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.

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

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

Putting in the best young writers from Personal Finance, Location Independence, Entrepreneurship, Small Business and Social Media, Brain Melting Ideas and Technology you get the modern day version of Captain Planet, or what they have collectively called Untemplater.

I was really excited to learn that this project got off the ground and was lucky to get a sneak peek of their Manifesto early last week. The Untemplater Manifesto follows Jun, Monica, Carlos, Cody and Adam as they tell their story of how they are ditching the white picket fences, 2.5 children, mortgage and lifestyle that was the dream of our grandparents. Each of their stories is unique, with challenges, struggles and game changing ideas that make you feel like anyone can do this.

Grab your copy here.

The new site is a great looking multi-author blog for 20-somethings, college students and young people that know deep down they were destined for a better life than the one they are told to follow.

In addition to the site really kicking ass, the aspect that I wanted to touch on was that 7 young, alpha entrepreneurs were able to build this business in 3 months or so. Putting their strengths to use, finding a business model and creating an environment to scale the site is an incredible feat when you look at how busy all of them are.

I encourage you to go check the network out, leave a comment, read the manifesto and if you have the urge to say something, they are looking for inspired minds to write for them as well.

• Untemplater.com
• Untemplater on Twitter
• Untemplater Facebook Page

Best of luck to all my friends that have put this site together!

-Greg Rollett

photo by Mike Schmid

As we close out 2009 and look at ways to have a rocking 2010 I have been looking at what provides true value into my life and into my business. This includes the things I pay for and the things I spend my time on.

Money and Value

My mindset is that we spend money on the things that are going to improve our state. For me that includes buying music to improve my mood or get my blood flowing. This can be in the form of food that cures a feeling of hunger. This includes education, where I buy things to compliment what I already know and what I think can enhance my business.

Chris Brogan wrote a great post today (that I felt was unnecessary, but it turned out to be a great conversation) on value vs. cost. There is a new eBook by a blogging buddy of mine Nathan Hangen (I wrote about Social Media and Product Launches for him a few weeks back) entitled Beyond Blogging in which Chris (along with myself and a ton of awesome bloggers and marketers) are affiliates.

The complain came from purist commenters who do not place value in an eBook that has a cost of $47. The logic is that either:

• information is supposed to be free, or
• eBooks are written on Microsoft Word, have no distribution cost and thus should be much more inexpensive.

Ah. This is killer to me. The comments on this post were handled very supportive of the cost vs. value proposition. If you are a blogger and want to use this book to make money then it is an investment into your business and education. If you buy it as a book that you are going to read for leisure, than yea, its probably too expensive.

This is the same stuff I deal with when pricing my own products. I want to make them affordable that people will give them a shot and put some of the stuff I talk about into action. Then I also want to price it high enough to where the people that would never take action and are leisure customers/subscribers/fans don’t buy. And that’s okay.

There was an awesome comment by Michael at Remarkablogger that summed it up best:

Here is something to consider: the people with an “investment mindset” instead of a “cost mindset” are the ones perfectly willing to shell out hundreds and even thousands of dollars on training they know will help them succeed in their pursuits.

And those are the people who DO succeed. I don’t know a single successful person who is also a cheap-ass miser that can’t even invest in his own success. All the people whining about the cost of this (or any) info product can basically put themselves in the “failure” camp until they make that leap of faith and invest in themselves. Strong words, I know, but I don’t see anything to indicate otherwise.

The value to me in anything I buy does need to be justified and I think you should justify the cost in your head as well, you just need to do it in what Michael calls an “investment mindset.”

Creating an Investment Mindset

This investment mindset can be applied to nearly all purchases. When grabbing lunch out today I made a purchasing decision. I chose to invest in my health and mindset by ordering the salad and soup. A cost mindset would have seen the burger and fries on special for $5 and made the decision to save a few dollars while sacrificing nutrients, calories and a mid-afternoon bathroom run.

When I look at investments into my education I look at long-term value over short term cost. It may not be an exact science but the thinking goes something like this:

• What is the item?
• What is the item supposed to do for me?
• Can I apply this to my life or my business now?
• Is this something that I can use in the future as I grow or need new ideas/revenue/etc?
• Do I have the time, energy and resources to use it? Will I?
• Does this align with the way I am doing things now?
• Will this item give me a return equal to or greater than the price tag?
• The price?
• Yes or no?

Again this isn’t a perfect science and isn’t meant to be. Most purchases are based on emotions and wants versus real life needs.

Remember all we really need is some water, some nuts, Nike B-Ball shorts, a white Hanes T-Shirt, a tepee and a warm shower now and then.

