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School of Hard Knocks: What 18 Hours of Painful Labor Taught this Mama About Marketing Mojo

Posted on April 23, 2013 | In Guest Appearances

Sometimes it’s simply impossible to get everything done, especially when you are one of the growing hordes of Mums and Dads juggling business-building and kids.

It’s not that your marketing efforts have completely flopped, it’s just that it never seems to be enough to get you the results you are after.

There’s always more that needs doing and there’s never enough time.

Before you know it, the day is over and you have to pick up the kids from daycare or school. You haven’t even begun that blog post you were supposed to write today and yet again, you’ve put off time on social media because something urgent came up with a client.

If you could just get 5 hours more a week to focus solely on marketing, you just know that your traffic, subscribers and income would skyrocket.

But where to find the time?

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Reality Check – How You’ll Really Get from 0 to 1,000 Subscribers in 6 Months

Posted on April 21, 2013 | In Guest Appearances

Maybe the most common question people ask from me is, “How can I build my list quickly?”

It’s about as common as “How do I get more traffic?”

I think guest posting is a great way to build your list – that’s no secret – especially when you’re starting out.

But do you know what it really takes to get 1,000 subscribers?

There’s a lot of hype, exaggerations, and even outright lies around about building a blog or online business.

So, a quick reality check is in order…

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Reliable Income Every Month, On Your Own Terms

Posted on April 19, 2013 | In Guest Appearances

That’s what you really want, but it’s not happening.

When you step back and take a good look at your business, you realize that you don’t have a clear system that is already working. It’s not like you can consistently do X and make $Y.

You dip in and out of thinking you know what you’re doing, followed by periods of mass overwhelm and confusion.

Everything is a struggle.

To your credit, you’re working incredibly hard whilst juggling everything else you know you need to do to survive. But the odds are you have little support and understanding for what you’re trying to achieve and sometimes you feel like just giving up.

But this isn’t how it was suppose to be!

When you conceived of the idea of your business you probably pictured something along the lines of:

  • working four hours a day,
  •  sipping coffee and checking your emails in cafes,
  •  having the flexibility to disappear off for the weekend at a moments’ notice,
  •  being your own boss,
  •  racking in the dollars, and
  •  feeling confident and self-assured all the time.

But here you are right now, and that image of how you’d love your life to be is a frustratingly distant visualisation that you are still striving for.

You’re still stuck struggling with tasks that drain your energy, battling internally to figure out how you can afford to outsource something, while your income is barely keeping you afloat. Tension and stress tend to greet you for breakfast, instead of hot croissants and room service.

So what happened?

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Training Your Blog to Work for Your Podcast

Posted on April 17, 2013 | In Guest Appearances

The promises of podcasts are pretty great: through the medium of audio you can interact with your audience and provide tons of value in a refreshing way. Podcasts provide you with the opportunity to catch and engage with your audience even when they are away from their computers; they also help to humanize your brand through the sound of your voice.

Unfortunately, when little interaction takes place between you and your audience, you may find yourself singing Pink Floyd: hello, is anybody out there? The preparations and hard work that are necessary to run a podcast can leave you feeling exhausted without an actively engaged audience.

You need them to keep you motivated.

The question is: how do you get them?

The answer may be right in front of you in the form of your blog. Like a lot of situations in life, this is a case where two is better than one. By branding your podcast to compliment the happenings of your blog you can increase not only the attention your podcast receives but the satisfaction it warrants. Audience members will appreciate a complimentary source that dives deeper and/or offers twists in perception.

Here’s how to make it happen…

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Questions for Guy Kawasaki, Jeff Goins, or me?

Posted on April 15, 2013 | In Firepole Marketing Updates

This post is going to  be short and sweet.

As you probably know, Guy Kawasaki, Jeff Goins and I are hosting a live training webinar on Thursday titled “Secrets of Great APEs: Authors, Publishers, and Entrepreneurs”, where we’re going to teach…

  • Real-life lessons learned from Guy, Jeff, and my writing and publishing experiences.
  • How to crowd-source a book: what to consider, and how to do it effectively.
  •  How to self-publish successfully, where you can save money and cut corners, and where you definitely cannot.
  •  Tactical advice from Guy Kawasaki, learned on the front-lines of writing and publishing APE.

And on top of the training, we’re also going to hang around quite a lot to answer questions.

Now, we’ll do our best to answer every question that gets asked, but realistically speaking, it’ll be hard to get to everyone (we’ve got 1,000 live seats on the call, and we expect them all to be filled) – so if you want to make sure your question gets answered, go ahead and leave it as a comment on this post.

So first, make sure to register and reserve your spot on the call.

And then leave a comment below, with any question that you’d like Guy Kawasaki, Jeff Goins or me to answer!

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Blog Posts for Rainy Day Blues – Best of the Web

Posted on April 13, 2013 | In Best of the Web

It’s been just shy of a month since our last Best of the Web. Although this one is a little bit on the shorter side, we’ve found some great posts in the past month that we couldn’t wait to show you… so why bother waiting for a long list?

April has brought the expected drab weather (at least here in Montreal), but it gives us all the more reason to cozy up in a cafe and browse the web for some outstanding content.

On the menu today: Some great videos, questions requiring extensive discussion, how-to’s and an assortment of other interesting pieces. The perfect combination to brighten up this gloomy month!

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The process of APE with Guy Kawasaki (Fireside Chat with Danny Iny)

Posted on April 11, 2013 | In Fireside Chats with Danny Iny

Today is a special episode of the Fireside Chats with Danny Iny, where we’re going to be interviewing one of the most well-known and prolific writers and marketers working today – Guy Kawasaki!

