Pat Riley, a New York Knicks coach, needed his team to win games.

It wasn’t about the skill – his players had it. It was about focus.

Basketball players have distractions – sponsors, women, and business deals. If he wanted his team to win, he needed them to focus on playing the game.

How did he get his team to focus?

He posed this one simple question: ”What’s Important Now?”

And it worked! His team became laser focused.

This same tactic also works for internet marketing.

Visit your site and ask yourself “What’s Important Now?”

Whatever your answer, make it obvious to your readers.

Better yet, eliminate all distractions and your visitors will become laser-focused by default!

The economy is in shambles. You can blame the rich or bad luck, but that won’t help.

As Baron Rothschild once said, “Buy when blood is in the streets, even if the blood is your own.”

Or, in other words, if you want to succeed right now, you must be willing to strike at all opportunities. . . even if you think you’re down and out.

So, your blood is in the streets. What are you doing about it?

In 2003, I dressed up as an AIM Buddy List for a college Halloween party. I dangled a piece of blank cardboard, the buddy list, from my neck that said “I have no friends,” painted myself yellow, and wore a hat made of emoticons.

When I walked into the party, people LINED UP to sign it. I didn’t know half of them, but they wanted their name on my buddy list.

Why did people care about my Halloween costume?

I had no idea, but I intended to find out.

The following year, I dressed as a Myspace page. I dangled a piece of cardboard from my neck, the Myspace page, and wrote “My Top 8.”

(As an aside, “My Top 8″ was a section on a Myspace page where you could highlight your top friends).

This time, instead of asking for signatures, I offered to take Polaroid pictures of people and tape them to “My Top 8.”

Jackpot! Just like the year before, people LINED UP to get themselves on my piece of cardboard.

Now, you’re probably wondering, what does this have to do with online marketing?

My Halloween costumes accomplished two things:

1. It grabbed attention

2. It asked for action

Online, you must do the same thing. You must get attention and then ask for action.

So, let me ask you. . . How do you grab attention? And when you have it, what do you ask people to do?

…You have two choices:

1. You could stop, turn around, and go back home.

Or…

2. You could put your shoulder down and plow through it.

Extreme?

No!

You must slam through all obstacles to achieve amazing things.

Happy July 4th!

What walls have you crushed lately?

That's Derek ↑ - Audience Conference 2009

Hey everyone, Derek Halpern here.

When I’m not working with Chris Pearson and Brian Clark on DIYthemes.com…

I’m showing people how to increase sales, customer loyalty, and conversion rates on Social Triggers.com.

It’s a pretty sweet gig!

This website is my personal blog where you’ll find “inside information” about my projects, life, and ideals on business.

Find Derek Halpern Other Places Online

• Derek Halpern on Twitter
• Derek Halpern on Facebook
• Derek Halpern on Social Triggers

Derek Halpern Public Projects

While I have several projects I’m working on, there’s only a few that I can discuss publicly. They are as follows:

• Social Triggers, which is a blog dedicated to showing you how to use human psychology to get web traffic and sales.

• DIY Themes, which is a Wordpress Theme company that is most known for Thesis Theme for Wordpress

• Conference Stars, a site that will soon be launched.