A sex-what-did-you-just-say-thank-you?

Bare with me, I didn’t bring her on here so she could help you with your sex life (I know that you my dear reader don’t have any issues in that area :)).

However I wanted to interview her on here, because of what she has done. You’ll hear her story in a minute, but what is interesting is that she succesfully completely changed her business.

From working with couples and individuals, she worked in the same manner as most people in her professionen do.

But unfortunately that didn’t scale well, so she started creating online courses. Fast forward to today and she no longer takes on clients, but only shares her knowledge through online courses.

Not only that, she has also been able to buy her dream house, and have more time with her family than she used to have when she was effectively selling her time.

So.. over to Maj…

So tell us a bit about who you are, and what it is you help people with?

My name is Maj Wismann and I´m a sexologist and love expert in Denmark, and has had my own Clinic since 2006.

I help men and especially woman to get their sex drive back. The natural way. Not with medication.

This is my specialty and I have helped over 1000 of couples understanding why the sex drive is gone or low, and what they can do to get it back. 3 years ago I launched my bestselling online workshop “Get your sex drive back and keep it for life” in Denmark, and being able to help men, woman and couples online is the best thing that has ever happened for my clients and my life.

Why did you decide to change your business, going from working directly with couples and individuals to online courses and programs?

One of the thing I experienced in my Clinic was, that a lot of woman and men could not get their partner with them to a sexologist – they were afraid of what would happen, what I would say to them, if I would ask them to have sex, etc. etc. etc.

With my online workshops couples can sit at home and learn from me. I can take them through the process of getting their sex drive and lust back and it is cheaper for them, they can sit at home when the kids are sleeping, they can listen to it again and again, and they do not need a nanny or go home from job early to meet with me.

There are SO many benefits in the way I work now. It´s a total win/win for all.

What did you fear most about this transformation?

My biggest fear was that I would not be able to help them the way I planned to. My biggest purpose is to help these unhappy couples – and if I could not do that with my online workshops, I would have failed.

Therefore, I was really afraid that people would not “get it” and understand the new way I could help them and not give it a try.

But that fear was totally irrelevant. In Denmark I have run the online
workshop more than 22 times and every single time it has been sold out – it has really become a bestseller and relationship therapist and a lot of my sexologist colleagues tell their couples to take my online workshop and THAT is a compliment that I blushes about.

What did you struggle the most with?

The production of the workshop was really hard! I have spend over 300 hours producing content. And I would say that the online marketing around the workshop has been huge.

I produced a “product” that no one knew about – so they could not ask about it – because the only thing people knew was to go to the doctor or a sexologist if the sex drive was gone or low.

Nobody would look for an online workshop – because they did not knew it existed.

What products did you end up creating?

“Get your sex drive back & keep it for life” An online workshop in 4 modules over 4 weeks and actually when I began to get these amazing and great feedback and thanks from couples, I decided to make another huge workshop about infidelity and how to move on as a couple or alone when you experience your partner is cheating on you, but it is still only in danish and is not translated yet.

What were the results?

Over 1000 danish couples have been through the workshop – it´s just above 500.000 danish krones a year on this one workshop. That’s about 80.000 us dollars per year on this single digital product.

And how has this changed your life?

It has changed my life in so many ways. Professionally I can help so many more people online with my workshops, free Q&A´s with Ask Maj, my columns and articles – I have so many free ways people can get help from me.

And in my private life I have got the economic freedom I have dreamt about all my life.

This year we bought our dream house where I can have horses and my office, and I love to travel and now I´m able to travel around the world with my kids and husband.

Actually I´m sitting in London writing this because I´m travelling with some of my friends together for a huge conference, I could never had afforded that if I had not worked online.

How can people do the same thing that you did?

Well, if they have a business and they are used to teach and counsel others they can figure out how they can take that knowledge and put into an online workshop. They can test it on somebody, get feedback and make it even better.

What is the best tip you can give people who want to start creating
online course?

Talk to your customers about what their biggest problem is.

My customers biggest problem was a lack of sex drive or a low sex drive, and that problem gave the couples so many other problems.

And then you need to know, that it takes a lot of time and effort to create a really good online production.

It is not something you can do overnight.

If you really wanna help people you need to be thorough and take the time it takes.

Don´t jump over where it seems easiest. Take the time, do your online marketing, and give a lot of really good stuff away for free so people get to know you and see that they can trust you to help them.

There are loads of bullshit online – sorry to say – but a lot of people say that they can help, and they can´t and they don´t even care.

So of course you need to proof your worth. It´s logic. Do that and people will trust you to help them online and offline.

What is the best question I forgot to ask you (and what is the answer :))?

What is your plan now? What are you working on right now?

Right now I´m working on some really big and large free online guides to my international homepage to newborn mothers and fathers about how the sex life and the relationship often change after the first baby is born, and what you can do to keep having a great sex life and lots of love in your relationship (and avoid divorce in the long term).

Where can people find out more about you?

You can read more about me and “natural ways to get your libido back”

And on my homepage you can also sign up for my newsletter and get my E-book: “When sexuality plays up” for free + free email course – More than 15.000 in Denmark follows my free email course and I get thanks and poitive feedback every week.

So there you have it…

Now you might not have an issue with your libido ;), but I’m sure you can get some inspiration from Maj’s story. And hopefully I’ve giving you an example of how you can go from working 1 on 1 with clients, to freeing up your life by building online products!

Needless to say, I learned a lot. At first I was very much focused on the writing process. It wasn’t until I was on the last few pages of writing that I realized that I had at least a hundred other things I needed to do to publish that book such as getting illustrations, working with an editor, formulating the best title, interior layout and oh, the small task known as….

…marketing the shit out of the book!

I never set out to write an NY Times bestseller. Not that I didn’t want one, but I was realistic about my current reach and the fact that this was my first book.

But after the entire creation process (that I probably spent more than six months on), I was really drained and wanted to move on to the next project. So I simply launched my book to my newsletter list and hired a publicity assistant who would help me get booked for interviews on blogs, podcasts and even live radio shows.

I thought that would do it. I thought that my sales would soar.

Now I did of course have sales but not really anything to speak of (the most sales came as I launched the book, and I haven’t really felt the need to revisit these numbers, but perhaps in a later post ;)).

The book was released two years ago and since then, I’ve wanted to write another book, partly because I learned so much in the process that I wanted to apply what I’ve learned. In the end of this post, I will reveal the topic of my next book, but for now let me guide you through what I learned the hard way with my first book.

If you build it, they won’t come – you need to market the shit out of it!
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As I’ve said, I hired a publicist who helped me with an outreach campaign- booking me left and right for interviews and such. To be honest, I thought this would be enough to jumpstart the sales.

I have to admit that while she did her job, I apparently didn’t sell the book that well since I couldn’t see the results in the sales whenever I had done an interview. So after 3-4 months, I cancelled the contract.

What I missed here was clearly a well-defined campaign where I start the promotion even before I release the book. That means my outreach campaign should have started even before I finished writing the thing.

Get help with the marketing strategy

While I did have a publicist, there was really no one helping me with the marketing and strategy of the book launch. I self-published so I basically had to do everything myself. I only get help with very specific tasks in the creation process like getting an editor and finding an illustrator.

So you see, I had help with the creation process, but no strategy was made for after the book launch.

I’ve learned my lesson. For my next book, I will most likely get an experienced publisher who can help me put a marketing strategy together. While we haven’t signed any papers yet (as I want to have the final draft done before I sign anything), I am currently talking with a company.

