Category: Entrepreneurship

It’s that time again!

Only72.com is kicking off another massive sale that begins right now and goes for 72 hours (until this Thursday, June 23, at Noon Eastern).

We’re calling this one the Rock Your Life Sale because all the products in the package are personal development related. My own Mind Control Method, $47 on its own, is included! In total there are 22 courses from 23 awesome people.

Some of the rock stars who contributed to this sale include Leo Babauta, Charlie Gilkey, Jonathan Mead … well, the list is long …

Check out the Rock Your Life Sale right here to get the full list of products/contributors.

If you don’t already know, Only72.com is a partnership between myself and Adam Baker from ManVsDebt.com.

A couple of times per year we run these massive sales for just 72 hours. The goal with each sale is to make it a massive win/win/win/win, which is nearly unheard of nowadays.

So who wins?

1. You win by getting a massive discount on a great group of products.
2. Our contributors win by getting their products in front of thousands of new readers.
3. A charity wins by getting $5 from each sale. (This time it’s the Kidney Foundation to help our friend Cath Duncan.)
4. And we win as well.

Check out the Rock Your Life Sale by clicking here and if you have any questions please get in touch.

I’ve been working for myself since I was 19 and used to attend events/conferences regularly during the early years. But I always felt shy and awkward and never actually befriended people at these events. I essentially threw away money to attend and didn’t get any return on investment (monetary or otherwise). Most of what I do isn’t about the money, but if I wasn’t even building friendships at these conferences, what was the point?

These days when I attend a conference it’s 99% hanging out with friends or meeting new friends and maybe 1% business. I focus on the 99% and the 1% happens mostly organically. I don’t have any solid goals going into these events other than a general “have a good time and learn from people far more intelligent than myself.”

I spent the past weekend at a conference and, as they can be, it was a wonderful time. It was actually the only conference I’ve been to where I actually went to all the sessions/speeches. (Chris never does anything haphazardly.)

But conferences aren’t good for a lot of people. Here are 7 reasons they might not be right for you:

1) You haven’t created anything.

If you haven’t created anything then it’s difficult to get respect. Without respect you won’t be on a level playing field with other attendees. If you’re not on a level playing field you’re not in the game. As much as it sucks every industry has cliques and groups who help each other out. It’s not a lost cause. You can join in on these groups. The barrier to entry is creating something. You get instant respect as a doer.

2) You’re socially awkward.

I know what this is like because it’s how I was in my early years of attending conferences. I was afraid to talk to people and felt awkward, so I didn’t have a good time or make any connections, personal or otherwise. You can get past this, but it’s better to do so before spending the thousands of dollars it may cost to attend a conference.

3) You’re a fanboy.

Listen, I know some of the speakers and attendees at conferences are rock stars. They’re successful, well-known, and you love what they do. That’s cool. But when you treat someone like a god you put yourself on a lower rung of the ladder. I’m not saying complementing them or telling them they’ve affected your life isn’t good. (It’s great!) But there is a line where it gets creepy or awkward. If you don’t know where that line is then you’re going to come away from these events disappointed because instead of building relationships (or planting the seeds for a relationship), you’ll forever be seen as a fanboy. If you’ve done this to someone don’t worry, so have I. It was an important lesson for me. These amazing people are just people and most of them want to be treated as such.

BTW, I absolutely love when somebody tells me they read my work or they loved an article or something else I’ve created. That is not at all what I mean about being creepy/awkward. What I mean is relentless fawning. The remedy is simple: be cool.

4) You’re not prepared to go full-on for 2-3 days.

When I was younger I used to have a saying, “sleep is for the weak.” I never actually believed that, but sometimes I make it my mantra. There is a lot going on during conferences and a lot of great things happen after hours. There isn’t a single night this past weekend that I didn’t come home before 2am or wake up after 7am. Long term this isn’t a healthy lifestyle, but for a weekend it’s necessary. Tip: drink 90% water / 10% whatever else.

5) You’re focused on quantity instead of quality.

There are some people who attend these events to meet everybody and as a result they really meet nobody. It’s much better to develop one friendship than a hundred acquaintanceships (new word?). You won’t hit it off with everybody and that’s OK. You might not hit it off with someone you thought you’d hit it off with based on previous interactions online. That’s OK too. But jumping around from one person to the next is an utter waste of time.

Additionally, when you’re speaking with someone don’t constantly look around the room for someone “better” to talk to. It’s rude and disrespectful. We’re all guilty of this sometimes, of course, but better if the majority of your interactions are focused on the person/persons you’re chatting with. There is good in all people, and even if you’re not hitting it off with someone it doesn’t mean you can’t give them at least a few minutes of your time.

