Last show this year

In 2008 I spent less money on software and info products but way more on seminars:

Twice in Chicago, once in Philly, and now Long beach, California For Brendon Burchard's extravaganza.

Brendon pulled out all the stops for this show. Usually, in seminars, it is speaker after speaker, with no speaker lasting for more than 2 hours. In this case, Brendon was there about 80% of the time. Essentially, he breathed life into his "Life's Golden Ticket" book. He had a huge circus tent made specially for the event and had a real circus troop do some circus numbers.

What fascinated me the most was that I had the chance of witnessing, for three  straight days, a totally happy and contented person. Someone who is living his life on his own term and who keeps on greeting new challenges with gusto.

He wanted to have his own circus, so he went out and did it!

In this case, the medium truly was the message. Brendon was the message.

Infrequent posts, redux

I have never been very good at posting regularly to this blog.

At least, this time I have a good reason

Lately, though, the reason I haven't posted regularly is that I launched another blog.

www.project1849.com which is an attempt at brain dumping a lot of the topics I have been studying and pondering upon in the past decades.

I have at least half a dozen themes that I will write about. The aim is to gather a following of like minded people.

As usual, I did not wait for the thing to be perfect before I launched it. I set a date and stuck with it. I thought that having the launch of the blog coincide with Brendon Burchard's event in Long Beach would be a good time.

I did renew several connections with the people from Impact as well as made some more contacts that pointed me to new resources I could use to feed my blog.

I fell short of having my ebook bribe ready and did not set up an optin box yet.

Because of the time investment in the Burchard show, over 12 hours per day, I can't really expect attendees to go check my blog and comment. They will probably forget to check it out after the show. I guess I will have to send them reminder emails and tweets.

My big launch ended up being a soft launch but at least, I did it!

Now, all I have to do is to keep on writing and keep on improving my blog to capture leads and increase my following.

The power of the 1 dollar kitchen timer

What is the difference between a succesful entrepreneur and a not so succesful entrepreneur?

Okay, I will give you a few secondsto think it over. I will even help you with what it isn't.

It isn't intelligence, it isn't knowledge it isn't a bunch of stuff.

Let's face it, all original and creative entrepreneurs, and I mean the truly out of the box, bleeding edge, pushing the envelope, lateral thinkers have their brains wired differently. In most cases, that results in the dreaded ADD ADHD syndrome. OOOOOOHHH

ADD makes you very focus, they call it "hyperfocussed" for short periods of time whitin which one can accomplish what others cannot even when given 10 times the amount of time. The problem is that this hyperfocus "zone" only comes once in a while, in between long stretches of procrastination and/or depression.

What thus separates the succesful entrepreneurs from the not so succesful entrepreneurs (or the downright failures) has to do with the ratio of hyperfocus vs procrastination.

I have read several times about mental discipline and how guys like Alex Mandossian, Jim Edwards, Mark Joyner use timers (Joyner has a timer built into his wimiki software).

Alex talks of a simple kitchen timer, a hand cranked thing that you can set up for up to an hour and that will ring a bell at the end. This forces you to do tasks within an hour.

Well, the other day, I went to my local dollar store and bought one of those kitchen timers.

This thing actually works! Well, for as long as you crank it up to an hour because less than that and the spring hasn't any juice left at the end to ring the bell . . .

Anyways, I'm kind of a techie guy who loves a paperless office and everything within my laptop, preferably in my browser . . . etc

In this instance, however, I find that the obtrusive tick tick tick tick tick actually forces me to be aware of the passage of time. With a quick glance, I know exactly how much I have left. The "ticking bomb" sound kind of puts me in a state wherein if believe that if I don't accomplish the task within the alloted time, the thing will explode. One hell of a motivation to get things done isn't it ? It's like the old movie cliché of the countdown to explosion Oh no, less than a minute left, hurry up!!

In this particular case,even though for the same price you can get a digital kitchen timer, go for the manual tick tick timer because the sound puts you in the "zone".

One caveat though: You have to manually crank it every hour for it to work ;-)

Works best when you can break down tasks so that they can fit within an hour or plan part 1 and 2 of a given task.

If you finish the task within the hour, take the remaining minutes to give yourself a break. Anyways, you should give yourself a 5 minute break every hour, just to stretch a little, get a glass of water, bathroom break, whatever.

If you can accomplish a task in less than 45 minutes, don't take too long of a break or you will lose your momentum. Take a short break, as usual,and crank up the timer for the next task. If you can gain an hour at the end of your work schedule, then you can relax and reward yourself.

