Raven: I want to know this. You just got out there and just pushed that old boy’s club to the side. How did that happen?

Ali: I want to tell all of you listening that if I were to look at myself from the Ali I was ten years ago, I would go, “There’s no way I will ever be a multi-millionaire. There’s no way. I don’t know how I can do that. I don’t know the how, how this, how that.” All I knew was I was so frustrated working for someone else, and I think that drives a lot of us to taking a risk more than wanting something. Sometimes being so frustrated with your situation, you just say, “That’s it. I can’t take this anymore.” I was working at this little ad agency for these – I call them the knuckleheads. These guys didn’t know what they were doing, and here I was way back then. I was only 25 or 26, and just so frustrated 3 working with these guys who didn’t seem to care about their clients. I got frustrated, and I just quit. I was in for a rude awakening because I didn’t realize, Raven, that the most important part of owning a business is actually the marketing. So, I started a business doing copywriting because that’s what I had learned at this little ad agency. I was writing some of the ads for the clients, and helping them out, and did an okay job. I saw what you can make freelancing. So, I thought, “Well, I’ll give this a try.” Well, I had no idea how to get clients. I had no idea how to network. I was not good on the phone like you are. You’re known as the Phone Diva, right?

Raven: Yes, ma’am.

Ali: So, I wasn’t that good back then, and I’m good now. It’s taken a long time, but I was really much more shy, and I when I would meet people, I’d be terrified to follow up. So, I was going around to all these networking meetings, and just getting through these breakfasts and lunches and dinners, and had a stack of business cards and kept thinking, “I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t think I’m smart enough to have my own business. I’m going to get online and write my mom and see if I can move home.” This is in New York, and it was just a scary time. There’s a story I tell when I’m speaking on stage. I remember I couldn’t take twenty dollars out of the ATM. My balance was 18.56, and I’ll never forget that number. I’m not one of those speakers who tells a story like I was living in my van or anything, but I had a little tiny apartment, and I just scraped by. I did what I needed to do, but it was not happy, and it wasn’t pretty, and I couldn’t buy anything for myself. I didn’t want to go back to having a job. I was fiddling around with email a little bit, and I saw some of these email newsletters. We also call them ezines, which is short for electronic magazine. I got good at doing this little email newsletter. All this was Raven is if you can type an email and press send, this is all it was. I wrote a little tip for the people that I had met that talked about how to market 4 yourself with good communication, which is what I did. I wrote brochures and web pages and things like that. I wrote a tip to show them I knew what I was doing, and I put a little promotion for my business. I started with a list of ten people that included my parents, and it included my cat. This was pathetic. From there, people started forwarding that little email around, and then people were writing me asking to sign up for it, people I’ve never heard of, people all over the world. Within six months, I started getting finally steady work and steady clients because what would happen is I’d hear from somebody at for example, Dun & Bradstreet. They’d say, “You know what? A friend of a colleague forwarded me your little newsletter, and we need someone to write a brochure. We’d like you to come in and make a proposal.” And wild stuff started to happen, and then I thought, “Well, I want to learn more about this email thing.” So, I looked around the bookstores. I looked online, and I was just frustrated with what I found. I started to write a few articles on the topic, and then I wanted to write a book because I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I didn’t know how to get a book published, and I learned about these things called ebooks, which is really just a PDF file, and many of you have probably bought one. It’s a digital file that you buy online, and you download. I thought, “Well, this is great because I don’t have the money to get anything published anyway.” So, I wrote a little ebook, and at that time, it was called Boost Business with Your Own Ezine. I put it online, and I remember I had by that time this little email list of about a thousand people. I’d send out an email to the list telling them about this ebook. I was scared to death. I’m thinking, “They’re not going to want to buy this thing. They’re going to get mad that I’m selling to them.” I remember I pressed send, and my heart was pounding. I just shut my computer and I left, and I ran out. I was like, “I don’t even want to know what they’re going to write back. They’re going to hate me.” I come back from the gym, and very slowly I’m booting my computer up, and my email comes in, and I see “order,” “order,” “order,” “money,” “money,” “money.” I was like, “This is cool because I did the work, and I’m done doing the work, and now I’m getting paid, paid, paid. It’s passive income, and I was hooked.” 5 I was so used to working hours for dollars, hours for dollars, and that comes from way back in the industrial revolution, and then we were in the service age. Now, we are truly in the information age. We throw that term around, but it’s still so applicable. Now, we get paid for results, and the information that gives people results, they will pay well for. From there, I studied everything I could about online marketing. I started scraping up my change and going to seminars. I remember the first time I had to buy a plane ticket to go to a seminar. I was just terrified, but since then, I’m just so in love still with the internet, and the possibilities it gives you to work at home, or to work from anywhere. This past year, my dad passed away, and I have to tell you that when he was so ill, it meant so much to him that I could grab my laptop and be there with him within a few hours, and fly to Texas and be by his side. It was so sweet. It just broke my heart. I remember him grabbing my hand and just trying to get the words out. He said, “But, what about your business.” I said, “Dad, my business is with me. It’s okay.” He still didn’t quite understand that I could make money and still be there with him because that generation, they didn’t have that opportunity, and it’s just an amazing place to be. Today, my business is worth several million dollars. We have our coaching company. We’re launching a magazine for women in business. There’s so much going on. My passion though is still helping those women get started from home. I see this a lot at the seminars now, too. People are getting a little tired of the men who are yelling at the audience, and how many of you want to blah, blah, blah? People want to be talked with and have a conversation with, and this is why anyone – and I do believe anyone can start a business from home on the internet because all you’re doing is talking to people whether it’s in type or on the phone or recording that you do. It’s just about communication, and you don’t have to act like this big company. In fact, one of the biggest advantages that solo- entrepreneurs have is being people, and people buy from people. Big 6 companies hire spokespeople to give their company a face and a personality. Well, you already have that. So, people listen to Raven because she’s Raven. People come to Ali because she’s Ali. There are a bazillion other people teaching internet marketing, but I have people coming to me saying, “Ali, I want to learn from you because I’ve come to like who you are and what you represent.” So, Jane Doe is sitting in the kitchen right now, even with the kids all around her feet and the Cheerios and all that, people would like to know that that’s her life and she can talk about that and talk about a product or service that she uses that helps her in some way. It’s just so wonderful for anyone. Hi, this is Raven Blair-Davis interviewing for Michael Senoff’s

