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John Oszajca said

Mike Ippersiel said

John Oszajca said
Hey Michael,

You know, the thing that has always worked for me is to just help as many people as possible and rest confident in the fact that the money will come. If I were in your shoes I would get a decent grasp on who i wanted to help and then start reaching out offering free consultations. You could do this by telling potential clients that you are a start up consulting firm and in an effort to get a better handle on what the market needs you'd like to take on a few beta clients for free, no strings attached. You could help a few customers get their sites up to scratch and then lay out a blueprint for what they would need to do maintenance wise (SEO, content creation, paid advertising, etc). You could of course offer your services at that point if they wanted to have someone do it for them and slowly accrue a client list of high end monthly clients. The idea being that because you will have worked with them there will be enough trust, and results in advance, that you won't even have to sell yourself. This is assuming you are looking into the web consulting space.

This process would help you to really understand what the market needed and to figure out a checklist for your process. Once you have clients coming in you could scale down your free consulting commitment so that it was much less time consuming and maybe just offer 30 minute consulting sessions to effectively accomplish the same thing. Or you could always stick with making personal appearances to introduce yourself and pitch your services.

Bottom line is that I have found that if you just think about the help you can offer first, and make sure that you do take action to get those services in front of people, it's hard to fail. Pretty soon you will be turning down work. There is always a shortage of people who are good at what they do and honest and fair to boot.

This is excellent advice John - I think I may have told you this "offline" rather then here on the forum.

The whole approach of giving first and letting the details come together after the fact is proven time and again. I just heard about a book from a man by the name of James Alturcher called "Choose Yourself" and saw a bit of a talk he did about how he managed to make millions of dollars. He basically put others before himself and helped them before worrying about what it was he wanted to get out of the transaction. This is a great way to build up trust and side-step the whole 'credentials' and track record issues that most people (myself included) tend to use as obstacles for why they can't do something.

The great thing about the situation I'm going through right now is I'm learning/solidifying what I know about myself. What my likes/dislikes and strengths are. As I understand myself better and focus on my strengths, my ability to help others will increase and I'll be able to make a greater impact and turn things around while helping others more effectively at the same time. Everybody wins.

I really appreciate the sounding board John, as it's nice to get some perspective from a knowledgeable source that isn't buried in the reality - who can still see the forest for the trees.

Thanks again!

Yeah, I remember Robert Kiosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad Author) saying something like "the best way to get rich is to offer people something that is a better deal for them as the receiver than it is for you as the giver". I think that's true and that it happens to the beauty in the potential of "Ayn Randian" capitalism. If we all do that the world becomes a better place and we all get rewarded for it along the way. In simpler terms, if you focus on just creating value you inevitably have more customers than you can handle, as by definition, if you are creating value people will want it. The money becomes the easy part at that stage. That sort of sounds like one of those BS things that people just say, but I really do think it's been a key factor in all of my successes in life. 

Cool - you read Rich Dad Poor Dad too eh? That book is a must read for anyone that wants to start creating more wealth in their life. There were a ton of insights in that book that opened my eyes in ways I hadn't imagined while being an enjoyable read at the same time.

John Oszajca said
Awesome to have you back Greg. Missed having you in here on a regular bases. Glad you're back in the swing of things.

Let me know if you guys get this going. Don't know how much free time I have at the moment but would love to try and stop by when time permits. Happy to see you guys organizing like this.

Hey John,

I'm getting big into Google Hangouts.

I'm planning on diving pretty heavily into them soon as they basically give anyone access to host a live webinar without the cost. I'm currently putting together a business plan summary and seeing if I qualify for some government dollars to launch my business with some coaching and guidance from local business professionals. The biggest obstacle is that they want me to have something like $4444 (not sure how they came up with that number?) that I can produce to fund my business to start.

However, since I already cover my webhosting and own several domains - the real cost is a computer (which I already have) and internet access. Sure, having advertising would be nice and there's some additional software that I'd like to purchase, but I think I can stay lean at under $100/month self-funded and only purchase with money funded from sales of my services. That's the goal anyway. We'll see how it goes.

Back to Google Hangouts:

I think it would be cool to have a full MMM panel - You & Steve with perhaps Scott James and myself (if you'd have me) to run it and chime in. This could be a live broadcast or a replay that goes out to the Insiders. It would add value to your members and could happen maybe once a month. I know you already have the coaching call - so we could probably put some sort of a different spin on this to make it different in some way (besides being slightly more visual).

I'm sure timing would be a HUGE issue since you're on the other side of the world right now...but it's something to think about.  In the meantime, if Greg and I get a regular thing going on - who knows where it can go from there?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Mike

Greg - tonight freed up for me. If you're available...? I could be online for about the next 1.5 hours. Sorry for the last minute notice, but if it comes together - that would be cool.

Hey John & Greg,

We'll definitely start a new thread about this once we have something going. However, we're yet to actually put one of these mastermind sessions together - so we don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves.

Greg - we need a way to communicate our availability on Wednesday nights around 9-10pm EST. I've been sending your messages on Google+ and logged into the Insider Circle this week and last checking to see if I'd catch you online. Let me know if there's a better way to get a hold of you.

Hey Greg,

Glad to hear you had an awesome weekend and a kick-ass long weekend tour - no apologies necessary. Gotta make hay while the sun is shining and all that - the truth is I envy you since you're out there doing music!

Monday or Tuesday could work - but the time would be later.  Regardless of the day, I think we need to get into the habit of setting a "meeting place" where on certain days like Monday or Tuesday around 10pm EST - either one of us can check-in and see if the other is available to meet.

There's Tungle.me that we could use. Otherwise - I could just open up a Hangout and invite you and just wait to see if you show up? Let me know what works for you.

Mike

I'm happy to report that Greg and I managed to do the Hangout Mastermind session tonight. It went about 1:15 minutes or so and we both have an action item for next week.

I'd like to see how we do after two consecutive hangouts before opening it up in it's own thread.

We could call it a 'study group' for those who want to implement MMM/digital marketing strategies either to their music career or online marketing stuff. I'm happy to help out anyone who comes out as best I can, and if John shows up all the better!

This was an introductory session, but I can see us getting this down to 30 minutes or less (especially if it's just the two of us) after we're well acquainted with each other.

John Oszajca said
Good stuff guys. Bummer that I missed it. I didn't ever see a link posted or instructions on how to find it. Did I miss that?

Hi John,

I thought it would be best to start out privately just to see how it goes and work the kinks out. I'd prefer to get the next session under our belt (it will be our first taste of accountability) before we 'go public' with it - but if you and Greg think we should open it up to the rest of the forum before that - I can be persuaded!

Mike

Hi John,

I invited both of you guys - I'm a little late to the party but hopefully we can still make a go of this tonight. Just login to your Google+ account and you should see my invite from there.