The Foolish Adventure Show | Internet Business Radio

What can a former rock band rapper teach you about becoming a successful info-product entrepreneur? Greg Rollett of the Product Pros shares how he started making money online by teaching other bands how to book gigs. From that beginning he started building a brand around his knowledge of marketing and booking bands and became the go-to guy for bands wanting to make more money selling their music. Now Greg makes info-products for others. His company helps create a “celebrity” brand for professionals (even lawyers! JK). Personal branding has transitioned into celebrity branding because our culture has defined celebrity as equal to subject authority. That means if people recognize you in your industry they will automatically see you as the most trusted authority in your industry. Think Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, Rachel Ray, Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz, but for plumbers, lawyers, and cake decorators. Celebrity branding is a very powerful strategy for building a successful company so listen in to find out how to do it.

This Just In… Huge Opportunities In Software And Information! Today’s guest, Rob Walling of Software By Rob, Startups For The Rest Of Us, Hittail.com and much more, joins us to talk about building and selling software. The surprising part is his belief that there is a lot of opportunity still in information products. Most software developers only talk software and believe that information wants to be free. In this episode, we learn about buying software. I’m not talking about software for your computer, but software as your flagship product in your business. Rob has done this multiple times and has two successful software products he talks about in depth. I even share some troubles I’m having with getting some programming done and why. I don’t share this story to show just how dumb I can be, but to help you avoid making the same mistakes as me. Then I hit him with a question I get all the time, “Can anyone succeed in creating and selling software?” His answer might surprise you. Listen in and see if the software business is right for you.

Focusing on a few key areas in your writing will dramatically improve your skill and help you engage on a deeper level with your readers. I’ve brought my friend and fancy-pants writer, Elisa Doucette, on to The Foolish Adventure Show to talk about un-sucking your writing. I felt she was better qualified than me to talk about becoming a better writer since she changed careers from insurance to professional writer. Elisa writes for Forbes.com and Forbes Women and has had her work published by Huffington Post, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and many more. She also writes for clients. If you need great content written then get in touch with Elisa. Inside this episode, Elisa helps us conquer getting ideas, writing with clarity, handling grammar and engaging with our readers. If you’re a blogger, or really anyone who has to communicate through writing, then you should listen in to this episode, take some notes and then put what you learn into action as soon as possible. Practicing your writing will make you a better writer.

Okay, so even the amazing LKR couldn’t make me social media smart (might have something to do with the ‘smart’ part), but Laura Roeder does share some great tactics on using social media to engage with your market (you know, like real people). I really enjoyed this episode and took lots of notes to make my social media strategy better. I’ve already started implementing some of the Twitter suggestions Laura made and will be improving my Facebook strategy very soon. Follow along as Laura schools me on using Twitter and Facebook to connect with people and then implement these tactics in your social media strategy.

In this product creation episode, we share our best tips and tactics for rapidly making infoproducts for our audience. Before I go further, I have to say we missed having Dan and Ian Of The Lifestyle Business Podcast on this Summer Marketing Mashup episode. They were caught in a typhoon in the Philippines without access to the Interwebs. They made it out safely and crossed the channel to their destination without capsizing. Back to the Mashup… You’ll learn how to repurpose free content to create a successful product. How to use other experts to create your product. Turn content into recurring income. How to get paid before you make your product. How to know what your audience wants to buy. and so much more. Jump in right now to and learn to create your product today.

