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Dane Maxwell AMA-- SaaS, Membership Sites, The Foundation

CommonCents

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Informative thread, thank you for participating.
 
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Charles

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You are missing something.

Something significant. Something so large that even though I don't know you, I question your reading comprehension.

MJ emailed you?


I just had to look at your supposed age...due to your childish immature response...43? You are right you do not now me and the likelyhood is you never will ....lucky me. Reading comprehension? Then you think MJ personally emailed me? Really

I had a quick scan over my emails, then had a quick scan over the thread...I made a mistake and to be honest I am very busy and looking at the emails for a 'break'. Some of us are too busy working the dream than sitting in front of a screen dreaming?

May I suggest you go and play on Facebook, Twitter or something! Maybe watch American Idol or Celebrity News?

Thank you to Allen Crawley for pointing me in the right direction.
 

codo3500

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I just had to look at your supposed age...due to your childish immature response...43? You are right you do not now me and the likelyhood is you never will ....lucky me. Reading comprehension? Then you think MJ personally emailed me? Really

I had a quick scan over my emails, then had a quick scan over the thread...I made a mistake and to be honest I am very busy and looking at the emails for a 'break'. Some of us are too busy working the dream than sitting in front of a screen dreaming?

May I suggest you go and play on Facebook, Twitter or something! Maybe watch American Idol or Celebrity News?

Thank you to Allen Crawley for pointing me in the right direction.

You're 42, have an obvious belief that you're successful - yet you still couldn't take anything useful out of this thread? Perhaps you're much smarter, more talented, educated and experienced than all of us.

Or perhaps you're a 42 year old with a superiority complex that likes to start fights on the internet, perhaps...
 

D. Maxwell

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Hey Dane,

My question is very basic, but what is your "outline" that you follow for getting in touch with the right person and getting to their pain. I'm kinda scared to get on the phone with people and what key lines would tip my extraction phone calls more towards success?

Liberty, I would practice your idea extraction on friends and relatives who have businesses first, get a few under your belt there, then once you find some success, branch out to the cold industries.

I don't prefer cold contacts for idea extraction. I like to find industry experts and get them on the phone and tell them I'm a tech entrepreneur looking to automate painful tasks in businesses.

Look up associations like if you picked chiropractors I'd look up chiropractor association. I found a website and looked up their board.

ACA - ACA Board of Governors

I would email and call all of these guys multiple times and tell them something like this...

"Hey doc I'm Dane, a tech entrepreneur looking to serve the Chiropractic industry, I know you guys have lots of options but many are terrible. So I'm doing a research investigation and learning about the top pains chiro's face, and looking to compile this research into a report and possibly create a product to solve some of the pains. Would you like to participate in this and also see the research I find?"

Then I'd hop straight into the idea extraction questions.

Lots of times with these guys who are heads of associations, they are so dialed in you can straight up ask them questions like

"What would you definitely buy as a chiro, if I was smart enough to offer it to you?"
"What software have you been looking for for years, but have not been able to find a solution that fits your needs?"

Then I'd go into the PAIN extraction questions...

Take me through the first hour of your day, what are you usually doing?
The second hour?
The third?
How about after lunch, what do you usually do then?

What are some of the pains you experience when handling patients?
What are some of the pains you experience with your staff?

NOW important, in idea extraction, it's not about the first question, but how you respond to the first answer.

They will tend to answer with general answers, and it's up to you to dig deeper.

You want to steer towards LEVEL 4 issues and answers.

Level 1 answer - an all in one software solution (don't build this, it's too complicated to build, and sell)
Level 2 answer - something that does all patient management but not office management
Level 3 answer - something that does a few key things like appointments and billing
Level 4 answer - just software handling people who don't pay on time, or appointment reminders only

In real estate a great level 4 software is e-signature software. It solves one painful problem only.

The closer to level 4, the higher the chance you can build it in under 12 weeks.

There is a lot more on this. We have a 43 page report on how to fully do idea extraction.

This should give you a good start. Get out there and practice lots :)

Expect the first 10 calls to go shitty.

