Super Star Marketers

I’ve been working on a special project that has just been released. It’s a teleseminar series with the world’s best marketers. I’m not talking about marketers who are just okay. I’m talking about marketers who have built multi-million dollar businesses.

I got them to reveal all their best strategies and tactics for success. I was blown away by how much I learned interviewing these super stars.

The lineup includes:

Richard Branson
Joe Polish
Mark Joyner
Tellman Knudson
Russell Brunson
Yanik Silver
Gary Vaynerchuk
Carrie Wilkerson
James Malinchak
Kenneth Yu
Rob Minton
Matt Bacak
Andrew Lock
Scott Stratten
Perry Lawrence
Terry Wygal
Ryan Lee

As you can see, this is an amazing lineup of the best internet marketers alive.

In the coming days, and weeks I’m going to dedicate a blog post to each entrepreneur and give some details on what I learned from them. So be sure to tune in because this information could be worth millions to you.

And if you’d like to hear EACH interview for FREE just go to SuperStarMarketers.com

Paul Evans & I Rambling

This weekend I spoke at an event with Paul Evans from Nicheology.com. At some point in the event, we got bored and decided to go chat about business, living in the south, and who knows what else. Some of the business ramblings were caught on video. Here you go:

Failing To Embrace Social Media Costs Business Owner $1 Million Dollars

This weekend I watched an amazing story unfold. One that left me scratching my head. The story I’m about to share with you is how a business owner missed the mark and literally cost himself $1 million dollars by failing to embrace social media. What he sees as a problem is actually an opportunity. I’m telling this story now in hopes of helping businesses embrace social media and use it for the opportunity it really is. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

When I was in real estate I looked into a company that would give me the opportunity to provide rewards to my customers when they purchased. This company works in many industries like the car and boat industries and they had come into real estate quite strong. Basically the way it worked was that when someone bought a house, car, boat, whatever…they could potentially get a reward worth up to $10,000. As a real estate agent or car dealership or whatever, being able to offer up to $10,000 to your clients as a way of saying ‘thank you’ is powerful.

I ended up never using this company in my real estate business. Several reasons went behind that decision, but I’ll leave those details for another day.

But I know several real estate agents that used this company in their business. As with everything some had success, and many did not. During this time a message board was created for those agents in the program or at least interested in it. I was a member of that message board as was “Steve”, the owner of the rewards company.

It’s probably been over a year since someone has posted to that message board. So long that I totally forgot I was a member of it and wasn’t sure at first why I was getting emailed. But when I started to read the new messages I was blown away.

It started when an agent posted saying he was being sued because a client didn’t get their reward in full or something to that effect. Naturally this got attention from the members of the group and a message board that was on life-support came to full life. Agents started posting and complaining left and right about how the company provides no support, doesn’t return calls, etc.

Here’s where it gets interesting. “Steve” chose to respond in a negative way. He bashed every person that posted, complained about all of his real estate clients, and even said this was the problem with message boards and blogs.

He told the story of how last year he had signed a large number of high quality clients from the boating industry. Apparently this amount was equal to $1 million in sales for his company. But a week later someone posted something negative about the company on their blog and all of those high quality clients backed out.

“Steve” put the blame on the blog.

The internet & social media have changed the game, but it’s changed in the favor of the business owner! Many people say that now the consumer has a voice thanks to social media. That’s incorrect. The consumer has ALWAYS had a voice. And a strong one at that.

That’s what “Steve” doesn’t get. If people are going to talk bad about you or your company they are going to do it regardless of blogs, twitter, facebook, message boards, etc.

As a business owner you now have the OPPORTUNITY to connect directly with the consumer and address issues and concerns. That is extremely powerful to those who realize it and embrace it.

In the back and forth bickering between “Steve” and the members of this message board “Steve” mentioned how many testimonials he had and how he should post them. Uh, of course! Why “Steve” hadn’t been sharing those all along is beyond me and could lead to another long blog post.

Word of mouth whether it be positive or negative is a powerful force. Regardless of it being online or offline you should embrace it and see it for the opportunity it is. When consumers complain they mainly just want to be heard. Now you can let them know you hear them and address their concerns and issues first hand.

Sometimes you’ll win the customer back and sometimes you won’t. But you’ll lose them all if you argue with them and blame social media for ruining your business.

Social media didn’t cost you over $1 million dollars “Steve”. You did.

Cash Flow Or Profitability?

Ask any person in business and they’ll tell you profits are the key to success. Obviously a business has to be profitable, that’s the whole point. But focusing on profits doesn’t mean you’ll survive.

Sadly, I come across too many people working a long-term plan. A plan that has them *hopefully* making a profit in 6 months, a year, and in some cases as much as two years out. This is crazy to me.

You’ve got to focus on cash flow!

Good things happen when cash is flowing in. Mentally you feel like you’re getting somewhere with the business. Things are happening and it’s motivating. This is a great thing for a start-up.

It also motivates your team. They can see results, and get the feeling that “things are happening”. I can’t think of a better way to rally the troops.

Focus on ways to bring cash in early and often. Adding recurring revenue to your business model is an excellent way to get the cash flowing.

Team-Focused Approach

Being an entrepreneur can be lonely. But I’m not sure why so many take the world on alone. It’s okay to keep your company small but if you think you don’t need a team, well then…you’re out of your mind.

You’re not going to be able to do it all by yourself. At some point you’ll need help. You’ll need a team. Assuming you have a team in place you’ll now need to motivate them and give them room to knock it out of the park.

The best way to keep your team motivated is to find out what’s really important to them and work that into the goals you have for your business.