Rock Star Lifestyle Design

I like stuff. I work hard so I can buy said stuff. My wife also likes stuff. The boutique with the designer dress type stuff.

I don’t necessarily think this is a problem. We know our limits and when to pull the trigger and when not to. I think that stems from the basis of my entire financial education up till about a year or two ago.

“Money is just money. You either have it or you don’t. You can’t take it with you when you’re dead.”

Thanks dad. That’s been my mantra since I got my first job, working in the backroom at Target and has followed me till this day.

I bought my current car on a Tuesday when I took Jen to the Scion dealership just to look at some cars and get some ideas. When I was surprised that they were willing to give me the payment I wanted, we left with a car.

When we were in Tahoe last winter we wanted to sneak our way into a free snowmobile trip. All we needed to do was sit through a timeshare presentation, firmly say no and off we would go to start backflippin our snowmobiles. Out we walked with a nice, new timeshare (that is much sweeter than we thought and has a super awesome summer retreat planned - half work - half wakeboardin on Lake Tahoe).

Had a good week selling some products, out at the bar with friends, buy drinks.

Had a slower week online, out at the bar with friends, look for happy hour specials.

Then I started reading. A lot.

First was Ramit, right around the time of his book launch for iWill TeachYouToBeRich. Then came the shocker that I was about to lose over $100,000 that I had invested in real estate over the past few years. Our taxes had eclipsed what the land was worth and giving up was the best option. Then came the bankruptcy to the builders of our townhouse community.

Only 5 buildings in out of a proposed 20, Lennar and their builder had decided to abandon the community (I still hate Lennar for how they handled everything and lied to our faces for a hot minute - now they just ignore). So we just lost all of our investments, our home was belly up and this Internet Marketing thing was not cutting it like I wanted (it was about the same time that I left the agency I started to go back on my own).

During this time I kept myself busy writing for this site, pumping out products for the music business and taking on some awesome clients.

All the while things looked sweet from the inside, but on the inside our finances sucked. Our savings had all but disappeared. Our reserve funds, gone.

Things really did suck. The stuff I was used to buying started to disappear - well the tags didn’t get popped like they used to.

Then I Started Reading Adam Baker (aka Man vs. Debt)

This dude had it tough and was telling everyone about it and more importantly how he was going about fixing it. I first met Adam when he dialed into a live chat Jun Loayza and I were having about SEO and StartUps on a Saturday afternoon over uStream. Adam was a fresh faced blogger with a ton of passion.

Over the next few months I watched Adam write some of the most innovative financial blog posts to blow up his SEO and brand and then combat that with really solid and transparent financial advice.

Seeing Adam lay it all on the line, made me rethink my own finances. I started using Mint.com on a regular basis. I started looking into things like online savings accounts and took inventory of all my subscriptions, marketing products, spending habits, lunches and other things that I liked, but were unnecessary.

What Has Happened This Year

Were only 2+ months into the New Year and I can already say things are leaps and bounds better than ever financially. I have launched 2 new products that have produced almost as much revenue for me in 2 months than all of last year (and last year wasn’t bad).

I am on pace to eliminate all non mortgage debt by the middle of this year and have plans to make this actually happen.

I am using Internet Marketing and my business plan to create creative strategies to get rid of debt and get over the fear of looking at my bank accounts everyday.

Here are some things on my calendar that are directly related to my finances:

• New Music Economy - this one product has eliminated one entire credit card and portions of another. All from a product that has literally no overhead and was created over 4 weeks at about 2 hours per week.
• New Music Mastermind - this is a mastermind coaching product that I am launching in May, that will be very exclusive and limited and will eliminate about 80% of the rest of our debt in one day (as long as things go as planned).
• Super Secret Software - we have some super secret software in the works for the Lifestyle Design community that has a goal of producing a big blockbuster launch and then a recurring backend to support 3 people full time with minimal maintenance and it doesn’t need a ton of customers (the true 4-hour workweek product, right?)

Back To Baker

I am a big fan of Baker and it was a lot of what he is talking about that has me thinking about finances. What I really like is that he isn’t Donald Trump or Motley Fool talking about finances. He is someone like me. Someone from Gen-Y that is making a difference with their finances. He has the “I can do it too” teaching mentality and today he is ready to share that with the world.

His new book “UnAutomate Your Finances” is 80 something pages of young money mentality. Don’t let “unautomate” fool you. Baker is not completely taking you away from automating your finances, but actually looking at what you are doing and seeing where the real money is being made and saved. These are the same techniques that he used to knock out $18,000 of their debt and put away $17,000 into savings in a little over a year. Oh, and he’s married and has a little one to take care of.

Did I mention that he still writes killer blog posts, is a founder at UnTemplatr and got Leo from Zen Habits to write the forward?

