A journey from Internet marketing stasis to business mastery and financial freedom (I hope)

It’s been a week since the Summit and, with one thing and another, I’m only just getting a chance to write up my notes. I’ll do a separate post for each day of the seminar.

The event was organised by Brett McFall, Ted Ciuba, Tom Hua and our man in the UK, Andrew Reynolds.

I had a real sense of deja vu actually. It was allocated seats in the Grand Hall of the Wembley Conference Centre, just like the Bootcamp last November. It’s a huge hall that seats about 3000 people. And where did I end up? About 5 feet away from where I was sat last time. Freaky!

So newbies day was mostly just that – a talk about lifestyle & mindset and a chance to get everyone up to speed with the kind of Internet business they’d be talking about (selling information products) and how to create a sales web page from scratch. They warned that it would bore the hell out of some people but that was fine. It was good to get a refresher and to see how they went about things.

But the reason most people were at the seminar was to see the 72-hour challenge get set up. It was exciting leading up to the demo wondering what they would do.

But what a let down…

“Give me a willing person… loan me a laptop computer with an Internet connection… and within 72 hours that person will have a product, a website… and money in the bank – plus a system to make that money over and over again for life!”

That’s what they said. The implication being (and in fact stated in the sales letter) that we would be able to copy what they’d done as soon as we got back from the seminar and make the same kind of money, all from scratch.

They started off talking about different niche markets and stressing the fact that we can do this in any market and not just Internet Marketing.

So what niche did they choose for the challenge? Was it learning to play the drums? Was it golf? French cooking perhaps? Or was it Internet marketing?

Hmm… let me see…

Why is it that all the examples they ever demonstrate with are all in the market of how to make money? If it’s not Internet marketing itself, it’s usually real estate, stock trading or some other cash making scheme. Even the Hair Salon, Accountancy and Dentist “examples” they gave were all about products to help people bring in more clients, increase business and therefore make more money.

Now there’s nothing wrong with doing any of that but then they tell us it works ‘even better’ for hobby markets and other niches aimed at consumers. Sure, they pop up examples of niche products that exist for learning to play guitar, braid your hair and paint your tractor. And no doubt those products do sell and make some money. But do they ever make the tantilising sums of cash that are presented for products aimed themselves at people who want to make money?

I don’t know because they never use them as examples.

If something sounds too good to be true then it usually is. I’m trying very hard not to be cynical about the whole thing, I really am. Very hard. But I was so dissapointed by the demo and so was everyone else I spoke to.

We were promised a demonstration of making £7K – £20K in 72 hours, from scratch with no product or list, that we could copy ourselves and do the same.

Well we could… if we happened to have 13 Internet marketing experts gathered together in one place for 3 days and about 1000 wannabes to use for instant market research. Then we could also set up a live Web-cast of the experts answering questions and sell that as an instant product. And did I mention the experts already? Oh good, because being Interenet marketing experts they’ll have their own nice big lists we can market to and we can joint venture with them.

It’s a good job the willing puppet (sorry Simon) did exactly what they told him and didn’t insist on doing that product about playing the drums.

Now I said that I was trying not to be too cynical and I can understand why they did what they did. After all, what else could they have done in the circumstances that would have been sure to succeed? Nothing!

It’s not that they told us porkies as such and the general principles make sense. But the whole point of doing the demo was to let us go away feeling confident that we can take the same techniques and apply them to any market and build a successful business (and not to show us how clever they are).

So am I feeling confident? Not really.

Sometimes I come across something while surfing or reading email that has a profound affect on the way I think about things.

This time it came in an email from Mike Filsaime. I’m on a few of his email lists and I usually ignore the deluge of emails I get from him every day but this one caught my attention.

Rich Schefren is another one of those mega success stories that I’ve never heard of (and no, as much as I’d like to sometimes, I haven’t been hiding under a rock). He’s just put out a “Manifesto” document that’s “shaking the Internet Marketing world”.

If you can look past the marketing hype surrounding this document (which is essentially trying to promote a very expensive and exclusive coaching programme), there’s some amazing insights in there.