6) You don’t follow up.

I’m pretty bad at this, but I’ve been getting better. When you meet someone you connect with or someone who you appreciated in some way be sure to follow up. A simple “thank you” is a great start, but you can take it further if you feel that it fits. Sometimes the conscious follow up isn’t necessary at all because you’ve built an instant friendship. It’s great when this happens, but when it doesn’t that doesn’t mean there is no possibility for a friendship in the future.

7) You feel like you have to be there instead of want to be there.

I used to attend conferences because I felt like I had to. “So many people are going to be there! I need to be there as well or I’m going to miss out on so much!” For the most part, that’s not true. Nowadays I don’t attend every conference I could. I attend the events that I truly want to attend.

Bonus: You hand out business cards to people who don’t ask.

In the words of Mitch Hedberg, what you’re “saying” when you do this is “here, you throw this away.” When someone asks for a business card give them one. Otherwise, don’t.

Although I took this from a “why you shouldn’t” stance, there are dozens of reasons you should. If you’ve attended a live event before it would be cool if you shared your best tip or reason for attending in the comments below …

I know a lot about this because I didn’t agree to an exclusive sponsor for my Roller Coaster Tour.

I decided to sponsor RollerCoasterTour.com myself.

Although getting a big chunk of money from a company would be sweet, in the long run it’s better if I make sales of Mind Control Method or Luxury of Less. (I’m planning on taking How To Live Anywhere off the market in about a month so I can revamp it, so I’m not including that.) I’m in this for the long haul, not for short term gains, and spreading my influence is more important to me than spreading influence for another company. (Not that there is anything wrong with that, because in the right situation I would be into it.)

I’m going to track sales that come from RollerCoasterTour.com so I know what is what. I’ll let you know after the tour is over how the tour did in the short term. There are also a lot of intangible benefits from the tour and I won’t know all the long term benefits for, well, a long time.

What I Did On My Quest To Find A Sponsor

I made a list of companies I would feel comfortable supporting and I contacted them. Unlike most people (actors, musicians, sports stars, almost anybody else?) I won’t put my name behind any company in exchange for the almighty dollar. It’s just not worth it to me. There has to be more to it than cash money. My brain fights itself too much when things aren’t on the up and up. I wonder if I’d be a good politician? Ha!

Let me elaborate about how I contacted companies.

I found a social media or PR contact for each company and contacted that person. Finding the contact is usually easy enough to do using the company website or Google, but if I couldn’t find a PR department contact I would send an e-mail to whatever contact I could find. I also tweeted a few companies. For the most part nothing came of that, but I’ll share something interesting that came from Twitter in the results section below.

In the beginning I also contacted Peter Shankman for advice, being sure to keep it to less than 5 sentences, of course. I can’t imagine how many e-mails he receives. He responded that I should focus on just one company’s parks and get them involved like that. “The Six Flags Tour of the United States” type of thing. While that would be cool, it didn’t align with what I wanted to do. I thanked him for the advice and moved on with my original “every coaster” mission.

The (Lack Of) Results

In my contacts with PR departments I was sure to highlight the benefits of sponsoring the tour, but most e-mails were ignored.

Two companies (Boingo and TripIt) gave me free accounts to try, but didn’t want to sponsor. Boingo gave me 4 months (retail value: ~$100?) but I probably won’t use it at all while on the coaster tour because I’m using a mobile broadband connection. That said, Boingo was awesome in airports and in random cities all over the UK and Ireland when I was there last month. I had WiFi connections almost everywhere I tested the service. (The guys in The Swellers also appreciated the Boingo WiFi since I was sometimes able to connect 4 devices to my one account.)

I really like how the TripIt Pro service (retail: $49/year) works, and I’ve been forwarding my hotel reservations (I’m averaging over 50% off Expedia rates using Priceline!) to the service. I have easy access to all my reservations through the app, which is convenient.

To be clear: I would not have paid for either of these services had they not been given to me. Not for the coaster tour anyway. Had we worked out a sponsorship I had a few fun ideas on how to integrate their services into the tour. But doing it without their support will be too much work so it’s not gonna happen. I’ll have enough to do on tour.

Note: I was not asked to write about Boingo or TripIt. They were really nice and I’m happy to support nice people.

