You Only Have One Shot At Getting It Right… Why Build Relationships For Your Business Online!

As you may remember, last week I told you that I would be retiring all of my products at the end of the day today.

But something happened today that has made me change my mind about the date.  Just like any other day, today I met several people and I heard their stories about the struggle they experience every day in trying to build their businesses.

I could hear the frustration in their voices.  For a few, it seemed as though they were close to tears just because of the shear agony of trying things only to have them not work, of getting up every morning and going at it again and getting nowhere before going to bed, disheartened, knowing that tomorrow would be another day.

Today was unlike any other day in one respect …

Because I’ll be retiring as the Mentor and Coach in The IM University’s Apprenticeship Program, and because tomorrow I had planned on retiring all of my downloadable digital products, I felt powerless to do something to help.

Yet for some reason, hearing one person’s story made me more driven and passionate than ever to make a difference for this person!

This one story made me want more than ever to help as many people as I possibly can before I retire from teaching forever!

As I heard this person’s story, I knew IMMEDIATELY what I needed to do.

No,  I haven’t changed my mind about my retiring from teaching.  And no, I’m not going to keep my downloadable digital products around.

But, what I am going to do is twofold.

First, tomorrow at 3:00 pm est, I’ll be holding a teleconference where I’ll share with you:

“The 5 Biggest Mistakes Made by Businesses
Online (and How to Make Sure That You’re Not
Making Them Too!)”

Second, I’m postponing the retirement of my products by 7 days ONLY!  That means that if you haven’t yet had a chance to download everything that you wanted yet, you now have a few more days to do so!

The part that has me the most excited though, is this last-minute teleconference that I’m holding tomorrow.
Let me tell you why I’m so excited about it.

But first, I really want you to GET this …

So let me share a story with you in hopes that you REALLY GET what it takes to build a business that CAN and WILL be successful online.

Sure, you hear my lessons all the time.  In them I share with you bits and pieces of what you need to do to build a business that can make you money for the long haul.

But, the story I have to share with you today illustrates in ways that nothing else ever could, EXACTLY what you need to do to finally see the kind of success you’ve been dreaming about.

Are you ready?

Get that highlighter ready, ’cause this one’s got some nuggets in it that can take you from $0 to 6 figures in record time!

(At the end, I have an ENORMOUS surprise for you, so make sure you watch for it!)

Let me tell you what happened …

I’m not going to call this person by name because that might be embarrassing.  So let’s just keep the name anonymous.  It isn’t important to the story anyway.

What is important is that like most of the people I talk to, this was someone who has been working HARD to build a business using the power of the internet.

I’m not talking about working for a few weeks or even a few months.

I’m talking about someone who has worked day in and day out literally for YEARS to build their business.

What did this person have to show for it?

Well, not much really.  In fact, this person had only 1thing to show for all that blood, sweat and tears.

The person did have a website.  In fact, they’d spent TONS having the website created.  And they were really proud of the website.

There was no traffic going to the website.
There were no subscribers yet.
There were no sales yet.

In this web 2.0 world, just about everybody knows that if you have nothing else, you have GOT to have a blog.

Yet, the only blog on the site was a blog that was on WordPress.org — not a blog that was installed on the actual domain name using WordPress as a blogging platform.

(Don’t make this mistake in your business!  You do NOT want to use WordPress.org for your blog!  You want to install WordPress right on your own hosting account, so that it is the actual index or home page of your site.  If you need step-by-step instructions on doing this, download 21 Days To Blogging Profits .)

Now things get worse yet …

Not only was the website the ONLY thing this business had achieved in the past several years, BUT the site as it looks right now, simply will NOT work for what this person was trying to achieve.

You can imagine how awful I felt when I could hear the pride in this person’s voice when describing the site and how much more terrible I felt knowing that I had to set this person straight, knowing that it would certainly mean that I would be bursting a HUGE bubble for someone.

How would you like to tell someone that has only accomplished 1 thing in more than 3 years that the one thing they had achieved was just flat out wrong?

You can imagine how I felt.

