Post Category → Online Business Strategy, Planning and Structure

The Issue of Scope Creep in Consulting

‘Scope creep’ is a common issue in consulting and one of the big downsides of consulting.  So what exactly is scope creep?

This is where you agree to do a job for someone else for a fixed fee and they try to expand the scope of the original project or change their minds about the details of what they want done AFTER the job is done.  Both scenarios mean that they expect you to commit more time and resources than you originally quoted for.

The reason I mention this is that today I had just such an issue with a job that I finished last Sunday.  It was a job that I took on for some online friends and often these can be the worst type of jobs – I didn’t really want to do it but I relented in order to help them. I did what I thought was a great job very quickly for them and now they are returning to quibble about minor issues where they have clearly had a change of heart.

The core of the job was quite tricky and technical, whereas the details they want changing are really elementary stuff that they could easily amend themselves – things like page names and page order.

The only way to combat this is to ensure that the consulting brief is clearly set out from the outset so that you can refer the client back to it and negotiate an additional fee for any extra work.  It is important to be quite firm about this because the client will keep pushing for more if you allow them to push you around.

In consulting, you are effectively selling your time and expertise and so it is important for your client to respect the fact that your time has a value – a high value that reflects your expertise!

If you do not communicate that your time has a high value to you, how can you expect your client to respect your time?  This is an educational process and also positions you correctly as an expert whose time is in high demand and that they need to optimise the time they have available with you.

Usually it is important to set out the brief in detail, in writing, upfront so you can refer back to it if necessary when a dispute arises.  You may also wish to build in some leeway to your project time and price for these kinds of  issues so that you do not end up out-of-pocket because ‘time is money’ to a consultant.

Of course, when I took on this job, I quoted a low price, because they were friends, and didn’t put it clearly in writing because I was under pressure with other work.  After 13 years in consulting, I’m still learning the lessons that consulting will inevitably pitch at you when you can least afford the time to deal with them.

Thankfully, this was a relatively small job and so not a lot of harm will be done but it would be very different if this were a large project and the scope creep was substantial.

In the meantime, hopefully you can learn from my mistake and be more careful than I have been about the issue of ‘scope creep’ in your consulting jobs!

 

 

New Products In The Pipeline

The Showcase App Profit Formula

Here is a brief summary of the new products in the pipeline for the next month or so.  These are new products that Chris Cole and I are creating.

After our success with The Hangout Cash, and our effort to provide tremendous value to our members through follow-up webinars, we have decided that we really need to refocus on launching new products.

Chris Cole & I have decided to launch one product a week.  These products will be tightly focused and high quality – meant for consumption in around an hour or so.  Ideal for the ‘one problem, one solution, at one sitting’ type of product.

With this in mind, here is our planned schedule for the next 4 products and the planned launch dates:

#1 Productivity Made Simple – in this product Chris and I have used Google Hangouts to create a series of training about improving productivity.  This includes a review of some of the best productivity tools that we have used.This will be launch on 15th September 2014.   Rather than a blockbuster product it was originally destined as ‘list-bait’ but we will launch it nevertheless and see how it fares in the marketplace.

Productivity Made Simple Website

#2 Honey Trap Funnels – this is a product that I have had in the pipeline for a while now as I wanted to offer a cloned sales funnel that could be quickly and easily deployed because you simply have to slot your own product offers into the pages.  We will also be reviewing different types of funnel and we have a nice marketing-twist in mind for this!  This product will also enable me to establish a joint, self-liquidating sales funnel for our partnership too which we can start driving paid traffic and grow our list exponentially. Launch date 22nd September.

#3  Launch a WSO in 3 Days – Chris & I are prolific product creators.  In this product we will be demonstrating how it is possible to launch a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) in 3 days when you systemise the entire process.  This will be an opportunity for us to review our product creation systems too. Launch date 29th September.

#4 Webinars For Local Businesses – the name of this product has yet to be established but the basic principle is that we will be exploring how Google Hangouts could be used by local businesses.  This was something we covered in The Hangout Cash Code but we want to dive deeper into this aspect of video marketing for local businesses.  We think this is a largely unexplored opportunity and we will get creative about how local busineses can use this technology to grow their business. Launch date 6th October.

These products may be replaced by others if we see an opportunity that needs pursuing urgently, but this is our plan for the next few weeks.  I also want to create a product about email marketing, so expect that to be on the list in the near future!

In addition to these products, we have been helping Saul Maraney, one of our students, to launch his first product as a WSO – it’s called The Showcase App Profit Formula, which is due to go live on 9th September.  This has a very good upsell – comprehensive training on Google+ which is exciting because I see a lot of untapped potential in Google+.  In fact, even more so than Facebook for B2B marketing.

The Showcase App Profit Formula

Also, quietly in the background, I am putting together a product called ‘Video Hooks’ which is a larger product about video marketing which will be excellent to add into our sales funnel.  Part of the content for this will come from a bonus session that we have promised to buyers of the product we are viewing in the paragragh below.

Chris and I have also started a weekly broadcast at Marketers Radio.com.  The second episode airs tonight with two guests and we will be reviewing a product called Incredible Green Screen, made by our friend and colleague Matthew Houghton.  This product reached #1 on JVZoo and has made well over 1,000 sales so this is very exciting.

We also have a LIVE event in our diary at Heathrow Airport for the 1st and 2nd November – which will be an an opportunity for Chris and I to meet physically for the first time.  We will also be meeting many of the coaching students that we have been growing with over the last 12 to 18 months.

This is how a business is created – by taking action and selling stuff rather than being a perpetual consumer in training mode!

Those are the new products in the pipeline, so we have some very exciting times ahead!

 

The Difference Between Success & Failure

Close to successThe difference between success and failure is often extremely small.