I was also in touch with the PR person for Best Western and she liked what I was up to. We exchanged a few e-mails and she said she’d get back to me after speaking to the company. I don’t know if this was just a brush off, but I followed up after a little while and never heard back. I contacted mostly mid-range hotels like Best Western because they are in almost every city on my tour and I feel like they would get more benefit than higher end hotel chains. A roller coaster adventure is more of a family event and, in general, most middle class families don’t stay at the Four Seasons.

My Honesty Prompts One Company To Back Out

One of the company’s I contacted on twitter got back to me with great interest. They make a camera that is wearable on your ear. I thought this might be perfect for the coasters, but I also thought that maybe it might not work well on coasters because it could fall off. In any case, asking them to sponsor the tour didn’t cost me anything.

I talked to their media person on the phone and we chatted for 15 minutes. She wanted to know what I was looking for. I essentially said “a title sponsor that would take care of all of my costs in exchange for all the promotion I’d do on their behalf.” She said since they were a startup they couldn’t spend money on a sponsorship, but would be willing to “seed me with a few units.” My response was “Yeah, that would be great! But so we’re clear, this won’t be a major sponsorship. I will mention the product where it’s relevant and also link it on the sponsorship page, but this isn’t going to be RollerCoasterTour.com Sponsored By [The Company]. I’ll also be honest about how I like it. If I don’t like it I’m not going to lie and if I do like it I’ll definitely say so.”

I never heard back. I was actually looking forward to using the product, but the fact that me saying I’d be honest would make them back out tells me that I probably would not have liked the product. The $200 cost of the “unit” wasn’t enough to buy my love. The way to my heart is through my stomach not my wallet, duh.

I also contacted the GoPro company, who make the camera I’m using on the tour, but they weren’t interested in sponsoring. I straight up paid for the camera (HD Hero Naked) and accessories (head strap, chest strap, and wrist strap – not sure which one will be best for coaster riding). I joined their affiliate program and may link to them where it’s relevant on the Roller Coaster Tour site. Or I may not. We’ll see how I like the camera first.

A Sponsor I Would Be Happy To Support, But Decided Against

A protein bar company called Zing Bar, who I was put in touch with through a friend, was going to send me a bunch of their bars. After their CEO David and I talked I said I’d go to REI (one of their distribution channels) to see if I liked the taste. I didn’t want to take a bunch of their bars and then not want to eat them.

The cool thing with Zing is that some of the bars are vegan friendly, but all of them are gluten free. While I don’t have a known gluten sensitivity I always feel better when I’m on a gluten free diet, so that was a cool bonus.

Anyway, I went to REI, bought the 2 vegan flavors they had in stock ($2.75 each), and ate them. They were good (I liked craberry/orange more than chocolate/peanut butter), but I ultimately made the decision not to accept their bars. It’s nothing against their company, but I simply decided to sponsor the tour myself. In my brief 15 minute conversation with David I could tell he is a smart entrepreneur so I’m happy to mention them here even though I’m not doing a sponsorship with them. I wish them the best!

What About The Theme Parks?

Some parks are being great about giving me media passes, and some parks are being more difficult. In a way, I guess you can consider a media pass a partial sponsorship. I’ll disclose exactly which parks give me media passes on the relevant blog posts for RollerCoasterTour.com.

I really have to give a huge shout out to Louis from CoasterFusion.com here. He has been an incredible help in getting me in touch with the right person at a lot of parks. Before his help I literally had zero parks that wanted to give me media passes. I’m still working my way through contacting the right people after contacting a lot of the wrong people before. BTW, a CoasterFusion membership is $10 and it gets you access to a lot of great park discounts all over the US and even a few internationally. I’ll be utilizing my membership (which I paid for) in the places I’m not able to get a media pass. Again, I wasn’t asked or paid to say that. Louis has been a tremendous help and I want his site to succeed as it’s fairly new and he’s put a lot of work into something really useful.

Also, a big thanks to Matt Bailey for letting me know that certain Six Flags season passes work at all Six Flags parks! So instead of paying $30 – $50 per park I bought a season pass for Great America (my first Six Flags park on the list) for $75 and I get access to the rest of the Six Flags parks I have on my list (11 parks total), not including parking ($20 per park). That prompted me to see if Cedar Fair (they own Cedar Point, Michigan’s Adventure, and 8 other parks on my list) had a similar deal. Lo and behold, yes they do! It’s $165, but it includes free parking at all parks. These two passes cover 21 of the parks on my list.

What I Could Have Done Differently

I could have done a lot differently. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that good stuff. Part of the problem is I’m a nobody to the vast majority of the world. Sure, I get a decent amount of visitors to this site, but most companies aren’t impressed by 50k visitors/month. 500k/month? 1mm/month? Now we’re talking.

