The first one was Roger Hamilton’s introduction night, a free event he puts on as a feeder to his 3-day workshop and breakfast pitch.

I’ve heard of Roger before, but I had some misconceptions. I thought he was one of the older crowd of “legacy” business folk still doing the speaking circuit. I was surprised when he turned out to be a younger fellow, with a unique accent (he is a strange combination of Hong Kong plus Scotland).

On Friday I attended the Andrew and Daryl Grant Sydney workshop and did my usual two presentations, one on website flipping and the other on blogging. The Grants put on a four day show that is unlike any other event I’ve been to, and is definitely more suited to my style (I’ll explain why in a moment).

On Saturday I popped into a Christopher Howard managed event, that brought together some well known Internet marketers, both locals and overseas speakers, including John Carlton, Brad Fallon, James Schramko and Ari Galper. This event is your typical pitch fest, with two hour sessions for each speaker ending with a sale for a $2,000+ product.

The Psychology Behind The Sale

I’ve been to many business events, some that were free, some I paid money for as part of coaching programs. It’s very interesting to observe the different psychology behind each event, especially when it comes to how they go about making sales.

All three events I attended during the last week were technically free to attend. Although there are pricing structures, in most cases you can score yourself a free ticket in some way. The organizers of these events do not profit from the seminar entry fees, rather it comes from money made when a person orders a product sold at the event.

I noticed three key elements were used as selling tools at each event, however they were applied in different ways. Here is how I observed each of the selling psychologies at the events…

1. Emotion Sells

The Chris Howard event was definitely the “hardest” sell of the three I attended. If you look objectively at the presentations, you will see that nearly the entire speech of each speaker was one long sales pitch. There’s plenty of inspiration, lots of great stories, some good ideas and maybe a sprinkling of techniques, but pretty much every aspect of the presentation is designed to lead to a sales conversion.

Each speaker has only two hours on stage, during which time they have to stimulate enough of an emotional response to create an action. It’s because of this contracted time frame that in order to get the best result (maximum sales), the speakers focus more on the “what” and not much, if anything at all, about the “how”. Even when they show how to do something, usually the focus is on how much money was made as a result of the technique rather than an in-depth look at the steps necessary to get the result.

This might agitate some people, and as an experienced marketer I just find it plain boring (although watching to learn about selling from the stage is useful even if the content is not - the “meta” research), it’s the most effective selling format.

The emotional brain is much better at pulling out its wallet and spending money, especially when it’s feeling excited about the possibility presented by the speaker.

The Grant’s workshop is over four days and there is only one or two offers made that cost money, and as such they don’t have to pack as strong an emotional punch in a short time frame. Andrew and Daryl actually teach content, and lots of it, during the four days, and the result is a very strong connection with their audience.

The Grant’s rely on a four-day trust building process, where they dish out lessons from their own experience, teach techniques, talk about mindset and bring people like myself on stage to teach unique specialist skills. The event is full of social proof, with a constant stream of live case studies presented from the audience and speakers, all serving to endorse the Grant’s as trustworthy mentors.

I like this format because the selling is soft. There’s still a period where you have to focus on the conversion (Andrew and Daryl usually sell their $5,000 a year coaching program on day three of the event), however because of the relaxed and slower build-up, the emotional connection is more natural and less intense.

Roger Hamilton, while still working within a two hour time frame, ran his event on one evening without any other speakers. His style was to teach concepts. He doesn’t so much teach how to make money as look at the traits of people who do make a lot of money. His entire presentation focuses on improving your mindset so you understand what holds you back and why rich people get rich (and thus why you might not be).

Roger had two distinct pitches, one for a free breakfast the following morning, which is explained as a chance to hear more about what Roger and his group are all about and apparently leads to a pitch for a $10K or $15K package (I don’t know the details as I couldn’t attend the breakfast). Towards the end of the night there is a pitch for his $1497 (this was the price for the night I attended) three day seminar on the Gold Coast.

2. Teaching Sells

Creating moments of new understanding within an audience leads to a strong desire for more and increased trust for you as an expert. When a person learns something new, when you give them clarity where confusion existed previously and empower them to come up with a vision for their future, this is very exciting (another emotional response that helps lead to more sales).

Roger relies on this idea extensively in his presentation. Since he is not teaching how to do anything, he depends on demonstrating his understanding of success and association with very successful people, as key forces to encourage people to work with him more in the future.

The Grants also use teaching as a key element to lead their audience to purchasing more from them, however they concentrate much more on practical aspects mixed in with conceptual strategies too. With the luxury of time on their side, they can look at all aspects of business success and well and truly “move the freeline” in terms of what they give away.

Of course Roger has a three day event too, which no doubt is when he goes into much more detail.

3. Trust Sells

Whether you build trust by teaching people concepts, or give them a step-by-step technical guide on how to do something, or you use case studies or rely on expert endorsements, at some level trust has to be in place for a sale to be made.

The underlying belief is that what a person is presenting as an outcome is possible and if you choose to purchase what they offer, you are actually taking a step closer to that outcome (that’s actually more a feeling than reality - buying something doesn’t take you closer to an outcome, only implementing what you buy does that).

Selling from the stage is a more intimate format of selling and usually results in a much better conversion rate than any other form of selling. Selling online usually nets about a 1% or 2% conversion, where on stage 10% is average or even a bad result.

Andrew and Daryl enjoy conversion rates as high as 50%, and that’s on products as much as $25,000, so you can see where having that face-to-face connection over several days can lead to serious trust - enough trust that people will spend serious money.

Trust is the underlying emotion behind any purchase. You trust the vendor when you buy something that you will “get what you pay for”. What you want and what you get is very much open to interpretation and will always differ from person to person, but ultimately that decision to buy is based on trust.

Combining The Elements

You can see that emotion, teaching and trust are all interrelated. Teaching leads to trust which is an emotional condition that leads to sales.

Emotions motivate (or blind) people enough that they take out their wallets and spend money. Teaching people how to do something practically or creating an awareness of a concept they didn’t know about before, is a fantastic way to prove your worth and value.

People rely on past experience to make future purchasing decisions, so if you prove your worth once, the expectations is you will deliver more of the same (or better), especially if what you offer costs money (having a price increases perceived value tremendously).

Although all these ideas are focused on selling from the stage, they are universally true for selling in any format.

Blogging is all about building trust and most good bloggers do it by teaching and being an authority source of information about something. This then leads to making money thanks to the trust established that leads to a purchase of a product you recommend as an affiliate, or when you sell your own product.

You trust me, don’t you?

Yaro Starak

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Rich went mainstream in the Internet marketing world thanks to the success of the Internet Business Manifesto report. To be completely honest, and this really is testament to the power of a strong lead free resource, if it wasn’t for the Manifesto, I would have stopped paying attention. Instead, I went on to join Rich’s Business Growth System, paying him almost $5,000 over the next 12 months.

Every New Business Lacks Momentum

One of the key lessons I learned, and this particularly came from listening in to the questions asked from other student’s of Rich during the live coaching calls with him, was that all businesses suffer from a lack of momentum when they start up. The psychology needed to deal with a lack of momentum in your business is different to what you need to do when your business has momentum, and it’s critical you understand the difference.

If right now you are having difficulty attracting new customers, or even just building a list or getting people to visit your website or blog, then you lack momentum. Momentum is the foundation that allows you to grow your business to the point where you can set up systems to separate yourself from the business.

Without momentum you don’t have cash flow and without cash flow you can’t afford to hire people, or outsource or purchase software that will help your business become more automated. In this situation, if you have no start-up capital to spend, you find yourself doing all the work.

Not only are you required to deliver the product or service you offer, you need to get out there and attract new customers by testing different marketing campaigns. Of course once you attract a customer, then your energy becomes divided, as you need to market less and start delivering. Unfortunately once you make this change, you get cash flow, but since you are no longer focused on marketing, your stream of new customers dries up. Once the current jobs are done, you have to get out and market again.

If you’re constantly in the stop and start loop between finding new customers and delivering to current customers, then you know what it’s like to feel too busy one day, and then struggling the next. You either have too much work and you’re flat out servicing, or your desperate for new leads. There is no happy medium where you have just enough work to be busy, just enough cash flow to keep growing and just enough new customers knocking on your door.

Do You Know Your Strengths?

One of the common problems I see my students face is a lack of strong vision. When you aren’t sure who your target market is, when you don’t know what your unique positioning is, when you’re not clear about what distinct problem you solve or need you meet, then momentum will be difficult to obtain.

Without clarity of purpose, then you send mixed messages and deliver sub-par outcomes. Being the best at one thing, a specialist, a maven in your market, is always the path to maximum profitability. You get the customers who you can best serve. Your customers get the best solution and everything lines up nicely.

What I really liked about Rich’s Business Growth System was his focus on having entrepreneurs find their strengths as a means to move towards a positioning strategy that leads to you dominating. If momentum starts with you, the clearer you are about what you personally need to do and what you should offer to the world, the better.

Once you’ve determined where your core personal points of leverage are (what you are good at and should focus on), everything else unfolds naturally. Most small business grow on the back of a very active entrepreneur attempting to do everything, including what he or she is not good at. This naturally leads to friction, as some parts of the business accelerate much faster than others, resulting in a lag in overall results.

When your largest business constraint is you, figuring out what part of you should be focused on and developed into a core strength, is critical.

In my case, blogging is what I teach and is the foundation of everything I do. The act of blogging, of studying and teaching blogging, serves to strengthen my “blogging muscle”. It’s a strong reinforcing cycle that allows me to constantly innovate and have the “technology” (the knowledge) that leads to me dominating my market.

Look For The Root Cause

If you’re lacking momentum then there’s very likely a mindset issue holding you back.

The reality, from a tactical stand point is that you haven’t taken the action steps necessary to build momentum (do keyword research, set up a PPC campaign, create a blog and landing page, etc), but the underlying reason why you don’t implement the tactical steps is because you lack a strategy to follow.

The strategy is the Roadplan, the Blueprint or the Masterplan (yes, these are the names of my free reports), which gives you the underlying psychology behind the decisions you are going to make that lead to actions you are going to take.

However, and this really is the key, behind the strategy is the mindset you have. Without the mindset you won’t be in a position to develop the strategy. You might “get” how something works, but you will block yourself from executing it correctly.

Everything comes back to how you think. Mindset is the real power and if you’re a devout reader of this blog, then you know what the key is to developing the right mindset:

1. Establish awareness so you know what is possible
2. Execute so you gain real experience to solidify the awareness you have gained as fact (at least fact in your world)

See this for more: How To Find The Courage To Change By Raising Your Awareness

In other words, discover what you don’t know you need to know, turn it into something you know you need to know, study the bits you do need to know because you have to do it, and then put into action what you just learned.