I was thinking about our recent product launch – The Hangout Cash Code.  It’s a good product and we’ve made well over 450 sales in the first 2 weeks of our launch, and sales keep rolling in every day.

But I’ve got products that are equally as good that have made next to no sales!

Why is that?

The reasons are ridiculously simple.

I didn’t go the extra mile and let enough people know about the product and I didn’t make an ‘event’ out of the initial launch.

I’ve also discovered that WSO traffic is relatively poor quality – it’s much better to focus on good quality affiliate traffic – the higher initial EPC”s attract in more good-quality affiliates like bees to honey!

The plain truth is that affiliates are always looking for good products to promote to their customers.  Good products are those that convert well, have few refunds and add value to the affiliates relationship with their customers by promoting them.

They want to know whether you can actually add value to the lives of their customers.  In other words, that if you make a claim, such as ‘you can make $500 a day with this’, that you can actually back up your claim with evidence.  After all, they want to maintain a good relationship with their customers by introducing them to legitimate and valuable products.

If you have a product like this, then you simply need to let them know about what you have and be willing to be interviewed about it.  Also, to create an event or launch which they can promote.  This usually means a time-limited event offering a special price or an additional bonus during the launch period.

Letting affiliates know is comparatively easy – just go into the JV Forums on Facebook and post details of your product and the launch date.  Send them to a JV page or blog that has more details.  If they like what they see, they will contact you.

In the case of the bigger affiliates, they will want a face-to-face interview to get more details for their list, to humanise the offer and to offer a bonus for clicking on their affiliate link.  Also, they are letting the product creators, who know their own product best, do most of the selling.

It’s all so ridiculously simple but here’s the thing.  You actually have to do it!

I’ve also learnt quite a bit just watching how the super-affiliates conduct their business.  They use a very simple system and they use it consistently.

Making products, and not going the extra mile by marketing them, can be fatal to your wallet.  I know because that was what I was doing up until the launch of The Hangout Cash Code (- the initial launch period closes down in 7 days from now.)

The difference between success and failure can literally be the failure to take that extra step in your business – small things really do matter in business and can be the difference between wild success and abject failure.

 

 

WSO Schedule For Next 14 Weeks

This week I have been planning my WSO Schedule for the next 14 weeks. As you will know from my last post I have been challenged to create one WSO per week.

Initially, I felt pretty stressed by this target but this feeling of pressure has lifted by planning out my schedules below.

The fact is, that when I started taking an inventory of all the products that I have already set up and ready to rock and roll, I realised that I only have to create 6 new products and reorganise and repackage my existing products to have a good selection of up-front offers and upsells.

So the task boils down to:

  • creating 6 new products, membership sites and sales letters
  • creating 14 sales funnels
  • creating 14 JV pages
  • placing 14 products and sales funnels on Warrior Plus
  • testing and checking that everything works and is integrated

Initially, I will be slow at some tasks, like setting up JV pages and putting products on Warrior Plus but as I develop familiarity and systems, this should become easier and easier.

My partners, Daniel Madeira and Scrembo, are handling traffic, affiliates and email follow up.  I will handle any support issues.

So here are my schedules for the next 14 weeks:

WSO Schedule 1 WSO Schedule 2

In the week beginning 14th April, my granddaughter is coming to say – so getting WSO #2 out that week will be a challenge – I really have to get WSO’s #2 and #3 ready for launch next week so I can meet my deadlines.  Also, once they are ready for launch, it would be helpful to make a start on my first new product, Honey Trap Funnels.

Honey Trap Funnels is all planned out, the membership site has been created – I just need to create the sales letter and content.

On top of all this, I have a number of clients to service and I am going through The IM System by Kenster – this is an excellent product that I recently invested in in partnership with my sister.  I also have a number of PLR and resell rights products to set up.

The first product – Product Creation Renegade – is all ready for launch next Wednesday at 6 p.m. EST which is 11 p.m. GMT.  The basic strategy behind our pricing and launch is being coordinated by Scrembo who has some experience at launching multiple WSO’s.

Product Creation Renegade is being sold at a large discount to its normal pricing – as you would expect with with a WSO.  It will be well worth the small amount of money I am asking.  If you want to promote this product, our affiliate page is here.

I have plans to launch Product Creation Renegade versions 2.0 and 3.0 because I have several more complementary product creation products that I can add into the funnel.  However, I may end up creating a new front-end product for either or both launches.

I hope you found my WSO Schedule for the next 14 weeks – if you take nothing else away, you should be mapping out your plans for the next few months too and setting yourself challenging deadlines for achieving your goals.

My Latest Challenge – At Least One WSO A Week

I’m preparing for my latest challenge – at least one WSO a week.

That’s quite a challenge for me since I have not launched many WSO’s.  (Also, I am babysitting my grandchildren for part of the time in April during the Easter break.)

I first came across the idea of launching multiple  WSO’s from Sean Mize when I bought his WSO entitled ‘How you can make a full-time income selling WSO’s in 2014’.

Sean set himself a target of doing 150 WSO’s in 2013 but came up short on his target – he ONLY did 80!  However, that was enough to generate $65k in sales.

Was it a coincidence then when two of my online colleagues, who know about my product creation skills, approached me to partner on creating a business where we launch one WSO a week?

I will focus on product creation whilst they focus on traffic and email marketing.  We would share the list of buyers.

My first thoughts were that I could be working flat out 100% of the time whilst my partners had the easy end of the stick and would also have time to run their solo ads and coaching business.  They do, however, have a large list from their solo ads business!

On reflection, I think that this partnership would be little different to a normal affiliate relationship and I have decided that it would be worth trying for a month or two and then review progress at the end of April or end of May.

The products would of course be ‘one problem, one solution’ type products that can be consumed within one hour and will sell at $5 to $7 on the front end and up to $17 on the back-end. The back-end will be built from existing products and former WSO’s most of which will be taken down after 7 days or the price increased.

