Rock Star Lifestyle Design

The new Rock Star Business Series went live today at 10am. For the past month I have been working on this thing with an amazing team (Matt and Jared from Under30CEO and Norcross, the top WP Tech Guy around) to deliver what is the best product I have ever put out there (well Label 2.0 is pretty awesome as well).

I have taken course after course, been to conference after conference and even launched some other products before, but nothing prepares you for doing it on your own and sending it out to the world. There are many parts that went into play, and today I wanted to talk about decision making.

Decisions Are A Change Agent For Lifestyle Design

photo by cwgoodroe

Fridays are still my favorite day of the week. Even work at home Internet Marketers and Entrepreneurs love themselves a good Friday. There is a five minute break in the early part of the evening that always gets to me though and it goes a little something like this:

Me: What do you want for dinner?

Jen: I don’t care, what do you want for dinner?

Me: I dunno, I’m good for anything but sushi.

Jen: Ok, well I don’t really care, let’s just pick something.

Me: How about that place by the river in Sanford?

Jen: No, but I don’t really care.

(And on and on and on till we end up getting a salad from Panera and some Chinese take out.)

Yea, that sounds like bickering, but strong leaders and those with an entrepreneurial mindset need to be quick to make not just powerful decisions, but a series of small decisions that effect everyone they influence.

In the above example, dinner affects many little things that ultimately affect the night. If there is a wait, it bumps things off schedule. If the food upsets a stomach or makes someone tired it also shifts the night. If it is too expensive (or too cheap) it may affect your behavior later in the evening as well. That little decision just turned into a big decision.

In the launch of the RSBS there were more than enough little and big decisions that tore our minds with every email from pricing to how to create the pre-launch sequence to sales page corrections, email copy, affiliate programs, site structure and countless other little pieces to the puzzle.

Being able to make these key decisions in product creation as well as in your everyday life certainly affects your lifestyle and the mindset you have. Being confident in your decision making gives you an assurance that you are doing the right things and gives the offshoot to your readers, customers, employees, etc that the right decision has been made.

One of the key lessons I took away from the 4 Hour Work Week was the action item that said, no matter what the situation, make a decision. Tim said to always give a specific answer to a question. “I don’t know”, or “what do you think,” is not an acceptable response.

Other than the food choices on Friday nights, I really try to have an opinion and make decisions. These decisions are not always right, and they do not have to be. They do however, need to be confident, strong and align with your values.

If your values are strong and well defined, making decisions is a very easy process. If you can make wise and confident decisions, you are well on your way to a strong lifestyle in which you are in change of your own mentality and the cards that you get to play.

Decisions in the Rock Star Business Series

After much conversation and brainstorming about how to take the Rock Star Business Series from a live event type product to something that can really scale and make a difference to entrepreneurs we decided on a membership site with a strong community basis. The number one compliment and testimonial from the first go round was the live attention and the access to Matt, Jared and myself. We took value in that and built it as a core component of the membership.

The next decision was to offer a front end product that was so compelling, it was a no-brainer. This is the 7 core modules for $7. It was a tough decision to make due to the fact that this is the same information we sold for $97 only 3 months prior and was the cornerstone of the business model. In the end, the decision was made to give away the best content we had and create something more powerful that was worth paying top dollar for. I know that we succeeded in doing this.

The last decision I wanted to talk about is software, specifically affilaite software. This was one of my key responsibilities and the initial decision was to use Clickbank to have access to their merchant account, automated affiliate payout system and tracking tools. We got everything integrated and was testing the sales letter with their system. Everything worked to a T! Then I submitted to Clickbank and got an email that said, “Are you sure you read the submission guidelines?” I said yes, I am sure and then got another note that said, you cannot have live products and your live calls and Faculty Office Hours reside in that restriction.

Damn.

After that it was back to the drawing board. I really wanted the assistance of a strong affiliate network and the payment processing, but other companies that offer this solution are very price intensive and we are still rock stars on a budget. After much debate I looked back into programs that I have promoted and their affiliate systems. I narrowed it down to iDev Affiliate which I had used in the Project Mojave launch and then Post Affiliate Pro which Ramit Sethi used in their recent Bootcamp launch.

From here it was looking at their features and integration. At the end of the day they looked pretty even and a gut decision was made to use iDevAffiliate. Norcross got it hooked up and flowing in a day and boom, now we are in the middle of a launch and I am writing a blog post instead of pumping my Twitter followers to death!

Making Decisions in a Product Launch

I think the next product launch I do will be for a product teaching you how I did my project launch (assuming this one goes good and early indication is that it will!). Making decisions when creating an info product can drive you mad, cause you to lose sleep and really put pressure on yourself and your team. Here are some things that I looked at when making decisions and maybe you can learn from them too.

Map Out Your Goals. What do you want to accomplish? How many new customers/clients/new subscribers/whatever? When is your deadline? When is go live day? Knowing the answers to these and other critical questions about your goals will make your decisions really easy to make. If something blocks you from getting to your goals, well, then, that’s a bad decision. I always look at it by saying,  “will this get me closer or farther from my goal?” If it’s closer - boom, make it happen.

Align Your Values. What do you stand for? Will the decisions you make take away from your reputation or credibility? Getting aligned with your values allows you to make decisions that are always pointing you in the right direction.

Ask For Help. If you don’t know something ask. Generally people will help you out and make your decisions easy. When I needed assistance with Wordpress, Norcross was there every step of the way. No need to try and make decisions based on what I think is possible, I’d rather get the expert to do that. Know what you know and ask for help for everything else.

Alright, off to make some decisions on where to buy some more traffic from! If you haven’t signed up for the best training for young entrepreneurs yet, even after this long blog post - go do it. The material rocks and it sells itself if you are serious about building your business.

-Greg Rollett

P.S. New FTC Disclosure - There are some affiliate links in this post. They are for products that I use in my own business and feel good recommending them. I will make some lunch money if you buy the products after clicking on my link, but you’re cool with that right?