Raven: So, let’s talk about the ezine.

Ali: This is so funny. Everyone, especially in the internet world, you’re going to hear people coming out with the next big thing. Everyone freaks out. I need this! I need that! I need a podcast! I need a blog! You can’t do everything. What I love about ezines is – and this is funny too, and you’ll like this Raven. When I first came out with doing the Ezine Queen stuff, and telling people to start an ezine, the internet marketing guys were looking at me like, “Oh, isn’t she cute.” I got a little pat on the head, like “Oh what a cute little newsletter.” Now, I’m making more money than most of them, and it’s because it’s about the relationship. It’s just something that women are naturally good at. This is something that you’re crazy if you don’t do this. All I did again, going back to that first newsletter, it was just like writing a friend and email, with a friendly tip and then a little bit about my offer. Whatever your offer is, it’s whether you’re selling a product, you could be a network marketing company, maybe you have an ebook or an infoproduct that you’re selling. If you don’t have a product, join up with someone else and be part of their affiliate program, but here’s the thing. You need to start with an audience. So, the biggest lesson, and this is an advanced tip to give that I think your audience would like this. The who is more important than the what. If you develop a readership of a certain type of person, your income will be accelerating for years to 7 come because you have a market who you can bring additional products and services to. The problem that most people have when they start online is they have a product or a service, and they go out and try to find people. The thing I love about a newsletter is if you have a theme for your newsletter, and you attract readers who are interested in that theme, you can bring in additional products and services. Let’s use a really simple example. Let’s say that you want to publish a newsletter for cat lovers. I don’t have a kitty right now. I miss have a kitty. I had my Francine for twenty years. Then, I needed a break. Let’s say you’re a cat lover, and you want to start a newsletter for cat lovers, and you start collecting this database of cat lovers. You’re placing ads online, maybe you’re getting some articles published. There’s all kinds of strategies we teach, but you have this audience of cat lovers. Now, you can market to them – books on cat care, books on cat behavior. You can maybe get an affiliate link within Pet Smart or companies like that who have affiliate programs, Amazon.com has affiliate programs and they have pet products. There’s all kinds of opportunities, if you see where that’s going. You can do that on the end. One of the women in my top end coaching programs, my Diamond tier, is a lawyer who markets to lawyers, and helps coach lawyers on how to make their business more profitable. That’s like a high end thing, but it’s of the same concept. She has a list of lawyers and brings them products and services and opportunities that they’d be interested in. So, how to get started? The biggest tip is just to pick an audience first that you have a natural affinity with, or that they’re easy to find. It’s important to pick a target market that’s pretty easy to find. People who are passionate about a hobby or in a certain profession, or maybe are in a certain locality is a great place to start.