Each product will be on a membership site to cross-sell other products and services.  I will create a membership site clone for fast deployment and easy branding.

Products will be sold through Warrior Plus where I will also be doing product research.  Existing buyers might also tell me what they would like to learn to generate more ideas, if I take the trouble to ask them.

The key to monetisation is the email marketing on the back-end to cross-sell more products.  I would like to get up to 2 or 3 WSO’s a week when I have refined the system but it is important not to run before I can walk!

Initially I am thinking in terms of planning my time like this:

  • – research – 1 day
  • – product planning & sales letter – 1 day
  • – product creation & membership site – 2 days
  • – WSO set-up & funnel testing etc – 1 day
  • – weekend as a buffer and to enable me to do other things and you to do product quality control.

Compared to what Sean Mize advocates, I am planning to take far too long on each part but initially I want to start off ‘slow’ and then if I can get it up to 2 or 3 a week, try for that rather than saying I can do it off the bat.

I think the important thing is to work out a system i.e.

  • carry out research for several products at the same time and / or utilise my existing products better by repackaging them
  • get the planning done in an hour
  • sales letter written in an hour
  • product created in 1 to 3 hours
  • clone a membership site for fast deployment
  • get familiar with Warrior Plus and membership site and auto-responder integration

This will require extreme focus in order to consistently churn out high-quality low-priced products week-after-week.  (Here is a product idea already – showing other people how I am doing it.)

So there it is – my latest challenge is at least one WSO a week.

What would you do if you had $2,000 to invest in your business?

One of the newsletters I like to invest in is Tony Shepherds – I usually buy it 6 monthly in arrears when he puts it up for sale in the Warrior Forum.  In the latest batch, he posed the question – ‘What would you do if you had $2,000 to invest in your business.’

I’ve curated a clip from the Newsletter, because I think that this is particularly good advice.

It has taken me 5 years to learn the ropes and I would have made money a lot faster online if I had received this advice (and believed it) 5 years ago.  You will therefore readily understand why this struck a chord with me.

So bringing it down to the bottom line if I had $2,000 to invest in my business here’s what I’d do…

I’d get an auto-responder service, I’d create my own product but hire someone to write the copy and build the funnel (squeeze page and offer), and I’d get a link-tracking service to track everything.

I’d then hire a coach for as much time as I could afford to look the whole thing over and see what he thought.

I’d make changes and buy traffic depending on his recommendation.

This next part is important.

Some new marketers spend YEARS doing the above – building sites, creating products and messing about with software.

In short, setting up the techy bare bones of your business.

Building a business is NOT about building websites and creating products. It’s what happens once you’ve DONE that, which is REAL marketing.

In my view, the setting up of sites and products should all be accomplished in no longer than one month.

Yet some people spend years doing it and never get to the actual marketing stage.

And I think that’s what a business investment should be for – to get you up and running.

I’ve been creating authority blogs in various niches this month.

Did I build all the blogs manually, install the plugins, do the SEO, created the design and optimize the whole thing myself?

Course not.

I paid someone to do all that for me.

To get me to the point where all I have to do is now add the content myself, or hire a writer.

It’s the small stuff that defeats you, the technical hurdles that grind you down.

Getting past those, that’s what your investment capital is for.

Getting you to the point where you can actually start marketing, having ideas and making money!

What I have learnt is that you can acquire skills very cheaply – much more cheaply than trying to do everything yourself.  If you are scaling a business, you simply do not have time to do it yourself – you need to hire in skills to help you.

That’s what a business is all about – coordinating and leveraging the skills and knowledge of others to produce a result for your customers.

I’m still not heeding this advice – today I installed Adobe After Effects onto my computer so I could make some cool video effects but at the time I was downloading the programme I was asking myself what the hell I was doing.  It would be much more efficient to outsource shit like this.

The other thing that took a long time for me to understand is what is meant by ‘marketing’ because you tend to think that everything you do is marketing, including setting up your website and creating the product.  In this context, marketing’ means the actual promotion of the product i.e. driving traffic, whether paid or free, to your offer and the processes you adopt i.e. whether the traffic is cold or has been warmed up beforehand.  Also the script or copy you use to persuade your customer to optin and/or buy your offer.

As Tony says, the marketing stage is the key one – almost nobody will buy unless you get this part right, however good your product.

So if you were wondering what you would do if you had $2,000 to invest in your business, you could do a lot worse than taking Tony Shepherd’s advice in my opinion.

Planning: Put A Number On It

Don’t do what Beyonce advocates and ‘put a ring on it’, Put A Number On It!

I’ve been a long-term member of 6-in-6 Coaching, which is owned and operated by Jason Fladlien & Wilson Mattos of Rapid Crush.

Originally,  I paid for 12 fortnightly coaching sessions and we are now up to Session 67 – see below for the topics that have been covered so far:

6in6 v1
6in6 v26in6 v3

As you can see, that is a huge over-delivery on their original promise and, as a founding member, I have been very happy with the training that has been delivered.

And it’s not finished yet!

But that’s not the purpose of this post.

Back to Basics

Session 1 is called ‘The Basics’ and that is what I want to talk about because, after 67 sessions, I have recently decided to implement what was covered in Session 1!

I know that sounds crazy but I tried to implement it originally and got distracted by more bright shiny objects.

My intentions were good but somewhere along the way I went astray again.  And I think I can now see why.

Some 33 months (almost 3 years) after we first started, I’ve gone back to basics and this time it’s working for me.

Let me explain.

In Session 1, Wilson Mattos did a number of things but three stand out:

  • he made us go through all our outgoings and ditch all but the essential expenses.  For most of us that saving alone paid for the whole coaching.
  • he assigned each of us accountability partners
  • the other outstanding thing he did was to explain how they had built their 4.5 million turnover business with a simple planning system.

