Day 2 of the London Warrior Gathering kicked off in beautiful sunshine, so like all good internet marketers we headed back down into the basement away from all that nasty brightness. Sometimes I wonder if IM is another name for vampirism – maybe not an analogy I should pursue!

Oz

We started the day in the hands of Oz,  a warrior who is rapidly growing his presence on the forum and who released a really nice WSO the other day on stock option trading. If you missed it, you should check out Ant Handshake – it’s a great intro to the subject and a refreshing look at another stream of income.

I have to say, that yesterday, I thought he seemed a bit out of his depth. His talk was primarily around being an affiliate for a continuity program. Nothing wrong with that, but it felt as if he was just coming into that knowledge himself, so it wasn’t delivered from a position of strength. I came away with the realisation that I really have made some progress over the years, if this subject, delivered by a well-known warrior felt a bit basic. LOL.

From this point on, the sessions went into overdrive.

Peter Garety

Peter Garety was next up and spoke about the way he approaches everyone on his lists(s) in such a way as to deliver them the most value. His primary focus is to take every customer through a 12 month journey, during which they should grown into money-making experts – and so be able to pay him bigger and bigger sums for stuff he does to help them.

This was an excellent overview of a really well-thought out system, implemented to make sure everyone benefits. Summary: Customers first, Money second.

Mark Thompson

Following on from Peter, Mark Thompson gave us a perspective on moving away from the Warrior forum to a sustainable long-term business model. My chief takeaway from this was to sort out a core product for myself. Mark uses this model and points everything he does back to the core, no matter what kind of link or product, there’s always a link back to his core system: WP Goldmine.

Mark was obviously nervous on stage – isn’t it funny how we force folk into different roles, like public speaking, just because they have had success in other areas. Maybe we need an IM expert speaker training course. Despite all that, he spoke with great clarity and real humanity about what he was doing with his system. Impressive enough for me to consider buying into his $19 a month program.

Steve Benn

Changing the focus slightly, Steve Benn talked through the ins and outs of successful copywriting, an area we all know we should know more about. He made it clear that there are times when we treat our prospects in ways that are never going to get them to buy anything and that we should always bear in mind that folks buy stuff to get somewhere. It’s not “the product” that is important, it’s what it does to help you get what you wanted in the first place.

Obviously, his Instant Copywriting Expert (another great course) goes into this in more detail, but he repeated something I’ve heard before, which is to write out examples of good copy by hand (not typed) so that you get the flow and phrases into some kind of copywriting “muscle memory”.

Alex Jeffreys

Our final speaker for the day was Alex Jeffreys, who walked through his own ideas and system for building a funnel of lifetime vale for his customers. It’s difficult to add much here to the kind of reputation Alex already has, but it was a clear breakdown of all that we should all be thinking about as a way to build a business, not just a hobby.

Alex actually made us a WSO for his coaching program, possibly a little steep for a lot of people there, but great value nonetheless. If I hadn’t already been paying for other mentoring, I may have been a customer at that point. I have no idea if he would extend the offer, but £3,000 seemed like a good deal if you were looking for a mentor. Tell him Martin sent ya’ (no affiliate link)

Summary

Overall then, a great 2 day event, with a lot of thought-provoking content and without the constant pitch-fest of most of these affairs. I know that Paul and Justin were recording the whole thing, so expect a WSO release in the near future, which will be worth every penny.

If you’re on my list already, I am thinking of putting all this down in more detail in a quick pdf, so if you want actual content details, grab my outsourcing webinar and that will ensure you see all my updates.

I thought I’d try to dash off a quick summary of what has been a full day at the first London Warrior gathering, but I find (at 1a.m.) that my brain may not be up to the full task I’ll see what I can get done…..

First off, it’s worth noting that this has been a pitch-free zone overall and I’m massively in favour of that, given some of the comments I’ve made on events in the past.

Secondly, I should just make a quick note to thank all the speakers for giving up their time to actually come and deliver this stuff. Some of it has already changed my thinking on what needs to come next in my journey.

Brad Gosse opened the day with a keynote which turned into a Q&A session where he gave out 5 copies of his new book to the best questions – beaten to the last copy by his favouritism for a woman – gutted! This was a very entertaining walk through some of Brad’s life and a pointer to his current thinking on things in IM.

