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Live On Stage At The 7 Figure Formula Event

James — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:10:05 +0000

Back in September my business partner in Your Internet Buddies, Daniel Wagner, and I had the privilege of enjoying what we both agreed was possibly the most amazing weekend of both or business lives… that is, holding the 7 Figure Formula Event for 200 of our members and their guests on Sep 18/19 in London.

Now Daniel has a lot more experience of holding events and especially speaking at them than I do – and for good reason, the guy’s awesome… (as you can see in his introduction.)

But this was special… It was a ‘Customer Appreciation Event’ meaning it was totally free but as I say, exclusively for our members and their guests. Plus, none of the guest speakers were selling from the stage, and that meant the atmosphere was something special. In fact, it was amazing…

For me personally however, there were multiple reasons why it was so special, but there is one above all else. That was to have the luxury to share my journey of going from a 5-figure employee to becoming a 7-figure entrepreneur in less than 12 months.

Public speaking is not my strength, let me be clear, so first of all standing in front of an audience of 200 and feeling comfortable was already a victory, especially after not much sleep and being, erm, ‘over-prepared’…

Fortunately I was talking about a subject I feel passionately about, and it was all from personal experience. You see to me there is no doubt that the greatest challenge many people face in building a real business occurs when they’ve previously spent a considerable period of their life as an employee.

Why? Because the experience, training, habits, and lifestyle of an employee is normally 180 degrees opposite to that of a business owner. Even coming from a sales background as I did, the transition to running everything yourself in your business is a stiff challenge.

And the lessons I learned along the way in my journey from earning a comfortable salary to being my own ‘Alan Sugar’ (… perhaps not) were many and signficant.

So, in my presentation I explain what where the key learnings in that transition, as well as share some practical tips to help with personal development, time management and wealth creation. In fact, for once, marketing doesn’t feature too much at all… But not everything in business has to do with marketing. Again, I can talk from experience…

Being an expert on marketing means nothing until you have the right mindset, and personal effectiveness skills to cope with building and managing your own business.

So enjoy the presentation and best of luck in your journey in business. I’d love to hear about your experience along the way.

For All Six Figure Traffic Summit Attendees… A Kindle Publishing Update

James — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:04:27 +0000

kindle publishing is simple, quick and free

This is a quick update for everyone that attended the ‘Six Figure Traffic Summit’ on Sunday.

Thanks to everyone for your kind feedback about the content from the event – I surely think there were some killer traffic generation strategies that were shared by Daniel, Stuart and myself.

My favourite free traffic strategy from the day was undoubtedly Kindle Publishing…

I was amazed to discover that in the last month, according to Amazon, for every 100 physical books sold on Amazon.com, they have sold over 180 Kindle ‘ebooks‘ …

Amazon is the 15th highest ranked site on the internet for traffic so the opportunity today is immense to publish reports and books on Kindle – all absolutely FREE!

So… what are YOU waiting for… Why don’t you start publishing everything you can on Kindle right now?

A Personal Review of 2010 GKIC Superconference in Dallas

James — Thu, 06 May 2010 13:07:10 +0000

How can i begin to describe the experience of spending four days at the Glazer Kennedy 2010 Superconference in Dallas, Texas?

In a word, exhilarating!

As a longtime student of Dan Kennedy marketing I knew what to expect. Nevertheless, I wasn’t disappointed… This year featured more and longer sessions with Dan and Bill, as well as a more select group of guest speakers, including the incredibly approachable Russell Brunson.

But Dan is ‘the man’ and it’s clear from the start that he ‘owns’ this show… The people hang on his every word, which isn’t hard to do as every presentation he gives is packed with engaging personal anecdotes, powerful metaphors and witty one-liners. On the long journey home my fellow ‘buddies’ Daniel and Nick amused ourselves by recollecting our own personal favourites, many times over.

It was of great personal satisfaction to me that Daniel and Nick were both ‘hooked’ by the insight of Kennedy’s marketing philosophy. They know understand why they consider me to be ‘obsessed’ with this weird old dude. Kennedy is attributed with being the creator of more cash millionaires than anyone else in the US and was described during the event as the ‘greatest marketing mind of the latter 20th Century’.

