Tom McCarthy

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Tom McCarthy on a trip over to Florida for a Strategic Profits event – he is an inspirational thought leader, and without doubt the most animated speaker I have ever seen on stage. He captivates his audience, and for Strategic Profits also performed the role of MC.

The package that Tom has finally put together, with Strategic Profits coordinating his first online product launch is phenomenal value at just $497 and whilst a little tangential to what I typically write about, would certainly be appropriate for almost any business owner looking to regain control of their lives and maximise performance.

But instead of giving you my link, I am going to do something else.

Strategic Profits Business
Acceleration Program

This was actually recorded at the event I attended in Florida, over 4 days. The training over the first 2 days with Rich Schefren and Patricia Hutchings was life changing – it will allow you to reclaim hours of your life… every single day, and consume specific knowledge when you need it, not just in case you need it some time.

The 3rd and 4th day the content was very good, though some of it has “leaked out” in a few product launches, so you may have seen it, though that doesn’t make it dated in any way… it is all still relevant, and no pitches.

Ever since this training, I always download video whatever way I can rather than listen to it on the web directly, and then play it back at 2.5x normal speed. I do the same with audios, and my reading speed & retention is vastly accelerated (though I have slacked a little on that score).

The additional materials are invaluable (assuming you get the same as I have) full launch sequences of the product launches that helped grow Strategic Profits into an 8 figure business, and I have well thumbed bound printouts of Rich’s first 3 ebooks.

The Business Acceleration Program is actually offered as part of Tom’s upsells, and adds real value to very unique offers.

But…

You can actually get Business Acceleration Program for free.

Strategic Profits have decided to give BAP away for free.

I know the old adage, “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is” but I listened to the Strategic Profits video twice to be sure. It seems the offer is for any purchase from Tom McCarthy.

So for $497 you would get Tom’s silver program, and a $4997 Business Acceleration Program box as a bonus.

• Strategic Profits are partners in this promotion
• I am sure they are hoping a large number of customers will see the added value of the Gold and Platinum coaching

Whilst as an affiliate I can offer value just mentioning Tom’s new product, and I could offer some kind of bonus, it would make me physically sick if you missed out on this opportunity.

No Affiliate Links

There are no affiliate links in this blog post, though I have added a parameter to the end of each link, as it might help make any sales visible.

http://www.strategicprofits.com/science/Todd-index.html?complements=andybeard

I would love to see my readers benefit from both Tom & Rich’s training, and I don’t believe you will ever get an offer quite as good as this, though as Todd, Rich’s sales manager explains in the video, this offer is limited.

That being said, I have no idea how they are tracking this on their end… maybe everyone gets BAP as an unannounced bonus.

I really will explain why I do these crazy things one of these days.

Rich Schefren GPS 2.0 Live

Last year Rich Schefren did something unprecedented – what was scheduled to be a 24hr marathon live training broadcast on Ustream ended up being extended by a couple of hours.

Here is a screenshot of what Rich looked like 24hrs into the session – he was still calm and collected, solving the constraints viewers had in their business, even though his servers were being hammered and people were finding it difficult leaving comments on his blog (with 4 dedicated servers)

Rich Schefren Live

From what I have heard you will be able to listen in without signing up to the VIP list, but then you won’t receive a reminder just before the broadcast starts, and you won’t be eligible for any of the prizes.

Prizes? Yeah Rich is giving away a boatload of prizes, worth subjectively tens of thousands of dollars including private consultation (which I don’t think he really offers these days)

Rich Schefren Live – 12pm EST (midday) Thursday 18th June 2009 – scheduled to last 4 hours, though knowing Rich he might keep it running longer if there are people online.

GPS 1.0 Review

I purchased the original GPS 1.0 course – if your business isn’t going in the direction you want it, you feel you are controlled by your business, or if you have hurdles you feel you need to overcome, GPS is a unique product that will help you. Rich is an outstanding teacher.

What didn’t I like?