Record your calls, listen back, and reflect on what you can do better.

Tom Brady became the best quarterback in the game by reflecting on game tapes.

Reflection is a top skill from our top students. The students who don't reflect on how they did after a failure, usually fail often and start blaming things.
 
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Charles

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If you read it through again I think you will find that I didn't start it, someone admitting they did'nt know me and then questioning my reading ability..I find very impolite and not really in the spirit of the forum.
I haven't read the thread through as of yet so can't comment but I am sure its very informative. I would not consider myself any smarter, talented, educated or experienced than anyone else here we should be all here to learn and listen. But, I will not sit back when some starts a fight..........
 

Execution=King

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Dane, thanks again for doing this AMA. I greatly appreciate it. I've also listened to several of your podcast interviews and have learned a ton.

I do think you skipped my question regarding Sam Ovens, your key case study. (I'm not counting the reply by the new account "Tank".)

Anyway, Sam Ovens has apparently launched a bizopp infoproduct based largely on his assertion that the Foundation doesn't work as advertised & the SaaS apps can't really be funded with presales. (Ironically, his ads are being injected for me into Fastlane Forum's adsense slots):

ZDChcKK.gif


g126hv8.png



I'm seeing tons of these. (I'm half wondering if Sam has made this thread a managed placement in Adwords.)

I'm wondering if there was there a falling-out? More important, is Ovens wrong when he asserts that the funding-through-presales model is largely unworkable, and if so, why?


On another topic, you're very clear that writing even a single line of code pre-Foundation is grounds for automatic disqualification from the Foundation. But if that's the case, how does Renata, who apparently failed to come up with a SaaS business, count as a Foundation success story?
 

exige

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That last post by Dane on idea extraction is gold! BTW, this process is applicable to more than just SaaS, these are some of the core skills in complex solution selling and consulting as well.

Maybe Ovens should have his own AMA. I've been getting the targeted ads too, but I didn't take it as any sort of falling out or whatever, it seemed to me he was just leveraging his Foundation story to drum up interest in his info product, I didn't watch his video maybe he says something specific? Didn't seem like any conflict to me.

Also just wanted to thank Dane for being so open and answering a lot of tough questions. I know I went a little deep with some of my questions, I just wanted to feel him out and see where his course fits in. I'm also operating in the SaaS space, in a different way. When my book is finished I'd love to send free copies to your students.
 
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MJ DeMarco

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Some of us are too busy working the dream than sitting in front of a screen dreaming?

May I suggest you go and play on Facebook, Twitter or something! Maybe watch American Idol or Celebrity News?

Consider this the 2nd foot in your mouth. First you scan the thread (you don't' read it) and then claim there's nothing to see, then second, you insult one of the most successful Fastlaner's on the forum-- one who isn't working for a dream, he's already living it. And no, I doubt he spends much time on Twitter and Facebook, but I do know he spends a lot of time on a beach in Hawaii twiddling his thumbs and building sand castles with his daughter.
 
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1step

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Anyway, Sam Ovens has apparently launched a bizopp infoproduct based largely on his assertion that the Foundation doesn't work as advertised & the SaaS apps can't really be funded with presales. (Ironically, his ads are being injected for me into Fastlane Forum's adsense slots):

He should really add a frequency cap to his retargeting ads, I've probably seen it 100 times today
 

RogueInnovation

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Hey Dane,

I'd like to ask about making something "you believe in" work. How do you personally differentiate between thoughts that are destructive, and which one's are good, when it comes to creating something because you believe in it?

I seem so involved in my ideas that I seem to refuse to look at them objectively because I don't want to presume things aren't possible when I've never tried it myself. I know its not the right way to look at it, but I can't seem to figure out the right way to look at it. (I know it doesn't serve me "to not face reality", but I can't quite see far enough ahead to see how I could be acting better, and am smart enough to see that I need a little help to see it)

When I find myself unsure about what is likely to work, I am never sure what can become a nightmare, and what is likely to be much easier than I expected.
I end up going in circles because I push hard on every single detail I get my hands on rather than focusing my time more intelligently. How do you minimise this hamster wheel type of thinking? And what do you think is the best way to/attitude for championing something?

