You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
Press play and watch the video for some important lessons I learned about how I was the reason my business took so long to get off the ground and how I could leverage who I am to increase my online earnings.
Once you’ve watched the video, read below for more information about the two programs coming out and the special bonuses I’m offering.
Get Out Of Your Own Way
On June 11th Rich Schefren is opening up the doors to his Guided Profits System 2.0, only the second release of this course. As you likely know already, Rich has been a huge influence on me, in particular for one reason: He teaches how to get out of the way of yourself so your business can grow.
What I really admire about Rich is how he’s been able to build a business that truly functions without him. He even has a CEO that runs the business so he can focus on his strengths (i.e. the fun stuff he enjoys). His company does ten figures a year now (that’s over $10 million), which is truly amazing considering it didn’t exist just a few years ago.
I paid him $5,000 back in 2007 to go through his coaching program and to this day I consider it one of the best investments I made in Internet business training.
Discovering what your strengths are and finding out what constraints are holding you back, are the keys to success with any business. This is an area that is particularly relevant for us online business people because there isn’t really anybody else out there teaching this. Most of us do not intuitively understand that we shouldn’t be doing certain tasks and we aren’t even aware of how we hold our business back. Rich’s course is very good at helping you to discover what you don’t know you don’t know.
I endorse Rich’s program 100% and invite you to join via my affiliate link. I’m offering almost $2,000 worth of bonuses if you do so (see below). I recommend you consider Rich’s course if you already have a business and are in a situation to focus on yourself over the next 30 days as you go through his program.
Be True To Yourself And Others Will Love You
On June 12th Frank Kern is releasing the final 800 copies of his Mass Control 2.0 (yes everyone has a 2.0 nowadays). I don’t know if Rich and Frank talked to each other about launch dates, but hey, I love both these guys so I’m going to tell you about both of them in one blog post!
Why I love Frank is his ability to connect with his audience as a likable genuine guy. Not everyone loves him of course, but one thing is clear - he is by far the very best Internet marketing guru that can connect with people on a human-to-human level. Frank comes across as a “normal friend” and because you naturally like the guy, you naturally feel comfortable buying from him.
That in itself is a huge lesson and if there is one big take away from Frank is that you can - and should - be yourself when you market online if you want a strong relationship with your audience. As a blogger, we get this. To blog well, you blog as yourself.
Through the use of video Frank has taught how to use every day aspects of your life as a selling tool, which is something I’ve replicated after learning from him.
Frank’s opened up Mass Control several times previously and I’ve not purchased it, but this time with only 800 copies left, I’m buying. I’ve probably learned about as much from Frank as I have from any marketer in the last year or so, especially when it comes to relationship development and launch techniques.
Jeff Walker has the best product launch “formula” but Frank has the best strategy and techniques for influencing real human beings, who sit behind their computers and read your emails and blog posts.
If you want to learn more about how to effectively use email, blog posts, video or any form of online communication as a persuasion tool, Frank is the man, and since persuasion is my craft too, it’s about time I bought Mass Control 2.0.
If you’re interested in grabbing one of those last 800 copies of Mass Control 2.0 as well, I’m offering the same bonus as I am for Rich’s course, if you order through my affiliate link below.
Do You Want Almost $2,000 In Bonuses?
You Are As Good As The People Around You
During the opening campaign for Membership Site Mastermind I actively observed the conversation occurring at other blogs about what I was doing.
One of the less-talked about benefits of conducting a major launch is the education you receive about your market. As Jeff Walker points out in his Product Launch Formula (PLF) program, each launch is an entirely different beast and once you begin the campaign you never truly know what will happen.
Eben Pagan, while presenting at one of Jeff’s PLF live workshops, stated something similar, explaining how each launch he has done has been different, teaching him new things as the campaign goes to unexpected places.
One of the great skills a marketer can develop is his or her ability to think on their feet and dynamically respond to what they see going on during their marketing campaign.
The very best marketers have an innate understanding of how they need to respond to what the market is telling them. For example, producing new content that is designed specifically to tackle an objection that they have observed coming from feedback during their campaign. As Jeff notes, he can “feel” how a launch is going, even before a product goes on sale.
Rich Schefren wrote an entire follow-up report to his first report (I believe it was the Missing Chapter follow-up to the Internet Business Manifesto) to specifically address a major sticking point he saw in his market. What was particularly amazing about this situation, was Rich was able to write the entire report DURING the launch campaign.
In my case, much of the content I published following up after the Masterplan report I released at the start of my campaign, contained elements designed to respond to specific rejections and talking points I saw in my market.
There were however, some things I couldn’t address during the campaign simply due to lack of resources (mostly time). There’s one thing that stuck in my mind since then that I wanted to write about here on my blog. This is a particularly important issue because I think it’s a mental hang-up you are likely feeling right now, which is significantly holding you back from success.
The Real Secret To A 2-Hour Work Day
I recently attended a network event as a panelist on the subject of social media. Before the panel discussion part of the evening began, a group of about one hundred attendees who work in PR and/or own a business, were mixing and mingling in the pre-show drinks and nibbles party.