Right now there’s a very good chance you are oblivious to even knowing what is holding you back from gaining momentum. Until you at least become aware of your problem, you will continually make mistakes or not get results and may be clueless as to why nothing seems to work for you.

Taking a course strong in strategy and mindset, like Rich’s Business Growth System, is exceptionally useful for what I’m talking about now. It doesn’t focus so much on the “shiny objects” part of growing business - in other words the techniques - it looks at the big picture.

Techniques are everywhere and most of them work if they have the right mechanic using them. They can be exciting because they show steps you can take that leads to a result, and they are vital for building a business, however they are rarely the root cause of your lack of momentum. Chances are you don’t need to know how to do more techniques right now, you just need to know they exist.

What’s really important is you learn how you personally fit into your business framework. Discover your strengths, become aware of what things need to be completed based on the business you are building, then find your place in the machine, and start building it. That is the key to building sustainable momentum.

Good luck!

Yaro Starak
Entrepreneur

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"How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online"
Download Here

One of the concepts I’ve heard Eben teach over and over again is the idea of dominating your market. This is more than just being successful, this is creating the perception that what you do is in a category all of its own. You don’t have competitors if you’re the only supplier in the mind of the customer, even if what you actually supply is provided by other companies.

The great thing about this concept is that you can dominate a market without changing anything about your product. Through a strategic marketing process, you can establish a frame of perception associated with your brand that is entirely unique. This isn’t actually something tangible, since most tangible elements can be replicated. This is a feeling that your marketing will emote from your prospects and customers when they think about what you offer.

When you establish a brand perception that is emotionally stimulating in a positive way, you have a very powerful advantage. You don’t have to compete on price, and assuming your product is at least adequate in quality, you will make more sales, even more sales than better products because you have a stronger brand.

What Is A Brand?

In my previous article from way back in December 2005 - Small Business Branding - It’s Not “We”, It’s “Me” - I defined branding, in this particular case a “personal brand” as -

Small business branding is not a good logo, a rhyming name, or special font. Small business branding is the owner. It’s what the owner does, says and how the owner’s traits come through in every aspect of the business. It’s the way relationships are built and maintained, the way a person does business and treats other people. It’s how rapport is established at an individual level, where trust and comfort exist as human characteristics, not from theme music, models or slogans.

A brand is intangible so you can’t really quantify its value. Advertising companies do their best to come up with some kind of brand value metrics, otherwise they wouldn’t have a means to value their services, but even the best technology is still making assumptions about the value of a brand.

When marketing is advertising and when advertising doesn’t have a measurable correlation to a response of some kind, then you’re making some assumptions about the outcomes you will get for your money invested. You can’t prove that X dollars spent resulted in Y dollars in new revenue from sales.

In other words, when you spend money on advertisements and you can’t directly correlate that with actual sales, then you are assuming it will have a positive impact on your bottom line, even though it might even have the reverse effect or be worth less than what you spent.

Can You Quantify Your Outcomes?

Small businesses rarely invest extensively in advertising purely for the sake of branding. We need to know that when we spend money we make more money in return. This is why the Internet is so good. Since actions and responses can be measured, you can determine how much you make based on how much you spend.

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is one of the best examples of this principle. If you can spend $100 a day to make $150 in profit, and you can know this by directly linking traffic coming from your PPC campaign that result in customers spending money, then you know it’s worth your while.

The same goes for any kind of traffic source resulting in a sale where we can quantify a result. Since we know where the traffic comes from, even down to what keywords someone used to find our website, or what medium they came from to find us (an email, a search engine, a paid advertisement), we can assess the value of that traffic to us.

This type of advertising is called “direct response” and while it was first coined to describe offline marketing used by guys like Dan Kennedy, it applies even better online because it is cheaper and you can measure more variables.

For most small operations, direct response online advertising is the only form of advertising that people invest money in, and branding, if it is even thought about at all, is not a concern.

Even people who don’t spend a penny on advertising, focus on methods of online marketing that are measurable in some shape or form, so they can focus on what works and skip what doesn’t.

So where in this mix does branding fit in?

Perceived Differentiation and Brand Awareness

One of the very first ways I made money online was by selling banners on my websites.

Although years ago clicks on banners where at least returning a positive outcome, nowadays banners deliver terrible click through rates. It’s very hard to justify spending money on banners as a direct response mechanism, especially when there are such better tools available, like Pay Per Click.

As a result of this I started selling banners to advertisers more as a branding tool, and less about direct traffic. I was taught this lesson by one of my long term sponsors on a website I used to own years ago.

This particular sponsor paid me $100 each and every month to place their 468×60 banner all over my site, and they did so for years. I monitored the clicks on their banners, and although initially the response was good while the banner was fresh, the click-rate dropped dramatically as the banner became “old”.

I told sponsors it’s a good idea to rotate in different banner designs from time to time due to what is known as banner blindness. People become “blind” to exposure of a particular banner, and if you change your design on a regular basis you can attract more clicks.

The sponsor never adhered to my advice and explained they were not sponsoring my website for the clicks, they considered any direct traffic a bonus. What they wanted is the branding that being associated with my website provided.

In this case, the sponsor was looking for two outcomes, which I believe are the much better reasons to do any kind of banner advertising.

1. Brand Awareness: My site had a very targeted traffic base for what this particular sponsor offered (they had a physical shop in Sydney in this case). What they wanted was “mindshare” in their consumer base, so when the need arose to purchase something, their store brand came into the thought of the potential customer thanks to the continuous exposure their brand was given on my site.
2. Brand Association: My site was a leader in the industry and thus it had credibility. Some of this credibility was transferred to my sponsor. As I said earlier, this is an intangible feeling, so in this case the association with my website brand transferred some of the “good” feeling to the sponsor’s brand.

You Are Everywhere

Although banner blindness is a problem, there’s a lot to be said when it comes to being “ubiquitous“. Although few people click on the banner, if a person is repeatedly exposed to the same image over and over again it starts to create a feeling of association with that particular product category.

When a potential customer sees your banner everywhere, and I mean not just on one website but on many and some of the leading websites in your industry, you become cemented in the awareness of people for that particular product. That doesn’t mean they will buy from you of course, but it does mean they will consider you.

Trust is also enhanced by being ubiquitous because people infer that you are successful and credible, since it appears so many people support you. This increases the likelihood the prospect will choose you to buy from.

Seth Godin, in his usual succinct and eloquent style, summarized this idea in a recent blog post of his - On becoming a household name.

The Branding Power Of Affiliates

I’ve written previously about the power of having your online peer group support you when you do a launch, in this case the leaders in your industry (see You Are As Good As The People Around You), but smaller affiliates play a role too.

Although the majority of affiliates never make a sale, they are valuable because they help to enhance your brand by plastering your banners all over their websites. Although each individual affiliate has minimal traffic, the collective exposure from an “army” of affiliates all promoting your banners, creates the intangible branding benefits that I’ve discussed in this article.

It’s through repeat exposure that your brand can become synonymous with a product category (awareness) and position you as the leader (trust).

Does Any Of This Matter?

Most of what I’m talking about in this article refers to elements of your brand that are intangible. What I’ve written of course makes sense - it’s logical - but it is hard to measure since you would need a direct wire into the brain of every customer you have to figure out their motivation when buying your product.

Most good branding occurs as a side effect of good marketing and it’s not likely as a small business that you will invest money on marketing or advertising that is purely about branding. It is however worth considering the impact on your brand whenever you evaluate the effectiveness of an online campaign.

Positive branding can lead to an increase in sales, but more important is the underlying psychology behind why that is. With a strong brand perception, people will choose your offer above everyone else because of the “feeling” associated with you and what you do. Much of this is developed in the subconscious within the mind of your prospects and customers as they go about their business online.

Keep this in mind next time you do any marketing activity - have you considered what impact it will have on your brand?

Yaro Starak
Branded

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& Make Your First $1,000 Online"
Download Here

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.

Your Peer Group Define Your Success

From a mindset standpoint you may have heard that in general people tend to perform to about the standards of their peer group. The people you associate with, how they live, what their attitude to life is like, how much money they make, etc, heavily influences your attitude and actions too.

This is why it’s critical that you surround yourself with people you regard and aspire to be like. If your peer group are negative, they don’t support you and don’t aspire to great things themselves, then they will hold you back. You may not notice it directly, but the impact they have on your mindset is dramatic. That’s why it’s so important to disassociate yourself from people who are not supporting your dreams.

If I look at my own success right now, it’s incredible who I have associated with lately. I recently attended a “faculty” mastermind session, made up of some of the most successful Internet marketing and information publishing entrepreneurs in Australia, many of whom are multi-millionaires.

Ten years ago I would have thought just meeting a millionaire was pretty cool. I don’t mean to sound blasé when I say this, but today hanging out with successful people is something that just naturally happens.

I’m still impressed by successful people and I admire them, but it’s not like deer in headlights type of impressed. Of course part of my attitude shift has occurred because my own financial wealth has increased too. I feel a part of the group of successful people because I am, but it is more than just that, my entire attitude to money has changed.

To put it simply, money is just not as big a deal as you think it is.

The only time when money feels like a big deal is when you don’t have it. This unfortunately is when emotions like jealousy, envy, bitterness and anger can surface, when you see that others have money.

It’s okay to experience these things, we all do at some point in our lives, but what’s important is you don’t let them control you. As an initial step, being aware why you are experiencing them in the first place is key. Having a peer group who are there to support you also helps, as they can “bring you down to earth” and keep you on track.

Role Models, Friends and Colleagues

It’s important to distinguish different groups of people around you. The multi-millionaires I know are not people I hang out with every day. They are mentors, colleagues, partners in business projects and friends, but the nature of where we are in life and often where we live too, means we don’t associate on a regular basis.

These people are important to me as benchmarks for success, who have done many things I aspire to do and thus make great role models, but they are not my day-to-day buddies.

My best friends, the people I see on a regular basis, who live in my city, perform the most important role of any of the people in my life (besides my family of course). These people are talented, motivated and share a passion for similar things to myself, both professionally and socially.

We’re all around the same level in terms of financial success as entrepreneurs and certainly this group of people are high-achievers compared to the general population. They are my peers, more so than mentors, but their role in my life is more important than any other group because we have so much fun together - I’d be living less of a life without them.

The final group I want to talk about are a bit different, and this group ties us back into the discussion I began at the start of this article. This group I will call your “online” peers, and it’s this group you really need to develop as an Internet entrepreneur.

Everywhere At Once

Every launch campaign I do I inevitably receive some kind of negative feedback, almost always coming from comments left on other blogs in my industry. This is okay, as I wrote about in my last article, if I wasn’t upsetting some people I’m not doing a good job as a marketer.

