Imagine being under water, upside down, trapped in your Kayak. You can feel your lungs burning because you didn't have time to grab a full breath ... though you are surprising yourself how long you are managing to force yourself from gasping down a lung full of water ... All you can hear is your heart pounding. Scary? I don't need to imagine what that would be like because I can remember in vivid detail. In fact I have had nightmares about it. My overriding thought was drowning … [Read more...]

I am sure you know someone who chases the latest shiny flavour of the month tactic and fails every time. I'm also sure you know some people who work really hard toward their goals, but never seem to get anywhere. Today I want to help you avoid these problems so you can grow the business you really want. It starts with getting off the "Tactic Treadmill", but goes much deeper than that ... The Tactic Treadmill People follow the buzz in forums and social media and believe they have found a … [Read more...]

Do you find you give and give, but people do not seem to be buying? Or maybe people do buy, but not in the numbers you would like? I get that, and I hear it a lot. You might have heard me joke that for a while there I was stuck in a loop of being known as a "freebie guy". Luckily it wasn't so bad that I left to go herd goats or something, I have always had a little something up my sleeve that was my get out of jail card (will talk about that in a bit), but it was frustrating until I broke … [Read more...]

Have you ever listened to a keynote speech and got all pumped and motivated, then found out what the speaker has suggested just didn't give you the results you hoped for? Or maybe you bought a best-seller and found it page-turning fascinating, but no clearer on what you were meant to do next? Silver Bullet Poisoning is my name for when your business is harmed by advice or products that look and sound good, but the advice doesn't work in practice. The reason I want to talk about this right … [Read more...]

Creating and selling information products is all the rage right now, with forums filling with conversations about launches and techniques. I can understand the enthusiasm, and I would suggest a lot of the excitement is coming from Jeff Walker's latest "Product Launch Formula" buzz. Sadly I think a lot of the people who are getting whipped up in the excitement might get mislead about the supposed "instant millions" they might be able to generate. The good news is, while not quite as glamorous … [Read more...]

"The only stupid question is the one you fail to ask". That has always been my philosophy. Of course at school that philosophy contributed to my regular beatings. Any pupil who took too much of an interest in class was considered fair game for a head-flushing. In adult life though we should be above such things and the philosophy has served me well. Have I embarrassed myself? Sure! A lot! But the thing is, I always get answers to things that I am stuck with, struggling over or finding … [Read more...]

During an interview with Sonia Simone for their Teaching Sells course members, I realised I had created more products in the last eleven months than I have the previous five years. That's eight products delivered and two more in the works, either solo or as part of a joint venture. This was while moving my family 3,000 miles to go live in Canada. Back in the summer 2007 I was bogged down with analysis paralysis. What started out as an outline for an ebook was fast becoming a mammoth course, … [Read more...]

Jake Nickell is the founder of Threadless, the super cool t-shirt store/design community. When I reviewed the Threadless book I only touched on what the company is about. So here is more of an insight into the workings of a 10 year old successful internet startup. Q: What do you think has made the biggest difference to the sustained success of Threadless over the last ten years? If you could pull the 20% out of the 80-20% pareto principle for your company, what would that be do you … [Read more...]

Are you wondering how you can get more people to visit your site or buy what you are selling? People often ask me why some people can get a lot of traffic or business while others struggle along with what seems like the scraps from the table. Why can "over night success" stories break through at the same time you might have to spend years "paying dues"? I have been seeing a lot of people fall into a common trap. That trap is called "Entitlement". Starting out bloggers all the way up to … [Read more...]

One of the disgusting but useful phrases in the programming and developer community is "Eat your own dogfood". I am sure there are people out there who really do have to eat their own dogfood in a literal sense, but the meaning behind the phrase in our context is that you have to experience your product, content or service from an end-user perspective. If you do not have that understanding and empathy then you will inevitably not meet your full potential, or potentially create a bad … [Read more...]