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Monday,
February 21, 2005 It's two days before Cracking the Wealth Code and the 101 day entrepreneurial challenge. I question whether I've entered the right category of the challenge. I came in as "advanced", which means I've earned over $50,000. While I have earned that in my business, I haven't done so with my book yet, which is my focus for the challenge period. The thing about the advanced category, is there is no upper earnings cap. I could be in there with people earning $1M a year from their activities. For them one month would blow me out of the water. At least with the other categories there are upper caps. If you're in the intermediate, you know that no one in there has earned over $50,000. It kinda makes being advanced seem like a double-edged sword. I had a voice message in the morning from Randy Garn from EMI. He mentions something about helping me with my website for CWC. Paulie says he thinks they might try to sell me some internet system (we are so jaded!). I return his call and we play phone tag. Later in the day I get a call from Steve Wisenberg. He says he's a copywriter working with CWC to re-write the copy on my website. Mentions that my website has been selected for a makeover, and that they are preparing to send my offer to their list of 800,000. OKay, now for the first time I'm really excited about the CWC seminar. I find out this information while in the car with Paulie and Robby LeBlanc. Robby is such a gracious, amazing man. He's so happy for me when he himself is faced with the inability to go to the seminar because of a medical condition. Part of him, I know, would gladly suffer a heart attack to have a chance to promote his music to a list that size. Yet he has only encouragement for me. I really admire him. Today we got a notification from Amazon that they wanted 8 books for their warehouse. It's a start. Also today my interview for The Wright Place aired. We received no orders through their affiliate link. Tuesday,
February 22, 2005 Today we fly from Las Vegas to San Diego. I have a whole bunch of things to do for the conference, to get ready to send the mailing. I have a few changes to make to the ebook, since they want to sell the ebook and not the physical book. I also have to gather together the bonuses so they go out right away. I want to make a few changes to the cover. Carl Galetti recommended that my title change from "From CRTCM" to "How you go from CRTCM" This small change took me the entire flight. I also wrote this letter to Mark & Bob, which I never gave them. Writing it was more for me.
The plane lands and we have a long struggle with the rental car company. As we are driving to the hotel, I realize that I've only brought "working" clothes with me, not nearly anything good enough to go on stage with. I say to Paulie, I'll be so happy is right next to the hotel there's a great big mall. Imagine my surpise when there was. We pick up Jose outside the hotel and head to the mall. I had to tell him about the events of the last day, even though Paulie would rather I didn't. There was NO way I could spend a few hours with him and not tell him. We shop, have dinner, and head back to the hotel. Back in the hotel room, I get cracking with the items on my to-do list, and have a few phone calls with Steve, the copywriter, and Chad, the webdesigner. The thing about having a website is, you're always tweaking it. It's never really done, is it? I have a constant stream of new testimonials coming in that I could add, were I so inclined. I try to gather some of them together for this launch. Wednesday,
February 23, 2005 Today is the first day of the seminar. I meet Ethan Willis, the CEO of Prosper Learning, and Steven Wisenberg, the copywriter. I learn that they have already sent a mailing out with my offer on it. I'm called on stage and shown the new site. It's attractive. Bob Allen is displayed on the site in a way that I wouldn't have been so bold to do myself. I would never have bootstrapped myself onto him so blatantly, and I'm a little uncomfortable with it. I glance at Bob to see if he has any reaction, but I can't read him. Ethan and Steven specialize in internet marketing. We learn about headlines in copywriting. We each create a headline for our product, and write them on the wall on seperate pieces of paper. Then the entire room gets up and signs the headline that they like. My headline came in #3 in the room for this exericise. I was beat out by someone who promised success without a college degree, and someone who would tell us how to raise millions for our favorite charity. With that as competition, I feel I did well. Paulie came in 9th.