Kennedy’s philosophy is consistent and was born out of the last ‘real’ period of severe economic hardship in the US during the Carter years of the 1970s. In those days of double-digit inflation and interest rates, as Kennedy remarked, “people were waiting in line at the gas station, not outside the Apple store to buy iPads.”

During his early years of failed businesses and severe debt, Kennedy made a realization that has literally helped built his own considerable fortune, as well as – even more importantly – those of a whole generation of wildly successful entrepreneurs.

His major breakthrough came about by realizing that the debt collection agencies that were spending considerable time, money and effort to get money from him, all followed a very similar pattern. That is, they would not just send one letter asking for payment, rather they would send one, then another one and then another one, each referring back to the previous letters (and often including copies of the letters themselves). Each letter would become more direct in tone and level of threat for non-compliance.

Kennedy’s lightbulb moment was this … “if they go to all this trouble and are successful in getting money out of people who both don’t have any, without even offering em anything in return (‘not even a bonus!’), then how successful would you be if you offered them something they wanted Instead!”

Thus, the Kennedy 3-Step Sequence became the basis for his trademark, revolutionary product ‘Magnetic Marketing’ which he sold from the stage at the Peter Lowe ‘Success’ rallies of 20-30,000 people at a time around the US for 9 years in the 70s and 80s.

In addition to the 3-step system, which Kennedy literally created himself, he’s also most widely known for his mantra of ‘message to market match’, which is the foundation upon which any and every business should be based.

His premise during the last 35 years and which in today’s multimedia, micro sub niche world is even more necessary than ever, is the following. Most businesses fail to segment their customer and prospect lists anywhere near as much as they should, instead choosing the lazy route of talking to them all as one big amorphous group.

Kennedy has proved, over and over again, that people will buy what thy think is ‘for them’ specifically far more than something which is generic and targeted at ‘everyone’. So its essential to split your buyers and prospects into multiple subcategories and talk to them with language that is specific to their situation and with an offer that is appropriately compelling.

The 3-step sequence and message to market match propositions are not idle theory, however. They have been proven to be wildly successful time and time again, in any market or niche, whether b2b or b2c, and all over the world. There is proof beyond any doubt of the success of these methods, so why isn’t Kennedy more widely known in the marketing mainstream?

Several reasons…

One biggie is that marketing is dominated by large advertising agencies who have no interest in anything other than securing the largest amount of money from their clients as possible. They get away with this robbery by calling their work ‘brand building’… And while for Unilever or Coca-cola there is some validity, for the vast majority of the business world there is not.

At an individual entrepreneur level, however, there is a more fundamental reason why more people don’t practice Kennedy marketing… It’s just too much HARD WORK!

Of course the alternative of a failed business doesn’t bear comparison, but that’s just not how most people think…

If you have ANY interest in improving your skills in sales, marketing and human psychology, whether for your job or your own business, I’d strongly encourage you to read any of Dan Kennedy’s books and above all, become a subscriber of his monthly newsletter.

Resources
www.dankennedy.com
Dan Kennedy books on Amazon

From Bath Farmers Market to Starting a R.I.O.T…

James — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 23:58:25 +0000

While wandering about dodging the hordes following their usual frantic Saturday routine (and wondering why I was joining in…), I thought I’d show you a place that is quite close to my heart in many ways, the weekly Farmers Market here in the city of Bath.

You see it was here in 2005 that my wife Licia and I started our journey – with much uncertainty and a fair few nerves – along the road to running our first ever business. My Italian wife Licia was an ‘aspiring’ chef at the time and she wanted to try her hand at selling her home-produced, Italian-inspired food.

Needless to say, she was a great success at the Farmers Market, which then led us on to setting up our very first cafe/deli also in Bath. The point I want to underline, however, is just how much HARD WORK was involved for very little relative reward.

My business partner Daniel likes to compare what he can earn now online to his ‘pizza days’, when he would work a full day for Dominos with only £50 to show at the end of the day for his time and labour.

For us, working on the market felt a bit like working 2 or 3 pizza days to perhaps earn a ‘net’ £50 profit. The hours were long, often all-night leading up to Saturday, and of course there was a lot of shifting and carrying of tables, fridges (yes, we were crazy…) and other equipment as well as the food itself.