The eBook is only $17. I told Baker he was crazy. He said he wanted the message into more people’s hands. I’m cool with that.

So I Am Hooking You Up

If you go and grab Baker’s “UnAutomate Your Finances” through my affiliate link (they are everywhere on this post), shoot me your receipt to rollettmarketing@gmail.com and I will send you the Core Influence video from the Rock Star Business Series. The people that have gone through the course say this is the one video that really opened their eyes to what is possible with their lives.

It’s a pretty cool 1-2 combo. Get your mind right and then get your money right (I think a smart guy by the name of Jay-Z said that).

I read the whole think over the weekend and it has me working with Jen to really step our game up. That way we never feel guilty for buying stuff while still keeping our finances tight.

What Is Your Financial Story

Even if you don’t grab Baker’s book, or you got it somewhere else, I’d love to know your financial story! Where are you at and where do you want to be? How are you going to get there? If it’s through Internet Marketing or an online company - what roadblocks or questions are in your way?

Let’s chat in the comments below.

-Greg

Top photo by TrevinC

photo by joshunter

Read below to see how you can win a copy of the Risk Takers by talking about your risks!

The last few months have been about taking risks. Taking risks in working with business partners I have never met in person. Creating products and asking people for money. Creating businesses based on passion - the thing we all preach, but few actually do. Well, I’ve been doing them. And it feels great.

Last week I held my first webinar for a music marketing related project. I was scared shitless. When I put together the materials, it looked awesome. I was really excited with what I had put together and even had a webinar pitch ready to go - totally back of the room seminar stuff.

Then I started promoting it.

My stomach turned. I had major label A&R’s, big names in the digital music space and some really cool musicians pre-register. Then more people registered.

Then some friends starting promoting it and even more people jumped on board. Mind you, we threw up a squeeze page on a Friday for the call on a Monday. Here is where we are now:

132 people registered. Not too bad, for a few tweets.

Then came Monday night. We rocked out. There was no turning back after I hit start. The confidence from all the clients, the writing, the actions, the research and the sweat had paid off.

After the dust settled, we had done just under $1,000 in sales on a $37 product. Do the math on that and you will see a nice conversion rate.

Risk Takers Get Rewarded (Sometimes)

If you want to advance and create a rock star life, or just one where you control your own actions, beliefs and emotions, you need to take risks. These can come in all shapes and sizes - from financial (think about Law School - no guarantee of a great life, but a surefire guarantee to $100G’s in debt) to emotional (just learned a good buddy of mine is getting divorced after 2 years of marriage) to going for it (Cody, Corbett, Adam, Jon, Jun and all you other crazy kids) when no one thought it was your best move.

This year I wanted to be sure I was doing the right stuff and by doing so, my comfort zone has gotten its ass kicked. My wife tells me all the time when we are out that I would never have butted into conversations, met the people I used to just talk about or take clients that were going to require work. All that has changed when my mindset changed.

And I have been rewarded. In the almost two months that have somehow come and gone in 2010, I have already had my 2 best months ever, financially. Maybe it was the fortune cookie (I hit up Chinese by my place at least twice a week and this was the first good fortune so I kept it in the wallet):

There are riches headed your way.

So then I flipped it over at the local 7-11 and played 41, 52, 19, 25, 37 and 50.

I don’t think that’s what the message meant.

I think it meant that putting in work and taking risks are worth it. They are the reason we fight everyday to do something cooler today than we did yesterday. It’s why I love the chase. I love learning and now I love trying stuff out to get myself in a position that is cooler today and will be wicked sweet tomorrow.

Free Book Giveaway For Risk Takers

Last week I was approached about a new book, The Risk Takers by Renee & Don Martin. After taking one look at the people they featured in the book I knew it was something special. They get inside stories on Kinko’s, Geek Squad, Build-A-Bear, Patron Tequila, Spanx and 11 other companies led by entrepreneurs who took risks to change their lives and the lives of others.

I loved the approach in the book. They went head on and showed the struggles in the early days, the mental and financial risks they put on not only themselves, but on their families, their friends, relationships and business partners.

The work that goes into making a difference is not easy, but who said this stuff was. Even if my sales pages do make it sound easy, it’s not. The webinar details I shared with you was not a one night home run. It was a long time of building relationships, trust, owning a niche and having materials that no one is presenting for the music industry. And then we had our technical nightmares, but hey, I’m a marketing guy, so that stuff happens.

I was lucky to receive an extra advanced copy of the book and I want to give it away to a risk taker.

All you need to do is leave a comment below about the biggest risk you have taken to advance either your business or your life. I am going to be looking and responding to everyone and will give the book away to the person I believe took the risk that had the biggest impact on their life.

I will pick a winner on Friday, February 26th at 4pm EST

And if you don’t want to leave a comment and want to pre-order the book, here is a nice affiliate link to Amazon for the Risk Takers.

