He was for us. In fact, we believe Mr. Adam Urbanski is a marketing god.

I know this because I’ve been reading his ezine for years, and Allen and I worked with him in an intensive mentoring relationship from June, 2006 - June 2007.

During that time:

• We each attended TWO of his 4-day, mega-focused, and information-loaded bootcamps.
• We each took part in TWO closed-door Platinum Mastermind pow-wow sessions involving Adam, a private hotel conference room (the first one) and a hotel suite (the second one), and fewer than 5-8 other entrepreneurs and small business owners
• We had monthly one-on-one coaching/mentoring calls that lasted 1-2 hours
• We had monthly group Mastermind calls (always around 2 hours)
• We’ve listened to and read a ton of his audio programs - including interviews, strategy-focused trainings, and much more.

I also know this because I’ve spent hours and hours talking to him in person - watching, listening, learning, engaged in conversation, looking into his eyes, and seeing how he treats and interacts with others, including his wife and kids.

Adam’s the real deal. He’s passionate, fast-thinking, and whip-smart. (He’s got a silly side too, but he tries to keep that under wraps in front of casual acquaintances.)

For the purposes of this blog post, you need to know this about Adam:

He knows Internet marketing inside and out. He lives and breathes it. He scrutinizes it, condemns its abusers, champions its honest and genuine players, and builds his knowledge base continuously, passionately, and with the purpose of teaching other like-minded professionals a better, more profitable way to build their own businesses and lifestyle.

The reason I’m ranting about Adam like this is because I just read one of his emails. It was a message promoting his new Business Navigator System. As with most (if not all) of Adam’s communications, it was conversational, straight-forward, and offered some grounded reminders and the “simple” essentials of building a successful business. Check out this snippet:

Now that’s pretty basic stuff, right?

But it’s astounding how easy it is to get away from those “basics” and get distracted with all the other pings, pop-ups, and dot-compromises of doing business these days - which means integrating your brand, products, and/or services into the online arena.

I encourage you to check out Adam’s Navigator System. He’s currently accepting applications for his year-long program that starts in November.

If you want to grow your biz, learn more than you’ve ever learned about marketing and biz success in a 12-month period, and meet other savvy, goal-focused entrepreneurs who will help you improve your game (and profits), Adam Urbanski is the guy who will lead you to your destination.

Oh - one more thing. I’ve also taken the time to write this post because Allen and I hit a milestone yesterday, and we know we owe a lot of that milestone to Adam’s tutelage.

Yesterday, we deposited the client check that put us into the Six-Figure Club for 2007. We’ve still got three months to go, and business has never been better. (Neither has our working - and marital! - relationship, by the way.)

We would not have hit this milestone if we hadn’t invested the time (or money) with Adam. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge to move forward to the next level. Adam’s offering this opportunity to a lucky few.

Give it some serious consideration.

(And THANK YOU, Adam, for all your help, patience, guidance, smarts, and support.)

Posted in Dances With Gurus, Entrepreneur Diaries | No Comments »

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 10:52 am and is filed under Dances With Gurus, Entrepreneur Diaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Content vehicles - the means by which your message and mission gets out to your ideal audience. You know, like press releases, articles, blog posts, teleclasses, workshops, podcasts, vlogs, social networking pages, and the like.

So many to choose from, but c’mon, let’s be real. You can’t do ‘em all at once. You have to pick and choose the ones that suit your budget, resources, realities, goals, and vision.

But…but…how do you evaluate them and decide which ones to run with? 

We recommend you run ‘em through the FIRES:

• Fun - Complements existing assets, is comfortable, exciting
• Implementable - Skills and tools are available or can be had
• Realistic - Achievable within timeframe and existing workload
• Energizing - Creates momentum, revitalizes and inspires
• Strategic - Supports the goals and bigger vision of your company

Use a 1-5 rating system, where “5″ is highest and “1″ is lowest. Take a look at the content vehicles that strike your fancy. See which ones score the highest. They’re the ones you’ll want to use to FIRE UP your marketing efforts, increase visibility, build your brand, and (ultimately) boost your biz profits.

Hey - want immediate access to insider knowledge on more than 12 of the easiest, most effective, and most affordable ways to market your products and services for long-term success and profitability? Interested in getting a blast of ideas, information, and recommendations about the content vehicles available to you?

Check out “The A-Ha Action Guide: How to Turn Your Most Powerful Ideas Into Profitable, Joy-Filled Action” and get the answers, insights, and direction you’re looking for!

