Ever since we took “The Naked Truth About Internet Marketing” off the market (my first A to Z primer on how to productize your expertise and sell it online so you could escape the dollars per hour trap) people have been asking Terry and I when we were going to come out with an update…

Well, I’m happy to say Terry’s taken care of that FOR me… and there’s nobody I trust more.  Listen to this full length, content packed interview to discover the multitude of reasons just about every entrepreneur (and especially coaches and consultants) needs to include information products in their arsenal.

G 🙂

PS – If you’re interested in the product, Terry’s offered a special discount for MY list through February 19th, 2016.

You might not know it but I’m a fully recovered binge eater…

There were times when I used to ‘dislodge’ my jaw and devour the entire contents of the refrigerator. So I had to come up with a system to ween myself off binge eating. And that system worked so well for me, I decided to write a book about it.

At first I thought that if I could just help one or two other binge eaters with my system that would be enough.

But…

One of my friends and partners, Yoav, developed a publishing system designed to help authors not only successfully launch their books, but also to turn them into a client-generation system for coaching and consulting businesses.

And in a very short span of time (less than three months), and for less than $100 in advertising, this little book has already built up my mailing list and generated 17 weight-loss coaching clients that pay me a monthly fee for weight-loss group coaching.

In the following video, Yoav and I explain exactly how YOU can position yourself as an Authority in your field and generate a steady flow of customers into your business with a book.

If you’d like to do the same thing under Yoav’s tutelage, please visit www.BestSeller-Club.com

About two years ago Terry Dean, myself, Doberman Dan, and two other partners
sold about 500 copies of a program called Joint Venture Fast Track.   It included
an ill-utilized bonus where one of the partners and I helped facilitate joint ventures (and JV readiness).  We’re going to be revamping this training and more aggressively publicizing
the webinars shortly… so I thought you might want to listen in on a particularly interesting
sample from November.

PS- Joint ventures are kind of like free income for most businesses once they get going,
and for others they’re the only way to get profitable.  The Joint Venture Fast Track is
really an incredible value and if you’re planning a marketing project of any sort you’d
be silly not to get it at this price.

WARNING: I’m going to use the F-Word today.   Yes indeed, I’m going to drop some big hairy “DOUBLE F-BOMBS” all over this blog post.  And I promise you not only won’t be able to do anything to stop me, you’ll actually THANK me for the profit-enhancing experience!

In fact, I’m going to introduce a DOUBLE F-BOMB which is viewed as sacrilegious by most internet marketers, so I’m going to have insist that anyone under 21 years old leave the room and read no further.  If you continue to read please be informed this is your legal notice that you’re doing so at your own risk.

OK, here we go…

That “DOUBLE-F-BOMB” for internet marketers is…

FINANCIAL FORECASTING.

It’s true.  Most internet marketers I know just jump into the game and hope for the best.  Sure, they measure opt in rates, sales rates, number of visitors, etc.  And they might spend hours staring at their Analytics account…

But how many of them have an exhaustively detailed spreadsheet with every last variable they can think of which impacts their financial model?  I’m talking about things like…

• Refund rates detailed for all your products and services…
• Up-sell rates (for not only existing products, but those you have planned for future dates)…
• Anticipated affiliate sales take rates and commissions (along with their refund rates, etc)…
• Cost of goods detailed for every product in your catalog (if you even have a catalog)…
• Taxes…
• Fixed costs…
• Customer service costs…
• Legal costs…
• Credit card and Paypal processing costs…
• Anticipated revenue from additional products and services purchased by people who did NOT purchase the front end…
• List growth prediction, asymptotic limit, etc…
• Retention rates…
• Ongoing costs of monthly delivery…
• Labor costs to maintain the product and develop new ones…
• Etc.

The ultimate goal of this kind of model is to forecast Cash Flow (not just how much you make per visitor but WHEN you expect to realize the income as compared to WHEN you expect to incur the expense) Cash Out (how much you’ll have to go negative before the system starts to produce for you), Break Even Points (when do you stop losing money on a given customer AND when do you stop losing money overall), and Profit Levels.

To date I’ve found it’s literally one in a hundred entrepreneurs who are willing to think
this all out and take the time to arrange the financial forecast.