The top 20 headlines are allowed to give a one minute presentation to further convince the audience of their copywriting prowess. I did well, using the Donald Trump chunk that I've developed. When I'm done with my presentation, Ethan tells me "good job" when I walk past him. He has a huge smile on his face. I learn later from Imal that the entire time I was onstage Ethan and Steve were saying "That's our girl, the fox. We get to work with her." The audience then voted on the top 8 people from these presentations. I didn't vote for myself. My father had taught me once when I was pretty young that he didn't vote for himself when he was in any election or contest. He thought it a show of grace and good sportsmanship to vote for "the other guy". Ever since then I've followed his example, often questioning it, but never to him. Every presidential election I wonder if the candidate goes into the booth and shows the same value of good sportsmanship as my father. I doubt it. Sometimes I wonder if that method doesn't also show signs of weakness, insecurity, or lack of confidence. I wish I had asked my dad more about this before he died. Back to the day-- I come in number two--second only to Paulie, as usual :) I can think of no other person I'd rather upstage me. Was there a one vote difference? Ethan and Steve get back on stage and teach us about creatives. This is a graphical image that is in the body of an email message. They've designed a creative to go out in the email for me. You can view my creative here. Finally, I get to see some numbers from when the email went out. They show onscreen that I've sold 26 ebooks. I'm underwhelmed. I later say to Paulie how I feel like a spoiled brat in that moment. To have been so underwhelmed, when I know that the sales would have meant so much to a lot of people in the room. By the end of the day I had 125 sales, or $5,000 in pure profit. We had also had sales of $250 from our websites, passively. Paulie and I head to Robert and Dotti's room that evening to run a mastermind session. As soon as I step in the door I'm embraced by a sobbing Dotti. After the sobbing subsides I finally learn what's happened. The inner circle has lost one of its members. Now it's my turn to sob. No one feels much like masterminding tonight, so after a few feeble attempts, we give in to mostly a social evening. It was a $5,221 day. Thursday,
February 24, 2005 I start my day with a brainstorming session at Denny's with Annette for her project. As we were walking there, we were joined by Paulie and Jonathan. Annette has the awesome goal to effect a social movement which highlights the nobility of motherhood. I struggle at this meeting. Annette's vision is too big for me. I try hard to give her the information she needs to take the next steps, without being negative about her dream. I'm glad Paulie is there. He's much better at being gentle than I am. Today at the seminar we do an exercise on subject lines to an email, or the "interrupter". We learn an exercise that they use to judge whether a subject line is a good one. They use the mnemonic RICHAC A
good subject line should have: You judge every subject line on a scale of 1-5 on each of these topics. Ethan and Steven mention that their office doesn't use anything that doesn't rank in the 20s, preferrably over 25. At the end of the exercises they reveal that they remailed the same list with my offer, but with a different subject line. The first subject line, something like "get out of debt" didn't really match my message. They said they changed the subject line based on something I said on stage the previous day, and had sent the new mailing out only a hour or so before. The new subject line "Does the bank owe you money?" They showed my numbers. Sales had doubled to 250. I can think of no better way that this to have driven home the importance of a subject line and message match to the group. When we break for lunch, I learn that there's been a small issue with the mailing. Seems like the programmers had one small mistake that caused big results. When someone went to the order page to buy the book, they saw all of the personal information, including credit card, of the person who previously ordered. It's a good thing Ethan told me, because I might have otherwise paniced when I saw the 33 voice mail messages and 104 email message that were waiting for me when I returned to my room. Time to tuck in and do some customer service. I answered every one of those emails and phone messages. Over the next 5 hours I spoke with people who simply wanted to let us know of the problem. Others wanted to order the book but didn't want to do it online. Some others didn't even have a credit card to order it. Others had heard that their credit card information was out over the Internet and were livid. One woman had her card charged 8 times! She wrote: "The 8 people who charged their book to me should not get it shipped to them by your company." I was floored! I wrote this back to her: "Wow, you are such an amazing and gracious woman. When you could be (and have reason to be) very upset with the processing company for the computer glitch, your real interest was in making sure that undeserving people weren't rewarded for their actions, thus saving me some expense. I'm amazed." She's now a satisfied customer. Two other interactions were notable: First, I