Tom Leung who is product manager for Google’s Website Optimizer tool was kind enough to come to Chicago to System 2008 and walk us through this extremely powerful and relatively new testing tool.

It’s the same one Google uses in-house for its own testing - and it’s free.

One of our faculty members Sean D’Souza, who is a wizard of info marketing, happens to have been a professional cartoonist in an earlier career and drew some cartoons illustrating big points in Tom’s talk.

I’m thinking of making Tom’s entire talk at System 2008 available for free to everyone in the Internet marketing world. Since it’ll take an investment of time and money on my part, if you’re interested in this, definitely let me know by posting below.

Meanwhile, here are Sean’s System 2008 cartoons on Google’s blog: click here for the cartoons

Every attendee got their money’s worth (it was $1,000 a head for the day.) At least one guy got advice that I know when he executes on it - and he will - will be at worth 1,000 times his investment.

Life’s not always a straight line. Not everyone gets dealt the same hand.

The purpose of entrepreneurship is to strengthen your own position and lend a hand where a hand is needed.

This small church which has lost 80% of its members still manages to provide material help to church members and neighbors alike; runs an after school homework center; and a home for teenage mothers and their children, so the mothers can get job training while their kids are cared for during the day.

I think that individuals like Bruce Davenport who is keeping this community going are the most impressive entrepreneurs there are.

Some home movies of what we saw:

For the next six years, there were less than a dozen people who were serious about teaching Internet marketers to what I call “bootstrap entrepreneurs.”

Now there are hundreds. Some good, some not so good.

An amazing number of these folks are System graduates. Some acknowledge their roots. Many don’t.

My biggest challenge today is to convey to “newbies” - and that includes many people who’ve been involved in the industry for years - that they’re really missing out if they’ve never experienced a System Seminar.

I’m gong to be fine whether people come to System 2008. We’ll sell out again this year, just as we have every year, but it bums me out a bit to think of all the good people who could be succeeding who are wasting their time on copycat crap peddled by rip off artists.

Anyway, here’s a short video I’m going to be using to give people who are new to the System who we are and how the System fits into the grand scheme of Internet marketing.

I’d appreciate it if you’d watch it - it takes two minutes - and comment and let me know if I’ve left anything important out.

No matter how many Rolex watches or trips to the Playboy Mansion they offer me…

I promise that they will NOT be speaking at the System Seminar this year.

But maybe I’m being too hard on them. You tell me.

To see who IS speaking at System Seminar 2008, click here.

For the full list of this year’s System 2008 faculty, you can click on this link.

It doesn’t compel frantic gift giving (like the commercialized version of Christmas).

It doesn’t promote excessive alcohol consumption and forced gaiety (like New Year’s Day).

In fact Thanksgiving is so laid back, it doesn’t even require that folks exchange cards.

Instead, Thanksgiving celebrates the basics: food, family, and friends and the deep fun that accompanies taking the time to enjoy life’s simple pleasures.

As icing on the cake, Thanksgiving encourages us - in its characteristically quiet and understated way - to take note of the things in our lives that are positive.

— Gratitude is power

It’s easy for entrepreneurs to fall into the trap of feeling that life is a never-ending struggle, where letting your guard down for a moment can mean ruin and every day is another day that the ever-growing “Must Do” list fails to get done.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you are a very fortunate person indeed, but I have a feeling you may know a little about the outlook I’m describing.

How do we get ourselves out of this particular no-win’ trap?

— Thanksgiving is the answer.

Robert Emmons, a professor at the University of California, Davis, demonstrated through an elegant set of experiments not long ago that if you want to sleep better, feel better, and motivate yourself to take better care of your health, regular Thanksgiving’ sessions work magic.

Once a month, once a week, once a day

Right now we celebrate Thanksgiving once a year and, truth be told; it can be somewhat of a production’ and actually be a bit stressful for some people.

But what if we had a Thanksgiving Day once a month?

And what if we defined “Thanksgiving Day” to mean spending a whole day with the people you really want to be with just living: eating, talking, playing, resting, and being militantly free from worries (and ambition) of any kind.

One day per month.

Is there anyone so busy that they can’t arrange at least one day per month for Thanksgiving?

Notice, by the way, that I said “arrange” not “find the time for” In my experience, trying to “find the time” rarely works. In contrast, arranging life to make the time for things has a nearly 100% success rate.

If it’s a good idea to have Thanksgiving once a month, why not have it once a week?

I’m talking about consistently carving out one day each week where you avoid the “busyness” of life and sit back to enjoy a good meal and revel in the pleasure of spending time with people you love the most.

That’s what weekends used to be for. Remember?

Finally, if Thanksgiving makes sense once a week, why not once a day? A good meal, good company, peace and quiet, and attention not on the things that aren’t working, that need to be improved, that are still undone, but dedicated to enjoying and appreciating the many things good in our lives.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

Ken McCarthy

Excerpt from the book “The System Club Letters” to be published in 2008

In the early 1990s, Buffett personally stepped in to straighten out a huge mess at Salomon Brothers, a major investment bank that had seriously lost its way and was about to get shut down.