So I can understand the trepidation with throwing $20k at someone you don’t know for a crazy event you don’t know much about. That said, this is just an excuse. If you want something to happen, and are intently focused on making it happen, you will make it happen. I believe that and I live that. What I’m trying to say is I had it in the back of my head to sponsor the tour myself all along, unless an absolutely ideal opportunity presented itself.

The interesting thing is, once you build your profile enough companies will begin contacting you. I’m not at that point, but it will make things a lot easier in the future. I’m only interested in win/win/win scenarios so if things look good, I’m game. If not, I’m not. And the companies I contacted probably feel the same. I respect that and I’m not delusional enough to think sponsoring me is like sponsoring a movie or sports star.

What Would I Have Done If My Back Was To The Wall and I Absolutely Needed Someone To Fund The Tour?

This is a difficult question to answer. If I couldn’t do this tour without sponsoring it myself I’d probably have went about things a lot differently. I would have had no choice. Either I’d have been more relentless about contacting potential sponsors (and less vigilant about the type of company), or I would have switched up the tour … maybe hitch hiked or used ride shares and camped/couchsurfed.

My Biggest Take-away

It’s important to try things even if you have no idea how you’re going to make them happen. Even though it was a grueling process putting this tour together it has been fun. It’ll be more fun to actually begin the tour!

In the future if I ever do something that will be conducive to a sponsorship I’ll be far better prepared because of what I went through here.

###

Odds and ends.

1) Roller Coaster Tour begins Saturday at Michigan’s Adventure in Muskegon, MI. The time has come!

2) My friend Jason is doing a 300 mile bike ride this weekend from Chicago to Detroit in support of prostate cancer. He’s raised almost $2,000 already! This is the 2nd Annual Man Powering Across Michigan ride (Jason did the first one solo, this time he has company) and I asked him to write an article about putting together your first road bike. I asked him to write it partly for selfish reasons since I’m very interested in building my own bike, but I hope you’ll get a lot out of it as well. Jason is a meticulous researcher and it’s a big article. That’s coming Monday.

This is a guest post from Tanja Hoagland at www.minimalistpackrat.com.

I’ve got two questions for you:

1) What ridiculously extraordinary thing do you want to do?

2) Why aren’t you doing it right now?

I suppose I’m an under-achiever because my first ridiculously extraordinary goal in life was basic. I didn’t want to work for someone else. You read that right. My goal wasn’t to be self-employed. It wasn’t to build a huge business empire. I just didn’t want to get up and clock in at nine on Monday morning.

Slacker of the year award? Heh. Not a chance in hell. I had never moved my way up past the bottom of the totem pole. We’re talking cashier jobs, stocking jobs, and the height of my glory, a newsletter design job making eleven bucks an hour. And let me tell you, people at the bottom of the totem pole work just as hard as those at the top. They’re just working hard for other people instead of themselves. It was difficult to create something successful out of my life with no real equity, no possibilities of real equity and the most dreaded fact of all, squeezing in “real work time” after a full 40 hours every week.

Evidently I wasn’t alone in my dissatisfaction with the working world. A poll from Gallup shows that less than 50% of people are satisfied with their work. Less than 50%! That’s a lot of unhappiness rolling around. But hey, I had my ridiculously extraordinary goal in hand and I was gonna succeed at it.

I’m nothing if not persistent. I kept ramming my head against that wall. I knew I could say good-bye to the world of bosses. I knew that my previous attempts at businesses had failed. I knew that meant it was time for a new approach. With that persistence in hand what was my second magic ingredient? I believed I could do it.

What you believe you can achieve. It sounds like a cheesy motivation poster hanging on a wall. But wait, did you know there’s really something to that? Yeah. Researcher Harold Stevenson from the University of Michigan found that student’s beliefs about their chances of achievement affected their ability to achieve. Jennifer Mangels appeared in the Oxford Journal with similar research results, that belief about success influences the outcome.

With these two magic ingredients you can make anything happen. It’s a serious mojo combination. What does belief and perseverance look like in action? I’ll use myself as the example.

1) Create a vision for what you want. (Having my own business and being my own boss.)

2) Look at the costs of achieving that goal. (Spending my spare time working my butt off to make it happen.)

3) Decide if those costs are worth it. (They were.)

4) Researching the hell out of how to meet your goal. (Researching successful business models. Investing in training programs. Studying people who have done it.)

5) Creating a never-ending amount of belief and perseverance. (Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.)