The nature of a large product launch campaign - and this is one of the true strengths of this marketing strategy - is that you get a lot of people talking about you at once.

This is incredibly powerful social proof, because it shows how many people support you and acknowledge you as an expert, even if they are doing it partially for a potential affiliate commission they might earn.

Every launch I’ve done has been extensively supported by a very important group of people: my fellow bloggers.

Right back to the very first time I launched a product online and including my recent Membership Site Mastermind launch, I’ve had significant support from other bloggers in my industry, for which I am truly grateful.

The reason why a big launch can trigger negative feedback is that some people get sick of seeing every blog they read all talking about the same thing at once. They get suspicious of the motives behind the actions, they become jealous and feel they can’t become successful because other people won’t support them by promoting their products.

From the marketer’s point of view, seeing this response (in a minority of people), is a very good sign. It shows that you are dominating the conversation in an entire niche, at least for a few days, when you launch your product.

Although a small group complain, they don’t represent the feelings of the majority. Most people are paying attention and enjoying what you do because you’re delivering value, usually in the form of giving away powerful free resources that your partners help distribute all over the web.

Generating significant buzz during your launch leads to engagement, excitement and mass exposure, which leads to sales. This is why the launch process is powerful.

One of the obvious questions thus to ask is -

How do you get all these people to talk about you at once?

There’s no short answer to this question, but what I can do for you is explain the key element, what you can begin working on today.

It’s Who You Know

Through the various launches I’ve done you’ve likely seen leading bloggers in my industry, including Darren Rowse at Problogger.net, Brian Clark at Copyblogger.com, John Chow at JohnChow.com, Daniel Scocco at DailyBlogTips.com and Jeremy Schoemaker at Shoemoney.com, all write about my programs and free resources.

Collectively these guys can reach hundreds of thousands of people, simply by writing a blog post. You can imagine the exposure having all of these people talking about your product at the same time can have.

In the Internet marketing “guru” circle you may have also seen a similar trend. Guys like Rich Schefren, Mike Filsaime, Frank Kern, Eben Pagan, Jeff Walker, John Reese, Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon, all throw their maximum support behind each other.

These guys are all good friends, they hang out together, they mastermind and JV together, and whenever any of them do a major launch, they mail for each other multiple times, throw in significant bonuses and essentially help each other all make more money.

You might view this situation as some kind of mutual back-scratching between power-players, and it is to some degree, but there are criteria that must be met for this to work, namely -

1. The product being sold must be quality
2. Your customer service must be solid
3. The marketing process being used must be sound
4. The relationships must be mutually beneficial

It’s difficult to break into these inner circles because of the criteria required to get there: You need to be somewhat successful already. Sure you can go up to any of these people and propose a JV, but most likely you will be rejected (see this article for more advice about proposing JVs to top partners).

The law of reciprocity is an important element and in order to reciprocate you yourself need to be in a position of influence.

I’ve had Rich Schefren, Mike Filsaime and Jeff Walker all promote my launches. The only reason these guys even know I exist is because of my blog and the influence I have over the Internet marketing industry because of it (try doing a google search for any of these guy’s names and products and see where this blog shows up).

I’ve also been a top affiliate for these guys, selling thousands of dollars worth of their stuff when they do their launches. If I make them money, then they obviously feel indebted to do the same for me. If you want to guarantee someone will promote your launch, sell a bunch of their stuff first.

I expect right now you’re thinking you have no means to become a power affiliate and you’re blog is not influential in your market (yet), thus you can’t convince anyone to promote your launch. It feels like a catch-22, in order to become successful you have to be successful.

That’s just a reality you have to face when you begin, and even though it seems unfair, realize that every power broker in any market got there off the back of hard work. They enjoy success because they’ve built up connections and relationships over time, just like bloggers build an audience over time.

However, and here finally is the most important part of this article, there is something you can do right now to place yourself in a position to become a power-player in your market in the future…

Rise The Ladder Together

When I first started blogging over four years ago, I stumbled across a blog called Problogger.net, run by this guy from Melbourne named Darren. At the time his RSS feed counter had about 3,000 people on it, and boy was I impressed.

I started blogging and built my audience up slowly over time. Shortly after I started a guy named Brian began a blog called Copyblogger and it too started to gain traction. A year or so later Shoemoney came to my attention, though he started blogging much earlier, and John Chow rose to prominence around this time too.

Many other blogs that focused on related topics to my industry were created around the same time. Some never really gained traction so the authors gave up, others just didn’t have the “magic” to result in big success or the blogger behind the blog never committed enough energy to the project for long enough to make it work.

The leaders started to pull away from the pack and the best blogs became more popular. These bloggers did what others were not prepared to do: they continued to publish valuable content day in and day out. They were rewarded with huge audiences, significant influence and of course, big profits too.

Throughout this time, though we didn’t meet face to face more than once or twice or not at all, the top bloggers in my industry started connecting in some shape or form. Whether it was from simply sharing resources, to focused JVs, or just an email or Skype conversation here and there, relationships formed.

The thing about being a leader in your market, you inevitably become exposed to other leaders. There’s an obvious synergy and leverage to be gained by partnering with other successful people - it’s what successful people do. I would be half the success I am today if it wasn’t for the support of the top bloggers in my industry, and of course I feel indebted to them and will support them whenever they ask me to.

So how does this relate to you?

You need to do two things:

1. Become a leader in your industry by being better, more prolific and more helpful than everyone else in your industry (this will take time).
2. Find people who are equally motivated, talented and committed as you - your current online peers - and form relationships with them now.

They key here is to spot talent in others early, and then support them. Find people who are like you and are in a similar place on the business development curve, who are ready to storm to the top of the industry with you. These are not the leaders today, these are the leaders of tomorrow. They will rise with you and when you are standing at the top of the mountain, they will be there with you.

It’s not always obvious who these people are, but it will become clearer over time. Most of your effort will be devoted to building your empire, but whenever you can, help build the empire of other talented and committed people and they will return the favor in time.

If you play this right and understand the importance of your online peer group, one day you will do a product launch and have all the leaders in your industry backing you, resulting in massive exposure and sales.

You Are As Good As The People Around You

I’ve defined different groups of people in this article, all who play an important role in your success as an entrepreneur and a human being.

Understand that relationships by their nature are extremely dynamic and take time.

You cannot manifest the ideal support group, key mentors and a solid online peer group in a matter of days. You need to put the work in to become successful because of your hard work, and leverage the support of the different people around you for exponential success.

My mentors, my friends and my online peers all influence me. Some are joint venture partners, some I hang out with for fun on a near daily basis, some I only see a few times a year and some I’ve never met in person.

What’s important is that you are actively looking for good people to associate yourself with. You won’t know immediately what role they will perform in your life, but in time relationships will happen if they are meant to and you want them to.

Don’t ever look at other successful people and become jealous because you think they are only successful because they have the backing of other successful people, and that will never happen to you.

It’s your job to demonstrate your worthiness over and over again and build your own successful peer group. Rise together and dominate your market by being leaders, innovators and mavens.

Good luck and I’ll see you at the top.

Yaro Starak
Connecting Maven

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Rich launched that program on the back of his most successful report to date, the Internet Business Manifesto, which featured the now famous flow chart of what an Internet entrepreneur is supposed to do if he or she wants to succeed online. If you haven’t read the Manifesto, I strongly recommend you do so as soon as possible, it’s still one of the most crucial reports on Internet marketing as an entrepreneur ever written.

After reading the Manifesto it was clear I needed to make some changes, so I joined Rich’s coaching program and began going through it. The premise of what Rich teaches is the idea that no person can realistically ever get to the point where their business looks after them, rather than they look after their business, if you do everything by yourself. Rich took this idea a lot further than just outsourcing, and sees business as a machine that can be completely automated.

At that point in time BetterEdit was doing well and I did have Angela, my admin/customer service person looking after most of the day to day emailing for the business, which is the main workload to keep it going. This was great, but as a result of thinking so much about automation and studying Rich’s course, I was interested in possibly using technology to further systematize the operations and gain more leverage.

Using Software To Automate

BetterEdit has a very simple job flow process. A client submits a paper and makes payment, the admin person assigns the job and forwards the document to an editor. The editor completes the job and returns to the document to both the admin and the client. Various emails flow back and forth if there are problems, but generally that’s the basic process.

One of the key weaknesses of the system I had was no affiliate program. I saw huge potential if I could find a way to pay a commission out to websites that referred jobs to the business. Besides manually tracking things, which would be a nightmare, I just couldn’t do it.

The answer to the affiliate issue was to create some kind of software that would handle the job process, including payments, so we could automatically track affiliate referrals and credit commissions for jobs completed.

I had to be careful because between paying editors and admin, the margin on jobs wasn’t massive. This wasn’t like an information product where I could pay out 50% commissions, I’d have to be careful. This was another reason where I saw software as a help as it could reduce the amount of work admin did, meaning I could incentivize affiliates with a higher commission.

With a software system in place, including an affiliate program, I could get out there and recruit an army of websites to refer customers to my business. I liked this idea because by then I was getting pretty tired of heading out to campuses to put up posters to promote the service, although I was starting to outsource this job too (my mind was constantly thinking about how I could work less without reducing my income).

Realizing Your Concept Can Be Tough

It was clear that software could be the automation answer, so I scheduled a meeting with a local development firm and sat down with them to talk about my plan.

The idea was to have clients create user accounts by filling out a form, then when it comes time to submit a job they login, upload their paper, stipulate the time frame and word count, the system spits out the price, they make payment or choose a payment option and the job is submitted. When new jobs come in an email is sent to admin who then logs in, and assigns the job to an editor. The system then sends an email to the editor, who logs in, accepts the job and begins work. The editor would then log in to return the paper, which would trigger emails to both the admin and the client to let them know the edited document was ready for download.

The developers understood what I was trying to do, they seemed capable of creating my vision, so we agreed upon a basic plan of action and they started work on the first phase of the software.

It was about this time that things started to fall apart. The software firm had finished preliminary work on the project so I could see the basic user interface. I had emphasized the need for simplicity given my client base where not coming from a background of English as a first language (hence they needed my proofreading service for their papers). I looked at the interface and I could see all kinds of places where my customers would get lost, and that was only the first phase of the software.

I knew my business very well and I knew why it was successful. One of the keys, as for most businesses, is good customer service and clear communication. This was even more important when your clients are not great with English. What I was effectively going to do was replace a human being customer service person with a robot software program. It could be done, but I had a feeling the time and cost involved would quickly spiral out of control.

