, and you can join Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for free. You don’t need a logo. Believe it or not, I even tell people that I work with individually, you don’t even need business cards. We use something other than business cards that costs no money.

If you don’t want to get a merchant account with a credit card, just go through Google Checkout or PayPal. There’s a way that you can get a shopping card if you want one that’s not very expensive, or you could even, if you have physical products, you could do it through a Yahoo store.

If you get into a business where you coach, train, teach or consult, think about setting up a WordPress website. You can talk about your experience and use a lot of testimonials.

If you are going to sell books or CD’s, you can self-publish them at http://www.lulu.com. They do print-on-demand, there’s zero up-front cost for inventory.

You can even use your webcam. Create educational video products, or you can use a digital camera. If you want to record your screen, you can use Camtasia or for Mac users, there’s iShowU.

Don’t bother investing. If you don’t have money and want to start a business, don’t invest in a retail location.

Another inexpensive way that you can advertise your business is through a Meetup group. Go to http://www.meetup.com.

You can install a toolbar that’s called StumbleUpon toolbar, and then you can also see what other things are out there that really teach you about the kind of business you’re in.

If you do want to get business cards, Vistaprint is very inexpensive. You can use Craigslist to post your offers.

Think about doing videos on YouTube. You can share the videos out there with something like TubeMogul. You can put articles out there for free with EzineArticles.

For just $10.00 – very inexpensive – you could try and use Google AdWords.

I’ve given you a ton of ideas. My response to those of you going, “I want to start a business, but I don’t have any money”: Come on. If you really want to start a business, go ahead and do it. There’s a lot of ways to do it. Get started.

I suggest that you set up bookkeeping systems, and that you make sure that there’s double systems so that errors are minimized. I also suggest you make sure to carefully review the books. You can begin to look at what expenses you can eliminate. You should be looking at bank statements and profit and loss statements, and you should also be studying the numbers for trends.

You should also be very careful about buying equipment or buying items outright. Quite often it is a better for you to lease things or to take out loans so that cash flow can be better managed.

One last tip! If you offer cash discounts to your clients and customers, patients, whoever you’re serving, that can actually increase your cash flow quite a bit. And I’d like to see you with more cash in your pocketbook.

One of the “do’s” for Facebook is you want to be very interactive. Get on Facebook and make sure that you’re commenting to people. Perhaps you do some real-time chat with some of your Facebook fans. I do recommend that you also create Facebook lists so that you can manage your friends better. These lists are a great tool to help you group and organize people so you can better communicate with them. For example, let’s say you are going to have an event and you live in L.A. You would find the list of all your L.A. friends and invite them. Or you may have people interested in a specific topic, and you can put them in a particular list.

For Twitter, I recommend that you respond to every direct message that comes in. This goes a long with being interactive, you need to be building relationships!

Now for some “don’t’s”. Do not constantly put up a messages (on any social network) that only has to do with selling, selling, selling, selling. Sometimes when I look on my Twitter account, I can find people that only promote their products and services! They don’t offer any type of value to their followers/friends. I don’t believe you should do that. I believe that you should be doing posts that are value, value, value, and then once in a while you can go ahead and you can put in, “Come to this,” or, “Here’s this,” or, “Go to this.” But what you want to do is you want to claim expert status, and the way you become an expert is by valuable posts. So everything you post should have value, and once in a while you can send people somewhere.

Another “do” is make sure that you have the same head shot used on all of these pages so you can become branded. I also definitely recommend that you use the same tag line that people are used to with you. Include your web site as well.

When you are posting on social media, be aware that every time that you post, you want to post things that start a conversation or ask a question or, again, show you as a credible expert. Don’t post things that are nonsense or that will start political conversation; you really want to make sure that your posts are valuable and in line with what people who follow you or friend you would want to know about.

The second thing is you have to have the right inner landscape, the right inner mindset, the right inner talk, the right attitude, because unless you can believe it, you cannot conceive it.

