How They Did It (Case Studies)

Interview with Brett Ingram
www.ryanlee.com
Copyright 2011 www.ryanlee.com
Welcome to Passion to Profits

Congratulations!
You made a wise decision by joining thousands of other smart entrepreneurs and small business owners who also invested in this program. This is not some get rich quick online product. In fact, the Passion to Profits - The Case Studies is the complete opposite of a get rich quick program. You are going to see EXACTLY how ordinary people, just like you, took something they were passionate about and turned it into six or seven figure incomes. Theres zero hype or fluff. Just real-life stories of how they made it big. Its the exact program I wish existed when I was first starting out! Heres my suggestion Print out a copy right now. Grab a pen or highlighter and start going through each case study. Take lots of notes. It doesnt matter if the notes are in a fancy notebook or on your laptop. Just write down everything that is important to you. Youll find a particular case study might really resonate with you. And another case study might give you one big idea that is the spark you needed to build your online empire. Again, thank you for investing in Passion to Profits - The Case Studies. I wish you much success on your journey Rock on,
Ryan Lee
www.ryanlee.com Passion to Profits - The Case Studies 1
Table of Contents
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. Brett Ingram Carrie Wilkerson Chad Tackett Darren Rowse Gary Vaynerchuk Holly Rigsby Isabel De Los Rios Jeff Cavaliere Jeremy Gutsche Jim Kukral Jim Labadie Joel Marion Jonathan Volk Justin Goff Kristi Frank Kyle Battis Lara Culpa Mary Ellen Tribby Matt Bacak Michael Dunlap Mike Geary Mike Litman Pat Rigby Ric Thompson Russell Brunson Ryan Deiss Shawn Casey Stephen Cabral Steven Conca Tim Kerber Tim Schmidt Vince Delmonte Yanik Silver 3 22 36 52 67 83 102 118 134 154 177 196 224 240 256 274 301 320 339 364 389 411 424 438 456 482 536 542 567 578 599 617 633
www.ryanlee.com
2 Passion to Profits - The Case Studies
CASE STUDY #1
Brett Ingram
www.ryanlee.com

David:
Tell me what got you started in internet marketing.
Brett:
You know, Ive always wanted to have my own business. Actually, years ago I had a brick and mortar business where we built custom configured PCs and we shipped them pretty much around the world, but mostly within the U.S. I realized a couple of hard lessons about business back then because the margins were so tight and the fixed costs were so high to run a business like that. I always have been entrepreneurial, but I really wanted something with better business dynamics. I didnt like the way a traditional business is run where you need a lot of employees, a lot of overhead, or the franchise route where you go in debt millions of dollars before you make a single penny. So I always was on the lookout for something with better dynamics where I could still run it myself and experience a lot of the upside without all the downside that you get in traditional business. That was turning in the back of my mind for several years. I went to graduate school. I was getting my MDA at NYU in the city and I actually stumbled on a sales page. I dont even remember which one it was, but Ive always been very tech savvy and I was doing something online and I saw this sales letter for some sort of a product and I just started digging and then I realized, wow, theres this whole industry that I had no idea even existed. The more I dug, the more fascinated I got, and I instantly realized without doing much research at all, that the potential for perfect business dynamics is right there because you have an internet delivery model and digital products and what could be better than that? So one thing led to another and I started tinkering with it. That was a couple of years ago back in 2006, and here I am today.
David:
So what was your first product and website?
Brett:
My first product and website, well, thats a little embarrassing. I had this thing called Micro4 Passion to Profits - The Case Studies www.ryanlee.com

marketing secrets. Basically the whole idea of it was a really small info product and it was like an eBook or something and a recording. The basic idea of it I think actually stills holds true on the internet. People have a big dream and they want to run this big internet business, and then they get stuck in the details of where to go and how to do it. My whole idea was just set simple milestones and hit each of those to create a business model that actually works. One of the things that you need to do in your business is add subscribers to your list, so it was okay, do something that will bring in list subscribers. When you get your subscriber, thats a milestone, and then do something, create a product, or do something that you can sell to actually generate even a dollar on line, and now youve got a revenue model. So you build a little training thing like that and then you scale it up to be bigger because the dynamics and the way that it actually works dont change. A bigger internet business is just a smaller internet business that did a lot of things right and that had some really good ideas and big ideas to help other people. So that was kind of the premise of that.
David:
And did you scale it up and become an internet business? Is that what happened? Well, Id like to think so; certainly much bigger than it was then. I think a lot of people can relate to this because when I started internet marketing, I was working full time. I have a couple of kids at home, and I was also going to graduate school at night. So I had a pretty full plate and I actually started my business amidst all of those things. I was doing the research, I was learning. I didnt have any mentor. I was just either buying info products or doing research on the web to try to really zero in on what it is that I wanted to do. So my first milestone was, hey, get my first list subscriber, and then okay, Ive got some subscribers coming in. Its really slow, but I know that the mechanism works to get them in the door. Now lets make a sale. From there, I didnt scale that specific business or those specific products, but yeah -I used that same idea and here I am right now in the midst of my biggest launch ever, so yeah, it definitely has worked for me.
Brett:

David:
And what are you launching currently?
Brett:
Whats currently in launch is a product called My Traffic Business. Its www.MyTrafficBusiness. com, and basically its a done-for-your internet traffic business. Its a full-fledged membership site that allows the owner of the site (so my customer) to actually provide free traffic to members that sign up free to their site. It has a monetization angle to it as well, so its basically, to use the old clich term, a business in a box. The thing that really makes it unique are first of all, it builds a list, it generates money, and it sets up a passive recurring income stream all at the same time.
www.ryanlee.com

So most things focus on one or the other and then you kind of have to delve in and put together the pieces. This does it all. Its tested and proven. Ive used it myself to add over 57,000 subscribers to my list. Ive generated over $300,000 with it and over $10,000/month in recurring income, so its a proven model. Ive had partners try it. Theyve been able to get similar results as well. So its proved. The other thing about it thats really unique is Ive seen a lot of things sold online billed as its your own turnkey business, and all it really is, is a webpage and a thank you page that you can basically customize by putting in your name and it sells the same tired old product to everybody. This is totally different. People, when they get the product, they go to the customization center and they can choose one of 25 graphic themes that weve created. They can choose various different videos that we can put on the homepage and various different sets of sales letters. And then my team actually goes and literally creates their site on their domain for them. Its a full-fledged membership site with over 15 pages inside. So its not just a couple of static web pages.
David:
Nice. If you had to start over from scratch, which is generally a nightmare scenario, what would you do differently?
Brett:
The thing that I would do differently, or at least the thing that I would advise anybody whos trying to get started now, is theres a couple of things and I think it kind of starts in your head. What I mean by that is, people tend to get pigeon-holed into one way of thinking about things. Some people will approach the industry and theyll say, Well, look at all the opportunity because theres so many tools and so many great things that I can use and leverage my experience. Other people say, Well, look at the industry. So many people have gone so far ahead of me, its really impossible for me to ever get started now. So I think the important thing is to know who you are.

Start by knowing who you are, knowing what you love to do, and then focus on the niche and focus on a business that you love to do that you would do even if you didnt get paid. I try to emphasize that so much to everybody because the most important thing is people chase the money. They see the new, bright, shiny object. Its a new launch. Its from some reputable marketer, and they say, Oh, this is it. This is making millions of dollars. Im going to run over there and buy it and its going to do it for me. But if youre not passionate about it, if you dont love what it is that youre doing every day, it becomes a grind because I dont care what business youre in or what it is that youre doing. There are going to be obstacles. There are going to be bumps in the road. And if you love what you do, you just jump right over those like theyre not even there, and you keep going. But if you dont really love it and you look at it like a job and youre just trying to chase the money doing whatever you think can make you the fastest money, youre going to quit when you run into those obstacles. And youre competing against people that do love it, that do get up in the morning excited, ready to get started on their day, and how are you going to compete with somebody like that if you dont really love what you do? Start by doing what you love, and for me, Ive been fortunate enough that I was aware of that before I got started. One of the aspects of the internet business that was really important to me is being able to help other people. Going into internet marketing, a lot of people say you dont have to be an internet marketer in the internet marketing niche. You can go in the fitness niche or you can go in the pets niche or whatever it is that you want. But for me, the reason that just resonated so well with me is my whole life Ive always been the type of person that wants to reach out and help other people and because Ive owned business in the past and because Ive been entrepreneurial, and because not everything Ive touched, quite frankly, has turned to gold. I can relate extremely well to somebody whos struggling, to somebodys whos confused, to somebody whos just getting started, to somebody whos tried a bunch of things and never gotten any results, or theyre feeling totally alone. Theyve got their friends and family telling them that theyre crazy. Any of those kinds of things, I can relate really well, so that helps me create things and create products and tools and give advice that help people kind of break through that.
8 Passion to Profits - The Case Studies www.ryanlee.com

David:
Was there a defining moment when you knew that online business was the way to go?
Brett:
You know, I would say there is, and interestingly, it kind of goes back to the whole micromarketing secrets thing. The defining moment for me, and I think its valuable to point this little extra tidbit out here because its not totally related to the defining moment, but its connected to it. I was in graduate school, as I mentioned, and 9 times out of 10, I would take the train into New York City at the end of my workday. Well, I was running late one day and I missed the train so I drove into the city and I parked on the street outside NYU and it was a really well-lit street and everything else. At the time, I was just starting my internet business. I had a thumb drive with a ton of ideas; I mean, months of research, no products, no official money-making information there, but I had my whole kind of mental mind map and ideas all laid out there. I went into class and I was rushing in so I left my attach case, my bag, there on my seat in my car. When I came out three hours later, the window was smashed and my bag was gone. Now, there wasnt really anything of value in the bag. I didnt care about the bag. I didnt care about the paperwork. The first thought that ran though my head is, My entire internet business or idea for one is totally gone, and it was not replaceable. I didnt have it anywhere else. I scoured the streets and the garbage cans right around the corner and stuff nothing. I couldnt find it. So that was part of a defining moment in the sense that number one, it was an obstacle and I overcame it because I knew what I wanted to do; but most importantly, it crystallized my desire and my drive. I said, You know what? Im not going to let this stop me. I was frustrated at the time and thoughts run through your head like, Am I just being foolish even trying to do this thing? Is this like a sign that I shouldnt be doing an internet business and just focus on my graduate school work and get a job in consulting? But I came back with stronger results and I said, No, this is what I want to do and this is what Im going to do.

And then how that leads into the micro-marketing secrets thing is the real defining moment for me when I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt it work, up until that point, I believed in it. I wanted to believe in it, but if youve ever done anything and not been successful, particularly in the business world, theres always this little voice in the back of your head that kind of says every time something doesnt go write, Eh, I dont know. You might be a sucker here. Well, when I set up the whole micro-marketing secrets idea, for me, I got my first list subscriber and that was a milestone. When I made my first sale, and I knew I had a complete system for generating leads and converting leads into sales, that for me was absolutely a turning point because I knew then beyond a shadow of a doubt, if I could get somebody to give me their credit card over the internet, or their PayPal account and pay me money, and somebody could give me their email address and join a list, I knew that it was a just a matter at that point. The dynamics worked, so the only thing in question was to find something of value to exchange for more email addresses and something of greater value to exchange for more money and then just do it bigger and bigger and bigger. And so absolutely, the turning point or the defining moment when I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would work, is when I had that first subscriber followed up by the first sale. Yeah, thats generally a pretty common defining moment when its validation.
David:
Brett:
Yes, absolutely it is. Its hard when youre starting out to continue working on the thread of potential. Theres almost infinite potential with anybody, but getting past the point of potential into the reality of what youre doing is always like This is it. Do it. Yeah, and I think thats a great point. At the end of the day there are a million things that you can do in the world, and there are a million things you can do online when you start a business.
David:
Brett:

The important thing is, before you get excited about any one particular thing, sit down and think about yourself. What is it that you would do if you would do it for free? What is it that you just love to do? And then focus on finding that because no matter what that is, your potential for greatness is way higher and if your potential for greatness is higher, your potential for profit and everything else is too. I would have loved to have been an NBA basketball player, but since I wasnt even quite good enough to make the high school team, it probably wasnt I didnt try out, but I was just selfconscious about my play but the point is, at 6 feet tall, I knew that I wasnt bound for the NBA, so the bottom line was do I sit there and keep beating my head against the wall and chase this dream, or do I say, you know what, maybe theres something else out there for me thats a better match for my skills that Ill get equally amount of joy from, but that I can actually contribute more by doing. So thats really what you need to find. Yeah, finding your strengths; and on a side note, to me I was just thinking about this last night watching Shaq people that are that big, thats just freakish. You cant grow that big without theres no way to do it unless you are naturally born and being 7 feet tall, 320 pounds and incredibly athletic is just ridiculous. Yeah, you can eat as many Wheaties as you want, for most of us its just never going to be a reality. Youre not going to grow an extra foot. So if there were some your top three biggest mistakes along the way and how we can learn from them, what would they be?
David:
Brett:
David:
Brett:
Lets see, top three biggest mistakes; one of them and I dont think its first in chronological

order, but I do think for me its been the biggest stumbling block and the biggest overall mistake, and so its a lesson for anybody whos trying to grow or leverage their business I just didnt have a very good plan for how to scale things up. I had an idea in my head for how I wanted to do it from the business side, from the product side, but not from the team and the support side. I dont mean customer support, I mean business support. I have a person who handles my customer support. I have a person who handles my programming. I have a person who - it took me a lot longer to do those things and actually go out and find the talent than I should have waited. In fact, Im still in search mode for some more members of my team because Im just at a point where Im still doing too much myself and so I think thats a big lesson. When you get to a point that you if youre in your business and youre building it and youre making money and you want to grow, the first thing you need to do is look at your business and say either Whats the thing that I doing the least? or Whats the biggest draw on my time thats giving me the lowest return on my investment? You know, customer support, you can pay somebody who really likes support a very reasonable rate per hour to do it, but if youre the business owner and you want to have a million dollar business, I mean, you need to treat your time like its $500/hour. So if youre sitting there and youre doing customer support, its good to get to know your customers, but you dont want to be doing that hours a day because youre crippling your business ability to grow because youre not focusing in the right areas. So definitely not leveraging, not outsourcing, and not delegating enough was my big ones, and honestly, I still struggle with it to some extent. Ive gotten better at it, but I still have some issues there. So I think thats a big one. I think a second one, and thankfully for me, this hasnt been a big struggle, but Im going to put it on the list because its really important, is focus. Decide what you want to do, focus on that, and stop buying products or dont buy things that are outside of that area of focus. One of the little tricks that I used to use when I was getting started and I was still in the learning phase, is when I decided what I wanted to do for one of my products, or what kind of a business I wanted to build, the screen logic that I would use when I saw a new product offering come out because these things are beautiful. These guys have professional sales pages and these awesome videos and you look at it and youre like, Wow, I want to buy that and I want to buy that. If youre a lifelong learning type of a person like I am, you just want to absorb everything.

But what ends up happening is you get scattered. You start doing a little bit of everything and then you cant get anything to do. And so the screen of logic I used to use is I would say for the specific project Im working on right now, does this product or service or thing Im considering getting specifically move me closer to getting it, or help me specifically to accomplish that faster? If it doesnt, no matter how great it looks, it goes on the ideas list for later. Then if its sold out, then so be it. Ill find something else. But once Ive completed my current thing, then Ill move on to the next thing. So focus is definitely, you know, not getting caught up in the hype of all the stuff thats going on is a second mistake and a lesson. And I think the third thing, you know, and I was guilty of this initially, but then I learned my lesson, but I see a lot of people that are still guilty of this and they ask for advice about it all the time, is youve just got to do stuff. Theres not going to be a point where internally you feel like, Ah, now Ive got the answers, now Im going to go and do it. You need to just take the step and do it. The way that I learned this lesson was when I started unfolding this massive, enormous thing call the internet marketing industry, I knew while I was personally tech savvy Id been around computers all my life. They didnt scare me I didnt know all the automation tools like autoresponders and stuff like that. I was unaware of any of those things and so I was going online and it was immediately intuitive to me because I actually was looking for something. Im like, well, if Im going to have a list of subscribers, how am I going to communicate with them? I need some kind of automation tool. So I knew what I needed before I knew what the tool was. But the interesting thing was, as I started doing this research and I was reading some of these eBooks and some of these other things and it kept leading me to other directions and then I realized, wow, there are email management systems. There are e-commerce platforms. There are product development platforms. Theres all these different things and it just keeps growing and expanding and expanding, and if you constantly are trying to learn and get on top of the information, its a hopeless battle. Its like treading water with one arm and one leg in the ocean. Youre just going to drown because its impossible. So you just have to start. Its not going to perfect.

I was laughing in the first minute of this call about my micro-marketing secrets. I would be embarrassed if somebody looked it up, but the bottom line is, I said, Hey, Ive got to get started. Ive got to do something to get a response, get a result. If its the result I want, I do more of it. If its not the result I want, I alter my behavior and try something else, and get a different result. And so I think to take action is the third one.
David:
Thats good. I had a good comment but I totally forgot. That usually happens. On the other side of mistakes, give us some good resources and tools that have helped you along the way. Sure. You know, theres so many really, you know. Just a piece of advice, and thats just keep your eyes open. Use your mind a little bit about what it is that youre looking for. You know, one of the greatest ways as an example just to get specific about something, you know, people have questions about copywriting. How do I become a great copywriter? How do I do this? How do I do that? Youve got the world biggest textbook online on your computer right in front of your fingertips. Go to www.ClickBank.com, look for the highest selling products. Go to do an internet search for any particular thing that your niche is involved in. Look at the highest selling products in that area and youll find wonderfully written sales pages. While you cant then go and just steal the sales page, you can totally dissect it, see the techniques that theyre using, and reconstruct it for yourself. So I think one of the big tools and resources is the internet itself. Just keep your eyes and ears open for things and its amazing what you can find out. In terms of specific things, from a technology standpoint, I have to say technology has always been a struggle in internet marketing because the issue is always how you integrate all the multiple disparate systems into one cohesive hole where youre not kind of duct taping things together: your follow-up systems, your e-commerce systems, your membership managements systems, and Ive gone through a full life cycle of testing and trials. Ive done this for a number
Brett:

of different types of products and for me, anyway, from the business platform standpoint, if youre at a certain level, anyway, I recommend Infusion Soft (http://www.infusionsoft.com).
I use their system, and while no system is perfect, its as close to it as anything Ive seen. Ive tried just about everything other thing out there and its the best for managing everything and automating all of your stuff. So your systems all run. You have great intelligence and reports that you can pull out. So for overall business management tool, I think thats a great one. It also includes the autoresponders and everything else. We just got set up with Infusion Soft here and Ive been getting a little behind the scenes look at it. Its pretty incredible. Brett: Yeah, it really is. The insiders secret is that what people may or may not know who will eventually hear or see the interview is that the majority of the top level marketers, slowly but surely are all coming around to it.
David:

David:
Yeah. Dan Kennedy was one of the first, and then Rich Schefren, and they helped iron out a lot of the kinks. They used their team and their resources to give feedback back to Infusion and say, hey, how do we make this better? How do we tailor it really to internet marketing? Because I looked at it a couple of years ago and it wasnt right for me because it didnt have everything that it had, but now it does. And so yeah, its a pretty incredible system, and so I use that. From the perspective of my overall though process and how I collect and categorize and maintain all of my ideas, I definitely recommend the Mind Jet software, Mind Mapping (http:// www.mindjet.com). You can just create these simple mind maps, keep all of your ideas organized, and map it the way that your mind actually works. So instead of having to do lists where you just have a thousand different things written, scraps of paper taped to your computer, its a great way to organize your thoughts and just kind of really get clear on stuff.
Brett:
www.ryanlee.com

From a help desk standpoint, I just Kayako (http://www.kayako.com). Again, Ive tried a number of different things. I use a hosted solution because I just prefer to not have to deal with the upgrades and the management. And again, on all of these things, these are not my first go around. Ive tried 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 different products and delivery mechanisms for all of these things and these were the conclusions I came to. So from a technology standpoint, those are some of the big tools that I use.
In terms of other tools and resources, you know, what I recommend if theres a marketer that you respect or theres a niche that you want to get into, you want to find as many people in that area, sign up for their lists. Take a look at their products. See what they do when send out emails. How often do they send them? What kind of content? Whats their tone when they write emails? You can duplicate a lot of success thats out there and choose then, what fits you and what doesnt. From a resources standpoint, information is really the biggest resource. The specific product names I can give you that I benefited from, from a product launch standpoint, nothing better than Jeff Walkers product, Launch Formula (http://www.productlaunchformula.com) just fantastic information about how to go about the psychology of building a launch, building a buzz, and then creating a product. It applies to anything that you do, so thats the beautiful thing about that. Its an information product, but it gives you ongoing training and shows you how it applies to different industries. So I learned a lot from that.
I learned a tremendous amount from Rich Schefren (http://www.strategicprofits.com/) and his group. I had a good fortune to be fairly closely associated with them for some time and I went through the GPS coaching program and everything else. As far as a business mind goes, not just internet marketing, but just a pure business mind, Rich is, in my opinion, probably the foremost genius in our industry. Ive been around a lot of smart people. Ive seen and heard from a lot, and I have to say his ideas and his way of articulating what the real key trigger points are for you, how to build your business, how to leverage it. Theres nothing better than him. Now, I dont think that hes the best person to get advice from as a very new, new beginner. A lot of its over your head.
David:
Hes pretty detailed. When you get to a point that youve built your business and youre saying, okay, Im stuck.
Brett:

How do I leverage this? How do I grow this? By far, the guy to go to. And then, honestly, one of the first software platforms that Ive got to give a shout out to is Mike Filsaimes Butterfly Marketing.
Id gotten to a point in my business where I had realized a lot of different things and I had all the pieces coming together and my one challenge was how do I deploy all of these ideas into different websites? I need some kind of automated website builder because I cant pay some programmer $2,000 to create all of these things before Im making any money and not know whether theyre even going to work. The timing was right. His product was coming out again, while it isnt perfect, it was an excellent launching vehicle for getting just the number of sites up there. Its a great case study for this whole interview because it goes right back to what we were saying, and thats that I remember trolling the forum after he originally sold it, and delivery took a couple of weeks, so Im sure he hadnt forecasted a demand or whatever the case may be that the fulfillment wasnt ready. Ive certainly been there, so I wouldnt throw stones. But the bottom line is, there were people in the forum that were saying, Dont worry about it. This thing is going to be the best. Were all anxious, but its coming. Youre going to love this. Ill guarantee those was people went on and created successful businesses. Then there was another group of people in the forum. I paid my money. I havent gotten it. Its been 48 hours. It hasnt been delivered to my doorstep. IF I DONT GET THIS THING TOMORROW, IM CANCELING. And you know, while I can understand the frustration and wanting to get the thing now, sometimes you need to step back and look at the bigger picture.

If he puts 100% behind everything that he does to make sure that it gets an impact from people, and if you know that about his character, you just need to cut him some slack and know that whatever delays there are, are for your benefit. So that was a product that really helped me experiment a lot on my way up because I was launching a lot of different sites. I launched giveaway sites, I was having add-on code built for it, and all these other things, and so that was really a big product that helped me out a lot coming up. Great, so whats next for you and your business? I know you have your product that youre launching right now. Yes, well you know, I have some ideas in terms of where Im headed next. A couple of the ideas are things that I really cant share at the moment because Im still in talks and Im still in the infancy in terms of trying to get these things off the ground. So Im not exactly sure where thats all headed, but one of the big things for me is Im just trying to make myself a little bit more accessible. One of the things that I think I did early on, in particular, is I was really buried behind my computer. I had my ideas in my head, but it was all about the products and the implementation and I wasnt really connecting with a lot of people. One of the things that Ive really been trying to do a lot more by going to conferences and Im starting to do some group coaching calls and things like that, is really just to connect with people more because thats ultimately one of the big drivers for why I got involved in the business in the first place. Yes, I wanted a better life and my own hours and everything for me and my family, but part of that is I want to be able to help other people do it too, and its very hard to do that just through products. People need the human interaction. They need the ability to kind of talk to you and get clarification and things like that. So thats a big thing for me. Its not a product-specific answer, but from an overall business direction, Im trying to get more and more of my dayto-day operations everything other than my strategy to other people to run for me, and have me really focus more on getting out there, talking to people, networking with people, building more partnerships and things like that.
David:
Brett:
www.ryanlee.com

David:
Great. Well listen, thank you so much for the interview. We really appreciate it. Absolutely; thanks so much.
Brett:
www.ryanlee.com
Passion to Profits - The Case Studies 21
CASE STUDY #2
Carrie Wilkerson
www.ryanlee.com
Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

David:
Tell me how you got your start in internet marketing.
Carrie:
I had been online 2 years and about 3 months and I already was a business owner offline. Because I was working at home and feeling a little disconnected and feeling like every time I was looking for a new resource, I had to start from scratch and nobody understood me, I decided to form an online community where work-at-home professionals could congregate. So my initial goal actually was not even really to make money, it was to connect a like-minded community for resources.
David:
And so this was 2 years ago?
Carrie:
Yeah, approximately August of 2007.
David:
So tell me about this community. What was it called? How did you get it started?
Carrie:
I called it the Barefoot Executive (http://www.barefoot-executive.com/) and where I got the idea was actually from a boot camp info product that Ryan Lee and Tim Kerber spoke at, and that was pretty much my first foray into the internet marketing arena, so I started there. A little back story I had a brand new baby, like a 6-week old baby, the fourth of four. Im a mom of four. I already had other businesses, like I mentioned, so this was very part-time. I started the Barefoot Executive. It was a membership community. I started building my list and went from there.
www.ryanlee.com
David:
When did you switch from part-time to full-time?
Carrie:
Probably within April of 2008, I promoted my manager of my other business to like the VP of Operations to take over my spot so that I could focus more online because at this point I could see this was going to be profitable and was where I wanted to spend my energy and my time.
David:
Can you give us some detail? What other businesses were you running?
Carrie:
I had an offline publishing company for a small niche market of direct sellers where we do monthly newsletters for their teams. We do template newsletters for them kind of a virtual administration type company. I have that. We also do some real estate investing and had had a couple of other companies in between that weve started and sold. So primarily now, were down to just that one, plus the Barefoot Executive, and then we now also have the Association of Work-At-Home Women, which is AWHW.org.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
So you were pretty much an entrepreneur from the start.
Carrie:
Well, no, I was actually a high-school teacher. I used to be a loan document processor through college, then I was a high school teacher. Then I adopted two children at the same time two toddlers and became an instant mom and decided to stay home, but I had to make some money. I went into direct sales; you know, the party plan, and started doing that. Thats when my entrepreneurship began. That was about August of 1998, I guess; but I started my first virtual company (my service business) my first 7 figure company, I started in March of 2002, and then I started online in August of 2007.
David:
Was the spark to go into entrepreneurship pretty much just you needed to support your family?
Carrie:
It was desperation, yeah. We needed the money. We had two little ones and my husband made my okay money, but we were used to having another income.
David:
When you realized it was time you have to do this, you have to make the money how did you determine what it was that you wanted to do, and how did you take action knowing that there was lots of risk? How did you justify that risk?
Carrie:
The truth is, David, I felt there was more risk in not taking action at that point than there was. I think at some point you have to hit bottom and really, all I could do was make money. I couldnt make less money than no money, so I just kind of stepped out and did it and the fact is, I kept sending out resume after resume and interview after interview, and I was just having a roadblock on getting jobs and Im a college degree, very qualified person in a lot of areas, and I was just having a hard time. There really was no risk.

This is what I say now. You look around at what youve been paid to do before. What are your skills? What kind of software do you have? What kind of space do you have? How can you most immediately turn a service into money? Thats your first step is take whats available not what your passion is, not whats your dream, but what can you do right now? And thats where I started. Doing newsletters was not sexy. It was not fun, but thats what I started doing, and then when I became profitable, it freed me up a little bit to pursue something that I was passionate about, which was connecting at-home professionals.
David:
So when did you go from Barefoot Executive to creating the association?
Carrie:
The association launched mid-February of 2009, so its not even a year old yet.
David:
Oh, really?
Carrie:
And I still am very much active at the Barefoot Executive. Theyre two distinctly different companies. I am the President and the Owner of the association, but I very much build that out kind of as a third party so that that remains a sellable asset, whereas the Barefoot Executive is very uniquely branded as me as the Barefoot Executive.
David:
I see. Lets talk about that for a second. Personal branding Ive brought this up with Yanik and a couple of other guys about the whole concept of you are the Barefoot Executive.
Carrie:
Yes, I am.

David:
How do you deal with the concept of do you feel like youre kind of trapped in that business? Trapped is probably the wrong word.
Carrie:
You know what? Like Yanik Silver is branded as Yanik Silver.
David:
Yes.
Carrie:
Matt Bacak is Matt Bacak. Mike Filsaime is Mike Filsaime. I am the Barefoot Executive. However, if at some point I decide to sell that brand, its a matter of a transitory process where I transition to where the audience is the Barefoot Executive.
David:
I see.
Carrie:
See what I mean? It would just be an exit strategy for me. Mine is kind of a distinct position instead of and I would compare it to Ali Brown (http://www.alibrown.com). Ali Brown was the E-zine Queen, then she kind of transferred out of that into Ali Brown the information marketer, the internet marketing blueprint, and now shes just Ali. So its when you have the tag of the brand, its a little different than just branding your name. Another example would be Perry Lawrences Ask Mr. Video (http://www.askmrvideo.com). He could assign somebody else as Mr. Video. It would just be a transition process.
David:
I see. But do you believe in the concept that the goal of any business is to make it a sellable asset?

Carrie:
I think before you start a business, you need to have an exit strategy. I didnt believe that when I first started, but I do now. Now I dont have any idea or put any thought into anything until I have an exit strategy first.
David:
So in terms of exit strategy, to me that would seem kind of like when people are exiting, theyre looking to retire. Do you believe in the traditional concept of retirement?
Carrie:
Ew, yuck, no, no, no. You know what I really think? Those of us who are entrepreneurial mindsets serial entrepreneurs is what Dan Kennedy calls us its never about retirement. Its about playing full out, working on an opportunity until were more distracted or enthusiastic or energized with something else. Then we move onto that. Our parents and grandparents wanted to retire because they were tired of doing the same thing for 30 and 40 years. Well, none of us is going to do the same thing for more than 3 or 4 years. Its just not the way we roll anymore. You look at Tim Ferriss (http://www.fourhourworkweek. com) - he talks about the mini-retirement. You plan those throughout the year or every few years or whatever while youre transitioning to something new, but I think as long as what youre doing is transitioning or trending into something you stay interested in, why would you need to retire?
David:
Yeah.
Carrie:
Especially with a lifestyle-based business like many of us have now created for ourselves.
David:
Yeah, its a pretty good business, the lifestyle type of business. You make money while living

your dream life.
Carrie:
Exactly. You know, I took my kids for Christmas, we went to Puerta Vallarta for a week and I worked a tiny bit while I was there, but the fact of the matter is, why do I need to retire if I can do that on my terms?
David:
Yeah, thats the way to do it. If you had to go back and start over, is there anything that you would do differently?
Carrie:
Nobody has ever asked me that question. I would have to say and I really dont mean this to be arrogant in any way, shape, or form, but I think I would do it exactly the same way when I started my online business. Now when I started my traditional business, maybe I would do things a little differently, but heres the plan, David. Heres what I did. I bought an info product from somebody who had already done what I wanted to do and did it well. I invested the money and then I took action on what they told me to do and I didnt question it and I didnt try to re-invent the wheel. I just did A, B, C what they told me to do. My next step and I did that action fast. I didnt over think it, over analyze it, or wait on it to be perfect. The next step was to surround myself with winners by investing in a mastermind group or a peer group of people that were achievers and other action takers. I didnt ask my current peer group if they thought it was a good idea. I didnt ask my current group if they thought I could make money doing that, or if they would do it if they were me, because I dont care what they think about it because theyre not where I want to be. I asked people who were where I wanted to be and then I stretched and reached and put myself at that same level. And thats why Im sitting around a table today with guys that are doing $10 million and $12 million online because I constantly am putting myself in the space of those people.

I invested in my education. I didnt try to learn it all myself. I invested in a peer group of people that was going to challenge me, hold me accountable, and then I took massive action. That sets me apart. People that just are hoping or planning or dreaming or saying their affirmations, theyre going to be doing those same things next year, except theyre going to have more debt on their credit card.
David:
Yeah.
Carrie:
Am I being too honest, David?
David:
No.
Carrie:
Youre going to make me sound nice in print, right?
David:
Yeah. No, you know, Im all about honesty and I think youre absolutely correct in everything you said. If you lie to people, youre doing them more of a disservice than if what you think sounds mean. Do you know what I mean?
Carrie:
Exactly.
David:
So then two questions for you off of that concept of getting a peer group. One is, did you ever have to deal with toxic friends?
Carrie:
You know briefly. Im a pretty positive obnoxious person. Thats why I tend to call them out.

Even when I was back doing direct sales and family too lets just be honest about it, there are toxic friends and there are toxic family. You have to be a dream protector and if youre really excited about something, really working toward something and you believe in it, then you surround yourself with people that believe in it and you isolate what you will share with people. Lets just say, for instance, I have an unsupportive husband which I dont, by the way; my husband is very supportive but lets just say I have an unsupportive husband who thinks the internet is a trend and that its all scams, etc. Then Im careful about what I share. Im not sneaky, but I dont share all my dreams because you can only take somebody shooting down your dreams. So maybe with your parents youre careful about what you share or your friends. This is why a lot of us do really well online dont have local support systems because nobody around us gets us.
David:
Yes.
Carrie:
This is why we go to seminars and why were in peer groups.
David:
Im with you on that.
Carrie:
Because nobody in our church or the PTA or that we hang out with knows or gets what we do, and thats okay because we dont want them to be dream stealers. We dont want them to tell us that it cant be done. Oh, I need somebody that fails at that. So you need to be really careful about that. So yes, you have to get rid of toxic people. You know, when you have something toxic in your body, you flush it out. You get it out, you get rid of it, and you need to do the same with people.
David:
Yeah, for sure. Its interesting. Every time that Ive gone to a seminar thats related to internet

marketing or when its a group of people who all have the same dream, its an extremely empowering sort of feeling because everyones confident. So its definitely a good environment to be around. Having a good peer group is incredible.
Carrie:
Its necessary; its mandatory.
David:
Yeah, definitely mandatory. So the other question is, you were talking about surrounding yourself with people who are where you want to be. So lets say youre starting a business and you have a partner, but theyre not where you want to be either, but they have the same dream. Is that okay?
Carrie:
You know, Im not a big fan of partners, honestly especially in the beginning. I kind of feel like you need to have a measure of success on your own before you know where you need to align yourself with a partner. That being said, I currently do a group coaching program with two other partners, but we all have a measure of success in our business. Were not too reliant on it, and we know where our strengths are, and we know what we need complemented in those areas. So yea, the partner thing, Im really cautious about, especially in the beginning.
David:
Yeah, I think theres definitely something to be said for that. Matt Bacak said that partnerships are the only ships that dont sail.
Carrie:
Exactly, yes.
David:
What was the defining moment that you knew that this was the way to go?

Carrie:
When I had a list of 25,000 people within in 9 months with no paid traffic, I figured I was onto something.
David:
That might be a good measurement of success right there.
Carrie:
It validated that there was an interest.
David:
Oh, yeah, definitely; and its crazy. The thing that always strikes me thats easy to forget is that each one of those persons is a real person who has put a vested its not just a number. Its a real individual with problems and emotions and all of that. Thats a huge amount of people. If you could name possibly the three biggest mistakes that youve made and how we could learn from them, what would they be?
Carrie:
Three biggest mistakes? Oh, wow, youre asking me to bare it all, huh. Give me a second to think on that. Number one was after Id had a level of success, acquiring somebodys elses business that they were selling and thinking that their list would be as responsive as my list thinking I could take their list and merge it into mine. Nobody elses audience is going to respond to you the same way that your audience responds to you, and that was an expensive mistake and one that Ive never actually told anybody about. Another mistake was I havent made a bunch, just to be honest. Probably a real common mistake, and one that Ive made before too, is trying to implement too many things at one time like, get the course on track, then get the course on launch formulas and then get the course on content generation and try to implement it all at once and it just becomes confusing and overwhelming.

David:
Yes.
Carrie:
I think all of us has been there at some point too much implementation at one time. Maybe another mistake early on was not carefully screening affiliate offers enough; not screening them thoroughly enough. You only that mistake like once usually.
David:
Like somebody you promoted?
Carrie:
Like somebody I promoted that my audience really had a reaction to or just maybe because my audience is such a good loyal audience, maybe just that their personality was so different or they had something in their background, or their product was just such a different message than mine; just not being considered enough with that promotion. So maybe those are three that really have been big learning experiences for me.
David:
And so to counter the mistakes, are there three specific resources that have helped you along the way?
Carrie:
More than just resources, the three keys, I think, are (1) quit trying to learn it all yourself. Do invest in yourself and your education, but be really careful about it as far as an info product or a course; and (2) is have a mentor or a mastermind group of achievers not wannabes, but achievers that can support you, hold you accountable, and that you can learn from. And then (3) is a money management issue. I think you have to be really accountable with what youre investing in your business, what youre making in your business, and it cant just be, Oh, Im

going to pay this off later when I start making money. You have to start treating this like a business if you really want a profitable business later on, you have to start treating it that way instead of a hobby that youre continually pouring money into.
David:
I agree. I think that a lot of people dont really take it seriously and thats why they fail.
Carrie:
Right. Businesses earn money; hobbies cost money.
David:
I like that catch phrase. Whats next for you and your business?
Carrie:
Im actually working on a couple of really core mentorships this year. Two individuals that have agreed to mentor me in really specific areas of my business. Also, we will be mass publishing going to the traditional publishing route this year, releasing a book, The Barefoot Executive and mass media, too; a few big things up my sleeve, so it will be fun to watch. 2010s going to be a really incredible year.
David:
I hope so. Well, listen, thank you so much for the interview. I think theres a lot of great stuff in there.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #3
Chad Tackett
www.ryanlee.com
Interview with Chad Tackett

David:
Chad, you mentioned to me in your first email, you had a fitness program launched in the late 1990s?
Chad:
Thats right, yeah. It was 1996.
David:
Man, holy crap. I tell people that 2003 is ancient time on the internet, but thats like right as Al Gore pressed the button to turn it on.
Chad:
Yeah, it was before most people even had email addresses, so the timing was good.
David:
So tell me what got you started. Back then it was even more its still kind of an unknown now much less now, but a complete unknown.
Chad:
Yeah, I have a degree in Exercise Sports Science and Nutrition and at that time I was managing a health club and had my own personal training business. It was going good. I enjoyed it. It started there was actually a member there a client of my own, a personal training client that mentioned that, Have you heard mention about this internet or worldwide web? You should consider trying to consider trying to advertise your personal training business so people can look you up here in Portland and find you. I thought that was pretty intriguing so I did some more research. The more I was learning about it, the more I started dreaming up ways where I could actually take what I was teaching people in my personal training business and actually try to develop a program to help people all over the world 24 hours a day in online programs, even if youre consulting and workout and nutrition plans and stuff.

So I spent about a year full time almost full time, because I was still kind of part time training people writing the content for this program and all the workouts and recipes and meal plans and everything. In April of 96, I launched www.Global-Fitness.com and got my first member about 2 months later. At that point, I guess I just figured if I just get one person to kind of buy into this, Id just kind of duplicate my efforts to get it out to more people and make more sales, and it just kind of eventually started snowballing and within about 6 months, I replaced my income from the my personal fitness business and decided to do that full time. A year later I started hiring other trainers and finally last year I guess Im kind of skipping ahead, but last year in February, I sold the company. We had members in 170 different countries and I had different experts working for me from doctors to dieticians to bodybuilders every health specialist you can think of, so it just kind of really blew up over the 14 years that I had it.
David:
How many members did you have?
Chad:
I had a little more than 50,000 paying members. Not all of those were active at that time when I sold it, but thats how many people I had acquired over the years.
David:
Thats incredible. Thats ridiculous for a continuity program; 50,000 people is absurd.
Chad:
Yeah.
David:
Let me ask you, obviously starting in 1996, youre pretty much a trend setter. Theres no how to make money online products. You were just going with the flow. What kind of gave you the confidence to do that when there was no real I mean, was there anybody that you kind of followed at all, or would that even exist?

Chad:
No, there wasnt anything like that. I think there were two other supplement sites that I saw you, just kind of selling supplements out of their garage, and some other content websites that were starting to pop up trying to sell advertising stuff, but no continuity or membership programs at that time other than porn sites. Thats kind of what, as the business grew, I kind of what modeled after, you know, to an extent. At that point I was barely in the business. I was just a little personal trainer selling my time. I saw how could you sell a username and password for money.
David:
Its funny that you mention the porn sites because theyre kind of the trend setters in terms of marketing, which is strange to say, but you see theyre very far ahead than the average internet marketer. The stuff that they do is a little ridiculous. Anyway, without getting into the pornography discussion, tell me, back in the early 90s, what were you doing to increase your subscribers?
Chad:
The main marketing strategy I used was just going to different search engines and searching in fitness and diet and workouts and all different related keywords and finding different websites that had the same target market, but were non-competitive. At that time, there wasnt really any competition. So I would find recipe sites or supplement sites or websites that were selling fitness equipment and I would offer to give them fitness tips or write articles and my recipes because I had all of this content created, so I just wanted to offer that info on their website in exchange for a link and an endorsement. I think at the time I sold it last February, we were on a little more than 5,000 different websites offering differing content. We actually created a Recipe of the Day, Fit Tip of the Day, Success Quote of the Day that automatically updated on their site at the stroke of midnight every night. That was kind of the main marketing strategy was just getting my content on everyones website.

David:
Youve been around for a while forever in terms of internet what have been the biggest trends that youve seen over the past the biggest differences that youve seen between now and then?
Chad:
I think one trend that Ive really seen is that people just kind of following the lead of going into continuity dreams because thats really where the money, I think. Its so much easier to just get someone to automatically renew their card or not cancel rather than try to continue to acquire new supplement site owners or book site owners. So I think thats what Ive been noticing. Theres a lot of people that are trying to develop different continuity from whatever existing product that they have, which I think is the right idea. 80% of my revenue is from recurring continuity, as opposed to new sales.
David:
So I guess you and Ryan both think the same way in the sense that continuity is where its at. If someone was to ask you, Im just getting started. I want to figure out how to start a business online, will you tell them that thats what they need to be doing is definitely start with continuity.
Chad:
I would definitely. I guess I would find out what theyre passionate about or what product or whatever they have to sell and then find a way to focus continuity around that. So if someone had an eBook that they wanted to sell, I would put an up sell on the sales page where you can click this button and get the first month free of consulting with that eBook, and ask about a continual renew, or give the eBook away absolutely free, but that automatically opts them into automatic renewal for continuity for whether its consulting or workout of the month or whatever. But I think the whole ideas is to get people part of a program or part of a continuity.
David:
What kind of strategies have you used in terms of keeping people in the continuity?

Chad:
Keeping things fresh and exciting, always improving the content and the website. We have I started a new company, www.FastTrackToFatLoss.com, which is kind of similar to www.GlobalFitness.com. Im doing it with one of the trainers from Biggest Loser, Season 3 and 4, and one of the ways that we keep people renewing is just continually offering new contests. We always have a 12-week fat loss contest, and we always have a 30-day choose your own goal contest. We continually put everyone up for a vote and try to just make it real exciting. Thats probably a better answer to your question the trends and where the trends are now. I would say one of the reasons why this new site, www.FastTrackToFatLoss.com is so successful, is its pretty much FaceBook meets www.Global-Fitness.com on that website. Its a real social networking site so everyones even if you arent actually doing the workout and nutrition programs, theyre developing so many friendships and theyre voting on other people during the contest. Its almost replaced their FaceBook account for them. So thats one way thats your answer to both questions, the trend and the ways that we keep renewing is just keeping involved in the site and continually updating it, giving them reason to come back.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
I saw that you run a site with one of the trainers from The Biggest Loser?
Chad:
Thats right.
David:
Tell me about that a little. Someone might see that and one of the things that has been something that Ive noticed that a lot of people are doing marketing for big name people online because they dont know how to do it themselves. Is that the kind of situation that youve set up? And if so, kind of run us through that process.
Chad:
Well, I approached (her name is Kim Lyons) I approached here almost two years ago because she has a great presence on TV and shes been on the magazines and endorses a lot of different products and stuff. She has a lot of credibility and a really good fitness personality, but wasnt really taking advantage of the internet at all, and is kind of a web-a-phobe, to be honest. So I just approached her about taking advantage of that opportunity and I would be the marketing person and she would be kind of the face of the company. The reason why I did that is just because online personal training is a really tough sell. People have a hard time buying into it, and theres so many different scams and stuff out there, especially with the diet pills and all that. So I wanted someone that when you went to the website, they would immediately recognize and feel comfortable in purchasing from them. So that was kind of the idea behind that. And Kim, Ive got her so involved in the website, its not just her endorsing it; she chats live with everyone each week. She has all her videos. We have a video tip of the day. She does all those videos herself. She actually takes the video inside her house or on the road with her in the gym. She has her own profile there so people really get to know her. So I think thats a strategy thats really played well and been responsible for this success so far.

David:
So tell me kind of how the logistics of that worked. So she said shes a Web-a-phobe, how did you get past that? Im looking at the squeeze page right now. It looks pretty good. If you dont mind me asking, is the business side of things, is it like a 50/50 split? How did you get her to bite the bullet, I guess?
Chad:
I just proposed that we develop the content together and she has to be involved to a small degree each week and just being involved in the site, like I said, with the video tips and chatting live, and in exchange, she would get compensated per new member that we acquire, and a small percentage of the renewal. I own the company 100%, but she gets profit sharing from it.
David:
So tell me, if you had to start over from scratch, is there anything that you would do differently?
Chad:
If I had to start from scratch, I would definitely I really think the social networking is where its at. It has made acquiring new members and member retention so much easier because if you have a good product and a good membership, the customers will do all the selling for you and keep them involved and keep them renewing. Theres a lot of people, a good percentage, that dont do the workouts, dont do anything, but they love the social aspect, all the lonely people out there that just want a friend or want to correspond with others. So thats what I would have done from day one way back when, is develop a lot stronger, more active community, which is what I kind of failed to do on my first time around.
David:
Well, I guess it was kind of harder to do it back then because social networks didnt even exist. But there still were forums back then, I guess.
Chad:
Yeah, I mean, even theres been forums for at least a decade. I never put emphasis on developing a strong community. It was kind of we offered a real good personal program

because people got all the consulting they wanted with their experts, but they never got to support and encourage each other or share tips or any of that on www.Global-Fitness.com. I think thats where I kind of missed the mark.
David:
For sure. Was there a defining moment for you when you knew that this was the right thing to do, this was where you wanted to go, this was your future?
Chad:
Yeah, I think when I just started really going on MySpace and FaceBook and just seeing how addicting it was for people. I just thought why wouldnt that business model work more for a fitness program, and so thats when I started looking to just sell www.Global-Fitness.com and just start fresh with Fast Track. I was just going to kind of take the FaceBook model and just put a fitness program behind it. So everyones got their own profile and everyones seen the progress and voting on each other in the contests and stuff, but they also have their own trainer and their own expert. So its kind of, like I said, its like FaceBook meets the GlobalFitness program.
David:
And when you say is it like a straight-up social network? Is that what youre saying?
Chad:
It is. Within the program, everybody kind of has the unique bond in that theyre all following the same program, the same workouts and similar nutrition plan. They all have their own profile, but theyre all kind of competing for the different contests that they enter, and its all on a points system. Any action you take on a website, whether its print a recipe or watch a video or finish your workout for the week or whatever, you get points. You can redeem those points for different products and services.
David:
That is really cool.

Chad:
Yeah, so you not only get points for actions that you take, but also we encourage others like when someone posts on the forum or on their own blog and you post something back to it then, you earn points. So everyones earning points for helping each other and thats really helped with member retention.
David:
That is a genius idea. Im just saying, that is a genius idea. It like it a lot.
Chad:
Thank you.
David:
And this kind of ties into if you were to start your business over, but lets say your top three biggest mistakes youve made and how we can learn from them.
Chad:
Sure. Number one I think would be not having good back end sales products. I think I just missed out on a lot of opportunity because when we had our online personal program or anything that youre doing where youre offering consulting, youve got a real good rapport with the customer, you have such a good opportunity to sell additional products and services, and I never really did that. I would just refer them to even other supplements or fitness equipment sites and didnt really even worry about affiliate sales just because things were going pretty well on the membership thing. I should have started branding my own vitamin line and all that. So that was a big mistake I made, for sure.
David:
Anything else?
Chad:
Yeah, lets see. The other one, like I already mentioned, would be a lot stronger community and then I think that, yeah heres another one. I wore way too many hats. So I should have

hired more people a lot sooner. I had different trainers and stuff, but I was also running an affiliate program, I was running the accounting, I was hiring and firing, everything. So I should have just been focusing on business development, which is what I think I do best, and hired someone else to do all the other different roles. My business would have grown a lot faster.
David:
When you got past the whole doing everything yourself, when you were looking for people to a lot of people have trouble outsourcing because of trust issues because youre giving people its your livelihood. Youre giving people some command of it. What kind of helped you do that, and what kind of helped you pick good employees?
Chad:
Well actually, everyone of my employees on Fast Track has actually been involved in the program. So theyre all customers first. Actually, my programmers were customers of GlobalFitness.com. Thats how I met them, my whole technical team, but all the other trainers, they went through the program and then they got certified. So its not like were just getting hardwood trainers that have always looked really good and dont really understand what it is to be overweight. We got people that really struggled with it for a long time, went through the program and now theyre ready to help others. I think thats really helped and I trust all these people really well because weve developed a really good rapport with them and weve helped change their lives. Its worked out really well. I always just look to my customers to hire.
David:
Thats almost cheating.
Chad:
Yeah.
David:
Because you get the raving fans and its not like they have a trust because its almost like they feel thats a kind of reciprocity. They feel like they owe you, so they do a great job for you. The fitness is probably something that theyve had a problem with their whole life and then

you fix that and they still have you know, theyre like, well, maybe I can help this guy out. So its definitely you pretty much cheated, but whatever.
Chad:
Yeah, all the employees pretty much eat, breathe, live Fast Track. They love it. Its all they want to talk about and do and its because its had such a great effect on their lives. None of this is just a job for them, so I think thats another reason why its been successful as far as choosing the right people that have already been really impacted by it.
David:
Yeah, for sure. So tell me, if you had to name some specific musthave resources that have helped you along the way, what would they be either books, information products, anything? Chad: I would say the #1 thing Ive never really spent much time on information books. I know I should. I know Ryan does but Ive always looked for people that have had success themselves and not just in the internet business, but just in general. I always try to surround myself with other successful people that are positive and just take action. I just found that the more I network and the more I surround myself with good people that make things happen, the more connections I make, and the more I learn from them. So I would say thats probably the number one.
David:
No books, though?
Chad:
Lets see
David:
We dont have to force the issue, but Im just wondering.

Chad:
Yeah, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one that helped, but honestly, I really havent read that many books.
David:
You find a lot of people in your position are like that and theres nothing wrong with it all, for sure. I mean, even like Gary Vaynerchuk do you know Gary Vaynerchuk?
Chad:
I do.
David:
Even him, for example, when we interviewed him, hes like I dont read at all, because hes readings good and all, but if you already know what youre doing and it works, then you dont need to really.
Chad:
Yeah.
David:
Reading for me is almost entertainment at this point. So its not something to be ashamed of.
Chad:
Right.
David:
Anyway, tell me whats next for you and your business other than creating the FaceBook of personal training?
Chad:
Well, we just launched not too long ago we just launched a kind of high-protein, low-fat, lowsugar, low-calorie ice cream. Its actually a powder that you mix up with water and then freeze

it and its like ice cream or you can make fudge sickles. Theres actually 22 different recipes that we have, but its selling, so were just excited to now that we have this captive audience that loves Fast Track, just to kind of funnel new products into them. We just launched just an hour ago kind of giving away free samples of this. Its www. freeproteinfreeze.com. I think weve already gotten like 1,000 sales here in just like the first hour, so its been pretty good.
David:
Thats not bad 1,000 in an hour. Thats cool. Oh, wow, this is, oh man, Im looking at the landing page right now very nice. This is almost structured like a CPA offer.

Chad:
Yeah, thats what I saw those dirty, greasy supplement sales where they hide that theyre going to charge you $80/month. Those sites get shut down. I thought, well those convert really well. Ill just do something with a really good product that has a lot of good testimonials and a good endorsement and just offer really good service and see how it goes.
David:
Thats awesome and emulating the whats it called emulating their sales process, not the customer service process.
Chad:
Right, yeah.
David:
So this is also one of the things I saw on this and then on your other thing, was the Whats the Catch? thing and I think thats a pretty neat little addition to the page as well.
Chad:
We try to make the offer really, really good, almost too good to be true, and so I know a lot of people especially with all the scams out there are probably thinking that its too good to be true, so I just try to put that total disclosure right there that were just really just trying to earn your trust.
David:
Interesting; and this is just a free sample. Theres nothing else.
Chad:
Well, once you enter your information, you go to the next page and you get your free sample, or option 2 is to go ahead and buy a full container of that and you get three bonuses such as a popsicle mold or a recipe booklet added to the thing. So right now it looks like about 20% are going for upgrading to option 2 and actually purchasing.

David:
This is more like something I would see like an infomercial. You should get Kim on the infomercials.
Chad:
Yeah.
David:
Listen, Im losing track, but were pretty much good. I appreciate the interview. It was really good and I really like your style with your landing pages and everything feels very fresh.
Chad: David:
Oh, good. Thank you.

It sounded like what youre trying to go for. I like it a lot.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #4
Darren Rowse
Interview with Darren Rowse

David:
Tell me what you got started online in internet marketing and your blog and all that.
Darren:
It started more as a personal thing, as a hobby. I discovered a blog one day, seven years ago now, after following a link in an email from a friend, and it was to a blog that was written by a guy in Prague on the other side of the world and he was really talking about the type of things that I was interested in when it came to spirituality and some stuff on emerging culture and post modernism, and some of those sort of fairly heavy topics. What fascinated me about his blog was that he had this voice that was being amplified all around the world, and so I was fascinated (1) by what he was talking about, but (2) what his medium was that enabled an ordinary guy to be talking to so many people around the world and to see the community that had formed around it. I was fascinated by the medium of blogging and started my own with no idea that it would become a business. It was purely for me to just do what he was doing have a voice and start to network with people and build a community. That led me to a personal blog which went for a year or so and grew to be sort of fairly popular in that particular niche. Off the back of that, I began to experiment with other types of blogs, particularly on photography, and began to experiment with monetizing those. Its a fairly long story, but to cut it short, I began to put AdSense Ads on my photography blog and experiment with affiliate marketing, and very quickly discovered that I could not only cover my own costs, but that I could actually make some money out of it as well. So it became a part-time job and gradually became a full-time job and then beyond into a business that goes beyond me. So it sort of started very much as a personal thing, something that I was just interested in doing, and grew to be a full-time thing over seven years.
David:
What were you doing while it was a part-time job?

Darren:
I was working three or four depending on the time part-time jobs, and I was studying as well. I was studying Theology. I was working as a minister in a church. I was working in a warehouse, I was working in in-flight catering, doing factory-kind of work. I was doing all kinds of casual jobs, as well as a few ongoing part-time things. So I was blogging at the start just in the evenings, on lunch breaks, and then as a blogging income grew, I was able to pull back on some of that other type of work gradually over time.
David:
It took you seven years ago now, or is it seven years until it was profitable?
Darren:
Yeah, it was seven years ago that I started blogging.
David:
Okay.
Darren:
So a little bit more now, but it probably took about a year before I even started to make money from blogs, and then it was probably another 18 months before I went full-time.
David:
So when did you want to start ProBlogger (http://www.problogger.net)?
Darren:
Pro blogger was in I think it was in 2004.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
That was your first foray into the make money with blogging sort of setup?
Darren:
Well, Id been blogging on my initial photography blog, which I dont actually have that anymore. Id been doing that for a while and really wanted to learn more about how to do it and how to make more money from blogging, and theres really no one else really writing on that topic, so I sort of started that blog, ProBlogger, because it was the blog I wanted to read.
David:
Yeah.
Darren:
It was kind of like a recording of my own journey. I was hoping that if I put my story out there, it might gather some others around me who were doing a similar type of thing so I could learn what they were doing and learn that way, but it was really it was the blog that I wanted to read.
David:
Youve gone from ProBlogger to now you have a membership plan set up?
Darren:
Yes, off the back of ProBlogger Report, ProBlogger.com, which is a membership site.
www.ryanlee.com

I toyed with the idea of having a forum which anyone could join for free. I had that on one of my other sites, Digital Photography School, and whilst it works quite well when you have a free forum, you end up getting a lot of very inactive members and get people spamming it. It can work, and it does work quite well for me on DPS, but I just wanted to keep the membership site a little bit smaller and a little bit more intentional and a little bit more rich of conversation rather than just sort of spammy, light-hearted stuff. So yeah, we launched that it must be a few months ago now.
David:
How long did it take for you to get a significant following? Youre the number one blogger in Technorati, right?
Darren:
No, Im not number one. I dont know what Im ranked now, but it took that first personal blog. I guess I grew to having 1,000 or 2,000 readers a day over the first sort of 18 months, so that was really slow. But as you build a profile youre then able to leverage that profile when you launch your next thing, so by the time I started ProBlogger, it was a couple of years Id been blogging by that stage. So I was able to launch that and have a few readers and then when I launched my Digital Photography School, I was able to launch that with even more readers because I not only had my previous photography blog, but I also had ProBlogger. My latest blog, TwiTip, when we launched that, it had a few thousand readers on the first day, but that was purely because of all the work Id done before, so it just sort of snowballs and momentum grows over time if you continue to be useful with people. You find that the next time you do something, people want to check it out.
David:
The one thing that Ive been kind of noticing is that there seems to this I dont know if dichotomy is the right word but theres two sides to getting people to your site. One is through relationships, and one is through the typical traffic building like ____ and SEO. What are your thoughts in terms of getting traffic? Do you believe that its just all about the content?

Darren:
Yeah, for me its kind of two-sided thing. Its content you cant build a site with great traffic unless youve got something there for people to read and something that draws people in and makes the come back. So for me, I always rave on about how building a useful site and having content that solves problems for people, whether those problems be serious problems like how do I raise my children, or something serious or light-hearted problems like Im bored, entertain me. So if your site is solving a problem in some way, thats a good foundation, but then you kind of need to do more than that because you can build a whole heap of really useful content and no one will know about it, so no one will come. So you need to then start putting yourself out there and you do that in a variety of ways. You direct them to other sites, gathering links to your site from other sites, which then helps your Search Engine Optimization. Just doing little things to help your SEO; playing around with your title tags so that they rank better in Google. But really, its about putting yourself out there, interacting with other bloggers, spending time in forums on social media, wherever it is that your potential reader might be gathering, you need to be there sort of networking.
David:
If someone came up to you and said, Hey, Darren, I want to start a blog and Id really like to make a full-time income from it, where would you tell them to start?
Darren:
Id probably tell them to get their expectations right first, that its going to be a long haul and that youre unlikely to make a full-time living for a good while. Then Id probably be talking to them about defining their niche and what is it that you want to become an authority on, what is it that you want to be known for talking about, and really defining that topic there and looking for gaps in what other blogs in that niche are doing finding out what theyre not doing and starting with some of that type of content. So you might find that there might be 20 blogs already on your topic,

but they might all be focusing on a particular type of writing. So if you can fill some holes in a way that can be useful. And then its just about investing significant time particularly in the start into creating good content and ideas for further content so that in a month in, you dont run out of things to say. You really want to have a couple of months ideas, at least, to write about. And then its about networking, so starting to get to know some of the other blogs, finding the forums in your niche, looking at who the key players are on Twitter and FaceBook on that particular topic and just getting to know people, being useful to them and their readers, if you can. Theres no real secret glamorous tip thats going to guarantee youre going to get there, but its really about just putting in hard work over time.
David:
You said, what do you want to be an authority in? Do you think that its necessary to become an authority to have that kind of income from a blog?
Darren:
I dont think you have to be. I know bloggers who dont really have their own identity on their blog at all, yet they provide good information on their blog and are able to make that blog profitable without them personally being the authority, but I guess their blog becomes a bit of an authority. It is hard to become The Authority in a niche because theres so many sites already out there that are the go-to sites. So I guess it comes down to being a credible person and a credible site and building that kind of air. You want people to actually believe and trust you. Thats part of it as well.
David:
So the sites that are kind of anonymous but still have good content its almost like you dont have to be an authority, but that site becomes an authority. I dont know how you would do that. Do you know what I mean?

Darren:
Yeah. Its partly just about consistently producing that kind of useful content over time and people then keep coming back to the sites like Photography Blog.
I dont really brand it as my site. I would suspect the majority of the readers on that site dont know who I am and dont really know my name beyond it a name that gets signed on the bottom of newsletters. I dont put my face on it too much, so its not really branded as me, Darren, as an authority on photography, because Im not. Its just my hobby. Its something Im interested in. But thats site has produced its got 2,000 or 3,000 pages of content on it now and its got a history of at least a few of those being good over time.
David:
Nice.
Darren:
Yeah, so its the same really.
David:
If you had to start over from scratch, is there anything that you would differently?
Darren:
Theres not a whole heap. Id probably do things with my domains a little differently. When I first blogging, I was on a personal domain and then I added my first photograph blog onto that domain so it was photoblog, which isnt really great branding when you want to focus on a particular topic. So I guess thinking through what you want your site to become before you actually start is useful, and I didnt do that but still had relative success.

I probably would have started developing my products a little earlier. My first four or five years of blogging, I relied on advertising revenue and affiliate revenue, but didnt really develop anything of my own. It wasnt really a mistake, but it was probably done a bit earlier, in hind sight. Not too many mistakes, not too many things that Id do that differently.
David:
You consider yourself an internet marketer, right?
Darren:
Im not sure. I dont really define myself as that. I guess I think of myself partly as a bit of an entrepreneur, more of a community builder than anything, but I guess I do marketing on the internet.
David:
Well, I dont mean like you completely, but because I kind of see online that theres the bloggers and then theres the guys that are very salesy. Do you have any sales letters out there at all?
Darren:
I really never went that direction at the start, and I guess having added some product into my system now, I kind of am doing a bit of that type of stuff as well. Yeah, I kind of see theres a lot of bloggers out there and theres a lot of internet marketer sort of hype sales type marketers out there, and I guess Im trying to position myself somewhere between those two. I dont really want to get too into the hype and the salesy stuff, but its hard to sell a product if you dont have some sales cause, so yeah, somewhere in between.
David:
You said you would do products earlier, so how do you get someone past the whole how did you get past the whole concept of being uncomfortable with sales? Were you uncomfortable

with selling stuff?
Darren:
I wasnt too uncomfortable with it because I guess I was selling other peoples stuff with affiliate marketing, and in some ways its not really that different. In fact, its probably a bit easier to sell your own stuff because youve got that trust with people. For me, the resistant was more around the work involved with it and not knowing how to do it. Its pretty easy to write a blog post. You sit down at your computer and an hour later or a couple of hours late, its finished. Its an eBook or a course. It can take days, weeks, months, you know, years. I know some guys who developed courses who worked for a whole year before they released it just on a course, and so for me, it was probably getting my head around the fact that okay, how am I going to write this eBook? How am I going to develop that course? That type of stuff that held me back.
David:
So was there a defining moment when you knew that this was it, this was what you want to do and this was working?
Darren:
Thats probably just been a series of small defining moments. The first time I put ads on my blog and realized that if I made that much every day for a month, Id cover my costs, that was a defining moment. I remember the first time that I experimented with writing posts in advance of an event so when Australian Idol happened here in Australia its the same sort of show as American Idol I put up a post a few weeks before the winner was announced saying Australian Idol winner and then talked about who I thought would win it, and the day that the winner was announced, I had so much traffic from Google, its one of those light bulb moments where I thought, gee, Ive just generated tens of thousands of pages of traffic. So again, that was another learning moment. Starting my first photography blog, which I intended to be a blog for photos and I posted a review of my camera and everyone loved the review and no one looked at the photos. It

was another disappointing moment in some ways, but it was also a defining moment in that I realized people searching for the web for information and reviews. All those sort of little moments along the way kind of inspired, but also taught me a lot which led me to today.
David:
So where do you see the future of blogging? What direction do you see that going in?
Darren:
Im not sure theres any one direction. A lot of bloggers now are just experimenting with so many different ways of monetizing and putting their content out there, so a lot of blogs now dont really look that much like blogs. Theyre just sort of more portal sites with all kinds of stuff going on them. Theres video and theres polls and theres forums, and theres social networks in the mix, so in some ways, blogs are becoming less blog like and integrating more just with the web itself. But then theres also blogs that are traditional blogs that are doing really well as well. So theres no real one approach to it. I guess the more Im discovering about the blogging and the web is that theres no real rules. You just need to find what works for you.
David:
This question kind of ties into the if youd do anything differently, but if you could name the top three mistakes that you made along the way, what would they be?
Darren:
Theres not a whole heap. Theres lots of tiny little ones, but nothing major. Partly around domains, poor domain names; Yes, getting a .net for ProBlogger.net was ProBlogger.com was unavailable. I could have bought it earlier and then I actually did so, those sorts of things, Ill be into that spinning devil. I could have owned that domain. Just not thinking big enough, not planning enough. My blogs and my sites have kind of evolved over time, which has been great and its part of their strength, but you kind of end up with something that can look a little messy at times as

well, so just being a little bit more strategic with what Ive developed or thinking bigger.
David:
Do you think everyone should be thinking big, because I just interviewed a guy today who told me we should be thinking small.
Darren:
Yeah, look, as I said, theres so many different ways. Yeah, I think in the early days, think small definitely and think real not too small because you can have a niche thats tiny and that wont ever work, but starting smaller and then expanding it, I think can work as well. Thats what I did with Photography School. I started just focusing on beginner tips and then have added other section to the site over time. It can work either way.
David:
If there were three must-have resources for someone who wants to learn the dotcom lifestyle, if you will, what would they be?
Darren:
You mean like teaching resources, or more tools?
David:
It can be either one.
Darren:
Probably tools I live more and more in the cloud and that type of technology. Im using gmail (http://www.gmail.com) for my email these days; Dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com) to back up stuff on the web, Basecamp (http://www.basecamp.com) to help me integrate to talk to my team and interact with the guys that Im working with. So I guess that type of technology, I guess, is really where Im spending more and more of my time.

David:
And were there any eBooks that have helped you along the way at all?
Darren:
Not so much books. I dont tend to read as much as I used to about this kind of stuff. Im reading guys like Chris Brogan (http://www.chrisbrogan.com) and Brian Clark from CopyBlogger (http://www. copyblogger.com). Seth Godin (http://www.sethgodin.com) is someone I just can certainly read. Yeah, Im a bit eclectic and pick up bits and pieces all over the place these days. Theres no one resource that I basically everything I do, Ive just done Jeff Walkers Product Launch Formula course which was great. I just like interacting in the different spaces, so Jeffs a real internet marketer that we were talking about before, and then youve got Chris Brogan who gives away so much and hes very different to Jeff. So somewhere in the middle of it all, I find lots of ideas come.
David:
What does the dotcom lifestyle mean to you? What is that to you?
Darren:
Im not sure. I guess for me, the thing I love about what Im doing now is that it allows me to be creative, to experiment, and be playful. It allows me flexibility to spend time with my family and take time off when I need to, or work really hard when I need to. It puts me in touch with people around the world who I never would have had opportunity to interact with, and its just opened up all kinds of amazing opportunities not just the big ones, but the really small ones opportunities to help people and be involved with peoples lives in a way that I never would have been. Im not really sure what it means, but its a lot of fun and a lot of work as well, but its fun work and good work that I really enjoy.
David:
Whats the best advice that youve ever been given?

Darren:
I dont know. I guess it comes down to being true to yourself and knowing who you are and what your values are and starting with that type of thing. A lot of people say just do what you love and thats just not practical for a lot of people who its hard to do what you love all the time because it doesnt always pay the bills, so Im not really into that type of thing, but I guess youve got to find spaces in your life to do what you love alongside what you have to do. Im not really sure what the best advice is that Ive ever had, but I guess it probably starts with you and who you are and knowing who you are and what you stand for and then building around those.
David:
Whats next for you and your business?
Darren:
Last year was a year where I experimented with products and eBooks and having ProBlogger. com, a membership site, so it was a bit of experimenting year. I think this year is probably a little bit more about consolidating, looking at what Ive built the mess that it is in some ways, and all the extensions that I kept building onto my house and refining that a little bit and consolidating that a little bit and looking at the lessons that I learned last year in releasing products and building upon that. All of my blogs this year, Ive got the goal of releasing more eBooks and more training resources in those ways because thats been pretty successful. Im looking at the economy. Its still a little bit tough in the advertising game, so to have some of my own products is good as well. Its developing products and just refining what Ive got a little bit. Probably hire a couple of people, as well, to help me do some of the things I want to do a little better, so its probably about consolidation.
David:
You said that the economy is poor and thats kind of doing damage to advertising revenue.

When things pick up again, do you see that advertising revenue increasing for blogs and such, or do you feel like its going to probably stay down? Because I know that it used to be better.
Darren:
What Im finding in talking to advertisers is that their overall budgets are going down and have gone down in the last year, but the percentage of their budget going online is at least remaining steady, if not going up. So what Ive noticed is that my overall revenue has gone down from advertising a little bit, but not as much as I think it would have gone down if I was in another game like newspapers or magazines. So Im really hopeful that things will pick up and well be in a better position after this year. Online advertising is so much more sensible for an advertiser, I think, than a lot of other mediums because theyre able to really target. Someone reading my photograph blog is obviously just interested in photography. We can really target geographical locations. We can target a whole heap of stuff that you couldnt do in a newspaper or something like that. So I think its going to be an area that will grow in my opinion.
David:
And its way to cheaper to advertise. I was looking the other day. My local newspapers media kit its $6,800 for a whole page ad for one day, which is absurd. Thank you so much for doing this interview. We really appreciate it.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #5
Gary Vaynerchuk
Interview with Gary Vaynerchuk

Ryan:
All right, Gary Vaynerchuk, the man, lets start off with the first question. Tell me how you got started on the internet.
Gary:
You know, way back in 94, my buddies in college were like, hey, come to my dorm room. Check out this. You can go on the computer and talk to other people kind of thing. I wasnt a prodigy kid. I wasnt a bulletin board kid. Nobody in my high school ever had modems so I didnt really know about such a thing. So when I first saw it in 94, it was just kind of like, holy crap. In the first five seconds I was like, I can sell baseball cards on this thing. So you know, it was very entrepreneurial and so immediately it was kind of like, this is interesting; I want to figure it out. And then I quickly realize that there was a lot of commerce to be done in this space, and at that point I was already very involved in my dads liquor store and so I wanted to bring that sensibility and internet to the store and so I launched winelibrary.com in the summer of 97 after learning a little bit here and there and then took over the family business in 98, day to day operations kind of, and that kind of became the playground of where I got involved in that. And then in 2002 I heard a full-time developer by the name of Eric Castner who now works at Epstein. Hes a great guy and really, he was amazing and instrumental in kind of showing me the way of the net and so that kind of became the journey. In 97 I launched winelibrary.com. 2001 was kind of the first year we did like some serious online business.
Ryan:
Okay.
Gary:
And 2006 is when I started Wine Library TV.
Ryan:
Yeah, and were going to definitely delve heavy into Wine Library TV, but jumping back for a minute, you talked about you started the site in, I think you said 97, how do you start the site? Like, did you have any computer experience? Did you hire your programmer?
Gary:
Ill tell you, no and no. I paid some Russian guy named Alex $15,000 to build me an HTML site, you know, one of those classic things.
Ryan:
Right.
www.ryanlee.com

Gary:
And so we had the site and it kind of just sat there and did really much of nothing and, you know, for the first year or two, and then slowly but surely, you know, I started learning more and started pushing the envelope and got involved and just kind of started understanding the web. Using it as a human being helped, you know? Using AOL and all that, but by 99 I started kind of understanding what was going on.
Ryan:
What was the big breakthrough? Everyone always has this kind of point.
Gary:
The big breakthrough was meeting Eric and John.
Ryan:
Okay.
Gary:
Two developers who really understood what was going on and recognizing that they knew what was going on and just learning and talking with them and then ultimately hiring both of them. That was really the breakthrough because once you had people that understood and started teaching me, that was it didnt take much. The web just matured. It was just raw and wild, wild west at first. It just matured and I started understanding.
Ryan:
So was there any obviously, take away number 1 is hire smart people people that are smarter than you on that topic.
Gary:
Uh huh.

Ryan:
Right. Yeah, but thats the whole thing to those .com lifestyles. You hire the people.
Gary:
But learn from them instead of letting them just be there and you do your thing because eventually their thing is always more valuable and if youre not the smartest person in your organization, youve got a problem.
Ryan:
Right; okay. So you started doing the marketing. You were selling. And at that time, it was purely an e-commerce site, right? You were just heres the wine, heres a bordeau, I dont know. I dont know anything about wine. I know 97 was a good year. Thats what I heard.
Gary:
Yeah.
Ryan:
But you buy basically it was just wines, right? It was just commerce. There was no communication. There was no blogging. It was just a pure commerce site.
Gary:
That is correct.
Ryan:
Okay; and now you guys areyoure on TV, youre on Conan OBrien. Tell us the transition because that seems like that was kind of what Malcolm Gladwell calls the tipping point. Tell me about this Wine Library TV how you thought of the idea, and then well get into some of the tactics and nuts and bolts of it.
Gary:
You know, the summer of 05 was a big year for me, learning-wise. There was a lot of things

that started happening online, video-wise. In 04 I kind of watched YouTube do its thing and get bigger and more important, and then in 05 I saw Ze Frank (http://www.zefrank.com/ theshow/) and Rocketboom (http://www.rocketboom.com) (two video blogs) really kind of hit and start getting popular. Videos started becoming less expensive to host.
Ryan:
Right.
Gary:
And that was it. It was kind of just like, oh, Im like Donkey Kong, right? It made sense to me to get into the content game. I wasnt a great writer, so video was very attractive to me and that was it, really. On my 30th birthday, I turned 30 and kind of decided, okay, I kind of freaked out and said I need a change and Im going to build something new for myself, and that was through content. So I decided to do a wine show and in February, a couple of months later after the holidays and everything, I started it.
Ryan:
So you started the wine show. Day 1, you launched your video. What kind of technology did you use? Did you use a webcam?
Gary:
We bought a $300 camera from Best Buy, nothing special, some Sony little thing, and uploaded to YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) and that was it. We used iMovie. We didnt edit, really, anything. There was no takes. There was one take, in and out, and that was it. Thats still kind of how the shows done to this day.
Ryan:
Well, it just shows you dont need a $5,000 or $20,000 per episode budget to get something good in quality out there.

Gary:
Its never the lighting or the camera. Anyone who thinks that just doesnt understand anything.
Ryan:
So what is it? Why is Gary Vaynerchuk all over the TV and the guru of social media marketing? What is it that makes you different, your show special, besides your boyish good looks?
Gary:
Thank you for that, and thats definitely probably number one, but I think a couple of things. I think I did it. I mean, building a $60 million company gives you the chops, right? Youre not just another guy running around talking about it. I think I outwork people, you know? I just work a lot and so that helps. So I think Im outhustling and outworking people, and I think Im putting out really good content, you know? And Im putting it out consistently and Im networking. Im in the trenches and Im fighting. I think its skill and effort. Its not only talent but its hard work and I think a lot of times, people are lacking one or the other. I think that combo has definitely been the rationale.
Ryan:
Well, you say hard work because you came your family came to this company with pretty much nothing, right?
Gary:
Thats right. Not pretty much a hundred bones. So yeah, its a lot of effort, you know. Having an immigrant mentality has helped and thats it. Its a good old-fashioned put your head down and work your ass off.
Ryan:
Now, what do you do on a day-to-day basis now to continue to promote your wine library blog or the site?
Gary:
Not much, to be really honest with you. Im just reactive. Im answering the emails. Im answering

the tweets. Im answering the FaceBook, but not so much out promotion. I probably will do more next year. I might even buy some ads and be smart. Im trying to barter and make deals, but not a whole, whole lot.I think putting out great content and being in the trenches and interacting with your fans in different communities is all you need.
Ryan:
I agree 100 percent. Its working for me too. What social media are you focusing on? Theres Twitter, their FaceBook, theres MySpace. Theres hundreds of things. Gary Vaynerchuk, if you had to choose, lets say, five, what are the top five that we should look out for and say if youve only going to study and focus on five, these are the five to do?
Gary:
You know, I think that FaceBook and Twitter are complete necessities. Theres no doubt about it. I think youve got to know what youre doing. I think the hyper niche of your world is totally overlooked. I think bulletin boards, believe it or not, and forums are completely underused because theres people in there.
Ryan:
Right.
Gary:
And theyre yapping and it blows my mind that people arent using more like Beer Advocate. I mean, how are you not there every minute if youre in the beer world? And so, I just think that people need to definitely focus more on forums.
Ryan:
Okay, so going to a site like groups.google.com and searching for your topics.
Gary:
Yeah, or just typing in coffee forums.

Ryan:
Right.
Gary:
Google search an ad and just seeing what pops up and being active in the first two pages, signing up for an account and being active in all of them. You know, I just think theyre overlooked and I think that forums have an amazing community and thats what were looking for, right?
Ryan:
Right.
Gary:
So I think that old school thing is completely overlooked, and then I think whether its Flickr (http://www.flickr.com) or YouTube or DailyBooth (http://www.dailybooth.com) or Tumblr (http://www.tumblr.com) or Ustream (http://www.ustream.com) or YouTube, theres so many. Theres probably 10-30 tier second tier sites that really are attractive and important.
Ryan:
Okay, so you named a bunch of them. Any more that you can think of that are maybe underutilized as well, like you said, forums that people kind of forget about that.
Gary:
LinkedIn, I think. LinkedIn is one that Im underutilizing. LinkedIn and Ning are two things Im looking at very heavily in 2010.
Ryan:
Okay, so give me now you gave us some good resources. You know, Im a big fan of books and theres a great book I just read. I dont know if you heard of it, called Crush It! (http:// crushitbook.com/)
www.ryanlee.com
Gary:
Yeah, I appreciate that.
Ryan:
So well talk about that in a minute, but before we talk about your book, which is just awesome, by the way.
Gary:
Thank you.
Ryan:
What are your top five favorite business marketing, self-improvement type books? Dont give me Stephen King, but give me some business marketing self-improvement books.
Gary:
So this is where I have to be massively authentic and let you know that I dont read books.

Ryan:
Okay.
Gary:
At all.
Ryan:
Really?
Gary:
Ive never read a business book; never. Ive only read like two books in the last five years which were Nine, which is a book about the Supreme Court and Namath, a book about Joe Namath. I dont read books and Im sure thats a big mistake of mine.
Ryan:
No, look
Gary:
Its just not what I do.
Ryan:
Thats all right. We wont put that in the interview.
Gary:
You should. I want you to.
Ryan:
All right. Were putting it in.
Gary:
Because its massively authentic. Its the truth. Because heres what it comes down to: you dont have to be anything youre not. You need to know who you are and I think that thats

very important. Im very aware of who I am and I get more out of other things than books and thats it.
Ryan:
So where do you learn from? I teach my guys, youve got to go outside of your industry. Where do you learn?
Gary:
Definitely the internet, reading blogs and I love TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com) and TechMeme (http://www.techmeme.com) and Mashable (http://www.mashable.com) and sites like that, but I learn for intake. The news comes to me from emails and tweets and faceBooks, just reading and talking to people. People will say something and Im like, I dont think I know what that means and then Ill Google it, you know?
Ryan:
Right.
Gary:
Thats it.
Ryan:
Hey, its called life.
Gary:
Yeah.
Ryan:
Youre just soaking it all in. All right, so the guy who doesnt read the books, you put out a best seller now. Youve got the book Crush It!. What is the overall theme? Ive read it, but for everyone reading this right now, whats your overall theme of the book? Why did you write it?

Gary:
I wrote it because I wanted my message to be heard. I think we all like to be heard and I know its a good message and I want people to win and I knew that blogging and video blogging and going to tech conferences was not going to reach middle America and not only middle America, because its unfair; Im not calling them out just people who dont consume video and online. So it allowed me to read a different audience. Thats it. When youve got thoughts and you want them to be heard, you use any deliverable that you can and so thats what I did.
Ryan:
And your message is how to cash in on your passion.
Gary:
The message is that everythings changed and the time is now because theres so much going on and youve got to get a part of it.
Ryan:
But how does and your idea is great its like, if you have a real driving passion and you work hard, you can basically what anyone can do what youve done, but lets say a guy is reading this right now and hes like, Hey, Im really passionate about fixing cars.
Gary:
Yeah.
Ryan:
What do they do? They dont have a store. Theyre $20,000 in debt.
Gary:
Content is the cost of entry. What I mean by that is that youve got to pump out content. You just have to. It starts there. Without having that, you really dont have anything. You can do all the social media you want, but thats it. If you dont have somewhere to send them back to and actively update that content, youre not going to win.

Ryan:
So is it as easy as getting your even if you cant afford a camera, if you have a computer, it theres a little web cam built in, is it as easy as just start filming some quick videos and putting it on YouTube?
Gary:
Yes. FaceBook you can upload videos to FaceBook through your webcam. If you have a computer, especially if you have an Apple because then you have the cam, but if you dont and you have a cam, you basically are in business. But again, thats only if youre doing video. I have no problem if you do audio or no problem if you do the written words.
Ryan:
What are your ideas to make it, though, different and stand out? Theres so many guys saying, well, Im a personal trainer and my stuffs the same as everyone else. How do you become the Gary Vaynerchuk of fitness, of parenting, or wholesale shopping, whatever it is?
Gary:
Youve got to be good, youve got to know what youre talking about, and youve got to work hard. Youve just got to continue to pump out content. People give up. People dont have enough patience. Thats the problem. They give up before they win. Its as simple as that.
Ryan:
You talk a lot about having this real hard work ethic, but how do you practically do so many different things, because you have your business blog, you have Wine Library, you do a lot of media, youre on TV.
Gary:
Yeah, I think you handle what you can do. You have to be realistic with yourself. Im robotic. I dont get tired as much. I know that if I eat lunch, Ill get tired, so I dont. You just have to know yourself and execute against the blueprint that works best for you. I think thats very important. I think way too many people are trying to be something theyre not.

Ryan:
Lets talk about you. Its all about you, Gary. This is why were here. So, any specific strategy that works really well for you in terms of managing time, managing projects, managing email. Any tips, resources, strategies that you use that maybe we can learn from?
Gary:
Yep, never do something you dont like.
Ryan:
I agree 100 percent.
Gary:
Its a big one. Too many people feel like they have to do this, that, and the other thing. You can always hire somebody to do something you dont like. When youre doing things you love, it becomes so much easier to work hard.
Ryan:
Right; and now kind of to wrap things up, now that youve achieved a lot of financial success, it sounds personal life and everythings going well, how has your life changed since the internet?
Gary:
Well, its allowed me to play and work hard and its allowed me to scale my efforts. Thats the real big thing. When you can scale your caring, when you can scale your content, when you can scale your efforts and thats what the internet has done. Its an amazing platform to allow scale. I would never travel until two oclock in the morning and meet people at bars, but Im talking to people until two in the morning, you know?
Ryan:
Right, thats huge, just the ability to scale. And what is a typical day like now for you?
Gary:
Interviews, answering email, brainstorming, taping videos. Its always a brouhaha of the

same things which is interviewing prospective clients, lots of media, taping stuff, putting out content, interacting with people, just a whole hodgepodge of that.
Ryan:
Okay, and any resources for getting publicity; because youve obviously been on a lot of TV and media. Do you recommend people try to do PR themselves and press releases, hire a publicist?
Gary:
I think at first you should do it yourself. Thats what I did. I got Conan OBrian, and Nightline and Time Magazine and People Magazine all without a PR person. But eventually, if youre able to do well, then you can get one, because I have one now. It helps, for sure. Somebodys working on your side on your behalf. But PRs gone through a big change. So much comes to me now, right?
Ryan:
Right.
Gary:
So it really just depends on how you look at it. I think it all comes down to putting out good content, man. If you put out good stuff, stuff happens.
Ryan:
Awesome. Its as simple as that.
Gary:
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #6
Holly Rigsby
Interview with Holly Rigsby

David:
Holly, tell me what got you started in internet marketing.
Holly:
Oh, wow. This is a fun story. This is all laid back, right?
David:
Oh, yeah, of course.
Holly:
Lets see, I started off going back to how this whole fitness thing came to be, me having a baby and then fumbling for a couple of years of trying to figure out what to do to lose the baby fat and get my body back which is not my tagline and finding my passion in the fitness industry, became a trainer in a gym, was taking the majority of my day turning one-onone clients, my husband, and a business partner owns the training company, and we actually started going to fitness business seminars which happened to be Ryan Lees, was one of the first ones I went to Ryan Lees Boot Camp (http://www.ryanleebootcamp.com)
From there, we were looking for ways to help grow the business, better leverage our time, and tried to implement some of the ideas that were shared there. So I started experimenting with group training and group weight management, and yes, that was working great, but I was still

stuck in a gym for many hours a day, and as a new mom Im not a new mom my son was probably about 3 years old at that point so hitting the ceiling of how much more I could give of myself and really how much more we could grow the business. After attending I think we had attended two seminars. Gosh, when was the last one we attended? I would say in 2006 we must have drove like a van of a group of us and a couple of trainers from Kentucky to Connecticut yeah, that was fun to be able to attend the seminar. On the way back, we were like, okay, were going to start implementing some of this stuff putting it into motion. We decided to take what I had been teaching the women in the gym, because I had a very strong following of moms, and started thinking about, Well, lets start to compile your information into an eBook. Thats what everybodys talking about. Just take what you teach and write it, put it in a book and get it out there, because Ryan Lees always the one saying, Youve got to implement. Youve just got to turn it around and do it. So we were inspired by that thought. I had experimented with going online by creating a blog for my clients so that way they could stay in touch and the accountability factor in between my sessions with them in the gym. Whether it was weekly sessions or biweekly or whatever, they still had a resource to go to. From there, we were like, Lets start a website. I called it Womens Fitness Solutions because I wanted to help women all over the world, and started just filling that up with stuff that I had been learning about, things that helped my clients, posting that on there, and seeing that that wasnt really going anywhere. Obviously as I was learning, that was not a strong enough niche. So we sat down after attending one of Ryans seminars like I said, I think it was 2006 and realized that we had to get more specific. We though, well, lets get Holly online. Shes successful at what she does in the gym. What can she do that is specific that women want? Were like, well, everybody wants a bikini body, so were like, okay, we can do that. That would be fun products to make bikini-ready abs, bikini-ready legs, bikini-ready arms so we toyed around with that idea and realized that that still was not specific enough. That wasnt who I was; and we brainstormed and came up with the idea that my area of expertise was working with moms and helping them get their bodies back.

Sharing this idea with a couple of other partners, we came up with the idea of Fit Yummy Mummy. This helped me to actually streamline everything that I had been writing down because now I had a voice and a purpose for what this was going to serve. I spent the spring and summer of 2007 taking all of my training principles and nutrition lessons and lifestyle management lessons and poured them all into this book, and we officially launched Fit Yummy Mummy in November of 2007.
David:
Cool. You mentioned being very specific in finding your niche. Is that something that you recommend to everyone, that they should definitely start niched down?
Holly:
Oh my gosh, yes. Knowing that and really not its not like I struggled for years wondering

what was happening to my business and why my business wasnt growing because I think I came into it at the right time. With the right timing and the right support system in place and having the resources, like being able to turn to fitness professionals who were successful, you know, it just made sense and thats just what you had to do. For a lot of people that I speak to who want to know more about What did you do? How did you get your business going? They are so afraid of getting specific because theyre scared of missing out on potential clients and prospects. That in turn waters down the message. It waters down your voice, what you are saying is too generalized, and it doesnt hit your niche market. It doesnt give them that feeling in the gut or get that emotional reaction when you write or whatever youre producing to get their attention. Really, the more specific you get with your niche, the more powerful what you have to say becomes and I have gotten it down to the art of no matter what type of blog post I write, I get about a dozen emails a day saying, Wow, you were reading my mind. How did you know? This is exactly what I needed to hear, and all I did was envisioned one of my Fit Yummy Mummy clients and what she was going through and spoke right to her. Because I narrowed it down, that specifically, it was that powerful to hundreds of thousands of other women. That in turn is what helps to create that following and grow your business. So yes, do not be afraid to be as specific as possible the age, where your prospect or your client lives, what does their family like, what do they do for a living? Getting inside of their head, what do they worry about, what keeps them up at night, what are their biggest stressors? Just being able to sit down and answer all those questions and one that helps me do that too because I was right there in it. I was a mom. I experienced it myself, but doing surveys with your clients is an excellent tool to really get inside the head of your prospect or your client if youre not sure how specific to get. Really, when you have people who know and trust you, theyre willing to sit down whether its a face to face interview or an email interview or something thats handwritten. Theyre willing to answer those questions for you and thats going to help you develop your niche that much more.

David:
So one of the things I actually just got off the phone with Kyle Battis and he was talking about building your list first before you release a product just so you already have that pre-created demand. Is that what you guys did, or did you launch the product first and then build a list?
Holly:
Hmm, I would say gosh, how did that happen? Let me think back to how it happened. What I was doing because nobody knew who I was I mean, I was new in the fitness industry. I was probably certified as a trainer for two years prior to what we did or when we launched this, so its not like, Oh, Hollys all credible and everything, so I had to carve my way into the fitness industry and part of what I did was that I just started a blog and I started blogging daily and this was something that was different than I had done when I was in the gym. I understood at this point internet marketing and writing with that voice and writing about what their wants and needs are. So really, kind of starting there with just that blog, getting a newsletter set up, getting the optin stuff set up, but also I was searching for my niche online, and for me, because my niche is busy moms, what I did was went to mom-based sites. I approached a couple of women who had these mom-based sites. For example, www.PoshMama.com, www.TwitterMom.com, and asked if I could be a contributor, so I was able to get myself in front of two completely different audiences of women and if they liked what I had to say, I was putting links back to my blog where they could get the opt-in to get my free report, building my list like that. But I was also in lots of Mom-based forums, whether its with moms looking to build their home business, or moms who needed support because their husbands were away. There were military wives, a lot of stay-at-home mom based forums, and I was just in there interacting with women just so I could build those relationships online and have a resource for them to go to. Also, because I can only go so far with that, I was in search of affiliates and when strong affiliates were able to partner up with me and help me get a kick start with that as well and introduce me with other affiliates. So I think that, like I said, this was like the stars were aligned and everything worked out perfectly to be able to create this launch that got me going, because I know a lot of people that have trouble getting started, but its a matter of just getting out there

and saying, Hey, this is who I am. This is what I have to offer, and proving that youre credible and proving that results can be made because even though I had affiliate connections, I still had to prove myself to other affiliates and letting them see how this could benefit them. So I think the combination of my own footwork of doing what I could online to build relationships with women helped as well as having affiliates in place.
David:
Okay, Im assuming while youre blogging youre product was already made at that point?
Holly:
It was in production.
David:
Okay, so it was kind of like a pre-production.
Holly:
Yes, yes. We definitely were experimenting seeing what we had to do while we were still fumbling around trying to figure out how quickly we could get a product done and get it out and people want to buy it.
David:
Okay, so you launched Fit Yummy Mummy in 2007. Have you done anything to expand in terms of leveraging that product? What have you done to build your Fit Yummy Mummy brand from that original product, and have you done anything else in other markets or in other brands?
Holly:
If I understand the question correctly, I would say and tell me if Im off what kind of things sprouted out because of this?
David:
Yeah.

Holly:
Okay, because what happened was when we launched this in November of 2007, one of the bonuses that I offered was a 21-day VIP coaching program where Im going to get on the phone live with them each week and theyre going to get daily emails with me for 21 days because we know its important to help them get started in the habit. So I had that personalized coaching from me and from that experience, I was getting 100s of emails a day and that just was not working for me being able to leverage my time, so I was like, hm, we need to do something about this. So I created a Google group and funneled all the ladies to go there and that way they could interact with each other and be able to have access to me. When I answer one question, it helps everybody get the answer. And at the end of 21 days, since it was getting closer to the holidays, we really liked what we had going on so I was like, lets just extend the is through the holidays and then at that point, I was like, you know what, why dont we turn this into an online community so that way Im able to leverage my time, Im able to keep these women in one place that can all benefit from the support of each other and provide resources to them without me having to recreate the same content over and over again. So we looked at the options out there and at that point I was like, theres no way I can charge these women to be part of a community, so what we did was chose to do it free. We used www.ming.com, and it exploded. Within a year, we had 3,000 members and it was really for me because Im asked at this point because we have transitioned to a paid membership site which was a wonderful step forward too, which Ill tell you in a second at that point it needed to be free because like what I said before, I was new to all of this. Nobody really knew who I was, but when people came questioning what I had and what I had to offer, I was like, Hey, go join club FYM. Its free. You get to meet me, you get to see the women I work with. You get to see the results, you get to see what we chat about. You have access to all of these recourses. It was a great segue into that relationship building and people earning trust in what I had to offer because then we know that these women all start talking and they start telling their friends, You need to come join. This is whats happening. This is what you get. It grew so big and were also looking at ways to because once again, I became saturated with everybody

wanting my time and because it was a free site, there are a lot of women who joined this community who were not customers. They never purchased a book. They just went there to see who I was and then were asking me questions and wanted me to coach them one-on-one, and that was not working. So we transitioned to a paid membership site. This is 2010? We launched in it February of 2009, so Id just say over a year of helping to develop my brand and my relationship, my reputation of what Fit Yummy Mummy was, the brand. We saw the need to take it to the next step and transition to a paid membership site and its one of the best decisions that weve done for Fit Yummy Mummy, and it is a significant source of income at this point. We all know the power of continuity programs, and these women, at this point, after a year and a half of knowing me, would have paid double or triple to be able to continue to have access to me and have these resources available to them. They didnt even bat an eye.
David:
So eventually you transitioned from the free community to the membership site. There really was no that transition from free to paid can cause some friction. There was nothing?
Holly:
Oh, yes.
David:
Were there issues? How did you make that transition?
Holly:
Well, I anticipated there being some people who would complain, so because of that, I started about three months ahead of time talking of the fact that I was looking for a way to provide a community that had so much more to give because at that point, it was just, Hey lets blog. Lets share blogs together. Lets meet. I propped up the fact that by me finding a new platform, what Im going to be able to give you is this, this, and this, like an organized form, Ill be able to post workouts of the months. Ill

be able to give you videos. So I started talking about this ahead of time and then talking and having them reflect. I went through a weeks worth of videos where I took them through a series of I think I picked out four or five components of what makes Club FYM so dang unique and wonderful, and I took 10-15 minutes to go over what that component was, talking up the benefits of that, so then at the end of those video series, I led up to the fact that, Hey, now that you know all of this, Im going to take all of this and bundle it together and put it into one fabulous site, and it just built the excitement to the point where they didnt even think twice when I said that they would have to pay to be a member. It was just kind of like, Yeah, its $9.95/month. They didnt even bat an eye. Yes, there were some who did, but then what kind of argument they make because I had already pointed out all of the benefits and its like, okay, and also pointing out to them how much I pour of myself into this and that this is my living. This is what I do and you wouldnt go to a doctor or a dentist or any other professional and say give me, give me, give me, and not have to pay in return. So helping them respect the fact that I have something for you and Im willing to continue to work with you, but its a contract. Its an agreement to be able to continue that. And if you dont want it, thats fine. You have a choice. You may go somewhere else. You may choose to not join. I shouldnt say go somewhere else. That helped to cut down on any types of complaints, and really, there are probably a handful of women who put up a big stink who are now members of the paid membership site because they missed the support so much.
David:
Its interesting that in the internet marketing and what not, you see a lot of people with freebie complexes that are like, Look, you gave me this for free. You need to give me everything for free right now.
Holly:
Yes.