Posted in All About Content, Tools to "A-Ha Yourself!" | No Comments »

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 1:12 pm and is filed under All About Content, Tools to "A-Ha Yourself!". You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Ever hear of a “hook”?

It’s that clever angle - a powerful and uniquely-positioned entryway - into an article, press release, or other piece of communication that grabs your readers’ attention and compels them to take the bait into your world.

Author and Communications Guru Jonathan Kranz enlisted a bunch of his “Bulgarian friends” to nab MY attention and lead me to this fab article on www.RainToday.com.

As Mr. Kranz explains:

By “Bulgarian,” I mean a proof point or intriguing “thing” that makes your promise credible or at least provocative. Bulgarians can be:

• Numbers: Use statistics to quantify the value of your benefit:
  • TrackStar’s Automatic Verification Data Eliminates 30% - 35% of Home Delivery Errors
• Stories: Demonstrate your benefit in real-life action:
  • Learn How Bling Co. Leverages TrackStar to Reach New Markets in Record Time
• Secret Ingredients: Introduce something new and unfamiliar into the benefit message:
  • Transportation Transformation: TrackStar’s “Feedback Loop” Corrects Addressing Errors In Real-Time

He goes on to show you how you can “recruit Bulgarians” to help you with your special reports, articles, press releases, white papers, and smorgasbord of other marketing materials - and specifically in that all-important HEADLINE.

What I love about Kranz’s article is he invokes all the tricks and tools he talks about in this article - weaving a story about a copywriter’s before-n-after victory, using lots of quick examples to demonstrate his point, showing how numbers in headlines can make all the difference - skipping along the whole way, hand in hand with his favorite Bulgarians.

In fact, I think it’s fair to say this:

Using “Bulgarians” effectively is a prime and wonderfully fun way to “A-Ha Yourself!”

Posted in All About Content, Fun With Marketing, How do you "A-Ha Yourself"? | No Comments »

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 6:37 am and is filed under All About Content, Fun With Marketing, How do you "A-Ha Yourself"?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

In a September 11th blog post, Mr. Purple Cow marketer himself explained to an inquiring mind why he’s never stingy with his ideas.

Since our Company - Epiphanies, Inc. - is all about using the “A-Ha!” (Bold Insight PLUS Joy-Filled Action) to catapult your life and biz to new heights, passions, and profits, I thought his eloquent response was worth sharing here on our “A-Ha!” blog:

…[I]deas are easy, doing stuff is hard.

My feeling is that the more often you create and share ideas, the better you get at it. The process of manipulating and ultimately spreading ideas improves both the quality and the quantity of what you create, at least it does for me.

History is littered with inventors who had “great” ideas but kept them quiet and then poorly executed them. And history is lit up with do-ers who took ideas that were floating around in the ether and actually made something happen. In fact, just about every successful venture is based on an unoriginal idea, beautifully executed.

So, if you’ve got ideas, let them go. They’re probably holding you back from the hard work of actually executing.

Right-eo, Sir Godin. Right-eo! So many people get stingy with what’s going on in their brains. “If I share the stuff I know openly, my competitors will steal it!” or “My clients won’t pay me for my services!” or “Someone will run with my million-dollar idea, and I’ll be bitter for the rest of my life!”

Yes, all that may happen, it’s true. But if you haven’t committed to an idea enough to put some actionable OOMPH behind it, you can’t be that in love with it, can you?

By all means, BRAINSTORM. Experiment. THINK. Dream. WONDER. Imagine.

Work it out in your head, talk with trusted friends and colleagues, do research, poke around the Internet and see who else is doing something similar to what’s on your mind. (And if it’s a good idea, 9 times out of 10, there ARE others playing in your idea’s territory!)

But if you find yourself dwelling in the Land of Ideas for weeks, months, and even years and never actually DOING something about ANY of your brilliant thoughts, chances are there’s a reason for your obsessive hoarding, and it’s a four-letter word that starts with “F.”

F-E-A-R.

Posted in Brainstorm Blitz, Insight + Action | No Comments »

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Brainstorm Blitz, Insight + Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

It’s a classic exercise in the value of small numbers compounded over time. (You can find this in a bunch of places, but we got the following graph here.)

Most people would think a million dollars in the hand is better than taking a penny and doubling it every day for a month. But as it turns out, you get waaaaaaay more if you go with the penny:

Below is an example of how fast money can accumulate. Start by putting a penny in a bucket (better use a big bucket). The next day, put two pennies in the bucket. Each day after that, double the amount put in the prior day. At the end of a month, you will have over $10 million.

