Dancing Beneath the Hunter’s Moon

Reflections… on dancing beneath the Hunter’s Moon

I hope you were able to see the gorgeous “Hunter’s Moon” in the night’s sky at the end of October. It will still be visible tonight, depending on where you are in the world. I learned to love moon lore from my friend, colleague, and co-author Geoff Hoff.

We met in an online group in 2008, and the following year he came to Las Vegas to cheer me on as I participated in and won the “Better Your Best” contest that came with a 25K cash prize. That evening he asked me to mentor him and he officially joined my program.

Geoff worked hard and we got him to six figures within a year. He had convinced me to write my first book, and that year I launched “Hunter’s Moon Publishing” and invited him to be a part of it. And he went on to win the “Better Your Best” contest the following year and purchased his first new car with his winnings! We lost Geoff in 2015 and the world will never be quite the same. But his memory lives on for me in two ways…

His beloved cat, Maggie came to live with me in the days after his passing. I helped his family go through his things – he owned more than three thousand books! – and it was clear that Maggie would do well at my house. She and I talk about Geoff every single day, and last night she came outside with me to see the full moon. Geoff had been born in October during a full Hunter’s Moon and Maggie looked back and forth between me and the night sky as I shared stories with her that must never be forgotten. Today is indeed a Sacred Sunday for me.

How did I help Geoff get to a consistent six-figures a year income from his online business endeavors? By having him implement the same strategies I continue to share with the people I mentor and work with closely every day. These strategies aren’t a secret and you deserve to have financial freedom and the time to enjoy your life as well.

You only need three things in order to earn income online. These are a list, traffic, and an offer. I’ll go into detail on each of these so there will not be any question in your mind as to how to get started and make this all happen, and in record time.

A list refers to the people who are willing to give you their name and email address in return for a free report or other giveaway and your promise to share the information they want and need with them, via email and over time. Your list members start out as visitors to your blog or website or even a social media profile, turn into prospects as they read your email messages to them and choose to remain on your list, and customers and clients when they actually make a purchase of something you have created, or from someone else you recommend as an affiliate.

Traffic is the term we use for the people who find us online, and targeted traffic is the most effective as you build your business on the internet.

An offer is the product, course, service, program, or other item that is available for sale. In order for you to make money in any business, money must exchange hands, and it’s all done virtually with an online business.

Geoff did struggle during the first year we worked together. When I asked him to share with me why this might be the case, he told me a story about Napoleon Hill and shared a quote from this great thinker of yesteryear…

“Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.” ~ Napoleon Hill

My initial response to this was to repel this idea and take a strong stand in the opposite direction. Why would anyone have to endure continuous  struggle in order to achieve their goals and dreams? But upon closer examination, I realized that Hill got it right the first time. I’ll share some examples from my own life.

School work came easily for me, and it felt like I needed to make very little effort in order to earn top grades in all of my subjects. But that belief would be challenged when I entered the 5th grade and set as my goal to win the Spelling Bee that year. But I didn’t factor in the previous winner and her uncanny abilities to spell words based on their Greek or Latin roots.

But I certainly wasn’t going to back away from my goal simply because there was interference on the playing field. Instead, I buckled down and worked harder than I ever had in my short lifetime. There were times I wanted to give up and tell my mother I would participate next year as a 6th grader. But I never voiced these feelings to her or anyone else.

Yes, I did win the Spelling Bee that year, and this gave me a boost of self-confidence I truly needed at that moment. And I had learned a valuable lesson: Sometimes life throws you a curve ball and you will need to step up to the plate and draw on your previous life experiences in order to hit it out of the park, or even to just do well enough not to strike out. I always think of this when a player hits the ball in a way that almost guarantees the other team will be able to get him out at first base. But it doesn’t really matter, because he met the challenge head on and completed the task at hand.

And wouldn’t you know it, when I finally became a writer I benefited from knowing those Greek and Latin roots and it made my writing so much better than it would have been otherwise. My next hurdle was accepting that other people would be interpreting your work, without so much as asking you what you were writing about and the meaning you gave to it. Geoff shared with me that he had become alright with others coming to their own conclusions and interpretations when it came to his writing. I told him that I would work on doing the same and I believe he was secretly pleased with how he had influenced me in this way.

So, while I agree with Napoleon Hill when he says that strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle, but my interpretation of his words – see, I can do to others what was done to me, and feel like it’s alright – is that what he is truly referring to is the work ethic one embraces when they are willing to do the work and exceed their own potential by embracing the struggle. I even wrote a bestselling book on this titled Rethinking the Work Ethic: Embrace the Struggle and Exceed Your Own Potential and I hope you’ll take a look.

The photo above was taken in a coffee shop in Westwood, California on Geoff’s birthday the year before he died. He had ridden his bicycle there and I surprised him with the iPad he had been talking about for at least a month. Yes, there was a Hunter’s Moon that week, and he loves moon lore as much as I did, now that he shared every heavenly happening with me.

He created a number of online courses, products, and programs, and I turned him into a marketer so that he could benefit financially from his work. Although he never earned much with his writing, his royalties did increase as his marketing improved and became more consistent over a two year period. I encourage you to do the same when it comes to marketing, and if you need to start dancing beneath the Hunter’s Moon to make it happen, so be it.

I’m Connie Ragen Green, a bestselling author of more than twenty-five non-fiction books, a marketing strategist, and serial entrepreneur. Come along with me, if you will and we will explore the future in a way that will make your heart sing and your future bright.