David:
Then you need to give me money as well, or a free workouts or call me for one hour tomorrow. I dont care about your business.
Holly:
Yes, I get that too.
David:
Its very interesting. Thats not strictly to marketing. That translates to everything.
Holly:
Oh, yeah.
David:
Once you have made yourself a person who is worthwhile, a person of consequence, you have to control the demand of yourself. So with that said, how have you outside of making the paid barrier for the membership site, how have you been able to you kind of made yourself the celebrity, right?
Holly:
Yes.
David:
How have you managed to keep your life together, in a sense, with so much demand for you and your time?
Holly:
Well, I found many little systems that Ive had to put into place. Obviously in the and its funny because the relationship I have with these women, because Im on m community daily and there are times when theyre like, Holly, you need to log off and spend time with your family. They are out to protect me as well, which is so awesome.

But what I do is I have a cut and paste reply that when people start to take up my time and its mainly through personal emails what I do is I will give them an answer to the question that they need and very gently say, If you would like continued support, you can find me at. This is where I am. This is what I have to offer, and giving them a link to Club FYM. If they email me again, then its more of a hard response of, Thats a great question and thats exactly what I offer at Club FYM. I hope that you will reconsider joining so you can have access to this as well. Have a great day. So being kind of gentle about it at first, but then letting them know that no, Im not going to continue to answer your questions via email and with Club FYM, what was happening too because I had to set some boundaries is that even though we have this forum where everybody can ask their questions and its not just me answering them, its all the other fit yummy mummies who are now experts in this area. People were still clicking on the personal message button to send me personal messages through Club FYM when they were questions that could be asked in the forum. So I turned that off and I made it very clear on the Contact Holly page. I made a video that said, Hey, Im a busy mom. I have a life. This is how I spend my day and if you need this, then go here. If you need this, then try this. If all other possibilities are exhausted and you need my personal attention, then please fill out the form below. So I go out of my way to set that boundary up front so that way they know that Holly does have a system in place and we need to respect that. Shes not on call 24/7.
David:
And kind of like its like respecting yourself, too, you know?
Holly:
Yeah.
David:
Its hard to that kind of system where you tell people, Look, I do this stuff. It might make some people uncomfortable to tell people no because you dont want to scare people away or make them feel like youre a jerk or that kind of stuff, but its like it has to be done.

Holly:
Yeah, Ive been described as being very loving but firm at the same time. People know that. They know it within the first couple of email exchanges or forum exchanges that Im not going to be a softy and Im not going to validate somebody making excuses or taking advantage of something. I point stuff out and make it known that this is how it is.
David:
Well, youre a businesswoman.
Holly:
If you dont like it, then and Ive had to do it that way. It all goes back to we teach people how to treat us. Ive got way too many people around me that I dont need them all coming down on me at once. It was just freak me out.
David:
Yeah, for sure. And its very, very businesslike and again, not necessary at the same time.
Holly:
Yes.
David:
On that topic and some of this might tie into what we were just talking about.
Holly:
Okay.
David:
Can you name your top three mistakes that youve made and how we can learn from them?
Holly:
Lets see, top three. I have many, right? Number one goes to I would say this started from the beginning was being so concerned about comparing myself to others in the fitness industry.

Always trying to stack up what I had to say based on what everybody else was saying or if somebody else was doing something, did I have to d the same thing? What if I write this and somebody criticizes me? Im not as polished as the rest of the trainers that are out there and somebodys going to catch me saying something incorrectly. I was terrified of that and because I was constantly looking to see what everybody else was doing, I was not focused on what I needed to do and go with what my area of expertise was. So I think that caused its very little at this point, but that was a process I had to go through to understand that I am okay to stand on my own two feet. What I have to offer is unique and no, it doesnt have to align with what everybody else is doing. What I have works for my niche. But it did waste a lot of time and energy in the beginning and while its okay to have a broad scope of what is going on in the fitness industry, that doesnt mean that you have to be worried about what everybody else is doing too. The second mistake, I would say would be being a little bit too much of a perfectionist. This did delay the production of the eBook because I kept going back and trying to refine it and make it sound better and make it look pretty. We all know, and I know Ryans talked about this before, its like who cares? If the contents there and its good and it delivers results, just get it out. You can always go back and revise it, and at this point, the book needs to be revised because its over two years old. Now I can look at it with brand new eyes because now I know my niche that much better. I have two years of experience with the results that the women have been getting and what theyve been asking for, like my Frequently Asked Questions. They all need to go in the book so I dont keep getting the same questions. I wouldnt have known that no matter how hard I worked on that book the first time through. I would never have known this. So theres always going to be a need for revisions. Just get the content in there and stop worrying about it being perfect. Today I find myself doing that when Im writing blog posts and I probably revise a blog post 5 10 times when I just need to get in the zone of writing, get it done and post it and stop going back to reread it. But its okay, so theres wasted time and energy again on being a perfectionist.

The third mistake would be the inability to delegate initially. I have crossed that obstacle now and I am now comfortable to delegate because I do realize that Im really, really good at some stuff and really not good at other stuff, and once again, its wasted time and energy to try to become an expert in all areas of what my business needs. It just is impossible. I wouldnt get anything done. So I have had to and this comes from having a good support system in place. You just cant do this all by yourself. You have to be a part of a mastermind group. You have to hire people to help you, or maybe recruit friends or family or even star clients who maybe are an expert in the area that you need help with and ask them for it.I initially did not because part of it was me being a perfectionist. Part of it was me being worried that nobody would know how to do it the way I do it, and it being out of my control made me very easy. But once I did start to let some of that go, things got done and the business started to grow and I was happier because I was actually just focusing on the things that I was good at and thats what made me the happiest.
David:
For sure, yeah. Things getting done, thats important. Delegating is really hard. Its not easy to give up control, especially if and its funny because theres trust issues and I guess everyone has different trust issues, but I feel like what Im trying to say is everyone has trust issues when it comes to this kind of stuff.
Holly:
Yeah.
David:
Its absolutely almost traumatizing to do it, but then once you commit Everyone that Ive talked to, once theyve kind of gotten past that first step, its like, Oh, yeah, this is the right way to do it. Lets just do it this way and then things work out from there. So on the other end of the spectrum, resources that have helped you along the way. You could say top three, but I always enjoy long lists.

Holly:
I am so fortunate that Im married to one of the most amazing resources. I will just say that up front. Patrick Rigby, obviously my husband, he is my go to source. Together he and his business partner created the Fitness Consulting Group and from there theyve created the Fit Business Insider and not only can I go to him for advice on whether it is getting ready to launch a product, something big like that, or just being able to respond professionally to somebody who might be giving me a hard time. I have somebody that I can go to that allows things to run smoothly. Definitely a plus because I mean, its not just my husband, but because of the support system that my husband has, we are all on a team so we all hold each other accountable. So when it comes to product creation and product launches, its not just me in my own little world saying, Yeah, Ill do it one day. No, Im answering to somebody else and that helps us stay on track with making sure that action steps are being taken and were making progress on this on whatever project or product that were working on. For me, its on a daily basis with me and my husband, but with the rest of the team, its definitely on a weekly basis so having that accountability. Plus his website too allows me a quick glance at whats going on in the fitness industry as far as internet marketing is going on. So just kind of glancing through there and being on top of that. And then of course, a invaluable resource Patrick and I have access to Ryan Lees membership site, The Inner Circle (http://www.ryanlee.com). Thats been we have bookshelves of information that has helped us and just being a part of that has been invaluable. Just information on internet marketing as a whole, definitely; and its stuff that I can go back to time and time again. Because I remember a good two to three years ago, Id look at that stuff and I would just be so afraid of it because none of it made sense to me. But now its just this library that as I come across certain specific things in my business, now I know where to go look. I know what book to pick up or what website resource to go look into because I know exactly what Im looking for and I know how to refine it.

David:
For sure.
Holly:
As far as my specific niche is concerned, my resource for that has been mom-based sites. Ill just say it general like that, but I had mentioned earlier how I had drove into that initially to help get an understanding of what my niche wanted and needed, trying to develop my reputation, increase my relationship with the women that are out there. I was definitely really involved in www.MomsTown.com because these were two women who were helping other women grow their business, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is great. Maybe they can help me. But my support was around me all the time, but I just thought how cool that would be that another woman-based site would be able to help another woman whos building a business. It was a good experience to be a part of that just to see that side from a females perspective because me be a female, going to and attending and having access to all these internet-based resources are all written by a man, so it was nice and refreshing to hear it from a womans perspective. So that really did give me some valuable insight into how to approach and how to handle things and it just went hand in hand with the rest of the resources that I had access to like the other sites that I had mentioned like www.PoshMama.com and www.TwitterMoms. com, are actually two very actually, TwitterMoms.com has just exploded. I think theyre ranked 25,000 and Im a contributor. She wanted me to be on Mondays because thats the most high-traffic day and she wanted somebody who is a reliable fitness contributor, and it just came from me joining the site and posting and she saw me and asked me to be a part of it. So thats been a huge resource there too because not only do I get to get in front of more women, but TwitterMoms, the majority are stay-at-home moms or work-at-home moms who are trying to build their business as well. So theres a lot of business-building tips that are shared on there. Most recently, I remember looking on there about social networks and how to use that to build your business, so its a nice combination. Its a nice crutch. I can just reach in there and grab anything that I need at the time and how it related to whats going on with my business.

David:
Where do you see the future of you and your business? Are you ever going to kind of delve into work-at-home moms kind of stuff, or is it always going to be fitness I mean business as well, thats all.
Holly:
Oh, yeah, it will only be fitness. We actually discussed because I went to speak at a couple fitnessbased seminars about what Im good at, and thats relationship marketing. Thats a component to anyone trying to build their business online. Afterwards, I would be approached by dozens of women because they want to work with a woman and they want to get their fitness business launched and they want advice. We had discussed the fact that maybe I could have a mastermind or something going on, and I really had to take a step back and say, is that really what I want to do? While I understand that that is something that would be so super beneficial to a lot of women out there, its not what Im passionate about. I dont mind speaking about it, but I love pouring what I do have into my Fit Yummy Mummies, and continuing to provide them with the online community. Like with the continuity program that we have, we have a I cant think of the world premiere level? I dont know what to call it. I cant think of it an upgrade that they can do for a membership site where they get DVDs of the month. That keeps me very busy just to film a brand new DVD each month. Creating new products, because actually we just launched our first big-ticket item in October of last year DVD packs that we had a basic level DVD pack for $97, and a deluxe, which is 9 DVDs for $197, and we had about 65% conversion that chose the upgrade. So that was very successful, so that give us and that was just the feedback that we needed that these women are willing to pay money for high-quality products.
David:
Yeah.
Holly:
That made us sit down and say, Okay, what other thing can we create to put a $197 price tag or

higher on that theyre going to be willing to invest in? So at this point, while I know that I have a valuable resource that I could offer to others who want to grow their business, I have a much less stressful time creating products for my clients and prospects. So I see myself continuing to create and provide, hopefully one day being able to provide a pregnancy program that is specific to my Fit Yummy Mummy niche (fingers crossed), and continuing to grow the number of women that Fit Yummy Mummy is reaching because I think at this point in the business, weve sold 5,000 books and how awesome would that be to sell 100,000 books.
David:
For sure, for sure; and thats the whole, you know, you think about how you were before. You were doing the one-on-one training and the group training and imagine if you tell a personal trainer that theyre going to affect 5,000 individuals - unique people they couldnt do that.
Holly:
No.
David:
In 5 10 years, you know? And youve only done that in two.
Holly:
Yes, its crazy.
David:
Thats awesome. Thanks for doing the interview with us. We really appreciate it.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #7
Isabel De Los Rios
Interview with Isabel De Los Rios

David:
Isabel:
I had been writing my book, The Diet Solution for three years and it was my initial intention to sell it as a hardcopy book and go the usual route that most people think about when they think about authoring a book and possibly self-publishing it. When I attempted to do all those things on my own, I was getting absolutely nowhere. I didnt know a thing about marketing. I just didnt even know where to begin.
It was about two or three months of that and I didnt really know what direction I was going to go in or who I was going to go to for help. Now, I had a friend of mine who actually didnt really realize where I was as far as the book process, but said, Hey, I know a couple of fitness guys that are doing some stuff on the internet and they seem to be doing really well actually

selling hundreds of their books, some of them thousands of their books, and theyre just doing it all as downloadable eBooks. Now, I didnt know anything about downloadable eBooks or internet marketing, but I decided to get these videos that this once friend had suggested. Do you want specifics as far as what videos they were?
David:
Sure, we can have specifics.
Isabel:
It was actually Craig Ballantynes Online SuperProfits and I watched just the first two or three DVDs and I knew that these guys were on to something. Now, I had already been on Ryan Lees list, always got email from him, went to lots of his seminars and conferences, was part of his Six Figure Trainer Program back when he had that, so I knew that some people were doing these programs. I just didnt know how to do it with eBooks. I went directly to Craig, asked him for some help, joined his Mastermind group probably the best thing I ever did because I saw firsthand the possibility of the internet, and thats when I decided to completely devote myself to thatno self publishing of the book, none of that. I was going to go full force total internet marketing and create my book as an eBook.
David:
So when that happened, what was your first website? Was it The Diet Solution, or what did you get started with in terms of your website and product?
Isabel:
The first product was The Diet Solution and thats really still my only product, is The Diet Solution Program. So that was my first website, was The Diet Solution Program.
David:
Is there a blog on there as well, or is it just pretty much the sales page?

Isabel:
I do have a blog at thedietsolutionprogram.com/blog. I do a pretty great job of keeping up with that. Its all of my previous newsletters that are on the blog. I have the website and I also have the bog where all my newsletters are.
David:
If you had a typical day and I know this has been a hard question for a lot of people that weve interviewed but if there was a typical day for you with your business, what would that be?
Isabel:
My typical day is I get up pretty early. Its usually about 6 a.m. when I start. I go right in front of the computer and I get my one big task done right away. So I dont even get hung up on email. I try not to check our website fax. I just really try and accomplish one big thing within an hour at least start it. Right after that, I will set up my priority list for the day, or even for the week, and then figure out what my priorities need to be that particular day and I will email that to my business partner. I have a business partner. Unlike a lot of other people, there are two of us that run this and shes in Colorado and Im in New Jersey and we talk once a day. We have a meeting once a day just to talk about what were working on and how were moving forward on that and whether or not we need help. After I set my priority list, I send that over to him, set up a call, and now thank goodness for me, hes pretty flexible. Im not because I have a three-month old. So I set up a call with him, figure out what time thats going to be and then I head to the gym. Hopefully Ive eaten something and I head to the gym. Im usually at the gym for about an hour, come back home and then Im in front of the computer probably from about 11 oclock until about 4 or 5 and its either working on my newsletter, having a meeting with my business partner, figuring out our next affiliate marketing strategy because I do a decent amount of promotions for other affiliates (and we do really well with that). I might be filming videos that day, so do I have some videos to film on that particular day?

Do I have comments to respond to on the bog? We do have a full-time assistant, so do I need to need to spend some time with my assistant asking him what kind of customer service has come in, or sometimes doing some phone calls, whether theyre with other affiliates who are promoting The Diet Solution Program, I do have a lot of people who interview me and then post those calls on the blog. Thats pretty much the majority and then developing your product, which Im always trying to add on to The Diet Solution Program. Over the weekend, I just put together a new series of audio, so that was something I was working on on Saturday. Thats it. Thats pretty much how most of my days go.
David:
So is your main focus pretty much building the business around the main product, or are you looking to branch out and be more broad and get bigger, or is it just like really hammering it home with The Diet Solution and adding onto that, like you just said?
Isabel:
Its really going to be adding on to The Diet Solution Program, but add other products. For example, we want to create The Diet Solution Program for the pre- and post-natal woman, The Diet Solution Program specifically for children. So its an extension of the program that there will be other products. Our main focus now is that we want to create a business around Isabel. We want to really have people be following what Im doing as opposed to having them be followers of The Diet Solution Program have them be followers of Isabel. That seems to have worked for us right from the beginning, so were continuing to go that right.
David:
Yeah, thats like personality marketing, pretty much.
Isabel:
Yeah.

David:
So if you had to start your business over from scratch, which might be your peoples worst nightmare, but if you had to start it over from scratch, what would you do differently?
Isabel:
I would have started videos much sooner. What I didnt realize in the beginning was that people did want to follow me and not just follow The Diet Solution Program. I think we could have created faithful followers a lot sooner if I had done that. So lets say if this business just exploded one day and it was no longer, thats how I would start. Video just seems to work for me a lot better than anything else. Other than that, what else would I do differently or how I would restart it differently, I dont know. I have to say Im pretty grateful. I think the things that weve done have resulted all in some pretty good things. Although we have made mistakes along the way, probably the biggest mistake we made at times is just buying way too many products and not realizing that we had all the information available and we didnt need any more products. We just needed to take action on what we were learning. So I think there was a lot of wasted money there.
David:
Yeah. One of the questions I actually had was the three biggest mistakes. So obviously, one of them would be getting too many products. I was just talking with someone else about this earlier. People will get caught up in the whole reading and the theoretical aspect of stuff because its interesting. The products are interesting. Do you enjoy reading through these books and the eBooks and the products about marketing and stuff?
Isabel:
Oh, I absolutely love it and I could spend my whole day just doing that. And then you havent really implemented everything, so what Ive done in the past, which is a huge a mistake, was I would read three or four books at the same time and there was no implementation on any of the principles.

So if I had to give anybody any advice, it would be grab one book. I mean, I do believe in the power of continued learning, but make sure that you have implemented at least one thing from that book and youre not just reading for the sake of reading. And if its not applicable to what youre working on, then just put the book down and go on to something else. Its like going to a bad movie. Why dont people just get up and leave? So thats what Ive learned. If its not helping me to move forward, then I need to stop right away. The other thing, I think what my business partner and I do now which is very helpful, that we didnt do in the beginning, was these priority lists. There are so many things that you can work on in one day and I just allowed myself to get so bogged down in emails so many times that I wasted a lot of precious work time. Now I do think that you do need to spend some time on email because if I do let it go too long, it just turns into a nightmare, but I think there was a lot of wasted time on low-priority tasks and I think its because sometimes the higher priority tasks are more time-consuming. They require more brainwaves and its like the stuff the you dont really want to do. And then the third thing, I think I would have put more effort into the study of copy writing. I think Ive become a fairly decent copy writer, but I think if I was just going to step away for a week or two and study anything, it would need to be that. Thats a skill set that Im still lacking and something that Im still working on.
David:
I think writing skills, in general.
Isabel:
Yeah.
David:
Even with copy writing, being able to tell a story, being able to communicate with people through words, thats the basis of internet marketing. That is a good asset to have, for sure.

So, if you had a defining moment when you knew this is it; this is what I want to do; this is working; this is what Im going to do; this is my future, in terms of your business online, what was that moment?
Isabel:
Well, lucky for me, it was the second we launched the site. We actually had a very big affiliate who was the first person to promote us. He really, really liked the product and it was actually Mike Geary.
David:
Wow.
Isabel:
He asked us to finish I know, what a great start is that? He asked us to finish the product by a certain date and we hustled and went back and forth with him and we didnt realize the extent of what was going to happen and we actually made more money in three days than I could make at my personal training center. I actually owned a personal training center where it was myself and I had two other trainers working there, and it was a very profitable, successful business, but I ended up making more money in those three days than I had ever made in my business in a whole month.
David:
Wow.
Isabel:
And I just decided that this was it. This was huge. Im not saying that every day is like that, but it really showed me the possibility and the potential of the internet one that I didnt realize. I kind of had heard how much money these guys were making, but never did I see it with my very own eyes in my own personal account, so that was it. It was really that fast and its been a lot of work since then, but Im very fortunate that right out of the gate, we had a really huge beginning, Id have to say.

David:
Well, Mike Geary is like the Oprah of the fitness industry.
Isabel:
Yeah.
David:
He does okay for himself.
Isabel:
Oh, yeah. I have to say you dont have to put this in the interview I feel really grateful that weve become such good friends because hes been such a wealth of knowledge. I really do look up to how hard he worked to get to where he is. So between him and Vince DelMonte and the franchise Ive established with him, the two of them have just been so, so incredibly helpful. And thats not to exclude several many other people that I could on and on and list, but very, very big help along the way.
David:
What was the biggest appeal for you for internet marketing? What drew you in?
Isabel:
What drew me in was that I actually had really lost myself while owning and running this personal training business. I would wake up at four in the morning so that I could get a workout in myself. I would be there all day long, usually get home about seven or eight at night, and finally got a point where I can remember specifically walking out of the center and just crying my eyes out like, where did I go wrong? This is great. This is what everyone dreams about. You have your own business. Its profitable. You have other people working here. You have clients that love you, and I knew that something had to change. I wanted something different. I also wanted to I was dating my husband at the time and after we were going to get married,

I wanted to spend time with my significant other. I also wanted to have children and stay home with them. So my reasoning was probably very different than maybe a lot of the guys, but right now I have a 3-month-old and Im working from home and I have help, which is wonderful. I have a sitter, but I can go upstairs and see my baby at any time and I can structure my day however I want. I can have dinner with my husband, and I can spend time with my parents, who are both retired, during the day with the baby. That was my appeal. Money or no money, if I get to spend my day with seeing my baby, have dinner with my husband each night, see my parents on a regular basis, thats all I need. I dont need much of anything else.
David:
Its actually interesting. Ive only interviewed women so far.
Isabel:
Oh, really?
David:
Yeah, so very similar answer. The first person we interviewed, Kristi Frank, said something very similar, you know, that she gets to spend time with the kids and thats been the biggest appeal for her.
Isabel:
Yeah.
David:
So, whats the biggest asset for your business? Is it the list, is it your personality? What have you found thats helped you the most running it?
Isabel:
Well, I would say its my list because we actually, right from the beginning, although we are very small compared to these big guys that we sort of hang out. For example, Vinces list is like

400,000 people or something like that. My list is 50,000. So, its pretty small but I can really hold my own when we promote other affiliates because I have established such a relationship with my list. That is the biggest asset. If we were to lose anything else, all I would need is my list. Now, I dont know if you want to tie in my personality along with that. Thats what these people have been drawn to and if I had to describe my personality, its just honesty. Thats what Ive given these people right from the beginning and that has been me just being honest and being a real person, not trying to sell them every last thing. If somebody comes to me with something I dont believe in, I dont promote it. Yeah, maybe I could have made thousands that day promoting it, and I think my list at this point has really realized that I am working here from a place of integrity and they are getting honest, honest information from me. So thats really it. Our list is our strong point.
David:
Thats really good advice. Its legitimate. Obviously, being a real person, it sound so simple, but some people might have trouble with that.
Isabel:
Yeah, they do and we even just did a couple of videos and my business partner was like, Well, should you maybe hide the bad food thats in your house? and I didnt because were a real family and theres some bad stuff here. I am a nutritionist, but my list really appreciated that. I kept it real. Thats what I did, just kept it real.
David:
Yeah, exactly; nobody really likes perfect people anyway.
Isabel:
Yeah, or people who you can just tell theyre faking it. Who can eat perfectly 100 percent of the time? I cant. And also, then they know that I can relate to them because I can. I can relate to them. Its hard. I know its hard. I think it makes them feel like were in this together.

David:
Its funny that the three things you just mentioned: honesty, integrity, and that were in this together, are three of the do you know Joe Sugarman? Does that name sound familiar?
Isabel:
Yes.
David:
Those are three of his buying triggers. Which its funny because were talking about how you want to have the integrity and the honesty and it really builds a relationship and so on, but in turn, its going to generate more sales.
Isabel:
Yes.
David:
Which is kind of swept under the rug a little bit because theres some negative I dont know, there shouldnt be any negative feelings towards money, but its the truth. Thats the truth. People like you, theyre going to buy from you. Its definitely its funny. I guess its so ingrained in your character that it works out, obviously.
Isabel:
Right.
David:
If you had one big piece of advice to someone getting started, what would that be?
Isabel:
My biggest piece of advice is finding a mentor is huge. If I hadnt found Craig Ballantyne, I might have just been spinning my wheels a lot longer than just a few months, and now I think a lot of people are afraid to do that because its costly and I spent money on Craigs Mastermind Group that I did not have.

I can remember, he was my boyfriend at the time not Craig my husband my husband now, who I was dating then, I just came home one day or went to his house one day and told him what I was going to do and he was like, Well, you dont have it and I dont have it, but you know what, were going to figure it out. We are somehow, some way going to figure this out because I know this is the way to go for you, and you know what? That investment that I made with him has already we made it back in the first three days that had launched, but it was scary. Its scary when you shell out that many thousands of dollars that you dont have to waste. So I think people need to have a little bit more faith in themselves, realize that it is going to take hard work. It might take an investment, but if you have enough faith that you can do it, find yourself a good mentor and then just emulate what they have done. Thats it. If you take someone successful like you mentioned Oprah before. Look at Oprah. People love her personality. Thats it. She keeps it real. Some people love her, some people hate her. There are maybe as many Oprah haters as there are Oprah lovers, but just people just need to have faith in themselves and not be afraid to invest in a mentor or find a good mentor. Thats it. That would probably be my biggest advice.
David:
I think another thing to take away from the Oprah comment is that even though there are haters of Oprah, everyone knows who Oprah is, you know?
Isabel:
Yeah.
David:
So it doesnt really matter if they hate her because shes so recognizable and thats why she has such a huge influence and is such a great brand. If someone came up to you and wanted specific resources that have helped you along the way, resources that helped create the .com life style, could you name a couple, like three?

Isabel:
Well, I would say first and foremost, Craig, who got me started. His DVDs were very helpful and also working with him one-on-one in Mastermind Group was very helpful. He over delivered on the investment that I made with him, so you know what, as much as it was expensive, he went above and beyond what he needed to do. Probably the biggest example for me of keeping it real and following someone as far as their personality has been Ryan Lee because I dont mind spending money on Ryan because theres such integrity there. I feel like what he wants is the same things that I want. He wants to be with his family. He wants the best for his family. Who doesnt want to spend money on someone who just wants to be with their family? I dont even care that he probably doesnt even need my money. And also, I love to watch his videos because I like to see whats going on in his life. So I took that as my example of how I was going to create my own brand. So Ryan is the Ryan brand pretty much and I wanted to figure out how to create the Isabel brand. And third would be Mike Geary and only because he did share with me his story from the beginning and he really took a huge list financially when he didnt have anything. He sort of found money that he didnt have to waste and he would work at his day job all day long and then work on his internet business all night long, didnt sleep sometimes just to work on it and his whole thing was failure was just not an option for him. He was going to make this work. So he is such an example for me of what faith can do for you as far as faith in yourself and confidence in yourself, and also the potential of the internet. I think Mike is the best example for me and for everyone else, and even Ryan and Craig fit into this category of the potential of the internet because fortunately, my husband does do very well for himself and so do a lot of the executives at this job, but you know what, what they make doesnt even compare to what a lot of internet marketers make.
David:
Yeah.

Isabel:
And these are executives that are doing very well for themselves, and a lot of these guys on the internet have just showed me the potential. Those are the people I probably keep in the forefront of my mind.
David:
I think theres two interesting statistics when it comes to talking about the potential of the internet. One is that the internet is pretty much its like 700+ million people, so theres so much potential of people to market to and people to get to know you. The other thing is that and this is probably not 100 percent accurate, but theres like a couple hundred thousand people a day that see the internet for the first time, which is insane.
Isabel:
Right, new customers every single day. Thats crazy.
David:
So the potential is absolutely enormous. Just to wrap it up, I want to ask you one final question, and that is what is next for you and your business? Whats next for Isabel?
Isabel:
I dont want to disclose any of our secrets, now. Whats next is really creating this video blog and getting that to be pretty big. Im now doing more videos than I am just written newsletters. So thats it. And then the next big project thats already well on its way and going to be launched early next year, is our membership site. Our followers want to see what Im doing on a regular basis, they want to talk to each other. We are actually creating our own membership site from scratch. Were developing the software ourselves instead of just making it. You know, it takes a lot of other people and that is being working on right now. So I know thats going to be pretty huge for us.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
Thats awesome. Im looking forward to seeing how everything turns out. Thank you so much for the interview. We really appreciate it.
Isabel:
Youre welcome.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #8
Jeff Cavaliere
Interview with Jeff Cavaliere

David:
Jeff, when did you create your first info product?
Jeff:
I actually created my first info product a long time ago. I would say probably 2001 or 2002, because I graduated in 2000 from physical therapy school and I always had a love of golf, actually, not baseball. Baseball I loved to watch, but golf is what I loved to play. I created info products on training for golf and power for golf, and it did mildly well for a guy that knew nothing about what he was doing. I just sort of made an eBook and put together some unique ideas. I think that was something that was unique from what was being said about golf fitness at the time, and put it together and had a website made. I made some major, major errors on the website, again due to inexperience, that still make me sick to this day just thinking about it. It turned out to be moderately successful and then I sort of got distracted in building my land business that I was sort of not focusing anymore online. Not that I totally abandoned it, because [inaudible] since coming back to it full speed ahead, but just that I was really trying to build up the business that I knew I could do. I could earn money at a more reliable rate at that time.
David:
When you released your eBook, were you employed? Give me your employee history, I guess.
Jeff:
My employee history is that I graduated from physical therapy school at University of Connective go Huskies back in 2000. I worked for one year in a PT clinic an orthopedic outpatient clinic. Again, in that type of setting, you can see some sports-related injuries, but youre not going to see that many. It depends on the clinic that youre at, but for the most part, Id say about 20% of your patient base will be sports-related injuries. I really wanted to satisfy my needs of wanting to work with athletes.

There I was on motor vehicle accidents, Workers Comp. and things like that and it just didnt feel as rewarding to me. So after one year, I slowly had transitioned myself from 5 days a week to 3 days a week to 2 days a week, and then totally on my own to where I started to serve a hybrid of private physical therapy and sports training. The sports training was again, training for performance, but mostly with guys who had already had some type of injury. Because of being a physical therapist, I knew how to address those needs and to train around those and also to train to try to prevent recurrences of those injuries. That was sort of my love affair and my niche and I found it and knew thats what I wanted to do, so I continued to do that on my own and build up that practice to the point where again, when I left, I had I think, as I transitioned down from that 5 days to 3 days to 2 days, there was a point when I was only working 1 or 2 of those days and had to fill up the other three. But over the course of the next year to two years, I was completely booked to the point where I was working 7 days a week and had a pretty fully client base. At that point, I started to do some baseball training. Id go golf train at the time, also, but I did some baseball training and wound up getting the opportunity to work with one of the guys that was currently on the Mets team, sort of a bench player, but thats when I knew he was because I grew up a Mets fan, so I started to train him individually. He liked what I was doing. He sort of put in a good word for me and when the opportunity came around to act as a physical therapist for the Mets because they were looking for one, I threw my name in the hat and was hired by them in 2006, and worked as the head PT and the fitness strength coach from 2006, 2007, and 2008, and then last yearI had a lot of changes in my life. I had recently gotten married, recently bought a new house in Norwalk, and I just wanted to start to calm down, not as much traveling anymore, and in 2009, I was back on my own again, and thats where I really made my dedication to getting an online presence again because I knew I had a lot of good information. I needed to be able to share with more people than just the people that were locally around me, so thats what my major motivation for me. In that time period also prior to the Mets, I had started to write for Mens Fitness, so that was my first chance to get more of my training ideas,

training methods, injury prevention tips, and things like that. I could get it out to the mass publicly through Mens Fitness and now Ive since tried to continue to build on that with the internet. Im still doing my training. As you know, I had the plane ride back here earlier because I was just finishing up a session. So I still do my training, but its a little bit formulated now.
David:
When you got back you said you started back in the internet stuff a year ago?
Jeff:
Yeah. As far as formulating my thoughts, when the Mets season was over in 2008, obviously a little too early for anybody out there thats a Mets fan, they lost on the last day of the season for the second year in a row. But that sort of freed up the entire month of October for me to startyou know, I had been game planning this a little bit earlier throughout the season, but I started formulating my thoughts of what direction I wanted to go in online knowing that would definitely be an avenue for me that I wanted to pursue. So by the time I had my first product together which we can talk about in a little bit by the time I had that together and released, I would say it was January of 09, so were pretty much talking about one year from that time and then the second program has just become a major success for me fairly quickly. Actually, at one of Ryans workshops, we sort of created the idea, and that was in March, and it sort of I started to concentrate on that in June, so its really been about six or seven months for that.
David:
And have you done well with it?
Jeff:
Yeah, theyre both doing extremely well. One of them the first was my Major League Insider Training, which was really taking everything I had learned every single thing I had learned in baseball from a physical preparation standpoint, from field testing, which nobody really talks

about, but thats what we did every spring training was we put our players through a series of six field tests to determine what their physical level of ability was and then how we could monitor that from year to year with solid objective numbers and see is a guy getting more powerful, is he losing a step, is he gaining some lateral agility and mobility? It gave us some good baseline information on guys who basically just told us about athleticism, so I included those in the system as well; long tossing programs for pitchers, really every single thing that somebody could do to prepare to play baseball, since again, that was my niche. That was what I was in for the last three years, and not only was I able to do that and put that into one I dont know if its called an eBook. I call it a system because it literally is like 187 pages, but it also was the exact program that I had Johan Santana from the pitching side of it, and David Wright from the hitting side of it, that were willing to put their names on the book and the program. That has since sort of opened the door to so many baseball information products that Ive been able to actually team up with Paul Reddick, who is very successful in the online baseball niche, and we put out some great stuff and formed a great friendship around it and still here. Heading into 2010, I think were just starting to pick up steam to what were capable of. Just to give the people out there a sense, since March of 09, because Carl was at Ryans workshop that day when we first met, we have been able to generate almost $250,000 on just our merging of our businesses online.
David:
Awesome.
Jeff:
The ATHLean-X (http://www.athleanx.com), thats my program that I can talk about with you now too. Thats the one that I created at the workshop and released in June, which has really begun to pick up some steam for me lately, especially at the turn of the New Year here. I think people with their resolutions, its become growing fast. I think by the end of 2010, I could easily double the numbers that we made with the baseball site.
David:
Do you pretty much hit the ground running?
Jeff:
I always try to hit the ground running with whatever I do. I like to tell everybody Im a workaholic, which sadly is not too inaccurate, but I hit the ground running and I usually just have a good idea I definitely have a lot of ideas but I have a good idea of what I want to do and how to get there, but sometimes the process itself can be a little bit daunting because Im thinking of too many things at once. So I hit the ground running, sometimes in circles, but always running.
David:
What I mean to say is, when you launched your product, did you immediately have an influx did you have a product launch?

Jeff:
No, no product launch. I put it out there. I used YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) as my sole form of marketing. I had the opportunity to talk to Arnell, who we all know was very successful using YouTube marketing, video marketing. He gave me some ideas. It was funny because I was focused mostly on the baseball early on because that was what I was most familiar with when I came out of the game. The general fitness program, the ATHLean-X program, was sort of my baby and the one that I really wanted to develop, so I had a commitment to, but I have to say early on I would put my first video up and a week later I had nine views and I thought this is certainly not hitting the ground running. This is a little bit tough. It was going to test my resolve, but a couple of weeks later I was like, hey, I got 80 views, climbing, and then Id put out another video and put out another video, and I just sort of stayed true to my commitment to the concept and to giving as much as I could to the people that were actually watching. I appreciate every single view and everybody that wrote into me, I would respond to every person and get back to every single person that had a question to me because frankly, I had the time. Because it wasnt like I was overwhelmed with customer service. I was able to answer everybody question and I think it helped to develop a little bit of a community and relationship between me and my viewers at the time because they really werent customers, and that started turning into customers one or two a week, and then one every couple of days, and then to now where its probably steadily doing about 10 or 15 sales a day now.
David:
Thats awesome.
Jeff:
With really no affiliates. The affiliates thats one of the biggest things Im working towards here in 2010 is letting more affiliates know of the program, because I dont think theres a lot of guys who actually even know of the program in terms of its potential for an affiliate moneymaking tool, but that should change here in 2010.
David:
The thing that you talked about sticking with the concept, how were you able to get rid of doubt, in a sense. You knew it was kind of slow, but you knew you had to do it. How did you make sure that you kept pressing?
Jeff:
I think its just a belief in what I was doing. I truly think that what I try to offer people, and I try to offer my clients even offline, is a unique approach to ideas that are just stale in my mind. I know that what I have to offer is actually that people like it, and I think that I gained that confidence from working with pro athletes because you have to bring the goods if youre going to work with pro athletes. You really do because they get bored. Theyre constantly looking for a change. Theyre the same guys that if go 0 for 4, theyre going to tweak their swing and they may do a major swing overhaul because they think everything is lost all their talents lost. So these guys are constantly changing things and needing things to be unique and different and I was always able to cater to that aspect of the pro athlete, that I had confidence in myself and I knew that the material I had was good. So the whole building an online presence, I just figured it would come with hard work. I have hard guys like Ryan say before hard work I saw when he started. I told him all the time when I talked to him, Ryan, I was there back in 2000-whatever when you had Sports Specific because I knew that I was starting to transition to sports training. I said, Let me see what this websites about. Maybe I can get some training ideas on here. But I saw his evolution from that to what he is today and it hasnt been all roses. He obviously works. I think that being dedicated to the idea and knowing that your stuff is good, that was what continued to drive me. And of course, theres always moments of doubt along the way, but I think you just look for small successes. I mean, really honestly, the first video I put up, I got over 100 views within that same period of time of a couple of days. I was like, all right, there were 10 views when I

first started, so now its 100, and now routinely if I put up a video, if its got 1000 views within a couple of hours, Im disappointed. It shows you how you can continue to grow and reset your goals, reestablish new goals that allow you to continue to be happy and feel like youre making some progress.
David:
Its definitely the concept of the whole believing in the concept is definitely a pro athlete mentality believing in the coach.
Jeff:
Yeah.
David:
Thats almost exactly what I was reminded of.
Jeff:
You know what too, Dave, when I went there, I was hired by the New York Mets having never spent the day in the Minor Leagues. Thats very, very unique. It might have only happened maybe once or twice before in the history of the game. Most guys have to spend time in the Minor Leagues. Hey have to go through A ball and AA. Im not even saying from a baseball player standpoint. Im talking about a staff member a medical staff member or a training staff member or strength coach. Those guys always usually go through the ranks. I was fortunate to not have to do that. But along with that came some tough tests where the first day I walked into spring training, guys are looking at me like, who the hell is this guy and can he bring some game with him? I think what allowed me to do that was being able to communicate with these guys, giving them some unique things, and then having those things actually produce results. Im not going to just sit up there and start telling them what to do. Them getting to know what I was able to do for them, then them coming to me and then trusting in me to do what I told them to do. I think the easiest part, that was it, because once they started to do it and they saw results, then the trust is there and now they have that belief in the coach that youre talking about. That was sort of the whole it made my transition from never being around

these guys in the Minors to sort of bursting on the scene in the Majors to actually earning a spot and being able to stay there.
David:
If you had to start your internet business over from scratch, is there anything youd do differently?
Jeff:
Yeah, I think if I had to start over, Id probably would have saved some money on Pay Per Click that I tried in the beginning for baseball. Pay Per Click is like an area that I still dont understand, and its funny because with my baseball partner, Paul, that I spoke of; Paul is an ace at it. Pauls all over Pay Per Click. I probably lost all my money to Paul because my audience and his audience was the same in the beginning there and they were just clicking on it to see my stuff, but I was wasting my money. I probably would not have done that. I would have definitely produced a little knowing that I would have an audience here for my stuff, I would have produced probably a few more videos at the time. Again, when youre building your belief, just because I had a belief in my what I did, didnt mean I was ready to commit whole heartedly to it and do nothing but film videos all week and put stuff out there, so I only did like one every couple of weeks, one every two or three weeks. And I wasnt really building up enough of a community that way or tried, as other guys would call it. But since then, I have since now increased the frequency of those videos and it has mattered because the more videos that you have up there, the more people can potentially find you. Think about it if I dont put up a video for task training, which I havent done yet, there might be a whole little niche group of people that are looking for just calf building workouts that theyre not looking for anything else online but a calf building workout, and by me deciding to put one up tonight, then Im going to reach a whole new group of people and a new group of potential customers. So I think having more of a commitment to putting videos out there, a variety of videos out there earlier on, would have helped speed this along. But I really dont have any regrets about that. Business would have changed I would have changed it knowing that I had an opportunity to push a little bit more.

David:
What was the defining moment for you when you knew that online business was the way to go?
Jeff:
I had a couple. One of the greatest ones was actually with the baseball product. I had a guy write to me and Im a big baseball fan, so Im a sports fan, so I always watch everything, but the World Baseball Classic this past year, the Netherlands played and they beat the Dominican Republic, which was a huge, huge upset. The Netherlands are not know for organized baseball, but they are definitely getting better at the game and growing fast and have some pretty powerful guys over there. I had a guy from the WVC team that competed and beat them by the program, by Major League Inside Training Program, and said that they were adopting it as a team strengthening and conditioning program. Now for me, it made me happy. It made me proud because I realized there is no way that this guy is going to know anything about my program or anything else if Im not marketing online. I dont have that kind of global reach to have people find me if I wasnt online. That was really cool for me. I think that was when I really said, you know what, I can reach so many people and be so much more effective this way than I can just treating the people within my local radius here.
David:
Thats awesome. Thats really cool. Those are always good. If there were three must-have resources that have helped you along the way, what would they be?
Jeff:
Must-have resources not to blow smoke here at all, honestly Ryan Lees stuff (http://www. ryanlee.com). I would just say all of his stuff because thats what I started with. Thats where I got the idea to pursue an online business in the first place. I know his focus has changed from marketing to fitness professionals to now marketing to anybody that wants to bring their ideas online. Really, I dont think I would have learned about it if it hadnt been for me finding his stuff at an earlier age. It was definitely at the right point of my career.

I think his stuff has only gotten better. You can ask Ryan. I buy all of his things. I continue to learn to him.
I think I would get let me think of something good here. Ill tell you another resource that does help me a ton has been Mike Hills stuff on CPA Marketing (http://www.mikehill.com), only because I think theres so much stuff that you can learn. CPA is not for everybody. We all know that. And its not even appropriate for a lot of offers, but the way that people are marketing via CPA right now, if you just a lot of people talk about that book, Predictably Irrational. You know that book, right Dave?
www.ryanlee.com

David:
Yeah.
Jeff:
When you start to get into the whole mechanisms of why people buy and what the emotional triggers are, if you go back and you start using CPA marketing, theres so many clever things that they have across a small area space on a page. Theyre all cleverly added for the sole purpose of increasing conversions. I think that you dont have to create CPA offers, you can just study the mechanisms theyre using to tap into the same psychological triggers. For me, its really, really cool stuff. I kind of get into the psychology of buying. I would suggest Mike Hills program because it just goes into such depth through transcripts and through I think theres like 19 DVDs or something like that. Its incredible how much depth he goes into on that. I would say just really another resource for me would be YouTube and understanding how to utilize video marketing. If someone wanted to after the understood how to do that, they know that YouTube is just one of many. Something along the lines of TubeMogul (http://www. tubemogul.com) or Traffic Geyser (http://www.trafficgeyser.com), those have also helped me to distribute videos to a larger audience. Right now I think those sort of my three foundations for what I use to get my material out there. Lastly, too, one thing if youre starting out and youre just getting started, try to learn as many skills as you can on your own. Im not saying you should be great at it, but sort of learnI had no idea how to do Photoshop a year ago, and now I bet you I can create Flash banners, logos, and Im not super smart. I just like to dig myself in and learn a little bit about what I can do because when youre just starting out, you dont want to have to pay everybody for everything. You have to have the budget to pay everybody for everything, so if you can sort of learn some of these skills on your own and not have to outsource right away, it allows you to save some money, and then at the same time, once youre able to afford the ability to outsource, you kind of know exactly what youre looking for. You can communicate a little bit easier about what youre looking for your graphic designer to create for you, or what kind of effect, because you know youve used the program for.

Thats just one example, but I would say try to learn as many different ways that youre going to need to run your own business without using outsource.
David:
Yeah, for sure. I think in terms of learning all the stuff on your own, theres definitely a fine line because as much as you want to learn everything, theres also finding when its time to delegate, but I guess youre right in the sense that in the beginning, if you have no money, it doesnt matter if you want to delegate or not because you cant.
Jeff:
Right. You can always get creative too. Ive heard of guys that have delegated to interns at local community colleges for computer programs, like a guy thats studying computer programming or your need a guy to do a website for you, you can get an intern to help you. So theres creative ways to delegate and still save money, or make it free, but I think that if you can learn some of those skills early on, its when you have the ability to do it, if you have that some of that time because again, when I was only processing an order a week for ATHLean-X, I certainly had time. There wasnt that much customer service coming in that I had to handle on my own. I could do that and I could learn how to sort of okay, this is exactly how I would do customer service, so let me see if I can systemize this so that when it does become time, when I need to delegate this to someone to do customer service for me, I can teach them and show them, This is how I would have answered this question. This is sort of the way I feel about this. It gives me a system to hand over. So I always think theres something to do if you do have the downtime. I spend a lot of time to make it a little more productive. But youre totally right. There comes a point in time where you cant grow anymore unless you delegate.
David:
Yeah, whats it called, what you just described is actually a concept from the e-myth about making an operations manual, is that when you hire people, youre just like, Here, this is what you do, and its an easy transition.

Jeff:
Yeah, its so important because thats how all the major brands operate. I think I read the same book and they were like McDonalds or Starbucks from their uniforms, to how they greet people, to how to up sell people, do you want fries with that, whatever. Everything they do, everything is systemized and organized to the point where it doesnt matter whether they open a McDonalds in Toronto or they open it here or they open it in California. Its all going to operate the same way, and to me thats awesome. If you can do that, if you can systemize it like that, its totally, totally turnkey and it makes it that much easier for you to delegate. I think it makes it easier from a mental standpoint, from the guy that has to delegate because a lot of times we, as internet entrepreneurs, probably feel its a little hard to delegate because you feel like, Im not sure if theyre going to do it the way I do it. So if you have something that systemized that it almost takes that anxiety out of it.
David:
So whats next for you and your business?
Jeff:
Big things in 2010; really the major focus is still on my two strengths, which are baseball information products and training. I have some pretty exciting things coming out there. Actually, David Wright and I are going to probably team up for some sort of a workout program again.
David:
Awesome.
Jeff:
Maybe even through video; so thats going to be exciting. Were supposed to talk about how were going to do that, but that should come later this year. And then for ATHLean-X, basically what I want to do with that is, I want to include women in 2010; you know, designing a program for women.

Thats going to be really, really, I think, totally cutting edge and different from a lot of the stuff thats been out there so far. And were growing the mens program into lots of different variations to make sure that every single guy gets a chance to utilize the training principles that are in this program, no matter how they prefer to work out. Some guys like to go the gym, some guys like to work out at home. Some guys only like to do body weight. Some guys like to follow along on a video. Every single method for addressing the principles of this system are going to be covered in 2010, so Im excited and were going to have some top secret stuff that were working on too. I should be able to share a little bit more information hopefully in a couple of weeks, but really, really cool stuff coming from ATHLean-X, too.
David:
Thank you so much for the interview. We really appreciate it.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #9
Jeremy Gutsche
Interview with Jeremy Gutsche

David:
First off, how do you pronounce your last name?
Jeremy:
Its Goo-Chay. I have extra consonants to make it more tricky on people.
David:
Im always messing up peoples names speaking, so Im glad we got that cleared up. Jeremy, how long have you had www.trendhunter.com for?
Jeremy:
I started Trendhunter, I guess I launched officially in January 2006, but it was something I was working in 2005. Its the kind of background that was I was always an entrepreneur at heart and I wanted to find my perfect idea for a business, but it never came about and so I started Trendhunter as a place where people could share business ideas and was hoping along the way that I would get inspired for my own and then the Trendhunter business itself ended up being what I ended up pursuing.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
You said you were an entrepreneur. Did you do anything online before Trendhunter? Give me your entrepreneurial journey, if you will.
Jeremy:
Sure. We can go back when I was trying to have a lawn mower business or painting decks and fences. I was always trying to think about what my little company might be from a very young age and almost everything I did along the way was about trying to figure out journey. I was always into technology and back in 1995 I had my first versions of websites up in the University. I had kind of I guess Ill call it a fake web design business that basically was doing a couple of clients here and there and then I became a management consultant because I wanted to try and get exposure to more companies and find out what they were all about, and then I moved to Capital One where I ran their innovation group and one of their business lines so that I could experience running a real business with real money behind it. While I was working at Capital One is when I started working on Trendhunter in the wee hours of the morning. So Id get home and code until 3 am and slowly build the site, and then after about a half year of coding, I was launched and it sort of became an ongoing thing where I was always working on improving and enhancing different parts of it.
David:
So the premise behind Trendhunter is finding trends so that businesses can see whats going on and take advantage of these trends?
Jeremy:
Yeah and really were looking for ideas, and so if you look at the front of page within the articles that well put on, well try and talk about what the idea behind it is, either that or the first part of our title. Youll never see the first part of our title be a keyword about a specific product. Its always sort of what could the idea maybe be, and then in terms of how we can actually use that to identify trends.

Weve got about 60,000 of these crowd-sourced ideas and well call them micro-trends, but articles on the site- and then we have about 140 million views come through the site in all time and we can kind of look at the patterns of where people are looking and then what are the interesting little clusters that arise based on that. So if we see a whole bunch of articles that are all about a certain theme taking off, then theres maybe something there and as an entrepreneur, you could use that to kind of spark some of your new ideas, spark an ad campaign, and then you get an idea for a business in itself altogether.
David:
It kind of helps you find niches, really.
Jeremy:
Yeah, absolutely.
David:
So how exactly does Trendhunter work? Its looks like its very robust, so you probably have a big staff.
Jeremy:
Well, we have a lot of contributions coming from all over the world, so I guess, in total, about 30,000 people have signed up and could be contributors, although its always a smaller group that adds the most content. What happens is, when someone submits an article, then our editor team will take a look at it and kind of bring it up to the quality standards that we need to publish it, and then set it to publish on the front page, and any given day we publish anywhere between 50 and 200 articles on our front feed.
David:
So that team is doing that all day, pretty much.
Jeremy:
Yeah, and weve got three full-time editors and then well have interns on top of that.

David:
Lets start from the beginning with Trendhunter. When you finally launched it, did you start with a staff and was this something did you plan on it kind of growing in this way, or was it just
Jeremy:
Well, it was my passion and my love, I guess, that wrapped in the things that I like the most, which would be hunting for articles of innovation. Its the examples of something whether its in pop culture, design or technology, so I really like that. And I really like graphic design and I really like the problem solving that comes along with programming. So all three of those things meant that this was always the hobby for me and at the time, I didnt know exactly how far it could go. That would obviously be based on how its grew. And after about a year of doing it on my own, theres a decent community of people that would be contributing regularly. Theres one young woman, I think in 2007, Bianca Bartz, who was always asking how she could get more involved, more involved. You know, Can I come to Toronto and see your office, and at the time the office was just my condo, right, so, yeah, my office, sure. But anyway, Bianca became the first full-time person working on Trendhunter then, as an editor, even while I was still working at Capital One. So then for about 8 months, she worked virtually out of her local Starbucks in Victoria and we would sort of check each day on how the articles were going and then that let me really focus on the marketing and developing the site itself. I think the tragic thing that happens with a lot of entrepreneurial monies is that you get trapped into a corporate job where the pay keeps increasing the longer you stay and that makes it more difficult to take that jump. At a certain point I just had to make that commitment. Okay, I was staying for one more bonus and then I did that and then I joined Trendhunter full-time and I think that was about 2 and a half years ago and I got to work on my full passion and hobby as my job.

David:
So what was the defining moment when you knew that this was the way to go and that this was going to sustain and you could do this?
Jeremy:
As the site grew, it grew pretty quickly and it was making money, but I threw a lot of that back in advertising. I guess its interesting when you try and think about what that defining moment is. In my case, a decent proportion of my compensation came in the form of my yearend bonus as a sort of business director, and so I probably would have left about 6 months earlier if it wasnt for the idea that youre hanging in for just that extra period. So when I did leave, we had a couple of very harried months, and it seemed obvious to me that thats what I should be doing full time. But the year before, you know, was a difficult conversation in my head with myself. I love that terminology. But just that whole idea of do I leave, and do I take that leap now? You can always argue that maybe it would have been better to leave earlier and then be more aggressive about building it an extra year of my full-time work, but I think the reality is youve got to kind of figure out when the timings right for you and not make too much of a risk and thats sort of the toughest thing that was going on when I was making that sort of transition. So what I did end up doing is for my last 6 months, I went down to four days a week and a full-time job which gave me a little bit more time not just because youve got that extra one day, but because youre no longer expected to have weekend work, so you get a little bit more breathing space.
David:
Yeah. And how old are you?
Jeremy:
Im 31.

David:
Nice. And you mostly monetize Trendhunter.com through advertising?
Jeremy:
Yes. We have advertising; sell people ads, and then advertising banner impressions, but we also sell our insights to companies that are looking for a little bit more depth in terms of patterns that were seeing, and so theyll pay us $1500 for our Trendhunter.com pro accounts and our trend reports.
David:
Cool. Thats really cool.
Jeremy:
Yeah, and its all sorts of companies from ad agencies, consulting firms like Boston Consulting Group, or like Pepsico, Microsoft, E-Bay, these sorts of things.
David:
So its pretty much theyll ask for a report on a specific type of trend, or is like they just want access to all of the data you have?
Jeremy:
No, we have a standard report, so basically what happens is we look through that 140 million views of data and the 60,000 microtrends and then we look for the very best stock in the patterns that emerge from that, and so based on that, we put together what we call clusters, and we write them up in terms of their business implications, and thats what we feature on Trendhunter.com/Pro, and the non-registered member, you can maybe see half a dozen of them with different insights, but as a registered member, you get the research that also has some of the quantitative data and 700 examples instead of the three dozen that you get on the site.
David:
So would you call yourself a math and statistics kind of guy?

Jeremy:
I did graduate from Finance and then at Capital One that was always a pretty big part of the role, and then a chartered financial analyst, so that is probably what make me one of the only people in the innovations space with that kind of background, but I think a lot of what you learn there lends itself really well to the field of innovation and that really, when youre trying to come up with new products, youre looking for more of a quantitative approach to know what youre doing and approach those things with a portfolio and a little bit of the systems that youre more likely to be successful, than just doing everything in a very ad hoc way.
David:
If youre the only guy that has a financial background in the field of innovations, then you could say that youre innovating the field of innovation.
Jeremy:
Well, there you go.
David:
Lets talk about innovation. Were there any similar sites like it? I have to assume that there are now, I dont know, but was this something that you saw someone else doing and said, I can do it better, or was it like, No ones doing this. I should do this.?
Jeremy:
Yeah, so theres sort of a thing where the traditional trend spotters, if you will, that are out there in the world, the ones that are sort of historical renowned, are people who are, I think, much more the collect the articles that they find most important and feature those, whereas I was looking to create the first more crowd-source concept, and theres no others that are doing the same business model as us. What were really trying to do is the crowd submits a whole bunch of ideas, puts them all out there, and then crowd filtered them as well. We kind of see what people gravitate towards and see whats important. So were the only one thats doing that, especially at the scale that were working at. In terms of our front page, I mean, you can also compare us to many blogs that

are out there. The difference would be that instead of featuring all these random ideas, were trying to push them just a little bit further to watch that business idea behind them.
David:
So for entrepreneurs trying to be innovative and I was just talking to someone in my last interview about a unique selling proposition, I guess, about that whole concept. I want to say, how do you innovate, but you cant really answer that question. Give me some good concepts or principals of innovation. If youre looking to be a successful entrepreneur and looking to be innovative and start something new and great, how do you give us
Jeremy:
My background, of course, is all in innovation, so thats a big sort of motive in what Trendhunters about. For me, its a tool. I have a book that came out in September called Exploiting Chaos, which is 150 ways to spark innovation during times of change.
(http://www.exploitingchaos.com)
www.ryanlee.com

David:
Im putting it in my Amazon shopping cart right now.
Jeremy:
Oh, excellent. Cool. You can also read a full first part for free at http://www.exploitingchaos. com. But the thinking that we threw out there is that from my experience as a management consultant, and then even here in the financial services world, what tends to happen is that at the entrepreneurial level or at the most senior strategic levels of an organization, people approach innovation in an ad hoc way. They start to act on their gut instincts and if you instead look at a few pharmaceuticals where theres billions of dollars poured into literally harnessing human creativity, then we know that having a business procedure that portfolio approach actually does make a pretty big difference. So then when you think about it like that, some simple ideas you might you come up with may be, be methodical, find ways to leverage the trends that are going on around you, and when you innovate anybody with a portfolio, which would mean youve got a whole bunch of bets that you think are certain to win, but you also make sure that youre always pushing the envelope and trying some things that are a little further out there, and that sort of portfolio approach is what will help you to find those next big wins. When theres the analogy that I often think of is the idea of a hill. Anything that you do in the world, youre sort of the best of the world on that hill and the problem with being the best in the world is that you always can find a higher point on the hill so you tend to locally optimize and just find the perfect tweaks to your product that can help you sell a little bit more. That kind of thinking can stop you from finding new hills. The example that I use in my book is Smith-Corona. Smith-Corona is the company that invented the typewriter and either they came up with the first personal word processor and had a huge list of innovations, but would prove to you that that they were one of the most innovative companies in the world. But the problem is, they never got out of the wonderful world of typewriting because they could always make a better typewriter and their biggest, biggest clients were all these multi-national corporations and governments and they kept buying

typewriters. And because you couldnt always tweak the typewriter and then let people save their writing to a disk and add spell check and search and replace and all these wonderful things to a typewriter, Id rather get into that undeveloped computer market. Because they never even had a little bit of innovation going on the side, they never it blinded them from that bigger hill of opportunity so they never re-invented. So then the question for the innovators is how can you make sure that youre always looking for that next hill?
David:
I heard some finance talk in there as well, your bets on your portfolio. My friends being talking about options a lot recently, so Im very familiar.
Jeremy:
Yeah, for sure. I think if you finance is another really good field because theres probably no other field where risk is kind of understood and tolerated. You can argue all the while theres been a collapse in the financial market, but this, in the last couple of years, the best stakes and a lot of other really advanced things that people were doing, were for the fundamental basics of having a portfolio of bets and having some things that are high risk and some that are medium, and some that are low. Its something you can easily apply to innovation and then youre not simply innovating based on your gut instinct. Youre actually being a little bit more measured. Youre seeing what works and theres some lower risk overall to what youre doing.
David:
Lets talk about risk for a second, then. One of the big I might be using this word wrong, but credos of entrepreneurship is take action, right? And for me personally, Ive always kind of felt that that phrase could be misused because its take action like break down doors and just run bear forward, but when Im thinking that things should be a little more calculated. How do you judge risk in terms of taking action, moving forward and knowing whether to take that risk; knowing whether its too much risk. How do you do that when its not finance when its not all numbers?

Jeremy:
Yeah, I think a lot of this comes from having a really solid understanding of your customer and we think we understand our customer because we have been in this market and we know more than they do in whatever industry were in. But the more we know about whatever your industry is, the more you actually lose touch with what a very first-time customer thinks of when they evaluate your product or service and if you really understand them, then these bets wont seem as big of bets because youll know theres already groups of people that are already excited. And what you really want to do is find a way to make your product irresistible to a specific group of people. As that group finds your topic interesting, theyll talk about it enough then you will get an overflow into other markets. And so it comes to understanding in that group and knowing if your product or deal is irresistible, there are different things you can do. A lot of it means that follow-up of a traditional form of customer knowledge which is lets do some focus groups and lets do a couple of surveys. Thats really interacting with them, observing them, watching the product use. Theres a number of examples that I wrote about in the book, but one of my favorites was a guy that I interviewed. He was the head designer for GM, and I asked him about the Escalade because the Escalade, when it took off, it became the biggest hit for SUV Sports Vehicles, the biggest selling, by dollar value, in the United States. The reason, of course, is its adoption into Hip-Hop culture. So I asked him, How did you infiltrate all the places and all the rap videos, or what did they do? He said, Well, Jeremy, I interviewed white affluent males age 45-60. Okay, thats threw out everything I knew about marketing. But the point would be, as soon as he saw that and realized that the designer didnt really understand their new customer, he personally decided to go to one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Detroit. And think about who was driving the Escalade in the most dangerous in neighborhood in Detroit.
David:
Okay.
Jeremy:
He walked up to the guy and he said, Excuse me, Sir, but I designed this vehicle and I was wondering if I could accompany you on a ride along side your business for the day, which was pretty intense. But you know, for that guy, this vehicle was a part of his lifestyle. Its a pretty important aspect for his culture, and so he loved the opportunity and the next thing you know, their rider gets to spend a day with someone in a very different demographic, really understanding what makes his vehicle so hip and exciting and then that, of course, forms the basis for all the next innovations that he was going to come up with his new Escalade. There are a lot of these examples like that. Capital One, I took my entire product design team across the country and we would work kiosk booths where you couldnt even apply for the product, but it was just simply so we could talk one-on-one with customers and in Canada, understand what they resented about the big five banks and what words did they use instead of the more advanced words we were used to using on the backend. And that led us to some really big breakthroughs. We got our senior executives to spend a day getting trained on how to work in a customer service call center and just answer customer complaints and understand more about the product from that angle. But its these sorts of things that help you get a lot more customer insight and then these big to tie it all back, these big risks that you take with new innovations, they wont be so big. Theyll seem more logical.
David:
I think that example with the Escalade is awesome. Thats kind of the great thing with the internet now. With social media and being able to create these kinds of relationships with your customers, because you know, every company has a Twitter account. Every company has a FaceBook account now, and theyre all trying to interact. Thats how it grows the whole relationship and it kind of does your selling and product creation and profits for you, almost.

Jeremy:
Oh, for sure.
David:
Youre like, We want this. Theyre like, Okay, well make it for you. So, it makes the profits so much easier. But I was just thinking the example of the Cadillac I remember seeing a video when I was in middle school about MTV. Theyd send people into teenagers houses and see what clothes they would wear and all of that stuff to kind of get a better grasp on the demographic, I guess.
Jeremy:
Yeah, MTV is a really neat example. There are a couple of other things that are neat, though. One was they just celebrated their 25th anniversary, but they didnt instead of making a big deal about it, they hid the fact and you wouldnt find that from anywhere no press releases or nothing on their website because they didnt want to be associated with 25 years old. They just want to keep on inventing. Another example, too, in my book I forget the name of the guy, but he was one of the first execs launching the MTV business. I dont want to say the wrong name, but anyway, what he had said in the beginning that he would actually fire anyone who didnt fail enough in terms of trying new products and new angles when they got into that MTV market because he realized that they needed to completely depart from everything else theyd been doing in traditional broadcasting.
David:
Yeah. I guess thats kind of like Everything is kind of changing, you know?
Jeremy:
Absolutely.
David:
The whole word of marketing and whatnot theres notraditional is bad now. Thats not a

term that you want to be associated with, I feel like, when youre running a business because its suchyou cant rely on it because everyone is innovating and thats why youre site is so good. Its just really cool. Where did you go to school?
Jeremy:
I did my undergrad in Finance at Universities Calgary, and then I did my MBA at Queens in Canada and then I also studied some education innovation programs at Stanford. And of course, I took the chartered financial analyst thing just for fun.
David:
Just for fun, yeah.
Jeremy:
Just for torture.
David:
Yeah. Give me some good resources that have helped you along the way like books that have helped you. It sounds like the Stanford classes were pretty cool.
Jeremy:
Yeah, absolutely. They were cool. But also, any books that are kind of in this innovation space can help you to really expand your mind. Theres another book which was an inspiration for my book, and its by a guy named Paul Arden and hes the creative director for Saatchi & Saatchi for 25 years, and its called, its not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be. Its subtitled The Worlds Best Selling Book by Paul Arden, as in, his only book. But thats a really neat one just about thinking base in terms of how youre trying to position everything. I really like Made to Stick which is all how you would position your product and break through all the clutter. What would be some other ones? Well, obviously Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is pretty influential. A couple other books like Seth Godin, like The Dip, can kind of help you think

about how youre pushing your product and how you want to position everything.
David:
Tell me about the lifestyle now. You sounded like financial stuff might have been a little torture. Do you feel like is every day the best day of your life? Do you wake up and youre like, I love what I do.
Jeremy:
I think the really neat thing for me and everyone who works at Trendhunter, is we like to think of this as a hobby, not just a job, and by definition, were looking for the coolest, most viable content from the net. Because of that, were really in the know of the things that are interesting and unique, and yeah, because of that, it doesnt really feel like a job. I often spend a lot of time doing speaking gigs. I do anywhere from 5 to 10 gigs a month here in North America. So that takes up a pretty big portion of my time, but its fun too because then you get to connect with people who are on the site or customers of the trend reports and instead of just creating these digital products and sending them into outer space and the blogisphere, you actually get to see theres people behind the readership numbers, and thats always really fun.
David:
Yeah, its always like, its interesting, because youll see stats like 9 million pages a month or whatever. You always forget that translates to a couple million people and theres an individual person. Its not just some statistic. Its like a real, living breathing human being that is interested in what youre doing.
Jeremy:
Yeah, I totally you can get lost in it and forget about that.
David:
Yeah. Thats always very impressive. I feel like sometimes it does get devalued on the internet space.

Jeremy:
Yeah, well, you start looking at these numbers and youre sort of comparing yourself to the numbers you had yesterday, and you forget that theres small towns every hour that are looking at your content, which is kind of neat.
David:
Thats a good way to look at it. I have a whole town reading my site.What does the dotcom lifestyle mean to you?
Jeremy:
I think that people that are sort of in the dotcom lifestyle, the people that are working with companies like Trendhunter or at Trendhunter, have a new interesting opportunity, which is that we have started reaching out to quantities of readers that are unheard of in terms of traditional publications for how short a time that we can be in the space and people that are in that dotcom land kind of have a unique insight right now that puts them so far ahead of many traditional companies, that the world has kind of opened. Its really interesting both from the pace your career perspective, but also just how connected everything in that space happens to be, and you see an author whosIll give you an example. Theres a woman named Margaret Atwood and shes probably 70 years old, very famous Canadian author, but she loves Twitter and if you were to send her a message on Twitter, shell send you a message back. So here you have this famous author and emails she sends, she happens to be in an extremely connected segment of people, and because she has that dotcom lifestyle, you can actually reach her because shes quite happy to communicate with you. But the worlds become a lot smaller, and its neat to see that group that understands it.
David:
Yeah, I think thats one of the biggest appeals is that its no longer the celebrities are unreachable. Like Ashton Kutcher, has a million followers on Twitter. Theyre like, Oh my God. I want to talk to Ashton. So its so funny. I think thats really cool and it allows everyone to be a celebrity if they really work at it, you know?

Jeremy:
Yeah, Ashton Kutcher has Tweeted our site a couple of times and our content as well, so when I was trying to influence Kanye West, I was trying to think of a launch stunt for Exploiting Chaos when it came out. What we ended up doing was we created an Epic Hi-Five battle 5,000 Hi-fives with strangers in 5 minutes, and basically, we had 50 people dressed up like Kanye West with the shades, and 50 people dressed up like Ashton Kutcher with the hat, and we ran around a very busy downtown square just hi-fiving like crazy. It was pretty fun way. Instead of having a normal launch party, to do something different and make a viral video out of it.
David:
Thats awesome. Thats really cool.
Jeremy:
Yeah, we had 350,000 views on Trendhunter, and about 150,000 views on YouTube.
David:
Awesome. My last real question before we wrap it up, if there were any mistakes that you made along the way that we could learn from, like three big mistakes if there are three big mistakes what would they be?
Jeremy:
I think that we make a lot of mistakes almost on purpose because were looking for fast visual context, so when you come up with a new site design, were just roll it out, or we even develop things on a live server, and because of that, we can get a whole new design out in literally a day or two and well get comments from people when certain parts of it are messed up in different browsers that we maybe didnt see, but that all helps us move a lot faster. I think there are certain mistakes that I would say can happen would be moving too slow with ideas and maybe sometimes we have an idea, but it sits on the deck for a couple of weeks because we have the thing we are working on. Another one would be making the mistake to not quit earlier and maybe getting that idea in

the business a whole year earlier could have been made a pretty big difference. And then the last one, Ill be very technical. I wanted to put a lovely shadow on the side of Trendhunters border and I thought it would look pretty smoking hot, but a day later when traffic dropped by 40%-50%, I realized that it was because my simple little border caused peoples Internet Explorer not to see the website, and apparently a lot of people use Internet Explorer.
David:
Apparently, yeah, unfortunately. Youd think people would move on by now.
Jeremy:
Yeah. This is actually a year or two ago, so yeah, it was pretty funny. Just a little border, and you dont always think that a small change is going to impact the rest of the different browsers. Always test it.
David:
Thats the great thing about html is its like, Why cant I just put this picture here? I dont understand it. Why is it breaking?
Jeremy:
Yeah, exactly.
David:
Jeremy:
If we rewind a year and a half ago, this business was me and another person working on it, so just two. Now suddenly, with the developers that we have and the interns and everyone, weve got about 15 people motoring along. So thats a pretty big change, so this year we spent a lot of time really just trying to figure out how we work everything together and the best systems for developing things.

I think over the next year it will be really exciting because were going to start making Trendhunter much more useful for people that come to us looking for how to get inspired and get a new idea. That means trying to make it a lot faster for people and inspiring within the category of whats interesting to them. I dont necessarily what that means just yet, but I know thats where we want to go and I think that always should be a neat trajectory to watch unfold.
David:
Awesome. Well listen, thank you so much for doing an interview with us. I enjoyed it.
Jeremy:
Thank you very much and good luck with all the interviews.
David:
Thanks.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #10

Jim Kukral
Interview with Jim Kukral

David:
Really quick before we start, I was just looking through your site. I really like thebizwebcoach. com the squeeze page you have set up there thats your writing?
Jim:
Yeah.
David:
I think thats awesome very unique, Id say.
Jim:
Thank you, yeah. Actually, its really not that unique. I got the idea from Bill Glazer, whos the master who does that.
David:
And Im sure it still converts, doesnt it?
Jim:
Absolutely. People come and they read it and they sign up and I get five to ten people on that page a day to sign up.
David:
Thats awesome.
Jim:
Thats a list and then when I launch the group coaching, I email them all out.

David:
Also, I was looking through your main site, the jimkrukal.com how do you pronounce your last name?
Jim:
Koo-kral.
David:
Koo-kral okay. I liked the design. I like your style. Let me just start of by telling you, I like your style.
Jim:
I appreciate that.
David:
So, lets get started. Lets go all the way back to the beginning and tell me how did you get started in internet marketing?
Jim:
Well, I got started in internet marketing from back in 1995 when I took a job at one of Clevelands very first internet firms. They called them new media companies back then. I got started learning how to do html and web design and all those things. It was about 1999 when I realized that I was more suited to doing marketing as opposed to web building. I figured out that I could make money from the web pages and the blogs and later the blogs that I started to build. Then I learned that you can market yourself online and you can make a lot of money. So thats really genesis of where Ive come from.
David:
Im assuming you left the firm and started something on your own, right?
Jim:
Yeah, I owned a couple of web production firms and then I went on and was doing my own

kind of thing on the side for a long time, where the very first website that I started making money on was Iquit.org. I had the idea was I was looking to resign my job and I needed a resignation letter and I couldnt find any online and I didnt know where to look, so I ran out just wrote a bunch of resignation letters and I made up a whole site called Iquit.org and it was free resignation letters you could download when you wanted to resign your job.
I put up funny ones, and serious ones, and professional ones and I hate you, Im leaving ones, and then I started to fill the site up with Amazon affiliate links (https://affiliate-program. amazon.com/) and other once Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com) came around and other affiliate networks and advertising, and I then I was like, wow, you can make money doing this. So that was my first site.
David:
What year was this?
Jim:
1999.
David:
1999? Amazon had an affiliate program back in 1999?

Jim:
Yeah, theyre the oldest program out there. I believe it was actually live in 1997 or 1998.
David:
Thats so crazy to me because I think of anything pre-2000 online as like the stone age almost, you know?
Jim:
Well, yeah, its crazy. I mean, youre right. I would look up at I dont know what the exact date was, but it was definitely late 90s.
David:
Thats awesome. So you went from there and when did you start moving from being an affiliate to coming and being like, Okay, Im the expert. Come to me for advice?
Jim:
Well, you know, as you know, in this business its what have you done. You have to learn on the job, so I was in the beginning trenches of all this, so I learned from the ground floor up through mistakes and just going out there and trying. The people who start today have the advantage of theres so many people out who can teach them what to do. I mean, I teach classes for the University of San Francisco online and I teach classes on internet marketing and always tell my students, look, I didnt have this 15 years ago or 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago, or even 2 years ago. I mean, there is so much information out there now for you to be able to get this stuff figured out and someone to teach you. So yeah, I did it all on my own just like most people who came up in the early part of the century there, just figuring it out.
David:
Out of curiosity, youre teaching internet marketing at school is that a class where ideally, the students are making money, or is just like case studies and that kind of stuff?

Jim:
Theres different classes. Theres the basic integrated online strategies course which is learn how people do business on the internet. Learn how to build a website, a blog, skidoo pages, email marketing, affiliate marketing, the core basics of the 101 version of being online. Now the people who takes those classes is a mix. You get a mix of people who have jobs already, maybe work for a large corporation and they need to figure out this online part of the business. Then you have entrepreneurs who want to just figure out how to get online and take their business online. And then you have small business owners who are just so frustrated with dealing with advertising costs. They just want to learn how to do it themselves. So its a mix.
David:
Are you saying at the University of San Francisco but its mostly adults that are taking the class, not really students not really the younger students?
Jim:
You know, I dont know the demo on it, but most of the people, Im guessing, are I never actually meet them, so I dont see their age or anything, but most of them are professional, yeah, it seems like.
David:
Thats definitely interesting because thats Im getting off track, but Ive been thinking about that idea throwing around the idea of teaching college students, but its always been like I dont know how you teach students how to do internet marketing because they generally dont have money, so its like not paying for the teaching, but to get themselves started, you know what I mean?
Jim:
Well, absolutely. The thing is, in colleges now, they do teach a lot of this stuff. I dont know how much internet marketing they teach, but I know they teach the web business type of stuff. I mean, theres not a lot of people out there who know this stuff. There really isnt, so thats why I like the San Francisco stuff. Its very helpful to people.

David:
How do you feel that the web environment has changed over the last 10 years, however long youve been doing it? Do you feel that its become more easy for people to get involved, or do you think theres still lots of opportunity? What do you think?
Jim:
Well, theres huge opportunity, and heres why; because 10 years ago, blogger.com came out and this is just a good example for you blogger.com came out which allowed anyone in the world without tech skills to be able to come in and create a blog and put their thoughts and their expertise out online without the gatekeepers of editors and publishers and all of this, right? So that was the really big first piece of technology I can give you an example of. Now were moving into a whole new age where you can go out and now create your own online classroom. I mean, I have a piece of software that I promote called Professor its PRfessor. com and this allows anyone in the world to come out and create their academy or training center or university without tech skills. So if youre the master of fish or cyclists or something, or whatever kind of fish or whatever you want. If youre the master of anything, now you can take the knowledge in your head and transfer it online and make a profit from it.
www.ryanlee.com

So the point is, the technology is advancing at such a rapid state that its becoming even easier for regular people who want to get into the business to do it. On top of that, its becoming a million times easier to be able to promote it. So when social media came around, and now we have Twitter and FaceBook and LinkedIn and all that, now people because the big thing would be, all right, I took the time. I took the time. I learned how to build a membership site, Jim, and I learned how to do all that stuff. I figured it all out. Now how do I get people to it? Well, in the past, you would have to have a list already or you would have to spend a ton of money on advertising and traditional media. Now you can build Twitter followers. Now you can FaceBook fan pages. You can use social media to drive traffic and awareness for your brand without having to spend any money. So its absolutely theres never been a greater time in the history of the world to go out and build an online business and to market it and profit from it.
David:
Yeah, for real. Do you find it can be overwhelming, though, for some people because theyre, oh, okay, its so easy now. Theres so much stuff you can do like social media. Do you feel that theyre like, oh man, its almost I feel like sometimes people might think its too easy so they get afraid of it, or also theres like so many different resources, they dont know where to start.
Jim:
Well, exactly right. Thats why they turn to places like the University of San Francisco Online or come and hire me to do coaching and consulting for them. I mean, thats exactly right. People can sense and feel that the opportunity is real and they see all these people being successful online, but theyre regular. They dont have the expertise. Theyve never been shown how people make money so the case studies are a great way to show people how its done going out there and helping people figure this stuff out. But once they realize the potential and they realize that its not a scam, theres more out there than spam and fake SEO and things like that, but theres a lot of education involved and thats why I do a lot of teaching.
David:
When someone is looking for a teacher, what would you tell them to stay away from online?

How can you make sure that youre being careful when youre looking for the right kind of information?
Jim:
Thats a tough one. Theres a lot of snake oil salesmen out there. References are a great starting point. Ive always said this: if I cant pick up the phone at some point and talk to the person thats going to teach me, then I dont how serious they are about really helping me. At some point, youre going to want to be able to check references on somebody and actually be in touch with that person and have some type of communication. It doesnt have to be phone. It could be email. It could be a forum. It could be whatever, but people need to be contactable. I dont know how you avoid the bad ones. I think you just do a lot of web research and you look around and find out what other people think. Use social media. Go on Twitter and ask people on Twitter. If youre researching somebody who youre about to buy their program, do a Twitter search and do a search on that persons name and their product and see what people are saying about it and then connect with those people and ask them. Go, hey, you bought that product. What did you think?
David:
Definitely. And I think with the social media social media is obviously a big I think its a buzz word nowadays, but it makes everything is transparent online. The majority of things are transparent. It gives a lot of real accountability to be frank.
Jim:
Yeah, thats one of the greatest things about social media and blogging and all of that is that theres no more hiding. So if you have a junk product and youre cheating people and youre doing all the bad things, youre going to be exposed. Anyone with just a little bit of searching around is going to find out and I love that because for people like me who obviously promote on the regular the non-scammy type of level its great for me because people only have to do a little keyword search on me and all of a sudden they can see that Im somebody who can help them out.

David:
Yeah, you definitely have some good social proof on your site. The mention in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, all that stuff. That definitely is helpful. What exactly do you do now? I see that you do consulting and speaking, and then you have a couple of affiliate sites like the FlipCam site, which by the way I liked as well.
Jim:
Great, thanks.
David:
So what exactly is it that you do now on a regular basis? Whats your typical day like?
Jim:
Well, my typical day is either teaching online its a combination of things. Its teaching online, its writing a bookIm writing a book right nowand I also have consulting clients. So my day is spread in between doing those things, and then a lot of social interaction. I mean, I am one of those people who uses social media. Its not a friend thing for me. Everyone out there is potentially a customer for me or knows somebody who can refer me to somebody. I use social media for leads. I use social media for all of those types of things. So most of my day is spent doing a combination of all those things.
David:
Social media kind of takes word of mouth to the next level.
Jim:
Well, it enables it. So, if you read Andy Sernovitzs great book, Word of Mouth Marketing, social media is just a tool that allows people to spread your message the same way you would put a bookmark with your name on it in the book that you sold to somebody or you would give out free cookies at your restaurant inside a bag with your business card in it. It just allows people

to spread the message a thousand times faster and the key to that is easier because people want to do easy.
If youre going to do word of mouth, unless people are huge, raving fans, theyre not going to go out of their way to drive 30 miles to tell you about something. However, will they click a little share button on their website? Will they post that link in the Twitter in five seconds? Yeah, probably.
David:
Yeah, definitely. It makes the transition much easier. So, if you had to start your online business over from scratch, is there anything that you would do differently.
Jim:
You know, the first thing I would have done and one of the biggest mistakes I made years and a long time ago, was not starting with an email list-building program. Every project I have now, I dont care what it is, Im trying to build an email list because once a customer or viewer is gone, theyre gone and trying to get them back to your website is futile. So you want to get people on your email list always because you can do so many things with that information down the road and that goes the same true now with social media.

Theres equity in the fact that you can build lots of followers on Twitter and lots of fans and friends on FaceBook. Theres a lot you can do with that. So, absolutely, you want to be able to thats one thing I would do from the beginning, make sure that I didnt miss out on doing.
David:
And actually, my next question was, if you could name your top three mistakes that you made and how we can learn from, so I guess one of them would be not doing a list. Do you have any other ones?
Jim:
Yeah, not doing list building, early on getting too caught up on the technology and the costs. You know, I mean, when youre starting out, you dont have money and youre like, oh, do I really need a domain name? Do I really need hosting? And you do. You have to have the right tools in place to be successful. I guess the thing after that is investing in the tools and the technology to do it right. And then I think probably one of the biggest mistakes out all those three is having too big of an ego in terms of no, I mean letting the ego get in the way of me making money. So, theres so many things that you can do online and if you let your ego get in the way, you know, I dont want to be known as that person, or I dont want to its important that you want to keep your brand clean and everything, but theres so many opportunities to make money online and if you can just kind of push your ego aside and focus on some of the things that are going to make you successful, youll find that you can generate a revenue faster.
David:
When youre saying putting your ego aside, I just want to clarify a little bit, so youre saying that it was
Jim:
Ill give you a good example.

David:
Okay.
Jim:
So, for example, everyones seen the long page sales letters online, right the scrolling long page sales letters. For years and years I resisted putting a sales letter page like that together simply from the fact that I didnt feel my brand should be part of the sales letter kind of guy approach. But the truth of the situation is that those things convert. Theyre the number one converting pages on the internet today. The reason you see them everywhere is because they work and if I would have gotten away from trying to if I would have just given in and done something like that years ago, Id probably be sitting on a beach in Cabo someplace right now instead of sitting at my desk working because those things make money, and I let my ego get in the way and tell me not to do it. So thats one example.
David:
Thats a really good example, actually, because that kind of advises me as well because when I was first looking at stuff, I was like, oh, sales letters? Do I really have to do that if I want to make money online. But yeah, theyre there because they work, obviously.
Jim:
Yeah, and you dont have to. I mean, there are other ways to do it, but theyre the easier way to do it. Theres great examples of people who are bridging the gap between the long page sales letter and the short page, more professional-looking ones like Brian Clarke at Copyblogger. His Teachingsells.com is a great example of how to do a squeeze page thats mapped the typical sales page letter that still converts like crazy.
www.ryanlee.com
So I think whats happening is that as the expertise and experience of the internet audience grows up, so is our ability to market to them in new and different ways. So I dont think sales page letters are going away, I just think that theyre being improved.
David:
Where do you see that trend going? When you say improved, do you mean more toward the teaching sales type, or are you thinking like
Jim:
Yeah, I think hes doing a really good job. Thats a really good job of but again, its going to vary for different audience. Like I said, I dont think sales page letters in their traditional sense, are going away because they still convert and theyre still 99.99999% of the world out there who doesnt know anything about internet marketing who are still okay with that approach.

Now, if youre selling to somebody like me or an intermediate user or a heavy, advanced user like me, sales page letters arent going to work for me.
David:
Yeah.
Jim:
So again, it all comes down to marketing sales 101 again. Whos your audience and then delivering a message thats going to get them to convert.
David:
Yeah, definitely. If you had to name your must have resources, what would they be?
Jim:
Number one, email list software.
David:
So, like Aweber?
Jim:
Aweber, yeah. Awebers my must-have. Everyone needs to have an Aweber account.
www.ryanlee.com

If youre going to do affiliate marketing, Share Sale is a great affiliate network.
If youre going to do a blog use WordPress.org and the Thesis theme for WordPress (available at http://diythemes.com/thesis/).
If youre going to do a membership program, Membergate (http://www.membergate.com).
David:
Yep, Tim Kerber.
Jim:
Thats a pretty good and theres other tools. If youre going to do pay per click, I love the site,

http://www.Spyfu.com. You spy on your competitors ads and keywords.
David:
Do you do a lot of pay per click stuff?
Jim:
I dont. Ive never been I used to be part owner in one of the United States top 15 search firms, so I started one of the first search engine marketing programs back in 2003 before there were really SEO firms, so I get searched. Ive just been out of that industry, technically, for seven years and I just dont I know how search works, I just dont do a lot of it. Heres what I tell my students and what I tell my customers: Once you have the basic technical things in place for search, getting your title tags in place and the keyword research and the website optimizer for Google and all that, it all comes down to writing great content that solves problems for people.
David:
Yeah.
Jim:
Thats why Google exists. Google exists because they solve problems for people. Why does Google rank you higher than everybody else? Because you do a better a job of solving problems than somebody. If you write good content, if you write good things, videos, whatever you put together, people will naturally link to you. I have a site called onlinevideotoolkit.com. Ive never done one ounce of SEO work on it. Ive never asked for one link. Ive never done anything, and Ive been mentioned in Entrepreneur. Ive been mentioned in Inc., you know, if you put out good high-quality problem-solving content, everything will come to you because people will naturally just link to you.
www.ryanlee.com
David:
Thats awesome. I think thats definitely a much better way to look at it because what Ive seen in my experience is that a lot of people get caught up in the technical aspect and forget about the actual the real marketing and the relationship building and the personality and its just like, oh, buy my crap. Go to the top ad and click on that and buy it because its good. They dont understand the whole solving problem.
Jim:
Yeah, and thats a lot of what I do in terms of coaching and teaching is that lets face it, if youre a human resource executive at Sherwin Williams, youre not a marketer. If youre a small business owner who owns an Italian restaurant outside of Cleveland, Ohio, you know how to cook pasta. You dont know how to market. People have to learn how to become marketers and once they get the basic concepts of target audience, deliver a unique selling proposition, that information, and then once they figure that out, then they find success.
David:
Yeah. And for your consulting business, when you decided to go that route, did you just build got leads online pretty much? You didnt really start locally or it was just straight online?
Jim:
Yeah. Ive been doing private consulting for 10 years, but when I officially started the member program, yeah, I used social media and just the connections I have built up for years to get the word out. I dont spend money on advertising. I havent bought money on an ad in three years or more.

Thats the first thing I tell when I do speeches. I dont spend money on advertising, and I say, does everyone in this room want to continue to spend money on advertising? Nobody does.
David:
Yeah.
Jim:
I actually sent out a tweet the other day. I literally, right now in my hand, I just reached over here on my desk, I have this fax. I have 50 business leads from a speaking gig that I did last month sitting on my desk, that I dont even have time to follow up with because with my businesses, because I started a sales funnel and if you do it the right way, if you use social media, if you go out there and do speaking gigs. All speaking is is providing great content.
David:
Yeah.
Jim:
You can build a lead funnel and then if you have a product to sell them, you can find a way to sell it to them.
David:
Yeah, awesome. So, if there was a defining moment and I know Im kind of jumping around, but Ill make sure its organized.
Jim:
No problem.
David:
Was there a defining moment for when you knew that running a business online was your future, that was the way you wanted to do things? When was that or what was that moment?

Jim:
Well, there was two of them. One was before I got into the web business, I was still doing the print business and I had designed a brochure for a large Fortune 500 company and I had put a typo on it and they spent $50,000 - $100,000 on having it printed it and my typo appeared and I realized that I dont like the fact that I cant go back and change things, so I didnt like that. The real big moment, thought, was the day I refused my affiliate check back in 1999 when I got a check from somebody in the mail that said, heres $50 for just referring people over to our website. Thats the moment when Ive had that moment every day now, but the first time it happened, its a thrill. Its a rush. I made money without really doing anything; just promoting, just putting out good information. I was at the gym the other day and I got back from the gym and I checked my email and it said, Hey, you sold a WordPress scheme and you made $52. I was like, okay, thats great. I was working out at the gym for two hours and I made $52. So its just a huge thrill and that was really the defining moment that told me I wanted to move forward in the internet marketing space.
David:
I think its funny when you really take affiliate marketing down to the core to what it is, is youre getting paid to refer someone to a product, to tell someone that a product is good, and hopefully they purchase it. I think at the basic whenever Ive brought that concept up to friends of mine who have no familiarity with internet marketing, it blows their mind. It still blows my mind. I think its amazing. Its such a good system.
Jim:
It is a great system and thats why the web just really brought it all affiliate marketing has been going on forever. Im 38 years old and I still remember the encyclopedia salesman coming to the front door of my parents house with those big cases of encyclopedias. Now, if they sold an encyclopedia set to my parents, they probably made I have no idea may $50 or 10%. That was offline affiliate marketing.

The same thing with the vacuum salesman. Now, when the web came around, the technology came into place and just made it so much easier. Now I can just put a link out there and earn revenue and its just unbelievable. The thing about affiliate marketing is youve got to have trust and thats where blogging comes in. Thats where building a brand up comes in and people want to trust what you have to say and then theyll take your recommendations.
David:
Yeah, definitely. The relationship building is definitely huge. Whats next in your business? Where are you headings toward now? Whats the future?
Jim:
Im writing a book right now and my book will be out in bookstores in July. Its called Attention: This Book Will Make You Money, and its going to be written for small business owners and entrepreneurs and people who want to figure out how to use attention-getting marketing to earn revenue online or leads to publicity. So Im basically dumping everything I know about online marketing into this book and also combining it with case studies on how people have used attention online to generate revenue. So its really a big book thats going to teach people how to monetize, really. Give them inspiration without having to spend a ton of money on advertising. So thats my big thing. Im doing that and Im teaching and Im consulting and my goal is to hit the speaking circuit next year and do some speaking and just continue to teach and problem solve for people.
David:
Thats like the fun stuff, too. I was listening to Ryans calls today and its like, that kind of helps I dont know if you have the Entrepreneuritis, but it staves it off because youre constantly coming up with new challenges and things to do.
www.ryanlee.com

Jim:
Yeah, and thats one of the challenges of being online, though, is that I suffered from this for years. Youve got to pick one or two things and youve got to go after them. Youve got to pick a niche and hammer it hard. Trying to do too many things can get you into trouble and youll never be as effective as you can. But as entrepreneurs, you see that butterfly fling past and you go, oh, look, a butterfly, and you go chase it and then you forget something else. You can add that to the actual list of biggest mistakes is chasing too man butterflies, too.
David:
I like that. Thats a good metaphor. Okay, so my last question. This is what I forgot to mention before. If someone came up to you and was like, All right, Jim, I want to get started online. I want to not a give me the fastest way I can make money right now, but I want to start a business. I want to go forward. Where would you tell them to get started?
Jim:
Number one, write down on a piece of paper in your computer, what are the top problems that you solve for somebody based on your expertise or something youre really good at. Once you know that, then you have a product. So what problem do you solve? Do you help people figure out how to make money more? Do you help people figure out how to put their shoes on faster? What do you know a lot about, what are you really good at it, that other people want.
David:
Yeah.
Jim:
Because once you know what that is, you can make a signature product.
David:
Yeah.
www.ryanlee.com

Jim:
And youre signature product can be worry about what that signature products going to be later. Find out go look at whether it could be an eBook, could be a membership site, could be an online academy. It could be a number of things. Dont worry about that first. Figure out what problem you solve, because until you figure that out, youre never going to find success online.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #11

Jim Labadie
Interview with Jim Labadie

David:
Tell me, Jim, what got you started in the world of internet marketing?
Jim:
Well actually, Ryan Lee did. I have an in-home personal training business in Tampa, Florida, and it was Ill never forget it was 2003. It was about April, and I had been seeing Ryans column. He had a column in a magazine called Personal Fitness Professional, and it was all about using the internet to grow your fitness business and his resource it made a mention of his I dont think its even available anymore, but his Fitness Info Products product on how to make information products. So I purchased that and I think I listened to I dont know. I was listening to the first 20-30 minutes and I was like, that stuffs to good be true. After that, I started listening to the other CDs and I think I made it through I think there were six CDs I think I made it through three of them or something, and I was like, Im sold. This is a business to me and this can happen. This can be a reality. Thats how I got started. I got started with Ryan Lees Fitness Info Products back in April 2003.
David:
So what kind of sold you on it? What made it beyond the its too good to be true?
Jim:
You know, I think it was just the realization that it was the internet that to me, it was the internet that was what made it possible. I think it was just the fact that Ive always wanted to do whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. That was always my goal to do whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. And with the internet and information products, I didnt know of any other business, any other model that allowed you to do that. It just became crystal clear that with a cell phone, an internet connection and a computer, I could be anywhere in the world and run my business. I used to tell people, look, if I picked up right now and took my computer and my cell phone, if I went from Florida to Tokyo, Id be live. I could still do anything I wanted to do and make this business work. It was just almost it went from being too good to be true to being how can I

possibly do anything else?
David:
I think a lot of people go through that phase, the how could you possibly do anything else? It almost seems silly that other people dont know about it that dont do businesses like it.
Jim:
Its like anything else. Ill bet a lot of people never would have gotten past the its too good to be true, because its so ingrained in their mindset that you have to suffer and slave and sweat and struggle to business is hard. Ill give you a for instance. I had a personal training client who her husband was involved in a business and he traveled a lot and the business that he was in a difficult one, and then they started their own business and it was a business it was a wine distribution, I believe, and its a very tough business and very competitive. So their mindset was simply that business is hard. You have to struggle. You have to work ridiculously hard, and if youre lucky, you make it. So thats their belief system and thats exactly how it wasnt surprising when they picked a business that was impossible to make successful. It always comes back down to belief systems. I always believed there had to be an easier way and luckily it did exist, and I found it.
David:
You teach people this kind of stuff as well, right?
Jim:
I have taught internet marketing to some extent. Basically, my business has been in the past, its been teaching the business of personal training. Its been teaching trainers how to sell, how to get themselves publicity, how to generate referrals. In our world the world that Ryan came from where he cut his teeth in internet marketing a lot of fitness professionals, they want to have high touch type business. They want to work specifically with people face to face. They want the interaction. They want to change peoples lives that way. Great. Its fantastic. Thats their passion and theyre doing what they want to do, and thats the way it should be. But yeah, Ive taught other people the basics of internet marketing information

products but my information product business, it was geared more around teaching people stuff that they were passionate about, and I think thats one of the things thats missing in internet marketing, or it seems to be. It seems to be that the internet marketing world people just want to get in and teach other people internet marketing, but theres lots of niches out there with hungry audiences that want information thats and around their passion. This isnt just about making money. Its about really living a life thats fun and filled with passion and you enjoy what you do.
David:
Have you converted any people yourself? Converted its almost like a religion. I mean, what has helped when youre trying to convince people of the benefits, what has helped in terms of getting them to get past the Oh, god, its got to be so hard. My life has to be hard.
Jim:
Well, I think the first thing is just being conscious of it. You have to start to be aware of why youre doing the things youre doing, and I always tell people if youve ever driven to work and your minds been on something, but 20 minutes later you pull into a parking spot and you really dont even remember driving there. Has that ever happened to you?
David:
Of course.
Jim:
Yeah, thats your subconscious mind at work. Your subconscious mind knows how to get you to work safe and sound without running anybody over. It knows the way to go. Its something that happens to us all of the time. You get there and you just were thinking about something else. Sometimes Im in the shower and I dont have too much hair left, but Ill forget if I washed my hair because Im just so ingrained, just doing other things and thinking about other things that your subconscious mind is doing the things that need to be done, but youre doing something else.