You see, we’ve noticed how many of our readers and listeners are interested in, writing a book – if they haven’t written one already! And with all of the changes in the publishing industry, more and more people are turning to self-publishing – just like Guy.  It’s not enough to be a great author any more - now you also have to be an entrepreneur and a publisher, too.

So Danny and Guy are going to be talking about what really goes into self-publishing a popular book. Guy uses his newest book APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur, to explain what steps are absolutely necessary when embarking on a self-publishing journey. And you’ll get a whole bunch of tips on how to write, edit, format, crowd-source and publish your own book.

So let’s get started – those manuscripts aren’t going to draft themselves…

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How to Make Profitable Decisions

Posted on April 9, 2013 | In Guest Appearances

In a spin, lost in confusion and not really knowing quite what to do in order to fix the business and make it more profitable?

Maybe you’ve been there?

Wracked by decision overload, not sure if you’re picking the right thing, and generally just feeling overwhelmed by it all?

And as a go-getting, inspired entrepreneur it wouldn’t be surprising if you have. At any one time there are at least a dozen different decisions you can make, and often in trying to pick the “right” decision it is easier to hedge one’s bets and try and do everything instead. What ensues is often overwhelm, and lack lustre results.

Now, if you’re anything like the forward-thinking, inspired folks I mentor, you probably spend a lot of your waking time trying to be positive, trying to find a strategy or tactic that is going to work for you. But unknown to everyone else around you whilst you’re outwardly being positive and proactive, you’re perhaps also secretly beating yourself up inside and kicking yourself for not having made more progress yet.

And maybe you internalize these results and attribute a meaning to it like – “Maybe I’m just no good at business”, or “I can’t make money, no matter how much I try”, or “maybe I’m just not wired to be successful”. If you do occasionally think like this, don’t worry – you’re not alone. And there is something we can do about it right now.

But there is one thing you need to know first…

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Ask the Readers: Charge People… to Email You?!

Posted on April 7, 2013 | In Ask the Readers

Okay, first of all, don’t worry, because we aren’t planning on doing this…

…but apparently, some folks are considering charging people to send them email.

Can you imagine?

I read this article on Slate a couple of weeks ago, and my jaw almost hit the floor.

Yes, I thought – it IS crazy to charge people to send you email.

The very idea is antithetical to just about everything we do here at Firepole Marketing.

And yet, I can imagine it happening.

I can imagine big companies cutting down on their labor hours. I can imagine busy solopreneurs asking that that people value their time differently. I can imagine that the custom of free communication might someday be a memory.

The interesting point made in the article above is that an email from a stranger adds something to your “to-do” list without your consent – an interesting way of looking at things, and one that just might be worth a good ponder. (If only for the mental gymnastics!)

But of course, it may never happen; people may reject the concept out of hand, and we’ll never hear of it again.

What do you think?

Should people be able to charge other’s for the privilege of sending them email? Would *you* pay to email someone? How much? Is this whole idea nuts?

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5 Lessons from Donald Trump About Social Media

Posted on April 5, 2013 | In Guest Appearances

Despite the controversy surrounding him, Donald Trump is internationally known as a real estate magnate, best selling author, shrewd businessman and “The Apprentice” host. His net worth is $3.2 Billion, according to Forbes.

What many don’t know about Mr. Trump however, is the many challenges he had to face in order to taste success: unfortunate incidents like the loss of his executive team in a helicopter crash, or major bankruptcy.

Ups and downs, the wins and the failures, where nothing but the architectural factors for building the brand he is today – TRUMP.

If you’ve read at least one of his books like “The Art of the Deal” or “How to Get Rich“, you’ll start to realize what kept Donald in business… it’s the passion and sheer determination to compete in the marketplace, close deals, and become better on a daily basis, rather than the profit itself.

Imagine you had the once in a lifetime opportunity to sit down and talk with Mr. Donald Trump for 10 minutes about life, business and branding. Priceless, you’d say, right?

Not many can have this chance though, of course. At least we have the Internet, which is freely available 24/7. So, I went ahead, and immersed myself (for days) into web research mode. I almost went nuts.

What I’ve found in my journey is incredible. Real life lessons we can adjust and fit into our own business (for social media success) just like kids playing Lego. Some connections are evident, others require a shift in perspective – looking at things from new angles has its merits.

Let’s go through some inspiring quotes which I’ve found through my research and the social media lessons we can apply for our business, as a result.

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The $26,495.00 SEO Sales Letter EXPOSED

Posted on April 3, 2013 | In Guest Appearances

Surely with all the talk about Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube, no savvy business owner ever reads snail mail. You remember that stuff that used to be printed on real paper – yeah, the stuff that is made from trees – and then stuck into an envelope, addressed, a stamp licked and stuck in the top right corner.

Hang on! Before I continue, let me clarify something. At Ugly Mug Marketing the vast majority of our revenue comes from building things that exist out in the world-wide-web. We are masters at generating leads and then converting those leads into sales, and often we do this by utilizing the latest Internet tools.

However, when we want BIG results, we often look to that old ancient world of print and direct mail. Which in our modern, technologically advanced world, seems to be a thing of the ancient past.

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The Great Online Marketing Scavenger Hunt: Extended for Another 6 Weeks!

Posted on April 1, 2013 | In Scavenger Hunt

The last five weeks have been so much fun, I just can’t imagine stopping. So we’ve decided to double the length of the hunt and release a brand new list of challenges – bigger and better than ever. We’re going to be taking things a few steps further, and will be upping the ante on [...]

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