Most assume that if they can make back the advertising costs in one or two months, everything
else will fall into place.  They don’t want to get bogged down in forecasting and would
rather “get to market” quickly so they can get real buyer and prospect feedback.  Moreover,
they point to the fact that such models are almost always woefully in accurate…

But although I will cede most of these points are accurate and valuable, the conclusion one
doesn’t need a comprehensive financial forecasting model is still wrongheaded.  The reason is,
it really only takes a day or so to put one together, and even though I’ve yet to develop one which wasn’t dramatically corrected by real market data as soon as I turned on the advertising,
HAVING the model still provides several incredibly important benefits…

• First, it forces me to think through every last detail of the business model, and kills any
  “happy dreaming” fantasies I may have otherwise been vulnerable to pursuing.  If you don’t
  do the math, your naturally optimistic, risk taking entrepreneurial tendency will almost always prevail, and you’ll be much more likely to get slammed when your fantasy meets reality 🙁
• Second, having the model in place allows me to quickly pinpoint WHERE the problem is, and
  what I need to work on to fix it.  Moreover, because the models I develop include so many variables, it forces me to assess the performance across the whole business model, and not
  get overly involved in and/or depressed about the failure of one piece (e.g. the opt in rate or front end sales).
• And last, the multitude of variables indexed in my financial forecasting models each function as LEVERAGE POINTS.  You may have heard Perry Marshall say “if your marketing
  system isn’t working, break it into pieces.”   Well this is as much of a mathematical truth as it is a functional truth.  If you’ve got a non-profitable system with clicks and front end sales, period, then there are really only two things you can point to in order to fix it.  The problem with that is that market conditions often make it next to impossible to get beyond a certain
  click through rate and/or front end sales rate.  And you can knock your head against the wall eternally with only minimal improvement to show for it.  On the other hand, if your system includes clicks, opt ins, front end sales, two immediate upsells, two back end sales,
  clear labor costs, delivery costs, and the multitude of other variables discussed above…well,
  then each of these variables functions as a LEVERAGE POINT you can use to make the model
  as a whole profitable.  When you come across that inevitable point of diminishing returns
  anywhere in your funnel you can shift to another leverage point.  It’s a much less frustrating
  experience, and lends itself to a much more encouraging and optimistic outlook in your
  entrepreneurial life.

So there you have it.   The cost is an extra day or two of hard thinking and detailed planning
in Excel or a Google Spreadsheet.  The benefit lasts the lifetime of the project…

Kind of a no brainer, don’t you think?

SO… who’s with me?  Who’s gonna start dropping more DOUBLE F BOMBS in their
marketing now?

Onwards and Upwards!

The Very Good Dr. Glenn 🙂

PS – Terry Dean and my Growth Acceleration System is the only marketing certification program I know of where extensive financial forecasting for eCommerce is taught in this way.   If you’re a marketing consultant, business coach, or have plans to be… read through what we’ve got to offer and get on the priority notifications list as soon as you can.

PPS – It’s been almost THREE full years since I’ve taken a new business coaching client.  But because I’m feeling a little rusty with NEW clients (and because I feel a responsibility
to stay FRESH with them given that I’m training and certifying business coaches as part of my core mission at this time) I’m going to open up for ONE DAY ONLY on January 1st, 2016.  Read about how I work here please, and if you’re interested, get
on the priority notifications list at the bottom of the page.

Here’s a strange question for you… do marketers eat too much protein?
And does it sap their energy, intelligence, and profit making abilities?

Well, if said marketers live on this planet there’s at least a 90% chance
they do, according to what Howie Jacobson, Ph.D. and his co-author
Garth Davis say in their new book Proteinaholic.

Could you be addicted to protein?  Have a listen and find out.

Thirteen things you never knew about the Very Good Dr. Glenn Livingston:

1. Money isn’t that important to me.  I know that’s a strange thing to say for someone who focuses on business and helping others to earn it, but it’s true.  I’ve never been very motivated by material things.  Instead, I’m driven to educate the masses, and to, like…NOT be yelled at by people I owe money to.   But as long as I have a roof over my head, Sharon to cuddle with, a computer with internet, some organic food to eat, a gym to exercise in, am close to the outdoors, and have some project to get all excited about, I’m happy.  (Also, I must obsessively watch “Nathan for You.”  I absolutely, positively, can not live without that show!  Thank God it’s back tomorrow.)
2. I regularly conduct upside-down business calls.   That’s not a metaphor…literally, I’m upside down when I’m conducting them.  I have an inversion table from Hang Ups which I love more than chocolate.  It’s great for my sciatica so it’s not uncommon for me to grab my iPhone to make some calls and respond to emails while I’m almost completely inverted.  I can now even attend a webinar (though not conduct one) in that position.
3. I DESPISE appointments because they sap my productivity and creativity.  I have a small circle of friends and colleagues for whom I’ll pick up the phone, but when I have to make appointments I try to ONLY schedule them for Mondays and Fridays.  This isn’t always 100% possible, but when I can do it, it leaves me with long stretches of time to write, make products, THINK, and sometimes to get out in the woods for a day.  (I’ve found if you only have one day in the week free the odds are about 50/50 the weather’s going to screw you over…but if you can leave three free at least one of them almost always works out, and the other two you can use for major projects)
4. I was born in an army hospital during a hurricane.   My Dad was an army psychologist who worked with PTSD in veterans returning from Viet Nam.   He was a Captain at Walter Reed Hospital, and sometimes in charge of the whole psych ward when the General was away.  My Mom was very worried they were going to ship him overseas in 1966 before my sister was born.  I think this background drove me to be conflict averse and spend too much of my energy seeking stability and security… absolutely the wrong goals for an entrepreneur!
5. I illegally bugged my father’s psychotherapy office when I was 9 years old.  He had been on the radio a few times before that, and my mom explained it was because he was good at making people happy when they were sad.  I was insatiably curios how he did that and decided I had a really good way to find out.  OK, so that was WRONG.  Thankfully later in life I channeled this drive into more professional aims!  But whenever I’m listening to a research interview, sitting with a coaching client, or talking to a patient, I still go back to the exciting intrigue and “figuring out the puzzle” feeling I had when I was 9.  (I hope the NYS statute of limitations is up on that or else now I’m screwed!)
6. I have a small wart on my right hand pointer finger.  It’s been there for at least 40 years.  I’ve seriously thought about getting it removed, but in my childhood each time I removed a wart ONE popped up elsewhere.  It’s like the wart-monster in my body says “just give me one and I’ll leave you alone!”  So I’ve always been scared to remove it and have it end up god-knows where.  There’s an analogy in business… sometimes there’s a small wart you decide to put up with.  A less than perfect shopping cart.  An A- employee.  A merchant account which will process $200K/month but won’t let you do forced continuity.  Lunch catered by Taco Bell… you know what I mean.  Sometimes it’s just the right choice so you can focus on the rest.
7. Neither Sharon or I like Lima Beans.  We think they are totally disgusting.  And since we are adults, doctors, and successful business people we have sworn a solemn oath to never eat them again.  I hope if you’re reading this, you’re not part of the Lima Bean board or anything like that.  Sigh.
8. In my early 30s, I had a patient who told me she was going to get up from her chair and bitch slap me if I didn’t answer her question.  After scrambling in my head to remember what the text books said I should do in that situation, I just went ahead and answered her question.  She became one of the best patients I ever had.  I remember this in business sometimes: You can’t plan for everything no matter how much research you do. At some point you’re gonna get bitch slapped if you don’t improvise.  Live with it.
9. When my dog gets tired he falls asleep with his tongue out.    (Me too)
10. Just after graduate school I seriously entertained the possibility of bolting from both my psychology and marketing research careers to compose jazz music for the piano.  I actually submitted several tapes to Polygram and got all the way to a meeting with the President.  Thank god I didn’t go through with it however, because although I was talented, I really didn’t have the training or experience to shape that talent into a professional career.  Passion is a necessary but not sufficient reason to go into a business!  Most people have multiple passions… the trick is coordinating with the ones that can actually produce money so you can support the rest.  Anyway, here’s a little recording from about 10 years ago (when I was still fat!) with me playing something I wrote, just in case you feel like listening.  (Plenty of mistakes in this – oh well)
    
11. Once, when I was 7, I once punched a hole in my sister’s wall when I got really mad.  Rather than getting upset, she asked me how come I never told her I was Superman.  I just went with it.  I think she still thinks that.  (My sister is the blonde in the video above)
12. I can’t get contact lenses in my eyes.  Seriously, I’ve spent hours with very gentle eye professionals who swear they’re going to be the one to fix the problem… but whatever I do my eye closes when the stupid contact is at least an inch away.    Oh well, I guess it’s good for us all to know our weaknesses.  (If you spend too much time trying to strengthen your weaknesses you’ll wind up weakening your strengths!)
13. This Friday, October 16th, 2015, Terry Dean and I are going to open up the Business Coaching Certification for just a few more enrollments before we plan to significantly raise the price.  Click here to read all about it and get on the priority notifications list if you’re interested.

Today I’ve got a little guest post from my partner in the Make Them Buy Conversion Club,
Michael McCarrell:

What’s the biggest mistake advance marketers – let alone beginners – make?  It continues to surprise me, but over and over I see people focusing on traffic instead of conversion.

And I have a theory about why – bear with me for just a minute here – it has to do with biology versus technology, and the fact that technology is evolving much much more rapidly than our biology.