We then heard from Paul Clifford, who took us through software creation, a model I think a lot of people would like to play with if they had the time/money. Paul demystified some of the needs around getting stuff created and knows his stuff well enough for me to point you in his direction if you want to know more about this stuff

We had a couple of panel sessions about offline and WSO creation, but if anything, these were a little short. It felt like they could have gone on longer with the interest being shown. I was heartened by Peter Garety saying that his first WSO only did 8 sales. My first WSO, released on Thursday, has done more than that already. Maybe I’m in good company after all!

Then Mark Lyford took to the stage and gave some great advice about the power of lists and how to get a buyer’s list from the Warrior Forum fairly quickly. I may write more about this session next week. Great content and very motivating.

Finally, Michael Christon, took us through some of the psychology of selling. This was a difficult to describe session, which ranged from NLP to religion and back again. Michael is a man I will be watching as this was the slickest presentation of the day. Key takeaway: Don’t be a “seller”, just help the “buyer” get what they want! So, don’t force your agenda, that  may not be what they want.

The day rounded off with drinks, paid for by Andy Fletcher of Digiresults, and a  hypnosis show from a fellow warrior – Hypnoman.

As a final punctuation point on that last comment, I was talking to some women in another conference, in a hotel being used by some of our group across the road. There were 350 women (exclusively) learning how to blog with an organisation called” cyp her”, I think. Nice people, apart from the usual “all girls together” sniping – I left them to it, but couldn’t help think that we were all missing a trick in our separate events. I may head back over tomorrow to check the organisation name, has anyone come across it already?

Edit: Ok, cracked it! The name of the organisation is Cybher (I just mis-heard through the haze of drinks and loud conversation ). It took a little while to come up with the right search terms to find them, but if you’re in the UK and female – since it seems to be exclusive – you can check them out here. Maybe I should be cheeky and suggest they look at internet marketing as a key element next year. Say hello to Claire (sp?) if you talk to them, she was trying to explain it all to me on the night.

This feels like it’s going to be a rambling new entry rather than just a quick how-to on building a list of buyers, so please bear with me.

I started out today with the intention of writing a fairly simple piece, but before I had a chance to do that, I got an email about the situation Anthony Aires is going through with Paypal and that changed my slant slightly.

As you may know, Anthony Aires has just had his Paypal accounts terminated with extreme prejudice! In fact, you can listen to a conversation he had with a Paypal rep here http://anthonyaires.com/PayPalcall.mp3

The reason this is important, is that it both increases the need for you to have a list of buyers but at the same time makes it harder to build one in the first place. Listen particularly to the section about 10 minutes in – that should be chilling for anyone using the Warrior Forum. It scared the life out of me, as I plan to release my first WSO tomorrow!

It’s All About Customer Service, Paypal Dummies!

Now, you can argue all you like about business models, but the one thing that came through to me about this behaviour and that of some of the other big players recently, is that they seem to have forgotten one of the basic principles of “having customers”.

If you have customers, they will need help at some point. It doesn’t matter if they spend a little or a lot, if they’re technically aware or not, there will come a time when they want to check something out.

At that point, you need to be there!

No matter how many clever automated systems you have in place, people sometimes need people. A blanket policy email delivered by robot won’t cut it. That’s why social networks have such power, they connect real people together.

Let’s take this back to Anthony Aires. He may be only one person, but his network is huge. Through his list and his social presence, he has a position of influence. It’s a position that many of us would covet, but even in his position, Paypal has shut him down without a minute’s notice.

It has happened before to other big names in the industry and after reading some of the stories it appears as if sometimes compromises have been reached and accounts re-activated but in general this has only happened for the big names as they sorted themselves out.

I’ve personally seen my Youtube account closed and you had better believe that I don’t have enough clout to get mine re-activated, but I know others who do.

Comparing Paypal to a Real Bank

So, where am I going with all this? First, let’s get it clear, Paypal is not a real bank. They are just a processor of payments that happens to sit between you and many transactions you wish to make.

If they were a real bank, they would evaluate the “risks” of doing business and charge accordingly. This is even true of the world finance community that charges whole countries (like Italy and France) slightly more for doing business when they are seen as being a little riskier. Paypal doesn’t have the willpower, technical smarts or maybe just the plain financial understanding to get this right and so they close accounts willy-nilly.

