Keith Goodrum

Ed Dale gives a preview of what’s in store for the 30 Day Challenge over the next week. You can still sign up for this years challenge. It’s free & you’ll learn how to start an online business. Click on the Thirty Day Challenge link here to join.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Popularity: 17% [?]

This past weekend we went up to Lake Placid, NY on the spur of the moment. We’ve been talking about heading up there to check it out & this weekend seemed as good as any.

It was cool to see the scenic sights & all the Olympic venues. I was surprised at the amount of activities going on up there. Especially when I considered it a winter sporting/resort area. But there are plenty of summer activates to participate.

The wife & I have started to get into trail hiking this year. We were excited to spend a couple of days hiking the trails. Unfortunately we were rained out Saturday, but that turned out to be a good thing.

Maybe the rain would stop after lunch

We decided to stop in a local deli for a sandwich & see if we could wait out the rain. It’s called the Saranac Sourdough Deli, and is across from the Comfort Inn on Saranac Ave in Lake Placid.

The food was excellent. As was the owner… I think her name was Eileen (Not sure about that). She was super friendly & made you feel comfortable as soon as you walked in the door.

There are a lot of us tourist running around town. And the only way I could tell she was talking to a local was she greeted them by name.

Lesson… It’s the experience stupid.

Yes the food was excellent. They bake many defend kinds of Sourdough bread & use fresh quality ingredients.

The description on the menus is very entertaining. For example the line for the Mountain Woman Combo… “Ladies, I’ve got your back”

But, it is the overall experience that makes this place so much fun to have breakfast or lunch. You are warmly greeted when you come in, you are treated like a regular & you are served great food.

Did you notice all the bases are covered?

They did such a good job with the overall experience we automatically went there for breakfast the next day. We didn’t even consider another place.

If you are ever in Lake Placid I would highly recommend eating there.

That is the simple formula to getting repeat business. So, how can you apply this to your business? Let me know in the comments below.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Score!

Ed Dale has given an exclusive interview… How cool is that!

You can sign up free by clicking the Thirty Day Challenge link here. It’s fun & you’ll learn some awesome methods to build an online business. The best part is there are no OTO, Up sell or down sell pages to go through. You put in your name & email address & your in… that’s it.

The preseason training has already started, but it’s easy to catch up. Ed Dale, Dan Raine & the gang have put together an outstanding training program. Some of the stuff I’ve learned in preseason has blown me away.

Another cool part is you are not alone during the training. Once you’ve registered you can join a team and complete the challenge together. This is the pure genius of the whole thing. Teams form to support, help & play off each others strengths. They network together, answer questions, lend moral support, help each other & cheer each other on. It’s a great way to stay motivated & help each other get through the challenge together.

One more thing… this a referral link. Ed & Dan are having a contest, and giving points for each person who joins. It’s a contest & they are giving away prizes based on the number of people who join. Here is what they say about it…

Promote The Challenge And Win

We want this years challenge to be the biggest and best yet, and we need your help. On the right hand side of the page you will notice a new section titled Referal Points. Currently you have X points, and you know what they say in gameshow land… points make prizes. And boy, do we have some prizes to give away.

Now I am not going to spoil Ed’s fun as he is going to be revealing some of the amazing prizes on the launch show tonight. But believe me, they are way cool!

I invite you to join & some of us can form a 30 Day Challenge Team. Here is the 30 Day Challenge Link again.

Popularity: 54% [?]

Catching up on my blog reading this weekend. I thought I’d share a couple post I found interesting that you might have missed…

Set Dates with Yourself – How to Be Productive

Ricky Breslin gives some great advice on becoming more productive. You have to be ruthless with your time management. He is pretty upfront about who to blame for poor productivity. He hit the bullseye, and shows a simple plan to higher productivity.

Overcome Marketing Guru Confusion

With all the hoopla recently over Guru’s, Ray Edwards came up with a short but powerful plan to follow.

[edit - Ray’s blog post is not bashing anyone, or being negative in any way.  The following comment is my opinion… I think I’ll expand on this thought in the next few days. :)]

Remember one thing… even those folks who bash Gurus are selling products.

What it takes to succeed in business.

Jonathan Leger discusses what it takes to succeed in business. Mostly is what’s going on between the ears… the state of affairs in our own thinking.

Popularity: 91% [?]

Not Exactly!

Another way to say this is “Do What You Love And The Money Will Follow”. I’m not sure where this “advice” came from, but I’ve been hearing it since I could remember.

On the surface it sounds like sage advice. But there is a fatal flaw with this advice, and it is this…

Do What You Love And You Could Find Yourself Bankrupt!

How could I say that?

