Raising $100,000 for charity through a virtual summit on Sales & Marketing

[Martin Boeddeker]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to give you some update.

First, I will move to my wife’s house in the summer, something I don’t really want to do but she will burn out otherwise because of her long commute to work and the fact that our property is just way too old and too large for us to keep in order.

Don't really like this but it just makes sense.

I have been reading Nassim Nicolas Taleb’s book skin in the game and the book “throwing rock at the Google bus” by Douglas Rushkoff.

Both book speak about the advantages of staying local in a way.

Especially Mr. Taleb made me realize that ethics (something I really care about) is a fundamentally local thing and that’s impossible to treat everybody equally.

That really ties along with my knowledge about the 80-20 principle.

Besides that, I listened to this podcast about ethics in online marketing by the founder of ThriveThemes: Ethical Marketing | ActiveGrowth Podcast Ep.44

After all the things I’ve tried, that did not work out so far, I decided to make a major change in my approach.

I will pause my work on FindFocus.

I don’t really want to get a job, and leaving my house will free up some cashflow if we are able to rent it out, so I’m fine from a cash-flow perspective (on a really basic level).

I thought about what, I was missing in my life the most and that was working with like minded people in real life.

One quote from Mr. Taleb then moved the needle:

“Every social interaction that is not face-to-face is injurious to your health.”

With FindFocus, I always thought about the US as my main market.

But I have never there and have not really met anyone in person.

Thinking a lot about ethics and following the news, I believe that the world (and especially the US) is so f*cked up that and will very likely not change, despite my efforts.

That means I will not feel fulfilled even if I would be successful with my SEO-strategy that I followed since February.

Because even if FindFocus would be finally successful and even if I get awesome testimonials and feedback, I would not fulfill my need for real-life social interaction with like-minded people.

I would still be missing the main goal and the reason why I created FindFocus (at least for myself).

Unfortunately, my strategic approach with FindFocus forced me to spend most of my time online, connecting with people from the other side of the world.

Because I don’t really like traveling, there is only a slight chance I’ll meet my connections in person.

So instead of focusing on the US, I will now carve out my spot in Germany.

So far FindFocus software has turned out to be quite a hard sell and software development is F*cking expensive.

That lead to my decision, to start with a blank state.

I will focus on becoming an expert first, serving people by selling coaching and courses, something that does not require spending a lot of money upfront.

I will take the theoretical knowledge about funnels, the 80-20 principle and especially the Dream 100 approach and carve out my spot as a “PowerLaw”-Expert in the German Market, validating my approach by applying it.

That means I will also not update this thread for a while.

Maybe I'll open a new one on the main part of the forum.

I don't know yet.

I want to end this by saying thank you to everybody who has contributed to this thread.

Especially I want to thank @Andy Black and @eliquid

Of all the podcast interviews I did, I liked like these two interviews/conversations the most.

 

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[Andy Black]

I talk to plenty of people via video conference. I don’t think “diesel and coffee” has to be face-to-face.

I have plenty of US clients and acquaintances, although have no intention of traveling there.

Don’t let that be the reason you don’t target clients in the US, and don’t let the media influence you either. There’s good people everywhere.


Saying that, I’m a fan of building your high ground, and your location is something others can’t compete as well on. It would be a tall task for me to be “The Google Ads Guy” worldwide, but a lot simpler for me to do it for Ireland, and even simpler for my county.


I personally like that you intend providing a service first. I think that gets you more engaged with the people you’re helping, and ideas for platforms/SaaS/apps/etc will naturally come out of those interactions.


Thanks for the feedback about our chat. I can’t remember what I rambled on about! What were your takeaways?

 

[Ravens_Shadow]

Just because your main market is in the US doesn't mean you have to go there or like what they do as a country. Just because I live in the US and it may be shitty to you, doesn't mean that I'm shitty. It also doesn't mean that it isn't a good market.

My biggest markets are Japan and South Korea. I know just about nothing about them, except that they have an extremely harsh working culture and that they give me a lot of money. My tools help *REDUCE* peoples workload in those countries, so it's my duty to meet the demand.

I thought about what, I was missing in my life the most and that was working with like minded people in real life.

One quote from Mr. Taleb then moved the needle:

“Every social interaction that is not face-to-face is injurious to your health.”

I think this quote is just someone being an edgelord. Following this advice would mean that my post is injurious to your health. This means that this entire forum is injurious to your health!