Why should you as a marketer care about biology? Because it’s unavoidable. As much as we like to think of ourselves as rational beings, we are much more emotional and ACT much more instinctively than many of us like to admit.

(In case you don’t think *you* are instinctually driven, try this experiment: try NOT to not jump when a black belt karate expert feigns a kick to your crotch. I don’t care how many times you are told, I don’t care how much rational explanation you get, how many diagrams, how many charts, how much experience he has, or how many times I tell you you’re not going to be touched, you ARE going to jump.)

The Painful Crotch Kick of Marketing

Our evolution from apes has taken millions of years and yet the Industrial Revolution began only 300 years ago.   Personal computers are, what 40 years old?   The Internet is what, 20 years old?  Can you see an issue with divergence going on here?

So why do advance marketers still focus on traffic even though they *cognitively know* that conversion is more important?

Because conversion looks, and in many cases is, tougher than getting more traffic.

And your biology dictates that it’s better to be doing something than nothing because

If you’re doing Nothing you’re a ‘sitting duck’, you’re helpless prey and…

The feeling of helplessness is one of the *most intolerable* of all human emotions

Meaning, at a biological, instinctual level – it’s better to work on traffic then to feel helpless – it’s better do something than feel helpless – even if that something is of little value.

And human nature makes us choose the seemingly easier route (with less work) unless we pause to seriously consider the alternatives.

So how do you overcome biology and get yourself focused on the things that will really do you good?

One – study conversion principles, and…

Two – and this might be more important – surround yourself with like-minded marketers (like us!)

We’re all very instinctual, emotional animals.  Successful marketers accept and even embrace this on a deep level, but they also put things in place to compensate for it…

What feels right isn’t always right…

Sometimes you have to feel worse to do better.

And what seems sexy isn’t always good for you.

I rest my case!

Won’t you join us? It’s ridiculously affordable for the moment.
Ridiculously!

Here’s a different kind of video interview I did with “Debbie the Office Doc” about a few pretty cool tricks for saving time in Excel and MS-Office.  Thought you might all enjoy!

To contact Debbie, please visit www.DebbieTheOfficeDoc.com

To join Glenn’s live site review webinars, please visit www.MakeThemBuy.com

The Most Disturbing Thing I Ever Did Online (Ever!)

Sometimes I talk to students who are very frightened of making a mistake and publicly humiliating themselves in their marketing… so I thought I’d share the ABSOLUTE WORST THING I EVER DID ONLINE, because short of pulling an “Anthony Weiner,” there’s no way you could possibly top this one.  If I survived something this bad, you can too.

OK, so the WORST thing I ever did on the internet was on September 12th, 2001.
Long story short, I started a WAR on the internet!

See, given that Sharon and I were psychologists just outside of NYC, right after 9/11 happened (literally the day after) we thought it would be a good idea to send out a broadcast to our 20,000 subscribers offering to do free support groups about the trauma.  We were genuinely motivated to do a good thing…

But here’s how it played out:

• Entered “9/11 Support Group” as the subject line
• Forgot that the system automatically pre-pended “GET PAID:” to the subject line because it was a custom email system built for recruiting focus group participants.
• Body of message was “Reply with your name, gender, phone, and age if you’d like to come to the group”
• The programmer apparently made a mistake and set it up so that when anyone replied, the reply went to all 20,000 people on the list. And then if people replied to THAT reply, that went to all 20,000 people too.
• The first reply was from a young woman who wrote: “I’m 24, female, and I’d like to come. My phone number is____”, and this went out to all 20,000 people with the subject line “GET PAID: 9/11 Support Group.”

As you can imagine, several hundred of these people replied back with incredibly irate messages… which, of course, proceed to be broadcast to all 20,000 people too.  And then they started fighting with each other.  Some even made death threats. And it just kept escalating!

It took us a few hours to realize what was happening and shut down the server, but by then the president of our trade association had called us to admonish us, along with most of our best clients and friends.

We spent the next week handling the angry phone calls and threats, day and night. We had to bring in attorneys.  We had to settle with the woman who wrote the first reply to avoid a law suit.

What a nightmare!

But you know what?

In the end, we were still standing…
The WORST thing I ever did on the internet (I dare you to beat this!) (TELL story of 20,000 people email fiasco on 9/12/2001)

Just thought you’d like to know what I did one time way back on September 12th, 2001.
Long story short, I started a war on the internet:

– Thought it would be a good idea to send out a broadcast to our 20,000 subscribers offering to do free support groups about 9/11

– Wrote the subject line as “9/11 Support Group”

– Forgot that the system automatically pre-pended “GET PAID:” to the subject line because it was for focus group participants.