Spend more time optimizing for Amazon Kindle

I was so focused on getting the book out that the Kindle version was out of scope for the initial release. It probably took a couple of months before I got around to getting the Kindle version launched. And let me be honest, I haven’t used all the promotion tools that the platform provides.

If you release a book today, you cannot afford not to have an Amazon strategy which, of course, includes your Kindle release.

Have a clear goal and outline before the actual writing process

I did know the topic that I wanted to write about and I even knew several of the main points I wanted in the book, however I started writing before I had the full outline. That might be a valid process for some but in retrospect, I would like to have had developed the structure first. If you read my book, you might disagree and tell me that there is a clear structure. However, I feel that some of the content was out of place and the whole book didn’t feel seamless.

For my coming book, I have developed a clear model to help people transition to the end goal that I want for my readers.

Write more books

After my first book, I thought that was it. I could tick that off my list. But as someone who reads a lot of books, at some point I just got the urge to write again.

It wasn’t something I expected as I felt that there was a lot of work in the first one. But despite all the media of today with blogs, social media, newsletters and not to mention the television with all the streaming services, I still absolutely love the good ol’ book.

While I mostly read books from my Kindle these days (and I know a lot of people listening to them as audiobooks), I still love getting information this way. My current passion is space operas (recently read a lot from Dan Simmons hand).

So what’s my next book about?

I’m glad you asked

I’m sure most of you know that I’ve spent 15 years in the IT industry. Of those years, I’ve worked more than six years with e-learning for corporate clients. And so a couple of years ago, I created my own online courses in both English and Danish. 

For my next book, I wanted something really hands-on on how to create and profit from online courses.

A lot of the information currently available is often written by people who have online courses but don’t have a technical background. They are often great marketers but have someone else set up all the tech stuff for them.

While the book is not only going to be about technology (also getting the right idea as well as sales and marketing), I feel like I can give some solid advice on the whole process.

The book doesn’t have an official title yet so I can’t share that particular information, but I’ll probably write about the process at some point in the future.

So there you have it, my current project revealed!

Did you self-publish a book? Did you go through an established publisher? I would love to hear your experience in the comments!

It means that you need to build an e-mail newsletter list of people in your market because that’s how you get money. This is also known as list building.

Yes, you should build it even if you do not have any products to sell right now because if you are planning on selling anything online, you need to realize that the best conversion media by none is email marketing. Despite all the wonderful social media platforms, statistics show that good ol’ email still works better.

I recently wrote about how I did a rather simple launch of an online product that generated me $6,659. I could not have done this had I not had people on my list that I could send the offer to. This was based on a small list of just 1,200 people. Just 1,200 e-mails and I got $6,659! Do you think I would have preferred to have 12,000 people instead? Do you think I would have made more in sales? Do you think I’m actively working on growing that list? (Hint: the answer to all these questions are “hell, yeah!”).

Here are the reasons why it’s a big plus to have your own newsletter list:

• Scalability (Same effort, bigger results)
  The thing I love about email lists is its scalability. It takes the same amount of time for me to send out an email whether I have 100 or 10,000 e-mails on my list.But if 5% of the recipients end up buying what it is I am selling (based on my emails to them), then I will have 5 customers in the first case while I will have 500 in the second. All based on the same sales effort!
• Points of Contact (Makes “Multiple Touches” possible)
  It’s just so much harder getting the sale on the first point of contact. There is a concept in marketing called the Rule of Seven which says that a potential customer needs to see or hear a marketing message seven times (multiple touches) before they actually buy a product. By being able to send people multiple emails makes it possible to get your message and product in front of them, enough times to make your offer interesting. That wouldn’t happen if they just saw a quick ad somewhere. E-mails make the Rule of Seven possible for you.
• Lead value and acquisition cost (Measuring cost becomes easy)
  When you start putting offers in front of your list (either your own products or products that you are an affiliate of i.e. getting a commission per sale), you start to get an idea about how much money you can make on your list.There is an old saying that one subscriber is worth $1 per month. So if you have a list of 1,000 you would be able to make $1000 per month. However that also varies depending on the industry you’re in and a ton of other variables.

  If you remember the recent product launch I referred to earlier, I made $6,659 over roughly 14 days with a list of 1200 people. But if I went on to calculate the average value per subscriber (or lead), it would in my case be $5.5 (at least in the month of the launch). Of course not everybody on my list will buy my products.

  However, it does give me an idea about how much money I should be willing to put into getting a new subscriber to my list.This is one of the reasons why I don’t mind paying almost $1 per subscriber using FB ads.

So how do you get started building your own list?

There are basically three things that you need in place.

1. some kind of list/autoresponder system
2. a landing page and
3. something of value that you can give away to people signing up for you list.

STEP 1: Getting the Autoresponder System in Place

You might think that with my 15 years in IT, this should have been an easy thing for me.

However, I’ve been through several providers before I found the one that works best for me. I started out with AWeber because at the time that was what everybody recommended.

Later, I moved to Mailchimp because AWeber had issues with international character sets and because Mailchimp was free up to 2,000 subscribers.

After using Mailchimp for several years, I migrated most of my lists to GetResponse.

Some things just felt hard to do in Mailchimp like they insist on double opt in – that is, only adding people to your list after they have confirmed their email address by letting them click a link in an email.

Also, Mailchimp might be free to start out with, but they make up for that in higher pricing when your list starts to grow. GetResponse supports signup without double opt in and its price is cheaper than Mailchimp when your list starts to grow.

But now that my system for selling online products, Simplero.com, will soon get more automation built into it, I might move all my lists there. The reason is that Simplero makes selling information products so easy!

Simplero started out as a billing system, but also got list management and a lot of other awesome stuff.

Whew! That was a bit of a detour telling you about my journey with autoresponders.

If you’re just starting out, you should probably check out GetResponse.

Once you’re registered you need to get a landing page.

STEP 2: Setting up the Landing Page

A landing page is just a simple page where people can sign up for your list. You could simply create a new page on your website and put the “form code” that you get from your autoresponder system into the page.

But there is one reason why I won’t recommend that: Conversion! How many people who sees your signup page will actually sign up? That’s your conversion percentage.

At the moment, I use LeadPages for pretty much all my signup pages, and I consistently get between 40%-70% signup rates. That means that more than every other person who sees my landing page will end up handing over their email addresses.

That is because the LeadPages templates have been created by conversion ninjas and have been tested again and again. If you simply create your own page and stick a signup form on there, you will most likely not get high conversion numbers. And in that case, you are wasting traffic (and if you pay for that traffic, you’re wasting money).

So while LeadPages is a paid product, the value I’ve gotten from it has far outweighed the price of it.The good thing about landing pages is that there is typically not that much text on it. Actually the simplest landing page templates in LeadPages are often the ones that convert the best.

STEP 3: Giving a Free Gift for them to Sign Up

Now that the landing page is set up, you need something to give to people who sign up. Some call this lead magnet.

A lot of people use e-books, and this is also what I am currently offering for both my English and Danish sites. However, in a recent webinar I did together with LeadPages, they shared some of their knowledge that they have on lead magnets.

Often, people want a quick fix and they feel overwhelmed about having to read a full e-book. They suggested that instead of making a full e-book, simply making simple 2-page resource guides for your particular niche would do the trick.

How awesome is that?! You don’t even have to write a 60-page e-book to get your list started (like what I did ), you can simply create a quick and simple resource guide on a couple of pages.

I typically simply upload the resource guide (or e-book) as a pdf file to my website and then direct people to a download page (either on LeadPages that has some great templates for thank you/download pages or on my own website). I then make sure that people are redirected to this page immediately after they have opted in.