It’s so simple that I failed to put it into practice and I’ll tell you why in a moment.

Their planning system is simply this:

 Step #1 – Set Goals

You need to set clear, achievable and measurable income goals.

In other words you MUST PUT A NUMBER ON IT.

Set your income goal for the month NOW.

If they are making $4.5m a year, their figure will no doubt be a lot higher than yours because they have grown their business steadily to this level over the past 3 or 4 years.

Don’t forget that it must be ‘achievable’ in your mind and slightly challenging.

Don’t move forward from here until you have that figure firmly fixed in your mind – remember, it must be:

  • CLEAR
  • ACHIEVABLE
  • MEASURABLE

Step #2 – Plan

Having first set your goal, you must now create a plan that is time-based, realistic, practical and measurable.

This is the difficult bit. (Or at least it was for me.)

This is where the rubber hits the road because you must now work out HOW you are going to achieve your target!

If you have not been earning much online until now, this is challenging.

So what you need to do is:

  • break your goal down into daily (or weekly) amounts
  • now ask yourself what you can do to earn the amount you have set yourself each day/week – list those out on a piece of paper.  (Do not let yourself off the hook or let your mind wander off when doing this – this is the serious bit!)
  • create a planning sheet with headings and fill in your target amount and the activity you WILL do to achieve that target for each day of the month – here are the headings: Day | Target Amount | Activity
  • make sure that you also plan for breaks

Review and evaluate your plan i.e. go back and forth between Step 1 and Step 2 to adjust your goal and your plan until it is:

  • REALISTIC
  • IT ACHIEVES YOUR GOAL
  • IT IS TIME-BASED
  • IT IS MEASURABLE

Step #3 – Execute the Plan

Now you need to EXECUTE the plan.

I’ve found that it is important to keep your focus on the target rather than the activity.  In other words, I remind myself daily and sometimes several times a day what my goal is and ask myself what I should be doing NOW to get my target.

Often that means doing things that I have to do, rather than what I would like to do. i.e. I find the path of least resistance to getting my goal.  

Wilson counselled us not to be too proud to make money.  

If the easiest way to make some money is write a few articles for someone else then  do what you have to do.

It might be that you put something up for sale on eBay.  Just do what you have to do.

This is the way to create a mindset of taking action deliberately to earn money.

It teaches you to honour your own time and to put a value on it.

In practice, I’ve found that the money doesn’t always come from where you expect it to!

But it does come, almost magically, if you focus on your target and work to achieve it.  (Yes, it does take work!)

Step #4 – Measure

It is important to continuously evaluate your results based on the goals that you set for your business.

At a minimum it should be weekly but initially it would be advisable to check your progress daily.

If you are falling behind, you need to think of a way (or ways) to catch up.

If you do this properly, Wilson says that they have never not made their target.  And their targets are huge.

In the short time that I have been implementing this system, that’s been the case for me too.

It’s really about focus – focusing on your target and constantly asking yourself what you can do to get it.

Step #5 – Growing Your Business

In order to grow your business, rather than just make money online, you also need to develop and document systems.

You can grow your business by outsourcing the systemised parts of your business so you can repeat the entire process by systemising other parts of your business with new systems.

Wilson said that perfection does not exist – set a deadline and just get it done and put your work out there.

It is also very important to celebrate your successes because you need a break sometimes.

Final Words

I’ve discovered that, by implementing this system, I have started hitting my income targets at long last.

My focus has shifted to hitting my targets.

If you will only have the focus and discipline to put this simple system into practice, I think you will start seeing success too. 

You may have to  make yourself do it initially (it’s simple but not easy) and, once you start seeing that it works, that should motivate you to keep going.

Who knows, you might also build a million dollar business empire too!

And it all starts when you ‘Put A Number On It’!

Beyonce

Don’t ‘Put A Ring On It’, Put A Number On It!

My Business Plan for 2014

This article covers my business plan for 2014.

To put this plan into perspective, let’s retrace my steps during 2013.

At the start of 2013, I was in another coaching programme which relied heavily on the WSO launch model.

I subsequently listened to a webinar that made it clear that such a model was not a sustainable business.  This webinar advocated the affiliate recruitment model and as a result I joined Marc Milburn’s coaching programme in May 2013.

At the time, I had developed just a couple of products – List Building Renegade and WP Website Wizard.  In joining Marc’s programme and learning the material within his Digital Millionaires Bootcamp, my productivity increased and I have subsequently created a lot more products.

Whilst I have flexed my muscles on product creation, I have not marketed my products to any great extent because I have a vision of coaching a holistic programme on how to build an online business.  Each of my products is designed to fit into my overall vision.

In creating these products I have been building my online business muscle.  The quality of presentation of my products has gradually been improving helped by tools such as Easy Video Suite.

In addition, Marc has given me greater clarity about how the info marketing model works and I have re-branded my business around my personal name.

In the meantime, I have learned better techniques for creating eReports, Audios and Videos.  This has included a focus in graphic creation to package my products nicely.

In 2014, it’s now time to create a really unique business led by my high-end coaching programme to position me as an expert in my chosen sub-niche – more about that later!

I must now focus on exactly how I will change my students lives through my coaching and products.

My purpose has long been that I want to help other people start and create their own online business using my unique expertise forged by:

  • 25 years in corporate banking
  • 6 years consulting with a global consulting business – RAN ONE.
  • 1 year running a manufacturing business
  • and 5 years running an internet marketing business.