Insert Titillating Headline Designed To Compel People Into Clicking Pageview competition is driving news sites (legitimate and not-quite-so legit) to “out outrageous” each other. I don’t watch the news because it’s full of negativity that ruins my mental health. Why all the negativity in the news? It gets people to watch, to read a paper, to visit a blog. Humans are innately attracted to bad events. News Media Know You’re A Rubbernecker Since we can’t help ourselves, we look, we click — we are entertained by tragedies that befall other humans. We might feel empathy for the people we see in the news. Some might even send some money to charities helping those people. But in the end, the news is entertainment. Entertainment that must fight for your attention. I only pay attention to tech/software/business news because 1) I’m a geek and love the stuff and 2) it keeps me informed on innovations in business. But… business news, tech news, software news isn’t immune to the economics of Pageview Profits. They must get my attention so I don’t go to their competitor’s site for the same news. These sites may even trick me with misleading headlines (which pisses me off and sometimes I don’t go back). They also have to fill the Internet with dozens of posts a day — most of which are just filler with a catchy headline and a few sentences. My Site’s Totally Epic, Dude! What does this rant have to do with you and today’s episode? Everything. We are seeing the misleading headlines filtering down to just regular blogs. Bloggers are trying to “Out Epic” each other and then fall into a trap of needing to “Out Epic” themselves. When battling for clicks to your site, you may end up on a treadmill of churning out stuff designed to just get people to visit your site. Become Newsworthy Without Selling Your Soul In this episode, Ryan Holiday, author of Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, shows us the inner workings of a click-based economy and the hyper-competition that comes with it. He shows us the holes in the system that allows people like him to manipulate what becomes deemed as real news. There is good news for us ethical business owners. We don’t have to manipulate, but we can influence our market so we break through the noise and grow a great business. Use PR To Propel Your Business I’ve talked to a lot of business owners who have gotten hung up on the shady tactics Ryan shares in his book, but you’ll hear in this episode how to take the shade of the tactics and ethically become a newsworthy business. I specifically ask Ryan to teach us how people in a small niche can move up to national (even international) prominence if they have that level of ambition without selling their soul in the process. Trust Me I’m Lying is an excellent business book (even for honest people) if you pay attention to the leverage points that are highlighted and find a way to honestly get your story onto content sites in your industry.

You might want to blow everyone out of the water with your innovations or dazzle with cutting-edge advanced methods. But if you don’t have the right fundamentals in place, you will only blow out and frazzle yourself to pieces from burnout. But don’t worry, Tim and I don’t won’t let that happen to you! Fundamentals may not be that exciting, but if knowing and using them helps you achieve freedom and success, then I’m thrilled to practice them. What’s the shortcut to more Time, Income, and Mobility? Fundamentals. But, how often are these talked about and implemented? I’m not sure. I just know that a lot of people don’t teach them, especially Business Bloggers. And I’m sure the multitude who follow the Hope & Pray Blogging Model could save time, energy, and heartbreak by at least having an understanding of these 3 fundamentals. But it’s a lot more exciting to sell high-level tactical shortcuts and the idea of Build It, And They Will Come. It rallies the masses and gets everyone excited. There’s a time and place for those things, of course, and there’s always room to grow. But it’s easy to ignore real-world fundamentals for a while and look at your Google Analytics to see posts go viral, visitors in the thousands, posts comments galore – but is your bottom-line getting any bigger? If you don’t have a handle on the essentials, chances are it won’t. Break out the pen, grab the notepad, have a Come To Jesus meeting, and see where you can get back to the money-making basics.

Sow The Seeds Of Unique Ability You and your company have Core Competencies (or Unique Ability) that you have and develop over time. This episode, guest starring Lain Ehmann, dives into really implementing core competency in your business. I’ve got issues with a lot of gurus who talk core competency or unique ability that say you should just focus on that, but they don’t give instructions on how that works in a fledgling company where it’s just you — doing everything. I think Lain and I do a decent job explaining how you can develop into your core competency as you grow your business. Oh, during the recording I was a bit wired on espresso so be warned that I go a little crazy.

My Mate from Down Under, Dan Norris of WebDomination.co (links to episode I did on Dan’s show) joins me today to school me on some web design Do’s and Don’ts. And oh, buddy… I needed some schooling. I admit to a HUGE design mistake for the Foolish Adventure redesign that I’ve delayed because of how badly I messed up. And let’s not even bring up the lame design that is Foolish Adventure currently (it was just meant to be temporary and nearly 2 years later it’s still there). I was thinking that I would list the 5 things you must do and the 5 things to never do, but I don’t want you to think you already understand them. Dan brings some unique explanation why he chose these to focus on in this episode. So you’ll just have to listen to find out how to make your website design not suck.

Jay Abraham, Consultant Extraordinaire, teaches that there are only 3 ways to grow a business. Since I’m creating training for Foolish University on Maximizing Profit Centers in a Business, I thought I’d share the 3 ways to grow a business and several simple ways that you can implement them in your business. What we didn’t cover in this episode is what happens to your business when you increase each of these 3 ways by just 10% each. What happens is you don’t increase your total business by 10% or even 30% — you end up getting a compounding effect. Jay Abraham says by simply increasing each of these 3 areas by 10%, you’ll grow your total revenue by 33.1%. This is a tremendous boost in income. If I said you should grow your business by 33.1%, you might feel overwhelmed, but if I said increase just these 3 areas by only 10% each you would believe it’s possible to achieve. Here’s the math used by Jay Abraham in his book, Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got: 1000 customers x $100 per transaction x 2 transactions per year = $200,000 Increase by 10% in each area: 1100 customers x $110 per transaction x 2.2 transactions per year = $266,200 Just following this simple formula, you could double your business with a 25% increase in each area. I’ve always liked this idea since it gives you a concrete idea of what to do to grow your business rapidly. My guest co-host, Johan Woods, joins me in this discussion. I’ve been mentoring Johan for over 6 months now and he has come a long way. He’s an action-taker and is becoming a knowledgable marketer in his own right. I think Johan brings a different perspective to the Show especially when he asks questions that I’m sure are on the minds of listeners. So, join Johan and I as we talk about how to grow your business. Make sure to take notes and then put them into action in your business.

