That's just a brief summary.

Actually, it's been far more interesting than that.

What have I been up to? I really had been consistent with posting daily, this past week has been a blur.

The lower carb regimen my own coach gave me has me feeling a little strange, but I do like the fact that I have timed carbohydrates post-workout. This means I haven't felt "weak" when training - in fact, I've felt phenomenal. Really doing some slow, methodic, strong repetitions and have been so sore I can barely lift my arms. That's not the half of it, however ... because I have legs tomorrow. I always have my most intense workouts with legs ... I expect to see spots.

This is the week of opportunity. My strategy for this year is to grow Natural Physiques in a leveraged fashion, meaning that I am not necessarily trading all of my time for the business growth. So, I began my outsourcing arrangement with an affiliate management and recruitment company. We're very excited to partner together and will be launching that initiative on Monday. What this means is that I'll have a team who will be working with other webmasters and companies to promote the Natural Physiques product line as affiliates. I've been spending quite some time researching sites and approaching their webmasters, so this will be tasked out. They also add more pizzaz to the program and do things I didn't have time for - for example, we'll be running a competition with prizes as an incentive for existing affiliates. That's just one example of how they'll benefit the program and expansion.

I was contacted by another company that works with larger affiliate networks - ones that reach millions of consumers. Their structure is very interesting. They take certain online products and run tests to consumers, then find the top performing products and take those on to distribute throughout the network. It's a pay-per-performance deal, meaning that I would only pay for distribution when sales are made. It is a larger scale than many of the other projects I've run. I have to write some special technology to manage the campaigns, so I'm quoting that now and will code that over the weekend, as they are looking to launch next week.

Finally, I was contacted by another firm that specializes in SEO. This is a unique situation, however. SEO is usually with you as a client - in other words, I would hire a company to search optimize my site. In this arrangement, however, they would essentially be working with third parties interested in being affiliates for my product. They will target key words for the affiliates to increase their sales (which would in turn increase mine).

I do not believe it is a coincidence that all three of these arrangements presented themselves within the same week. I am a firm believer in synchronicity. In the past, I would have had fear over moving into new directions, as some of these projects have substantial investments or set-up fees, etc. involved with them. However, I have learned to follow my gut as an entrepreneneur, and that what most people call expensive mistakes are in fact the most valuable lessons. I feel confident my investment of time and finances into these endeavors will create some massive activity these coming weeks, but only time will tell - and either way, I'll either be excited about the increased productivity, or armed with more knowledge of what not to do!

I might be losing my mind on this stricter nutrition regimen, but did I mention that the brand new and remastered Lose Fat, Not Faith Audio Set is now available? I'm excited about it. I hired my favorite banner designers to create an ad. These guys are incredible - inexpensive, fast, and I believe they produce quality work. Here is what the new banner looks like:



Is it a sign that I am a bit of a "nerd" because I have all of the paths to my image files memorized? Whoosh.

I had some down time ... I was on a 10 gig per month plan, upped it to 20 gig but maxed that. The Become Your Best health and fitness podcast is increasing in circulation and popularity. Those 10 meg downloads are adding up! I talked with my webmaster and discussed whether I should move from the current, shared solution to a dedicated server. We both feel we are fine for now but once these projects roll out, we may end up having to get on load balanced servers rather quickly. It should not be difficult to build and migrate as it will all be in house at the facility.

Speaking of bandwidth, another leech of my bandwidth is the comment spammers. I turned off comments for awhile at the main site because they were being inundated with hits from the programs that post ads to poker sites, pharmacy sites, and all of the other spam that floats around and clogs up the Internet with it's worthlessness. Fortunately, there are plenty of people fighting back, and the content management system that I use to publish my articles has a plug-in to prevent these attacks. We installed it and opened up the comments. A test comment I sent made it through, the 60+ other comments from SPAM servers did not. So far, so good ... if you like to comment, the comments on the articles at the site are now open.

I did a long-overdue reorganization of my online coaching page. I wanted a new look and feel - done. I wanted a nice report that would describe exactly what online personal training is, and hired a firm to product that - done. Finally, I wanted to restructure the programs to give more people access. This meant increasing what I give to my affiliates while lowering the cost to the end user because people deserve to have quality online coaching. Due to the technology that I can leverage with the online coaching programs I am able to offer packages with those for $50 / month and less when customers order in larger blocks. I also changed my health coaching packages and believe I will reach more people with the new pricing structure.