There are many people who have an expertise or expert knowledge that need to know exactly how to leverage that knowledge online. I can show them how to:

  • begin with the end in mind
  • how to get from where they are now to where they want to be
  • how to structure their business
  • the various online business models available
  • how to create digital products and services
  • how to automate and systemise their online processes
  • how to market their business and generate traffic to a sales funnel that converts
  • how to deliver the product through multiple modalities including through Amazon S3 and and Cloudfront and membership sites
  • how to brand their business
  • how to communicate and follow-up with prospects and customers using email marketing and other methods
  • how to structure their sales letters and presentations
  • how to outsource parts of their online business
  • how to secure your online assets
  • how to monitor and measure the key performance indicators such as the conversions statistics

So specifically what do I want to achieve in 2014? Here are my goals:

  • to narrow my niche focus – perhaps concentrate on business or health coaches and consultants, or both (my sister is a health consultant)
  • to keep improving my graphic design skills (- see this article to discover why)
  • to improve my video marketing skills
  • I want to master and use Google Hangouts as my preferred webinar platform
  • I would also like some speaking engagements – I used to do speaking as a consultant but have not done so for a few years now
  • I also want to master the book-publishing model (- I have access to a high-level training from someone earning over £1m per annum from around 70 books, few of which she wrote herself!) – publishing a book is a great way of establishing authority in your niche in addition to earning income from the sales.
  • to create a high-value coaching programme and funnel
  • to improve and transform the lives of the people who want to be my students
  • I was a relationship banker – I now want to focus on being a relationship business coach and marketing consultant i.e. concentrate on building solid relationships with my students and customers.
  • I want to systemise and modularise my training so that it can plugged and played into customised solutions for customers because we are all at different stages of development and expertise.
  • I will focus on online beginners and intermediate students.
  • I will massively increase productivity in 2014 i.e. content creation.
  • to generate an income of $10,000 per month in 2014 from a mix of group coaching, product sales and affiliate commissions
  • each week I want to make at least one person happy.

I will do what it takes to achieve these goals and to implement this business plan for 2014.

Anchor Your Sales Funnel With A Coaching Programme

Do you anchor your sales funnel with a coaching programme?

If you don’t, then this may be the reason why you are not selling as many info products as you would like.

Why?  Because a high-priced coaching programme positions you as an expert or guru in your niche and if your prospects cannot afford your coaching programme then they will buy the lesser-priced products in your funnel in lieu of your top-end coaching programme.

You will of course want products with a range of prices in your funnel that lead up to your top-end product to cater for each persons budget: – for example…

  • $37 one problem  / one solution type of product
  • Your monthly automated continuity programme e.g. $27 per month
  • Your lower-priced group coaching
  • Top-priced one-on-one coaching

If you think about it hard enough, all the top ‘gurus’ run a similar business model – they are not relying on product sales alone.  There are a few exceptions but in the main, most of the so-called gurus run a high-end coaching programme.

No coaching programme = no longer a guru = no more product sales.

Hope that makes perfect sense!

My coaching programme is called Business Creation Mastery and will be launching in the New Year because I practice what I preach.

If you still don’t see with 20/20 clarity why you need to anchor your sales funnel with a coaching programme then click this link to read the message again but in different words:  

http://infobusinessmasterplan.com/

Oh and how about this as a direct coaching style:

The Hero With A Thousand Faces – My Story

‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ is a book written by Joseph Campbell.

The first time that I heard about this book was from Chris Payne at the KISS 2 seminar last weekend 19th/20th October 2013.

Apparently, both the storyline of Star Wars and also The Lion King are built around the framework that was outlined in ‘The Hero With a Thousand Faces’.

Chris Payne told us that this was an excellent story framework to use when selling yourself as a coach or consultant (or indeed in any setting) as our life stories almost always follow the pattern set out in the book.

The basic framework is as follows (taken from the notes of his talk):

  • The hero is stuck in a wasteland
  • He/she receives a call to adventure
  • Initially he/she refuses the call
  • Then accepts the call
  • Meets a mentor
  • Crosses the threshold into a whole new world
  • Encounters adventures
  • Things get worse
  • The hero then triumphs and transforms
  • The hero returns home and shares what she/he has learned i.e. brings back the elixir

This story framework does indeed mirror my own experience with internet marketing.

I wanted to get online as a business consultant but didn’t have the necessary computer skills.  I was in the wasteland!

I initially started with internet marketing by going to a local college to learn how to create a website with Dreamweaver.  All the students were at different levels of skills and the whole experience was a nightmare.  But I had received the ‘call to adventure’ – I was desperate to express myself online.

However, the experience at the local college put me off – I was no longer confident that I could do it.  I ‘refused the call’

To promote my business consultancy, I was part of a local BNI Group to network with local businesses.  One of these businesses was a network marketer called Avril who signed me up to the Telecoms Plus network marketing opportunity.

It only took a short while trying to generate leads offline before I realised that I needed to generate leads online or risk losing all of my friends and family.

In 2009, my sister then introduced me to Ann Sieg and her partner, Mike Klingler, who were teaching internet marketing skills online to network marketers.

It was in this comprehensive training, for which I was paying $33 per month, that I was introduced to WordPress.  My love of internet marketing took off from that point – I accept the call as a result of meeting my first mentor.

Of course, the subsequent 3/4 years have been a real adventure, because I quickly transitioned from wanting to generate leads for my network marketing opportunity to providing internet marketing services to offline businesses.

This part of my journey is documented on http://businessrenegade.co.uk (- incidentally, at one time Alexa listed this site as being in the top 1% in the world as far as traffic is concerned which proves that I also know a little bit about SEO.)

Rather than focusing on one business niche and one service, of course, I made the mistake of trying to be all things to all men and learn a lot of different skills.  This led me into thinking that I don’t want to mess around with local businesses.

I discovered that most local businesses have been badly treated by so called web design experts who have charged them a lot of money and given them a website that doesn’t perform.  As a result they are rightly suspicious of anyone offering internet services – the motto is ‘one bitten, twice shy’.