got an email from David who writes: "My wife and I have a fledgling business and know I could grow it if I have just a little more money. Although I've been avoiding taking on any additional credit exposure, you've got me thinking possibility again. What if you were sent to me by my angels with the information that you have to share?" So I call him. He asks the same question on the phone, his voice breaking. By the end of the call we were both crying. It was a beautiful call, that wouldn't have taken place had he not let me known about the "computer malfunction". I also get an email from a woman, M. Yabut. Her email is something like myabut@realestate.com (that's not her exact address). I repond to her email, then ask, "is Yabut your real last name?" Turns out, it is, and she'd never read the story of Ms. Yabut in the One Minute Millionaire. In fact, she'd never read the book. I explain the story and tell her I'll send her a copy of the book. Another moment of sheer delight that wouldn't have come without the malfunction. After 5 hours of returning emails and phone calls, I come downstairs to make an appearace. I learn that Paulie has been tapped on the shoulder by a make-it-happen person, and he's going to be selling the OREO product on a conference call with a few others that night. And I have to fill in for him on our usual Wednesday night call. So, back up to the room to get on the phone again. I have a few minutes, so I decide to throw together a webpage to sell the "CWC Bags" the package that we have been given permission to sell until the end of the month. I take 15 minutes and put together a web page. It was VERY basic. However, it was a place where people could read what was in the package and place an order. On the call, the speaker had the flu. She was in pretty bad shape, with her voice barely making it the full hour. She was a trouper, and provided good backdrop to my primary purpose on that call-- to sell those packages! By using the power of a personal relationship, I asked the callers to support Paulie at this seminar where his challenge was to make money, by ordering that great product while I was still on the call. I made two sales before the 90 minutes were over. This was the first time ever that we have made a sale while a conference call was still in process. It had been a goal of ours. I guess it shows that when you want something, try asking for it. That night we mastermind again in Robert and Dotti's room. I'm there, I'm not sure where Paulie is at this time. I don't think he was feeling well. I work with Robert and Dotti on their sales letter for the spot remover. End
of day totals: 360 books after 2 days Friday,
February 25, 2005 I start the day with massive action. Why not? I send an email out to our list of best students advertizing the CWC bags. I test a different number, $197. Then I head downstairs to give some presentation coaching to Teresa. We had fun for an hour being sexy with salt. When she presented that morning, I was so proud of her for maintaining her cool and doing a fantastic job. The video was beautiful, and a spokeswoman was born! When Jay Abraham spoke to the group, I was frankly a bit bored. I'd learned a lot from Jay's tapes, and was eager to see him live. However, it seemed much like all the same content. I'm not sure what I was expecting. He's a classical copywriter...likes long copy headlines with lots of description and to hit the benefits hard. Jay's talk was in direct contrast to our discussion about fun, curious subject lines, and a couple of our members expressed confusion to me about the conflicting information. One conversation was classic Her: I'm confused, this conflicts directly with what Steve and Ethan said Me: that must be very frustrating for you. What do you thing that means you should do? Her: (pause) test? Me: ding ding ding! :) At the end of the day, students started to parade across the stage telling everyone how much they had earned those 3 days. I decided not to go up unless they specifically asked me. I had received enough attention. I told this to Paulie and he didn't seem happy about it. Later I see him go up to Mark on stage, return to me and say, "we've been called up." I still don't know if it's something that Paulie asked for, or if we've been called and I didn't notice it. When we went up I reported our figures for that day $1948 (we had sold more books and more CWC packages from my mailing that morning). Our grand total for the 3 days $18,707.00 That night Paulie seems to be in a meeting. I go out with a bunch of people, and really have a blast. I blew off a little steam, and developed a couple of stronger friendships. Saturday
February 26, 2005 Today I've stayed behind in San Diego to have some time with Alexandra. She asks, "Do you know that big hotel from Some Like It Hot that's white with a red roof?" I say, "oh yes, the Del"...feeling so continental. We rent a car and visit the Hotel Del. We walk on the beach for some time, then lunch on the patio. We imagine we are back there in 4 years, wealthy, powerful women, hiding from the paparazzi. Sunday
February 27 2005 On no, I'm sick. Alex doesn't like how green I look so she rides with me in the hotel shuttle to the airport. Good thing she did, she told the driver to pull over I was about to be sick just in time. Afterwards, Alex says, "you even vomit like a champion." I have a miserable flight home. Monday