I will always remember coming back home about 2pm on Saturday after the market was finished, eating (very good), counting the takings (even better) and then sleeping for hours to recover. So much for a relaxing day off (I was working my corporate job Monday-Friday, of course…)

What a contrast, then to the world I now inhabit. That is, full-time internet marketer, teaching people the very best knowledge, information and tips I learn as my journey develops. Although we’ve just started to produce physical products (a monthly newsletter, audio CD and data DVD) for the members of ‘Your Internet Buddies’, its still a world away from the production of low-cost, perishable produce. At least our CDs don’t have expiry dates on them…

In my corporate job, selling specialist software solutions to schools to help children with their learning, many of my colleagues had to sell physical products like computers or networks. Now, although there was no expiry on these either, the profit margins were thin to non-existent. And a Million-pound order isn’t very cool if your overall production costs are £1,000,001…

In contrast, selling software was much like selling information products. The cost of production is low, but the sale price can still be high, therefore with MUCH higher profit margins.

However, software is complex to produce, and has implications for technical supports and updates, so the clear winner of the three businesses, for me, is to package and sell ‘information’.

Information is a strange commodity. It can vary in price from free to multiple millions, and can be presented and shared in many different formats and situations. For example, a $17 ebook can have the EXACT same information as a $97 DVD, or a $497 seminar.

Unlike many other markets, however, the demand for information is only INCREASING each day. We live today in a specialized world of micro-niches, with a million TV channels rather than just 3 (yes, I’m old enough to remember that…), and that’s because technology has made things a lot cheaper, simpler and faster to deliver ‘tailored’ information that cater for people’s specific needs.

The internet offers us endless virtual real estate to create publishing empires and all for free or insanely low-cost (who would have ever imagined that I could publish a video, with an article, to a worldwide audience, all for the cost of some shared web-hosting…).

Internet search engines like Google allow us to get ‘inside the mind’ of someone surfing the web, and actually present our opportunity ONLY to those people who have clearly expressed their interest in the same thing. The potential is mind-boggling…

What strikes me most, however, is when I see people of all ages, even octogenarians, actually learning the basic skills of writing a blog, creating an ebook or even recording a video, and then promoting their website to prospective customers via Google Adwords. They can do this, and do it well, because the basic skills of internet marketing are… shock.. really very SIMPLE! Anyone who routinely uses email can learn pretty quickly how to get a blog set up – and even create a video on YouTube…

Obviously, there real learning occurs if you’ve never run any kind of business before, or had any experience of the world of ‘profit and loss’. If you have, you’re already several steps ahead of the rest, otherwise be prepared to learn from people with experience, who you know, like and trust. I can promise you that working this stuff out on your own is not so much fun. Yes, I’ve been there…

So, if you’re interested to learn more about how YOU could transform your passions and knowledge into profit online, and you’re the kind of person who likes to learn face-to-face, or as part of a group dynamic, then Daniel and I are putting on a very special one-day event in London on February 13th called R.I.O.T 2010 – (R.I.O.T = Recurring Income Online today)

Basically, one member of the audience, picked at random, will have a group of Internet Marketing experts literally BUILD them an online business on the SAME day! We’re going to demonstrate just how literally anyone can get started online – and fast…

When we ran a similar workshop last summer, we took one young student’s idea about creating a fashion tips business, created a site and a product for her, and drive traffic to the site, even making a sale on the same day!

Even if you’re not the lucky person who gets their business built in a day, however, you’ll still get a first-hand chance to learn all the steps of the process, so you can do it for yourself.

So, if you’d like to find out more about RIOT2010 – and also secure some highly-discounted early-bird seats before they sell-out, then check out our special PREVIEW webinar at http://YourInternetBuddies.com/webinar and find out all about it…

But whether we meet there on the day or not, be sure you ask yourself one question… Is your income currently generated ‘pizza-day’ style?

And if so, do you really want to ignore the income-potential generated by a world-wide, 24/7, Internet Marketing business?

Live From The Web Business Building Workshop

James — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:53:54 +0000

Footage from Daniel Wagner’s last-ever 3-day hands-on Workshop in London.