I am constantly shocked how web designers and SEO companies are ripping off small businesses and leveraging the business owners ignorance of the internet. (99% of business websites receive hardly any traffic and are therefore almost totally ineffective in my opinion.)

Converting offline businesses to customers ethically requires that you have the patience to educate them about what it really takes to succeed online or alternatively take their money and give them something that you know won’t work (which is what most people do!)

I therefore decided that I would prefer to create information products that teach what I have learnt about internet marketing in an ethical way.

So as you can see, for a while things got worse as I explored many blind avenues and I have been through many adventures and created many websites in the process of getting to where I am today.

In May this year, I hooked up with Marc Milburn as my coach and started implementing the strategy he outlined.  In a very real sense this was the point at which your ‘hero with a thousand faces’ – me 🙂 – triumphs and transforms.  Since that time I have been highly productive by creating this new blog and numerous products that I can now promote.

I now have a solid business plan and strategy that I know will work and I am loving doing what I do.

[features_box_grey width=”75%” + border=”2px”]My products have been created to share what I have learned on my journey so far.  For example:

I have several other products planned such as:

  • Email-ATM that covers email marketing
  • Easy Web Page Graphics that covers how to create stunning images and graphics because websites are a very visual medium and graphics are very important
  • Outsourcing Renegade that will cover the opportunities for outsourcing to scale your business
  • Business Creation Mastery which will be my high-end coaching programme bringing everything together

In addition to these products, I want to cover various traffic strategies.   For example, I am helping a friend of mine to put together a traffic product about solo ads called Solo Ads Assassin.  As a quid pro quo, he is selling my products on the back-end of his funnel.

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If you are not convinced about the value of telling stories in your business, then read this article to see evidence of how stories can add huge value to any brand, product or service – in one experiment, stories added 2,706% to the value of the products concerned!  In the circumstances where YOU are the brand (as in the case of people like consultants and coaches), then it is critically important that you tell your own story.

As you can see from my own story, in a very real sense I am bringing back the elixir for others to  partake of and my story definitely follows the framework set out in ‘the hero with a thousand faces’.

If you have a similar story, I would love to hear it – alternatively, you may still be ‘in the wasteland’.  Let me know below where you think you are on your business or life journey!

 

The Very Essence of Making Money Online

In the process of creating a viable management information system for my own online business, I have been thinking about the very essence of making money online.

What are the critical success factors and how can I measure my progress towards achieving them?  These are critically important questions because they will determine our daily activities and the actual work we do online.

Here are my current thoughts…

#1 Build Lists

Why you need to do this:

  • so you can communicate value and offers to people who have an interest in your niche
  • so you can contact them many times (as most people will not buy until they know, like and trust you.)
  • you will have the ability to direct traffic on demand and to earn money through doing so

What is a list?

  • a database of people willing to accept communications from you
  • the definition of a list can be extended to:
    • email lists (aweber, get response, icontact, mailchimp, infusionsoft)
    • social sites
      • Facebook friends, fans and groups
      • Twitter followers
      • YouTube subscribers
      • LinkedIn colleagues
      • Google Plus followers
    • other lists:
      • Skype contacts & groups

How to get people to join your lists

  • offer something valuable in exchange
    • free gifts
    • products
    • information or tools that will improve their life
  • give them multiple, high quality opportunities to join your lists with a call to action  i.e. create multiple and deep sales funnels (- see my free eBook entitled ‘Sales Funnel Supremacy‘)
  • drive TRAFFIC to those opportunities (i.e. optin boxes, squeeze pages, sales pages, invitations to join your social network)

What you need to measure in your list building activities

  • number of people on your lists
  • their responsiveness to your communications (i.e. the quality of your relationship with them)
    • email opens
    • clicks on links
    • likes, comments, shares
    • the amount of unique visitors to your landing pages
    • sales/optin conversions
    • Return on Investment (ROI), Earnings Per Click (EPC), Cost per Click (CPC), Cost Per action (CPA)
    • Advertising spend & effectiveness
  • buyers convert better than prospects – also measure #of buyers and # of prospects

The size of your lists, and the quality of relationship with them, will be a major determining factor in your ability to make money online.   I created List Building Renegade to give more information about List Building

 #2 High quality communication with your lists

 Why you need to do this?

  • to differentiate yourself from your competition
  • to build a relationship – the know, like and trust factor
  • this shows that you are an authority and someone worth listening to
  • this is what will generate a substantial portion of your online income if you do it well

What is ‘high quality’ communication?

  • regular and consistent communications i.e. this shows that you care and that you actually want a relationship
  • your content is:
    • entertaining (- stories, real, well-scripted, well-presented, easy to consume)
    • valuable (- useful and relevant or Better, Cheaper, Quicker and/or Nicer than your competitors.)
    • disruptive (- that you have your own opinion or viewpoint that is worth listening to)
    • answers the ‘what’s in it for me?’ question going on in the recipients mind
    • has calls to action (and all the other elements of copywriting)

What you should measure

  • See list building measures above plus
  • Amount of communications:
    • no of posts
    • no of emails/promotions
    • no of Facebook posts
    • no of  tweets on Twitter

The quality of your communications will determine the strength of your relationship, your customer retention rate, the lifetime value of your customer i.e. your ability to get them to buy from you again and again.  Look out for Email-ATM which I will create shortly covering email marketing!

#3 High quality content/product creation

Why you need to do this

  • to persuade people to join your list
  • to build your relationship with your list
  • to get people to give you money either for your own product (or through following your recommendations for other people’s products)

How to deliver high quality content / products

  • keep informed
    • be on the lists of the best marketers in your niche
    • Google Alerts
    • use content creation techniques to find current and relevant information
    • Google search
    • Facebook shares
  • improve on, add to and share the best stuff (e.g. re-purpose, re-format, re-organise etc)
  • focus or go deeper on one aspect of your niche (become the expert) – preferably in an area where a lot of other people are having problems.
  • share what you are actually doing (and your results, good or otherwise) – authenticity is critically important.
  • outsource content creation e.g. a plugin coder or content creator

What you should measure

  • no and range of your own products (- just one product may be enough if it is a market leader but a spread will reduce your risks)
  • traffic
  • no of leads and buyers
  • no of affiliates
  • refunds
  • multiple purchases
  • email open rates and click throughs
  • number and amount of sales
  • outsourcing – project management measures – delivered on time and to cost at an acceptable quality?