It was at that point I decided to stop the project. I paid the phase one fee and concluded that, at least with me as the owner, I wasn’t going to pursue this avenue.

I still believe the idea is sound and certainly finding a way to include an affiliate program is possibly the best way to grow the business, but I had to consider the clients first. The software could have ended up becoming a barrier for customers to submit jobs. This of course would have been a fundamental flaw, and with no jobs coming in because the clients couldn’t figure out how to use the software, they would have ended up emailing their job anyway - which was the current system - so I would have spent thousands on a software system that no one used.

Humans As Automation

I decided, in this instance with the editing service, the best form of automation was to continue to use a human being. My clients needed the understanding that only a real person at the end of an email account could provide.

I have no doubt somewhere out there a software script exists, possibly even at another proofreading company, that does what my idea planned to do, but for me, given the size of my business, I could have gone broke trying to create the program and I wasn’t convinced even then it would do the job.

This experience led me to always ask the question of whether a human is a better suited automation resource than a script or program when it came to methods of systematizing my business. There’s never a clear cut answer as to what is the best way to automate your business, but so far for me, beyond basic automation through email autoresponders like AWeber (by far the most powerful automation in my business - see Conversion Blogging for why), I’ve gone with very simple solutions backed up with human beings.

Don’t get my wrong, scripts are great and I expect I’m probably missing out on some very cost effective ways to gain more efficiency and leverage in my business (there’s always more you can systematize), but because of my experience with technology, often the cost of implementation outweighs the benefit I could gain.

Bear in mind I’m saying this from the mindset of running a business of a certain size and living a certain kind of lifestyle. I’m not looking to take on full time employees, get an office and grow to the point where I’m committed to certain things simply because the size of the machine has become more than I can handle.

I’m out to make as much money as I can, but keep operations small and fluid, so I can chase the projects I like without over committing myself. This tends to cap my overall capacity for growth, but if you can make one or two million dollars a year without ever committing to full time employees or relying on complex software solutions, that’s good enough for me! (and yes, that is a realistic goal, I expect to be there in about a couple of years, or whatever pace is comfortable).

If your ambition is grander then obviously you will need full time employees and paying thousands of dollars for computer programs that can deliver powerful automation and leverage, such as customer relations database programs (which often take a full time employee just to manage), is no doubt in your business plan. There’s no right or wrong direction here, it’s whatever you need given your goals and the speed at which you want to get there, that impacts your decision making.

Keep It Simple… Enough

Right now, in terms of technology, I use very few tools. WordPress of course, AWeber for sure, email through Gmail, forums with vBulletin, Twitter, Facebook, some servers with Knownhost and Dreamhost, domain registration with Dotster…and that’s about it.

There’s a few more odds and ends here and there of course and I make use of certain desktop applications to produce reports, video and audio, but my business relies on very little from a technology standpoint. Simplicity is beautiful (Apple understands this - that’s why their programs have so few options) and if you can create a business that relies on basic programs, that makes automation even easier.

From there, I rely on a few key people to use these basic technology resources and help manage my business. Customer service, technology implementation, graphics and copywriting, are handled by other people, more capable than myself at meeting these needs. That leaves me to do what I do best, which is teach and be creative by thinking and then communicating my ideas to you.

In the next few weeks I’m going to release a report on making money with membership sites. Inside the report in the technology chapter I relate my process of choosing the technology to run my membership sites and how despite certain advantages that some scripts can provide, I choose to forgo these options and instead build a very simple system. Again, keeping things as simple as possible and relying on human beings for the most critical tasks has proven very effective for me.

Paying People Is Expensive

It’s fairly clear that for most companies, paying people is the greatest cost.

I was looking over my accounting records for the last tax year and my number one expense was contractors, accounting for more than 25% of my margin. That cost is far above any other cost to my business (I operated that year at a little less than 70% profit margin), and that’s without any full time employees.

I was slow to initially bring on people to help me, precisely because I was so attached to keeping money in the bank, but eventually I saw the light and realized my mindset about outsourcing needed adjustment. I’ve written extensively about cash flow and outsourcing, and I’ll link to the articles at the end of this post so you have some references if you are still not comfortable with the idea of paying others to do work, especially when your cash flow is tight.

Once I got over the miser attitude, I started to experience the “dream” lifestyle that Rich talked about in the Manifesto and so many people strive for every day. True, I was spending more money and that had an impact on me short term, but I began to enjoy much more freedoms and my income eventually surpassed what it was, to the point that I could travel for most of 2008, spend $50,000+ during that time and still come home to more money in my bank account thanks to my business.

Thankfully, unlike the massive investment you might have to make upfront in a technology solution, when bringing on people you can tightly control how much you spend and how much you automate. You can start with very basic tasks, like have someone filter your email for you for an hour a day and then contract someone to install WordPress and make basic changes like adding an email opt-in form and custom header to the blog design. Most of these things cost very little, but you immediately begin to experience the effectiveness of having people do processes for your business.

Perhaps the greatest challenge once you embrace the assistance of other people, is finding good people in the first place. It’s not easy to locate people with the right skills, who are looking for the kind of work you have and who slot well into your work flow. Thankfully with more and more people looking to live the online lifestyle and the global nature of the Web, you have abundant choice, it’s only the filtering process that takes time.

Find Balance Between Technology and People

Today I barely do anything with technology. While in the past not a single day would go by without me spending hours FTP’ing up and down some files for some website that I’d been coding, today I do little of that, and it’s wonderful.

Technology of course still plays a major role in what I do, it’s just no longer something I personally deal with on my own. Instead of being a constraint (something that stopped me from succeeding), it’s now a tool I can leverage however I see fit.

The key here is to follow a learning curve that goes something like this -

1. Establish a basic understanding of the general systems and processes that successful Internet businesses use online already (email marketing, seo, blogging, squeeze pages, copywriting, pay per click, etc)
2. Pick a business model you want to follow
3. Acquire the technology resources you will need to realize the model (web hosting, domain names, email autoresponder, etc)
4. Find people to implement the technology and launch your business
5. Use cash flow to reinvest in people who can handle the processes that you need to do now that you have a business (customer support and management, ongoing marketing and new product development, etc)
6. Purchase more technology systems as you need them and hire more people to manage the systems

This is a very basic process and as you can see, both people and technology play a major role. As long as you are prepared to use both resources and understand the possible synergies between them, you can build a system that is effectively a money making machine that leaves you free to play whatever role in the business you want to.

People and technology are key topics when it comes to having true success online, in terms of experiencing both financial AND time freedom. Unfortunately most people who run businesses lack one or both of these elements. If you are motivated to change this, please continue your study by reading the following articles.

Further Reading

• When Is The Right Time To Begin Outsourcing?
• How To Establish Cash Flow When Starting A New Business
• Hiring In The New Economy Requires A Proactive Recruitment Process
• Reputation Management: Starbucks Offers A Simple Lesson In Good Customer Service
• Growing Pains: How To Manage Customer Service As A One Person Enterprise
• Inside My Business: The Evolution Of A Customer Service System
• How To Find A Good Customer Support Person (Or Any Outsourced Staff)

When you realize business success comes down to many components, most of which all tie back into the people you work with, the technology you use to deliver your product or service, and of course you and your role as the owner, you start to see the big picture and how everything is interrelated.

Just like energy management as a human being is critical to performance, resource management as an entrepreneur is vital to business profitability. Having awareness of of all the parts that make up your business - a complete holistic approach - combined with unique insight into a few key aspects (the unique value you bring to the equation) is the formula for success.

Yaro Starak
Holistic Entrepreneur

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I love case studies as learning tools, and podcast interviews make great blog content, so I’d publish these regardless of whether the people involved are students of mine or not (most of my podcast archives are full of successful people who are not my students), however it makes smart business sense for me to showcase my best members because they offer the most powerful demonstration of proof I can present.

Proof, in my opinion, is the single most persuasive element of any marketing campaign, especially if you are an information publisher. I think it’s safe to say that most top Internet marketers agree with me simply by how they market their own products. There hasn’t been a single sales page or launch process that doesn’t involve people talking about how successful they became after studying the information the product offers.

Proof is so prevalent as a marketing hook today, that many successful launches are hinged on the back of just one success story. The power of the story - and the proof demonstrated within - is enough to convince hundreds and even thousands of people to purchase the product. If you don’t understand this and use proof to your advantage with your own marketing campaigns, you’re making a huge mistake.

Why Proof Works

There’s a very clear reason why proof is a powerful marketing tool. When making a purchasing decision, some of the big concerns a customer has is whether what is on offer is a scam, or won’t work for someone like them, or is more hype than substance. Regardless of the objection, proof is the best psychology we have to destroy it when it comes to purchasing decisions.

I don’t really need to explain this to you, you already understand and experience proof. Most of the new product buying decisions you make today, especially online, occur usually because you have some kind of proof that it’s a good product. The proof may simply be a friend or trusted expert recommendation, like for example me talking about how amazing AWeber has been for my business and showing how I use it to build profitable email lists.

What Kind Of Proof Do You Need?

Proof comes in many shapes and forms. It can be something simple, like a text testimonial from a previous customer, or even just a comment left to a blog post. You can take it further by recording a video interview, or doing full blown case study podcasts as I do.

In general there are two kinds of proof that are prevalent in most information product marketing campaigns, they are -

1. Proof that the creator of the product has done what is he or she is teaching or selling
2. Proof that other people have bought the product and then experienced the same or similar results as an outcome

The second type of proof is more powerful because people are more inclined to believe and resonate with the proof when they see that the person has come from a similar place as them, with similar circumstances, and then been able to buy the product and get a result.

It’s almost as important that the person selling the product is able to show proof that they have walked the path they are proposing to teach. Although skepticism is more prevalent in your audience when you talk about your own results, provided you can demonstrate tangible outcomes, your own proof is a powerful persuasion point.

In product launch campaigns, it’s often the story behind the person who is selling the information that carries the marketing. For example, the “reluctant hero” is a classic tale of proof, explaining how a person was able to go from an average joe-off-the-street and turn around their life into a successful outcome, whether that be making money, learning to play an instrument, having success with the opposite sex, losing weight, or whatever the product is about. The every day joe turned hero is then in a place to teach the next group of average joes, who connect with the story and see the possibility that they too can be the next hero if they just buy the product.

Believability plays a big part in this process. As more marketers show similar proof, for example in the make money online niche, pictures of sports cars, mansions, huge checks, Paypal email receipts and Clickbank balances, are the norm. They are still very persuasive, especially for those people new to Internet marketing sales pages, but as they experience more and more of them, the power of this form of proof wanes.

