Here is a link to see it full size.

The Hosting you use for you Business Website or Blog is important more than ever before.  With Google and the other search engines penalizing you for slow load times and people frankly becoming impatient with sites that take forever to load, it is not imperative that your site runs fast.

Cloud Red Hosting is what I use and recommend to all of my clients.  Give them a try. No long-term contracts and no fuss or muss. Just good service at a good price.

Do you need Transcription Work done? Try out www.YakWrite.com and get your first 1 whole hour of audio done for just $20! That is about 8,000 words worth. Just let them know you are a new customer when you order and they will refund you the difference when you order! (i told them to do this).

Why Join?

1. It is a great way for you to learn how to add more to your bottom line.
2. You can learn from others in a wide variety of industries and niches.
3. You can let people know about your business with links back to your site.
4. Get access to the latest trends and techniques to help you add more customers and make more money.
5. It is FREE!

So, just sign up today and get started. If you know of other people that want great information on how to help their business, tell them about it too.

Self-promotion and common sense is allowed. But stupidity and bad manners are not tolerated.

Thanks and welcome aboard!  Go Here to sign up!

Cheers,

Andrew Anderson

I hardly ever login to Linkedin and only do Facebook about once a week if that.  Plus, I  have been keeping my Twitter to a minimum these days which is a whole other blog post, but in my quarterly login to Linkedin, I came across one of what I think is one of the core truths about making money.

The first time I heard something similar, it stopped me in my tracks and here is what I distilled that rather shocking moment down to.

“The Key to being successful is to become great at what you are good at, not becoming mediocre at what you do poorly”- Andrew Anderson

And that my friend is pretty much the secret to making money in a nut shell.

If you every really want to get ahead, you need to figure out what you are good at and say to heck with the rest. Become the best that you can be at it.

Let people that love to do what you hate do it for you.  If you can pay someone to do laundry and it costs you less or even the same as what you love to do, let them do it.

Same goes with Yard work, and everything else.

When you do things you don’t like, you are not going to do them as fast or as well and it takes time from practicing and getting good at what will truly make you money.  The mind set may be foriegn to you, but it works.

When someone tells me they have a maid or domestic help, I think what a smart cookie. I used to think they were lazy or pretentious.  Shows you how truly ignorant I was.  They were actually smart and had a lot more money and free time than I did.  But I eventually figured it out.

Now you can too.

Cheers,
Andrew Anderson

OK, having a Social Media Manger seems to be in Vogue these days.  I have seen the ads for some of them with absolutely ludicrous requirements.  I know I have been laughing my ass off just reading the want ads for them and you can bet Gary Vaynerchuk is as well.  I want to share some of the joy with you here.

First off, the biggy seems to be a Journalism Degree or even better yet an MBA.  Really?  How or why that one is relevant is beyond me and actually it is totally irrelevant as I will show you.

What they should be asking is, do you have the ability to communicate in 140 characters or less and do you send out a minimum of 1,000 to 5,000 texts a month? This one is obvious as Twitter is a huge part of social media.

Here at two sample out takes from ads that are laughable.  These are from a REAL ads… LOL

Completion of an advanced degree (e.g. MA, MPH, MJ, MBA) and six (6) or more years of relevant experience

* 7+ years traditional media experience working for industry-leading company with significant media budgets in the area of digital marketing.

Wow, since Twitter has only been around for 3 years and Facebook did not really get going until about 2007 tell me how you pull off that 6 or more years of relevant experience ?   This is not traditional media either. Can you say Clueless?

A High School Dropout And Grandma Are More Qualified Than An MBA

There were more like this but this is an example of why most companies Social Media SUCKS.   Give me an 18 year high school dropout that has 20,000 followers on Twitter and Texts all day or or 72 year old Grandma that has a huge circle of friends that she stays in touch with and they are going to be more qualified than a dooffus that has spent the last six years learning from text books that were out of date 3 months before they went to print from professors who don’t know what the word profit means.  Yea… cool… let me hire 5 of them please. ..NOT.

Both the high school dropout and Grandma have better suited skills than the MBA by far with proper supervision.   They know how to communicate on a one on one basis and have practical experience doing so.

Old Media Skills Will Get You Killed In Social Media

Social Media is a whole different ball game and unfortunately most companies are clueless as to why. This is not traditional media and the skills used in old media will get you killed in Social Media.

This is about one on one interaction. It is direct marketing pure and simple and there are very few really good direct marketers out there. Which is why most Ad Agencies suck at Social Media.

But, if you are clued into this, that is good news for you!  Because it gives you the ability to clean the clock of the clueless out there.  Social Media gives a single Mom who is running her business out of her bedroom the chance to go up against multi-national companies and win!

This gives a single Mom who is running her business out of her bedroom the chance to go up against multi-national companies and win!

Seriously, if you know how to engage your customers via Social Media,  you will win out against the MBA’s and especially the Ad Agencies that are running Social Media for their clients.  They don’t get it either. But Ad agencies as a whole is a complete other clueless story.

There have been some notable disasters recently where Interns and other silly people have been turned loose on Social Media for clients and cause huge problems because they were clueless and yet had the power to cause a public relations disaster with one little Tweet.

Don’t Fall Victim To CTS

The Red Cross, Chrysler, and Kenneth Cole have all fallen victim to the Clueless Tweet Syndrome or what I am calling CTS.  CTS is bad, very bad.

Which brings me back to my main point. If you are a small shop, spend a couple of weeks figuring out a Social Media game plan and then use common sense and you can and will beat the big boys.

If you can afford it, hire a really good, and I do mean good Social Media consultant and outsource your Social Media to someone that actually knows what the hell they are doing.  You can get a real expert team for less than it costs to hire a single Social Media person and you can hit the ground running the right way.  For less than $2,500 a month you can get an expert team in to do things right if you want a complete turn-key experience.  If you are small company, you can get started for about 10% a month or $249.  Well, at least that is what I charge.  Contact me here if you need help or have questions about your Social Media. I will give you a free 15 minute session.

With Social Media being a necessity and not an option if you want to stay competitive, if you get your act together here you can own your niche and it is a totally level playing field.  This is one of the few areas of life where size does not matter.

I am going to give you two qualifications that can really nail down someone that you may want to bring on board if you do decide to go ahead and hire someone.

If you are a regular reader, you know that I am friends with Marilyne Woodsmall who is the author and creator of Personality Language ™ and which is the most advance behavior modeling tool in existence.

Using Personality Language ™ testing you need to find someone under the Motive People Pattern that is an Affiliation Type and under Primary Interest pattern a People Type.

Those two qualifications should knock out 90% of the people out there and help you zero in on someone that can actually do the job well. And as to hiring, if you are going to hire someone internally, you need to be using Personality Language ™ testing.  It is by far the best set of indicators that I know of for sure.

But the bottom line is this. If you can afford it, find and hire a qualified Social Media consultant to set up your game plan and acquaint you with what you need to get going correctly. Then you if you want bring in your own people to manage it great. But, make sure the people you hire have real qualifications such as empathy, good texting ability, good communications skills, and know marketing as well as having common sense.  A tall order I know.

10 REAL Qualifications For A Social Media Manager…

1. Must be comfortable texting and show a minimum of  1,000 texts a month
2. Must have been on Twitter and Facebook for a year minimum and have over 100 friends and followers and been active on a regular basis
3. Must have good marketing and sales skills. This is important. Your Social Media in order to be effective must have a game plan
4. Must be empathetic and a good listener
5. Must be great at problem solving and thinking on their feet
6. Must have a pleasant personality and enjoy interacting with people
7. Must be creative
8. Must have a clue and common sense (there are some tests for this)
9. Must be positive minded and have a Move Toward rather than a Move Away From motivation pattern
10. Must be able to type

That is it, schooling, experience, and age do not really matter. Really…

Follow what I have listed above and you will be ahead of the herd and your competition.

Cheers,
Andrew Anderson
Social Media Consultant

PS Contact me here if you need help or have questions about your Social Media. I will give you a free 15 minute session and answer as many questions as I can.  This is not a sales call but just honest to goodness free info for you.  I want to see you succeed.

This is an update of a post I did awhile ago… very relevant for today thought don’t you think?

Could it be that the real secret to profitability is to be Intelligently Lazy?  Could it really be the more Intelligently Lazy you, are the wealthier you become? And what about Alligators?

Well, like a lot of revelations, this one popped up rather unexpectedly right after I took a Green Pill this morning.

With this revelation came a whole breadth of understanding like revelations often do.  Point in fact, one of those revelations is I can tell you are Intelligently Lazy too because you are here reading this.

Hopefully, if I communicate this to you correctly, you are going to want to become the laziest person you know.

You may not know it yet, but I am actually giving you quite a compliment.  Let me explain to you why, by giving you two old adages you may have heard before.

• Most people are too busy making a living to ever become wealthy
• Most people are too busy doing urgent things, rather than important ones

This is because, as the old saying goes, it is hard to drain the swamp when you are up to your ass in alligators.

You are probably saying OK, what the heck is he talking about?  Well, I bring this up for a couple of reasons that I will make clear in a minute.  Here are some scenarios so that you can see what I mean.

Which Pill Are Your Taking Everyday?

I am going to call this option #1 or the Red Pill which is the Intelligently Hard Work Pill. You can use your intelligence, work hard, and spend a lifetime trying to figure out how to do things on your own.  This is what 99.999% of people do.

I am going to call this option #2 or the Green Pill which is the Intelligently Lazy Pill. You can read a book or a blog and learn the basics from someone else who may have spent their whole life learning about a subject or perhaps spent millions of dollars learning what works best and then emulate what they do, or even hire them.  These people most likely love what they do and are therefore very, very good at it.

So I ask you this,  which pill would you rather take?  The Red Pill or the Green Pill?  Which one do you think is going to cure your malaise called lack of wealth or put more money in your pocket the quickest? Which do you think is going to work the best?

Now if you are here, you have the propensity to be Intelligently Lazy which is a great thing in that you are out trying to learn something from someone else on how to be profitable.  Now what we have to do, and this goes against nearly all conventional wisdom, is  get you to become even lazier by learning from others even more.

Once you recognize that the lazier you become in this particular area, the faster profits are going to start hitting your bottom line.

I am going to reveal something else that I know about you.  You are involved in selling or marketing something.   You have a website or work in a business that sells something to customers who then give you money.

Even if you are not directly involved sales or marketing, nothing happens with any business until there is a sale.  With that in mind, and remembering how we decided that taking the Green Pill is the only smart way to go, how many books have you read on sales and marketing lately?

Hmm…do you think it might be a good idea to up your reading list a tad?

I am going to suggest that you read some of the following so that you are not inadvertently slipping yourself a Red Pill.

1. Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins – You can download this one free in PDF format by going Here

2. Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy

3. How to Advertise by Ken Roman and Jane Maas

4. How to Write a Sales Letter that sells! by Drayton Bird

5. Obvious Adams: by Robert R. Updegraff

6. Personality Language by Marilyne Woodsmall and Wyatt Woodsmall. If you click on the title, you can get $5 off of this book

7. www.21to21.com and of course this site.

