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Recently I was the willing target of several audio interviews. The topic of course, was blogging, however as is customary, most interviews begin with a little background study of the person in question.

As a result of telling my recent business history I found myself reminiscing about some of the ventures I was involved in during the previous 8 years or so. Most of them were online enterprises, but there was one experience where I was running a start-up based in the real world, an English tutoring school called “Aussie Tutor”.

If you dig into my earlier archives you will find several posts and podcasts were I mentioned my English school. It was an interesting time in my life, which taught me many lessons about business and in particular what I want from a business and what I don’t want.

Working 9 to 5 by Choice

While in charge of my school I came to fully realize what I had always known - I do not like having to be anywhere nine-to-five, five days a week.

Before I avoided a full time job specifically because of not wanting to be anywhere for such long periods of time to work for someone else. Not surprisingly, despite working for myself, I still did not like that I had to be somewhere during working hours.

Unfortunately, as a business with a physical premises, the English school demanded my presence every day unless I was willing to forgo any possible patronage that might walk in off the street. Ironically, despite my immaculate attendance, many days my English school was empty and I spent the time working online.

It didn’t take long for me to realize, despite my passion for the idea and my entrepreneurial spirit, my tutoring service was not going to work unless I made a significant commitment to it. I would need to either shut it down, or invest money and time and treat it like a true start-up.

At the time I had a growing Internet based business demanding my attention that was profitable (BetterEdit - an online proofreading service I sold in 2007). It wasn’t too hard to decide what to do next. I closed down Aussie Tutor, broke my lease and went back to working at home.

A Web Based Life

I am very thankful that I grew up during a period where the Internet also grew up. My very first casual job was web based (crafting websites for the business school at university) and my very first self created income stream came from the Internet too.

I can’t remember what life was like before the Internet, but I know it wasn’t nearly as good as it is now.

Tomorrow I hop on a plane and fly to Fiji. I’ll be there for 5 days before I board another plane where I’ll head to Hawaii. I’ll spend a week in the land of aloha, before jumping on another flight, this time to Vancouver, where a week of fun awaits. I’ll then make a short flight to Winnipeg, visit my grandmother, before settling in Toronto for 5 months. I intend to visit the USA for conferences and other fun things during my time in Canada too.

In Fiji I will be in a hotel but during the rest of my travels I’m staying in rented apartments with kitchens, private double beds and all the usual trimmings, at two thirds the price of equivalent standard hotels (I’m practicing a little 4-Hour Work Week accommodation hunting). I’ll have ample time and funds to do what I want and it’s all thanks to the World Wide Web. There’s not many occupations today that grant you this much freedom.

Ever present during this trip will be my laptop. My computer that connects me to the online world will serve as a communication tool to keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues. I’ll blog, create content, work on products, market, network and effectively live a very similar life to what I usually do at home in Brisbane.

The scenery might change, but the purpose and lifestyle doesn’t - and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Live the Stereotype - Laptop on the Beach

We all know the archetypical image of the entrepreneur sitting on the beach with their laptop, logging on to check how much money they made during the previous night and then settling back to a day full of sun, sand and sleep - a perpetual holiday.

I’ve already written about my disdain for the traditional non-working holiday, however the gist of the laptop on the beach image is definitely something I appreciate because it represents fantastic freedom. A business that can function - and even grow - despite your absence or location in the world, and the freedom to choose when to work, how to work and what to work on, is a great business.

This is a far cry from waking up at 8am to open the doors to a 3rd floor English tutoring school.

How To Build a Framework for Life Portability

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At the start of March I bought a bunch of new products, including Product Launch Formula from Jeff Walker ($997), the Dot Com Secrets Free CD from Russell Brunson ($7.95 for shipping) and paid half of the $997 fee to attend the World Internet Summit in Melbourne. On top of that I subscribe to Perry Marshall’s Renaissance club and Rich Schefren’s private business systems coaching program.

I think I spent at least half of the money I made from blogging in February in the first week of March, but I consider it money well spent.

Top Bloggers Are Thought Leaders

If you read many of the top blogs written by one specific individual you will notice that they know a lot about a certain topic. They usually have spent a significant amount of time working and experiencing the things they write about. Consequentially they can blog with the authority that only comes from experience.

On top of experience, many bloggers tap into the industry they write about, reading other blogs, following industry leaders and buying books, magazines and information products. They realize the necessity to stay up to date with current events so they don’t get left behind. The is especially important if you want to be a consultant or establish authority in your field.

Good Ideas Are Not Enough

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I’ve compiled a bunch of notes from the Rich Schefren conference and also the videos he’s been releasing in the lead-up to the launch of his next program. You can get the free videos here - Strategic Profits Videos.

I was pondering over how to release them to you and I’ve decided to extract the key lessons and present them to you in this series.

The order may not make complete sense since I’m combining my notes from different sources and skipping a lot of points in between. What I have provided are some really great lessons and tips on how to successfully build and manage an Internet business, thanks to the mind of Rich Schefren and filtered by Yaro…

Multiple uses for the same content

Rich was up on stage doing his presentation explaining that he had “stolen” away an employee from (Donald) Trump University to act as his product developer. This person’s role is to take all of Rich’s materials, his audio, stage presentation and written words and come up with content packages to sell (with some help - there is more than one person on the product development team).