Applying the Investment Mindset to a Real Buying Decision

This year Stompernet was the biggest investment that I made in my personal development. At $200 / mo it is steep for continued online marketing information, of which I think I am pretty well versed. Here is the process I see looking back with some analysis on my buying decisions.

What is the item?

Stompernet is like the Harvard of online marketing. With instructors that have been there and done that, resources and connections, live events and a suite of tools to make my life/business tasks easier.

What is the item supposed to do for me?

There are a few key things that I wanted to get out of the product. A support team. People to answer questions. A mastermind group of internet marketers. The tools - specifically Market Samauri, the Article Spinner and Submitter and the free 800 number. All these combined would save time, give me confidence and accountability.

Can I Apply This To My Business or Life Now? What about the future?

Yes. The second I got my username and password I was in, had access to the tools and started digging into their archives. On my recent Rock Star Business Series launch I got feedback on affiliate software, payment terms, salesletter help and some great things to look at on the backend. As I am gearing up for some new products in 2010, there are some awesome things that I have been picking up to improve conversion, boost sales numbers and increase transaction size.

I have also applied some of the lifestyle videos into my daily habits. So much of working online is mental and they have some great teachers for mindset.

Do I have the time, energy and resources to use it? Will I?

This is the biggest “iffy” part I had with Stompernet. Could I justify $200  /mo if I never watched a video or used a few of the tools. To this day I still haven’t touched a few of the tools and am still trying to find the best way to use the 800 number.

The forums can be a time suck and there is more videos than someone could watch in a lifetime. For me, the answer here was a maybe. The best thing they teach is that you use what you need and the rest will be there when you need it. That was a huge selling point.

Does this align with my current business / lifestyle?

Yea. I really want to indulge fully in online marketing and they are the Harvard. There is no tomorrow. I knew that if I wanted to make something happen, it had to happen now. The average perfect day for me includes working on my laptop from home. I needed that accountability now.

Will this item give me a return equal to or greater than the price tag?

That is the plan. If you look at $200 / mo as the investment, I would spend $2,400 a year on the product. Since joining I have increased my revenues (not profits, yet) to almost that much per month. I plan on surpassing double that amount per month in the 1st quarter of 2010. So yea, it has produced a very nice ROI.

Yes or No.

Honestly I pulled the trigger at 11:55pm of the last night of their pre-launch. I can’t say this was the easiest decision I ever made. When I thought about the value it brings in, the decision now looks easy.

The decision was still based on emotion, but it was an investment decision. It was not a cost decision. Deep down I knew I would make more than I ever invested in the training.

Other Investment Minded Buying Opportunities

photo by Anke van Lenteren

Your food. Every time you eat, whether you are cooking or eating out, you have made an investment in your health. Are you making this based on cost, or as an investment towards a long, healthy living.

Your time. You will never get time back, no matter how hard we try. Are you investing your time to create a better lifestyle for yourself or are you choosing a cost based lifestyle. This can be mental cost as well. Staying home on the couch, or reading blogs instead of working, etc.

Your work. The economy is tough. Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur or an Internet Marketer or musician. Some choose to work and that’s cool.  No matter what career path you choose, make the decision based on an investment mindset versus a cost mindset if you want peace of mind.

Taking a job for the money is a cost mindset. Selling acai berry because it has the highest affiliate payout is a cost mindset. If you choose to sell the acai stuff, be sure you are doing it from an investment standpoint - maybe learning to drive affiliate traffic, looking at conversions or outsourcing and automation. Use that investment to fuel something more powerful and valuable in your life.

The Last Penny Story

I always love the seminar speakers who come up on stage and they start with their story of what they did to make it. It generally breaks down like this. Crappy job. Wanted to make a change. Bought a course. Invested a bunch of time. Stuff started to happen. Boom - success.

I remember one story where they said they had paid something like $2,000 to go to a conference and didn’t have enough money to book a room so they slept in their car for the weekend. That weekend he worked his ass off at the conference and met everyone from the people in the seats to the multi-million dollar speakers. Something like 6 weeks later he made $10,000. Then $100,000. Then the $1,000,000. He said most of that came from the relationships he made in that room. It may have been his last $2,000 - but was that investment worth it?

The Choice is Yours

We all have the mental capacity to make whatever decisions we want to make. The person in control of our thoughts, beliefs and emotions is us. The value we see in products comes from our own perception and reality. The next time you see a long sales letter, or an offer to learn something or are faced with putting crap in your body versus something that will help keep you healthy so you can surf at 60 - think from an investment mindset.