Are there others? Absolutely, and I will post more at a later time,  but these should get you pointed in the right direction.  So the choice is really just how Intelligently Lazy can you become and how fast can you become truly lazy?  Your bank account could become larger right away.

You can get most of these books on Amazon.com and if you buy used versions, you can pick them up for only a few bucks.

Doing Things That Are Urgent Versus Doing Things That Are Important And Alligators

Here is where it can get out of focus sometimes.

You need to figure out which alligators are merely a pain in the butt and is not putting you in mortal danger. These non life-threatening alligators can take the form of having 20 things to do seemingly all of the time, having customers needing attention, an email that has to get out, or just trying to keep up with all the different things going on that absolutely demand your attention right now.

Could you put off sending that email to customers until tomorrow?  If that’s the case, use the time today to read a chapter out of one of the books above and make your email even better.

The result could be you getting a better response rate and getting 5 more orders which in turn eliminates an alligator that was biting you.  It can take the form of  a vendor looking for payment or alligator that said you really should get a new computer.

I am not suggesting you make a list per se, although I do find once you write down the alligators’ names, they are usually a lot less scary.

Then you simply take a step back and look at what you can do to be more Intelligently Lazy about things.  Oftentimes, it will make several other alligators go away as well.

Now I mentioned that I got the revelation after taking my Green Pill this morning.  I was reading some Drayton Bird who was a partner of David Ogilvy’s and is a pretty smart Bird if I must say so.

I have been pushing for Planned Ignorance as well with myself and my clients, which is a whole other subject and I will explain at a later date.  Because of this, when Bird mentioned Intelligently Lazy, it fit in with what I have been observing over the years with successful people and in my own success.  Let me have another one of those Green Pills please, Gulp!

The choice is really that easy and we make the choice every day, whether we realize it or not.

Cheers,

Andrew Anderson

PS  Here is to taking only Green Pills!

Listen to what has happened at what I consider the best Social Media management tool and learn how you can use HootSuite to help you make more money, stay engaged with your customer base, and learn from the Secret Sauce that HootSuite is using that has lead them to dominate their market in less than a year.

Enjoy,

Andrew Anderson

Here is a link to sign up for HootSuite and get a free account or you can click on the image above or below. If you are a business, you really should look at signing up for the pro service at only $5.99 per month! It is the only way I use to manage my social media for myself and clients. I am also an affiliate too. Which as you know if you are a regular reader of mine, just how rare this is as I always drink my own Kool Aid.

Click the play button to listen to the interview or download the mp3.

HootSuiteInterview.mp3

Interview With Dave Olson Of HootSuite

Andrew: (Laughter) Yeah, okay. Hello, this is Andrew Anderson and I’ve got Dave with HootSuite on the interview here, and we haven’t spoken in, gosh I think it’s been 8 or 9 months or so. And quite a bit has changed. Um, the one thing that hasn’t changed is I’m still a big fan of HootSuite. I still think it’s the best social media tool that any business can use out there. And, point in fact, I became an affiliate, so I think I’ve sold a couple of subscriptions for you guys and I’m also a paying user of them and as everyone knows, if I don’t like something I won’t talk about it and I will not use it. So, that will set the stage for Dave Olson here and we’ll let you rip. Um, so you guys since we last spoke, um, you’ve surpassed a million users I believe. Is that correct?

Dave: Yeah. You know, it’s been a wild year since we spoke last, and it feels like every week we’re pushing out some exciting announcement and even as equally exciting, we’re finding ourselves in the middle of world affairs and business successes and all sort of stuff. So, it’s a real wild ride. We’re up to about 1.3 million users now and adding at a great pace every day. And it’s also really exciting that these users are coming from all around the world.

Andrew: Wow. Yeah, I hadn’t even thought of that. Um, one of the big things that has gone on, and I mentioned it previously is that you’ve gone to the paid model for your business customers. You still offer the free service, right?

Dave: Yeah. We sure do. In the basic plan which is free is, is really what’s used by 95% or more of our user base. Before we switched over to those premium plans, we looked real carefully at how people use HootSuite, the feature sets, the amount of networks. And we found that people either have a few, you know, maybe their personal Twitter or Facebook maybe LinkedIn. Or else, they have a ton where they’re clearly using it for business use. So, we kind of designed the packages to fit into those buckets. We first made some announcements about it at the end of last summer. Did a little bit of a very slow roll-out so we could really get some feedback from the market. Made some adjustments and finally migrated everyone with a month-long grace period and so on to make that decision and, ah, you know we had–of course, when you first roll out something like that, there’s going to be a few people who have some, maybe have a little bit of frustration…

Andrew: (Laughter) Get bent out of shape.

Dave: Yes, indeed. But for the most part, people were really excited. And the work that we had done building the community was folks like yourself, really paid off ’cause folks were coming out and saying, “Hey, you know, it’s $5.99 a month and look what you get.” And it allows them, I mean, you know, we’ve got to make a living, too, right? So.

Andrew: Yeah. No, it’s a deal. It definitely is. Of all of the roll-out models to the–what did you call it? Freemium or Premium levels?

Dave: Yeah, it’s Premium, yep.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s the best one that I’ve been involved with, you know, as a customer. And it was fairly painless and it wasn’t a mega amount of money. If you can’t afford $5.99, you probably shouldn’t be in business anyway. But if, you know, it was $19.99 though or $29.99, I would have had to think about it a little bit, you know? So.

Dave: Yeah, and there’s certainly some upgrades and we really tried to put into that a-la-carte model so if you wanted to build a team out, well, there’s an additional charge for that. You can opt into some elevated support times if that’s something that’s really important to you. But at the same time, um, you know, that 95% of the people are using our free basic tool and finding everything that they need within that. Um, and even the basic matches up great against any other tool out there by any measure. Um, you know, obviously we take really good care of our entire community–both with adding new features, adding new networks and providing that really top tier customer support. All of those things are so important to us.

Andrew: It is. And I think Gary Vaynerchuk, you know, has talked about it and about the thank you economy about keeping your customers happy. Which you would think it’s common sense. But you guys do a particularly good job of it which is, you know, amazing because I think the norm is really service these days in so many areas.

Dave: Well, it’s interesting because we have this weird role of using HootSuite to promote HootSuite. So it feels a little recursive sometimes. But the same things that I tell people about, you know, you’re out selling widgets, this is what you should do with HootSuite, we do the exact same things in here in-house. We send out hundreds and hundreds of twitters a day, personally following up with people. You know, anyone who follows our Hootwatch account which is kind of our media and backchannel announcement list or else my personal account can see that throughout the day, we’re always finding people who are doing neat things, turn their friends onto the products, writing great blog posts. You know, we really try to amplify the success of our users as, you know, as reflective on the good work that we’re doing.

Andrew: Right, and do you want more followers on your personal thing? Or do you want to keep that quiet?

Dave: No, that’s fine. I, ah, DaveOHoots, and we also have a number of different Twitter handles. Of course, there’s the @HootSuite but another neat thing that we’ve done since we spoke last is we’ve really gone big on this internationalizing–for lack of a better word–where we’ve built out Twitter accounts and we’re providing support and monitoring, at least community building, in several different languages now. Particularly in Japanese and Spanish. We have everything that we’re releasing as far as our case studies and info sheets and marketing materials is going out in Japanese and Spanish as well as English and usually on the same day.

Andrew: Wow, that’s cool. Very cool.

Dave: Yeah, it’s pretty neat. You know I did–I’m sorry to interrupt there–but ah just before the holidays, we did a big announcement in Japan and I was there, skyped in through Skype video chat to a media briefing room back in Tokyo, and I’m there coming in from ah my house with the video cam because we had to coordinate hours and seeing, looking back at all these Japanese reports, they’re in this media briefing room and the next day, seeing us written up in Japanese in these major newspapers in Japan. Ah, we certainly get, we have a lot of fun with that and really savor the opportunity to go there and build. And Japan, in particular, is an under-realized Twitter market. If you ask people what was Twitter’s high watermark of most tweets per second, um, we’ll say, you know, it must have been the Super Bowl or maybe the Oscars the other night. Or even the World Cup football, you know the soccer tournament? None of those are the high watermark. The high watermark of Twitter ever is 4 seconds after midnight on New Year’s Eve in Japan.

Andrew: Really. Wow.

Dave: 6,000 tweets per second. Now, to put that in a relative sense, the high watermark of the Super Bowl was 3,000-4,000 tweets per second. So, you know, at 4,000 tweets per second, Japan crushed that and this is like a whole other tech economy that a lot of folks don’t even realize really exists. And 140 characters in Japanese. That’s like a small novel sometimes.

Andrew: Really. Wow. Um, the–and I’d also heard, and I think this is relative to Facebook, that they have fewer friends but they communicate more with them. Have you guys seen that to be the case? Or is that just something I heard?

Dave: We don’t see near as much activity on Facebook in Japan as we do with Twitter. But we’ve also noted that the big social network in Japan is one called “Mixi”.

Andrew: Really.

Dave: And that has Facebook-like domination. You know where Facebook dominates most markets, Mixi is absolutely the dominant social network in Japan and, as such, we added it to the, we added it to the dashboard so now besides Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Myspace, Ping, etc., now we’ve got a Mixi which is big in Japan and we’ve also added Ning recently, too, which is a little experiment that we’ve been doing with the Ning community. So, we’re really now, we’re trying to branch out and find where those passionate groups of communities where we can tap in and give them something that they really need to help them do their work.

Andrew: Cool. Yeah, so you got Mixi in the mix now. That’s interesting. What’s their user base? Do you happen to know? Or rough estimate off hand?

Dave: Oh, it’s tens of millions.

Andrew: Oh, it is. Wow.

Dave: Yeah, and when we launched that–the blog post–I got a lot of reference linked into some stuff so you can learn more about how social media is developed in Japan. And actually this year at South by Southwest, ah, we’re hosting a panel called “Big in Japan” that kind of, we brought together a few different cross-cultural business people from Japan and North America to talk about how do you localize for Japan? How do you outreach to that market? When do you know it’s the right time to go in there? What are the expectations in the market? ’cause it’s been a fascinating experience for us, for sure.

Andrew: Um-hmm. Well, I wish I was going to be out there this year, but not going to be able to make it. The most–I’m going to go back here. How does it feel to have, you know, as many customers as you do now? Did you guys project this? Was this in your realm of possibility? What was the viewpoint back in April of last year?

Dave: Well, we certainly put a lot of, um, importance on listening to our users and building the tool that we know we can build. And we here have, you know, we have an outstanding team of people who come in with ideas, and we go from idea to execution very rapidly. So, it’s more driven by that if we build the best thing, the thing that we know we can build, then people will come and come on board with it. You know, we’re here using it that too so we know what the people out there want. We listen voraciously to customer feedback. And our development team just doesn’t know the meaning of the word, “Oh, no, I don’t think we can do that.” And they rock stuff out in record time. So, really, we’re so focussed on getting that next integration getting that next release out that that’s kind of our focus. You know, that one-game-at-a-time kind of thing rather than looking at the broad breaststrokes. That said, you know, we’re lead by a real visionary thinker who’s always coming in with some other way to, ah, you know push something amazing out and, you know, that’s some of the examples you mentioned with the affiliate program. The Crowdsource translation program which now Twitter and a few other companies have hopped on board and released very similar programs. Our Hoots with University program. You know, we, we’re always launching something. And it’s really based on that user feedback and where we see a need in the market.