• The notification emails regarding live training didn’t import date/time into calendar programs
• Notification was often short, and from the same email address as other promotional items – I typically open all of Rich’s emails anyway, but I can forsee this being a problem for some
• Downloading Videos – I am a fan of downloading videos, then viewing them at 1.5 to 2x speed – something I learnt from Rich and easy to achieve with media players such as GOM. Downloading the course material from the player inside the members area was easy, downloading the recorded live sessions was extremely cumbersome and required intelligent tools or monitoring header information.

Some of these problems might be cured as I have heard that GPS 2.0 will be made available through a totally different content management platform.

Ideally I want content pushed to me, or that I can somehow automatically pull using a download manager, though I am a geek and rather set in my ways. A counter argument is that if I just get to download it, it will sit on my harddisk untouched, and that is a problem even for $1000+ courses

Rich’s launch has been running for a week or so, and this is the finale. I gained a lot of value from the live event last time – I think I watched maybe 18 hours of the 26 last time around, my son then 18 months couldn’t understand why we were watching this man talking on the screen all day rather than Teletubbies, “Lady & the Tramp” or “Jungle Book”, but maybe he picked up something too.

Anyway, I think you should try to reserve some time in your schedule to check out the free live event – last time there wasn’t any fluff, and Rich was answering real questions llive.

Dan Thies Link Building Training – Live

This is a totally different kind of training and will suit a different audience. I highly respect Dan’s knowledge and the way he presents information, both with clarity and a significant amount of humour.

Dan is running a linkbuilding course over 12 weeks, and the first part is today which you can attend free. He is only accepting 200 students for the remainder of the course and many of those seats have already been filled.
50 slots are being reserved for during his broadcast.

You can also get an idea of what the training is about from the free material he has already provided.

I am not one of Dan’s affiliates, this is very much an “internal launch” for his list, plus his Stompernet students – the free info is pretty sound and I expect this training session to deliver some valuable nuggets.

Dan Thies – 3pm United States Eastern Daylight Time, Thursday June 18. The class will last about 90 minutes

Most of my readers know I am a fan and customer of Rich Schefren and the Strategic Profits team, and I have even had the opportunity to be a “fly on the wall” inside one of his exclusive customer mastermind sessions.

Just imagine… Rich Schefren, MaryEllen Tribby (of Early To Rise), plus 6 or was it 7 of their most ardent customers, plus me. Serious people who were willing to pay a little more for direct feedback that could make significant improvements to their businesses or in some cases personal lives with more free time.

I always realized that Strategic Profits used quite a sophisticated upsell process, but to be honest even I was shocked at the attention to detail they go to, and how well it works.

I just signed up to get a free report and access to some videos from the new Launch Tree program from Anik Singal & Mike Filsaime.

If you sign up you will get access to:-

• The “Money Does Grow On Trees” report – some insights into how various upsell processes work, and how they can go fatally wrong. Honest rating 6/10 (but then I have been studying this stuff for years)
• A video with Brian Johnson from Strategic Profits (Rating 10/10) – Some of what Strategic Profits are doing I found enlightening.
• A comment by me – I just dropped a comment on the launch blog (with Brian’s video)part of a launch strategy, though in isolation it is more a tactic, of what can be done to improve any launch process that none of the gurus are currently doing. It is my belief it would even improve the process for Strategic Profits or Jeff Walker who are masters.
• More revealing videos to come… plus maybe I will leave… another comment ;)

Take a look at Product Launch Tree, it is well worth it, even just to read the comment I left, as I probably revealed a little more than I originally planned.

Some of the things Brian reveals in his video?

• Conversion rates on upsells & downsells
• Their sophisticated upsell/downsell system (serious gold dust)
• What they should have added as a $100,000 upsell

It is my understanding that this isn’t meant to be a course on “upsell hell” but on adding additional products with incredible value to the sales process that people actually want to buy.

Also of value, see how they have put this product together.

Rich Schefren really wanted to get in contact with Kathy Sierra – he mentioned this privately to me on a call last November – I didn’t get any immediate results to enquiries I made with a few online friends, and December was a time of turmoil for me – moving house, no internet connection, no telephone.

I dropped the ball

In January I noticed that Kathy Sierra was listed as a speaker at SXSW, but concluded it might be a mistake. Speaking proposals go through a fairly long acceptance process, and there was no hint of a resurrection of her blog, Creating Passionate Users. The last post was in April 2007 – I expected a mention if Kathy was really going to be speaking at SXSW.

