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

[Roli]

Finally back to work again.

I can only recommend to anyone to start a podcast. Not so much for getting publicity (yet) but it's an awesome way to build relationships and have a reason to talk to experts.

So many gold nuggets...

The best nugget I want to share with you is this One Minute Willpower - Breathing exercise.

Pic a gif that you like and breath along with it for one minute (or longer)...

10 Awesome GIFs for Calm Breathing

It will increase your heart rate variability and has so many positive effects on health.

I will probably add a gif like that to the page my website blocker redirects to if you visit a blocked site.



Really looking forward to my next interview with Jason Brown tomorrow.

Man this is a great thread, and for somebody who doesn't believe they are together, you are pretty f*cking together man!

I am sorry for your loss, I'm sure no words I can write will make it any better or give you some kind of resolution, just to know I feel you man.

On the side of business, I can't see how you'll fail if the app is good and you keep up with this kind of momentum and pressure. I swear reading threads like this I wonder why all of Germany aren't entrepreneurs!

Have you heard of Stay Focused?

It seems they do the same thing you do but for free (or maybe they have a pro upgrade), how does your app differentiate from that one?

 

[LittleWolfie]

The idea is that you already know what's best for you but s...

I'd just lock those sites out at the url level like those blockers in schools and offices or use a time limited vr4sion. You get an hour every day then it's blocked all though if your advertising promoting this way it might not work.

 

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[MTF]

I wonder how much people would pay for this?

I'd say 2-3x the price of transcription services, depending on how you want to brand yourself. I'd probably go with a more expensive service but an awesome end result (well-formatted, with images, etc.).

 

[LittleWolfie]

I'd say 2-3x the price of transcription services, depending on how you want to brand yourself. I'd probably go with a more expensive service but an awesome end result (well-formatted, with images, etc.).

About $2-$3 A minute then. Although most people just use automated software instead.

Prior to my hearing loss, I did some transcription work,there's a lot of stuff you can do to accelerate the work, the most important thing is typing speed though. Checking and editing is way quicker.

A lot of clients were lost to automated transcription software though. This is something I could help a lot with. What software to speed up the transcription work, how to train workers,etc.


There's a large deaf and hard of hearing community who appreciate transcriptions greatly and hate podcasts(at least video gives you a chance of lip reading, if no subtitles.)

 

[MTF]

About $2-$3 A minute then. Although most people just use automated software instead.

You could use automated software to generate the transcript but then a human would be needed to edit it and turn it into a proper, easily readable blog post.

 

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[Martin Boeddeker]

I agree, however you will get better results using automated software to accelerate and improve the human transcription.

Like how an automatic transmission does the computer friendly part, and leave the unfriendly part to a human. Your approach is like automating the steering and leaving the human to regulate the rpms of the engine directly without a clutch...

I think you are right here AI generated content takes a lot of time to get right afterwards again. Way too many mistakes!

To make it profitable with a solid margin and turn it into this idea into a fastlane business I would estimate you would need to charge at least $500/30min audio or $1000/hour.

There is probably a market there but it will require a lot of work.

Even if it's outscored, you will need highly qualified people to make the decisions which part to change, to cut, to omit. A lot of times it will be like writing blog posts from scratch especially if you don't have a decent interview partner...

 

[LittleWolfie]

I think you are right here AI generated content takes a lot of time to get right afterwards again. Way too many mistakes!

To make it profitable with a solid margin and turn it into this idea into a fastlane business I would estimate you would need to charge at least $500/30min audio or $1000/hour.
.

I'm not sure that's the best way of pricing it.

Even at $16.66 a minute, your still thinking in time and a machine optimised pricing. Now words per minute would let people outsourced or employees get more pay the note efficient they are.

you will need highly qualified people to make the decisions which part to change, to cut, to omit.