And, I also see to it that I put the URL to the download page in the welcome email I send them.

Getting traffic to the landing page

We’ve covered some ground here, but let’s go to the most important part: getting traffic to your landing page.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m totally in love with Facebook ads. That might change in the future, but right now it’s possible to get subscribers to your list by advertising your lead magnet.

I currently pay something like $1 per subscriber to my list. You might think that this will get expensive as people start joining your list, but you need to see this as an investment now that I’ve shown you that you can make so much more than what you paid.

So there you have it, if you haven’t started building your own list yet, you should really get started already. Even if you are not yet selling anything! Because it’s so much more fun to be able to launch your product to 1000 warmed-up leads than it is to start with an audience consisting only of your family and friends.

Are you already using email marketing in your business? What are your results?

So for the past months, I’ve been spending more time on launching a couple of products for the Danish market as well as working for a couple of enterprise clients in my consulting business. And that is exactly why I’m writing this blog post today. I want to take you behind the scenes in a launch I recently did for my Danish audience.

Now, while I’ve had this blog for six years now, I launched my Danish website RasmusLindgren.dk over the summer of last year (2014). I recently added a couple of blog posts but it wasn’t really started as a blog and I do not plan on blogging regularly in Danish. Instead, the site serves mainly as a platform for my personal brand in Denmark as well as outlet for the products I’m currently creating (one of them I’m gonna discuss in this blog post).

One of the reasons that I’ve been focusing on the Danish market is because of traction. I’ve simply found a lot of traction in a short period of time. As I mentioned, I’ve had this blog for six years and I have approximately 3,000 subscribers on my newsletter. For my Danish site, I got almost 1,200 subscribers in the first three months. And that was without a blog on the site! Because of this, I felt that I needed to leverage this flow of people to my newsletter (I, of course, used a free gift to attract people to my newsletter, just like I’m doing on this site.

In this blog post, I wanted to show you exactly how I leveraged a list of 1,200 people and generated $6,659 in sales (basically in profit since the only expense is credit card fees) for an online course I hadn’t created at the time of the sales. I used a kind of special launch model that I will get into in a moment.

I want to let you in on why I decided to launch this online course.

It all started with me taking a consulting contract for three months. Now while this is rather profitable (I make around $60,000 over the period of three months), it also meant that I was chained to an office desk for 37 hours per week (plus the time used on commuting). With two small kids at home, that does not give me much time to take over the world with my own products. I simply knew that unless I did something proactively, three months would have gone by without me doing anything else.

I figured that I needed some kind of external accountability that would hold bme accountable for doing something outside of the consulting contract. And what better thing to do than to sell something before you have it created! Once you have paying customers, you basically HAVE to find the time for creating the product.

Let us dive into the subject of the product I sold.

For the past couple of years, I have created several online courses, some more successful than others. I also have more than 15 years of experience from the IT industry, 6 of those working with e-learning companies. And just a couple of months ago, I started working on my second book (my first book was about being a lifestyle business rockstar) . The new book I’m currently working on is going to be about how to create market and sell online courses based on your expertise. The book will be in English and I will probably create a blog post at some point on the whole book creation process, but more on that later.

Anyway, because of this, I had all this structure knowledge about creating online courses as I had already created the model for doing this for the book. That meant that it was an easy thought to create an online course on how to do online courses (talk about meta here… ). And  because of the traction on the Danish market, I decided to do this course here.

And now we get down into the launch process.

First, I warmed up my list and flushed out all the people that might not be that interested in making online courses. I eliminated them using the famous “rack the shotgun” method. And since Denmark is a small country, I decided to offer a free two-hour workshop on online courses in my office.

I originally planned a small thing with perhaps 10 people. That way, I could get some feedback on what people were struggling with and use this in my online course (as well as in the marketing). But after only a couple of hours, 65 people had signed up. My office can probably only hold around 70 people, so needless to say, I had to hurry in and disable the signup page as this wasn’t done automatically.

Suddenly, with just one email that probably took me 10 minutes to write and schedule, I had to come up with a two-hour workshop for 65 people on a pre-determined date. Awesome! Public accountability in effect.

Whenever you’re offering something for free, people don’t feel as committed as if they paid for it, so in the end around 55 people turned up for my two-hour workshop. In the end of the workshop, I pitched my online course (on online courses). Basically, I just planted the idea in their minds. On the same day (when people got online again), I did a couple of sales.

Over the next couple of days, I had scheduled some emails to people who had attended the workshop (not my full list). Some with content and some with reminders about that my early bird offer for the online course was about to expire. The campaign lasted almost a week. In the end, I ended up selling 11 spots to people who were on my workshops. A 20% conversion. Not too bad!

After this early bird offer, I did another campaign to my full list that also lasted for a week. As the dust settled, I sold 18 seats in the program totaling $6,659. I had already announced that I would have a maximum of 20 people in the program (as I also included a weekly live FAQ over six weeks and wanted to make sure that everybody got a success and time for questions).

I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t sell out. However, I quickly got over it as I then had to come up with a six-week online course and I hadn’t even done the introduction at that time yet.

What started as an exercise in public accountability and ensuring that I would get something done while consulting full time ended up with me having to deliver the six-week online course which I had sold to 18 people. We started April 1st and so far it’s going really well.

Since then I’ve actually re-opened the enrollment and the following launch did even better (but that’s for another post :)).

How can you apply this?

First up, you can start by simply setting some dates and then inviting people to some kind of event. It doesn’t have to be a physical workshop like what I did. It could be an online webinar. It might seem overwhelming to start a webinar but I actually had fun when I did my first webinar. And since I’ve done a ton of webinars.

Once you start filling up spots on the webinar, you suddenly find yourself in a situation where you have to get a presentation ready by a fixed deadline. Then you, of course, need to sell something on the webinar or your time would be wasted. At the end of your webinar, make sure you put a date for when you would start your online course or give information about your product. That’s one of the best tips when it comes to selling with webinars.

By simply selecting two dates and scheduling some emails to your list (and if you don’t have a list, you should start building one now), you suddenly have to create and launch a product.

How’s that for motivation.

Awesome! I’m totally there with you .

I love how you can put all your knowledge about a given subject into a digital product and then sell it again and again. And I’m not talking about all those crappy quickly created products out there, but products that truly help and transform the customer.

One of the most common questions I get is about the tech stuff. Maybe it’s because of my 15 years in IT, or perhaps it’s because more than 6 years was working with corporate e-learning, where I helped roll out educational programs to some of the biggest companies in Denmark.

Or maybe it’s simply because I’ve created several online courses and programs myself, in both English and Danish.

But back to dealing with technology. Because let’s face it. You’re an expert on your particular subject, not a tech savvy computer geek living and breathing computer code.

So while you can probably put together a kick ass program that can take your audience through a transformative process to some end goal, you most likely have no idea about how to get it online.

That’s where I and Simplero that I’m gonna take you though, come into the picture

Now, normally you hear about all these systems that the so called gurus are using for selling and delivering their online programs. But you know what? Most of them are not tech savvy as well, and while they most likely know a lot about their field, they often don’t get their hands dirty with the operational stuff. They rely on other people to set up all of that.

Bigger systems like InfusionSoft and Ontraport, and in the cheaper end 1ShoppingCart.

I’ve used both InfusionSoft and 1ShoppingCart myself and while I hated 1ShoppingCart and found to be an old system without much new development (in a space where everything changes really fast), InfusionSoft is a really great product.