SXSW & Twitter

On Friday Rich mentioned that he was heading to SXSW and that he would be twittering

My first thought was of Kathy – I had seen that she was still listed as presenting, though still no mention on her blog – maybe Rich had confirmation through other channels?

I did the obvious thing, like over 100 people had already done at the time in the space of just a few hours, I started following Rich Schefren on Twitter.

Fortunately Rich reciprocated a few hours later – that allowed me to send him a private message just in case

Hi Rich – I just bet you are going to “20 Ways to Woo Users” tomorrow – I hope you get to meet her, all my attempts to contact failed 05:59 PM March 08, 2008

It seems that was a fortuitous message – Rich had actually been encouraged to go to SXSW by Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library.

Rich wasn’t aware that Kathy was presenting at SXSW

Fortunately Rich received my message… read what happened over on his blog.

One of the people who I trust to give me good information is Rich Schefren.

• His company is less than 2 years old
• He has a team of 20 people now
• He has grown it to $8M turnover
• He gives exceptional advice because he also listens to experts.

I don’t know anyone who is so fanatical about collating quality information so that they can pass it on to others.

I have seen how Rich gives advice to his consulting clients first hand, not just in large conferences, but as a fly-on-the-wall in more intimate sessions.

Attention Age Doctrine Part 2

Today Rich launches his new report, in fact the doors have just opened for people to get access.

I Am Disappointed

Over the last 10 months I have been quite prominent in my support of Rich, but very few of my readers seem to trust me enough to give Rich an email address to download a free report.

Not just one free report, multiple free reports, each which contain very useful information.

With these reports Rich is “moving the free line” providing exceptional useful content that can help your business grow even if you never decide to buy anything from him.

Guess what? I am doing the same

The only difference is that Rich does things the slightly more traditional way and asks for an email address.

I have Been Taking A Gamble

As part of my experimentation, before I finally launch a product or service, I really wanted to test the viability of blogging for business promotion.

The biggest hurdle is often building up trust, and blogging is a great way to build up trust.

RSS Readers Are Not Responsive

I have been thinking for a while to switch to primarily email for my best content, or to lock it inside a private membership site. I am honestly quite disappointed in how poorly responsive my RSS Readers are when offered free information from a source I trust.

This is crunch time, if I don’t see a significant improvement in RSS responsiveness, it will probably be time to just pump out newbie tutorials like everyone else, and keep the best stuff for insiders.

The Attention Age Doctrine Part 2

I trust Rich, you should too – show me how responsive you can be

10?
20?
50?
100?

Your brain has a finite capacity, though through training you can improve your use of it. The more you fill up your brain with things like passwords and phone numbers, the less capacity it has for learning important things, and thinking about them.

This and many related things were talked about a great deal at the Acceleration 2 seminar I attended in Florida last month, and are also related to things like GTD (Getting Things Done), task management, etc.

I Forgot My Email

Earlier today I received this message from a friend on StumbleUpon

Hey Andy, added you as a friend on my new account (forgot the email to my old one)

I actually told him I was going to name him in this post because I am quoting him, but then there is the “shame” element, and though better of it.

This problem likely is similar for 50% of my readers

Either

1. They use the same password everywhere

or

2. They have a few passwords and try to remember them and sometimes forget

The Smart Ones Use Roboform (or something similar)

Nothing is ever going to be 100% secure for 100s or even 1000s of emails, but Roboform is fairly secure against everything other than the most advanced keytrackers.

I currently use Roboform to store over 2000 passwords, and they are generally random 12 or 14 character strings that I wouldn’t have a chance of remembering.
The reason I tend to use Roboform over other password management is because it is so portable. The password files are encrypted on your drive, and can be easily transferred to other computers, or you can buy a license to their pen drive version.

I purchased a license to Roboform with my first affiliate earnings over 2 years ago, and have since purchased additional licenses for all my computers.

Do yourself a favour and start forgetting passwords

He would be quite shocked that I was in many ways fulfilling the role of a member of the press for the last week in Delray Beach, Florida, attending Rich Schefren’s Acceleration 2 Seminar & Strategic Profits Live.