Buffett stepped off the plane from Omaha and headed straight to the company’s New York City offices for his first face-to-face meeting with its board members.

When he arrived took one look around the room and said…“You guys look exhausted. Why don’t you go home and get a good night’s rest and we’ll meet again tomorrow.”

Sleep ranks very low on the priority list of most hard driving entrepreneurs…but that may be a mistake. A BIG mistake.

I used to think that that story about Buffett and the Salomon board (a true one by the way) was just a sign of his eccentricity and independence, but now after reading a joint study by Harvard Medical School and the University of Berkeley, I realize there’s a lot more to it.

In a nutshell, here’s what they found:

Lack sleep can drive you crazy!

Maybe not permanently, but without proper sleep, the study says, your brain dramatically overreacts to negative experiences.

“Dramatically overreacts”…that’s pretty strong language for a scientific study.

The researchers admit to being surprised at the massively disruptive effect lack of sleep can have on people’s moods and mental health. Going into the study, they intuitively knew - as we all do - that not sleeping well makes you cranky, but they weren’t prepared for what they found.

Lack of sleep, researches say, causes people to act as if they have psychiatric disorders.

Think about the potential significance of this…

It may be that the current epidemic of mood disorders like depression, anxiety and just plain unhappiness may be come from the fact that people just aren’t sleeping enough.

What to do?

Somewhere a long time ago I read (and I wish I could cite the source), that if you want to get a good night’s sleep, make sure you start winding down and are in bed before 11 PM.

If you don’t, your body gets a natural “second wind” that will keep wide awake well past midnight. I’ve tried winding down by 11 PM and I’ve found it works. I’ve also found if I don’t, I’ll probably be up for hours.

Also, avoid things like drinking coffee or soda or eating big meals late in the day. Watching TV too late at night can also keep you up.

On the pro-active side, you might even try some of the tried-and-true natural sleep aids like chamomile tea to help you relax at the end of the day.

I have to confess I’ve often been a major violator of the “get a good night sleep” rule. Somehow there always seems to be something more interesting or important to do than sleep.

But now I plan to take my cue from Warren Buffett and Harvard Medical School.

Sleep…it may be the best productivity (and satisfaction) aid there is - and it’s free!

Ken McCarthy
P.S. If you live on the west coast and want to drive to the next live System training (and maybe even get a good night sleep in your own bed), I’m bringing my one-day System Intensive to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver.

So far, I’ve taught this program in Chicago, New York City, and Toronto.

What is the System Intensive?

It’s me, and you and a small group of people focuses intensely for a day on the things that really matter in business and Internet marketing. No fads, no guru BS, just the things that I’ve seen reliably work over and over again in my now fourteen years of Internet marketing.

Details: http://www.TheSystemIntensive.com

Use a holiday.

Department stores discovered this trick over a century ago. If you analyze it logically, it doesn’t make any sense. Why should there be a discount on socks because its Columbus Day?

Fortunately, this is one area where logic is not required for the method to work. If there’s a holiday coming up soon, you have instant rationale for a sale.

Holidays move product.

Here’s some numbers on the impending Halloween holiday to show you what a top-drawer-of-consciousness holiday Halloween is… I got these stats from the National Retail Federation’s annual pre-Halloween survey.

8,877 US consumers surveyed from 9/4 to 9/11

• Average intended spend: $64.82, up from $59.06 last year
• Average spend on costumes: (including pets and kids): $23.33
• 11% of households intend to dress their pet for the holiday
• Estimated sales of Halloween candy, costumes and decoration his year: $5.07 billion

Am I suggesting that you go into the Halloween business? Of course not, but if you’re looking for a way to juice things up a bit, ride the holidays. A halloween angle can used to sell practically anything.

It was quite a ride, but to be honest, I’ve been so busy in the last nine years, I’ve rarely looked back and have only visited a few times since.

This video reminds me of what a unique and admirable bunch of people live in San Francisco. There really is no place like it and it’s no accident that San Francisco was the first city in the world to “get” the Internet. Enjoy!

Sounds like a pretty tall mountain to climb.

Here’s a company that does it masterfully.

First, they offer you the answer to a question.If you bite, they ask you two very simple multiple-choice questions, only showing you one question at a time. They’ve streamlined the process so beautifully, you don’t even need to hit the send button after you’ve selected your answer.

If you answer the questions, THEN the system gives you a way to get the answer to the question you were originally attracted to the site to in the first place. And to get the answer, you have to give them your cell phone so they can text it to you.

Devilish.

And I’m sure it works because I see the ad everywhere. In fact, the last stats I saw show the site has moved from the 370th most visited site to the 147th. Well over 1.5 million uniques per month.

Here’s the AdWords ad that they’re using now:”Who has a crush onyou?

Calculate their exact name now.

It’s scary how accurate it is.

www.yourdestinyrevealed.com”

Not surprisingly the market for this service is young females. Perfect medium/message/market match. (Most young females seem to have their cell phone surgically attached to their heads these days.)

By the way, I did NOT take the bait. If I did, I’m sure I’d be pitched (mercilessly) on their horoscope service.

Look at their numbers for the people they sell into this:

Sprint, Nextel and Boost customers are billed $5.99 per week!