David:
Yeah.
Jim:
The point of the story is that your subconscious mind is running most of your life. When you pick things to do, if you pick projects that you know just deep down arent going to work, if youre making things much harder than they need to be, thats typically your subconscious and its your belief systems that are deeply ingrained in you so those are the things that you have to start to look at first. I always tell people, look, youve got to step back. Youve got to get away from your business. I always go for a walk by the water, whether you live by a lake or the ocean or a river or whatever. Theres something conducive about water and ideas. You get out and you start to say Why am I doing the things that Im doing? Why do I believe the things that I believe? What did I learn from my parents? What did I learn from my religion? What did I learn from my teachers? because all of this stuff that happened to you as a kid is basically running your life as an adult and it might be good for you and it might not, and you have to become aware of it. That is always the starting point.
David:
Yeah, and I mean, definitely. Tony Robbins asks in a sense, like challenging your beliefs because thats the most its hard to do something if you dont believe in it. Its almost impossible.
Jim:
Youre absolutely right, David, but the problem is that people say, well, I do believe. Well, thats great. The conscious you believes that, but the deep-down, deep-seated belief within you believes something else, and thats what is driving your life when driving that car to work. You have to really dig deep into the things you truly believe, and Ill tell you what, all the clichs are true. Like, I cant stand people who cant stand clichs. All the clichs are true. If we lived our lives by clichs, our lives would be much better of.
David:
Probably.

Jim:
Its true. It is true. Listen to the clichs. And part of it is, actions speak louder than words because Im sure Ryans to the point. I could really care less what anybody says. I dont care. I mean that sincerely. The only thing I care about is what youre actually doing and what youre actually doing is where your belief systems lie. So if you tell me that you believe this, you can do this, and you believe Im going to be successful, but I look at what youre doing in your business and I see the complete opposite, then your belief systems need to change. People ask me, How do I change my belief systems? Well, it takes time. It takes effort. It takes work on yourself too. Ill tell you one of the biggest killers is guilt. I guarantee you that theres people out there who try internet marketing that have such guilt ingrained in them from religion and from their parents about work and money, that How can I possibly be the one to live this life where I can work from anywhere in the world and run my business when somebody else is stuck in a job that their miserable at? Thats not surface level stuff. Thats deep down ingrained in you, and thats the stuff thats killing everybody. Everybody wants the how-to, the give me the blueprint and everything and Ill tell you what, its all great, but if your beliefs are pointing in the wrong direction, it doesnt matter.
David:
Its interesting. Youre actually the first person to talk about this kind of stuff. Most people were not really asking you for blueprints, but this is the foundation. Your belief system is your foundation of you as a person.
Jim:
Ill tell you what, David; the reason why is because #1, this doesnt sell. People dont want to buy this, and #2 is this is the hardest work youll ever have to do.
David:
Oh, yeah.

Jim:
Because the work has to be done on yourself and its scary and it hurts and its emotional, and its painful. Its not for everybody. Some people can just pick this stuff up and run, but all those people out there who arent successful in internet marketing, who never seem to get anything done, this is what your problem is. Youre not going anywhere until you fix this problem. Now, I dont know what Ryans ever told you about me, but Im about as blunt and honest as it gets. Im with you for 5 seconds, you can tell me the things that Ill tell you right away whether or not youre going to be successful. If you dont change, then youre just not. Its just not going to happen. Youll do something to sabotage your success along the way. I promise you. I dont want that to happen to people, but this is the hardest work and it doesnt sell for a reason.
David:
Self-sabotage, I guess. I want to talk more about this, but I feel like we should probably move on. I dont even want to move to a different
Jim:
We dont have to.
David:
Buying into something thats want I want to say. For people who have trouble buying into things we talked about it before, but people who have trouble believing in anything, do you feel a belief in something is necessary?
Jim:
Absolutely.
David:
How do get somebody to believe in something, or how do you get someone to make themselves believe in something?

Jim:
It depends on what it is.
David:
I dont mean like religion, but believe that this is what I should be doing for my future, like that kind of stuff. Again, theres the people who say and theres the people who do, so how do you get the people to transition from the words to the actions?
Jim:
Thats a great question. Again, I think it comes down to being constantly of your actions and saying no. Say for instance this: to me, the most devastating form of self-sabotage is perfectionism. When it comes to being an entrepreneur, infopreneur, internet marketer, what have you, there is nothing as deadly as perfectionism because its never going to be perfect. At some point, you just have to get stuff done and get it out the door and sell it. Thats not to say you put out a bad product, but youll never put out a perfect product. So lets look at perfectionism. If youre one of the people that just isnt getting anything accomplished youre working on projects, youre 75% or 90% done, but its never actually getting done and making you money and improving your life you have to take a step back and say, What is it that I believe? Where did this come from and why is it ruining my life? Its becoming conscious of the things. It can be as simple as Im telling you, this is the kind of stuff that holds us back. It could be somebodys third grade teacher that was a perfectionist and ingrained in that persons mind that everything had to be perfect and if it wasnt, it wasnt good enough and youre a failure. That might sound like a ridiculous example, but thats an example. Thats the kind of stuff that demoralizes people and its something that has been with them their entire lives and they didnt even know it, and its killing them. So you have to do some serious soul searching. Why do I believe everything has to be perfect? and after that, its going to be a fight for a little while to defeat that belief. Its going to take a while for a new belief to take hold, but the root cause of it is the start. It has to start there. Ill give you an example of my own. My father had his own business. I grew up in northern New Jersey and he commuted into the city for years and he was very unhappy. He had three

kids he took care of. He was an awesome father. I love him to death. Im proud Im very much like him. Im proud to be that way, but the part that wasnt fun was the fact that I grew up thinking that you had to be miserable if you ran a business. It had to be hard. You had to be stressed because thats just the way it is. Thats what business is. Thats what I learned as a child and thats what you take with you into adulthood and those are some of the things that I had to look at it and say, Okay, there is an easier way. There is this internet marketing. There are these info product businesses. It doesnt have to be a struggle. It can be easier. So those are two examples, but youve got to look at root causes. You have to.
David:
Yeah, I think there are two things to take away from that. One is the concept of theres got to be a better way. I think a lot of people just dont even think that. They dont even think for a second. They just accept. They accept the reality thats been given to them. I dont want to dive into this too much because Im going to get way off topic, but I feel thats what gets taught a lot to people. In schools, as a 21-year-old myself, I have friends who are graduating from college and theyre like theyre getting ready to spend the rest of their life in misery like, Oh great. Now I get to go to work for the rest of my life. Its going to be awesome, and thats the reality that theyve been told.
Jim:
Yeah, youre not just getting it youre getting it from friends. Youre getting it from family. Youre getting it from schools. Youre getting from the media. One of the worst things you can do is listen to the radio. If you listen to morning DJs and stuff, if you listen to that stuff, its like Oh, thank god its Friday. Oh, my god, its Monday. Its true. A lot of people are living miserable lives in quiet desperation and thats not funny. Its just reality. It just doesnt have to be that way, but youre right. Thats what society teaches, basically.
David:
Its the Henry David Thoreau quote that most men lead quiet lives of desperation.

Jim:
Yeah, Im not sure of the exact quote, but yeah, Im sure thats where I got it from.
David:
Yeah. Then theres people okay, so getting people to take responsibility for their own actions. Again, like you said on the radio; you get the guys that are like, Oh, the economies bad, so I wont get a job. Do you find that people if just its almost like people just have to do stuff. It all comes down to that.
Jim:
Well, Ill tell you what, David, one of the things youre going to need to do is youre going to need to stay away from your friends.
David:
Oh, Im learning that; trust me.
Jim:
Its true. Ill tell you what; you have to stay away from your old friends. You may need to spend less time with your family. One thing you definitely need to do is absolutely positively stay away from the media because then the government forget it. Nobody wants to be responsible. Nobody wants responsibility for their lives. Nobody wants to be accountable, hardly anybody. The ones that do are the entrepreneurs and theyre the ones that are super successful and living the lives that they want. You just need to look at reality and say, Im fully responsible for my actions, for my life, for my results, and so is everybody else. This guy named Randy Gage, who I just love reading Randy Gages stuff. He always calls it the datasphere. Thats basically all of the influences you have out there, all the media, movies, TV shows, any kind of entertainment, government, religion. You have to be very, very wary of the messages youre listening to because all of that stuff is very devastating on a subconscious level.
www.ryanlee.com
David:
You mentioned the friend stuff. The journey of the entrepreneur, it sounds kind of like a lonely journey almost. Theres two things I want to ask. One is, in terms of getting rid of toxic friends, was that an issue for you ever? And then the other question was how do you not make it such a solo thing? How have you been able to still do this and not be influenced, but still have friends or some sort of social life?
Jim:
Its a great point. Its a great question. Yeah, Ive had experience with it. Ive kind of slowly but surely moved away from other people who I felt werent good influences, and other people, you just kind of have to do the same. Now when it comes to family and close friends, its hard, but really what you find is that youre going to be so passionate and thrilled with what youre doing, chances are you will be working a lot more, but its because you want to, not because you have to. I worked a lot, but I do it just because I love it. I dont know what else to do because its more like my work is more like a hobby. I get this with a hobby. So you move away from people slow but surely. Part of it was I used to move from home. Ryan probably has a different take because he has a wife and kids. I dont think he got much accomplished because his little girls would kind of be all over him and I was just living by myself when I was in Tampa when I started. Its kind of a miserable existence just because you can get up whenever you want and youre just kind of sitting at the computer and youre at work. Before you know it, its 7:00 at night and you havent left and you havent taken a shower. So you need to set a routine. I would definitely recommend getting some sort of executive suite. Have an office. Go some place where theres people that you can talk to, theres other people that are entrepreneurs or what have you. Then you can go to those places and have a semblance of a life in that way.

You can spend time with your family and friends. You just may need to spend less time. You just need to be very careful of the things that they believe. Youll start to notice which people you just simply will not resonate with anymore. Lots of people love to sit around and share their misery and be more miserable, and if thats the case, then you must need to get out of there. So you might spend time in sports leagues or things where youre socializing with other people, but youre doing other things other than just talking about how much your job sucks. The other thing is mastermind groups, seminars you really need to start to go out and network. You have to get out and network and meet other entrepreneurs. The great part is Ive met tons of new friends, people who are likeminded and believe the same thing I do and have the same goals and aspirations and want to achieve success and they love what they do and they love to work. You cant just make your life a vacuum. You need to get out and meet other entrepreneurs because its just great for your self worth and self esteem. Also, it will advance your business.
David:
Yeah, I agree. Every time Ive been to a seminar, its almost like a drug effect. You leave and youre like, Wow, that was great. Im ready to rock and roll. You have to keep that momentum going with you on your way home.
Jim:
Its a new high.
David:
Yeah, so tell me what resources have helped you along the way, in general. You mentioned the Randy Gage Datasphere, but in terms of everything marketing, you know what I mean.
Jim:
Well, lets see. There are so many resources. Im not a big the funny thing is, Im not a big information product guy, per se. I buy one of two things: I buy books or I pay for mastermind and coaching. Besides Ryans product, I havent really bought any of the other products. You know, most products that people buy that are a couple of hundred bucks or whatever, or a

thousand bucks, I dont usually get those because I know that Im not going to do anything with them. I like to personally get books and I like to just spend I spend the big bucks. Put me in a mastermind, put me in a coaching program. When I got started with Ryan, I hired Ryan as a coach or a consultant for a couple of hours of his time. I just wanted to go right to the person who had the information. Im just a big believer in that. I like having a coach. I like having somebody who just heres what youve got to do. Mastermind groups are awesome. Theyre bigger investments, but to me, thats where you really start to to me, those are the greatest resources. As far as books, I love Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, Dan Kennedy books, that kind of stuff. I do like the motivational stuff, maybe even too much. Thats my thing low-end books and high-end coaching programs and mastermind groups.
David:
A lot of people mention masterminds and the one thing that I theres no resource for masterminding. What is mean, is where do you go to find a mastermind group? It sounds like a complex process almost.
Jim:
My one of two suggestions for mastermind groups is #1, Ive seen this in the fitness industry with personal trainers is on forms Ive seen trainers who have real no experience and no real background. Theyre teaming up themselves for a mastermind group, but theres no if you dont know what the hell youre doing and the other person the other 6 people dont know what theyre doing, theres no real reason to mastermind because you get where Im going? Because if nobody knows what the hell theyre doing, theres no point in sharing your ignorance. It just doesnt make any sense in it. You want to make sure that youre surrounding yourself with people who are already successful. I dont mean that to poke fun at people. I love people who are taking action. I love people who are trying. I would just rather that people who are making an effort get better results, and theyll get better results if they start teaming up with people who know what the heck theyre doing.

Now locally, they may have some masterminds. You could go to Rotary clubs, Kiwanis clubs, Optimus clubs. Theres all sorts of clubs with very successful people in it and you can start to pick peoples brains and maybe put together a group that way, or the other is, if youre lucky to follow a guy like Ryan, Ryan has a mastermind for Prograde nutrition. We are in a mastermind with Andrew Lock right now with the How my business sucks, theme. If you follow a particular guru, so to say, or an expert in a particular area, that you like that person and have a mastermind, sign up. I think they are definitely worth the money. If nothing else, you just become surrounded by people who thing like you do and have the same aspirations and you just its hard to have too many people like that in your corner.
David:
For sure, and also I 100% agree in the sense that you dont want to share your ignorance because its just a waste of your time. There has to be somebody there that knows more than you, otherwise its pointless. Theres no point. All right, so lets talk mistakes. Tell me the top three mistakes you made along the way in your entrepreneurs journey and top three mistakes and how would you learn from them?
Jim:
Geez, top three mistakes? Well, I spent when I first started Im talking back in the day way before I met Ryan or got into internet marketing was I spent money on advertising. You know, just like running an ad in a publication, because remember, I had an offline business. So I would definitely if youre just getting started, be much more frugal than I was. Maybe its the wrong attitude, but I just thought that it was going to be I just had the expectation that this was going to be easy and that I would find a way to do it and I just promptly plopped down hundreds and hundreds of dollars which at the time was a lot of money for no result. I was using advertising that just wasnt getting a result. I wasnt focusing. This will be mistake #2, it wasnt focused on my target market. I didnt really think about my target market at all. And #3 is that I took advice from people that I should not have been taking advice from them. I would say be frugal, number one, is the result of the mistake. Be frugal with your money. Make

sure youre making wise investments. Number two, make sure you know your target market inside and out. Who are you really shooting for? Who is your customer? And as everybody says, if you say, My customer is everybody, then youve got a serious problem. And then the third one is, dont take advice from people that you should be taking advice from. Ill tell you right now, unless they are a successful entrepreneur and you want to learn how to run a successful business, then just dont take advice from them. If your friends or family are even if theyre successful in their own rite if you have somebody in your family who is a successful attorney, they make a lot of money, but they work in a practice. They work in criminal law, but theyre not a partner. They dont run the firm. They have no business giving you advice. Thats the mistake I made. I asked people who I thought would be helpful. They werent helpful.
David:
It sounds a lot like your approach is very logical. You said before, youre a very blunt person, but then in the sense of staying away from the emotional connections that can drag you down I dont know if theres really a question involved, but I just wanted to
Jim:
Ill fill my two cents in. I think, again it was the book by Phil Jackson. It was Phil Jacksons autobiography. It talked all about Michael Jordan. He talked about his successes before he coached the Lakers.
David:
The Last Season or Mind Games?
Jim:
Something like that. It was his first. I thought it was Zen in the Art of Basketball, but I looked for it recently and that wasnt it. Anyway, if you look for Phil Jacksons first book, it talks about how he finally got through to Michael Jordan that if you eliminate your emotions from the game and you focus at the task at hand I shouldnt say you eliminate your emotions you always control your emotions and you dont let your emotions, your belief systems you dont

let them control you when theyre not especially productive. To me, everything is extremely simple. Another one keep it simple, stupid. That kids principle, it applies to everything. Its incredibly simple. You make sure that your head is on straight. You make sure your beliefs are pulling you in the right direction. Do you know exactly what direction you want to go in? What are your goals? What exactly do you want? Everybody knows that people with goals and a plan get to where they want to go faster than those who dont, so I need goals and I need a simple plan. If the plan isnt working, then you alter the plan. And then the basics, you need leads. You need prospects. You need to convert those people and then you need to sell more to those people. All of this stuff is really super, super simple Theres a ton of work involved in it, but if you get the basics right I always compare it to sports. If you can I love football, so I always put football in there if you can block, if you can tackle, if you can make extra points, if you can do some really simple things, youre going t win a lot of football games, and the thing holds true in business. If you do the basics over and over and over again and you do them really well, youre going to be successful. Now part of the problem heres another form of self sabotage is I always see business owners they find something that works and then they stop doing it and Ill ask them and theyll say, I dont know. Its a good question. I guess I should do that again. You think you should do that again? In Prograde, we found certain things that worked and we just do those things over and over and over again. You focus on what works and you keep doing it. You can improve it and you can try some different things, but dont mess with the formula and you will be successful. If you mess with the formula, it will take you back to step one with your belief systems. Somethings driving your car into the freaking lake.
David:
Yeah, for sure. The football metaphor applies. Good football teams, as an example, the Patriots, Bill Belichick, the reason his team wins is because they dont have some set formula for when they play other teams, they find out works against that team and then they just abuse it. If the

team has good run defense, theyll just pass the whole game. They dont try to stick something based on some emotion. Its just pure, This works, lets do it over and over and over until we win the game.
Jim:
I cant stand the Patriots. I dont know if youre a Patriots fan, but
David:
No, I hate the Patriots.
Jim:
I agree. Like when Tom Brady threw for over 50 touchdowns that year, youre exactly right, they saw what worked and they just killed it. They did not stop and look, Ill tell you what, I agree, if you see some teams that dont win do the opposite. They find something that works and then they try something else. Its almost ridiculous, but this is really pretty easy. Thats what people forget.
David:
Its simple. Its very simple.
Jim:
As Ive said, its simple. There just a lot of work involved.
David:
For sure. Tell me, whats next for you and your business?
Jim:
Right now, Ryan and I founded Prograde Nutrition (http://www.getprograde.com). We started it back in 2005 and now Ryans doing his thing in the internet marketing world and me and his best friend, Sammy Cee, is our CFO is Jayson Hunter is our Director of Research and Development and does a great job of Operations. Im the CEO of Prograde, and thats our baby. Its the one that were focusing on.
Im different than Ryan. I live on the sidelines as a serial entrepreneur. Ryan is that guy whos always starting something new and creating. Thats him. Thats Ryan, and Ryan should be Ryan. Ryans happy doing that. He needs to do it. Im the kind of guy who I like to do the methodical approach just find what works and keep doing it again and again and again. Thats just more how Im set up, which works because thats what this company needs. It just needs solid, steady, do the same things over and over, and steer the ship kind of thing. Prograde is a big one. Were growing really, really fast. Were a continuity-based business. We

have auto-ship for supplements and we focus on getting repeat customers, and thats the big thing right now, running Prograde and making Prograde as successful as possible.
David:
Awesome. Well listen, Jim, thank you so much for this interview. It was really good. Im glad we talked about what we did as opposed to the typical stuff. Its always nice to get different perspectives and that kind of thing, different topics, because this is more helpful stuff than the average. We appreciate it and I appreciate. It was a great interview.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #12

Joel Marion
Interview with Joel Marion

David:
Lets jump right into it. I want to go back to the beginning. I know you wrote a book before you even got started online. Tell me about your experience with the book.
Joel:
Okay, well I guess it all first started off with the whole winning the Body For Life thing and then as far as my first publishing gig, I guess, was when I started writing for Muscle Media, which was the I guess youd call it a partner with Body For Life and the AEF Supplements, so being that I was the Body For Life Champion and I had an ambition for writing, I contacted the editor there. He was pretty receptive to check out some of my stuff, so I sent over a couple of sample articles or a couple of pictures and I did that and I think I just sent one full-length article that I had already written and he loved the article and after he read it, he said, What would you think about being a regular contribution to Muscle Media?
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I was 20 years old at the time and I was extremely stoked. I obviously just wanted to have one article published and then here the editor of the magazine that I grew up reading and following is asking me to be a long-term contributor to the magazine. So that was pretty awesome. From there, I started to get published in other magazines, on the training team at Mens Fitness, and just was really ambitious in reaching out to as many different editors as possible because if anyone is looking to get into the writing scene, thats just the best way to start somewhere. Get some sample writing. I was also writing for what was Testosterone Magazine, now [inaudible] and T-Muscle and it seems like they changed their name about every other month.
David:
Yeah.
Joel:
I was writing for them as well, and then came on Mens Fitness, and then I was writing for a lot more mainstream magazines all the way to Womens Day and Shape and some of the more female-specific magazines like Oxygen and stuff like that. What started it is me wanting to achieve wanting to achieve one thing and getting my foot in the door, and then kind of just taking that and using what you have as leverage. I think thats an important lesson that I learned through that is just once you can achieve one thing, you can use that as leverage to then go and achieve other things. So I was writing for at least one magazine that gave me leverage to approach other magazines and say, hey, I write for this magazine and I had work published here. Even if they may not have heard about it, at least its published and you can send them a link to go check it out, or you can send them the actual article. When you do that and youre ambitious about it and you have the drive to continue to do that type of thing, it becomes fairly I would say easy but I can say that anybody who really wants to do it, youll be surprised at quickly how you can grow. Within a matter of a year, you could find yourself writing for 10 different magazines.

And then I used that for leverage again, its all about leveraging what youve accomplished and then taking it to the next level I used that leverage to then write an article called The Cheaters Diet for Testosterone Magazine and had some colleagues of mine tell me that they could see; just imagine that title on the bookstore shelves, and had really encouraged me to starting writing a book. So I wrote like a chapter or two and had the idea, but had no idea about anything as far as publishing was concerned. On the book side of things, I knew everythingI was very rooted in within the magazine world. As far as book publishing, I didnt know anything. So you need an agent to start approaching people and all that type of stuff. It was all brand new for me and I had no connections. By the time that I actually got hooked up with an agent, it came off of me completely cold emailing him and then having a cold call conversation after that on the phone and pitching him all my concepts in this book idea and again, using my previous magazine publishing history as leverage of developing a platform that way. The next thing you knew, he said to me as his client, took me on and heres a little lesson learned from that you have to have the drive to succeed and have that never give up attitude, otherwise its just not going to happen for you. If every time I got turned down by somebody as far as book publishing, I would never have a book and probably wouldnt be doing what Im doing today. The first agent that I was working with, I waited six weeks to hear back from only to be told that he liked it, but it was kind of a conflict of interest with another author. The next agent took another 46 weeks and we just werent really on the same page. They were thinking like a paperback book and I know they had a lot of big time clients, so I didnt really feel like that was going to be prioritized with that particular agent, and I knew that the book would do really well if it was backed by the right people. So here we are about three or four months into this thing and Ive contacted several people and its just a big waiting game. Finally, I went back to Lou Schuler, who was the Editor at Mens Health at the time and asked him if he had any other contacts since Im not really having any luck, and he said, Heres this guy, and he gave me the name. He said, I dont know the guy.

I have no connections. I dont even have his email address. Maybe you can Google his email address and try to find some contact info, see if you can get hold of him, or snail mail him something. So I did and ended up finding his contact information and had no connection whatsoever. This guy didnt know who I was at all when he opened up my email, and I guess with the power of good copy, I guess Ive always been writing good copy. I was able to sell him on my idea and the premise of my book with one email, and then we talked on the phone once, and then he just pretty much said, Okay, Ill forward you over the papers to sign the agreement that Ill be representing the book. This is a guy who represents Joy Behar from The View, represents Montel Williams, represents LL Cool J, and then his fitness book deal, represents Barry Sears and all the Zone books, and all that stuff. So this is one of the top guys within diet and fitness and lifestyle, and because I was relentless in trying to do what I wanted to do and what I set out to do, I was able to get that agent. Once I got the agent, he said he was out to lunch with the editor from she used to work at Rodeo, now shes at Crown Publishing, which is a division of Random House. Its her job they brought her into Crown to bring in some big time health and fitness authors and she had since brought in Jillian Michaels and Jorges Cruise, and she was out to lunch with my agent and she was inquiring to him, Do you have anything thats going on right now, or what I might be interested in? Who are you working with? So he told her about the concept of my book and its called the Cheat To Lose Diet, and that perked her ears up and she was excited about it and said, Well, do you think that we can get an exclusive, meaning that we would just send our stuff to them and pitch to them and hold off on pitching to other publishers. So my agent said that he thinks that this would probably be a good fit. Lets just see what happens with them and we can always go to other people and then negotiate offer, but lets set up the meeting. So we set up the meeting three or four days after that. This all happened within a period of week. There was like three months or four months of me feeling I was spinning my wheels, and then once I got the right guy behind the book, three days later we had a meeting, went to

the meeting, and the next day they bought the book. Things can happen really quickly once you have the right team behind you. If I wasnt persistent with it, then I never would have reached that point, so it was pretty exciting to have that. I dont know that Id ever do another print book. Its a lot of waiting and a lot of work and two years later your book finally hits the shelves. With internet marketing, you can make a product today and sell it tomorrow. With publishing and dealing even with magazines and print publications, it seems like every time you contact an editor, you know, here we are in January. If the editor contacts me now about a print publication, theyre talking the June or July issue right now. They just have really long lead times.
David:
Yeah. I mean, even like us here, we have to do an issue pretty much two months in advance because of the printing stuff.
Joel:
Right.
David:
So what you said brought up a couple of good questions that I had. One of the themes that sets you apart is your writing skills. Youre clearly a good writer and you said you were doing copywriting. You dont normally think of an email like copywriting to pitch a book, but that was a skill that helped you. How did you learn how to be a good copywriter?
Joel:
Well, I was always kind of a good writer and then if I believed in myself enough, I think I intuitively and naturally the ability was just kind of there for me to be able to relate that and I knew what the important components are that would give us selling points or whatever, in a way to position a certain idea in order to get somebody else interested in it. Now, as far as structuring an offer an stuff like that for an internet marketing product or a website or sales copy and stuff like that, I didnt know that, per se. I knew nothing about

writing a headline. I didnt know the format of a sales letter. I didnt understand email copy too much or anything like that, other than the fact that I was pretty good at conveying ideas and I was a good writer. So having that foundation, once I started learning the formula for sales online and sales copy and email copy, the formula that youre taught, then I was able to just take my natural skills and then apply it within that type of formula. I bought Yanik Silvers one of the very first internet marketing products I bought. The first one was Ryan Lees Fitness Info Products, and from there I learned about Yanik Silver and I bought two of Yaniks courses. The first one that I bought was his Ultimate Copywriting Workshop. That was four binders of information all about writing copy. I took that information, studied it, and devoured it, and then took action on it and used my own natural abilities to become even better and more skilled within a specific niche, or the formula of internet [inaudible]. Its just like somebody who has natural athletic abilities and maybe theyre going into basketball or whatever. Youre never going to become one of the best basketball players unless you practice the game and skill and you learn from the best whos doing that, although you do have some sort of natural ability there. So I think thats just ultimately what it was. I had some natural ability and then I learned specifically what I wanted to do. Yaniks course was an awesome course and I invested over $1,000 into that course and copywriting in and of itself has probably made me, over the past year, $300,000$400,000 over the last year in just affiliate promos and email copy and I write all my own sales letters and all that kind of thing.
David:
I know we havent talked about your online stuff yet, but just before we do that, I want to ask you, one of the things I see online is there is a lot of fitness guys I mean people in general, not just fitness but people who are pretty poor writers are still trying to get their name out there. Is there any suggestions you would have for someone who might not have the natural talent for a writer?
www.ryanlee.com

Joel:
Well I think a lot of peoples sales copy sucks and I think that some of that goes back to the fact that they dont really understand sales copy and persuasive writing at all. Thats a whole other arena in it and of itself. And then I think that theres partially the point that just some people need to go back to English class a little bit and learn how to write a essay, or whatever the case may be, and spend a little bit more time writing. The number one thing that I can recommend to anyone who is looking to be a better writer as far as finding your own voice and flow and all that type of stuff is just to write and be yourself. Read other peoples blogs and stuff like that, and who you think might have a natural ability to write or you feel that they are a good writer or theyre getting a good response from their writing. Obviously I feel that Im a good writer if writing a blog versus Im not selling anything. Its not sales copy, its just interesting content or an article for a magazine. It has nothing to do with sales. So the more you write, the better you become at writing and ultimately I dont think that a lot of people have spent enough time writing to become a good writer. It takes practice. So the more people blog and the more people write, and the more people actually practice the skill of writing, the better writer youre going to be. As far as like sales copy and stuff like that is concerned, it is a skill that you need to learn and then the more you write that type of copy, the better your going to be at being even a better copywriter as far as sales are concerned. So I think that the first step is become a good writer, and then the second step is becoming a copywriter. But ultimately you have to be able to put sentences together and make sense and have structure, and come off as intelligent before you then go take it a step further and learn how to be persuasive with your writing and make sales from it.
David:
So, all right, so lets jump back to the book. So you finished the book and it took you was it really two years?
Joel:
It wasI started writing it in 2004 or 2005. It took me approximately six months to get an

agent, and then we got the publishing deal, and then it was like another seven months until the deadline for the manuscript was, and then it was about eight months after that when it hit the book shelves. So from the beginning when I wrote the first chapter, it probably was just over two years until it hit the book shelves, and when I got an agent and we actually started shopping around or when the book got purchased, there was probably almost a year and maybe five or six months until the book actually hit the shelves, and that was after I had a contract inside a contract with these people who wanted to publish my book. It was a year and six months later and that was considered to be average time that it takes.
David:
So, did you have a website during this time?
Joel:
I had just a simple website www.joelmarion.net, all it was, was just a way for people to find me online. I would get very minimal traffic just some clicks and stuff from some of the online websites that I was writing for. I really had nothing to market on the web sale. The only thing I had on there was a little coaching service. The only reason I added the coaching service was because I had the website so I had my e-mail address on there, and I was writing articles for some online publications, and then at the end you had a little resource box or whatever. I would get some clicks that would come back over from be it from T-Nation or www.BodyBuilder.com or whatever. And enough people were really into my articles and my content because I was giving me such great content, that I was having people e-mail me and requesting, Hey, can you design a training program for me and I will pay you for it? So if youre good at what you do, I guess some people ultimately will come to you. And from there I was like, Okay, well these people are just taking the initiative to e-mail me and ask for this service that Im not even really publicizing or saying that I offer it and I didnt really have anything to offer at that point. So what if I actually just had it on the website, maybe I would probably start getting more sales and then ultimately you will see as we get into it how it starts from, okay what if I actually had it on the website, and what if I actually started marketing it, and what if I actually started becoming good at marketing. And the difference between that is having two or three clients and having two hundred clients.

David:
Did you think that at this point, did you ever think you would end up doing like an info product or whatever outside of the book world?
Joel:
I really didnt really know what internet stuff was. I wanted to work in the fitness niche somehow. I was concentrated on the print book. I would see things at South Beach and stuff like that, and Im like, the South Beach sold a million and some odd copies, then Cheat to Lose Diet tells people they can cheat on their diet and still lose weight. How much more marketable is that then just the name of a beach? I should be able to sell a million copies. I was kind of naive at the same time. I kind of put all my eggs in one basket with the book, like that was going to be it. Let me get this book with the right publisher, and then all of a sudden, you know, you get the TV appearances that I wanted to get and I was kind of thinking that like that was going to be it. I was just going to write books and then here comes the sequel and here comes the next print book and that was going to be my career. I was going to get this book published and then that was it. And if it were to happen that way, quite honestly that probably would have been the way that it went. I probably wouldnt be doing anything internet marketing right now. Maybe I would have dabbled into it, but I mean, obviously if you sell a million copies of a book you dont really have to worry about too much else.
David:
So it didnt quite work out as you planned?
Joel:
Right, and as I told Ryan when we did the interview, its not like I didnt make money from the book, but it didnt set me for life either. It did well, and you know, we sold nearly a hundred thousand copies of the book, which is a lot. Its a very good book. Its considered a best seller. However when your only making a buck or two per book, Its not the end of it doesnt mean you dont have to work anymore after that, or that thats becoming you new job at least. So there were no plans for a sequel for the book or anything like that, and at that point it was just

kind of like I was making money online, minimal. I was doing some personal training, making some money that way. I had the book. I was making money that way. I had a membership site that was associated with the book which I was making commissions on. So I was making a nice living and probably approaching the six figures per year with the book deal and all that. It was generally higher than a six-figure year for me that year, but I knew I was not going to be able to sustain that type of income, because book sales are not going to be the same every year, I wasnt going to get a new book deal every year. So it was kind of finding it was going from a book to then the goal was developing a business in which I have a business which I can rely on monthly income from.
David:
So when did you decide it was time to make the full jump into internet marketing and then you went full force with the whole Cheat Your Way Thin?.
www.ryanlee.com

Joel:
It was quite awhile after the book was released. I think it was probably about a year later a year after the fact. And I saw some guys doing eBooks like Allen Cosgrove and Mike Purcell, I think, that just had released their books and just seen some other people with the sales page and Im like, Oh, okay this is a sales page, I get it Just people Making a lot of money off downloads and stuff like that. Its pretty cool. I was intrigued by it. I knew there was more to it than that, but I was intrigued by the concept of selling downloadable material and making 100% profit off of it, as opposed to getting a 7% royalty from a print book, and charging a higher price. The concept intrigued me and thats when I went anytime I ever wanted to do something, I went to somebody who has already did it. Like when I wanted to gain 20 or 30 pounds of muscle, thats when I hired Anthony Ellis as my mentor, and Anthony Ellis is a guy who put on thirty-two pounds of muscle on his body for life. If anyone thinks of people who put on muscle using Body for Life or won the Body for Life contest thats had that type of transformation, they think of him first and then maybe they think of me after that. But I actually hired Anthony because he had been there and done that and now it was like, okay, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to get into. I dont know too much about it, so I need to learn. I knew Ryan Lee was kind of the go-to guy in fitness internet marketing, so I bought his info products and then I started going on ClickBank and all that stuff and trying to find out who the best publishers were. Then I tried to network and contact and become friends with some of the top publishers. Now pretty much theyre all my best friends and they just came here in Tampa last weekend to speak at my event and its come full circle at this point. Thats how it started. I started turning to people who I knew had eBooks or websites and stuff online that were doing well. Ryan Lees product was the first product I bought and I also bought Craig Ballantynes Online Super Profits (http://www.onlinesuperprofits.com), and then I also signed up to do some phone coaching with Craig as well. Vince says youve got to pay to play and I did that. I bought products, I invested in coaching with people who had been there, done that, and then I did a number of other things to establish relationships with the people that I knew were doing well online.
David:
Did you set the record for biggest fitness launch?
Joel:
Yeah, when we did the launch on ClickBank, it was the biggest fitness ClickBank launch ever of all time. We did over $300,000 in sales in four days. No one up to that point had done any numbers quite like that. Still no one has done anything quite like that. Probably the second biggest launch was when I re-launched the program in November and we did like $250,000 or something like that.
David:
So youre big thing and this was brought up at the last Summit was how you got all your JVs. You pretty much had everyone in the industry promoting for you.
Joel:
Right, right.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
And you mentioned at the Summit, it was because you had called them. So kind of walk me through that process, and then also how would someone who definitely had that much to offer, how do they get in with these guys the big name guys in their respective niche?
Joel:
I didnt really have too much to offer these guys either. I used what I had as leverage. Leveraging what you do have and then being a nice, genuine person and being a likable guy all helps. I had two people we just had an event here in Tampa this past weekend and I had their two trainers who came to the event and they wanted to learn some things about marketing as well, so they networked and when were at dinner one night, they were just huddled up with me and Vince and we were talking a lot of business as well as some other topics. But these are guys who showed initiative. They were nice. They were genuine. They are very likable guys. Does that mean Im going to promote their product? I dont know, but as long as they continue to show that they are somebody who wants to work, then thats whats going to catch my attention and I think thats what caught some other peoples attention. So its not necessary about having nice you dont have to have all this stuff to offer, but if you can offer something or you can approach somebody and say, Hey, I may not have much to offer, but heres what I can do. I can interview you for this magazine which I have connections to, and maybe they didnt, or I could write can you pass along a product or a copy of your eBook. Id love to write a review and you can use my review and my name and the fact that Im a Body For Life Champion and Im a member of this training team and if you want to post that on your website and post my review of your product, you can do that. I can interview for this, or can I send you a copy of my print book? So theres all different kinds of things to make me look like Im legit and if Im sending somebody a copy of a hardcover book in the mail and none of the guys that I talk to have a hardcover book, that just distinguishes me as something and Im not saying that its everybodys goal, but I think a lot of the people, like Vince DelMonte, he was like, How can I get a book published? After that, now that they had access to somebody who had done that, then I just helped him come up with a whole concept for a print book and were going to be helping one another in

that respect this year, as far as trying to get him and this book idea that we both came up with together, published and all that type of thing. It was just like whatever resources I had access to, I was willing to help them out with. I didnt ask people to promote my product. I tried to recruit friends, not affiliates. A lot of times I get emails from people and theyll listen to the interview I give with Ryan for the newsletter, so many people will contact you and say, hey, and maybe theyll say something nice about you, whatever, and then the next thing that theyre talking about is some product that theyre coming out with and will you promote it? Were offering 75% commission. Well, I can go in ClickBank Marketplace and look at any product that I want and its 75% commission, so its not like there are any shortages of products to promote or do some sort of digital product that offers 75% commission that brings anything to the table that anyone else isnt. Heres the other thing I decided to turn my print book into a digital product. It was something that was a good fit for everyone, plus you have to make sure that your product stands out and its different. So many people contact me and say hey, I have a high intensity workout program coming out. Its a short 15-minute a day workout. Join the club. Theres 30 of those products out there already. I always promote Craig Ballantyne like a million times, so how am I then going to go promote something thats pretty much the same thing? With my product, it gave people the opportunity to (1) people want to promote a product thats good and that they know that is reputable thats coming from somebody that they can trust and thats a good product so that when they recommend it to their list, people are going to get results and people are going to say, okay, its not going to damage their reputation in anyway; and (2) they want to promote a product that fills some sort of gap in the industry or fill some sort of gap in something that they havent promoted before. AJ Roberts contacted me about promoting his bench press program and he never promoted anything and I dont know anyone who had problems primarily with that list, but my list seems to purchase whatever I promote. So Im like Ive never promoted anything really strength

based and I never promoted anything thats especially I think a lot of people might want to increase their bench press. Its just everyone trains their pectorals like 30 times a week. So Im probably going to end up promoting that and the only reason why Im going to promote that is because it gives me something different to promote to my list than what Ive already promoted. So I think probably theres several things that go into will someone promote you, and it has to be a good fit for their list. I has to be different and unique from all the other products out there in some way, shape or form because we get asked to promote something literally every day, and if youre produce is just another high-intensity, short interval workout, their product has been done 15 times already, so theres no reason to promote it and you have to have some sort of I think ultimately, at least within fitness, people are looking for products to promote that are new and interesting and they can position in some sort of way to their list. So I think that that was one of the main things that I had than in addition to the fact that I was a published author in addition to the fact that I was nice guy, in addition to the fact that I never really asked anybody to promote me and I called them on the phone and I said, What can I do for you, and I wrote a review on all their eBooks and I was just giving, giving, giving, and then I also had a good product for them to promote that no one else was really offering. By that point, we were all friends. I was friends with all these guys. Its not just that internet people are only going to make friends with other marketers. People are going to make friends with other cool people. So if you can get somebody to be your friend and you have a business proposition that makes sense, its not likely that theyre going to turn you down.
David:
If you had to start over from scratch, is there anything that you would have done differently? It sounds like there might be.
Joel:
Well, I probably would say that theres a lot of things looking back. Ill tell you there are certain things that I did that had a certain purpose and they were good for the time that I wouldnt do again, like probably a print book. Maybe Ill do that maybe five years now if some other opportunities arise or whatever. The amount of money that I made from that, I think there

are definitely positive things that came from my use of that leverage to contact some other people and I think it was impressive that no one really had a print book and that was kind of one of my ways into this whole niche and arena. But at the same time, I probably wouldnt do it again. If youre just getting started out, its probably to go toward the digital product if youre looking to make money and establish a business, than to try and be the next guy who had the print book out because youre going to waste two or three years of your life and then hoping that it works out. If people are reading this and learning internet marketing at this point, theyre way ahead of where I was when I first started off because I didnt even know what internet marketing was. I didnt know what an eBook was or anything like that, so I spent a lot of time getting to that point. So if people are reading the interview, theyre already ahead of where I was so congratulations. Youre delving into the right information if youre trying to make money and allow your passion pay the bills. Some other things that I would have done differently is my website sucked from the door, and again, that was because I didnt know anything about internet marketing or anything. You have to have a good website that follows a certain formulate, a sales copy, and now video sales are becoming really big. Things are constantly changing and Im starting to learn that. Just being online just for just over a year now, Ive witnessed so many things that have just changed and changed and if youre not willing change with the times, then youre just going to get left behind. My next thing is Im going Im going to be converting my website to video sales because I see people who are just making a lot with it. So I think unless youre willing to get on board with some of the newer things that are on there, you sort of get left behind and then people who are your business colleagues and your friends are just going to be on the next level above you and then here you are trying to get people to JV with you for a product lunch again. Its all about wording, what works in internet marketing, and getting in, and if youre reading Ryans magazines, if you own some products or some of my other mentors like Jeff Walker and Yanik Silver and Frank Kern and all these other guys. You just learn as much as you can.

The reason why when I started and my website sucked, I didnt know any better and now thatI think I did a lot of things correctly when I started and thats why I was able to jump forward and become such a rapid success story and propel all the way to the top of my nice. But now unless Im keeping in line with the times and the changes that are making, then Im just going to fall behind just like you have to constantly be working to be at the top.
David:
So if there were three must-have resources that have helped you along the way, what would they be?
Joel:
Jeff Walkers Product Launch Formula. I spent $2,000 for that. Its worth every penny. Its probably made me $300,000 at this point just this past year. And then along with that, some of the information overlaps, but if youre going to learn from somebody, somebody in the business that I learned from would be Frank Kern and his Mass Control System. I own that as well. If you want to do a continuity program and things are changing now, so Ryans going to have to update it but I really enjoyed Continuity King. Thats what I based my continuity program also the print newsletter and CD and the offers that he talked about there. Now you can do free plus shipping, so we actually changed ours yesterday to a $5 offer and made sure that were in compliance with having certain check boxes on the order forms and all of that. But the Continuity King (http://www.continuityking.com), as far as learning how to do continuity programs, its an awesome resource.
www.ryanlee.com

Yanik Silver if you want to learn how to write copy, Yanik Silvers Ultimate Copywriting Workshop (http://www.ultimatecopywritingworkshop.com/). Yes, it doesnt cost $10, but if you want to learn how to do things the proper way copywriting makes me my money. I kill people on affiliate promotions. Ive gone head to head with people with a list of 700,000 and done more sales than them with a list thats almost 1/10th the size and it all comes down to the fact that I know how to sell the people through email and through words. On the sales letter of Yanik Silvers website its just like how to turn works into money. Im going to teach you how to turn words into money and the next time you want to give yourself a raise, all you need to do is sit in front of your computer and write your next Corvette or write your next whatever it is that you want, and ultimately thats what Ive found time and time again and consistently do. Just sit down and do an affiliate promotion and get $30,000 in commission promoting Vince DelMontes DVDs.
There are people on that list much bigger than me who are promoting that product, but I think I sold like 60% of all the sales. I sold more units than everyone else combined, which was pretty sick to see happen, but ultimately its just my copy was that much better than everyone

elses and I offered some bonuses that other people didnt. You have to learn how to write copy and if you want to be really, really good at it, it can make you a lot of money and your list doesnt even have to be that big in order for you to make more money off of affiliate promos than other people if you just learn how to write good copy. Yaniks Ultimate Copywriting Workshop, Jeff Walkers Product Launch Formula, and if you want to learn continuity, I recommend Ryan Lees Continuity King.
David:
So one last question before I want to ask you the future of your business; I mentioned this to you before a while ago. Some people kind of have trouble with the whole concept of selling and it makes them uncomfortable to be a salesman for a service. Were you ever uncomfortable with it? And if so, how would you suggest people to get past that hump of selling themselves?
Joel:
Heres the thing I suck as a salesman in person. I wouldnt say that now because we just had an event and we did pretty well with sales and I dont mind telling people in person now because Im a marketer. But initially, I was very uncomfortable with selling personal training. I hated it. As a personal trainer at Golds Gym and setting people up with consultations and putting them in higher pressure situations to buy personal training and all that stuff, I just kind of wanted to be at the gym and talk to some people and if they wanted personal training, theyll sign up. I was the guy who was Body For Life Champion, writing for Mens Fitness and then had just an average number of personal training clients. And then there were just local guys and guys who were 55 years old and a personal trainer and he had way more clients than I had. I just wasnt really comfortable with selling in that form. I think online it becomes much less of a barrier to sell because youre not directly interacting with somebody. If somebody had to call somebody on the phone, it would probably be a lot more awkward to sell to them on the phone speaking to them one-on-one than it would be to email blast it out to a list and have the email do the work. I think for people that may not be comfortable with selling their

services or marketing their services and all that stuff on the internet, is just as much less of a barrier to sell because youre writing strong copy based on what you know to be the email copywriting email formula and you put it together and you just send it to your list and then you watch the sales comes in and the people who dont like to be sold to, they wont buy, and then the people that do, do. And believe me, once you start seeing the money come in youll get very comfortable with selling once you see the money come in. Ultimately, thats what it was for me. I wanted to do an affiliate promo and thats the other thing, people are like, well, you email like five or six times for one promo, and yeah, true, I do, but my list buys over and over and over again because I know how to do it and I understand the art of copy and I have a fantastic relationship with my list and I dont just sit there and say, hey, this promos ending tomorrow, or hey, this promos in a few hours. I dont constantly remind people that the promos ending. At least if I did that and I emailed five or six times and I didnt have a specific formula to how I do things with promotions, then it would backfire on me every time. I hard sell. Im a salesman and if Im promoting something, its because I believe in it and no, you dont have to buy it, but Im going to give you some good information and the promos and sell a lot of it. Its content driven and we do some interviews and stuff like that, so my list is very, very responsive even though the fact that I sell. Once you start seeing the results of you being a more aggressive marketer and I almost hate to say it if people study my email promotions, then theyll probably start to understand why, but the take-home message is not [inaudible] for promos because your list is probably going to hate you by the end of that if you dont know what youre doing. Everyones going to unsubscribe. But its a lot easier, I will say, as far as getting beyond the selling barrier. Its a lot easier to do it on the internet, so if youre starting an internet-based business or youre looking to market your services online, you dont have to be in the highest pressure situation face-toface with somebody trying to get them to buy personal training or whatever. Those types of sales, like phone sales and all that, Im not into that. If someone is calling me to inquire about a service, then I have no problem trying to help them convince them that this

will work for them and its a very smart decision for them. But at the same time, I dont like to be aggressive with people in person, face-to-face, who may or may not be interested in the service and Im not somebody whos going to try to convince you face-to-face that if you give me signals that you dont really want to buy, that Im not going to be that type of person and be uncomfortable doing that in person. At the same time, if you open the email, thats your choice. I feel that its direct response marketing. You respond if youre interested. If not, then dont respond. Its a different type of situation that youre in and a different type of selling that youre doing.
David:
Also one thing as well that I think about when you say theres a lower barrier to entry; its also kind of easier you can kind of be more shady on line, which is not necessarily a good thing. Ethics online, I guess thats a topic considering all the shit thats going on with the continuity.
Joel:
Right.
David:
Youre obviously an ethical person. Do you feel thats pretty important?
Joel:
Yeah, I know what youre saying. Essentially, its how does your list trust you and with all the bullshit that happens on line and so many scams out there, I dont just sell to people and Im not a company. Im a person. When people buy from me, they feel like theyre buying off of my recommendation because they know me. They feel like theyre buying from me my product because they know me, and then of course, some people come in off somebody elses recommendation or something like that. But a lot of my list building and the people on my list either theyre all on the newsletter list for a little while, I built a relationship with them and then they bought from me because theyre comfortable buying from me and they saw that Im a real person and I give good information and Im not just a website. Im a person and theyre buying from a person.

Ultimately, I think people buy from people and people buy from websites that they can trust and Pay Per Click traffic and stuff like that, thats why some conversions go down way so much because they dont the website that they land on from anyone else. For me, and I think a lot of the reason why I do so well with promos is because my list is built primarily from people who have been on my list for a little while that I collected and they read my blog and stuff like that, so they either came in on my blog or you came in from a recommendation of somebody else who you trusted and now youre trusting me because youve gotten to know me by hey, I have you a good product at a great price, and now Im giving you all this newsletter content and all that stuff. So Ive become a personality to people. Theyre willing to recommend me to their friends and now Im not just a website online. Im a person and people feel like theyre buying from somebody, and Craig Ballantyne does an excellent job of doing that as well. I think one of the major things that he has going for his business is not just Turbulence Training. If I land on Turbulence Trainings website, I dont know anything about Turbulence Training, probably would never buy it for me, and Im sure there are some people who do and are more comfortable buying. But for me, I probably wouldnt. Maybe Id sign up for the free report and then when I got his free report, now Im getting hit with YouTube videos and hes taking me through his kitchen and all this different stuff, and the next thing you know, youre like, okay, Craigs for real. Now Im going to buy turbulence training and I think that is a much more effective way to do things is just be a person and allow your personality to shine through and develop relationships with your list. The better relationship you have with your list, then the more money youre going to make from your list because theyre going to be responsive when you recommend a product and when you come out with something new, theyre going to be responsive to taking you up on that offer as well. As far as not being shady and stuff like that, I think people are more comfortable when they feel like you are a person, but at the same time, you dont ever want to do anything to damage your reputation so you just have to make sure that you dont ever do anything to damage your reputation. If Im promoting someone elses product thats junk, youre going to be transparent about your offers, you cant do free plus shipping anymore, but when we had that free plus

shipping offer on there, it said in three or four different places that you will be re-billed and of course, theres still people who, after that first billing, all of a sudden they dont know that theyre being billed again. Im sure its still going to be the same way because I couldnt possibly disclose in more places than I did and even now that we have a checkbox on the order forms, I have a feeling my charge backs are very low (way less than 1%), but I think theres always just going to be those people who just forget or dont read or whatever. You just have to operate in a way that you want to be treated as a customer. If someones going to charge you 30 days later, you need to put that very clearly on your website or youre going to be charged 30 days later and then we also, in the welcome letter that we send out, we have it online, we have it in the email that theyre sent after they purchase, and then we have it physically. We cover our bases in three or four different places. We have it physically when they ship the product, its right there in the welcome letter and its in bold. We dont try to hide it in Terms and Conditions because people ultimately are going to realize if youre trying to get over on them and then theyre going to get pissed off and then theyre not going to buy from you anymore. Then if you piss somebody off enough, then theyre going to do whatever they can to post on other websites or throw something up on FaceBook or whatever, and the next thing you know, there goes your reputation and thats damaging to you and who you are. So the bottom line is, you just have to run an honest business, and if youre not trying to run an honest business and if it becomes more about money than the person behind whos purchasing your product, then I think you just need to reevaluate why youre doing what youre doing and are you here to make money or are you here to help you. Ultimately, I think it comes down to what Ryans doing and what Im doing and what a lot of the guys I associate with are doing. Yes, we have a business thats associated with our passion, but ultimately the passion is to help people and if we can make money or [inaudible] then all the better, but first things first. We got into this business for the people and now were just learning how to monetize it in a better way.
David:
For sure. So whats next for you and your business, especially now with the new stuff going on?

Joel:
Well, we changed our continuity offer to a $5 offer as opposed to free and you just pay shipping. So its $5 plus shipping, and I was told that should be good as long as you offer as an incentive discounted trial. As long as theres some charge going on. So we changed that and were probably going to be converting the Cheat Your Way Thin website to a video sales page. Ive got a lot more launches and products coming out this year. I have a new product called the Extreme Fat Loss Diet that releases in May. Because Ive been so successful with launches, Im now at the point where Im helping run other peoples launches, so Im kind of creating other success stories. Ive recruited one of my long-time friends whos another writer for Testosterone Magazine and hes written for Shape, John Romaniello, and I think you know who John is.
David:
Yeah.
Joel:
Im running his launch. Ive kind of got my hands full now because it starts in two weeks for Final Phase Fat Loss. So hes somebody who is willing to work in the gym full-time and I kind of had to convince to open his eyes to online life, and now that he has done that, I know hell be successful because he has the same drive that Ive always had. He just needs to learn how to do it. So Ive helped boost him. Hes good friends with all my friends now and hes somebody else whos going to be in a rapid success building. So now Im running other launches. Im going to be running a couple of launches this year. Ive got a new product thats coming out. Were always going to be re-launching Cheat Your Way Thin on an annual basis for the holidays, so I think pretty much every year, as long as I can continue to get the affiliate support and I dont see why not, because they make money every time they promote it well be doing that every year. We just did our first live event. No one in fitness really does live events that arent marketing related. Its just an end user event. We taught training and nutrition information and there was a

time for us to meet our customers and the feedback we got from that was phenomenal. I didnt really know if I was going to do it again because of all the time that it took going into it, but based on how rewarding the experience was, thats probably going to become an annual thing. Weve got everything going on now and I like to be kind of a trend setter and knowing how to really print continuity program within my circle of affiliates, so I was the first guy to do it. Now Vince DelMonte is jumping on board and hes pretty much ripped off my entire model. His package looks exactly like mine, but I helped him put it together, so I dont care. We work with one another closely. I was the first guy to do a print continuity program, so I take risks. I was the first guy to think about doing a live event for the end user and that worked out, fortunately. But I take risks and I do things by diving in head first and next years going to be more of the same and if anything new comes out, Im sure Ill be one of the first people to give it a whirl.
David:
Awesome. I mentioned to Ryan a couple of times, you obviously had a quick success story, but I see you as heading towards the top of the food chain in the fitness industry. I know Gary is pretty much Oprah in the fitness industry, but I feel like youre getting quickly to his point, if not further, even though youre not doing the Pay Per Click.
Joel:
Yeah, well, I think Gary makes a little more money than we all do and one of the interesting things about Gary is I just talked to him the other day and hes making like $40,000/day in his ClickBank account.
David:
Yeah.
Joel:
But at the same time, hes spending $40,000/day too. So hes more concerned about volume and just getting the customers. If he can break even on his front end, he doesnt really care.

The truth about ads, I dont know how much of a money maker it is for him and he wants to get people cycled and hes starting a continuity back end and also all the affiliate promos that he does. I think the majority of his income comes off the affiliate promotions and back end sales. Hes just more concerned with getting the customers. Hes somebody who makes more money, but hes also somebody who right now his customers have no idea how much money he makes and as far as celebrity status within the fitness niche amongst us marketers, hes huge. But as far as the list is concerned, he might as well be just as big as anybody else. I think the fact that were doing live events, we have physical products now and stuff like that, and [inaudible] promotion and the personality driven business that we do, I think that myself and Vince DelMonte and Craig Ballantyne, and now John Romaniello is coming up into the news. I think were just really going to try and take the fitness industry to a whole new level and just kind of the four of us be at the forefront and just dominate the whole niche in the whole new personality driven way this next year. Thats our goal. Were getting more money in and probably be doing more well off than most any of us, but at the same time, as far as the notoriety and becoming known and we can begin to get people from a standpoint of people know who Bill Phillips is; people who know who these authors are that have print books. If we can manage to use the internet to propel us to that type of status, I think thats really what our goal is in the next year to work together and within our four businesses, to help promote each other and uplift us to that type of position of power and notoriety and recognition within the industry. I think that will be really cool.
David:
Do you have an end game, like your absolute goal?
Joel:
Thats a good question and something I hadnt really thought about. My goal for this next year with my first year online, I approached seven figures, but didnt quite hit it. My goal for this next year and I didnt really have a goal. I just knew that I wanted to move as fast as I possibly could, and then by the end of the year I took my bank statements and I made myself $700,000. My goal for this year is to do seven figures net and then I think as I achieve goals, I just always

want to achieve the next thing. So I may say I have a goal of what my end goal is right now, and then a year from now it will probably change.
David:
Yeah.
Joel:
I never know until Im doing the next thing and then once I accomplish that, then I just want to do more.
David:
Well listen, thanks a lot for doing the interview with us. We really appreciate. Sorry I ran it way longer than the half hour.
Joel:
Its no problem. Im here to talk and I have the afternoon to do whatever what I want here. Thats one of the good benefits of running an internet marketing lifestyle I work when I want to work and I take breaks when I want to take a break and I have predominantly the majority of my day is free for me to pick and choose when I want to do certain things, so running over isnt a problem.
David:
Awesome.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #13

Jonathan Volk
Interview with Jonathan Volk

David:
Lets start all the way from the beginning and tell us what you got you into internet marketing. I know youre doing a lot of affiliate marketing now. Is that what you started with?
Jonathan:
No, I actually started out in a thing called Arbitrage and basically what that is you buy traffic and send it to a site that has some Google ads or things like that, just regular advertisements, and theres usually a profit margin in between the clicks and the amount of revenue you get from the ads. So basically, I started I bought an archaic site and I noted that for every visitor I was averaging around 6 cents per visitor. So what I did was I went to just every place I could find that offered traffic for under six cents. My first one was Google AdWords, and I started buying traffic at five cents a click and making six cents on average. The desire to find more profit was really what led me into affiliate marketing, so I began to research what is affiliate marketing and how can I make it work for me. Thats really what got me started.
David:
Run us through the journey since then. So after your arbitrage, you made the transition to affiliate marketing, I know you probably its hard talking about affiliate stuff because its veryits likeTell me your traffic secrets. Tell me all your traffic sources, what offers youre running, and all of your money pages.
Jonathan:
[laughs]
David:
I also want to talk about your blog as well. So you moved on to affiliate marketing. How did you get into that? Tell us more about that story.
Jonathan:
It was probably around I started doing the whole buying websites and sending traffic to

them around 2004 and it wasnt until like mid-2007 that I began to really pushing to affiliate marketing. One of my friend, he was into affiliate marketing and kind of had told me a little bit about it and thats really when I started to push into that and because of the profitability of affiliate marketing and the potential in it, I started actually doing that more than anything else, and to this day, thats my main source of income, is all of the affiliate stuff.
David:
And so were you working during this time, or were you working and quit your job, or were you not working the entire time, or how did that work?
Jonathan:
I was working for a year and a half, a little over that, as a part-time computer salesman. I actually worked extremely hard so I was actually earning the income of a full-time computer salesman so that I could do affiliate marketing. Basically everything I was earning from that, besides bills obviously, was going into investing into pay per click and actually my first year, I probably lost close to $20,000 of income because of it, but I really count that as my education and now it really set the ground for me to be able to get to the levels where I am right now.
David:
And about education you are 23?
Jonathan:
Yeah, Im 22. Im almost 23 now.
David:
Oh, wow. Youre only two years older than me. Thats wild. So your college experience, from what Ive read, you went there for a short time and then left

because you were doing well, or?
Jonathan:
Correct. I was a part-time college student at a community college here and my plan was obviously to get my general education and then transfer to a university to get my Masters in business, but I just started I did way better than I was expecting to and I wanted to devote my time full-time into this, so it kind of I think it was a good decision in the end.
David:
Well, is that like, if you had to change anything about that, would you is that pretty much you pretty much went the exact right way you wanted to go with that? The whole learning process and going through school and like, what am I trying to say? For me, I dropped out of school before I even started making any money. I mean, if someone learned about affiliate marketing right now, would you say stay in school, stay with your job, figure it out first, or is it something that people should be diving head first into?
Jonathan:
I always recommend people especially people who have family that you dont risk your familys well being for a business. Weve got to look at affiliate marketing as a business, and I think thats the important thing. When you start affiliate marketing, if you have a lot of previous responsibilities, then I would say that you should stay at your job until youre earning enough income, just because thats the responsible thing to do, but if youre a younger kid like I was where you can kind of you can risk a lot more when youre younger because its not going to be as detrimental. I would say that its probably fine to risk a little bit more and just jump head first into it.
David:
When did you make your blog? When did that start?
Jonathan:
It started in 2007. I believe it was in April, and that was right after I became it was pretty close

to when I started doing full-time at home internet marketing and I kind of wanted to journal the whole thing. I had heard from a couple of people that I look up to that are in business he owns the site aldamings.com. He was saying how its really important to basically journal where youve been and where youve gone through, and I think thats really the main reason I started the blogs.
David:
And you were profitable at that point, right when you started it?
Jonathan:
Yeah.
David:
Yeah. So, how has that worked out for you? What do you use to blog for now? Is it still the journal, or are you using it for having some more influence and being recognized expert, or what are your goals for that the blog?
Jonathan:
Really, the blog has served as kind of an extra stream of income, but not through the traditional

advertisements or page reviews, though I do get paid for those. The main thing that its done is its been able to bring lots of influential people and people who may not necessarily be well known, but they know me and so its been able to bring a lot of really good deals. One for example is, a guy read my blog frequently and he was having trouble with some campaigns, so we worked together and its ended up making us close to $75,000 each profit. Its not a huge income stream up front, but the amount of connections that its brought me is really whats been the main thing about it.
David:
Do you get hooked up with press passes?
Jonathan:
Oh, yeah, everybody conference. I couldnt get PubCon because I requested it too late, but everything else has gotten a press pass for.
David:
Thats awesome. So, was there like a defining moment when you know that this was the way to go, that youit sounded like you kind of new, but when did you move past the kind of unsure state to the being 100% confident that this is it this is your future, this is your career?
Jonathan:
I think when I started hitting around a five-figure-a-month mark was really when I started to recognize, hey, this actually can be significant as a source of income. Before it was kind of like Im trying to connection money. Im not sure what Im going to do, and then right when I hit six figure per month income, thats when I really realized that this could change my life and its more than just kind of a job, its a career and a business that I could turn it into Thats really what Ive been striving to do.
David:
And did you pretty much treat it like a business from the start? I know you run Surge Marketing, but did you treat it like a business from the start or were you thinking, Oh, just a way to make money?

Jonathan:
I really didnt treat it like a business at the front, but I think thats something that Im really striving to learn. Im reading lots of books on running businesses successfully. I think theres a huge learning curve in learning how to treat something like a business and so Ive been talking to mentors and reading and trying to treat it like a business.
David:
And so Surge Marketing, when did you make that?
Jonathan:
I made it last year in 2008. I wanted to save some money on taxes. That was the main motivation, so I hired a CPA here locally and incorporated into an S Corp and through that out there, well save a good chunk of money.
David:
And is that something that youre trying to build into a brand, or is it just the tax stuff?
Jonathan:
Yeah, well actually, were actively building it into a brand, but not as huge of an internet brand. Really, the brand that Im trying to do on the internet is my name, Jonathanvolk.com, but locally Im trying to build a brand, Surge Marketing, Inc., and thats where we help local clients and local lead generation.
David:
So the local lead generation, go into that a little bit. What exactly are you doing with that?
Jonathan:
Basically, my brother-in-law is a salesman for a couple of places that I really cant disclose, but he has a lot of clients that own dealerships and dentists and chiropractors and all the main service industry people, and so by using his connections, Im hoping to bring in a lot of clients locally that can be a little bit more of a consistent and kind of easy income, just to continue to grow the business.

David:
Im actually doing some local stuff myself. I cant even tell you. Its amazing. A question, I guess, to go into that isits hard because I want to ask you a lot of strictly affiliate stuff, but our whole audience of the magazine is mostly people who really would be like, whats affiliate marketing? If you had to say someone who knew affiliate marketing, is there kind of the pros and cons or the compare and contrast between the local and the pure online stuff what do you think is the better opportunity? What do you prefer? Tell me your thoughts on that.
Jonathan:
Honestly, I think for someone just starting out, the affiliate marketing where its just widespread internet marketing is probably the best way to go just to start out because with the local affiliate marketing, youre having to deal with clients that are strictly your own. I like to say that when youre dealing with someones business and its kind of in your hands a little bit, when you have the local clients, I think having a little bit more experience is a little better to go into that one. Plus its a little bit more difficult than some of the easier campaigns that you can set up, like a dating campaign or something like that.
David:
On a sense of a feel-food basis, do you feel better about doing local stuff, or do you not really have any thoughts on that. Because one of the things that Ive seen is that even for the real legitimate offers on CPA networks, its almost like some things just feels like its very much like youre dealing with a big business with a real agenda, as opposed to a guy just trying to do his chiropractic. What do you think about that?
Jonathan:
Yeah, I definitely agree that it is a little more fulfilling in that you are impacting someones life that you can see and its tangible. Its not just about the money side. Its about seeing the social results, rather than just the market results. Being able to impact a business is just something that I love to do and part of my hearts goal is just to see a bunch of people become

successful. If you have the internet and just be a part of that.
David:
For sure. So if you could pinpoint three big mistakes that youve made in your journey, what would they be?
Jonathan:
I think probably my biggest mistake is not been treating affiliate marketing like a business right from the get-go, not doing the accounting, not doing the just all of the things that you need for a business, not wanting to really grow it as aggressively as I could have. I think thats the main mistake that I made. The other mistake that I think was pretty big, was just being a little bit lazier when I was in lots of success. Last year I did very well, but because of doing so well with some particular campaigns, I was a little bit lazy in starting some new stuff. So Id take a few more days off and not work as hard, and I think because of that Im still doing quite well, but I think I could have been a lot better off right now if I had just not been lazy.
David:
And affiliate marketing is generally a pretty intensive thats a lot of work. How have you created a work/life balance for you, and are you outsourcing a lot of your stuff, or are you still writing all of the stuffyourself? How are you doing that?
Jonathan:
Back in February of this year, I really was starting to get worn down from all the work that it does take to manage the larger campaigns and to try and grow so, I actively sought out a person who is very interested in the internet kind of like a Digg/Fanboy/Web 2.0 kind of guy, and I hired him and hes really been just amazing in helping the company grow. I have him on revenue share now and instead of just working set hours, hes always thinking about the company and thinking about how he can grow it. He actually just recently brought us in a chiropractor as a local client. Hes going to get a chunk of that. So hes really one of the

main things thats helped me to grow my business to the next level.
David:
Yeah, any time you can get an employee thats just as enthusiastic or even almost enthusiastic about your business, thats pretty awesome.
Jonathan:
Its amazing.
David:
One of the things that I kind of have seen with internet marketing, is the guys who end up having their own business and brining on people. Its kind of a world where theres either people that just have no interest, or the people that are like insanely passionate about it. So getting employees, its almost not that hard, right?
Jonathan:
Yeah.
David:
Theres so many you have so many fans on your blog, youre just like, Hey, anybody want to come work for me? and youd get like 10,000 responses maybe not the highest quality, but whatever.
Jonathan:
Yeah.
David:
Just give me money. Just give me all your money. Come on, I just want to know how to make money.
Jonathan:
Some of these people just want it now.

David:
What are your traffic sources? Tell me about your lending pages. What campaigns are you running? So if you had three big resources that have helped you along the way, they can either be products, books, tools, anything, what would they be?
Jonathan:
I think the three things for me would probably be mostly the blogs and the forums and basically my failures is the other big resource. So with the blogs, I like to read. I pretty much read every industry blog thats available and theres a lot less when I was getting started, which was one of the main reasons why I wanted to start one. But if you go on affbuzz.com, it lists all of the major blogs of the affiliate marketing industry. Theres really a huge amount of information that you can glean from reading those.
David:
I was going to say and youre on top on Affbuzz.
www.ryanlee.com

Jonathan:
Yeah, I am on top of that one. And then the other resource is probably the forums. I used to read digitalpoint and thats actually one of the ways that I learned about affiliate marketing a little bit more. And for the people who can handle a little bit more of a rough crowd, theres wickedfire.com, but its not recommended for the newbies, definitely.
David:
Its kind of sad to I feel like I see that a lot in forums online. It always starts out with good intentions and it will be helping, and then it will just be like a shark tank. Its almost like theres less real content on that site, and its more just like if you post something that someone thinks is stupid, everyone is going to jump on you.
Jonathan:
Exactly.
David:
Theres a lot of negativity, almost. I read the affiliate blogs, but it seems like a lot of the guys if Im a new affiliate marketer and I come in and I start reading these industry blogs, a lot of these guys have some pretty they seem worn down, they seem beat up. They seem like, listen idiot, this is what you have to do, otherwise its not going to work. Meanwhile, Im going to go run my campaign that Ive been working for 14 hours today on. Is it really like that, or is it something that you can manage? Can you live a real life and be a successful affiliate marketer?
Jonathan:
I think you can. I think a lot of these guys, a lot of people seem to talk a lot more than what truth is especially on the internet. A lot of peopleI think a lot of people, they can be mean just because its the internet and theres anonymity behind it. I totally agree with you in that theres a lot of good intentions behind helping start, but people can just kind of get worn

down and lose their focus, so to speak. But definitely, the answer to your question, you can live a normal lifestyle, definitely, but you really have to work at it.
David:
For resources again, affbuzz obviously, Wicked Firenot Wicked FireDigital Point, and did you like both? You didnt go through the Definitive Guide to AdWords or any stuff like that, really? Its just from for learning pay per click, was that just through trial and error?
Jonathan:
For learning pay per click, it really was trial and error for me. Id been doing pay per click and Google AdWords since 2004. It was actually before they had the whole quality score and things like that, so I could send traffic to any page that I wanted and they didnt really they didnt care too much. But then the quality score came along and that really was a huge hit.
David:
Yeah.
Jonathan:
I had lots of errors along the way that taught me what not to do.
David:
Yeah, thats for sure. Google dont even get me started. One of our questions that weve been asking people is their number one strategy for more traffic. Can you answer that question, or do you not really
Jonathan:
Absolutely.
David:
Okay, go ahead.

Jonathan:
The number one way to get more traffic via page verticals is that you just have to know your demographics. A lot of people, they get stuck on the whole, if Im going to be selling ringtones, I just need to get on ringtone keywords or whatnot, and they just get stuck on the ringtone, ringtone, ringtone type of mindset. But really the way to get more traffic is by just knowing who the people that are buying your product or service are and go find them. Go place your ad in front of them however you can do that. By doing that, youre going to get more traffic than you could imagine.
David:
For sure.
Jonathan:
Yeah.
David:
Its crazy. The whole concept of the fact that Google services, I think its 30-something percent of the search traffic on the internet, and thats hundreds of millions of people. Its insane how much stuff there is out there.
Jonathan:
It really is.
David:
So I guess to wrap it all up, what is next for you and your business? Whats your focus from here on out? Do you have some sort of end game goal?
Jonathan:
We have been working on, besides affiliate marketing because were always working on extending that weve been working on the local marketing and actually next year, in the beginning of the year, were going to be launching a few new websites that are actually servicedriven websites. I cant say a huge amount about it, but basically taking the knowledge I have

now from affiliate marketing, and applying it to more of a mass scale. It should be interesting. Im kind of branching out every little which way I can.
David:
Awesome, dude. Thats really cool. For a 22-almost 23-year-old-guy, I think youre ahead of the crowd. Youre doing seven figures right now.
Jonathan:
Yep.
David:
Thats awesome. For me, I think as a person who Ive only I didnt even know what internet marketing was until February, so like meeting people that are my age, I think especially in the affiliate industry, theres a lot of young people. Meeting people that are doing so well, its pretty cool. I think its awesome and I think that as a person who wants to stick it to a man, that kind of mentality, I think its pretty awesome what youre doing, so keep it up.
Jonathan:
Thank you. Thats actually one of my favorite parts about the industry, and one of my least favorite parts is that theres so many young, successful people and just being able to network with all the young people that are doing well is just really awesome to me.
David:
Yeah, and I definitely understand the pros and cons of that. Its almost like its easier to relate to, but also lots more insecurity. Its almost like high school.
Jonathan:
Absolutely.
David:
Its like in PPC.bz, hating on everyone kind of stuff. I know how I feel about that. Thanks so much for doing the interview. Are you going to be at Affiliate Summit West?

Jonathan:
Absolutely, yeah. Cool, then Ill probably see you there. Ill keep my eyes open.
David:
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #14

Justin Goff
Interview with Justin Goff

David:
Tell me what got you in internet marketing.
Justin:
Its kind of an unusual story. My background is in college. When I was a freshman or sophomore, I used to be a huge poker player and sports better. I actually used to do pretty well. Thats kind of how I made money instead of having to get a real job during college. Then I kind of had one [inaudible] football season loss. I cant remember exactly how much it was. It was probably like $2,500 or something. Its not that much money now, but at the time it was a good deal of money. So anyway, I kind of was looking for ways to make money so I ended up starting a website trying to sell sports pics and it actually did decent. The first year, I think I made for not knowing literally anything about internet marketing, I think I made maybe like $1,500 or something the first year and then I was just hooked from there on. Looking back now, that first site was absolutely horrible. It was the worst designed site Ive ever seen. I had no idea what SEO was, Pay Per Click, anything. I had no idea how to drive traffic. I was basically just posting on forums and stuff and driving traffic that way. Anyhow, thats kind of how I got into it. That kind of gave me the first taste of mega money online. From there, I kind of moved toI did another site another sports pic site that did a little better. I kind of got out of that business. I got into being a poker affiliate. That was kind of the first time I really started taking it a little more serious. I was kind of going along the same lines. I was doing probably like $500 or $1,000 a month while I was in college, which to me, it sounds great because like I said, it kept me from having to get a real job or working some stupid job that I actually didnt want to do. When I graduated college, I actually really didnt have much of a plan. I kind of knew I didnt want to work for someone else. I wanted to do something on my own, but I honestly wasnt making enough to live on, but I kind of just said screw it, Im going to try it and see how it goes, and worst comes to worst, I can go get a job bartending to pay the bills in the meantime. Its

kind of a tough decision. You see people for me that was a tough decision to make when I had literally nothing that I really needed that much money for except for an apartment and my car payment. Unlike most people who had family, kids, everything, mortgage, all that kind of stuff. I can kind of see where people are hesitant to make the jump. Anyway, from there I ramped up my efforts and started focusing a little more on it and everything actually really took off for me. In the first couple of months I started making a couple thousand a month and that kept going up and up and up to the point where I was making like $12,000 or $15,000 a month and for someone who was 22 years old, right out of college, it was insane to me really. What I realize though now is that what I had back then wasnt really a business. It was more just pretty much exposing loopholes in Googles algorithm doing some major wink buying and ranking really well for a lot of poker stuff that converted really well for that poker affiliate. So I think around 2007 or somewhere around there, all the stuff I was doing pretty much came to a halt. Luckily I had made good enough money and had saved pretty much all of it. At the time, like I said, I was making like $15,000/month and literally living in an apartment that cost $300/month. I didnt have a car payment, so it was nice that I actually got to bank a lot of that and I kind of lived off that for awhile while I started a bunch of new projects. Thats kind of when I got into blogging. I started a mixed martial blog that did pretty well actually. I think I had it for about 6 or 7 months before I sold it. I actually sold it for $40,000.
David:
Damn.
Justin:
Yeah, and it was a good idea because I kind of took the stuff I knew with gambling and that and mixed it with mixed martial arts and it was pretty much perfect timing because thats when the UFC was really taking off. Everybody was into mixed martial arts at that time and there was a lot of people looking to bet on it, so I was writing all these guides and articles and blog posts on it and just doing the affiliate thing for the gambling sites. Like I said, it was the

perfect time for it. I ended up selling that and then around that time is when I really got into working out. It was the first time in my life I seriously worked out and I saw really good results. A lot of the stuff we were doing was stuff that pretty much me and my friends had never done. I was like, theres got to be way more guys out there who are struggling with the same stuff and they want to know this information, so thats when I kind of partnered with my personal trainer I was working with and we started a fitness site and pretty much from then on Ive been doing that as well as I also do consulting for copywriting stuff which Ive really, really delved into the last year or so. Thats pretty much where Im at now.
David:
So one of the things that I took away from that just now is your blog that blog, there was no Justin Goff personality in it in a sense that you didnt brand yourself, it was the blogs own branding kind of thing?
Justin:
Yeah, and it was definitely more just like a straight-out SEO play with lots of good concepts. It ranked well. I did tons of guest posting on other internet blogs. I built up a bunch of really good links. If you actually go to the site now which is www.InternetBettingBlog.com, it ranks for every freaking betting term related to the UFC, MMA, stuff like that. It was one of those things where it was perfect timing. I was pretty much one of the only ones kind of going after that little niche and its still doing well because I still kind of consult with the guy who runs it now. Hes upped the efforts of it, but its still a niche thats doing really well. But yeah, like you said, it was definitely not really had nothing to do with me or my brand or my name at all. It was just more getting stuff to really rank well and I focused a lot on my conversions.
David:
So when did working with ShoeMoney fit into all this?
www.ryanlee.com

Justin:
That was earlier kind of like in the middle of 2009. The ShoeMoney tool system theyre running is doing pretty well, but he has like 8 or 9 other businesses that do a lot more money. He was looking for someone to take it over and work with him on that. I actually only worked with him for a brief amount of time with that. Honestly, between my schedule and trying to work with him with him having so many projects, it just kind of really wasnt working out, so we kind of ended it. Hes been focusing more on his new ShoeMoney system which I think definitely is going to be killer and its probably going to change a lot of things for people new to internet marketing.
David:
You mentioned Search Engine Optimization a lot in telling me about what youve been doing. Tell me in terms of what youve seen get you the best results, do you think that is the way that people should be focusing on Search Engine Optimization, or should it be because I know youve kind of I feel like youve kind of moved away from and towards more like a relationship-building side of the internet.
Justin:
Yeah, definitely; in the beginning I was much more of a strict SEO, but now Im kind of seeing more of the benefits of the relationship blogging which definitely adds to your SEO, so its a good way to drive traffic and build links and start ranking better. Im kind of more definitely onto that path. In the last couple of years, Ive also learned so much more about internet marketing, whereas before SEO was really all I knew. At the beginning when I started out, like I said, I didnt have any money so there was really if you dont have money, theres really no other way to go besides SEO and article marketing and stuff like that and blogging. You cant really dump $10,000 into Pay Per Click when you dont have it.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
No; so getting these guest posts this might be a silly question, but were there any strategies that helped you get more guest posts? Because I know that some people that blog might be a little intimidated to ask other people if they can post on their blog. But I mean, what helped you?
Justin:
Theres definitely a lot of strategy to it. Some of my best tips would be you really want to form a relationship with someone before you actually do a guest post. One of the things I probably did was comment on their blog, send them emails, stuff like that, without asking for anything from them even helping them out if I could help them in any way; just basically any way to get on the radar, especially with a bigger blogger, bigger website that I really wasnt on their radar basically, and they didnt have any clue who I was. Thats kind of the first objective. The best way for me so far is meeting people in person. Anybody Ive met at a conference is almost always up for letting you guest post because they know you, they know you actually know what youre talking about. Connecting with them on FaceBook and Twitter definitely works so that when you send them a first email, they actually have a lot more chance of recognizing your name. But like I said, the biggest thing is to not try to pitch them anything right away. Always try to help them out a couple of times before you actually ask for a guest post. And then obviously when you write a guest post, you want to make sure its like I always give the best post that I can write to someone so like, if I write a really, really good post thats like 2,000 words and incredibly detailed and really good tips and strategies, Ill give that away as a guest post instead of putting it on my blog, especially if its for a bigger blog because its going to help you more being on a bigger blog than it will on your own blog.
David:
Yeah, I remember you mentioning to me that you got one post on ShoeMoneys blog and it took you all the way to page 4 immediately for fitness marketing.

Justin:
Yep.
David:
Yeah, thats pretty ridiculous. Along the way, were there any learning resources that helped you out a lot?
Justin:
I would say well, I mean, Ive kind of gone through different stages with all I got was all SEO at first. I was reading a lot of Aaron Walls stuff. I think he has probably the best free resources listed on his blog at www.SEObook.com. I really got into blogging, so I was always reading CopyBlogger and ProBlogger. Id say copywriting was one of the biggest things that really taught me the most about the ins and outs of marketing because if youre a good copywriter, you basically understand all of the fundamentals of marketing to someone and selling to them. So picking up some good books on copywriting will definitely help you.
David:
Any specific ones?
www.ryanlee.com

Justin:
Yeah, Joe Sugarmans Advertising Secrets of the Written Word is definitely my favorite advertising book. Its a little advanced for someone if theyre just starting out and know nothing about copywriting, its a little over your head. Robert Blys The Copywriters Handbook, is a great starting copywriting book. Those two together, I think, are probably two of the best books you can start with. Just read The Copywriters Handbook first and then move on to Sugarmans book.
Eben Pagan has a lot of really, really good products. Theyre pretty high-priced, but definitely worth it.
David:
Do you have domains at all?
Justin:
His Guru Mastermind, I think its just called How to Create and Sell High-Priced Information Products, or something like that. Theres a DVD set thats really good.
David:
So you now moved into the information product area. I feel like a lot of people start with the

affiliate space and then move into actually making their own product. At what point do you feel confident and ready that you can and should be doing an information product?
Justin:
I think it kind of depends on two different things. If youre a really good marketer and youre sending tons and tons of traffic and sales to someone else, you probably should either make your own product or if youre not an expert, partner with someone and do one with them because if you look at some of these guys that spend six figures of their affiliate sales and theyre losing out on so much money, then thats just - partnering with a guy, giving a guy 10% and starting their own stuff. I would say that and then a lot of people are kind of scared to do it just because theyre like, Oh, Im not an expert, but you dont have to be the most well-known expert in the world. You only have to be smarter than the people youre selling to. I can easily write a product on copywriting. I know Im not the best copywriter in the world but to someone whos just learning copywriting or someone whos kind of intermediate, I could definitely teach them a lot of stuff. So to them, I look like an expert, but you really dont have to be the expert, I guess is what Im trying to say.
David:
You kind of mentioned the cost to me a little bit before, but are there any top three mistakes that you made along the way that we could learn from?
Justin:
First, I used to never build lists so I didnt have an email list. I didnt have a buyers list, or reader list. That was kind of an eye opener. When I first started on the internet, like I said, I was doing all SEO and it kind of dawned on me that if I lost rankings on the website, Id pretty much lose everything because I ignored my list. Like I said, the smart marketers are the guys that have big lists that they continually to market to them. I think my other biggest problem is at first was not sticking to something long enough. Theres a lot of projects Ive jumped into, got really excited about, and then just quit on them or sold

them before they were where I wanted them to be. So really finding a project that you actually really, really like and can be really profitable is kind of something that took me a long while to learn.
David:
That was two, I think.
Justin:
I owe you another one. My other biggest one was definitely time management stuff. The day I learned the difference between being busy and being productive just kind of switched a light on in my head. For so long I did so many light things like checking emails, reading blogs, reading forums, and stuff like that that make you feel like youre doing something, but all they are is just busy work and youre not actually getting anything done. Youre not pushing your business any further. The day I realized that was a big eye opener to me.
David:
Time management tools what have helped you along the way for being more productive?
Justin:
The biggest one, which is probably the simplest one, every day before I start, I get out a note card, I write down the two biggest things I want to get done that day, start with those things; and one of the other biggest things I did by far, that changed everything, is I usually dont check email now until like 3 in the afternoon. Checking emails is one of those bad, bad habits that pretty much everybody has, especially if youre working on a computer all day. It sounds so simple, but if you get right into start working right when you sit down at the computer and really focus on knocking out your first big project or the first big thing you want to get done that day, it really sets the tone for the rest of the day. I definitely recommend people reading some time management stuff which, for me, whats

really helpful was Dan Kennedys Time Management book and The 4-Hour Workweek were both incredibly helpful to me.
David:
You told me before that you have an intern? I dont know if you still do.
Justin:
Right now I do. Hes out there now, but Im currently looking for another one.
David:
Where did you this is something that a lot of people dont really do. Everyones looking to outsource online and whatnot, meanwhile you have were you paying him?
Justin:
No, he was getting college credit.
David:
So run me through that process really quick of getting this intern.
Justin:
Its actually a lot easier than youd think. I ran ads on FaceBook, I posted some stuff on Craigs

List, and I think I posted a thing on some of the local colleges. I had like an internship page on a website. I put up stuff about how I was going to do like a 4-week internship, targeted kids who are business majors and then also kids who are interested in technology or fitness type stuff. I actually got 4 or 5 kids to apply and the one kid I got, he worked for me pretty much about Id say he worked 15 hours a week for me. The best part about it was a lot of the stuff that I had to do but it took me a lot of time to do, I wasnt really helping like, say uploading a YouTube video or something like that. That was stuff he loved to do, which freed me up for 15 hours a week to do stuff that actually was productive. Like I said, the FaceBook ad worked really well. You could spend $120 and get yourself an intern with FaceBook Ads. That was nice.
David:
Were you working at home when you had the intern?
Justin:
Yeah, I got an office in my apartment.
David:
How nice.
Justin:
He just came to the house.
David:
Okay. I was going to say, that wasnt weird at all?
Justin:
No, I kind of set it up like that. I told him we met before I decided to hire him. I just told him that this is obviously not a huge company. Its just me, but I was like, Heres the fact. Ive done

a real internship for a large company and honestly, you dont do anything but fetch coffee and do paperwork and a bunch of crap like that. I was like, You can work with me at my house. Ill teach you everything I do and basically youre going to have most of the skills to run your own business or at the very least, youre going to have a lot of internet marketing skills to get a job when you graduate, and he was all for it.
David:
And the setting up college credit for the school?
Justin:
That was actually really easy because all they do is I think they take a class which is an instruction class which I think they meet like once a week or something, and his instructor just called me like twice during the quarter, asked me how he was doing and what kind of stuff we were working on. I kind of thought it was going to be a big process, but there was really nothing to it.
David:
Thats awesome. I think a lot of people skip the intern route because they dont think they can set up a college credit because youre afraid that the schools going to be on top of them and shit.
Justin:
Yeah, I kind of felt the same way, but when I was in college, I did an internship with Ozworth. com and I did one with another guy whos an entrepreneur who ran a small website business and it was fine with him while I did that, so I figured why the hell not?
David:
So tell me, if you had to start all over again is there anything you would do differently from the beginning?
Justin:
Yeah, definitely. Get my own product up and running right away, start focusing on conversions for that page and really focus on driving traffic to it through bloggings, articles, Pay Per Click, whatever you want to do. That was kind of one of the things that took us forever to get up

running. Were now doing just kind of ramping up the efforts a little bit, but getting the stuff going was kind of a we put it on the back burner and I would definitely suggest getting that as soon as possible if thats the route you want to go.
David:
Tell me, Justin, what is the best advice youve ever been given?
Justin:
The best advice?
David:
Yes, ever, of all time.
Justin:
Of all time?
David:
Yeah.
Justin:
Let me think. I dont know. Can we come back to that one?
David:
Sure. This is kind of off topic, but hows the Adwords book treating you?
Justin:
Good. I have about of the way through it still. I havent gotten to the contact network stuff yet, but it definitely gave me a good grasp of the regular search network and stuff like that. Its kind of intimidating how much shit there is to know.
David:
Yeah, it is ridiculous. Its absolutely ridiculous because its much easier to do it though, if you

have your own product, I think. When youre doing affiliate marketing with Adwords, its like, good luck.
Justin:
Yeah, I was kind of thinking that when I started looking into tracking and stuff. Im like, if youre doing this as an affiliate, its got to be way harder.
David:
Its a nightmare. The last question really, and then we can come back to the best advice question whats next for you and your business? What is the future of Justin Goff and Justin Goff Enterprises?
Justin:
Well, were going to keep working on our eBook and our other products. Weve got three DVDs coming out this year. Actually all the films need to be put together and packaged type thing. Were definitely going to keep working on ramping up our Pay Per Click efforts and traffic-driving efforts for our eBook. Thats definitely going to be our focus this year. Getting that probably somewhere in like the 10 20 sales-a-day range is our goal for the year. And then Im working on a membership site as well. Im definitely looking to get into more copywriting jobs for bigger stuff in the fitness industry. I just think theres a lot of opportunity not just sales letter, but also doing direct mail stuff, doing infomercials, stuff like that. I definitely kind of want to get into copywriting scripts for that kind of stuff.
David:
Getting into infomercials, thats where the moneys at, Ill tell you. Infomercials is like Ill tell you more about that later. Okay, best advice.
Justin:
I dont know. All I can think of is cheesy shit.

David:
Thats okay. Advice is advice.
Justin:
I actually liked some of the stuff the first time I read Think and Grow Rich, one of the things that really dawned on me was youve kind of got to get out of your own way with your mental blocks when it comes to making money, and that was the thing that I really struggled with at first, especially coming from a lower middle class family where you definitely have some bad pre-existing notions about money and making money and stuff like that. That was kind of a real eye opener for me when I actually it just really dawned on me that some of the reasons I wasnt making as much money as I wanted was kind of a way personal thoughts I had about money that had pretty much been ingrained in my head since I was five years old.
David:
Thats not cheesy.
Justin:
I was going to go with something cheesy, though.
David:
Were good. Thats pretty much it. I appreciate the interview.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #15

Kristi Frank
Interview with Kristi Frank

David:
Lets just start with The Apprentice. I think thats a good place to start. Im sure you get that a lot. What was your business like and what were you doing before you got on The Apprentice?
Kristi:
Well, I had two major focuses. I had a couple of properties in Santa Monica and around the LA area, and I also owned a restaurant. When I applied The Apprentice, those were my two strong suits and when I was on the show, they called me a restauranteur because there were a couple of other real estate investors. So I got to be known as the restauranteur on the first season of the show. Before that, I had my brokers license and I was doing investing and we opened the veryI dont know if its the first, so dont say thatwe opened a raw foods restaurant in Santa Monica, California, that started getting a ton of press. We were on Entertainment Tonight and the cover of Time Magazine was all about raw food in our restaurant and Demi and Cher and we had a huge celebrity clientele and those two backgrounds really kind of got me on the show.
David:
Thats pretty cool.
Kristi:
Thanks.
David:
When you got on The Apprentice, how long was the show? How did that work? How long was the process on the show?
Kristi:
It was crazy. Do you want to know about the interview process, or actually on the show?
David:
On the show specifically.