Volume of proof is also important. As your business grows, which should mean you are delivering value to people, the amount of unsolicited positive feedback you receive will increase. It’s a natural side effect, which you can encourage if you need to (in which case it’s not “unsolicited”, but that doesn’t necessarily make it less valid), and can be turned into a powerful proof tool. Showing page after page of testimonials can be very persuasive, simply because of the volume.

When I was building my previous business BetterEdit.com, over the years we received quite a mountain of emails from satisfied clients. I took the best testimonials and put them on to our website. We quickly outgrew just one page of testimonials (and a long page at that) and today there are nine pages of testimonials with the new owners of the business continuing to add more as they come in. Seeing the volume of testimonials and that they have been coming in for many years demonstrating how long the business has been delivering great results, is a powerfully compelling message of proof.

How To Get Started Demonstrating Proof

Now that I’ve convinced you of the power of proof, or reminded you to look again at this critical element of your marketing process, you have to think about how best to demonstrate proof to your potential customers.

Here’s a list of ideas you can implement no matter how big or small your business.

• As a successful blogger, one of the first place you can find proof is in comments made to your blog. Positive comments are proof of the value your blog offers, but you can go further than that and take those comments and apply them as testimonials on sales page and other marketing media.
• I run an affiliate program for my products and educate my affiliates and blogging students of the power of review writing as an affiliate marketing technique. Reviews often contain fantastic quotes, so if you have other people, such as your affiliates reviewing your work, you can then take that content (with permission) from the review and use it as testimonials.
• For people who are about to launch a new product, so you don’t have existing customers yet, giving away free complimentary versions of your product in exchange for a review, case study or testimonial feedback, is a fair exchange and a great way to get some early proof developed.
• You can follow in my footsteps and contact your best performing customers and ask if they will do an interview with you to talk about their success and how your product impacted them. This should be presented as a win-win situation, since they get traffic and exposure and you get a great case study.
• When I relaunched Blog Mastermind in 2008, I made use of the very cool picture-in-a-picture mode on Skype video conversations combined with the software Call Recorder for Mac to record short interviews with my previous students. You can see the videos on the Blog Mastermind sales page.
• I learned this one from Mike Filsaime. Create a guestbook in your forums where people can leave feedback and comments.
• And lastly, the most logical one of all - ask people for feedback. You can send a broadcast email to your customers asking for general feedback, or email people individually if they look like good candidates for a case study or testimonial.

There are many more things you can do to collect proof elements. Some experts advocate an automatic testimonial gathering system, for example an email in your follow-up sequence that automatically asks people to leave feedback in a certain place (like a guestbook or via email reply) so you always have a repository of great testimonials ready for use.

In your case it depends how developed your business is. If you’re just starting and you haven’t really helped that many people, then getting those first few testimonials can be tough. As you grow though, you will find positive feedback comes in passively assuming you continue to over-deliver on the promises you make, both in what you give to paying customers and what you offer for free.

What’s important is that you make use of proof in your marketing process and that you don’t fake it. Genuine proof is powerful and a must-have element in your sales pages or any marketing related messages where it makes sense to include it. I guarantee you, the better your proof, the more case studies, testimonials, videos and pictures you can show people, the more sales you will make.

Yaro Starak
Proving It

PS. My sales page currently features me in the car I own - an 08 Suzuki Swift. I bought a car that is practical for my needs, however a few individuals have challenged me asking if I make so much money online, why would I have such a basic car?

For the disbelievers, people who are compelled by photos of nice cars, and as a further demonstration of proof of my success, I took a couple of photos of me with my other cars* -

* I don’t really own these cars. I just couldn’t find them in a color I liked

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Although I boast I was able to run my business while traveling a circle around the globe, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t experience more pressure on the time available for work.

The way I chose to travel resulted in planning the details for my next stop a week before I arrived - sometimes just 24 hours before arriving or even after arriving! This included booking accommodation, flights and figuring out things like how to get from the airport to the apartment or hotel I was staying at.

Once landing in a city and settling in, the next “pressure” was determining what was worth seeing and doing, and ensuring the time available for fun was used on the best sites and attractions. This involves research and planning, reading reviews online at sites like TripAdvisor.com, buying tickets for tours and figuring out how to get to places using public transport.

When at home in Brisbane my time is quite fluid and I have few commitments or deadlines. With just my mother now living in Brisbane, I rarely have family events on and I’m not married with children, so I’m pretty much looking after myself.

Traveling dramatically changed how I live. What is normally stable in my life - where I live, what I do during the day and what I eat - became dynamic, with the variables changing every week. Suddenly my free time was gone and I was forced to live in perpetual inconsistency.

As a result of the constant changes in my life, I had to become very focused with how I used my working time. I didn’t want my blog to die, I had customers to support and I wanted to work on new projects so my business continued in a positive direction. This was no easy task, but I’m proud to say that I was able to achieve all my business goals in 2008 despite the changes to how and where I lived my life.

Revisiting the 80/20 Rule

If you’ve never read my article on the 80/20 rule, go do so now. It’s one of the most powerful concepts available today that can truly make a difference to your life and your business. My article introducing you to the rule has been one of the top 10 posts on this blog for years. You can find it here -

• What Is The 80/20 Rule And Why It Will Change Your Life

If I look at the metrics, this was a great year for my business. I more than doubled my revenues, my blog readership and email lists grew significantly, I had successful product launches and released some fantastic free resources like the Conversion Blogging video, not to mention publishing many articles on this blog that I know will continue to bring in traffic for years to come (the true essence of a pillar article).

None of this would have happened if it weren’t for the 80/20 rule.

Information overload has always been a problem. In 2008 it became even more of a problem. Although a great enabler and empowering tool for education, the world wide web has created a situation where it’s as important to be aware of what you need to know and do as much as knowing how to do it. If you don’t learn how to ignore 99% of what’s out there, you never get the clarity to learn the 1% that you should focus on.

I Want Your Attention

In 2008, a wonderful collection of new communication tools took off, and although they are fantastic resources, and can be great business tools as well, they are serious time sinks if used passively.

Twitter has well and truly arrived and is fast becoming a must-have tool for every blogger, internet marketer and small business owner. While it’s a wonderful way to connect with people, if you aren’t careful, you can tweet entire days away.

Facebook is the leading social networking application available today. The generation just below me (the teens and early twenties) are so connected with Facebook, they choose to communicate through it rather than email. Think about that for a moment.

You can’t afford to ignore Facebook, yet like any social network, it takes time to maintain and leverage your profile and networks, so another slice of your limited time is taken away.

These are just two tools, the leading two social media tools in my opinion when it comes to business purposes, that demand your attention. You might also spend time building a stumbleupon profile, or keeping up your Digg time so you sway some power there, or perhaps you have a MySpace profile to upkeep, or maybe video is your thing and you’re actively monitoring all the latest YouTube developments while keeping your own profile fresh with videos.

I haven’t even mentioned reading the leading blogs in your industry and staying up to date with news articles. Thanks to Digg and similar sites you can easily find what the crowd considers the best content, but that only increases the pressure you feel to read it so you don’t become out of touch.

Let’s not forget the oldschool resources that still claim some of your mindshare - books, magazines, trade publications and print newsletters. While “traditional media” face stiff competition from newer forms of information sharing and publishing online, there’s still much value to be found in reading the old fashioned way.

Plus we have new product launches each week too. If you’re in my industry, the world of “learn how to make money” information products, then every few days something new comes along to tempt you. Even if you have no intention of making a purchase, most launches offer free resources that are actually pretty good, since businesses today are learning how important it is to move the free line even more (thanks Eben Pagan!).

Simply put, in 2008 there were more tools, resources, articles, reports, books and e-books, videos, podcasts, news feeds, magazines, tweets, and updates coming your way that if you attempted to give your attention to even just a handful of it you will have felt overwhelmed, and worse still, you were distracted from the all-important action steps you should be taking to build your business.

So as not to be hypocritical, let’s acknowledge that we all contribute to this problem. I’m doing it right now by publishing this article. I’ve been doing it for four years on this blog, with a steady stream of content, that while valuable to some, adds more noise to an already very noisy world wide web. I released free reports this year, published videos, blogged, tweeted, updated facebook, uploaded photos and like any good net-citizen, made comments, posted in forums and sent emails.

How exactly is this going to work, if we all contribute to an information overload problem that’s becoming worse, yet current wisdom dictates if you want success you need to study information and then produce output to gain experience, and ultimately, make a profit?

The solution, in particular for information publishing entrepreneurs who are attempting to build a profile of expertise as the basis for their online business, is to liberally apply the 80/20 rule to everything they do.

Less Is More

Although one of the key selling points of the internet as a commerce medium is having access to a global marketplace, this also creates the aforementioned problem of information overload, and means you face a lot of competition. In order to compete you need to focus on fewer people, not more, although you can certainly draw people to you from all over the world thanks to the web.

What I am talking about is what we call niche marketing, and as Seth Godin explains, you need to build your tribe.

We differentiate ourselves by focusing on a target market and presenting a perception as being the best, or offering the best solution, to one problem. This in turn attracts a certain type of person, who become part of your tribe because they benefit from what you teach and sell, and also feel rapport with you - they share your circumstances (or perhaps your previous circumstances that you rose above) and like you as a person, as well as a resource to help them become better at something or solve a problem.

People want the best answer to their specific question in a specific niche. You need to be the answer, but only to that question or category of questions - not every question.

Your job is to be the search and filter for what your tribe need to know. You help deal with their information overload problem by being a trusted source. They ignore almost everything else, listen to you and apply what is relevant for their present situation. You are one of their 80/20 resources. You are part of the minority that they pay attention to and not the majority they ignore.

This is obviously a good position to be in for your business, since people pay attention to what you say, and thus buy your products. However it’s a position of great responsibility. You need to deliver results and in order to do that, you have to solve your own information overload challenge.

Removing Constraints To Find Leverage

The 80/20 rule, when applied right, means you work less and get better results. This happens because you focus concentrated effort on the few elements that matter most.

In order for the 80/20 rule to work right, you need to be able to identify what you should ignore. Once you know what is not important, then what is important are your points of leverage. With leverage, comes exponential results.

The first step to determine what is important to the growth of your business, is to figure out what you need today in order to get an immediate result. In other words, what constraint do you have that if removed would immediately take you a step closer to the result you want?

When you find the constraints holding back the 80/20 leverage points, then you have your big money answer. You need only work on eliminating that constraint and then the next in sequence until your outcome is realized.

If at any point you spend time on tasks that do not remove immediate outcome constraints, or are low-impact activities, you are effectively wasting time, at least from a business objectives point of view.

Determine Your Trusted Sources

Just like your tribe look to you for advice on what really matters to them, you need to find your trusted sources. The people you follow, who you study under, admire, aspire to replicate and of course, like as people too, are your filters. You take what they learn, experience, filter and then distribute to you, and then process it for your people.

