Items Tagged With preneur

So, it's Sunday morning and I've just spent the week at Beechworth. I don't think I could do justice to the experience by trying to detail it all here. And of course, there's quite a bit I can't detail here anyway, as people paid a handsome sum to attend and that knowledge needs to stay indoors.

What I can tell you is what I've taken away from the event on a personal level. When I break it down, it all really fits into 3 areas: Community, Knowledge, and Savvy

Community

More than any other event, internet marketing or otherwise, I met and became friends with so many people this week it's incredible. And that's taking into consideration the fact that there was only around 30 people in attendance. I won't rattle off a list of names here either, as I would no doubt forget someone and that would not be cool. The reason that meeting so many people this time around is doubly important for me though, is that everyone I met is actually doing things online rather than just talking about it.

You go to these conferences (not that this was like ANY conference I'd been to before), and you do meet people. Genuinely nice people most of the time, but the common denominator most of the time is that none of them are taking action. The Beechworth crowd are a group taking action. In some cases massive action. Fantastic to be around. By the way, the link to the Beechworth crowd isn't everybody I met during the week, there were heaps more people.

Knowledge

Of course you know we had Ed and Dan present during the week. They each have their own style and their own brand of presenting. What they did do the same though, was deliver absolute top shelf content. If you were around for the Ustream show on the first day of the conference you got a taste of what Ed was doing. Just brilliant. Dan on the other hand, wowed us in a completely different way. His content was also nothing short of brilliant, but you won't be hearing about it on this site. I'm not deliberately trying to build it up either, it's just a simple case of not being able to share. Just wouldn't be fair to those that attended.

Another huge highlight for me was Rob Somerville's presentation. It was a real gamechanger for me. Rob really did a fantastic job, and has just opened my eyes up to where I'd been going wrong. Well, not wrong exactly, just not as refined as I should have been. So thanks Rob. By the way, if you're an Immediate Edge member, Rob's presentation will be available to members in the next week or so. If you're not a member right now, it might be a very good time to consider it. There are some very big things coming to the Immediate Edge this year, and if you're an experienced online marketer there are things coming that will rock your socks off.

There were 2 other presenters at Beechworth, Marc Lindsay, who I unfortunately didn't get to talk to much, and Pete Williams who is just the coolest dude ever.

Marc gave us a presentation on his service PLR Pro . Now, I've been a member of a few PLR services in my time, and I ended up quitting my subscription on all of them after a while. They just didn't deliver the goods. Marc's service does. I've signed up already, and I can't believe the quality I'm seeing. The service caters to groups with a maximum of 200 people, and delivers articles, keywords, top affiliate programs, graphics, etc across 11 niches! That's right 11 niches. There's heaps more I could tell you, but go check it out for yourself, PLR Pro

And that leaves us with Pete Williams. His presentation was superb, and has given me a huge insight into the process of publicity and general PR. He's a terrific guy too, and someone that I'm really glad I connected with. His technique as a poker player is 'interesting' but I can't deny that it seemed to work for him. He took out Ed on our poker night and I think that surprised everybody. If you want to see a bit of fun using some of the techniques from Beechworth, go to Google and do a search for man hunk. You'll find Pete on the front page of google. Pete runs a terrific blog on marketing too, check it out Preneur Marketing. I should also mention too, that I was one if the winners of Pete's competition he held while he was overseas. Very cool.

Savvy

Presenters and attendees alike, it was just fantastic to be around so many sharp people. I'm in this game for the long haul, and spending time with people smarter than me is never a bad idea. Chatting to people, whether at the conference itself, over dinner (Rob Somerville blew my mind at dinner on the first night), or while playing poker and talking trash, there were just so many nuggets that were flying around. I feel like the bar has been raised on the way I literally do everything online, and that can only be a good thing.

I've been meaning to write a post reviewing one of the articles Pete Williams has had publishing to his blog while he's been overseas. My main reason was purely selfish, Pete was running a competition for people who reviewed his articles, and winners would receive a swag of goodies. I really dig Pete's stuff, so I wanted to win.

But I've been pretty busy the last few weeks and time looked like beating me to the punch. But then Pete wrote an article about failure, and there being no such thing, and that struck a cord with me so much that I knew I needed to set a time and write something. So, it's Sunday morning, I have a brilliant coffee in front of me, I have no pressing work to do, and it's time to write a review.

What I love about Pete's article is the simplicity of it. People need to realise some basic truths in order to overcome them. What Pete suggests, which I wholeheartedly agree with, is that failure is just a perception. There is no such thing, it doesn't exist. Same for success. It's just a perception as well.

Our culture tells us what success and failure is, and we hear it so much and so often that we just accept it as a reality. It becomes a Pavlov's dog scenario, and people judge themselves and others based on what they have been conditioned to believe is so. People go though their entire lives living in this lie. I know this because I see it all around me every day. When I made the decision to leave the teaching profession and make my living full time from the internet, I had many, many naysayers. All of the negativity came from one source, fear.

I believe that fear is the one major controlling factor in all of our lives. In my situation, the motivating fear was to have lived a life where I didn't take chances just in in case, and ended up an old man full of regret. For the people critical of my decision, the fear was grounded in one of three ways. Fear that I would fail, a projection of their own insecurities; Fear that I would succeed, a projection of jealousy or resentment; or fear of the unknown, not understanding this business and therefore being afraid of it. The only people in my life that were happy for me, were those who had no fear associated with the path I chose.

Pete goes on to give a history lesson in the development and acceptance of PostIt Notes. It works on two levels. On the first level we have the classic example of something perceived as a failure. Spencer Silver created an adhesive classified as a failure, spent five long years trying to make it better, until a use was found for the original adhesive. The only reason this first adhesive was classified as a failure was because it was perceived that way. Nobody had found a use for it, so it was seen as a failure until that changed. A shift in thinking is often all that's needed for something to be viewed in a completely different way

On the second level, this is a great example of the concept of fear in action. One group of people (the 3M marketing department), rejected the PostIt notes as a failure. I believe fear plays a part here in terms of fear of the unknown and fear of an product that doesn't sell. If the product didn't sell, the marketing department would've had to wear the blame as the people who brought the product to market.

On the flipside, the secretaries began using the PostIt notes with a complete lack of fear. They had them at hand and found a use for them, there were no perceived or real pressures creating fear to contend with. There was no perception of failure or success, just the reality.

Look at the issues in your life, both personal and professional. Everything you see as a failure or a success, what are they really? Try to remove fear from the equation and just look at things from a fact based perspective. Do things look different? They should.

Pete's Article

Pete Williams, marketer extraordinaire, Cleo Bachelor of the year finalist, and leading Australian entrepreneur, has done a little interview with me about the You Tube video I did a few weeks ago. I admit I was chuffed when he asked me, as I see Pete as a shining example of what you can achieve if you just get out there and do it.

Check Out The Interview Here

As you may recall, my video of the streaking incident at the cricket a few weeks ago did fairly well. In the time since it went up and got the result it did, I've had numerous people ask me how I did it. I've had questions about various web 2.0 techniques, software I might have used, and whether I'd do it for some other people. In truth, I've been a little overwhelmed by the attention.

When Pete asked me about the interview though, I thought that would be a great way to share what I did. So, want to know how I went about it?

The answer is simple, go here to find out.