You should download it and read it yourself but here’s a brief summary based on my first read through (I’ve probably missed some stuff):

1. The typical Internet Marketing business is absurdly complex and it doesn’t have to be that way (not sure how yet). There’s a very funny (not so funny) chart that shows this.
2. Have a vision and create strategies to achieve it rather than jump on every opportunity. Be an Entrepreneur rather than an Opportunist (yep, that sounds like me).
3. Stop collecting tactics and only buy products & services that support your strategies (me again!).
4. Know the value of your time and plan to increase it (there’s a worksheet that goes into this in detail).
5. Build a business around scalability and leverage. That means creating systems and getting the most out of the work that you do.
6. Create multiple products for a single niche rather than single products for multiple niches for maximum leverage.
7. Use outsourcing to free your time and don’t out-task (the difference is explained in the document). Outsource tasks that cost less than your time value.
8. Create process maps for everything you do and use them to continually improve your processes.
9. Try to create metrics for each activity and relationship to make it easier to gauge performance.

There’s apparently going to be some follow up videos so it’s well worth your name and email address to get on yet another list to get the document. You can always unsubscribe later (yeah, like I always don’t).

Anyway, here’s the link to opt-in and download (not an affiliate link):
http://www.strategicprofits.com/manifesto/

Enjoy!

So I was at the World Internet Summit UK in Wembley a few days ago and I’ll be following up with a number of reports once I’ve got my notes in order.

If you read my last couple of posts you’ll know that I wanted to get to the bottom of Andrew Reynold’s involvement in the event and find out why he promoted it the way he did.

Well, I was more surprised than I should have been to find that he really was one of the key organisers and hosts of the Summit with most (if not all) of the bookings going through his company and via his list and sales web site.

In fact, when Ted Ciuba asked how many of us had heard the preview calls, as I suspected, I was one of only about 10 people that raised their hand. Out of 800 delegates, that’s not very impressive. I still think it’s a bit of a shame because there was some good content in those calls and not all of it got repeated at the seminar.

So, is Andrew Reynolds as approachable and down-to-earth as he always makes out to be?

In a word, I think the answer is “yes”! I have to say that my respect for Andrew went up several notches these last few days. Not just because he sat down with a bunch of us in the food hall for lunch , answering questions and chatting, but also for the kind support he gave me later on (I’ll probably post about that another time).

I told Andrew how I felt about the way the promotion was put together and he seemed to genuinely take it on board and even apologised. His reasoning was that he thought the “World Internet Summit” badge would confuse his customers and he chose to focus on the 72-hour demo aspect. He knew it might upset a few people but was prepared to take the risk. That’s business I guess.

So what does Andrew Reynolds eat for lunch?

The answer is fluorescent orange sandwiches it seems! I don’t know what was in them but I swear I saw them glowing as they came out the packet. Peppercorn and uranium I think. Nice!

Always be truthful in business. Never, ever try to decieve your customers, prospects, partners or anyone else you have dealings with. It will only come back to bite you.

No matter how much trust you’ve built up over how many years, it can all be wiped away in an instant with one dishonest act. As soon as any seed of doubt enters a persons mind, you’re going to struggle to regain their trust.

Of course you can spin the truth with good copywriting skills but be careful. If you stretch too far from reality then the elastic can snap.

It’s a question of perception. While you might honestly be able to claim that you haven’t lied about anything, if your prospect or customer has just a whiff of something that doesn’t feel quite right then you’ve lost them.

As a general guide, always ask yourself how you’d feel if the tables were turned and you were on the receiving end of what you’ve produced.

Tomorrow sees the start of the World Internet Summit UK 2006 in London which means an early start for me to travel down there. Yep, I splashed out another ton of cash I haven’t really got to attend yet another Internet Marketing seminar.

Didn’t I just go to one of those a few weeks ago? Yes I did, and I’ll probably talk about that pitch-athon in another post.

The Summit looks like it’s going to be a great seminar (don’t they all?) and I love the opportunity to meet with like minded souls but I could easily have missed this one.

In fact, the reason I’m going at all has some very interesting marketing lessons, so listen up!

I’d heard a little bit about the Summit before but, to be honest, I thought it was just a typical, expensive Internet marketing seminar and really didn’t pay it much attention. You know, one of those things that would be nice to go to if I could afford the cost and the time away from my family.

So what changed?

Well, if you’re in the UK then there’s a good chance you’ve heard of a guy called Andrew Reynolds. If you haven’t then all you need to know is that he started with nothing and is now a very successful, multi-millionaire who knows a thing or two about marketing (and direct mail in particular).

Anyway, I’ve been a customer of Andrew’s for many years. In fact it’s probably due to Andrew that I got interested in niche product development and marketing in the first place after he sold me some Bill Myers video tapes (back in the Manhattan Direct days). Now that was a good example of a cheap ‘front-end’ product because I then went on to spend hundreds more on a full set of tapes (there were no DVDs then) and have since sent him thousands more.