– Body of message was “Reply with your name, gender, phone, and age if you’d like to come to the group”

– The programmer apparently made a mistake and set it up so that when anyone replied, the reply went to all 20,000 people on the list. And then if people replied to THAT reply, that went to all 20,000 people too.

The first reply was from a young woman who write “I’m 24, female, and I’d like to come. My phone number is____”, and this went out to all 20,000 people with the subject line “GET PAID: 9/11 Support Group.”

As you can imagine, at least 1,000 of these people replied back with irate messages. Some with death threats. And it just kept escalating from there.

It took us a few hours to realize what was happening and shut down the server, but by then the president of our trade association had called us to admonish us, along with most of our best clients.

We spent the next week living at the office handling the angry phone calls and threats. I had to bring in attorneys. I had to settle with the woman who wrote the first reply to avoid a law suit.

What a nightmare!

And while I’d never recommend starting an internet war on purpose in order to get the attention of your long-unheard-from clients… many of them sympathized with us once they heard the story and actually gave us MORE business.  (Crazy, right?)

So what should you take away from all this?

D.W. Winnicott said “The Nightmare We Fear Most is the One We’ve Already Been Through”…

The odds are, whatever mistake you make in your marketing won’t harm you to the extent you’re frightened it will.  Most entrepreneurs spend so much time worrying about what negative thing might happen if X comes to pass, they never stop to consider that if X happens, Y positive thing might be hiding behind it.

And since frequency of contact is one of the pivotal foundations for increasing conversion…

Your fear of communicating with your audience more is likely doing you more harm than their negative reactions might.

Food for thought,

Glenn 🙂

PS – You can still ask me LIVE questions about your marketing once a month in the MakeThemBuy.com club for just $9.95.

———————————-
Live Web Critique Club with Glenn – now just $9.95/mo
———————————-

The Dirtiest 4-Letter Words in Internet Marketing?

1) WORK
2) WHEN
3) RISK
4) TIME

Listen, this is NOT the first loaf of bread I’ve baked!   I’ve been around the internet marketing game almost as long as anyone else.  I’ve seen more pitches and appeals than you could possibly imagine.  And given I’ve chosen to teach marketing, I’ve also spent many long, hard nights laying awake thinking about why so few people genuinely succeed.

It pains me, it really does.  But most people in this game are so terrified of the truth, they stop reading when anyone starts to disclose it.  You’ve got to be a little bit of a masochist to step out and say what I’m about to say if you still expect to be able to sell your materials.

On the other hand, anything of significant I’ve ever accomplished in my life came from facing reality square in the face, and then driving forward with intellect and fortitude until it yielded.  Everything.  So before we get to WHY “work, when, risk, and hire” are the four dirtiest four-letter words in internet marketing, let’s start with a challenge question…

I CHALLENGE YOU TO ANSWER THIS: Is there ANYTHING of significance in your own life which came to you without hard work, risk, deadline-focused commitment, and persistence over time?  Anything?

When I ask people this question, perhaps 5% quote some lucky break.  But upon further reflection and prompting they inevitably conclude “luck favors the prepared.”  People who seem lucky from afar have usually worked VERY hard to put themselves in a position to take full advantage of the situation which seemed to “fall in their lap.”

Success requires we deal with four letter words!  It takes the ability to put in the work, the willingness to commit to deadlines (“when”) , the cajones to take risk, and the ability to play the long game (“time.”)

Perhaps the toughest part is this: As an entrepreneur you don’t get the kind of linear, step by step feedback we were all trained to love in school.  You don’t really know if you’ve “passed the first grade” or not because money doesn’t come out the end of the pipeline if there’s even one leak along the way…

So we all suffer with constantly agonizing decisions on how to balance these four letter monsters.  Being an entrepreneur inevitably means having way more projects and opportunities than you can possibly handle, and having to take more risks with your resources than any of us ever really grow comfortable with… no matter how big we get.

The good news is, there are tools and systems for making these decisions much easier.

One of my favorites is a simple little spreadsheet technique for calculating weighted averages.  I just list out my projects or choices one per row, and evaluate them against all the factors which I consider important to the decision in the columns.  Finally, I assign a relative importance level to each of the factors, and the simple spreadsheet calculates a “batting average” (overall score) for each project.

Have a look at the video to see what I mean, and feel free to download this example here

NOTE: be sure to download the spreadsheet here to follow along.
(My apologies for the visual quality of this particular video… please don’t
tell my Mom, OK?)

PS – Here’s an EASY decision: Live Personal Web Critique Club for just $9.95/mo. with the very good Dr. Glenn.  How could you go wrong?

Hope it helps,

The Very Good Dr. G 🙂