I was standing in a circle talking to a group of people, all involved in running their own businesses. As we talked I noticed a difference between how these people worked to build their businesses (or at least how they talked about their work) and how I work on my business. They seem forever busy, and while they were brave enough to start their own business, the amount of labor hours they put in is significant.
The problems people have with their relationship to work became clearer when I mentioned that I’m doing a productivity course from Eben Pagan (Wake Up Productive), whom none of them had heard of.
I told the people in the circle how I often have a nap in the afternoon if my body feels like it, which got a laugh from some, presumably because they couldn’t imagine sleeping in the middle of a work day. I felt the need to defend myself and explain the nap is actually beneficial for my productivity (Eben suggests this in the course - though I didn’t need him to give me permission to take a nap, that’s for sure!).
My naps are short, usually around 20-40 minutes long and are not solid sleep, more like a dozing in and out of consciousness. I feel amazing once I get up, very clear and coherent - it’s like a reset button when you are feeling tired in the afternoon. Eben, and people he quoted, concurred about the effectiveness of napping for improved productivity.
This concept, the idea of “not working” when it’s designated work time based on what society tells you or how you have conditioned yourself, is something that lots of entrepreneurs and certainly employees have trouble coming to terms with. If you’re working for someone else then obviously you can’t just go to sleep on the job and if you are working for yourself the sense of obligation to keep producing is very strong - you feel guilty if you don’t work a 12 hour day.
Personally I got over the typical working day time structure a long time ago. Truth be told, I never really had to adopt it because I went from school, to university to running my own business at my own pace, so I never had the stringent nine-to-five mentality applied to my life, even if most people around me live that way Monday to Friday.
Do You Work Too Hard?
How To Combine Your Brain And Willpower To Break The Pattern Of Average Results
There are some sad facts about this article you’ve just started to read, sad for me as the author and sad because it reflects something unfortunate about our current society.
Today we just don’t have enough time to learn new things. Worse still, most people don’t have the motivation to improve themselves and their lives, and instead choose to use what spare time they have to seek instant gratification, short-lived pleasures from entertainment, food and other leisure activities.
It’s a universal law that what comes quickly and easily is not satisfying for a long period of time and often can have a lasting negative impact. Junk food is tasty while you eat it, but it’s not doing much good for your body. Eating raw veggies is not always the tasty option, but doing it for long enough and you start to feel good.
In the Internet marketing space the same rule holds true. The techniques that are easy to do, for example using automation software to scrape RSS content for use on “spam” blogs, is never going to make you money long term. Yet if you focus on producing quality original content on your blog, and do it long enough, you can establish an asset that delivers income for years.
There’s nothing wrong with having fun, enjoying your spare time and occasionally indulging in instant gratification behaviors, but if you want to experience long term satisfaction in your life, you need to invest in yourself and become a better person. You need to become more than most people ever aspire to in their lives.
Most People Will Not Read The Next Paragraph
I said this article is sad for me as the author because the majority of people who were exposed to this text never read this far. Even if the title was compelling enough to convince them to read the first paragraph, they likely only made it as far as one or two paragraphs, began scanning the document from there, or browsed away.
As a blogger you learn to live with short attention spans and as an Internet marketer you learn that you can do very well if you have the attention of a small group of people who love your work. This is a powerful awareness, once you accept it and learn how best to leverage the situation.
Sadly, the knowledge I just shared with you, which I gained through experience and study, and teach to others through this blog each and every week, is insight most people will never become aware of, let alone go on to benefit from by starting their own blog or Internet business.
Pay Attention And Learn A Fundamental Truth
How To Brain Dump Tasks To Increase Your Productivity
I’m going through Eben Pagan’s Wake Up Productive (currently closed) video training program (Eben is fast becoming my favorite mentor) and one of the first starter tasks is to write down everything you are thinking about so you can “clear your mental desk”.
This reminded me of a technique I first came across from John Reese called the “brain dump”. Neither John or Eben invented these techniques of course, but that doesn’t really matter. John’s Brain Dump is slightly different to Eben’s clear your mental desk, but the principle is the same.
The idea is to get everything out of your head on to paper so you can stop thinking about it. As an entrepreneur - or just a human - we have a lot of things we need to do and keep track of, especially if you have a family as well.
When I returned home from overseas as expected there were a lot of little things that needed to be done. My lawn had grown to about a meter high, and needed cutting. My house needed a good clean. I had to buy food, pay bills, sort out my car registration, and all kinds of odd things - and this doesn’t even include the business tasks!
Over the first few weeks my brain kept collecting things I had to do and storing them for later. As I worked on the computer and walked around my house, certain objects or emails would trigger a reminder of something that needed to get done. This actually causes stress as your brain is constantly feeling the pressure of needing to do something but not actually getting it done.
I’m fairly good at dealing with that kind of stress as I tell myself to be patient and get it done when I can, but that doesn’t make the problem go away and of course, the task needs to get done eventually. It pays to become aware of how you think when it comes to task accumulation in your brain.
This is not a new problem for me, but thanks to Eben’s course I was reminded of a solution to help deal with mental clutter, especially during periods of new starts, in my case returning home from overseas and the new year beginning.