Happy New Year and please let me know your thoughts on this. I think it’s huge for those looking to make a huge impact on their future.

-Greg Rollett

P.S. If you are serious about wanting to make income and a living from your blog in 2010, I highly recommend Beyond Blogging by Nathan Hangen and Mike Cliffe Jones. He worked really hard to break into everything you need to do, do NOT need to do and brought along some powerful friends like Chris Brogan, David Risely, Chris Guillebeau, iJustine, Penelope Trunk, Pete Cashmore and more.

If blogging is not your thing no worries. Enjoy your holiday and leave a comment below on what you want to invest in to make your life better in 2010.

If you are thinking of creating a membership or continuity type business, I’d love to chat and check out your model. Having this type of a business is crucial to efficient lifestyle design. The reason is simple:

If you can predict your income, you can plan your life.

With continuity you can really see how much money your company will make in the coming month and give you an idea of what kind of marketing you need to do to get to the number of members that you need to enjoy your ideal lifestyle.

Happy holidays and enjoy the video.

-Greg

Today I am happy to bring you another guest post, this time by Justin Freid. Justin is an upcoming youth marketer that specializes in SEO and Social Media. We had an opportunity to talk over the phone and had a great conversation that led to similar goals and ideas. I asked him to write a post and introduce himself to this audience. In this post Justin diggs into some of the new social aspects of search engines and how they may affect your personal brand.

Over the past few weeks major search engines such as Google and Bing have began to show blog posts, tweets and status updates on search engine results pages.

This new form of blended search has been cast under the name of Social Search. Google specifically stated that your social network is a large part of your life and their influence should contribute to your search for information. With tweets and blog posts showing up in search engine results, this presents an opportunity to utilize social media to associate your personal brand with highly searched terms.

As most people know, SEO doesn’t happen to a website overnight. The structuring of your website, creating great content and link building is a lengthy process. So if you are trying to brand yourself in an industry such as SEO or Marketing, you will have a tough time showing up on the first page of results for industry related terms.

With tweets, blog posts and status updates now taking up a spot on SERPs, this presents a great opportunity to overcome the length of time you would need to invest in SEO. By simply doing some keyword research and utilizing your social media profiles to broadcast your message and personal brand, you can begin to use Google and Bing’s social search for your benefit.

Here is what you need to do

Use a tool such as Google Keyword Tool and simply enter in a popular term for your industry, searching through the results to find highly searched terms. The results will show a green bar that shows how competitive the search terms is. Pick a few of these terms that relate to the brand you are trying to create and then utilize them in your blog posts and status updates. The terms you select should have a perfect storm of number of monthly searches and competitiveness. (High search volume, not extremely competitive)

The next step is integrating these keywords within your tweets, blog posts, status updates and social media profiles. Make sure not to overuse these terms and end up spamming your tweets and blog posts. The key is to wisely insert these terms into your status updates and blog post titles. This will help you take advantage of the new social search and have your profiles and blog posts show up in search results.

If you choose the right keywords and insert them effectively into your social media profiles, you may end up on the first page of search results for terms that no matter how hard you optimized your website for, you would never show up on.

The largest drawback of this tactic is that it borderlines spamming the search results. You need to attack this plan and post quality information in a tasteful manner. You could easily ruin all the personal branding you have done by filling your latest tweet with 25 hashtags.

Keep in mind that Google has not come out and said how long social results stay atop the new Social Search. It could be minutes, hours or days. So keep an eye on how long your updates stay atop Social Search results and post new quality content accordingly.

Justin Freid is an internet marketing entrepreneur specializing in SEO and social media marketing. Justin currently heads up Petersons.com’s SEO and social media marketing efforts and is pursuing a MBA in marketing from Philadelphia University. You can check out Justin’s views on SEO and Social Media at Justin Freid | SEO and Social Media Blog.

Last week I had the opportunity to co-host a teleseminar with #1 Amazon SEO author Michael Fleishner. We had a chance to talk about SEO, getting your site primed, how to get some links and good ways to kick start your site. While you didn’t get a chance to listen live, I will send you a copy of the 80 minute MP3 by signing up here.

On the call I mentioned that guest posting was one of the most important things bloggers can do as it kills a few birds with one stone. So in the spirit I wrote a guest post on his marketing blog about Gen-Y entrepreneurs and he came back with a great post on publishing a book, something I always want to know more about!

One of the keys to achieving financial independence and proactively designing your life is to create automated revenue streams. As someone who has been doing business online for over a decade, I can share with you plenty of successes and failures with trying to find sources of steady income that provide the freedom you need for truly effective lifestyle design.