Over time, instead of spreading work over 12-16 hours a day, you may find yourself packing it in less that half the time and then reorganize your leisure activities with these newly found continuous hours of free time.

Imagine doing 80% of your work in 20% of the time it took you previously, that is motivation enough to do the remaining 20% of the work in the same amount of time it took you to do the first 80%. 80-20 rules still applies.

I am not there yet, but I'm working on it.

Gotta go now, my time is almost up;-)

When do we stop learning ?

Ask any expert in any given field and they will stay that learning never stops.

At the Impact event, I was sitting right next to Frank Sousa. Now, Frank has attained a level of success that makes him an Internet Millionnaire. Traffic Geyser is a fantastic cash cow and is a business that will be worth millions in a few short years.

On stage, was Felicia Slattery talking about the importance of a having a "signature" speech and how you can promote your business by doing a simple thing such as giving a short speech at your local Kiwanis club or chamber of commerce.

At this very moment, I could sense an "Ah Ha! Bling" going in Frank's head. Something had hit home. During Q&A, he commented on his "revelation" and, if I am not mistaken, I believe he recorded a video testimonial for her later that day.

It was a simple thing, something some would consider obvious but for Frank, it was a slap on the forehead "Why didn't I think of that". Frank speaks at conferences but never thought about packaging a speech designed to bring local offline businesses online by reaching out to local clubs such as Lions, Rotary, Kiwanis, etc...

How much could this simple tip bring in cashflow to Frank in months to come is unknown. But, as he says himself " I always come out of these conferences with way more than it cost to attend".

In Frank's case, it was through one of these events that he met his Traffic Geyser partners.

As for me, I got two orders for producing promo videos. In my case, it's bartering, but that will give me two samples and two testimonials. More so, I could create an info product on how to make slideshow movies ;-)

Do you know the secret to networking ?

You hear it.
It is constantly being repeated to you.
Despite all of the technological advances, even tech savvy virtual entrepreneurs (i.e. Internet Marketers) can't get enough of live seminars.

The warmth and strength of real physical contact is very strong. Maybe it is because we generally live isolated lives, alone with our computer, that we are so open during live seminars.

The more I go to seminars to better the relationships develop.

At my first seminar, 18 months ago, I was hanging out with newbies and can't say that I pusrsued much relations with attendees after the event was over.

By the time I hit my third seminar, this past July, I was already hanging with the speakers at lunch or dinner.

This time around, at the Impact event, I developed a good relationship with Frank Sousa and he even promoed me to Sanyika over my great imagination in coming up with ideas for videos. She is looking for a great video to promote one of her products.

Sanyika's specialty is personal finance but she promotes her business heavily using Television appearances as a financial expert. This prompted her to develop a product teaching people how to prepare for TV appearances.

There is no way in the world that I could have sold Sanyika on my video expertise without the totally spontaneous endorsement of Frank. Actually, producing videos for others is not what I do right now but then, I did study film making and actually have one movie I worked on that was shown at the Cannes film festival as well as other award winning films. Yeah, twenty or so years ago, I had expertise. Then again, if you've read one of my recent posts, I am planning a "film" comeback, at least on the web, nowadays they are not called films but You Tube videos :-)

Day 2.5 of the impact bootcamp

Our mision is to create a campaign to raise funds for various groups involved in teen suicide prevention.

As I write this, Dr. Ron Capps, the "Niche prof" is giving a vdeo testimonials for Expert WordPress.

And in the next room, a green screen is being set up.

It is really a bootcamp here. We are working from 7AM til midnite.

I now gotta set up a ning acount so that my group, headed by Frank Sousa, of Traffic Geyser fame, can produce some videos.

Who's seen Frank Kern's new video ?

Or should I say: "Who hasn't seen Frank Kern's new video ?"

Price tag for the website by Matt, the marketing moron ? $10K or the equivalent of what Frank can make in 2 minutes on product launch days ;-)

Boy, am I glad I have a friend who does those $200,000.00 infomercial. At least I can get great video expertise for cheap.

But fear not, although Frank uses two $3,000.00 + cameras; fancy final cut pro editing; great splash page with flash, a great video website can be made for a lot cheaper.

First off, for web video, a $300.00 camera can do as good a video as a more expensive one.

Frank's video does not use fancy cuts, transistions and effects, just straight cuts and B&W footage, easily doable with Windows movie maker.

Slip in a little camtasia screen capture, host the video on YouTube and other such video share sites, put a link on your blog or whatever, and voila!

Sure,it may not look as slick as a fancy flash website but, if the message is right and addressed to the right audience, it will get the clickthroughs.