So what was wrong with this website?

Well, other than “everything”, there were some specific, concrete things that any marketer can learn from …

First off, the entire focus of the site was completely wrong.

This person was targeting an audience that was mostly baby boomer women, aged 45 to 65.

For any audience online in this web 2.0 world — and ESPECIALLY an audience that’s comprised of primarily older women, it is ESSENTIAL that you focus not on selling something, but on building RELATIONSHIPS.

Women, especially more senior women, make their buying decisions 85% of the time or better based on the relationships that they have.

The relationships they have with suppliers causes them to buy.

The relationships they have with their younger daughters cause them to buy.

Their relationships with their friends cause them to buy.

Not only have there been hundreds of articles written on this precise topic, there are are even best selling books that make this same point.  My opinion isn’t just a matter of “opinion”, it’s a scientifically proven fact!

If you intend to target an audience consisting mostly of women or even of baby boomer women, if you aren’t focusing on building this relationship from the start, chances are good that your prospect will go and find someone else who does!

So, how do you build a relationship with someone you don’t even know?

You do it through your blog!

One of the BEST ways of building relationships with your prospects is to put your blog right on your index or home page for your website.  Then, on your blog, you can use your posts to help solve the problems that your prospects have.

Your blog allows for a 2 way communication that does not occur with any other type of website.  It’s in part that 2-way conversation that helps to build the relationship right from the start.

The blog also establishes a stronger relationship, at a higher level, than any other vehicle available right from the start.  It does this by allowing you to use your posts to show your visitors that you really are an expert AND at the same time, really help them by giving
them the information they are looking for.

Always remember …

The internet is “the INFORMATION Super Highway”.

What do people want when they go to a search engine?

INFORMATION!

They’re not looking for products.
They’re not looking for home study courses.
They’re not looking for coaching programs.

What they ARE looking for is a solution to some problem they have.

They don’t know what that solution really is either.  All they know is that they have some sort of problem, and that until they can find a solution they’re going to feel miserable.

It’s your blog that gives them this solution!

Notice that I didn’t say that it is your blog that SELLS them this solution.  It is truly that your blog GIVES them the solution freely — not even requiring them to opt into a list first — that causes the relationship to be established at a higher level immediately!

Think about it this way …

Let’s say that you have some big problem in your life. It’s been eating away at you for weeks now.  Every day you get up, there it is, staring you in the face.

It’s making your life miserable.  You can’t concentrate. You’re totally distracted.  Whether you’re at work or at home, whether you’re on the computer or driving in the car, you always have this nagging little problem in the back of your mind.

One night, you finally can’t take it for another second!

You turn to the internet from the comfort of your home late one night.

You go to your favorite search engine.  You type in a search that goes something like this:

“Getting rid of _______________”

The blank is your problem.

You find John Doe’s blog.  On it, he’s written an article entitled “3 Easy Steps to Getting Rid of ____________”, and the blank is your EXACT problem!

In 5 minutes, you whip through the blog post and you have the solution!

Now, on John Doe’s blog, you happen to see that he has a newsletter that gives you tips on preventing “___________” from ever re occurring again.  And, when you subscribe to his newsletter, you even get a free report that gives you 10 tips on a related topic.

Holy cow!  You just hit pay dirt!  You immediately part with your cherished email address and vow to stay on his list forever!

Finally, after all those weeks, you KNOW exactly what you need to do to get rid of your problem!  You can finally focus again!  You can finally get on with your life again!

Everybody who knows you — your friends, your family, your co-workers, your minister — they all know that you’ve been struggling with this problem.  The next day as you go about your daily routine, every one of them notices the difference in you.

You look well rested.  You don’t have bags under your eyes. You actually are smiling for the first time in weeks.

They all ask you repeatedly, “Hey!  What’s up?  You seem like you’re a new person!”

Of course, you excitedly tell them what happened to you the night before while you were on John Doe’s blog.  In fact, you’re so excited about it, you even give them the address to get to John’s blog for themselves.

Do you see how powerful this is?