I believe I’ve cracked the code on how to become an expert and you really only need to do three things well -

1. Study the lessons of other experts
2. Implement what you learn so you gain real experience and have real results to talk about
3. Translate your learnings and results into lessons for your tribe

Every expert I currently study is constantly referencing to other experts they have studied. They quote from a book, or from a presentation or a coaching program or even just a blog article, but in essence, all they are doing is taking what is already known as a good idea - an idea that works and has been tested by someone else - and then translate that idea into an applicable concept for their audience.

Rich Schefren and Eben Pagan are two guys I place at the top of my mentor tree. These guys are experts I study, because they both have achieved what I want to achieve. I follow their example, study their training, and find myself referencing their ideas to my people - and yes that means you as a reader of my blog too.

Rich and Eben constantly read books, listen to audios and study courses and use what they learn to teach their students. They act as filters for their followers (Rich has openly stated that his key role in his business is acting as an information filter and idea generator for his customers).

I choose to listen to a select group of people because what they teach resonates with me, they have credibility and proof, I fit their target demographic, I like their personality and style and I have benefited from implementing their techniques in my own business.

Because time and energy are finite resources, there is a limitation when it comes to how much you can study. To succeed you need to find the right people to follow, who match your criteria, who can help you eliminate your immediate constraints, and then go to work implementing what they teach. It’s also critical that while you do this, you ignore everything else until you have achieved the outcome you desire.

Learn How To Ignore

In 2008 I ignored like I have never ignored before. As a result of less time and constant change, I needed to focus specifically only on what needed to get done to get a result.

I wrote fewer blog posts this year than in any other year since I began blogging. I read fewer books, ignored product launches, didn’t read the news in my industry, almost completely stopped reading other blogs, didn’t keep up to date with plugins or scripts or tools released for my blog platform and unsubscribed from all but a few key email newsletters.

What I did do was focus on what I knew mattered most to my success given my present circumstances and desired goals for the year. I needed to keep my marketing system active. I had to keep blogging, but I focused more on pillar content and less on update frequency. You will see my blog this year featured very few news posts and although less was published, each article I wrote was thorough and had a specific purpose.

In 2009 my circumstances have changed again and I have time once more for more active study. As a result of this I’ve already ordered several courses and plan to increase the amount of time I spend keeping up with my industry and using social media tools. I may also write more blog posts, however I plan to use most of the “extra” time for product creation, as that is a higher leverage activity for me at this stage of my business.

What You Need To Change

In your case right now you need to ask yourself if your current day to day activities are really helping your business, if of course business goals are your focus in 2009. If they are not, you need to make changes.

Stop trying to study everything that shows up on your radar. Stop trying to keep up with every social media tool. Just because an expert you trust says something is great and you should do it, and this certainly includes me too, don’t just follow them blindly. Even this advice I’m giving you now should be carefully interpreted based on your situation and what you want to achieve in 2009.

What Bloggers Need To Do To Succeed in 2009

For bloggers, if you are keen to make 2009 a year of growth, you need to commit yourself to excellence. Excellence in terms of what you consume and what you output for your readers. You have to study and you have to take action. That’s the only way you can truly learn new things, which you can then teach to your audience, your tribe. However you must be careful, choose only to study and action what can help your business and what can be translated into learnings (blog content) for your readers.

The core elements of a successful blog have not changed. You still need great pillar content. You still need to market your work through communication channels. You still need to build relationships, network, and implement fundamental traffic and marketing techniques. You still need to follow the Blog Profits Blueprint, which is just as relevant today as when I published it in 2007.

For most of you bloggers reading this, the big change you need to make in 09 is an adjustment of how you spend your time. I’ve said this before, but it remains just as powerful a statement - you don’t win if all you do is consume other people’s ideas, you must publish your own unique ideas for others to benefit from. Cut the time wasting activities, focus on output and consider what you can become really good at in 2009.

What Entrepreneurs Need To Do To Succeed in 2009

For those of you building a business, which may include blogging, but also other critical elements such as email lists, automated marketing systems, affiliate programs and of course, products of your own, you face a myriad of choices next year.

Your challenges are relevant to what stage of business growth you are facing. Most of you reading this are likely still in the momentum building phase, which means you lack cashflow, products, resources and marketing systems.

In most cases the first place you need to focus attention on is marketing, in particular, how you can automate your marketing system, so your cashflow becomes steady while you go to work building the other aspects of your business. It’s much easier to spend money hiring people and investing in your business, when you know a certain amount of money is going to be generated next month, and the month after that and so on.

To make this practical, you can ask yourself some practical questions.

Is your business not delivering what you want because…

• You don’t have an email list?
• Your email list is too small?
• Your email list is not responsive?
• You’re having trouble sustaining consistent lead generation?
• You don’t have a product?
• You don’t have a niche?
• You need a certain person to handle an aspect of your business?
• You don’t know how to do something important?

…and so on.

If as you ask yourself these types of questions, consider what you could do if you had the answer. If what you could do would immediately result in an increase in cashflow, or elimination of whatever major constraint you face now, then that’s the problem to solve. If however the answer only opens up more questions, then you haven’t found the core element that needs to be addressed first.

Once you find the core element - the problem you need to solve today - go study the trusted source to get the answer, or if you already know how to get it done, get it done. It’s not rocket science. Find problems, learn solutions, implement actions, get outcomes.

Consider the 80/20 rule, learn how to ignore everything that’s not going to help you eliminate your immediate constraints, decide what you want to change and what you need to learn in 2009, and you will enjoy tremendous rewards.

Good luck and I look forward to continuing my entrepreneur’s journey with you in 2009.

Happy New Year!

Yaro Starak
Still Studying

PS. I’m going to open up a handful of private coaching spots in 2009, something I’ve never done before but have been asked about repeatedly. The price will not be cheap - low four figures - because I want action takers. It will involve personal time with me over the phone, designed to get your internet business making at least four figures a month.

If you feel capable of following my direction and are ready to get busy in 2009, please enter your details into the form below and I’ll send you more information once I’m ready to take clients. Slots will be strictly limited on a first come, first served basis.

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Most of you haven’t met Gideon or myself in person, but if you did, you would see we are both down to earth and soft spoken - not your typical extroverted, in-your-face marketers. Of course what you perceive as over-the-top might be different to another person so you may not agree, but I’m pretty comfortable saying that Gideon and I are way below average when it comes to the hype-o-meter.

One interesting observation I made during our launch that you probably weren’t aware of, was Gideon’s email marketing style (his writing style when promoting), compared to how he is in his videos.

Gideon has difficulty doing any kind of “sales pitch” in his videos, he much prefers to focus on content, and if you watch the few parts at the end of his videos where he was promoting our paid course, you could tell he wasn’t pushing very hard at all.

However, when Gideon wrote emails, he wasn’t afraid to use his marketing skills. He knows the triggers, is quite comfortable pushing all the right buttons and isn’t afraid of saying whatever it takes to convince you that you need to do what he suggests.

This is important because if Gideon couldn’t sell the premium course when it came time to sell it, then our results would have been negatively impacted. At some point in business you have to be prepared to sell.

The same goes for anything else we promote through email, whether it’s to convince people to watch a free video, or download a report or read a blog post. It’s not always about eliciting a purchase, it’s any time you want people to click a link or even just open an email in the first place - any action at all is impacted by your ability to “sell” the benefits of taking that action through the words that you use.

I asked Gideon if he had studied copywriting - and he has - which explains his ability to talk in marketing speak when communicating via email when necessary, yet it doesn’t show up in other forms of communication with him. Gideon has learned skills that are vital to his success as an Internet marketer, and you can too.

Be Your Self

One of the core skills I have, and honestly I believe this is the number one reason why I have had any success online at all, is my ability to communicate, especially with the written word. This blog’s success is based on that skill, as is my email newsletter.

If you asked me how you should write your blog or how you should write your email newsletters I’d tell you to “be yourself”. After all, this is the exact advice I followed when I first got started in internet marketing and the same advice all the experts will tell you as well.

However that advice is not quite right. To just “be yourself” only works if you come from a place where you know certain things AND are prepared to say certain things. If you lack the awareness and the insight into a range of elements - your target customer, marketing triggers, the general marketplace - then just being yourself won’t be effective.

I am just “being myself” whenever I publish content online, but as a result of years of absorbing the words of other marketers, experiencing how they sell things, observing human behavior in general and immersing myself in my market, I inherently know what to say, when to say it and what kind of reaction it will stimulate.

I’m very comfortable writing in a manner similar to how I interact in real life, however I am prepared to say certain things and use words that are designed to sell, when I’m writing to sell something. I’m still being myself, but I’m mixing in some marketing technique too.

All marketers write to sell at some point, or they won’t be in business for very long. Some are prepared to push harder, or know more techniques, or have different goals or standards, so their language style is different. All good marketers are “being themselves” too, throwing in something from their personal lives, telling stories and coming across as human as possible, yet still are marketing.

If you’re the kind of person who hates selling, or you don’t have certain words in your vocabulary, or you don’t know the triggers, or you’re afraid of being perceived in a certain way or you’re not knowledgeable about your marketplace, then you’re in trouble.

You Can Learn How To Sell Through Words

Being yourself is good advice, but it’s only part of the answer. There’s technique, skill and awareness required in order to successfully achieve your goals with the written word and even then you have to be prepared for negative reactions.

As Gideon’s case illustrates, you can study practical training designed to teach you how to write for marketing purposes, generally termed “copywriting”, and skill up with some techniques you can apply the next time you go out there and attempt to make money.

You should become an observer of behavior, especially when it comes to purchasing decisions. I particularly enjoy hearing the justifications people deliver to their friends and family after making a purchase or during a buying process. These verbal cues give you insight into the emotions the person wants to feel or change as a result of buying something, and the logical explanation they give to others and themselves to “justify” the expense.

My favorite way to skill-up as a writer who wants to sell through words, is to copy what works for others. Find a successful marketer who’s promoting a product similar to what you want to release, and that you know has enjoyed success, and see how he or she uses words to sell. Adapt their technique, try their style, duplicate their format - take whatever parts you like, modify so it fits your persona, and then send it out to your audience.

Combine these three methods…

1. Practical study of copywriting
2. Observation of human behavior
3. Replication of what already works

… and you can dramatically improve your writing and as a result, make a ton of money too.

One Word Of Warning

As soon as you become a “marketer” and ask for money, some people will hate you for it. It doesn’t matter how “soft” your pitch is, the fact that you attempt to profit by charging money, especially for information, a minor revolt will break out - assuming anyone is listening to you at all of course.