I hope you can tell what I'm talking about because I don't feel I understand my problem well enough to articulate the question 100% clearly.
I guess, I feel like a guy who wants to champion something new, who hasn't championed much of ANYTHING yet. I hamsterwheel on every detail, and I'm not sure if I can be the guy that makes it work whilst I'm doing that.

I hope you know what I'm talking about,
Thanks heaps man :)

Here are some other questions if you have time:
- What was the biggest surprise benefit of biz to you?
- How do you feel you've become a better man through biz?
- Do you have any burning ambitions outside of your biz projects?
- Looking back on your choice to be better with business, how happy do you feel about most of the things you did to learn what you did? Is there anything you would have done differently looking back?

(fantastic stuff dane)

Also, are there any tips you would share for making sure your educational material is REALLY helping your target audience out, rather than being "fluff" that they look through and say "yeah, ok, dude, thats common sense... neeeext". :)
 
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bernieshawn

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Hey Dane,

2 quick question about selecting industries to target:

1. Your criteria for number of businesses in the industry is 5k+, ideally 10k+. Is there a maximum number here also? I found a couple industries that look interesting, but they have 150k+ businesses, so I was wondering if that meant that I needed to get more targeted. Or, if it just meant that it might be a nice, big market!

2. How are you determining if businesses in a given industry already pay for software of some kind? I saw the one example about that chiropractor marketing businesses with 100 employees being an indicator that chiropractors pay for their software. If you can't find something like this, is there another way to find out about this?

Thanks for this AMA, I've been loving it so far. Just what I needed... it just makes so much sense! :)
 

samovens

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Hey all,


I can see some comments in here about me having a falling out with Dane and I want to clear that up.

Firstly, SnapInspect and my consulting business would not be here today if I had not joined the foundation.

I learned a ton in the foundation and that is ultimately where I got the new mindset and strategies to start the businesses I own today.

Dane Maxwell and I have not had a falling out. Dane is an investor in SnapInspect and I still have a ton to do with the foundation - mentoring, creating content and attending the bad a$$ parties that happen at the end of it.

The Foundation model does work. You can pre-sell enough customers to fund the development of your product entirely.

What I am saying with my recent marketing is that I used cash flow from consulting to "Accelerate" SnapInspect as a business.

SaaS companies start slow and then explode when you get a few critical things right: product market fit, pricing, positioning, optimal sales process and key marketing channels.

I used consulting to accelerate my business; activities like marketing, hiring in-house developers and hiring a sales team on salary.

These things are not necessary and SnapInspect did not need them to become a success, it was simply a way to accelerate the growth.

On another note; I do NOT recommend consulting as a end-game business. I've read the book and consulting is not "fastlane". Software as a service IS "fastlane".

Just like MJ and many other entrepreneurs... sometimes you have to do some non-fastlane stuff in order to get your fastlane business off the ground.

I hope this clears things up and I'm open to asking any questions you might have.

Dane Maxwell is an amazing dude and the stuff he teaches in the foundation is seriously powerful and life changing, I endorse everything he does 100%.


-Sam Ovens
 

pisco

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Thx for these great replies?

I have already send 1000 mails to doctors, and got around 80-90 answers. However, the answers are roughly,

I do not use the computer, however, I have problems with not paying customers, Time managment.

Software building is not the problem for me, I can build everything. For me the problem is to convert somebody who is interested in a paying customer?

So my question is:

How to convert an interested customer into a paying customer?


I really appreciate your answer Dane!
 
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JudoTom

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Definitely one of the best threads on the forum.

How did you first sell the foundation? What was the process of getting leads and then converting them to sales? Did you do ppc? Google, facebook? I am in the process of converting from doing my thing to teaching others how to do it. So this IMO is a crucial step.

Did you test out different sales pages? Offers? etc?

Did you start with a free product or free offer?

And thanks again. Some great stuff in this thread.
 