Andrew: Oh, cool. So your focus is on the product and the customers take care of themselves basically. I mean the growth.

Dave: Ah, yeah. I certainly would do things to encourage that along. But, it’s, you know, we don’t do traditional advertising, per se, or now we have a business sales department here that helps that along but did the users kind of take care of themselves? We really put a lot of effort into once people sign up for their account to make sure that they get onboard and really engaged. You know, it can be a little intimidating if you’ve gone right from Twitter web and all of a sudden, you’re looking at HootSuite because there’s a lot of power in there. And it can be like sitting down in a jet plane cockpit of you’ve never seen it before. So, we’ve added a lot of resource to kind of help people get over that learning curve and get up to speed quickly.

Andrew: Gotcha. And then, I guess from a little bit different standpoint having been involved in the startup, you got any advice for other startups out there that are, you know, growing fast or they’ve got a great product and, you know, what you’ve learned with the growth thing that looks like a real hockey stick.

Dave: It does. And it’s not just because we’re Canadian.

Andrew: Yeah, although that doesn’t hurt, huh?

Dave: Really, kind of from a personal standpoint in making sure that, you know, remember why it is that you got into this game and, you know, write down those things and kind of leave messages for yourself to look at six months later so you kind of remember where you came from. Because, you know, it’s not an easy life doing a startup. It’s a lot of late nights and it’s a lot of hustling. There’s a lot of change to get stuff out and get stuff pushed out. So you have to kind of take care of yourself in the sense that remember why you’re doing it. But, from a business standpoint, absolutely take fantastic care of your customers. Make them into your stars. Listen to everything that they have to say. You know, we try to reply back to most everyone and, ah, but we certainly listen in to everyone.

Andrew: So, you guys are in the catbird seat as far as social media goes. Where do you see social media heading? I mean it’s, it’s got a major impact these days on a lot of things, and I’m not sure that people realize just how big it is. But I want to get your take on that.

Dave: Well, I think that very soon, we’re to the point that people stop calling it social media and it’s just media. It’s just–everyone has this, this ability to amplify. So I think that the power of these web tools is just starting to be felt because regular folks, you know, folks who aren’t geeky or early adopters, or whatever, as they’re coming on board and they don’t have preset notions about what these tools can do, I think that’s where you see the really exciting things. I think you’ll see companies engaging with their audiences in a more authentic manner with creative kind of advertising.

Andrew: Right.

Dave: You know, we’ve seen with the Twitter promoted tweets, I think you’ll see a lot of creativity in that space where there’ll be kind of special offers, geo located offers and that kind of thing. With what we saw recently in Egypt, which was a stunning story for us when we came in one day and we saw 7,000% growth in Egyptian signups and traffic in one day.

Andrew: Wow.

Dave: Basically what happened is when Twitter and Facebook were first shut down, word quickly got around that you could still get out to those networks through HootSuite and so for 36 hours, we were the outlet for a lot of this conversation which was amazing for us to watch and something that you could have never possibly predicted.

Andrew: Right.

Dave: So I think the one thing that I can say for the future is that it’s going to be very different than what we’ve seen the last couple years where it’s more, um, people who have the ability to speak to one another in all sorts of different ways. I mean, you know, you and I, we have Twitter and Skype and phones and emails and that kind of thing. But there’s a lot of people who are going skip a lot of those steps and go right to the social media, and they’re going to be able to do amazing things from a business, political, social realm that we can’t even think of.

Andrew: Right. Huh. Yeah, I hadn’t realized that you guys were the outlet for that. You know, imagine that they didn’t report that on the news. Go figure.

Dave: Well, we actually got quite a bit of coverage about it in itself and part of that was, you know, we were so fascinated with what had happened that we released an infographic. We also did an infographic for our million-user threshold where we kind of broke down for social media geeks to see what percentage of messages go out through Twitter versus Facebook versus the other networks in what media and kind of our growth patterns. But we did the same thing for Egypt where we kind of tried to articulate in some way our impact. And it wasn’t to put ourselves in the story but it was, I mean, we couldn’t help but feel an affinity with these people when the tweets started to turn to, “They’re using flags as bandages now.” You know, that’s–and they’re sending these messages out through our tool that’s made by this group of developers and marketers here in a little office in Vancouver and we’re having impact in world affairs. It was a pretty incredible feeling, and we just wanted to share that with the world in the form of this infographic.

Andrew: Gotcha. And then, well I’ll have to put that on the site, too. But you gotta remember, I live under a rock when it comes to news, and I’m also involved in a startup, too. So, I don’t have a lot of free time. (Laughter)

Dave: Yeah, if it hadn’t impacted us so directly, I definitely wouldn’t have been as well informed. And now we’re seeing the same thing in Libya. And so we start seeing the internet as this, ah, as a very heavily wielded political tool in a lot of ways. So, it’s fascinating to watch and I think the next year or two, it’s just going to be wild as the tools evolve and the understanding of what these tools can do moves away from the cynicism or the self-referentialness and becomes more and more mainstream.

Andrew: Right. Um, I guess in, I’d like to get one or two of the newer tools or techniques, you know, that HootSuite can give a business the ability to use now that, and I know it’s come a long way since the interface, you know, 8-9 months ago, um, do you have any high points there that you might, someone that’s new to HootSuite from a business standpoint that might be relevant to them?

Dave: Sure. From a business standpoint, there’s two that jump out at me right away that I think business users would really love. In the last 6 months, there’s been a lot of conversation about influence. I mean, of course, you love all your followers equally. But, from a business standpoint, you want to reach out to the people who have a big reach first and foremost to help amplify your message. So, we’ve integrated Klout into the dashboard. Klout, that’s with a K. They have an algorithm that measures people’s reach and influence based on who follows them, how many times they get re-tweeted, you know, what kind of clicks they get. Basically, their realm of social influence. And then they assign a score to each person. Now, I don’t want the social web to turn into a popularity contest, but it’s a great way that within your HootSuite streams, you set a search stream for, you know, profit coaching or something like that, right? And then you start looking down and you can move a little slider bar across and it’ll drop off all the people who are under that certain level of Klout so you might find the ten people in your network that have high Klout scores that you want to outreach first to with some kind of special offer or to put an advance notice of some message or something like that. Also, on each person’s little popup profile card, you’ll see their Klout score.

Andrew: Okay, yes. Go ahead.

Dave: The second thing that I think is really handy is Retweets. Retweets are obviously a really powerful way to build your network, amplify messages and kind of do a favor back for the people who are in your network. And now we’ve added a way where you can choose which Retweet style you want to use on the fly. So on each tweet, you can choose the old school RT style where you can put in some more notes and add, “Wow, I thought this was a great article” and Retweet, etc. or you can do the new web native style that’s similar to Twitter web and you can choose that on the fly. So whichever one you like, you can choose them, and you don’t have to be stuck with one choice. So, it’s the best of both worlds.

Andrew: Gotcha. And then, one of the other features I like, and I don’t know how long it’s been there–it’s seems like it’s been there forever, but–is the ability to manage conversations you have with individuals and they stack up so you don’t have to go searching for them.

Dave: Yeah. That’s super handy, especially if you’re dealing with a lot of volume and managing like, you know, monitoring brand sentiment for example. You can see well, like why is this person saying this? And at first, it can, you know, be a little disorienting but as you start to expand the conversation and go back to find out where that comment came from, it really puts it in context, and context is everything in understanding what people are feeling.

Andrew: It indeed is. So, I know you’re a busy guy there and I don’t want to take up too much more of your time but anything else you want to throw into the mix?

Dave: Ah, well a couple things that we love to see people doing is if you write a blog post or have some tips about HootSuite that you’re sharing with your audience, let us know, and we’ll include your blog post in our user-created tutorials, give you a nice link back, and share your news and share your site with our audience. Ditto with any kind of media articles. We round those up and put them in news roundups. WE also tweet them out over a HootWatch. So, there’s a couple fun things if you want to engage with us a little bit more. And if we see you doing neat stuff and helping other people out–learn about HootSuite–we might even send you a HootKit which is a little envelope of stickers and pins and tattoos and other cool treats.

Andrew: Okay. Well, that’s cool. And then what’s the best way to just go to the–is there any particular Twitter name that they should follow to do this? How do they get in touch with you guys?

Dave: Well, just check out the blog, and it will give you all of the hints and clues and stuff. But if anyone has any questions, DaveOHoots is a great way to get started. If you have Help questions specifically though, go right to HootSuite_Help and we’ve got some fantastic technicians always all day long that just answer any questions via Twitter. So we’re definitely eating our own dog food and I tell you what, it’s pretty tasty.

Andrew: (Laughter) That’s pretty good. Yeah, you know, and any of the business owners out there that aren’t using HootSuite, I can’t recommend enough and for all the reasons that you just said, Dave. Plus, there’s tons more that once you get used to it–which won’t take very long, you know, within 5 minutes–you should be up and running on most of the, you know, some of the really good features on there and then, you know, you can always dive into it. But, you know, it’s the only way that I could even imagine managing, you know, all of the Twitter accounts we have and keep sane at the same time.

Dave: Well, all these folks out there who are going to sign up for your business account, I encourage you to do it through Andrew’s affiliate link.

Andrew: Well there you go. Thanks for the plug!

Dave: Let’s get this guy some beer money. Right?

Andrew: There you go. So, I’ll have to check and see what the sales are. But, yeah, maybe I could go buy a beer here soon and if not, maybe I’ll buy you one next time up in Vancouver. So, alright, well Dave, thank you very much. Thanks. This is an interview with Dave Olson at HootSuite–the best social media product out there for business that I can think of for sure. So, thanks a bunch for chatting with me, and we’ll get this up on the blog here and hopefully a couple people will read it and start using HootSuite and make their life a lot easier.

Dave: Sounds great, Andrew. It’s a pleasure to chat with you again.

Andrew: Okay, take care. Bye-bye. And that’s it.

An interview with the author of the new book “Personality Language” Marilyne Woodsmall

(OK, I threw in the part about finding the love of your life but it is possible   )

I did this interview when this book first came out and I see that there a few people have picked on just how valuable this really is and are starting to teach it. But, why not get it from the Horse’s mouth so to speak instead.

Get comfortable and take a listen to an interview I did with the author of the new book Personality Language. Listen in as we discuss how using Personality Language can dramatically boost your profits.

This is a totally new way to reach not only new customers, but get a lot more sales from your existing customers.

I hope to have more chats with her about this mind-blowing new way to communicate with your customers and increase your profits.

We talk about how Personality Language and you will find out why you want to layout all of your Blog posts, Sales Letters, and Information Products this way if you want to have the most success with them and become profitable.