Raven: Okay, so don’t go out there creating products before you do research on where your target market is, who they are, and understand them and what they’re needing, right? 8

Ali: Yes, let’s say you do have a product. Let’s say with a network marketing company, and I’m in a few companies as well just because I love great nutrition products and things like that. Let’s say you have this wonderful vitamin. Well, marketing is always easier if you go after a certain type of person. So, it’s really great it you can pick that niche and focus on the niche. It’s like going fishing, but not knowing who you’re going to go fishing for. You’re going to catch anything, but if you know what type of fish to go after, you know what type of bait to use, you know where they are. Maybe you can market just to moms who are in your area, or maybe you can say, “I’m going to market to doctors of a certain product.” You need to get very clear on your target market. This is a great tip for any business, not just internet marketing, and not just work at home either.

Raven: You want to mix a little personal stuff with the business stuff in your ezine, right?

Ali: You do. Can I tell the cat story?

Raven: Yes, tell the cat story.

Ali: This is hysterical. I have three keys to making what I call boodles of money on line, and the first is, we touched on it briefly, your story. Again, I don’t mean a story like you don’t have to share that you were living in a van by the river. You just need to show a little bit about your life. I used to publish my newsletter. It was very formal, because I was having clients like New York Times Digital. I was like, “I can’t talk about my life.” I actually moved to California, and didn’t even mention it in my newsletter. I was like, “Well, they don’t really need to know that.” Then, when I moved out here, I had Francine, my older cat. I had really not mentioned her before, and I mistakenly thought that Francine maybe needed a friend. I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker. If you go down to one of those pet adoption things, oh my gosh, I start crying and bringing home kittens. It’s bad. I can’t even go near those things. I just want to take all the animals home. I found this little kitten named Minxsy, and I just fell in love with her. I thought, “Okay, well, maybe Francine would like a friend.” She gets a 9 little lonely when I travel. So, I bring Minxsy home, and big mistake. Francine did not want a friend. She never asked for a friend. Minxsy’s chasing her around the house. I forgot how crazy kittens are. They’re going up the drapes, down the drapes, over the desk, knocking stuff off. I’m writing my newsletter and trying to get it out the door, and out of nowhere, I wrote a little sentence or two, and I said, “I’m trying to get this article done, but my gosh, I just got a kitten, and what a handful. She’s terrorizing my older cat. I think this was a mistake, but anyway, here’s this great article on how to get thousands more visitors to your website.” I pressed send, and I go out for the day. I come back, and I have dozens and dozens of emails about what?

Raven: Your cat.

Ali: The cat! They wanted to know more about the cat. Questions like, “What are your cats names?” “How old are your cats?” “Can you show us pictures of your cats?” “Have you had your cat spade?” People are sending these pictures of their cats, and some of them were in costumes, but you know what? It started this communication. It started this connection that made me human. Since then, Raven, everything I do, I will mention a little something about maybe I just got back from doing some shopping or that I was visiting my mom. I’m not saying that you need to talk to people about your divorce, and actually I’m not making those examples up. I’ve seen people who go a little too far. If you’re planning a vacation, mention you’re planning a vacation to Italy and ask for tips. You will be amazed at the rapport that that builds with your readers, and it will absolutely increase your response in your sales. I guarantee it. We can relate to it too because like Oprah – I’m like Oprah’s biggest fan, and I’m reading her magazine, and I love when she talks about her life or when she’s made a mistake or gone too far with something, or she adopted that dog, and everyone wanted to know all about the dog. They wanted to see pictures of the dog. This is just so simple. 10 I teach many strategies for doing this. Everyone starts from scratch. No one is handed a giant list to start with, and if you are handed a list, you’re going to get in trouble for spamming. There are ethical and easy ways to do to build your list at no cost. I remember the first month I made a thousand dollars with my ebook. I was squealing. This ebook pays my rent, and absolutely, you want to be excited about your first dollar online because this will change your life to whatever level you want to take it.

