Jim Lovell: “All right, there’s a thousand things that have to happen in order. We are on number eight. You’re talking about number six hundred and ninety-two.”

One of my favorite quotes…from Apollo 13 (the movie that SHOULD have beaten out an outstanding Braveheart for Best Picture…but I digress.)

It’s been three weeks since I started Teleseminar Secrets by Alex Mandossian. And, I am on Step 8. Alex warns you that his full intention is to provide so much content and so many action items that the faint of heart may feel overwhelmed. Having run multiple companies for the past three decades, I am NOT faint of heart and I do not get overwhelmed easily.

However…

My wife jokes all the time that my brain goes 1,000 MPH…which is why I usually limit all work stuff after 7PM so I can slow down to less than 100 MPH by bedtime. Unfortunately, Alex’s seminars go from 8PM EST to 2AM – and while I have the choice to listen to any or all of the teleseminar via MP3 a couple of days later, I usually don’t want to wait. (For most entrepreneurs, patience is not a virtue…it is a waste of time.) The corollary problem is that with all the stuff that Alex covers, my brain is usually up to about Mach 3 at 2AM…and heading toward Mach 4. There are only eight of these sessions, so eight lost nights of sleep is just part of the investment on what looks like a GREAT ROI.

I end up taking what Alex covers…mixing it with my own 30 years experience…and producing pages of action items that I want to immediately implement. The first “oh, by the way…” that keeps getting in the way is that my 1 to 1 consulting with Ceo Resource ( www.CeoResource.com ) is booming so that it limits implementation time for the 1 to Many primary goal. The second “oh, by the way…” for me is that I am applying everything to two totally different businesses: my primary day job of Ceo Resource and my totally fun job with my relationship book that was just published, Efficient Love (www.EfficientLove.com). The effect of all of this is at least doubling the action items to be done! (So far, most of my time has been spent with Ceo Resource…with Efficient Love, I have yet another company that I have now started.)

In spite of all that, this is what I gotten done in the past three weeks since starting Alex’s course:

• Autoresponders – I have set up four autoresponders so far – two for Ceo Resource and two for Efficient Love. These are done through my newly set up account with 1ShoppingCart (see below.) These weren’t hard to learn or set up…but it did take a couple of hours to understand it all and get these first four set up and tested since I had not worked with autoresponders before this. However, even though they seem to be working fine for the rest of the world, I can’t seem to get my own emails. I have been working with 1ShoppingCart support via telephone and emails but apparently I have to wait for the return of the Abuse Manager to know why I am getting technical bounces from my own hosts. It has been this part that has burned a LOT of extra time…probably up to an additional 6-8 hours so far and still counting. Debug is the REAL “giant sucking sound” when it comes to productivity for a small company. Hopefully, the folks at 1ShoppingCart can figure out the solution to this without wasting a whole lot more of my time.
• List building – On this point, I have been incredibly stupid for the last 14 years. In spite of the hundreds of thousands, or more, who have been to my web site at www.CeoResource.com , I have never had a form on there to collect opt-in emails. Stupid. I would fire me – but then there would be no else left to do anything! The good news is that the forms are there now for both sites…I knew enough to add them – and the names are already starting to flow in via the autoresponders. I expect the current velocity will greatly increase with the planned ethical bribes that should be ready this week. 1ShoppingCart makes it very easy to do this if you know anything about HTML. I am starting with a zero-based list. As it grows so will my use of the autoresponders. The fact that it took me less than an hour to add this to both sites and to add it to two Ask Campaigns REALLY makes me feel stupid for not doing this about 13.9999 years ago.
• Ask Campaigns – I’ve already designed two…one for each company. You can see both…and ask your own questions at www.StartUpCompanyQuestions.com and www.AuthorQuestions.com (was amazed that both domain names were available!) In my case, I used Alex’s templates…and heavily modified them myself, including all the coding. As of now, I am not using the Ask database and just having the autoresponders email me the info directly from 1ShoppingCart (these I get…but not the signee’s emails.) Fortunately, I know FrontPage and HTML well enough to do a lot myself. I do not know PHP….but can sometimes fake it.
• This blog www.ShouldYouStartACompany.com – blogging is something I had considered for a long time but had never taken the time to learn and implement. Based on Alex’s strong recommendation for the multiple benefits from blogging, I bit this bullet and took the time to learn how to do this. I will warn you, this is not that easy to set up yourself. Even with the video tutorials from Alex which are great, albeit a few versions of WordPress behind, you may need web master help to get this part done….especially if you want to heavily customize the vanilla version like I have done. We will see if the effort and ongoing posts have the traffic and organic search impacts that Alex predicts.
• Multiple domains galore – I am currently up to about 21 33 42 54 domain names that I have bought as a result of Alex’s advice. At $7 each per year at GoDaddy, it is cheap internet real estate that will let me use different domains for various marketing campaigns and teleseminar-specific focal points. With GoDaddy’s free URL forwarding, this really is a no-brainer. I have been surprised at some of the great domains I have been able to still grab including the two I am using for my current Ask Campaigns. With all the different foci of my intended teleseminar series and new product and service lines, these will become very useful.
• 1ShoppingCart – I signed up for the Professional version which offers everything: shopping cart, payment, ad tracking, autoresponders and affiliate program. If you already have all this stuff going for you, getting your online business going will be a lot easier. However, if you are like me, all this stuff is new to me and will require man-days or even man-weeks of effort, learning and implementation. So far, the only thing I have going is the autoresponders…see above.
• Shopping Cart Queen – Because 1ShoppingCart is all new stuff for me, I signed up for 1ShoppingCart with the Queen. If you sign up with her for 1ShoppingCart, you get her club membership for six months for only $1.00. 1ShoppingCart is the same price, so this one is another no brainer.
• Instant Teleseminar – Another no brainer for having access to an all you can “speak” bridge line and webcast…Instant Teleseminar all for only $47 a month for unlimited use, 200 user telephone bridge and 2,000 webcast users. All with amazing marketing tools. Check them out if you want to teleseminars and/or webcasts.
• Online audio and related equipment – One of the things that got me started on teleseminars was the idea of adding sound to web sites with easy to use Flash players. The one I bought that I am using is Total Web Audio. There are others out there. I am convinced that it increases prospect intimacy and increases page stickiness – and frankly it makes it easier for my visitors to digest my content. I am slowly adding audio files to my various pages and even figured out how to add audio here on the blog! With regard to equipment, I have a great telephone headset from theboom.com but as good as it is on the phone, it is terrible for computer audio due to plosives (based on my comments, I understand their engineers are trying to design a pop filter that works for a headset…but no luck so far. If any reader knows of an effective pop filter that works with headsets, please post!) So, I began the search for a better approach. Once again, I used Alex’s recommendations and went to www.teleseminartools.com. I liked the equipment that I saw for The Ultimate Teleseminar Package for $1,695. However, I was able to get exactly everything there on eBay for under $700 for a $1,000 savings (actually got microphones plus another microphone, plus the JK Audio Innkeeper 1x and Edirol UA-25, plus cables, etc., all for under $700.) One key thing I did NOT get was Mike Stewart’s video tutorials. Since I am a total geek, I was able to assemble all the pieces myself. If your VCR clock is still flashing 12:00, then save yourself some grief and pay retail with Mike. Another thing I added was an Olympus DS-30 digital voice recorder. Great little gizmo for about $100, surprisingly great fidelity, easy transfer of voice files to the computer. The idea is that I can create audio content anywhere. The other part of that equation was that I added Dragon NaturallySpeaking Version 9. That way, I can generate transcripts of my audio. Still training the software so stay tuned how well it actually works for the transcriptions.
• Re-write of sales copy on both of my web sites and my Amazon page – I had a real pro do the sales copy re-write of my front page at www.EfficientLove.com. Kathleen did a great job with both the landing page and the re-write of the Amazon page for my book. I am still adding several new products to www.CeoResource.com. Once those are done, I will have her re-write my landing pages there too.
• Google AdWords implemented and modified – This is one of the few things that Alex has recommended that I actually already know something about. I have been using AdWords for about two years and know my way around the system. I have found it cost effective for Ceo Resource but not cost effective for the book. I’ve just started with new ads that tie to my Ask Campaigns so check back to find out what kind of results I am getting.
• Advertising in Radio TV Interview Report (RTIR) – This is another thing that Alex recommended that I was already using…but using just for the book – my first ad was December 1 and I had my first radio interviews last month. I plan to switch the next ad to push my entrepreneurial and start up company expertise for interviews on those topics as a way to jump start the list building for Ceo Resource.
• Whew – all that in three weeks – and a day job AND a night job!

Major things I have NOT gotten to yet include:

• Setting up my shopping cart – with my current products and services. This will take some time to learn!
• Setting up real credit cards – after using Paypal for the past decade plus, it will be nice to actually have a merchant account and gateway.
• Hosting my first teleseminar.
• Adding more content to the blog.
• Setting up affiliate programs for both Ceo Resource and Efficient Love.
• Aggressively pursuing list building for both companies.
• Set up Facebook Group for Ceo Resource and starting a business. (I already have an Efficient Love Group set up at Facebook.)
• Add the Ask Campaign links to my LinkedIn pages for both Ceo Resource and Efficient Love.
• Continue to develop the top three curricula for my first paid teleseminars.
• Finish teleseminars curricula on “Five Years from Today” and on “Start Up Company Workshop.” And first Ask campaign.

The goal is to get all of the above done in the next three weeks. Stay tuned for the results!

I hope all of this has been of help to other students of Teleseminar Secrets. I invite you to post your comments and participate in this blog. Share your experiences and recommendations with the rest of us!

Robert Lee Goodman, MBA
Ceo & Chief Dragon Slayer
www.StartUpCompanyWorkshop.com

PS: If you are overwhelmed with your own action items or your own start up dragons, please take a look at my various mentoring services that can help you accelerate your results.