Recently I was invited by Greg to speak to a group of young entrepreneurs. Although the topic was really focused on search engine optimization, I believe what people were most interested in was learning how to get their web sites generating multiple streams of income – on auto pilot. It is true that once you achieve #1 organic ranking on search engines like Google, it takes a lot less to generate qualified traffic and generate a stream of potential buyers that result in ongoing revenue. But there many ways to generate income that have nothing to do with search engine ranking.

What does publishing have to do with lifestyle design?

Knowing how important lifestyle design is today, I asked Greg if I could share my experiences in publishing. And no, I’m not talking about publishing online content (although I do that too). Rather, I’m talking about traditional publishing - writing a book. In this post, I’m going to reveal how I’ve used a small 120 page publication to generate multiple streams of income and design a life focused on helping others.

I’m not your typical author. In fact I’d argue that my writing skills are weak at best. But that didn’t stop me from writing a book and achieving top selling status. You may be wondering how a guy with hardly any writing ability could produce a book with legs. Well, I think the answer to that question is rather simple - I wrote about something I care about, enjoy, and wanted to focus my time on.

My book, “SEO Made Simple” is the number one ranked book for “SEO” on Amazon.com, the world’s largest book seller. I wrote to share my knowledge with others who wanted to learn about search engine optimization, saving them time and struggle when learning about this exciting area of Internet marketing.

Unlike other books you might read, I took a slightly different approach. Instead of writing hundreds of pages with lots of theory and worthless advice, I thought I’d be direct. If you ever have the opportunity to read my book, you’ll find that’s it reads more like a set of directions (do this, then do this) than anything else. I decided to take this approach because that’s what I needed when I starting in SEO and was unable to find a resource that met my needs.

How I used a book to launch my career

What’s great about this book is that each time Amazon sells and ships a copy for me, I earn a royalty. That’s right, I earn a small royalty on each book sold but never have to deal with printing it, warehousing it, selling it, shipping it, or running a customer service center – sweet! But it gets better than that.

When individuals pick up my book, I not only tell them what to do, but how to do it. And you know as well as I do that having the right tools makes all the difference. So I drive readers through a secret URL noted in the book which brings them to a special page on one of my many web sites. On that page, I list all of the tools I personally use to help me achieve top search engine rankings and which work well with the techniques I reveal in the book. When users buy these products I earn a commission. Not only am I earning royalties on the book, but I’m earning affiliate commissions too!

And it doesn’t stop there. In addition to offering affiliate products, I drive users to my web resources, which I monetize (such as an Internet marketing forum) , allowing me to grow my online businesses. The book has been a tremendous source of traffic as more and more users go online to check out my website, access my secret pages, additional content, and other resources noted in the book.

As you know, not everyone is a “do it yourselfer”. In fact, once starting down the search engine optimization path people frequently don’t have the time or resources needed to implement all of the techniques they need for search engine ranking success. While they are on my secret page, I let them know about my SEO training and consulting services. This helps me grow my business and generate inquiries while I sleep. This is the key to designing the type of life you want when you want it.

If you’ve considered publishing a book or simply communicating what you know to a larger audience, I suggest that you put together an outline and start writing. Commit to 30 minutes of writing per day and make a commitment to keep writing, rewriting, and editing until you have something you can publish. This can be a long and arduous process, or can happen quickly. It all comes down to your commitment and time frame. Once you have a manuscript, consider self publishing. This route worked for me and is pretty easy to implement.

I suggest using CreateSpace for self publishing. This site is owned by Amazon.com and can help you get ranked on Amazon quickly. Ranking is based on sales numbers in addition to title and description so be selective when choosing your title and uploading your description through Createspace.

Once you’ve published your book, be patient. Tell your friends, order copies that you can personally distribute on your own, and promote it wherever you can. I’ve used my website, blog, and social media to get the word out. Whether you are promoting through webinars, blog posts, or email, always focus on your audience. Let them know what this book will do for them. If you content is good, word of mouth will be your best sales person!

This post was written by Michael Fleishner, a marketing expert and author of SEO Made Simple with more than 13 years of hands-on marketing experience. His blog, the Marketing Blog is currently ranked #1 for, you guessed it, marketing blog. Follow him on Twitter, @mfleishner.

Disclaimer: This post features affiliate links to buy Michael’s book, SEO Made Simple. After being on a call with Michael last week, I would recommend his SEO services and think his book is a great place to start. If you end up buying the book on Amazon after clicking on the links, I will be compensated.