Marilyne Woodsmall and Wyatt Woodsmall, who are Human Success Modelers wrote this as a primer to introduce this new way of thinking.

While you may not have ever heard of them before, I can bet that you have heard of, or seen on TV, or on the Internet, or read the books of some of the many people that either one or both of them have coached. People like Anthony “Tony” Robbins, Eben Pagan of Internet Marketing fame (if you have never heard of him before, under the pen name David DeAngelo who sells over $20,000,000 of Dating eBooks and Advice on the Internet every year and doesn’t even have a published “real book”) , Joe Polish of Piranha Marketing, world-class Marketer and Joint Venture specialist extraordinaire, and finally a host of Olympic Athletes and Coaches that brought home oodles of Medals, and quite a few other people that you have heard or seen as well.

Again the Woodsmall’s don’t go out of their way to mention them as they don’t like to talk about the people that they have worked or are working with all that much. It is just the way they operate, and I can respect that.

The only reason that I bring these people up is help you give some weight to what I am about to share with you. The folks that I mentioned have used what they learned from Marilyne and Wyatt to help make themselves tens of millions of dollars and to achieve success at a world class level that very few people are ever able to obtain.

Part of what those individuals did to obtain those ultra-high levels of success was to Leverage, with a capital L, what Marilyne and Wyatt gave to them to propel themselves to higher levels of success faster than they could have done on their own.

Now imagine if you had access to that same type of information that you could use to Leverage yourself to those ultra-high levels of success and profitability? Now you can.

Take a listen and let me know what you think.

Press the play button and find out how to improve your sales with Personality Language.

1.mp3

Or you can download it here Marilyne Woodsmall Interview.

Click below on the book cover to order the book and type in 21 to get a $5.00 discount. I can’t recommend this book enough. It is a game changer. I will also be posting other interviews with Marilyne and Wyatt as soon I can talk them into giving up more information.

Even if you don’t buy the book, go and sign up for their newsletter at www.PersonalityLanguage.com as it is well worth it.

Money makes the world go around. You have heard it. Is there anyone out there that does not believe it? Well, I am going to give you some practical tips on how you can start improving your financial situation, immediately. I am not talking pie in the sky stuff, but practical things that no matter where you are on the money totem pole you can start doing right after you read this. I promise you that the concepts are easy to use and implement. Plus, more importantly, they work.

Having been in positions of having money and not having it, I can indeed tell you that life is far easier having it than not, yes, tis true indeedy. I know it is hard to believe. LOL

Looking back now some of those times not having money is funny but, it is not when it is happening to you. I have been totally flat dead broke and not sure where it was going to come from. I have grocery money come in the form of payment for changing my long distance service and ATT at one time put food on the table for a whole month.

It is not fun, it is way overrated, and if you have ever been there, you know it Sucks with a capital S. I know a while back I vowed to not go there again. So, I put my noodle toward figuring out how to do that. It takes up a good portion of each day but, not quite the way it used to though and there are more dollar signs associated with my thinking.Now when I say wealthy, I mean have enough money to live life comfortably and be able to enjoy things without having to worry about money. It does not mean you have to be a millionaire.

There are thousands of books, seminars, and tapes on how to make money. It can be overwhelming, but I love a challenge. I have literally read hundreds. There are some very good ones out there and as you can imagine, many that are not worth the paper they are printed on.

My first bit of advice is to depend on yourself. Make sure that you are the one in control and you know what is going on. Don’t be handing your money decisions off to someone else and then complain about the results if you don’t have a clue what is going on. There is too much info on the net and at the library these days to not get up to speed on what going on in any situation.

Is there a big secret to having enough money so that you don’t have to worry about paying your bills and all that entails? Freeing you up so that you can spend your time on things that really matter like doing the things you love with the people that you love? The answer is an emphatic, YES there is.

In studying wealthy people there are a couple of things that I found that stand out. First off, they feel that they deserve it. Not only do the feel it, they know it. They actually feel that it is there due. What a cool concept. Coming from a middle-class family with all of the usual illogical concepts about wealth this was pretty far out.

The second trait that most of them have is that they are fast at making decisions and they don’t go back and second guess themselves later on.  I have written about this in my Books “The 4 Hour Muse” and “Start On Monday“.  I typically see wealthy people make five decisions for every one decision a not so wealthy or successful person makes. The wealthy person grabs 2 pieces of cake and is eating one by the time most people are deciding if they want any.  The wealthy person will often as not in turn sell the other piece back to the slow poke for a profit.

You have to get used to making decisions faster.  In this day in age things are moving at an unheard of pace and you need to step up your game or you will not make money period.

OK, you might not want to start your own business, you may just want to improve your life!  Make a habit of making decisions quickly, learn from the ones that don’t work out and move on.

Think  And Know That You Can Get The Money

Wealthy people approach money as something that they can indeed obtain and they put several hours a week into it and in many cases a whole lot more than that. I mean that most people go to there job and collect a pay check and then go about there business.

Wealthy people spend a good part of the “Free Time” in better educating themselves about becoming wealthier. They don’t for the most part spend the better part of their lives parked in front of the TV.

One of the other things that I have learned is that they make money work for them, they don’t work for the money, which is totally reversed from what people that are not wealthy think.

I am going to give you an abridged version of this information as I don’t want to write a tome here… LOL

Unfortunately, we are not taught how to make money in schools. No matter how much you paid for your education, I doubt that you learned that basics on how to not only build wealth, but to have enough money to not worry about it anymore. And may I ask, how many of you had a great Economics teacher that made learning about Economics fun? How about rate of returns or compounded interest? Thought so.

It Is Not Your Fault…Mostly 

So, don’t feel too bad if you did not have any great teachers on the subject of money, or if you listened to what the poor ignorant folks in the public schools and what your college professors told you and you have not arrived yet. They were just ignorant and did there woefully inadequate best. Just a fyi, the majority of the wealthiest people in the world do not have a college degree of if they do, they made their money in a field unrelated to what their degree is in.  There are a lot of over educated poor people out there.

Here are a few of the secrets to start having more money and to keep getting more of it.

First off you have to make up your mind that it is something that you really want to do. Not just wish it, but actually get to the point whereby you are willing to do something about it every day. Every single day. Not when it is convenient or when you can work it in your schedule.

Write It Down

In the example here, I put in $5,000, but perhaps you are more comfortable with $50 or $500. Just put in what you feel is right.  Once you accomplish this goal, you can always bump it up.

You have to have a plan and write it down. If you don’t write it down, it is just hot air. You need to not only write it down, but you need to look at what your wrote down every day and act on it. That is not to say that this process can’t be fun. In my books I talk about the fact that no one in there right mind would ever think about building a skyscraper without a Blueprint, or go on a trip cross country without a map, yet, they travel along their financial future without a Blueprint or a Map and then wonder why they get lost along the way.

We are going to take baby steps first, and then you will be running before you know it.

Next , you need to convince yourself that you deserve it. I am not sure why exactly, although I do have my theories, but many of us deep down don’t feel that we deserve to have wealth. It has been programmed in to you. Many feel guilty about having money as if for some reason they are not worthy. This is bunk and BS!

Before I go any further, much of what I am going to tell you is contained in the book, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker. I have had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of times and he seems like a nice guy. I suggest you go out and purchase a copy if you are serious about becoming wealthy he does a great job of explaining this.

As far as programming or your Money Blueprint goes, perhaps you heard while you were growing up for instance that you have to work hard to get ahead. That you have to work like a slave. That the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the Filthy Rich and all of these sayings with negative connotations.

Not to get off track but the Rich will get Richer for the most part although recently, that has not been the case in the US but that is a story about a degenerative tax system that rewards laziness and punishes productivity.   This should not be a big WOW for anyone. They have to tools and knowledge to grow more money. Just like any good farmer versus city folk that think hoe is spelled Ho. Arghh That was too easy.

Back to the subject. Did your parents have arguments over money? Guess what your subconscious mind thinks when the subject of money comes up? You got it, bad, bad things. Guess what else happens? Your subconscious in order to protect you will make sure to that you do not get enough money so bad things will not happen to you.

Your subconscious can’t tell reality from make believe. So, while you frontal lobe may know the difference, you subconscious does not. Lets take advantage of that!

You need to believe deep down that is Ok for you to have money and that it is a good thing. How do you reprogram yourself? Much like you learn anything. Repetition of input. You should do this by writing, hearing it, and looking at it. But this may take a bit longer in that you will have to also unlearn what you think you know…LOL

This can be done first by writing it down and secondly by reaffirming it to yourself. Now you may be saying, geeshe this is a bunch of hooey. The only thing that I can say is how has what you have been doing so far working for you?

Look at it this way, if you are not wealthy yet, what have you got to loose? The things that I am going to tell you that you can do will only take about 10 minutes a day and it will only cost you pennies.

First off, and I know some of this stuff may seem a little bit silly but, I can assure you it does work.

Lets get started on the what you need to do. I will ask you to spend some money, that adage that you have to have money to make money is true, but not in the way think.

You need to buy a yellow pad, or a fresh spiral bound notebook and a pen or pencil. Get a string and attach it to the notepad. This way when you have a money idea you can always right it down. I want you to start all the way in the back. This way the latest thing that you do will be on top. Make sense?

Write your name at the top and the date. Write down underneath that, “I deserve to be wealthy.” “I deserve to have enough money to have fun and enjoy life and help those that I love. ” I have a wealthy mind and I am beginning to become more wealthy every day.” ” I am a money magnet.” Now read it aloud 12 times, yes 12.

For those of you that actually do this exercise you might have found it sounds silly and is kind of hard to do. It felt funny, didn’t it? Don’t worry, it will get easier once your subconscious buys into it. It may take awhile to convince it that all of the baloney that it has picked up over the years is exactly that. Do this every day for a month and two or three times a day is even better. You are going to be surprised at the results. If you have a spouse it will greatly help if they buy into this. If not it may be a bit harder and you can just tell them that if they give you any guff, that when you do become wealthy you may just trade up for someone that does appreciate you.

Stay Away From Crap Magnets

You also need to stay away from crap magnets.  (see previous post about them) Stay away from anyone that does not support you in this.  And I do mean anyone, especially relatives.

Now on to some fun stuff. It does not matter how much you make right now. We are going to figure out a budget that will make you money. Here is a plan on divvy up your funds.

If you read Harv’s book and I highly suggest that you do, he puts this exercise toward the back. But I think this is one of the most important steps.

Lets start with a budget. An honest to God right it down on paper budget. You might be saying that I don’t have a whole lot of money to start with or invest. It doesn’t matter, we will show you how to get it too. If you can’t handle what little money you do have now, how do you expect to handle a bunch of it?

I like to start with the best part first. You can do this with jars, shoe boxes, or a spreadsheet and a couple of bank accounts.

Now, what were are going to do is to start putting a portion of your money that you earn to work for you. It doesn’t matter if you have only $50.00 or $500 per month to budget. This program will help you ramp that up very quickly.

You Need A Fun Fund

We will go over a perfect scenario first. 10% of our budget will go for a Frolick fund. And yes, it is exactly that. You will have a fund that you have to spend every month on having Fun and Frolick for yourself.

