Once upon a time, I used to think I was unique.  That was until I found out just how many guys were named “Robert Goodman” in this world.  It’s even true here in relatively small Clearwater Beach, Florida.  Come to find out that there are THREE of us named “Robert Goodman” that go to my same doctor!

So, when you look at the world wide reach of the world wide web, you quickly find how difficult it can be to create a brand around your own name – especially when the best popularity metric here in the new millennium is Google.

They are very few of us who have not “googled” ourselves to see what’s out there.  Sometimes, it can be a little disturbing and embarrassing – since Internet photos, videos, blog postings, instant messages, tweets, pokes, flames, complaints, rants and raves, etc. live on forever.

So how DO you create a brand around your name?

For many of us with “common” names like mine, there is a special ingredient that improves on our individuality.  It’s called our middle name.

In my case, my middle name is Lee.   Even though that helps tremendously, trust me when I say there may be a near-infinite number of other folks with the same name – even counting the middle name. (Would you believe, one of the other two “Robert Goodmans” in the small universe of my doctor’s office has my same middle name?)

My recommendation is that you start branding your name, with your middle name, as aggressively as you can to establish your Google presence before someone else does.  This is what I call “G-Branding.”

To see how this can work for you, I invite you to check out my new online business card at: www.RobertLeeGoodman.com.

As of this writing, you’ll notice that I currently have 9 out of the top 10 first page positions for my full name (the obituary is not me).  On both page two and page three of Google, I have 5 of the 10 entries on each of those pages.

As you can see, there is room for significant improvement on my part to tweak these numbers.  Note that there is almost NO hits for me if you type “Robert Goodman” since all my “G-Branding” is focused with my middle name.  As a consequence, everything you do, say, publish and distribute needs to include your full name – so your prospects and customers know you by your full name.

Just so you know, this “G-Branding” is not ego-driven (okay, maybe just a little.)  In my case, I have several different companies and several different products and services that I offer to startup and emerging companies – along with products and services to a completely different audience for my relationship book, Efficient Love.

What gets difficult is trying to describe ALL of those companies and services on one small business card – even front and back.

At a recent seminar I attended in San Francisco, our host, Alex Mandossian, handed out his new business card which is similar to what you see at my website www.RobertLeeGoodman.com.  If you google “Alex Mandossian“, you’ll see he has even MORE products and services to sell than I do!  Alex is probably THE best expert on promotion that I have met in three decades in business.  As you can see, he completely dominates the first 10 pages on Google and is an excellent example of how to create your own “G-Branding.”

I thought that his Google Business Card was such a great idea that I decided to produce an online version of Alex’s idea with www.RobertLeeGoodman.com.

Like it or not, it really is the World According to Google when you’re in business – especially if your predominant market is found on the Internet.  If you take that statement as axiomatic – and your market is the Internet – then you have GOT to take action to improve your own “G-Branding” before someone else with your same name beats you to it.

Two of the highlights of the reunion were outstanding and epiphany-producing presentations by Raymond Aaron on “Double Your Income Doing What You Love” and Dave Stech on “The Power of 6.”

It was great to finally meet several folks and clients who had only been virtual up until this past weekend…especially so many who are directly on Alex’s core support team…and to develop so many more new relationships as a result of the networking.

I’m looking forward to developing joint ventures with several we met – and to coaching and mentoring others so that I can help them get from their current Point A to their desired Point B faster and more efficiently with my Deviled Details Action Planning Service.

Part of my UnStick The Stuck CEO and Start Up Company Process (www.UnStickTheStuck.com) is to develop my W-Cubed = WHO? Is Doing WHAT? WHEN? (www.ActionAccountability.com) for each line item on the Deviled Details Action Plan.

One of my goals in attending the Teleseminar Secrets Reunion was to meet and interview candidates for my Approved Vendor List. These are the resources that I recommend my clients consider for all the WHOs on all the line items on each of their Action Plans. Fortunately, there were several folks at the Reunion whose services would be ideal for some of my clients.

But all of that starts next week. For the rest of this week, wife Janet and I are going to enjoy some of what the great City of San Francisco has to offer.

Robert Lee Goodman, MBA
Ceo & Chief ImpleMENTOR
www.Virtual-Exec.com

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.

However, providing 1 to 1 consulting has a major downside: there is no way to effectively and efficiently leverage myself. By transitioning to 1 to Many, I gain that leverage and can make some of my services more affordable to even more entrepreneurs – especially those with severely cash-strapped start up companies.

Toward that goal, I am taking a comprehensive course on Teleseminar Secrets by Alex Mandossian. Although its primary focus is on offering teleseminars and webcasts, it is really an 8 session course in marketing and sales – both online and offline. With a price tag of $2,000, it wasn’t totally clear up front as to whether it would be the highest and best use of those funds versus other, alternative marketing investments. Now that I am two sessions into the eight session course, I now have that clarity.

In my opinion, it is an exceptional program and Alex is literate, articulate and expansive – giving his audience MUCH more than their money’s worth. Although I am only a quarter into the training, if it were to end now, I would consider that I have gotten much more than my money’s worth already. I highly recommend the course to many of you who are starting a company but have little background or experience with either marketing or sales.

As a CEO of multiple companies for the past 30 years, I’ve had marketing departments and VPs of this and that to handle both the creative and implementation sides of marketing and sales in all my organizations. Those of you who know me, also know that I made a strategic decision 14 years ago when I sold my real estate companies that I specifically did NOT want hundreds of people working for me again. In fact, I still prefer no one works for me and that I use contract superstars instead. The corollary to this is that you either have got to do it all yourself – or understand “it” enough to know, hire and manage the right superstar. And, “it” can be a very long list of individual this and that.

However, just because you’ve been a CEO, even of multiple companies, does NOT mean you know it all. (One of my favorite quotes: “What I know is a raindrop…what I don’t know, is an ocean. Isaac Newton.)

For me, I am not an internet marketing and sales expert. Far from it. Actually, VERY far from it. So, learning to swim in this particular ocean has quickly moved from ankle deep wading near the shore to currently being well over my head – with a multitude of implementation steps required for much of what I am learning to aggregate into swimming with efficient strokes instead of just treading water.

For what all that I am learning from Alex, this includes a lot that is generic to internet marketing: autoresponders, shopping carts, blogs (which is why this is my first), list building, opt in pages, flash audio, ethical bribes, webcasts, teleseminars, bridges, etc. and more etc. As I blunder through learning and implementing this stuff, I will post my successes and failures here at this blog…along with my abort, retry and skipped steps along the way. Hopefully, some readers here will avoid some of the mistakes I will make…others of you who wish to share your own successes or recommendations or comments are welcome to participate!

And, yes…I have been a CEO for 30 years. And, yes…I never want to stop learning…or stop reinventing my company. (Hint: If you are starting a company, be prepared to both refocus and reinvent your company – often – to respond to your market space and your customers’ needs. If you don’t, you will not thrive…and you may not even survive.) The late Peter Drucker, business guru extraordinaire, said, “If you weren’t already in a business, would you enter it today?” he asked. “And if the answer is no, what are you going to do about it?” For me, transitioning from 1 to 1 to 1 to Many is what I am going to do about it.

What about you? What are your answers to Drucker’s questions about your own company – even if it is a start up?

Happy New Year Everyone – Go out and MAKE it a GREAT 2008!

Robert Lee Goodman, MBA