So I guess you could say that I’m a fairly loyal customer. I’ve met Andrew. I really like him. He seems like a straight-forward, down-to-earth, honest kind of guy.

But sometimes he does things that really tick me off. And to get back to the story of the World Internet Summit, here’s a case in point…

A couple of weeks ago I got a mailshot about a special gathering where Andrew and some of his associates were going to show us a step-by-step system for creating several thousand pounds (or dollars if you prefer) within 72 hours. And they were going to demonstrate it live in front of us.

It was a new system this guy Brett had shown him a year before and he’d used it to pull in half a million quid in a week (this is the same half million he talked about in Wembley last year that was filmed for a TV documentary). It was supposed to fit in well with another of his systems that I’m currently following. Maybe I’ll talk about that another time.

Well, to cut a long story shorter than it might otherwise have been, I was convinced by the sales letter, the urgent scarcity play seemed plausible (after all, the seminar was only 2 weeks away), and the dates turned out to be amazingly convenient for me. So I signed up.

Now, at that point, I still had no idea that I was going to the World Internet Summit. In fact, for all I’m supposed to know right now, I’m not! Instead, I’m going to a “72-Hour Demonstration Weekend and Summit” that just happens to be in the same place and at the same time as the World Internet Summit. What the feck?

And how did I find out?

Well, I happen to know who Brett McFall is and recognised his picture in the sales letter (which only referred to him as “Brett”). So I did a bit of Googling and figured it out very quickly.

And here’s the point of the whole story…

Once I knew what the real deal was (though I couldn’t be 100% certain until the location information arrived in the post a few days later), I felt really angry. I felt stupid. I felt like I’d been duped or conned. That perhaps the seminar I’d be going to was not the one I’d signed up for or been ’sold’.

My first reaction was that I thought I ought to cancel it immediately and get a refund. No, actually, my first reaction was to wonder how I’d been so dumb as to do the research after giving him my credit card details!

So I was feeling pretty low about the whole thing at that point.

But I decided to do some more research and have a look at the ‘proper’ sales letter for the World Internet Summit and sign up for the pre-seminar mailing list. And I’m glad I did for 2 reasons:

1. I got to find out what the seminar was really all about. It looked pretty good and still included the 72-hour demonstration.
2. I discovered a whole bunch of teleseminars that were being recorded with the speakers in the run-up to the Summit. I had a few weeks of them to catch up on but they have been full of great information and a good primer for the seminar.

So after a few days of frantic pacing around, I mellowed and decided to go ahead after all.

But I’m still pretty mad at Andrew Reynolds for the way that he’s handled his promotion of the event. If I get the opportunity this weekend I’m going to corner him and ask him what is approach was all about. What was he thinking? That we’re going to walk through the door of the Wembley Conference Centre tomorrow and he’s going to say “Surprise! You’re actually at the World Internet Summit not that other thing I made up just for you!”

I feel like he’s been dishonest in hiding the true nature of the event and I think he’s done his customers a disservice by not giving them access to the teleseminar recordings. This is a very bad thing to do to your loyal customers.

I hope he has a good explanation for it all. Maybe he didn’t realise what the implications would be or maybe he just screwed up. Will I forgive him? Probably this time, but the damage has been done.

The irony is that the angle he took was what ’sold’ me on the event and I probably wouldn’t have been going otherwise. I just wish he’d come clean afterwards, that’s all.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean that there are any cosmic forces at play here. It’s just human nature.

If you give your time and know-how generously then people will feel compelled to do the same for you and be more likely to do business with you in the future. You’ll develop a good relationship with them that can only benefit everyone in the long term.

But it has to be genuine. It shouldn’t be a planned response. Don’t think that if you give away ABC today that you can claim back XYZ next week. You need to give for its own sake and then let nature take its course.

I have to confess to being an Underachiever. Yeah, I know – you’ve already gathered that from my first post. But that’s not the kind of underachieving I’m talking about. And I don’t want you to think that I’m a total waster!

Now I’m always surprised when I meet people at seminars who haven’t heard of Frank Kern and Ed Dale’s Underachiever system. It’s a well defined process for finding a market, figuring out what that market wants, developing a product and selling it – all with minimum cost and risk.