The problem with InfusionSoft (and Ontraport I’ve heard but haven’t tried myself) is that

1. It’s quite expensive typically costing $300/month + setup because apparently you can’t set it up without a “consultant” helping you
2. Has a steep learning curve
3. You need a separate system to deliver the actual program (some kind of membership software) as this is not included in InfusionSoft

Now if you’re an established company with a dedicated employee that has the time to learn InfusionSoft, and existing cashflow, then I would say that InfusionSoft would probably be worth looking at, HOWEVER…

If you’re a solopreneur like me (only working with freelancers), then I would recommend that you look at Simplero.

Simplero Review

So let’s dive into the features of Simplero and why I think it’s an awesome system.

First and foremost it’s a system created with the sole purpose of selling information products. That means that if you’re planning on selling physical products, you should probably look elsewhere.

What is the big difference you ask?

Well, for one, there is no “cart”. Normally when you shop for physical products you browse through a catalog and put different items into the cart (or basket).

With information products you typically just buy one product and check out immediately. So you go from sales page directly to the checkout (and payment).

But what are the features of Simplero?

Well a Simplero review wouldn’t be complete without a list of features…

The three main areas of Simplero are

• Lists – these are your newsletter lists where you can send out emails to your leads.
• Products – setup products with flexible pricing
• Spaces – create private membership sites with content only being available to paying customers

Let’s go over them in a bit more detail…

Lists and autoresponders

You get your leads to signup for your different lists. You can then send out single campaign emails (and schedule them of course) or you can send out autoresponders automatically after people sign up.

In general Simplero contains the basic functionality of any autoresponder service out there, but lack the more advanced stuff like split testing, geotargeting, advanced segmentation etc. If you’re after that, you can still just use a dedicated email service and bypass the functionality in Simplero.

Simplero also integrates seamlessly with Mailchimp if you want to use their service instead. Unfortunately Mailchimp is the only other email service that they integrate with.

I still use both GetResponse and Mailchimp but will most likely move all contacts to Simplero once they get more automation (like InfusionSoft, something that is currently being worked on).

Simplero supports both single and double opt in functionality (double opt in is where people will get an email after signup asking them to confirm their email address before actually adding them to the list).

Products

It’s clear that the whole product and billing area was where Simplero started. Actually the product was initially called ZenBilling.

Simplero is incredible powerful when it comes to configuring your products and prices.

It’s possible to make multiple payment plans, for example on with the full price and another in three installments.

You can also easily do subscriptions with Simplero handling everything transparently. You can do secret campaign prices where only people with the secret link, can see the campaign price.

It’s also super simple to setup campaign prices that expire after a given date, and then fall back to the list prices.

Simplero works with a ton of payment processors, but you don’t really want to mess with all that stuff. Another time I might blog about when I tried getting payment processor for 1ShoppingCart and I wasted almost a year and thousands of dollars… Well… I can just say that you don’t wanna go there…

Instead use the gateway Simplero also recommends, Stripe.com.

You can signup and be up and running taking credit card payments with Simplero in less than 5 minutes. It’s crazy easy.

(notice that Stripe originates in the US and isn’t available in all countries, so check to see if your country is supported)

Spaces

“Spaces” is the Simplero term for “membership site”.

These are the private areas that paying customers get access to, after purchasing a given product.

You can easily create pages with videos and downloadable handouts and worksheets. You can even insert your very own forum (although I typically prefer to use private Facebook groups).

Spaces support “dripping out content” meaning that customers will get access to content over time. Like getting a new module every week or month.

As with all features in Simplero, it’s dead easy to create and manage these Spaces.

Simplero will automatically handle access to the spaces based on the products your customers buy, and terminate access if a subscription ends.

Another cool feature is that Simplero will actually host all your videos. So you don’t need to host your videos elsewhere and you don’t need to think about protecting them from people who haven’t paid, Simplero will take care of all this for you.

So what is not so good about Simplero?

Well, I don’t really like the “Landing page designer”. You know for creating signup pages and such. Maybe it’s because I have a man crush on LeadPages and therefore compare all landing page designers with that.

While it’s ok for creating simple embedded forms for your site, you probably want to look elsewhere if you want top converting landing pages. But here there are a lot of alternatives (like my personal favorit LeadPages I just mentioned).

Also it’s not that easy to create sales funnels with multiple products. Like creating a main offer and then offering an upsell/downsell or “one time offer” afterwards.

But I guess that these kind of sales funnels are mostly limited to the internet marketing industry and not a much requested feature outside of that industry.

But I still love Simplero because…

They have everything you need for selling information products like online courses in one neat package. From collecting leads over to selling products and delivering the content.

I haven’t seen any other system out there do it as smoothly as Simplero.

Secondly it’s dead easy to use. The navigation is intuitive and you quickly learn how to use the system.

Also compared to the competition, Simplero is priced quite cheaply.

And finally, if you have any questions, then Simplero’s support is just awesome.

To be frank I’ve never experienced a better support for any software product. You can even wake up the CEO of the company in the middle of the night with a tweet (that gets converted to a text message on his phone), if there is something extremely urgent.

How many companies let you do that?

Signup to Simplero for FREE

So did you enjoy this Simplero review?

Want to try out Simplero? Good news. You can signup totally FREE OF CHARGE and test out everything as long as you need.

Only when you are ready to start selling your own products, do you have to pay for one of the (cheap) payment plans.

So you can test out pretty much every feature in Simplero before deciding on purchasing it. How awesome is that?

Click here to signup for Simplero free of charge

It’s actually a bit funny, right? We should probably stop up several times each year, reflect on what we’d done and plan ahead, but somehow this is something we save for when New Year’s Eve is just around the corner.

I’m a lousy planner myself, something that I will work on in 2015 but more on that later.

Did you notice my posting schedule went down?

If you’ve been a regular reader of my blog then you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been posting much these past couple of months.

As the year started out, the plan was to publish a new blog post each week. However I had an identity crisis and some other stuff started taking off, and to be honest, I don’t want to spend a lot of time writing blog posts, if I continually feel that it’s an uphill battle.

Then I would rather spend my time doing else. I don’t mind hard work, but I don’t like doing stuff that drains me energy wise.

I super passionate about helping people realize that you can structure your life totally different.

• That it’s possible to create a business that will let you travel when you want.
• That it’s possible to be able to spend much more time with your family and loved ones.
• That it’s possible to get more freedom into your life so you can live a life on your own terms.

That has always been the purpose of my blog. To inspire and give you the tools to build a lifestyle business that help you sustain your desired lifestyle.

However I’ve been struggling with finding my own voice. I didn’t want to simply copy the blog posts that everybody else was doing.

For example the blog posts that have the biggest chance of going viral is “list posts”. You know them right? Posts with headlines like “The Top 10 Things Not to Say on the First Date”.

However I really don’t like writing posts which only purpose is to get shared viral OR target a certain keyword that is only there because a lot of people are searching for the term.

“Ok, Rasmus… now is the time to get down from your high horse…”

Yes I know, I’ve done this myself on several occasions, like “10 Days to Improve Your Life With 10 Simple Habits” (list post format) and my “Clickfunnels Review” (targeting a keyword).

I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with posts like this. I just want the purpose of the blog post to be about providing value, and not necessarily about what kind of posts will work best from a marketing standpoint.

But perhaps I’m wrong, and you’re of course more than welcome to call me out in the comments :).

Do you focus on what you didn’t accomplish?

Me too…

I’m really good at letting the stuff I didn’t do, steal the spotlight from the stuff I actually did do.

So this is actually one of the reasons why I’m writing this post today. It’s a way for me to acknowledge what I actually succeeded with in 2014.