I am not going to make any claims to having journalistic integrity. I write from my own perspective which may be similar or totally different from my readers.

Disclosure

I am not sure how many people were invited as members of the press to this event, but I know that 4 were in attendance. I gained free entry to all the seminars and the same conference notes as attendees.
I covered all travel and accommodation costs – Transatlantic travel and hotel bookings at short notice are hardly petty cash so whilst my total cost to attend might be reduced, it certainly wasn’t a free ride.

Total cost of attendance (for me) was approximately $3500, so that is the same as someone living locally who just had to pay for a conference ticket.

As always I am going to try to be objective in all my coverage. Proportionate to income (and disposable income) my cost to attend is quite likely higher than many of those attending (in fact I am sure of it), thus I am hoping this will provide a good measuring stick for anyone interested in attending a similar event in the future.

Content

You have probably seen reporting by many bloggers at similar events. Different seminars have different rules in force regarding recording of content, and certainly many bloggers are much more capable than me of “live reporting” – in fact I decided not to even attempt live blogging.

I am going to see how the following formula works out:-

• Speaker Overview – Introduction to the speaker for each session where appropriate, including links to related websites
• Session Overview – An Overview of each session, including intended goals – unlike many seminars, some of the sessions certainly during the first 2 days have specific attainment goals, and even homework
• Topics – in bullet form with short descriptions – I don’t intend to cover every aspect of each session
• Retrospective Review – I am going to be reviewing each session where appropriate with the benefit of hindsight – that might seem strange, but in many ways the topics that will be covered on Day 2 are a continuation of content from the first day’s sessions.
• Takeaways & Results – the aim from some of the sessions was to walk away from the training with work and lifestyle changing skills and techniques that can show immediate measurable results.

Hopefully if I just use some of the material covered in the seminar I will work more effectively, allowing me to spend more time enjoying life and grow my business exponentially.

There is going to be a lot of material, probably around 60 pages, so rather than publish all the material as blog posts, I am going to publish almost everything in PDF so it can be downloaded and printed out.
I walked away with over 1000 pages of course materials and notes, so there really is a need to condense the material into an “executive overview”.

My only regret from the trip is that I didn’t have a chance to hook up with any readers whilst over in Florida – the schedule was extremely hectic and combined with a little essential networking in the evening resulted in not even switching on my laptop for 4 days straight.

I had intended to spring a surprise “postie patrol” on Dan and Ted but travel arrangements and attending an extremely exclusive 5th day “mastermind session” with Rich Schefren (CEO Strategic Profits) & MaryEllen Tribby (CEO of Agora Publishing’s Early To Rise) totally messed up any free time I might have had on the trip.

So what classes as exclusive?

Rich + key members of his executive team at Strategic Profits
MaryEllen Tribby
7 very serious business owners
Myself

That session started at 9am and carried on until 4 or 5pm officially, and then some of us headed out for a meal. I don’t think I got back to my room until midnight.

Whilst the main sessions were amazing, the exclusive mastermind session was phenomenal and was a great display of the business prowess of both Rich and MaryEllen, who were able to address each of the other businesses as if they were running the business for themselves, and highlight the exact ways to bring each business to its full potential.
Whilst I was offered the same treatment, I opted to take a more “fly-on-the-wall” approach, helping out where I could offer something constructive, but otherwise not attending for personal gain.
I honestly learnt a great deal, and from the feedback I received I believe the attendees benefited from my involvement.

My attendance at this event was a great example of the Law Of Attraction in action (yeah I am sure I will get lots of comment spam now just mentioning that phrase), and also the Law of Reciprocity – paying it forward – which James Brausch wrote about a few days ago in a guest post on Michel Fortin’s blog.

In publishing my reports I have a few technical hurdles to overcome, and 60+ pages to write, so things will still be a little quiet here on the blog until next week (though I will meet a few prior commitments).
Then there are also the 800 emails that have stacked up. If I am slow in response, please bare with me.

One of the things I like about Rich Schefren’s books are the quotations from a multitude of credible news sources, and historical references.

Here are 2 examples, though without commentary.