JackTackett

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In the '80s I and a partner sold and installed an office practice software called The Medical Manager into doctor's offices. While the Doctor usually attended a part of the sales meeting - we found the big decision maker was the office manager - get that person on your side and you are usually golden. They are the gate keepers. The doc may sign the checks - but this person runs the day to day affairs. I've been out of the industry for many years so don't know if this is still the case - but maybe you can try a test with the office managers instead of the doctors themselves...

Best of luck,
---Jack
 
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Arrabista

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Hi Dane,

thank you for your generosity in sharing your thoughts and processes.

Thank to members too who have also contributed by asking great questions.

Sometimes its just better for me to read , listen and learn..

This thread is gold...

Thanks again
 

D. Maxwell

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Hey Dane,

Here are some other questions if you have time:
- What was the biggest surprise benefit of biz to you?
- How do you feel you've become a better man through biz?
- Do you have any burning ambitions outside of your biz projects?
- Looking back on your choice to be better with business, how happy do you feel about most of the things you did to learn what you did? Is there anything you would have done differently looking back?

(fantastic stuff dane)

Also, are there any tips you would share for making sure your educational material is REALLY helping your target audience out, rather than being "fluff" that they look through and say "yeah, ok, dude, thats common sense... neeeext". :)

To your first issue... it sounds like you are aware enough to know you are sabotaging yourself. This is awesome. I don't know enough to help you through this problem with the specific issue you are facing. But I know it's something around a fear of either failure or success. Do either of those ring true?

Second, biggest surprise benefit of business for me? Having my mid life crisis at 26 instead of 50. I found out what was important to me real fast once I had money. Money only amplifies your problems. Take whatever problem you have now (self doubt, insecurity, paranoia, arrogance) and add millions of dollars, and they all amplify. So having lots of money helps you to sort through your baggage.

To add to that, I've become an incredibly loving guy. Sincere, humble, soft, and loving. I used to be hard, edgy, and have "F*ck you" energy. Like look at what I've done. Well that energy sucks. And because I got to achieve and see that accomplishments don't really matter to your true self esteem and love, I get to play a new game now.

For burning ambitions. YES. Oh shit yes. I want to show you Rogue, how brilliant you are. You are truly, incredibly, brilliant. This is called the "You Are Brilliant Project" right now. What I want to do, is have younger children take a personality test using the Enneagram, and then match them to the greatest thinkers and achievers of our time. So these kids have a north star for their potential.

Think Billy, takes the test, finds out he is a type 5, investigator. We'd match him to a report on Albert Einstein. Billy would get a report that says

"Hey Billy, do you know how brilliant you are? Do you know you have the same personality type as albert einsten? Do you know you could be as genius as he is? Here is a really awesome fun summary of Einsteins personality traits, skills, habits, and flaws. Read this report and learn how you could not only be like einstein, but even more powerful because you are learning from his mistakes."

Rogue it's insane to be in my mind these days... I'm thinking of the potential of others. I see kids walk down the street and think... "That kid could be the next Einsten, that kid could be the next Edison, that kid could be the next Bruce Lee!"

And so my lifelong project is this non-profit mission - I want every child on the planet to know how loved, and how Brilliant They Are. I will probably use my software background to create an integration between a fun test on the Enneagram, and linking in these great people to match to a personality system. (Sorry if this isn't making sense, The Foundation launch has me zapped on mental energy, but I wanted to get back on here to serve.)

Is there anything that I'd rather do differently? I'd start with and run a business up to $500,000 a year soley on webinars. I wouldn't waste time with anything else. I'd add the other shit in later.

If you want to be a master at persuasion, it helps to apply the 27ish word persuasion sentence. "People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, calm their fears, confirm their suspicions, justify their failures, and help them throw rocks at their enemies."

My reports follow that framework.

So...

When I create content for the foundation, it's all based around the readers feelings FIRST. So I co-create content with the students. I ask them what they are feeling when they try to think about doing the task my next piece of content is going to help them do.

If I get, "frustrated... overwhelmed... not sure where to start..." I take that and create content like this:

"So in this report you're going to learn how to extract profitable ideas in a single phone call. Gone are the days of guessing for ideas. No more! If you feel overwhelmed or you aren't sure where to start, you are in the perfect place, because this will explain it all."