Why on earth would you start a budget with a Frolick Fund? Well, it serves a couple of purposes. Not the least of which is to keep you and your subconscious motivated to continue with the program. Besides this will give you a taste of the Wealthy Mindset.

You and your subconscious mind works better with rewards and gratification. So, each month you have to go out and spend all of your Frolick fund. Maybe you want to get a massage, go to the movies, buy books, or whatever trips your trigger. But you have to spend all of it each and every month on doing something for you that brings you joy. Ok, you may only have $5 dollars a month at first but, I can guarantee you that once you get into the habit of allocating your money you will find that this amount will grow exponentially.

If you are a couple, this means you may want to do something together or do something separately. As long as it is fun and you spend every penny on you, you are good to go.

10% or $5 dollars goes into your Financial Freedom Account. This money is only to be used to create passive income. You never spend this principal amount, only the income that it produces.

The next portion is 10% that goes for your education account. Use this to educate yourself to make more money. Perhaps you use this to go to college or to take courses on making money or buying books. I know that I have invested a boat load of money attending different classes on different ways to make money. Guess what, it works.

The next portion is 10% and it goes for Long Term Savings for Spending at a later day account.

We have another 10% going for giving. Yes, you can give this to whomever or whatever you want. Now I always mess this part up as when I look around, I can’t think of anyone better to give it to than me…LOL

Let’s say the last 50% goes for overhead and bills and is our necessities account.

So, it should look like this.

10% for your Frolick Fund – you have to spend this on yourself and have fun
10% for passive investments
10% for long term saving for spending later
10% for giving – Even if it is to yourself if there is a deep hole
10% for education
50% for necessities

What does this do for you? Well, have you ever noticed that whatever you mind focuses on it has a tendency to expand and grow? You will be surprised at what starts to happen once you start doing this. You will start seeing opportunity everywhere!

Now where are you going to put all of these hard earned funds. Well, this comes down to where your interests lie.

The Pillow Ratio

What the Pillow Ratio is and why I only invest in small businesses and people

I happen to like the Internet to sell your product. I invest in my own businesses and actually in small niche businesses that I can help scale on the Internet.  I am still amazed that over 65% of the businesses in the US do not have a way to buy their product or service on the Internet. It has a very high Pillow Ratio for me. A pillow ratio is an investment that allows me to sleep well at night. LOL Here are just a few reasons why I only invest in small businesses and people directly.

One, there is no building to burn down, I have insurance in the form of backups of their site. I don’t have to worry about some idiotic CEO fudging the numbers or diddling his secretary and seeing my investment drop 80% in one day. I know what is going on. Generally, there are at least 500,000 new potential customers that go on the Web every day.

My overhead is low and the ” Store”  is open 24 hours a day. If you know what you are doing, you can make a boat load of money. I know I usually get better than a 50% to 100% cash on cash returns or I don’t mess with the deal.

But as you know, you should always consult a qualified professional before you invest your money.  I just play one on TV.  The kicker is to find one that knows his or her rear end from first base.

Your Best Investment

Your best investment without a doubt is the time and money you invest in yourself! Don’t forget that part.

As to some other money making ideas, how about finding a new job or a part-time job where you can expand your skill sets?

The point is that you can do anything to get extra money. Ever tried selling things on Ebay? It still works! Do you have any special skills or hobbies that you could put to use?  Babysitting, mowing lawns, putting together resumes, baking, anything to bring in more money to get you going.

Once you get into the money mindset and you will start having money come your way. And you will see more amazing ways to make money than you ever thought possible.

It takes constant practice and it does take work. I know I get off track every once in a while. But, when I do focus on it guess what?  Money starts coming in out of the wood work!

I know Harv recommends this and I really do as well. If I see change on the ground, even if it is just a penny pick it up and say ” I am a money magnet” and do a little jig. People think that I am crazy but you know what? The universe hears you and starts to send you more of it. Most importantly you own wonderful brain hears you and it starts to go into over drive.

Money finds those that appreciate it and it goes where it is wanted and taken care of. This may sound like mumbo jumbo but I have seen it happen time and time again. Do the same with the money you find in your pants, or your purse. Money will start to come your way, be ready for it, no matter how big or small.

Lets wrap this up and put it in its most basic terms. Start paying attention to and taking care of your money and it will pay attention and take care of you.

Have fun and remember that you deserve to be wealthy and successful and you are a Money Magnet!

Cheers,

Andrew Anderson

For those of you that know the answer, it is easy and for those of you that do not, you really need to pay attention here.

It is simple. The answer is just two words, Social Media…

Because of Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites out there, good news and bad news is going to not only travel fast, but in volumes and with ease like has never been seen before other than perhaps when our grandparents lived in small towns and everyone knew what was going on almost immediately.

With the advent of mobile devices having instant access to the Internet, potential customers and customers alike will be able to instantly find out if you are worth spending money on.  And if you suck at customer service, you will not survive period.

Those businesses that do have great customer service, will thrive and wipe out their competition in a relatively short period of time as their competition dies on the vine wondering what the hell happened to all of their customers.

This is especially true for Brick and Mortar companies. And for those those that still don’t have a decent Website or a Social Media game plan, they are going to be history in short order.

While it is true that you may end up facing some undo pressure from the customer, who let’s all just say it out loud, is an Asshole from Hell when they go on a rant, most smart customers will recognize them for what they are and they will be ostracized and their opinions will not be held in high regard.

So, if you have not gotten off your duff and gotten your Social Media program together, then you really need to get your act together and quickly and beef up your customer service. Because good, bad, or indifferent, news really is going to travel like lightning and you need to keep an handle on what is being said about you and your company and respond to it and fast.

But the best defense is truly a good offense and that is simply treat your customers well!  If you have not seen this yet, here is a 5 minute introduction to Twitter.

Cheers,
Andrew

Tim Ferriss And The 4- Hour Body. How It Can Teach You To Succeed In Business And Bed

I will say this right up front. I have been a big fan of Tim’s ever since he came out with his first best selling book “The 4 Hour Workweek”. After reading it all in one day, it inspired me to change my business focus forever and has lead me to some interesting twists in my life. Oh yea, it has also made me money.

If you have not read it, go to the library or better yet, go online and buy the latest version now.

To paraphrase and give you the Cliff Note’s version, he basically turns upside down most of the popularly accepted wisdom about work and starting and running your own business. And he shows you how to drastically increase your productivity and hence income while working a whole lot less.

Why Butter And Ribeyes Are Good And Orange Juice Is Bad

The 4-Hour Body does the same for your body and getting in shape. He blows way 90% of the conventional wisdom and proves why it is wrong. Things like why “not” eating butter is unhealthy and why you should, to eating way more protein like Ribeyes and why it is good for you and why the food Pyramid that is widely accepted will more than likely make you fat and unhealthy. Plus, how a few inexpensive supplements can stop Diabetes and High Cholesterol in their tracks and why if you do have high Cholesterol you want to stay away from Orange Juice.

Then you have to throw in how working out as little as 4 hours a month doing the right type of exercise can in fact make you healthier than if you worked out an hour a day, 5 days a week.

And that is just for starters. You also have to throw in there how to obtain a 15 minute female orgasm. Now the last one should be common knowledge but sadly, it apparently is not.

Tim covers a lot of ground in his latest book.

Which brings me up to how “The 4- Hour Body” and Tim Ferriss can help your business.

For my regular readers you already know this, but it is worth repeating. 90% of the accepted knowledge and wisdom that is written about how to succeed in Business in Magazines, Online Courses, and most especially in Colleges is plain and utter junk and worthless. Frankly most of it is just plain Bull Shit really and truly.

Tim points out the same thing about Health and Fitness Magazines, Exercise Courses and even what you hear from most Doctors and then he goes on to explain why and how you can verify this for yourself.

So, just imagine if you could only do about 20% of the work you do now and yet get 90% of the same results or perhaps even 120%? Well not only is it possible, but there are thousands of people already doing it every day.

One of the hardest things to do is to accept that fact that at least 80% of what you know about business is just wrong. Then the other hard thing is to take the new ideas and implement them.

The thing is that your mind is going to rebel at this for the most part. Not only that, everyone around you is going to tell you that you are nuts and give you crap about it too. That is unless of course you find some like minded people to give you some support.

If you are ready to accept the fact that most of what you know is junk and that the faster your get it out of your head, then you are going to like what I have for you in the coming weeks. I am going to start ripping apart the conventional wisdom that is more than likely keeping you from succeeding and being as successful as you should be.

I will be doing some short videos that are going to blow up the common misconceptions about running a profitable business online that you can start using right away.

Enjoy your New Year and get ready to make 2011 your most successful year ever!

Oh, and by the way. I started “The 4-Hour Body” about 10 days ago and the results so far? Lost 8 lbs or fat and gained 8 lbs of muscle. How is that? Plus I am eating like a horse and tomorrow, I will probably have a big Milkshake, eat some cake, have French Toast slathered in Butter and Syrup plus, eat whatever else my taste buds desire and will still lose weight. My advice is to get the book and find out how I am doing it.

I will leave you with a little known Business success secret. If you want to make more money, get in shape, have more sex and open your mind to doing things differently.

Here is one of my favorite quotes. Tim uses it in his book and it is from William Gibson. If you are a Sci-fi fan, you will recognize it.

The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.

I am going to show you how to make sure it is distributed to you if you want it.

Cheers,
Andrew Anderson

PS and as you can tell, my editor is on vacation….  Plus if you have any questions, please drop me a line!

Here is a picture of Glenn and Tim Ferriss and Tim’s Launch of The 4-Hour Body which just made #1 on the New York Time’s best seller list. That is Glenn on the right and Tim Ferriss on the left of course.  I am following Tim’s book and it is awesome by the way. Lost about 10 pounds of fat and gained over 5 pounds of muscle in a little over one week.

Hope you enjoy the Interview. There is some great information in here. Just click on the arrow below to get started or you can download the MP3 for later.

Here is a link to Download the MP3 of the Interview Here.

Here is a link to Glenn’s Non-Profit  Inner Flame

Here is the transcript of the Interview.

Andrew Anderson: … Andrew Anderson and I have the pleasure today to interview a gentleman from across the pond in the UK, named Glenn Bridges. Glenn, how are you doing today?

Glenn Bridges: I’m doing exceptionally well. Andrew, after a couple of minor hiccups, I’m doing very well.

Andrew Anderson: Yeah. The subject for today’s interview is basically how a good website can give you a competitive edge even against the largest of multinational companies. And we wanna go over some of the things that you should and shouldn’t do to make sure that your website is useful, that you could actually make money and be profitable from which I would dare to say that most people want to do that. Although by some of the websites you and I have discussed recently, you’ve got to wonder that if they’re not trying to drive people away at times. Glenn, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are, and what you want, etc, etc,?