But one of the things I really wanted to focus on in 2014 and didn’t actually follow through on, was my existing online programs The Lifestyle Business Mastery and Life Outsourcing Mastery.

If you build it, they will come…

Sorry, it doesn’t work that way…. You have to market the shit out of it!

If you build it they WON’T come. You have to market the shit out of it
Click To Tweet

So after the initial launch of my online programs last year, I really needed to follow up on the marketing (and even do a marketing plan :)).

I still haven’t decided what I will do with these programs in 2015. They contain a shit load of valuable information and I’ve spend a lot of time creating them, so there’s a big chance that I’ll might update the content and relaunch them during 2015.

Another thing I didn’t follow through on, I already mentioned. My blogging.

But I’ve already discussed this so let’s move on.

So what did I do in 2014

Traveling

Well I’ve already mentioned the two months I spent in Thailand (our house is in Hua Hin) with my family, but I’ve also went to Sweden (Stockholm), London (UK) and Barcelona (Spain) for shorter trips.

I don’t really want to be away from my kids too long, so I try not to travel for more than one week at a time.

Webinars, Seminars and Speaking

Besides being invited to speak and train several times in 2014, I also repeated my successful two-day “Lifestyle Entrepreneur Bootcamp” here in Denmark (in Danish ;)).

I really love it when I can do more than just inspire for an hour. After the two days, the attendees went home with a plan for a lifestyle business that they could create.

I also did several webinars in both English and Danish, and even did a full day workshop on creating webinars together with the ever awesome Maj Wismann from OnlineBiz.dk.

Launched my Danish Site

I often get the question why I’m blogging in English and creating online products for the international market. My reply has always been that the Danish market simply is too small for the products I wanted to create.

However several things happened that made me realize that it perhaps was a good idea to at least position myself as a brand there.

So in just five days (while in Barcelona working out of an apartment we’ve rented on airbnb), I created a new website and wrote an eBook that I could use to get people on my list.

And in just 3 months after launching my site, I had 1200 subscribers on my list!

So I saw some momentum that I simply couldn’t ignore, which also led me to create an online program helping coaches and practitioners position themselves and generating a customer flow using online marketing.

If you’re a coach or practitioner (and you understand Danish) you definitely want to check out “Online Customer Flow for Coaches and Practitioners“.

Rebranded RetireMyAss

In the spring I re-launched this site. I worked with a designer over several months and I really like the way it turned out.

Most of the pictures on the site were taken in Hua Hin, Thailand, while my family and I were in our house there.

I won’t talk much more about it, as you’re already here on the site and can see the end result yourself (unless of course you’re reading this in an RSS reader of course ;)).

Launched my own Coaching Program

Now I’ve created several online programs, mainly using video to convey they the training. However I really wanted to work closer with just a handful of people, helping them create their own business.

So I started the Dream Business Formula Coaching Program, “An 8 week program where a few people worked directly with my.”

I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this. My time is limited, so it has of course been limited to a few people, but having the chance to take people from no idea to launching an online business in 8 weeks have been fantastic.

This is definitely something I will repeat in 2015.

If this sounds like something you would be interested in, please join my newsletter (and get my eBook for free) and you will be the first to know when it opens up again.

Personal Stuff

I’ve always been a tall and rather skinny guy and isn’t quite the sporty type. However as a guy hits the 35 and spend a lot of time in office chairs in front of computers, one start to acknowledge that one should probably move a bit (that and get a nose-hair trimmer ;)).

So several years ago I started running and I’ve now gotten into a habit of running 3 times per week (2x5km and 1x12km).

This year I wanted to put on some muscle weight, mainly upper body. So I got a coach who could create a program that fit me and my schedule, and could hold me accountable until I had integrated the exercise program as a habit.

So from the spring to now, I’ve been exercising 5-6 times per week. Typically running 3 times and going to the gym 3 times.

While I still run a bit further on Sundays (12-13km) I sometimes cut down the 5km trips to just over 3km.

However me exercising 5-6 times per week is something I’m really proud of, and not something I saw coming as I’m definitely not “the fitness type” (whatever that is).

Are YOU Going to Crush It in 2015?

So that was a bit about my 2014…

What will happen in 2015? Well, I haven’t quite planned it out yet, but I’m currently working on the master plan.

However here are a few teasers on what you can expect from my blog in 2015…

• I’m currently in the process of bootstrapping a company in Switzerland with an awesome partner (good for me as my German is quite… ahem… rusty)
• I’m going to write and publish a book in just 30 days (I will update you on the strategy for doing this, and of course also let you know about the end result)
• I will also do a lot more webinars as I fell as they are a great way of sharing tips and strategies on a given subject (if you want me to do a webinar on a particular subject, let me know in the comments and I will seriously consider it!)

So what did you accomplish in 2014? And how will you crush it in 2015?

I’m looking forward to hearing from you

On the other hand, if you want an insight into male nature as well as advice on starting your business, you are of course more than welcome to keep on reading.

In this post I will teach you one important rule, you must remember when building your business. The rule is simply

Don’t Stop to Scratch Your Balls

Don’t Stop to Scratch Your Balls
Click To Tweet

OK, what the … does your ball have to do with building or running a business you might ask?!

I’m glad you asked

It all begins during my Sunday morning run

Thank god for habits… I’ve been down with running nose, sore throat and difficulties swallowing for three weeks now (in varying degrees), and yet I still manage to follow most of my morning running and exercise routines.

This also means that I run 12-13 kilometers (sorry, I have no ideas how many miles that is) each Sunday, and my moment of eureka came to me during one of these runs.

Around the 7 km mark I suddenly had an itch from my crotch.

Yes, I’m sorry to spell it out like this, but I guess that the title should have given you an early warning.

While you might not regular read blog posts about other people’s balls itching, I’m pretty sure that you’ve felt your balls itch (well at least if you’re guy :)).

Now I know it isn’t socially acceptable to simply go for the crotch when with others, but when that’s said I’ve seen a lot of dudes scratching and pulling the crotch area of the pants when they thought no one was looking (or simply didn’t care).

I’d say I’m normally a gentleman with my balls and not trying to do the Al Bundy move whenever I’m with other people.

But today I was pretty alone in my running and thought I could get away with a quick scratch on the balls to kill the itch.

This leads me to discuss “the how of ball scratching”… (Wait for it; I actually have a point about business very soon ;)).

The Ball Grip to rule them all

I really didn’t go for a “scratch” I was more aiming at the “three finger pinch” at the itching area.

Now that might not seem like an optimal strategy and for the ladies reading this, I have to emphasize that only certain areas of the balls are “no pinching regions”.

But it was a quick decision to use a strategy that had worked really well in the past, however this time around it should prove to be less than optimal.

Oh, the pain…

I missed the spot…

Normally I would say that I can pretty much identify the exact area of the itching area, and hit it hard with a blindfold in a dark room, even without involving any brain neurons to speak of.

But what my brain to hand coordination had forgotten on this precise day, was that:

1. It was pretty cold, and
2. I was wearing running tights

These two facts meant that my balls weren’t exactly positioned like they used to be…. ‘Nuf said

And my otherwise well-meaning three finger pinch, missed their mark and instead grabbed (and pinched) a pretty sore area (oh it hurts just writing this).

My first impulse was to go into fetal position right there on the forest path I was running on.

But I didn’t!

And now we’re approaching my point, because as pain flowed into my system, one thought stayed in my brain.

I’m running, why should I let a freak accident like this stop me?

Yeah I know, I’m probably pretty stubborn, but my point is that I was out running and if I was this as an excuse, what would be my next excuse for stopping.