Super Successful Entrepreneurs Do These Five Things, Do You? Dan Andrews, of the Lifestyle Business Podcast, and I sit down to have a discuss on success traits. We decided to discuss a presentation I gave to his TMBA Startup attendees where I shared 10 behaviors of highly successful entrepreneurs. Inside this episode, we cover 5 of those behaviors (Dan picked) that can have a huge impact on your business and your life if you’re willing to implement them in your business. The 5 Key Behaviors we cover are: Ready, Fire, Aim! Master of Details Adversity Challenger Disciplined Systemizer I hope you get a lot from this episode, but I have a warning… There was heavy construction going on all day and we couldn’t find a quiet enough place anywhere so you will hear a lot of pounding of hammers. You can easily make out what Dan and me are saying, but it does get a bit annoying. I know, I edited the show. Check it out and let us know other Key Behaviors of Highly Successful Entrepreneurs.

Tim Conley from FoolishAdventure.com shares insiders' knowledge of online entrepreneurship. Tim Conley brings 13+ years of Internet business consulting where he has helped over 300 companies launch products, enter new markets and optimize their marketing systems. Foolish Adventure is about stepping outside of "normal," breaking the rules and creating a fulfilling life. Online business just happens to be our preferred method of funding our lifestyles. You may feel a little foolish when you start this adventure, but we'll be right there with you showing the way to success. In areas where we aren't experts, we bring in other successful online entrepreneurs who can teach you passive income streams, profitable blogging, different affiliate marketing strategies and unique lifestyles that only an Internet entrepreneur can have. Come join us on this wonderful Foolish Adventure.

Tim Conley from FoolishAdventure.com shares insiders' knowledge of online entrepreneurship. Tim Conley brings 13+ years of Internet business consulting where he has helped over 300 companies launch products, enter new markets and optimize their marketing systems. Foolish Adventure is about stepping outside of "normal," breaking the rules and creating a fulfilling life. Online business just happens to be our preferred method of funding our lifestyles. You may feel a little foolish when you start this adventure, but we'll be right there with you showing the way to success. In areas where we aren't experts, we bring in other successful online entrepreneurs who can teach you passive income streams, profitable blogging, different affiliate marketing strategies and unique lifestyles that only an Internet entrepreneur can have. Come join us on this wonderful Foolish Adventure.

Tim Conley from FoolishAdventure.com shares insiders' knowledge of online entrepreneurship. Tim Conley brings 13+ years of Internet business consulting where he has helped over 300 companies launch products, enter new markets and optimize their marketing systems. Foolish Adventure is about stepping outside of "normal," breaking the rules and creating a fulfilling life. Online business just happens to be our preferred method of funding our lifestyles. You may feel a little foolish when you start this adventure, but we'll be right there with you showing the way to success. In areas where we aren't experts, we bring in other successful online entrepreneurs who can teach you passive income streams, profitable blogging, different affiliate marketing strategies and unique lifestyles that only an Internet entrepreneur can have. Come join us on this wonderful Foolish Adventure.

Tim Conley from FoolishAdventure.com shares insiders' knowledge of online entrepreneurship. Tim Conley brings 13+ years of Internet business consulting where he has helped over 300 companies launch products, enter new markets and optimize their marketing systems. Foolish Adventure is about stepping outside of "normal," breaking the rules and creating a fulfilling life. Online business just happens to be our preferred method of funding our lifestyles. You may feel a little foolish when you start this adventure, but we'll be right there with you showing the way to success. In areas where we aren't experts, we bring in other successful online entrepreneurs who can teach you passive income streams, profitable blogging, different affiliate marketing strategies and unique lifestyles that only an Internet entrepreneur can have. Come join us on this wonderful Foolish Adventure.