Day #	$ Saved Today	Total $ Saved
1	0.01	0.01
2	0.02	0.03
3	0.04	0.07
4	0.08	0.15
5	0.16	0.31
6	0.32	0.63
7	0.64	1.27
8	1.28	2.55
9	2.56	5.11
10	5.12	10.23
11	10.24	20.47
12	20.48	40.95
13	40.96	81.91
14	81.92	163.83
15	163.84	327.67
16	327.68	655.35
17	655.36	1,310.71
18	1,310.72	2,621.43
19	2,621.44	5,242.87
20	5,242.88	10,485.75
21	10,485.76	20,971.51
22	20,971.52	41,943.03
23	41,943.04	83,886.07
24	83,886.08	167,772.15
25	167,772.16	335,544.31
26	335,544.32	671,088.63
27	671,088.64	1,342,177.27
28	1,342,177.28	2,684,354.55
29	2,684,354.56	5,368,709.11
30	5,368,709.12	10,737,418.23

 

It still blows our minds every time we see it. For us, it just reinforces how small changes over time add up to really, really BIG results.

What small change could you make today?

Posted in A-Has in the Ether | No Comments »

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 11:49 am and is filed under A-Has in the Ether. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

By way of introduction…

Gene and I knew those old shows would be worth saving, but for a long time nobody agreed with us. In the years before home video, it seemed like a waste of expensive video tape to preserve hundreds of episodes of “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You,” “Sneak Previews” or “At the Movies.” After all, the movies we were reviewing weren’t going to be opening again, and who’d want to watch a show of old movie reviews? Right?

That’s Roger Ebert, movie critic with the Chicago Sun-Times, writing the Introduction to the Balcony Archive on the At the Movies website. And as he continues, you realize how lucky and prescient they were.

Siskel and Ebert (now Ebert and Roeper) are arguably the most famous movie critics in history, and their commitment to never giving a thumb sideways - not to mention their obvious passion for the art of moviemaking - resulted in a catalog of reviews to die for.

And now they’re making all the reviews they have available online. For free.

They throw a 15-20-second ad up before the review plays, and they sell banner ads on the site as well, so they’re certainly not sharing their content out of charity. What they are doing is reinforcing their brand even further, as they add new reviews and content, to do for the web what they did on TV - become the go-to powerhouse for online movie opinion-making.

And considering their core audience, who’ve aged with the show and are increasing in numbers, demand, buying power and confidence online, this is one of the smartest content moves I’ve seen all year.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again - if you’ve got a lot of content about your business, your hobbies, your passion, or however you think about that area of life where you excel, PLEASE, get it out there and grow your reputation as THE source of knowledge and education in your field.

Build your brand with solid, reliable, relevant content. Siskel, Ebert, and Roeper seem to think it’s a good idea. If you trust them for movie-viewing advice, would you trust them with the marketing example they set, too?

Posted in All About Content, Brand Funk | No Comments »

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 5:24 pm and is filed under All About Content, Brand Funk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

No sense making it harder than it has to be. Start with the easy ways to “A-Ha Yourself!” - put your boldest insights into joy-filled action - and work up from there.

1. Write an email to a person or business that caught your attention. It may be one-on-one, or it may be through their marketing efforts, but if a person or business makes an impression on you, let ‘em know about it!
2. Comment on a blog or website. Let the blogger or site owner know you came, you read, and you enjoyed it.
3. Blog. Design the blog around your business, passion, or expertise. In the best case scenario, those are the same things.

4. Write useful articles to your target audience. Assist, inspire, answer, inform, educate, debunk, entertain! Then send out to ezine publishers, magazines, article directories, and more. (We use and recommend www.AhaArticles.com.)

5. Submit a press release. Got news, an upcoming event, seasonal tips, a new product or service, etc.? Sanctify it with a press release to your local media, and with online services like PR.com, PRWeb.com, or MarketWire.com.

6. Create a social networking page for yourself and/or your business. We’ve got one on Squidoo, and we’ll be getting in the MySpace and Facebook games next.

7. Teach about your topic. Whether it’s a speaking engagement, class, workshop, seminar, webinar, or teleclass,
get in front of an audience and let loose on the things people need and want to know most in your field.

8. Serialize your knowledge. Create a series around a theme, process, set of steps, bag of tricks ‘n tips, crazy shtick, you name it. Don’t just go for the written word, either. Try out audio (we use and recommend www.AhaAudio.com) or have fun directing a few YouTube videos.

9. Send out ezines, newsletters, or autoresponders. Build an opt-in list and start sending them regular doses of user-friendly, info-rich content relevant to their lives. Repeat! (We use and recommend www.AhaCart.com.)