Kristi:
They flew me out, to mess with my head Im sure, on September 11th and I came home at the end of Oct no, thats not right. I was there three months and I was actually on the show about a month and a half.
David:
On the show, did you have any did you interact with Donald Trump a lot on the show, or is it just like he just shows up to fire people?
Kristi:
No, that first season we actually had a ton of interaction with him. Remind me, I have a funny story after that. But we did get to talk to him a lot. I remember the very first day of filming. We walked into Trump Boardroom and theres Mr. Trump standing right in front of me. I thought, oh my gosh, here we go. Game on. We got to really see a different side of him; how he is off camera, which was totally amazing how sarcastic and brilliant and charming he was. Its a totally different persona than you really see on the show. So yeah, we did have a lot of interaction with him.
David:
You said you have a funny story?
Kristi:
Yeah, they told us in the beginning of the show you know, this is the very first season. We didnt know what The Apprentice TV show was. We were really there to audition to be Mr. Trumps apprentice and the producers of the show said Mr. Trump is always watching and I remember helicopters going above our heads and someone said, Theres Mr. Trump. We thought he was constantly monitoring the challenges, and its crazy because he had no idea what we were doing until we actually got in the boardroom. He had no idea.
David:
Thats funny. Thats like what I had heard, that it was kind of because hes a busy guy, you

know, so hes like dealing with his stuff. So how has your life changed since you appeared on The Apprentice?
Kristi:
Its crazy. I guess the first big event since The Apprentice, I was on Oprah and I got to do The Today Show. I was one of the lucky ones because the show was such a hit, so I was fortunate to do so much PR and that really has catapulted me into a lot of different things. After that, I met Mr. Dan Kennedy and he hired me to endorse his line of No B.S. books, and that was really my first taste of info marketing and getting into the internet marketing world.
David:
Thats cool. Before we jump into that, I wanted to ask you quickly, if you had any Donald Trump, obviously very astute businessman were there any big lessons that you took from your experience and from interacting with him and such from The Apprentice?
Kristi:
I think the biggest lesson I learned is how quickly you can get things done when you really have no choice. We were building businesses and good businesses in one or two days. We launched a Marquis Jet entire advertising campaign print, radio, TV you name it in two days and we shot the commercial and things like that. To actually build a business from scratch into making money in two days just blew me away and its something that I try and hold on to in real life. Like we all say, good is good enough when youve got to get out there and start getting feedback and generating revenue and you can refine the process, but to get something from start to finish so quickly, was just a huge lesson.
David:
Thats pretty cool. I was actually thinking about that yesterday, you know, when youre creating something, really the biggest lag time, Ive always felt,

when youre making a business is if you have to wait for someone else. If you are all together in the whole process, then you can really get stuff done quick.
Kristi:
Thats exactly right and the realization that you need to trust your team, theres no second doubts. You cant second guess them. You just give them a job and it will get done.
David:
Im sure the confidence that youve gained from that experience has been a huge help.
Kristi:
Definitely. Definitely. And I think another lesson I learned, when I first walked into that boardroom, I was surrounded Harvard MBAs, top-of-the-class this, Yale, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and was a very good student at an incredible school, but I realized that talk is cheap and that actions really speak louder than words. That was huge for me. And also keeping your morality and keeping your whats the word? your standards and whats important to you intact on camera was huge too.
David:
Yeah. So, now that you have finished with all that, what does a typical day look like for you?
Kristi:
[laughs]
David:
Is there a typical day? Does that exist?
Kristi:
You know, my typical day is me and my laptop working about four hours in the morning and I have a 5-year-old son, so about 2:30 I pick him up and then I spend a lot of family time. So I have the most incredible life. I am so very blessed, and I do love my time away as well, to go

and speak and to go to seminars and conferences. Thats really special to me as well. I think it recharges your batteries, and I think my husband and I both work. He works in Los Angeles a lot and he travels a lot, so we kind of trade back and forth and its really worked very well for us. So Im so fortunate. Im very blessed.
David:
Yeah. Lets jump back into internet marketing. I know I kind of jumped away from it before. So you said Dan Kennedy got you into the information marketing and internet marketing or got you introduced to it, I guess, right?
Kristi:
Yeah, and then so I started coming to the seminars and really beingI call myself the GKIC apprentice mascot because I come to everything they do. Then Dan asked me to host The Phenomenon, which I really to experience one-on-one all these power houses Ali Brown and Ed OKeefe and Ron LeGrand, and Ryan Lee and all these amazing internet marketers, and every single one of them, I said can I sit down and have an hour of your time? And they all gave me incredible advice and it really started me on the path to internet marketing.
David:
When you saw what internet marketing was, what was the appeal to you? Theres two things, I guess. One is, did you know about internet marketing before? What was your knowledge beforehand?
Kristi:
Well, I didnt know that term, internet marketing. I guess Ive heard of that. I have an Engineering degree so the term internet marketing wasnt scary to me, but I think my passion, when I came back from The Apprentice, I got married and I had my son all within pretty much six months. I found out we were pregnant on my honeymoon, so my world totally changed. I wasnt expecting to have a child. I was on the height of my career, but it was important to me to stay home with my son. So the only thing I did was endorse and speak for Dan for a couple of years and right after that, it took about two years, and I decided Im not a stay-at-home mommy and I really had a passion for creating a business, but the most important thing was that it be at home so I could at least be around for my son.

So that was the major push and the draw into why internet marketing was so special. It just fit all my needs and I could put my passions online and work anywhere I wanted to. Thats my reason for teaching other women, because I believe its such a female-friendly job because it fits everything we could possible desire. You know, the moneys there, the flexibility is there, the opportunity to stay at home with your kids, the opportunity to network. Its just all there.
David:
That is true. So you learned about internet marketing. What was your first website? How did you get actually started? How did you jump into internet marketing?
Kristi:
Well, let me tell you first another story Id like to tell about. I was at one of the Glazer Kennedy Conferences and I remember looking around and half the audience, 50 percent of the audience, was female and the lineups were three days. There was not one woman speaker and that was the impetus for me to really change some things. So after that conference, I came home and I started my first website and its called Saturday Morning Success (http://www. saturdaymorningsuccess.com).
www.ryanlee.com

Basically, its a huge tele-seminar series a free tele-seminar series for women to I took all the gurus in the industry, all the mompreneurs and women entrepreneurs, and I interviewed 12 women and its a 12 free tele-seminar series. And that was really basically a list-building exercise.
David:
And how long have you had that for?
Kristi:
Thats been, gosh, its been around for I think 2 years - 3 years.
David:
So is there a product that youre selling as well or how does that?
Kristi:
Well, theres two men I started studying right away: Tellman Knudson, whos the list-building guru, and Jeff Walker. I was fortunate enough during when I was studying, I had an opportunity to speak with Tellman, and I couldnt believe it. Heres my idol on my phone. To me, Tellmans an idol. Donald, yeah, yeah, yeah, but Tellman Knudson, here he is. I was telling him about Saturday Morning Success and said, Kristi, its an amazing idea. I said, Tellman, should I give away five free calls? How many calls should I give away? He said, Youve got to give it all away. This is a list-building exercise. Give it all away and just keep it running. So basically, yes, theres a product you can purchase, but its sole purpose is to build a massive list.
David:
So wait, hang on, so you said there is a product. What is the product?
Kristi:
The product is just the transcripts and the recordings and a work book based on all these amazing womens advice and basically how to get your business started, how to keep sane with your family, how to do it all, basically, as a woman entrepreneur.

David:
And how has that whole process been the last two to three years? Has it worked out well for you?
Kristi:
What process, David?
David:
Running the site.
Kristi:
Well, then I launched more sites. So then I launched a couple of local sites based on well its a newsletter model. They call it the daily candle model. Thats what I call it. Im passionate about putting up sites that I love and so theres a couple of big sites that I started and then I put up something that Id been working on for a while called Blow Dry Bootcamp (http://www. blowdrybootcamp.com), and that really was my baby.
www.ryanlee.com

That was something that Im very proud of. It teaches women to style their hair at home just like the salon, and I know you probably cant understand it, but its a total unmet need, and its something that women they watch the 7-minute video and theyre just amazed. The testimonials and the rush on this product has just been incredible and now were actually in talks with a huge manufacturer of shampoos and conditioners and line of beauty products.
David:
Thats awesome. Talk about niche marketing.
Kristi:
Yeah, and its actually, you would think it would be women in their 16-18, but women in their 60s is actually whats selling more to women over 30, definitely.
David:
Thats awesome. So how many websites total do you run right now?
Kristi:
I have four sites.
David:
Cool.
Kristi:
And that really led me to start teaching.
David:
Teaching who? How are you teaching?
Kristi:
I like to now call myself a list-building guru.

David:
Thats nice.
Kristi:
And now I have I dont know if you want to go here yet, but I started teaching and coaching women on list building because I think theres enough advice and help and support to get your site up and going and to get that idea out there, but there was really no list-building expert talking to women and talking that simple language. Tellman is Im a huge fan, but hes very technical and so it helps that I kind of understand where the women are coming from and help them simply ways to grow their list and I believe thats really the backbone of a strong business a strong internet business.
David:
Yeah, having a customer list is pretty important.
Kristi:
Yeah.
David:
So if you were starting your internet business over, which is probably not be the best thing in the world, but if you had to, what would you do differently?
Kristi:
To make it really simple, I think I would start off with a basic WordPress site or another model that Im working with is this newsletter model where you start building your list and you start sharing information and you start selling products right away.
David:
When you say newsletter model, youre just saying a strictly online newsletter?
www.ryanlee.com

Kristi:
Yes.
David:
Okay. So when youve been doing this for the past few years, what was the defining moment when you were like I mean, you obviously said before that the internet marketing had the major appeal to you, but once you had started it, what was the defining moment when you were like, Man, this is it. This is what Im doing and this is the way to go.?
Kristi:
You know, David, it is crazy. From day one, I was passionate and I would spend hours researching and studying and learning this. I would get up at 4 a.m. to listen to Jeff Walker Product Launch because I was so obsessed with this. It was from day 1, but I think the thrill came in when you start making money. When you start making a lot of money online and you realize that your efforts are paying off, thats when kind of the total passion and the Oh my gosh, this is a real job, kind of combine and youre hooked.
David:
Ive been there before with the being like, not addicted, but extremely passionate about listening to the info product. People think Im crazy when Im listening and reading business books and marketing books. Thats entertainment to me. Its kind of fun, right?
Kristi:
Its so true. You should see my husbands bed stand. Hes got great novels and things hes interested in, and mines all how-to internet marketing guides. Its just crazy. Thats all we do.
David:
And I can definitely see the whole understanding that this is the way to go before anything really happens when youre just starting because if youre an astute human being you dont have to be a business expert to recognize that the internet is the future, the present, and its where everythings at business-wise.

Kristi:
Definitely. And realizing that and also tying in what I think a lot of internet marketers need to go through as well, tying in snail mail, real mail, newsletter marketing thats actually hard copies and realizing that you can connect with the consumer offline as well.
David:
Theres definitely still some skepticism in terms of pure online stuff, so its definitely a good way to double your reach, kind of.
Kristi:
Definitely. Definitely.
David:
What is your number one strategy for more traffic for your site?
Kristi:
Do I have to give it away? Okay, Ill give a simple one. David, maybe lets not ask that question because heres what we havent gotten into Russell Brunson and I have formed a partnership and hes bringing me onto the team to be their list-building expert and were actually launching our product probably sometime in January, and so right now were in the process of figuring out what the hecks going in there. But its a partnership with DotComSecrets (http://www. dotcomsecrets.com) is so exciting and it gives DotComSecrets a way to be able to launch DotComSecrets for women, and it allows me to teach on a really large scale and to really get in with someone who I believe is a total guru, and thats Russell Brunson. So its a win-win. But I dont want to give away anything right now, if youre okay with that.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
Thats fine. I do affiliate marketing myself, and people dont really like to share traffic stuff, in general. Even if its going to be in a product, people are very protective of that, which is totally understandable.
Kristi:
Its a crazy world because theres so much out there, yet it doesnt really all make sense yet. Theres not one simple, direct way. Youve heard the 17 ways to direct traffic. You all know PR and articles and we all know that, but first you have to be a robot to do them all, and secondly, theyre not very effective. Its frustrating.
David:
I think the biggest thing that Ive seen is that if you really want traffic, if you really want to not have to be a robot, just build great relationships and have them work for you.
Kristi:
A thousand percent. Its the way I build my list. Its the number one way, I believe, that you can get a massive list is to foster big relationships and share.
David:
Well say that for your number one tip for more traffic is relationships.
Kristi:
Great. I love it. Thanks, David.
David:
Okay. A few more questions for you. If you could pinpoint your three biggest mistakes
Kristi:
But you know what, David? Im sorry. Im so sorry to go back. Can we not say that? I dont want to give a general answer because then its going to seem like I dont know what Im talking about.

David:
Okay, thats fine. Well just forget all the traffic stuff.
Kristi:
Okay.
David:
Were not going to make you sound trust me, youll be okay.
Kristi:
Just mention that Im a list-building guru and I will be so happy.
David:
Well definitely have that in there. Maybe well put that in like a byline: Kristi Frank, list-building guru.
Kristi:
Great.
David:
So if you could pinpoint the three biggest mistakes that youve made and how someone else or how people can learn from them, what would they be?
Kristi:
I think the number thing is waiting until youre ready. There is no ready. There is no right time. Its all about getting something up and continually to refine and to improve and to get better. But to wait until youre ready is just insane. You can wait years until youre ready, and youre never going to get there. So, thats number one. Number two, I guess, was in the early stages I needed to have a mentor, someone to basically cut the process in half and boy, have I learned that lesson. When you mentor and when you coach, your learning curve and the ability to just jump right through your dreams, basically,

happens because you follow what they tell you to do and it works.
David:
Yeah, thats true. Mentors are very big. And do you have a third?
Kristi:
Lets see.
David:
Its always so hard. Ive found when Ive been interviewing people, when you try to get them to pinpoint one or big things, its never theyre like, Oh, I dont know.
Kristi:
Oh, I have a good one; something I try to do, I try to force myself to do is check email last. Its so easy to run you can be so lost once you start checking email, youre down the rabbit hole. But focusing on what I need to get done in the day first and then responding to everybody else secondly has really helped my time management and gets things done quickly.
David:
Sure. If you were to pinpoint, as well heres another one of those questions three musthave resources for someone who wants to create the dotcom lifestyle. Could you name three?
Kristi:
Oh boy. Hold on and let me just check the were okay. Lets think. No. Oh gosh. A great auto-responder, of course. I would say a flip-camera. These are so basic.
David:
Trust me, theyre not. Those are big.
Kristi:
Okay, and I think a support system and Mastermind coaching group is massive. Thats, to me, number one.

David:
So our final question for you is whats next in your business, and I guess you kind of touched on this before, the Russell Brunson thing.
Kristi:
Yeah, the Russell Brunson partnership and DotComSecrets for I dont know if I want to say for women because I dont know if were launching that yet, but I guess Im going to be Im looking forward to doing a ton more speaking and teaching on not only list building, but internet marketing and especially internet marketing for women because thats where my passion lies, to help women create at-home careers that really fits everything theyve ever wanted to get, and doing a lot more speaking on stage and selling and presenting in seminars. Also, I have a TV show.
David:
Oh, really?
Kristi:
Yeah, theres two TV shows. We have the DotComSecrets TV, of course. Thats really exciting. Its going to run once a week and its going to Ustream. DotComSecrets TV (http://www. dotcomsecrets.tv/) is great. And then Im in talks to produce the Kristi Frank Show.
David:
Ooh.
Kristi:
Yeah, I cant even hello, I forgot about it. Its so huge, I cant even believe it. Thats what on

the horizon.
David:
What exactly is The Kristi Frank Show going to be?
Kristi:
The Kristi Frank Show is going to be a unique twist on the basic interview daily show and its being produced out of Los Angeles. So well just say that.
David:
Thank you so much for the interview. We really appreciate it.
Kristi:
Sure, David. No problem.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #16

Kyle Battis
Interview with Kyle Battis

David:
Kyle, tell me what got you started in internet marketing.
Kyle:
Yeah, I was working at a physical therapy clinic. I went to school and double majored in Exercise Science and in Sports Medicine and really loved it and I was working for a clinic and I was working a tremendous amount of hours, nights, weekends, covering athletic events, taping ankles, fixing broken athletes, and it was a blast. I had a lot of fun hanging out with the athletes. But it just got to a point where I was working 6070 hours a week, not getting paid very well, and it caught up with me. I couldnt take my girlfriend out to nice places. I couldnt hang out with her a lot because I had to work on nights and weekends. My friends were always doing some fun things that I couldnt do because I had to work. I remember the day it already changed for me. I ran into a friend of mine who went to the same high school as me and he was actually an athletic trainer too, but he was about five years old than me and hed been doing this same profession obviously longer than I had, and he was really kind of stagnated with his life. He had reached a point where he wasnt happy with how much money he was making. Truthfully, he wasnt making much more than I was at that point, and he had been doing it five years longer than I had. He was unhappy, couldnt keep a girlfriend because he could never hang out with her and I basically realized that I was going to be in the same spot in five years if I didnt see the road that I was on. So thats what really sparked me to want to do something, and I started looking for something to do because I knew I didnt want to be in the current profession I was in forever. A friend of mine from high school by the name of Tellman Knudson had started doing stuff with the internet and was telling me all of the cool things he was doing and thats what kind of peaked my interest. So I started playing around with stuff online and I watched him his first year go from making nothing to $800,000 in sales his first year online. That obviously caught my attention and I went to the same high school with Tellman. I was in the same classes with

him, and I knew that if he could do it, then I could do it too. So I got the hope that I needed and the proof that I need and I just needed to figure out how to do it at that point and thats where I went to Tellman and I said, Hey man, heres whats going on. I made a decision to change my life and to change my career, but I need help doing it. So I went to him and pleaded with him like, Tellman, just please tell me what to do, and he laid out a plan for me and told me what courses I need to buy, and so I couldnt afford them at all at that point, so I started just saving my money and working with some more personal training clients and putting away some money to invest into my education and finally I could afford those courses, and I bought them and got an autoresponder, got some domains set up, and started taking immediate focused action. Thats how it all started for me.
David:
Its funny. I feel like theres a lot of guys in the fitness industry there are but the fitness industry especially has been very quick to jump onto the internet marketing world. Its just like, I dont know. I cant even describe it, but theres just like the fitness industry online is huge now.
Kyle:
Yeah.
David:
But its just like, I dont know. A lot of guys just werent happy. They werent making enough, and so this is like the very quick appeal for them.
Kyle:
Yeah, its a tough profession. It was really fun and really enjoyable and I still love it to this day, but Ive got friends that are still trainers that work 70 hours a week, waking up at 5:00 am in the morning, if not earlier, and training people until sometimes 8 or 10 at night with little breaks in between, so its a tough profession if youre going to do that exclusively. Health is such a huge market and theres a lot of people all around the world looking to completely change their physique, change their bodies, you know.

My friend, Mike Geary, whos a student of Ryans as well, I remember talking with him and hes like, You know what, if I walk up to 9 out of 10 people on the street and ask them, Do you want to lose belly fat? 9 out of 10 people will say yes. So I think that is theres a huge opportunity and so fitness professionals have the knowledge to share, so if they think they can learn then information marketing business and learn how to share their information with more people, theyre actually able to help thousands and thousands and thousands of more people than if they were to just train one person at a time where youre limited by how many hours are in a day and how much you can actually work, whereas with information marketing and the internet, youre able to reach and help a lot more people and share a message with a lot more people in a very leverage-able way.
David:
For sure, for sure. From what Ive seen, theres definitely lots of skepticism towards information marketing in the fitness industry and in general. I dont want to pick on the fitness industry, but what I mean is the side of if that you just described, you get to help so many more people. You can only help one person an hour, or you can help 100 people every day without doing anything.
Kyle:
Right.
David:
So its definitely thats the whole greatness of the scalability. Tell me what your first website/product was.
Kyle:
Sure. I took Tellmans course called the Perpetual Marketing Machine (http://www. perpetualmarketingmachine.com) and it basically taught you how to do a teleseminar interview series with the whole premise that when youre first getting started online, you dont have an email list, you dont have any followers. You dont even have your own product, so how do you get started?
The system that Tellman taught is you go out and you find a market first, then you go out and find a group of experts that already have an email list that have a product or service that you believe in and that have an affiliate program. You sign up to be one of their affiliates, and basically if you make a sale of their product through your affiliate link, you get a commission from that product. And so in that sense, thats what I did. I went out and I found experts and the way I delivered value and the whole thing about business is I have something of value and youre a customer, and you give me some money and I deliver the value. And hopefully Im delivering way more value for the money that youre giving me. So what I did for the value exchange of my internet business, is I would go out and interview these top experts these top fitness professionals that had information products that I believed in. I would go do a teleseminar with these people. I would interview them and ask the questions that my audience wanted to know. So I would be an advocate for the people that signed up for the teleseminar, and they would enter in their biggest question for XYZ Business Expert before the teleseminar started. And I would wade through those questions and pick the top 10 questions that kind of represented what everybody was looking for, and I

would ask those questions to the expert on the teleseminar. In doing so, I was able to deliver great value so people were able to get some great information for free from these experts. And periodically throughout the call, I would do a little mini commercial and say something simple like, Hey, if youre really liking this information from Tom Venuto. Hes got a great resource called Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle and you can learn more about it at www.AskTheFitnessExpert.com/burn. If you want to learn more, just go to that page and check out his resource. I would simple say like the mini little commercial just like and I would do that in a very soft sale kind of way periodically throughout these interviews because I didnt know how to sell. I wasnt good at it, and I wasnt positioning myself as an expert. I was positioning myself as a reporter and I was positioning these guys as the experts that they were and simply interviewing them. So I was able to do a couple of really cool things with this interview series. I was able to build my email list by hundreds of people every week, and the way I would do it is the expert would email his email list telling his email list about the teleseminar that was going to be happening, and he would invite them to go check out or go sign up for this teleseminar for free and they would sign up on my website, and so I was growing my email list through other people lists and delivering value with these teleseminars and making money as an affiliate selling their product. So I was able to grow my list by hundreds of people every week, bond with those people in a really cool way with teleseminars because youre able to get a lot more personality, deliver a lot of great value, and deliver results in advance to these people, and I was able to make money real fast. The first week I started this, I was able to make money which was really cool promoting products and services I believed in. So I didnt have to create anything. I didnt have to create my own product first. I was simply promoting existing products that already converted from experts that I believed in.

David:
So I have a couple of questions that stem off that. One is, when you sent them to the link that you mentioned the commercial that was your affiliate link?
Kyle:
That was my affiliate link. That was a redirect that would go through my affiliate link promoting their product.
David:
Okay, second thing is when you did the first interview you ever did, how did you get the interviewee? If you dont have a list at that point, how were you convincing them to do this with you, not only in a sense because in a sense, they are just talking to their list, and Im assuming you didnt do the affiliate link at that point? Or were you still kind of doing the affiliate link?
Kyle:
I sure did, and thats a great question. The first ever interview I ever did was with a fitness professional by the name of Alan Cosgrove, whos awesome. Hes a student of Ryan Lees as well. The way I approached it; I approached Alan and said, Hey, man, I really love your materials. I would love to do a teleseminar and interview you and share your information with the people that sign up for this teleseminar. I dont have a big email list right now, but Im building one and heres what Id like to do for you if we can do the teleseminar, Im going to promote it and promote these products and services of yours in my autoresponder series so that anyone that ever signs up for my website from here to the future, will be able to hear the replay of your call and your call will be first in the autoresponder series. So if Im adding people to my list three years from now, theyll still be able to hear the replay of the call because well have this automated stealth machine continuing to make money for you even years and years down the road. So you do the work once, and were going to get paid for it over and over again.

So that was a key part of the pitch that I put in there. In that exchange, its a value exchange, so Ive got to come up with as many different ways to provide value for Alan because hes got everything to lose with that situation. Hes got the list and were promoting his product, so Ive got to come up with all kinds of different ways to deliver value to him. So I gave him a copy of the mp3, a copy of the written transcript of the teleseminar. I set up the whole marketing system that would sell his product in a very effective way that he wasnt currently doing it. Id put it in an automated way that anybody that ever signed up for my list, he would continue to make money, and it held very true. For at least two years after that thing, I still get notifications of people buying Alans stuff through that affiliate link, and thats the only place I have it in that autoresponder series. So its like an automated little millimoney machine that has been a source of revenue and leads for both of us for a long time, so its really cool.
David:
All right, I was trying to think how this whole process works. Its very interesting and I know someone whos doing something very similar right now. So you come up to the person and you say, Look, I want to do a teleseminar with you. On the teleseminar I will promote through my affiliate link, and then in the future, youll be the first one to come up and I will continue to sell for you as I grow my list outside of just yours.
Kyle:
Yes.
David:
Do you feel like this is still a practice that is viable, or do you feel like you have to be a little bit tricky now? Because I know that over time things have become its much harder to get people to mail out because everyones kind of afraid to share their list.
Kyle:
Right.

David:
Thats just my sense of the industry, not necessarily fact.
Kyle:
Yeah, its been interesting. So since that model first came out, its gone through some evolutions and some changes and I actually worked with Scott Colby on a model that he did very similar, but we added some unique twists to it and since then Kevin Gianni, and theyre both students of Tellmans, and they took this model and kind of innovated some things about it. One of the innovations they made is they took it to another level with this one-time offer for the mp3s and transcripts and some bonuses. So what they did is, they basically were able to create an instant product and give all of the partners instant credit, like affiliate credit, if they promoted this thing. So lets say you get 12 experts. You give each one of those 12 experts an affiliate link. They mail to this squeeze page for the teleseminar series and then on the next page after the subscribe opts into that teleseminar series youre presented with a very simple offer. You can either listen to all of these calls for free each week as they happen (and thats totally cool), or you could also get the mp3s and the transcripts and some cool bonuses for a one-time fee of $97 and you have access to these things forever. You can listen to them when you want, however often you want, load them in your iPod, all of that kind of stuff. Otherwise, you just get to listen the free call and thats it no replay, no download links, no anything like that. So with that model, now for all of the expert promoting, they are not only making sales of their own product through your affiliate link during each teleseminar, but theyre also getting anybody that opts in and takes the one-time offer for the mp3s and transcripts, theyre getting an affiliate commission for that. If I was running one of these today, I would make the affiliate commission 75% so Im giving the expert the lions share of the profit on each one of those sales because theyre donating their subscribers and sending their subscribers to this site. And I would also go out of my way in as many ways as possible to make sure that Im sending them traffic down the road.

One of the things I told the people I worked with was, Hey, I believe in your stuff. Thats why Im working with you. Thats why I want to do this teleseminar with you. I think youre information is some of the top information out there, and I want to be one of your best affiliates, so Im going to put you in my autoresponder series. Im going to devote time every month to promote you and your products. Anything that you come out with, I want to promote it. I want to be one of your best affiliates. I want to drive forms of traffic to you via my blogs, via as many different avenues as I could article submissions, paid ads, whatever. I want to be one of your top affiliates. And so the nice thing about this model is youre creating content, youre creating value, youre creating instant affiliate commissions for your partner, and back-end revenue sources for them too. So its really cool, and yet, some people are hesitant about this and I think you cant just come out nowadays and say, I want to do one of these teleseminar series. I think you have to have a good hook that separates it. I think you have to constantly raise the bar with this until one of our students recently did this model and they actually had a fixed they had a one-time offer for the mp3s and transcripts, but then they had a series of up sells that included a 52week, 6-term membership program. So one if one these affiliates promoted and somebody took that program, theyre getting checks every month for promoting this thing one time. So I think youve got to constantly raise the bar and if you are going to take that tactic of working with other people and tapping into other peoples lists, youve got to deliver way more value to these people in order to make it a good offer for these folks.
David:
I dont think you can up sell continuity any more.
Kyle:
Yeah, with the new rules changing and stuff, yeah, thats a little different. Theres different ways to do it; you could have it on the download page. You could have an offer and say, Hey, if youd like to check out our membership site, heres where you can go check it out. So youd have to sell it differently.
David:
Im just mentioning. Im not trying to rain on the parade.

Kyle:
Oh, no worries at all.
David:
All right, so I wrote down a couple of questions I want to ask based on what you just said. I guess lets talk about approaching first. So you said that you have to kind of change the approach. You have to have a good hook and youre raising the bar. So, tell me you cant really just come up to these experts and say can you? Is it kind of like a sequence where its like youre making friends with them first? Or can you simple outright say, Hey, I want to do this teleseminar. Is that something youd be interested in? and then go on from there?
Kyle:
I think you can start with that, and some people will say yes, but I think one of the reasons I was able to get it up and running faster and more effectively, is I was active in my industry. I would go to live events. I would go to the Certified Strength Conditioning certification weekends. I would go to continuing education events and I would hang out with some of these fitness professionals that were there. Id hang out in the back of the room, buy them drinks at the bar. Wed talk on the phone and do this kind of stuff. There was a lot of relationship building first, and thats a real key, I think, if youre going to have this as a strategy within your overall business plan, is you should be constantly working on your network and your relationships with the people. Dale Carnegie, in his book How to Friends and Influence People, theres a simple concept where you should be thinking about everybody elses needs, wants, and desires before your own, and thinking about what the other person really is looking for and what they want, and do your best to deliver things and help them first without really having expectations of getting anything in return. So for a long time, thats all I did is Id help people out. If they had questions, I would share, and I was just being a giver and just giving and working relationships and helping people out in as many different ways as you can, you build a network and you build stronger relationships, and going to a lot of events and just hanging out and laughing and going out to dinner and hanging out. Theres so many intangibles to that.
I remember reading a study in Cialdinis book called Yes, the Psychology of the Influence, and he talks about these two college studies that at he did with these two universities. They were charged the task of doing this online collaborative project. So there was one college campus, and then theres another college campus, and these two groups at each college had to work together in an interactive way on the internet. One of the groups the only thing they ever did was they emailed. They emailed, and that was it. Then the other group had the advantage of they actually got to spend some time on the phone talking with each other and they exchanged pictures and bios and got to know each other a little bit more.
What they found with the research study is the group that actually spent some time on the phone and exchanged some pictures and bios and got to know more about each other had

much better success working together because they felt like they knew the other person to a much greater degree. I think with joint ventures and strategic partnerships, any time that you can have some sort of relationship and some sort of bond with a person, youre going to find that its going to work much more effectively. Theres plenty of pitfalls with joint ventures. Somebody might follow through with their commitment. They might now show up for a teleseminar. They might not mail out to their list for a teleseminar, and I think a lot of the times where that happens is where the relationship doesnt exist and you dont have that strong bond between the two partners. But if the persons a friend of yours, if youre at that friendship level or youre at least hung out and you met each other a seminar and talked, its much, much, more effective, and my experience has show that too in a lot of different areas, so I think thats huge. Even it means just being somebodys FaceBook friend, following them on Twitter, signing up for their email lists, paying attention to their list and buying their products and understanding what it is that they teach and how they teach it, and what they believe in and what they dont believe in. Theres a lot of those kind of things. Doing your homework is super critical in understanding who they are and where theyre coming from is going to make it much more effective for you.
David:
Yeah, for sure. I think from what Ive seen, the biggest being peoples friend. If someones your friend, theyre going to help you out. If youre just like some dude, Please promote me, Ill give you a commission, its not going do it.
Kyle:
Yeah, exactly.
David:
So once you have this system up and running youve created your 12 experts is it 12 weeks?

Kyle:
Theres no real limit to what you can do. Weve done 12 weeks, weve done 14 weeks. Weve even done little mini ones that are just 36 weeks. So yeah, once youve got your experts selected, theres a couple of different ways to do it. One is they all mail at the same time for the coordinated launch and then you do the interviews. In an ideal world, you get each expert to mail each week that theyre doing it. So if Expert 1 is on week one, you have him mail for the beginning, the launch of the whole thing, and then youll have him also mail the week of his own teleseminar as well. So thats how you do it in an ideal world. You can also do it and what I recommend for beginners and people that are new to this model and want to do it is just do individual one-off teleseminars. Theyre much easier to do and theyre much easier to coordinate because you dont have to rely on coordinating 12 different busy marketers to all mail the same day. Its not an easy task and theres a lot that goes into setting all these things up. So Im a huge fan of when you get started, just do one-off teleseminars. Just go find one expert at a time, interview them, promote their products or service, deliver some value, build your own email list, and then go move onto the next person. And you can always come back and interview a person again because they always have so much value to share and so much information to share. Theres really no limit to the amount to the amount of interviews that you can do with one expert.
David:
Yeah, for sure. So lets talk leveraging. So you have your things all set up and its working. Its generating commissions for you and these experts. Now what do you do? In the whole thing, youre positioning yourself as not the expert, but the reporter, right?
Kyle:
Right.
David:
I guess its obviously a personal preference if you want to continue in that niche and become

an expert or if you want to just do it in a bunch of different niches. How did you leverage your first teleseminar series?
Kyle:
Thats a great question. Even though I was a Certified Strength Conditioning Specialist and a very knowledgeable fitness professional, (I knew a lot of this stuff ), I didnt have the following. I didnt have the markets attention within the online community. An interesting thing with interviewing other people and the power of that is that when youre on the phone and youre interviewing an expert, an interesting thing that happens is that in the audiences view, you get raised up to that expert level status by association because youre on the phone talking to this guru that they have so much respect for, that theyve been following him for years or they buy everything that hes every put out and theyve gotten so much value from him, and hes on the phone with you. Its like a subconscious seal of approval that he endorses you. So you eventually get raised up that credibility. It was interesting, after doing these interviews of a lot of different people, I started getting approached by people asking me to do interviews and people asking me to work on projects with them. So its interesting how that has shifted. That opportunity might present itself for you if you choose to go with this model and do these type of interviews and interview others. And it might just be a piece of your overall business strategy, just interviewing experts to get your name out there, and it is marketing and it is putting your name out there. One of the things I found is that by doing a lot of these interviews and promoting other peoples products and services, they got used to hearing my voice on the line and they got bonded to me and it created this pent up demand and they started asking me for help with specific things. After listening for a while, I ended up starting to create my own products and services. The nice thing about this is Ive already got a list of people that know, like, and trust me and people buy from people that they know, like, and trust.
David:
Yeah.

Kyle:
So it was real easy for me when I did release my products, I sold a lot of them really fast because I already had a group of people, like an entourage, as Craig Ballantyne calls it, that like me, that were bonded to me, that were following me and that still do to this day. The nice thing about building an email list like that of people that are bonded to you and that you helped to deliver value to, is that you can continue to market to those people and continue to help those people, and theyll continue to give you money and buy lots and lots of different cool things. So thats been an interesting shift of everything.
David:
So you went off and made your own product from there. I know you have the My First List. Is that what you went on with next?
Kyle:
Well, this is all back in the fitness niche still at this point. So I made some fitness products. www.HomeGymSecrets.com was one of them.
David:
Okay.
Kyle:
And then I had Secret Audio Vaults, which was like a collection of all of the audios and teleseminars Ive ever done (http://www.fitnessaudiovaults.com).
www.ryanlee.com
And then I actually started working with one of the guys that I interviewed on the interview series by the name of Tom Venuto. We started up a membership site together. So Im kind of the behind-the-scenes guy over at www.BurnTheFatInnerCircle.com. While all of this was going on, I started to work for Tellman Knudson, my original mentor because he knew I was a butt kicker and was taking action and actually doing things, and he invited me. He was like, Hey, man, do you want to come be my Affiliate Manager? and Im like, sure, but I dont know what an Affiliate Manger does. So he bought me a course on how to be an affiliate manager and basically go out and work with top-level affiliates and get them to promote Tellmans products and services. That kind of grew from there. I really started just soaking up all of this marketing information and studying Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham, Ryan Lees stuff. Anybodys stuff that I could get my hands on, I started pouring

it into my brain and I got better and better and better at all of this. I eventually became the Marketing Manager for Tellmans company and were now a multi-million dollar company and we teach people how to get businesses started online. So, yeah, weve got a site called www.ListBuilding.com that we just teach people how to build these big massive email lists of people that want to hear from them, that they know they can trust them.
Ive got a site called www.MyFirstTeleseminar.com, and www.EasyTrafficSteps.com. So weve got all these different sites that team people basically how to do what weve done and how to get started building a business online.
David:
Oh, yeah, for sure. Ive seen youre My First Teleseminar site as well. I dont want to I kind of want to ask a little more about this thing the whole process you were talking about before the list.
Kyle:
Sure.
David:
And you feel this works in all niches, right?
www.ryanlee.com

Kyle:
Yeah, weve taught this model to lots of people, so Ive personally seen it work in golf, romance, pick-up (like how guys can meet girls), the raw food market, definitely fitness, internet marketing, traffic driving. I think I said real estate already. Theres a myriad of niches. So any market that is online and you can talk about cool stuff, you can definitely do an interview series with it.
David:
Heres a question that I was just thinking of. When it comes to doing these multi-person teleseminars and youre promoting their product, how do you determine, other than the fact that they have a good product, how do you make sure that when youre promoting products youre not overlapping? Where do you draw the line, I guess, in terms of making sure that each product compliments each other, or do you even do that?
Kyle:
Yeah, I didnt really worry about that because I think with any market place, within fitness for example, theres submarkets within any given market. So theres people that are body builders. Theres people that are home gym dungeon hardcore trainers. Theres moms that are simply looking to lose a couple extra pounds and get back into bikini shape. Theres older people looking to just maintain bone density. Theres skinny guys that are looking to pack on some muscle mass. And so what I did was I just interviewed a lot of top experts in various subniches with my particular interview series. Ive had friends that have focused in on one subtopic. So a friend of mine, Scott Colby, hes done a lot within simply the ab training niche. So people that want six-packs abs, so hes built up a more targeted list of people and he would interview experts specifically on the topic of getting six-pack abs, both the nutrition side of it and the exercise side of it, and even the psychology side of it. But it was all targeted around that one subtopic. So I dont think you have to worry about that because one thing that you grow to learn about marketing and niche marketing and information marketing is within a niche, its a group of people that, as my friend Joshua Shafran says, They like it, they love it, they want some more

of it. You become like this rabid devourer of this type of information and like for me, Im still a fitness junkie. Ive got a stack of DVDs here from some guys that are friends of mine and they came up with products and I had to get it. Id buy fitness equipment all of the time. Im constantly outfitting my home gym down in my basement with more stuff. Im a Harley Davidson rider too, so I buy Harley Davidson jackets and boots and pants and shirts and accessories for my bike. My wife is an English Bulldog lover, so we have an English Bulldog and shes constantly buying calendars and mugs and shirts and the best food. We brought her to a dog trainer. We put her up in a special doggy day care thing when we go on vacation. Thats the cool thing about a rabid niche is they like it, they love it, they want some more of it. Dan Kennedy, whos a really smart teacher of direct marketing, he says your customers capacity to buy far exceeds your ability as a marketer to deliver products to them. So theyre going to go buy lots of cool stuff that theyre passionate about whether youre selling it or not. So you might as well be selling it to them because theyre going to buy it somewhere. So you might as well be doing it. Different types of offers from different marketers appeal to different people. So you may have thousands of people on your list and some of them might really like one style of the way the guy teaches the system to them, and another 1,000+ on your list might like another way a totally different way that this other marketer teaches to them. So I dont think you have to worry about that.
David:
All right. The other thing is what if you lets say youre still getting started, but you do actually have your own product or service to sell. Do you feel that this teleseminar model still works, or do you feel like Scott Colby for example, right?
Kyle:
Right.

David:
Lets say hes already the abs expert, right?
Kyle:
Right.
David:
But he does want to sell product, but do you think someone would have to halt that kind of promoting themselves until after this happened, or what do youhow does that kind of process work?
Kyle:
Sure. I think you can definitely make it work. Ive known of circumstances where somebody creates the item first and then says, All right, Im going to go find people to sell this to, versus build up a massive herd of people who are interested in a specific topic, ask them what they want, and then give it to them. I like the second approach better. Even if you have your own product, what weve done with a lot of our students is we and zooming back out and not looking at just the teleseminar model, but more the overall concept the teleseminar model is just one tactic that we teach. Theres lots of others, but the overall strategy is that you build a big list of people within a target market first. You ask them what they want and then you give it to them. You might have to repackage or repurpose your product in order to do that if you have your own product. But that works a lot better. Im going to give you an example. My friend, Kevin Gianni, Tellman and I ran into Kevin at a seminar and he spent a lot of money and created this membership site in the raw food and vegan niche and then he went and tried to sell it, and it completely bombed. He couldnt get anybody to join his site. He kind of explained what was happening, what wasnt happening, to us, and we gave them a simple shift and said, all right, heres what youre going to do. Youre going to focus on building your email list, because at that point his email list was less than 1,000 people. And so we went on and had him do his list building and focus on list building and delivering value to that list and bonding with that list.

He did a lot of teleseminar series. He did multiple teleseminar series. Hes got one called http://www.rawkathon.com, all kinds of different raw food, and things that would build a list. He put up a blog and he was doing daily blogging every day and had squeeze pages and Adwords traffic and article submissions, and all these different traffic sources, but they were all funneling into squeeze pages and pop ups and building his lists. In a short period of time (in a couple of years), he had built up the biggest list within in the raw food and vegan market and then he was constantly bonding with these people and creating an amazing relationship with them and creating little products and services along the way. And then he re-launched that very same membership site and after hed gotten to know his market and had done a prelaunch and asked them what they wanted to see in a membership site and at this point they were completely bonded to him and they loved him. He is the guru in that niche. And he re-launched that site and instantly put thousands of members in that site. He got a 5-figure plus recurring revenue every month from it. Contrast that to where he was a couple of years before that, following the model of creating the product first and then go try to sell it, which completely bombed before. So you can definitely do it that way, but the formula that Ive seen and it very much is formulaic, is to identify a group of people, find out what theyre looking for, what they want, what their paying point is, what theyre trying to accomplish, and go out and start building a list of those people and delivering value to them, whether its solving a problem, giving them the information that theyre looking for or helping them in some sort of way and doing that along the way, and then promoting products and services of other people to them as an affiliate. When youre ready, you can release your own products and services and youll have that pent up demand and it will be a much more successful endeavor for you.
David:
Awesome. I think of the main things to take away from what you just said is that it requires patience, planning, and preparation. I hate to do the dorky 3 ps of marketing kind of crap, but you said yourself, it took him a couple of years to build up that list. Its not going to happen overnight. You cant just be an overnight expert. You have to slowly build your way up.

Kyle:
Yeah, I think theres a great quote where it says success generally depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed. The people that Ive seen that are successful, theyve done a lot of the work and theyve done a lot of the homework and they work hard. The people that tell you that you dont have to work hard and that you can put one of these things up and instantly be a millionaire two days from now. Thats not going to happen. Otherwise, everybody would be one. But the people that are successful, Ive had the privilege of hanging out with a lot of millionaires that make a lot of money online. One characteristic I see is that theyre always learning. Theyre always implementing. Theyre doing more every day than most people do. Theyre trying all kinds of things. Theyre failing over and over and over again, but theyre constantly learning from their failures and their mistakes and readjusting and course correcting and navigating. They have a vision of where they want to go and theyre constantly trying new things to get to that vision and make that a reality as fast as they can, and theyre studying under mentors. Theyre finding people that have been down the path before and asking them how they do it so they can do it faster. So I think that really is a key thing and they work their butts off every single day. That is a huge ingredient for success.
David:
For sure. All right, so you mentioned earlier in the interview about resources that you purchased and resources that were given to you. What are the resources that have helped you the most?
Kyle:
Yeah, sure. The first-ever course in internet marketing that I ever took was Tellman Knudsons Perpetual Marketing Machine course, and that is what taught me how to do the whole teleseminar series thing, and we kind of have a modern-day version of that at www. MyFirstTeleseminar.com. So thats the kind of basic model that I followed in order to get up and running. So that was one. Number two is I just started soaking up I became a student. I think one of the biggest

mistakes a lot of people make when they go into any kind of business profession is they dont do their homework. So I wanted to go into this information marketing space and I knew nothing about it. I was a dumb personal trainer. In college, I only read what I was supposed to read, and didnt read anything else. When I graduated, I actually fell in love with the profession instead of reading everything I could and attending seminars and spending my own money becoming really proficient at it, and I got really good at it. I took that success habit into the information marketing space when I started making that shift. So I became a student of information marketing. I bought all of the old books. Ive got old-school books from John Carlton and Gary Halbert. I bought everything that Dan Kennedy has his cheap, low-end books, his high-priced courses. I became a student of information marketing. If youre going to go into this, then you need to understand all of the things that have happened in the niche so that you can learn from those and grow and experience fast results. I think thats huge. So thats something I would highly recommend, is just start paying attention to the books that everybodys always talking about like Think and Grow Rich, Dan Kennedy stuff, Jay Abraham marketing stuff, John Carlton, Gary Halbert, and starting to study these gurus, these giants that have come before this, and that way you can hop up on their shoulders and make faster strides to where you want to go.
David:
On the other end of the spectrum, tell me mistakes youve made along the way and how did you learn from them like your top three.
Kyle:
Okay. Id say the biggest mistake the first year online, I tried to do it all myself, and I tried to do it cheap. I didnt have a mentor, so that was my biggest mistake. Number two is and I paid for it in wasted time, money and effort, and time probably being the biggest waste. Number two is I didnt follow proven formula. I tried to piece meal things together. You know, like this one guy had a recipe for success and I would cafeteria pick little pieces of that oh, Im going to try this piece and that piece and Im going to add in some elements from that receipt from this other guy over here and try to make my own recipe

because I want to do it my own way and it didnt work. Nothing quite worked until I finally swallowed my pride and Tellman told me, hes like, This is what you need to do. Follow this formula all the way through. Once youve done the model and youve had some modicum of success, then you can feel free to go back and change it and try to innovate things, but the first time you go through and you follow any formula, follow it as they laid it out because theres reasons they laid it out like that. The first time, I didnt do that my whole first year on mine, until I became a student of Tellmans. I see a lot of people struggle with information marketing and online business because they messed that one thing up. That would be my second thing is follow a system all the way through exactly as they lay it out and youll be in better form. The third mistake is not thinking big soon enough. Its been interesting. First, when I got into this whole thing, I just wanted to make an extra $500 a month, but that was my goal. I remember writing it down and thats what I wanted to do and that was great. Thats all my mind could think about at that point when I first got into this. But now Im thinking about an extra $10,000/month, and what can I do to get an extra $20,000/month and playing in bigger numbers. So I think the third biggest mistake Ive done is not working on my mind soon enough. One thing that Ive come to learn over the last few years in hanging out at about these seminars and hanging out in mastermind groups and spending time with some of these internet millionaires, is that one characteristic they all have in common is theyre constantly working on themselves. I was just listening to Jim Rowan actually last night while I was working out and he had a great comment. He says that your income will never exceed your own personal development, so youve got to constantly be working on yourself, constantly be learning new things, constantly be sharpening your own axe so that when it does come time to use it, youre ready to go.
David:
For sure, and I think the whole mindset stuff sometimes it feels like the mindset stuff is a dime a dozen well, to me at least but at the same time, its the most important thing

youre beliefs and thats like your foundation for what youre going to be able to do.
Kyle:
Yeah.
David:
So tell me what is next for you and your business.
Kyle:
Im a serial entrepreneur at this point, so were constantly launching new products and services at Tellmans organization, and I also work really closely with Tom Venuto over at Burn Fat Inner Circle, and so were just looking to make everything bigger and bigger and bigger and reach more people and help more people both in the fitness niche and helping people realize that they can live in a better body and achieve amazing fitness results and also in the teaching people how to tap into the power of the internet with information marketing and share their passion or their knowledge with thousands and thousands and thousands of people.
So Im just constantly looking at growing both of those and reaching more people and the amount of value that were able to deliver, were going to be rewarded for with more money. So Im just trying to reach as many people and help as many people as I can in as many different ways as I can because I know its going to come back and help us out too. So Im just looking to magnify everything and multiply it times 10 and by 20 and just kind of keep it going and bigger and bigger and bigger.
David:
Awesome. Well, listen, thanks so much for doing this interview with us. We really appreciate it.
CASE STUDY #17

Lara Culpa
Interview with Lara Culpa

David:
Lets start with a quick bio.So, you currently run Gingko Consulting?
Lara:
Yes.
David:
And you also work with Darren Rowse with the ProBlogger?
Lara:
Yes, with ProBlogger, Twitip, pretty much everything he does.
David:
Awesome. Okay. So, lets start all the way from the beginning, if we can go back a couple of years.
Lara:
Okay.
David:
Tell me what got you into internet marketing. When did you start?
Lara:
Its actually a funny story. Ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a zookeeper. I wanted to work with animals and growing up, I knew thats what I was going to do. Senior year I made a phone call to Jack Hannas office and I got through, which was kind of funny because I wasnt supposed to, and he ended up calling me the next day at like 7 oclock in the morning and told me to go to this college in Florida, Santa Fe Community College. So I went there because he told me to and I wanted to be like him. So anything he told me to do, I was going to do. I graduated and became a zookeeper. September 11th, tourism had shot down, obviously, all over the country by like 30 percent,

and I walked into work one day and they had this meeting and they said that if we were new and were due a raise, we werent going to get it. If we were due health insurance and didnt have it yet, we werent going to get it, and there was no guarantees about job security. At the time, I had been working for a site called NeoPets. I was the Senior Site Monitor for them part-time to supplement income as a zookeeper because zookeepers dont make very much money at all. I had been working for them for a while and I was getting into the whole web design and that kind of thing. It was more hobbyish-type stuff. I came home from work after having that meeting and I couldnt get into my NeoPets admin account so I called up and I talked to my boss and I said, whats going on, and he says, Well, I need to figure something out here because they want you to either move to California and work here at headquarters, or we have to let you go, and I was in Florida and my home was in New York. I didnt know what was going on and everything and I said, well, what would be the pay? He says, Well, it would be $10 an hour, and I choked. I said, theres no way I can move to Glendale, California for $10 an hour. Its just impossible. Its not going to happen. So I lost that. Now I didnt have the supplemented income. I didnt know what was going on with the zoo, and I moved home and worked a couple of other jobs and still did the web design stuff on the side, and I was a personal trainer for Curves for Women. I was a 911 dispatcher. I worked in a biotech lab. You name it, I was doing it. I was just trying to find something else to do to get my life in order. I stumbled upon this listing where someone was looking for basically someone who didnt know anything. They wanted someone who had an interest in the internet and knew enough to build a web page, or knew enough html to get by, but they wanted to basically mold and shape that person as a Search Engine Optimization Specialist and internet marketer. I said, well this is kind of cool. On my interview, we actually played Scattergories. That was like the interview process and Im like, wow, this is fun. These are a cool bunch of people, you know? I got into that, worked for him for about six months and he laid off all but two of his employees. So I went to work for his competition.

She retrained me in all different ways on Search Engine Optimization and she kind of took pity on me because of my situation and created a position for me and retrained me on certain things. I learned even more about SEO and learned a lot about how to run a business the right way an internet business. A year later, she restructured and dissolved my position. So here I am left alone again with nothing. She was very supportive and wonderful when she said, Listen, I want you to go out and do this on your own. She said, Youre really good at what youre doing. You have a great personality. I think you could do well. So thats what I did. I started Gingko Consulting and started off doing Search Engine Optimization and SEO and all of that. All this time - I was blogging before they ever called blogging. I did it all in straight html and I had my thing and whatever, but it was at that point that I got into WordPress and really fell madly in love with the platform and really enjoyed and started pushing people who came to me, clients and stuff, and Id say, you dont want this regular basic static site. You want to have WordPress because its great for SEO and out of the box its perfect. You update your site and you get peoples attention and you keep them coming back and you keep them interested and all of that stuff, and it just kind of progressed from there. I went to a meeting with Darren. We had a meet up in New York City and went down there to meet him because I was a fan first, and the rest is history since then.
David:
So it sounds like youve had a lot of adversity, I guess, would be a good word.

Lara:
Yeah, you could call it that.
David:
Was part of the appeal of running your own business the fact that you knew that once its up and running I guess its kind of an obvious question, but once it was up and running, you knew you controlled your own destiny. It wasnt something where, oh my god, were going to restructure and I wont have a job.
Lara:
Right.
David:
Its like, I am the boss.
Lara:
Right, that was the biggest thing. That was the biggest thing for me because I was I had run into four situations over the course of two years that I had no control over whether or not I was getting paid. It wasnt up to me anymore, and it wasnt like I had been fired. It wasnt like I had done something wrong. It was just circumstances and a lack of control on my part. It really did. It was like as soon as she told me, You know what, you need to do this on your own, I was like, hey, wait a minute. Yeah, I do. Why am I working for somebody else for $10 an hour or $12 an hour or $14 an hour? Theyre making all the money and Im sitting here and I dont know if Ive got a job tomorrow. So yeah, that was definitely a huge part of going at it myself; plus both of my parents were selfemployed for most of my life and I was familiar with the idea of running your own company and running your own business. It kind of wound up being more natural than I might have thought when I was 16, headed to college to be a zookeeper.
David:
Hey, zookeeper, that was probably a fun job while you had it.

Lara:
It was amazing. I would go back in a heartbeat. I miss it every day. Theres not a day that goes by that I dont think about it. There really isnt it, you know.
David:
Specifically, concerning being self-employed versus having a job, you also knowing that your work directly translates to your own income as opposed to making someone else the majority of the money than you get is probably another thing as well.
Lara:
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
David:
For someone who is in the job world now and struggling, or has gone through circumstances similar to your own, if you had one piece of advice for them, what would that be?
Lara:
Oh boy. I honestly dont think I could put it into one piece.
David:
Is there something general you could say, possibly?
Lara:
Dont be afraid. I really think if its a situation, like you said, where somebodys struggling right now because of the job market and theyve been unemployed for a while and unemployments running out and theyve got a family or even not I dont but dont be afraid to just tackle it on your own because you build your own opportunity that way.
David:
All right, so does Gingko have product based consulting, or just servicebased programs?

Lara:
Just service-based, yeah.
David:
Okay. And youre doing pretty well with that?
Lara:
Yeah. Its funny because Ive gotten to a point now where I have a few, what I call A-list VIP clients that I work with. Obviously, Darren is one of them. Deb Ng from Freelance Writing Jobs. I have a couple of A-listers. They keep me very busy and on occasion when I have time, I can bring in somebody else. But Ive found myself at a point where sometimes I really have to say, listen, Im kind of booked up, and it feels really good to say that. I just hit five years. Im starting my fifth year and its like, wow, I can really tell people, oh my God, Im booked through January. Its November, and Im booked through January. Its kind of nice.
David:
It must be pretty empowering.
Lara:
Yeah, it is. It really is. To go from one point where Im sitting in West Palm Beach calling my dad on the phone in tears and telling him to come get me and bring me home, and now Im doing pretty good.
David:
Awesome. So if there is a typical day and I find that a lot of people say that there isnt when it comes to internet marketing.
Lara:
No.
David:
If you could run us through possible you could try for what a typical day looks like for you.

Lara:
Well, I usually get up about 6:30 every day and grab my coffee. Its kind of cool to stay in my pajamas, I have to admit. I get right to work right away. Theres no 4-hour work week in my life. I love Tim Ferris to death, but theres no 4-hour work week in my life. Im up and at it at 6:30 and I pretty much handle client stuff most of the time. Theres a few personal projects that Ive got kind of off to the side right now because I am so busy, but I start off doing some stuff for Darren. I run through editing for Twitip. We have guest posts, you know, people submit their tips and everything and I have to run through and make sure that things get published on time, or as close to on time as possible. Im on Skype. My clients can reach me on Skype if they need me for anything. At any given time I could be working on a new site project for somebody, or doing more editing, or dealing with emails. I also am the community manager for ProBlogger.com, which is Darrens new membership site, and that takes up a lot of my time too, answering emails and moderating the discussions in there. I usually pop in there three or four times a day, at minimum, depending on whats going on. Some days Ill spend more time on ProBlogger.com. Some days Ill spend more time working on a client site. It depends on whats going on, but Im pretty much in front of the computer, with exception to eat or get more coffee or maybe throw a little laundry in.
David:
Yeah. So if you were to starting your internet business over from scratch is there anything you would do differently?
Lara:
I probably would have gotten out there more to social events. I believe very strongly in face-to-face connecting with people. When I was at Blog World recently in Vegas, there was a big deal with a bunch of people about how were more than just floating heads on the internet, you know, because you talk about avatars on Twitter and FaceBook and LinkedIn and StumbleUpon and all these other sites, and you see these little floating heads and youre

talking at 140 characters with people and youre doing all these sort of things, which is great. Not to take away from any of that because its an amazing way to connect with people. But I probably would have gone to more conferences and meet ups and things like that in the beginning because theres still nothing that compares with face-to-face communication.
David:
I think that theres a couple things to say from that as well. One is that sometimes its easier to forget like, what I think of like web traffic, specifically, or like sales or leads on line. You sometimes forget that theyre real people behind those email addresses.
Lara:
Absolutely.
David:
I think the conferences help that. Also, building relationships is obviously huge.
Lara:
Yes, definitely.
David:
And people dont say no to people when youre in front of them, face-to-face, unless youre being obnoxious or something.
Lara:
Right, rude people do that.
David:
And then the last thing is that I dont know how you feel about this, but every time Ive been to a seminar, when I leave Im extremely motivated. Im ready to do more stuff.
Lara:
Absolutely.

David:
And I think that thats a very important thing for people because when youre around I guess its usually those seminars have people that are leaders in your field or whatever, so it gets you motivated. You want more.
Lara:
Absolutely; I get very inspired. For example, meeting Ryan; I got to talk to him for maybe a half hour and I harped on Darren the whole rest of the day. Im like weve got to do this; weve got to do that. It is very inspiring and its motivating to be around people and talk to people and get ideas and see what theyre doing and feel their power. Its nice.
David:
Okay, so if you had a defining moment, and I know you were talking earlier about how you can tell people now that youre booked until January and thats a good feeling, but I dont know if this is your defining moment. But is there a defining moment when you knew that, Okay, running my own online business is the way to go. This is working. This is what Im going to do.?
Lara:
Oh, boy. I think when it got to a point where people were coming to me and telling me that they heard about me from somebody else. You know what I mean?
David:
Yeah.
Lara:
Its like youre out there and youre introducing yourself to people and youre approaching other people, you know? Its like, Oh, I saw your comment over here and I checked out your site and this is great, but you should do this, or youre in a forum and somebody posts a question and you answer it and they thank you for it and its great, but then you never hear from them again and youre doing all of these things to try to get your name out there. I really think that it was the first time that I got an email from somebody saying that they saw my work somewhere or

they spoke with somebody and I was recommended. That was like, wow, you know?
David:
Yeah.
Lara:
Somebody actually thought of me, and it was kind of cool. On top of that, I think the next big thing is when people started to associate me with Darren because getting to the point where when I started working for him, it was little bits and pieces here and there. Could you build this little site for me? Could you put this together for me? Im going out of town for a week. Could you moderate comments for me? Little bits and pieces and stuff and it was tiny little things and we slowly have built it up over time. The work that I do for Darren does take up almost 40 hours a week at this point. Not this past year, but the year before when I went to Blog World with him, I was also blogging for b5media at the time, which Darren is a cofounder, and being around that and people going, oh, youre the one who writes that blog, and Jeremy Wright introducing me to people and saying, This is Lara. Shes been writing for us for a while. Shes really cool. She does this. And people contacting me and associating me with Darren and with b5 and that kind of thing was really amazing. It was kind of like, okay, my feet are planted and Ive got a name and people know how to associate me with things.
David:
Yeah.
Lara:
It got even better this past year. This past year it was like now Ive got people who want to get to Darren that are contacting me and then once they get through that thing, theyre contacting me for other stuff too.
David:
Yeah. Its kind of validating, I would say. Right?

Lara:
It is very validating. I feel so blessed right now and its been a long road and a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of heartache and a lot of oh my God, how am I going to pay this. Im paying my own health insurance and Im paying all these other things. How am I going to do this? And calling up the companies and begging them and saying, listen, Ive got another job. Ive got to finish it and theyll give me the remaining 50 percent and I can pay you. And now its like, wow, I can pay all my bills on time and things are going great and people know who I am and I really dont think I have to worry right now.
David:
Yeah.
Lara:
Definitely validating.
David:
I guess when youre self employed, its hard to get that validation in the beginning. Im sure its a very motivating feeling, Im sure. Right?
Lara:
Absolutely. I want to do more.
David:
Yeah.
Lara:
Im not stopping anytime soon.
David:
And its almost like an industry where money is sometimes a scorecard. Its also when you get those relationships and the people that come in and say that they recommend you, thats

another way for you to feel good about what youre doing and have that extra belief in yourself.
Lara:
Absolutely.
David:
Its huge.
Lara:
Absolutely. One of the things that Ive done and Ive done this my whole life is I write down mini goals for myself and I post them up so that I have to look at them every day and I wrote out eight of them back in January and one of them I scratched off because its something that Ive decided is no longer a goal of mine. So that brings me down to seven, and Ive got three of them crossed off. They were pretty big things for me and when I cross them off, its like okay, now I have other things that I can focus on and theyre still big things. It feels really good to be able to sit here and look at that and say, wow, okay. So come January, Ive got to make a list. Its like I have some stuff thats actually done and its working for me and now I have to come up with new stuff.
David:
I need more things to do.
Lara:
Yeah, its like, okay, now what. Kind of like people who go on big weight loss trips. Theyre like, oh, okay, Ive got to lose 50 pounds and then Im going to break it up into little 10-pound sections. And then I want to lose 10 pounds and its going to take me three months to do it. And then they hit that and theyre like, okay, now Im going to hit my next 10 pounds, and then Im going to hit my next 10 pounds. And then they get their 50 pounds off and theyre going, okay, now what? Okay, now I want to run a mile in four minutes. Just crazy stuff. Its like you start to come up with even more outrageous things because all of the things at one point seemed so hard that you set yourself really, really reasonable time limits on and

really reasonable and reachable goals. Now you want to start setting stuff thats maybe not so reasonable stuff that might seem a little outrageous just to see if you can do it.
David:
Yeah, its like a progression. Ive felt and Ive heard that its like if youre progressing towards something, if youre making progress in your life, thats part of human happiness almost.
Lara:
Absolutely. Its core. You have to be that way. If youre not like that if stagnancy is cool with you and status quo is what youre actually looking for, then youve got problems. Youre not making the most of what youve been blessed with and thats the ability to wake up in the morning and get on your feet.
David:
Thats true. So, lets talk mistakes. If you could take however many mistakes you made if you could take those three biggest mistakes okay, what are your three biggest mistakes and how can people who want to get started, or people who are involved already with internet marketing, how can we learn from them?
Lara:
Theres a favorite phrase that a lot of people use when it comes to things that theyre doing to protect yourself, and its called cover your ass. There were a lot of times that I kind of just let other people sweep me into stuff. A client would call, Oh, Ive got this great project and da, da, da, da, and this that and the other thing and lets get working on this. Heres my login and password. Heres a PayPal deposit, and heres this and heres this, and lets go, and how much you charge and heres your money. And I would start working on stuff and then youd get into it and two and three months down the road, youre like, okay, I need more money from this guy, but you never set up a contract. You never set up a plan. You have to take step back and while something might sound really exciting, you have to take a step back and make sure that youve kind of made a plan of things. Get the contract done. Even though you might want to really trust somebody, get a contract. Make sure that you

have especially when youre working with somebody else, make sure you have a definitive fee schedule and project schedule and This is what Im going to do and this is what youre going to pay me, and this is how were going to roll with this, and obviously be flexible with things, but dont jump into stuff without actually planning for it. You take a risk. Everybody needs to take risks, but thats one thing that I think that I wouldnt call it a mistake, but it was a frustrating time and a frustrating thing to deal with and I spent so much time dealing with it, that I probably lost out on a few other opportunities.
David:
Yeah.
Lara:
Thats probably the biggest mistake that I had made. Its hard because sometimes you still want to run into that. Sometimes its like, oh well, okay. Whatever, no big deal, but you just have to be conscious of things and take a step back and plan.
David:
Thats pretty solid advice.
Lara:
Failure to plan is a plan to fail.
David:
Exactly. I think thats John Wooden. Thats something that I really believe in. Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Lara:
Yeah, definitely.
David:
All right, so if you had some must-have resources for someone who wants to create the dot

com lifestyle, what would they be? That could be anything from books or people to follow or products. You name it.
Lara:
Well, Darren, obviously, because hes helped so many people and he got me inspired to really do the things that I wanted to do to get rolling with things. Chris Brogan (http://www.chrisbrogan.com) is also amazing. Im secretly obsessed with him not so secretly, actually. He knows quite well. Brian Clark (http://www.copyblogger.com) is amazing. Depending on what it is that you want to do, I think Deb Ng is fantastic for writers (http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com). Anybody who feels that blogging and writing and that kind of a thing is the way to go, shes definitely someone that you need to latch onto. Liz Strauss (http://www.successful-blog.com/) is a very inspiring person to talk to. I had several conversations with her back in the beginning and she really helped me to drill down to the things that are the core of what I like. She was very helpful for that kind of thing, and very inspiring. She was kind of a backbone sometimes, you know. You can do this, that kind of thing. Thats in terms of people to follow, obviously.
David:
Okay.
Lara:
Books to read, Ill be honest with you, Im not one to sit down and go cover to cover on anything just because I get impatient with myself. I have Book Yourself Solid, Michael Port. I have his book. I got through maybe half of a chapter and Im like, I dont have time for this. I have to go do stuff. I just dont do well with that. Id rather connect with people and make friends and talk about things with people and get it out and then act upon that. In terms of places to go online or things to do, Im a huge fan of social networking. I mean, like, its the core of what I do in my day. I use Twitter to interact with my writers for Twitip. I use FaceBook

to interact with other people on just random topics. Things that pop into my head that I post as a status message and people comment and we have big long discussions about things and that kind of thing. LinkedIn is really good for people especially with the groups and stuff that they have on there. Its really nice to get in there and kind of meet other people that way. Im big on communication really big on communication.
David:
Yeah. Really quickly, I was going to say when youre reading the book and youre like, Oh, I should go do stuff, I feel that way a lot, too. I mean, it would be nice to sit and read all day, but at the same time, reading is not really productive time.
Lara:
Right. It is because it gets you thinking, but while thinking is great, I do a hell of a lot of it and Id rather spend my time actually putting my thoughts into something concrete or tangible.
David:
I feel like thats what separates the great from the not-as-great because instead of having just thoughts, they have physical manifestations of those things.
Lara:
Right, absolutely.
David:
Ryan is a great example of that because Ill come in and hes like, Oh, I created a whole new process this morning. People who are like that like, hes just a machine, and they keep having new and new things so even if something falls through, they just keep doing things.
Lara:
Right.

David:
Doing stuff thats the key to the success doing things.
Lara:
Absolutely, and thats where that whole risk thing comes in. Planning something is one thing, but you still have to make the leap, especially when youre coming up with your own stuff. Not necessarily even working with clients or anything like that, but you actually have to be able to jump on something. When you have an idea, just throw it out there and do it. You may fall flat on your face with it, but as long as youre throwing it out there and doing it and you have another one right behind it, eventually youll come up with something that really works.
David:
And theres no sense in hesitating.
Lara:
No, because if you waste time, you end up with, Geez, what would have happened if I started this earlier?
David:
Yeah.
Lara:
Even if it is successful.
David:
Yeah, for sure. Im going to wrap it up with one final question and that is, what is next for you in your business?
Lara:
I have no idea, and I like it.

David:
Thats a good thing.
Lara:
Really, I enjoy the fact that every day is new and every day something new is going to come out. Honestly, if you really wanted a concrete answer, were growing ProBlogger.com even bigger and its going to be this amazing thing. I know it is. And its going to connect people it already has and weve only been live since the end of September. Were not even a full two months into it yet, and weve got 2600 members and people are connecting and communicating and getting work from each other. Its been amazing to see and were not even started yet. Some really amazing stuff is going to come out of that. Thats where our big focus is right now with me, is working on that with him. Also Freelance Writing Jobs, shes going to be starting a premium site as well a membership site and Im working on that with her, which is going to be really exciting. So pretty much thats where things are now. I have no idea where theyre going to be in the future. I was recently asked to speak at my first event. Its a local one. Its a social media breakfast and thats on December 4th, so thats my first speaking engagement. Im going to be on a panel with a couple of other people talking about blogging, which is really great because I love it.
David:
Thats awesome.
Lara:
Yeah, so who knows. I dont know and Im putting on my helmet and enjoying the ride, I guess.
David:
Thank you so much for the interview. I really appreciate it. Oh, absolutely.
Lara:
CASE STUDY #18

Mary Ellen Tribby
Interview with Mary Ellen Tribby

David:
Tell me how you got started in marketing, period. I want to say internet marketing, but I know youre bigger than that.
Mary Ellen:
Yes.
David:
How did you get your start?
Mary Ellen:
Really, I learned from scratch and when I got out of school I was actually a Theater major in college, and when I graduated, I started working at PBS in New York City and I thought I was going to get into the production aspect of it, but instead I got into the marketing aspect of it. When you start in a non-profit organization, youre asking people to donate money. So marketing is the most important part of any organization, and thats what I learned early on. I learned to teach that very early on that if you dont value marketing as the most important thing in your company, youre not going to make money because marketing drives sales. I learned direct response marketing. Theres a big difference between branding and direct response marketing and you have to understand dollar out/dollar in, and so Ive been in business much, much longer than the internethas been a boom. So when the internet really became popular in business for us who were traditional direct response marketers, in direct mail, on TV, on radio, all the other channels the offline channels when internet became big, like in 2000, thats really when I jumped on it and it was just another channel of business that we leveraged and it exploded because it was immediate and your costs were virtually nothing compared to the cost of doing direct mail or TV or being in the newspaper where youre spending $50,000 for a single ad. Then you can reach millions of people for nothing. It was really an amazing, amazing thing to watch this grow.
David:
Just to clarify, PBS is what?

Mary Ellen:
Oh, Public Television, Im sorry public television in New York City, it was the largest public television station in the country.
David:
So when did you begin to work with Agora?
Mary Ellen:
Agora, about almost 4 years ago.
David:
So was it the Public Television then Agora, pretty much?
Mary Ellen:
No, gosh no. I went from Public Television to Times Mirror Magazine, which is really one of the largest public companies next to Time Warner, was the biggest competitor of Time Warner and we had all the big, enthusiastic magazines like Saltwater Sportsman, Golf, Skiing, the big ones just circulations of 3 million or so. So when you are doing magazines when youre selling magazines youre mailing 25 million pieces of year per publication, and then youre on TV, and then youre on the bus and literally inside the buses. Youre in it. Its all direct response. Its not branding. And so, I was there for a while and then from there, I got recruited to run a division of Forbes and so I exploded Forbes. Steve Forbes would call me down just to say, Hi, how are you doing? How are we making this much money? From there, I went to Cranes New York Business. From there, I got recruited to Florida to American Media Publications. From there, I went to Weiss Research, which as the largest competitor of Agora. When I went to Weiss, we were about a $11 million company, and when I go there, within 12 months, we were a $67 million company. Thats when Agora just tried to recruit me, recruit me, recruit me, and then finally, five years

later I went to Agora after being at Weiss. When I started Early to Rise, we were about $8 million and went to $26 million in 15 months.
David:
And Early to Rise is a financial tips newsletter?
Mary Ellen:
No, Early to Rise (http://www.earlytorise.com) is an affiliate of Agora Publishing. Theres 24 different affiliate companies, which means were independent our own P&L, but no, Early to Rise is the largest self-help newsletter online today. So thats all we had. We talked about entrepreneurship, meeting your goals, direct response marketing, internet marketing.
That was the flagship profit center within Early to Rise, and when I got there, then I started a financial newsletter division which was called Investors Daily Edge and that went from year over $13 million in 15 months.
Then I started an alternative health division, Total Health Breakthroughs.

So again, it was all the info publishing model and the majority of its being built online, but also offline tactics as well, and then I just started my brand new company, workingmomsonly. com, and that is pretty much the info publishing model, while Ill still be consulting to Agora.
David:
Cool. So, when internet became big, like you said, there was the boom time, was it one of those things where you were like, Oh, my god, when you realized what you could do with it as a direct response marketer? Was it just like
Mary Ellen:
Oh, gosh, yes. When youre talking about product creation and youre talking about publishing, if somebody wants to be a publisher today like a traditional publisher, like the old time Time Life, Time Warner, kind of publisher, just think about what you have to do. You have to go get a huge building. Youd have to have printing presses. Youd have to have people who were trained to operate them. Youd have to get all kinds of writers and editors and accountants and all these things, and today, when you want to start your business, an online info publishing company, you dont need any of that. So basically, what you have is you have greater potential with so much less work. When I say work, I mean at the manual, sweat and labor kind of work, and virtually no investment. Thats key. You can start your company for virtually no investment.

David:
I guess its also probably good for the people who were doing it the old school way, when they moved to the internet, because you guys already had the really, really strong work ethic, Im sure, because its always probably been hard.
Mary Ellen:
You have the work ethic, and the other thing you have is that you understand when it costs you when youre so used to paying anywhere from 50 cents to 75 cents to speak to your customer, you know your copy is good. You know youre going to the right person and you know you have a strong offer because you cant go out in the mail. You cant spend 50 cents to 75 cents to talk to somebody if you dont think its going to work, if you dont know its good. So when you have that, you know youve got an advantage today where people are like, Well, its not going to cost me to talk to them, so I might as well just send it out, even if its not good, even if its not going to pull, and thats the wrong attitude. So you have to make sure that youve got a strong copy and a strong offer, and that youre going to the right people.
David:
That actually makes me think what do you think about the whole sentiment of Good is good enough, versus people who are constantly trying to be perfectionists?
Mary Ellen:
Well, theres an in between. Good is not good enough, you know what I mean? But you cant be perfect because nothing will ever be perfect because the market is going to tell you what works, right? Thats another mistake people make. They think, Oh, this is what my market needs. Well, guess what? You dont sell what you think people need. You sell what people want. Theres a big difference between wants and needs. So you get it out there and you test it and you constantly strive to make it better. But when it doesnt feel right in your gut, then you dont send it.
David:
How do you know when its right and ready? Is that an internal thing or is it external? When

are you sure, Okay, this is good enough to send out? because I think that go ahead.
Mary Ellen:
Yeah, well basically, what you do is you almost do these mini focus groups and you view them with colleagues and you do them with people who are part of your target audience. When you start a business, the best thing that could possibly happen is that youre actually part of your target audience. So for example, my company is workingmomsonly.com. Well, Ive been a working mom for 11 years. I have three small kids, right, my oldest being 11. So I know what its like to be a working mom, to be a successful career woman while raising great, healthy, compassionate, smart kids. But because Ive been in this market, I know what moms want. I know what Ive been through. I know theres this feeling of being overwhelmed. So if you can be a part of your market, thats key, but then the other thing you need to do is you need to do your research. And today, again, with the internet, there is no excuse not to understand who your competitors are, and not to know exactly what theyre doing. So when you look at what your competitors are doing, and then you look at yourself, what do you do? If you look at your competitors, do you strive to do what theyre doing, only do it faster and you do it better and you do it cheaper. Thats how you beat your competition. So when you strive to do that, youre going to know when somethings right. Youre going to be able to look at an offer and say, Man, my offer doesnt come close to that, or My offer is so much better than that. So youve got to do your research and thats going to help you tremendously to narrow whether youre ready to go out there or not.
David:
How this might be a silly question, but when youre doing research for stuff like this, how extensive are you getting? Is there a set timeframe that you do research in, or is just like until you get the feeling?
Mary Ellen:
No, its until you have enough. This is the big mistake people make. It blows me away. People

are going to go and theyre going to start up a new business and they call up people in that industry and they say, Oh, will you comp me on this product. or comp me on that product, and that is the wrong way to do it. What you need to do is you subscribe to five of your competitors five different competitors and then you watch them and then you emulate them, and do it better. Then you know. But if you just have because youre following that customer path, if you just have people comp you, then youre not getting the customer experience. So youve got to understand what that customer experience is like and now youre the customer. You paid for this. You paid for this, so are you satisfied with it?
David:
Thats a good answer. So in terms of competition, how do you feel about the whole landscape online? DO you have a good sense of the competition? Do you feel that its pretty much wide open, or is like, if you want to compete, you have to be like really, really, good and really prepared?
Mary Ellen:
No, you need to be good and you need to be credible. This is another mistake that people make is that they say, Im going to go out there and Im going to be the expert in something, but you know, experts are developed either through the years. So youve got to get that credibility behind you. When I started this business, Ive got people like Michael Masterson or Rich Jeffrey and people like Richard Branson think, Wow, youre amazing. Look at what youve done, and Ive got real results behind me. You know, Ive grown businesses from $11 million to $67 million dollars or $8 million to $26 million dollars by and I can teach other people how to do this. So you need to have that credibility factor. You need to have that. You just cant all of a sudden say, Im going to be the expert in teaching people how to fly kites, when youve never, ever flown a kite in your life. Its got to be real. Its got to be authentic. And if its not, its going to be very obvious.
David:
And so Im assuming that youre not thrilled with You know how to become an expert in a

day? Go to the library and get all the books on your subject, skim through them, take notes, and then youre an expert. Im assuming thats not how you feel.
Mary Ellen:
Thats not because you have no practical experience there and thats why I have a real problem with a lot of people online. There are so many people who are so good, and then there are so many people who are not. But this is the beauty about the internet, is that you cant fake it for a long time, right? Because not only are your customers going to tell you, youre customers are going to tell each other. Theyre going to tell all the customers online. So youve got to be good. So as easy as it is to make a lot of money online, and if youre good, its just as easy to get a really bad reputation online, and you dont want to do that to your customers. You want to treat your customers with the respect they deserve. When people are spending time and money with you, they need to be respected. Thats a trust. Trust is the most important aspect in any relationship, whether its a business or a personal relationship. If you dont have that, you will not have the relationship for very long.
David:
And I think its unfortunate that it is so easy to be anonymous online and have that kind of snake oil sales, if you will, because the barrier to entry is so low.
Mary Ellen:
Right.
David:
Which is like a blessing and a curse, I guess.
Mary Ellen:
It is. It really is, but there are a lot of really good people who are very good who have really done very well with that. But I really do believe in the end, people who arent good will be found out.

David:
Before. you were making a clear distinction between direct response and branding. What are your thoughts on branding advertisements? Is that something that you for example, when I see ads on TV that are like a Doritos commercial thats just like some goofy guy does that irritate you? Because that irritates me a little.
Mary Ellen:
No, it doesnt irritate me because its serving its purpose. That why you have to understand what your purpose is. If you want to start a business online, what do you want to do? Do you want to sell? Do you want to make money? So, developing goofy ads are not going to make you money online now. You need to understand ROI, Return on Investment, Dollar out/ Dollar In. Direct response marketing basically is marketing thats immediate. Branding is not. You see that commercial for Doritos, you dont run out of your house and buy Doritos. The next time youre in the store, you might pick them up, but you dont run out of your house and do that, so its not direct response ads. Its a branding ad. Direct response is immediate. Its quantifiable. You know exactly that if you match 100 people and 20 people respond, then you have a 20% response rate. You understand that, so you can measure that. So, its quantifiable, its immediate, and its very specific. So youre sending out for a specific offer, and youre getting that back in. So those are the ads in direct response marketing and its very different from branding. Branding is there so that you remember. You see Nike. You see an Nike ad, you dont run out and buy Nikes. The next time you need sneakers, you think, Oh, let me take Nikes. Maybe thats your thought.
David:
Yeah.
Mary Ellen:
People need to understand the difference. And so when you have a business online, your

branding almost can develop organically. If you can constantly put out good content and good products, then thats your brand that people know who you are.
David:
On the topic of brand differentiations, how do you develop if youre sitting in a business one of the things that I hear a lot when people are like, Whats the first thing I need to know when Im starting my own business? The answer is usually, find a unique selling proposition. Is there a good process for doing that? How would you approach that?
Mary Ellen:
Basically, you say, How am I different? Why is somebody going to buy my financial newsletter over someone elses financial newsletter? There are styles and a map there, but is there still room to go into that market? Of course there is. So what makes you different? And again, that goes back to how credible you are and your track record and your niche because even within financial newsletters, you have a nice. So for me, theres a lot of womens communities and theres a lot of moms communities, but here I am, working moms. Its a much more specific niche than just women, or even just moms. Its working moms. Its very specific. Its a niche. Whats my unique property and selling proposition? Ive done it. Ive done it over and over and over. You can look at my business track record. You can look at my family track record. Ive been married for 13 years. So I dont stress out about the little things. Absolutely, you need to have a unique selling proposition, something thats going to set you apart from everyone else.
David:
Earlier you said you were self-taught in marketing, right?
Mary Ellen:
No, I wouldnt say I was self-taught. I started at PBS and then I was actually very specifically taught in different channels of marketing. And so when I started this, I had great mentors like Eugene Schwarts and Benson, really the old time marketers. And then I worked with Clayton

Maypiece of seven years. He was my copy writer, and he is a marketing genius. So I worked with I think I worked with some of the best direct response marketers on the planet Michael Masterson, Bill Bonner. It doesnt get much better than that.
David:
Resources for someone trying to live the dotcom lifestyle, if you will. Do you feel mentors are pretty important? Obviously.
Mary Ellen:
Oh, my gosh. Mentors are everything. Mentors are everything and Im an avid reader so Im inthis is another problem people make. They go overboard. What you need to do is you need to pick a couple really good mentors. You need to read everything I read one book a week. I read a business book a week, whether its business marketing, self-help, or whatever it is a book a week. And you need to keep up with that. The key though is direct response marketing fundamentals have not changed in a hundred years. I wrote a book last year with Michael Masterson called Changing the Channel 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business. It is a fantastic book and I put it out there because it talks about all the different channels today where you can pickanother great book, of course, Breakthrough Advertising, Gene Schwartz, and its a fabulous book and its fundamentals hold true regardless of what channel youre using. Anything Bob Blys every written on direct response marketing these are all great resources.
www.ryanlee.com

Thats something that people just dont take advantage of today. Theres so much out there and maybe theyre just overwhelmed by it, but if you start out with those three if you start out with Changing the Channel, Breakthrough Advertising and Bob Blys book on direct response marketing, those are great ways to start because people have very specialized books out there about whether its CPA, SEO, or PPC, but if you dont understand the fundamentals of direct response marketing, it doesnt matter what channel or strategy you use. It wont work if you dont have the right copy, if you dont have the right offer, and if youre not going to the right audience, nothing else will work. You can understand the technical aspect, but if you dont get those fundamentals, your campaign will bomb.
David:
Yeah, and I guess thats like having a foundation versus to me, the metaphor would be like, thats trying to put windows on a house that doesnt exist yet. You have to have the foundation first and then go on from there.
Mary Ellen:
Right. For me, thats exactly what I say all the time is that you can build a mansion on swamp land, or you can build a mansion on solid foundation. What do you want to do? You want to build your mansion, your home, on a foundation. If you dont understand those fundamentals, youre going to build your home on a swamp and its just going to crash.
David:
So you were mentioning before that people get overwhelmed. Have you ever suffered from this disease that Ive heard of called Paralysis by Analysis?
Mary Ellen:
I have, but you know what? Im pretty good. Im not the typical IM guys out there. I really am very much a results-oriented person and thats the one thing you have to do in your business regardless of what your business is. You have to focus and you have to concentrate on finishing something youve started. The biggest problem I see with entrepreneurs is that they have an idea and they work on that idea and its 50% done, and then they have another idea and then they work on that idea and its 50% done. They do this four or five times. Well, you know, five

projects 50% done yield zero revenue. One project 100% done, yields a revenue. The way I combat this is because everyone has these great ideas you put them into your journal and you review them each week and you kind of prioritize whats next, but youve got to finish what you start, or else you will make no money in your business regardless of how smart you are. If you dont finish it, its not going to yield you any revenue.
David:
Yeah, so is there some sort of what do you do to keep yourself it sounds like its really not a struggle for you to be productive, but is it what do you do to keep track of what youre doing and make sure that youre on track for your goals? How do you stay on top of that?
Mary Ellen:
You know what? Its all about developing habits and it is one point it was a struggle for me, which is why I had to develop really strong habits. When I get up in the morning, I work out and I have to do that and do that every day and that puts me on track. Then I come home and I have a very specific schedule of how I work. You do the important things first. People do this all the time. They get up and they spend hours on email and thats just the worst thing you could possibly do with your day. You get up and you do the things that are most important for your day to get done and you do it because as your day goes on, you have more challenges and you have more interruptions. You dont know whats going to happen. So for me, the most important thing is my writing, so I get up in the morning, after I work out, when I come home, I write and I write for three hours. And then when Im done writing, then you move on to the next part of your day. But I do like to have my day planned out. For me, that works. I think that works for most people because its very easy to get off track.
David:
When you say, a fixed schedule, is that something that you know exactly what youre going to be doing tomorrow, the day after, the day after, or is it like do you find that living on such a strict schedule, obviously that probably makes you more productive, but do you feel like that

takes away from anything in your life, or is that exactly what you want?
Mary Ellen:
Oh, gosh, no. Its really not that strict. Kind of I work out my next day at night and know the things Im going to get done. I kind of had my daily, my weekly, and my monthly and then my year goals. These are things that I want to get done. And thats constantly evolved. It evolves all the time. I have three kids. You never know when somebodys falling off a swing or has a baseball practice, and suddenly you have things that were supposed to be on Thursday, now its on Tuesday. So you go with the way it happens, but you cant use that as an excuse, and a lot of people do. So you should have an idea. I like to start out and say, this is what I need to get done this week, and then I kind of break it down and I know by the end of the week, this has to get done. So if Im ahead of schedule on Monday or Tuesday, then Ill take on things that I didnt think I was going to do until Wednesday or Thursday. But if you plan it by the week first, and then put it into a day, it really helps.
David:
Yeah, I think so. Im making a plan for myself thats very similar to that. So, these habits that you mentioned before, could you share some of them with us? What are the habits that have helped you out the most?
Mary Ellen:
Well, one, I have what I call accountability corner. I have someone who has his own business and we talk every single week and we kind of hold each other accountable. We say, these are things that are going to happen this week. Its almost like having a personal trainer. You want to if thats your goal, to go to the gym and work out, get fit, thats what an accountability partner does. They help you stay on track and for me this is just my personality Im a pretty competitive person, so Ill never let him win. Ill never say, I cant just not get this done. I said Im going to do it, so I have to do it. A lot of its your personality, but the best thing you can do is start habits. If you hate to write,

but your business relies on it, you have to start writing, and a great trick that Gene Schwartz use to teach us all the time set an egg timer. Dont say Im going to write for three hours, because thats just a little overwhelming. Set the egg timer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, you get up, you stretch, then you go back to it. For me, what I like to do is I take a mid-day break, meaning around 12 or 12:30, Ive been writing and working all morning, I go out for a bike rider. I live in South Florida, so I can do it anytime of the year. I go out for a bike ride or a walk or something that just gets my blood flowing again and my creative juices going. So thats something I really love to do. And then by 3:00 in the afternoon when my kids start coming home, Im done. Now if theres something that didnt happen that needed to get done that day, my kids go to bed around 8 or 9 oclock, and then Ill make it happen at that point. But thats my time now that I like to spend with my family. So you have to create what works for you and your lifestyle, but you also have to know that a business is serious. You have customers and theyre paying you money and theyre giving you their time and so for me, I always say, a Saturday is the same as a Monday, or Sunday is the same as a Tuesday. You dont have days off. You do what works for you and your family, but if you need to get something done on that day, then you do it. This idea of Monday through Friday or 9 to 5, just cracks me up. You need to work what works best for you and your family.
David:
Im with you on that. I never really believed in the concept of weekends. Its like, Oh, its Sunday. I cant do anything today. Sorry.
Mary Ellen:
Right. For me, the goal and this is what should be for most people is that you are living a blended lifestyle and that means when you do things, you do them because you want to be doing them, not because its work or not because its fun, its because thats what you want to be doing, and for me, my work is just as satisfying and as much fun as when Im playing tennis. I need it mentally. So you just need to get to a place where youre blended and thats what

workingmoms.com is all about is leading that blended lifestyle.
David:
So if you could pinpoint some specific mistakes that youve made along the way, like three or so, what would they be?
Mary Ellen:
The biggest mistake, I think well, Ive seen entrepreneurs for 20 years and worked with them, and so I think the biggest mistake and Ive been guilty of this is in the past is trying to do too much at once. I kind of just addressed that a little bit about you get so involved in so many projects, that nothings really done well. So you need to focus and not start so many projects at once. The other thing that people do and people think this is a good thing that they can multitask, right? You have to look at multitasking again. Its really kind of its almost evil because if you were running a business, everything you should be doing, if its taking up your time, it means its really important. And if its that important, then you shouldnt be concentrating on anything other than your task at hand. There are times that you can multitask, but you have to understand when that time is. If youre doing your marketing plan or your business plan, then you shouldnt be multi-tasking. If you are listening to a Tony Robbins while youre in the car, thats good multitasking. So you have to understand the difference between good multitasking and bad multitasking, and for years I thought all multitasking was good. So thats a mistake that I made that Id really like people to understand that because that will help them tremendously. When you are concentrating on business matters that are making your business money, you should not be multitasking at all. The other thing that I havent done this because I understood this, but I was tempted to do this you start a new business and youre really, really crazy about it and the first thing you do is you go out and you print stationery and you print business cards and you do these things that dont yield you any money.

When I started this business, I did not do it, but I see it all the time. I meet people at events when Im speaking and they come up to me and they hand me their business card and I ask them about, How are you doing? Well, I havent really got off the ground yet, but I have a business card. So that is the first thing everybody should be doing is kind of writing their sales letter, understanding what their business, making a sale not printing up business cards, not getting stationery, not decorating your office.
David:
Whats next for you and your business?
Mary Ellen:
Well, with workingmomsonly.com, the next thing were going to be doing is developing a membership for moms to make it a more interactive community and Im developing some special products that are only going to be available for members. This was kind of people are kind of like, Wow, so if somebodys not a member, theyre not going to be able to buy this product? And yeah, thats kind of the way it is that this is my thought. There are so many free things online and people tend to get overwhelmed and subscribe to all these free things and use none of them. When you have to pay for something, all of a sudden youve got this shift in your mindset and it says, Wow, I paid for this. I better use it. For me as a marketer, I can sell stuff all day long if I wanted to, but that is not my idea of success. My idea of success is that when I can sell somebody something and they can apply it and become successful, then Im successful not just by selling it, but by them using it and being successful. So my idea with the membership is that it will be a paid for membership and thats going to be where the stuff is that if you really want to learn, youve got to become a member. And thats real exciting for me because I think that were going to have a community of working moms who are on track to just have a better life. This is really important. I say this seriously worldwide, because if a working mom is stressed or angry or not making money, then guess what? The kids in that whole household are stressed and theyre angry and theyre frustrated.

So when working moms have the tools to have a better life, the next generation are going to have a better life. It really is a circle. So, this is really important for me to get this up and going in the next couple of months.
David:
I think thats really cool the whole, you have to pay to get access to the products. Its kind of like a screening process, almost, but I think that whole mindset of were trying to help you and by giving it away to you for free, youre not going to take advantage of it as much as you would otherwise.
Mary Ellen:
Right.
David:
Thats the best way to sell, I feel like, because they have to give it to you because if they dont, then its not going to work, so theres no point. So thats a kind of cool reframe right there and it sounds like youre going to absolutely annihilate it. Im sold.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #19

Matt Bacak
Interview with Matt Bacak

David:
Lets start all the way from the beginning. What got you into internet marketing? When did you start?
Matt:
When did I start? Well, were just talking, right?
David:
Yeah.
Matt:
My first opt-in page went up in 2001, and actually I was thinking about this, if I chase back all the way through the domain, like your domain tools and stuff, I found my personal first page went up in 2001, but I did dotcom back in college. We werent doing internet marketing. We were just building brochure websites, so my beginning of DM, or Direct Internet Marketing, really probably started in 2001. We were selling brochure websites back in 97, 98. We were selling Flash websites before the websites we were building for people, it was all Flash and people were literally, when theyd buy them from us for thousands of dollars and the customers couldnt see it because they didnt have Flash downloaded on the computer.
David:
Thats funny. Oh, this looks nice. Oh, too bad it doesnt even work.
Matt:
The site looked good because we downloaded the Flashbecause you know, back then the browsers didnt even have Flash installed.
David:
Thats funny. So youre online business started selling websites.

Matt:
Pretty much. Well, we had a business doing that, but if you really look at the business model that Im using today, that was really I started off with doing stuff with I became attached with one facilitator for Robert Keith Sofskys organization back in 2001. I think it was 2001, and basically I was putting on cash for one-on-one events all over Atlanta. I was putting 50 to 100 people in a room in less than two days and then Id invite speakers to come out and talk to my events. Thats kind of how all of this world happened. If youre looking from an entrepreneur perspective, I started my first business when I was 12 years old. I was a paper boy delivering papers and what I did was I took all my paper route subscribers and I turned them into lawn care clients and then actually, I didnt have time to do it because I was delivering papers, so I had my neighbors cutting all the grass and I went by and collected all the money. So Ive been an entrepreneur from an early age and doing a lot of different things.
David:
Its kind of like a bug that bit you early.
Matt:
Yeah. I started doing stock brokering. Ive been in stocks since I was 12. I was buying stock. I had my first stock broker when I was 16. I fired him when I was 18, then after graduating to college, I started paying for my school.
David:
Thats awesome. Are you still doing stocks today?
Matt:
No, actually my whole thing its funny Im actually really good at it, but I just choose not to do it because it is emotional ups and downs the way I used to play it, so I just focused all my energy in my business and the one thing that I told myself when I kind of decided I was going to go on this path and become a millionaire, I decided that I was just going to invest all of my money, instead of investing in other peoples companies, Im just going to invest all my money

in my own company by stock in my own companies. The bill goes and I do whatever, so.
David:
I guess thats kind of the mindset that you make a significant return when you invest in someone elses company, but your return is nothing compared to what that actual company is making, you know.
Matt:
Yeah. Why go invest in somebody elses company that I have no control over when I can actually build my own and stuff like that.
David:
So youre first opt-in site, when did you go from Matt Bacak, entrepreneur to Matt Bacak, Internet Marketing Expert? When did you start?
Matt:
Back in 2003.
David:
Okay. And what was your first site/product? How did you?
Matt:
Its freaking hilarious because I was doing these cash events in the wealth-building world, so we were doing events and Id have real estate events that I was putting on and stuff like that, and I was just a promoter. Thats how I got the name, Power Promoter, like a lot of people call me, and I hate that, but it wasnt that I named myself. I didnt self-appoint myself the power promoter. People literally couldnt believe it because what would happen for me and this is how it all started where I was doing these wealth-building events, but I didnt teach them. I was just the guy that put it together I got the room, I put the people in the room, and then whoever I asked to come do the event, but I would literally call somebody up on Monday and say hey, Saturday, do you want to come to my event, and theyd say how many people do you have? Id say, well I havent started promoting it yet, but Ill start promoting it on

Wednesday if you want to come. And literally, they would tell me, are you serious? Im like, yeah, and literally theyd show up and thered by 100 people in the room and they were just shocked and like, wow, you are the powerful promoter, or something like that. What ended up happening was because I started doing that and started getting a reputation around town in the Atlanta area because thats really where I focused. People literally, like marketing, these guys that paid $50,000 for marketing franchises and they actually wanted to model me. I started noticing them all sitting at my event and Im like, what are you guys doing here? Are you guys here to learn what this real estate investor is going to do? He goes no, Im want to go through the process and see exactly what youre doing, and Im like, Oh, interesting. And then I just made everybody raise their hand and was like, how many people here are actually trying to figure out what Im doing? And like half the room raised their hands and I was like, well, Ill tell you what. After this whole things over, why dont we all go meet in the side corner. Lets just talk, and Im like, what do you want to know from me. Like Im literally questioning, what do you want to know? And they all told me, like, look, we want to know how youre putting on seminars, and Im like okay, how much would you be willing to pay for me to teach you this stuff? And theyre like, well you know, and they all threw out numbers. I said, let me think about this, because I didnt choose it it chose me. I didnt really choose it, and how I was doing it was all through emails, you know. So these guys I wrote them all and I said, hey, Im going to put up my site. The first thing I did was called How to Put Butts In Seats. It was www.buttsinseats.com. I did my first sales letter my first sales letter to sell IM kind of stuff. Because really what it was was, hey, build a list, send emails out to the list and have them go to a sales I mean, back then it was different. We were actually emailing sales letters, which is really different than we are doing today, but there was none of this, send an email, have them click on a link, go to the page. We were literally sending full sales letters to them in emails. Plus there was no canned spam act, so it was just kind of different.