I've met some of my customers in real life, and it's great, but not necessary. They say "Oh man, your tool is so awesome, we use it all the time! Thank you for all of your hard work!" And then.. that's about it. It feels great, but I would have felt just as good if they told me that via email.

If you want to have that social connection, find a co-working space in your area, or go meet up with other entrepreneurs. I highly doubt that if you sold your software in Germany you're going to be meeting a lot of your customers for coffee.

I will focus on becoming an expert first, serving people by selling coaching and courses, something that does not require spending a lot of money upfront.

I will take the theoretical knowledge about funnels, the 80-20 principle and especially the Dream 100 approach and carve out my spot as a “PowerLaw”-Expert in the German Market, validating my approach by applying it.

Is this a pivot to money chasing and short circuiting the process? Are you an expert in funnels, 80-20 and what ever else this stuff is?

I think you're just trying to find some superficial reason to give up on your software company because it's hard. You're in the desert of desertion, obviously, and need to go meet up with other entrepreneurs in your area if you're desiring a social connection.

If the software just isn't valuable, then that's a different story.

 

[eliquid]

I have plenty of US clients and acquaintances, although have no intention of traveling there.

So we will never meet.

Gonna have to update my bucket list now. lol

.

 

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[Andy Black]

So we will never meet.

Gonna have to update my bucket list now. lol

.

Ha... I’ll take that as a big compliment.

Maybe I’ll get there one day. I just don’t see it happening for the foreseeable future.

Let’s arrange that Skype chat sometime though? Doesn’t have to be recorded... would be nice to finally have a chat and just shoot the breeze.

 

[rogue synthetic]

I have been reading Nassim Nicolas Taleb’s book skin in the game and the book “throwing rock at the Google bus” by Douglas Rushkoff.

Both book speak about the advantages of staying local in a way.

Especially Mr. Taleb made me realize that ethics (something I really care about) is a fundamentally local thing and that’s impossible to treat everybody equally.

That really ties along with my knowledge about the 80-20 principle.

Hey @Martin Boeddeker , thanks for sharing this.

Just some thoughts on what you've said here.

I agree with the sentiment you're getting at. Taleb was (somewhat indirectly) a formative influence on how I think about most everything. I think he's right about a good many things, and this is one of them.

Things go better, for the most part and in most domains, when we generally favor local and organic over abstract and artificial.

But, that said.

I think you need to ask yourself some hard questions about what you're trying to achieve, and why that achievement matters to you.

It sounds like you're feeling pretty anxious about Big Questions. Geopolitical stuff. Whether or not the right politician gets elected (this never happens). Etc.

Nothing wrong with that.

But maybe it's worth asking yourself why it matters to the business you're doing and the people you're trying to serve.

What are you trying to achieve?

Who are you trying to help?

If going local makes sense to you, with your answers to those questions, then knock it out! Nothing wrong with making the business sync up with your ethical viewpoint if you can make it work.

But if you can better reach people, and help them in the way you're trying to help them, by using the internet, I don't think there's a strong ethical case against that, either.

If you haven't followed Seth Godin, you might want to have a look at his books Tribes and This is Marketing to see how a Taleb-like approach can be consistent with business in the online world.

Seth is big on finding "your people" by connecting one relationship at a time. Connecting doesn't have to be (but could be) local. It's about finding the people who want to hear what you have to say, and building from there.

Really, there's no reason you couldn't pursue both. If it makes sense to grow locally, then do it. If it makes sense to find your people online, in different geographical markets, then do that, too.

Good luck!

 

[Andy Black]

Seth is big on finding "your people" by connecting one relationship at a time. Connecting doesn't have to be (but could be) local. It's about finding the people who want to hear what you have to say, and building from there.

Oh, I didn’t know that. I think that’s what I do naturally, and why Mother Theresa’s quote in my signature resonates so much.

In which of his books does he discuss that?

 

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[happiness2go]

Oh, I didn’t know that. I think that’s what I do naturally, and why Mother Theresa’s quote in my signature resonates so much.

In which of his books does he discuss that?

Tribes: we need you to lead us. Among others.

 

[Andy Black]

Tribes: we need you to lead us. Among others.

Awesome. I had an Audible credit. Just purchased.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tribes-We-Need-You-Lead


Sorry to derail @Martin Boeddeker

 

[eliquid]

Good luck @Martin Boeddeker , all will work out

 

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[rogue synthetic]

Oh, I didn’t know that. I think that’s what I do naturally, and why Mother Theresa’s quote in my signature resonates so much.

In which of his books does he discuss that?