Glenn Bridges: Well, I’ve had a very interesting couple of years. The quick answer to that is I left college at 18 after studying English Language and Literature Music. Music technology, IT in Psychology, and decided I didn’t wanna go down the typical route of going to university. It just didn’t appeal to me. And I also didn’t wanna get a job. So I did, I fell into kind of like the passion and interest of mine, which I set up as a business. And at that time it was called… what was it called? Right Now, that’s what it was called. And I say that because we shortly changed the name to something called interflame. And the premise was, we would work with young people, helping them get access to personal __ of materials by running courses, some of the stuff that I’ve had access to and have helped me to make amazing changes in my life. Other things like, becoming an LP practitioner and one of those Tony Robbins courses, and lots of other __ around that and spent some thousands of thousands of pounds in my early teens. That sort of stuff

So we set up and again, everyone was saying it was gonna fail and telling us the experts in the area you know, those sorts of ducks that like to peck at you and tell you that you’re…

Andrew Anderson: There’s certainly a big flock of those out there.

Glenn Bridges: Yeah, yeah. And very often, their opinion is just their opinion. And it’s nothing more than that. So we took the lonely road if you will and went against the grain and set something up which has been incredibly successful. It’s been running for over two years now. Just recently, we won a National awarded over 8000 organizations that work with the people. We came number one. And we had some pretty big sponsors. __ Global Companies sponsored us. People like nationwide. She’s a banker in the UK if anyone is listening outside of here as well as ____, you can Google. As well as a number of very successful entrepreneurs, adventurous mountaineers. And basically, how I kind of got on to this interesting area, I might find it fascinating on a website design optimization, online marketing. Whatever you wanna talk about. What we’re basically talking about is how you create something which people like and love and when exchanged the value of the cash is because I realized that to do what I want to do, I need to be earning an income from elsewhere which wasn’t reliant on the hours I put into things. And let’s start with what we call, The 4-Hour Work Week, which I absolutely love. I’m a huge, huge fan of Tim Ferriss. And…

Andrew Anderson: And I wanna interject. That’s how we actually end up meeting because we were both fans of it.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. Yes. It was very ___ wasn’t it, Andrew?

Andrew Anderson: Yes, it was.

Glenn Bridges: It was… I supposed you left and I actually thought ___. He’s not gonna reply or he’s not gonna be interested but I thought I might give it a go.

Andrew Anderson: Lo and behold, here we are.

Glenn Bridges: it’s a good lesson to anyone out there that you should always never put the books and the barriers inside your own head before actually giving it a go.

Basically, I started with a product which was then an information product which was about helping, it’s all about ____ and how, what you needed, some of the legal stuff that you needed to create digital products and physical products. And I got that because I was working with some __ entrepreneurs at the time. I was studying them and modeling them. And this time I was getting all the information from them when I was building a web map which we eventually took to Google and show them and say, this is what we want to do. And we went for eleven rounds of investment and saw eleven different investors. And unfortunately, we ended up pulling on it just because the space became so competitive and we were really, our USP had really kind of fallen out of it. So we decided the best thing to do was actually to…

Andrew Anderson: Can you stop a minute? Can you explain what a USP is?

Glenn Bridges: Oh, sorry Andrew. A Unique Selling Proposition. Or basically… sorry, I apologize there.

Andrew Anderson: We just had a lot of people that don’t have any idea what a USP is. And it’s basically the thing that’s gonna make you money and make you stand out in the market. What do you say?

Glenn Bridges: I’d say, yeah. It’s the single point of difference. And we went from proposition that we weren’t gonna be better than everyone else. We’re gonna be just different and I think that’s what I learned about marketing is, you don’t have to be the fastest, quickest, cheapest. And in fact, that’s not always a good thing. In fact, a lot of times that you ___ value what you’re doing by kind of trying to keep up with that constant rat race. Coz there’s always someone that will sacrifice cheaper profit margins. There’s always somebody that will just focus on being faster than you. Or is if you don’t ___, you’ll be different. And we basically lost our point of difference. And so, we decided it’s best to do other things. And I started to come back to some of the stuff I’ve been following up on. I’ve always had a lot of people pitching me products and ideas and business models. And it’s just kind of a never-ending thing. I mean, you must get tired all the time Andrew with kind of what your connections and what you do.

Andrew Anderson: Yes.

Glenn Bridges: I can imagine.

Andrew Anderson: There’s a bazillion out there but very few that are actually worthwhile.

Glenn Bridges: Yeah, there are. And for me, it’s a very worthwhile in terms of just products that I’m so passionate about or so believe in so much. That’s why I’m so lucky about this stuff ______ I really, really believe in what it sets out to achieve and I’m passionate about kind of helping people to do that. So the 4-hour work has kind of been my single biggest kind of success in the sense of helping me to create passive income and develop that and learn about the lifestyle design of things and developing the lifestyle that you want to create. But also, it’s been my biggest pain because what Tim talks about is very achievable but through some of the chores and the mediums and the strategies that he suggests, it actually __ people to spend a lot more money, time and be a lot more frustrated about the way they go about things.

Andrew Anderson: Can I stop you for one second? For those of you who aren’t familiar with Tim Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Work Week, basically what his theory or what he has people put in practice is that you set up a business so that runs virtually and that you spend no more than four hours a week actually “working.” How’s that for a synopsis?

Glenn Bridges: That’s pretty much it. He goes on to say that The 4-Hour Work Week is kind of non-existing because very often he works more than that but then some weeks, he won’t work at all, even for months. But yeah, it’s pretty much, it’s the idea here of having a low input, low time input business, which you get maximum cash out. You can leverage that difference. So, minimum time in, maximum cash out. And he has a very systematic way of going about creating products and strategies for selling them. And I think everyone should read it coz it’s the most brilliant ten thousand fee overview into getting started online, whether you’re gonna bring an existing business online or whether you want to create your first business online or you wanna sell one of those products, or you wanna create your own products, it’s the best one to go to. And I know people that have developed their own products and just started on the 4-Hour Work Week. I know people who have taken existing ____ businesses online. I think The 4-Hour Work Week, alongside with Dr. Robert Cialdini’s influence, is the two most essential books that people should read if they wanna get started online. Would you agree, Andrew?

Andrew Anderson: Yeah. I could throw a couple more in but I’ll put them at the end of the interview. I do wanna go through some of the meat and potatoes. So you’ve been frustrated basically, from our previous conversations in actually following through and doing what Tim Ferriss says because it’s really easy to talk about in theory, but when you start getting into it, I know there’s technical hurdles and all kinds of other things that people run into especially if they’re not technically savvy.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. The single biggest assumption I made was incorrect. I though the hardest part of it would be creating the products. Actually, what I’ve realized is that the products are the easiest part. And in fact, Andrew, one of the things that we’ll be doing, I’ll be running later on this month or this January is actually a webinar on product creation strategies. Creating a product is so easy. And if you don’t wanna create one, you can sell someone else’s. There’s so many ways to go about doing that. The single biggest difficult part of it is the technical side of things. And the single biggest part is trying to get actually everything set up online to go into rock and roll. That’s what I’ve found. And that’s what I’m speaking to so many 4-hour weekers, people that are building an online business. That’s what I know they found as well. So that’s what I was kind of point out to people in the book is, putting in labels is a process of doing things. But things have moved on quite a bit. The book was written in, was it 2007?

Andrew Anderson: 2007 was the first version, yeah. And I totally agree. Things have dramatically changed.

Glenn Bridges: Yeah. And I think it’s just frustrating coz Tim says, do this, this. Very specific, clear actions. And that’s brilliant, brilliant that he’s provided that but the problem is with that is actually, a lot of those methods are outdated and you can’t go __ in the same way.

Andrew Anderson: Nope, you can’t. Let’s go into some specifics that people may not hear again. I don’t wanna get them, I love people that aren’t technically savvy and I’m sure we’ve got a lot of listeners around the block for a while. But let’s go, why don’t we go through three or four things that people can go do today to improve their website to make more money, to make them happier, and etc, etc. so why don’t we dive into that? What would you say the five key things are that people need to do with a website? Or to look out for.

Glenn Bridges: Wow. That’s a good thing. I mean, it’s a difficult question to answer coz it depends what people are doing and what market they’re in, and what angle they come out. They create their own products so the people’s products, it’s a different one to start with. But I think the first single biggest thing that you… there’s a couple of things. I think I’ll start with, the first thing I’d start with is you really need to have it very, very clear in your mind what benefit you’re adding to somebody who’s gonna buy this product. What value are you offering? You need to be very clear about how that relates to people’s emotions and the benefits and the solutions that you’re providing. So the question I’d like to ask is, what is it that if I imagine my mind going forward once this person has bought, used, or continues to use his product, when is the very end of that experience? If they, once they’ve completed that program or once they bought that, they’ve gone through that bottle or to the bottom of that box, what have they done? What is gonna be the end result that you are going to deliver? Or is at least you hope or wants to deliver to the best of your ability. What’s the end result? And how can you sell it to someone? So I think it’s really about getting clear because once you have that, I think if you really know in your heart of hearts what that thing is, you can really acutely describe it to someone than putting on a website. It’s actually very easy because you can provide a video of you doing it or a clip of the end result. Or you can provide a reading, like cutting and pasting message in your headline. So I’d say that’s the number one thing you gotta get started.

The number two, second thing is definitely has to be credibility and trust because this stuff if sort of going on unconsciously. This stuff is happening without you really knowing about it and it’s like, I think you’ve __ a couple of times, Andrew. You have to accumulate people’s trust because if you think of any relationship and your ability to persuade or influence someone whether it was a sales process or a coaching environment, or that was with your loved one, within a work environment, whether that was in any environment, people only change or people only make, take an action that you want them to do, or they want to take when they trust who they think they’re buying that from. So I think you need to do that. And to do that, I think it’s important that you have a good looking site design with good graphics and a good layout because that, first of all shows you’ve made an investment in your business and people wanna buy something they see that they’ve made an investment. The example I give to many people was, if I turned up in a pair of, if you turned up to a Ferrari showroom and you’re gonna buy that car that you wanted to buy your whole life, and I turned up in ripped jeans and a greasy t-shirt, you’d be suspicious. You’d be fearful. You’d be wondering what was up with the situation.

Andrew Anderson: If I was the buyer.

Glenn Bridges: Yeah, if you were the buyer. Right. Because you’re expecting this, not only to appear the perfect car you’re buying but an experience which is full of pride, excitement depending on your own perspective on these things. You’d be going with those emotions. And so, once you have that, if you complete ___, it’d be… some of you might be thinking, something’s wrong here. So that’s what you have to get across with good site layout, good graphics and having those sorts of things in place.

Andrew Anderson: Let’s stop there because I don’t think people will, we’re throwing that term out there but I don’t think most people know what that is. And so, let me throw a couple of things out there and I know we’re on agreement on this.

Good site layout means that, hey, it’s centered in the screen, it doesn’t have ugly colors. Would that be one of them?

Glenn Bridges: Yeah. Absolutely.

Andrew Anderson: Also… and I know you just had this experience and if you wanna throw the name in there, you can now. But not being able to contact the site owner to ask them questions, phone number, easy email address, maybe instant messaging, etc, etc.