Do you see why being of service to your prospects, and focusing on helping them, and building the relationship can cause them to become so loyal they want to tell everyone they know about you and what you have to offer?

This is why it is absolutely ESSENTIAL to your future success that you do things differently!

On today’s internet, more than at any other point in history offline in business, without relationships you can NOT succeed!

In this web 2.0 world more than ever, you need to be causing people to have a conversation with you and also to tell others about you as well.

It’s what I call “Developing Product Evangelists”.  If you remember Oral Roberts, you know what I mean by this.

A “Product Evangelist” is someone who loves what you have to offer so much that they have to tell everyone they know about it.

It’s someone who is fiercely loyal to your products and wouldn’t ever consider buying from one of your competitors EVER.

It’s someone who listens to your every word and takes action on your every recommendation.

Obviously, that gives you great power!  But it also comes with an equal amount of responsibility.  As the expert, you need to make sure that you don’t steer this person in the wrong direction.  If you don’t KNOW the right answer, don’t just guess!

On the other hand, when you really do know what you’re talking about, assume the authority of the expert — you don’t need to wait for permission to talk!

Just assume the authority, step into the shoes of the expert and TELL that prospect exactly what to do!
That’s what he or she wants in the first place!

So how do you turn someone into a Product Evangelist and get them to think of you as an expert?  To become fiercely loyal to you and your products?  And to listen to your every recommendation (and even seek out what your recommendations are in the first place!)?

It all starts by building the relationship through your blog!

It’s from that GIVING of information freely on your blog that your prospects really get to know you, trust you, and resonate with you and your ideas.

If you don’t have a blog up and instead you have just a regular website — maybe it has a Welcome page with an opt in box on it, or maybe it has a sales page right there when someone gets to your website — then you lose this opportunity right from the get go!

HERE’S THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF WHAT I’M TRYING TO TELL YOU …

You only have one shot at getting it right!

If your prospect finds his or her way to your site and doesn’t immediately make a connection with you, or doesn’t immediately either optin to your list or buy something, then you lose the opportunity to ever again get your message to that person.

That’s it — just ONE SHOT!

Get it wrong, and you’re going to have to drive a LOT of visitors in order to get any real results.

Ok — now back to my story for a minute …

So you can imagine how awful I felt when I saw this person who had spent all this time, effort, and money building a site — and was clearly proud of what the site looked like — and I had to be the one to tell this person that what they had just flat out wouldn’t work.

That instead, they needed to do a 180 degree turn around and do things completely differently.

For this person — like more than 90% to 95% of the people I talk to — telling them that these changes were necessary meant that they’d have to spend hundreds to thousands more to have the website revised.

This happens because so many simply don’t have the basic computer skills to make these changes themselves.

So they instead have to outsource everything and spend WAY too much money in the process!

But there really is a REAL SOLUTION — one that can keep this person from having to overspend like that,  AND, at the same time, can help to ensure that the business finally gets results!

The thing is — if this person were to use a blog, they could literally take the webpages that wouldn’t work, go into their WordPress dashboard and copy and paste the html code into a Page of the blog and turn it into something that would DEFINITELY work!

The ONLY technical skill required to do this is knowing how to cut and paste!

BUT — what it would require is knowing how to work with WordPress.  This is about the same technical level of working with Microsoft Word or any other word processing program.  It’s no more challenging than that.

And — if you have someone that can take you by the hand and not just tell you to do it, but someone who can really SHOW You how to do this, then you can have the entire site revamped in less than an hour or two!

Most importantly, with the changes in place, you would go from having something that is extremely unlikely to bring in a single subscriber much less make any sales whatsoever.

I almost forgot to tell you … there was yet another HUGE mistake that this person was making.

This person THOUGHT that the site the way it was would bring in affiliates using ClickBank.  They THOUGHT that the affiliates would be making almost all of the sales.

Again, though, there were big problems in store here …

Affiliates just won’t promote to a page that has one opt in box on it, much less a page with 2 opt in boxes and a full navigation bar.