Oh, sorry @Andy Black, just now saw this.

@timrettig got it with Tribes.

This is Marketing came out about 6 months ago. It picks up that thread for the freelancer and entrepreneur sets.

A lot of Seth Godin's advice reminds me a lot of how you talk about (not) selling/marketing. I'm kinda surprised you haven't come across him before.

 

[Andy Black]

Oh, sorry @Andy Black, just now saw this.

@timrettig got it with Tribes.

This is Marketing came out about 6 months ago. It picks up that thread for the freelancer and entrepreneur sets.

A lot of Seth Godin's advice reminds me a lot of how you talk about (not) selling/marketing. I'm kinda surprised you haven't come across him before.

Thanks.

I read a few of his books *years* ago and was on his daily emails list for a bit. I dropped off when I realised I’d stopped reading them.

“Meatball Sundae” was a good book if I recall...

 

[Martin Boeddeker]

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who posted here. Your feedback really made me rethink my decision.

It's mainly my excuses and lack of clarity the made me jump from idea to idea and not following through with anything.

Recently I've been listing to a lot of Russel Brunson's stuff and doing some of the exercises from @Kung Fu Steve's program.

So I'm getting rid of a lot of the believes and worries that were holding me back and finally narrowing my focus and getting clear of whom I want to help, and how I want to approach this.

There was an initiative within the Kartra Users Group to level up their affiliate activities.

So I took initiative and took leadership on this.

I will be hosting a virtual summit for people new to online marketing currrently looking which software to use (Clickfunnels, Wordpress, etc.)

Sort what I did with my podcast when I was interviewing other fastlaners & entrepreneurs.

I learned so much from these conversations and I believe others will do, too.

 

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[Martin Boeddeker]

The summit is taking shape.

I've got some really huge speakers already confirmed to do an interview with me and I've got the full support of Kartra affiliate manager.

The people I'm speaking to are helpful beyond my believe.

Together my confirmed speaker net more than 1 million email subscribers.

I'm doing the hour of power from Tony Robbins again and a few other things I learned in @Kung Fu Steve's training.

My mindset has completely changed and probably the comments in this thread have moved the needle to just moving forward and try to get the flywheel moving (thanks @eliquid for that metaphor and the tip to start my marketing efforts within my peer group).

If you have not listened I highly recommend my podcast with Jason: So many gold nuggets SERPWoo Founder Jason Brown Reveals: How To Make 7 Figures in 6 Months Starting From Scratch (+His Best Advise for SEO)

Right now I'm just trying to keep the momentum going and not screwing this up.

If I can only implement 10% of the ideas that I have with this event, it's gonna be epic.

 

[Martin Boeddeker]

Still making lots of progress.

The goal of the summit is to raise$100,000 for charity.

So far I got these speaker confirmed for my summit:


• Jason West (sponsored his virtual summit funnel)
• Jonathan Finely (scaled his business to 10k+/month offering Kartra services)
• Mike Klingler (huge affiliate marketer)
• Robyn Linn (expert on funnel building in Kartra)
• Stephan Hilgard (Lead Coach of Tony Robbins for the US)
• Kathryn Jones (cfdesignschool.com)
• Dan Woodruff (owns the biggest Martial Arts Training Company in the UK)
• Nickolas Eek (SaaS-Founder & Agency owner from Norway)
• Nick Jordan (Growth Hacking & SEO Expert)
• Simon Lovell (Personal Branding Expert)
• Ovi Negrean (CEO Social Bee – A social media automation tool)
- Navid Moazzez (Virtual Summit Expert)
- John Lee Dumas (Podcast-Host at eofire.com)

Next step I want to build a team of motivated students that can help me with various things and getting sponsors involved.

Yesterday I had a call with Pencils of Promise, which is the charity I will be working with.

Hopefully this will give me access to other A-Level speakers, that supported this organisation in the past.

Tomorrow I will pitch my first potential sponsor AYOA (beside Kartra) for a $10k sponsorship of the summit.

This is the company that created the iMindMap-Software that I'm using daily to stay organized.

They just got venture funding, rebranded and try to push their new SaaS-Plattform which is a combination of Slack, Trello and iMindMap.

They suck at marketing in the B2C field but are quite successful giving training in the corporate world. It seems they don't have a marketing strategy in place yet.

Only thing I can tell from the positions they want to hire is that they want to grow via SEO.

After the summit is over I plan to get on a lot of podcasts. That will make it easy to get natural backlinks for them from someone who is using their product.