Raven: Then, when you get those first dollars coming in regularly, then you’re ready to think bigger, but I think especially in this economy, people are just wanting to make it happen, and they prefer not to hear the hype. They want to hear the realism, and that’s what we are hearing today. Can you kind of just recap what’s all needed in a story so they won’t put too much in it, when they start building their ezine?

Ali: We’re talking about online marketing today, but any type of marketing, I will tell you the biggest advantage that small business owners and especially those of us who work by ourselves from home have is being people. The point I want to nail down again is that people just needs to be themselves. It’s funny. It kind of scares people. I can just be myself? Just be yourself, talk about your pets, talk about your kids, talk about where you’re going on vacation. That will build such a rapport with people. It’s so funny, Raven, that when the internet came out, that this is what they taught in the old days that you have to befriend people to sell. On the internet, everyone thought that, “Oh, I need to act like a big company, or people can’t really get to know me.” No, no, no, this is the biggest advantage you have to compete with big companies and here’s what I love too. When you are just yourself, and you are completely authentic in your personality and your style, you have no competition. Now, a lot of people start off by modeling people who are successful, which is great. That’s how I started too. I learned from mentors and modeled them, but then you find your own voice and you have your own style, and that’s important.

Raven: Let’s move into strategy now. 11

Ali: Let’s talk about strategies, and we touched on what an ezine is. It’s just an email newsletter, and this could be as simple as just like if you were going to type an email and send it to a friend. It can look like that, or you can go fancy like me, because I just got started as the Ezine Queen. So, my ezine is gorgeous. It has pictures and graphics. You don’t have to go there, though. It’s just giving some useful information and then a little promotion. There are many ways that this will help you. I have seven, but let me just touch on a few of them. The one thing that I want to emphasis is that many of us start a business and we’re marketing one-to-one, one-to-one, one-to-one, and it is just exhausting. The thing that an ezine will give, that is the biggest benefit is that you will grow a list so you can market one-to-many. Imagine pushing a button, just a send button and having an email go out to 10,000 people who are in your target market that know who you are, and they don’t think you’re spamming them. They actually want to hear from you. That’s what an ezine can do for you. It also positions you as an expert. You don’t have to be an expert, but just you sharing information makes you credible to people. If you see an article written by somebody on a certain topic, you’re thinking, “Wow, they must be an expert on this topic.” A few years ago, I was at my desk, and this is before I had caller ID. I don’t know why I didn’t. I picked it up, and I said, “Good morning, this is Ali,” and I guy started, “Hi, this is Andrew Blackman. I’m calling from the Wall Street Journal.” I cut him off and I said, “Andrew, I used to get the paper, and I liked it, but you all keep calling. I just wanted to cancel my subscription, and I’m kind of irritated. I want you to take me off your list.” He was quiet for a minute, and then he said, “Miss Brown, I’m not sure you understand. I’m a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.” I said, “Oh my gosh, how did you find me?” He said, “Well, I was searching online. I found your website, and I see that you have articles on email newsletters. So, obviously you’re an expert.” That changed what experts are from there. Expert isn’t what you say about yourself, it’s what other people perceive you as. You sharing 12 some good information positions you as a trustworthy resource in other people’s minds, and an ezine is great because you can send this out every week, and then you have what we call top of mind awareness. Your readers, the first thing they’ll think of is they need a product or service that’s in your area. They’re going to come to you. Another important thing an ezine will do is it stays in touch with people, and we all think that we can send out one promotion – I’ll have some students do this who aren’t too smart. They’ll send out one promotion, and it’ll come back, and they’ll say, “This didn’t work.” I’m like, “Do you see companies run one ad on TV? And then say, ‘This doesn’t work. We’re going to shut down.” It’s over and over and over. People buy from repetition, and repetition is actually even more important than the quality of your content. I don’t like to say because I’m all about quality content, but I’d rather see you do a short decent newsletter weekly than a long really good one monthly. Don’t go crazy trying to make this amazing publication. Just get some good information out there. So, repetition is important, and frequency outpulls length of content. Here’s the most important point I want to make Raven is that if you have a website, and people come to your website, if they’ve found you, they’ve taken the time to maybe Google you, or they’ve asked friends or they clicked an ad and found your website, they are really valuable to you, and unfortunately 99% of your first time web visitors won’t buy from you. They won’t even contact you. They’re just kind of sniffing around and gathering information. Well, if I’m at your site, you want to get me on your list so you can follow up with me. Otherwise, I’m going to click away, and you lost me likely forever. So, offering a free newsletter with some good information that’s related to what I’m coming to learn more about makes total sense. Let’s go back to that fun example of just someone interested in cat owners. Let’s say I’m a cat owner. I’m researching some good information. I find your site. Well, offer me a free newsletter with cat care tips and maybe I get a bonus special report on how to teach my cat to actually behave like cat’s do a back flip or something. That’s an example of I’m coming to your site. You wan to get me on your list as soon as possible. This will go for any type of company. I don’t care if you’re selling shoes. I don’t care if you’re selling cat food or vitamins or whatever it 13 is. You can come up with some type of offer that I’m going to want to get on your list for free.