Affiliates know that having an opt in form or a navigation bar is likely to decrease conversions greatly.  There are TONS of products that affiliates can promote that will convert to sales easily.  Why take the chance on a page that isn’t likely to convert when you can
easily get the sale with another product that has a site designed better?

No, affiliates won’t promote to a blog either.

But, when you know that, then all you need to do is to take the pages that affiliates will promote — the sales pages — and move them to an internal area of the site and put a link to that page up in the sidebar of the blog.

All of this is VERY simple to do.  But it requires 2 things:

a)  KNOWING that you’re doing it the wrong way.

Most of the time, you simply don’t know what you don’t know.  So you don’t even realize that what you’ve just done won’t get results of any kind.

AND

b)  Having someone to SHOW YOU precisely what to do!

Again, that fear of the technical side creeps in all the time.  It almost always causes people to over complicate things.  The fear that something might involve a technical skill can literally paralyze some — even when the only “technical” skill is knowing how to cut and paste a document!

In hearing this person’s story today, I felt even more strongly than ever that I absolutely HAD to find a way to help as many people as possible to really figure out …

a)  What the RIGHT WAY is to do things, and b)  SHOWING them HOW to do it!

That’s when it hit me that I absolutely HAD to do something prior to my retirement to make sure that I could help as many people as possible before I forever step down from the podium so to speak.

So are you ready for your BIG SURPRISE?

Well you’re going to have to wait just a little bit longer and join me tomorrow, at 3:00 pm est on my bridge line for a teleconference that’s sure to be a once-in-a-lifetime eye opener!

On that call, I’m not going to hold anything back!

On that call, I’ll share with you “The 5 Biggest Mistakes Made by Businesses Online (and How to Make Sure That You’re Not Making Them Too!)”.

When you join me for this call, you’ll learn strategies that you can use to make sure that you don’t have to spend one more day doing things the WRONG way.

I’ll show you EXACTLY what you need to do to finally start seeing REAL RESULTS in your business … possibly for the first time EVER!

You’ll learn exactly what you need to do to reach a 6 figure income within a year — even if you’re not making one single red cent today.

How can you do that?

Well, You see, I have a big secret to share with you.
Are you sitting down for this one?

It’s really not rocket science.  Don’t let any of the so-called “gurus” make you think that it is.

All you need is a system that has already proven itself, one that already gets results in any market and any niche, and someone to show you exactly how to implement that system!

I have a system that I use to build my 7-figure business. It’s the same system that my students have successfully used to build their 6 figure businesses within a year.

It’s the same system that my $10,000 mentoring clients use to add MILLIONS to their revenues all the time.

Since I have a system that has already proven itself, one that already gets results in any market and any niche, and since you NEED this kind of system, I decided to do something that I never thought I would do.

And I’ll be announcing what that is on this call …

At the end of the call, I’ll share with you how you can get MY HELP PERSONALLY in building your business.

This has me more excited than I’ve been in a LONG time!
I’m hoping that it will prompt at least 40 people to give me the privilege of working with them before I retire as a coach at the end of August.

My husband is going to KILL ME when he hears about this one!  I’m actually trying to figure out what kind of wild goose chase I can send him on at 3:00 pm est tomorrow so that he’s not around while I’m on the call!

I had to wait for him to go to bed just to be able to get this message out to you tonight!

I’m not going to tell you all the details here as this email is long enough as it is and I know you want to get some sleep.

But let me give you a few hints …

You already know that I’m just getting ready to start the very last Apprenticeship Group that I will ever teach myself.

In September, my coaches come on board and begin teaching my program.  At that point, I will never again be personally available to teach this system to my Apprentices.

But, before that happens, I want to reach as many people as possible and really make a difference in their lives by helping them to build their businesses quickly, using the system that ALL of my current students use to make 6 figure incomes by the end of
their first year!