It really helps to meet people where they are at, before you take them where you want them to go. And you do that by connecting with feelings.

We can talk more about this if you're curious!
 

D. Maxwell

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Thx for these great replies?

I have already send 1000 mails to doctors, and got around 80-90 answers. However, the answers are roughly,

I do not use the computer, however, I have problems with not paying customers, Time managment.

Software building is not the problem for me, I can build everything. For me the problem is to convert somebody who is interested in a paying customer?

So my question is:

How to convert an interested customer into a paying customer?


I really appreciate your answer Dane!

Hahaha pisco. That is the most challenging question in ANY INDUSTRY! Pisco, with the right mindset you could probably create a solution around this. Here's how I would go about doing it.

Assuming people have an interest in the product, sales is nothing more than removing the barriers people have to buy.

STEP 1

I would email every single patient who has not purchased a one line email.

Subject: Quick Q

Body:

Hey Pisco, just curious why you have not decided to move forward with hip replacement surgery?

Reply back and let me know,
--
The Doc

STEP 2

I would create a sales brochure that addresses all of the common objections you get to the email from above. I would hand that to patients on their first visit.

That is one idea off of the top of my head to increase conversions.

Doctors are amazing at their craft. They suck balls at marketing.
 
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D. Maxwell

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Hey Dane,

2 quick question about selecting industries to target:

1. Your criteria for number of businesses in the industry is 5k+, ideally 10k+. Is there a maximum number here also? I found a couple industries that look interesting, but they have 150k+ businesses, so I was wondering if that meant that I needed to get more targeted. Or, if it just meant that it might be a nice, big market!

2. How are you determining if businesses in a given industry already pay for software of some kind? I saw the one example about that chiropractor marketing businesses with 100 employees being an indicator that chiropractors pay for their software. If you can't find something like this, is there another way to find out about this?

Thanks for this AMA, I've been loving it so far. Just what I needed... it just makes so much sense! :)

Bernie it depends, but it sounds like an awesome market. The bigger the better.

How to determine... I'm not sure... it depends on the industry. Just try to figure it out with some genius hack you can think up.

You could seriously run a survey of "the top tools X industry uses to run their business." and contact people asking them to share and in return you'll share the entire list of results. Value add, relationship builder, and a great way to start idea extraction.

My next question after getting those submissions is which of these software cause you the most pain? That's more or less how I built www.paperlesspipeline.com
 

D. Maxwell

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Definitely one of the best threads on the forum.

How did you first sell the foundation? What was the process of getting leads and then converting them to sales? Did you do ppc? Google, facebook? I am in the process of converting from doing my thing to teaching others how to do it. So this IMO is a crucial step.

Did you test out different sales pages? Offers? etc?

Did you start with a free product or free offer?

And thanks again. Some great stuff in this thread.

We launched brilliantly in my opinion using the podcast channel. 90% of our sales came from Mixergy, SmartPassiveIncome, and one other top podcast that is slipping my mind. 10% from affiliates. We had a few sales from Facebook PPC.

Find places that have an audience, and do an interview.

Did we test out different sales pages? NO. I did an interactive offer asking people questions along the way so I didn't have to guess and launch with a winning sales letter.

Did I start with a free offer? No, but it could have helped. I went straight for the sale on the first version of the foundation.
 

supervagabond

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Hey Dane,

Thank you so much for doing this AMA and giving your advice. Your freedom=kindness philosophy makes me think that someone being kind (and giving advice) also pushes me to being kind and giving advice to people around me.

Say I have found my market and have several pre-sales that validated the idea. Now I have to build the software.

Now what are specific steps to take here?

From what I understood:

1- Sketch out on paper how the software will work. Every screen every action. (ok, done)
2- Translate these into HTML/CSS to have the UI ready
3- Hire a coder and build it

Could you go into details on the steps 2 and 3?

Where do you hire the coder? What programming language to develop my app in? Once I hired the guy, what should I tell him to do first?