Raven: It doesn’t have to be written. It could be audio.

Ali: That’s a great point. I’m glad you brought that up because you can find other people’s reports or articles that they’ve written and put it together as an ebook as a bonus as well. I love that you brought up it could be audio. As women, we speak ten times more a day than guys do. I have a great statistic. I don’t have it right here, but it’s something like we use 30,000 words a day, and men use like 4,000. Why not be making money with your mouth ladies? You’re talking anyway, so there’s all kinds of things you can do creating products with audio recording, doing a radio show like Raven, or recording something on your own and just posting it as an mp3, or mailing out CDs, doing podcasts. It’s just a natural for a lot of women. Let’s talk about products now. What are you actually making money with online? Some of you listening may have a product you want to sell or a service, but some of you just may say, “I’m not sure. I want to do something.” You may have an idea of your passion or a hobby that you’d like to get involved with. I’m such a big fan of information products, like we mentioned ebooks earlier. All an ebook is, is a digital download. You don’t need to print anything. You don’t need to have it designed. If you can type like a Word document, and you just turn it into a PDF. There are free PDF creators online. I’ve seen many ugly ebooks make a lot of money. You do not need a pretty ebook. There’s something I learned from one of my marketing mentors. This grumpy old guy named Dan Kennedy, and I love him because he taught me this. Good is good enough. So many women, we wait for things to be perfect, because we’re naturally very aesthetic. We like our environment’s beautiful. We value beauty, and in the beginning, I wasted so much money hiring designers to make things look gorgeous. Now, listen, my business now is at a different stage. We’re doing a lot of design. We’re doing some big branding, and we’re going to be launching a TV show. There’s so many big things going. The magazine, I made a very conscious decision to grow a big business, 14 but when you are getting started, you do not need that. You do not need things to look gorgeous. It can be too ugly, but you can do this yourself. I did this in the beginning myself with just ClipArt.com. It’s a great site you can go and get tons of great clip art. All you need is a webpage, and actually there are templates for that too. I explain this all in the program. I will tell you money does buy speed. So, if you want to hire people to help you with this stuff, and you do have a little money set aside to start a business that will speed you up for sure. My higher level clients I work with you, they usually come to me with some money, but most of my students start with little to no money and get their businesses off the ground in a very short amount of time because I tell them exactly the resources and steps to take. When you start collecting a list of people – let’s go back to the cat owner example. Let’s say you could approach companies that have cat products and say, “You know what. I have an email newsletter, an ezine that goes to 10,000 cat owners. Would you like to advertise?” They’ll most likely say yes. So, you can also sell ads in your ezine as well. That’s another income stream. There’s a few different ways of making money. One is your own products and services. The second is other people’s products and services, as an affiliate which we mentioned so you can find people who have affiliate programs like Raven or like myself, and then the third way is by selling advertising. There’s many different income streams, and I still have many different income streams from my business now, but those are the three that I started with.

Raven: Knowing you, Ali, I bet you’ve also added advertising in your ebooks and stuff, too. Have you done that yet?

Ali: Not in the ebook, but in the magazine. Do you know what I recommend? Don’t start with advertising. It’s a big pain in the bum. There’s a lot of back and forth. The simple thing to start with is an affiliate program, and then from there, I’d focus on promoting your products and services, and throw some ads in when you’re ready and you have a little bit of help. 15

Raven: What tips can you share in that area because I’m sure you’ve heard people get really stuck on the pricing of online products and services?