So here’s your hint …

What would you say if I told you that you could:

a)  Talk me into holding your hand as you build your business from nothing to 6 figures in under a year using a very simple system that has already been successful for more than 150+ people (you’ll get to hear from some of them on the call)?

b)  Get me to show you EXACTLY what it is that you don’t know so that you can really figure out what it is that you need to learn and implement it into your business so that it can grow faster than ever?

c)  Never again have to wake up wondering when, if ever, your business was finally going to start making a real income every single month?  Instead, you would KNOW that in less than a few months that would be a DEFINITE reality provided you followed the simple, step-by-step system that I SHOW you??

and

d)  Get into this program for the lowest tuition I’ve EVER offered!  It’s even less than 50% of what it was when the program first began more than 2 years and about 5 price increases ago!

On tomorrow’s teleconference, I will share with you exactly how you can get ALL THIS and MORE (including Resale Rights to EVERY ONE of my products for FREE AND access to every one of my newly redesigned products/membership sites for 1 year for FREE as well!).

I will NOT make this offer available anywhere other than on the call on Friday, August 1st at 3:00 pm est!

If you want to make sure that you don’t ever make any of the “5 Biggest Mistakes Made by Businesses Online” and you’d like for me to personally review your site, your plans, your blog, or your products LIVE on the call, then make sure that you join me tomorrow at 3:00 pm est on my bridge line!

You’ll find all the details to access the call at:

—> http://www.askggg.com/blog/teleconferences

So let’s just summarize it real quick …

WHEN:  Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 3:00 pm est

WHERE:  My Bridge Line — You can access it at:

1-605-475-8590 — Your VIP Conference Room
Number is : 5142354#

From Skye: +990008275142354

WHAT:   “The 5 Biggest Mistakes Made by Businesses
Online (and How to Make Sure That You’re Not
Making Them Too!)”

This is NOT going to be another pitch fest like so many of the teleconferences you hear about!

On this call I will share with you REAL STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS!  These are the strategies that People’s livelihoods … and to them, their very LIVES … can be affected by!

In conjunction with this call, I’ve decided to give you an extra 7 days to download my downloadable digital products at:

—> http://www.askggg.com/retiring

Most of those you would call “gurus” were successful by accident.  They were in the right place at the right time.

But if you have a strategic plan, you can be successful on PURPOSE.  When you are successful on purpose, your results are even BIGGER than when you are successful by accident!

That’s exactly what I want for you …

I want you to have every advantage, indeed EVERY EDGE, and every opportunity to be successful on PURPOSE!

So join me on Thursday, August 1st at 3:00 pm est and learn “The 5 Biggest Mistakes Made by Businesses Online (and How to Make Sure That You’re Not Making Them Too!)” and let me help YOU build the plan that will let you be successful on purpose … LIVE right there on the call!

When you join me for this call, be prepared for the following:

1)  This call will be VERY interactive!

I plan on working with you one-on-one on the call to put together the plan that will let you succeed!  That means that I’ll happily critique your website or blog, take a look at your offer, or offer suggestions for mistakes to avoid in any aspect of your business.

2)  In order to help you the most, I would like to know your long term goals for your business.

These are the goals that you have 3 to 5 years from now. This dictates what your first steps should be.  When you tell me your goals, I’ll help you figure out what your next steps should be if you want to guarantee your future success!

3)  The URL’s of your website or blog if you already have one.

This is probably the best way for me to show you what you are doing wrong and to tell you (even SHOW YOU) how to correct it!

I expect that his call will last at least 2 hours so that I can help every single person on the call.  So if you can’t be there right at the beginning, get there as soon as you can!

Make sure you have a pen and paper to take notes!  This is a call you’re not ever going to forget!

Don’t forget to mark your calendar for Friday, August 1st at 3:00 pm EST for the “5 Biggest Mistakes Made by Businesses Online (AND How You can Make Sure You NEVER Make Them In Your Business!)” once-in-a-life time Teleconference!  Call in to the bridge line at 2:50 pm est!  All the details are at:

—> http://www.askggg.com/blog/teleconferences

Tags: gina+gaudio+graves, the+jv+queen, technorati, The+IM+University’s+Apprenticeship+Program, 21+Days+to+blogging+profits, build+relationships

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