The quality of your content and your products will influence the volume of sales, prices of your products, the average value of each sale and your reputation in the marketplace.  This is why I created Product Creation Renegade and Membership Millionaires Bootcamp i.e. my strategies for creating high quality content and products.

#4 Traffic Generation (- start by focusing and mastering one method)

Why you need to do this

  • to build your list of prospects and buyers
  • to find the people who want what you can provide
  • to grow your business

How to generate traffic – examples

  • through affiliates
  • through paid advertising – examples
    • PPC
    • Banner ads
    • Solo Ads
  • search engine optimisation (SEO) – examples
    • blog posts
    • articles
    • podcasts
    • videos
  • viral content – examples
    • posting on other peoples blogs
    • facebook posts
    • forum posts
    • YouTube views
  • your list

What you should measure

Decide the critical success factor for each traffic method and then decide what to measure – examples:

  • Affiliates
    • time spent networking
    • no of affiliates on your list
    • no of approaches to affiliates and responsiveness (opens, replies)
    • average number of communications with affiliates
    • EPC’s
    • Amount and number of prizes
  • Paid Ads:
    • Ad Impressions #
    • CTR (click thru rate) % Ad to Landing Page
    • Clicks to Offer
    • CTR % to Offer
    • Unique Visitors
    • # Sales
    • Conversion Rate %
    • # Refunds
    • Revenue
    • Costs
    • Profit
    • Return On Investment  %
    • Earnings Per Cclick
    • Cost Per Click
    • Cost Per Action
  • SEO
    • Alexa ranking
    • No of relevant ranking keywords
    • On page factors (- score)
    • No of backlinks & quality
    • No of unique visitors
  • WSO’s – there is a huge amount of traffic on the Warrior Forum for IM related products!

The amount and quality of traffic that you can drive to your offers will determine your ability to scale your business.  This is also a function of the size and quality of your list.

A Viable Strategy & Proven Business Model

The business activities above need to take place within a viable  strategy and a proven business model ( such a strategy and business model is fully set out in ‘The Way of the Warriors‘.)  For example, selection of your niche and target market are critical. You also need to be able to build the systems and processes that will deliver on your strategy.  In fact you need to be able to deliver in each of the following areas in your business:

RAN_Rocket

However, measuring your progress towards delivering on the critical successes factors is absolutely vital in my opinion.  If you take action without putting in place the systems to measure the outcome you will not know what is working and what isn’t.  I am afraid that many, many businesses make this mistake.

It is absolutely critical that you should implement systems to measure your activities.  It’s boring and tedious but it is nevertheless essential which is why I created Measure N Manage.

Whilst it is desirable to measure everything, in practical terms there is a cost to doing so.  Initially, it is therefore important to get started by selecting just a select a handful of measures that are the most critical and apply those, building more sophistication into your management information system as your business grows.

I believe that some of the key performance indicators outlined above will be appropriate for most online businesses but each business has to design its own management information system according to its own aspirations and goals and depending on the stage of its development, ability and the tools available for doing so.

Measurement will focus your activities around what is getting results and the  results will drive your actions.  This is the very essence of making money online.

Mark’s Month 1 Progress Update

I started my coaching just over one month ago with Marc Milburn and set up this blog on the 1st May.  I thought that I would just recap my progress to date in the first month.

We have now had 6 trainings within the bonus product called Digital Millionaires Bootcamp.  This training was a basic overview of the kind of business we are going to create with Marc.

At the core of the business model is this website and the creation of a list.  Surrounding the core of the business will be a series of info products on separate web domains.

Prior to Marc’s coaching starting, I almost had 3 of my core products already created.  I have now ‘released’ these 3 products on JVZoo.   I now need to drive traffic to each of the sales pages.  The sales pages are here:

In addition to releasing these 3 products into the market, I have created this website to chronicle my journey with Marc.

I have been able to assist my fellow students by securing a discounted deal for Membersonic ($27 rather than the market price of $167) – this is a membership plugin that I use to protect my products and now 13 of my fellow students also have access to this plugin.  When they discover how good this plugin is, hopefully I will win some friends as a result of this deal!

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So the thrust of my business activity over the next month will now be as follows:

  • to continue creating products – I have at least 4 more planned – the next is Business Storyboards on business strategy and planning which I want to have finished by 19th June so I can revamp List Building Renegade for re-release at the beginning of July
  • to email my list 3 or 4 days a week with one promotion each week (including my own products)
  • to recruit affiliates for my products using the system Marc has given to us
  • to set up a recurring income membership site using BusinessCreationMastery.com (- I need to narrow my niche focus perhaps just targeting ‘beginners’).  This will be the upsell on all products and I am starting the monthly fee at $9.95 per month.
  • to start building sales funnels for each product that I have released
  • a weekly blog post and email my list as I publish it.
  • consider trying some solo ads  to start building my list
  • become more organised about finding products to promote by creating a JV email address and forwarding all promotional emails to a gmail account for review
  • set up Bonus Press on a directory of my site to offer bonus packages on big promotions.
  • make sure that I have joined all the affiliate networks recommended by Marc

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I definitely need to create a good working routine.  This includes using Alex Jeffreys time management system – particularly setting goals in advance of each month, week, day and reviewing progress through a ‘did’ sheet i.e. what I have accomplished each day.