I'm currently using the software to take notes on influencers that I want to speak at my summit. (See example attached).

 

[Martin Boeddeker]

Partnership with Pencils of Promise is going great. Spend the last days working on the structure of the summit and created this amazing document that I will send to potential speakers.

I think I did a pretty good job here.

https://my.visme.co/projec…/dmpn7v77-pareto-marketing-summit

Next weeks I'll start with the first interviews and continue doing the outreach.

 

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[Martin Boeddeker]

I've just seen the rebill from Viperion Corporation in my Paypal account. I did not know I was still subscribed to the INSIDERS but after getting all the support from this forum I just want to give back to MJ for his amazing work.

There was not update for about one year.

It's been an interesting ride.

There were some things that went really great with the summit and some that did not go well.

Here is a list of all the people I interviewed last year.




There were soo many things I've learned.

A lot of things went wrong just before the summit started, e.g. my Facebook account got shut down, so I could not run ads, almost none of my speaker promoted the summit to his email list and I got no help from Pencils of Promise.

I would have considered the summit a complete failure if I would not have been for Mike Filsaime promoting it.

I made about $4000 in sales, which roughly covered my expenses.

However, with the information, I got I learned more about SEO and affiliate marketing and I'm now on my way to become the #1 affiliate for Mike Filsaime's software GrooveFunnels. (affiliate link)

The new software has the potential to become more popular than Clickfunnels.

After interviewing so many people how made a fortune by promoting their products, I decided to shut down my software 100% and turn my blog into an affiliate marketing blog.

I noticed that is this niche is scammy as hell and there are very very affiliates who create trustworthy reviews.

In my opinion, I failed with FindFocus because I was trying to compete with my competitors in SEO but all of them were super strong in this regard.

In affiliate marketing, it feels like I have almost ZERO competition for in a niche that sells at a much higher price point than my own software and I don't have to take care about customer support and development.

 

[Martin Boeddeker]

I wasted a lot of time in the last three weeks but all the work I put into creating my blog posts pays off.

I'm ranking just below main domain for all important brand keywords and the company it growing like crazy.



I don't know how many Tier2 commissions I receive but since SEO is not likely to change fast, I will probably build a very stable income stream once they turn to MRR.

Besides that I'm also ranking for "Kartra" in the top positions which will add to my MRR in the next 2 month.



Still have to wait how many of these trails will stick but this will give an alternative and diversify my risk.

Btw. if you have any questions let me know I would love to get this thread acitve again.

 

[Martin Boeddeker]

So I made some progress.

First of all, after all these years of struggle, it's great to know that I will not have to worry about money again for a while. I might still face some cash-flow shortage but there are probably $30-$40k in GrooveFunnels commissions heading my way in the next couple of months.

I've also made the decision to not offer "make money online" products myself.

I will promote some of them that I believe in but not create courses myself if there is not very clear demand and I believe in what I'm teaching and that I can get people results.

Other people are soo much better in this. I might do SEO consulting or strategy consulting like Taylor Person though.

I've always been best finding high-leverage points in existing systems (where I'm not responsible for implementation or can easily outsource this)

However, I'm currently working on something that I always missed with online courses myself in the productivity/high-performance courses.

I will have to test this but if it works for me there is no problem charging $400 or even $1k per month for it if I target the right audience.

But first I need to test this myself and see if I can get results for myself.

 

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[Martin Boeddeker]

It still feels unreal to see the sudden sales of GrooveFunnels sales and commissions in my dashboard every day.

I don't know my exact number but it's $25k in confirmed commission that I will receive in the next 8 weeks and probably already over $50k expected commissions in the next year.

I'm still ranking top for most of their keywords and the software is growing like crazy.

Yesterday I had a pretty revealing experience.

A marketer reached out to me and ask I've I would promote their SEO course/webinar.

This was promoted in an "expert talk" and conversions must be crazy.

He gave me access to the course and what I found was quite underwhelming.

The course only covered the absolute most basic things of SEO probably not even 10% of the stuff I've learned from other courses covering SEO and I highly doubt many people will see results from this.

The only positive thing I could say about this course that it would not overwhelm an absolute beginner.

Just the overhyped stuff you see a lot in this space.

 

[Martin Boeddeker]

I've started to email my list daily and really like it.

I feel I get to know the people on my list a lot better and also gain a lot of clarity.

Because I email them daily, I'm really thinking about what will help these people the most.

This is probably the best thing I can to build my 1000 true fans.