So I was just showing them all the stuff I was doing and how I was doing it and how I was building my list, how I was making things happen, and how I just build a list of targeted people and created the pages and mailed them and put people in the events.
David:
Okay, so your first thats kind of a good name there, butts in seats. And so how did you expand from there? What was the building process?
Matt:
Okay, so heres the interesting thing. I taught everybody so really, the question is how did it all happen? So, after the event that I did, so heres the thing I told them like, heres how you go get the hotel room. Heres how you negotiate hotel rooms. You need to get a list I never told them how to build a list. So everybody in the room comes to me and like, okay, this is great. We had the best two days of our life. We learned so much from you, but how do we build the list? And Im like, oh, yeah, I guess you guys need to know how to do that. So literally, I said, okay. I went to the place I was renting out. Its kind of like a learning annex, but it wasnt. In Atlanta, we dont have a learning annex. We have a thing called The Knowledge Shop, and so thats where I was doing my event. So I went over to the owner and I said, hey look, can I rent this thing out again next week? And he was like, yeah, and I said okay. So I went back into the room and I said, how many people here want to learn how to build a list? Next week Im going to do another workshop on how to build a list. It will be my first event How I build my list to 10,191 in 29 days or less. So thats kind of how it went from there. I just kept on really focusing in that area and teaching people how to build lists and how to do things. Thats been the core of my business since I can remember.
David:
List building, pretty much?
Matt:
Yeah.

David:
And so how many sites do you run currently?
Matt:
Run? Right now?
David:
Yeah.
Matt:
Right now, I actually like to keep it simple as much as possible, so I mean, I have what I call a branding site. I have a blog. I have about two sales letters out there and then I have two opt-in pages out there. But I guess thats it. Im not running like 10,000 pages, but you kind of caught me in a different time because last year if you had talked to me last year or even the beginning of the year, The one big thing is in the middle of all that stuff starting, I built three one multi-million dollar company, another million-dollar company, and tons for niches. So people started coming to me like, hey, will you do this stuff for me? So I chose three different people. I got into stocks, because I like stocks. So I built that company and then I kind of sold it off to my partner. Then I took another company in the real estate world because it just made sense because I had a wealth-building list too. I built that company and that became we did over $14 million last year. And then I did another company in the real estate didnt do that, but another company that did had a flash for taxes and stuff like, and built that one. And then meanwhile, I built a hosting company which became the fastest well, The Host Review said it was the fastestgrowing hosting company in the world actually one of the fastest. We are in the top 10. Actually, were in the top five because of acquisitions. So what I was doing was I was taking a lot of my money and I was going out and acquiring hosting companies using real estate strategies. It was amazing what we were doing because I had these sites on the internet and the people

was like, we buy hosting companies dotcom. Then people would literally go and try to get into the same exact things like, we buy hosting companies faster and remain fair, and people would literally I mean, basically hand me their freaking companies. It might have had $100,000 recurring revenue and Id go in there and give them $50,000 cash and theyd just hand me over the company and I would just move it over really quickly, as long it was a good match, sell off all the equipment on eBay and acquire all the customers and reoccurrence.
David:
Thats not a bad business model.
Matt:
Yeah, it was a great business model, except for support sucks.
David:
Yeah, I mean, thats one of the when you have so many customers, thats true. What you said kind of struck a little something in me. You said you were using real estate principles to purchase companies, and I guess like, Ryan mentions this a lot, but going outside of your industry and kind of copying how other people can really kind of lead you to innovate, and Im sure thats probably been a part of it,
Matt:
Seriously, let me tell you. Are you familiar with the free CD concept?
David:
Yeah.
Matt:
Okay, so I brought that to the community back in 2003. Like you can literally its documented inside the internet marketing kingdom that I brought this whole concept in. How I got that whole idea, I was watching TV and all of a sudden this infomercial comes on

and theyre doing a free CD. Im like, thats a great idea. Let me just bring that same exactly letter and instead of it being an infomercial, Im going to take that whole idea and bring it to the internet and then I started doing it. I started teaching people, and thats kind of like one of the things that I brought to the community. Then everybody started doing it because I started teaching it. People started modeling it like big names that you would know on the internet. They would literally take my pages. You know Ryan, right, ripped off one of my promotions, like the whole thing about somebody and you know, the whole thing he just did about somebody stole his content and stuff like that.
David:
Yeah.
Matt:
Well, thats the same exact thing I did. I did that two years ago because I gave him the whole idea. I brought in 15,000 customers in seven days doing that, so at that point in time, I had the largest product line of customers that the internet community ever saw and thats why I told Ryan about it. I was like, dude, heres exactly how I did it. Somebody literally did rip off one of my seminars. I had six thousand dollar seminars going. I used to train those, and somebody literally came in, literally took my sales letter and built it and actually taught everything I did. He bought the CDs and he started just teaching straight from it. I had students come and like, hes teaching your stuff straight from your workbook. I was like, are you kidding me? So I said screw it, Im quick tune the event, Im going to put the even up, the $5,500 seminar that I was literally charging for three years. I was charging $5,500 a person, 50 to 100 people a month at this thing, and I said screw it, Im just going to give it away, but not only that, Im going to give it to charity, and then everybody matched my dollar. Ill match the dollar. So basically, for every dollar people invested, and then it went into forced continuity and then I brought 15,000 continuity members in less than seven days. Thats what really started everybody getting really hardcore in the whole forced continuity aspect of things because

everybody was like, Holy crap, Bacak just pulled this off. Right after that, then I came off that record so the whole community got a little weirded about that one because I came out of the blue with it and my whole concept and my whole strategy of my business has always been outside of what you were talking about looking at other industries, where I used that idea from was Henry Ford. I told everybody the one thing that I dont have really mentored. Nobodys every really taught me. I just look at what other people are doing and the things that are bringing them in there just like Henry Ford did when he walked into the butcher shop and realized, Oh my gosh, I can take these and create an assembly line and do cars. Thats the kind of thing I do all the time. The same thing with the phone so like if you ever hear of anybody coming out with a phone in the industry, like selling people their phone that was something that I brought to the industry back in 2002. Thats exactly how we did a lot of it because it just didnt make sense. When I was running a sales team and I taught Russell Brunson. I gave him all my scripts from my sales team. A lot of people credit him for it, but Im the one who taught him. I remember when he was piss broke and couldnt even afford doing stuff. The fact of the matter is that a lot of okay, take the lead, have the leads go to the sales floor and then you pick up the phone and you call them and how youve been coaching, thats exactly how we put our events on. That was a big thing. That was actually what the free CDs were created for only one purpose. It was a low-end product that I can get people to get on the phone to talk someone because I originally started off that whole idea to get people into seminars, was having them go to a confirmation page and they filled out a strategy session form and then from that I would just pick up the phone and call them. That was literally my legion for putting people into the rooms later on and for higher-level rooms, and that moved into I said I need something and people actually gave me a credit card and then I created the free CD idea, and after that, it evolved into adding forced continuity to it and adding all these other aspects to it, but that was the original thing. 2003, I think, is when we started it.

David:
I have a question. When youve been doing your promotions and I guess when you got started, or now, do you even consider the general traffic methods? Do you really care about SEO or pay per click stuff, or is really just relationships and JVs and just your internal stuff?
Matt:
When Im doing product launches?
David:
Yeah, or just in general, really.
Matt:
My product launch strategy heres one thing I dont usually talk about, but I plan my product launches years in advance. What you really hit on is all of the relationships. So what I literally do and this is one thing that I do so back in 2005, I decided for my birthday I wanted to have that year, I decided for my birthday I wanted to have a best-selling book. We just hit Number one on Barnes Noble. We hit Number one on Amazon at the same exact time. I dont think theres ever been anyone that I know that actually hit the top of two places using the internet marketing stuff. Usually the just hit one and they move on. We had so much traffic coming to the page. So what I usually do is I plan those long in advance. Ive mailed for them three times and never asked them for anything. And then I just basically Im planning for a big-ass launch that Im going to be launching. So right now, Ive got a big launch Im going to be launching here pretty soon. Do I know what Im going to be offering? I dont know, but I know Im going to be doing a big launch. So Ive been preparing for it over a year and a half now because the last launch I did was my retires promotion I did Matt Bacak Retires. I was talking about the $seminar that I did for $5,500, and I brought in 15,000 customers. The last time I did that was back in 2008, in fact, the last time did a promotion was back in 2005.

So sometimes I take a couple of years and then really plan off a big, huge launch. Because on my first launch, I mean, I had 715 people mail for me and the last launch I did, I had over 315 and only 2 people didnt mail for me, and thats unheard of. And the reason for that is because all Im doing is focusing on the relationships. So if I need them, I put on my wall Ill put the names of the individuals, the phone numbers and email addresses, and whenever Im looking, Im like, have I touched base with this person? I have done something for them? So Im actually going first and then later on when I ask for it, its like, Hey, look, Ive mailed for you about 10. Can you mail for me? And if they dont reply, No, I dont know if I can do it, Im like, Hey, look, I mailed for you three times. You have never mailed for me once. Can you mail for me? And then they typically come back and say yes. Ive never had to pull like, Hey, look, do you ever want me to mail for you again? I have never had to pull that yet, but I do keep track. But Im always going first. Im looking to build relationships. A lot of times Ill go to events and just be the guy that does the barrings by everybody who drinks all night just to kind of build it up for something big Im doing in the future. Its not like Im that guy that walked in and is like, Hey, dude, can you mail for me tomorrow? Id rather see you wasted five or six times and then later on say, Hey, you know, it would be pretty cool. Ive got this cool promotion. And then the other thing too about my product launches that are a little bit different. Actually, Im kind of doing a rolling launch a mini launch with a couple of my buddies but the one thing that most people make the biggest mistake on is the fact that what I do is, I split all the traffic before I even get going. My whole thing is like, I believe its my right and my job to get that dollar per click or get that visitor as much as possible because I need to put as much money in the pocket of my partner or my affiliates as I can, because if I dont, they wont mail that offer again. So Im always, always working on that so I can do that. Most of my launches actually all of my launches I never do any pre-launches because I dont need it. If you have the right angle my whole thinking and how its always been is if you have the right angle in your promotion, you need no pre-launch. Pre-launches are, I think, a waste of time and a waste of peoples emails when they could make more money doing other things.

So if Im going to get somebody to mail, because I only have a certain chance to get somebody to mail for me, really most people, you can only get them to mail once and its either a prelaunch mailing or its to really sell my shit, then I want the right people to sell my stuff. So thats the big thing that I really focus on. Im the guy who comes out and I just knock them over the head like, I dont have any prelaunch anything. I just come out and all of a sudden it has such a great angle and thats where I get, Hey, look Ill give you $5,500 seminar for $1 and plus Ill give that dollar to charity and match it. Its a no-brainer freaking offer. And so, the same thing I did on my book promotion. My book promotion, the angle on that was the same thing with charity. I said, Hey, Ill tell you what, heres my book, and the great thing is I told my publisher that I dont even want the royalty checks for this book. Im going to give them all to Habitat for Humanity, so people just buy my book. You know, do stuff because it had a great angle. So thats the one thing is a promotion with the right angle doesnt need the pre-launch and also it helps out, but also on top of that, if Im looking at creating all the bonuses, creating all the OTOs in the back end, trying to get my dollar per visitor up as much as possible, you know, more people are going to mail. Ill get guys to mail for me all week because they see the emails coming in their email box too. They know I mailed for them like six times before I even asked them to mail, so they have that piece of it. But the other thing is, my shit works and theres none of this, I had any problems because I test everything out before I give it to them. So, you know, thats a big thing, I think. I was just telling how I was doing the whole thing about things that piss me off that people do on the internet when it comes to launches and stuff like that. This guy yesterday pissed me off made me really mad. I sent him thousands of clicks and I made like $168 and I wrote him back and said, Dude, how could you even ask me to mail for you when you never even tested this and your dollar per click was like two cents, you know? Thats literally not going to work I could be emailing something else because I always look at look, I dont mail anything unless I make above a buck fifty because this is a business to me and not a freaking hobby.

David:
So, you sound like youre a big systems and process kind of guy.
Matt:
Well, pretty much. Yeah, in a sense. I like to do something once and then hand it off.
David:
So this whole testing period where youre testing stuff and youre raising the value per customer, how long does this take usually for you?
Matt:
Well, its actually its not based upon some of it is not really time its based upon as much the amount of traffic I can get circuiting to the offer.
David:
Okay.
Matt:
I wont call a winner until I have at least a thousand clicks. So if you think about this, right now Ive got a promotion and when I do my testing, this is one thing that most I dont just test headlines and test background colors and stuff like that. Im doing dramatically different angles. For example, right now the test Ive got and actually Ill go look at my wall the test Im doing right now, Ive got a free CD offer, so you basically get the CD for free and then you get the free shipping and handling. And then I did where you pay for shipping and handling, and then I did versus a $7 CD with free shipping and handling. But the whole angle is like when you go there, if you look at them, theyre dramatically different. The page looks different. The whole way of my angle looks different. Heres whats going on. I decided to do this because I remember what it was like being dead broke and da-da-da. The other one is goes over and says, Hey, with your permission, I gave this to a bunch of

people. They said this is the most amazing thing ever. Its totally different angles on both sides. And so what Ill do is Ill split those and actually Im running my test tomorrow. So Im going to split-test those and with my own traffic, Im going to be able to get enough data actually in the one mailing. So Ill split-test those and find out which angle Im doing. I didnt sleep because Ive been doing this because Im really focused. So like last night, I wrote both sales letters, and not only that, I set up the in-between pages, set up the order forms, I set up my first OTO, and the yes/no the one-click orders and not only did that, I just went ahead and then I set up my next OTO that people will go to. I set up linking pages. And thats for just one so like the $7 CD I set up that, and then I set up the same exact thing on the other ones. I set up two traffic flows and one of them Im going to be ditching after a couple of hours tomorrow. So I spent two days buildings this thing out because I dont know which ones going to work, and once one does, I drop it. So the big thing is Im not emotionally attached. Thats one thing I learned about being a trader and trading stocks and stuff like that. You never become emotionally attached to anything. Just analyze numbers, look at things. The market is emotional, but so is a lot of internet marketing. But the people that really win are the ones that are unemotional and Im not emotional about my pages. Look, if it sucks, Im dropping it. If it doesnt suck, you know, Im using it.
David:
Yeah, I think that the stock tracking stuff can really translate well to the internet marketing world in terms of testing. I feel like it works well. It kind of goes into traffic like when youre messing around with traffic, I feel like they kind of very similar and you have to have like a similar mind set. You have to be ruthless.
Matt:
Yeah. I mean, its not only that. Its like a lot of people get emotionally attached to their freaking page. They get emotionally attached to the first way they do things. Im like, if something doesnt work, it doesnt work. Move to something else. A lot of people are like, well, Im going to keep on working until it works. Its like, it doesnt freaking work, just leave it alone. You can

throw good money at bad stuff, and thats what Ive even done that before. Theres a market. Thats one thing I do here is like, Im not going to spend any more energy or time on something thats not going to work. Yeah, I could probably get it up, but its going to take me a long time. I need to go quickly. I need to do it rapidly.
David:
For sure. All right, I dont want to hold you on the interview for too long because know you it sounds almost like you have every day of the year planned out like you know exactly what youre going to do in three months today. Is that close to the truth?
Matt:
No, thats very far from the truth. I know Im going to do something. For example, Ive got a big macho idea like I want to become number one in ClickBank or I want to get another book I want to launch. So I know what Im going to do through the year. I dont know when Im going to do it because the timing has to be right. Its just like the market anyway. Ill give you an example. There are communities out there that most people dont know about. The internet marketing community theres secret communities inside the internet marketing community. They have product launch calendars. They have all this stuff. So if the timing is right and nobody else is going, Ill jump in that spot really quickly, call my date so that nobody else will plan on it, and thats how I can get everybody to mail for me anyway because so nobodys in my way. So if somebody else moves their date, that opens up a date for me, so Ive got to be ready to be able to put in as many hours as I can before something to be able to launch when I have a good opening, because I dont want to compete with anybody out there when the market because I want to be the one thats having the attention at that moment.
David:
For sure. All right, so heres some questions for you. So, what are the three biggest mistakes that youve made throughout this whole process? If you can name three if thats possible, and how can we learn from them?

Matt:
Well, thats good. I think one of the biggest mistakes like I told you, I got really involved in my companies. Actually, the biggest things Ive learned all along and I should have listened, is partnerships suck. First of all and I kind of came to the whole conclusion I used to believe I needed somebody to be able to do stuff. Like, in the real estate company, I had a guy that was running basically the face of the real estate company, gave me information on every company. But anytime Ive been in a partnership, it was crappy and the big thing that I learned was the only ship that does not sail is partnerships. No matter how they sound and how they are and everything else, Ive never had a partnership that ended well. It ended fine, but then after that, the promises werent made and kept and all these other crazy things. But also, the big thing I learned from that is if Im going to get in a partnership with anybody, Ive got to look at it because the biggest issue with partnerships is its always a power struggle. The thing I learned from that is the only reason that I need to get in a partnership, if I ever choose to get one in the future, would be two reasons (1) to learn some things from that individual or (2) to learn how theyre doing something. But other than that, its an education experience. It has nothing to do with money. To me, thats a really big lesson Ive learned, which I wish I had learned a long time ago because I would be in a totally different place. The other thing I think thats really big for me or kind of a learning lesson, would probably be weve been talking about testing and stuff like that, but testing early. One of the biggest mistakes that Ive realized is that over the years, because of my non-testing or just being complacent with the things that are going on and not coming back and looking at things and analyzing things and looking at data and analyzing the data and analyzing the numbers on site. I literally could have made my life so much easier if I would have just done some of that because I wouldnt have had to either spend as much money in my marketing efforts, or I wouldnt have to get as many eyeballs to pages, you know, and I would have just made more money all around and thats one big thing that I wish I would have done a lot earlier on. It took me six

years of being online to really figure that out. I was like, duh, I should have known that. Now Im just a little testing fiend. Another thing I think would be really huge and Ive always said this, but its like I started doing some speaking. Ive spoke all over and stuff like that, but what I did was allow me to lose touch with my team and also we started losing touch with our customer support, and I think the number one key the number one biggest thing anybody running an internet marketing business, if you dont have stellar customer support, youre going to be losing people left and right. People want to be responded to. They dont want to be talking to auto-responders. They want to be able to talk to people. I have always had it, but I wish I would have had better customer support. I mean, right now literally people are like, this is the best customer support were getting, and really emailing me and tweeting me because now were around the office a lot more because of the next thing I learned is the fact that the biggest learning lesson, too, for me, is building a company around my family, not building my company around my greed lamp. That was something that Ive kind of come to the conclusion maybe its because of where Im at and Ive made a lot and I have had tons of things, you know, land and tons of a lot of things, and maybe because of where Im at, but its one of those things that I kind of look back and its like, wow, I sacrificed some of these things to get where I am. But in a sense, maybe thats why I am where I am, but also, its like when you take in consideration family and stuff, I wish I would have built my business around family.
David:
Yeah. Okay, so if you could name three big resources for someone who wants to create a dotcom lifestyle, what would they be?
Matt:
Three resources? What do you mean?
David:
Like either tools or skills or books or anything, really.

Matt:
I think that, honestly, I mean every single freaking answer on the internet is in Google. If you just search for the damn thing. It drives me absolutely insane, like I literally have people who will email me and ask me questions like, Hey, whats FTP mean? Well, you could have just Googled the freaking thing, you know? Why are you asking me these questions? So a lot of things like how to start a business literally, if you see a common theme, like if you Google stuff and you do some research and you see a common theme like everybody says, Hey, you need to get a URL, get a hosting account. You need to get an auto-responder, you need to set up a squeeze page, you need to set up a blog. Well, theres a reason why thats thing is there and what people forget about is everything is x. What hosting company do you use? I dont know, research it, you know. I mean, I do have recommendations, but its like a hosting company is a hosting company. Its just x. You need a hosting company, you know. Where do you get domains? Its just x. Wherever you can get a domain. Go to GoDaddy, go somewhere, but youve got to search in domains. Thats one thing that people dont really get and they get so stuck on trying to just not doing, not implementing. It sounds very simple, but I would say seriously, really searching with Google and using that to where Googles your best friend if you just use it; using it that way. You can find anything. Thats where I get scripts, anything I want, sales letters. I can download them to look at how theyre creating stuff. I mean, theres tons of stuff. If I would say theres some skills that I think somebody should master, one of these things is internet business. I think the most profitable thing that anybody could ever do on the internet is becoming a master email marketer. Seriously, its just amazing. You can literally send emails and make money. You could just become an affiliate marketer and not have to do anything, but having that list and building that list and being able to send emails, so you know, learning how to send broadcasts, learning your auto-responder, learning how to build your list. It all has to do with email marketing.

And inside that would be another skill that I think for an internet marketing lifestyle, (1) would becoming a master internet marketer, but (2) would also become a master copywriter because youve got write copy when you send out emails to get people to actually respond. I mean those two skills for internet marketers, if you nail that, youre golden, quite honestly. My next door neighbor sits at home. Hes got him and his assistant, and he makes $14 million a year. He turns out an email every freaking day and make money. Its just like, its insane what you can do if you just have a list and you have people coming in and you have the power to be able to turn words into money. Its just like sending out emails.
David:
So I guess one more question to follow that theme is, email marketing I want to ask you how you learned email marketing and copywriting and I have a feeling that part of that answer would be Google and the other part would be through experience. For copywriting, is there a specific book that helped you, and for email marketing, is there a specific something that helped you learn, like gave you some guidelines?
Matt:
Actually, I would say Google. I wouldnt say any of that stuff. I wouldnt say really in books either. Actually, there is one book youre going to have to probably look it up. The Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters Ever Written by Richard Hodgsen. Basically, its a compilation of every single sales letter. It says, heres why they work. It had like Wall Street Journals like their control piece has never been beaten for like 60 years. It had I dont know the value of that number, but for a long time. It has a control piece for American Express. It has like all these control pieces and it goes through heres why it worked. Heres the philosophy behind it. Its like, Heres what beat it. Its really crazy and you kind of get the idea of that. But thats actually not what I would tell people to really pay attention to. The key that I found isnt that, and I guess it was a learning style that I learned, is literally taking these sales letters and how I actually learned to do it, is I took the sales letter and I just wrote it out. Id look at the sales letter, Id write it out. Id just keep writing the thing out until it actually became part of me.

The other same exact thing that would be like my sales letters, but when it comes to writing emails, what I do is I literally go find people online that have lists inside the marketing niche that Im in well, I would suggest, but if people it doesnt matter what niche, but anybody thats writing emails that really get my attention, that I always open up, that I always want to go buy something whenever they send an email, and just literally looking at their emails, saving them all in a file on my computer and then emulating or modeling their emails saying okay, heres how they use the subject line. Now, Im not going to use the same exact subject line. Im going to use a variation of it. Im not going to use the same exact wording in it, but Im going to use a variation of it and Im going to model it. Once I start modeling or emulating that individual that Im actually following online, then I wont use them anymore and Ill kind of get their ideas. After a while I start to see their tendencies that get you to suck you into whatever theyre doing.
David:
Okay, so I guess to wrap it up, whats next for you and your business? I know you said that youre doing a big launch. Do you have any specific big goals that youre trying to achieve, or whats your plan?
Matt:
The biggest plan for me that I have for my business is really redesigning well, Ive already pretty much done it but keep on changing the plan that were already on, really keeping it simple. The only thing I care about, everything that I do will lead to one thing and one thing only, is people becoming my enrolled numbers. If every single purpose like this launch, the whole reason is because my first OTO is basically, Hey look, because you got this, I gave it to you for an absolutely amazing price, but Ill just tell you, if you want to really build a business, come here, in a sense. I mean, everything I do is always allegiance to my subscribers, with all my buyers, you know, with tele-seminars. My whole game plan is basically I want to create I want to focus on my

members and focus on nothing else. Our whole office is starting to get into this member mind set. Its like, Hey, look, if youre a member, it comes with privileges. If youre not a member, basically youre not a member. You dont get these privileges that everybody else does. Creating that environment where everybody wants to belong to it and be a part of it and never leave it. I have my own communities that Ive built.
David:
So pretty much what youre saying is you have a bunch of like all of your products are frontends for this membership back-end.
Matt:
Yeah, everything I do is a front-end to that.
David:
I really like that. Its like youre making kind of a big spider web, almost, and everything goes to the center of it.
Matt:
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. The one center thing is the membership. I just did Your First Sale Online theme was a great angle I did with my daughter. I got her to sell stuff online.
Matt:
Everythings going to lead into that and nothing else. I like to keep it simple and thats why I dont have 10,000 websites out there, because Im really into this one thing. All of it is angled to get you into my angled membership so that you can become a member and I can send you a shirt and youre cool.
David:
My one question about that is one of the themes that Ive seen with internet marketers is the whole thing of multiple revenue sources. You still have different streams of income, right?
www.ryanlee.com

Matt:
Yeah, if you look at anything that Ive done for example, we just launched a $17 thing, but then youve got all the OTOs and then youve got the continuity, and on top of that every single sale. Every single step goes to the sales team. Not only that, every single day Im mailing. I make two thousand twenty thousand dollars a day every time I mail. So you know, theres multiple things that are happening, plus all the members of course. Were getting them into having get set up with their merchant accounts. Were getting a piece of that action. Were telling them to go to hosting things. Were getting a piece of that action. Were telling them so all of the resources internally to all those people because they actually I tell them to do something and they do it and theyre going through all my links and I just get nice residuals off that initial base. But see, the great thing about mine is I have been doing, since 2003, I really started teaching, in a sense, but I do this call every single Monday night and Ive done it every single Monday night since 2003, and literally Ive only missed five calls since 2003, every Monday night and they get on there. They get to ask questions every single Monday night, so literally people go on there and ask me questions. Thats one of the benefits of it. Ive promised this to all my students in the past and anybody who did the $5,500 seminar, I promised them theyd have a lifetime membership and I just said, screw this, and I built off of that training. I was like, okay, Ive still got to service these people, but Im not making any money now off it because Im not doing those events, so how am I going to turn it into cash. So I basically built my membership around that call that I promised all my students in the past so that I can honor my word to them.
David:
Its kind of interesting what you said before about how theyre all going through your links. Im not sure is that vertical or horizontal integration? That just reminds me of old school business like, okay, youre paying me for this service, but then you also pay me, because you need all these separate tools as well, so its really driving up the value of a customer for you.

Matt:
The value of the customer, yeah, to me, its really huge. I used to get to the point where every single person I had on my list was worth $10 a month. Of course, Ive been doing some other strategies and getting a little less quality people, but it was ridiculous, totally ridiculous what we were able to do. And thats just off an email opt-in. That doesnt have to do with sales pages or traffic, and so the big thing is yeah, theres multi streams coming in. Especially for beginners, the biggest mistake that I made is that I though multi-stream income to me means and this actually helps a lot of people. When I first started, you read multiple streams of income, so youve got to out and in the internet marketing mind, youre like, Okay, I need to go out and I need to get into this market, and I need to get into this market, I need to get into this market and this market or I need to get into network marketing. I need to get into stock. I need to get into real estate. I need to do internet marketing. I need to do 10,000 things, and the only thing that really drives people to do one thing is multiple streams of expenses. And then they get to the point and you actually see the progression of my business. So thats how I was when I first started. I went totally bankrupt that way. Then you go to the next level which was, I said to myself, Okay, why dont I do this? Why dont I focus on one company? I take it to a million dollars. Once I build it to a million dollars, then Ill get into another market because then Im going to create multi streams of income, right? The way that most people think about it. So I did. I took one company to a million dollars, then I went over into another market, took that to another million dollars, went to another market, took that to a million dollars. I actually did that four times. And then meanwhile, like this year, I was running three of those companies literally me running all of the marketing and everything, which it pulled me in so many different directions and its actually kind of crazy, but again, I know this recording is not getting out there one day I said to myself, Okay, when I sit on the toilet every morning and I have to think about these companies, even though Im not actually dealing with them, this really sucks. So I basically called all my partners and within about two weeks, I got rid of all of my companies except for the one I really was the most passionate about, which was internet marketing.

I said, Guys, I want to sell these things off. What do we do? Lets work it out. Of course, I had my own plane so I flew back and forth to do the deals and then I was done. I was out of it. Now weve been so narrowly focused because I said to myself, okay, if Im a guy that can actually manage three companies one of them a million dollar company, and two multi-million dollar companies and I can do this imagine what I could do if I said screw them all except for one and really take one to a whole new level.
David:
Yeah.
Matt:
Thats the big thing for me, is just the power of focus and realizing, screw it, Im going to create multiple streams of income specifically inside my business.
David:
Again, I like your style. I think thats awesome. Obviously its worked out really well for you. Thanks!
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #20

Michael Dunlap
Interview with Michael Dunlap

David:
How have you been? I havent talked to you in a long time.
Michael:
Its going really well, so its all good. You?
David:
Its going pretty well here too. We moved into a new office in the canyon so I got my own office now, which is pretty sweet. Are you coming to the Continuity Seminar?
Michael:
Im 90% sure Ill be there.
David:
Awesome. Im so excited. Its going to be a great crowd, I think. Its going to be nice going there like not like someone who doesnt have a clue whats going on. Do you know what I mean?
Michael:
Yeah, I get you.
David:
Its definitely been an enlightening few months. Its funny. This magazine is so similar to your site. I feel like the questions Im about to ask you are going to be like youve probably asked them yourself before. So you ready to go?
Michael:
Yeah.
David:
Cool.

Michael:
Is the magazine physical or an e-copy?
David:
It is a print magazine, but we have a digital version as well.
Michael:
All right, I just wondered.
David:
Yeah. We kind of wanted to go the full-print avenue because Ryan is really big on that and I because I was like, heres the Recurring Revenue Report, and also its like it makes it more legitimate, do you know what I mean, than just another internet marketing thing. Its pretty good. I work for it, so obviously I would say that, but I think its really legit.
Michael:
Is the price I think it was like $8. Is that just an opening offer for the first month, or what are they doing?
David:
Its just $8 a month for the magazine. Were going to keep it at that price.
Michael:
Sounds good. Did you have a good launch?
David:
Its going okay. In internet marketing standards, it would be not good, but in terms of this, we kind of just did it in-house and letting people kind of start to spread buzz about it so were getting a couple of hundred people in a day at this point. We only launched it three days ago, but its good. Because we have the up-sale setup and whatnot in terms of making back the investment for print and whatnot, were doing pretty well.

Ryan wanted more subscribers on the first day, but its not going as fast as we wanted it, but its not like an issue or anything because we believe in the magazine.
Michael:
It sounds good. Youve got some good people behind it.
David:
Brian Tracey is going to promoting for us soon. We havent done anything joint ventures, so its just been his list pretty much. Lets get started. Its kind of cool to interview someone my age, as you are. Are you 21 yet?
Michael:
Yeah, I just turned 21 a couple of weeks ago.
David:
Nice. Happy extremely belated birthday then. Tell me what got you started online.
Michael:
Well basically, when I was younger, Id never done very good at school. I was probably the worst in the year not like in the head, like I couldnt pick up a pencil it was just that I was rubbish at applying myself to school. Anyway, we had the chance when I was 14 to do run a company called Young Enterprise, and you basically get to set up your own official business where you have a business bank account and you had to deal with stock. What happened was I became Managing Director and I sort of had to give everyone these jobs and I asked someone to do a website and he goes, Yeah, sure. A couple of months later he comes back with a geocity site and I was not very happy and went off and did it myself. I won first prize in the competition we go against a load of other schools and it sort of went from there.

I got my dads webmaster to teach me some things and started my first site which was [inaudible], which was about graphic design, and then went on to bigger and better things.
David:
So my first question, you said that you had trouble applying yourself. Was it because you didnt believe in what you were doing, what it was you were learning? What was the issue?
Michael:
I dont know. I wasnt I didnt really pay much attention to what was happening. Ive always done probably since I was 5 or so Ive always wanted to try to sell things. I had great fun with E-bay and trading cards and playing on the playground and all this sort of stuff. I started my own business. I did the Young Enterprise and then I went to start a business when I was 14 or something. Thats the way we did it for two years, and I just remember thinking theyre teaching us really how to work for somebody else, not to work for ourselves. I remember thinking that was a bit dumb and I just didnt really enjoy having to learn to get a job. Thats not what I wanted.
David:
I can empathize with that. In terms of your skill set which youve learned, are you fairly proficient in HTML and that kind of stuff, or would you say
Michael:
I know nothing about coding. I know how to make a line break, bolds, and italics, but thats it. Actually, my first site I was just telling you about, it was about graphic design. I was visiting a site and I liked it because young people traded graphics and for trading graphics, you got credits or you could even sell your credits for cash. I liked that whole system. I liked doing the buying and the selling. It got me interested. Anyway, I saw this forum and they pretty much took it out on me because I was very aggressive in the buying and selling. I was taking over. I didnt like how people treated me so I was like, cool, Ill start my own forum and do it myself.

I remember calling it Shout GFX not knowing what GFX stood for when I actually registered the domain, and I still didnt know months later. It really clicked in my head. But I knew nothing about graphics design and managed in six months to be the number one site in that niche. I did really well with it.
David:
What year is this?
Michael:
I dont know, about five years ago maybe?
David:
Awesome. So how many websites have you had since then?
Michael:
Ive had three major sites, Id say. Ive had dozens of smaller sites, but I wouldnt call them huge success. Theyve made money, but compared to what youd call big, theyre not really successful.
David:
All right, and your three sites are: http://www.WebDesignDev.com/, http://www.RetireAt21.com/, http://www.IncomeDiary.com/? Is that what youre referring too?
www.ryanlee.com
Michael:
Yeah.
David:
So, I know Income Diary is relatively new. One of the things that struck me on that site and you mentioned this last time that we met the thing I remember a graphic thats like, Michaels traffic has increased 26,000% in the last month or so. I dont want to say How did you do that, because I think thats too much, but in a sense, what was the motivation for you moving from Retire At 21 to Income Diary?
Michael:
Actually, that graphic you just told me about, I have to update that. Since September 2008, it was earnings update to make it sound cooler. Anyway, yeah, why I started Income Diary, it was pretty simple. I retired at 21 and it was cool to see you make loads of money, but how about I do it myself? I knew I had to do a course. I knew I had to get them in this course because thats where I could make the money. However, I didnt want to retire at 21 and I had this Income Diary domain now I bought off a friend. The only thing is, I wanted to sort of funnel the system, get on one site and get them to a landing page. It was pretty much just the fact that it made sense. People were asking me how to do it. I didnt really want to send them a URL support from my site, so the sites were just grouped from there and then the content pretty much inspired them to take my calls or apply themselves in online business.

David:
Are you still having involvement in the other two sites, or is it mainly Income Diary at this point?
Michael:
Retire At 21 I dont work too hard recently. Actually maybe now I found myself an apartment. I want to do that and Im sure the costs of living will make me try and work real hard.
David:
Yeah.
Michael:
I have my own office which will be poolside. I will be able to swim. There will be some space between my Xbox and my computer, so I wont be at the game all day. However, were back to re-launching it with a new design. That should be pretty big next month. I havent worked on it for a year, perhaps, but it still consistently made me a couple thousand dollars, which I know is not really much money, for something that you havent worked on to keep earning you that consistently every single month, is brilliant. Ive had the same advertisements all this time because they get a good return and I dont do anything to the site, so its sort of a great deal. We have hired a writer and were actually going through discussions concerning that, so I cant really talk too much about that.
David:
Thats fine. So man, Im writing down a bunch of questions. So the Retire at 21, actually, what I was going to say is thats pretty awesome. Youre still making a couple of grand a month youre saying, for the Retire at 21?
Michael:
Yeah.

David:
Thats pretty great.
Michael:
Yeah.
David:
Anytime you have that [inaudible] thats the whole I guess thats the dotcom lifestyle, if you will. Wasnt your whole thing going to be youre going to retire at 21?
Michael:
The day I do I dont want to be financially dependent and not have to worry about money.
David:
And you are at that point, Im assuming youve been at that point for awhile.
Michael:
By the end of this year, I will have made a lot of money. I make - on the auto-pilots, a lot more than all of my friends, and I forgot to [inaudible] myself, and I dont [inaudible] working too much, so but once I stop working, Ill be in a really cool place.
David:
For sure. So how does it feel with Income Diary to have an awesome design and have people rip it off from you? Does that bother you at all?
Michael:
I think I know who youre talking about. No, I dont mind. I think its fine. When it comes to site design, I sort of take little bits of all the best sites and put them together to have the best design. Thats pretty much how I do it. So it wouldnt be really right if I said no one could copy that.
David:
I think its an awesome looking site. You mentioned before you had the same advertisers for

this whole time for Retire at 21. So in terms of people who want to do blogging and their whole idea is to get at recurring revenue, what are realistic expectations in a couple of ways. One is, how long until theyre at a point generally where they can sell advertising; what their traffic kind of needs to be at, and what kind of expectation in terms of earnings?
Michael:
Okay, so you must build on that. the first thing that is important is to establish yourself as an authority, I guess, because people want to sometimes be looked at as the same as the site they advertise on. The second thing is obviously traffic. If youve got no traffic, theres no point in buying advertising space on your site. And the more traffic a site has, the better deal you usually get. So what I would say is pretty much just you need to traffic to sell. To get traffic, you need to good content. Once youve got your traffic, you build from there. Now the only thing is on advertising, you should take a long time to get enough to make it worth it. So you may want to instead of putting up an actual advertising site at the beginning, you may want to put affiliate banners up or just take the affiliate route, which is basically promoting products related to your content.
David:
Does most of your income come from affiliate marketing?
Michael:
Id say about 80%.
David:
So in terms of monetizing a blog, you say the best route you want to go is generally affiliate marketing.
Michael:
It make sense because say I get 30,000 visitors this month and I could either make $1,000 commissions or $1,000 of banner advertising, and then the next month I double my traffic. I

would then make $2,000 affiliate or $1,000 with the advertisements because the advertisers paid before the month starts, or they pay every 30 days. The fact is, advertisers its hard to get them to pay more. Affiliate stuff, you dont actually have to talk to anybody. Youve got no customer. You just put a link and they pay you. Its sort of a good passage way to do your monetization.
David:
The state of the make money online niche is a little bit interesting to me. I wanted to get your thoughts on that. There seems to be this big contingency of people where its like there will be a make money online blog, and then there will be blogs that have you ever seen a make money online product and the testimonial is other people that are make money online sites, and youre wondering if any of them are making any money? Theres like a lot of fakers. How do you feel about that?
Michael:
I dont like it myself. Theres a lot of faking until they make it is sort of the saying. Theyll say they make lots of money until enough people pay attention to them and until they make money. I dont like it. Ive worked with a few people that basically lied and faked. Its not cool and with the whole make money online niche, I like it, but theres too many people in that dont know anything about it and therefore, arent providing any value and are just trying to make money out of people. Its different like, Ryan Lee, he offers lots of value. He does so much cool stuff, and thats cool. But then theres some guys out there, such as John Smith (even though its a made up name), but hes like hes just read my course and making money on blogging. Hell then teach people exactly what hes written. Thats not cool and I dont like that sort of thing. I dont mind people ripping my stuff. Its just that I dont like people teaching stuff they dont know anything about and then trying to get people to buy stuff they dont know anything about.
David:
One thing I was interested in youre obviously an authority at this point (and you have been

for a while) how come you havent had any products yet?
Michael:
Ive just got back from Washington. Its been - I saw some of my mentors there. The thing is, Ive managed to set up such good monetization [inaudible], I dont need to work hard and then deal with these customers that Im going to have to talk to, work with, and give all these refunds, although Im sure I wouldnt really get many. But theres always somebody. I talked to somebody three days ago in Washington and he said somebody contacted him four years after a seminar he held and he asked for the money back. I dont want to deal with that stuff. My friend just paid him back. For all he knew, his daughter could have cancer and need to pay medical bills. He just paid it and got over it. But that sort of thing is something I dont want to do. I dont want to deal with that when I have the monetization program that pays it all. Theres something in my head that I have an idea for a product and I think its going to sort of make a big difference to a lot of people because a lot of my readers who take my courses are like, Thats incredible. I want to buy your site because if this is free, I cant imagine what I could get if I paid for something.
David:
I think that mentality, in terms of when youre writing content, are you ever thinking, man, I should probably hold back, or is it always like youre giving absolutely everything and then with that whole process of, if this is the free stuff, then imagine what I can pay for.
Michael:
Thats invested in my head. I give 90%. I hold some back because if I told everyone, the it wouldnt work anymore because everyone would know and it just wouldnt apply anymore. Yeah, I just have to really think about a product. Im thinking when I move out, Im thinking just giant solid product trying to do something really cool. Some people I know, they start, I want something thats going to be timeless. I see people I was at an even in London and some guy goes, this new technique. This is something Ive made

up, and it as something I was doing four years ago, and because the people in the crowd were uneducated and sort of make money online. I want to make sure something I do is really cool.
David:
Definitely; so I know that you have a lot of how many virtual assistants do you have?
Michael:
I actually have zero right at this moment.
David:
Oh, really?
Michael:
Yeah. Thats why I havent done too much lately. I actually just had some great advice a couple of days ago on how to take on somebody new, because I want somebody that speaks fluent English and thats something that annoys me about outsourcing not because of who they are and where theyre from, its just the fact is my crowd is English speaking people. If its somebody else speaking, like somebody in India and theyre speaking, they dont talk the same language. It doesnt translate the same way. Its just not my style. I prefer to have someone in England, and England is probably the place thats going to cost me the most because of the exchange rate. Im earning in dollars, but I think the euros the best. Thats something Im working on the next few days.
David:
You said that youre pretty you know your stuff when it comes to outsourcing.
Michael:
Yeah, Ive outsourced a lot. At the beginning, what I used to do was I found a theres a company called www.TaskUs.com and its actually a company Brian used to do a top list. It was a 101 internet marketers. The cool thing about outsourcing is they do your leg work. They do your research.
When I do a list, for example, a top 30 entrepreneur list, thats going to take me a long time to research and find images. If I can pay someone to do this crap for me and not be the passion of the blog I want someone else to be the passion of the blog because they wont have the passion as me. They wont come across like they care and so its important for me to keep that to myself, but to get someone else to do sort of the leg work and do all the stuff I dont want to do.
David:
So www.TaskUs.com would be your recommended resource for outsourcing.
Michael:
Yes - www.TaskUs.com they are brilliant.
David:
I guess this kind of ties into our age, but you said you gained a lot. One of the big hot topics

and actually, this a theme of March issue is productivity, I know that sometimes its hard to run an internet business because the base distraction is the internet itself. How have you been able to stay focused when youve needed to?
Michael:
Thats a hard question because I havent always stayed too focused. I think I was saying earlier that the idea of having an office is to sort of block out my personal life. Working at home, youve got all these distractions youve got the TV, the Xbox, all sorts of different things you shouldnt have in your work environment. I think to work hard, you need to eliminate them. Now on the other hand, one thing thats worked well for me is getting away from the usual spot. So say you work in your office, go down to the coffee shop and work there. Changing your location really changes your frame of mind and it gives you ideas. Like sitting in the airport, and its like youve posted 10 great travel tips for the internet entrepreneur or something like that. So just being in a different position, place, can really help most days.
David:
And in terms of getting new ideas, what are you doing? Its kind of a strange question because everyone has their own you know what I mean? Ideas just come from nowhere sometimes, but when youve been looking for inspiration, what kind of has helped you the most? Is it mostly traveling around like that, or is there another way?
Michael:
I get the most ideas through the inspiration from going to seminars and mastermind groups and talking with like-minded people. The thing about that is you pay a few hundred books, or even thousands of bucks to go to a place to a mastermind or a seminar. But all you need is one good idea and there are thousands. Theyre constantly sharing loads of tips, examples, and all I need is for example, Ryans Continuity Summit he spoke about he did this talk on something of the month club. That gave me an idea to interview of the month club. So its going to events like that that can really push you in the right direction and give you the ideas that you need.

David:
If you had to start over from the beginning, is there anything that you would have done differently.
Michael:
Yeah. My first main site actually was really big. It was worth quite a bit of money, especially at the age. I was about 15 or so. I could have sold it for a lot of money for my age. But the thing is, the site got hacked several times by my competitors. I didnt have a good hosting company. I didnt have any backups. I lost everything. So that would be the first thing that I changed is Ive learned quickly to have the right host and to keep backups are two really vital things for an internet business. I think I would have worked on content more when I started. I thought it was about getting content up as quick as possible, as often as possible. Id see sites like John Chow and hed get like three small posts up a day and I was like, wow, if I did that, I could make three times the money. No, thats not the case. You want to put as much into every posting and provide as much value, and if you do that, people will share it more and come from everywhere. When I stopped doing that, I really started to make a lot more money because people sort of saw me as more of an authority because I was giving so much value and the search engines love it. They dont like little posts about nothing. I think thats why I like good content because what they say is content is king, and thats so true.
David:
Yeah, for sure; definitely. Are there any mistakes Its funny. Every time I ask this question, it ties in, but I guess you pretty much made your mistakes in terms of hosting. Are there any other mistakes that youve made that would be big ones to mention?
Michael:
Yeah, records is an important one. Having records of everything is really cool because say you have advertisers and you have records of who started when and if theyre on for example, someone unsubscribes. I dont know why. I have to go through all of my emails to work it out

every single time. Thats not easy. So if you recorded when you get a new advertiser, what the banner is, how long the advertising, if its a subscription; if you have this information, you can sort of carve a lot of hard work. The other one would be employing people. Ive employed lots of people freelance and Ive actually had someone full-time working for me. I think its really important to firstly make sure youre 100% satisfied that theyre going to do a really good job because you can get in a lot of trouble from them when they do the work and youre like, Thats really bad. And then they still are expecting pay for it.
David:
Yeah.
Michael:
And the thing with internet, if you didnt pay them, they can make a lot of hard work for you. Theyll go on forums, write a comment where they give you a hard time and youre like, Do you want me to pay this money for something my five-year-old sister could do? So those are the mistakes, I would say.
David:
As a young entrepreneur, have you had any issues with friends who dont understand what youre doing or hassle you I guess the term is toxic friends.
Michael:
Oh, yeah.
David:
Go ahead.
Michael:
If theyre like that, theyre not your friends. Just cut them out while you can. You dont want to hang around with people say you say, I have to be home by 7:00. Ive got interviews to do

to put on my site, and theyre like, No, stay out. Do this, do that. Why dont you just skip out for a few weeks and come do this. Theyre always trying to stop you because its not because of you. Its because of themselves. Theyre not satisfied theyre doing enough with their life. I dont really need people that want to put me down or stay stuff about my site, so I just forget it because theyre not my friends. Its not like Im losing anything.
David:
Yeah, thats definitely true, the concept that its not you, its them. Because theyre like, Oh, I dont understand. Why dont you want to g out and drink with us? Why dont you want to just go be mindless instead of building your future?
Michael:
At seminars we get that opportunity to cool stuff, but with like-minded people, so its still very hard. When I was at Continuity Summit and Im doing this event lots of push here but it was cool because I got to hang out. I actually met up with an internet entrepreneur who was the same age and we actually met you. All three of us are the same age. And there was a few of us out there and we got to have great fun because its not often we speak with the same age of people with the same interests. But one other thing I want to share with you is I think it was Ted Nicholas that said, Lend your friend 20 pounds or $20 and if they dont pay it back, theyre not your friends. Thats pretty true and thats something I still do. Its worth it to me to give them $20 to find out theyre really my friend.
David:
Yeah, thats pretty cool. So, resources that have helped you along the way are there any, like a top three maybe books, info products. Whats helped you the most?
Michael:
Can I say seminars again?
David:
Yeah, sure.

Michael:
Ive been to five now, I think five: for in America and one in London. Theyre always great, actually. You want to get in on that as soon as possible. Its not too far away. I was at a Continuity Summit. Ill be speaking second time this time. Those sort of things give me the best return on investment because all it takes is one idea and youve paid for the event. So that would be my first one. The second thing is not really a resource, as such. Its what I do to what I do is I got to sites that are similar to mine such as I like to talk a little to other entrepreneurs, but you cant do that all the time, especially in England. I know that free, and I see them once a year, and so the second best thing you can do is be on a forum or on Skype, and I use Warrior Forum and found its been a great asset because you get to discuss that stuff you would. Thats about it. I dont actually have many resources. Its really not that hard. You dont really need that much to make money online.
David:
For sure. Okay, let me ask you if there are any books that you sincerely enjoy reading that are related to marketing or internet stuff?
Michael:
This will make it worse, but Ive never actually completed reading a book. Ive only started a few, but never finished them. There is one book Id say that I really enjoyed, but I wouldnt say that its so much about internet, being an entrepreneur. The thing is entrepreneurship, one of the biggest things to me is sort of your mind being in the right mind of frame and sort of being pumped up, is what I would say; be ready for it. Theres a book called Get Off Your But, but is spelled B-U-T and its by Sean Stephenson. I hope I said his name right.
www.ryanlee.com
David:
Yeah.
Michael:
That book has something I really quite love some good sort of information in that and I think theres so many other people worse off than all of us, and if they can do it, why the hell cant we.
David:
I actually saw that interview on your mind. It was really good. That was one of my favorite ones. Well, I guess I agree that there are no info products necessary. We just like to focus on resources because its always fun to hear different stuff. Gary Vaynerchuk, when we asked him that question, he sort of said the same thing. He doesnt read. Its just like doing things, you know, is really what you have reading books isnt going to make you money. It can help your foundation, I guess, but thats not the be-all to end-all.
Michael:
I think so many people are scared to do something in case they fail, but whats going to happen if you fail? Youre going to be exactly where you are now, but plus some knowledge in business and life. You will get something out of going into business or doing anything. A lot of people

dont really want to take that step, but the more things I learn. Ive had a couple of business ventures. Ive never lost any money, but everything you learn lessons from is worth it.
David:
Has it become easier to take steps as you get a lot of experience?
Michael:
Well, when theres more money involved sometimes. I go at it because, for example, you learn a lesson, thats a risk. You know if its going to get response. Here in England, I didnt do it. We didnt actually get contracts, so I was pretty lucky because I may need some trouble trying to sort all that out, but nothing bad happened, really. With the laws one of the things I dont like so much. Theres so many laws that make it hard for I dont know what its like in America but it makes it hard for entrepreneurs. They want to sometimes they even go so far as to, say, punish us. We make more money. What are they going to do? Take a higher percent from us. If we give someone a job, they want an ounce five, and in England, if you employ someone, its next to impossible to get rid of them. If you get rid of them, youre going to have to pay them a load of money. There are always different things and while I can see why they do them, its not really appealing to an entrepreneur, but its so worth it in the end.
David:
The laws make it worth it?
Michael:
No, theres so many things
David:
Oh, being an entrepreneur is worth it, is what youre saying.

Michael:
Theres always so many things, like you said, friends saying Hey, dont do this, lawyers trying to add to the risk, but it doesnt matter. The more you get through those risks, its worth it.
David:
Have you considered moving to the States at all?
Michael:
No, I wouldnt. You know what they say. Theres nothing like home.
David:
For sure. I understand.
Michael:
Dont think for a second I dont like you Americans!
David:
Tell me what is the best advice youve ever been given.
Michael:
What a beautiful question. It was Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people wont, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people cant.
David:
I like that.
Michael:
That really stuck for me because it basically said, Hey, Michael, you just work hard for four years. Youve worked really hard you can be a gazillionaire and then you can do whatever you like the rest of your life. Thats sort of what it says to me, so I like that.

David:
The thing thats crazy did you ever feel like the internet marketing community is almost like this underground cult?
Michael:
Whats that?
David:
Do you ever feel like the internet marketing community is like this underground cult? Like people dont understand because its like I dont know, I guess the concept of like friends not I guess cult is a strong word took but what Im trying to say is I dont know, forget it.
Michael:
I sort of understood that.
David:
Its just kind of cool being part of the internet marketing community.
Michael:
Yeah, I just love being able to be around like-minded people. It sort of inspires me. Even if were not talking about anything really that interesting, being around like-minded people, just the things they say just get me pumped to really do more.
David:
Yeah, definitely. So tell me, whats next for you and your business?
Michael:
I plan to work harder. Ive got this sort of a plan to work. It may not sound like much, but its three days a week and work three days solid hard and then four days of [inaudible] given to me by a good friend of mine, [inaudible], but she actually lives in Ireland her names Bernadette Doyle. Shes a really lovely lady.

Basically, the thing is with working for me is, I feel guilty when Im not. I think doing it this way, I think Ill get the best of both worlds. Ill get half the week to do the cool stuff that I want to do, and half the week making sure to achieve as much as possible. And then for me, in that time, I have to really bring Income Diary to a new level, get lots of new great interviews, guides and inspiration outlooks and great gifts to come. I also do plan to [inaudible]. Its different between the English people and the American people. I love the Americans. Youre used to the hard sell, a big push. Looking at your adverts and then looking English adverts, youd see a huge difference. Because Im not used to that, its sort of part of your life, and part of our lives is to especially English people, its like just go with the flow and just take it easy. I just want to really achieve something big this year, so I will by myself.
David:
In terms of the hard sell and the soft sell, it is kind of ingrained in our culture, the hard sell, but I like the its not really my style personally. The only reason why I would ever do it is because it works. Thats all. Its much better when its the soft sell and its like you dont really have to be like Youve got to get this right now! Its the best thing ever! you know? It shouldnt make you feel uncomfortable, but its just like sometimes you dont really want to. Its like youre whoring yourself out, you know?
Michael:
Yeah, exactly. It would make me look desperate, I think, personally,. I mean, the whole countdown. Youve got four days to go and buy it. Theres only like 2 million copies left and if you dont get it right this second youre not going to get it and it will ruin your life. And Im not dissing any of these products because Ive seen some amazing products and especially events. I cant keep saying enough about events because they really do amazing things. But I think let the product speak for itself.
David:
For sure. I agree 100%. Well listen, thanks so much for doing this interview with us. Its going

to be great. Youre pretty much our perfect interviewee because you fit. You are the dot com lifestyle.
Michael:
I should have told you more about it and what I enjoy.
David:
If youd like to, you can tell me what the dotcom lifestyle means to you.
Michael:
No, its probably just the same thing you get from everybody, just the freedom. You get to do what you want when you want because theres nothing stopping me spending the whole day playing the Xbox. Im still going to get paid as long as I have my sites making money. Google will always send one of my sites 1,000 visitors a day and thats always going to make me cents every day, so I feel pretty much safe. I know nothings for sure, but theres no boss turning me off. Theres no stress of driving to work. I look out the window if I get up early, that is and I see all those people walking off to work or theyre scraping their windows because theyre going to be late because of the snow and all this stuff. Its like youre just stress free. You get to enjoy the little things in life all day long.
David:
Yeah, for sure. Again, thanks.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #21

Mike Geary
Interview with Mike Geary

David:
Mike, tell me what got you started in the internet marketing?
Mike:
When did I start?
David:
What got you started, and I guess when, too.
Mike:
Actually what got me started, interestingly enough, was I came across a Ryan Lee product. I think it was 2004, and I came across one of his products that basically taught fitness professionals how to make money on the internet how to market information products on the internet and thats what started the wheels spinning and got some ideas flowing and got me into the business.
David:
What was your first website/product?
Mike:
Actually, my first product was the one that has been the biggest seller. It was www. truthaboutabs.com and the product was The Truth About 6-Pack Abs. It took a couple of years to build up the marketing and at first, for probably about two years, it wasnt a success and then it just started taking off probably in about 2006 so about two years after I started the project.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
All right, so you read Ryans thing and you started the product. When you say it wasnt a success, what was going on during those two years?
Mike:
Well, I still didnt know a lot about I wasnt good with the marketing. I put together a sales letter, but I think it was fairly weak at the time. I didnt know how to drive traffic, so those two years that I struggled was really just that whole time I was trying to better learn sales copy and learn all about the psychology and the persuasion and all that stuff that goes into sales copy, and at the same time, I was also trying to learn methods to drive traffic. So thats what really started to correct when I got them both at the same time, is when the business took off.
David:
When youre talking about you were learning about the marketing and the persuasion, was it kind of trial and error, seeing what other people were doing, or was it kind of like studying certain things, like books or whatever?
Mike:
You know what, it was a combination of just studying as much as I could. I was reading books on sales copy. I was buying online courses, just reading articles online from some of the copywriting greats in the past, and eventually I think I honed my skills enough to really start making the project work, and then at the same time, like I said, I was studying as much as I could on how to generate traffic to the website, which at this point, thats my main specialty is traffic.
David:
I know youre a really big Adwords guy. Are you doing other forums as well at this point, or are you pretty much entrenched in the Adwords world?
Mike:
Actually, Im not doing as much Adwords anymore. That was always one of my biggest sources of traffic, but its kind of a long story, but in the last year or so, theres been a lot of problems

on Adwords and their willingness to work with anybody in the weight loss industry, and so I wont go into all that, but basically theres been a big problem over the last year with them and weight loss ads. They basically think everythings a scam, even if you have a legitimate business like mine. It doesnt matter. So I wont go into the details on that, but basically I had to really expand and diversity my traffic sources so that includes I work directly with a lot of websites and buy banner ads and text ads and things like that and provide content directly for big websites, and I buy traffic in a lot of other places. I do big media buys with high-traffic websites and stuff like that and so some other Pay Per Click advertising too, but thats only one portion. That used to be pretty much all of my traffic, but now thats just a small percentage of it.
David:
Two questions that come from that, and I know that people are pretty tight-lipped talking about traffic sources, so I dont know how youre willing to share in that respect, but I wanted to ask. Do you still feel that even though theres the issues of the weight loss stuff and I know exactly what youre talking about. Do you still feel like theres room in terms of people who want to get started to work on Adwords? What advice would you give to someone who wants to start getting going on Google Adwords or just Pay Per Click advertising in general?
Mike:
Well, you mean for any industry?
David:
Yeah, oh yeah.
Mike:
Yeah, theres definitely still a lot of room, it just so happens theres a few types of products and industries that Google just doesnt like right now and that can be in a lot of industries, not just weight loss, but yeah, theres plenty of room for people. I would say one of the most important things in a mass appeal type of industry the content network is actually a lot

more lucrative than search. And then theres some industries that if, depending on what niche it is, if its a tighter niche where you really have to find the specific type of person thats looking for a specific type of product, thats where search can be better than content. But mass appeal stuff like health, fitness, dating, money-making things, they tend to work really well on the content network. That would be the and the prices are a lot cheaper than search, usually, too.
David:
A lot of people are afraid of the concept of paid advertising. Is it something that you need a significant budget to get going? Do you feel like if you want to get going in any even remotely competitive niche, what would you say is a fair enough starting point for people?
Mike:
On Adwords, really anything goes. You can test as big or small as you want. You could start with a $10/day budget or you could start with a $5,000/day budget. Anything really goes, its just that each persons threshold for the risk tolerance when they start with how much they want to test. I will say that from my experience, it seems and theres no definitive evidence for this but it seems that when you bid very aggressively on a campaign setting a really high budget, at least a 4-figure per day budget, that the system seems to give preference to your ads. If you set them to accelerated instead of standard so that instead of the system trying to run your ads, if you set a $50/day budget, for example, and you set it to standard, its going to try and run your ad throughout the entire 24 hours and pace it. So its only going to try and go through $2 per hour, basically instead of if you set the $50 budget and set it to accelerated, its going to try and run those ads as fast as it can and max out that $50 budget, even if that happens in 10 minutes instead of 24 hours. So with the way the system works, like Ive noticed when I set really aggressive campaigns, $5,000/day and things like that, and set them to accelerated, it seems to get the maximum exposure on the network and really run your ads as fast as possible. I just wanted to throw that in there because depending on everybodys like I said, with the risk tolerance, you can start

really small. You can start really aggressively.
David:
And you find yourself doing lots of free traffic still?
Mike:
Yeah, I continually work on Search Engine Optimization and article marketing and things like that that bring in free traffic. I guess you cant really call them free traffic because everything takes some work, so its traffic thats coming in for free, but Im hiring people to do article marketing and Search Engine Optimization work and stuff like that. And then my own article building and content building on my main domain, Im trying to continually build out content pages on my Truth About Abs domain. Im building that out. Probably right now I have about 400 content pages on that domain.
David:
So finding people to do this kind of work for you, when youre talking about you have people who are doing article marketing, do you have people as well who do Pay Per Click management, or is that still all you?
Mike:
No, Ive always done all of the Pay Per Click management and any paid advertising Ive pretty much all done myself.
David:
When youre looking for new people to help you out, where do you look? Any kind of tips in terms of finding good work as opposed to the nightmare outsourcing situations?
Mike:
For hiring people to do the work?
David:
Yeah.

Mike:
Actually, I have just kind of gotten lucky and I had a couple of college kids that Id known from my gym that I hired and they worked out pretty well, actually. I had a guy who has been sort of my main assistant for a few years, and then hes known people from his church or things like that and weve just tried them out and it worked. A few people havent worked out, but I also dont have a huge list of people working either. We literally had just a handful. I probably had maybe six people working for me and thats about it. So its been pretty small in terms of the amount of people Ive had in doing some stuff. Everybodys been just working virtually, so its been great for them. A college student loves the opportunity to just work a couple of hours a day if they want, from their laptop when they get done with their homework or whatever, so its actually worked out pretty well.
David:
Awesome. Theyre not interns? These are paid, Im assuming, paid employees?
Mike:
Yeah, so naturally, for them, a lot of times not only the ability to work from their laptop whenever they want and not have to drive to a job, but also for a college student, Ive been able to offer them a pretty competitive wage that would make them more than most restaurant jobs or stuff like that.
David:
You kind of have ridden to the top of the fitness industry in the sense that a lot of people refer to you as the Oprah of the fitness industry. Its almost like, if I get Mike Geary to promote my fitness product, Ill be rich overnight. First off, how do you feel about that? And secondly, in terms of people joint venture stuff I wanted to ask you what has worked for you in terms of because you are getting a lot of requests for joint ventures on a regular basis, Im sure what kind of attracts your attention and makes you feel good and want to promote someone?
Mike:
Well, first and foremost, I have to believe in the product. It has to be right up my alley in terms of my interests and beliefs. If its just sort of the same old same old fat loss thing or you know,

theres not a whole lot of impetus for me to really want to promote it unless theres sort of some unique angle or something that a lot of times when I find an author who has maybe a nutrition product thats right along my same beliefs with nutrition, a lot of times thats rare to find in the world of nutrition, so Ill get excited about it and want to help them out and sometimes even approach them before theyve even approached me. Other than that, as long I believe in the product, it also has to make sense for me business wise and because of the nature of my business and how expensive advertising is and a lot of times I have to bring you know, I bring in high volumes of customers onto my list and you know, bringing them in the door, its not cheap and a lot of times I break even or even have slight losses with certain sources of traffic. So on the back end, if Im going to promote an affiliate product, it really needs to be a strong commission. It pretty much needs to be almost everything because that person should be confident enough in their backend that they know bringing the customers in the door is the most important part and they can make their profit in the future, but pretty much give everything to the list owner who, without that list, theyre not going to make their sales. For me, if somebody offered me 50% commission, its pretty much out of the question. For internet marketing standards now, thats pretty much stone ages. On ClickBank, 75% now is standard. Usually, Ill also get a bonus too, so most people now that will approach me and actually get my attention will say, Im paying 75% commission plus Ill give you bonuses up to 90% or 95% commissions or some people even say 100%. If they really believe in their backend too, theyll offer me 100% commissions. The other thing to keep in mind is joint ventures are great, and I do a lot myself. Ive had plenty of super affiliates myself that have promoted my stuff to their lists and I just get tons of sales that way. But to be honest, thats still kind of small world compared to cold traffic compared to buying traffic. You can get thousands of sales per day buying traffic, but one joint venture partner even the best of the best joint venture partners if someone with a huge list might be able to send you 1,000 or 2,000 sales, but thats it and then its done. Maybe they promote you once in a year and thats it. Its just 1,000 or 2,000 sales.

Most people even people with 100,000 or 200,000 lists might get a couple hundred sales for your product. So its not like people are getting rich overnight, even with people with fairly big sized lists promoting. So thats just one thing that I always try and tell people that if you can get your website to convert on cold traffic, then thats the biggest source of traffic available and you can pretty much bring in as much as you want. You can bring in the entire world to your site and its just a matter of how the numbers work out. Are you losing money? Are you breaking even? Are you making a profit? Are you making money on the back end?
David:
Yeah, for sure. And thats obviously true. Paid traffic is the whole entire internet. So my question to you is, I find in the fitness industry specifically, I feel like youre kind of the only guy whos going at it with Pay Per Click. I mean, theres obviously when I say the fitness industry, I kind of mean the Ryan Lee tree of fitness guys. I dont really know them. Obviously theres the Acai berry scam crap, but thats a whole other story. But I mean, you dont really see a lot of guys do it. How do you feel about that? Not how do you feel, but why do you think thats the case? Why do you think that more people arent taking advantage of it if its as good as youre saying?
Mike:
Well, the biggest problem is just being able to convert cold traffic from just paid advertising. The reason why all these Acai Berry and other diet pill people that have done things in very unethical ways with the fake blogs and fake news pages and all of this stuff thats fake and its just lies. They basically feel like the only way they can sell is to make up some lie and then sell a bottle of pills. That also aligns with the mentality of most consumers is that theyre kind of lazy and they want the easy way out and they just want to pop a pill and not have to work hard and not have to change their diet. So the way that they can convert that stuff gives them the ability to convert cold traffic and just buy traffic everywhere. You know, unfortunately, thats caused a big problem in the weight loss industry because now all of the ad networks think everythings a scam and Im sure its kind of been getting in with the consumers too that more and more think anything weight loss related is a scam.

But how that relates to information products is that its a lot tougher to sell an information product to a cold traffic source. So somebody coming from an ad that knows nothing about you, conversion rates are usually about 10 to 20 times lower than traffic coming from a warm traffic source, so from a joint venture partner who recommend your product in their newsletter, and their newsletter list is probably already made up of people who are more the type of people willing to work and willing to try things other than a pill. So that traffic can convert 10 to 20, maybe even 100 times higher than traffic coming from an ad on a random web site. Thats the big issue is that I think the reason most people arent doing it is because theyve tried it and theyve lost you know, theyve tried it on Adwords or something and theyve lost money and they just stopped and never figured out how to make it work. So Ill admit it, it definitely takes a really good sales process to make cold traffic convert, and its very few information products that Ive seen that have been able to make it work.
David:
Yeah, for sure. This is from my observation, when people try to take paid traffic directly to a sales letter, that usually is a disaster, but I dont know. Thats just from what Ive seen. So I wanted to ask you, paid traffic a big thing about it is tracking and thats the real appeal, I think. Its very strange to me that more people arent taking advantage of it because you literally track everything. You know what keyword is making you x amount of dollars, how much you need to bid. If you know your numbers, its just automatic. You just press the button. Do you know what I mean? Lets talk about a couple of things resources for people wanting to get going on paid traffic what talks you the most other than trial and error? And secondly, for tracking, theres more to tracking than just Adwords. What have you used as your tracking solutions, because it is a complex process, you know, like split testing everything.
Mike:
Yeah, well, for Adwords, just the Adwords conversion tracker is really all you need. To be honest, I dont use any really advanced tracking software or anything like that. Because I run

everything through ClickBank, for Adwords, I always used pretty much 100% relied on just the Google conversion tracking, which is pretty accurate. And then there are some of the other Pay Per Click engines too, have tracking pixels too and you can just see the conversions right in the pile, so everythings really easy. With other traffic sources, like say Im just buying an add directly through some random website, lets say for a high-traffic website, now how do I track that when theyre not really going to offer a tracking pixel because they dont have that technology available. I just really simply use the ClickBank tracking ID. So I run my ad through my own affiliate link so that I can put a tracking ID on the end of it and lets say that I bought the ad for $10,000 and then I just track it as it goes along and I see how much it brought in revenue in that account. I can just calculate how much total it made, whether it lost money, whether it made money, and thats really as simple as it is. I pretty much use that for all of my advertising that doesnt involve a tracking pixel.
David:
The other thing tracking land split tests are you using a little website optimizer?
Mike:
Oh, yes, so Im constantly split testing my website, although in the last couple of weeks I admittedly got too busy to set up split tests, but Im usually always split testing my website and I use just a custom software that my webmaster built. So if I had 200,000 visitors come into the site on a day, 100,000 went to Site A and 100,000 went to Site B, and its as simple as that. Ive tried the Google website optimizer in the past and I dont know why, but we had discrepancies I think about a 20% difference. Like the Google website optimizer 20% more sales than we really got when I looked at my ClickBank stats. So Im not sure if we just installed it wrong or what, but there was actually some other reasons, too, why I just told my webmaster to just build it customer because there was some other features that we wanted to be able to split test some things that we really couldnt do with the Google website optimizer.

For my German site, I think we use something thats actually been fairly accurate. I think its like Split Test Accelerator, I think its called.
David:
That sounds familiar. So youre international then. Ive heard youd been doing international for a little while. So are you doing more than just Germany, Im assuming.
Mike:
Yeah, well actually, weve always been international with English. Ive probably sold my English version in almost every country except for a handful of countries in Africa and maybe a couple of countries in the Middle East. But other than that, I know we pretty much consistently get sales for the English version in almost every country because theres English-speaking people in every country. But yeah, the German version definitely expanded was a huge hit in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland specifically; the main German-speaking countries because you know, you think the ability to penetrate that market in just our English version, then maybe we could possibly sell to 5% of the population there that were comfortable enough with English to buy the English version. But now that we have a German version there, we can pretty much sell to the whole population. So thats been huge. Our German versions been very successful. I have a Spanish and a French version too that were just started within in the last couple of months. We finally got everything up and running. Theyve been a little slow to get going. Spanish has been kind of a tough market to sell in Mexico and Spain conversions are fairly decent, but we get a ton of traffic from South American that just doesnt convert at all, even at 1 cent clicks. So its really been sort of a challenge to figure that market out. One interesting thing that we found is that in English, when we split tested price points from $29.95 to $39.95, $39.95 I think even had slightly more conversions plus there was 33% more revenue. So it crushed $29.95 in the split test.

In the Spanish market, $29.95 crushed $39.95. It was significantly more sales to where even at the lower price point, it pulled a lot more revenue. So that was interesting in seeing how the Spanish market versus the English market could do exact opposites in terms of price point testing. Were just kind of getting going with French. Thats been fairly decent so far, so I have high hopes for that, but we just have to work on ramping up the traffic.
David:
I have heard, in terms of paid traffic, that international traffic is the next big opportunity because most people dont advertise in the other countries.
Mike:
Yeah, when we started our German version, I found it really lucrative with the Pay Per Click advertising because it was a lot less competition than English, especially in the U.S. Competition in the U.S. for traffic is just unbelievable. Its really hard to get you can get a lot of traffic, but it will be expensive and if your want to complete youre competing with thousands of other companies with really savvy marketing and in the German and French markets, I found the traffic to be a lot cheaper and the ability to use what Ive learned in the English market and kind of just transfer it over to the foreign language markets and get a pretty good response. Interestingly, in the Spanish market, the traffic is so cheap, especially in South America. You can get as much traffic as you want for a penny a click, but like I said, the problem was we were having a really hard time making any sales from that. I guess the percentage of people that have credit cards there is lower. Income lowers are lower, so we just found it extremely hard to make sales even though there was almost an unlimited amount of traffic for a penny a click.
David:
Are you doing international research, in a sense, where youre trying to figure out what like outside of testing, but try to figure out what appeals to that market, like learning a little bit about the culture, or do you not go that far?

Mike:
Actually, yes, a little bit. I read a really interesting book called The Culture Code by Dr. Clotaire Rapaille, and that was really interesting in how there are different trigger points and different aspects of the marketing that will appeal to the Germans versus Americans, or the French. Because of their culture, there are different reasons why they make buying decisions and different emotions. So it was a really interesting book and kind of opening, but weve tried to use some of that. Like I told my Spanish and German partners, to make sure they read that book and if you would figure out how to apply any of those things that they talk about, how the cultures are different, and if we can apply those towards our sales process to sort of go after. If theres a certain thing that will trigger the sale easier for Germans, lets try to incorporate that into or sales process.
David:
Yeah, I mean - if you mention that because thats like the exact book I was thinking of. I havent read it, but its the office here.
Mike:
Yeah, its an awesome book.
David:
All right, so this kind of ties back to before with the media, but when youre doing market research for places that you want to advertise I dont want to dig in too deep, but if you cold

maybe walk us hrough the process of market research. What do you do when youre doing market research for your product?
Mike:
Well, to be honest, because my business has almost solely been focused on my Truth About 6-Pack Abs product, and that was my first product. Really, the only market research I did jumping into that niche, was as a personal trainer, I simply knew that 905 of my questions that I would have got were related to abs or stomach fat. So I just knew that was the biggest demand that I saw working day to day with personal training clients. And obviously, I knew that those products sold. Theres so many information products. I knew there was a demand for that, and that was pretty much the only market research I do. From that point on, its just a matter of can I get my product to sell. Whats my angle and you know, in the beginning, people told me I needed a different angle. How was I going to sell my product when at that point, I was a nobody and when they could buy some other abs product that was endorsed by a celebrity or something like that. But I just kept plugging around and knew that if I just kind of believed in myself, that if I got the sales message in there, that I could sell this thing, and eventually got all those kinks worked out and got the sales process going. Other than that, one of the other things I sell is my skiing fitness product. I have a fitness product for skiers. I really didnt, to be honest, didnt even know if there was a big market for that. Its turned out to be mildly successful. I make sales of that product every day. Its not a huge seller, like my as products because theyre much smaller in market. But actually, it sells pretty well. Its a nice little extra that was a fun little project and really the only reason I did it was because I love skiing and I love fitness and a lot of people that I ski with, I noticed always had problems with leg fatigue and really being able to ski the whole day without trashing their legs, so I figured Id just make the product something really that I was passionate and interested in. That was really the only reason I made that product. I didnt even know if it would sell. But it was just kind of fun project for me and it ended up selling pretty well. Like I said, not gangbusters, but it makes a decent passive revenue.

David:
You were talking before about back-ends as well and being competent in your back-end. When someone is kind of creating a back-end for their systems for their product, like the sales formula almost, at what point were you competent in your back-end? When do you get to the point when you can know the numbers that you need to know?
Mike:
To be honest, its a little hard to measure because you could have a one-month value of the customers you bring in. You could have a three-month value, you could have a six-month value, and you could have a lifetime value. Its hard to know any of those numbers exactly. Obviously, youd never know a lifetime value. Some customers may buy your product and they may never read another one of your emails ever again, and other customers may read every email you send for decades. Who knows how long it could go on. I know I have some customers who have been with me for four years or so and I still get emails from them that show that theyre still reading my emails. So its kind of tough to measure, but for a long time actually, I didnt have a lot of my own back-end products, so my main back-end was really selling other peoples affiliate products for high commission. Like I said, those 75% to 100% commissions, that was my back-end, was selling other peoples products, so it needed to be strong. That was yet another reason why it needed to be 75% 100% because that was my only back-end. So if Im bringing all these customers in the door and sometimes at a slight loss, I needed to have that really strong back-end to get those really strong affiliate commissions. That was, for the longest time, my only back-end. Now I have a fairly good back-end with working with Pro-Grade Nutrition with Ryan and Jims company. Also, just launching a couple of continuity products in the next couple of weeks, too, which has really helped strengthen the back-end too. And Ive also created a pretty good back-end by offering bonus products on my customer thank you page that gives the customer real value, but also ends up offering them an additional product from that vendor too.

So for example, one of the bonuses I might offer on my thank you page to all of my customers is a free fat loss tips video and a one-month free membership to somebody I work with their membership site. So its a legitimate bonus. Theyre actually getting a DVD and theyre actually getting a free month to this persons membership site. And then a certain percentage of those people that take that free bonus are going to renew in the membership site and then Ill get my commission then. So thats a way that Ive incorporated a bit of a back-end directly on the customer thank you page itself.
David:
All right, so lets talk mistakes and resources. Number one, give me the top three mistakes youve made along the way and how we can learn from them.
Mike:
Mistakes, lets see. Well, Ill tell you, everything has been a learning process, so I never really beat myself up over saying something was a mistake. Theres been things where Ive done a traffic deal and its just been a total flop. I can remember one time I did a $30,000 traffic deal with this site and it was a total flop and I told them to cancel it and it turned out that they couldnt pay me the money back. I had paid up front, so that was a big mistake. Ive learned that Im very careful now about paying up front because what happened was they gave me a much better deal on the price when I paid up front, but then this company, it turned out, was having a lot of financial problems and when theyre traffic they did legitimately have traffic and it was semi working out, but the numbers were just diminishing really quick and after a few weeks, it just was just like no sales coming in from this traffic anymore and they didnt even have much traffic and the way we calculated it out was this $30,000 that I spent would have taken them like 5 years to deliver. They thought they could deliver the traffic, but they couldnt. And then they were in such a financial mess, they couldnt pay me the money back. They had already spent it on employee salaries and whatnot. So I would have had to sue them to

get the money back and the way it turned out, it was just too much of a hassle and too much legal costs to chase after $28,000 or something, because they had actually made a couple of thousand dollars for me. So it wasnt going to be worth. So that was one big mistake was paying up front for a big traffic source. Now pretty much all of the when I buy traffic from websites, theyll either get a credit app and then they bill me monthly. So theyll run the traffic and then I wont have to pay for like a month, which is great. Or at least for the first buy, most places will want prepayment, but what I do to protect myself is do the prepayment on a credit card, that way if anything goes wrong and they dont deliver the traffic and for some reason they dont want to pay me back, because that happens I dont know why, but people for some reason, feel like they dont need to pay you back even though they didnt deliver what they said they were going to deliver. So if I do the prepayment on a credit card, you have protection, basically. You can call your credit card and say, I spent this money and they never delivered what they said they were going to deliver, and then get a charge back. So thats the way I protect myself now from what was sort of a big mistake and a $28,000 lesson. As for other mistakes, off the top of my head I cant think of anything major other than just learning over the course of years to do things better. Like I said, my sales process was very weak in the beginning and I just kept refining that and making the site sell better.
David:
For sure. So then, resources that have helped you along the way any books you mentioned The Culture Code and any books, info products, what has impacted you the most?
Mike:
Well, in the beginning, it was more the mindset and motivation stuff that helped me the most. There was sort of like a hump that I had to get over to really get to a level of success to allow myself to get to any success, was really getting my mind straight. So all of the stuff in the beginning like years ago, like The Secret and people have their issues and flaws with The Secret, but I think it was great for really helping me change my mind set. Some other things, Think and Grow Rich big thinking things like that that kind of change your entire view and what you think you can accomplish. Those were really important to me in the beginning.
In the last couple of years, once I got over that hump, now its been a lot of the technical things, but then to be honest, I learned Pay Per Click traffic and buying traffic, I learned all of that on my own. I just kind of taught myself as I went along. I didnt really buy a lot of resources, but I have theres been some business building things that one of the best things that I ever went through was Eben Pagans Get Altitude course. That was, I just thought, amazing.
www.ryanlee.com

It came with like 15 DVDs and at first I actually let them set on my shelf for about 8 months and I never watched them because I could never dedicate the time. I had heard how good they were, but I had this thing in my mind like, How am I going to sit down and watch 15 hours of DVDs? because each one is about an hour and theres 15 DVDs, and that was just blocking me from ever getting started, instead of doing a little bit at a time. Finally I figured it out one day and I started popping them in while I was cooking breakfast and eating breakfast every morning. So I could kind of see the TV and hear the TV while I was cooking breakfast and eating, but it would give me about a half an hour a day. So I would get through one of the DVDs every two days and I would do this every morning. So I got through all 15 DVDs in about a month. That was perfect and it was an amazing course. Then I did that with Frank Kerns Mass Control, which I thought was really good too.
Ive read some copywriting books. Joe Sugarmans copywriting book was really good. I cant remember the name of it. Its pretty much his famous sales copy book.I know theres been some other copywriting books that Ive read too, but I cant think off the top of my head. But those are some that Ive really liked recently.
David:
Get Altitude what is the subject on that? Is that getting Eben Pagan kind of uses the term Inner Game a lot. I dont know if thats what
Mike:
Yeah, its the Altitude program actually talks about a really diverse array of topics. A lot of its psychology and the psychology of the buying process and persuasion and a lot of it business building in terms of employees and just hiring and things like that. Some of it is specific website tactics and sales process tactics and things like that. So it was pretty diverse.

There was a lot of topics. There was big picture topics like mindset stuff, and there was actual technical details too. Overall, it was just I never found myself bored on that one. Like every topic applied, pretty much.
David:
Everybody who has spoken of him says hes a pretty smart guy.
Mike:
Oh, yeah, definitely.
David:
I want to ask you whats next in your business. You mentioned before the continuity program. Do you feel like youre ever going to branch out of weight loss into the peer internet marketing world, or is that something youre probably going to stay away from?
Mike:
You know, at this point, I dont think I will. Ive had a lot of opportunities. People have approached me to do internet marketing products, and right now I feel like I dont have the time to break into another market because Im so entrenched in the fitness market and even now, its taking up all of my time. I did build my business to be a lifestyle business and not be a mega corporation that would take up every minute of every day, so I continually am trying to balance that. I have a lot of hobbies and a certain lifestyle, a lot of friends and family that I want to spend time with, and I dont want to be a 9-5er. I dont want to grow my company Ill continue to grow my business in terms of revenue as much as I can with the current structure, which pretty much the entire business is just me and maybe three virtual assistants, and thats about it. Thats great if I can keep growing the revenue with the current business model, Id love that. But things that complicate the business and would take hiring a lot more people and a lot more oversight on my part, Im trying to stay away from right now because Im pretty happy with where its at now and I dont want to complicate my life anymore.

So right now, Im kind of staying out of the internet marketing world for now. Im not saying that Im not going to do something maybe in the future, but Im pretty busy with what Im doing in fitness and some additional plans and just continuing to maintain that and grow that a little more. Im kind of content with just staying in fitness right now.
David:
Awesome. Well listen, thanks for this interview with us. Sorry for running it so late. All this stuff is fascinating to me. I enjoy the interview more myself than anything for the magazine. Thanks for having your interview with us.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #22

Mike Litman
Interview with Mike Litman

David:
Tell me what you got your start I dont even want to say in internet marketing. I want to say, when did you get the entrepreneurship bug?
Mike:
Okay, starting when I was 19 years old, while I was playing sports and doing things that 19-yearold people do, I started reading books on Tony Robbins, Dale Carnegie, and Napoleon Hill, and the goal or dream Ive ever had in my life was to create a platform that could influence hundreds of thousands of people, and one day millions. I had absolutely no idea of how to do that, though. I went to the University of Rhode Island, graduated in 1995. My first six years out of college, I had six different jobs. I was going nowhere real fast. People around me were losing a ton of faith in me. Though I would not give up, I was definitely not someone who wanted to work at a job for their entire life. It just didnt work for me. So at 19, I got this entrepreneurial bug and then in 1997, I went on the internet and put up my first website.
David:
And that website was?
Mike:
That website was www.MikeLitman.com.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
Okay, and so what did you do from there?
Mike:
Okay, so during the six jobs in six years, I did something every interesting that really propelled me to where I am today and if look back, this is where it all started. My parents accountant asked me to appear on his radio show in Long Island, New York, to talk about marketing. Like most people, I wanted to say no. Its always easier to say no. When most people get approached with an opportunity, their normal reaction is no. I said yes, and I always say that greatness especially financial greatness always starts by saying yes to an opportunity. So I appeared on his radio show. After the show, I loved it. I went to the station manager, it was WGBB 1248 AM in Long Island, New York, and I said, I want my own show, and they said, Okay, you pay $75 for 30 minutes of airtime. I said, great, and for almost a year, I interviewed by idols. Not its important for me to say this I never had more than three listeners live to my radio show. Two of them are my parents. For a year, I interviewed my idols back then from the Tony Robbins to the Jim Rowan, to Mark Victor Hansen, Famous Amos, Sharon Lechter from Rich Dad Poor Dad. I did it for almost a year, couldnt make any money at it, had to give it up and pay the money to do the show. At that time though, during those eleven months, my first website went online back in 1997 and it was promoting the Mike Litman Radio Show. That was my first website. Back then the audio streaming was really terrible. We did our best, and it was almost not even most of the time we put up the recordings, very dead back then, and my first website was promoting my local radio show.
David:
You said you werent even making enough money to continue it. Did you know when you were interviewing these guys that it was going to beAll these guys you were interviewing or I have your book did you feel like something was missing? How come it wasnt working?

Mike:
Well, what wasnt working is I had no entrepreneurial knowledge. I had no I didnt understand how to turn my passion into a business. Since the age of 19, Ive had a desire to help others. I work on myself hard. I work harder on myself than I did on my business then and even today, though I didnt know how to take an idea and turn it into a business, so I did a show and it was an expense. This was back in 1997 1998. It was an expense. But something very interesting happened back then that is instrumental to where I am today. So that was 1997 1998, and then three years later, a friend of mine by the name of Jason Olman call me up me up from 3000 miles away and he says, Mike, do you know all those radio show tapes collecting dust in your parents basement from when you did your radio show three years ago? I said, yeah. Theyre in a brown box in my parents boiler room. He said,Well, why dont we get them transcribed and turn them into a book called Conversations with Millionaires? We thought this was a great idea, though all of the publishers that we went to said nobody wants to read this. So we had a decision. Do we quit, or do we self publish it, and do it on our own? We decided to self publish it. 90 days after we published it, it was a #1 best seller on Amazon. And if you look back at these instances in my life, they all are congruent to my mantra which I like people to hear because the mantra of my career is that you dont have to get it right, you just have to get it going. And my book, which we first sold as an eBook (very important point here), we first sold my book as an eBook before we turned it into a printed book. My mantra is that you dont have to get it right, you just have to get it going because perfectionism has destroying so many internet entrepreneurs. Whats really interesting is that the first dollar I ever made online was selling the Conversations with Millionaires eBook which we sold then for $19. The paperback version ended up only being $15.95, but the first $1 I ever made was selling an eBook and the first time I ever made money while was sleeping was also selling that same eBook.
www.ryanlee.com
David:
When did the website, MikeLitman.com, when did it you said you put it up in 1997. How long did it take for it to be getting a significant following?
Mike:
The interesting thing about me is Im not one of those guys who had the best habits or had the high self esteem, who grew up in a generational family business who knew what they were doing. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, so after 1998 when I stopped doing my radio show, my website was out of business for a while. I just stopped doing it. I became a recruiter. I then became a personal trainer. I didnt know how to turn this dream into a business. I fast forward. I was probably out of the game for 2 years. So I say that so many times, me personally, Ive given up many times, but Ive never quit. Thats a very important message for people listening to this right now or reading this right now, is because there are challenges in building a business. There are challenges in getting the dotcom lifestyle, but through that perseverance, through being coachable and teachable and never giving up great things, it happened. In 2001 when the idea for Conversations with Millionaires came about, then MikeLitman.com started and really, in 2001, my real internet business career started with the success of the book which was really my entry point into this business, and then from 2001 onward so

2001 started, and you asked me I think the question was how did I build the business or a following (I forget the word you used) but was that question?
David:
Yes, the following.
Mike:
The way that I built the following starting with nothing, knowing nobody, is a concept and a term that I coined called loverage. I realized early on that the way to succeed was not to try to get right away, but to try to massively give right away. Early on my career starting with my radio show, starting with my book, I was always about seeking to serve other people potential peers of mine. But everybody I could find, I wanted to go the extra mile. The same point that Napoleon Hill talked about in all of his writings, the core concept of going the extra mile. So I didnt begin my business with even saying whether I was right or wrong. It wasnt about how can I get more. It was about how can I give more. I started early on when my newsletter was only 100 200 people. I knew that a newsletter of 100 200 people is very tough to make any significant income from, but I knew that I could go out there and connect with people and promote other people not necessarily promoting products Id make money from, but I wanted to kind of get out there and start developing relationships. I have a concept I call an asset of value. What an asset of value is, something that you possess that others can leverage off. When youre starting a business, Im a very big fan of you creating an asset of value because when you have something whether its listen, I had a radio show that had three listeners, two of them my parents, whether its an online newsletter, whether its a blog talk radio show, whether its a podcast channel. You want to have some platform, some kind of asset of value where you can say, Hey, Joanne, come on my show. Hey Barbara, let me promote your newsletter. And the more opportunities you have to give to others, in return a percentage of them will say, How can I help you? So thats one of the concepts thats really not talked about a lot, but your ability to create assets of value so you can help others first, comes back to you tenfold.

David:
So the concept of helping others first is something that I agree with wholeheartedly, but lets say youre someone who doesnt really have much to give. How do you determine what it is that you can how you can help other people if you dont really have anything yourself?
Mike:
Einstein said Dont look to become a success. Look instead to become a person of value. If youre doubting yourself and say, well I have nothing to give personally, great. Becoming valuable is not just what you have to offer. Becoming valuable can be your organizing the information of other people. Theres so many ways online to become valuable. To really live a dotcom lifestyle, you have to understand how to create value. You have to understand how to create value for your target market. You have to understand how to create value for your relationships, for joint venture partners, so the person with no value is really just doubting themselves. Theyre not seeking to valuable. Making the decision to become valuable, in my opinion, is the first and one of the most important decisions to create the dotcom lifestyle. You can create maybe youll ask me about lifestyle in a second you can create the most incredible lifestyle by being alisten, you dont need to reach a million people to build a successful business. If you can become a reward for 10,000 people and become valuable for 10,000 people over the next 18-36 months, you will build the kind of business that will surprise you, shock you and really youll love.
David:
What does the dotcom lifestyle mean to you?
Mike:
Ask me about my lifestyle. It might be a little different. Well, Im not going to answer your question on the dotcom lifestyle. What the dotcom lifestyle means to me is this: people say, its not really what is I think your question is whats a typical day? Okay, lets do that one. Is that cool?