Thankfully the people who complain are usually in the minority and in general have a chip on their shoulder for other reasons, and you’ve just happened to cross their path at the wrong time. If you ignore them, or react in a friendly manner, explain that you need to make a living and you’ve invested a lot of hard work in creating your product, you will be fine.

The trick is to not let naysayers get you down and keep delivering value to those who appreciate your work and and are prepared to pay for it.

Good luck with your writing, enjoy the creative process and keep practicing. Being a prolific content producer, whether you are writing to directly sell something or to educate, entertain and build relationships, will help you improve your skills and spread your message further.

Yaro Starak
Writer

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In the previous article I discussed the importance of understanding your strategy for outsourcing and how it is important that you comprehend the sequence of tasks to complete, starting with the action that serves to eliminate the immediate constraint.

Despite clarity about what and when to outsource, it all means little if you don’t have the cash to do so.

Money Required

The one major problem that faces new start-up businesses, especially small enterprises launched by solo entrepreneurs, is a lack of cash flow. This problem is broader than just your business as the need for money impacts where you live and how you live as well. How you pay the rent, pay for food and live an enjoyable life is dictated by how much money you have and if your business is intended to be your income source, until it produces cash you’re in trouble.

As a catch-22 situation, many entrepreneurs must take jobs to generate “living” money, which drastically reduces the amount of time available to work on the business. How can you turn your new start-up into an income stream if you are too busy working a job to pay the bills that you can never work on your business?

Unfortunately there is no easy answer to this question and every person faces a unique situation. I don’t have a one-solution-fits-all proposal for you, but what I can do is explain how I made money during the times when my business was not able to support me.

Working A Job

This blog recently hit it’s four year anniversary. That means that most of you reading this are probably not familiar with the early years of my writing here, where I was literally chronicling the growth and changes to my business, which were a lot more dynamic back then.

The reason why the changes were more significant during the early stages of my business was precisely because I didn’t have great cash flow. When you are not making stable money you are more inclined to try new things, jumping from opportunity to opportunity.

My activities from the late nineties right up to about 2005 were all over the place, however there were a few constants because even though I was playing with online business ideas, I needed at least a semi-reliable income stream to live off.

It was my third year of university and although I was still living at home, so my expenses were limited, I wanted a job. I found out my campus library had these amazingly well paying computer help desk jobs ($18 an hour was big time for me back then), and I eventually landed a part time job there.

That part time job at the help desk would become an income stream I relied upon for many years. Although I left the job to travel, I came back to it and used it as the foundation for moving out of my family home and renting for the first time. I also relied on the income from that job to pay for the very first requirements an Internet entrepreneur has - a connection to the Internet and a place to host your website.

Say No To Full Time Work

I often say with pride that I never had a full time job - and I didn’t - but that’s not because I never had the opportunity. There were plenty of chances within the university to upgrade my casual and part time jobs into full time roles.

Upon graduation I watched most of my friends move on to lucrative, full-time salaried positions in big firms, as I continued to live off my 10 to 25 hours per week of casual work. I didn’t have amazing grades, but I was certainly in a position to go through the graduate recruitment process and seek a job because I had my degree - the piece of paper that opens doors to “real world” occupations.

The reasons I never took a full time job were many, but the key point was that I knew I wanted to run my own business and be my own boss, I just wasn’t sure how that would work out. In order to figure it out you need time, so I was content to keep casual work while I figured what business would be my ticket to independence.

I was prepared, even if I struggled with it emotionally many times because I have a nasty habit of comparing myself to my peers, to only work a job for as many hours as I needed to and say no to any extra work that might hinder my chances of starting a successful business.

You might have a family, or commitments that demand more than 15 hours a week of casual labor income, but I expect you probably can downsize in some shape or form, or find ways to get more work done in less time (working your job from home for a few days for example). Maybe work four days instead of five or start work earlier so you can finish earlier and have the late afternoons and evenings to work on your business.

Whatever is the case, you need to find a balance between making a living from a job that is just enough to keep you going, leaving the rest of the time available to build your business or, as was my case, experiment with business ideas until something worked.

Create A Cash Cow

Although it was never enough to live off, I did establish a cash-cow income source online, my very first successful project. I’ve talked about it a lot on this blog before, so I won’t go into too much detail, but the income source was a community website called MTGParadise.com, a site dedicated to the tournament playing scene in Australia of the Magic: The Gathering card game.

This site, started as a hobby that acted very much as my learning tool for how to create websites, after several years emerged as a dominant website in its niche. Eventually, thanks to a thriving forum community who traded cars and a reliable cadre of volunteer writers, the site developed a stable audience. I then tested the waters attracting sponsors and even started an email newsletter - my first “list”.

I made anywhere from $300 to $1,000 a month from the site, but the income fluctuated dramatically. Even after starting a small retail store selling cards from the website, the income never reached a point where I knew each month I would make a certain amount, and after I got hit with credit card fraud wiping out all the money I had made online and all my savings, I realized I would need my part time job for a lot longer (I almost made the decision to take a full time job after the credit card fraud incident, but upped my casual hours instead).

Selling Online Assets

After recovering from the credit card fraud I went on to start more business projects and eventually started BetterEdit.com, the editing and proofreading service that I consider my first real successful business. However long before BetterEdit became a cash flow source stable enough to live off it had to go through a growth stage.

BetterEdit, much like MTGParadise was not a stable income source for a long time. Some months were amazing, netting several thousand dollars, but then during summer when no students required editing services the income could drop to next to nothing. I was still dependent on my part time job, even though the money I had coming from my web projects was increasing.

It was one day while catching a train to the city that I had the idea of selling MTGParadise.com. Although the sale did not occur to many months later, I walked away with $13,500, which was about how much I was earning per year at the time from my part time job. You can read more about this time and selling my first website in part four of my business timeline.

Although I lost my reliable cash cow income source, I did gain enough money to live off for a year, assuming I didn’t change lifestyle habits. This gave me a little security and also taught me what was possible selling website assets, which would become something I did on a regular basis over the next few years.

Government Grants

I did take advantage of a government funded support service for small businesses, which I discovered was available thanks to a tip off from my father’s friend who was on the scheme. This is not something I want to stress as key for success as you may not have something similar in your area and in fact what I received in support in Australia several years ago is dramatically different today - and no doubt much harder to get.

The program I benefited from is called the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme, and after completing an application process that included writing a business plan and attending a panel interview, I qualified for a full 12 month’s worth of income support

This income - about $200 a week when I received it - was certainly helpful and became another dependable income stream, although with the knowledge it would end in 12 months you don’t want to make decisions based on the money coming forever. The idea is to use the breathing room the money provides to grow your business so it can replace that income, and then some, within the 12 months.

I didn’t make any dramatic changes as a result of qualifying for the support, but combined with my part time job and growing online income, my cash flow was good.

Fewer Projects and More Focus

At this stage I probably should have begun some outsourcing, at the very least have someone else handle website creation and maintenance for me, but I didn’t. I was, and still am in many ways, addicted to saving money and preferred to work harder and watch my bank balance inch up slowly, rather than work smarter and get leverage from the money I had by using it to hire help.

What did start to happen was a narrowing of my business focus. By this point with my magic community gone and BetterEdit becoming reliable (the income was stabilizing at least an average of $2,000 a month), I didn’t need my part time job anymore. I was also starting to grasp how people made money online and felt I had a future in Internet business.

Eventually I would discontinue many projects, including an offline English school, community websites focused on trading items and social activism, I would frequently start pay per click marketing projects after being lured by new information products, but would shortly after give up and focus back again on BetterEdit.

A long story short, this focus meant my cash flow became more stable, my business grew and I started investing money in assets that didn’t take much time - I purchased new cash-cow income source websites.

Finally Help Arrives

Better late than never, I finally recruited help. I was still uncomfortable with the idea after doing the numbers, but I saw that I had the cash flow to pay people and at least cover my basics, even if my business stopped growing, which I did not expect to happen as I had no intentions of stopping to market it.

I hired a customer support person, I began relying on contractors for website design, installation and maintenance, had other people edit and create my sales copy, and hired a manager of my website investment portfolio.

This did not happen all at once of course, but with each contractor I brought on, although I took a hit in my profit margin to pay the fees, my business growth skyrocketed because I was able to get more done of what I was good at.

Cash flow was crucial at every stage of this process as I used the money the business was making to hire people to either take a job away from me or complete a crucial component of a new project. This in turn led to injections of new cash flow sources, and although you are never comfortable with the process due the variables involved (managing people in particular), with practice you start to experience the benefits and become comfortable with spending money to make money.

What Does This Mean For You?

My story illustrates that it is far from straight forward to grow a business and establish your first income streams so you can begin reinvesting cash into outsourcing. Most of my projects lost money or made no money and took a lot of my time. The small handful that did work, paved the way for the situation I am in today, making several hundred thousand dollars a year online.

I relied upon juggling various small sources of income until something showed it had enough of an upside potential that I could slowly start selling off or quitting other projects to focus on just the one or two enterprises that worked.

During the very early days the fuel to grew my business and sustain my life was a part time job, which eventually became unnecessary as capital injections from selling assets and long term savings meant I could handle the potential exposure to any downturn in business cash flow.

In short, because I was willing to work a lot and save whatever I could thanks to stubborn patience (not recommended), I eventually got there.

This is not the path I recommend you copy exactly, but there are some very powerful lessons to be learned from my story, in particular -

• When the situation requires stability of income and you have no money and no people to support you, a job is the answer. The risk is turning that job into a career or worse - a trap - when you should view it merely as a temporary cash flow source, a stepping stone, to help fuel your business growth or give you the stability to test business ideas if you don’t have one yet.
• Capital is a powerful thing. Selling websites to build capital is one of the best ways to pave the way for a successful business because the cash can give you breathing room, even if it is not consistent. The great thing about website investment is you don’t have to necessarily commit yourself to the industry that the websites you buy operate in. You can simply view them as investments, which you monitor and maintain, tweak were necessary and then sell when the time is right. You don’t need intimate knowledge about the niche, you just need to know how websites work or hire someone who does.
• Capital is a powerful thing, again. Many people are sitting on assets right now and until you see them as something you can sell, you don’t realize you have a source of untapped capital. My first website sale was not a concerted effort at building something I would later flip for cash and for years I looked at it as a hobby that made a few hundred dollars a month. Then one day it dawned on me that something that makes money can be sold, and a few months later I had made as much money as I usually made in a year from a job in one big injection of cash.

  Do you have any websites or assets you could sell?

• Combining small cash sources into enough money that you can reduce your dependency on a job is not a bad option, especially when your projects don’t quite take off. It’s relatively easy to make a few hundred dollars from a website if you work hard at it long enough.