In your projects, when the coder is working, what is your involvement? Do you let him 100% freerange as long as it's in the budget and timing, or do you tell him things to do 1 by 1?

What is the typical breakdown of the 12 weeks of programming, in terms of milestones and tasks?

I have 8,400€ of "6 months advance" presales in my hands, is that enough to start and focus on dev?

Dane thank you so much for doing this AMA and take care

Cheers,
Valentin Van Nhut

PS: If you come to Paris, you're always welcome at my place!
 
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TurboWagon

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Hi Dane,

Thanks again for doing this. It has been absolutely awesome so far. I am coming way out of my comfort zone in posting a question here but I would like to know if you can elaborate on your comment above where you said:
"Is there anything that I'd rather do differently? I'd start with and run a business up to $500,000 a year soley on webinars. I wouldn't waste time with anything else. I'd add the other shit in later."

Can you talk more about how that would work and the steps involved? Thank you!
 

SNORKu

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In a new Foundation. Will be a new videos lessons?
Is it will be different from 2012?
 

ricktx

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That last post by Dane on idea extraction is gold! BTW, this process is applicable to more than just SaaS, these are some of the core skills in complex solution selling and consulting as well.

Agreed. I have been a Information Technology consultant for 25 or so years of my life, and the process Dane has explained sounds a lot like IT consulting. Matter fact it sounds exactly the same to me.

The only real differences are, instead of creating a custom solutions for his clients and charging them just once for software they end up owning. He creates SaaS applications and sells them to the original client at a discount (for the seed money) in a subscription based model, and resells the same products to others with the same problem for profit.

A very interesting Business Model to be sure.
 
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RogueInnovation

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Second, biggest surprise benefit of business for me? Having my mid life crisis at 26 instead of 50. I found out what was important to me real fast once I had money. Money only amplifies your problems. Take whatever problem you have now (self doubt, insecurity, paranoia, arrogance) and add millions of dollars, and they all amplify. So having lots of money helps you to sort through your baggage.

To add to that, I've become an incredibly loving guy. Sincere, humble, soft, and loving. I used to be hard, edgy, and have "F*ck you" energy. Like look at what I've done. Well that energy sucks. And because I got to achieve and see that accomplishments don't really matter to your true self esteem and love, I get to play a new game now.

(I got over that fear of success/failure thing, it was more like I was using success and failure as a way to steer my ambitions, and I needed to find something more tangible to steer with. The solution was that I expanded my perception enough that I could simplify my 75 page biz plans into a few sentences and graphical set ups. When I had the few pieces I needed they also came with knowledge about in what way they needed to be implemented, and that helped me not work off fear of failure or success)

That amplification thing sounds familiar to me, its like there is a void in front of you and all your results come from what you just did, so you are left hanging there. If you don't find your center and a place you can develop yourself from it can run you around until you are tired and frustrated with people. So you grab yourself and you say "hey, this is how I'm gonna make things better". For you it is people, for others it is crucial knowledge being shared, for others its making less mistakes so they feel better about their self measurement.

Nice answer man :)

For burning ambitions. YES. Oh shit yes. I want to show you Rogue, how brilliant you are. You are truly, incredibly, brilliant. This is called the "You Are Brilliant Project" right now. What I want to do, is have younger children take a personality test using the Enneagram, and then match them to the greatest thinkers and achievers of our time. So these kids have a north star for their potential.

Cool, we nee a world with less doubt. People give more crap than they realise to those starting out and it makes it harder for people to say "yes this is what I want to do with my time".

Think Billy, takes the test, finds out he is a type 5, investigator. We'd match him to a report on Albert Einstein. Billy would get a report that says

"Hey Billy, do you know how brilliant you are? Do you know you have the same personality type as albert einsten? Do you know you could be as genius as he is? Here is a really awesome fun summary of Einsteins personality traits, skills, habits, and flaws. Read this report and learn how you could not only be like einstein, but even more powerful because you are learning from his mistakes."

Rogue it's insane to be in my mind these days... I'm thinking of the potential of others. I see kids walk down the street and think... "That kid could be the next Einsten, that kid could be the next Edison, that kid could be the next Bruce Lee!"