Now, let’s talk about what else you have to have. You have to have the right processes and the right systems. Most business owners don’t get to seven figures because they don’t know the right processes and systems. That’s why you need a mentor. I have never done anything alone in my life. When I want a good eating plan, I hire a mentor; when I want a good training plan, I hire a mentor; when I wanted to do jujitsu, I hired a mentor; when I wanted to become a racecar driver, I hired the best racecar driver that could teach me. So you’ve got to have the right mentor that is going to give you the right systems and processes to instill in your business. If you want to go from six to seven figures, you need somebody who’s already done seven figures and has routinely made seven figures. This person needs to have already helped other people make seven figures. You’ve got to have these right tools.

I also recommend that you have the right mastermind, the right network of people to brainstorm with, hang out with and play in a forum with. You want to have lots of like-minded people in there.

Next thing is you need to take the right daily actions. Most business owners are busy doing the wrong things. Every single day you have to be doing the right things. You also have to be asking the right coaching questions and your mentor needs to be asking the right questions of you.

Everybody who makes seven figures that I know does it by leveraging. They leverage whatever it is that they have. They’re able to leverage connections, products, services. They’re also able to sell the same thing in many different formats. Think of this: a seven-figure business owner knows how to maximize everything.

There’s an expression that I’ve been using for many years called fail forward. What do I mean by that? It means just go ahead and do it. Go do it! I love when Nike says, “Just do it,” and it’s really my philosophy. Fail forward. Just jump in and start doing it. When I train people to be business coaches, I say, “Just start coaching.” And they say, “But what if I’m not good?” That’s how you’ll learn. You’ll fail forward. I started out 30 years ago as a speech language pathologist, and I was a pretty crummy one to boot, but I got better the more that I did it. So you just start doing it, and then you’ll perfect it as time goes on.

How else do you become a seven-figure business owner? You have to know how to have hot leads. What’s a hot lead? It’s someone that is ready to buy. They’re already investigating or interested in the kinds of products and services you have. So let’s say that you sell running shoes. A hot lead is someone who is already a runner, and they already have a desire to have running shoes. That’s who you want to be speaking to.

Seven-figure business owners have automated their business. Everything runs. They’ve got retention systems; they’ve got referral systems; it’s all automatic.

Everyday they are increasing the lifetime value to their clients and of their clients or customers. What do I mean by that? They’re adding on more bonuses, more and more value than their clients expected, and they’re also requesting higher and higher fees for their products and services.

They are great at lead conversion. What do I mean by that? A hot lead comes in and says, “Hey, I’m a runner; I’m interested in running shoes.” This business owner knows just how to take a hot lead and convert them without selling, and again, that’s a system.

Finally, it’s about having an offer that’s irresistible. Whatever you’re selling, a product or a service, you make the offer so irresistible that customers just can’t say no. It could be a money back guarantee or a risk reversal, whatever it might be.

I want to take you to seven figures.

No. 1 is Internet services, data processing or other information services. Just think “Web.” According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, output by the Internet service industry is to grow 10.3 percent annually. Job growth in the industry is 46.2 percent!! So it’s one of the best industries that you can be involved in.

No. 2 on the list is computer systems and related services. Think of solutions for hardware or software, communications, that sort of thing.

No. 3, software. Let’s face it: every small business or multi-national business needs software, and that sector is supposed to grow by about 8.4 percent through 2012.

No. 4, employment services. Today, employment is very competitive and very in flux, so placement agencies are also going to grow.

No. 5, management science and technical consulting. Management consulting is huge right now. Job growth is expected at around 55 percent.

No. 6 is home health care. They say that the industry could grow 54 percent; nearly twice as many people are going to need home care.

No. 7 is personal financial advisory. Lots of baby boomers out there, and we need some help with our money.

No. 8 is childcare services. Obviously there’s more and more parents in the workplace, dual incomes.

No. 9, arts, entertainment and recreation. Why? Baby boomers. We love to spend our cash in those areas.

No. 10 is motion pictures and videos.

So there you have it, the top ten industries. Perhaps you’re already in one, thinking that you can join one or you can add one of those to a business you’re already doing.

You also should take a look at the growth per week. For instance, if you were able to increase sales this week, growth, by $1,000.00, then you can also predict what’s going to happen next week. My recommendation for indicators is you review them once a week, set goals, see how you’re doing on your goals, notice trends and take immediate action when you are not meeting your financial goals. Track your financial indicators, review them weekly and make plans to improve them.