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.

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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.

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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.

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Found out about a cool plugin for Wordpress today from The 30 Day Challenge. It’s really cool you can add video comments to your blog. It’s from Seesmic.com, and adds a great way to expand the interaction with readers.

I’ve been playing around with it today, and have already posted a comment on the 30 Day Challenge blog. It’s easy to post a comment with this plugin. I also found it easy to setup in the blog.

There is a nice feature to this option. Video blog comments get added to the Seesmic public time line. That means you could grab some traffic from people searching Seesmic. Cool beans.

One thing I like about this plugin is you don’t have to have an account with Seesmic. Anyone can post anonymously. Of course to prevent morons from posting insulting or spam videos you can have them held for moderation. I’m doing that for the time being.

You can grab the plugin at Seesmic’s Wiki page. On the wiki page they show you how to install it & how it works.

I’ve added a video comment to this post, so you can see how it works.

How about posting a video comment yourself?

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Today’s guest post is by Sharyn Essman is a recovering attorney and the owner of FeeFiFoto.com. You can find more about her or contact her through her blog.

Remember Mrs. Fisher, the miniskirted junior high typing teacher whose male students never seemed to improve despite their slavish attention to her every move thigh word?

Not technically Mrs. Fisher, but you get the picture

Anyway. Focus.

Remember her insistence that numbers less than ten (10 — or was it 20?) must be written typed out? Turns out Mrs. Fisher wasn’t 100% right.

After abandoning the practice of law I wrote resumes for 15 years, obsessing over design, language and font choice. Before too long I concluded that for a piece of sales-oriented writing to be impressive and memorable it must above all be easy to read and interpret; font choice was irrelevant. The intended audience resented having to play hide and seek; they wanted to be spoon fed and not forced to hunt for pertinent information. Unusual fonts or layouts would just annoy readers and send them on to the next piece in the Inbox.

Like it? It’s called “Gypsy Curse.” Great for a Halloween party invitation. For a resume? Not so much.

From Sinisterfonts.com

A key element of this rule was to use digits whenever possible, since the eye is drawn to anything distinct from the surrounding material. In other words, a “seventeen percent” increase in sales would catch the eye better written as “17%”.

Try it – skim the previous paragraphs and note how the digits catch your eye. I’ll wait.

Musical interlude: “Feelings! Whoa, whoa, whoa – feelings!”

Bet she got your attention, didn’t she?

Image from rocktownweekly.com

See my point? If you aim to stand out from tons of material similar to yours but you make it difficult to detect what’s important about you, your intended audience will abandon you and move on to the next candidate.

Why am I telling you this? Because I have nothing better to talk about Because it illustrates the importance of images in making your marketing and blogging memorable.

Remember Crazy Eddie? His prices were INSANE and he was too, but he sure was hard to forget.

Image from nextnetworks.com

As a blogger you compete for the attention of readers who are being pulled in eleventy million directions, kind of like moms but with a bit less spill wipage. If you aspire to retain your reader’s attention, you’d darn well better offer something interesting, useful and easily accessible or risk her stumbling on to someone else’s blog. One easy and effective way to make your blog memorable is to use images in your posts.

A picture’s worth – well, you know.

No matter what you’re selling, provide an image to help readers visualize your subject. I blog to promote my website, FeeFiFoto, which puts digital photos on all sorts of gift items. I’d be foolish to describe a personalized photo watch, for example, without providing a related image. The same goes for any other consumer item: selling your car, or camera, or computer, or anything on eBay is much easier if you provide an image along with the description.

You claim images are beneath your blog’s dignity? Well, bravo for dignity, but if you challenge your reader to trudge through your material on a scavenger hunt for what you’re selling, you’ll be like a tree falling in the forest and just maybe no one will hear you.

Always wondered how the Wall Street Journal created these portraits. I figured it was done with computers, but guess what: real people draw these! And admit it – it catches and holds your attention.

Image by Randy Glass

Even the Wall Street Journal, the embodiment of dignity, provides images. You should too.