A couple of years ago, I got sucked into the whole launch process for their Underachiever Mastery course which I duly bought (naturally). Well, it seemed great. I watched all the DVDs and as soon as I had the time I was really going to put it into practice…

So I sat on it for 6 months and did nothing with it.

That was until Ed Dale did the most remarkable thing I’ve ever witnessed in Internet Marketing. He decided to issue a 30-day challenge and teach as many people as possible how to make their first $1 in sales from scratch within 30 days using the Underachiever system. But the most amazing part was that he’d decided to do it for free using podcasts, online training videos and a members forum.

It all happened in July 2005. I think more than 900 people registered for the challenge. There were probably a large proportion of passive observers and many that dropped out. But a huge number stayed with it and continue to do so.

32 people made their dollar in the 30-day challenge. And I was one of them!

That challenge changed my way of thinking in so many ways and I started to believe that it was actually possible for ordinary people like me to make money online. Being a part of it was an emotional roller-coaster ride. Partly because of the amount of time and energy I put into it (and the resulting lack of sleep) but also because of the incredible community of Underachievers (”Undies”) that I became a part of.

I’d always thought of Internet Marketing as being a highly competitive, back-stabbing arena. But the generocity of everyone on the forum has been unbelievable. And I don’t think it would have happened if it hadn’t been for Ed’s huge generocity in the first place. It set the scene.

I’ve certainly done my best to contribute as much as possible. How could I not? I maintain a resource page as a one-stop portal into all the tools needed and places to research markets, etc. It’s really a labour of love. My chance to give something back.

I’d post a link to my resource page here but I really want to reserve it for Undies at the moment. If you register for free (from the Underachiever’s Blog) and visit the forum, you’ll find it soon enough.

And now is a great time to join because it’s all happening again. The 30-Day Challenge II starts in just a couple of weeks (July 2006). Be prepared for one hell of a ride and I’ll see you on the forum!

What is this blog about and why have I started it? Two very good questions. I’m glad you asked.

Well, I’ve been kinda struggling at this Internet Marketing game now for quite a while and I’ve decided it’s time to really figure it out. To stop just reading, watching and listening about how to do it and to finally take the steps I need to create a successful online business.

It’s not that I haven’t tried anything before but I guess you could say that I was really just dabbling in it. I’d have a go at one thing then as soon as another tempting money making scheme was dangled in front of my eyes I’d jump straight onto that bandwagon.

It’s no wonder I haven’t mananged to make a success of any of it. I haven’t stuck at anything long enough.

And it’s not just Internet marketing. I’ve been a sucker for everything. Info products, affiliate marketing, AdSense, arbitrages, financial trading, spread betting, network marketing, ebay, direct mail, biz-ops and even gambling. You name it, I’ve been to the seminars, bought the books, the videos, the audios, the software and the whole kaboodle. Sometimes I even look at the stuff!

I don’t want to keep buying all these expensive hard disk fillers and door stops but I can’t help it. I get seduced by all these sales letters telling me that this is the one that’s going to bring an end to my life of drudgery and instead bring financial freedom and sunshine into my life. You know, where I get to sail the World in that expensive yacht and drive that flash car to the supermarket. No promises, of course, but it made gazillions of dollars for all these other people.

I know it’s all hyped up guff but I’m so desperate to find my way - to reach the levels of success that ‘everyone else’ seems to be having – that I’ll go for anything.

And they know it. These guys are good marketers. They know exactly how to push my buttons and get me to whip out my credit card.

A few years ago I started logging all the stuff I was spending money on to reach my goal of financial independence. I had to stop. It was getting depressing every time I’d add another £70 here or $1500 there while knowing full well that I’d got zero return from all the previous stuff I’d bought.

Is there no limit to how dumb I can be?

The collective knowledge in everything I’ve bought must surely be enough to achieve what I want. Surely. Somehow it hasn’t happened because I haven’t managed to apply it.

But all that’s about to change. I’m going to get focussed and really figure out how to make something work.

So this blog is really a declaration to myself and, by making it public, I’m now accountable to you.

I’m going to chart my rise from Idiotic Spendo-Maniac to Successful Entrepreneur.

And if you’ve read this far (without skimming) then I hope you’ll join me on my journey. Along the way, I promise to share with you pretty much everything I’m doing with any insights into what’s working and what’s not. You never know, it might even help you on your journey.

It’s getting on for half past midnight now but I wanted to get this started tonight, especially as I have a few more things I want to share over the next few days.

Where do I start? Right here and right now! Well, okay, after I’ve had a bit of sleep…