10. Last but not least, get yourself a website. Preferably a real website, with a dedicated domain, and matching email addresses. (That means no you@gmail.com, @hotmail.com, @yahoo.com, @aol.com, etc. We use and recommend www.AhaWebHost.com.) Make it easy to read, engaging, and make each page its own relationship-building experience. And don’t forget one clear call to action on each page!

We were inspired to write this blog post because someone took the time to “A-Ha Herself!” with us, and we took the bait - hook, line, and sinker. Her name is Mary Leedy of CandlePassion.net, and she dropped us a line on our comment form to let us know she heard Allen on an Ali Brown call, which is what inspired her to check out our blog and sign up for our Inciter ezine.

She reeled us in (to continue the fishing metaphor - can you tell we got our son a fishing rod as a new-big-brother gift, though he doesn’t know it yet?) with great storytelling on her About page, and a compelling Team Vision page that details her R.I.P. Roaring Business philosophy.

What’s more, she’s passionate about what she does, she actively takes the steps to share her mission and vision with others, and she’s an advocate of the Golden Rule. Basically, she’s an “A-Ha Yourself!” natural, and we really dig that about her.

Posted in How do you "A-Ha Yourself"? | 2 Comments »

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 8:53 pm and is filed under How do you "A-Ha Yourself"?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Sometimes I actually (often unintentionally) take a step back at the life Allen and I are creating together and have a good laugh at what I see.

With all the big rocks AND minutiae that we microbusiness owners have to deal with on any given day - from meetings with clients to meeting project deadlines to wrestling with fussy printers to making sure we don’t forget to take our dog/office mascot for a walk…or else! - it’s easy to get so wrapped up in the to-do’s that you forget to appreciate the ta-da’s.

So here’s last evening’s “Ta-da!”:

Joey at my desk, taking care of his www.Webkinz.com pet, a little green frog named Supersonic:

Allen at his desk, wrapping up the last few details of the day:

Our dog Buddy, snoozing away in the corner:

And the sign I just bought on a whim (and Allen risked his life to hang by standing on a twirly office chair), to remind us what it’s all about:

And the thing that’s REALLY blowing my mind this morning is that by this time next month, there’ll be a newborn baby boy in the scene, too. *Gulp.*

Ahhhh, this IS the good life…

Posted in Entrepreneur Diaries, Microenterprises R Us | No Comments »

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Entrepreneur Diaries, Microenterprises R Us. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I’ve got a bit of a confession to make:

Over the years, we’ve been much better at giving testimonials than we’ve been at asking for them.

If we haven’t weighed in publicly on why testimonials are so valuable, allow me to do so in four quick bullets.

1. A testimonial isn’t coming from you. Of course YOU love your product or service. But what does your client or customer think of it?

2. A testimonial is authentic proof of goodness. If it has a full name attached (and even a web address), your prospects can - if they want - dig deeper and hear more from the horse’s mouth.

3. A testimonial reflects your prospects’ wants and needs. By sharing testimonials, you tap more directly into your prospcts minds than you could with the same message coming from your sales or marketing messages.

4. A testimonial tells a story that connects with its readers. A simple “I like it” isn’t a testimonial. A true testimonial wraps the positive feedback in emotional story elements. And people buy based on emotion - they use facts later to justify their emotional decisions.

These are just a few reasons why it’s good to collect testimonials for your business. But as it happens, it’s also good for business to GIVE testimonials.

For instance, in February 2007, we gave this testimonial to Alexandria “The Ezine Queen” Brown for her Online Success Blueprint Workshop home-study course:

After working our butts off for several years as “freelancers,” we put all our work on hold so we could radically reinvent our business. On March 6, 2006, we met in our living room. Our first order of business was to press “PLAY” on our CD player. Why? Because we had invested in your Online Success Blueprint, and we were determined to give 100% of our attention to it. We knew you held the answers to our financial freedom.

Now, less than one year after that fateful meeting, we’re on track to make $150,000 - $200,000 MORE than we did last year…and that’s without any new clients. (Did we mention it’s only February???) Your OSB course gave us the specific steps to take, the strategies to implement, and the mindset to succeed – AND it inspired us to take bold actions we hadn’t had the courage to pursue previously. Your course literally changed OUR course. And now that we have our second child on the way, we’re more grateful than ever that we trusted you with our success. THANK YOU, ALI!”

- Lani & Allen Voivod, “The Content Lovers”, Epiphanies Inc., Gilford, N.H., www.epiphaniesinc.com

Granted, she’s not the only person whose materials we’ve studied - and we’ve worked more closely/personally with other people, including a certain “Marketing Mentor” I’ll mention in part 2 of this testimonial rant on another day - but Ali helped us lay much of the groundwork that got us to where we are today.