If you follow Frank on Twitter, there are some tips thrown in. For example, Frank got his inspiration from the movie "The Last Waltz". Just think of a movie or TV show or even a magazine layout that you like and use that as your theme or anchor. This will give you the flavor, the look, the feel. From there, put in your message.

Notice how Frank used something highly personal and put it in his video. The guitar is what tied the whole thing together: The Last Waltz theme, the introduction to John Carlton (Frank is intimate with the tops in the field) and the secret tips that has made him and others millions.

Credibility and social proof established just from one guitar ... Kewl.

Yeah, I'm about to do shit like that myself . . . watch me.

Now, how about you?

Busy summer

This summer has been busy with live seminars.

Kicking off with "The System" in June, followed by "The Masters" in July, and now,coming up in just over a week, The "Impact Bootcamp" in Philadelphia.

I am preparing a launch that will coincide with that event.

Stay tuned ;-)

Wilie Crawford

Continuing on with my Master's Seminar series that was interrupted last week, when life caught up with me ;-)

Another speaker I met and spent some time with is Willie Crawford.

I had heard the name but did not really know him. From hanging with a bunch of invited speakers, I heard he was a veteran of the marketing business to the point of legend status.

I caught up with him when he was chatting with a few other attendees. He was asking if he could get an instant transcript from two people on the phone using Naturally Speaking's Dragon dictate. I told him that unless both parties have their own configured version of dragon dictate, that would be impossible because the software has to be trained by each individual user. Glad I could provide Willie with some info.

It was sunday evening, the seminar was offically over so, about fourteen of us, including Willie, went out to Giordano's, the italian restaurant next to the hotel, for a famous Chicago style deepdish pizza.

I was sitting right across the table from him. It seems that he has an answer to just about every problem or issue concerning marketing.That is because of constant learning and putting to practice.

Besides his encyclopedic knowledge of Internet Marketing, he is also pretty well rounded in many other unrelated fields. Willie was a martial arts expert, traveled to over 40 countries. He is about 60 years old and is intent on keeping active for years to come.

For some reason, the waitress made just one check for the entire table, Willie picked it up, no problem -- Thanks Willie :-)

Oops, we are sunday

I did make an announcement on thursday, as promised, but it was a rather private announcement.

I was on a Skype call with a fellow masterminder and I told her that I had created a master mind community on Ning. The thing is that something happened during the creation of teh community and I could not access it.

The following day, the situationwas settled and I was able to finish configuring "Master Mind Central".

The project is still in its infancy but over time, others will join in and various cellswillbe created so that, depending on where you are in your business or personal development, or whattype of business you are in, you will find teh master mind group that best suits your need.

something wonderful will happen this thursday

I have been busy doing other stuff so I slowed in my posts.

I will make an announcement on thursday and may post some more before and after.

The Master's Seminar and Joel Comm

In a previous post, I talked about Joel Comm at the seminar and how I got involved with helping with an interview with him. The following evening, Joel was still around for the saturday bash in which three of the featured speakers, who had a birthday in July, were surprised with birthday cakes. Well, we all got to eat the cakes, but still, it was a nice gesture from Ross and the staff to do that.



During that evening, I got to chat some more with Joel. He is very proud of his new iPhone and already has tons of applications installed on it. Being the gamer that he is, he enjoys the gyrospcopic feature of the iPhone which makes the ball of a pinball game roll in various directions, depending upon how one tilts the iPhone. Joel recommends to anyone to get an iPhone because he just loves this gizmo -- and not just for the games but as a working tool as well :-)

Joel is a very down to earth guy, very approachable. I had the same feeling with Willie Crawford whom I met sunday afternoon after the end of the event. But that's for my nextpost ;-)

Ross Goldberg and the Master's Seminar

Ross often says that his medical condition makes his brain work differently than most people.

His "Medical Condition" could be spun into some sort of conspiracy theory drama.

Seeing him at the Master's Seminar, I had the hardest time figuring him out. It's like we can never tell if he will suddenly jump on someone if that person does something he doesn't like.

There is almost a split personality at work here. A guy who, on the one hand, is the most sociable and generous person; a guy who apologizes if he makes the slightest mistake; a guy who tries to bring on as much value to the events he sets up. But, at the same time, a guy who can return to his gang leader past by being blunt, rude and putting up threats of violence and blood if things are not exactly going the way he likes it.

For example, when the A/V guy showed up late, Ross walked out of the room, presumably to avoid a blood bath and let his assisitant handle the issue. Of course, it is only in the language that he uses that the violence lies. Still, one can only but feel a certain anger, which is probably caused by his medical condition which induces much physical discomfort.