A modern maxim says: People tend to overestimate what can be done in one year and to underestimate what can be done in five or ten years

Footnote on p. 17 of Joseph Licklider, Libraries of the Future, MIT Press, 1965.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Where is the information that we have lost in data?

T.S.Elliot “The Rock” 1910

Playing With Video

I have actually had access to a Pro account of Veoh TV for a couple of days, and as I was looking to review it at least briefly, I thought I would create at least one video, and use it to cross publish over on YouTube.

Here we have a whole bunch of the same video that was originally created at 320×240
That is well below the 540×405 @ 500kbps that is recommended by Veoh and less quality than the default for the other service.

The embedded code below for each service is the standard size offered. I thought it would be an interesting way to compare both quality and playback speed.

Veoh TV

Online Videos by Veoh.com

It should also be noted that Veoh take forever encoding videos compared to Google.

The ratio I uploaded is the same 4 : 3, though you have to allow for the controls.

Youtube

Note that Veoh add a viral splash screen after the video has rolled. I am not sure I am too happy about that aspect.

Google Video

I didn’t use the syndication option from Veoh to upload to Google Video because I don’t really want to divulge my Google account attached to my Adwords / Adsense / Gmail

Veoh Conclusions

It is early days yet. They offer some interesting ways to sell content, though I have been a little disappointed in the ways you can search for content, and the overall selection.
With all three videos uploaded at the same time, it will be interesting to see how much of a difference there is in number of playbacks.

I am assuming that people reading this post will most likely play each test video, so total playbacks will be similar for the traffic I send them.

Deliberate Low Quality?

If I had created the video to the highest quality for Veoh, the print in the ebook might have been readable frame-by-frame, which wasn’t the intention. I used some very basic tools, a cheap screen capture program that many give away for free, and windows moviemaker.
I only used Snagit for the splash at the end, though the fonts didn’t render as smooth in video as they were on screen before processing.

Video Content

Strategic Profits actually produced their own commercial video to help promote their Acceleration Seminar. To date it has had approximately 1700 views since 17th May

It is a professional creation, yet marketing videos of all kinds get very few votes on favorites on the various video sites.

In addition it is strange that as far as I can tell, no affiliates have used this video in any of their promotions, as no links are being reported from YouTube.

1700 views might seem a small amount, but from what I can see it is quite high for the internet marketing niche, especially if the videos were not used by affiliates in promotion.

Read The Ebook

Obviously it is better to read Rich’s ebook in the medium it was designed for.

Download “The Attention Age Doctrine” FREE

There is a prize inside worth $25000 for the person who creates the most buzz about this new special report.

There are also 5 runners up prizes of $1000

I have the ebook open, I have just skim read it even though the ebook is all about “the Attention Age”

Yeah… think ADD, AD/HD Attention Span of a Gnat,
but it is all about business… and profit… for you

Read it… its free

But you can pay me $47 for it if you want

A review of the Attention Age will follow shortly… but don’t wait

Update: Having read the report cover to cover, it is my belief that the competition is something that anyone could potentially win. You don’t need to be an A-list blogger or have a massive mailing list. What you need to do is demonstrate your potential at creating buzz, probably using methods that are as efficient as possible
Another key will be documenting the methods you use, and the reasons you took specific actions.

Your creativity, and ability to create buzz efficiently is a key.
Think Viral… think Linkbait…

Strategic Planning Isn’t The Same As Productivity

GP had been working seven days a week for the past 6 months with no days off and no vacations. At first I thought I had misheard her, but I hadn’t. Six massages a day, day in and day out, for over 180 days straight.

Rich also offers some thoughts on retirement which for most people will never happen.

Whilst it seems there is a constant trend to concentrate on getting more things done within your working day, Rich concentrates on something much more fundamental, managing your business strategically such that you have a lot less that you have to do each day.

Increased productivity would allow the masseuse to do 7 massages per day instead of six. That would probably bring him/her closer to a sick bed than comfortable retirement.

Also I highly suggest to take a look inside Rich’s profit vault

A subtle hint for my regular readers, Rich’s blog is “friendly”, so it is well worth reading the article and leaving a comment on one of the highest traffic blogs in marketing.