  What you want of course is a real business with real scale and big profits, but not every project is going to get there. If something is making money but it’s not the big dream you want to follow, let the site carry you forward and create some freedoms and use that time to work on the next project (or of course sell it - see the previous point).

• The time to hire help is usually earlier than you think. Us misers tend to look at our cash flow and would prefer to see it go into the bank account and just keep working our butts off to grow, when a much smarter and profitable path is to take that money and hire people, even if it drops your business profit to zero temporarily. It won’t be like that for lone and very soon your cash flow will be exponentially greater than the money it cost to hire help.
• It’s worth taking a look to see if there are any small business grants or income support systems that you could qualify for. Just be careful about what they require in return for the investment. Some are going to want to control your business, or create demands on your time that outweigh the benefits they offer.

As I stated earlier, there is no one size fits all solution to the problem of cash flow. I’ve study and experienced enough in the business world to know that no matter what industry you are in, cash flow is always going to be critical to everything you do - and that’s the case from day one.

Outsourcing becomes an option once cash flow reaches a point where it can cover the cost of outsourcing without creating a critical deficit in your life (e.g. can’t pay rent) or business (e.g. can’t pay for Internet access). The rest of your business life will involve using cash to reinvest in other people in order to create more cash, and so on, until one day you sell your business or you retire and let other people run it for you.

Yaro Starak
Cashing In On Outsourcing

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My European travels have really highlighted some of the unique challenges you face when attempting to run a business and enjoy yourself no matter where you are in the world. The reason why it has been especially unique in Europe is because of how much moving around I am doing. Literally each week I am in a different city, which makes for fun times, but also means I am in a constantly changing environment.

As a result of my experiences I’ve learned quite a lot about traveling with an Internet business, some of which I’d like to share with you now.

Here are seven things you should consider if you decide to travel with your business…

1. Expect The Unexpected When Renting

Renting apartments offers superior accommodation often at rates as affordable or cheaper than hotels, however you don’t always get what you expect.

Whenever I’ve planned to be in a city for at least week, or whenever possible, I’ve looked for apartments to rent short term. Apartments offer more room, a real kitchen and let you live like a normal person in the city you are visiting.

Unfortunately you never know what you are going to get with an apartment. Photos and descriptions offer some insight into where you might be spending a week or two, but until you get there you never really know. I’ve been pleasantly surprised and at times, quite disappointed with how an apartment turns out. Vancouver was awesome but New York was terrible. Both looked excellent on paper and in photos.

What’s critically important when choosing an apartment is you ask for what you need to run your business, as well as your life. Part of why New York was not good was because the Internet was unreliable. When running a business you need good net access.

Right now in Amsterdam I made the mistake of not checking whether the apartment has a landline telephone, which it doesn’t, and I need to do a group teleconference call with my members this week. I’m going to have to try and do it over Skype instead, which can be hit and miss for connectivity.

Make a checklist of things to ask before renting an apartment so you cover your basis and then just cross your fingers and hope for the best, but be prepared to function in less than ideal situations and have contingency plans too.

2. Prepare Where You Will Live In Advance

Continuing the accommodation theme, when traveling through different cities with short time frames prepare your living arrangements in advance.

When I arrived in the UK I only had three days in Glasgow before heading to Edinburgh. Perhaps I was foolish, or maybe just tired because of jetlag (that going east from North America to the UK jetlag is a killer!), but I never got around to planning where I would stay in Edinburgh until the day I actually arrived.

Here I was at 6 PM in the evening, with my luggage, sitting at a net cafe phoning apartments up to see if they were available for immediate occupancy. I managed to find a place that turned out to be okay. It wasn’t the cheapest though.

As always, planning in advance works best and gives you the most flexibility and choice. Now I try and arrange my next destination accommodation during the first few days in the city I’m staying in before I move to the next city, rather than the day before I’m due to leave or the day arriving in the new city.

You can outsource this task too, however I found that apartment shopping is a ridiculously personal thing and deciding what’s good for you is not something that is easy for others to do. This is particularly an issue if you are like me - fussy about certain things like beds and of course business requirements such as Internet access.

If you are not so fussy, creating a list of accommodation requirements and then handing it to a person to do online research for you to come up with a shortlist of apartments for you to choose from, is a very good idea.

3. Have A Computer Back-Up Plan

Have a back-up plan for computer failure. Regardless of what kind of business structure you have, chances are you will be doing everything for your business on a laptop and you don’t want to rely only on that laptop or you will suffer from “all your eggs in one basket” syndrome.

Everything critical to my business is remote from my laptop. This is great because if the laptop dies, you can head to a net cafe and do what you need to do through Gmail and Skype, or whatever tools you need to use to run your business.

A regular back-up routine is a good idea too of course. I have a Macbook Pro and travel with a hard-drive that I use with the “time machine” function in Mac OS, which has to be one of the best backup solutions for local files since it replicates your entire computer.

4. Don’t Be The Main Cog In Your Business

Don’t have anything too time critical in your business that can’t be done by other people. Traveling around means lots of unexpected things happen and when it does, usually the first thing that suffers is the time you have available to work.

I’ve been sick a couple of times this year, the kind of sick that leaves you in bed not really wanting to do anything else but focus on recovery for a day or two (probably due to all the funky things I’ve been exposed to on planes, trains and buses). Thankfully since I’ve been in apartments my surroundings for recovery have been good, but more importantly I haven’t felt stressed that my business will fall apart without me.

You need to know at the very least the critical elements of your business that need attention every day, are dealt with without a dependency on you. In my business customer service is important every day so I have help with that. Other important tasks, like writing new blog posts or email newsletters and email correspondence that only I can deal with, can go for days without my attention, if life dictates time away from the computer.

I’ve structured my business deliberately in this way and made certain choices about how I work in order to create these freedoms. While I choose how much I work for most days of the year, sometimes that choice is made for you by external elements, often unexpected things like illness, or family or personal issues, that must be attended to before work. While traveling you tend to face more unexpected things, so freedom from your business is even more critical.

5. If Your Business Demands Time, Stop Traveling

If you are planning anything major that requires significant commitment of your time, plan your trip so that you stop somewhere for long enough to live a stable life.

In July I relaunched Blog Mastermind. This required creating new video content, preparing a launch strategy, communicating with lots of people and generally doing a lot more than I usually do on a day to day basis. As a result, I planned my trip to have a full two months in Toronto, which allowed me to live like a normal person with a routine, work on my project during the week and travel around acting like a tourist on weekends.

You know you run a truly global business when you can coordinate an entire product launch from any place that you have good net access. We’re lucky today we have all the tools that the World Wide Web provides us, so you can do a lot without being in a certain place at a certain time. Obviously this requires your business structure is something that can travel with you, but that’s a whole other topic already well covered in the archives of this blog.

6. Don’t Say Yes To Every Project or Promotion

This might be the hardest piece of advice for entrepreneurs or those of you addicted to money - take on less than you would usually.

During the past few months I’ve said “no” to more projects and more opportunities than ever before. I’ve also not written about many things on this blog or in my email newsletter. Of course by doing this I’m also forgoing a lot of money and my business is not growing as fast as it could be, but you need to slow down if you want to have the time to enjoy everything you are experiencing while you travel.

Traveling with your business shouldn’t be spent with 10 hours a day in front of your laptop in a different city each week. You may as well stay home and work and save the money you spend on travel and accommodation if that’s how you intend to work while overseas. You can create certain efficiencies within your business structure to free up time, but at some point you need to make a deliberate choice not to do something in order to free up your time and your mind so you can relax and enjoy your new surroundings.

I spend most nights doing “status quo” work on my business, just like I am doing right now writing this blog post. I’ll spend one to three hours each day, maybe write a blog post, respond to some emails, coordinate the one major new thing I’m working on, but that’s it. Sure I’m thinking a lot about what new projects I want to do, but they are in the pre-planning stage, ready for action when I return home to Australia.

7. Don’t Let Money Be An Issue

Watch your cashflow and/or plan to have “nest eggs” to live off as you travel. Europe is expensive. North America can be affordable and most of the rest of the world can be very cheap (maybe not Japan), if you are coming from a country with a strong currency (that’s a seriously subjective matter nowadays!).

You know where you are traveling to and can do research to prepare for how much things cost, but you never really know until you get there. I personally like a bargain, but I’m not a backpacker. I don’t want to spend all my time looking for the absolute cheapest accommodation, food and things to do, and I want to be okay with spending money to avoid any problems and make my trip as comfortable as I can. Of course I don’t want to blow the budget either.

We all have our own self-imposed “limits” when it comes to how much money we spend. Thankfully the Internet provides many tools we can use that makes the search for what we consider affordable easier, but as always with travel, expect to spend more than you plan to.

There’s going to be hidden fees and all those unexpected circumstances that pop up. If that means you spend more on an apartment than you want to because you were poor with your planning (a mistake I’ve made), or food costs more than you expect, or a last minute flight costs five times more than you want to pay - whatever the reason - you don’t want the idea of that or the chunk it takes from your budget to ruin your whole trip. This is a mindset issue and a reality based on how much money you have.

To help deal with this situation you can rely on one or both of two things -

• Your business cashflow
• Any large savings you have to live off

I had the luxury of both the above benefits. I’ve got savings built up from selling websites during the past two years and cashflow from my current business, which requires minimal effort to maintain beyond the two to three hours of work I do each night.

If you read my blog from start to finish you might have an idea how I’ve managed to do this, but obviously it’s not “simple” but the idea that you need to have money saved up and/or cashflow coming in while you travel in order to enjoy your trip should be obvious.

An Internet business provides a great avenue to create the conditions to travel without needing to think like a backpacker and be comfortable with spending money to enjoy yourself, within your own limitations.

Personally I would never have left on this trip without knowing that if push came to shove I could spend money to help deal with whatever situation came my way. On top of this, when I check my bank balance I’m still making more than I spend, so I know the system is working despite my travels and even though I turn down many opportunities.

In your case you need to look at your own business cashflow, your systems and your savings and decide whether you are ready to travel or determine what needs to happen in order to become ready.

I hope this article has helped to highlight a few of the issues you need to consider and I wish you best of luck with your travels if you manage to pack yourself up, with your business, and see the world.

What Would You Like To Know?

I’d appreciate your feedback on the topic of travel and business. I’m planning a report on this subject and it helps to have a feel for what people really struggle with. Is it the money? Is it creating systems to leave your business? Is it figuring out how to travel and work at the same time?

Let me know what specific concepts you would like discussed as comment replies to this post and I’ll answer in future resources I release from this blog.

Yaro Starak
Business Traveler

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