One thing for sure,he's quite a character. However, judged by the quality of the people he surrounds himself with, he must be doing something right.

Back from Chicago

I must be getting better at networking the more I go to seminars. I thought the System seminar in June was great but this one --The Master's Seminar -- felt even better with the networking.

I got to mingle more with the speakers as well as with succesful online entrepreneurs.

Am I able to give advice to newbies and even seasoned marketers, which is cool.

I met Joel Comm and helped out with an interview he gave for Kristi Sayles at TalkWithExperts.com I did the lighting and provided the microphone. It's one of those things where I wish I'd brought my "better" microphone at the event but I did not expect to pinch in at the last minute for an impromptu interview and "save the day", so to speak.

Breaking the 5 month silence

5 months without a post.

It's one of two things: Either I am too busy or I haven't done anything.

Maybe both. Maybe I am so busy doing a bunch of things that it feels like I am not doing anything.

I created this blog in preparation of my first Internet marketing seminar back in April of 2007.

I wanted to upgrade to a wordpress blog for my second "System" seminar in May 2008 but shifted gears days before the event.

Now, with my third Internet seminar, I figure it'd be time to update my blog a bit.

I found out that I have been doing more than I thouht. It is just that I ddn't direct my energies to where I thought they would go.

6 weeks ago, at The System seminar, I made a little 5 minute speech about my progress over the previous year. Turns out that I have applied a lot of my learned knowledge to the company that supplies clients to my current business. I have also applied a lot of my knowledge to turn my existing company, not so much as an Internet marketing company but rather on an Internet operating company. I get all my jobs by way of the Internet. That has allowed me to work all winter long from the Dominican Republic with only a laptop and a WiFi connection.

Without necessariy being an Internet marketer, I was able to live the Internet lifestyle. A laptop and two feet in the sand :-)

I got to experiment with various traffic generating tactics to bring traffic to another blog of mine (I won't tell you which one) I was surprised at how little can make a difference and how one can almost control traffic like opening or closing a tap. Kewl :-)

I am also starting up a mastermind group with people I meet at live events. If it works well, I will expand recruiting via the Web.

Despite my past frustrations with aggressive Internet marketers and other issues, still I forge ahead.

I must now end this post as I am about to board my plane to Chicago for the Masters Seminar.

Infrequent postings

They say you should post regularly to your blog. Some say 2-3 times a week, others say daily-- like clockwork.

As far as I am concerned, it appears to be on a regular 2-4 month schedule :-(

This blog will eventually migrate to wordpress. I have a new webhost with Cpanel and Fantastico but other that that, not much help.

I want to transfer several domain names to that new host. This does not appear to be the problem. What is, though, is how can I have many instances of wordpress for each of the domain names. I have yet to crack that mystery. First, I have to find the help file or the customer service help desk to help me figure it out.

Once that is done, I will study wordpress so that I can optimize all of its capabilities.

I also have an interesting group of friends over on Facebook. I am also LinkedIn. Getting comfortable with that Social Networking thing.

I regularly pay for traffic geyser but have yet to use their service to upload. The thing is that if you want your video to be posted to all those 40 plus sites that traffic geyser they upload your videos to, you have to register first to those video websites. There lies the catch. So far, I have a You Tube account, Facebook, Digg, Stumble Upon, and MySpace (which I can't log into because I am currently in the Dominican Republic and I am constantly sent over to "latino MySpace" where apparently my login does not work). Guess I will spend another afternoon registering to the rest of those video websites.

Also, I need to learn Sony Vegas to do some editing on my videos. Shooting the videos is easy, finishing them is something else. For some strange reason, Windows Movie Maker did not come preinstalled on my laptop and any attempt at installing it failed and so, I decided to buy Sony Vegas which, unfortunately, does not appear to have the same intuitive cut and paste capabilities as windows movie maker.

I am currently enrolled in the 30 day challenge. So far I did not learn much since the first few days focus on installing firefox as well as some of its plugins. Duh! I've been using firefox since day one and have more plugins that a sane person would normally have. Lately, Ed (Ed Dale, the 30 day challenge guy) is talking about Stumble Upon. Again, duh! Can't wait for Ed to explain in detail how to get multiple instances of wordpress to work on hostgator, or how to do simple editing on Vegas. Hey, Dale, Give me some stuff I can use now will ya!!

-- Gilles

P. S. This post has been optimized for several keywords, how many did you spot ?

P.S.S. Now how the hell do I put those cute Digg, del.icio.us, furl, stumble upon, etc etc icons at the bottom of each post in Blogger ?