Ali: It is challenging because everyone wants this golden rule, and there really isn’t one. The biggest tip I can give is that in the industry we say there are soft topics and hard topics. So, let’s say you’re doing an ebook on cat care, and then another person is doing an ebook on how to double the profits of your law firm. The law firm ebook, you can guess just by this example is you can be able to charge a lot, lot more for that because it’s for a business owner. They are ready to pull out their wallet to make more money. They want to invest in their business and themselves. They’re in that mindset. Someone just wants to learn how to keep their cat from shedding, depends on what the solution is worth to them, but that’s known as a soft topic. Relationships, health, pets, family, versus hard topics, which are teaching people basically how to make more money in all kinds of industries and situations. So, I’ve seen ebooks on the low end, as low as even nine dollars and 97 cents, all the way up to a thousand dollars if it’s for a niche, especially involving teaching people how to make more money. There’s a huge gamut. Generally, most of my clients, I see them start with an ebook probably around $50 to $100, but many of my clients are business oriented. I actually bought – I don’t know if you remember a few years ago, I had hair extensions put in. I was doing all this research and I found someone who had an ebook on hair extensions. It was brilliant, and they had affiliate links to these companies to learn more. I think that was about $30. I was happy to pay that because I wanted to do my research. That’s a big investment, getting hair extensions. I always wanted that long Godiva kind of hair, and I did it for a year or two. It was a lot of fun.

Raven: You’ve got that product. How are you going to market it, especially if you have a small list?

Ali: Today, we are talking about online businesses. Let’s look at any business. Marketing is getting the word out, and it’s something I learned very early on when I started my very first business with no 16 money and no clue is that I learned the marketing is more important than your mastery. Let me explain what that means. You can go out and spend time trying to be the best whatever it is that you do or sell, or inventing the best mouse trap in the world, or trying to be the best dog groomer or accountant or personal trainer, whatever your business is, but if you don’t get the marketing down, you will never have a business that truly brings in the money. So, focusing on the marketing is something that many people resist because they think it’s going to be uncomfortable, but if you don’t want to tell people about your products and services, why are you in business? You should be very proud of what you do. Get out there and talk about it, and there’s ways to do it without hitting people over the head, which I think is what people fear is they don’t want to be taken the wrong way. We teach you like twelve different ways to get more people to your website. It’s very comfortable for people, too because unlike the Phone Diva, some people are uncomfortable talking to people. It is nice to have an online business, so they’re kind of anonymous. You can do this as well, if you want to do it that way. I’ll start listing off a few things. First of all, there’s search engine listings, getting listed in the regular search engines. Then, there’s what’s called pay-per-click advertising, which is when – if you do a search in Google, you’ll see some main listings in the middle, which re the search engine listings. Those are called organic listings, but on the side and top, you’ll see little blocks of copy that says, “Sponsored Ads.” You can show up there in as little as fifteen minutes if you want to right now, for people who are searching for your keywords. Article marketing, if you’re going to be doing writing a little bit for your ezine or having a writer do that for you, you don’t want these to die. You want to recycle them, and you can use articles and post them all kinds of free places online to get you free traffic. You can advertise in other ezines. There are ezines that accept advertising, and you can buy ads and reach your target market. You can advertise in ezine directories. There are many free ones you can advertise in. You can use blogs, which are great traffic magnets. You can use social networking like Twitter and Facebook, and if you are not on those, they are just a ton of fun. Are you on Twitter? 17 Twitter’s fun because it’s free, and what you do on Twitter, I’ll give you a little tip, make it real. Give them updates on your life, but make sure you mix in promotions, but it has to be a mix. There are some people who get on there, and all they do is promote, and then people don’t want to hear from them of course. An example of a quick update is this morning I sent out a tweet about, I’m working on some great projects. I’m going to be doing some a radio interview, really excited about this radio interview with Raven. That’s an update. I’m not selling anything. It’s just a real update on my life. So, mix it up, and this is again, the same thing like in your newsletter. You don’t want to be selling hard all the time. Make it personal and fun, and then throw in those promotions when you can. Twitter is a great way to keep in touch with people. I love Twitter because it’s like having a mini-newsletter. You only get something like 200 characters to use. It’s limited, but you can send out little mini- messages to people.

Raven: Do you find a big difference in Twitter and Facebook?