In a previous post Karol said, “Throwing away your TV and working from 6pm – 10pm every day and all day on weekends is an attempt at an idea.” I’d say Karol is steering us in the right direction with that.

I found an online website building system and worked on my goal every day and on weekends for a couple years. I committed myself to its reality and took the action steps I needed to make it happen. I’m not telling you what that online website system was because that system doesn’t really matter. What matters is I got up off my butt and I made a decision.

I gave myself serious consequences for failure. I was over thirty with a nice pile of failed business ventures under my belt. I made the decision that if this program didn’t work I was going to give up completely on my ridiculously extraordinary dream of not having a boss. I’d buckle in, settle down and work my way up some ladder somewhere. That led me to the most important decision of my life.

I made the decision that this program was damn well going to work for me.

I put the fire under my butt and told myself this program HAD to work. I kept clocking in, doing the 9 to 5. Then in my spare time, and I mean every waking spare moment I had, I worked on my goal. Even when my results were pathetic I kept going. Let’s digress into what pathetic means for a moment. I mean 5 cents a day pathetic for months. I mean an insanely grand $5 a month after a full year of busting butt. I kept typing out pages. I kept learning from my mistakes. I kept studying the big dogs. I kept moving forward. Even when that wall didn’t budge after two years, I kept ramming my head against the wall. I kept ramming and ramming and ramming until I did it.

You wondering what happened? Fast forward three years and my first site is now at 60,000 + visits a month with just under 20,000 of them being repeat visitors. My honey and I are both self employed with our online business. It’s ridiculously extraordinary and now we’ve got to up the ante and come up with some bigger dreams.

What’s it gonna take for you? What does it take to achieve something ridiculously extraordinary?

Thomas Buxton is a smart guy you might not know (he just happened to abolish slavery in the British Empire back in 1833). He said, “With Ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance all things are attainable.” He knew how to succeed.

You gotta have belief and perseverance. A solid goal and some serious research help a lot. But if you really want something you gotta believe it in the marrow of your bones. And then there’s a little something called getting your ass in gear that has to happen in the middle of the equation. That’s called perseverance. Belief and perseverance. Some “git up and go”. Some bam. Keep ramming your head against the wall and the wall will crumble.

Now this is where I’m supposed to tell you that I’m now making a million dollars a month and if you sign up now you can too. Let’s scratch all that, because the reason I wrote this has nothing to do with what my goal was. The reason I wrote this was to light the fire under your butt and get you moving towards whatever the heck it is you absolutely freakin’ want to be doing, what your soul is begging you to be doing. It might be climbing Mount Everest, it might growing rare orchids, it might be having a baby. It’s your goal, not mine. So back to you. Let’s answer those questions again with a new perspective:

1) What ridiculously extraordinary thing do you want to do?

2) Why aren’t you doing it right now?

Tanja Hoagland is a minimalist, entrepreneur, and author who speaks out on her blog Minimalist Packrat.

If you don’t already know, I regularly help fund businesses on Kickstarter. Every couple weeks I login to the site and search for vegan or vegetarian (veg*an) companies. So far I’ve “backed” (Kickstarter’s term for putting money towards a project) 4 successful veg*an companies, 2 musicians, and 1 soon-to-be successful veg*an company. You can view my Kickstarter profile here. Usually I back a company with only $10-$20. It doesn’t take much to help a new business get off the ground. That’s the power of scaling using the Kickstarter platform.

The way Kickstarter works is the business (or artist or other) submits a proposal with how much money they want and what kind of rewards backers will receive. Backers get different rewards based on how much they give to the project. If Kickstarter approves the proposal the project goes live and it’s time to get the word out! If the amount of funding needed is reached then the project is successful and backers are charged. If it’s not reached then the backers don’t have to pay anything. There is no risk to you if one of the projects you back isn’t funded.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris and Caleb from Bearded Bros, an organic snack food company I backed (with $10; as my reward I got 2 energy bars) a couple of months ago. I e-mailed them once the project was successfully funded and, knowing I’d be in their hometown of Austin, asked if I could pick up my reward in person and also interview them for RidiculouslyExtraordinary. As smart business people they said yes. :)

Also! Chris and Caleb were kind enough to offer a 15% off discount code (expires March 31) to y’all: ridiculous

Just type that in when you check out from their store and you’ll get 15% off their organic energy bars.

Watch the interview below … (Click here if you’re viewing this via e-mail and can’t see the video.)