David:
Yeah, thats fine.
Mike:
A typical day is three days a week, I take my 2-year-old son to school at 9:15 every day. After that we play three days a week. One day a week I take him to sports class at 11:00 in the morning, and 5 days a week I go to the gym between the hours of 10:00 and 11:00. I predominantly work between 1:00 and 5:00 during the day, and sometimes a little bit at night. Work, to me theres really two kinds of work I do. One of the work is creating value because Im committed to changing the lives of the people in my audience, and the second kind of work is I might spend more time reading every day than I even do working because the key to reallythe important of getting the dotcom lifestyle the most important part of it is getting back your time. The difference between the employee and the entrepreneur is time. Your first goal shouldnt be to get rich online. Your first goal should be to get to financial freedom. All financial freedom means is youve created an online system, an online business, that can produce more income than what your expenses are at home. So to me, in this day and age now that Im a new dad, Im committed more as ever to help people to understand these ideas because its so important to get that to allow you to get your time back where during the summers we travel. We spend most of our summers out on a beach town in eastern Long Island, and now with the advent of the computer and how fast the internet is and how small computers are and how widely accessible internet access is, theres never been a better time to succeed in a dotcom lifestyle.
David:
So if there was anything you would do differently from starting your business and being online, what would that be?
Mike:
Great question. What would I do differently? One of the things I would do differently early on

is Id put much more emphasis on building my email newsletter. So #1, Id put a much more greater emphasis on building my email newsletter. I find some of the biggest mistakes new entrepreneurs make is they dont understand the real important of your online newsletter that with a click of a button you can reach thousands and thousands of people. Thats one of the mistakes. The #2 mistake, if I knew what I know now, I would have done paid advertising even sooner. I find that most people online talk about free traffic strategies and while free traffic strategies are great I do them to this day and I highly suggest them very few people teach how to do low-cost, targeted advertising online. So that could be anywhere fromIm a very big fan of whats called solo email advertising where you can purchase an ad in someone elses newsletter. Google and Pay Per Click is very good. Paid advertising is one of the most underrated and fastest ways for you to build your newsletter list and your audience. The third probably mistake is not creating enough products. We have to realize that everything is created to solve a problem and that the people that find you online that are attracted to your message, theyre attracted to it because they have a problem that they hope you solve and their appetite to solve that problem is bigger than you think. So one of the mistakes I would have made is I would have created more products and services earlier on that could help them solve their problems.
David:
Great. So was there a defining moment when you know that online was the way to go.
Mike:
Yeah, the defining moment is interesting. The defining moment that I knew an online business was the way to go is when you make your first dollar online and early on, the first money that I really made online selling the Conversations with Millionaires eBook, we did a joint venture with another individual and I went to bed and woke up and Id made about $2,200 while I was sleeping. For friends and family, proof of concept is everything. When you can start paying your bills,

its everything. So I highly suggest people start part-time, not full-time, and now my defining moment was when I made my first dollar online.
David:
If you had any specific resources, like the top three resources that helped you along the way, what would they be?
Mike:
Can you ask me also the question is: what are some of the challenges that hold people back? I dont know if you asked me that. I want to answer that from a personal development standpoint. Lets do that question now, if you can.
David:
So what are the biggest challenges that are holding people back?
Mike:
There are three main challenges that I find that whole the new entrepreneurs back. Most of the new entrepreneurs that find to succeed online, they come from an employee background. Theyve spent their years at school trying to get As on their tests and they had a job, worked for an employer, and the employer always said you have to be perfect unless youre going to lose your job, and one of the biggest mistakes I find people theres three mistakes I want to discuss. Number one is perfectionism. If you try to be perfect before you do anything online, youre never going to succeed. Too many people over obsess about their website. Does this color here? Do I have this? They worry about things that are of no consequence. I sold millions of dollars using the internet and Ive made less than 1% from MikeLitman.com. So I sold millions of dollars worth of products and have made less than 1% from my homepage, MikeLitman.com. So perfectionism will destroy new entrepreneurs. Number one, you have to understand that you dont have to get it right, you just have to get it going. And I say this: Think of an A, B, C, and D grades. In school and your job, you had to shoot for

an A. To succeed in the dotcom lifestyle, when your website or newsletter is at a C level and youre just starting, just get into the marketplace. You dont grow by freaking about things. You grow by taking action. Number 2 is procrastination. Procrastination destroys so many new online entrepreneurs. They wait, they hope, they dream, and they dont do anything. What most people do and most online entrepreneurs do, they take the advice of those who say, Think big, and theres a magic in thinking big, but I would have more suggest people do, especially when youre getting going, if youve never built a 6 or 7-figure business, I would highly suggest you think about using the concept of the magic of thinking small. What helped me early on was to have small goals. Some people think, I want to make $10,000 a month online.: They never made $1,000/month online, or they never made $200/month online. After failing for six years and running around in circles, I said this, Let me try to make $100 on my online business this month. Great. Next month, let me go for $250. Great. Then $700, then $900, and then it was $1,500. It goes on and on and on. So I found that when you have these huge goals, but you dont have the experience or the mindset to back it up, its very difficult. Theres a magic in thinking small. Number three is lack of focus. So many new entrepreneurs have a lack of focus. They are like I used to be. They are incredibly scattered. Some of them are business opportunity grasshoppers. They jump on opportunity online, opportunity online, opportunity. Its so important to understand the power of focus, especially if you come from an employee background, focus on one idea online. I know some people will tell you to different. If you want, join them. But I found that people that have a strong employee background, build one business at a time. Find one niche. Find something you love. Find something youre passionate about. I highly suggest focus as a key to accelerate your path down the dotcom lifestyle. I want to add one thing to the question here about what the day looks like for me. Let me

add this. This is about what is a day like for you? The reason Im able to take my kid to school and go to the gym and kind of do whatever I want is because of the power of leverage. What the internet gives anybody today, its the great equalizer. It gives you the ability to reach thousands and thousands of people at the click of a mouse. The reason Im able to do this is I have leverage, recurring income; I have my content working for me 24/7. Your content, your articles, your videos, your products, those are your best sales people youre ever going to hire. Great content is your best salesperson. So the way to the dotcom lifestyle is to think more like an entrepreneur, and think about leverage. Thats the key.
David:
All right, so resources if you could name some specific resources you along the way, be it books, info products, tools, anything that has really given you lots of help.
Mike:
Okay. Im going to answer this question For someone who is starting out in trying to achieve the dotcom lifestyle, the key is this every level of income demands a different view. So the three resources that I would most recommend are Earl Nightingales The Strangest Secret; I would recommend Tim Ferriss The Four Hour Work Week because this will allow people that are just starting to get the vision of what the dotcom lifestyle looks like. I would recommend anything from Jay Abraham, and I would also recommend Napoleon Hills Think and Grow Rich.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
Cool. So what is next for you and your business?
Mike:
Next for myself and our business, we have just launched two breakthrough products that cater to my business philosophy of insane value at affordable investments. Weve created the worlds first all-in-one business solution helping people turn their passion into profit. So in one place they can get everything they need from their website to their training to build what I call a passion-based business. They can turn their passion to profit, which is called Total Coach at www.TotalCoach.com.
Weve also just released a product called Greatness Nation, which is a movement of personal transformation which is one place where you can get help in accountability, goal setting, training and support. Its the most comprehensive and most powerful, and the most affordable success coaching program online. Thats at www.GreatnessNation.com.
David:
Awesome. Well listen, thank you so much for doing this interview with us. We really appreciate it.
Mike:
Okay, fantastic, and always remember put this in always remember that you dont have to get it right, you just have to get it going.
David:
I will definitely put that in.
CASE STUDY #23

Pat Rigby
Interview with Pat Rigby

David:
Before we even say what got you started in internet marketing, I want to ask you, have you been an entrepreneur from the start? Have you always had an entrepreneurial mindset?
Pat:
I guess Ive always had an entrepreneurial mindset, but Ive definitely not been an entrepreneur from the start. I was initially a college baseball coach and strength conditioning coach. I always was very creative in my approach. I read a lot of marketing books to help me recruit when I was coaching baseball, so I was always kind of looking for other avenues to achieve success and outside of that, I was very creative when it came to trying to run camps and clinics and writing sales copy to market those when everybody else pretty much had the same standard brochures or fliers. So, an entrepreneurial spirit, yes; an entrepreneurial background, its been more recent for me. It hasnt been something that just was there from day one..
David:
When did you make the jump from baseball strength coach?
Pat:
I was a collegiate baseball coach and strength and conditioning coach at the same university. It was 2002 that I left working at a university setting and decided I wanted to go out on my own. I knew at that point I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I also knew that I didnt know enough about it that I was just going to take the leap. At that point, I was getting ready to start work on a doctorate. I said, well, instead of getting a doctorate, Im going to pour myself into learning about being a business owner. So I went to work for somebody else for a brief period of time and spent all that time studying the way they ran their businesses and at the same time, doing what a lot of people reading this are doing, you know, studying successful people or successful entrepreneurs.
David:
What was the first business venture that you went for?

Pat:
My initial business venture and there were basically two simultaneously was opening up a personal training business and at the same time, becoming a health club owner. I signed a franchise agreement with my business partner, Nick Berry, for opening health clubs at the same time. We launched a personal training business and a Smoothie Bar in somebody elses health club that we had leased exclusive rights to provide those things for there.
David:
So you had the franchise. When did you make the jump onto the internet?
Pat:
Ill tell you what, it was really kind of interesting and I have to give Ryan a great deal of credit for this. I had studied Ryans initial product. I believe it was like 6-Figure Train or something like that. I dont remember the exact name of it, but that was the first fitness business paced information product I had ever bought, and up until that point, I and my partner, Nick, had always kind of assumed that our growth in our businesswe were having a great deal of success in the training business and the club, but our growth was always going to be by adding locations, other physical facilities. After reading some of Ryans stuff and becoming an early-on member of Personal Trainer U, I, along with Nick and about six members of our staff, went to Ryans first boot camp and after kind of watching what was going on onstage there, seeing all these different people up there some of them had incredible backgrounds. Some of them hadnt had as much experience, or maybe even success, in the industry as I had. I thought, you know, Im thinking too narrowly thinking that we can only expand by growing locally by adding physical businesses. I can basically the skys the limit with the reach we have, and so thats where it started.
David:
So you became a member of Personal Trainer U. You guys kind of have an ownership stake in it now, dont you?
Pat:
Yeah, we partnered with Ryan on Personal Trainer U and we worked with Ryan from a consulting

standpoint on pro-grade nutrition as well.
David:
So you see the potential with internet marketing, you become a member of Personal Trainer U, and the partnering with Ryan comes a little bit later. Tell me what was your first website and product?
Pat:
Well, I had initially created a couple of products. One product called The Personal Training Money Machine, which was basically designed to help trainers create the same type of business in a health club setting that we had, and then almost immediately after that, came out with an eBook called Fitness Riches, which was a compilation of a lot of different articles from various trainers on how they had achieved success.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
You said a compilation of articles?
Pat:
Well, you know, I guess Chapters is a better way to put it. So there were chapters, 6 to 10 pages, kind of profiling what each of those people considered a key component or how they had personally achieved success.
David:
And that kind of brings something that was I talking to Ryan Deiss about yesterday the concept Fitness Riches, would you say that you were qualified yourself to be having a product, or did you feel like you had to go the interview approach?
Pat:
You know, I felt very qualified to have a product because I had just created the product The Personal Training Money Machine just before, but Ill be honest, the reason I created that product was I didnt really have that much of a list and I knew that to grow my presence on the internet, I needed a list. So I sought out a number of people that already had some traction online and this was before the days of everybody giving out 75% affiliate commission and whatnot, and I basically said to each of these people that if they contributed to a chapter of this book, it would be a product that each of them could sell and receive 75% of the proceeds. I would do all of the leg work as far as compiling the book, editing, all the graphic work, all the website work, everything that went and I would just basically serve as kind of a tollbooth position, so all their orders went through to me. At that point, I was helping to position myself as an expert in front of their list because I was a co-author with them, plus I was building my own list not just to prospects, but buyers of this book the people who would be in my target for things moving forward.
www.ryanlee.com
David:
So youre strategy, do you think that kind of strategy still flies? Because I feel like a lot of people, if you came up to me and said, Hey, let me do an interview with you. Ill do the book and you can sell it for 75% commission, do you think people would still be okay with that idea, or do you think it would be something where its like Uh, no. Im just not going to do that.
Pat:
I think its kind of run its course. I think people did that for a while with eBooks and then it evolved into people doing that with TeleSeminars and whatnot. I think that it works with live events still, but what it was for me was trying to do something at that time a little bit creative and innovative to position myself in front of a new audience as an expert and build a list. So at the point when nobody else was paying out 75%, I was happy to do it. I dont necessarily know that that exact strategy would work anymore, but Im sure that with each new innovation that comes out in the internet marketing landscape, it presents an opportunity to get out there

and try some things before other people do it. You always can secure your own little piece of the market by doing things that way.
David:
What would you say to someone looking to do something in any market really, looking to break into a market, and they want to kind of build a list. And if that strategy has now kind of run its course, what would you say are some good strategies for that because you have to be much more I dont want to say tricky, but tactical or something?
Pat:
Well, I think that the first part of building a list is actually delivering good content. If you dont have anything of genuine value to say, a list isnt going to be real valuable because even if you have it, those people arent going to trust you to either sell them products or refer other products. Identifying something that you can deliver really rich content in and its doesnt necessarily have to be unique content, but it has to be in maybe a little bit different voice so you can appeal to a specific audience. I think thats a start. Now with the evolution of blogs, its so easy now to go out there and really display the content that youre creating and sharing your voice, so you do that and you do all of the basic little things that are pretty commonplace now, the pinging and the bookmarking, to try to spread the message, but then I think that a lot of the grass roots stuff really works. Writing articles and guest posting onto other peoples blogs and doing any number of the social media things is probably the easiest and lowest cost way to build a list. But it also seems like the most timeless because Google changes its algorithms very regularly. It changes what Pay Per Click ads can be run very regularly, and the Google slap has really kind of damaged many an internet marketer. But the one thats always really held true is delivering content with real substance. So base your list building off that and then just look for different avenues to disseminate that content. I know that sounds really simple, but I think that if thats the basis of what you do and you dont just stay in your own little world and just blog to the three family members that are reading

it initially, but if you start with that and just look for other ways to disseminate your content, eventually youre going to build not just a list in volume, but a list in quality.
David:
Thats definitely the foundation. It always comes down to good content. A lot of people have kind of moved past that step, to me, like How do I get the traffic? but they dont even think theyre not even thinking about delivering value. If you dont have that, then youve got nothing. So this is kind of a change. Im going to jump around a little bit. You said your business partner is Nick Berry.
Pat:
Yes.
David:
Ive actually interviewed him before. It was a really good interview. Tell me about partnerships, because a lot of times when I interview peoplefor example, Mike Bacak, said The only ship that never sales is a partnership. Im assuming you dont totally agree with that statement. Find partners to work with and making sure youre working with the right people, how has that worked for you?
Pat:
Well, I guess the first part of it worked out really well with Nick and I because our skill sets are talents and really, a lot of the things that our interests lie in vary. Im more of a sales, marketing, creation, product development guy, and hes more of an operations, billing, customer service side of things guy. So having people that offer complimentary skill sets is the first part. There are only This is going to sound corny, but theres only room for so many cooks in the kitchen here, so it doesnt really make a lot of sense to add a partner thats just replicating exactly what you already do. But adding somebody that can compliment what you do, that has a vested interest in the businesses success, it isnt just going to be a 9-5 person when youre trying to get off the ground.

It has a lot of validity because it allows each person to focus on areas where theyre best. I mean, we always hear about outsourcing, but Ive outsourced as much as anybody and a lot of times when you outsource, things dont get done in the fashion that you hoped for or theyre not done as timely as you hoped for and its mainly because those people dont have a vested interest in your business success. So finding somebody that compliments you is paramount. Finding somebody who is willing to put as much into the business as you are is vital as well. Im telling you this making it sound like, hey, just go out there and if you dont like doing the financial side of your business or something, find a partner and everythings good. Its not really that simple. Weve had to buy out partners. We had one partner we had to buy out that Im sure cost us well in excess of $100,000 because he wasnt really on the same page and he put his interest before the business interest in that initial growth stage and it really set us back. So definitely, I agree with Matt in that its not something to be taken lightly, to enter into a partnership, but I also think that if youre very selective and you pick somebody who compliments what you bring to the table, it can allow you to grow faster; it can allow you to have a stronger infrastructure; and it can create an even higher long-term upside for your business. But its like hiring. You hire slow, you fire fast. Well, you choose a business partner even slower.
David:
For sure. I mean, its almost like a marriage.
Pat:
For all intensive purposes, Im as legally bound to Nick Berry as I am to Holly, who youre interviewing tomorrow. Yeah, it is like a marriage and you should take it just as seriously when it comes to choosing a partner.
David:
For sure. Growth stage: thats something that interests me a lot. Everyones always stuck in a growth stage. It seems like theres an endless stream of new entrepreneurs, new people trying to start their own business. What helps to get you through the growth stage to the actual point

where you are like, Oh, man, we are running a legitimate business and this is sustainable, and so on? How do you kind of break through to that point?
Pat:
Well, Ill tell you, the first part of it was not trying to abandon the growth stage too quickly. Its something a lot of people dont do. We spend a lot of time early on in our business reinvesting our revenues to make sure the infrastructure was solid, make sure that we had our fulfillment, our marketing, our customer service, all that in place. So instead of just taking every penny that you can get out of the business in the beginning, for us, it made a lot of sense to reinvest so we could exit that growth stage. A lot of people, theyre not willing to make those sort of sacrifices. Theyre not willing to do it in any other business or never at all really. They call it pay your dues, and the internet a lot of the people have kind of portray what goes on on the internet as an opportunity for get rich quick, and Im sure those cases are there, but far more people that receive long-term success did it by building a solid business, building the infrastructure, making sure that you dot your Is and cross your ts. Thats something that we were willing to do before we really started trying to extract a lot of the revenue coming in.
David:
What to you is the foundation of solid business?
Pat:
Gosh, the foundation of a solid business would come with a multi-faceted answer here, but number one, having a quality deliverable, be it a product, a service, information, but something of real value. Without something of real value, I think that your success is going to be really short-term. Yeah, you can sell with great sales copy or savvy marketing, but youre not going to get repeat buyers. Youre not going to get any traction other than with just the new people are unaware of what your product really is about. I think having a quality deliverable, having systems that the business can not only become scalable so it can grow beyond just you delivering everything from the marketing, the product,

and the customer service yourself. So systems so you can grow the business beyond yourself. If you have systems in places, processes that allow you to outsource it, be it to a partner or be it to an employee or virtual assistant, but having systems in place so you can grow the business, and then making sure that all of the things that go on behind the scenes are given just as much attention as the things that are put out on the stage. Everybody sees the sales copy. They see the graphics on the web page. They see the videos. They may even see the product. But if you dont have all the other things in place behind the scenes from making sure your fulfillment is good, making sure your customer service is solid, making sure that your accounting and the financial side of the business is on point, without that, you essentially are just kind of set with a house of cards. Its going to fall at some point.
David:
The whole systems thing kinds of ties into the its funny, on the internet theres a guy who actually has real business education by real business education, I dont mean business school, but know how to run an actual business as opposed to sell a product on the internet, you know what I mean? So the backend systems and that but like systems and processes are very nonsexy terms, but that kind of is the whole foundation for the lifestyle side of the business is that everything there are systems that make things run on its own. In terms of making systems that work for you instead of you constantly working on it, what have you done to create more effective systems?
Pat:
Well, that was really kind of what we were known for in the personal training landscape when we started was that we were kind of the systems guys. Really, I think the foundation of creating systems is pretty simple. Document the processes that you take to complete tasks. If youre paneling a customer service inquiry, what is the process that you take to do it? Whats the script that you use? Whats the timeline that things happen on? So documenting what you do and then refining it and optimizing it so that somebody else can execute it seamlessly.

Its really not much more than that, but what you get then is a very repeatable process and a business model that is infinitely scalable. I use McDonalds as a great reference, which is kind of funny in the fitness industry, but theres not a gourmet chef one working at any McDonalds. In most instances, its people with no food service background at all, but theres a very simplistic process that each of them can follow thats Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, and so now, entrepreneurs can entrust these multimillion dollar locations to a lot of people that are teenagers because they know the processes are easily replicated by somebody who may not necessarily be the most talented person in the world when it comes to food service or whatever else. Simply just document what you do, clean it up, and optimize it to make it more efficient. See if there are ways that you can improve on each of steps and then make sure that its presented in a way that someone else can replicate. Ill tell you whats even better now. With the internet, with the evolution of video online, creating systems using video or Camtasia or whatever else is even easier than its ever been before because instead of telling somebody something that might be halfway around the globe, you can show them.
David:
For sure; thats like the big way for training employees and whatnot. Tell me, resources that have helped you along the way the top three or you can always share more. I love resources, so feel free to share everything, but what have been the things that have helped you the most?
Pat:
I guess I have to give you kind of categories. First was Ryans initial product and Personal Trainer U (http://www.personaltraineru.com), and you know, to this day, I am still a subscriber to The Inner Circle, so that stuffs always been tremendously valuable for me. It helped me kind of broaden my vision and it still kind of keeps me on the cutting edge of whats going on online.
All Dan Kennedys resources have been very valuable to me, from being a member of his newsletter for years, to having a mountain of his product. Those have always been great. And then kind of along the same lines, Ive been a big fan of Jay Abraham as well. So Jay Abrahams stuff, he does share some similarities to Dan Kennedys. Its kind of written in a different voice and he has some unique perspectives on some different things, and some of it just seems to resonate with me differently than some of Kennedys stuff. So those are the three that if I were going back to square one, thats where Id start.
David:
So tell me, what is next for you? What is the future for you and your business?

Pat:
Gosh, well right now, Nick and I have an ownership stake in over a dozen different businesses all in the fitness industry and there are a lot of things going on with all of those and Im excited about all of them, but one thing that weve done thats actually taking us kind of back offline even a little bit more is we just launched a physical youth fitness franchise. Were the franchisors of a youth fitness business called Athletic Revolution. So thats pretty exciting for us because it certainly is the biggest project that weve ever taken on, so I guess working in all those different business are what 2010 has in store for me, but thats the one that I feel like is something that stands to hopefully be my legacy, or our legacy, whenever those days to retire come along.
David:
Awesome; well listen, thanks so much for the interview. We really appreciate it.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #24

Ric Thompson
Interview with Ric Thompson

David:
Lets start all the way back from the beginning. I like to just figure out what got you started online? I know you were on Healthy, Wealthy and Wise (http://www.healthywealthyandwise. com). Was that your first project?
Ric:
First internet marketing-related project, I would say. Actually, my background is through a long strange set of coincidences. I got involved with websites with my first real job after college and I did a various number of different techy-type things and then, yeah, through just a long story, ended up with starting Healthy, Wealthy and Wise back in 2003.

David:
Cool. So Healthy, Wealthy and Wise, you started in 2003. What was the tell me the long story.
Ric:
Okay. I got this job out of college. As a kid growing up, like in high school and middle school, I was into computers and programming and all that sort of stuff, and then college came along and I decided that Id had enough of computers, I wanted to get into people, so I partied a lot. That was kind of my major; I socialized a lot, and then my first job out of college, strangely enough, got me back into websites. It was a corporate website; nothing fancy, but it was a very small organization and the guy who was handling it was leaving it, so I got lucky enough to get picked to take that spot. I did some other things too, but it was in that part time. Then that opened up the whole world for what the tech stuff was doing, and of course, this was the 90s. The tech boom was coming, so I did a bunch of different stuff in computer networking, in programming, and then I ended up doing some network consulting and all this stuff. We built up enough revenue to buy a local ISP, called an Internet Service Provider, so think of like a really tiny AOL. We had dial-up access and satellites when that came out, and stuff. So that was a local company. When we sold that, we made the plunge to jump into online 100% back in 2003 when we started Healthy, Wealthy and Wise.
David:
What made you start Healthy, Wealthy and Wise? What was the reasoning behind that?
Ric:
Well, at that point, we had been involved in a number of different businesses, starting on the buying and then selling them, and we had enough of employees. We wanted to do something that we wanted to do that was just us, that could be done on our time. We were commuting probably a good 40 minutes to the office and then back in the evening because we were pretty much away from where our office was worked. We wanted to work from home. Just all those different things sort of that internet marketing dream of little overhead, no employees, and

living life on your own terms type of thing.
David:
Yeah, so how did you learn about it? Was there a specific point when you heard of internet marketing like, oh, whoa, Ive got to do this, or was it just a natural progression?
Ric:
Yeah, totally a natural progression. We were entrepreneurs and had been for a number of years, so like for instance, we got introduced to direct marketing first. We were a student of Dan Kennedy and we heard about Joe Polish and direct marketing principles and really kind of going in that direction. Then somewhere along the line again, keep in mind, though, I was going a lot of internettype stuff, right? Now, in the beginning, a lot of it was like corporate websites, those web brochure type stuff. It was the 90s. It was still the era of If you build it, they will come, or at least that was the predominant thinking, as incorrect as that was. So overtime, after having been introduced to the web and after being introduced to direct marketing, it was just sort of a very natural progression to jump into internet marketing, which is just the latest adaptation of solid proven direct marketing principles.
David:
Thats for sure. Healthy, Wealthy and Wise was a physical newsletter, right?
Ric:
Nope, great question though, because weve done lots of different things.
David:
Okay.

Ric:
Of course, what we started over six years ago now, is not what we have now. We walked into it with this really full-blown business plan and stuff, but the idea was to go all online, be totally digital. We have an actual online magazine where every month a whole new issue is released. Its not a physical magazine. Its an online magazine. You go online, you read the articles. We have a weekly newsletter that goes with it, but again, its a weekly email-delivered newsletter. Over time we did do a bunch of physical stuff. We do a bunch of physical products now which is a great next step, and some products we have digital, some products we have physical, but the magazine itself, which is sort of our face to the public, fully digital; no cost for delivery.
David:
Awesome. And so its like you pretty much build the brand around the magazine and then you have Healthy, Wealthy and Wise-branded products?
Ric:
There are. Now keep in mind that was the very first business that we had. Weve got other sites, other projects, other companies now. But yeah, Healthy, Wealthy and Wise is that name and the magazine was basically a lead generator to get people to come to the site and check things out and subscribe to the newsletter, and then we would have various products that we would market under our name; absolutely.
David:
I have two questions. One is, when you guys started in 2003, traffic was easier to get. How did you guys kind of jump start it, or did it? Was it something that kind of grew slowly over time, or was it like you had a joint venture partner, or how did you guys get people into the funnel, I guess?
Ric:
We did a lot of different things, and youre right, it was a very, very different world in 2003. Ill tell you the very, very first thing that we did was we were actually at an event of Marguerite Johanson and Robert Allen and we had gotten pulled up on stage because we were students

of theirs and there was a number of us who got pulled up on stage to kind of share our success stories and be given a little award and so forth. I think this was all part of their Enlightened Millionaire Program. Regardless, during my time on stage, being a marketer, I took the opportunity to give a quick 10-, 15-, 20-second blurb on Healthy, Wealthy and Wise and basically I said that in our next project, we will be focusing on sharing your content and selling your products, because at the time, we didnt have any products of our own. We were going to be affiliate marketers, right? So walking off the stage after everybody heard that, as Im walking down the line, everybody starts passing me their business card. Like literally, it was like I was on the red carpet or something and everybodys diving into their pockets to give me their business cards. Of course we made contacts there at the event and we were kind of spreading the word around of the course that was 2 days or 3 days, or whatever it was. This was before the magazine ever launched and we launched probably a couple hundred names right then and there. That was the very first thing that we did. After that it was whatever we could do to spread the word. Back in 2003, you could buy lists. It was still kind of gray. It was certainly not the best performance type of thing, but it boosted numbers. We started doing JDs as fast as possible. There was no silver bullet. Just like today, theres no real silver bullet. You just do everything you possibly can to get the word out and collect names.
David:
You say you have a bunch of sites, how many sites do you run per man line?
Ric:
Wow, thats a great question.
David:
Most people are like, Uh, a lot.
Ric:
Yeah, pretty much. Ive gotten to the point now where in the signature file where I need to

send, Ill list like the three or four top ones and then Ill just say, and a bunch of other stuff. Dozens probably over 100 different domain names, but not all of them are fully active yet, but certainly dozes of active sites right now.
David:
And theyre all mostly product stuff, or do you have just fun stuff, or is it all generally for business purposes?
Ric:
Well, both because I love business, so its all fun, but its all product-related. For instance, Liz and I, my wife and my partner, Liz Thompson, we got exposed to a lot of really different stuff in Healthy, Wealthy and Wise and a lot of stuff that in the internet marketing world is considered pretty woo-woo or pretty airy-fairy. So for a few years now, weve been pretty interested in this whole 2012 phenomena just from kind of a exploration type exercise, so here we are, weve got the information, weve got the knowledge and 2012 was getting hot and hotter, hotter, more and more people looking for it, and we finally said this is a hobby of ours, were interested in this, weve been reading books on this. Lets turn this into a business and make money off our hobby. So we just recently did that and have made tens of thousands of dollars because we know what to do now. We can do that. Were looking at doing possibly some food-related type stuff because we love to go out and have great food and great wine. Why not monetize that? Thats the beauty of todays internet market, right? You can start a blog and start making money or create some great quick information products and start making some money. So for us, I love business, so it just makes sense to start taking our other hobbies and turn them into businesses to produce more revenue.
David:
I think youre 2012 example is probably the best one of niche marketing that weve had yet. How exactly are you monetizing that?

Ric:
In an interview series.
David:
Okay.
Ric:
What we have done from the very beginning has really built our business off of interviews like youre interviewing me here now. So for instance, on that one, I just reached out. I didnt know any of these people. Im not networked into this arena. Millions of folks know who the heck I am or Healthy, Wealthy and Wise is or any of that stuff, and I literally just cold emailed them or I hooked them up on FaceBook. I hunted them down and stalked them on FaceBook and found these authors and I cold emailed them and said, look, Im going to do an interview series and get you some exposure. Are you interested? I was little bit more formal than that, but not a whole lot, and in a niche market, its fantastic because everybody is dying for more exposure and more attention so 90% of the people came back right away and said absolutely. As a matter of fact, one of the biggest names in the industry, his name is Carl Johan Calleman. Hes written a number of books and hes been in some of these movies and stuff on 2012, like the History Channel type stuff. He was the first one to say absolutely, lets do it, because its a niche market. Its awesome, and in niche markets, like I said, theyre all dying for attention. So I just did a bunch of interviews, we created an interview series and we grew things from there, but thats a great continuity program that people can start just by doing a great interview series.
David:
Im blown away by the concept of the monetizing 2012. Thats also like its kind of not really a long-term thing, but I guess it kind of is because we still have a couple of years, dont we?
Ric:
Well, as a business, its short term, obviously, because after 2012 no ones going to be looking

for information on it, right. So weve got to find a way we have a plan in place to twist that and turn that into stuff beyond because we dont want do anything thats totally short term, but now is the time period where the traffic is going through the roof.
David:
Yeah.
Ric:
Youve got a mainstream movie that came out. Theyre talking about a TV series. There are books and theres stuff all over the History Channel. Its very, very mainstream, but no one, from a marketing perspective, is really tapping into it. So this is more of a fad than it is really a niche, but big deal. Ive got a couple of years left of the fad, so lets all tap into it, Ill make some money. There are a few other savvy marketers who are tapping into this, but not a whole lot, so it makes JVs tough, but Im not looking to make a million dollar business out of this. If I can add an extra 10 grand a month from a hobby, that doesnt suck, right?
David:
No, not at all. Id say thats a pretty savvy move. Again, its pretty cool. Ive heard a lot of pretty cool fad stuff, but thats definitely I dont want to keep ranting on about it, but did you guys make it before the 2012 obviously youve had it for a little bit now, but before the 2012 movie came out?
Ric:
Yeah, that was actually one of the big motivators for us. We started marketing that thing like 8 months in advance, 12 months in advance, and wed been thinking about it and wed been getting interested in it for a couple of years now and we were sort of like, well, if were going to do it, weve got to get off our butts and get it done before that movie hits because after that movie hits, we figured thered be a lot more players in the space. As it got hotter and hotter, its like any market, somebodys going to finally figure out theres a

ton of people looking for information, theyre willing to pay for it, so when the demand gets hot enough, supplys going to materialize and we figured we had better be part of that supply. So that was we launched a few months before the movie hit. Were just looking to build it out and stuff.
David:
Was that like a huge surge of traffic for you when it came out?
Ric:
Yes and no. Keep in mind that at this point, we had our own internal lists and weve got a number of different ones that cover a variety of topics so the first thing we did was we launched it internally to test it more than anything. We said, okay, our lists are not a perfect match for this, but the Healthy, Wealthy and Wise lists are a pretty wide range of interests. Look at the name, right, health, wealth and wisdom all rolled together. Its far more broad than a lot of lists out there. So we launched it internally. Is this going to fly? Is the marketing system going to work? Are people really going to pay for this? And it worked out really well. Then we started taking out banner ads on sites. Okay, Ive never done banner ads before that have actually worked, but I hadnt really been serious about it either. So I found some great 2012 sites out there that had a lot of traffic. Again, Im not very savvy so Im paying really cheap banner ads, getting some traffic, and its converting. So thats on autopilot. Well start finding some people that are selling some 2012 products and stuff like on Click Bank or whatever and contacting them. Lets do some JVs. And again, theres no silver bullet. You just start growing and looking for more opportunities. Once youve got a product that works, its like, okay, cool, now where can I go find some more people to put this in front of. Thats for any product in any niche.
David:
Yeah, definitely. So if you had to start your business over from scratch, what would you do differently?

Ric:
So thats a great question. You know, certainly in my mind, Ive got business plans or how-to plans of if I had to start over from scratch, this is what I would do, but in general, I think the biggest thing I would do the biggest lesson Ive learned would be to network faster because what I have found are that people bring opportunity. So going to events, whether its a local type of venue, if youre an offline business, then go to your local Chamber of Commerce and do some networking, look for master mind groups, B&I groups, whatever. If youre in internet marketing, go to the internet marketing events and start Networking. Its not necessarily to meet the speakers, per se. There are plenty of people in the room that could be working with you that are in similar industries or complimentary type businesses, or in your same exact niche and theyre looking for partners. If you go to these events, if you start networking, if you start meeting more people, people bring you opportunities. They talk about a project theyre working on, or a product they need help on or whatever. You have no way to predict in advance and its always profitable. I know physical, face-to-face networking is a dirty word here in internet marketing because were all on the internet because we dont want to deal with people. We want to hide behind our computers, but if you want to be successful in business, business is business, gang, and the internet is just a new way to do it. So get out there, make some contacts, network, because for us, personally, its a very huge lesson. The faster you can grow your network, the faster opportunities come in and the faster money comes in.
David:
One of the questions we get a lot is about how to approach joint venture partners and how to approach experts and that kind of ties into the networking aspect. Do you have any sort of networking strategy or advice for people who are like, oh, I would go to these events, but then I dont really know what to do. I dont know how to introduce myself to these people. How do you build these relationships at these events the first time youre meeting these people?

Ric:
Thats a great question. What I do is, I guess, kind of a two-step process, right? Understand that people are much more comfortable talking to about themselves, typically. So when Im introduced to somebody or I introduce myself to somebody, Ill ask them, what do you do? What are you into? Whats your main focus right now? to get them to talk about whats hot for them right now because thats what I want to know because my second step is to look for ways how can I help them? Now, Ill be very kind of cynical about this. Really what Im doing is internally Im kind of filtering this person and saying, is this person doing something that complements what Im doing? Is there something that theyre doing that interests me or can help me out, but Im doing this by finding out whats hot for them, what are their interests are, what are they focused on, because Ive got to be able to provide value to them. So if theyre doing something thats near my industry or complementary to me, or theres something that I can contribute to them, whether its contacts or tips or knowledge or whatever, then Im going to go and freely give that to them. Im asking them what theyre main focus is. Im going to see if its a good match for me, and then Im going to offer them something and Im going to help them out and then well just see where things go because if you take the first step, if you say, Hey, thats great. Youve got a great project going on. You know, Ive got an idea, or Theres someone you need to me. Let me connect you, and just offer them something first. Thats the biggest thing. And then just see where things go from there. Dont be recruiting. Dont be out there looking for people to help you out. Offer value first. Look to help other people first because if theres somebody that you can offer help to, odds are that they can offer help back and they are obviously much more likely to do that. Think of them first. Dont forget about yourself, but think of them first.
David:
Yeah, for sure. I think that a lot of people make that mistake and they come in and expect to be like, Hey, Im doing this thing. You want to help me out? and people are like, Im not really sure. Theyre not approached right.

I know you said that internet marketing was a natural progression for you, but was there a defining moment when you knew that it was the future or the present, like it was your career of choice, or was it just like, you always knew?
Ric:
No, I didnt. As a matter of fact, when I was in college, a good friend of mine was working on a website for I think it was the Universitys meteorological department because he was trying to become a weather man, and I was just like, yeah, whatever. No interest. I was like, why would you waste your time? Hey, theres a party to go to. Then in my first real job, I started working on this company website and it was neat. Now, youve got to remember, as a kid, I had a lot of experience in computer programming, so that kind of brought that up. It was kind of easy for me because I had the background and html is just not very difficult anyway. Anybody can learn it. So I get in this website at the company and like, support issues, if the people handling the support lines in the company were getting a lot of certain questions, wed go put that information up on the website and youd immediately see a reduction in those phone calls because people would go to the website from around the world to look for this information. It was like, wow, thats magic that youre having an instant real world result by just putting some stuff up on the web. So things grew from there, obviously, but that was sort of the first real eye-opening experience of holy cow, this is a whole new world, and its instant and it literally spans the globe. It was just sort of a magic thing and then things sort of grew from there.
David:
Thats pretty cool. Everyone always really has that one moment where its just like, Oh, so it does work, you know.
Ric:
Right.

David:
So, if you had to name three of your biggest mistakes that youve made in building your online business that we could learn from, what would they be?
Ric:
So, a conversation on my mistakes would take days because weve obviously failed a lot more than weve succeeded, but you keep going and your senses are built up and you just keep on going. Lets do this. I think the number one thing is one of the things that Ive already mentioned, and thats not having a large enough network. That was a hard enough lesson to learn. I am very much kind of introvert, actually, but the reality here is this, is every time that my network grows, every time that I meet a new person, my results grow. So hey, you know what, its pretty hard to ignore that so now its a big, big focus of mine to continue to network out, grow a network, and if I had done that when I first started out as aggressively as I do now, Id be light years ahead. I know that so, so many entrepreneurs dont network out; because that networking spills into everything. It spills out to business opportunities. It spills out to being able to grow your team. Ill talk about that too. So just growing your network can help out in millions and zillions of ways and theres no sooner or better time to do it than right now. The second biggest mistake would have to be leverage. I mentioned in the beginning, when we walked out of our last business after selling it, we sort of had it with employees. We were sort of done, right, and we wanted to do this whole internet because, hey, we dont need employees. We can do it all ourselves. Its one of those big internet marketing myths, and the reality is that in business, you have to have a team. Youve got to have that leverage of outsourcing or getting employees, however you want to do it; but the trick is youve got to have that leverage. That includes having those teams because, god, if I had to do everything myself, Id be a 10th, maybe a 20th of where I am today with my results because you can only do so much. You only have 24 hours in a day. Im blessed because Ive got my wife as a full partner in the business. Shes actually the brains of the business and the beauty. Im not sure whats left

over, but thats me. But without a whole team and without that leverage that a team creates, we wouldnt be where we are today. Part of that leverage thing is also systems. A lot of people dont really focus on having operational systems, or even worse, marketing systems, but thats part of this. If you have an operational system if youre doing something more than three times and its the same thing each time you do it, somebody else should be doing that so document it. Create a system. Create what we call a Standard Operating Procedure in the military or the government. Create them and then find somebody else to do them. So get that leverage going in your business and get it going now. For those of you, if youre working out there yourself and you fully bought into the dream of doing everything yourself, I apologize for shadowing that illusion, but if you really, really want to reach success, you cant do it by yourself. Youve got to create massive leverage, and that means having other people do the work for you. And then the third biggest kind of area of mistakes, I think, would be to know your numbers. Be very clear on what your business is doing and how its doing it. You can look at the cash flow at the end of the month and youre positive and whoopy-doo and next month youve got more positive cash flow, great, fantastic. But if you dont know what youre systems are doing lets say from a marketing perspective if you dont know how X system is performing and Y system is performing, you dont know which ones are real winners and which ones arent, which ones can be improved, or which ones are just homeruns and you need to really focus on building that out as fast possible and getting more eyeballs to it. So just know your numbers, in general, of everything of systems, of how fast youre rolling new system out, or how many people are com coming to your website, or how many people are buying, or how many people are staying customers after theyve bought, versus returning your products and wanting their money back. Just know your numbers and I know a lot of people, this is not a very sexy conversation. Its sort of like pulling toenails out, but its super, super critical, gang. Youve got to know your numbers and it gets fun because you cant grow anything unless youve measured it. So once

you start measuring things, you can actually watch the growth. Thats where the fun comes in not so much the physical action of measuring stuff; growing stuff gets to be fun.
David:
Well, its funny. Im a systems and numbers guy so I appreciate that was two of your important things because sometimes I do get the feeling that a lot of guys are just they just throw a whole bunch of stuff out there and then hope something sticks, you know, but theyre not really sure how to track that. I do like pay per click affiliate stuff, so its very much specific like I have to know what keyword is making me what money, you know what I mean?
Ric:
Yeah.
David:
So when people are not really tracking what theyre doing, it bothers me.
Ric:
Well, I think there are two comments to make there because certainly at some level all of us, when we start a new project, we are throwing out there and were seeing if it sticks, but the more important thing that youre really driving home, I think, for everybody is that if youre not measuring, how are you going to know if its stuck or not.
David:
Yeah, exactly.
Ric:
There is this mental faith leap that you have to make of well, I built this sales page, lets go see if it works, and you throw it out there. But like youre saying, if no ones actually measuring things, take Davids advice, gang. If youre not actually measuring it, youre not going to know if its going to stick or not and then youre going to just be stuck always throwing stuff out there and not really knowing whats what.

David:
For sure. So our last two questions for you the first one is, if you could name three its always three things if you could name three must-have resources for someone who wants to create the dotcom lifestyle, what would they be?
Ric:
So I no particular order, they would be (1) team; youve got to have that team. Again, if you want the dotcom lifestyle, which I guess really I should define first, which for me is working hard and playing hard, and if you want that time off to go play hard youve got to have other people doing the day-to-day type stuff. You cant have a week off in a tropical island and have to handle your email support. Thats just not going to happen. So get that team going. The second thing is mentoring. Thats whether its a personal mentor or CDs or books or tape sets or online programs, whatever it is, tap into the experts. Reduce your learning curve as much as possible. So find some mentors that you like and go with it. Take what they teach you and put it into effect and apply it. And then the third thing would have to be a personal development library. What a lot of people dont really focus on is the fact that it is just as important to work on yourself as it is for yourself. Everybody is, hey I work for myself in this whole internet marketing thing. Ill build all these sites and stuff and make all this money, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. Well, youve got to be able to focus on your own mind set. Youve got to focus on getting yourself past issues, making yourself more effective and more results oriented, so a personal development library. Spend that time, that energy, working on yourself and on your mind, on your attitude, and all that and that will be boost your results, I think, more than anything else will.
David:
For sure. I think that investing in yourself pretty much is well, its like the same if you, yourself, arent growing as a person, then youre going to be struggling with it. So, our last question to wrap it up is whats next for you and your business? What are your long-term plans? Whats your end game?

Ric:
So, whats next versus what our end game is? Like two completely different questions?
David:
Yeah.
Ric:
Our end game is the same as everybodys, right? Its world domination. Whats next is weve got a great business model here with our online magazines. Weve been creating some products. Weve been getting more traffic to them, and its all about speed now. Weve got these systems in place. Were growing our team. How do we do it all faster? How do we get our results boosted a lot faster? Weve been doubling our business every year for the past few years. Wed like to go beyond doubling it. We want to do three times, four times, ten times a year, and that all comes down to speed, which goes back to that leverage issue having a bigger team, having better systems in place, and just building out, building out, building out because what youre going to see from us are a lot more online magazines, a lot more products, a lot more JV deals, a lot more of everything. We just want to be able to do it faster. The faster we can do it, the more we can do it.
David:
Well listen, thank you so much for doing the interview with us. We really appreciate it.
Ric:
Well, thank you David. Im glad to share this and hopefully it does some good help for some people.
David:
I hope so. I think it will.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #25

Russell Brunson
Interview with Russell Brunson

David:
Lets go all the way back to the beginning and start with what you got you into internet marketing in the first place. How did you start in the world of internet marketing?
Russell:
I guess the very, very beginning, when I was about 12 years old, I watched a Don Lapre infomercial. He was selling this product talking about how he was placing classified ads. So I was 12 years old and I saw that and I got real excited by how to make money. I mowed lawns for two or three weeks and saved up the $40 it cost to buy the kit. I went and bought it. Back then when I first started learning about direct response marketing, I was 12, and then I started getting obsessed with it. I used to go down to the grocery store and I would buy Small Business Opportunity Magazine and call every single 1-800 number in there and say put me on your mailing list. I ended up getting so much junk mail in the mail each day that the mailman couldnt fit it into the actual mailbox. He would knock on the door and hand it to my parents. Id get home from school in the 7th and 8th grade and thered be my parents stack of two or three bills and then my whole stack of mail sitting next to it. I used to go home at night and Id read all this junk mail because I loved the whole concept of it, but I didnt know how to make any money with it. I learned how direct mail worked and how things worked. I didnt have any money to try it out. And then I got into high school wrestling and I got into North College. I wrestled in college. I didnt really think much about it at all after that. Right after I got engaged to my wife, I started realizing that it was going to take a little bit of money to survive. We had to pay for rent and food and all these things that I nevermy parents always supported me before that. I remember one night I was watching this infomercial on TV that said there was basically a seminar happening in Boise right up the street from me, teaching people how to make money on the internet, so I got all excited. I signed up for it. It was a free seminar. I sat there and when I was sitting there at the seminar and they started talking about everything, and it reminded me exactly about stuff I learned when I was 12 and 13 years old about direct mail.

It was happening on line with email and things like that and it was free. You dont have to pay postage and that kind of stuff. Thats when I got kind of reignited and re-excited about the whole concept. Then I got off that seminar, I jumped online and I started trying a whole bunch of different things. I spent about 18 months trying things that didnt work. Id make $100 here and $20 there and little bits here and there, but nothing that was any real money to brag about. Then about 18 months into it is when I started learning about how information marketing works and how to create a produce and put up a website and drive traffic. After I had a little epiphany and figured out how it all worked, my first month I made about $1,200 and my second month it was about $3,000. By month three, I had $5,000 and that was just one product. I started getting excited and started creating more and more products and more and things. Fast forward now a couple of years later, my senior year in college, I made about $250,000. Within a year of graduating, I made over $1,000,000; and this year our company was over $10,000,000 in sale. It kind of snowballed quickly and its been a lot of fun.
David:
Thats definitely a quick transition from $250 to $1 million to $10 million. Thats pretty good. So what exactly was the first website? What year was this, by the way?
Russell:
The first website Ive been out of college now about four years, so it would have been six or seven years ago, I guess. So whats that? 2003?
David:
Yeah.

Russell:
Something like that 2003-ish. My first product that actually was successful was a product called Zip Brander.
What happened its kind of funny. I started learning about information marketing, so I started buying all these peoples eBooks and theyd have resell rights to their eBooks. Id buy the eBook and Id go and start selling them on eBay and different sites like that and I think, like I said, $20 here, $30 here, things like that. What always bothered me was that Id open these eBooks that I was selling and inside the eBooks the person gave me the rights to sell it and keep all the money, but inside the book they always had links back to their site and told stories about them and was really branding them really, really strong every time I sold one of their products. I thought, I wish there was a way that instead of eBranding them with this product, I wish there was a way that I could brand this eBook so that when somebody opens it, the first thing they see is my ad, and then they see the eBook afterwards. Thats kind of the idea, and so I wondered if anybody has a product like that.

So I went out there and started looking and nobody had a product that did that, and so that was kind my first idea, hey, maybe should create product. So I had the idea and I went to Google and typed in program and I found a company in the United States a program company and I posted the idea. I said, I want to create a program to brand files so when you open the file, it shows your ad and then it shows the file. I got a quote back from this programming company for $5,000, and for me, at the time, my wife was making less than $1,000 a month. I was like, thats six months of our income for this idea that I think might be a good idea.
David:
Yeah.
Russell:
We just couldnt justify it, obviously; so at that time, I actually went and I switched my major in college to Computer Information Systems. I said, I think this is a good idea. I want to learn how to become a programmer so I can just program it. So I switched my major over, signed up for my first I cant remember if it was Java or C++, some kind of programming class and I went to class that day and I sat in there listening to the teacher talk and I was just like, this is a whole foreign language. Im not personally smart enough to figure this stuff out. I was sitting there so confused and I was frustrated. I remember we spent weeks and weeks trying to do little programs like make a clock, and I couldnt get my clock to tell the right time, and all sorts of problems. I was like, this is horrible. I hate programming. About that time, I read an article that somebody wrote I dont know who it was about who wrote it but they were talking about Armand Morin and they showed Armand and he had all these different software programs just like the ones I wanted. I was like, oh, these are so cool, and in there, somebody basically said that Armand doesnt know how to program, but he goes to places like Scriptlance.com and pays a programmer maybe $100 to develop a product for him, and then he goes and sells it.
I got so excited. I went to Scriptlance and I saw how it all worked and I went and posted my project up there, and like I told you before, the U.S. company quoted me $5,000 on it. So the quotes started coming back in and some guy says, Ill do it for $1,200, and I was like, oh, wow, thats a lot cheaper. Then somebody said for $300, and then $150, and you get all the way down to some guy named Cipri in Romania. He bid $20 on the project. I was like, Ive got $20. I can try this out. So I hired Cipri and I paid him the $20 and three days later he knocked out a product, gave it back to me, and it was amazing. It was everything that I ever dreamed of and more. It just did it perfectly. I gave him $100 bonus after that, so it cost me $120 to have my first product created and then I looked at all these peoples websites, I tried to copy theirs and I made a site to look a lot like Armand Morins site. I had someone create a software box like his and I just kind of copied his and put it up there and that was my first product. Thats the product I made $1,200 that first month selling.
David:
And how was traffic happening back then? Was it just how were you getting traffic to that?
Russell:
The only thing I knew about I read this book. This guy named Harvey Segal wrote a book that was called Forum Superprofit and it talked about how to use forums to market your business. It was really interesting when he talked about it. Basically, he said that people that congregate together based on similar beliefs and values and if you have a product, you should go and find the existing congregations of people that are out there and just put your message out in front of them. The forums are a great place. There might be 30,000 people in a forum all talking about a topic.

So I looked out there and I went to a bunch of internet marketing forums and started posting messages about just commenting on peoples posts and talking and asking questions. Then my signature file I had a link that said, New viral marketing software to brand your eBook, click here, or something like that. Every time I make a post, people see that little ad down there; and the first month, my $1,200 came from people seeing that ad, clicking on it, and buying it. What happened when I was in these forums and stuff, I started meeting a lot of people. I met Mike Filsaime, I met Gary Ambrose, I met a bunch of really big marketers while I was in this forum, and thats when we started doing joint ventures with each other and we started growing our businesses at the same time. Thats how my whole business started was with forums. In fact, Im in a lot of different niches. I have a product on how to make potato guns and theres a potato gun forum out there with 10,000 members in it. Theres forums on any weird topic that you want, but its a great place to start getting traffic from initially.
David:
Yeah, thats kind of cool, you said you met with Mike Filsaime and such. It must have been interesting to go through that whole process with them, like youre just guys checking out a forum, getting into it and you both are now multi-millionaires. Thats pretty cool how that process I dont know I think its interesting.
Russell:
It was really fun. In fact, it was fun because me and Mike were friends back when he was still working the car business and I was still going to school, so hed be at work all day and Id be at school all day, and then at nighttime wed get on Instant Messenger and wed share ideas back and forth and check out what this guys doing; check out what this guys doing, and Mike and II think a lot of it when we were first getting started, we spent a lot of time on Instant Messenger sharing ideas and that kind of stuff. So its been really fun to watch his business grow as well as it has been a lot of fun.

David:
Yeah, thats awesome. So, how many websites are you running now?
Russell:
Oh, man, weve got hundreds of websites in quite a few different niches. We do a lot of stuff in theres a lots of internet marketing and small business. I think we probably have over 100 in the internet marketing industry. We do a lot in the diet and fitness and those kind of markets. Ive got two big companies ones called Combat Fitness, and ones called Body Evolution. Ive got a local search engine company. I have a lot of different website and niches as well, but the core ones, my big profit centers, are still the internet marketing industry.
David:
You guys are set up in an office, arent you?
Russell:
Yeah, weve got an office. Im driving to the office right now. Weve got a big office. Right now we have between 70 and 80 employees in house in Boise, Idaho, and weve got another 5 or 6 that are overseas in different spots. Primarily a lot of guys go the route of outsourcing everything. I did that initially, but it got really hard for me to manage and maintain. Its like I went the opposite direction because I opened an office and hire staff, bring on people, and we built a really big company here in Boise that they run everything for me. Its kind of nice. Next week Im going to a Tony Robbins event for seven days and Ill be gone and Ill probably make more money when Im not there than when I am there. Its kind of nice to build a team of people that can help run your business for you.
David:
Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, Ive done work without outsource stuff and sometimes it can be like a complete nightmare, so having an in-house team and people that you can talk to in person and that youve hired and screened to make sure that theyre more its like a higher-quality work and its much more efficient, so I can imagine that that must be really nice to just let . . .

Russell:
The collaboration and synergy when you get a whole lot of people in a room with ideas; if you have a problem, you can walk in an office and get a fix really quick, as opposed to instant messaging them for 30 minutes trying to explain what the problem is.
David:
And hoping that theyre actually there to respond to you.
Russell:
Yeah, if I see your point now.
David:
Yeah, there are some pros and cons. The fact that its cheap is pretty nice. So if you have a typical day if that exists what is that typical day?
Russell:
I dont know how much you know about me and my story, but I used to wrestle in college and just recently started I plan to start wrestling again, so we just opened up a wrestling club here in Boise, Idaho. Ive actually hired the Olympic training wrestling coach got him to quit his job at the Olympic Training Center and move to Boise to train us, and so far weve got a 9 guys for the team for the Olympics to move to Boise and start training with the coach and with me.
David:
Youre training for the Olympics, arent you?
Russell:
Yeah, were training for the Olympics 2012.
David:
Awesome.

Russell:
So my day now is a little screwed up. Basically, I get up about 5:45 in the morning and a early morning practice at 6:45 in the morning, so I wake up in the morning and have my green shake drink breakfast with my dad and drive to practice. From 6:30 until about 8:30 or 9:00, we wrestle really hard wrestling practice. Then I have to shower and get ready, drive over to the office. Then from 9:00 until 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon, Im at the office doing work and doing meetings and managing people, straining content, whatever is on tap for the day. By either 2:00 or 3:00, I drive back to the wrestling room. We have our second practice of the day and it goes from 2:00 or 3:00 until about 5:30-ish, and then when 5:30s done, then head home with the kids and then from 6:00 until about 9:00 or 10:00 three or four hours I get home and stay at home and play with my kids and have fun with them, and then about 10:00 the kids go to bed and my wife and I hang out and we read or watch movies or just talk or that kind of stuff. Thats kind of my day. Its a lot of fun.
David:
I think thats pretty cool that youve got the whole you intersplice the wrestling into the middle ofthats kind of what its all about, thought, isnt it? That you now have the option to you are running a full-sized business, but then you can also be doing youre doing your dream, which is the Olympics and the wrestling stuff.
Russell:
Exactly. The biggest problem I see with most business owners is that they get into business for a reason, like they want the freedom, they want the time with their family whatever it is and as soon as they get into it, its a very addicting business, so they get so much fun, they get into it, and it gets to the point where they are in business so they can be in business. I think thats a really, really sad thing. You lose sight of why you did this. When you were a little kid, you didnt say, I want to grow up and own a huge business. You said, When I grown up, I want to be a sky diver, or whatever your dream was; and so I encourage everyone and I hope my example I know a lot of our students have taken this and followed it, but use business as a means to an end. If its the end, thats a sad, sad life. Use it as a means

to get the things you really want in life. You get the freedom or whatever it might be. It was wrestling and time with my family those were really the reason I got into business to start with, and now Im kind of going back to those roots. One of our students, they launched their business about a year ago and its doing really, really well, but theyre doing usually $6,000 or $7,000 a week right now, and he actually came out to Boise a little while ago, and he said, Russell, youve really inspired me. What Im doing right now is Im actually putting my business all on autopilot because I decided I want to become an actor. That was always my dream when I was a kid, and I forgot about it. Now Im going to be an actor. He texted me about two weeks ago and he told me he got his first acting role in a movie as a police officer. So thats the exciting part. Dont lose sight of the dreams and things that are pushing you in this business. Dont lose sight of those things as the business starts to grow. Remember that the business should not be the end all be all. The business should be a tool that gets you to what you really want your dreams, your hopes, your desires whatever it might be.
David:
I think the concept of taking a step back sometimes and just remembering youve still got a life to live, you know?
Russell:
Yeah. Being in the office is not sort of life.
David:
Definitely. So, if you had to start over, is there anything that you would do differently?
Russell:
Yeah. In fact, its kind of fun because this year weve started like three other businesses and so I have had a chance to start over in different niches and different industries, so thats a great question because you look at it and its like, what am I doing different this time than the first time around.

The first time around, I didnt know I was just kind of trying to hustle and make some money, and I see a lot of especially young entrepreneurs they get in this state where they learn how to make some money and they start just doing that one trick and they turn over all these for the quick buck and they learn that one thing and they just do it over and over again. They make some money, but they never build a sustainable business. I think with the business Im building now, I spent a lot more time and Im not really probusiness model, you know, building a business plan and that kind of stuff. I like building a business model where you say, Okay, when I have a customer, where are they coming in? What are they going to do? Wheres it going to go? How can I scale this? Is this the kind of business that can. . .first off, I guess one of my goals, I try to make this a 6-figure business or do I want it to be a 8- or 9-figure business understanding that, and then from there building a business around that. Do you know what I mean?
David:
Yeah, definitely.
Russell:
I think a lot more time preparing it when we started our Body Evolution company, we spent a lot of time thinking about whats our unique advantage in the industry. We saw a lot of people out there selling eBooks and selling supplements and that kind stuff. I said, what makes us different than everybody else? So we build the whole business around a virtual coaching model where basically, we have a huge staff of personal trainers around the country who are doing phone sales and phone coaching and stuff like that. So whats cool about it we can look at how the marketplace and see all the other businesses that are out there that are doing supplements and doing eBooks and all that kind of stuff, and we can plug directly into any of these guys businesses. We can join venture partners with all of them because we strategically thought about it ahead of time. If we would have created an eBook or created a supplement like everybody else, that might kill all our chances of partnering it didnt make us unique in the industry and so, I guess

basically, its preparing a little bit more, figuring out what makes you unique, and then building a business after youve kind of thought it through a little bit more what is the biggest thing I would have done different? I went through a lot of learning struggles along the way that I probably could have just bypassed had I I guess Id known a little bit more, but I also would have spent a little more time planning and getting ready for it.
David:
Yeah, and I think thats the kind of difference between as much as youre saying youre not really into business plans and whatnot, thats still very much thebasic business 101, I feel like, is the planning process and understanding the long-term scalability, the fact that youre overarching the entire industry, as opposed to just being like, Oh, Im Russell Brunson. Heres my eBook about getting fit. Its more like, Heres my company that runs it. It obviously much more scalable; so having those thoughts in mind when youre creating it, puts you at a huge advantage. Thats probably why youre doing so well is that youve been able to do you know what Im saying? Youre building brands, as opposed to just a single product.
Russell:
Yeah, thats what a lot of people miss when they get started. We have a lot of students come through and thats the thing that I see that most of them miss is that their goal is to make money. They dont think about, I want to build a business and I want to make some money. Because of that, theyre jumping after the shiny object consistently, where if you start this thing and all of a sudden someone sends an email out about the greatest new thing and they jump to this thing, they jump to this thing. Theyre jumping trying to catch the all might dollar, as opposed to just sit down, lets think about this for a minute. Lets plan it out and make all of our decisions based on, does it fit inside this model? Theres a great book called Good to Great. I dont know if youve had a chance to read that.
www.ryanlee.com
David:
Not yet, but I was just at the bookstore yesterday, so I did see it there.
Russell:
Yeah, its definitely worth getting. It talks about in the history of America the businesses that went most businesses are good businesses and it talks about that the good is the beginning of the great, and what are the qualifications of a great business. They went through all of this time and said how many businesses went from good to great and what are the similarities between all of the businesses, and I think they found 9 or 11 businesses that had made the jump from a good business to a great business and broke out all off the things. One of the core things that all of these companies had is they called it a hedgehog concept. Theres a difference between a hedgehog and a fox. They said most businesses are like foxes. Were jumping from the quick and the swift. Theyre going to this, this, this and theyre jumping around. A hedgehog business if they have a hedgehog concept, hedgehogs are very slow and monotonous, but they figure out their route and they stick on it and they go and they go and they go. And it talked a little bit about defining what your hedgehog is in your business. When I was in my business five years ago, when we were only doing a quarter of million dollars

a year, I was pretty much like a fox. I was jumping here and there and there, and now we have a very solid hedgehog concept. Our goal in our businesses on the internet were generating leads. As soon as we generate a lead, we call on the phone and we sell them coaching. Thats our business, and if things dont fit in that business model, no matter how great or shiny or exciting they are, I cant do them because it pulls away. It does not give you the foundation you need for a great business. Reading that book is really understanding the hedgehog concept and defining it your company and then sticking to that no matter how great another opportunity is, thats how you can really go from a company doing a quarter of a million dollars a year to a company earning $10 million a year in a couple of years, is because youve got a solid goal, a pack youre going for, and youre just moving forwarding quickly.
David:
And I think thats a concept to take away from what you just said as well, was that youre reading the books, but youre obviously implementing what theyre saying. It doesnt make sense to read a book about how to make a great business and then just completely ignore it. Thats obviously a big part is taking the action.
Russell:
Definitely. Implementation is key.
David:
To go with that book concept, if you have three must-have resources for living the dotcom lifestyle, could you name three specific resources?
Russell:
Three resources like tools or ?
David:
Whatever would be most important to you either books, tools. It doesnt have to be anything

specific. Whatever works, really.
Russell:
I think the most important resources I guess if I could think of three resources I had to have, the first would be a team of people that I think I can work with. For me, I think you need a techy guy, you need a guy graphics guy, and you need an entrepreneur. So if youre the entrepreneur, then youve got yourself figured out. If not, you need to find an entrepreneur. If youre a tech guy, go find an entrepreneur. Thats kind of the core things. A team of people would be the first thing so its not just you as a one-man show. Thats something that I wish I had done earlier, was find a team of people that I could work with. The second resource would be a phone. As dumb as that is, it still amazes me that people think business is done on the internet. For me, stuff happens on the internet, but the business deal happens on the phone. If I was on the phone three or four hours a day, I can set up two or three deals that are going to make me $100,000 that month really quickly. So the telephone is people rely so much on email. My employees drive me crazy. Theyll send emails out to people. Im like, emails do not work. Do not send out emails ever. You need to pick up the phone. In fact, if you look at my business now, about 75% of my employees are phone salesmen. Were on the phone calling people and talking to them and that kind of stuff. I think the third resource Id have is an auto-responder. If you dont have a way to build a list and fault that list and that kind of thing, then youre pretty much useless. The only sellable asset in a business is the list. In fact, I buy a lot of businesses and it makes me laugh because these guys will have these products that have made a ton of money, but the products going to die. Ill come in and buy their business for $5,000-$10,000 and theyre like, this things worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Ill say your products, your assets, arent worth anything. The only tangible sellable asset is your customer list, and Ill buy your customer list for a lot more than Ill buy your old, outdated product, you know?
David:
Yeah.

Russell:
They dont really realize that ahead of time, but then I am buying it and I can take that product and because I have a list, I can go and I can sell a whole bunch of them. Do you know what I mean? So, the list, I think, is the third thing I would really have. So team, the people, a phone, and an auto-responder for your list.
David:
And I think because the phone, that obviously people, its harder for someone to say no when youre speaking to them and they cant hide behind theyre obviously behind the phone, but its a whole I dont know, you can yell at someone on the phone. You cant yell through email.
Russell:
Yeah.
David:
Its kind of interesting, though, that you have so many salesmen. That must be like you said you have 75 people doing phone sales?
Russell:
Ive got about 40 sales guys on the phone.
David:
Man, thats wild. So if you could pinpoint and I love to use these three specific things but if you could pinpoint three mistakes that youve made and how we can learn from them, what would they be?
Russell:
Most of these will actually tie back to about three years ago right now. Three years ago right now, I was at my house, I was hanging lights and I was almost $200,000 in debt and freaking out and they were all because of stupid mistakes I made building my business.

So, stupid mistake number one is when I started growing, I thought, hey, I want some employees to help me work this thing out, so I what I did was I went and hired all of my buddies who had no experience, had no idea what they were doing, but they were really nice guys who I liked to hang out with, so I hired them all to come work for me. Huge mistake, and I cant believe how many other entrepreneurs do the same, so I talk to them about this. It was hard because my business, at the time, was just me and I would go and Id create a product, Id put together a promotion and make a bunch of sales. Wed make 30 to 40 grand. It was just my wife at that time. Wed have all this money and Id hand out for the next two or three months. Id be working on the next project and then when it was done, I launched it and make a big surge of money. Well, I went and hired literally, overnight I hired 10 guys to come work for me, and whats interesting about employees is that they want to get paid every two weeks no matter if youve made money or not. They dont really care. They just want to get paid every two weeks. So wed launch a program, make a bunch of money, Id pay everyone and two weeks later theyd come back and want to get paid again, and Im like, we havent made any more money. Theyre like, well, we need our paychecks. So Id go and Id have to hustle and Id create another product, launch it, roll it out, make a bunch more money, pay the payroll, and Id have like a day to rest and then all of a sudden, oh my gosh, payrolls happening next week again.
David:
Yeah.
Russell:
It got to this point where I was just spinning my wheels and these guys, they know what theyre doing, and because I was working so hard just to be able to make enough money to cover payroll, they were just kind of hanging out in my office and didnt know what to do. Theyre playing solitaire or talking. Theyd be asking me, what do you want me to do? And Im like, leave me alone because Ive got to do this thing or Im not going to be able to pay payroll next week. It created a huge, vicious cycle so I had to take out credit lines to pay payroll and dug myself in the whole almost $200,000 and that really scared me. I almost had to lay everybody

off. So that was my first mistake. Hiring very, very slowly and second off is hiring people who know what theyre doing. Dont bring in people you like, necessarily. Go and find people who have the skill set you need and then bring those people in. In Good to Great, it talks about the key is finding the right people and then putting them on the right seats on the bus. Its not just going out and finding people you like and trying to be like, Youre going to be a copy writer. Heres a book. Go work a copy. Literally, what I was doing, youre going to be my PPC guy. Heres a book. Go read about PPC and lets go do it. Thats literally what I was doing. Its going the other way and saying, Hey, youre a good PPC guy. I want to bring you on my team. Im going to give you a percentage of the profits. Im not going to be able to pay you your percent of the profits and build that direction and build slowly without all that overhead and the costs that you can get in trouble with. Thats the first thing. The second thing is that the lifeblood of any business is continuity. If you dont have continuity, you are dead. That was the reason why I got all this debt. I had no continuity. My money was coming from these one-off promotions we were doing every two or three months that paid for the bills. Two things came out of me hanging Christmas lights and both of them are in my two other answers. One of them was continuity. I was hanging Christmas lights and I was listening to some mp3s of a seminar and during the seminar, he was talking about continuity and that kind of stuff. We decided to launch a continuity program. That was the first thing. The third one is having backend sales. If you dont have backend salesif you actually look at my company now, why 40 of our people are all backend phone salesmen, because thats where your profit and your business comes. My goal is to break even online. Everything I make online, try to break even with, and then on the phones is where I make all my profit and my money. So I kind of watch that process. Hanging up Christmas lights and stressed out over almost $200,000 in debt, I had no idea what

to do. I was listening to mp3s that talked about continuity and talked about backend phone sales and that kind of stuff. So that next day, one of my friends that worked for me came over and I basically told him, Hey, I havent told any of your guys this yet, but Im almost $200,000 in debt. I dont know how were going to pay for Christmas. I dont know how were going to pay payroll next week. Im stressed out. I dont know what to do and I dont want to put you guys out of a job the week before Christmas, but my credit lines are maxed out. I have no idea what to do. I said, Ive got two things that I think might work, and I explained continuity and the backend phone sales and he used to work at call center and so he said, Okay, Russell, lets do this. The next day, we came into the office and we mapped out an entire like, if you were to buy a $5,000 program from me, what would be the ideal, best thing we could possibly create? And we designed this program that was just amazing. It would be worth $20,000$30,000 and sell it for $5,000. That was step number one. Step number two is we created a continuity program. Ours was a monthly newsletter. I took an old product off the shelf that was a free DVD and I put up a little website that sells letters literally a page and a half long that said, Hey, theres a free DVD. Send for this DVD, youre going to get a free month to our newsletter and youre going to get a free coaching call with one of our coaches. That was the entire sales letter. We sent out a whole bunch of emails and in the first week, we sold almost 5,000 of those DVDs, which is awesome, but we didnt make any money off it because they were paying shipping and handling and theres nothing happening. So what happens is, we had my one friend and then two or three other people in my office, we just kind of trained them really quickly. We said everyone who bought one of those CDs, call them on the phone and tell them about this program. Its $5,000, and try to sell these guys on it. That first week, they sold 10 people the $5,000 program, so thats $50,000 in cash that first week. That covered Christmas, that covered payroll, that covered everything, and boom, backend sales was now a part of my business that I love.

The second thing is we sold 5,000 people on this free CD and I think about 1400 of them had taken us up on the continuity program, which was $40 a month. So 30 days later, it was like January 15th or whatever, we had over 1,000 people billed the $40 a month, which was like $40,000, and that covered payroll; it covered everything. The next month after that, another $40,000 got billed, and now I had cash flow in my business that covered payroll, covered all the things like that, and I was back into my business which gave us the ability to have profit, and boom, now we had an actual business that was sustainable. We could grow and we could develop and have something big. Since then that was about three years ago thats been our core concept - continuity and a backend and thats how we built our entire business since then. So Id say thats kind of the three things be careful who youre hiring, make sure you build some kind of continuity into your business model, and third, have backend sales in place. Otherwise, thats really where youre making your profits is in the back end.
David:
Thats awesome. Im a business geek, so when you were talking about frontend and backend and that kind of stuff, I like it a lot. You obviously are very grounded in real business, which is, again, like I said before, which is why youre doing so well. So, its very cool. Okay, so last two questions. This is kind of going back a little bit, but what was your defining moment that you knew that this was the way to go, that you were like, All right, internet marketing, done. Thats it. Were doing it. Thats my life, my future.?
Russell:
My future; good question. I think for me, it was before I ever made any actual money. I think it was the defining time, I was going through and the light bulb went off in my head and I was like, oh, my gosh, this is really cool. I totally spent a year and a half going out there and I had been looking at all these things. I was trying a bunch of programs, nothing really worked. Ill tell you a story that goes along with this. I read this article, and I dont know who wrote the article, but when I read the article, it just

clicked in my head. It basically talked about who out here believes all these people telling how they made $30,000 in an hour and $5,000 today and all this kind of stuff. You may not believe it, but the reality is its really true. This is how it works. All these gurus, all these people, they build up a big email list. So lets say they have 100,000 people on an email list and they create a new product and they sell it for $50 and they write an email and send it out to 100,000 people and lets say that 1% of the people to buy, boom, theyve made $30,000. This kind of thing really happens and when he described it that way, I was like, oh, my gosh. Thats amazing. If I had a list, then all Id have to do is send out an email and you make money whenever you want. Thats what kind of clicked in my head. Im going to tell you one of my how I screwed up with this concept because most things I do, I screw them up at least once or twice before I get them right. So I get the idea and Im like, okay, this is cool. So I went online and I went and I tried to buy an email list. I found this site I think it was like, spamfreeemailaddresses.com, and I was like, cool, spam-free email addresses. I dont want to be a spammer, so these are spam-free. I bought like two or three million names off this email list and went back home and I was so excited, and I told my wife, were going to be rich. By morning time, we will be rich and she said, Okay, so I can quit my job? And Im like, yeah, I promise. You can quit your job by morning. Well test it tonight and well see. So I set up this email program I bought and plugged in all three or five million email addresses and wrote a little tiny email selling a product I created. It was only a $5 product. I didnt even create a product yet, I just had an idea for a product, so I sold it. I queued up the thing, I clicked send, and I went to bed that night. We were on dial-up modem. It was super, super slow, so eight hours later, we woke up in the morning. I looked at it. We had sent out about 6,000 emails overnight and my wife said, I need to get on the phone. I said okay, so I paused it, unplugged the modem, plugged back in her phone. She picks up the phone and the phone rings. I pick it up and it was my internet service provider and they were yelling at me, for the last three hours, weve got 24 spam complaints

against you, blah, blah. I said no, no, I dont have spam because these are spam-free email addresses I bought, and they started laughing and I told them how I got them and they were like, thats the definition of spam, what you just did. I was like, oh. So they shut down my internet service provider. Everything disappeared and I was bummed out. I went to school that day and I was kind of depressed. I couldnt check my status because the internet was shut down at my house now. So I went to school, went to the computer lab, logged on, looked at it, and what was amazing was from the 6,000 emails I had sent out, I had sold about 20 products for $5 apiece, and I thought, oh, my gosh, this worked. The process worked. I did it incorrectly, but the process worked. I was like, if I could figure out a way to actually build a real list thats my own, then Im not going to get in trouble for spamming, then I can see this whole thing actually working over and over again. Thats when I started building my own list. When you have your own list, life becomes really easy. Its not hard to make money online.
David:
No.
Russell:
That was the big epiphany, was the whole list thing. When I started that, I was like, this is not a hard business when you have a list.
David:
Thats funny. I can imagine the dial-up struggles. I can remember those times, too. It was not fun. We got two phone lines in our house to make sure that we could actually call people while we were on the internet. It was funny. So to wrap everything up, our last question is what is next for you and your business?
www.ryanlee.com

Russell:
Thats good. I think next for us with any business and if you read anything from Michael Gerber from E-myth, the goal of any business is to be able to create a business you can sell. If you cant sell your business in the end, then congratulations, youve just bought it. I hope you really, really like it a lot. So for me, right now, a couple of things; first off, we are structuring our business into a way where someday Im not looking for it quick or anything, but building your business a way that you can sell. So a big part of it is structuring our business now to the point where its a sellable asset. And then second off, is figuring how to leverage your assets to grow more. What I mean by that is, for example, two years ago even after last year our call center we had, we were just calling my own customers. We call my customers, some coaching, were doing really well with it, but we were limited by how many leads I could create. So last December, I called Mike Filsaime, and he had kind of been starting his own call center and stuff like that. I said, Hey, Mike, Ive got all these guys. Its Christmas time. Were running a little bit low on leads. If you want, Ive got my desk guys that can start calling your leads and see what happens. If it doesnt go good, thats fine. If it does work good, then well see what happens. So hes like, Well, heres 10,000 customers that weve already called. Weve already pulled all the money out of them that we can. If you can do anything with them, then that would be cool. So we took his 10,000 customers and during Christmas season, which is traditionally in the call center industry is the worst time of year because people arent looking to spend $10,000 on a coaching program. Theyre trying to buy Christmas presents.
David:
Yeah.
Russell:
So not normally a good time. We took Mikes leads and we called them all and we just crushed it. We did amazing during Christmas time, and I thought, wow, that was really cool. So after I

called Mikes leads, I called some other buddies and said, hey, do you have any customers? Let me call them and then started that over. And now theres about 10 or 15 guys that we call their leads and now we have leads whether Im creating leads or not. We still have leads coming in from all these other guys who are doing product launches and driving traffic and made my business point where I can scale it and grow it without me needing to be involved. I can go and sign up with a lead provider and boom, I can hire 10 more guys because that lead providers got enough leads to handle 10 more people and then I can really expand my business. So for me, its really making my business not where its dependent on me, but its where were now service for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 other guys and that way if I want to sell my business or I want to take a break and not keep producing leads, I can stop producing leads, which allows 20, 30 other lead providers who are developing leads. It really takes a lot of the pressure and the stress off of me and gives me the ability to grow a lot faster with a lot less risk.
David:
Thats awesome, and it sounds very much like the thing you were talking about before with the Body Evolution, thats what it is?
Russell:
Yep.
David:
How youre plugging into each one of those personal trainers.
Russell:
Right.
David:
Its the same thing. Youre becoming the overarching internet-marketing thing that plugs into other gurus, and then that way you can have a much bigger reach in the industry as opposed to just Hi, Im Russell Brunson, heres my products.

Russell:
Exactly. Anytime you can figure out a way where its not you thats responsible for the heavy lifting where you can tie it to other businesses Mark Joyner calls it Integration Marketing. If you can figure out ways to interject other people, it makes your job so much easier.
David:
And youre systematizing everything.
Russell:
Exactly, yeah. When we were doing Body Evolution, I was looking at my current business and said, how can I replicate that in the fitness industry?
David:
Thats awesome. I like that a lot. Thank you so much for doing this interview with us.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #26

Ryan Deiss
Interview with Ryan Deiss

David:
Were you an entrepreneur from the start?
Ryan:
From the start of when? Like since I have been a kid and stuff like that?
David:
Yeah.
Ryan:
I was that kid who, when all my friends were watching Saturday morning cartoons, I would watch infomercials instead because I was kind of fascinated by the process. I had a buddy of mine who really got into Origami and he would make all these crazy Origami things I remember thinking, man, I could sell that. He would make Origami and I literally went door to door selling these weird Origami figures. Im sure it freaked out all the neighbors. So Ive always been kind of entrepreneurial. I always saw myself as wanting to own my own business and for me, I think one of the things thats helped me a lot is I never really separated starting a business from selling and I always knew that was an important part in something that Ive always done and Ive tried to get better at. So I guess the short answer is yes, and even when I went to collegeI went to college and got my degree, but I always knew in the back of my mind that I was going to own my own business. I dont know where it came from. I dont come from an entrepreneurial family, necessarily. Its just that Ive always kind of wanted to do my own thing, so for me that was always what I wanted to do.
David:
Have you ever had a job, out of curiosity?
Ryan:
Yeah, yeah. I got a job straight out college. I paid my way through college and so I always had jobs when I was in college, and I interned at a financial services company, and I got a job at

the financial services company right when I graduated. They were kind enough to take me on even though I was just a recently graduated college kid. And it was fine as far as the job went. Because it was in financial services, I was relatively free to do what I wanted to do as long as I was generating clients and generating business. I knew pretty quicklyactually, we had about two months of training and for part of this training I had to fly to St. Louis and it was while I was at training that I knew that this whole real world job thing wasnt for me and probably the internet marketing online business thing was because I had actuallyjust let me backtrack. I had actually started my online businesses while I was in college. So I did that to make a little bit of extra money, but I still felt likeI got married right after school, so I felt like I needed to get a secure job and I would work for awhile to make a secure income and then eventually I would quit my job and do my own business. When I graduated from college, I was doing between $6,000 and $10,000 a month through my little internet businesses and I didnt realize that that was a lot of money. I assumed that adultswhen you graduated as adults they got jobs and after a couple of years they were all making $200,000$300,000 a year. That was the bubble that I was in and it was fortunate because if somebody had told me that starting this little business making $6,000$10,000 a month thats great. If somebody would have told me that was a lot, then I probably would have kind of stayed in that little zone.Not realizing that was a lot, I kind of pressed forward. So anyway, getting back to my story I had been making $6,000$10,000/month. Kind of my last semester of college is when things took off and I started making pretty good money. Then I graduated in May of 2003. I got married the weekend after I graduated and I started my job three weeks later after we got back from our honeymoon. So here it is, its the summer of 2003. Im making $6,000$10,000/month $10,000 on a great month, usually around $6,000 and I had been for over six months now, and I go to training the first month that Im taking the job, I go to training and part of the training was theyd bring in these big producers. You know, guys who work for the company whod made a lot of money

for themselves kind of to pep us up and to motivate us. One of the guys was like, If you kill yourself and you prospect and you work really hard and you do everything for your clients and you give them your phone number and you become their personal concierge, and this and this and that, hes like, If you do this, then you can be me and if you work really hard for four or five years, you too can make $250,000 a year. I kind of started laughing because probably at first I thought he was joking and then I realized that no, he was dead serious. He made $250,000/year; and then I was further kind of crushed to find out that when he said he made $250,000/year, thats what he made gross. That was his gross production. He only got to keep 40% of that, so really he made about $125,000 a year. I kind of looked at my business stuff and Im like, gosh, if I can make a good month a normal month I would be there right now. Maybe I should focus a lot more on these little internet business.So yeah, I did have a job, but I realized pretty early on that that wasnt going to be the way for me.
David:
Out of curiosity and if this is too personal, you cannot answer it , but growing up, when you were kind of in a well-off family?
Ryan:
No, my dad was an electrician. My moms a school teacher. I didnt go without. I mean, Im not going to pretend like I was when the video game systems came out, I got it for Christmas, but you know, youre a kid; you dont really know whats poor and whats not. I remember, looking back now, I had friends who were fairly wealthy, but no, we would probably be considered middle class. I knew there was always kind of this burning desire for me, though. I just wanted more not because I wanted to have a lot of stuff. Even now, I dont have that much stuff. I dont have that extravagant of a lifestyle. As a kid, my favorite comic book character was Bruce Wayne, not Batman. Batman was cool. He was okay. I liked Bruce Wayne because Bruce Wayne was a millionaire. His super power was money. I dont know why, as a little kid maybe it means Im messed up but my parents but Ive

got very humble parents who are not money grubbers by any stretch of the imagination, but when people ask me what do you want to do when you grow up? I would say I want to be a millionaire because thats what Bruce Wayne was. Bruce Wayne was a millionaire. I never really knew how he made his money, but it looked like he was having fun and so that was what I wanted. I dont know where it really came from. It was just kind of one of those things that was part of me from an early age.
David:
Your perspective on money as a kid is very interesting. It sounds like it would be somebody who already has an obscene amount of money and just assumes that the regular but it sounds like you just I dont know.
Ryan:
Yeah, I guess I thought, growing up, that my parents were very rich. Again, not because we had a lot of stuff, it just I knew we never really went without. I dont know why I had such a whacked-out view of money. It seemed like I assumed that everybody made all this cash.
David:
It clearly worked out for you and I think theres a lot of people trying to get started in the world of marketing and entrepreneurship and selling. They have weird views of money in the sense that its a bad thing and they shouldnt be having it. So I mean, you kind of broke down that barrier. That barrier was kind of not even existent.
Ryan:
Yeah, and the problem isnt so much that people I do agree that thats an issue. People think, Oh, moneys a bad thing and I dont deserve it, and so a lot of times theyll self-sabotage. I think a more prevalent problem, because its less obvious, is the person who thinks that everybody out there is broke and so its wrong from me to try to sell them something. My attitude, again, my assumption going into it everybody around me is loaded. And really, if you think about it in the ground scheme of things, we are. Emperors, centuries ago, were using the bathroom in pots. Stuffs changed. Weve got it

pretty good. I had the privilege (and I will say privilege even though it was pretty miserable) my freshman year of college, the youth group that I was involved in my high school youth group they decided to do a trip to Haiti and so I had the opportunity to go down to Haiti and work with some of the folks out there and do some building and just kind of work with them and help them out with some stuff. So I saw Haiti back before all this horrible earthquake stuff happened. I mean, it was a pretty miserable place. It was incredibly impoverished, but you saw the spirit of the people. They were just wonderful, generous people. I remember thinking then because this was whenever I was starting to really think about starting my business and some of these notions of is money bad, is money good? Thats when I was really starting to initially wrestle with that, and I looked around at these people and here I was a broke college kid. I mean, it was my first semester of college. I was broke. My parents could not afford to pay for school, so I got loans and scholarships and grants and stuff like that and a part-time job. So by most standards, I was impoverished, by American standards. At the same time, the moment I landed in that country, I was probably in the top 10% as well just by the few hundred bucks I had in my bank account. That kind of hit home for me relatively quickly, having that realization that, gosh, a three- or four-hour plane ride away from me are these people and especially now, I just really, really hurt for those people down there after the earthquake thats really poverty. When your home is a piece of cardboard leaned against a pile of garbage, and that was literally some of the peoples homes, thats poverty. So for me to feel guilty about, oh, its good if I make $30,000 a year, but its evil if I make $100,000, and its super evil if I make $1 million a year. Thats a really, really slippery slope that I think youve got to be careful.
David:
The whole concept is its all relevant when it comes to its just funny. Thats a good perspective, for sure. So youre running these two businesses as a college student, do you mind if I ask what exactly where these sites?
Ryan:
When I was in college, my business then I was doing a lot of lead generation and so I had a lot

of little bitty niche businesses and I had some information products businesses. But mostly, because I didnt know how to create products, I would license software so other people had software products, and so I would license and sell different kinds of software. This was back when pop ups were huge, and so I sold pop-up blockers. There were these types of annoying ads. I forget what theyre called now like IP adds that people could force through. There was some hole in the original version of Windows XP where people could force these pop up ads on your computer, and I sold a piece of software that would block those ads as well. And again, I wasnt a programmer, so my model then was just find the people who were programmers and I would either work out a deal with them or hey, sell me a white label version of your software for a few hundred bucks, or let me just sell it and well split the money. So I had kind of the software side of the business, which I eventually stopped doing that because I found I couldnt do support because Im not a very technical person. I just knew how to write decent sales copy and find and target markets where there was a clear and obvious need; and this was in the early days of Pay Per Click, so Pay Per Click traffic was so incredibly inexpensive.
David:
Oh, yeah.
Ryan:
So that was one side, and then I also did some Search Engine Optimization work and I would drive traffic into I would build these big lists and I would broker leads to other people. At one point, we were in almost 500 different markets and I sold off a lot of those businesses. A lot of them dried up when Pay Per Click costs went, but that was what I did in college. We were just starting and cranking out these new business left and right.
David:
When you say, we was it you and your friends, or was it you and hired people?
Ryan:
Me and hired people. I figured out outsourcing relatively quickly because I was such a nontechnical person, so I knew I had to get somebody to help me with stuff. So fairly on, I found

Elance and sites like those and I found some programmers and people like that who I could rely on. Yeah, so I guess I use we kind of it was just me in my apartment doing a lot of this stuff.
David:
Well, yeah. When did you kind of make that jump into internet marketing? Was there something that opened up the world, that was kind of like, Holy shit, theres this whole thing out there for me. Theres the whole internet for me to market on, or was it just like, you were just like, Oh, yeah, the internet. Ill sell something on there.
Ryan:
My original exposure because I went to school at the University of Texas in Austin, and kind of everybody was talking about Michael Dell and how he had started Dell Computer Corporation out of his dorm room in Jester Dormitory, which is across the street from the dorm that I lived in my freshman year. So there was all the people talking about it and this was in the early days of the dotcom boom, so there was a lot of buzz. I knew guys that I went to school with who got part-time internships at dotcom companies in Austin that got funded and then everybody was paying people in stock. I remember I had one buddy who was literally an intern, but in being an intern, they gave him a little bit of stock. They got funded and went public, and he was able to at one point his stock I dont think he ever cashed it in, because Im sure it was just option but I think he told me at one point his stock was worth like thirty-something thousand dollars, yet he was a part-time intern. That was when I got a sense of this whole internet thing being out there, and that was when I really I needed a job anyway, so I started bumming around and looking for different jobs and I got a job at an Austin dotcom and it was a company that they said they did email marketing. Basically what they did was they harvested email addresses and spammed people.
David:
Oh, okay.

Ryan:
But in 1999, spam was not it certainly wasnt illegal, and really they would actually do targeted spamming, so they would go into a forum for a fashion-related forum and harvest all of the email addresses out of this forum and then they would basically spam people for In Style Magazine. People didnt get it. Obviously a lot of models have changed and eventually that company went out of business for obvious reasons. But I did see the power because I would write some of the emails for them. I would create some of the landing pages and I saw the power of these guys sending out emails and money coming in, and that was why I got into early on, I saw the value in building lists. That was the crest of business and it wasnt until, like I said, I graduated in May of 2003. I started my job that summer, and I worked at that job because I just felt guilty like I was hoping they would fire me, and they didnt. They were so nice and I really still have a lot of people who were there because I mean they took a lot of chances with me and I didnt I just felt guilty quitting, basically, is the short story. But eventually, by about December, I had had enough and that was when I quit and in January of 2004, that was when I got serious and I started focusing on the business, and that was when kind of a normal month was between $12,000 and $15,000, and that was when I really, really, really got serious. By got serious I mean that was when I did full-time. But now for 2004 and 2005, I was living the internet lifestyle. I didnt realize how good I had it. I was playing golf three days a week. I was making great money, and I wasnt doing I wasnt working that hard. And then in 2006, I decided, okay, this is my year. Im going to blow this thing up. By the end of 2005, I was in almost 500 different markets and in 2006, I was like, this is my year. Were going big time. I wanted to take home $1 million, and in 2006, I actually made more money, but kept less. So that was when I learned, whoa, I need to actually learn a little bit about this whole business thing. I kind of let overhead get out of control and all that crazy stuff.
David:
I want to ask you more about that. I want to ask you about the dotcom boom as well because thats one of things that people dont mention. So tell me, overhead got out of control; when did you make the transition? Because I mean, youre kind of in the I hate the word guru, but

youre kind of in the internet marketing guru space now. How did you make that transition? When did you kind of move up into that position?
Ryan:
Yeah, that was completely unintentional. Im actually doing my best right now to get out of it. In the early days of this when I first started, I was in college, and nobody was teaching about this stuff. It was just a handful of folks and around that same time, there were guys like Armand Morin and John Reese and Frank Kern, and all these guys who kind of started finding in the middle, and so we sort of found each other at these different events and through guys like Jonathon Mizel, you know, people who a lot of us owe a lot of success to, who have now kind of gone onto theyre not like dead, but theyve gone on to better things and better places. I didnt want to say, hes gone on to a better place. He hasnt died. But that was kind of where I would just they kind of went into kind of the guru space and teaching a lot of this stuff and I was doing it and was making good money doing it. That was when Armand started doing his big seminars and I would go as an attendee and it was fun. Then one day somebody asked me if I would speak in the event and talk about some of the stuff that I was doing, and the ego side of me took over and I said, Sure, yeah, Ill do that, because I was seeing all of these guys who were out there teaching it, and I knew they werent doing it. So the ego side of me said I can teach it better than them, and I should be the one teaching it if Im the one whos actually doing it. So that was when I kind of got into a little bit more speaking. And then when I spoke, people wanted to buy stuff to learn, so then I started doing some coaching programs, and the coaching programs got turned into products, and then people signed up for my lists, and then before I knew it, I felt guilty saying no to speaking gigs, and I think in 2008 I spoke 10 or 12 times and travelled a ton. It was cool at first and its kind of a nice, fun ego stroke to get up there on stage and have everybody tell you, Wow, that was great, and all that stuff, but Im over it. I cut the speaking way, way back in 2009 and Im speaking none in 2010. I have no speaking gigs at all, and Im really getting back to the doing of business. Getting up there and taking a couple of years to teach was fun. The great thing about teaching

is it forces you to systemize things youre doing, but when you explain Ill do a lot of stuff out of instinct, but when I have to explain it and break it down to somebody else, it really forces me to come up with checklists and think about sequence and order. So it has been very, very beneficial, but the down sides to it are definitely there. So the guru business was definitely an unintentional turn in the business that will be corrected.
David:
So tell me these downsides that you speak of.
Ryan:
Well, one of the downsides to the guru business is that I dont have as much privacy as I would like. I mean, if would have used a pen name from the beginning, I wouldnt mind as much, but having people talk about you, having family members saying, Why is this person bashing you on your blog? I dont know. You know, I dont want to have to explain that stuff. Ive got people that post photos of my house and stuff like that on their blog. I mean, that stuffs not cool. Its kind of all of the downside of being a celebrity, with none of the upside. I would never go anywhere and anybody would recognize me and Id get seated at a nice restaurant. Theres no upside whatsoever, but because were such a celebrity-obsessed market its such a celebrity-obsessed culture when you put yourself out there and you become a public individual, and with the internet and with social media, if I go and speak in a group if I go and speak at a dozen events and all of them have between 400 and 800 people, not big events. Again, Im not sitting here trying to pretend like Im a real celebrity. Im not. But to a very, very, very small segment of the population, they know who I am and with the internet the great thing about the internet is that everybody has a voice. And the bad thing about the internet is that everybody has a voice. Just losing some of the aspects of private life, I like my little niche businesses, but I publish other peoples content because I get to keep all the money, but I dont have to be the face of it. Not the house that I live in now, but the house I lived in before, I remember one time a neighbor came up to me and they had found me and they wanted to ask me about starting an

online business and Im like, oh, man, my pinkys going to talk to you about starting an online business. So theres those downsides and its also just a distraction. Again, I actually do make more money doing this than I do teaching it, but teaching it takes up way more time than the doing it because when you teach it, you are the product and so theres not as much leverage there. Sometimes the downside is just the lack of leverage and the loss of privacy, but privacy, it is what it is. Privacy is kind of a myth in this day and age anyway.
David:
Yeah. Its kind of interesting to get your perspective on all this because I talked to Ryan himself about the guru scene. So tell me you just said that you make more money doing it than teaching it. A lot of people I dont want to get too into it, but I want to just kind of quickly brush on kind of the state of the guru section and the thing you mentioned about being a celebrity to a small group. Thats really funny because people would you know at the seminars, and you go outside and no one has a freaking clue who you are.
Ryan:
Yeah, thats the way it is.
David:
So you said that you make more money doing it than teaching it. Do you find that a lot of people, though, are [inaudible] because I feel like a lot of people, when they look at the guru market, theyll be like, Oh, hes just selling something because he knows he can make money selling it back to us, but not actually doing it himself, you know?
Ryan:
Sure, and a lot of the gurus are like that. I mean, Ive got some friends who they do make, now, they make all of their money teaching and not doing. And you know, I dont think that theres something inherently wrong with that because they did do it before and the stuff that theyre teaching still works. Now, when people go out there and they made a bunch of money using some loophole SEO or Pay Per Click strategy or some funky little e-Bay tactic and they made

$8,000 one month and they parlay that one good month for one good idea that doesnt even work anymore into a guru business, yeah, theres a problem with that. When I publish a product showing people, Hey, heres how we do FaceBook advertising, its because weve tested FaceBook advertising in at least half a dozen different markets selling physical hard goods, information products, continuity programs. Weve gone out there and done up our own tests, and so I can speak authoritatively on it, and in those cases, creating those kinds of products, again, because they force us to systemize things, thats fine. I dont mind doing that and Im not going to lie. I make very good money teaching. When I publish a product showing people how we do something, I make a lot of money that I can then invest in other business ideas. I make sure that we limit the exposure of that product so that it doesnt affect the overall effectiveness of that tactic and believe me, theres some things that we do in our business that I will never teach because they work too well and Im afraid that if a lot of people knew about it, that it would stop working. But in the cases where I can teach something and make money doing that and again, we also get the forced systemization and benefit some other people, Im more than happy to do that. But as far as the guru world and people who are out there and teaching money, I do take exception and I do have a problem with teachers who have never done, and I do think that unfortunately, the number of people who make more money doing than teaching, but who also teach, is a very, very, very, very, very small fraternityvery small fraternity.
David:
Yeah.
Ryan:
The number of people who teach and who have done and theyve done legitimately, thats also a quite small fraternity, but still those two groups, which to me represent the only real legitimate teachers, probably are less than 5% of the entire guru marketplace. So Ive got my friends and my buddies that I associate with because Ive known them, in some cases, for almost 10 years.