To your risk taking adventures!

-Greg

Update: After reading about everyone’s risks, we decided to give the book to Al DeCosey. I’m a sucker for musicians giving everything they have to do something remarkable and having and trading in a $80-100k a year job to be an indie musicians, well that’s a hell of a risk, seeing where the industry is right now. Thanks for all the comments and we’ll have to do this again soon. 

This space has been starting to get really cool.

People are working really hard to change their lives and do cool things with their time. Today is another moment that shows the hard work from someone in our community. Jonny from TheLifeThing.com has brought together 30 young (and young at heart) entrepreneurs, lifestyle designers and change agents together under one roof to remind us that we all have very ambitious and very different goals, dreams and ideas of success (more on Johnny in a few).

The physical images of success are playing right now on my tv. It’s Grammy time and you can see all the artists, high end fashion and expensive production that goes with getting Lady Gaga, Elton John and 2 pianos in the same room. For some, this is the epitome of success. Money, things, highly influential and powerful circle of friends and the big house with the lake.

For others, success is being able to spend time with family, work on projects they truly care about or even having a job that is stable and able to provide for the lifestyle they are enjoying being a part of.

For Nikki Stone, success was being able to overcome adversity and win Olympic gold. Two years before becoming America’s first gold medal winner in aerial skiing, Nikki suffered a chronic spinal injury that prevented her from standing.  She was determined to see her vision of success. She worked hard and 35 World Cup Medals, 11 World Cup titles, 4 national titles, a World Championship and Olympic gold later - Nikki has seen ad experienced success.

Nikki has shared her vision of success in her new book, When Turtles Fly. In the book she chronicles her story of success along with the success of others like Shaun White (who took home more gold at the X Games this past week), 49′ers legend Steve Young, author Steven Covey and others.

What I like about this approach is that you can take bits and pieces of the lives of others and put them into your own life. This is something I learned from Tony Robbins and his modeling approach. If you want something, essentially all you need to do is find someone who has done it and model their actions, beliefs and mental approach.

The title of this post comes from a line in an nontraditional song about success from Jay-Z and Nas. For them success came at an even greater level when they came together, put their past behind them and regained their focus on making the best music in their genre. In the song Jay boats about an “apartment at the Trump” that he only slept in once. Nas goes on to say something that I think hits the lifestyle community,

I climax from paper, then ask why is life worth livin’
Is it the hunt for the shit that you want
To receive is great, but I lust giving

In true spirit Jonny Gibaud has come together in a project about bringing people together and giving back to the commuity and for those that need a little dose of what “success’s all about.”

30 bloggers, lifestyle designers and change makers have given their definition of success, but more importantly how they think you are to achieve it. You will see some familiar faces like Ashley from the Middle Finger Project, Jun from Viralogy and Untemplater, Gordie at LifestyleDesignForYou, Cody from Thrilling Heroics, myself and a ton of others!

You can download the eBook for free, right now. Pass it on and hear about success from the people that are defining success, one unique story at a time.

So what do I think of success? Well, when I sent in my comments for the Success eBook, here was my response:

Success is…

creating a lifestyle that allows you to surf on a tuesday and save the world on a friday

Achieve this by…

working harder, smarter and more passionately than anyone you know and smiling while you do it

Go learn about success from Nikki and read about it in Jonny’s new eBook. This is going to be a killer successful week. Who’s with me?

-Greg

P.S. Yup, that’s an affiliate link to Nikki’s book and I did receive a promotional copy of the book. It’s a great read if you want to see success in a new light. I was also a contributor to the Success eBook. It really rocks and costs you an afternoon of reading and getting inspired.

A lot has been changing in the Internet Marketing world in the last few months. I wanted to spend a few minutes going over some of the important changes that you should look into for your online business. Many of them are things that you should have been implementing already, however many marketers like to play on the edges to turn their biggest profits.

I have always stood by creating cool stuff that provides value to the people that need it and with this audience that reads RSLD, I think you are the same way. I follow many of your escapades and think you have the same integrity to give the most and only receive when people win with what you have.

So here are some things to look at in your online business.

The FTC

This is the subject that has been the most public as it has hit bloggers and affiliates equally hard. I am no lawyer and this should not be legal advice, but here’s what it boils down to:

• If you are given a free product to review, you must disclose it
• If you have affiliate links that you or your company stand to make money from, you must disclose them to
• This can be in blog posts, in emails and possibly even free reports/eBooks
• If you use testimonials in your sales letters or promotions, you must also state what the average customer experiences. This is giving marketers a very big thorn in the side as many have no way of telling what the average user does or gains. Most of the time its nothing, as the product sits in dust on a shelf.