Video notes:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 00:20 – Why they used Kickstarter.
• 00:40 – The process for submission to Kickstarter.
• 01:05 – How much they raised.
• 01:16 – Why funding didn’t take off in the beginning.
• 01:55 – Why they chose the name Bearded Bros.
• 02:34 – Are they real brothers?
• 02:50 – Using social media to spread the word.
• 03:35 – Different Kickstarter backing levels.
• 03:58 – The excitement of getting fully funded.
• 04:38 – How to get an extra $10-15 from each backer.
• 04:58 – How much Kickstarter takes from the funding total.
• 05:20 – How long it takes to get the money once fully funded.
• 05:43 – Getting started before all the money came in.
• 05:59 – Using friends/strangers to figure out the direction for their flavors.
• 06:49 – The power of co-working space.
• 07:38 – Some of the challenges of their business.
• 08:02 – The love of healthy snacks & business.
• 08:35 – Hitting the streets to get the product out to stores.
• 09:40 – Final thoughts about starting a food company.

Websites mentioned:

Kickstarter.com
BeardedBros.com
@BeardedBros

If one of your goals is to start a small business then one of your other goals should be to support small businesses. So check out the Bearded Bros and buy their awesome energy bars. They’re organic, vegan, gluten free, and exceptionally tasty. (I’m serious. They are really good!) I recommend the Ginger Peach flavor, but you know, that’s just a rec. Do what you will. ;)

P.S. The 15% off coupon code is: ridiculous – use it at beardedbros.com (expires March 31).

I spent the past 10 days enjoying the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. What began as a music festival for unknown artists has morphed into a media spectacle covering tech, film, and music. This was my first SXSW so I can’t be one of those people who says “it was so much better way back when.” This is a common sentiment among SXSW loyalists. What I can say is that I’m glad this wasn’t my first exposure to Austin. It’s a great city, but the music portion essentially ruins it for 5 days. For local businesses and the local government it’s probably a good thing. The amount of dollars SXSW brings in is ridiculous and I’m sure quite a few businesses have their best weeks of the year during this time.

As for musicians? The majority threw away an outstanding opportunity.

I saw exactly one band (Vandaveer) sell CDs after their show. But even then they didn’t announce anything for sale while on stage. I understand it’s not cool to “sell out,” but you know what else isn’t cool? Not having enough money to do what you love.

There were a handful of artists I would have purchased music from and I don’t even have a CD player! (I would have had a friend rip the MP3s for me.) Instead I bought 3 albums off AmazonMP3 (Lady Lamb The Beekeeper, Leslie Stevens and the Badgers, and The Jezabels), from which the artists probably only got a few dollars. Wasted opportunity. Captive, slightly (or incredibly, depending) intoxicated audiences in a festive money-spending mood usually don’t come around very often. Yet the only people that seemed to be making money was everybody except the musicians who needed it most.

If you’re running a business (a band is surely a business whether the artist likes it or not) you are an idiot if you have a captive audience and you don’t offer them what they want.

I’m told that bands get paid only $150 for an official SXSW showcase. (The drummer for a 4 time SXSW band told me this.) Maybe that’s different depending on the band but let’s run with that number. Gas to get to the festival is probably at least a few hundred dollars for most artists. That means that you’re in the negative before you even play. Most artists only play one or two official shows and then a few unofficial shows (where they don’t get paid). So most band’s expenses to come to SXSW are out of pocket. It’s not worth it to play here for most artists unless they can at least break even. The days of being “discovered” and given a huge recording contract are behind us. But what SXSW offers is exposure to new fans, who will hopefully spread the word. It’s easy to make $50-$100 extra per show just by selling a few CDs and helping those fans spread that word. If you’re phenomenal you’ll make even more.

I could go on, but this article isn’t even about music.

While getting pissed off at the bands I wanted to buy stuff from I thought to myself: Where am I wasting opportunity?

When answered honestly this question can open your eyes to things you haven’t seen before.

I readily admit that I’ve wasted a lot of opportunity in my time and I wanted to take a moment to dissect where I’m currently wasting opportunity.

– When I meet people I do a bad job of following up.

I fixed that recently at SXSW Interactive by only taking biz cards from people I truly wanted to follow up with. Then I followed up. Simple. :) It only takes a few minutes per email and who knows, it might result in a good friendship or partnership in the future. Personal and business relationships all begin somewhere.

– I have a lot of customers from the business side of RE and I rarely follow up with them.

Not to sell but just to keep in touch. Offer some value. Let them know I’m here.

– The 72 hour sales have been a huge fun success and I haven’t been vigilant about setting up the next one.