You take Armand Morin and you take John Reese and Frank Kern, some of these guys, Ive known them for 5, 6, 7 years. Weve got friendships that go back a long way and we associate and were buddies, and Im associated with them in being in that guru world, but because Im not a more public person, but I was friends with those guys before I had products in the guru space. I do think that, unfortunately, theres a lot of people out there teaching who have no real business teaching. Thats one of the reasons that Ive always respected Ryan so much is Ryan was one of those guys who went out there, he did it and still does it and he had a particular strategy that he was doing that he then decided to teach. Thats great. He has every right in the world to teach that. People absolutely should pay him money to learn that because hes proven it. Hes proven it multiple times.
David:
Oh, yeah.
Ryan:
But the Ryan Lees of the world are, unfortunately, few and far between.
David:
Yeah, and some of them are getting yeah, definitely. I was going to say some are getting hammered, too, Im sure with the whole Visa and Mastercard stuff as well.
Ryan:
Yeah, youre getting a lot of that. Thats going to be the theres a purging from the marketplace because of that. Googles made a lot of changes. The internet marketing guru make money from home kind of crowd Im not saying their days are numbered because that offer will always sell.
David:
Oh, yeah, of course.

Ryan:
Its like the get rich in real estate. The first person who bought a house, three weeks later there was some guy teaching everybody how to get rich doing what he did. Its such an easy sell and its crack and there will always be buyers for it and anytime theres always buyers, there will always be sellers. But I do think theres going to be quite a purging in the guru space this year and I think its absolutely needed.
David:
So tell me how you what do you see in terms of the future of internet marketing, in terms of the market place itself, and then also, obviously theres increasing regulations and rules and all that stuff, and theres some stuff thats going on in Washington about net neutrality as well. Thats kind of a different story. Where do you see this all heading?
Ryan:
Do you mean the teaching of internet marketing or the doing of internet marketing?
David:
Probably the doing.
Ryan:
The doing of internet marketing the internet is a medium. The internet is a medium just like TV is a medium and Dan Kennedy said this, whos one of my marketing mentors. Dan Kennedy said this probably 5, 6, 7 years ago and everybody told me he was a complete idiot. They said no, the internets completely different and yes, the internet is a more robust medium. The internet is a medium that allows for different forms of communication. Nevertheless, it is still a medium for distributing information, just like TV, just like radio was, just like print was, and just like all those medium, when they first came out, it was the wild, wild west and everybody and their dog was able to profit from them. If I were getting started today as a poor college kid, I dont know if I would have made it. I like to think I would. I like to think that if I were just getting started today, I know it would have been harder. For sure, it would have been harder. I like to think that had I failed the first few

times, I would have kept going and kept trying and kept working at it until I figured it out, but I dont know. I really dont because I was very fortunate and a lot of being successful is knowing when youve been lucky, and Ill admit I was very, very lucky to be born when I was born and to start using a computer and start considering business at that particular moment in history because I was one of the first people to start doing Pay Per Click advertising, which was the wild, wild west. We could generate traffic, tons of it perfectly targeted for nickels and dimes. It would be impossible to screw that up. There was no way that I could have screwed that up. Had I thoroughly sucked as a marketer and I actually spent a lot of money and a lot of time investing in my education but had I thoroughly sucked, I probably still would have figured it out. But thats no different than look at a more recent example with television infomercials. When the television infomercial concept first came into being, they were dirt cheap and anybody could put up a 30-minute infomercial spot on late night TV and make an absolute freaking fortune and so you know what happened? Everybody started buying up spots and making a lot of money and then the cable companies realized this, so they raised the rates, and the same thing that happens in every other forum of medium in the early days, everythings cheap and everybody makes money, and then more people come in, the price of that media goes up, and so not everybody can make money. Only the strong survive, and eventually it gets to the point where you only have your big, massive brand advertisers who can afford to spend. If you look at magazines, in most of your major national magazines, you dont see direct response style marketing. Youve got to go to a tighter niche-based magazine or industryrelated magazine. Thats because those guys have been pushed out. Now only the Cokes and the GEs who have a marketing budget, but they dont track anything. Theyre the only ones who can afford to do it.
David:
Yeah, theyre just like, Yeah, heres $1 million. Go break a leg.

Ryan:
Yeah, go spend. Why do I do that? Because Ive got a job and my job is to spend money for GE, and Im not accountable to the results of it because were not tracking it. Im accountable to spending my entire budget, and if I dont spend my entire budget, Im not going to get as much of a budget next year. Another thing that occasionally happens with media is occasionally it gets taken away from us. Again, Ill go back to the infomercial example. When infomercials got hot, the government stepped in and said these things are illegal. These television infomercials are inherently deceptive because people think that theyre actual, real content and so theyre swindled. Theyre bamboozled. Thats why now eventually people lobbied and the infomercial was allowed to come back, but they have to disclaim at the beginning of it, this is a paid advertisement paid for this and this and this. Theyve got to disclaim throughout that its a paid advertisement. That only happened after it was completely taken away, and now they happen. Youre seeing that happen a lot right now with people putting up fake blogs and stuff like that.
David:
Oh, yeah.
Ryan:
Those should be taken away. Its fraudulent. People lie and you shouldnt be allowed to do that. That should be taken away. But youre seeing it happen also with Pay Per Click. The thing that got me started, the thing that got me spring boarded, the thing that, gosh, must have been 10 years ago, was so dirt cheap. Now its getting to the point where theyre kind of forcing out little guys. That is a medium that I could see, over the next few years, being taken away from the little guy. Google may move away from their model where anybody can come and sign up for an account. They may eventually and probably will move to a model where unless youve got a $50,000 ad budget and go through one of their account reps, you dont get to do it because they will have reached a critical mass and they dont need the little guys anymore. That may happen.

Thats why I want to emphasize to everybody dont wait to start your online business. Tomorrow its not going to be easier. Tomorrow will be a little bit harder, so I would suggest getting started today.
David:
Yeah. I like your perspective, and its interesting, that whole interesting other medium just that was kind of a recent oh, youre right, that is kind of how its done. I only recently followed the whole thing with TV and whatnot, but to try to move to more positive light, my last question on that subject is, do you feel like theres going to be a point and I dont just mean in Pay Per Click advertising, but just in general even to make a website, do you think theres going to be a point where the small guys still cant do it, or do you will think there will always be opportunity?
Ryan:
There will always be opportunities. If you took away the internet, I would make money in direct mail.
David:
Oh, yeah.
Ryan:
I guarantee you I would figure out a way to make money in direct mail. I mean, there will always, always, always be a way to make money on the internet for the little guy. There will always be a way to get started. Will it be as easy as it was to do it as quickly? No, probably not, but I believe there will always be a way. I mean, with the way the internet works, the way it encourages the long tail and growth in niche markets and things like that, I think in that sense, as far as medias concerned, the internet has forever established a home for the little guy to start a business. But take all away. Look, people still spend 96% of their discretionary income within a 5-10 mile I forget the exact stat but say around 90% of their discretionary income in a 5-10 mile radius of their home.

Take everything away, Ill start selling lemonade on the corner and make money because it gets back to the stuff that we talked about in the beginning. Its not about the medium. Its about an internal burning desire. Some people have it and some people dont.
David:
And then theres the foundation of direct response and all that stuff, that stays the same forever. The interesting thing you said about direct mail, its almost cheaper depending on the market but it is almost cheaper to do direct mail now than Pay Per Click.
Ryan:
Oh, especially postcards. Ive got a buddy here local in Austin. Hes in the real estate business. Hes built an entire list and has come in to dominate a well entrenched industry as one of the big players, through postcards. He sends out a postcard.
David:
Its funny, I just did a postcard campaign myself, literally mailed out yesterday. Its definitely very interesting. And I think that a lot of people in internet marketing are completely neglecting direct mail as well, so even there is opportunity. So its almost going backwards. The whole thing is fascinating to me. I could talk about this with you all day. I kind of want to get back on track a little bit.
Ryan:
Fair enough.
David:
Give me resources that have helped you along the way; your top three resources that have given you the education that you needed, pretty much.
Ryan:
That have given me the education?

David:
Not necessarily the education, but just like info products, books that have helped you.
Ryan:
From a book perspective, Michael Mastersons Ready, Fire, Aim. Thats a great book in terms of the business of starting in our kind of business. Whether it be an online business or information products business, it just takes a very real world realistic look at things.
I believe that people should absolutely go out there and buy books on how to do Pay Per Click, how to do Google Adwords books that have been written very, very recently because a lot of the stuff that I read that got me started, Im looking at it right now. It was Corey Rudls original Insiders Secrets course that was published way back when back in 1999. It was the first course that I ever bought and it showed you how to harvest email addresses and spam people. [inaudible] had it and we did that. Back then that was okay. Back then it wasnt even called spam. It was called opt-out email marketing and the whole big ethical thing was as long as if people ask to be removed from your list you take them off, then youre fine opt-out marketing. Everything was okay. So a lot of the books that I read when I got started arent really relevant anymore, but I would encourage people to go back and read those old booksBreakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz.
David:
Im reading that right now.
Ryan:
Its a fantastic book that everybody who wants to have anything to do with marketing should read, or The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy, I think people should read. Those kinds of books are where people should get started. I would encourage people to go to events and seminars and things like that to listen to what the speakers have to say, but more to try and meet talk to people who are actively doing it because I figured this stuff out by making friends, and not by making friends so those friends could mail for me, but by making friends so they could talk and say, Man, what are you doing thats working? So thats the advice I give people from an educational perspective. From a getting started perspective, the resources I would give people, in my opinion, you need three things if you want to get started: You need a killer an idea. An idea of something that is worth selling, and my advice is to find an expert. You dont have to be the expert. I tell people all the time, adopt the mindset of a publisher. Its the publishers that make all the money. If the publisher concept doesnt make any sense to you, think about it in terms of owning a sports franchise.

We all are kind of impressed with these sports figures and are impressed with these millions and millions of dollars that they get paid every month, but would you rather be the basketball player that makes $20 million a year, or would you rather own the basketball team who can afford to pay that guy and a dozen other $20 million a year?
David:
Yeah.
Ryan:
I would rather own the franchise, and thats the way you need to approach your business. Its not that Oh, I need to be the guru. I need to be the expert. No, screw that. Authors dont make that much money. Its the publishers who make a lot of money, so find the experts. Theyre all over the place. The secret sauce is not having a cool idea. Its not in having a cool product. We look all the time for people who have great products, and that was how I got started. I told you I got started by finding software. There are great products all over the place. The secret sauce is in being able to sell those products and being able to market them efficiently, so learn marketing. Get good at marketing. Get good at selling. Get good at generating traffic. Get good at writing offers and then go out there and find the people. My number one source for experts: www.rtir.com. It stands for Radio Television Interview Report. www.rtir.com experts who have written books, they go to www.rtir.com and they post a profile. They have to pay to post this profile. Its free for you to use, for you to go and look at. Anybody can go and look at it. Just go to www.rtir.com and you can go over there and the experts are categorized in a number of different categories and it gives you their contact info. You can call them up and say, hey, Id love to interview you. Just like what were doing right now, Hey, Id love to interview you on this topic. Congratulations. 60 minutes later, you have a product.
www.ryanlee.com
David:
This is like Im looking at it right now. Its like helping a reporter out on steroids almost.
Ryan:
Yeah, RTIR, like I said, it stands for Radio Television Interview Report, so basically these experts who have written books or have products and other things, they post their profile there and they want somebody from Oprah or Howard Stern or some big national television or radio program to call them up and say, Hey, wed love to have you on our show as a guest for a twominute segment, or something like that. But most of the people who are on there are cool. Theyll do just about anything. Theyd be happy to do an interview with you and you give them an opportunity at the end to pitch their product or whatever they have to sell. I tell people, Look, heres the deal, Im going to interview you and Im going to go out there and Im going to try to sell it and hopefully I can send some more people your way. When the interviews done, you can have the recording to use however you want to use it, and Ill take the recording to use how I want to use it. Im just up front and honest with them about that.
You can even go out there, if you want to create a compilation kind of product, you can ask to interview a couple of people at the same time. So lets say theres two experts in the same area, you get them both on the same call, thats a beautiful model because what theyll start doing is trying to one-up one another, and so one person will throw out a really good idea and then the other person is like, Well, you think thats good and before too long, theyre throwing out their best stuff just because theyre trying to one-up one another. I think being a reporter when I go to market, I think How can I be a publisher? and How can I be a reporter? or How can I license somebodys product? You dont need to be the product creator; you absolutely dont. Well look at people who have recently filed patents whove been awarded patents on things. People dont realize you can go to somebody whos just been awarded a patent, the chance that theyre going to know how to spend the money that theyre going to be able to spend that patent prototype built and get it sold is slim.
David:
Yeah.
Ryan:
So well tell them, Look, give us a license to sell your product, and well give you 10% of our net sales.
David:
And out of curiosity, if youre looking for patents I know theres like the U.S. Patent Office online. Is that where you would go?
Ryan:
Yeah, you just go to the U.S. Patent Office. Weve got people that we pay to kind of keep an eye on things for cool ideas.
David:
Yeah, for sure.

Ryan:
But if I were just getting started, thats not what I would do. I would look myself.
David:
Yeah, exactly.
Ryan:
You know, its a piece of cake. The big point is that you need a cool idea. This whole thing of Let me go out there and sell crap, no, thats stupid. There are too many great ideas out there. You going out there and Im hiring a ghostwriter to create some lame ass book on some subject that I know nothing about and then Im going to get a copywriter to write some lame sales letter that they clearly dont know what theyre talking about, look, that doesnt work anymore. That worked back in 2003 and 2004 when there was zero competition. Now every niche has competition. You better be bringing something cool, unique to the marketplace or you dont deserve to exist. So find the people with cool, unique ideas and get good at the marketing and the selling.So thats kind of the first thing you need. Like I said, www.rtir.com is my absolute best resource. The next thing you need is you need someone to build your site for you because while I believe you should spend time learning the marketing side, I dont believe you should spend time learning how to do web design because its too cheap to get somebody else to do it. Elance. com I mentioned before. Its gotten more expensive, but you can still find pretty decent people, but www.99designs.com, though, is my favorite.
David:
Yeah, thats a big one.
Ryan:
You go to 99Designs and you say, hey, I need a website that looks kind of like this and youll have hundreds of people who will submit you site design concepts and youll say, I like that one, and only pay that guy.
I dont know why anybody would ever submit a design to that thing because literally, youre competing with hundreds of other designers and you dont get paid anything unless you get picked. That was like the suckiest business model in the world, but people are willing to do it, so hey, they clearly have a lot more time than money, so avail yourself of that resource. But do not spend forever and a day learning how to build web pages and FTP stuff. Find somebody. Its too dang cheap to find somebody, and theres too many people now that know how to do it. Find somebody. Put an ad in Craigs List in your local Craigs List area, if you have that. I need somebody to build me a website; willing to trade other services. Barter with people. It happens all the time. So thats kind of the second. The first thing was getting a killer concept. RTIR was my reference there. Someone to build your site 99Designs and Elance. And I also believe that another thing that you need to be successful and this is getting a little bit advanced, but you need a good shopping cart solution that has what are known as one-click up sells or post-order up sells, or risk-free up sells. These are all kind of synonymous

concepts, but basically, once you have sold somebody something, its getting to where its harder and harder to make money off that initial sale. Pay Per Click costs, like I said, higher. Affiliates are expecting bigger and bigger percentages. In one of our businesses, we sell a $97 front-end product, but on the back end, we upgrade them to a $497 product. Im willing to go to affiliates and say, Hey, on this $97 product, Ill pay 100% affiliate commission. Why? Because I know that 9% of the people who buy that product are going to buy the $497 product. Thats where my profit is. And having that post-order up sell, that one-click up sell so that after somebody has completed the initial order process, you can then put an additional offer in their face an additional, do you want fries with that? and they dont have to re-enter the credit card information. They can just click one button to add it to their order. That has given us between a double or tripling of conversion over having them re-enter their information. Its that important. 1Shopping Cart I dont own 1Shopping Cart this isnt an affiliate link, but 1Shopping Cart recently added one-click up sells. I believe that ClickBank is also testing them. But this is getting to the point where it is as crucial as having a good idea, because you can have a good idea and you can run a great thing, but if you dont have an up sell or a back-end of any sort, youre still not going to make any dang money.
David:
Yeah, for sure. The back end, thats the key. Thats why I guess you dont really see this as much now that the forced continuity stuff has kind of been crushed, but the CPA offers would the affiliates would get $40 for a free offer.
Ryan:
Yeah, and it was for that very reason because they all understood and they had these up sells. And continuity, thats another thing you can up sell, but do it the right way. You mentioned it.

Dont force people into it. Give them the option of taking it.
David:
Yeah, for sure. You actually had a death of forced continuity, right?
Ryan:
Yeah, it was almost over a year ago. Its one of the few predictions Ive made that actually came true. I guess if you make enough of them, just out of sheer luck, like the old broken clock is right twice a day. But no, I kind of saw where everything was going with this forced continuity and people were taking it way too far. They werent telling people about it, and if you take money from somebody and they dont realize you did it, and they dont want you to do it, thats called stealing. Thats not allowed. You cant do that, and thats basically what a lot of these guys were doing. I wrote a report called The Death of Forced Continuity just kind of talking about heres the right way to do continuity as an up sell.
David:
Yeah, its bad when people just its a little ridiculous. Theres so much garbage out there and so muchits almost like you wonder why everyone has to go that well, not everyone, obviously but why so many people go that route of trying to milk everybody for every little

dollar that they can in the most unethical way. You wonder why people cant just be ethical and understand the concept of a long-term business and building relationships with your customers and so on and so forth. Its just very frustrating.
Ryan:
Very short sighted.
David:
Yeah, and its the industry is fascinating, though. That kind of stuff thats like the internet marketing drama or whatever the soap opera of internet marketing. I dont want to hold you on the phone for are you like I have more questions if you have time.
Ryan:
Yeah, Im okay. We can go on. This is fun. I like this stuff.
David:
Okay, cool.
Ryan:
I allotted 90 minutes. That doesnt mean we have to go that long, but in my calendar thats what I have allotted.
David:
Well, I have no problem taking up that entire time, trust me. I will go that long. So tell me, three biggest mistakes youve made and how we can learn from them.
Ryan:
Okay, the first big mistake I made is a very practical one, but its a bit of advice that I give to everybody, and that is when you start a new business and you launch a new product, youre going to need something called a merchant account. When you start your merchant account,

your merchant account is going to be in test mode. That is so that you can go through and make test purchases and make sure your process is good and all that fun stuff. Make sure before you go live that you take that sucker out of test mode. Not once, but twice I have launched products. One time we did over $80,000 in sales the first day and I left the freaking merchant account in test mode which meant that the order looked like it went through. Test mode is designed to look like everything went through just fine. So the customers, they got shipped the products. Everything went through. It wasnt until days later that I realized, Huh, that money that we made never actually went into my account. We hadnt collected the credit card information. There was no way to go back and charge them again. The money was just gone. We sent an e-mail out to everybody saying, Hey, by the way, I realize that it looks like you purchased this product and I realize that weve already sent you the product, but we didnt actually charge you. Would you be cool and go to this website and run a charge again? I think we got kind of almost nobody to do it because theyre either thinking, Whatever, scammer, you know. You did charge me. It looked like you charged me. Thats your bad, dumbass. So big mistake number one, and Ive done it not once, but twice, like I said, forgetting to take my merchant account out of test mode. Some more kind of general mistakes: early on when I first got started, and this is kind of a big business concept that if youre going to start making any money, you need to consider. Pay yourself a salary and think How much can I pay myself?, but dont go, Hey, cool, I made $20,000 this month. Im going to pay myself $20,000. When I first got started, I had no concept, number one, of taxes, and I had no concept of retained earnings and leaving money in the business to grow the business. I just went and took all of it out and that is not the way to grow a business. You can get yourself in serious cash flow crunches by doing that. Kind of take a conservative amount out to where you can afford to live until youre making a nice, sizeable chunk, and then pay yourself a salary. You can pay yourself a great salary, and then every quarter pay yourself a nice big, fat bonus or a nice big, fat distribution. But you want to make sure that you do leave money in your business so that

it can grow, and you definitely want to make sure that you set aside money for taxes. I know more than a few people really big named gurus names everybody would recognize, who have gotten themselves in some bad tax messes.
David:
Oh, Im sure.
Ryan:
And it just the money comes out and you spend it, and then at the end of the year, that tax bill comes and youre like, Oh, my gosh, and your accountant says, Ive got good news and bad news. The good news is you had a great year. The bad news is you owe $200,000 in taxes, and if you dont have it, its a bad thing. So be conservative and realistic in the income you pay yourself, and dont just rob from your business at the expense of your business. And kind of a third big mistake that I made was I didnt focus enough on growing businesses. So I mentioned at one point that I was in over 500 different markets. That sounds a lot cooler than it really was. It was impossible to focus and our focus was on expanding wide and not maximizing the winners that we had. Its a lot easier to make more money maximizing winners than it is to go out and, Okay, cool, I figured out one way to start a business. Now let me go and do that again in another market. No, dont do that. Focus on the market that youre making some good money because youre going to be able to double the profits from that business way easier than you are going out and starting a new one; and this is a mistake that I still make it. Today Im still too quick to go into new markets and even though weve got a good sized team now, its still Ive got entrepreneurial ADD and I see so many opportunities that I want to jump into each one of them and Id be better if I would just focus on the ones that are doing well and really grow those.
David:
I have two questions from that. I want to ask you about your team, but first I want to ask when youre getting started in a market and youve kind of got your first product out, I guess, in that

market. When do you determine if youre saying jumping way too quickly, when is the right time to move to something new? When are you solid enough in that market that you can feel actually comfortable, not just like ADD moving pieces.
Ryan:
Its one of two places. Either one where you cant think of any other ways to maximize it. So you said to yourself, Gosh, for this particular industry, were kind of tapped out on traffic. It doesnt matter how much we spend, were getting all the Pay Per Click traffic we can get. Theres no new media we can test. Were buying banner ads. Were running FaceBook ads. Were doing all these things we can do. I cant think of any ways to add a substantial revenue stream. I might be able to find some little things that add a little trickle, but nothing that will really do much else because internet business is two things: Its traffic and its offers.
David:
Yeah.
Ryan:
So once youve kind of maxed out your traffic, youre sort of done there, and then you go and you look at your offer and you say, Okay, have we tested everything that we can test in this offer? Have we tested price? Do we have a good up sale sequence? Now if we try some different up sales, hows our continuity stick rate? Once youve maximized your traffic, and once youve maximized your offer, youre kind of done. Theres nowhere else to go at that point except to take the business offline to try to take it into a totally new direction in which case you may want to do that for lifestyle reasons. You may not want to do that because thats not what youre equipped to do. That may involve bringing in a whole new team of people. So that would be one time. Another time when its okay to move on to another venture is whenever youve brought someone else in who can effectively manage and grow that business for you. So youve spun it out. Its rock n rolling, its rippin and tearin and when you have somebody in whos a driver and whos a skilled individual and maybe theyre not as good at marketing as you are, but

they can implement and they can execute so that all you have to do is tell them, Okay, this week I want to split test this offer and this offer; and this week go talk to so-and-so. Lets have him create a new up sale for this product, and they can execute all of that for you so that all you have to do is spout instruction, then its okay to move on as well.
David:
Yeah, that sounds like a pretty nice position to be in where you say, Hey, split test this.
Ryan:
Yeah, and it is. Its hard to find really good people who can do that for you. You kind of have to develop them.
David:
Finding good work is not easy. A management person like that, what kind of salary does that entail for someone? Is that something that youre thinking down the line when youre pretty much like a 6- or 7-figure business, or is that something you can afford early on?
Ryan:
I definitely wouldnt do it if your business it depends on your personal goals, so Im not going to necessarily place a monetary goal on it, but I wouldnt bring somebody in unless yeah, that was a 6-figure business. If youve got a business making less than six figures a year, you need to be running that sucker yourself. You need to be maximizing efficiency. Nobody should make less than $100,000 a year. It is just way too easy to make $10,000 a month. It is. It just is. Its too easy. So if youre business is less than a $100,000 a year business, then you have no business bringing somebody in to run that because you still need to be growing unless you can bring somebody in who can grow it better than you did, in which case, by all means bring them in. Typically the way that we compensate those kind of people is we pay them a fairly low salary in the $40,000 - $50,000 a year range, and we pay them a bonus based on growth to where they have the opportunity to make a six-figure salary by running a business.

David:
Yeah.
Ryan:
But were very slow to give away equity because equity and this was a mistake that I made early on. I gave away equity too easily. In that case, I wont give away equity unless somebody is also sharing in the downside risk. If theyre not contributing money or if theres not an agreement that if this thing dips below a certain level, theyre going to start paying me, then theyre a partner on the upside and Im on the downside. So they are an employee who gets a bonus check, and weve got people who work for us who make a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of money, but they dont own any company.
David:
Yeah, for sure; and I think definitely the concept of not giving away equity the performance bonuses, thats kind of the way I would see it as well - the best way to structure it. I think I had something else to say, but I totally forgot. So finding a team and you say you have a team now finding good work and then training those people, tell me first off, I guess finding. You said Elance before. Is that where you generally go?
Ryan:
No, not for finding these kinds of people.
David:
Okay.
Ryan:
Not for finding the people who are going to run the day-to-day operations of the business. And this is just how I run my business. I want those people in-house, in-office. Weve got an office building. Its full of people. I run a real business. This is not a lifestyle company. Not everybody wants to do it. Some people look at me and say that guys an idiot because again, back in 2005, I was working out of my house. I had one employee. I was making a nice sixwww.ryanlee.com Passion to Profits - The Case Studies 515

figure salary and I was playing golf three times a day. Now I make a considerably greater salary, but Im at the office by around 9:00 or 9:30 and Im here until 5:00 or 6:00. But Im trying to really grow a business thats going to be multigenerational that can really spin off a lot of long-term wealth and stuff like that. So I just have different goals that may or may not jive with what everybodys trying to do. So for me, if somebodys going to run a division of the company, they need to be in-house. So were not going to find those people off of Elance. This is the hardest thing and probably the single most important thing now that I do, is finding new talent and I find it just by networking. I attend different meet up groups marketingrelated meet-up groups and business related Im involved in a lot of local CEO groups and I network with those guys and Im always asking people whos got good folks or who knows of somebody whos good, whos and Im not looking for people who are marketers. I dont want somebody who thinks theyre good at marketing. I want somebody who has a proven track record of implementing and executing a plan. Ill set forth the plan. I dont need their opinion on it, any of that stuff. I just need them to do it. And fortunately, those people are out there. Those are business people and theyre great. Theyre immensely valuable, incredibly, incredibly valuable folks.
David:
So you mentioned local CEO groups. That sounds similar to a mastermind.
Ryan:
It is, yeah. Im in a couple. Probably one of the oldest CEO groups I think ever. They sort of almost invented the organized mastermind, Vistage.
David:
I was actually talking to somebody about this, about finding masterminds because usually in the mastermind market, from what Ive seen, its like a specific persons mastermind. So its like you purchase my products. My highest end product is my $10,000/year or whatever x dollar

amount a year mastermind. But it doesnt really feel like theres any sort of group masterminds where you can it always feels like its a persons. So finding these kind of masterminds, where would you suggest? How would you suggest?
Ryan:
Theres national chapters. Vistage is one of them, which is a I think theyre actually international, but Vistage is a CEO business mastermind. You need to be making youre company, I believe, needs to be a minimum of $1 million a year company and theyve got a group for like $10 million and above EO, I mean, theres a bunch of them that have kind of local chapters that have been around for decades and theyre just a mix ofIn my Vistage group, there are attorneys. Theres a very, very successful dentist. Theres people who have real live brick and mortar businesses. Im the freak. Im the anomaly. Theres a guy whos got a $2 or $300 million a year HVAC services business.
David:
HVAC?
Ryan:
A massive company. Now, that guy cant tell me jack about advertising and Google Adwords not jack. But he can tell me a lot about, Hey, Ive got a problem employee. How do you guys deal with it? So that kind of group is good when your business is going and when you shift from the doer of your business to kind of the CEO of your business, then thats where those kind of groups can be good. I am involved also in the types of mastermind groups that you referenced where youre in some body and so theres mastermind groups that are based around kind of a CEO, Im a business owner, and then theres mastermind groups that are based around specific fields or industries, and if youre industry is internet marketing, if thats what you do if youre a publisher of products or services on the internet, you should be in that kind of mastermind group as well. I absolutely recommend. But when your business gets bigger and you start dealing with kind of traditional business issues, then you should be in another local mastermind as well.

David:
Yeah, and I mean, kind of going upside of your market kind of sense. When you were talking about the guy with HVAC, if you kind of narrow yourself into the internet marketing world or whatever, it doesnt really let you grow and see things from different perspectives. Thats one of the things that Ryan talks about. Its this weird thing that Ryan talks Im talking about you and Ryan as well. Okay, so youre talking about brick and mortar businesses, and one of the things that Ive been hearing a lot about is online to offline. Marketing online for local businesses, that kind of thing. Do you see that as kind of the next big trend?
Ryan:
Absolutely because thats what Im seeing all these guys who have local businesses doing, and thats really starting to gavel up a lot of the Pay Per Click inventory as well.
David:
Oh, yeah.
Ryan:
So with Pay Per Click, youre seeing a lot of it. With social media youre seeing a ton of it. I was in Austin, Texas, which is a fairly progressive town in terms of technology, and there are whole businesses out here that theyve got 10,000 Twitter followers and there are people who are just excited about their restaurant and theyll send out a tweet that says, Hey, today weve got a special on this. Come in, and theres a crowd of people. Were doing a special for the first 500 people, and you know, they do it by that, so theres no doubt in my mind that its the future the instant nature of communication. I think it lends itself very, very well, and the Yellow Pages is basically dead. Nobody uses the Yellow Pages anymore. Everybody uses Google.
David:
Yeah.
Ryan:
Google, Local Search, and social media, I believe are absolutely the future for local businesses.

And the local businesses who just kind of plant their flag and they say, The internets not for me. Im a brick and mortar business. Im going to keep buying my Yellow Page ad every year.
David:
Yeah, see you later.
Ryan:
Eventually somebodys going to come into their category and kill them.
David:
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Ryan:
Its not a question of will it happen.
David:
Its when.
Ryan:
It will absolutely happen.
David:
Yeah, I mean, the guys who are still saying Oh, its just a trend, or I dont know, theyre screwed. Theyre absolutely screwed.
Ryan:
If somebody is still saying the internet is trend, theyre smoking a special kind of crack. Thats like, come on, thats like, I dont know if this television thing is really going to fly.
David:
Television? Who watches that?

I think its definitely going to interesting. Thats kind of like a lot of people have been talking about it, so its definitely interesting to see kind ofthere are kind of new Yellow Pages kind of coming out, but I feel like thats not really the way. It feels like theyre not doing anything for those businesses.
Ryan:
Yeah, the convention is if I need to find something, I go to Google. That is it. That market shares been gobbled up. To try to align yourself in opposition is stupid at this point.
David:
Yeah, oh yeah. For sure. Going against Google; thats the evil empire right there. Youre not going to win. So if you had to start over from scratch, and weve been going so long I forget if I asked you this already, but if you had to start over from scratch, is there anything that you would do differently?
Ryan:
If I started over from scratch and knowing what I know now, having the knowledge that I have now and having the confidence that I have now, I would really only go after big markets and big ideas because the conventional wisdom is that you should go after tiny little niche markets and thats where you should carve out your space because its less competitive. Thats true to an extent, and there is definitely some validity and Ill still tell people to do that because in some of these markets, it is less competitive. But its getting to the point now where its not that much less competitive. Its not a tenth as competitive as going out for a bigger market, and yet it might have 1/100th of the upside. So we found that we were spending a lot of time and a lot of investment in businesses that will do $8,000$10,000/month; and not that $8,000$10,000/month isnt significant, but we were spending just as much time on those businesses as on the ones that were doing $80,000$100,000/month just as much time. So in the businesses now, knowing what I know now, going into those other bigger businesses, its not like, okay, this market is 100 times larger than this one. It doesnt mean you have to

be 100 times smarter. The people in these bigger markets usually are smarter than the ones. Usually theyre better funded. Thats why I still dont think that that should necessarily be the first thing that you do. But fairly quickly, you need to start going after some big hits. You need to start going after some big licks if you want to make big money. If you want to have a lifestyle business and make $100,,000, $150,000, $200,000/year, have just one person helping you out doing some customer support, then yeah, carve out a little niche market and you can probably live there for a good long while. Thats fine. If you want to have a big business, though, you need to start going after some big markets, and its not as freaky its not as difficult as people make it out to be. It usually has to do with a self confidence issue. Thats why Ill still tell people, hey when you first getting started, pick a niche market. Not because they necessarily have got a substantially better chance of succeeding in a tiny little niche market than they do in a bigger one. Its that they believe they have a better chance of succeeding in a tiny niche market as opposed to a great big one, and as long as they believe that, then thats fine. I cant fight that. But if I were starting over again and we do start over again all the time because were always going into new markets and new businesses I will not even consider a business thats not going to do $1 million a year. I just wont do it; and really, thats kind of pathetic. I ought to be thinking much, much, much bigger than that. Ive got friends in Silicon Valley that their businesses get 10s of millions, 100s of millions. Im still thinking way too small. Ive by no means arrived, but its always a step. So, big markets, big ideas, and the other thing that I would have done, I did it accidentally, but I wish I would have been more strategic about it because it could help me grow a lot of faster adopting that mindset of a publisher and I dont have to be the expert. I dont have to compile the information or gather the information. Just thinking that there are people out there who are experts, let me go find them.
David:
Yeah.

Ryan:
This is the same, and again, I think the reason we do that is because laud actors. We laud musicians. We laud the sports athletes. Those are the heroes. Those are the people that we idolize. But behind every musician is a record label whos making a lot more money than they are, who has 15 musicians just like them and next year there will be another.
David:
Right.
Ryan:
Behind every book is a publishing company thats making a lot more money than the author, so thats the position to be in. With that becomes frankly, a lot more safety in diversity. So those are the things that I would do if I were doing it all over again.
David:
It makes me think of do you know who Aaron Spelling is?
Ryan:
Oh, yeah.
David:
If you look up his house, hes a producer. You know thats where its at. He lives in a castle.
Ryan:
Yeah, Chris Rock does a great bit. I think Chris Rock is pretty hilarious, actually, but hes got a whole bit on the difference between being rich and being wealthy. Hes like, Shaquille ONeal is rich. But the white guy who can pay Shaquille ONeals salary is wealthy. Here you go, Shaq, heres another million. Bling, bling. You know, that whole thing, and I Im like, dang, hes right, you know.
David:
Oh, yeah, for sure. Jerry Jones just built a friggin

Ryan:
He spent a billion dollars on a stadium.
David:
You can see it from the states, probably.
Ryan:
Yeah.
David:
Thats ridiculous. So, just to kind of clarify really quickly, when you say big versus small, youre talking in monetary value, but could you give kind of an example of what a big idea would be versus a smaller idea?
Ryan:
Yeah, just ideas which have a large market cap. So we, for example, sell a product this is an example of the small one we sell a product that shows people how to start a hotdog vending business. That product, for the last three years, has done Im not going to say how much its done. Its in that range that I talked about before. Its about $8,000$10,000/month a range. Its a great little product. It does really, really, really well, but it will never do more than that. Its done. Its tapped out. Were done with it. Thats it, and the amount of time that we spend maintaining that traffic because there is some The myth of, oh, Im going to create this product and Im going to put it up there and that will be it. Im just going to go sip Mai Tais on the beach, thats crap; its a frickin business. Youve got to maintain it. Googles going to do a little dance. Theyre going to slap you. New competitors are going to enter into the marketplace. Theyre going to come and go and youve got to send emails. Its still a freaking business. So compare that to a product that were releasing into a pet market, and Im not going to go into the details of this one, but the market cap on that is massive absolutely massive hundreds of millions of dollars, and it has the potential to go offline, which is another thing

now. I wont go into a market that doesnt have the ability to eventually go offline because if you cant take it offline, then youre always going to be limited because people will still only ever spend a certain amount of their discretionary income on the internet, and that hasnt changed. All the internet did was steal money away from mail order and catalogs.
David:
Yeah, it made it quicker.
Ryan:
Yeah, the market share of spending hasnt gone up that much with the internet.
David:
So you sound like you are a products guy. The publisher model is you create the product. Youre not the expert, but you create the product. How do you feel about the service industry on the internet? Do you feel like that is something that people should mess with at all?
Ryan:
Absolutely; services are great. What were good at I found that were really, really good at creating offers for the consumer market. We dont go into the business-to-business market as much and consumer-based services are limited. An individual, a consumer human being, is only going to give you so much money for a particular service. They pay for cable and they complain when their cable bill goes up. When you get into business services and things like that, and when youre selling utilities, those are great. Those are absolutely fantastic. The down side to those is that typically they become commoditized very quickly and easily. Take hosting, for example. Ive got a hosting service. Hosting is a great business. Theres tons of money in hosting. All right, how hard is it to set up a hosting business? Eventually it just becomes about, you know, at Rackspace some of your stock was able to gain a ton a market share because they said we offer unbelievable superior customer service. Because they were one of the first to offer 24/7 phone support and higher up-time guarantees and they carved out a huge slice of the marketplace.

Now everybody does that. So thats kind of the down side of services. Its really, really hard to eventually they become commoditized and thats when it becomes difficult. Now its what your unique selling proposition. You know, I kind of dont have one, you know. Everybodys sort of selling the same thing.
David:
Yeah, exactly.
Ryan:
And so thats one of the reasons it doesnt mean that we avoid those completely. We are in some services. Were in some niche hosting businesses and those are great. What I love those for, theyre great for cash flow and theyre really great. Theyre very, very sellable.
David:
Yeah.
Ryan:
But I do like products and thats just a personal preference. Again, thats kind of where I am. I love creating stuff. We have a manufacturing facility that manufactures real hard products. I love that. I like making and selling stuff. That, to me, is really, really cool.
David:
Yeah, that does sound pretty cool. The last two questions, because were almost at the hour and 30 minute mark, I want to talk to you about systems and competence.
Ryan:
Okay.
David:
Youve been doing this for so long now. Well, actually, I say so long,

but really its only been how many years? Probably like 10?
Ryan:
Yeah, its been about 10 years. Actually, in November of this last year was kind of my 10 year anniversary of when I launched my first website and started selling my first product.
David:
In internet marketing terms, thats like ancient times, like people are like Yeah, Ive been a teacher for 30 years.
Ryan:
Yeah, I know.
David:
So, systems, youve been doing it for a while. Im assuming that you you sound like youve been incredibly productive. Im sure you have made systems and processes along the way to help you kind of make everything more efficient. This is the case, right?
Ryan:
Yeah, honestly, it probably would make people feel better if they saw me because were a mess. We fly by the seat of our pants and do a lot of crazy stuff, and thats one of the things thats been beneficial of seeing other peoples businesses. Theyre a mess too. But no, we absolutely we have, over time for specific processes, we have developed checklists and we use a service called Backpack (http://www.backpackit.com) which is from 37 signals, and its kind of a project management thing. So for all of our repeatable processes, we have a checklist inside of Backpack so whenever somebodys going to start a new process we kind of sit somebody down and say, Okay, heres your checklist. Make sure you check all those things off. The important thing to realize is that I didnt put those systems in place. Im not an organized enough person to do those. When I would switch from me doing it to having somebody else do it, I would force them to document their work.
David:
Yeah.
Ryan:
And they would come and ask me questions like, Okay, well, when do I do this and how do I do this? and thats what I would tell them, and that gets back to coming full circle to what I said in the beginning about teaching stuff. When you teach somebody else, whether its an inhouse employee or whether its somebody whos bought something from you, thats when you get forced systemized things. So there are aspects of the business that I dont have anything to do with anymore, but there are checklists created and theres people in the office who abide by those checklists and it is huge. You have to do that at some point.
David:
But you werent really documenting what you did. You kind of us just went by when you teach it to them or whatever, you kind of just told them what youve been doing just by memory. Theres no operations manual.

Ryan:
Yeah, theres no real operations manual. When its just me doing, I didnt really create that many checklists.
David:
Yeah.
Ryan:
That was probably stupid. It became instinctual and I would just sort of do it. You have chefs who, when they make stuff, they dont read from a recipe book. They just kind of know about how much to put in, and so thats kind of how I ran it for a long, long time when it was just me. But as soon as I started hiring people, the first person I hired was a customer services person. I told them, Okay, heres a list of 25 frequently asked questions, so if somebody emails in asking about this, just kind of reply this, and my thinking is that that would have been good enough. And I said if you dont know how to answer something, just forward it on to me and Ill answer it. What I found is I was still getting a ton of questions that she didnt know how to answer. So when I flipped it around and I said, okay, if you dont know how to answer something, ask me and then I want you to reply and I want you to add it to the frequently asked questions. Now that was more work the first time then just forwarding it on to me and me replying. That was more steps. There was some back and forth that took a little bit longer, but it created efficiency. There was leverage there now. She learned.
David:
Yeah.
Ryan:
Thats how you have to do with your people. When you bring somebody on, the worst thing you can do is if somebody says I dont know how to do this, and you go, Oh forget it. Ill just do it myself. No, no, no, dont do that. Show them how to do it.

Everybody in my office who has a computer, and thats only about all of them, they all have Jing on the their computer, and if you dont know what Jing is, its basically a free version of Camtasia.
You go to www.jingproject.com and download it and so Ill sit down at their computer and say, Okay, fire up Jing. Lets record this thing. Im going to show you how to do it. You do this, this, this, this, this, and there you go. Then youre done, and they can ask, Well, how did you do this? Okay, all thats recorded. Theyve got a documented record of it and we download that and that gets put in the centralized learning center so that if somebody else has that question, they dont have to show them and they definitely dont have to go and get me to show them. They show them the video. When we deal with systems, people dont know what they dont know, and you dont know what they dont know. So youve kind of got to wait for them to ask questions, and then when you answer those questions, you want to make sure that you answer it in a way that the process that you just taught them is leveraged and can be re-taught.
David:
For sure; its always interesting to see people in the internet marketing space with real business

knowledge and know-how because theres so many guys in internet marketing that just know internet marketing. They dont really know deep down business, employees, that kind of stuff. I like the real side of the business. Its almost like a corporate it is a corporate structure. It has to be with the way youre doing it.
Ryan:
Yeah, weve got 30-some-odd people here. Weve got a lot of people. We run a good sized business. Weve got a benefits program and all that stuff. I dont know I still am afraid that Im going to show up one day and everybodys going to figure out that I dont know what the heck Im doing because I still really dont know how to do this. Im learning, and thats why I talked about joining the local mastermind groups and finding out and talking to real business people about how to deal with that becomes huge because Im no longer the guy creating the product, doing all this. Im kind of the guy making higher-level vision decisions, and thats the direction I wanted to move. Its not what everybody wants to do. And again, now, for all intensive purposes, I have a job. Ill admit it. But you know what, if I want to leave right now, Ill leave. If I dont want to come back tomorrow, I wont. And if I want to tell everybody, Hey, go come home and dont come back. Im keeping all the money, I can, and thats good enough for me. Im not saying Im going to do that, but at least its mine.
David:
Yeah, for sure. Youre talking about youre afraid people are going to come in and no knowing, the last question I will ask you well actually, I have one more because theres a wrap up question but, confidence when did you get that confidence and what helped you become like, All right, Ive got this.?
Ryan:
I dont have that. I dont. I will still tell people what helped me more than anything was, again, number one, seeing people who have bigger businesses and can make more money than me who are just as screwed up, if not more. And thats what you find when you talk to other businesses. Thats why networking and meeting people and talking to people thats why its so important. You realize that theyre just as dysfunctional as you, and so it makes it okay that

you dont know what youre doing. And Ill be honest with my people. Ill tell them all the time, Im sorry I dont really know what were doing here. People will ask, Hey, do we get off for this holiday? I dont know. Whats normal? Im working because its my business, you know? I dont know, and Ill tell them that, and I think people appreciate that. So I still rely very, very heavily on mentors and advisors and a lot of those mentors I pay a lot of money to. I was at a meeting last Friday and there was a just a roomful of unbelievably sharp business people. There were two billionaires in the room people who have grown massive companies and I went around and tried to meet as many people as possible and through different networks try to kind of build a real live personal relationship with some of these guys. Thats helped tremendously. So if Ive got a question, I can ask. But the biggest thing is just being open and honest. People can tell if youre faking it. They can tell if you dont know, so Ill just tell them, Hey, I dont know, and as long as Im open and honest with them, I think they respect and appreciate that.
David:
For sure.
Ryan:
I dont have really any confidence.
David:
Okay, this is the last one for real. Networking any tips and strategies that you keep in mind when you are talking to people, like keeping in touch kind of stuff, making sure that you actually build these relationships.
Ryan:
The first thing is dont be a tool. When you meet somebody, dont go into it with any expectations because I think people can sense desperation and they can sense expectation. Go into it humbly, but dont be an ass kisser either. So you just go into it and youre humble, but youre also approaching somebody as a peer, and the better you can get about, Hey, can

you introduce me to so and so? and work from network to another, but then dont forget about the people who helped get you to that next plateau. Thats a big mistake that a lot of people make. But above that, doing what you say youre going to do, arriving on time, these are all things that make you very referable. I think a lot of people fail to do that. And then in terms of keeping in touch, I think sending a casual email to somebody about something that you believe is of interest to them every 6090 days is a really, really good plan. One of the best networkers that Ive ever known and had the opportunity to meet fairly recently, Tom Hill, who wrote Chicken Soup for the Entrepreneur Soul, and hes a great salesman and has a great story, but thats kind of his rule. Every 6090 days, you want to make sure that youre making casual contact with these core key people who are on your list.
David:
For sure.
Ryan:
I think the more you systemize it, really the more it gets kind of fake. So just being friends; just being cool with people.
David:
Yeah, definitely. Its interesting. Its always like, I dont know, its funny when people tell you, Just be friends with them, and youre like, But wait, I want something from them. How do I do that? Thats kind of very similar to the concept of getting joint venture partners. Everyones always trying to be like, Hey, Ive got this product. Can you promote me? and they always skip over the whole building an actual relationship.
Ryan:
Yeah, well that comes down more to patience than anything else.
David:
Yeah, oh yeah.

Ryan:
I mean, it really does. It just comes down to patience, and it comes down from having the confidence of my success is not dependent upon this person. Maybe thats kind of where it all needs to begin. Its in being good enough at what you freaking do to know that your success is not dependent upon somebody mailing for you or somebody sitting down and having lunch with you, or somebody telling you some magical, mystical secret, because there are no freaking magical, mystical secrets. You need to have the balls to just go out there and do it and succeed in spite of that person. If that person expedites your journey, fantastic; if it doesnt work out and they dont, hey, thats okay too. Youre only expectation going into it should be, I want to hang out and meet cool people who are doing cool stuff.
David:
Yeah, exactly, thats the seminar sort of thing. Okay, so final question: Tell me what is next for you and your business.
Ryan:
We kind of made a big shift this year where were shifting from being a lot of little businesses to actually being an incubator company. This year we kind of have restructured everything and Ive changed the way all the ownerships are set up and theyre all kind of under one thing. We were able to get some funding and not a lot, but mostly just through people I knew selling off small portions of the holding company to get some funding, and now we can move forward on some of the even bigger ideas that I have that are going to require plunking down $250,000 before we ever go. I didnt steal from my other businesses to fund those.
David:
Yeah.
Ryan:
So we went out there doing that and I really see my job and my goal is growing businesses

to the $5$10 million a year level and then selling them off. So thats kind of where we got the incubator set up. Weve got a lot of really good people in place. Were forming relationships with Merger and Acquisitions firms and a bunch of capital firms so that were keeping them up to date on the status of different businesses and when they hit certain levels, then we sell those things off, and thats kind of were in the business of building businesses and then passing them on to people who can really grow them because I acknowledge in me, number one, I dont have fun filling a business. I have fun starting businesses and thats not where my skill set is. I dont know how to manage lots of people and to grow a business, theres kind of this no mans land from like the $10, maybe $20 million mark up to the $100 million mark. Thats considered, in business, the no mans land from like $20 million to $100 million, and the skill set to get through that no mans land, I dont possess and I dont feel like, you know, I dont feel like going out and developing it. Thats not fun for me. Thats not where my passion is right now. So thats kind of whats next for us and its exciting.
David:
Out of curiosity, the $100 million mark, thats almost like are you thinking about ever going public?
Ryan:
I dont know, because then youve got a whole lot of people who can tell you what to do. With the partners that we have, its a limited partnership, so they literally have no say over anything. They can give me money and if I choose to go and buy an ice cream truck with it, I can do that and they have no legal recourse. They have zero voting right and zero say over anything and Im comfortable with that. When you go public, theres a lot of things, but the incubator itself could, at some point, go public, but boy, thats I never say no to any concept and I allow myself to dream pretty big, but that right now seems so far away, I dont dwell on it for too long.
David:
Yeah, for sure. For sure, that is a pretty big move.

Well listen, thank you so much for this interview. This is, by far, the best one weve done yet and by we, I mean I.
Ryan:
Thank you.
David:
And I appreciate you staying on the line for so long.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #27

Shawn Casey
Interview with Shawn Casey

Ryan:
Im here with Shawn Casey, a world renowned Internet marketing expert who has helped over 150,000 customers in 119 countries to unlock the secrets of making money online. The real proof of his marketing skills arrived in 2008 when he, along with his partner Tellman Knudson, outwitted their bigger competitors to win the most valuable prize ever offered in an online promotional contest - a $135,000 Ferrari 360 Spider. Shawn, the stopwatch is set. Weve got 7 minutes and lets get started. Are you ready?
Shawn:
Im ready. Lets get going.
Ryan:
Alright so, lets talk front end versus back end. You know, we hear this all the time in marketing. Kind of tell us what the difference in mentality is thinking front-end sales versus back-end.
Shawn:
Sure, the big thing that many people focus on is the front end. The front end in a business is anything you sell as your first product to get someone into your business. Now, for many peopleespecially those just starting a businessall they ever think about as a front end is making a sale, but the reality for a highly profitable business, you have a front end and then you have a back end and the back end is all of the products and services that you get to sell after you acquire a customer. See, one of the big focusesthe shifts that people need to makeis from looking at their business as, Im making sales, to Im acquiring customers, because then what happens is Ive got to acquire customers who buy the front-end product, and then I get to sell them a lot of other stuff. And one of the greatest things about the internet, Ryan, is the fact that we dont have to own, create, manufacture, warehouse, ship, price, collect money, and service every product we sell on the back end like a traditional offline business would have to.
www.ryanlee.com

Ryan:
Right.
Shawn:
Instead, so much of what were able to do is immediately offer the products and services of other people through affiliate programs. So, it doesnt require me to build this huge, huge business to sell stuff on the back end, but I can make great profits on the back end. So, if Im smartand all the people listening to this are about to become smart, if youre not already about thisI can go out and spend all of my money acquiring customers. In fact, I could spend 100% or more of the first sale acquiring a customer because once I have that customer, I know they will continue to buy products and services related to whatever that subject matter is. It doesnt matter if Im teaching how to play golf, how to grow roses, how to invest in the stock market. None of that matters because generically, the crowd thats interested in that subject matter will continue to spend money. You cant stop them from spending money. Its what they do. They spend money on what they want to buy that theyre passionate about, that theyre interested in. The only question is, will you as the business owner, get in the path of them spending money so that part of that money automatically comes to you instead of going to someone else.
Ryan:
Okay, with that being saidand again, were going to focus right now on back endgive me some examples of back-end products and services either you offer or clients youve trained, that they offer.
Shawn:
Well, lets talk about information products just in general because its a great market, especially people that are starting out. I suggest you look at the information product business which his where I primarily focus because in the info product business you havefor digital products you deliverwhich is many of themzero delivery cost, zero product cost. Anyone in the world can buy them and instantly download or access them online so its great.

Once youve got people that are interested in information products, you either sell more of them yourself that you create. You buy the rights to selling them and these can all be low priced products. You might start out at like $29 or $39 and sell more products in that area, but you could also sell more expensive home study courses which Im sure many people listening to this have brought from. Anyone ranging from Nightingale Conant to a lot of other providers that sell a lot of home study materials where you get CDs or DVDs and you get a workbook and a manual and a lot of different parts and those could range from $200 to $2,000 or more, and you could also offer a personal coaching program if you have a kind of industry where hands-on training and coaching would be a very valuable component because those you can get very high prices too of their peoplecharging up to $50,000 a year for something thats very industry-specific to big business owners. Theyre getting $50,000 a year for being a coaching program, but most of those are going to be more priced down to the $2,000 or $500 a month level. And of course, you could also have seminars or industry convention-type events that are again, focused straight on that industry where you might be a speaker. Other people could be speakers. You could have exhibiters there, but all related to the fact that someone came in the front door on that front-end product and said, Hey, listen, yeah, Im serious. I want more knowledge or information about this particular subject matter and Im willing to and collectively, some of those people are going to want more hands-on training, more details. And of course, they might want products and services related to what theyre actually learning to do. Like, if Im learning to grow roses better, I might want to know the best place to buy roses and the best kind of mulch and the best kind of clippers and all kinds of stuff that where I could be the person selling all that information could also be the affiliate for all the suppliers of all the good products and services to that consumer.
Ryan:
Yeah, and the interesting point you just brought up was the different price points because I think a lot of people think, Okay, if I wrote a book, Im just going to try to sell 1,000,000 copies

of the book, and they dont think of the back end. And also I think a big mistake is people price their productsin generaljust way too low and your guy whoseyoure not sorry about charging a lot of money for a product or services.
Shawn:
No, Im not. And you know if the value is there for the customer then the customer will pay for it. Thats the key. If the value isnt there, they wont pay for it. You know, in the narrow niche of the internet marketing, training and teaching community, there tends to be lots of new people who come in and want to break into that area, and so within that community, youll see a lot of people want to complete on price so they figure, Hey, if someones selling something for $20 and I sell it for $10, everybody will buy my thing, and if I sell 100 of them this month and make an extra $1,000, Im happy. And they are and thats all great. You cant build a business based on that model, but you can be happy making a little bit of money doing that. But if youre going to build a real business, you need to build a business with sufficient profit margins to support the business and you need to build it based upon delivering value to the customers. Thats what customers will pay for all day long on a repetitive basis.
Ryan:
And as were closing out here, we have one minute left. Any of your closing thoughts or tips or like a really good strategy on just building a really big successful business? Because I know youve done very well for yourself. So give us just one good piece of closing advice.
Shawn:
Sure, the next component I would look to bring into my business is anything that brings in recurring revenue such as a membership program. Everybodys familiar with them from the DVD of the month, to the health club, to whatever else you might belong tothe country club. Certainly on the information product side, memberships are a natural component where every month people can have everything from new information thats delivered to them to the opportunity to interact with each other as well as the people that are the experts in the field. And so by creating this whole series of opportunities for people to give you money every month, you wake up in the morning on the first day of the month knowing that you have revenue coming in already that month even if you never make another sale. So, you make a

sale one time and you get paid for it multiple times and youll find that many members will stay with you for a very long timeagain, assuming you deliver the value that theyre looking for.
Ryan:
Perfect, and with that being said, the seven minutes are up. Shawn, I thank you so much. Again, if people want to learn more about you, I know youre giving away a lot of freebies and bonuses and products at your site, so check out quickstartsite.com. That is quickstartsite.com. Shawn, thanks for being here.
Shawn:
Hey, Im very excited about this and cant wait to hear my interview.
Ryan:
Absolutely, and guys listening, hope you enjoyed this interview with Shawn Casey.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #28

Stephen Cabral
Interview with Stephen Cabral

David:
Stephen:
I started about 3 years ago, and the reason I got started in really getting online in the first place is that I had opened a brand new personal training and weight loss studio. Id been consulting for a number of years before that and really got tired of traveling. I was traveling between four states every week to set up health clubs, personal train departments, and even non-dues revenues, so the sales, the pilates, all of that. So what I did Ryan, for my own studio, I needed a really fast way to get clients in the door because I was starting from scratch. So what led me to really do the online part of it is that Id already done a lot of offline marketing, but a lot of times it wasnt fast enough to really test a lot of things before I even got out there. So first started to get into Google Adwords, and thats what got me started in the first place and really got me into marketing online. From there, which Im sure well talk about, I developed a lot of online products as well.
David:
What year did you get started on Adwords?
Stephen:
It was 3 years ago, so we just entered 2010, so I would say it was late 2006.
David:
How interesting; so are you still doing Adwords?
Stephen:
I am. I rely heavily on Google Adwords.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
Oh, really? Thats very interesting. Im a big traffic guy, but I will stay on topic. So you were doing consulting, and you were working for a company, or was it just you on your own independent?
Stephen:
I was independent. What I had done, I had been training now for 12 years and what Id done was work at health clubs myself as a personal trainer. I kind of worked my way up all the way from the guy who was really doing consultations for free for clients and getting paid $8/hour to work the floor, up to then having my own clientele, and then eventually leaving the health club scene just because of personal philosophy and wanting to train clients kind of on my own terms. So I started working independently at different health clubs and clients homes, and what would happen is when I went into a health club as an independent trainer, I would end up really racking up my clientele very quickly and doing more than any of the other personal trainers there. So a lot of health clubs started to see what I was doing, catch onto how I was doing more sessions than all of their trainers combined, and they said, can you do this for us? Can you make that happen? So one thing led to another and I was designing departments and training trainers on how to get more clients and train their clients and retain their clients, which was obviously a really big thing with online products as well as offline, is that you dont want to define your customers all the time and obviously youre going to do that, but the best thing is if you can keep your customers and keep selling to them month after month. Thats a much better thing, and thats what I taught health clubs and studios and other businesses for about three years.
David:
That sounds like generating an email list, pretty much.
www.ryanlee.com

Stephen:
Yeah, absolutely, and its both in person and online and I think the offline taught me a lot of things about how to function online, about how to use integrity and really talk to the person, not just talk to the computer screen or my email program.
David:
Funny that you mention integrity. I just wrote a column about that because its a whole
Stephen:
One of the reasons that I think myself and Ryan Lee, we really are in tune to what the other person is doing because theres so many online marketers out there who feel they can get away with really anything because being online a lot of times can be anonymous and making up your own identity, but who I am is who I am. It comes out of mine and I think the same goes on with Ryan as well.
David:
Also, a lot of those guys that were doing shady stuff are not pretty much shut down. Their merchant accounts are done and theres nothing they can do about it.
Stephen:
Yeah, no matter what, even if they get started back up, it will happen in a different way. You have to be honest with people and you have to operate your business with integrity. If not, youll make money for a little while, but then youll lose it and you will be shut down. Its just the way it works.
David:
Okay, so at the end of 2006, you started doing Adwords for our studio.
Stephen:
Yes.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
So its been 3 years, and I see that you just did a launch the Smart Studio System. How many products have you created at this point?
Stephen:
Well, after I opened my studio, we literally sold out in six months, so once you sell out in six months, youre like, well this is a great problem to have, but now what do I do? If a person like myself [inaudible] great, this is always what I wanted. You kind of just sit back now. You can train your clients. You have your other trainers training you, but my personality is I like to create. So for me, Im always going to be working with my personal clients. Im always going to have my personal trainers working with their clients, but I needed to hit and reach more people. What I did was I actually spent way too long doing it, but it took me about a year. I wrote an entire manual on healthy living and how to lose weight. So what I did was I created that and launched that two years ago, and that did really well. It did well in the fact that I was able to learn so much from it. I started using autoresponders, and I really started to pick up marketing and the intricacies of it pretty heavily, going to a lot of different seminars, investing a lot of money in different tools. Anything that else I could [inaudible] mine that was cutting edge. First I had my printed book, and then I realized this would be a lot easier and a lot more profitable about 50% more profitable if I just had it downloadable. I was worried about that in the beginning because I was worried that people are basically going to steal my material, so youre going to give it away for free, and you know what, truthfully, that does happen sometimes, but you just have to accept that. It takes a while to accept, but you accept it when you realize you can help a lot more people and make a lot more money either way by doing that. After that I launched this huge program which was my online personal training. Its more expensive. Its a monthly online personal training program that includes videos and you name it, we include it. So the nice thing is that started being recurring revenue. And no my big thing is now, once you create something as massive as an online training program,

you can kind of rip it apart. Im going to take out all the different core and ab workouts, Im going to take all the different videos, all the different body weights, all the different stretches, and make those their own product just from that product. So I really feel like right now I never need to create another product because I have this huge one that I can just pull apart and sell independent.
David:
I like your style. I was looking at your sales page for the Smart Studio System (http://www. smartstudiosystems.com).
Stephen:
Yes. Thats a little different. So what I did, I got out of consulting about 3 years ago, and I did it for really personal reasons. For me, I wanted to get back to what I loved doing and concentrate on that full time. Id never gotten away from training clients. Id always continue to do that, but I wanted one place I love traveling and I take a lot of vacations, but I like to travel for personal reasons for just downtime, thinking, creativity, but I dont like to travel for work. So when Im opened my studio, I just stopped consulting altogether. I just said, you know what, Im just going to concentrate on building my own personal training business. So just about six months ago now, Ryan was talking to me and he heard what I was doing with my studio and how I had such a small space, but was able to do literally over $50,000/month just in 500,000 sq. ft. of studio, which is unheard of. Im very grateful that Im able to do that. I have awesome clients to work with, but having said that, it happened for a very specific reason. It

wasnt by chance. It wasnt surprise. We had that goal in mind and we worked our way up to it. So now what Im doing is Ive really hit what I feel is a high pinnacle for me for what I wanted to achieve training wise, and now its at the point where Im not worried about I need more clients, its helping other personal trainers because I get so many emails from people to create what I created a business without a lot of overhead that has a specific system to it, and one that you can monetize. People who went to our program are going to make a minimum of $1,000 more a month, and thats like the very minimum; and we offer a likeness program at Smart Studio Systems for all of that.
David:
So, out of curiosity, $50,000/month, how many clients is that for the studio?
Stephen:
It varies between whether you want to look at it as some small group, or some one-on-one, because what we do is we offer different programs. My idea for both online businesses and offline businesses is that you shouldnt turn anyone away, meaning that if someone wants help, you should have a bottom tier, a middle tier, and a high tier training program, so thats what we offer at the studio. We offer our small group training, which is less expensive. Its basically like a boot camp, but its unique in a different way. We dont want to become a commodity and we see where boot camps are going, so we want to kind of move away from that. From there, we offer some semiprivate which is 2-3 people at a time, and then we also which is our high tier, or pinnacle, which is one-on-one. Youre not looking at a lot of clients either. Were going to be looking at between 100 and 150 clients between one-on-ones and small groups. But to do that $50,000/month, we just take about 100 clients.
David:
Nice which is not many when you think about it.

Stephen:
No, and thats this is all fascinating to me, but Im kind of getting off topic.
David:
All right, so youre telling me that you went to a lot of seminars and picked up a lot of resources. Were there any things specific that helped you along the way like top three?
Stephen:
Yeah, the top three are we talking about resources as in like how to build your business, or what Ive just found to be most successful?
David:
Either one, or you can do three of each; whatever you want to do.
Stephen:
When Ive looked for the magic bullet Id asked Ryan for the magic bullet. Ive asked many people. In a roundabout kind of way, theyve said that there isnt one, which really is the truth. You have to go through a process just like anything else. In my business, transforming your body, whatever it might be, you dont know what you dont know, which means you just need to get into it. People are like, what should I use for this; what should I use for that? Heres where you start. I can tell you exactly what autoresponders to use, how to design your websites, what templates to us use, but you must have to do it. Thats the bottom line. You have to spend money. Everybodys afraid to spend money and Im no different than anybody else. I dont want to waste money. But the truth is, you look at it as a 5-year education. Since Ive graduated college, Ive spent close to $100,000 going to seminars, buying products online, and joining mastermind groups. And from all of those, I can easily say that Ive at least made my money back, and not even counting future sales. Im sure I double or tripled my money on the seminars that I go to.

So if its someone just starting out, Im saying you have to buy the essential products that everyones recommending. You have to get a really good guide on whatever it is you want to focus on. If it was Adwords, like I did, I think its Perry Marshall, but I could be mistaken, but you need to read about the guys who were originally doing it and then youre going to have to look at the examples. After that, you just have to go to seminars because again, you dont know what youre doing wrong. You dont even know the questions to ask. If you sit at the seminar, youre like, wow, I never even heard about that. I never even knew that. The first time I went to Yanik Silvers Underground, I was like, what is all this stuff? But you start to just absorb it and you start to hear about it, and then things start to go off when you read it online like, oh yeah, I heard about that. Maybe this is something I should look into. Oh yeah, Frank Kerns hes doing this launch thing. Whats that all about? So I learned from that when I did the Smart Studio Systems launch. We literally shut it down because we werent ready to accommodate the amount of people that we had for licenses. That was an amazing thing, and thats the power of first you have to have a great product. Our product provides at least 10 times the value and I think thats what people should shoot for. Thats what Yanik Silver kind of taught me was to give something away thats worth at least 10 times what youre charging for it. I know when we open again in a couple of weeks, well probably double our membership just because I have people emailing me all the time literally bribing me, How can I get in now? Integrity wise, Im not going to let them in an then not let other people in, although Id love to make that sale, thats just not how we operate. So find the product, the seminar, and once you start making a little money, just think of that as your little separate account that youre going to invest in your education. You dont have to spend money you dont have, but invest that money back into a mastermind group or into an additional seminar. One of my favorite things now is I need specific answers to my questions that may not be out there in a product, so I do one-on-one type coaching. Ill get a coach thats above me where

I want to be. They might be doing $10 million/year, and I say to them, This is where Im at now. This is my blueprint for where Im going. How can I create the best product for the exact markets that Im working for? So hopefully that answers your question.
David:
Yes. It does, in a sense, but Im kind of looking for if you list off three real quick, if you could.
Stephen:
Products that Ive really enjoyed getting?
David:
Yes.
Stephen:
If I could give you a few, Im going to actually walk over to my I have a huge library in my house. Thats one thing I suggest other people do as well.
David:
Im with you.
Stephen:
A couple of things that I really recommend are a few Dan Kennedy products, so he has a product called Magnetic Marketing (http://www.dankennedywebsite.com/magneticmarketing.htm). I think thats phenomenal. He has another one, No B.S.. His books are great. He has a whole series called No B.S.
www.ryanlee.com
David:
Yes.
Stephen:
If you have time or you should make time you should make an hour a day to read and go through products and thats how you build yourself. Thats how you get better. I suggest you read that series and the one for No B.S. - Wealth Attraction for Entrepreneurs is great. Another one that I like as well is the Google Adwords, and thats by Perry Marshall.
David:
Yes.
Stephen:
Thats the one I was talking about before. So if you want to learn something, learn the basics of Adwords. You need to definitely pick that up.

One book that I really like just to have as youre writing copy is called Words That Sell. Its a great book. Theres another one called Web Copy That Sells, and thats by Maria Veloso. Theres another one, I cant remember his name. He did the whole Blue Blockers campaign.
David:
Joe Sugarman.
Stephen:
Exactly. Its the Ad Copy
David:
The Adweek Copywriting Handbook.
Stephen:
Yeah, thats a fantastic one, and that gets you to because you have to learn how to write sales copy. So for me, its very personal. I write how I speak. I keep thing s short. I keep things concise. But one thing that Sugarman will teach you is that each sentence only serves a specific purpose, and that purpose is to get you to read that next sentence, and thats all you have to do. Your email can be 1,000 words long, and people have guys like Matt Furey, sign up for his newsletter. See how he writes and youll see that his emails are very long, but youre interested. He tells these personal stories and theyre amazing. I sign up for the best peoples newsletters. I highly recommend everyone do that. Theyre free, you get great little reports, and in the beginning, you need to absorb as much information as you can and then you can start taking yourself off of other peoples lists that are just basically sales lies. But even if they just send you sales emails every day, thats okay too because you get to see how they sell; you get to see the headlines that work best, so those are great as well. Another resource that I like is Nightengale-Contants, and I use a lot of their programs. Theyre all audio-based programs so I can listen to them while I work out. I can listen to them in the

car, although I try to eliminate as much driving as possible. Its not something I enjoy, but I used to. You can just pop that in and you can really learn about that as well. In terms of larger products, I have all of Ryans, so I dont want to be too biased and promote those, but Ryans one of the leaders in the industry, so if you can take out at least a couple of his larger ones like Continuity King or one of those, those are the ones that you make your money back right away, so you have to invest in those. I just picked up Mind Control Marketing by Frank Kern; pretty intense stuff. Thats a big one, and I dont even think thats on sale any more, but you might be able to find a copy.
Stephen:
I have Dan Kennedys newsletter as well.
David:
You mean Kennedys print newsletter, or are you talking about emailing his newsletter?
Stephen:
I get his print newsletter.
David:
Oh, really? Okay.
Stephen:
Yes, so thats more direct marketing and sales-based. They have a lot of different facets to it, but its also something that you dont need to be on that newsletter list forever. You can get it for 3 6 months, get the information that you want out of it, and then cancel it and maybe sign up for another. One of the things is you should stay in tune with at least one top marketer, and the reason I say that is things change all the time and my favorite thing to see about things changing is technology, so a guy like Andrew Lock, I follow his stuff because he has these amazing

resources. One of them, I think, is Nifty Clicks.
David:
He writes a column for us called Nifty, so yeah.
Stephen:
Oh, does he? I know the magazines coming out very, very shortly. His print newsletter, Microwave Marketing I got for about a year and I thought that was excellent as well. Youll see some overlap between newsletters from people that I thats great. I used to read Millionaire Blueprints Magazine when it was in existence. Its no longer in print, I dont believe, but theres a book. So if you want to get basically what the magazine used to be about, you can get the book, Millionaire Blueprints. Thats a great one.
David:
You mentioned before, you said Nightengale something. I didnt quite catch that.
Stephen:
Nightengale-Conants. They have the top business self-improvement people on there, like Joe Vitale, Anthony Robbins, theres just tons and tons of people on there and they have some amazing programs both for health and for business. Guys like Jay Abraham he has one called Mastermind Marketing or something like that which is a tremendous audio CD. Theyre usually 6-CD sets and I find myself flying through them. Ill listen to like 3 CDs in a day, and theyre just great for picking up all sorts ofso theres the new stuff they have to learn all the time, every month. But theres also the core principles that never change, and those are the books like Think and Grow Rich and The Richest Man in Babylon and just all those like How to Win Friends and Influence People, but those are the things that never change, so you have to read those because you have to have a basis. But then after that, what you want to do is then get your monthly follow-ups on like, this is the best shopping cart to use; this is the best autoresponder to use; these are the best templates to use for building your website, and those types of services.
www.ryanlee.com
David:
That was definitely youve got us the resources there. Thats going to be good. Speaking of foundations, have you read the book Breakthrough Advertising?
Stephen:
No, I havent.
David:
Okay, if you get a chance, pick it up. From what youve described to me, it sounds like you pretty much hit the ground running and didnt did you have any troubles along the way? Were there any big mistakes that you have made?
Stephen:
Well, theres always mistakes because I was at this pointMy biggest mistake is that in the beginning, really until about 3 years ago or so, I was just a perfectionist. I would not release and thats why it took me years it would take me forever to make sure that something was exactly how I wanted it; when now I realize that if I dont get it out fast enough, someone else

is going to do it, and if I dont get it out fast enough, it doesnt help me or the people that Im trying to help. So my focus in anything that I do is not about making money. Any time Ive ever concentrated on making money, Ive always failed to make money. So now I realize that its more about [inaudible], its like, how many people do I need to help in order to make this happen? I work like that with the personal trainers in my studio, with any of the fitness professionals that I coach. I say, if I can get them up to 120 or 140 sessions per month, then theyre going to be making x and when theyre making x, Ill also be making x. I will be making whatever. So its just a better way for me to feel confident about what Im doing and feel better about what Im doing. But having said that, once I got over my whole perfectionist syndrome, I really tried to move as fast as possible. So yes, Ive taken on a couple too many projects that maybe I shouldnt have and thats cut into sleep time, but you learn a schedule that works for you. The other thing is that Ive also lost money on web designers, websites, Adwords. Its all part of the learning curve and thats why I say you cant be afraid to spend the money. I consider that now part of my education. I spent $5,000 literally on somebody to build a website for me that never actually got built.
David:
I did the same thing, so I can empathize.
Stephen:
Yeah, and its painful. Its something you dont want to let go of because Im someone who doesnt like to waste money. I would definitely say I hate to waste money more than I like to make it. It is painful, but you just say, I learned from that. I know exactly what not to do now, and now I know less expensive resources to get that done in the future.
David:
In terms of moving away from being a perfectionist, you said that your whole thing was you think someone else is going to get it out faster or youre not helping people. Is that pretty

much the only is that the two real things that got you out of being a perfectionist, or was there anything else that kind of helped you break that mold?
Stephen:
Yeah, there was. I had to hear it 100 times, but it was everyone saying youre 80% as an expert is going to be far better than anyone else is going to be able to get out there, in the first place, but if youre confident in your work, but also, if you give people at least 80% of what you have, its going to be so valuable that its worth the price that you want to sell it for. And then you can always do updates. So once I heard them say, Just give them free updates, because I didnt want to charge for updates, so when I saw that you just say, If you buy today, youll get free updates for life, so once I heard I that, that took the pressure of me. I said, all right, I can give them everything they need to at least get started and succeed, and then Ill give them even more once Im able to put all my charts together and my graphs and all the good nice photos and whatever it might be, because thats the time-intensive stuff. You can write them yourself. I write daily for different websites and magazines and all of that, so writing for me is not an issue, but kind of getting it all on paper and getting it laid out nicely, so now I outsource. If someone can learn something faster, its outsource more faster. So I know exactly how much I get paid when I work with clients for an hour, and I know how much I get paid for my phone consults with personal trainers and other business professionals. So I say, if I can work one more hour and make x, well I can certainly pay someone $10/hour to outsource something.
David:
Do you have an assistant?
Stephen:
I do. Actually, we have different types of assistants. I do have multiple assistants, and they do everything from a personal assistant, who helps me with all things in my life, as well as in my studio; then I have one basically studio person; and then I have a virtual assistant online that

helps me with the nuts and bolts of peoples accounts and if a credit card gets declined, and all of that.
David:
So you have two actually live assistants, as opposed to virtual, youre saying.
Stephen:
I do have two live assistants and thats only because the work that I need done has to be done physically, or I would have the all virtually.
David:
For outsourcing, give us some strategies, I guess, that you have used that helped you find the right people, because that tends to be an area of significant pain in this industry.
Stephen:
It is an area of significant pain because by the time you get to the point where you want to hire someone, its very hard to part with your money. Thats just the way it is for people. Its the whole fear of scarcity and If I just save that $8/hour, I can have another $100 by the end of the month. Its the wrong mindset to be in because once you free up your time, you can actually just breathe and relax and enjoy yourself, or you can put that time you were doing with these smaller assignments and put it into your higher profit, and I really recommend that everyone write down every hour. Actually, I do every 15 minutes of my day and what its dedicated to, and you can actually look at the blocks and what its dedicated to meaning how much money do you bring in for that activity, or enjoyment. It doesnt have to be just about the money. It can also be about enjoyment. But you should have a factor for that. Anything you dont enjoy, you should outsource. Anything that isnt bringing you in a significant amount of money at least your hourly rate you should outsource if it doesnt bring you enjoyment. So thats how I look at it. So now youre asking how does that pay off, everyone at the point where they have this pain, then they want to outsource, but at that point, theyre so busy they cant take a half hour

to actually write an ad to find a person to outsource, and then they get all these emails and resumes and theyre like, Well, how do I get this person? How do I find the right person for me, and then how do I train them? So thats the reason most people dont outsource in the first place, is because you have to go through that whole initial process. What I recommend is find a resource from someone who says this is the place to go for in assistance, and then take that persons advice. Before you do anything, write out your entire system of how you want things done. A cool way to do it is just use a screen cast software. I use Screen Flow as a program (http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/overview.htm). Its only $100 for a Mac, and I can record everything I do on my desktop, and then I can just send a link to that to my virtual assistant so that it shows them exactly how to do everything.
David:
Cool.
Stephen:
Thats the best way because you can tell people over the phone, you can have documents written, but to actually hear my voice and see me do it on the screen about how I do emails and templates for all my emails and all of that, and thats the easiest way. Personal resources I use www.Guru.com and www.CraigsList.com a lot to find assistants and outsource.
David:
I havent used Craigs List myself, but I know that a lot of people have found local people that have been very good from Craigs List as opposed to just searching on www.Elance.com or whatever.
Stephen:
Thats what I use. If its someone local, I use Craigs List. I get a lot of applicants even for low pay, somewhere around $8 - $10/hour, and I get you cant expect to get an MBA off Craigs List, but youre going to get somebody whos able handle the tasks and thats all they should

be is administrative tasks that youre giving to your assistants. Youre not going to have them balancing your books. Thats for an accountant. Those people too and this still blows my mind I know a lot of people that are making money and they still do their own taxes, and they still do their own write-ups. I highly recommend they hire someone who is a professional at what they do and can find you as many legal writeups as possible. Youd think youd find them all through Turbo Tax. That is not how it works. If Turbo Tax worked as well my accountant, I would just use that, but no, you get an accountant and someone who is highly skilled at what they do. You give them your numbers, your expenses, your problems. You give that to them. Definitely outsource that. That is not something you should spend time on.
David:
Yeah, no one wants to spend time doing taxes.
Stephen:
No, definitely not. Bare minimum, if we can get it [inaudible] give it up and pass it off.
David:
So how many hours do you find yourself working a week? By working, I mean actual stuff that you dont enjoy doing that you have to like those kind of tasks, and then just in general in your business.
Stephen:
It definitely varies, so my personal workload works like this I work Monday through Friday pretty intensely. Ill probably it is on my own schedule, but I probably work 12 hours a day. I probably work 77, and that might seem like a lot, but for me, the entire day encompasses working with clients doing phone coaching calls, working with online people, just updates from there, and then it also involves my own personal life like lunch. I get my own workout in and that. So thats my whole day. Its probably not dissimilar to a lot of people.

The weekends are for creative base work. So during that time, Ill definitely read. Ill catch up on newsletters. I might watch some DVDs, so I do a lot of stuff for myself on the weekend, so thats my down time. I very rarely check email. Im not an email guy. I check email three times a day. If youre someone whos hounding me to get me by email, its just not going to happen. I dont let emails run my life. I have a Blackberry and an iPhone. Neither one of them get attention thats specific times a day and how you recognize the most people because even if you say, Oh, it only takes me a second to write this email, what happen is it takes you out of the mindset of doing something else. So it occupies your attention for a specific period of time, which is good. What I do, too, is I really enjoy my work, so I dont really dread it. For me, Im always thinking about my business, thinking about creativity, whatever it might be, but I also take 6 weeks of vacation a year. So, I work hard and I also play hard. I just spent 10 days in Costa Rica. I got back last Sunday. During that time, no work gets done. Literally, I check in for about 15 20 minutes per day, once per day, and then Im done for the day. Januarys a busy time for fitness, and I still took 10 days off. People thought I was crazy, but once you have a system in place, it runs. You dont have to be there all the time. If you have to be there all the time, and you cant take a vacation, then I would hate my life. But I have freedom. I can take time off whenever I want to take time off.
David:
In terms of planning out your week and I know Im kind of pushing for time, so Im going to wrap it up soon do you have a planner? How do you schedule yourself?
Stephen:
Yeah, absolutely. For me, and I think for every other really successful person, you need a routine. You really should have pretty much the same times of day doing the same things every day because eventually you find out what time of the day your most creative writing or whatever it might be, and you just get those done at those specific times. Thats important, so I do have my days scheduled to the T. So when people say, oh, can I just stop by and meet with you for

a few minutes about your personal trainer, I have to say no. I feel bad. They dont understand why I have to say no, but its because I have everything scheduled throughout my day. The night before Im someone who wont be able to sleep if I have all these thoughts running through my head, so the day before or the night before, I always have my list of to dos for the next day just a normal to do list. I tried every method in the world. I have planners and technology-based programs or whatever it might be. I now have a 4 x 6 high-tech index card with lines on it and it says, Monday, and then on Monday it says what I have to get done. If I cant fit what I have to get done on the front of that index card, then I have too much too get done, and it wont get done. So its actually a very simplified, nice, easy system that I use to get things done. The other thing I want to say about my schedule is if I decide to take a half day or a three-day weekend, I do that. Thats the thing. I will work whatever I need to work to get done what I need to get done. But then Ill give myself the downtime that I know because you cant ramp yourself up and ramp yourself up and keep going at that pace forever. Youll burn out, and so Ive realized that and I now draft my schedule up like we did for lots of Smart Studio Systems. I was working I cant even tell you maybe 16 hours a day answering emails and getting back to people, and making sure that the site the site was the first of its kind. I never had a site come out like that where a license had everything that you needed downloaded by template right online and it was membership based, but it was without the monthly membership fee. So, I worked a lot then, but then after that, what did I do? I just took a lot of time off and I only had to do it once. So my great thing is if Im taking on a new project, I look at it and I say, how much time is it going to consume, whether Im being paid for that project, what type of enjoyment am I going to get out of it, and how long is going to last? If its going to be a permanent thing, if Im going to be writing for another magazine or whatever, thats going to take one hour a day because they want me to write a daily article. I really take a big look at that because that means something else has to go in my schedule.

So what I do is I basically take on larger projects that are going to take about 2 4 weeks to complete that I have to work hard on, and then I have a lot of downtime as well.
David:
So tell me what is next for you and your business?
Stephen:
So, the great thing is now that Im always going to grow in my personal training business, but its at a point now where weve maxed out the studio. Ive decided right now that I dont want to expand the studio, so I dont want to expand my physical location because I dont want to take on more overhead. What I would like to do now is teach personal trainers how I am able to make $50,000 - $60,000 - $70,000 per month actually just training clients in a sustainable business not one thats going to become a commodity then youd sell it for $100/month for unlimited personal training. Those types of things are based on cost. Theyre not based on value or theyll never last. Theyll last for a little while and then bigger competitors will just price you out and just destroy your business. What I do is I keep sustainable businesses and what I plan doing now is really focusing on helping other personal trainers, other fitness professionals, other business owners to learn how to build that business from the ground up. If they own a business, thats great. Well revamp it; well make sure that we - a lot of times double or triple their sales. Thats not uncommon for what we do. So thats going to lead me through the licenses for building their own. For a strength business, thats www.MyStudioBusiness.com. The other thing is Im going to be starting an actual business personal training system. That doesnt mean theres going to be an actual physical location because we want people in Australia, the UK, Iceland,

all over the world. So what we want to do is personal trainers in the fitness professional dont receive any business education. They receive a certification on how to train clients. Even at that, its very inadequate, but they can go to seminars that perform better, and they can learn a lot there from other fitness professionals. But the business side of it is lacking and that means not just business on how to sell to them, but how to actually conduct your training sessions, how to retain clients, everything from the forms that you use with the client, to how youre actually supposed to speak with them during the session. People dont think about that, but everything you say and the environment that you create is what your client sees as your brand, so were teaching them how to create their brand. So Im going to be coming out with a website this is free this is my way of giving back because everyone has to give back. Its something that if you dont catch on at the beginning of how much its worth to you and to others, you will eventually down the road, and everyone gives back what theyve gotten to a certain point. Im at a certain point where its not about the money anymore. It is about how can I teach people to literally live the lifestyle. Im doing everything that I want to do, and live and do what I do. Were creating something called www.PersonalTrainingBusinessSchool.com, and its going to hand in hand with Smart Studio Systems, but Personal Training Business School is going to be an online video coaching and article-based system for how trainers can systematically build a business and systematically is important because you need a system.
You cant do it one day like this and then another day like that. Thats what causes headaches. Thats what causes frustration. You get overwhelmed and you can never take a vacation. I teach a system. Once the system is in place, the system runs itself. You dont run the system.

Those are the big plans and thats what 2010 is really going to be all about. Its going to be about helping more people and I help personal trainers to build their business. I know exponentially theyre going to be able to help more people get in better shape an its achieve their body transformation goals than I could possibly every work with. The whole reason I got into selling my products online in the first place and now if I can help 1000 personal trainers personally work with them myself, and then help hundreds of thousands just by going to that website and getting all the free material, that will be really what Im looking to do.
David:
Awesome. Out of curiosity, where are you located.
Stephen:
Im located in Boston, Massachusetts.
David:
Oh, Boston, cool. All right, well listen, thanks so much for the interview. You gave a lot, for real. It was very good.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #29

Steven Conca
Interview with Steven Conca

David:
Steve, tell me what you got you started in internet marketing.
Steven:
Well, basically I guess its just trying to find another stream of well, two things (1) to find another stream of income, and (2) just to be able to reach more people with the product that we have.
David:
And so that product is the Raise Fit Kids (http://www.raisefitkids.com)?
Steven:
Correct, thats right.
David:
So when did you get started?
Steven:
I actually got started its been over about a year and a half ago. After the Ryan Lee boot

camp, I submitted an application to be part of the mastermind group just to kind of see what the behind-the-scenes internet marketing business really was all about and how to go about developing a product and getting it out there. So thats when I sort of jumped in with both feet just to learn a little bit about the whole process and how it works and a little bit more about the internet that was being from the fitness side of things. That was a little bit foreign to me at the time.
David:
And did you have a product already, or how did that work?
Steven:
It was more or less a thought that sort of what we looking to do, and that evolved into the Raise Fit Kids program. My initial thought was more of a coaching educational-based program for parents with kids that play sports, but then sort of looking at our own lives and having three little kids and the experiences that we had, and my experience as a stay-at-home dad for a few years really kind of opened my eyes to this whole world of parents trying to do the right thing to raise healthy kids, fit kids, however you want to say it. But they were really misinformed through the nutrition industry, through the exercise industry, so thats where we got to thinking, hey, if we can help young parents kind of get off on the right foot with the Raise Fit Kids program, thats kind of how that involved into what it is now.
David:
So what were you doing before? Im assuming that you were obviously something in fitness.
Steven:
Yeah, my background is in exercise science. I was a strength coach. I had my own business for a little while and then my wife and I switched roles where she went to work more of a full-time business. I was more or less staying at home for a few years doing some consulting work, and then we made the big move home to the northeast, and thats when I start to dive into the internet marketing component just to look at, hey, it was great to be home with the kids. I learned a tremendous amount. Now how do I do that, or how can I do that for my wife as well

and still be able to generate income and work the product, and thats how the whole internet marketing mindset kind of came to the forefront.
David:
Do you both work at home now?
Steven:
No, actually my wife works about 30 hours a week as a physical therapist. I have a fitness studio in town which I work at, and then I do the online stuff sort of in between all of that type of thing. The online component has definitely added an additional revenue source. Im not going to say its anything significant to this moment at all, but its a way that were learning how to work it and how to market it.
David:
Okay, how do you feel about the whole concept when I was first introduced to the world of internet marketing the whole appeal was automated source of income. Even if its not a significant amount, its still (a) its money that you wouldnt be getting otherwise, but (b) youre not selling each individual person on this product. They go to your site and it does all the work for you. Do you feel that the concept of autopilot is correct, or is that misinformation?
Steven:
I think once you get it set up, yeah, for the most part, it is on autopilot. Youre still going to deal with people having questions or something didnt go through, so thats the stuff that youre going to have to deal with where youre not really spending your time developing your program, so to speak. Youre now just kind of managing it. Do you know what I mean? Our thing was that we made a lot of mistakes going forward. We didnt have a lot of the pieces in place like we should have. We changed a lot of stuff, so there was a lot of learning curve that

took place, but once we got the program set and the website down, yeah, it worked. It worked great, but there was that customer service component that you really personally, I think you should be able to manage if you want to continue to put out a good product and not just blow it out there to make some money and then be gone with the wind, so to speak.
David:
Yeah, thats not the best way to do it. When you launched, did you have any joint venture partners, or how have you been getting traffic to your site?
Steven:
We sort of have a soft launch. I didnt have any joint venture partners at the time. Where I got most of my traffic was within our business development group, there were some people that basically put us in contact or referred us to some other folks that they had on their list about our product, and that kind of got a little bit of momentum going. What we plan on doing is really getting out there on the blog scene for our specific product and really trying to connect with people and say, Hey, you know what? Were just not trying to sell you something. We really have a good resource that you can learn from. Heres what it is, heres how we can help you, type of thing. So I think thats starting to come a little bit now. The thing is, you know, you still youve got to put a lot of work on it and time into doing that. We heard a lot in the beginning, Oh, you know, you just write all these press releases and you do all these articles, and all this other stuff. Theres going to be people just kind of flocking to you, and maybe its the product and maybe its for whatever, but you somehow still have to have that personal connection, I think, of trust a little bit with people so they can actually feel comfortable about clicking that pay button. Because our product is a lot softer, what we learned is that a lot of these guys that are making ridiculous amounts of money with weight loss and fat loss and making money online investments. Those folks, we kind of learned, are more desperate, so to speak, but theyre willing to drop $50 or $100 here and there and try various things at the drop of the hat, where

when youre dealing with young parents with kids and their kids especially, you know, theyre probably going to think twice about is this legit, can I really afford the extra $50 or whatever it is, so I think we had to think of a little bit different approach than your hardcore selling guys that are doing it.
David:
Yeah, well its definitely more of a family environment.
Steven:
Right.
David:
Thats one thing that Ryan talks about all the time is building relationships with your customers, especially I think thats really big, specifically in the fitness industry. Theres something about the fitness industry because its like outside supplements and the acai berry garbage stuff, but its very much like everyone is so friendly and nice because healthy people are happier people.
Steven:
They really are, yeah.
David:
So its definitely the whole trust factor, and I think that getting started in marketing and the fitness industry, if youre qualified, is great for anybody because the relationship building and the people skills that you need to have.
Steven:
Youre absolutely right.
David:
And that kind of grows off of personal training and that kind of stuff. You have to have relationships with your clients as well, otherwise if they dont like you, theyre not going to pay for your service.

Steven:
Right.
David:
So if you had to start it all over again if you really want to do that if you had to start it all over, would there be anything that you would do differently?
Steven:
I would probably do less of the web-based stuff on my own and just right from the start go to somebody who really knows what the heck theyre doing from writing copy and getting the website up. I did the mistake of trying to do that just for the pure sense of just trying to save some money as youre starting to develop this whole thing, where in the long run, I probably spent twice as much as I should of just because I screwed up and had to get somebody to unscrew it and do it right. Then I would definitely probably be a little bit more methodically organized on what Im going to do and kind of how Im going to approach the marketing side of things. Theres so many different ways that you can go about doing that and you kind of look at that thing and you get almost overwhelmed at times about, Man, I should be writing articles or I should be blogging, or I should be doing this or I should be doing that, and I tried to do a little bit of that and I made the mistake of not really focusing on just doing one or two of those very well and efficiently. Thats why Im going to try and sort of relaunch this whole thing with really focusing on one of those components, which I think will help us moving forward.
David:
Was there a defining moment for you when you knew that this was what you wanted to do, that you knew this was the right way to go?
Steven:
Id say, believe it or not, when we had our first client and it was a family out in Wisconsin who I received an email from them saying sort of how lost they felt with trying to find the right

answers with exercise and nutrition and staying healthy. They had a 12-year-old son who liked sports, but he was heavy. His dad was big; his mom was big. His mom was working out, but him and his dad were kind of fighting it, just not really knowing what to do or how to do it. So when I got that email, I called the lady as soon as I got that and said, hey, look, well be glad to help you in any way we can. The scope of the program was designed for preschool and elementary kids, but basically the whole concept is the same about exercise, eating healthy, so basically what we did is we took those concepts and helped that family sort of develop some eating habits and daily exercise and they were grateful for it, which was great. We that was kind of cool that all of sudden now we hopefully just helped a family out in Wisconsin out of the blue, trying to get their lives back together. So that was cool. If we can do that and wed do conference calls with them once a week and we made some personal exercise videos for them once we saw how they could move. We actually had them I sent them a video saying, Hey, I want you guys to show me how you look doing exercises x, y, and z, you now, body weight, squatting, lunging, different things so that we can just see where are these people now instead of just sending them an exercise DVD and saying, Here try this. So we got that and we created sort of like a mini video series just for them, just for their family, about them and how they move and dealing with their limitations. We thought that was pretty cool to do and if we can do that for other families, that would be neat.
David:
Thats pretty awesome. Its always the internet is such a faceless environment, so its always cool when you see the real results. I think when I see testimonials online a lot, you always question if theyre real people and whatnot. Its easy to forget that youre dealing with real people, that each person who signs up to your email list is a real person.
Steven:
Yeah.

David:
Its just crazy sometimes. If you had three must-have resources that have helped you along the way, what would they be?
Steven:
Like a resource as far as someone to help me?
David:
It could be a book, it could be a mentor, it could be an info product; whatever has benefitted you the most.
Steven:
I would say what definitely helped me was Ryans program the whole mastermind group of collective people trying to do the same type of thing. Everybodys going through sort of the same trials and tribulations of what to do and how to do it, and then to have somebody like Ryan whos got his hands in the pot with all these other internet marketers and trying to take the best of the best of what they do and telling us what sort of not to do where youre seeing people try to do some sneaky stuff. To have someone there to do checks and balances to make sure youre staying on the correct path has been a pretty big help along the way. So that would be, I guess, one major component would be having someone like Ryan as like a leader of a program like that where hes got a lot more experience than any one of us did. And then having a group of professionals in the business, the whole networking capacity, joint venture capacities are a big help. And really the third, honestly as corny as it sounds, is like just a supportive spouse because its definitely been a lot of work, a lot of money invested that all hasnt come back yet, so thats the thing that hey, were trying to do is get our investment back and then on top of that is where were going to be hopefully profitable and kind of reap the benefits of our hard work.

David:
Yeah, it can be a lonely road, you know, so having someone I cant even imagine having that kind of support. Its hard. Youre constantly questioning, Is this the right thing to do? Should I really be doing this?
Steven:
Right.
David:
And having someone there at your side constantly saying, Yes, do it. You can do it, is probably pretty awesome.
Steven:
Yeah, its big.
David:
Steven:
Basically, what we want to do is we want to re-launch the Raise Fit Kids program more on a local level. We got so ambitious in the beginning to try to get it out there on the web and do all these great things, but I think just given the nature of our product, I think weve got to start a little more grass roots, a little more local connection, and then as things build and momentum builds, then we can take it to more of the masses type of thing. But thats what were going to do is just kind of take a step back and say, Hey, lets just do it right here in our own backyard to start, and then we can take it online in a greater capacity.
David:
I think thats definitely a good approach because the whole concept of niche marketing, I guess, but also having that solid foundation.