So many people tout the ‘follow your passion and the money will follow’ it must be true. After all there are television shows, magazine articles, books, movies showing people following their passion to millions.

Yes, there are plenty of examples of people following their passion to millions, but one key element is left out. This one element is the reason you are going to make money or go broke with your ‘passion’. And unfortunately many want to gloss over this key element.

It’s popular for authors, speakers and gurus to wax philosophic about this subject. They want to talk about how awesome it is to find your passion, embrace it and run out there sell it to the world. It’s warm and fuzzy, and that’s makes it a popular topic.

But the cold hard reality is this…

If your ‘passion’ is not a something people are willing to pay for, then you just have a hobby… not a business. You have to have a passion that people are willing to give you money for something you have to offer.

Think about this… how many times have you run across someone with a “great” idea for a business? They are passionate about this idea. They eagerly tell anyone who will listen about this ‘great’ million-dollar idea. And they go on and on about this business.

Why are they only one in the room who doesn’t recognize that this idea is a dog? And if you try to point out any flaws in their idea… they get incredulous. All you did was try to point out that there’s no market for this idea… but they accuse you of being a dream stealer.

Here’s a silly example…

I like to joke about a new service that I want to start. It’s for people who are high achievers, and just too busy to do this activity for themselves. I would take this problem off their hands, and give them one less thing to worry about doing everyday. In a way they would be outsourcing this to me, and I would gladly do this for them everyday.

My service is a nap taking service.

After all I love to take naps… I take them every chance I get. And I would be thrilled to take naps for other people.

The only problem so far is I can’t find anyone willing to pay for this service.

It’s great to follow your passion, and build a business around it. You have to do your research, and make sure there is a market willing to pay money for solutions to their problems.

Remember to first find a market… then find out their problems… Then make a product or service that solves the problem…

And make sure they are willing to give you money to solve this problem.

Popularity: 97% [?]

This is something that has been long over due.

I submit to blog carnivals, and have had several people kind enough to publish my submission. Well it’s about time I start thanking them.

Did you know blog carnivals is a great way to help build back links? You also get traffic, but the back links are good to get. It’s easy just go to http://www.blogcarnival.com find a blog carnival that matches your blog and submit your best post from the last week.

If your post gets accepted it will be published with a back link from the blog that hosts the blog carnival.

Here are the last few places that published my submission… go check them out.

http://leadinspectors.blogspot.com/2008/05/carnival-of-leads-to-making-money.html

http://www.oibo.org/internet-business-blog-carnival-edition-11.html

http://vidacomesperanca.org/socialentrepreneurshiptoday/?p=13

http://womeninternetmarketers.com/2008/05/06/blog-carnival/

http://www.businesscreditcards.com/bootstrapper/carnival-of-business-and-entrepreneurship-18/

http://www.successpart2.com/a-make-money-blogging-carnival-april-25-2008/

Popularity: 87% [?]

This weekend I saw Chrysler advertising a new incentive program called Let’s Refuel America! I thought it was a brilliant marketing program. It sure beats the same old copycat “Cash Incentive’s” every car manufacture and his brother is waving around.

Cash incentives works until everyone copies each other. Once everybody copies a marketing tactic what happens to the tactic? It loses its power, and you no longer appear different. You become part of the herd, and cannot stand out from the crowd.

Another problem with cash incentives is two fold…

One is you are giving away profits. The only thing cash incentives do is profits. Think about it… every dollar you give as an incentive comes straight off the bottom line.

Let’s say you knock $20.00 off a $100.00 purchase. You only need to sell $20.00 to make up the difference, right? Wrong. Look at the math… you are giving up $20.00 in profit, not $20.00 in revenue.

Say you run at a 20% profit margin. (Single digit profit margins are more realistic… but we will go with 20%. ) To get back that $20.00 you need to sell $100.00 worth of product or service just to get your money back.

Now, I’ll admit that this example is overly simplified. If you want to see the real impact this has on your business get the book How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors By Larry Steinmetz. This book will be a real eye opener.

Second is its easy to copy. Any clown can lower price… all it takes is a decision. So, all the competitors in town offer incentives. Then what happens is a competitor notices that the cash incentive is losing effectiveness. They figure if a $1000.00 incentive works… then $1500.00 will work better. Then the next bozo concludes… If $1500.00 works better then $2000.00 will knock their socks off! Where does it end?

Chrysler’s new incentive program might be hard to copy, and that should give them a longer competitive edge…

Steven Levitt at Freakonomics said today in his post $2.99 Gas that it would be hard to copy. That could mean Chrysler will be able to hold a completive edge that much longer. Here’s what Steve said…

If it works, I don’t think it will be that easy for the competitors to copy, at least not quickly (in contrast to the “employee discount” plan which spread like wildfire across the various car manufacturers). Setting up and administering this program must be a logistical nightmare. I could imagine it taking another company many months to get all the pieces into place.