What we are doing is taking numbers out of testimonials - like “I make a gazillion dollars in 2 days using your product” and now using “Greg’s product was really cool, I learned a lot and it has helped my business.” Again, I’m not a lawyer, I’m just showing what we are doing.

If you want to learn more about FTC stuff, I suggest you head over and read this post by Frank Kern, who knows a thing or 2 about the FTC and lawsuits.

Membership Sites

Here is a disclaimer, I love membership sites. I am a fan of creating really cool stuff and having people pay me every month to be a part of something special. I have even been recently speaking on the subject.

I am also a fan of free and “just pay shipping” trials to membership sites. If you do it upfront and ethically, its a great way to get people to see if they like the content you are producing and you only make money if you deliver.

As of last week - this is no more.

Memberships and rebills account for only 1% of all transactions for Visa and Mastercard yet are responsible for 30+% of chargebacks, refunds, disputes, etc. That is why merchant account (not the FTC) are putting the hammer to free trial and forced continuity offers (the type where they have to opt out before the time period or else they will be rebilled).

So, we used this type of a strategy with the Rock Star Business Series. We had a front end offer of $7 for 7 modules and 10 day access to the Backstage Pass, our membership component. If you didn’t cancel within 10 days, you were rebiled $47/mo. These types of deals are no more.

Since this hits close to home, here are some things to look at in your business, or in the structure you are setting up:

Offer the membership as the upfront product. With Label 2.0 it has always been a $50/mo product. No trials, no upsells. They get immediate full access and are free to cancel anytime, no questions asked.

If you were giving away a free product, like a DVD, CD, MP3 player, etc - use that as a bonus. Like, “Join our membership site and as a gift we will send you this DVD.”

Be as transparent as possible about the rebilling. Tell them they will be billed every “x” number of days for “x” amount as long as they are a member.

Give your members a very easy way to opt-out. Like super easy. In Label 2.0, the unsubscribe button is one of the first 3 links on the top right sidebar, in plain view. We are not scared of it. We put it there upfront, as to say - you are going to love this stuff so much that you are not going to care or need to use this button, but its here if you ever need it.

Some More Continuity Bombshells

Ryan Lee, one of the top teachers of online continuity, just received a few emails from his merchant account (the people that handle taking the money from the customers). You can read the letter in full, but I wanted to point out a few “shockers” and things that are of high impact to me.

Avoid a false sense of urgency - This means using those auto-scripts that add countdown timers, today only specials and other misleading  info on your sales page that is NOT true. Now if you offer really is only today or ends this week or something, then you have nothing to worry about.

The full price of products sold must be within reasonable “fair market value.” Honestly, not sure how they are going to assess this, but take a look at your market and be sure that your product isn’t a gazillion dollars more expensive for the same thing.

Consumers must be required to validate understanding of the terms of the offer twice during order submission. If you are rebilling someone, whether its a membership site or supplements, etc you need to have your customer acknowledge that they are paying monthly twice. Once can be on the initial offer and once at checkout. Pre-checked boxes must never be used, your customer must check them off once they understand the offer.

Up Sells with recurring charges are prohibited, regardless of consumer opt-in or acknowledgment of the offer. Ok this is the big one and it kinda sucks. I am a fan of upsells that make sense and align with what the buyer wants. If you offer a great front-end product, say some kind of training course - “7 DVD’s on How To Speak Spanish” an ethical upsell may be a monthly membership for one-on-one or group coaching where you will rebill them for as long as they want the coaching. Makes sense right? Not any more. With this rule coming from the merchant account, you can no longer upsell a membership. This just means you are going to see more memberships upfront attached to front end products. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Ok, enough with the scary tactics!

Essentially if you offer cool stuff, are upfront on the offer and over deliver to your customers, you have nothing to worry about. It you are selling teeth whiteners or acai berry, then you may want to rethink what you are up to.

What do you guys think about both the FTC rules and regs and the new membership guidelines from merchant accounts? Does this affect your business? Have you been affected? How do you think it will be enforced?

Talk to you in the comments.

-Greg Rollett

Photo above by RealEstateClientReferra ls

Things have been changing. I’ve seen the fire and the focus in some of my friends, both online and off over the past few weeks. It’s like I can smell the fresh cut grass of a baseball field every morning with how we are building our businesses right now.

The way you spend your time is more important than ever. The recent events in Haiti really proves that. Stop doing shit that you hate, stop paying for mortgages that you can’t afford and stop doing shit that doesn’t affect your bottom line or help you grow your business.

Here is a quick vid I shot that talks more about time management, but its not about time management. It’s about spending your time to where every minute counts towards your tomorrow.

The Internet Lifestyle and Time Management

What can you be working on right now that will affect your bottom line?

I have a cool case study of a music product launch that will get you super inspired to do stuff asap. The results have been nothing shirt of awesome. See you in the comments.

-Greg