Februrary 28 2005 Still sick, don't really remember today. I do manage to pull it together for an hour to be on the conference call and give my 90 second speech. I also check my numbers. At this point, I've sold a total of 453 books and have 885 other people who have opted into my database. I enter our totals for the week into the Millionaire Hall of Fame. I know it's important to Tom, so I want to get it done before the call. We've earned $22,830 this week. Tuesday
March 1 2005 Sick again. I'm starting to stress about losing too many days, but I can't even eat anything. I work for about 2 hours today, surrounding the chat with Pat. Wednesday
March 2, 2005 Still sick :( My phone is ringing off the hook, but I'm too wiped out to answer it. One call is from my support staff, Tim. Amazon has placed an order for 83 books! I need to bring him more UPC stickers. Sold 3 books on our website today Thursday
March 3, 2005 Still sick, but I manage to get out of bed this time. I drive to Indiana to deliver UPC stickers. I'm excited about the Amazon orders. When I listed my book 3 weeks ago, I was ranked 437,000th (approximately). Today my book is ranked 11,167. It's moving up! This is a dynamic ranking, so it likely means someone just ordered one of my books. I could look at it in an hour and it be up or down a few thousand in rank. However, people are ordering it, so it's up there! I talk with the Director of Strategic Alliances today from Ethan's company. They are interested in keeping me on as a permanent partner, and having my credit book be one of their regular offerings. We talk a little bit about their coaching program, and having me train their staff on the concepts in the book, so they can advertize coaching by people trained by me-- like I'm somebody. This tickles me. Sold 3 books on our website today. Where do these orders come from? We do almost no active promotion of them now, it really is word of mouth and people finding us on the net. Paulie did a conference call last night. We've gotten two orders so far of $595. This group is so slow to order. So I still feel awful, but I can't let another day go by while the clock is ticking. Tomorrow I begin massive action again. I'm going to work on drawing people to the credit millionaire website using pay per click. Friday,
March 4, 2005 March 4th. This is the only day of the year that's a full sentence. "March forth." So I'm going to March forth into the world of pay per click using the strategies I've learned from Perry Marshall, an Internet Marketing Infopreneur. I'm in the middle of creating the campaign now. I'm nervous. I hear so many stories of people losing their shirt because of their pay per click campaign. I can see that I've limited my campaigns to $10 a day...yet still I'm nervous. Did I do it wrong? Are we going to suddenly have a bill for thousands of dollars in clicks? Forging ahead in the field of the internet is one of those things where it seems like you can never learn enough. There will always be things that I don't know. I've got to walk that fine line between "just do it" and "anaysis paralysis". My new method? Learn what people are recommending as the source of good info on a subject. In this case, it was Perry Marshall's $50 ebook. Spend the time to learn that, then take the time to do it. My theory is that most recommended sources will tell you the basic how to and the major pitfalls to avoid. The nuances can come when I'm ready for them...and as long as I'm a newbie, I'm not ready! Today's orders? $2331 in other people's products and two books. Saturday,
March 5, 2005 Today I worked on revising the CM website for the new launch. I didn't finish. I took a nap that seemed to last until roughly bedtime :) I guess I'm still not feeling well. Today's orders? One book, one $997 JV product. Sunday,
March 6, 2005 I caught up on some things today, answering posts on the credit millionaire forum, and blogging about how half the nation can now get a free credit report from all 3 bureaus after testing the system myself. During these 90 remaining days I feel a bit of guilt working and not focusing on revenue generating activity, or even when I'm not working (like sleeping the day away yesterday). My Google AdWords doesn't seem to be working. I have a 0% Click-Through-Ratio (CTR). That means even though 30 people may have seen my ads, no one has bothered to click. Which is good, because it's not COSTING me any money, but bad, because it's not MAKING us any money either. So we are planning on rolling out a new credit program, where the book is a manual that accompanies a 6 CD audio program for $297. We'll have the downloadable ebook as an exit offer for the $37 price. We will do a "shy yes" page where all you have to do is sign up to get a free audio recording. Then you will be directed to the landing page, where the offer is found. We really need to get someone to write an autoresponder series for us to attempt to convert some of the opt-ins that we have. We have so many opt-ins...it would be great to convert all of them (if unrealistic). How about this for a goal for the end of the 90 days? I want to have 400 people in my $49.95/month subscription program. Then maybe Paulie and I could finally pay ourselves salaries after 3 years!
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