Steven:
Right.
David:
What Ive seen a lot with the successful online marketers not all of them, but a good amount is that a lot of them were doing everyone who has a strong offline presence always does well online. Im not saying that you dont, but do you know what I mean?
Steven:
Oh, yeah sure.
David:
Great. Thanks a lot for the interview. I really appreciate.
Steven:
Thank you guys.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #30

Tim Kerber
Interview with Tim Kerber

David:
Tim, tell me, how did you started in internet marketing?
Tim:
Ill share my little known dual life story with you. Very few people know this. I think Ryan Lee does. Way back when I was 12 years old, I started with the computer and I taught myself how to program a little bit (definitely a geek) and in college, at the first glimpse of the internet back in 1989, of all things, it was before it was anything like it is now, and I was immediately excited. I saw some potential not nearly as much potential as it came out to be, but I knew it was big. During that time, I actually started programming small little games and programs for a handheld computer called a Scion computer. I found way to sell them online even though I couldnt take money on line. I would actually put them on different chat and bulletin boards that were available then, and people would actually send me money. They would send me $15 and I would send them code to unlock the program that they downloaded, which was pretty interesting because I thought if people were actually willing to pay somebody they didnt even know The interesting thing was I should have sold them make it U.S. money because I was getting currency from all different countries. Anyway, that was pretty exciting. In the early 90s to mid-90s, I started designing websites and thats when the internet started getting more graphical America Online came about and things like that. So I started creating websites for local businesses. I lived near a popular beach community and theres a lot of hotels and motels and things like that, and I started building up a client base and actually creating websites for them. So I started directly working online and met capacity. My next venture, I was paying attention to internet marketing at this point. I saw some people who were early adopters and I was paying attention because I like it, make more of it, and my next venture was to create an eBook. This is basically a segue of that dual life that I was alluding to because during that time while I was doing all this, I actually had a full-time job and I was a police officer. Not a lot of people that even know me now know that, but I was a

full-time police officer at the time and it was for that busy beach community. I was supervisor. I was on the SWAT team, and detective riding motorcycles and horses on the beach, etc., so it was kind of fun from that perspective, but I was moonlighting during the daytime so I was working at night and moonlighting during the daytime with all these other ventures online. From that, I was trying to figure out what eBook can I create, what downloadable product, and first thing that obviously came to mind was what do I know. I know how to become a police officer, so thats what it was. I created an eBook how to become a police officer. I started selling that through ClickBank when they first started up about 1998 or so, 1999. At the peak of it, I was earning about $7,000 per month, which wasnt too bad not a bad little side business. During this time, my police friends and coworkers had no idea what I was doing, no idea what the money I was making, anything like that. So to bring it more modern, in the early 2000s, I started making how-to DVDs, videos, and things like that. I totally taught myself. Im very much a self teacher. Ill pick up a book and learn how to do video editing or whatever. I just like doing that. I started creating how-to DVDs. My biggest one was how to use the Blackberry phone right when it was taking off. That DVD sold thousands and thousands of copies. It was right around 2001 maybe, I decided I wanted to do a membership site. I wanted to create a membership site and I figured I could either reinvent the wheel and start designing something, start programming something myself I do have a programming background or I could see what was out there. In digging around, I came across a solution called MemberGate and this was right when MemberGate was first released and the developer, his name is Bill Myers, I immediately I just thought he was brilliant. I really clicked with his personality just very sincere and just over delivers. Hes got a very popular side that I liked and still remember to this day. Long story short there, I actually signed up for a membership site through MemberGate. I became a beta tester because I was bugging Bill all the time. Id say, Wow, this is great. Have

you thought about adding this or that? and after a while hes like, Okay, I put it on your site. Let me know. Try to break it and let me know if you can come up with any suggestions. From that, it segued into me actually working for Bill and part of that, I think an important thing for people reading this is a tactic. It really wasnt like this manipulative thing, but in the mind I told myself and I also told my wife at the time if I ever have a chance to work with Bill in any capacity, I would jump on the chance because I was just so impressed with how brilliant he is. Way back then I coached him. I said, his softwares great. Theres not as much documentation on how to use his features, and if youre interested, Id be willing to go through the whole control panel and create online videos showing you how to do the different stuff. Id do it completely free, just in exchange for another site license. I dont even know what Id use it for yet, but in the future. And I actually created him examples so for example, heres how to do this on your site and just let me know. I sent him an email. Like five minutes later, he says, Yes, done. That really caught his attention and from that a friendship grew. I started talking to him regularly. I was so thrilled to learn from him. I really became he was my mentor. I guess I was his protg to some extent. We got to meet at functions and from that he asked my wife and I out to dinner one night, asked if we wanted to help out with support for MemberGate. That segued over a period of time for me actually running support for MemberGate. And a few years later this is a few years ago he actually me asked me if I wanted to take over and basically buy the company out from him. Hed still maintain kind of a quiet role for awhile, but I would actually be running it. At that point, the point that came to that, I was running 95% of everything. He was doing the programming. Thats what he likes doing. He wasnt really big in any of the other aspects of it. I was doing everything else. A few years ago I bought the company. I saw what the potential was and there were things that he really had no interest in doing in growing the company past where it was, which was fine. Bills great about knowing what type of lifestyle he wants and the things that he doesnt want to do to complicate things or to interrupt the lifestyle he wants.

I knew that the company had a lot more potential if it was marketed differently or a little more aggressively. He didnt market it at all. Its completely word of mouth. Long story short, Im the CEO of MemberGate. We are the top of the line membership site solution. Were 10 years in the making now and we have about 1100 membership sites running on our software everybody from Zappos and General Motors and Ryan Lee has multiple sites with us, and many, many online marketers that people would know if they heard their names. Thats my short story.
David:
Real short. Out of curiosity, do you have to pay a monthly fee for MemberGate?
Tim:
Yeah, MemberGate is set up its a one-time license fee, a perpetual-use license, and then once youre up and running, theres a hosting fee and that can run basically under $30 a month - $29$35 month.
David:
Oh, nice. Thats awesome. So, wow, you were starting way, way, way early. Everyone weve interviewed is like, Yeah, I got my start back in 1998, and Im thinking thats ancient times for internet. Youre like 1989.
Tim:
Right.
David:
Thats incredible. When did the internet even exist? When did it start?
Tim:
Well, first Al Gore came. It existed in different forms. The way that were used to now with a graphical browser and things like that, was the early 90s. I want to say 9293 is when AOL and

some of the other Netscape browsers and things like that started coming out. When I first saw it, it was completely text only. I was used a browser called Gopher at the time. I just remember sending somebody an email in England and within 2 minutes they responded back and that just totally blew me away. I was like, wow. I didnt know the full potential. I wish I did. I would have brought every domain name in the world. I knew something big was coming and I knew something good was coming and I knew that I wanted to be a part of it because I just wanted an entrepreneurial life and not working for somebody else, aspect of things.
David:
Yeah, go back in time and buy Money.com and then come back.
Tim:
Yeah, everything business.com and RyanLee.
David:
Yeah, buy RyanLee.com. Thats crazy. So you saw there was potential. You sound like you used the term early adopter before. Do you consider yourself that kind of person? I mean, like the whole Blackberry thing. I thought that was pretty fascinating.
Tim:
Yeah, I definitely
David:
Is your style to kind of to get things as soon as they come out and then learn them and teach other people kind of sort of deal?
Tim:
Yes, absolutely. Im a gadget freak, so when something gets announced and if its from

something from Apple of whatever, Im the first one board. Im definitely an early adopter and I realize that the first version is not going to be as good as the next version or whatever, but I try to I just enjoy that anyway. So seeing new things and seeing the trends, but then also taking advantage of those trends, and the Blackberry was a prime example. My wife had actually suggested that because we were thinking around and its like, How about that phone you just got? You seem to like that. The next thing I know, literally, I was doing it out of the house. I was doing hundreds of DVDs a day because corporations such as Wendys and Mobil Exxon, and even Google were ordering hundreds because they were rolling them out to the sales force. It got to the point that the makers of it were actually sending me customers. I heard about you from Research in Motion, who is the maker of the Blackberry. Its just fun for me. I love technology and seeing the opportunities, which is something that Bill Myers really bestowed upon me is the ability to see a trend and put yourself in front of that trend and really take advantage of it. Marketing is big about that.
David:
Two things: One is, I want to talk about mentors, but first I wanted to ask you, youve pretty much seen the internet grow from the start. How has it changed for the better, do you think? Do you see where at least do you have any gut feelings about where its going in the future and what the good things have happened in the past few years.
Tim:
Sort of. The biggest trend is pretty obvious when people pay attention to it, but its the fact that everything is just becoming so much easier to do online. So before Id say five years ago it was difficult if you wanted to put a video online at all. Then YouTube comes along and geez, next thing you know, youre uploading and two minutes later youre sharing a link with everybody so the early adopters, myself and others, who would spend days or weeks to try to figure out how to do something. Now the technology is point and click. Because of that, its just opening up new marketing opportunities here because those people that are finally getting the internet.

My mother, who is 76 years old, is online regularly doing different things. She gets it as far as what it is now. Ten years ago she had no idea totally intimidated at things like that. So theres so many opportunities along that line. The big thing obviously lately for anybody not paying attention much is social networking and a lot of Google is really driving a lot of directions for things online and theyre really paying attention to social networking. So anything that basically gets the thumbs up from the average person as far as Google can determine that other people like a certain website, a certain product or whatever, the more things you can do to let Google recognize that is how youre going to really fly as far as Google listings are concerned and things like that. The more social you can get as far as getting YouTube and having people link on it and leaving comments and just reviews in general, anything social in that manner is just exploding for good reason. Google looks for relevant results and relevant means people like it. So when they get signs that people like a certain thing and vote n, it basically, theyre rewarding those sites handsomely.
David:
One of the big selling points of internet marketing and doing stuff online is the concept of automation. Do you feel like obviously things are moving towards the trend of being more and more automated. Do you feel like at some point everything is just going to be like click on everything, you know?
Tim:
Well, for an online business person, the more that you can go toward that model, we absolutely youre fortunes going to increase dramatically. Ill speak from my level of expertise or my topic of expertise with membership sites. When you have something that somebody can join a site automatically, pay you automatically recurring or continuity income month after month after month and your interaction really is very limited, whether you have 10 members on your site or 10,000 members on site, the amount of work does not go up exponentially like that. So the more things that you can automate and make happen without your involvement, your income goes up incredibly.

Im blessed now with having some really good connections throughout online marketing and stuff like that and the people I talk to, they either have a membership site or a recurring income stream or they are strongly, strongly considering it because they know theyre missing the boat. So when it comes to income, if you can automate your income, that is the goal. If you want a true dotcom lifestyle income, that is really, really key and anybody that is in this business long enough totally understand that now. Theyre just working on how to do that.
David:
I guess that kind of makes me think, what about people who dont have products that are service based? How do you help them automate that process?
Tim:
Are you talking about an offline business?
David:
Well, probably more folks on offline, sure.
Tim:
The biggest thing, if you have an offline or a real business, one of the biggest things that you absolutely essentially have to do is start collecting your prospects information, building an email list. There are two things. When I talk to people, I usually pick peoples brains when were masterminding and things like that. Theres a few things I ask people pretty regularly. A couple of those things are, what do you wish you did sooner and things like that. Inevitably, I wish Id built my list of email prospects sooner because its allowing you to continuously market to them over and over again. The other thing is I had a recurring income stream coming in. So building your list, if you take a pizza shop or a hotel or a motel, thats one of the things that I did for our a client even way back then I made sure that they collected the email addresses of people who wanted to know more about it. So we encouraged them to have either a flier brochure at the time a CDs and DVDs werent big back then something that they could actually send somebody if they gave their information. Once they did, they gave me the permission to repeatedly contact them.

So if its a restaurant, for example. You have the card there and you have a drawing. Let them know that theyre going to have specials. Tuesday is a really quiet for your restaurant, well send out the Tuesday Two-for-One Special to your email list. I guarantee if you position it right, youre going to fill your restaurant on the most dead day of the week with the right offer. You can automate all that nowadays, for example, using a service such as Aweber to collect and to set up a series of autoresponder messages and things like that. So thats really one of the most critical things I see. Businesses that are just starting to learn but dont quite get it yet, the importance of getting that email address.
David:
You actually just gave me some good ideas right now. Thats the way to do it. Youre right. I never really thought of it in terms of for restaurants even. Thats pretty interesting.
Tim:
Any business; any business that you are going to be a repeat not even a repeat customer but first-time customer. Win them over. People buy because they know, like and trust you. So they get to know you. With some emails, they get to like you because youre actually giving some good information in case of a restaurant or a beach community or hotel something. You tell them what are the points of interest. What other things are going on in town that they may want to check out after theyve been to your business. So you build up that trust and the next thing you know, theyre like, Of course Im going to go deal business with them because I like them. I trust them. Theyve been talking to me.
David:
Awesome. So if you had to start over from scratch, your internet business, is there anything that you would do differently?
Tim:
Yeah, I wish I had built my list sooner, definitely. I learned that the hard way. Youll never regret that. Another one is delegate as soon as possible from the very beginning. So understand

and recognize what you are strong at and what youre not and find people to bring on board that help you with the things that youre not. And also pay attention to the 80/20 rule. Pay attention to the 20% of your efforts that bring in 80% of your money and focus your energies primarily on that 20%. All of the other 80% of the stuff that you do that it isnt quite efficientfree time or whatever, have somebody else do that. So for example, theres great service at the odesk.com and what this allows you to do is you can bid on a project and things like that. I need this created for my website. I need a sales page or whatever. This oDesk, when somebody accepts your project for $25 to build a site, the sales page is something it actually takes screen captures of their work as they go along every 10 or 15 minutes that you can review. I know for me, learning how to delegate, for me, a lot of it boiled down to a trust issue and not wanting to give up too much control and Ive learned over time you have to weigh different things and that oDesk, for those that are not quite as trusting at first, it may be good to use for somebody that youre initially trying out. Down the road, once youve built the trust and they want to work for you more often, then maybe you dont use that, but its just a good tool to keep an eye on things and itll assure you that they are actually working for the money, so delegate and you can really ramp up quickly.
David:
Yeah, I actually was using oDesk the last month of so. Its really good. Especially, it made the whole tracking stuff that they have really good. Elance doesnt really have anything like that.
Tim:
Yeah, its really cool. What you see is in action. Youll be like, Wow, thats neat. I dont know, from the person doing the work, maybe they think its a bit much, but they understand that thats what its about. Its kind of a trust thing.
David:
Yeah, definitely. I myself have trusting and control issue as well.

Tim:
The thing about, I think, is that online its just a face lift kind of place and everyone can guarantee whatever they want behind their computer screen.
David:
Exactly. I think that accelerates the issue of trust for sure.
Tim:
It gives you a level of accountability.
David:
Yeah, definitely. So was there a defining moment when you knew that online business was the way to go; it was your future?
Tim:
Well, the big thing for me was when my monthly income from the police eBooks was surpassing my full-time income as a police officer. That was total autopilot. If I was spending an hour a week really on customer service I cant figure out how to download the eBook. I dont know how to download Adobe as a PDF or whatever. For me it was mind blowing that I can make much money and it was ongoing. That was really huge for me. The month that I retired to put things in perspective again my police friends have no idea. I was going on trips on my days off to speaking at events and then coming back and theyre basically all, What did you do for the week, and Im like, Oh, not much. Just kind of hung out. I didnt want to go into the whole story of explaining what I was doing, but the month I retired a few years ago, I actually watched an info product that it pulled in like $1.71 million in 10 days. That was like 10 days before I was going to retire. So for me, that was like, okay, Im making the right decision here. That was not all profit, by any means, but thats pretty huge to make that amount of money in a short amount of time. I also had a speaking gig around that time and during the engagement, I could offer some product. I offered a high-end coaching and software package and in an hour and 70 minutes

of speaking, it was like $289,000 in sales. So Im like, okay, now I know my hourly rate. But again, my police friends still have no idea. I can only imagine what they think. They know I do something online and Im sure I can guess what they think it is, but its not.
David:
$289,000 an hour; that is your going rate right now. One of the things that you just mentioned that kind of struck me because I was talking to someone about this yesterday, when you were saying you werent really sharing with your friends, whats the reason behind keeping it to yourself?
Tim:
For me, theres two worlds of it. There are people that really get it my friends in the internet marketing and they understand what it means to have online sales. Just that concept is really outside its a total paradigm shift for my friends. I still have really good friends on the police force and things like that, but they equate earning more money by putting in 20 hours more overtime this week. They directly are selling their time for dollars and for me to explain that you can totally create something once and benefit for years, literally, to come in the future, is just kind of mind blowing. Ive tried to explain to some of my friends. A lot of times I get the deer in the headlights look. They just kind of looking at me going, how? They dont even know where to start. Preface it to say that its very good to have friends in both worlds. I have the friends that have nothing to do with internet marketing and I can totally enjoy not talking about it all, and then I have plenty of friends obviously in the internet marketing world I mastermind with and talk to regularly and things like that, that get it, I can share and bounce ideas of them and give ideas to. And for me, it kind of helps to keep me grounded too. I dont like to rub money in peoples faces. If someone knew whatever, its just not my style to go on bragging to somebody in the other world as far as what the potential is and things like that. I try to help some people, but a lot of times its kind of too much of a jump to have to step into easily and start to learn it.

David:
Do you think for someone thats getting started, would you try to tell them to probably just not talk about it?
Tim:
Well, one of the real big factors and Im really into psychology and I kind of like to analyze and reverse engineer the things that I see that are working that includes the people I know that are very successful. One of the common traits that I see almost unfailingly is the people that do start to take off online and do well, a huge fact to that is having a supportive significant other their wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. If they have a family or if theyre in a home environment where their significant other may not totally understand what theyre doing, but at least they have to be supportive of it. If they are in a position where if they try to say what theyre going to do and its immediately shot down and say, Thats stupid. Youre never going to do that. Why are you wasting time? How long can somebody put up with that until finally youre saying, Youre right, or I feel guilty. You need a supportive environment to do that. If you have that at home, then absolutely, just be realistic about the goals and things like that. Im blessed with a wife who totally gets it. And the friends that I have, the close circle of friends that I have, are equally blessed and have supportive partners that also get it.
David:
Give me some more traits of the successful people that you know.
Tim:
Sure. Its funny because I had a really good one. I sit in the meetings and when its kind of quiet, I look around the room and kind of pick up on what it is that makes them. Off the top of my head, some of the things somebody that can learn to delegate effectively and very quickly. Again, understand your strengths and weaknesses. Ryan Lee is a great example of that. The ability to act on something extremely quickly. So, Eben Pagan is another very sharp guy. He has a term Im sure he coined it from somebody else but he has Ready, Fire, and Aim, so basically if you see an opportunity, get it ready, throw it out there, see what

happens and then aim and make it a little bit more accurate. One of the things that I see people do wrong is they have analysis paralysis. They start thinking about something. They half finish something. The next thing you know, its on the shelf, and now they have another project on the shelf. I have to tell you, but if you dont want something, you can spend as much time as you want, youre never going to earn a dime on it. So get it out there. It doesnt have to be perfect. Get some feedback on what it is. If its an eBook, if its a site, or whatever, the people that I see that could be more effective, they really need to step it up and just throw it out there and get some feedback. Its not the end of the world. You can regroup, you can re-launch, and things like that. Just get some feedback and grow with it. Some of the other things its so imperative for the people that are truly really, really successful is networking. The best way to network is to get out and go to the seminars and conferences that are related to what you do. Thats effective. To meet someone face-to-face totally blows away meeting somebody online through an email or whatever. So I personally do several speaking engagements and actually attend different events a few events a year and its really not for the content that Im going. 95% of the time its for the networking and just meeting people. My main thing is Im not a big extrovert. Im sort of quiet, but I can strike up a conversation. I force myself to become extroverted and basically just try to find out personally what somebodys into, but also how I can help them. If they start talking, and inevitably it gets to what they do. Thats not the first thing ask. I dont say, What do you do for a living? Its more like, you know, basically, Tell me about yourself. What do you like to do in your spare time, and inevitably it gets back to work and I try to think in my head, or I ask them straight out, I have a question for you. If there was one person that if I could introduce you to them that would totally change your world, who would that be? Is there a contact? I cant guarantee I can make that contact, but I certainly give it a try. I know a lot of people and I know people who know people, so if theres somebody that really could change your world, Id love to.

You would be amazed. That question alone opens the flood gates because they start telling me so much more insight into their business, the direction of their business, who their role models are, things like that. Youd be surprised how many times you can actually help make a connection with somebody who knows that person. Ive made some really strong connections for other people and I can tell you theyll give me the shirt off their back now just because I went that extra yard to try to make that happen for somebody. The networking for me has added so much money. And then finally, mastermind groups. Even the most successful people that I know making a lot of money (7 or 8 figures a year) belong to high-end mastermind groups. I cant under emphasize the importance of being able to be in a room with people who are generally at your level. Some may be a little higher than yours, some are catching up to you, or whatever, but to be able to bounce ideas off of each other, to just learn just really cutting edge stuff that theyre thinking, and then to be able to pick up the phone when youre not in the group and bounce ideas. Ive had launches where Ive literally been on the phone as Im launching a product, with different people I mastermind with, and theyre helping me tweak the launch as it goes. The power of having connections like that can exponentially increase the success of your business.
David:
I think the concept like you said, youre kind of introverted but you can start up a conversation the concept like the more uncomfortable conversations youre willing to have that kind of like theres a correlation between that and your success as a person, I guess.
Tim:
Yeah, definitely. Dont try to its almost like a courtship first date when youre first meeting somebody. Dont go straight for the jugular, but if you can help somebody, theres a lot of reciprocity. A great book Im sure youve heard of, was The Power of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini.
www.ryanlee.com
David:
Yes.
Tim:
Reciprocity is such a good thing. If you can find out something some way that you can help them, they are inevitably going to be indebted and want to help you out in return. You dont go in with that expectation, but its going to pay you back multi-fold and just force yourself to meet people. Dont go to I see people sitting at a conference and theyre always sitting with the same people. They dont go out to the dinner events which is where most of the stuff happens, like the bars or whatever. Even if you dont drink, grab a soda or something, but just force yourself out of your comfort zone and dont just stick with your group. Go over to the other people and meet and youll be amazed at what connection you can make.
David:
On reciprocity, the one thing Ive taken away from Robert Cialdini, I know his whole thing is when you do someone a favor, instead of saying, Its no problem, you say, I know youd do the same for me.
Tim:
Right.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
I had a friend do that once and I found it so stupid when I said it, but I know it worked because I could see it in their eyes. Theyre like, Oh, right.
Tim:
Right. If you throw something like that out there, probably the next line is, Well, what could do I for you? Is there somebody that you would like to meet? Is there some connection I can make for you?
David:
Exactly.
Tim:
One of the most important things you could do is make connections, and again, you dont have to know the other person. You [inaudible] through the grapevine and you guarantee everybodys only a few degrees of separation. You can make some big things happen just by asking around.
David:
So if there are three must-have resources for living the dotcom lifestyle, if you will, what would they be?
Tim:
One we just mentioned Robert Cialdinis The Power of Persuasion book is absolutely fantastic. Grab some really high-end marketing books. That book is just fantastic and I would put that at the top of a list to read that, but also, once youre read that, be cognizant and pay attention to not only your own buying habits and your own just kind of look at yourself in a fishbowl tank. Why was that site so appealing to me? or When I got off the phone, why did that person make me feel so good? Once youve read that book and understand the principles in it, you start putting all the pieces together how sites are positioned, how offers are positioned. A lot of it has to do with the things that are mentioned in that book, so if somebody doesnt have that, theyre just crazy.

Must have resource, we mentioned email newsletters and things like that. I use Aweber for mine. I personally know the owner, Tom Kulzer. Its just a rock solid, you know, it does exactly what I need and more. Its just really great for being able to collect names and actually gets the weather and stuff like that. Thats just a really rock solid tool. We mentioned previously that I sincerely believe that recurring income is just absolutely huge, so consider looking at a solution such as MemberGate which is a total done-for-you membership site. They come on board and the next day you have a site up and running for you, including design. Understand that recurring income can totally change your world. You can have a lot of sales last month, but January 1st does whatever. Youre starting from scratch again unless you have recurring income. In that case, you have a steady stream that keeps growing like a snowball. Anything that you can do to add that to your business will make things go leaps and bounds.
David:
So what is next for you in your business?
Tim:
Whats new in my business, or whats next in my business?
David:
Whats next?
Tim:
A few things. Its going to be an offshoot. With MemberGate, I see the behind the scenes. I run several membership sites. I have my own product membership site, www.owner.com, so I have different things in the works. One of them is going to be basically a high-end partnership service, basically a done-for-you membership site model. Im planning on pairing up with some top echelon gurus in their particular niche or field and creating a site for them and actually running it for them on a partnership basis. So I have a partner on board. Im not quite ready to announce everything,

but its very soon to be unrolled and were already getting some feel as to some really high-end people that know they have some great knowledge, some great assets, but they dont know how to run a membership site or how to do it effectively and things like that. So were actually going to partner with them. Were going to do launches and everything pricing strategies and things like that. So were already getting feedback just from the few people that Ive sent stuff that we may need be doing it. Another one is creating an offshoot for a membership site. Basically, I love travelling. I have two young kids who travel really well and I am creating a portion of my business thats going to allow me to travel as often as I want and basically be able to write it off in some capacity. Im going to be meeting people around the world in different kind of mini-mastermind settings basically wherever I want to travel to. Part of it will be meeting them for a day or whatever and probably will be checking out and writing stories while Im out there and things like that. Ive learned to balance my life with my business and try to put things in place that helps me to enjoy both of them. As far as giving back and things like that, one of my projects this year is a large multi-community kind of social rec center that is going in place in my town. Actually, its the next town over, but its only a couple of miles away its a few miles from me. Im committed to helping them finish off raising the funds to make this thing happen. Its just going to be such a great place for our community. For me, theres a saying, when it comes to donating, you can give your time, your talent, or your treasure (in other words, your money), and in my case, I think my talent and my time yeah, I could just write a check but I think my talent and my time, if I set up things for them fundraising wise and also just recurring things to help make this thing happen, I think it could really make such a big difference than just simply cutting them a check. Its something that can support this thing over a long, long time, so thats something Im actively working on right now.
David:
Youre just making me think about your high-stakes partnership sort of deal. I know Brian Clark was talking about doing stuff like that with celebrities.

Tim:
Sure.
David:
Like membership sites wheres its like a $9.95/month to talk to Brittany Spears or something like that.
Tim:
Right.
David:
Those kinds of things are pretty cool. I think thats a big thing for the future is getting like celebrities involved in that kind of stuff people who already have a huge share at giving them mass because those are the kind of sites that can get hundreds of thousands of people, you know?
Tim:
Right; absolutely. Theres a lot of people out there that know that they need recurring income. They have no idea how to really go about it or they can put something together they could hobble something together but instead, the position I have is I know what works. I see the financials of the sites that we have and I talk to the site owners regularly so it would actually be me helping them in a partnership and really making things taking off not just getting members onboard, but keeping the members onboard because without that, you dont have a recurring revenue stream.
David:
Yeah, for sure. Well listen, thank you so much for doing this interview with us, Tim. We really appreciate it.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #31

Tim Schmidt
Interview with Tim Schmidt

David:
I want to ask you not when you got started in internet marketing, but tell me when you got bit with entrepreneur-itis, if you will.
Tim:
I would say the entrepreneur-itis started when I was in high school. My dad convinced me to read the book Atlas Shrugged, and that was pretty much the beginning of it.
David:
What about that book got you going?
Tim:
Atlas Shrugged, its funny because that book really isnt about entrepreneurship at all. Its more about the value and the importance of Capitalism and a free society. Really, the way that book is written, the ultimate entrepreneur is kind of the hero of the book, so I think that was it.
David:
What was your foray into it? What was your first thing that you did?
Tim:
The first real business, or the first pretend business?

David:
You can do pretend business because those stories are always fun.
Tim:
Okay. I call it a pretend business, but it was my paper route I started. Its funny because I did that for six months and I took it over from a guy and I never made a cent because it was so messed up. He didnt have his account set up right and he wasnt collecting the right amount of money, and I just kept on doing it that way until finally my dad sat me down and its like, Kid, youre supposed to be making a profit with this. That was the first one. After that, really the next business I started was my engineering business right out of school.
David:
And what exactly was that?
Tim:
I had gone to school to be a mechanical engineer and I worked for a company for a year and a half and I figured with all that year and a half worth of experience, I was ready to start my own engineering consultant business. If theres one things about entrepreneurs, its that they usually just act first and really think about stuff later on, which a lot of times gets you in trouble. But at the same time, its really what saves the day for the entrepreneur because I certainly did not have the experience, but in my mind I did and that was good enough.
David:
And did that do okay? Im judging by your laughing, it sounds like it was a struggle.
Tim:
It was a huge struggle. It sucked, but eventually I built it. It took it me about three years for it to be able to support my I take that back. That thing supported the family right out of the gate. I ran the business for 10 years and eventually sold it to a key employee. I sold it in 2007, so it was good. I never made a lot of money, but it was good.

David:
When did you jump into internet marketing?
Tim:
Internet marketing came along because halfway through the engineering business game, I started what I call my dream business, which was a publishing company, and it really wasnt much of an internet company at all, but internet marketing, when I started to study that to save that business, and not only saved it, but transformed it into a very, very successful operation. You could say that started in 2004.
David:
And the publishing business is separate from you have an association, right?
Tim:
Correct, yes.
David:
And was that separate from that, or were they together.
Tim:
Well, it started out as just a single print magazine which, if I could make one recommendation, I would tell a person never, ever, ever to do that.
David:
Wow, thats weird, because thats kind of what were doing, but you know.
Tim:
Ryan doesnt always listen to me. Its really, really, expensive, and if youre going to do it, you have to do it the way that Ryans doing it and the way I did it, which was well, I guess I shouldnt put words in Ryans mouth. Im not sure if hes doing it this way, but the only way to really make it work is it has to be a real premium niche type of vocation and you have to have your subscribers pay for it because hell never, ever get enough advertisers to make it work.

David:
Yes, were definitely in agreement on that. We definitely are not relying on advertising money at all.
Tim:
Yeah, and dont get me wrong because having appropriate advertisers is tough and in most publications, customers want that because they want to see the other people in that business, but thats what it really needs to remain as, which is simply just a small benefit for the reader, not a revenue source.
David:
Yeah. So, you had your print magazine. You said you that you struggled and then internet marketing saved it. Tell me more about that.
Tim:
Exactly. Well, the magazine started in 2004. In 2004 was the first issue, and I just tried to I bought three books. Im an engineer so I figured Id read a book on how to do it and just do it. So I bought three books on how to start a magazine. I read half of one of them and never looked at the other ones, and just tried to do it with just direct response and send out a bunch of free copies. But the magazine proceeded to grow really slow and the staff I had to hire to make it happen was pretty expensive, and it just continued to lose money for a year and a half almost two years. I think the way it started was I actually brought this product from Matt Furey, like a training workout product, and in Matts follow-up sequence, I bought a product from Dan Kennedy, Magnetic Marketing. That was my very first internet marketing product. So then somehow I got involved and the next thing I knew, I was surfing the internet and I saw Yanik Silvers Underground online seminar, so I went to that. Thats when I really started to study internet marketing, direct response marketing, and thats when I decided instead of just having the magazine, but actually create an association that I can charge a lot more for and just have the magazine be one of the benefits of the membership.

So thats really what saved everything.
David:
And this was the whats the associations name?
Tim:
Its United States Concealed Carry Association the USCCA. (http://www.usconcealedcarry. com/)
David:
I mentioned it to my friend last night and hes like, So he runs the NRA? Is that what youre saying? I was like, no, not quite. So then you had that and youre still running the association.
Tim:
Thats correct, yeah.
David:
But then you recently came out with the Tribal Formula (http://www.gettribalformula.com/)?
Tim:
Yeah.
David:
Tell me about that a little bit.

Tim:
Oh boy, like most entrepreneurs, I have nonstop ideas coming into my head and whenever I get around people that are in different businesses, I always think, Oh, that would be fun to do. I could do that. I could do that, and one of the smartest things I did shortly after I went to Yanik Silvers first workshop, was I joined the mastermind group and there were a bunch of really successful internet marketers in that group, so I thought, well god darn it, Im going to create an information product as well. So the Tribal Formula was the result of that. What it is, I just in very specific detail, explain how I transformed the money-losing magazine into a very profitable association and how other people can use these same association-type principles to really improve their business as well in terms of how long people stay members and that kind of stuff. So thats whats that product was and honestly, right now I have one full-time employee that continues to work with that business, but my main focus is on my initial passion, which is my association.
David:
I kind of recall doing the launch. Youre stuff is kind of based around Maslows hierarchy of needs?
Tim:
Sure, yeah.
David:
Are you really into psychology?
Tim:
I wouldnt say Im really into it. Im certainly a student of psychology and I think that anybody thats a student of direct-response marketing is just inadvertently a student of psychology because what we do is we try to figure out how the human mind works and how we can persuade to do something thats mutually beneficial to both the person as well as the business

owner. To that extent, I certainly am a student of persuasive psychology.
David:
The concept of persuading to do something thats mutually beneficial is interesting. It sounds like that almost shouldnt have to happen, you know? Its like, if its such a good thing, then there shouldnt be any persuasion involved. It seems like with the human mind, its almost with everything, everything seems to be backwards. Do you know what I mean?
Tim:
That, my friend, is a very interesting observation but unfortunately, its completely wrong.
David:
Oh, yeah?
Tim:
The human mind really doesnt do anything without persuasion. Are you married, Dave?
David:
No, no. Im 21. Im not there yet.
Tim:
Oh, youre 21. Okay, cool. You better not be married.
David:
No.
Tim:
So yeah, I guess the keyword in that is mutually beneficial. Its pretty easy to persuade once you study enough psychology, its easy to persuade anybody to do anything, but if youre not persuading people to do things that are better for them and really, you want to persuade people to do things that are better for them than it is for you, but then youre never going to have a real long-term business.
David:
Tell me about how did you learn persuasion? What were the resources that helped you?
Tim:
First of all, I would never consider myself having learned Im continuing to learn every day the art of persuasion.
David:
What got you to a point that was like you were using it effectively?
Tim:
Thats a great question. I would say when I went through Yanik Silvers copywriting course, that was fantastic, and really that very first information product that I bought from Dan Kennedy, that Magnetic Marketing, that was really the basis of all of it. The neat thing about this kind of stuff is that you need to know the laws of physics and calculus and science or the stuff doesnt change. So really, what you do is you just need to find the type of person that you relate with the best in terms of your teacher because theres lots of people that teach the art of persuasion and just study what they put out. Yanik Silver and Dan Kennedy are both good teachers that I like and so thats really where I got my initial education.
David:
The associations whats the difference betweenI guess when I hear the word association online you think of membership sites and then an association has kind of a different to it. How is it different? Whats the more appeal?
Tim:
The way I define it is that an association really has to have a commonly shared passion, if you will, and if you think of some of the biggest associations like for example, the National Rifle Association is a perfect example. Thats actually the exact association that I modeled my business after. People that join that are very passionate about the right to self protection and self defense. Maybe AARP whats that stand for? Association of Retired People or something like that?

David:
Yeah, American Association of Retired Persons or something.
Tim:
Persons? Okay. I guess that probably doesnt pass the litmus test quite as well, but certainly people are in that I guess right now youd call it the Baby Boomer Age Group are very passionate about the fact that they think theyre special and they deserve special treatment. Quite frankly, theyre such a large demographic, they get that special treatment. I really think the commonly-shared passionate belief about something is really the main difference and theres all sorts of membership sites that really dont have that common passion thread.
David:
So, when youre marketing an association, how do you convince someone to pay to be a part of it, because it almost seems like theyd be like, oh, I want to join it so Ill get a card or something in the mail and thats pretty much it, or how do you get them to be is it recurring billing?
Tim:
The way I do it is annual. I do annual billing.
David:
How are you convincing people to pay? What is the rationale?
Tim:
It just comes down to how you convince somebody to pay for anything. You make a giant list of all of the specific benefits that theyre going to receive from joining, and those benefits need to be tied into some problem they perceive they have, and then just essentially make an irresistible offer showing that theyre going to get 10 to 50 times the value of what youre asking them to pay for. Its a no brainer. How do we determine that? This is the easiest thing to do that people screw up, and that is you just ask them.

Ask them what they want. Ask them what their problems are. We just got done doing a gigantic survey of our members and we asked them over 50 questions and this was a survey where they actually got to type their answers so it was a lot of work to go through everything, but now we know: Why havent you joined yet? What are your biggest concerns about using a firearm for self defense? and on and on and on. Then you just make your business so that you solve the problems that your prospects just told you they have.
David:
Youre a pretty organized guy, from what Ive been told. Do you have any Ive seen some of your videos where you have some pretty cool-looking mind maps. How did you find your organizational strategy? How did you figure out what worked for you? It seems pretty complex, but do you feel like its something that can be applied to everyone, or is like everybody has a unique way?
Tim:
I think its a combination of both of the two options you gave me. Number one, the way that I built my most successful business is based on proven principles and I modeled my business after other businesses that Ive seen have been successful, and everything that I do theres absolutely no risk because Im doing things that have been done before. Im not reinventing the wheel because it doesnt need to be reinvented. Thats the part of the answer that says, yes, the way I lay things out to do will work for anybody. However, people that dont think like me and dont get excited about detail or organized spreadsheets, are going to have a hard time learning from me. Therefore, it would probably be a better idea for them to model their business after somebody whos closer to them. Does that make sense?
David:
Yeah, it did. Its a complex question, so yeah. Are there any organizational tips you would give to someone who was looking to become more organized?

Tim:
Yeah, probably the most important thing I ever learned in engineering school is that no matter how complicated a problem may seem to be, if you just break it up into smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller chunks, it eventually gets easy, whether its stats or a dynamics problem, eventually youre going to break it down into very simple, basic physics rules which are all very simple. Youve got gravity and theres not much more. So therefore, in business and in your organizational life, just break things down into as simple steps as you can. What that inevitably helps you do, David, is that it helps you to continue at action, and action is hands down the only thing that will see you through all the struggles you will have to go through as a business person and an entrepreneur. As soon as you stop doing stuff, even if its the wrong stuff, then youre screwed.
David:
If youre suffering from paralysis by analysis, would that be the way youd break it is by if youre in a lot, just break things down into what you can do right now?
Tim:
Yeah, what can you do right now and how can you exactly. Even if you know in your minds eye that this next thing that according to this breakdown thing, Im pretty sure its going to be wrong, just do it anyways because 95% of the time, the mistakes that you make will lead you to the things that will eventually work and youll never be able to see those things that will work unless you make mistakes. So many people will never see huge success because theyre just too afraid of making mistakes, and the funny thing is that the only way to really be successful is to just getting good at making mistakes.
David:
Yeah, and processing what you did wrong. If youre never doing anything, yeah, for sure. If there is anything that you would do differently if you had to start business over from scratch, what would that be?

Tim:
If I could add up all the money that Ive wasted on developing products and back-end products and books and DVDs and just membership benefits that I thought were a good idea, you and I could both go out and by ourselves a couple of Lamborghinis right now. The whole concept of a brilliant idea is the biggest bunch of BS ever, okay? The only really brilliant ideas are the ideas like your product concepts or your membership benefits youre going to offer a thing that your prospects tell you want. That would be the first thing. I think the question was, if I could change one thing is that I would never introduce a new product or a membership benefit without first asking my prospects if they wanted it. The cool thing is when we ask people what they want, they tell you.
David:
Crazy.
Tim:
So many people and even just this weekend Im in DC right now at a mastermind meeting, and I watch people who I perceive as sharper marketers than me, and what are they doing? Theyre coming up with what they think is a great idea and then they come up with this product, and Ive got to sell it.
David:
Im confused. You said theyre making stuff, but theyre not asking the prospect? Im sorry.
Tim:
Yeah, theyre putting the product first instead of asking. Theyre coming up with great product ideas themselves what they think is a good idea instead of just simply asking their prospects, Hey, Im thinking about creating some new training for x, y or z. How can I make this so that you would like it? Even if you have to direct them a little bit, thats the way you do it. You always ask your prospects and customers what they want as opposed to just coming up with what you think is the next great idea, because I guarantee that very rarely will it be a good idea.

David:
This kind of ties into the last question, but if you could pinpoint your top three mistakes that youve made along the way and how we could hear from them, what would they be?
Tim:
Trying to do everything myself. I realize that some people dont have that problem because theyre not a neat-freak perfectionist like me, but thats number one trying to do everything myself. Not practicing the principle that good enough is good enough, trying to make everything perfect. Probably the third biggest mistake is doing what I just got done telling you about is trying to come up with my own product and produce ideas is ridiculous.
David:
Heres a quick question for you. If you dont already have a list of prospects, youre just starting out, how would you suggest doing market research?
Tim:
Well, the first thing I would do is I would try to find a person who was being successful at the type of business I think I want to get into, and look at what theyre doing. Who are these prospects that this guy is marketing too? What are they buying? What are they selling? How much are the customers paying for it? Who are his competitors? So youd totally be modeling somebody else. That would be the first thing. The second thing is once youve found a niche that you think that you want to run a business in, would be to start developing your own list.
David:
For sure. Was there a defining moment for you when you knew that online business was the way to go?

Tim:
Thats a good question. I dont know if there was really a defining moment. Yeah, I would say that when I was sitting in the crowed at the Underground Two Seminar. If there was going to be a defining moment, thats when it was. Actually, dude, guess who the person who I saw speaking on stage really made me think that I could turn this magazine around was Ryan Lee. I kid you not. Isnt that crazy? So there we go. That was the defining moment, when I was listening to Ryan Lee speak, ha ha.
David:
Thats really funny. Ill tell him you said that. That was probably my defining moment as well, when I was at his Continuity Summit because hes a pretty good speaker.
Tim:
Hes a good guy, too.
David:
Must-have resources for someone who wants to live the dotcom lifestyle, if you will books, products, what has helped you along the way the most?
Tim:
Im going to give you three resources that are a little bit off the radar. Theyre a little bit more like really old school stuff because theres so many solid copywriting resources and influence resources. So here are the three. Ready?
David:
Yeah, definitely.
Tim:
The first one is the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. The next one is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. The third one is a book called Emotional Trigger Words by Tony Flores.

The first one, Think and Grow Rich, really teaches you your inside are you familiar with these books at all?
David:
I know the first two. I own How to Win Friends and Influence People. I havent read it yet. Think and Grow Rich, Ive heard some stuff about, and Emotional Trigger Words, Ive probably seen the title around somewhere, but I havent picked it up at all.
Tim:
Yeah, Think and Grown Rich, it really gets you to master your inside game in terms of what goes on in your head and how to think and how to really influence your actions just with youre thinking, which is so, so important and so powerful. How to Win Friends and Influence People just teaches you how to be a good friend person not that most people arent good people, but everybody needs to improve their game on that. And then of course, the Emotional Trigger Words, thats actually kind of a relatively recent resource, but its a phenomenal book to have right next to your computer whenever youre doing almost any sort of copywriting, headline writing, anything. Its just a killer resource.
David:
Kind of like Words That Sell? Have you seen that one by Richard Bayan?
Tim:
I havent read that one, but this is almost like a Thesaurus-type resource where if you think to yourself, what kind of emotion do I want to invoke, and then this thing is divided up into emotional segments. So if you want to invoke fear, it gives you like or frustration or greed or hope, and actually gives you all these examples of how to invoke those feelings, which is just hot. Its just killer.
David:
Thats pretty cool. Ill definitely check it out. Tell us, whats next for you and your business?

Tim:
I would say that probably the previous I took almost an entire year off to create the Tribal Formula product and do the seminar and do the launch and in these past three months, Ive gotten 100% back with U.S Concealed Carry, so right now my next move is to take that to the next level. Ive hired a bunch of people. Weve got a much more aggressive benefits team, marketing team, customer service team, so thats the main thing for me to kind of get back into my original passion and add zeros to the end of stuff.
David:
Add zeros to the end of things. I like that. Last question to wrap it up what is the best advice that youve ever been given? Good luck.
Tim:
Id say its a combination of in the next five years, you will become a combination of the person youll be in the next five years is based upon the books you read and the people you hang out with. You have to guard those two things with our life. You have to constantly be improving your game in business and in life and the people you hang out with is also so important. Youre income will give you average of the five people that you spend the most time with. So if youre spending your time with people that dont think big and dont read books like Think and Grow Rich, youre going to end up like them and you can do nothing to avoid it. But the cool thing is that if you plan it the other way if you hang out with guys like Ryan Lee and other guys like that, its almost inevitable. You will start to become like that. There you go, man. Guess who taught that to me? My dad taught that to me when I was 17.
David:
Thats totally the truth, and thats a big recurring theme is having positive peers and the mastermind kind of stuff, their huge. Its so interesting because its like its not something you can do yourself.

Its like controlling whats around you. Your environment is so crucial for what you want to become.
Tim:
I dont know how you got into this position at 21, but aligning yourself with Ryan Lee is a good decision, so good for you.
David:
Thanks, I appreciate it. Thanks also for the interview.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #32

Vince Delmonte
Interview with Vince Delmonte

David:
Tell me, Vince, what got you started in internet marketing.
Vince:
It was probably when I found out a guy named Anthony Ellis, who has a similar story as mine. He transformed his skinny body to really muscular and gained a lot of weight in a short period of time. I found out this website which is known as Long Sales Copy was making over $1,000 a day and my instant reaction was Thats impossible, and it got me really curious because I had pretty much the identical story to him and I was a trainer at the time making okay money, but obviously that peaked my curiosity.
David:
So when you saw this, what year was this?
Vince:
I think that would have been probably early 2005.
David:
All right, you see this thing. You see he has the same story as you. What was your next step?
Vince:
Sorry?
David:
What was your next step?
Vince:
Oh, my next step; okay, so I got in contact with another guy who I met through the internet, Lee Hayworth, who is making money from another bodybuilding website. He had some fitness info products, and he referred me to the Internet Marketing Center which was off of Corey Rudl, and I bought $300 worth of his DVDs and started to see what this internet world was all about, but still didnt really know the next step personally, for myself.

I hired a mentor through the Internet Marketing Center. It was a $7,500 investment and it was a 6-month one-on-one coaching program, included eight 1-hour sessions. That was in October 2005, and I went live May 2006 with my first info product.
David:
What was your first site/product?
Vince:
Its called No Nonsense Muscle Building and its at my website, www.VinceDelmonteFitness. com, and its basically a complete muscle-building program for skinny guys all digital.
David:
So you launched this program instant success? Making millions immediately? How did that go?
Vince:
No, definitely not. I started off at $39.95 and I was experiencing a couple of sales a week. I

was driving some of my own traffic, but I was doing like $500 every two weeks and thats $500 every two weeks for a couple of weeks. It kind of started to grow. It got up to about $1,000 every two weeks, but that took a couple of months and it was steady at that for a while.
David:
What were your expectations?
Vince:
I told the mentor that my main goal was to make $3,000 a month. I said, If you can help me make $3,000 a month, then I will sign up. I couldnt fathom making an extra $3,000 a month. I thought that would have been more than I could ever dream of, and that was my initial I had no idea that years later, fast forwarding a bit, that $1,000 a day would become a really bad day for me.
David:
A really bad day? How nice. All right, so you got the site up. When did you realize, Oh, man, this is it. This is what I want to do. This is where its going to go. This is my full-time thing now.?
Vince:
When I started doing joint ventures with some key players, I was doing them just one at a time and they would make $3,000 - $5,000 in 24 hours in affiliate commissions, I started to realize that I just needed to get this in front of more people. Ive got something that is good, I just need more faces, more traffic. So thats when I realized that I could easily scale this up if I figured out how to do this. So that was probably within about a year. I just kept reinvesting into the business. Id make money and Id spend more on coaching. I hired a sales writer. Everything just continued to gradually increase.
David:
What did you do to increase to get it in front of more people?

Vince:
The joint ventures was big. Just doing one of those at a time, hiring a sale writer, increasing the price to $67, adding new bonuses, adding an up sell, and increasing my position on the ClickBank marketplace, that was the most powerful because the higher youre up on ClickBank, the more affiliates find you and the more traffic you get, the more sales you make. The big move was increasing my commission to 75%. When I increased my commission to 75%, my top competitor who hadnt, thats when I passed him. I got that information from being in a mastermind. Actually, Ryan was in that mastermind as well.
David:
Thats funny.
Vince:
One of the guys mentioned that.
David:
In the beginning, you said you were driving your own traffic. Do you find that you are doing that on your own, or is it pretty much just letting it run all by itself?
Vince:
70% of my sales are from affiliates; 30% of my sales come from my own sources.
David:
And you consider what youre doing a lifestyle business, right?
Vince:
This is my full-time thing, yeah, definitely. I dont have any other job.
David:
When I think about people who have their own products online, theres kind of like two types.

Theres the ones who are doing their own traffic, and theres the ones who just have the affiliates, and thats all automatic. Obviously, when you say, look, I made a good product. It was great. Thats obviously the first key. But now I have people promoting me and I dont have to do anything and the sales happen on their own. I know you said raising your commission to 75%, is that still just what you need to do to fly? How are you getting it to a point where people are selling your product for you, recruiting people, I guess.
Vince:
The unique thing about ClickBank is they have the Marketplace and the Marketplace ranks the top converting products. Thats the power of ClickBank. You can attract an affiliate army if your site converts because in the internet marketing world, theres a lot of gurus, you know, guys like Ryan Lee, who are coaching beginners how to get started on the internet, and a lot of the gurus are teaching beginners to start with affiliate marketing and theres likeLets use this example. Theres a Pay Per Click Classroom and thats basically geared at complete beginners who want to learn how to Pay Per Click, and the majority of the people signing up for that course are being coached to go to ClickBank and find the top converting products and to start with those. So to show you the power of like that Pay Per Click Classroom class, I think they got 6,000 or 10,000 members in there. So if youve got even a percentage of those amount of people going to ClickBank to see your product and they start sending your site traffic and they start converting, youre going to pick up a lot of affiliates just like that. Its kind of like building your body. Once you get into that certain body fat percentage, its way easier to stay there than to get there, but once you get there, youre not going to go back down. So just focusing on getting into that top 10 was really powerful and just maintaining my site so that it continues to convert has created a lot of loyal affiliates.
David:
So what have you done to kind of make your sales process better to make convert well to attract those affiliates?

Vince:
One of my biggest advantages, especially with my competitors, is I have an affiliate resource center and its like a website in itself and I capture their email and first name and I basically coach them through the process of how to promote my product. This appeals a lot to the beginners, so I get them started with getting a domain name, to how to set up a website, figuring out what sources of traffic to focus on, and if you can help some of those guys just make their first sale, theyll continue to stick with you. So that was one of my things. Its completely done for you, so I have a completely Done For You System thats got pretty much every resource a beginner affiliate would need, and then on the key players, I focus on one-on-one joint ventures and meeting those people at live events, building relationships with those guys, and those are the guys that generate the majority of the traffic. So reaching out to them, helping them with their business, and then finding good relationships that make sense for both of us.
David:
Competition can kind of scare people away from the marketplace, and youre talking about your competitors and what youve done thats better. What would you say to someone coming into a highly-competitive space? How does someone break into that? Lets say thats their specialty, but theyre afraid that they just cant compete. How do you break that?
Vince:
I get it totally. I think the first thing is what I did is I literally muscled my way to the top. I basically went head to head with the products that were promising the exact same promises I was, but I just became a better marketer. So thats one way, and thats typically the harder way, but fortunately it worked for me. That was before I ever heard anything on finding I had never heard of the concept of positioning and USP (Unique Selling Position), or filling a gap in the marketplace. I never heard anything about that, so I dont know if I got luckyI dont think I got lucky. I could tell you right now the guys I was going up against, I just worked harder and smarter against them.

For somebody else coming in who say they want to get a piece of the muscle niche which Im in, and wanted to literally compete with me, so to speak, I would tell them to do this: approach the competitors and basically ask them what other kind of muscle product would you promote if I created it, because those are going to be the guys that are going to promote you. For example, if someone came to me and said, Vince, what product would you want to promote? I would probably say create something for guys over 40 because I dont have that product out yet, and if you created something that was really good for guys over 40 specifically around muscle, I would promote you. But if somebody came up to me and said, Im creating a muscle product, it makes zero sense for me to promote them. Basically, the key is to fill in the gaps. You kind of want to be a purple cow, so you want to stand out differently and you want to figure out how to build the marketing into the product. So for example, maybe you have a unique delivery method. Maybe you deliver the entire program on your iPhone or iPod or something like that and theres no books or anything. Thinking of how you can be unique. You need to build something into the product thats completely different. A good example would be a muscle product that came out a year ago called 7-Minute Muscle, which is basically going to sell like crazy because everybody wants muscle, and everybody wants to do it in a short period of time, so that makes sense for me to promote because my product isnt based around 7-minute muscle. So just basically thinking creatively and thinking differently, maybe you target to beginners or you maybe you target to really hardcore guys, or just teens. There needs to be some unique positioning or else its going to be very hard to get a piece.
David:
Well, yeah, the unique selling position is definitely key, especially in
Vince:
Yeah, I think thats the most important step. Its the one step I think most people spend the

least amount of time on because they just want to get started. Its easy to get started on building a website, but you know, if youre doing all the wrong things, youre going to have a website, for sure, but its not going to break through for you. You really need to do your market research, look at whats out there, look at what you can do differently, and then fill that gap.
David:
For sure. If you had to start over again, is there anything that you would do differently?
Vince:
I probably wouldnt have spent so much time creating my product. I spent a lot of time writing the actual book. Thats a good question. I actually like the way I did everything. No, I cant tell you nothing comes immediate to mind. Otherwise, the only thing is probably making a more simplified version of my product because the number one thing I get is theres just a lot of information. I probably put more info in. I think the one thing actually, would be to spend more time on the actual uniqueness of the product itself, and my product is called No Nonsense Muscle Building. Its got some unique concepts in the program, but you would never know about it unless you bought the program. So I wish I had spent more time maybe on product naming, on bonus naming, and thinking along the lines of 7-Minute Muscle, 8-Minute Abs, names like Double Your Dating, putting some more appealing benefit-oriented titles into the names of my products. Thats the one thing I wish I had spent more time on.
David:
Thats funny Double Your Dating, nice David DeAngelo mention there. So the biggest resources that have helped you along the way books, products, what has impacted you the most?
Vince:
Ive got so many people I can name. I just spun around to look at my bookshelf. Okay, initially I was exposed to Ryan Lee and just seeing what he was doing and just following his business

in itself was like coaching in itself. Even though I actually didnt buy any of his initial coaching products, I followed everything that he was doing and that kind of opened you know the seeing/believing statement? Well, just seeing what this guy was doing really, really opened my mind to whats possible and whats out there. Initially it was Craig Ballantyne, and he had something called Online Super Profits, and that was a specific two-day event that was geared completely just to fitness professionals. A lot of stuff from Yanik Silver; initially, Corey Rudls all of his DVDs from the Internet Marketing Center. Bedros Keuillian is a recent mentor of mine and right now a big thing for my business four years later is continuity. Im finally incorporating that into my business and thats where Ryan comes in. Im on his Recurring Revenue Program and listen to all of his interviews and on his site, and basically figuring out how to do this continuity thing properly. I just launched my first continuity product an advanced hardcopy muscle program which includes a DVD and newsletter, all hardcopy, and I have about 1,000 people in that and they pay $50/month, and that was just launched internally. I plan on that growing quite a bit. Those would be the main things. I think the key to my success is that I havent exposed myself to too many people. Ive just really focused on maximizing basically squeezing out every bit of juice. If I have three or four mentors, I can tell you that Ive probably implemented every piece of thing that theyve ever taught or Ive ever read about from them. I find that thats easier to do than to get coached by 20 people and spread yourself thin. But to go with a couple of guys and go really deep with what they know and youll most likely get everything you want by following that system. So thats been my model. Ive got a couple of mentors, but Ive gone really deep with each of them.
David:
Also, other than mentors, are there any books specifically?
Vince:
In terms of books, I read everything. Ive got so much, Im trying to think of what do I have?

Okay, one really good system Ive got is John Carltons Simple Writing System on copywriting. Hes got a whole thing called Kick-Ass Copywriting Secrets. That was really, really helpful. I read everything by Seth Godin. He doesnt specifically coach the internet marketing, but everything that he shares and talks about are concepts that can apply to the internet. Ive got Tim Ferriss stuff on managing your time. Ive read to be honest, I dont read a lot of the books. I basically go to the guys who read the books. So I just go to the guys who teach from the books and that helps out a lot. Ive got Yanik Silvers Information Players Workshop. Thats really helpful. All of Ryan Lees Membership Site Boot Camp information; his Continuity King info all of that info is on my walls. Ive got a lot Dan Kennedy stuff as well. I buy a lot of the stuff. I havent gone through it all, but Ive studied the Frank Kern, Jeff Walker Product Launch Formula stuff, the Frank Kern Cash Machine and all that information; so I have all their stuff incorporated in my business at some point in some shape or form.
David:
For sure; you mentioned time management before. Running an internet business or a lifestyle business I guess internet lifestyle business the appeal is that you get to do what you want when you want, but part of the problem is that and this isnt a problem for everybody part of the problem is you have to manage yourself. What kind of strategies have you used to manage your time and be disciplined in that respect?
Vince:
To do lists were always big for me. Knowing what Im going to do the next day, being focused on one task at a time so really knowing whats the lowest-hanging fruit from my business, so in terms of immediate income, a product launch or big affiliate promotion, thats easy money and Im always looking for those things to fill my time up first. Then I schedule the smaller things around that. So kind of like Stephen Coveys principle thing, youve got the jar and youve got the big rocks and the small rocks and youve got the sand. Most people fill the jar with sand and water first and theyve got no room to put the big rocks, which are the equivalent of your priorities. So knowing what your big rocks and putting those in the jar first

and then filling it afterwards with the sand and with the water, so you manage your time. Another big thing for me was not answering email until I have put in 2-3 hours of just productive work in the morning time. That was really, really powerful. Outsourcing my customer service to email people I trained over a course of a couple of months. A big thing for me was someone taught me the 95% / 5% rule, and knowing the 5% of things that only I can do in my business, and creating a list of other things which turn out to be about 95% of the list of things that other people can do and outsourcing that. That was a real breakthrough; and moving a lot of things that were in one column that should have been in the other column. That helped out a lot. A big thing is to outsource as much as you can and have a vision of what you ultimately want your day to be like. For me, my ultimate day would be just to real books on marketing and just studying and learning and then outsourcing all the implementation to everybody else. I shouldnt be doing any of the sweat work. Initially, I was doing all of the sweat work, but you know, youve got to eventually get to that point, so knowing where I wanted to get to was really important. So the whole concept of starting with the end in mind helped me focus on my daily tasks. Does that make sense?
David:
That definitely makes sense. Its funny that your ideal day is just reading books and having someone else implement because I could tell you thats my exact ideal day just reading all day. Have you reached that point?
Vince:
No; I dont think Ill get literally to that point. I mean, I like a lifestyle that includes balance, too, so I mean business isnt my entire life. You know, I like to spend time with my fianc, with my family, my friends, watching movies. I like travelling and I do a lot of volunteer work and like working out and stuff. So I want to build my lifestyle around all of those things so I remain

balanced, but I also want to keep my fishing rod in the water still. So I still want to stay sharp with the information that Im sharing, so Ive built my business around an ascension model, so Ive got my entry level programs which are managed by email assistant and people Ive trained. Ive got my higher level training, which is my higher priced stuff which is going to be my continuity stuff. Thats exclusively for my high-end, elite customers. That content I will always write myself just because I enjoy it. I really do enjoy what I write about and talk about it, so its not hard for me. It also keeps me in tune with my information and making sure that Im up to date on that. So Ill always schedule time for those big things, but eventually I want to outsource all the little stuff. I still write my own sales copy. Im hoping one day I can outsource something like that.
David:
When do you get to a point where youre confident enough to outsource something like that?
Vince:
I think I need to build relationships. It will definitely be somebody I currently know who Ive had a relationship with for a while, who knows my business as well as I do, so there wouldnt need to be any coaching involved. It would almost be like youre the person. You could do this right now. It will probably happen naturally over time. I probably wouldnt enforce something like that right away.
David:
Oh yeah, for sure. This kind of ties into if you had to do anything differently from the start, but what were your big three mistakes youve made and how we can learn from them?
Vince:
First thing: not increasing my commission to 75% right off the bat. I probably would have passed my #1 competitor way sooner, so putting your affiliates not that I was trying to rip them off. I was giving them 50% - 60%, which to me was generous, but when somebody said no, you should give even more, it was just a concept Id never thought about. So I wish I had implemented that earlier.

I think not learning copywriting sooner. I did outsource that, but right now Im thinking of the most successful guys I know and theyre typically just the best writers. Theyre very, very smart. Theyre entertaining, they know how to write. They know how to create a sentence that flows, that has punch, thats captivating. So I think learning how to write and spending more time studying and mastering copywriting earlier on, I think there was probably a lot of emails Ive sent that just didnt get a response because they might have been not as effectively written. I wish I had figured out Pay Per Click earlier on. All the big guys right now seem to have really figured out how to crack that code. That was just something I didnt have as much interest in doing, so I know that would have probably accelerated my business; so those three things.
David:
Funny that you mention that; I just got off the phone with Mike Geary.
Vince:
Oh, gosh, yes. If he told you any numbers, Im sure theyre mind boggling.
David:
Yeah, hes probably almost 8 figures a year at this point in terms of revenue.
Vince:
Yeah, Im going to see him in a couple of days actually, in the Bahamas.
David:
Yeah, he John Romanella told me that theres a Bahamas thing. He said that a lot of the for the muscle market, or the weight loss market its very you cant really do Adwords as much anymore because they think its all a scam because of the Acai Berry stuff which, by the way, I saw a picture of you on someones fake blog the other day using your image, Im sure without your consent. Im posted on your FaceBook, I dont know. But yeah, its bad.
Vince:
Yeah, I know, I know. My dad emails me all the time. Im like Dad, I cant do anything about

that. Hes talking like, Well, thats not right.
David:
Its really bad. Its gotten to the point where its just ridiculous what people get away with. To wrap everything up, tell me whats next for you whats the future of your business?
Vince:
Well, I want to build up my continuity program. I mean, Im getting some tremendous feedback. I havent launched it with affiliates, so my goal is to get a couple thousand members paying $50/month, so Id like to create a 7-figure business just off continuity. Thats the entire focus with this one year. Im very focused on one thing at a time. Its what works for me. I know the big stuff and once its done and its automated, thats going to be an automated 7 figures a year, so all my focus right now is to master this continuity thing, treat it like a baby, and not let it go unnoticed for a second. I just want to make sure Ive got my hands on that. Once I figure that out, Ill outsource that. Another goal of mine is to get my hardcopy book deal just for my own personal goals, and to get more credibility. I want to rewrite my book the way a book should be written. Right now its kind of like modular. Its all written in modules and its kind of like a text book. Its not got stories and stuff in it. So I want to do that. Im working with some Pay Per Click guys. Id really like to start doing Mike Geary kind of numbers in the muscle niche and that will come from improving conversion. Im working with conversion guys and working with some Pay Per Click. Just one more thing, Ive actually been approached by a couple of guys to start doing some coaching, so theyve offered me a very generous amount of money to coach them for 12 months with some live events, some live coaching in there as well, with time. So Im starting to teach what I know and thats going to be pretty exciting as well.
www.ryanlee.com

David:
Awesome. Well
Vince:
Live events too. Geez, I guess this is going to be a busier year than I thought. I want to incorporate live events into my business as well.
David:
Did you speak at the Transformation Domination thing?
Vince:
Yeah, yeah; I actually just realized my name today, while I was on the treadmill. It came to me. I think Im going to do a series called Man on a Mission, and its going to focus on the 5 Ms that most men are most passionate about in no particular order. Missions so a mans higher calling in life, kind of like the spiritual component; Money so like the business component; Muscle sort of the whole taking care of your physical body; Mate so finding your mate or improving the relationship you currently have; and Motivation just living all out. So those are the 5 Ms Im most passionate about: Mission, Money, Muscle, Motivation, and Mate. I want to have a live event that focuses on those five things. It would be completely geared to skinny guys any male that wants to improve those five areas of their life.
David:
Yeah, thats a pretty cool idea. I like it a lot. I think that will be a bit hit.
www.ryanlee.com
CASE STUDY #33

Yanik Silver
Interview with Yanik Silver

David:
Lets start all the way from the beginning. Lets go back to what got you started in internet marketing. Where were you in the beginning?
Yanik:
Well, I was working for my dads business, actually, selling medical equipment and kind of poking around looking at the internetthis is back in 99; I didnt even have an email address back thenand I saw people doing some interesting things where they put up a website with a long sales letter on there (and I already knew how to do that from years of doing that in my fathers business where I would sell medical equipment for him with letters and ads and so forth). So I already had kind of the chops to do that. I saw this really interesting system where literally people threw up a web page and they were getting paid via credit card and someone could download an eBook. Im like, wow, thats fascinating. Theres no fulfillment cost; no product cost. It just seemed to me like this incredible opportunity and I kind of naively decided I could probably do the same thing and see what would happen. And I literally I think our questions dictate our answers and I posed myself this question which was somewhere along the lines of, how can I create a fully-automatic website that makes me money while I sleep, is an incredible value for other people, and isnt just an eBook. Even at that point, I really wanted to differentiate myself in some way. I woke up at three oclock in the morning one morning in early January and poked my wife with my finger on her shoulder and Im like, Miss, wake up. Ive got this great idea. Its going to be a great website for instant sales letters dotcom, and shes like, Oh, please, go back to bed. Im like, no, this is going to be really good. So I jumped out of bed. So did something that most people do is theyll have the million dollar idea, but they never take action on it. I literally jumped out of bed and got going on it. That morning at three oclock in the morning, I registered the domain, got to work on it the next day, and within about a month or six weeks, we had our first sale come in for at that point, I think the price was $29.95. So I had all these sales letters that I had written for my dads

business. I had also, before that, done a little bit of consulting for my uncle at a gas station, and these other doctors that I worked with helping them for their practice a little bit. So I had some templates and I did some other ones around all these different categories. That was how Instant Sales Letters was born.
In the first month, we made $1800. The second month, we made about $3400. The third month it was like $7800, and then the fourth month was like $9800, and so it was on track to do six figures pretty quickly right out of the gate, and thats when people started asking me, what did you do, how did you do this, and can you show me how to do the same thing?
David:
And this was back in 99, or is this 2000?
Yanik:
This is 2000 now.
David:
Thats so crazy because it feels like 2000 was not long ago, but when youre telling the story, it

seems like its almost ancient times of the internet, you know?
Yanik:
It does seem that way. The funny thing is some guys that I looked up to at that point, had all started in 93, 94. People who Ive since become good friends with like Jonathan Mizel and Marlin Sanders and the late Corey Rudl, Declan Dunn. Some of these guys arent even really so much in the scene anymore, but they started in 93 and 94 and Im like, Im coming in pretty late. Its almost never too late to come in if youve got the skills and you have something different that makes sense.
David:
The interesting this is I only recently, like probably earlier this year learned about this whole world of internet marketing.
Yanik:
Great.
David:
Even I have like a Oh my God, it might be too late, those kind of feelings, but if someone was coming up to you and asking you, is it too late to get involved, what would you say to them?
Yanik:
Heres the cool thing. It might be an odd answer. I think in some ways its more difficult now, and in a lot of ways its easier, and I really think that theres this amazing golden opportunity where a domain name, a couple bucks, a semi-good idea even, and you can see what happens. You can be on a level playing field with a multi-national company just by putting up a website. Theres so many more tools out there; theres so many great resources out there; blueprints, that it makes it easier. Even something as simple as putting up a WordPress blog and using that as a vehicle to sell what youre selling or to promote other peoples products as an affiliate whatever you want to do; theres a lot of different ways of going out there and now social media has made it all youve got to do is spend a little bit of time and you can get some traffic. You can do it on the cheap.

At the same time, I think its harder, I think, because almost every market place is not saturated but theres people in every marketplace. Once again, thats a good thing and a bad thing. The bad thing is that you dont have the marketplace all to yourself. The good thing is the way I built a lot of my business is around partners and affiliates. So now you have more partners and more potential affiliates that can sell your products or that you can sell products of in pretty much every niche and every marketplace.
David:
Its also a good way of judging whether a market is viable, if theres actually people who can make money in it.
Yanik:
Absolutely. Yeah, a lot of people will automatically discount something that theres competitors in there, and thats the complete opposite way of thinking. If theres competitors, that means theyre spending money advertising or promotion and that means that theres definitely money to be made in there.
David:
Do you find you were mentioning how theres so many resources and what not. Now, do you find that can be overwhelming for people?
Yanik:
Absolutely.
David:
Was it simpler when you were doing it, there werent how to make money online eBooks really, right?
Yanik:
There were a couple, yeah. There were definitely, some but there wasnt the deluge that there are now and its like separating fact from fiction and figuring out who actually makes sense. Youve almost got to put blinders on because every day theres going to be a new shiny object

that will distract you and unless its on the same path that youre headingI look at models and I try and think about, okay, whats the business model that were going to build. Ive really become an authority and done everything in information publishing where everything from free eBooks to $17 eBooks, all the way to selling $20,000+ peer-to-peer Mastermind kind of advisory groups, and everything in between from events to you name it. So if something doesnt fit my model of moving the publishing business forward, then I would discount it and not necessarily pay attention to it. Thats where youve got to get clear on is, okay, am I building a blog that then supports and sells affiliate products, then thats what I want to learn about. Am I building my own products and my own information, then thats what I want to learn about. Am I going to be doing eBay? Am I going to be drop shipping or selling my own product via kind of an ecommerce type store? Then I want to learn everything about that. So its important to then discard kind of separate the we from the chase there and just figure out what you want to pay attention to and more important, what you shouldnt pay attention to. That goes for the 80/20 rule is really in effect here and I found that to work really well in everything that I try and do with my activities, but pretty much everything in life is around that. So if you think of the 20 percent of activities are going to create 80 percent of the results, its the same with resources, products, things that youre going to study. Its figuring out what are those 20 percent and then paying attention there.
David:
I think its funny. Youre just listed six or seven ways off the top of your head to run a business online. I think its kind of cool. Theres obviously so much opportunity. Theres so many different ways that you can make money.
Yanik:
Yeah, there is so many ways and thats part of maybe that overwhelm, and I think people want to start with where theyre excited, where theyre passionate about, or if they dont have this amazing kind of this heat for some sort of passion or they get excited around a topic, then think about it in a more logical, wheres the market place that I can attack.

David:
Yeah.
Yanik:
So theres kind of two ways of going at it, depending on how you feel. Ive always gone around on where my passion is and whats exciting to me because a lot of times theres going to be, obviously, ups and downs in your business and if youre not passionate about what youre doing or the market place that youre serving, then I find it harder to keep going on in the times when youre like, God, this totally frickin sucks.
David:
Yeah.
Yanik:
But some people are more rationale and theyll evaluate a market place based on keyword research and theyre much more of a very analytical kind of mindset and thats great. Thats not so much the way that Ive done it. Ive done it more on instinctual gut feeling and what gets me excited, but at the same time, people that I know have done incredibly well lets just say as affiliate marketers. One guy that I know whos a maverick member and maybe well talk about that later on he makes over $100,000 a month, doesnt work that many hours per month, is one of the most laid back relaxed guys I know, and he really doesnt care what he sells. He just has a process down for driving pay per click traffic to merchant sites. Hell be selling shoes one day. Hell be selling dating products another day. Hell be selling, I dont know, whatever. It doesnt matter to him. He just looks for gaps in the marketplace and where he can make his system work. Theres so many opportunities and theres so many ways for making it work for your personality type and what youre good at. Thats whats really so exciting to me is not having to conform to, Okay, Ive heard Yaniks story. Im going to go out and start a better sales letter site, or whatever. You dont have to do it that same way. You can literally find a spot there in this vast marketplace and make it work for you. I think a lot of it comes from the authenticity that the

genuineness of what you put forward.
David:
So how many websites do you run currently?
Yanik:
I have no idea.
David:
A lot?
Yanik:
Yeah, Id say a lot. Everything from our blog at internetlifestyle.com to the instant sales letter site, which by the way, is still going strong, which is pretty amazing nine years later almost 10 years later and its still doing six figures every year, which is pretty cool. I dont know. Id say roughly 15 to 20, maybe.
David:
Nice. A quick kind of off-topic question the fact that yours has been up for nine years is pretty impressive. Ive always been under the impression that businesses online can be extremely profitable, but a lot of them arent always long lasting. Do you see that as well, or am I off?
Yanik:
I think it depends on the marketplace that you go over and the topic. Like, sales letters, I think, is a pretty ever green topic. Business and thats who we targeted anyone from a retail business to a professional practice, to you name it. They need they want to drive more people to their offices or their business and so thats a pretty ever green topic. If you go with something more of a fad type product where, I dont know, right now the swine flu is a pretty big deal and so if you had an eBook all around heres how to protect yourself from swine flu, thats going to be much more short-lived, though you can make a whole lot in the short-term, but its more of a fad and a trend not so much a fad for that one, but trend.

And so thats where its important. It also depends on what you build your foundation on. A lot of people make an analogy of if you see a huge hole in the ground and a deep foundation for a skyscraper and you dont need that huge foundation if youre going to build a two-story house. So it all depends on what you do in the beginning.
David:
And do you think, in terms of having a long-term business we were just interviewing Gary Vaynerchuk. The thing that hes always talking about is personal branding. Is that something that you are very focused on?
Yanik:
I am in an almost side benefit to what I do. I have a personal branding has a double-edged sword to me and I love Gary; I love what hes done the advantage of it is that people want to buy from people. We talked about the authenticity, the genuineness. That comes through. They want that shepherd a lot of times that will tell them, heres what you should be buying, heres what you should be getting, follow me here. We do a lot of that and Ill return to that in a second. The downfall of it is if its the Yanik Silver show and the Yanik Silver products, then if youre looking for an exit at some point, it makes it harder to sell that. Though we can look at some of the really big brands that have been developed around one person and they have done okay. Like Martha Stewart has gone public, and thats a pretty good aspiration to shoot to if you want to become an empire builder. Now as far as what we try and do, I always try and preach and do at the same time, is building the personality. I think most websites, most businesses, are pretty damned boring so what we try and do is interject what is my core philosophy and my core personality. A lot of it is sometimes a little bit goofy, but its definitely fun and its definitely adventurous and we like to create experiences for our customers if we can.

Ill give you a couple of quick examples. Everything from when I turned 30 (which is six years ago now), we did a Yaniks 30th Birthday Bash and it was a free event for all of our customers, just a customer appreciation event, where 50 bucks got you in the door and that all went to Make-A-Wish Foundation down in Florida, and we ended up, at that time, having the largest internet conference, I think ever. It was like 500 and some people at that point. Many people have probably exceeded that number since. We raised $25,000 for Make-A-Wish and kept it fun and light and goofy. The whole promotion was me in a birthday hat. Mickey Mouse came out and sang Happy Birthday. We had cake for everyone there. We had birthday balloons and streamers and things. Everybody got a goody bag like you used to get as a kid at birthday parties. It was fun and the marketing around it was fun. So that wasnt some made up kind of thing. Thats kind of how I do things. If people read my blog (http://www.internetlifestyle.com/blog), theyll hear all sorts of random stories of things that I do where me and my friends will do an Elvis bar crawl or, I dont know, we have a random website called Chicks in Chicken Suits thats just totally a silly goose site, but talking about that or just other crazy adventures and the things that I do, but all thats in a genuine, authentic way. So I think you need at a certain point, if youre simply selling whatever your content is or whatever youre delivering, at a certain point, people are saturated with it. Theyve got it.
Lets say youre teaching golf instruction. Theres only so many ways you can teach people how to hit the ball or how to putt; how to line up a shot, whatever the case is. The thing that you wrap around it is the personality and the personal branding. Thats what makes people stick for the long run and become long-term customers. People are bonded to you, people that will

basically follow you into whatever youre doing, and with that comes responsibility where you cant just promote whatever comes down the pike and expect them to stick around. Im very diligent about whatever we promote to our customers because of that and I look at it as almost a fiduciary kind of responsibility. Things like letting people in on not just whats good in your life or your world, but kind of letting them see the self deprecating side and where you screw up, because nobodys perfect, so that helps bond them; letting them in on some of the internal behind-the-scenes family stuff. So Ill tell them about our kids and about my 4-year-old son Zach and my 2-year-old daughter Zoey and her walking into my office with her potty seat around her head and show them pictures of that. Ill show them good stuff like when well go visit Sir Richard Bransons private island for a trip that I set up and helped raise $400,000 for his charity. Thats really awesome. Thats great. Then at the same time, I show them me falling through the attic in our house because I have no earthly idea what I was doing up there and I never knew you were only supposed to walk on the joints up there. I literally plunged through the city and onto the next floor. So showing things like that, I call it the good, the bad, and the ugly. Literally, most people want to if theyre thinking about personal branding or the new transparency thats going on between social media and businesses and we can talk about that a little bit, but they want to be like, okay, well, Im pretty perfect and I want to control what my image looks like and what people think of me, and you cant. Youre not a real person then. And real people have flaws and real people have good points too. So if you showcase that, thats where you get that extreme bonding, and so I always try and do that.
David:
Its funny. Youre not the first person that weve interviewed that has said that its important to be a real person.
Yanik:
Yeah.

David:
Its so interesting because thats such a simple piece of advice, you know? Except I dont know what it is, but I feel like a lot of people do have trouble with that.
Yanik:
Oh, absolutely.
David:
Its just a strange thing for me. I dont understand why, but I guess theres lots of pressure, maybe. I dont know what it is, but theres something going on.
Yanik:
Yeah, well, part of it, I think is I never wanted to be a plain vanilla sort of person and I would rather have the right sort of people attracted to me. It might come from this feeling of maybe of a trepidation around whos going to actually be interested in this, or why should I even share anything going on with my family or my personal opinions or viewpoints or what I hate and what I really love. All those things, you want to share those because otherwise youll get the wrong people attracted to you, or youll have to continue living not necessarily a life of lies thats probably too far but youll continue putting on this public faade.
David:
Yeah, building a web of lies.
Yanik:
Its a lot easier to be yourself.
David:
Yeah, definitely.
Yanik:
And have the right sort of people attracted to you.

David:
All right, so if you had to go back and start all over again you had to start your business from scratch, is there anything you do differently?
Yanik:
Sure. Theres always stuff that you would do differently. I think part of it (a) for the most part, I think all of its a learning experience and Ive been asked that a couple of times and I always kind of fluctuate about between no, Id never change anything or yeah, Id change some stuff because yeah, knowing what I know now, Im obviously a lot wiser and smarter about how I started my business. I think part of what I would have changed is looked at how do you create much more scalable promotional ways of driving new customers because a lot of timesweve done a great job when we get customers in the door of nurturing them, of building that relationship, and then extracting good revenues out of each customer in a very ethical, honest way. When I first got started, I made a list of my values and one of them was I get rich by enriching others 10 times to 100 times what they pay me in return, and so thats one of the things I always think about. So weve done a good job with that with existing customers and then leaning on using affiliates as our way of driving new customers in the door and so forth, which is probably one of the best no-risk solutions out there where you only have to pay after an affiliate, which I traffic to you. Starting over, I would have looked at more ways that we can actually control our own destiny, in a sense, where not only would I use affiliates, but I would also be looking at ways that I could be spending $10,000, $50,000, $100,000, $500,000 a month, if possible, to drive visitors if I knew that I was making 10 percent on that, 15 percent, 150 percent online. So Id be looking at more ways of doing that and that all is part of whats the benefit of the web is that you can so easily track and test and its money if youre making money or not. So Id be looking at more ways of doing that. Id also be looking at more ways that I could get paid monthly from my customers, so not having one-time sales, necessarily, but creating either utility models where theyre paying to you know, like youre cable TV you never want to shut that off or your electricity. How do you create a utility model or how do you create something that theyre going to want to stick with monthlywhich Ryans done an incredible job with.

David:
Its funny that you mention the pay per click traffic stuff. Thats what I do right now. Thats what Im really focused on and I feel like a guy in your position, like, it would be its very time consuming so at this point, I guess its kind of out the question, really?
Yanik:
Well, heres the pay per click is a great example. We have a guy that does some pay per click and he does a pretty good job at it, but the pay per click, I think, also has a ceiling. So Id be looking at even bigger ways that you could leverage beyond just pay per click. Whether its banner advertiser, whether its text links on different places, whether its even offline media, what can you do to really ramp it up beyond the natural ceiling of pay per click and natural where the traffic is going to stop. So pay per click is definitely if I was telling people heres how to drive traffic to your site tomorrow or literally in 15 minutes, that would be the number one spot.
David:
Yeah.
Yanik:
And then you get good at that, but then looking at what else is out there that we can build in a big way.
David:
Yeah. Its kind of interesting. I feel like there havent really been that many guys that have made theI mean, theres lots of offline to online transmission transitions, but not really the other way around.
Yanik:
Theres some. Theres not many people that talk about it too much. I have a couple of friends that are doing really well with it and via postcard because mailing lists are one of the most scalable things that you could do and if you make it work right, it takes a little more patience because its not driving traffic in 15 minutes, but thats one of the things that you can make

that work, and then if youve got a universe of a couple million or 20 million people on one particular list, then you can go through that and scale that up pretty nicely.
David:
If there were any specific mistakes that youve made along the way, can you name three of your biggest mistakes and how we can learn from there?
Yanik:
I think part of them was what we just talked about; scalability, having more continuity. Probably the other ones would be around not giving up, doing everything I never really did everything myself I was going to say not doing everything myself, and thats not quite the case because even from the get go, like, I still dont know how to put up my own webpage or do anything technical if my life depended on it. Automatically from the get-go I had somebody else running the tech side and putting up my websites and so forth, which let me focus in on the things that kind of brought you know, the 80/20 rule again what I had the most leverage around and what gave the most proactive activities that I could do. So writing copy, focusing on joint venture, partner relationships, new product development, all those things was where I focused on. Probably not bringing in somebody who could handle operations sooner. We just hired a VP of Operations here about four or five months ago who is in charge of everything now that weve grown beyond just me and my one bedroom apartment. Hes our first technically well, my wife was my first employee, but hes our first technical real employee beyond my wife, and weve always worked with independent contractors and virtual assistants and so forth, and so bringing somebody in earlier that can manage projects and manage operations and all those things. So I guess figuring out exactly what youre really good at and then unloading everything off your plate sooner what youre not good at or what you suck at.
David:
Sticking to your strength.
Yanik:
Yeah, absolutely, and its a process, learning about what is your strength and what youre

really good at it. Theres a great book called Unique Ability which is put out by Dan Sullivans company. You can get that on Amazon.
Theres now Discover Your Stregths. I recommend Colby Testing. Ive done all sorts of things everything from a 3-day test by the Johnson OConnor Human Engineering Foundation to going through all those processes and kind of figuring out what youre really good at, what gives you joy, and a lot of times, what gives you joy and what youre really good at are the same thing, which makes it easier. For some reason people think that it has to be harder and it doesnt. Sometimes we make it harder on ourselves because theres some people who cant imagineI really suck at finances and numbers and things like that orI wouldnt say I suck at it, but I dont like it so much. I love the new products. I can come up with an idea to revolutionize your business in probably a minute, but if were talking about something else, I could care less. So figuring out that theres other people out there that absolutely get off and get really excited about numbers or systems or something that you suck at, and thats kind of this weird its a weird feeling. Wow, why would somebody else be excited about that?

David:
I get excited about numbers and systems.
Yanik:
Good.
David:
So do you still work out of a house, or do you guys actually have office space?
Yanik:
Yeah, I work out of the house. Its a nicer office now than my one bedroom apartment and it doesnt require very much room to run your business. We moved from that one bedroom apartment to a really nice luxury townhouse and I worked in the basement for a while and then we moved now to a really nice house and I still basically work Ive added maybe a couple of square feet to my office. Now I have a 10 foot by 10 foot square office and its you dont need that much room when you can outsource a bunch of stuff. You can do things on the cloud, in essence, where things are just we use tools like Basecamp or BackPackIt and lives on the cloud.
David:
Theres no internet marketing factories out there, so
Yanik:
Not really. Theres a coupleI just had a great visit with my friend Tony Hsieh at Zappos who runs Zappos and Alfred Lin whos the COO, and theyve got a great office over there where culture takes first place and I can really see the benefit of having a physical location, but at this point its not the best way of doing it.
David:
So I do have a few more questions for you. I dont want to keep you for the rest of the day. Tell me really quick about the Maverick you mentioned the Maverick Mastermind?
Yanik:
Yeah, the Maverick Business Adventures (http://maverickbusinessadventures.com/), and that grew out of my own personal interest, again. Like I talked about a lot of times, following your passion about what youre excited about, so this is a group where take incredible adventures and experiences and combine that with really high-level business sessions and meeting business icons and then at the same time, on each trip theres a charitable or philanthropic component around young entrepreneurship, whether its teaching young entrepreneurs or raising money for organizations that support that. So I kind of mashed up everything that Ive been excited about throughout the years. I love all sorts of extreme adventures from bungee jumping to running with the bulls. Im signed up to go into space on Virgin Galactic. Ive jumped out of an airplane at cruising altitude

from 30,000 feet with an oxygen mask. So, Im into that stuff and so I created a business around that also, I think, will have a tremendous impact on the next generation of entrepreneurs. Our big goal by 2020 is actually to impact, empower, and help a million kids 13 to 23 start their own businesses. Thats a big part of our mission around that, and at the same time to help entrepreneurs really live their lives and get out from behind their desks and have meaningful connections with other high level people. So thats been really exciting to me. Thats not an internet business, per se. Its a totally different business model, but its something that Im pretty passionate about in following where your excitement and passion takes to.
David:
Its funny. I know one of those young entrepreneurs, Alex Morocco. Im really good friends with him.
Yanik:
Yeah.
David:
Hes talked about you a lot and I think thats really cool.
Yanik:
Yeah, for me its aboutI have thisyou can actually download it, Dave, when you get a chance. Its at maverickbusinessadventures.com/vision and thats our painted picture of what were trying to build. In there I have a diagram which is kind of a circle that falls back onto itself and I look at it as the entrepreneurial success cycle and its from startup, then you move to a growth phase, and then you move to a legacy phase. And then that legacy phase hopefully then will connect back to the next generation of startups. So thats what were trying to do is create that ripple effect from startup to growth to legacy and Im all about the ripple effect. So like you mentioned Alex; he was a scholarship winner at the seminar I put on the Underground Seminar and so now hes gone off and done some really exciting things and

having some great success. Theres no doubt hes going to because he was mentored a little bit by one of our Maverick members who took him under his wing a little bit, Craig Ballantyne. Theres no doubt that hes going to go out and share with his friends or people that are interested, what hes doing and just this incredible ripple effect, I think, is going to take place. To me, thats what gets me incredibly excited with this goal of a million kids who start their own businesses; just that ripple effect of what thats going to do and the impact that thats going to have. And thats what gets me turned on right now is that ripple effect and where thats going to take it. So many young entrepreneurs right now, they have a social conscious bend to them where not only are they interested in making money, but theyre interested in doing good at the same time. So I have this philosophy of make more money, have more fun, and give more back and where it all intersects is what I call a Maverick Entrepreneur, and I really think that you can make that happen. Weve got the tools and the opportunities out there.
David:
Its funny. Im a 21-year-old myself so talking about the young entrepreneurs, oh man, I could talk your ear off about it, but I think thats really cool. I like that a lot because I know a lot of kids my age that its like, coming out of college, theres a lot of my friends that are kind of in crisis mode right now and Im telling them, I like, internet marketing. Theres all sorts of stuff you can do online. Youre all intelligent people. Theres potential. But its like theres so much people theyre scared. So its really cool that someones out there doing stuff and thats something that I want to get into eventually as well.
Yanik:
Yeah, to me, the scariest position is when youre held essentially captive by an employer. Anytime they could fire you, they could change what youre making. They can change what youre doing. To me, from a lot of people looking from the outside in, entrepreneur life is filled with risk and youve got to be this superman or superwoman to be able to do it, and its not the case. Its all about freedom and driving your own course and you have the most security when youre

doing that and when you have the knowledge inside your head that you know that no matter what happens, youve got a customer list of 1,000 people, 5,000 people, 100,000 people that you can turn around and come up with something that offers them incredible value and it will make you money. Thats where you get a lot of security from knowing that, and that comes from having the knowledge of learning how to make that happen. Its not an overnight thing, and Ive never said that the internet is a youre going to get rich tomorrow kind of thing. Youve got to figure out the path to making that happen. One of my early mentors, Bill Nighgale, he said that if you want to become an expert in any subject, you read for one hour a day for three years or you read or study it for one hour a day. If you want to become a world-class expert, you read or study on that subject for five years. So I got bit by the direct-marketing bug really early, like when I was 18 and so I just went full bore and tore into it where I was studying 2-3 hours a night every night, and so that just accelerated what I was doing. I think direct marketing is still a fundamental that so many people need to learn around internet marketing because really the basis of it is direct response marketing.
David:
Yeah, and I think its kind of interesting, like you and Ryan for example, if there was no internet, you would still be able to sell stuff, you know?
Yanik:
Oh, absolutely.
David:
You are not just internet marketers, but pure marketing people, you know.
Yanik:
Right.
David:
I have two last questions. If you had to list three must-have resources for someone who wanted to create the dotcom lifestyle, what would they be?

Yanik:
Wow. I think let me think about this for a second. It could go as easy as a couple different products, but that doesnt make sense. I think part of it fundamentally, number one is mind set. I think youve got to I dont know if theres a resource around that, but youve got to get straight around having the right mind set and even the 10 times to 100 times in value what I mentioned. If you can keep asking yourself that question, thats going to set up your long-term success where youre delivering incredible value for your customers, which creates repeat customers, which creates a lot of the profitability that happens in your business. So getting straight around the fundamentals of how to create value in your business and for other people, I think would be really important. It comes down to a couple different things. I could say all you need is WordPress, a Google Adwords account, and PayPal and you can make money and thats all you need, but thats not quite the case. You definitely need so value mind set is one. I think number two would be an education around the fundamentals of direct response marketing. I think thats incredibly important. You can go pretty far down that rabbit hole and learn about it, but I wouldnt look at bastardized versions of it, like for some many people that are teaching internet marketing now, theyve almost got their education third or fourth hand from somebody else who learned it. I always go back to the source whenever possible, and so I always used to study the people who were doing mail order back in the turn of the century because they didnt have fax machines. They didnt have, obviously, the internet. They didnt have anything to make response easier for person. They could persuade and influence people to walk down two miles to the post office and send in their mail order, their check or whatever, for whatever gizmo they were selling. Thats pretty powerful. So studying people like Claude Hopkins, Maxwell Sackheim, who created the Book of the Month Club, John Caples is a good one to study. I just have a vast library in my house and I always go back to those people. So learning the fundamentals of direct response marketing will always serve you well. And then number three, for me its been about and this is different for different people because you might not have an inclination towards it, but if you do, I think learning a skill and

figuring out what youre great at, and hopefully that skill is something that gives you incredible leverage. Like for me, it was copy writing. So learning about copy writing because you could literally tomorrow jot off an email and create a website and have people buying from you. Create a skill that will feed you whenever, that would be pretty important to me. I guess copy writing also falls under direct response. So maybe Im cheating a little bit there. Hes got a pretty readily available book called Billion Dollar Advertising or Marketing I think its marketing and then hes got one thats super hard fun called My First 65 Years in Advertising.
David:
Its funny, I actually have Claude Hopkins Scientific Advertising and then John Caples Advertising Ideas or something like that.
Yanik:
Yeah, its something different, but yea.
David:
Yeah, I read the John Caples book. Its pretty good. Its kind of cool to go back and read about those guys because like you said, if theyre making people walk two miles, you know
Yanik:
Right. Proof in Advertising thats it.
David:
Yeah, thats what it is.
Yanik:
All those guys would have they would just flip out about what is available now. If you can figure out how to take the principles and the fundamentals of what they used, apply it right now to online, youve got a real good thing good because you figure out pretty quickly whats working and whats not working. Thats what Id like to do is throw things out at the marketplace and see whats working and double down on the stuff thats working and anything thats not

working, then we can just say next and move on. You can do that for a couple of hundred bucks right now, which is pretty exciting.
David:
Yeah, it is pretty cool. Our last question to wrap it up, and I know you mentioned before about the young entrepreneurs; what is next for your business?
Yanik:
Definitely the focus around the young entrepreneurs; Id like to do even more of that. Were going to be building up Maverick Business Adventures where were going into different regions and doing that, so not just on an international and national basis, but having localized groups to do that. Those are probably some of the bigger ones. At some point really soon, were going to start an association around that notion of the million kids. Thats going to be called MaverickOneMillion.org.
David:
Thank you very much for the interview. I really appreciate it.
www.ryanlee.com
For More Great Profit-Building Resources... Make Sure to Stop by www.ryanlee.com

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Interview with Brett Ingram

Copyright 2011 www.ryanlee.com

Welcome to Passion to Profits

2 Passion to Profits - The Case Studies

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

And what are you launching currently?

6 Passion to Profits - The Case Studies

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

16 Passion to Profits - The Case Studies

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

Interview with Brett Ingram

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Interview with Brett Ingram

Passion to Profits - The Case Studies 21

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

Passion to Profits - The Case Studies 23

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

24 Passion to Profits - The Case Studies

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

Interview with Carrie Wilkerson

Passion to Profits - The Case Studies 35

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Passion to Profits - The Case Studies 41

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Interview with Chad Tackett

Oh, good. Thank you.