The idea here is to make use of every thing you produce in multiple ways to generate the most cashflow and front-end sales mechanisms. In Rich’s case he has a ton of materials to play with, but even if you are only getting started it’s worth remembering that you can combine any podcasts or blog articles you produce and make them into products. The same goes for reports or ebooks, whitepapers, interviews and presentations. Everything is marketable if there is someone out there who sees the value.

Journal writing

Rich keeps a journal every day that he uses to reflect on his life, the decisions he makes and the outcomes he generates. He finds by looking over periods of his life, both successful and not so successful, he can determine, with the benefit of hindsight, experience and education, what he was doing well and why. This sort of self reflection can be very valuable to ascertain why you might be failing to gain momentum in your business today.

Outsourcing

Here is a sample of the significant roles Rich currently has outsourced/employees managing that he no longer needs to do himself.

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I finally had a chance to watch Rich Schefren’s long video (not the case studies he has been sending recently). This is the video he was intending to perform for his current clients at the seminar in Florida, but later defaulted to his proven presentation, which I had seen before.

If you haven’t see the latest videos, you can start by watching the first 30 minutes for free and then opt-in on that page with your name and email address to get the remaining 1.5 hours.

What Is The New Video About?

The new video is more of the same from what he have come to expect from Rich - he teaches exactly how to build a long term, sustainable business, that runs without you. In other words, the goal for most entrepreneurs of having stable income and other people working to keep your business running and growing.

Rich’s latest video is the next evolution of his message. It’s clear he has learnt more and tidied up his presentation, so you get a real sense of knowing what the steps are.

He’s also putting a lot of emphasis on the concept of Momentum, which I think is worth explaining in the context of a small business.

Momentum

I expect most people reading my blog lack momentum. Even in my case I’m still on the cusp and haven’t quite tipped over into a momentum phase, though I can almost taste it now - it’s just around the corner.

When you first start your business it’s just you or perhaps you and your spouse. You do almost everything by yourself and your focus is on building enough cashflow so you can start bringing in people to help you. Your goal is to go from a technician role that does all the basic jobs, to a manager role where you coordinate workers to finally a business owner where you can do other things or only perform a very top level strategic role in the business.

The problem with being a technician is that you are constantly doing the jobs you hate, like client support, basic tech jobs like website updates, server management, email accounts, affiliate software, bookkeeping, etc etc - the list is endless! All this “other” work takes you away from your core competencies, which for many of you I suspect is content creation. You do best writing, or recording audio or video or perhaps coming up with the ideas for content that you want other people to create and sell.

This is where momentum comes in. Momentum gives you the cashflow so you can begin to hand over jobs to other people and do more of your core passion jobs, thus creating more value in your business and increasing cashflow - momentum - even more. Once the momentum starts it tends to compound, since with each new employee or outsourcer you hire to help, you get more time to create value and ultimately, increase profits.

Thus for every small business out there, or really every self employed person out there looking to turn their start-up into a real business, the first goal is to attain momentum.

Rich understands this need and thus focuses a lot of time on the concept of momentum, so if you feel this is an area you need to understand better in order to reach a momentum phase, block off two hours of your time and go watch Rich’s video now.

Here’s the link again: StrategicProfits.com/startuptofreedom/

Strategic Profits Program Launching This Week

Rich is opening the doors on his next round of coaching this week - hopefully. He tends to change plans quite often during his launches, due to the very dynamic nature of his product launch process. The date may change, but my current understanding is that towards the end of this week you will be able to join and the price is about $400 USD a month - but don’t quote me on that!

As you know, I’m a current client of the program and a big fan of the proposition Rich and his company offer to the Internet marketing world. I’ll spend more time during this week relating some of the insights I’ve picked up from Rich, so stay tuned for more articles like this one.

I’m also very keen to mastermind with every person who joins Rich’s program under my affiliate link. If you want some personal contact with me after joining the program, please make sure you get in touch and let me know you are in.

Yaro Starak
Gaining Momentum

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When I first started Entrepreneurs-Journey my business was not a stable source of income, nor was I confident that it ever would become one. I constantly searched for other ways to make money online. As a result of my desire to stay updated with Internet business, I was exposed to many different money making opportunities and people who were enjoying tremendous financial success online, many of whom I blogged and podcasted about.

When I first read that Darren Rowse was earning $14,000+ USD monthly from Google AdSense for his work blogging in 2005, I thought I could do the same. My blog had some traffic - I could start some more blogs too - and I probably knew more about the Web than Darren did at the time, so I slapped some AdSense up to see how I would go. After a few months of earning about $10-$20/m I removed Adsense and realized that perhaps that was not how I was going to get rich.

Later I read about Daryl Grant, who with her husband was earning a quarter of a million $USD per year by creating ebooks and selling them online via Google AdWords. I interviewed Daryl in a podcast and she kindly let me join their coaching program for free. Thanks to the details they revealed in the podcast and with their coaching program, I thought for sure I could make a go of replicating their success. I certainly understood all the pieces that go together to make the system work, I just needed to set out and do it.

My friend Will Swayne and I arranged weekly meetings to get our ebook business going. After two meetings it was clear to both me and Will that we were acting divergent and spreading our resources across too many opportunities. Will and I both had start-up businesses, which were still embryonic, yet we were devoting time and headspace to something else. It didn’t work, and we quickly ceased our attempt at making money from ebooks to focus on our core enterprises.

Unlimited Opportunities

Over the many months I have published content to this blog, I’ve studied, researched and featured a host of opportunities, including -

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