I definitely need to concentrate on simplifying my business model as far as possible and increasing productivity.  I attended Alex Jeffreys live event in London during May and this has helped to galvanise me as well.  The realisation that I was over-complicating my business suddenly removed the blockages in mind about what it takes to make money online.

I also bought and read ‘Ready, Aim, Fire’ by Michael Masterson.  I now know that I must spend the majority of my time in ‘selling’ activities – Marc is giving us the optimal model for selling our products – but I now need to focus on doing it which will be difficult for me as I have never liked this aspect of business.

Marc has also made it crystal clear that most of his activities have a promotional aspect to them, with the main free content being in the form of his blog posts.  He says that the trouble with offering too much free stuff is that your prospects are conditioned to expect everything for free!

Also, I may try a launch of one of my products on the Warrior Forum just to start getting some traffic and affiliates to my sales letters to track conversions.

One idea that is circulating in my mind is to set up a graphics membership site providing graphics and tutorials on how to customise the graphics.  I love creating graphics and I think there could be a market for showing marketers how to create simple web graphics.  Whilst we are told to outsource this task, I definitely like to create my own graphics – it’s more convenient and it’s part of the creative process of creating a product.

The other big breakthrough this month has been my understanding of how to use Google Hangouts on Air.  I have purchased a useful plugin called Hangout plugin to help me to set up live webinars on Google Hangouts.  I would definitely like to test this out during June.

Also during June, I need to book another consultation with Marc to review progress and to get Marc’s guidance.  One consultation per month and the opportunity to ask questions at each weekly webinar should enable me to keep moving forward.

On a point of detail, I am acquiring the new Membersonic membership theme in the next few days to use for my non-core products.  Optimize Press will be used for my core products so that my branding is nice and crisp.

That concludes my month one update of Marc Milburn’s coaching.  Altogether, some good progress has been made and it’s all shaping up well.

Internet Marketing Strategies For a Sustainable Online Business – The First Post

This new website has been created to share my internet marketing strategies and my journey to creating a sustainable online business. In fact starting this site is part of that strategy.

I already have a well-established blog called The Business Renegade that I started 4 years ago in 2009.  Initially that blog was about ‘how to grow a business’ and covered a lot of my consulting strategies and my interest in finance and bookkeeping.  Gradually the site morphed into being almost exclusively about my interest in internet marketing and how to start an online business.

I also set myself up as an internet marketing consultant to help offline businesses do local internet marketing and created a number of websites for offline clients but did not find that terribly fulfilling even though local SEO is relatively easy.  So I decided to change my strategy to concentrate on information marketing.

I realise that chopping and changing is destructive but at the end of the day I am on a quest to find work that is fulfilling to me and generates the most value for other people.  I am passionate about starting and growing small businesses and I want to be able to show others how to do it.  After all, I now have 37 years experience in business and that should count for something!

Starting a new blog in the same niche is a big step for me, so how will this one be different?

Firstly, it is branded to me personally in recognition that people do business with people rather than businesses.

Whilst I couldn’t get my first choice of domain i.e. marksalmon.com, I did secure my second choice domain!  (My first choice is not currently in use as it diverts to another website so I wonder if it will be offered for sale?)

Second, this new site will document my progress with my new coach, Marc Milburn, who has recommended that all students start again anew and follow his coaching exactly.  This time I will keep things very simple and follow a clear-cut strategy.

Marc is aiming to make $1.2m online this year and has promised to show all his coaching students exactly what he does to be successful.

My plan this year was to release 7 high-quality products about building an online business.

Four out of the 7 products are more or less ready and I am releasing the first one as a WSO any day now.  It is all about how to acquire the right mindset and is called The Sky Inside.  It includes information on Vision, Mindset and Time Management and I have included two interviews with other high-profile internet marketers as a bonus.

Whether or not these products are successful, they have been a valuable exercise in flexing my product creation muscles.

The other products include:

  • Business Storyboards – about business strategy and structure i.e. various internet marketing plans and strategies.
  • WP Website Wizard – over 100 short video tutorials about WordPress systems and processes
  • Product Creation Renegade – about how to create digital products
  • List Building Renegade 2.0 – I released this as a WSO last November but I am going to update it and release it.  This is all about list building, sales funnels, email marketing, and traffic strategies.  (A huge topic that I will probably breakdown into smaller products in future.)
  • Measure ‘n’ Manage – this product is all about the key performance indicators and numbers that you need to monitor and test in your online business.  Also, how to get those numbers and what to do with them.
  • Outsourcing Renegade – this is about team building and outsourcing or delegating tasks within your business to enable you to scale up your business.

I have no doubt that these products will only be enhanced and improved as a result of Marc Milburn’s training.

Do you want to discover my internet marketing strategies for starting an online business?

I will be sharing my internet marketing strategy in my blog posts so, if you want me to keep you informed as I post new information on my blog, then sign up to my list below and I will send you an email when I post new information.


One of the mistakes on my last blog was to be too promotional with affiliate links and, on advice from Marc Milburn, I will just be sharing good information and keep the promotional stuff well in the background.  Whilst I’ve made some money from affiliate marketing, I honestly don’t think it is a great business model for your primary business because it does not position you correctly with your customer.

I’ve learnt this lesson.  Your relationship with your list is critically important and if you can gather a small band of happy followers then you are set for life. This is my goal – to over-deliver to a relatively small number of people who have the same interests that I do – creating a sustainable online business using an internet marketing plan that has integrity and authenticity.

I’m in this for the long-haul because I love it and I love working from home.  I also like the creative process – websites, graphics, products, software, strategies – a wonderful intellectual challenge that keeps me rooted to my desk.

So join my list and let’s get to work together on designing our internet strategies for a sustainable online business – feel free to connect with me on Facebook and make yourself known to me if you want make this journey together.