Ali: I use those together. I think they’re for different purposes. I have a fan page on Facebook, and I have 6,000 fans, I think at this point, and it’s going to be growing. It’s more of a community. It lets people write and post on my wall as well, and it’s more interactive, with everyone being able to see photos and videos and things like that. A lot of people now are using Facebook as almost their whole business, and it’s free. Nothing gets me happier, and more emotional than changing these women’s lives, and it’s sometimes in the smallest way that it gives them the freedom that they don’t have to rely on their husband anymore. I’ve had women actually been able to leave a relationship that they couldn’t leave because they were financially stuck. I mean this changes lives. When women take control and just can take care of themselves, that’s the first step. That gives you unlimited possibilities, and that’s my biggest passion in teaching. 18

Raven: I’d like to close out by talking a little bit about your magazine, if we could.

Ali: Yes, when I was eleven years old, I sat in my bedroom, and I was putting together a little magazine, and I called it Cool Girl. I was cutting out pictures from other magazines and putting a magazine together. What’s wild is last year, I had the vision of doing a magazine. I kept saying, “Well, some day, and I don’t know how to do this.” I’m excited to say I made it happen, and right now, it is subscription only. We are taking it to newsstands by the end of the year, and it’s called Ali Magazine. It’s business, life and style for the female entrepreneur. We have articles talking about how to build home based business, how to get publicity, but we also have articles on celebrities, not celebrity gossip, looking behind the scenes how they run a business. Sarah Jessica Parker for example is an amazing entrepreneur. The tabloids, all you’ll read about is marriage and things like that, but she has several companies. She has perfume lines and clothing, and so we go behind the scenes of the celebrities and they turn themselves into a business.

Raven: You actually got to meet her.

Ali: No, we didn’t meet her. We did a whole feature on here, and real good interviews with people who are in the know.

Raven: You just showed us something right there that they can do as well as they want to if they want to start a little newsletter. You can actually go in and fill some little celebrity tips.

Ali: You just gave a real juicy tip, Raven is that in your newsletter and in your marketing, why not capitalize on current events? One of my email newsletters that went out, I had a little hook, and it said, “What gets me more excited than Hugh Jackman,” and I had a little picture of him. The girls went nuts. They said this was the funniest thing you’ve ever sent out because all the girls get excited about Hugh Jackman, too. It was a promotion, but I was joking like this get me as excited as Hugh Jackman. Anyway, so that’s the business side. We have style and we cover fashion and how to look you best and feel your best. We have great stuff in there from like Banana Republic and the latest from all these designers and Nordstrom. 19 Then, the last part is life, and so we talk about how to make more time with your kids, how to be a good role model to your daughters, how to take vacations on a budget. I give them my favorite vacation stops around the country. There’s nothing like this. There’s either women’s magazines that are all kind of fluffy about how to lose weight. How much can we read about that? Then, there’s business magazines that are boring. I said, “Why don’t we have one for women who want to make money, but want to have fun and have a life and be sexy and beautiful?” Go to TheAliMagazine.com.

Raven: It’ll be out on newsstands in December?

Ali: Hopefully by the end of the year, but you can subscribe at TheAliMagazine.com. It’s only $18 a year. We priced this competitively with other magazines out there, so it really is a steal. So, you’re crazy not to get it. Turn off the tube. All you’re going to hear about is how bad things are. There are people in other countries with no water. I mean, we complain here about the economy, and I know some people have been hit hard, but most of us in this country – okay, so you go to Starbucks once a day instead of twice a day. There is no better time than right now to step into opportunity and to be in control of your financial future. Yes, you need to be aware of what’s going on in the world, but please, I beg you start making most of the messages that come into your head and come into your life, start being very selective of the messages that you allow into your space – whether that’s the TV, radio, friends, unfortunately family some times. You know what’s best for you, and you need to keep yourself in that positive place. I live in what I call my happy Ali bubble. I check the news online. I want to know what’s going on, but I do not watch TV. I do not allow myself to be force fed any doom and gloom that’s news. Most of us is created just to keep us distracted from our true life’s purpose is we’re here to grow, we’re here to thrive, we’re here to help the world. That is not changing. My students are thriving unbelievably, like their neighbors and friends are like, “What is going on with you?” My business has continued to double because we had more people than ever now joining our 20 coaching program because they know this is the time. There’s this whole underground surge of positivity, and we need to bring this to the mainstream.

Raven: Thank you so much for coming here, sharing with all of our listeners. Oh my goodness, this has been just an incredible interview. Thank you. Thank you!

Ali: This was great Raven. I loved it. You’re a wonderful interviewer. I hope to meet you soon.

Raven: I hope to meet you.