Instead of offering cash incentive, having a sale or knocking down your price… what could you do to add value to your offer without giving away profit?

Popularity: 73% [?]

Here is something cool I stumbled on a couple months ago. You can add any YouTube member to your Google Reader. Check out the video to see how it’s done

Here is the url add the rss feed to Google reader: http://www.youtube.com/rss/user/USERNAME/videos.rss

Popularity: 78% [?]

Now is the time to start a blog. Many people have discovered that they are a great tool to get your ideas out to promote you and your business; it builds a relationship with your readers, and the platform simpler than ever to get your message out. For this reason they are more popular than ever.

Here are three reasons why you should start a blog.

1. It’s the best form of marketing and branding you can do for your online business - One of the easiest ways to market your business is to build trust with your market. Relationships and trust build a sense of community. And when you have a sense of community there is no need to use hardcore marketing to make sales.

2. You can use a blog as a direct line of communication - Ryan Healy in his post titled Copywriting Is Not the Most Important Skill said: “It’s my belief that communication is the most important skill you could ever learn.” A blog opens a direct line of communication between you and your readers. This is a great platform for communication. In fact many times you start getting feedback within hours of posting… priceless information.

3. A blog is easier than ever to start - The tools to start a blog are easy to learn & use. You can have a blog started within minutes if you choose to use one of the free services like blogger.com, wordpress.com, or typepad.com. If you wish to host the blog on your own domain, you can be up and running within a couple hours. Where else can you start a business so fast, or so inexpensive?

One of the complaints I hear is people hesitate to start blogging because they believe it would take huge amounts of time to write a blog post everyday. Many people abandon their blogs because they cannot find the time to write blog posts. They are caught up in a busy life, and it tough to carve out the time.

It would take me hours to write a simple blog post…

I had the same problem. It use to take me hours to write a simple 300-word post. It was agonizing, slow and frankly became a drag. I would go through spurts of writing several posts at a time…. then go weeks, even months without posting. My blog looked like it was abandoned at times.

I finally made the decision to figure out how to write faster. After trying many methods without much success… I finally figured it out. I found a speed writing technique, and modified it to make writing blog posts. I can now write a regular blog post in 10 minutes or less. It has been working great, and producing great results.

I’ve recorded this technique, and will be releasing it as a new product called “10 Minute Blog Post”. In it I show you how to write a blog post in 10 minutes. You get to see how I prepare, write and edit a blog post. You get to look over my shoulder as I write one of the posts I wrote for this blog.

Tomorrow Thursday May 1st “10 Minute Blog Post” will be released…

Of course there will be special pricing. Now, I have to warn you these recordings are not pretty. I’m not a professional presenter, and my Camtasia skills suck. It ain’t going to win any awards… it ain’t even going to be nominated.

So, if you are looking for pretty, flashy recordings with fancy graphics… save your money. This is not the product for you. But the information is valuable, and that’s what’s important… how to write a blog post in 10 minutes.

Popularity: 59% [?]

Mike Ambrosia gave me my first break as an online copywriter. I sent him a direct marketing letter for my copywriting services. He called, we met and he hired me to write Easy Product Profits. It was fun, and exciting seeing how a product gets created from the inside.

I now consider Mike a friend, and we still keep in touch. His story about starting his online business is interesting. Today he wrote a little about it on his blog. The post is titled I’m Better Than You? He worked a full time job, and still managed to build his business. Check out his daily schedule…

All of my on line success (until recently) has been PART TIME. I had a full time J-O-B and worked on my business at night. For about 4 years I averaged just four hours of sleep per night. Here was my typical day:- 4:30 AM, wake up
- shower
- breakfast/newspaper
- 5:15 am, emails, misc. stuff on business
- 6:15 am, go to work
- 4:30 pm, home from work - check emails
- 5:00 pm, family time
- 6:00 pm, dinner
- 6:30 to 8:00 pm, work on sites
- 8:00 to 8:45 pm, play with son and put to bed
- 9:00 pm to midnight, work on business
- Midnight, go to bed

That was it for four years. Lots of work and commitment.

Of course, there is a lot of things I did, people I met and so on that have helped me along the way. We call
that networking.

But I hear the same excuses all the time…

Mike of course is not better than any of us. He is making the point that anyone can create the business of their dreams. We all have the same 24 hours each day.

Head on over to his blog and check out the rest of the post…

http://www.mikeambrosio.com/im-better-than-you?

Popularity: 53% [?]