This “accident” wasn’t related to my running activity, so why should I let stop me?!

What your balls can teach you about creating your own business

Wow you’ve made it this far :).

When you’re building a new business you need

• Focus,
• persistence and
• an optimistic view of the future

When building a business you need focus, persistence and an optimistic view of the future
Click To Tweet

And the lessons my balls taught me today were…

• Don’t let trivial and unrelated tasks slow you down
• Don’t let resistance and pain stop you, it’s a natural part of building a business

Life is complex and doesn’t stop just because you’ve decided to create a business.

So don’t let all the static and background noise stop from your life stop you or even slow you down in your quest!

Go out kick ass, focus on the positive and ignore all the crap life or other people are sending in your direction!

Oh, and be careful if you ever try the three finger pinch on your balls!

Medical “Ball Busting” disclaimer

Please note I’m no medical professional (some would probably argue that I’m not even a professional ;)) so if you feel stressed and burned out, it’s probably a good idea to listen to what it is your body tries to tell you, and go visit a doctor.

I’m certainly not advocating that you run yourself down. Building a business is a marathon, not a short sprint so there’s no idea in burning yourself out. Or to keep the analogy below the waistline, don’t piss yourself to get warm, you’ll freeze again in 2 minutes (and look like fool on top of that). Hmm, that reminds of a certain new year’s eve, but I guess that’s a totally other story

As I’m writing this, it is still in closed beta, so some of my points might change as the product goes out of beta.

ARTICLE UPDATED WITH INFORMATION FROM THE PUBLIC 2.x RELEASE!

I’ll have to test out the new system and I will update this review in a short while.
The background for me writing this Clickfunnels review is that I’ve been a customer since the beta and using the system for almost four months. So this is not just some quick at a feature set and an affiliate link.

What is Clickfunnels

Since Clickfunnels does so many things, it’s hard to difficult to articulate just what it is in just one word.

Is it a landing page and sales page designer/editor?

To start out, it’s an easy to use page designer, like we know from other systems like LeadPages. Just like LeadPages, they offer a long list of templates and let you change any content you like, however, confined to the fields that the template provides you with.

This gives you some awesome looking pages without you having to be a designer or developer (or even pay for one).

Over the past couple of years we’ve seen a lot of these page designers, some offer more freedom, like the Optimize Press 2.x plugin that is more a drag and drop designer, and in the other end of the scale LeadPages which it’s based on templates.

I might sidetrack a bit, but I was really disappointed with OptimizePress 2.x when it came out, because it was slow and I really just wanted some nice looking page templates for my landing and sales pages.

And then I’ve jumped on the LeadPages bandwagon and done a bunch of landing pages on their platform. Most of the time getting a 40%+ conversion even without me is being a professional copywriter.

Clickfunnels is a lot like LeadPages when it comes to the designer.It’s intuitive, easy to use and they offer a lot of cool templates.

They are still adding templates and they are also starting a marketplace where you can upload your own templates and even sell them (just like LeadPages I might add).

But wait there’s more….

But now the similarities to other systems stop. Because, as the name implies, the core of Clickfunnels is not the page itself, but the sales funnel that it is a part of. Clickfunnels know that a landing or sales page will never stand alone, it will always be a part of any part of the funnel.

So besides the page designer, you can create your entire sales funnel inside the system.

But that is not all; Clickfunnels comes not only with page templates but also funnel templates. Want to make a funnel with a landing for a webinar registration page? That leads to a thank you page? That includes a live webinar page? That has a page for the replay? That leads to a sales page?
No problem, Clickfunnels has you covered.

Actually, you can do webinars and membership sites directly from Clickfunnels. No need to use other systems. I know that LeadPages also have some templates for webinars, but they do not have the option to send out emails to different segments, like “send email to all who did not participate” or “send email to all who watched but didn’t see the offer“. Clickfunnels can do this!

Heck, I’m currently using the Easy Webinar Plugin and it can’t segment emails like this.

Another thing to note is that Clickfunnels even does billing right inside the system. You can in a few minutes link a Stripe account with your Clickfunnels account and bingo! You can now make sales directly from inside your sales pages in Clickfunnels.

What I like about Clickfunnels

So why am I really excited about Clickfunnels?

First off I like its focus on the entire funnel! More expensive CRM systems like InfusionSoft typically have a focus on the lead/customer and how their behaviors are, over time, and can also setup processes that people get through, however, they do not have a page designer that is as easy to use (with top converting templates), and also don’t have all the add-ons like webinars and membership sites.

Second, I actually like that it is “self-contained”. This one system will literally be able to replace 3-4 other systems I’m currently using (like my webinar system, billing system, split testing system and page designer).

It really has enormous potential.

What I don’t like about Clickfunnels

While it was in beta, there were still a bunch of minor glitches in the templates. The designer works really well, but the actual templates are quite faulty. Also, I found several templates where you could not change all texts, which is kind of a show stopper for me when I want to use it for the Danish market (and I can’t change the English words).

This has improved a lot with the public version 2.x release.

Also the price point might turn some people off. Right now the price point is $97 per month, which is more than a system like LeadPages. However, if you look at what you’re actually getting and all the other systems you can replace, I think it’s a quite fair pricing.

Since I’m the one that is using WordPress for pretty much everything, I kind of miss the awesome WordPress integration that LeadPages has. Sure, you can embed something on your site using an iFrame, but that’s just a “hack”.

So instead of having the landing page directly on your site, you will typically create a subdomain and point that to Clickfunnels. That means that if your site was called “awesomeness.com”, you could create a “flow.awesomeness.com” and point that domain to Clickfunnels and have all your Clickfunnels pages being served from that.

When you try to do everything, you might not do the individual thing as well as others who are specialized in this. I haven’t tried the membership part of Clickfunnels, and I probably won’t replace my WordPress and Wishlist Member combo out anytime soon.

Who else wants an integrated system for landing pages, sales pages, webinars, billing and more?

If you don’t receive any technical skills, don’t require paying a designer each time you need a page, but still want top converting landing and sales pages? Then Clickfunnels should be something you would want to check out.

I have been a satisfied customer with LeadPages up until now; however, I haven’t seen anything like Clickfunnels to date. No other product tries to integrate the entire sales process like Clickfunnels does.

Clickfunnels Review: Powerful Ways to Use the System

I’ve literally passed a vast measure of time on this review and using Clickfunnels so I’m fairly sure I’ve had enough experience to insure a portion of ground here.

But in case you think I must have lost something or would like to take me for anything else, please permit me know in the comments or email me. I will be more than happy to answer questions you might have about Clickfunnels.

So here’s how to setup an automated webinar inside Clickfunnels

I have recorded a video that shows you the entire process. You can watch it right here:

* I recommend that you watch the video in full screen mode! NOTICE THAT THE VIDEO IS OF THE BETA 1.x VERSION OF CLICKFUNNELS

The video will show you how to:

• Use an automated webinar funnel template
• Use the page designer
• Created targeted emails to your webinar participants
• Setup split testing of the webinar registration page
• Set up the webinar funnel directly on your own domain

Below I have also highlighted the most important steps.

1) Select the automated webinar sales funnel template

Clickfunnels comes with a lot of different funnel templates. These are basically “done for you funnels” where you just need to change the text.

In this example, I simply choose the funnel called Automated Webinar, however there are many more funnel templates like the “Launch Funnel” that gives you a complete Jeff Walker style launch funnel complete with optin page, three free value video pages and one sales page.