Really liking the process and the feedback I got so far, which is 100% positive.

 

[Martin Boeddeker]

Although I'm pretty much solved my financial situation, I'm going through one of the toughest times of my life.

It's super hard for me to concentrate and get things done.

I thought building an online business was hard.

However, it's 10x harder to build a business when you have a family.

The corvid-19 crisis made things much worse for me.

Having the kids at home 24/7 is a nightmare to an introvert like me who gets distracted easily and needs a lot of alone time.

This is basically impossible for me right now.

After I moved to my wife's place we are living in a house that's under construction and much smaller than the farm where I lived most of my life.

Unfortunately, there is no simple solution.

It's just something I have to deal with.

What has this to do with you?

I don't know about your situation.

Chances are you are facing a different challenge.

It might be MUCH WORSE than mine.

For me, it's one of the toughest situations I've ever faced because I do not only have to take care of myself.

So how can you deal with tough situations and the challenges that life throughs at us?

I try to put things into perspective.

I'm not living in the middle of a warzone like Khaled, a friend of mine.

He fled from Syria, had to abandon his wife, and told me stories of his relatives' deaths in the civil war.

I remind myself that I'm incredibly fortunate.

There are hundreds and thousands of things I can be grateful for.

What can you be grateful for right now?

Even if it's about the absence of things like a war.

Here is another thing to keep in mind if you are facing a tough situation.

It's more important than ever to focus on the fundamentals.

Your brain is not in the position to make good choices when you are stressed.

Keep it simple and avoid the things that are bad for you.

It's much easier to know what's bad for us than what's good for us.

For me, that means, I'm taking care of my health first and foremost.

I try to avoid sugar & alcohol, get enough sleep, stay away from social media as much as possible, meditate, and even started to work out again.

On top of this, I write daily emails to my list.

Nothing fancy.

I just try to avoid the bad stuff and do some simple things that I know are good for me.

 

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[Martin Boeddeker]

The last months have been tough and I did not get much done.

I'm making more money than ever I'm super unsatisfied with my current situation.

I'm making probably around $15k/month on average from promoting GrooveFunnels plus some money from other affiliate promotions but being surrounded by my wife's family sucks big time.

Their way of thinking is nothing I want to have in my life.

With my wife being at home during Corvid-19 made things even worse because I was surrounded by people with a different mindset 24/7.

Fortunately, I will be moving my office to this place Herzlich Willkommen im Ferienhaus Viaduktblick on the 12th of October. I will have time for my self and for Deep Work again.

When corvid hit in March, I spent about 4 weeks there which is when I created all the blog posts, funnels, and videos than now fuel my business.

So I spend the last couple of months taking walks, playing computer games, reading a lot of books, watching a lot of guru courses and participating in some small talk on Facebook and sending an email now and then to my email list.

Just trying to "mentally" survive to do the most basic things without getting depressed.

I think I did a pretty good job there.

At the same time, I brainstormed what kind of online course I will be selling until I found a framework that I'm really exited about.

So despite not getting much "real work" done, I was quite effective.

I set myself up for success big time when I will launch my own online course to the GrooveFunnels audience.

I love what Mike Filsaime and the team are doing with GrooveDigital and I really want to help people over their who might otherwise fall prey to gurus with less integrity than I have.

I don't know how much I will sell, but it's very likely that I will make over $100k if I create a half-way decent webinar and offer.

Of course, I aim for much much more, which is very likely because at that point my webinar will be promoted to a list of roughly 500,000 active people.

Most important thing is, that even though I'm feeling down at the moment, I'm super excited about my course and working with real people who trust me and buy my stuff.

I have almost nothing else planned for next year and still need to prepare a lot to serve them well.

The course is the first step to get back to release my FindFocus software at again and selling it to a different audience with a different angle.

I don't know how big I want my company to be but it's definitely better to have a big "war chest", so I can afford to work with the best people in the industry if I want to scale.

 

[Martin Boeddeker]

Just found this in another forum, I don't know where to post this but I really like this story.



An old man was selling watermelons. His price list reads:

1 watermelon = $3.00
3 watermelons = $10.00

A young man stopped and bought 3 watermelons individually - paying $3 for each.

As the young man was walking away he turned and said “hey old man, do you realise I just bought 3 watermelons for $9 instead of $10? Maybe business is not your thing.”

The old man smiled and mumbled to himself “people are funny, every time they buy 3 watermelons instead of 1, yet they keep trying to teach me how to do business.”