Baker and I met up and talked strategy last week. The copycats won’t know what hit ’em. That’s not coming from a place of anger, but from a place of “we know what we have, we know what we can do, and we know what you’re not doing.” I don’t believe the pie is finite. I fully believe in expanding the pie so we’re doing just that. You’ll love what’s coming at Only72. :)

– I don’t give enough people enough credit.

This is something far too many bloggers get wrong. One of the reasons I started the Sweet Shit Saturday posts was so I could give credit to my favorite writers, but I still don’t feel I do it often enough. I’ll try my best to spread the love right now. I met a lot of fantastic people this past week. Some for the first time, some for the second time, and some for the umpteenth time.

Just a few of the great people I conversed with (action takers doing sweet shit): Nick, Markus, Heather, Ashley, Jenny, Jenny, Baker, Matt, Sean, Chris, Benny, Laura, Holly, Scott, Hilah, Christopher, Matt, Cody, Norcross, Adam, Dave, Monique, Joshua, Nicky, Anne, and many others.

Proof that I don’t give enough people enough credit is that I didn’t add this section to this article until a few hours before my scheduled posting time and I know I’m not remembering everybody as my brain/body are recovering from 10 days of sensory overload.

There are other places I’m wasting opportunity, but you don’t want to read another thousand words. Let’s wrap this up with …

The All-Important Question Guaranteed To Bring You More Clarity In Life and Business

Where are you wasting opportunity?

I’m not a big fan of business plans (or plans in general, for that matter), but it can be good to get ideas out onto paper.

I get a lot of questions from people who are stuck. They’re not sure which direction to take or what to do. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you. What I can do is help you figure it out yourself. If you complete the exercise below you will have a business plan of sorts. But remember: more important than any business plan is to get off your ass and do some shit. Test out your ideas. If you succeed, great! If you fail, learn from it and try something else.

Get out the pen/paper (important) and go …

1) What are you good at?

List all your skills, both professional (stuff like computer programming) and hobby (stuff like playing an instrument).

2) What are you not good at?

Answering this question is important because it will keep you from going after something just because of the money. Following the money is OK if it aligns with you, your skills, and your personality. But otherwise you’ll be swimming upstream and that’s not fun.

3) Of all the things listed in Question #1, what can you teach well?

If you needed to show someone how to do your skills, which would be most fulfilling? Do you love showing people how to do anything?

4) Can you see yourself doing that for the next 5-10 years?

If not, you’re not really interested in starting a business. Choose something else.

5) Do people pay for that skill?

In other words, are people already making money teaching what you’d like to teach? If not, you won’t make any money. Choose something else.

6) Where do those customers hang out?

How can you reach your potential customers? Get really specific. Do they hang out in certain online spaces? Do they hang out in certain physical spaces? Also, are they a certain age, gender, nationality (demographics) or do they have similar thoughts/philosophies (psychographics)? (The demographics and psychographics go deeper than just these few things, so buckle down and really get into it. Write down a complete profile of your target customer.)

7) Is there something missing in this market?

Another way to look at this question is: Do you teach your skill in a markedly different way than the norm?

This question is important, because to gain a foothold in any market you need a hook. What makes you different? Why should people give a shit about what you have to say?

I don’t know many people who do this better than Benny. He pisses a lot of people off because a lot of his information is contrary to what others teach. And he makes a lot of people fall in love with him because his information is contrary to what others teach. (Did you catch that?)

8) What product can you create based on all of the above information in 40 hours?

40 hours is enough time to create a great product, but it’s not so much time that you’ll never ship. 4 hours per day for 10 days and you’re done! Or 2 hours per day for 20 days! You can have a product ready to go in less than a month.

Easiest to create: PDF, audio, video. (You don’t need any fancy skills to create any of those so no excuses.)

Sell!

Once you’ve created your product, go back to the places your customers hang out and get your offer in front of their eyeballs. Maybe that means PPC or Facebook ads. Maybe that means having affiliates or bloggers review it and send it to their e-mail lists. Maybe it means having your inner circle tweet it out. Whatever it is, make it happen.

Wrapping It Up

Answer those 8 questions (it should take less than 3 hours to get down to the nitty gritty) and you’ve got yourself a business plan. Do it or don’t. The choice is always yours.

This offer is now closed, but the lessons below still apply.

In exchange for reading this post you’ll learn how to make a win/win/win offer that is guaranteed to make you more sales than you’re used to. All you have to do is copy what I do here for your own business. Even if you’re not interested in my Greatest Offer you need to read this and use it yourself in the future.