And here’s how it’s good for business: Ali’s using that testimonial on her website for the live, in-person Online Success Blueprint Workshop coming November 8, 9, and 10 to Los Angeles. So everyone who sees that page has a chance of finding and connecting with us.

And she’s promoting that workshop to an ezine list of over 21,000 people. 21,000! Not to mention any other joint venture promotions she or her affiliates have done for other large list memberships.

What’s more, she’s offering a series of free teleclasses in advance of her workshop, and I’m going to be speaking on the live call tonight at 8PM Eastern to the 500 live attendees, plus the 2,000-or-so other folks who register for the call so they can receive the free MP3 recording to listen at their convenience. That’s up to 2,000 more exposures to coaches, consultants, authors, speakers, and other solo-preneurs - a very targeted audience, if I may say so.

In short, the act of GIVING a testimonial has served as a marketing tool for our business! Cool, huh?

So, if you, like us, are not so good at collecting testimonials yet - or you feel shy about asking, resist asking, fear asking, whatever! - then try it the other way around for a while, and send a few unexpected testimonials out to the folks whose products or services made a big impact in your life.

Posted in Dances With Gurus, Fun With Marketing, Tools to "A-Ha Yourself!" | 1 Comment »

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Dances With Gurus, Fun With Marketing, Tools to "A-Ha Yourself!". You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

[Note: I just found an old blog entry that I tweaked a bit and submitted through http://www.ahaarticles.com/, our article submission service. Now I'm posting it in our "Inciter Articles" category, to keep our submitted stuff all together, so I can find it easily when the need arises (and it does, more often than you think). Happiness is finding easy-to-repurpose content on your blog, in your notebook, or wherever decently-constructed rants hang out!]

You have an idea. A business. A passion. Something to say.

The question is: How important is this to you?

“Well, I have a website/blog/brochure/business card,” you say. And that’s a good thing. You should. They’re all part of your self-marketing efforts. They’re all virtually essential these days. You want to have your information retold, repackaged, and reinvented in various forms, to suit your audience’s content consumption preferences.

So why not take it a step further and turn your singular information, concept, strategy, philosophy, process, or knowledge into an eBook?
 
Make it interesting. Make it readable. Give it titles and subtitles, sidebars and sass.

Make it easy to download and email.

Share it with people, groups, websites, and associations that would find value in it, or be entertained by it. (Or preferably, both!)

More than anything, make it available…for FREE.
 
“But, I don’t have time to spend on creating and developing a FREE eBook?!!” you yelp. “Why the heck would I waste my time/energy/billable brain power on that?”

Well, don’t you already?

Don’t you already think about your own passions, ideas, business, systems, or solutions in a fairly obsessive way?

Wouldn’t you like a clean overview of your might and mission to hand off to prospects, fans, clients, consumers, strategic partners, website visitors, email recipients, and accidental tourists so they could sample your wares? Experience your voice and style? Scan over your offerings? Dig into your ideas? Benefit from your expert status?

Essentially, consume a premeditated, decently configured version of YOU?

What’s more, wouldn’t it be valuable to YOU to put your fleeting thoughts and down-the-rabbit-hole analyses into some semblance of order and refined context?
 
Hey - we’re talking a free eBook here. It doesn’t have to be a $20,000 project. Make it neat. Format it nicely. If you can get a designer to help it look good, that’s a plus, but if that’s not possible right now, let it go.

Most importantly - HAVE SOMEONE PROOFREAD IT so you don’t embarrass yourself, or worse, lose business because of grammar, spelling, or blatant nonsensical communication skills.

Earlier this year, we joined forces with Acorn Creative - a top-notch branding firm and our key strategic partner - to create a FREE 18-page Special Report that generated more than $100,000 in new client revenue in less than two months. That little document took us less than two weeks to put together. Not bad on the ROI scale, wouldn’t you agree? (You can check it out at http://www.gonutsin2007.com/.)
 
Don’t make it harder than it is. If you’ve just got 10 pages, turn it into a Special Report or White Paper. You can always expand or add to it over time.

BOTTOM LINE:
People can’t learn to know and love you - your products, services, passion, advice, know-how, brilliance, ideas, insights, offerings, deliverables, voice, style, personality, vision, business, unique promise of value, philosophies, etc. - if you don’t give them anything to know and love.

WANNA USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE?
Please do! Just kindly include this blurb with it:

Posted in Inciter Articles | 1 Comment »

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Inciter Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.