That's the part that is easier to automate. Compare the spell check on your computer. Now predictive text is usally quite poor on a phone, but run it on a more powerful PC and it really comes into its own. Since you can virtualse those, you can build up a virtual instance in Amazon Web Service for each client. Spin up with 1 click and let the transcriptionists ssh in. This lets each client have a machine for their idiosyncratic speech patterns regardless of which outsourcer/employee is working. You could also do this with profiles of course, but more synchronisation work and control over worker's machine are needed then

Speech and grammar rules are a lot more standardised than people think.

You could make this more complex by having it recognise verbs and nouns and where the syntax goes like natural language programming does. Wolfram Alpha does this kind of processing for text though.

Your basically automating the steering wheel.

I disagree on the like a blog post from scratch, because most of the work is already there. You could upscale by offering SEO tweaking I suppose. However they have recorded the information so your just typing, and correcting.

While you probably do still need the highly skilled person for the final cut, you don't need them that much because most of their work can be automated easily. Nor do you need them to be highly qualified. A psychologist could give a standardised test to a 16 year old and tell you how good at error spotting in the language they are. You can test for the skill directly and offer A flat rate. You should be able to get someone in the top 10% of the population for that ability at
$20 an hour plus profit share(or up the salary)

 

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[LittleWolfie]

All you have is a roof over your head, a phone line, an internet connection, and a ClickFunnels account for only ONE MONTH.

Other than your vast marketing experience”
…

That's not from zero, might be interesting none the less.

 

[garyfritz]

But it's close enough to zero that someone new to digital marketing could pick it up and run with it. I would LOVE to see those interviews.

 

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[LittleWolfie]

But it's close enough to zero

Sure, I just hate hyperbole like that
If it said almost zero or very low then I'd like it. That's just me though.

 

[Martin Boeddeker]

Not all of them use clickfunnels in the beginning though... Honestly, $100 is not making a difference for anyone. Some mentioned that would make initial money from fiverr and upwork to start with..

Some kept it really low tech, just Facebook + Paypal basically. Another guy actually TESTED it and started a new business that is made him 100 of thousands of dollars (obviously in a high profit niche)...

It's actually pretty cool because you see a lot of different angels...

 

[Martin Boeddeker]

Next update:

Still working and improving my podcast and keep up the schedule of one episode per week.

Besides that I realized that I cannot do everything alone.

This too time intensive.

I've thought about getting students to help a while ago but never took action.

Then I came across this service and signed up for it.

GenM - Digital Apprenticeships (Afflilate link)

It's a pretty cool SaaS with great onboarding that provides free courses and internships. Also really like their affiliate/referral program...

So I've searched their database and reached out to 30-40 students.

About 3/4 of them replied.

After the reply I send them to a 30min online application I designed and shortlisted about 5 of them. (It's amazing to be able to prequalify them with this tool I is part of the appsomo briefcase...Vervoe: AI-powered skill testing)

It's probably possible to build a business just around that tool if you are in the HR field.

Anyway,

today and tomorrow I'll have interviews with 5 students who volunteer to help me grow my business (for free).

I've created a short curriculum, so I'll make sure they will be doing meaningful work and actually learn something.

(Mostly focused on SEO and writing articles, doing outreach and building basic funnels)

They will get to know some automation tools, social media marketing, wordpress and autoresponders...

Marketing Internship Curriculum

This will also help me to refine my processes and document everything.

In the past I really liked to work with other students all around Europe in a virtual environment.

I've been an apprentice myself for 3-4 years and I'm sure that I'll be able to create a Win-Win situation for us...

 

[Martin Boeddeker]

This may be totally off your radar, but I'd love it if one of these self-disciplining web-firewalls would work natively with Linux.

The only options I've been able to find involve setting up squid proxies or futzing around with iptables, and that ends up being a bigger distraction than the original problem.

Plus none of them have any easy way to set up simple whitelisting. I stream a lot of music through the desktop during the day, and it would be great if I could rig up something that says "block everything except Soundcloud and Bandcamp" or something like that.

I may not go into this for a while but just for clarification:

You want to allow playing "Soundclould and bandcamp" in your browser and block all other websites?

 

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[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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[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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[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]

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 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]

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]

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.”