Below is a broad list of the funnel templates at the time of writing (some of them just consisting of a single page like the “404 Error Pages”)

• Optin funnel
• Webinar funnel
• Automated webinar funnel
• Invisible funnel
• Launch funnel
• Membership funnel
• Sales video funnel
• Two step funnel
• Micro continuity funnel
• Youtube pages
• Tripwire funnel
• Blackbox funnel
• Thank you pages
• Affiliate center pages
• Presell pages
• Podcast pages
• 404 error pages
• Prelaunch pages
• Sold out pages
• Double opt in pages
• Squeeze pages

Wow, right? I think you get an idea of the enormous potential of Clickfunnels from this list.

2) Select the page templates

Next comes up the template wizard where we need to select a template for each page in the funnel

This is super simple to do, and remember that split testing is built in, so you can quickly test two different templates against each other. In the automated webinar, you have to select templates for the following pages:

• Webinar registration
• Webinar confirmation
• Webinar broadcast room
• Webinar replay room

Those are the actual pages in the wizard; however I typically also add a sales page to the end of the funnel (since I want to sell something on the webinar )

After the wizard the funnel is displayed nicely as a list of pages where I can track the conversion from each step to the next.

3) Write the copy for the pages

Next I go into each of the pages and change the copy so it’s relevant to my webinar.

The Clickfunnels editor is super easy to use. I didn’t think it could be much easier than LeadPages, but I have to admit that the Clickfunnels page editor works extremely well. It’s easy and quick to change all the texts and images, and it’s also easier to jump between steps in the funnel right from within the editor.

4) Select automated webinar times

Right now at the entire automated webinar feature in Clickfunnels 2.0 is limited to two daily webinars (at fixed times), however I’m sure they’re working on letting you customize this.

Also notice that you can of course still do live webinars at a specific date and time using Clickfunnels, it’s only the automated once that are a bit limited functionality (and I believe that this will change once the platform matures).

5) Setup the email sequence

In the last step I edit the automated emails that go out to the webinar participants.

Clickfunnels can target different audiences among the webinar signups.

• Everyone
  As the name implies, it targets all who sign up to the webinar
• Missed webinar
  People who sign up, but didn’t see the webinar
• Attended but missed offer
  People who observed some of the webinar but did not beat around until the offer was submitted
• Saw offer but didn’t purchase
  People who did see the offer but did not decide to purchase
• Purchased
  People who purchased your product

Each of these segments can be sent at various times based on the date and time of the webinar. So you can send reminders out to everyone before the webinar starts, and you can target people who saw the offer but didn’t purchase 2 days after the webinar.

Pretty powerful stuff.

6) Setup products and up sells

Last but not least, you barely require adding a sales page and any you might want in your funnel. It’s just as easy as editing the webinar pages.

And that’s it, in the video above I go through, all the steps showing you exactly how doing it.

How does Clickfunnels compare to the competition

But as I wrote in the beginning, there are other page builders out there. So how does it match up against these?
(If you want to see comparisons between Clickfunnels and other systems, let me know and I might add them)

Clickfunnels vs LeadPages

Allow me start out by stating that I’ve been really gratified with my LeadPages subscription. They have some awesome templates and a pretty stable system that just works.

Their support is great; however they have a lot of customers so not super quick.

Clickfunnels has an even better editor (in my opinion) than LeadPages and they have a super quick support. But that might be because they are a new service and they don’t have that many customers.

However Clickfunnels really go beyond the whole page designer thing. While LeadPages also has templates for webinars, they are just that simply templates. They look awesome, but do not contain any special webinar functionality. You can sign up and watch the webinar.

LeadPages does however have an awesome WordPress integration and you can even download the raw HTML and stick it on your own server if you wanted to. They also have other features like the LeadBoxes that creates nice popups on your page.

If you wanted to integrate ClickFunnels with WordPress the only way to this, is currently with an “iframe” that isn’t really an optimal way of doing it.

Also one feature I really like about LeadPages that I would love to see in Clickfunnels, it’s the ability to sort the page templates after conversion.

Now this is just my own analysis of the situation, however I think that LeadPages has felt the breath of this newcomer in the neck, because lately LeadPages have had a very aggressive strategy for getting you to either upgrade or extend your subscription for 1-2 years. But again, it’s just good business to bind your customers to your platform for a longer period, so perhaps it’s just an coincidence.

The Clickfunnels version 2.0 is a pretty big re-write from the beta version that I original worked with (and wrote about). So a lot of the “beta bugs” have been ironed out. So they are really working hard on getting the system perfect.

So right now, I’m considering cancelling my LeadPages account.

Clickfunnels vs OptimizePress 2.x

I was never really that fond of OptimizePress 2.x. I really liked OptimizePress 1.x and just wanted more and better looking templates in 2.x. However they created a super slow drag and drop page builder. Now it has probably improved, but there were a ton of bugs when they first launched it. I bought it, but have really never used it for anything other than tests.

Originally OptimizePress 2.x had one advantage over page builders like LeadPages and Clickfunnels, and that was that it was possible to completely change the template. That means adding new items or removing existing. However with version 2.x that is now also possible in Clickfunnels. And it works way better (not to say way faster) than the OptimizePress editor.

I think it’s a deliberate choice from LeadPages (and originally also for Clickfunnels before they changed it), because it’s much easier to give you some rocking templates that are already converting and getting them to convert for you to. So you can’t really mess the template up too much.

However I still think that Clickfunnels has done the right thing by making the editor even more flexible, while still providing some kick ass templates.

What do you want to know about Clickfunnels?

So there you have it, I’m really excited about Clickfunnels.

Have I left something out? Is there anything else you want to know about Clickfunnels? Then let me know in the comments below and I’ll add this to the article.

CLICK HERE TO CREATE A FREE ACCOUNT AT CLICKFUNNELS

If you look closely, yes we’re on Facebook. It was midnight after a handful of beers. Procrastination was allowed

A couple of weeks ago a friend and I went to Barcelona.

Barcelona is a wonderful city with a lot of things to both see and do. However, we weren’t there to see the “La Sagrada Familia” church that has been underway for more than 100 years. We weren’t there to fill up on tapes, pintxos and vermouth (although we did go all in on tap as one evening). Heck wasn’t even there to see FC Barcelona play on Camp Nou Stadium.

So what were we doing from Monday to Friday in Barcelona?

We were working….

Instead of sitting home in Denmark, we decided to move our office to Barcelona for five days and get a change of scenery.

But why spend money to go somewhere like Barcelona, simply to work?

Good question.

Being interviewed for a US radio show. Live from Barcelona

It was not like there was something in Barcelona that did that it had to be there. We could pretty much have chosen any location.

We went because

• It allowed us to focus 100% on a given task or project.
  When we’re home there are thousands of distractions and tasks that requires (or simply steals) our attention. When we’re away we can to a much higher degree set the agenda.
• The synergy of working right next to each other.
  While we were only two guys traveling together, we were still able to get help from one another
• Accountability
  We knew were there to kick ass and do shit, so if the other person would procrastinate for more than 5 minutes, it was ok to gently remind him that he was there to do awesome stuff.
• And then we did manage to see Germany wipe out Brazil 7-1 in the semifinals of the 2014 FIFA World Cup on the big screen while eating tapas and drinking beer out of oversize glasses

It’s great to get away with a common goal (although we’re working on our own projects) and be able to focus 100% on this.

Finding a cheap place to stay

We ended up finding an apartment right on La Rambla that is a popular street in the center of the old town, popular with both tourists and locals.

If you’re interested we paid around $100 per night in this apartment.

Our host was great, although the apartment did have an issue with the Internet connection. Well, there is not so much of a problem with the Internet, as there weren’t any (even though it said so in the airbnb listing).