Glenn Bridges: I wanna see personally any site that is doing sales by phone. I wanna see the number in the top right hand corner or somewhere accessible like that on every page consistently. I do not want to search for that. So many people do not. I wanna give this example coz it’s really irritated me and I hate it. And I want people to learn from it.

I recently just booked a hotel in London at an event I’m speaking this weekend where I’m gonna be sharing with people more of this content. And I went to book into the hotel and they’ve been organized. They’ve been really lovely. That, hey, Glenn. We’re really glad you’re coming to town. We’re really grateful you gonna take some time out. One of the things I’ve done for you is I’ve set you up for that really nice, big chunky discount off of your room. So the last __, he’s given me a bigger room and he’s given me ___. All we need to do is call the hotel. So that seems like a pretty __proposition for anybody, right? You’d think.

Andrew Anderson: You would think. Yes.

Glenn Bridges: You’d think. So anyway, I go into this site. And first of all, I __ into Google, like most people do. If you haven’t heard of Google, you’re in for a treat. So I put in and nothing came out. And I had to search through that to like listing 8 or 9 or whatever. And I managed to find it. So __ the page, got park in, get to them. I search on the site. I’m __ at the site for five, seven, eight minutes. Now, if by that time, if you haven’t got normally what you want at a website, that person would be that they won’t hang around that long unless they’re absolutely desperate for what you’ve got to offer and your site seems to have an inkling there provided. People just don’t do that. So anyway, I managed to find it. And it had a contact us button, which was at the bottom of the page. And the page was pretty long, not too long for the __ site but pretty long. And it was about a size font 7. So it’s a tiny font in light gray against a light gray button in the bottom right hand corner. Now, that’s somebody who screams accessibility, right Andrew?

Andrew Anderson: Yes, yes.

Glenn Bridges: So I clicked on it. I go through and they’ve got international numbers. Haven’t got UK number, haven’t got even the number for the specific hotel I want to go into. And then they have the drop down file with the classic, you’re gonna love this, Andrew coz I know it’s something you mentioned on your blog __21.com a few times, is I have to scroll through the listing of every country starting from Afghanistan all through the UK.

Andrew Anderson: Lots of customers coming from Afghanistan, I’m sure.

Glenn Bridges: Of course. And I’m full ___ from Afghanistan all the time. And so, I scroll through, by the way I’m on a co.uk site so they could have it set up to a co.uk site to go through to UK. But anyway, I call the number. They’ve got three numbers. I called all the three numbers, didn’t get anything. I had to call through to the USA. They gave me another number. So I called the USA on my personal phone. It cost my mobile phone, it cost me __ so my home phone _____. I have to call back coz that number didn’t work. And finally, the USA managed to route me through to the UK. I then spent five minutes with the phone ringing. I have to get through to somebody who takes my sale and finally gets through.

Andrew Anderson: How long did this take you?

Glenn Bridges: This actually took me an hour and a half today.

Andrew Anderson: What’s the website again? Is it park…?

Glenn Bridges: I think it’s parkinn.co.uk. I can’t bring it up. I actually…

Andrew Anderson: Yeah, go ahead.

Glenn Bridges: It’s parkinn.co.uk. And you wanna find…

Andrew Anderson: Yeah, this is a great example. So you can see what not to do. And I think that’s as important as finding out what to do. I would venture to say this is probably causing them tens of thousands of dollars every month. Coz I’m sure that it’s more than a couple of pounds per evening to stay there.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. I mean, it’s _____ but it’s pretty pricey which we’re really glad to get a good chunk of change of it. But you know, it’s just simple things like that. One of the things that… I got a friend that runs a security company. She sold her company. But they’ve got a number of websites. And the first thing you get them to do is just put the number in big red text in big font in the right hand corner. It’s just simple stuff like that because if you’re taking phone orders, make it accessible to people. For me, I’m just sort of, I come from a strategy that I want to make money.

Andrew Anderson: Yeah, what’s up with that?

Glenn Bridges: What’s up with that?

Andrew Anderson: You’re pretty radical. For sure, people are really gonna get that concept though.

Glenn Bridges: I’m not sure, Andrew. It’s a hard pill to swallow. And one of the things that I just scream at people is, make it easy for people to contact you. In fact, one of the other things I’d say on coming back to this applying things is, the third thing, which I most see for people online is they put loads of call to actions on a splash page. And the splash page is nothing more than the page you land on, you can see within your browser from wherever destination you come from, whether that’s Google, or you clicked on an ad, or you can send a link in an email or you’re going on Facebook. Whatever. And they fill the page with call to actions and that’s just basically a __.it’s just basically an action that you want someone to take. So it’s like a button or a link to click or fill a form ___ there or whatever. Something that you want someone to do. So they have loads of buttons and they have loads of like opt-in forms and have loads of advertisements going crazy around the site. They have multiple ___ but then, when it comes to contacts, they have ___. They have like a contact us in email. And we said Andrew, it’s about making it successful and easy for your customers so you got at least __ which is phone if you’re gonna do phone orders. Or at least you got like a customer service line if it’s appropriate for your business. It’s not always necessary but it’s great to have. Email addresses, multiple email addresses so you can have __ to organize. If it’s possible, IM, instant messenger. You got a lot of this text boxes pop up and you can talk to someone…

Andrew Anderson: And there’s free services for that now that make it so easy it’s not even funny. And also Skype numbers too. I think you and I agree on that. If you don’t know what Skype is, you need to get on it. Now or yesterday if you wanna be on business. Right now, we’re doing this call on Skype and there are 23,573,232 people online using Skype right now. So if you wonder how, whether it’s acceptable or what it is. And you’re in London in the UK and I’m in the United States and this conversation is being recorded on it and it sounds crystal clear.

Glenn Bridges: It does. It does.

Andrew Anderson: And it’s free. It is free.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. And in fact, Andrew, I looked at my phone bill just this month, my mobile phone, my cellphone and I realized that I had, I called maybe five or four numbers and those were all girls. They were all girls.

Andrew Anderson: Clients, of course.

Glenn Bridges: Yeah, of course. Coz that’s proper market research when you understand who you’re calling. And I realized that do 95, 97% of what I do on Skype. And it is the best way to do it because for those people using it, you can do what is called a screenshot so you can basically show other people what you see on your screen and they could do the same. And you’ve got a choice, it’s not like you could remain privy to her. You can show it to her but if you want to, it can make things so much easier. And you got the web at hand. It’s just so helpful.

Andrew Anderson: It is. And you can do video calls too.

Glenn Bridges: Yes, absolutely.

Andrew Anderson: I guess we probably… I’m sure we talked for a couple of hours on this. What other salient points I mean, other than just making it… and it’s obviously not obvious because I would say, 90% of the sites do not have the contact information correctly and they don’t give you the ability to purchase either. You should be able to, you wanna buy it, you should be able to, from the very first page within one or two clicks, you should be able to figure out how to buy whatever it is that you’re selling.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. I think you’re right on that, Andrew in terms of it. I think to be honest, there’s so many, the elements that we could really pick upon. There’s a couple of, ones I’m really keen of the moment, I’m telling everybody about and you’re probably tired or hearing it but for me, I’m really sick of people constantly having their social media stuff, clogging up the website because most of the time you are, people struggle to generate traffic. They struggle to get traffic to their site. It’s an issue for a lot of people. And if you don’t struggle with it, you always want more of it. It’s more targeted and you want it to stay longer on your site and do all these different things with it. And traffic by the way is just people that are searching for your site or coming to your site and going around it. Visitors or users, these are people that __ are looking at your site. Now, we always put effort into it. And then, immediately like I say, people on the splash page, the first thing they __ upon, this huge big buttons that say, follow me on Twitter, become a friend on Facebook, __ my fan page and look at my LinkdIn profile. And by the way, have you looked at my YouTube channel? And have you looked at my Friendster? And they have this huge list. And so what you’re doing, is you’re just taking, you attempt to get people to your site only to send them back up to some other site and it just to me seems strikingly obvious that you would not do that. So I would say, when you do this stuff, be conscious of where you’re placing it. I personally think that the best place to put your social media stuff is on the page, on the bottom of what’s called a footer, at the bottom of your page or to sort of in the middle way down on the right hand side of your site. I think somewhere those two places are good. You got blog posts, have it at the end of the post. _ they’ve completed the action. They’ve read the blog or they’ve clicked through that link, then get them to share it. Don’t send them off. I think that, for me it’s ___. Sorry?

Andrew Anderson: A peeve, apparently.

Glenn Bridges: Yeah, I know. I get passionate about it. I’m just, for me, it’s so strikingly ___ is that people put so much time into it and then they just fall down. The final thing I guess I’ll just say is, the video is not utilized enough.

Andrew Anderson: And that’s amazing. When I… I truly agree with you on that.

Glenn Bridges: It doesn’t always have to be you either.

Andrew Anderson: It could be just screenshots.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. One of the things we did with a __ site and we need to do some work on that. I say and listen, my business partner is very kind of closed about wanting to do anything with it coz he’s got very specific ideas. But I need to _____. One of the things we have definitely done with it is work on the first part page of the site and you actually see a video from those people from UK ____ Rachel __. She’s a very successful and famous entrepreneur in the UK. And she’s telling us, she’s on the front video for three minutes telling us how great Interflame is and how she’s involved with what she does. And if there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind about who we’re doing with, we’ve got __ by associations that is incredibly cool and successful entrepreneur. And I didn’t have to sit in front of the camera. I didn’t have to do that. She’s done it all for us. She really sells the site. So simple things like that could make a huge difference.

Andrew Anderson: I wanna bring up, perhaps for the last point here something for people who are following the 4-Hour Work Week or even people who are starting their business, and it was the fact that a lot of people, and I’ve ran into this. I know you and I, you have well have as well the fact that they have a great product or service and then they go through when they get their website up and it doesn’t get the sales that they think that they expect. And they think it’s the product or the service when the point in fact, it’s the website that sucks. It’s not the product or service. And it’s such a key component in being successful in business because let’s face this, as Bill Gates said, if you’re not online, you’re not in business these days. And that’s, it’s becoming more and more true everyday. So can you kind of address that and give us the whole wrap up on it?