I've got a newsletter to release soon. I've found quite a few articles to add to the site and am selecting some for the exclusive spot in the newsletter. I always love how the company that I partner with for pharmaceutical grade nutrition shares breaking health-related news. Speaking of that, I received this from a customer of mine:

"I have also tried many vitamin supplements in my day and now that you've turned me on to the [pharmaceutical grade multivitamin] brand, I believe they offer everything I'll ever need and I no longer look anywhere else for supplements. Everything I have purchased with them is absolutely first-rate. I'm using their hair care and skin products too. I have also taken the "5 day Fiber Cleanse" and as a matter of fact just placed another order this morning. My motivation was a trip to Jamaica I just returned from and prior to leaving, I dropped from 234 pounds to 218 pounds in 12 days! I can fit into my old clothes again! Having said that, the reason for this mornings order was that I took a few liberties with my diet while I was on vacation and I put some of that weight back on, but i am confident that in just a few weeks I'll break thru that 218 pound mark and reach a healthy weight that I will be able to maintain.

Thank you for all the quality information you have provided me with and I look forward to my new improved health with optimism. At age 41 I feel rejuvinated..."

Thanks, Dave D. - and congratulations. Feeling rejuvinated at 41 is AWESOME, isn't it?

Now THAT is exactly why I do this ... to hear awesome feedback and stories like that. You can browse at the links above, and then either contact me or enroll online to try out these awesome products. The skin care line comes with a 5-day sample kit for just around $20 ... but be careful if you order that, because I don't know too many who ever go back to what they were using before. Personally, I became involved with the company for the nutrition line, but my wife insisted I tried the skin care and, lo and behold, it served a purpose for me ... two, actually. First, I HATE sunscreen and my dermatologist told me to wear it every day. The face lotion (daily emulsion) actually comes with sunblock and I love using that, and have yet to get a burn while I'm wearing it, even though it is only SPF 15 and I was used to having to glob on SPF 45. Also, I've had eczema around my eyebrows and nose, and even flakes on the sides of my cheeks. Since regularly using the skin care line, those are completely and 100% gone. I can always tell when I get lazy and stop doing my daily regimen because the redness and flakes start to come back.

I really have a blast training my team and am always looking for entrepreneurs interested in something leveraged like this. It's definitely not for everyone, so those interested should take a look here and then only contact me if you feel you qualify and have the courage to try something new.

That reminds me, I got off on a tangent ... the reasaon I've been building systems and outsourcing part of my main business is because I choose to focus more on the opportunity I just mentioned. I really did some soul searching and realize that this is the key for me to grow this company and reach more people. By building teams, I don't just share my passion for health and wellness, but I have the added advantage of giving people the same type of freedom I have - to not have to drive into an office or answer to a boss. This is also very leveraged, and there is just no other business I can find where you can create the type of leveraged income I have experienced - literally receiving paychecks even in weeks I don't directly work on the business. This will be a way to fund more projects like boot camps and seminars for Natural Physiques, and to reach more people as is my ultimate goal. As long as the majority of Americans are overweight or obese, I feel Natural Physiques truly hasn't reached its potential because when we do, this epidemic will be a memory.

WOW! It is really late, isn't it? That's what I get for not posting every day ... instead of a few normal sized blogs, here I am spilling out pages and pages. If only I could write articles and edit my e-Book that fast! This flows more naturally for me ... although I have made progress on the e-Book edit, and may just burn some midnight oil and wrap it in the next several days. With the new anticipated activity, I want to have these final edits to present! Anyone who has purchased it in the past will, of course, receive an update.

I guess the last tidbit is that I received my external sound device so my recordings should have even more quality. Wouldn't you know - I ordered the wrong line recorder, so I had to visit Radio Shack and get a combiner for my phone line to plug it in. Now I have the digital sound device, and lo and behold, they have a monitor-sized line input when the phone device has a mic-sized one (sorry, techies, I don't speak the technical jargon when it comes to the sizes of these things, I just know I plug a into b and flip the switch on c to record). So, it'll be back to my favorite miscellaneous parts store to pick up an adapter and then I should be golden to record clean for this coming Monday's call.

Haven't you read enough already? LOL. I should get some SERIOUS sleep as I have legs coming up tomorrow.

Thanks for taking the time to let me share a bit of my life with you. I wish you health and abundance.

Blessed be,

Jeremy Likness