The apartment was “between connections” so to speak

So our host went out and found a 3G modem we could use. And while it was ok for the usage we needed, I did have to re-schedule a webinar I was going to do one of the days, for when I was home again.

(Please notice that I’m sure that the apartment will have Internet as you read this, so that shouldn’t hold you back from renting it!)

So in the end we did have to spend $500 in total on accommodations and some cheap airfare tickets but it was totally worth it to be able to focus and get a change of scenery.

I got to re-launch my Danish site (and if you can read Danish by all means check it out here :)), while Jon my traveling companion got his first info product online (and even made is first sale – yeah).

If you’re into workplace happiness and positive psychology you definitely want to check out his English site at HappyWays.com (or Danish site at Jon.dk).

The structured version of moving your office

I first heard of Project Getaway in 2010. That was when they held their first event where a small number of online entrepreneurs located in Bali for I believe it was six weeks.

While this has now changed to 30 days, the concept is still the same.

A total for 20 adventurous mainly IT start-up oriented entrepreneurs get to spend 30 days in luxury villas in Bali. Complete with chefs preparing all their meals and scheduled tours all through the period.

The focus is of course that each person will work on his or her own business or product, but with so many like-minded people in one place, an atmosphere of helping each other and networking is bound to materialize.

The project was started by Michael Bodekaer, a fellow Dane, who simply decided to stay in Bali instead of coming home.

Workaway Camp

This is another project started by a Danish guy (Nikolaj Astrup Madsen). I know several people who have participated and I’m considering doing it myself.

It’s only seven days, so more suitable for people like me with kids who don’t want to be on the road away from them for something like a month.

The next Work away Camp is actually located in a luxury villa just north of Barcelona. I guess that Spain has this great mix of being just a couple of hours away from Denmark, all while have great weather (and food).

Another common trait with Project Getaway is that they also have a chef preparing all meals.

I guess that the organizers know that the most important thing for online entrepreneurs is FOOD (and internet – not necessarily in the at order ;))

Location independent entrepreneur?

If you’re a location independent entrepreneur you also want to join Dynamite Circle that is a community for just that. They also organize a number of Meetups all over the world where you can hang out with like minded-people as well as participate in awesome seminars and lectures.

There are some extremely cool cats in there

A disclaimer: I’m a member of Dynamite Circle!

Moving the office

So getting away has never been easier, with low cost airfare, airbnb and projects basically organizing everything, there is no excuse for going, getting that network of awesome like minded people and kicking some ass on your personal projects.

Have you ever re-located your office?! If so let me know your experiences below!

In this post I will present you with the secret strategy of creating a successful business!

Your Will Experience Pain and Suffering

Now Martin Luther King said the following:

“Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr

Now while I won’t compare his battle for freedom for entire groups of people to something as petty as building a business, his words are still a huge inspiration if you are trying to do so.

The reason why I bring this up, is because while I will give you a strategy you can use to build a successful business, you will still be challenged by “suffering and struggle”, you will be required to take massive action (“tireless exertions”), and put your passion and drive into it (“passionate concern”).

So this is not a push button strategy for success. You still need to take action and get stuff done!

Strategy Overview

The secret strategy for building a successful business
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So let’s move right to the strategy and I will go into more details about each step afterwards.

1. MARKET
2. MODEL
3. POSITION

Market

The first step of the strategy involves in you choosing an existing market.

Yes, I do not want you to invent something unique. Forget about the Blue Ocean Strategy. Creating a business without any competition just means that you need to change people’s behavior (in order to persuade them that they need your product), and that is NOT an easy thing to do unless you have like millions in the bank for a Super Bowl commercial.

So you want to go into a market where people are already spending money, customers that have already felt a pain and are now looking for and willing to pay for solutions.

Successful entrepreneurs are doing this all the time. Think Apple creates some amazing products (I do ;))? The technology in all their products is available to their competitors as well – heck they couldn’t even make the iPhone and iPad without Samsung, one of their biggest competitors.

Model

Once you’ve selected a market to go into, you need to identify the players and their underlying business model.

Whenever I do this with my coaching students, I use the awesome Business Model Canvas. It’s a free visual tool to layout any business model.

While the model itself is free, I would recommend that you purchased the book as it’s really inspiring and has an awesome layout (so in this case don’t get the Kindle version!).

The questions you really need to ask yourself is:

• How are they getting their leads?
• How are they converting their leads into customers?
• How do they deliver the product or service?
• How do they get paid?

“But Rasmus isn’t this just copying” – YEP it sure is.

But we’ll add a small twist to it as we move to the last part of the puzzle…

Position

Now that you know how other successful products or services are sold in the market you wish to penetrate, it’s time for you to be unique.

Now you do not need to be unique in your entire business or product, but you do need to thing about your Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

Now there are mainly two different ways that you can do this:

1. Bring the model to a new market
2. Improve one or more of the existing ways of doing it

Let’s look at these to ways in a little more detail.

New Market

When Danish IT entrepreneur Martin Thorborg started the company SpamFighter which sold software to combat spam in your email inbox, he (according to himself) already had more than 300 competitors, one of them being Microsoft.

You might ask why you would ever go into such a crowded market, however it was an established market where people were already paying for products.

So they modeled the competitors and then did something brilliant.

The existing products in the market were typically targeting the IT savvy. The nerds so to speak. SpamFighter chose to create a user interface that targeted the average computer illiterate. Think of your grandmother. In this they brought the same technology that everyone else was also selling to a new market.

But they didn’t stop there. They also translated the product into more than 25 languages! The other products were typically only available in English or a couple of the bigger languages.

So they took existing technology and brought it to new markets that also needed help fighting spam in their inbox.

Improve one or more ways of the business

The first thing a lot of people think about is “I can sell this product or service cheaper”.

However competing on price was never a good strategy to getting a sustainable business.

Competing on price is never a good strategy for building a sustainable business
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First and foremost it would attract people only concerned with price (who would abandon you the second someone gave them a better offer), but it would also start a negative spiral as you continually had to go lower than your competition.

So if price should not be a part of your USP, what should?!

To give you a little inspiration, here are five ways to improve your business over the competition.

• Create a better looking website than the competition. In a lot of industries websites still look like it was created in the 90’s. People can’t see if you’re a one man operation or a 1000 people corporation form the website. They can only see how professional it looks and how easy it is to find the information that they’re after
• Give the industries best customer support. The bigger the company the more distanced it tends to be from it’s customers. By showing your customers that you care you will get more passionate customers who will in the end also recommend you to their network.
• Find a better product. You might have found a product that is even better than the one currently selling in the market. Perhaps it got more features, perhaps it’s better for the environment or perhaps it simply just looks cooler
• Optimize product or service delivery. Could you speed up the delivery of the product or service? Perhaps the current market leader can deliver in 5 days, can you do it in 2?
• Make it easier to buy. A lot of companies still make the actual purchase process much harder than it has to be. You might get their 5 step for ordering down to a single page where you ask for their name, address and payment information (one of my companies do e-commerce websites so I know it’s possible :)).

Rip, Pivot and Jam

To end this off I wanted to show you a similar approach used by the cool cats Dan and Ian from the Tropical MBA podcast.

They describe their very successful model as Rip, Pivot and Jam.

• Rip – Identify if others in the niche are making money from it
• Pivot – Bring it to a new market / new approach
• Jam – Crash the boards with 100% energy

If you want to know more about this strategy you should definitely take a listen to this episode of their amazing podcast.

Got any questions or comments? Don’t hesitate with letting your voice be heard in the comments below!