Tomorrow my friend Corbett is releasing a product called Traffic School that I’ve seen go from pre-conception to completion. Corbett is in my mastermind group. It’s a very small group (4, including me) that meets (virtually) every week to discuss business/life/everything. I remember months ago when we were discussing the naming, content, price points and lots of other fun business stuff for Traffic School. I’ve seen Corbett grow Traffic School from a gleam in his eye to a full fledged baby and it has been a great personal learning experience observing his creation process.

Note: Last year our tiny little mastermind group collectively grossed over $400k. This year we’ll probably double that even though we actually only have 3 people in the group right now. Bonus lesson of the day: Mastermind groups work.

I believe in Traffic School. (Hell, I wrote the landing page headline!) Traffic School is, without a doubt, the most thorough framework for taking any website (blog, online store, etc) to a new level of traffic. From 0 to at least 3,000 visitors/month if you’re brand new, or double your traffic if you’ve been around a while. Corbett has done it multiple times, he’s helped other people do it multiple times, and I’ve done it myself multiple times as well. I can say straight up that what he recommends works.

Now for the greatest offer I’ve ever made …

Traffic School is only available to 100 students tomorrow and you need to go to Corbett’s site to register today before the sale starts.

If you are one of those 100 who buys Traffic School through this link you will get the following from me:

Bonus 1:

All of my products if you don’t already have them. (Just wait, this is the baby bonus just to get this started.) That’s How To Live Anywhere Long Haul ($97), Mind Control Method ($77), and Luxury of Less ($9.99). Value: $183.99.

Bonus 2 (the huge bonus):

My next product, which I haven’t even announced yet! I’m tentatively calling it Your First $500 and the price when I release it will most likely be $500, although I still haven’t discussed this with the mastermind. You get this as a bonus when it is released (timeframe: end of Summer). Value: $500. (Getting better here, aren’t we?)

Bonus 3:

A one hour online group conference where you can talk/type with Corbett and I. This will be held March 22 and if you can’t make it we’ll record it and send it to you later. Corbett and I each charge in the vicinity of $250 for one hour of consultation. Put us together and that’s another $500 bonus. But I’ll be conservative. Let’s say this is valued at only $50. So far we’re up to $733.99 in bonuses.

Bonus 4:

On April 21 we’ll have another one hour online group conference (with just me this time) because I want to follow up and make sure you’re implementing what you’ve been learning in Traffic School. You’ll be about 6 weeks in so you’ll have had a chance to go through quite a bit of the course. Value: at least $50.

Total value of my bonuses: at least $783.99. And that’s not even inflated value. That’s a straight up “if you were to buy all this stuff separately this is what it would cost” value.

This is, by far, the best offer going for Traffic School. Beyond that it truly is The Greatest Offer I’ve Ever Made.

All you have to do is be one of the first 100 to buy Traffic School through this link when it goes on sale tomorrow (go to that link and register so you don’t miss out). After you make your purchase tomorrow forward your receipt to KarolGajda at Gmail so I can get you your bonuses.

Why Am I Doing This?

There are a multitude of reasons why I’m making such an outstanding offer out in public instead of keeping it private via the Freedom Fighters and I’m happy to be transparent about it.

1) I believe in Traffic School.

What better reason than that to support it?

2) This is a case study.

I’m using this as a case study for a future speaking gig.

I want to prove that you don’t need a big audience to make a lot of sales if you position the offer well.

3) This is a presell.

I’m effectively preselling my next product before producing it. By purchasing Traffic School you get my next product Your First $500 free. Or you can think of it as buying Your First $500 in advance and getting Traffic School free.

4) I love making insane offers.

As you already know, I’ve been part of some insane sales (the first two 72 hour sales). It’s simply lots of fun putting together crazy value for people who deserve it.

Wrapping It Up

Important: Do not click any other links for Traffic School besides this one. If you do click a link elsewhere come back here and click this link before you purchase. If I don’t get credit I can’t give you your bonuses.

– Get Traffic School through this link (register at the site; it goes on sale tomorrow, but you have to register to get it) and forward me your receipt after your purchase: KarolGajda at Gmail.

– Whenever you’re making an offer (whether it’s an affiliate offer like this one or a regular offer of your own products), make it a win/win/win if you want it to be extraordinarily successful. You can copy what I did here straight up and I guarantee it will work for you.

– Thanks for reading The Greatest Offer I’ve Ever Made. I’m going to leave comments open here because I’m interested in your thoughts about this.