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This Post has an ulterior motive for me. I’d like to introduce the many benefits of guest posting. Hopefully you’ll see the benefits & get excited about the of guest posting… Then take me up on my offer to guest post on this blog next week…

Guest Posting is a great way to get yourself in front of targeted traffic…

One of the best methods of marketing is finding targeted traffic. Birds of a feather flock together… and that is so true with blog readers. They are interested it the same subject, and are a sympathetic ear.

Steven Snell at Pure Blogging makes a great point about how guest posting is get past the advertising defense by demonstrating your expertise…

The Best Blog Advertising is Free - Are You Using It?

Despite the title of this post, I do realize that guest posting is not really advertising. However, it allows you to accomplish many of the same objectives that an advertisement would, and in most cases it’s even more effective. …

Darrin Rowe over at Problogger makes a powerful case why guest posting is a effective way to find new readers…

Finding New Readers for Your Blog with Guest Posting

Perhaps one of the most powerful ways of exposing your writing to a new group of people is to put some of your best content on other peoples blogs - and not your own …

Jason at The University Kid goes over how to make sure you are putting out quality guest posting content. You can get a leg up on your competition if you remember to follow these steps with your guest posting…

How To Annihilate Your Competition With A Guest Post

A lot of people get sucked into the whole guest posting spree and churn out posts for various blogs in their niche… and then neglect their own website. Remember, people are notoriously fickle – their views about how good a writer you …

So, how can you take advantage of what you’ve learned at these blogs?

Simple… I’m taking a week’s vacation starting Sunday. I’m looking for some guest posters. If you would like to guest post for me next week head on over the my about me page. fill out the contact form, and submit it. I’ll get back to you, and see if we can make arrangements.

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Pay close attention to what Chamillionaire says in this video. He repeats over and over again that he found out where his fans were going… and he went there. He didn’t try to force fans to him… he followed his fans, and made sure his content was in front of them.

He gets it! Chamillionaire understands the power of social media. He has started using the many social sites to feed the demand for his fans. They are demanding more content, and he realizes if he is not there to feed the demand they will go elsewhere.

Here is the video I watched today.

Chamillionaire also JV’d with Weird Al Yankovic to explode his sales. He knew this would give his video new life, gave Weird Al permission to make a spoof video. He knew that Weird Al could reach an audience he couldn’t reach.

The video that Weird Al made has to date over 27 Million views… how’s that for viral. It’s titled White & Nerdy a spoof on Ridn’ Dirty. Here is the video

Oops, I bet you mashed on the play button and nothing happened. Why won’t Weird Al video play? It’s because big dumb corporations still don’t get it. This video’s embed feature has been disabled.

The big dumb corporation still clings to the belief that they must force people to the content. They don’t understand that the new way is to put the content where your fans gather. Watch and learn from Chamillionarie… find out where your fans are and add your content there. Get in front of them… Make it easy for them to find you.

In case you would like to see the video here is the link… White & Nerdy It is classic Weird Al… Hilarious.

You see if they like the content they will come to your website and check out what else you have. Now they are arriving because they trust you, and like what your are providing. This will make it easier to make sales… they are coming pre-sold.

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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.

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On Saturday, Dec. 15th 2007 I attended Sterling Valentine’s VIP Launch Party & Workshop. The event took place just outside of Philadelphia. It was fun and everyone had a great time.

The group had about 35 people in attendance. The size made it easy to network, and meet people. Sterling being a master networker had each person stand up and give a quick introduction. That really broke the ice, and made it easier to meet people. There was time set aside to specifically to meet each other.

One person I got to meet was Ken McArthur. He is a great guy and very gracious with his time. Getting time from someone with the experience Ken has was priceless. This is the guy who consults with many of the top marketers. In fact he is the guy many of them call in to help behind the scenes.

I was glued to the advice Ken offered me about one of my projects. What he had to say made me reevaluate the direction I was taking. At first it was hard to hear, but I realized that his advice rang true.

I would like to thank Ken for his time and advice.

Ken has a book out called “Impact: How to Get Noticed, Motivate Millions and Make a Difference in a Noisy World. The book launched today…

If you order the book then enter your order number you’ll get instant access to some pretty valuable downloads. There are bonuses from Joel Comm, JP Maroney, Randy Gilbert and others…

Head on over to Ken McArthur’s Impact website for complete details.

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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?

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