Glenn Bridges: Wow, yeah. You’re dead on. In fact, I was just with ___ Andrew which is with somebody who we worked with. ___ called Sean who has just got his products launching in for the ___ market. And got these big guys, these heavyweights ___ really quickly and do some ridiculous stuff. Just type it __to YouTube. It’s fun to watch. And he is a perfect example because he said to me, my product hasn’t really selled any. Sold one or two. And it was really exciting. One sale. But the system was not growing. And what not. And just really doubting his own product. And what I see is so many people that have really good, great business ideas and products and models. It’s not always the product but the business that they wanted to do is fantastic. But the way they deliver it, they doubt what they’re doing because… the way I look at it, marketing is just communication and influence. You’re communicating an idea and then there’s a side of that which you’re influencing people to basically say, to make it easier for them to buy stuff coz they’ve made up a decision in their mind to wanna buy this. So they’ve got a problem and then you’re just using your own influence to persuade them why you have the best opportunity to solve that problem. And there’s just so many peel that are stuck. If you don’t believe me, just go on to the 4-Hour ­__ form, and just look at how many people say what you think of my site. What do you think of my product? What do you think of this? I’ve not seen many sales. And you look at them. And what they’ve got is, they’ve got a good market, they’ve got a good product but the vehicle they’re using to test them is failing. And in fact, I was on a conference call with ____ a month or two ago before the book launch of his new book, The 4-Hour Buddy. And people were saying, why do so many people fail with their ­­­____? And he said it was __ down to testing. He said it was all about the testing in the sense that people have good products in most cases but they weren’t able to communicate that and get that across. And he didn’t say it was the vehicle they were using but I believe he was hinting at it. And in my experience, it is down to that. And I know you had exactly the same…

Andrew Anderson: It’s the website. Website will make you or break you. And I wanna throw something else out there and maybe you’ll agree with me. I have never seen a super, super successful business run on a free website. It just will not happen. And if you are successful, if you get your act together and get together a good website, you can be five, ten, a hundred times more successful and get more sales by having a well put together website.

Glenn Bridges: It comes back to the ___ idea I gave earlier that whether you are selling something or if you want someone to do anything. If they see that it’s a free site and they can see that little logo at the bottom that says, this is a free website built by X or they know it because they’ve used it. It’s such a popular, well-known, free brand, people just don’t want to put any energy into it. And people, the way I look at it is that, people like you to make decisions for them because it takes so much energy and thought process to make a decision that most people are terrible at making them. If you have the entrepreneur mindset, you’re only very good and quick and fast at doing that. But some people would do and they just want you to present something that is well put together and takes away all of their objections and just say, hey, this is what I’ve got to offer. Now, if you put a doubt in someone’s mind and say, hey, here’s my product for fifty pounds or fifty dollars, or five dollars or five hundred dollars. And then they see you’ve got a free site? Well, that puts a doubt because if you’re making money, why would you not pay for that site? And if it’s not a good enough ___, why is it not invested? You don’t believe in your product? Is it not valued? Does it not sell? All these doubts __ someone and the thing is, and I’m sure you’d agree with me, Andrew is that this stuff happens so quickly in such an unconscious level that people, they are putting these sites together, they don’t even think about it. I think all that is just nothing when in fact, it’s happening in your customer’s mind and something that they’re not even aware of. They cannot even describe it to you. They just get an uneasy feeling. Some people will. Some people will say, I didn’t buy from your site because it’s a free site. Most of the time, the people will go, I don’t know. I just had this uncomfortable feeling. Or I just didn’t want to. I went to this other site and I used it there. So you can’t be using free sites. And to be honest with you, with the stuff that’s coming along, you can get a site out there that’s rocking it and doing really well and pumps out cash day in, day out.

Andrew Anderson: Yeah. And if people were gonna do that and I mean, as far as the baseline goes, there’s a bunch of different types of sites and I don’t wanna confuse people but there’s Joomla, and ___, and WordPress. If you’re gonna do anything out there, wouldn’t you agree that WordPress is the only option for people these days or the smart option that’s the least expensive?

Glenn Bridges: Yeah, absolutely. I think I’ve signed up to about in the past two years, thirteen or fifteen different services both paid and free. And that probably doesn’t sound a lot to most people. It might be a huge amount to some people but I’ve pretty much used all of them just to see what’s available. And WordPress has to be where it’s at. It’s moved, for anyone who says it was just a blogging platform, it’s not. It’s CMS. It’s a Content Management System. Everybody __ will tell you that. Everybody that’s running successful businesses online will tell you that. The people that will tell you it’s a blogging system and not CMS, are the people not making money with it. So just ignore that. Coz I hate that. Oh, it’s just a blogging ___. No, it’s not. It’s CMS. It’s Content. And what ___ is it’s a content management system and that’s any content that you want to put online, you wanna manage it. And sorry to tear away a little, Andrew but I think a lot of people, I see this as a pitfall for a lot of people is that, they don’t have their own concept management system and they just like have a website designer or they outsource it. And to any time they wanna make even the smallest of changes, they just wanna __ that to you ___ or put an exclamation mark in. they have to then pay someone or they have to get on the phone or have to email someone to update it. And if you’ve ever done that, that is just a pain. It’s just a drain.

Andrew Anderson: And you know what? When we agreed to do this interview, we should’ve set up a page where they can get more information on this. But I think maybe we can use the one page that you’re gonna use this weekend at your speaking event. Do you think it’s a good idea to give that out or should we do something else? And we’re not trying to sell you anything here. Just wanna give you the benefit of the experience that Glenn has and get them on the webinar that you’re gonna put in this January.

Glenn Bridges: Absolutely. Absolutely. We got some webinars coming up. Actually, a series of webinars. We got two or three lined up, Andrew. And that’s gonna be covering stuff like, how you built a successful profit website, how you generate traffic and all that sort of different things to it. We can definitely do that.

Andrew Anderson: Why don’t you go ahead and give them the URL and then I’ll do it in American accent in case they can’t understand the wonderful accent you have.

Glenn Bridges: Oh, you put me on the spot now coz I need to find that URL.

Andrew Anderson: It is www… And if you don’t know that by now, ___ you really should be on this call. But it’s launch as in launch a rocket and then brain as in what’s inside your head. Launchbrain.com/private. So it’s launchbrain.com/private. And there’s a sign up form, just put your email in there and we’ll send you out the info for the upcoming webinars. And there’ll be tons of free content in there. This is not gonna be a sales fest at all. I’m just sick and tired of a lot of the gurus out there that they con people into signing up for something and it ends up becoming nothing but a pitch fest and there’s no real value there. And I’m just sick of it. We’ve got the chance to really change people’s lives. Just the information that you and I talked about today, I don’t really see it being spoken about on the web anywhere. And it’s a shame because it can really make a difference from someone being successful, following their dreams, and having a wonderful life and not. It’s pretty serious stuff.

Glenn Bridges: It is. I’d really encourage everyone just to go to that website. Thanks for remembering what it is. There’s so many websites __ of my head, it’s important to ____ there. I think you’re absolutely right, Andrew. It’s provided there the event I’m going to and I’m speaking at tomorrow.

Andrew Anderson: And today is what, December 10^th so that everybody knows. So that’ll be December 11^th, 2010, right?

Glenn Bridges: Yep. Absolutely. ____ in the future. Hello, future ___. We know I’m providing an hour and plus web content for free and then no pitch, I’m not selling a single thing and then we’re throwing in some webinar for you just because it’s important to get this out there. I think you’re right, Andrew. There are so many people that are, I don’t see them talking about it. And sometimes that concerns me coz I think, well, am I missing something? The fact that no one talks about it, I think that there’s so many people that are profiting off of people’s ignorance. And there are website builders out there that are ___ they can just put something out there and send it and hope it works. And there’s that good old phrase goes, you don’t know what you don’t know. And you don’t know that.

Andrew Anderson: Where are you speaking tomorrow?

Glenn Bridges: I’m speaking at the Entrepreneur’s Boot Camp Xmas Bash. That’s the most snappiest name I’ve come across.

Andrew Anderson: Wow. Ok.

Glenn Bridges: I’m gonna ___.

Andrew Anderson: And where is it?

Glenn Bridges: It’s at ___.

Andrew Anderson: Don’t try and call them.

Glenn Bridges: You don’t really ever wanna come to this man. Don’t do it.

Andrew Anderson: You wanna come to the event but you may not wanna stay there. And then what time does it start?

Glenn Bridges: It started today at nine. And it runs for about nine till six daily. Starts today, tomorrow and on Sunday. So they got some people speaking but you’ve definitely heard of people like Reed ___, _____, Johnny G., Nick James, the list goes on. There’s about thirty…

Andrew Anderson: Glenn Bridges?

Glenn Bridges: Oh, yeah. And you definitely know who I am now.

Andrew Anderson: What time are you speaking again or where is it. I ___ to repeat it.

Glenn Bridges: I’m speaking at 6 pm tomorrow.

Andrew Anderson: So everyone’s got a chance to stop off a pint before they come see you. And that’s a civil time.

Glenn Bridges: It is. It’s a civil time. And I’m gonna be at the bar afterwards with my gorgeous girlfriend, Amy and a couple of her friends. So if you wanna come along and join me, I’d love to buy you a non-alcoholic beverage.

Andrew Anderson: Glenn, listen. I really appreciate the interview. This is long overdue. And we’ll have to pop off and do a couple more on this because it just got my mind going and on so many different fronts on this. And the basics are just too hard to find and there’s no reason for, because it’s just simple. Not that making money online is super duper easy, but it’s not as hard as everyone makes it out to be either.

Glenn Bridges: And the most important thing is, if you’re not covering those basics, just ___ stuff you’ve learned, you’re sabotaging yourself from the start. So it’s important out there for fundamentals.

Andrew Anderson: Yep. You’re shooting yourself in the foot. I know you gotta go get ready. Glenn, I appreciate the interview here. And hopefully everyone else got some content out of it. We’ll do another one shortly. And break a leg tomorrow on your presentation. I’m sure there will be some great stuff. And everyone, listen to this. If you can get a chance to… Now, this is in London, correct?

Glenn Bridges: This is in London, yes.

Andrew Anderson: I forgot to put it out there. It’s in London, England, December 11^th at the park in which you can’t call but Glenn will be speaking at 6 pm London time. And go check him out and afterwards he will buy you a non-alcoholic beverage if you’re nice to him. And what is really smart, I would buy him an alcoholic beverage and pump his brain because you’re not gonna be able to pay him enough to get the information that he’s got stuck in __ that we haven’t even gone over yet. Thanks a lot. I appreciate this and we’ll chat with you soon.

Glenn Bridges: Thank you so much, Andrew. And best luck to everyone on the call.

Andrew Anderson: Thank you. Bye.

Glenn Bridges: Bye.

"Coming up with new ideas is easy. It is letting go of the old ones and actually using the new ones that is tough" Easy Anderson

"The right man is the one who seizes the moment." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Happiness depends upon ourselves. Aristotle

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper. Sir Francis Bacon

When deeds speak, words are nothing. ~African Proverb

By far the best proof is experience. Sir Francis Bacon

Knowledge is power. (Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est) Sir Francis Bacon

"Silence is the virtue of fools" Sir Francis Bacon

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors. Thomas H. Huxley

The Irony is that even Non-Profits depend on someone making a Profit to run. Without Profit, there is nothing. Easy Anderson

You know when the Universities start teaching it, it is only 3 years out of date and irrelevant. Easy Anderson

Cheers,
Andrew Anderson

Why you must be mobile ready!

Just check the first 15 minutes of this video and you will see why you need to be mobile ready.  The rest about Flash is not relevant. Flash is dead and don’t use it.  It will not work on iPhones, or iPads.  Do not fight Apple. 

Get mobile ready. You and your business need it. There are a lot of opportunities here. If you don’t take this seriously you are going to get your butt handed to you on a silver platter by your competition that does get “it”. And we don’t want that now do we?

Cheers,
Andrew “Easy” Anderson