In doing so, they expose their customer service ideals to the world. I’ve never heard such a terrible support call in my life…..all carried out in perfectly reasonable tones, but desperately full of attitude born in a company that obviously feels it can do no wrong. It’s not just the kool-aid these guys are drinking!

When was the last time you went grocery shopping and were told that it was a “privilege” for you to be allowed to shop there?    How quickly would you switch stores?

So why should I care?

In my own rambling way, this brings me to the point of this whole post. Although it has turned into a bit of a rant against the giants of our industry, I think there are some valuable lessons to be learned here.

First off, if you are building a business of any kind, you need to be prepared to interact with your customers. Get them to be the “recommendation engine” driving you forwards, rather than the “complaints anchor” dragging you down online.

No company can afford to ignore a turn in sentiment, not even one the size of Paypal, so build a customer-serving attitude into yours from the very beginning.

Secondly, make sure that you are aware of payment processing alternatives as you grow. Paypal is not the only game in town any more – we have both Google and Alertpay in place already and there are others just waiting to step up, some of them very surprising.

Finally, keep building the list. It may sound like a broken record, but if you have a loyal fan base that you can contact, you can re-direct them if you need to and, as with Anthony Aires, you might even be able to get their support as you fight to get yourself re-instated

If this has touched a nerve, or you just want to get word out about the treatment Anthony Aires has seen, please feel free to like,tweet or comment!

List Building for Beginners – that’s the name of my new project…..but I have also decided that List Building for Beginners should also be the focus of a new product that gets built as I work through this month.

Now, I know that’s a lousy name, so my first challenge is to come up with something better, and the second is to decide if I want this to be a product I sell at the end of the month, or if it will be used as a giveaway for my list-building.

I’m veering towards selling it at the moment. What do you think? It will be super-cheap, to get folk started in the process as quickly as possible.

I started yesterday with a bunch of grand plans to get loads done in the evening, only to realise that the UK taxman needed feeding by the end of the month. As a result, I ended up filling in forms all night and my IM plans went awry yet again.

The good thing is that I had spent my lunch hour brainstorming the topics I need to cover and implement for my List Building for Beginners course, so I don’t feel so far behind. This morning I have written the first article, and I hope to get some more time at lunchtime to write a few more.

All of the articles will be posted to article sites around the internet, I may spin them before uploading, but they will all point back to my squeeze page for the List Building for Beginners product. So, one more thing I need to do is to create a freebie for that page.

Anyway, the work day beckons, so more musing on all this will follow tomorrow. Send in those product name suggestions so I don’t have to stick with List Building for Beginners!

Some of you will have seen my first stab at a month’s worth of list-building starting back at the beginning of December – and will have seen me slowly fade away as the month progressed!

What on earth possessed me to think I could really do 31 updates on here in the month of events and presents? I have no idea. In fact, it would have been almost impossible, as I spent several days in Paris before Christmas and then 5 days in Iceland leading up to New Year….and yes, I did get some pics of the Northern Lights. Due on here when I find a decent flickr plugin.

So where does that leave 2012?

List-Building is Back!

Strangely, I’m determined to follow-through with the list thing. I know that many of you are looking for ways to get this done, and I feel an obligation to finish what I started, so list-building is back on.

The problem I have now, even though it’s a fun problem to have, is that I am working as an interim manager (for 90 days) at one of the big UK media agencies. You wouldn’t believe the scale of their media buys compared to mine

As a result, I am now officially employed. What that means is that I will only be able to work on my personal business in the hours before and after doing “the job”. I guess that will make my efforts more easily comparable to all of you that still have a full-time job and are working in IM as a means to get out of the rat-race.

So, here’s my next 3o day commitment….well, up to the end of February anyway.

I will be keeping this site up to date every day with what I have achieved in the list-building challenge. In fact, what I think I will do, is set up a separate list just for those who want to follow along, with the promise that it will only be used for list-building content. If that is where you need to be concentrating next, watch out for my follow-up announcement.

In the mean time, I have a couple of sites that I’m setting up to help folk in the IM world find the information they need to make their lives easier. I’ll fill you in on those as they spring into life.

Finally, why 3 months to change the world with list-building?  Well, that’s how long I have in paid employment before I am back to earning my money from IM, and I intend this list-building exercise to be a big part of that success.