And so my lifelong project is this non-profit mission - I want every child on the planet to know how loved, and how Brilliant They Are. I will probably use my software background to create an integration between a fun test on the Enneagram, and linking in these great people to match to a personality system. (Sorry if this isn't making sense, The Foundation launch has me zapped on mental energy, but I wanted to get back on here to serve.)

I think that support is important too. Initial inspiration is only part of it, ime, its when you are getting those crucial failures that you are hardest to help. Nobody knows what you are talking about or how to solve most of the problems (but they've all been there) so it gets hard to really be comfortable with your peers through that stage of the process as there is a mix of "stop being stupid" and "oh thats weird, I don't know" thrown at them.

Is there anything that I'd rather do differently? I'd start with and run a business up to $500,000 a year soley on webinars. I wouldn't waste time with anything else. I'd add the other shit in later.

If only you weren't having a crisis xD
But I like this. To streamline an efficient process that you like and can do easily, rather than focus on accessories etc to belong.

Are there any principle ideas behind why this move is prefered?

If you want to be a master at persuasion, it helps to apply the 27ish word persuasion sentence. "People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, calm their fears, confirm their suspicions, justify their failures, and help them throw rocks at their enemies." My reports follow that framework.

So...

When I create content for the foundation, it's all based around the readers feelings FIRST. So I co-create content with the students. I ask them what they are feeling when they try to think about doing the task my next piece of content is going to help them do.

If I get, "frustrated... overwhelmed... not sure where to start..." I take that and create content like this:

"So in this report you're going to learn how to extract profitable ideas in a single phone call. Gone are the days of guessing for ideas. No more! If you feel overwhelmed or you aren't sure where to start, you are in the perfect place, because this will explain it all."

It really helps to meet people where they are at, before you take them where you want them to go. And you do that by connecting with feelings.

We can talk more about this if you're curious!

Ah yes, of course! I'm definately curious about this!
It is something I've been instinctively applying myself, but not in a framework where I'm making profits, so I could definately use some more perspective on it being applied.

I'm assuming you preestablished a framework or end goal for them to move into, that you validated previously, and then you assume interest from frustrated people etc. What kind of goals do you set to achieve for your readers after the articles or after they've gone through a sale, are there any check points you keep in mind? Like, do you want them to be calm, excited, inspired, introspective, active? What do you feel is most important there?

Also two or three points that come to you off the top of your head would be great :)

Cheers man :)
Great stuff
 

D. Maxwell

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Hey Dane,

Thank you so much for doing this AMA and giving your advice. Your freedom=kindness philosophy makes me think that someone being kind (and giving advice) also pushes me to being kind and giving advice to people around me.

Say I have found my market and have several pre-sales that validated the idea. Now I have to build the software.

Now what are specific steps to take here?

From what I understood:

1- Sketch out on paper how the software will work. Every screen every action. (ok, done)
2- Translate these into HTML/CSS to have the UI ready
3- Hire a coder and build it

Could you go into details on the steps 2 and 3?

Where do you hire the coder? What programming language to develop my app in? Once I hired the guy, what should I tell him to do first?

In your projects, when the coder is working, what is your involvement? Do you let him 100% freerange as long as it's in the budget and timing, or do you tell him things to do 1 by 1?

What is the typical breakdown of the 12 weeks of programming, in terms of milestones and tasks?

I have 8,400€ of "6 months advance" presales in my hands, is that enough to start and focus on dev?

Dane thank you so much for doing this AMA and take care

Cheers,
Valentin Van Nhut

PS: If you come to Paris, you're always welcome at my place!

So that is NOT exactly how I would go about it.

The five step framework I folow is this

1 - Idea Extraction
2 - Sketch The Solution
3 - Pre-selling
4 - Building the product
5 - Scaling

Under sketching the solution, this is where you draw on paper, get buy in, then go NOT to html or CSS, but something like www.keynotopia.com - then make a clickable demo, then show to the customer, then get them to pay you in advance.

After a pre-sell, then hire HTML/CSS and the dev.
 

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