Cellular One customers are billed $9.99 per month.

Virgin Mobile, Verison and AT&T customers get whacked $19.99 per month.

Looks like they’ve cut deals with cell providers who may also handle (and take their cut) of the billing. Anybody know anything about this?

In the meanwhile, there’s a lot to learn from from this opt-in process:

1. Offer enticing bait first
2. Get some data by asking questions, but keep it short and sweet
3. Make the opt-in process as painless and glitch-free as possible

(That’s what September always feels like for me.)

If you think about it, a “fresh start” attitude is what is at the root of all success.

Here’s what I mean by this:

What else is success, but learning to do things differently - and better - than you did them before?

- A quarterback practices new plays over and over until he knows them cold.

As the new season unfolds, his preparation pays off. Situations arise and he’s ready for them. Plays work. Touchdowns happen. Games are won. Past seasons don’t matter. They’re history. Today’s victories are all that matter.

The success mind set is very simple.

And it all boils down to one simple attitude.

If you want to buy success CDs and attend pep rallies and hire success coaches, that’s fine. Those things won’t hurt. (At the very least, they’ll keep you out of trouble!)

But when it comes to success, there really is only one essential guiding thought and it’s
this:

“It doesn’t matter where I am today
because I am taking action to get me
to where I want to be tomorrow.”

This simple idea trumps any other positive thinking mantra you’ll find.

It even beats “The Secret.”

Why?

It gets you out of the loop of bemoaning your fate.

You know, those not-so-helpful questions like:

* “How did end up here?”
* “Why did this happen to me?”
* “Why are things so messed up right now?”
* “Why am I not where I want to be?”

Here’s my answer:

You didn’t “attract” the conditions you’re in. It’s not part of your “bad luck.” It’s not the
result of some secret (and permanent) defect you have.

You are where you are today because…you are.

That’s it. That’s all you need to know.

Imagine you just woke up today for the first time and found yourself in this body and this situation.

How you got there is not the issue.
Getting somewhere else is.

That’s the first part of the formula:

“It doesn’t matter where I am today…”

Maybe by visualizing some glorious future, you’ll magically attract it to yourself.

Again, I don’t think it will hurt, but..

I’ve talked with a lot of people who’ve attained real success in their fields and - unless they sell positive thinking books for a living - they all seem to agree that…

“Success is the meeting of luck with a prepared mind.”

They acknowledge that this thing called “luck” (and I’ll define that in a second) is part of the puzzle.

But they also stress that “luck” means nothing without preparation to take advantage of it.

In fact, I think it’s fair to say that preparation is what actually creates so-called “luck.”

Most people get this entirely backwards.

They think they need a “lucky” break to fall on them out of the sky for things to get better.

No, no, no.

You’ve probably heard of the lottery winners who find themselves dead broke, in debt and much worse off after winning a million dollars or more.

How can this happen?

“Luck” happened alright. And it met an unprepared mind and destroyed the “winner” in the process.

Here’s the take away…

You create “luck” by developing yourself:

* Learning to think more clearly…
* Learning to communicate more effectively…
* Turning off the TV…
* Avoiding substances (including junk food) that weaken your mind and body…
* Improving your social skills…
* Confronting and overcoming personal flaws and limits…
* Reaching out to and enrolling positive people in your life…
* Mastering the skills you need to win in your marketplace…

You do THESE things and “luck” will become your servant.

Thus, the second part of the formula:

“I am taking action…”

Action could be taking a nap when you’re tired…or taking a vacation when you’ve been at it too hard and too long…it’s whatever is needed today to help move you the next step forward.

Positive affirmations are great, but you know what the most positive affirmation of all is?

ACTION.

In a pitch black room, you can affirm “let their be light” or you can light one candle.

We all KNOW what we’re supposed to be doing and we also know what doesn’t help.

Sitting in front of the TV, indulging bad habits, wallowing in self-pity, failing to develop our skills and knowledge, wasting time with people who are wasting their lives…none of these things are going to yield a positive outcome.

On the other hand…

* Learning new things…
* Trying new methods…
* Experimenting with different ways of thinking…
* Meeting new people…
* Learning to *listen* to people…

These are all “luck” magnets of the highest order.

“It doesn’t matter where I am today…because I am taking action…”

Successful people are future-oriented.

They’re aware of history and get some of their best ideas from knowing what people have done in the past.

They know how to focus in the present. They know how to unwind and enjoy the moment. They know how to listen. All skills that require being in the present.

But the thing that differentiates them from the historian or the simple happy-go-lucky person living for the moment is that they have a VISION of the future.

They’ve given a lot of thought to where they want to be…they’ve taken the time to harmonize their vision of where they want to be with who they are…and they’ve dedicated themselves to figuring out what it will take to get them where they want to go - and then executing on it relentlessly.

Positive future-orientation which means I know the past, I’m enjoying the present, and I’m investing my energy in creating something new (or improving something that already exists.)

That’s the third part of the successful life formula:

“…to get me to where I want to be tomorrow.”

People - and nations - become great in proportion to their willingness to conceive of and work towards a better future.

We don’t get there by patting ourselves on the back (or conversely criticizing ourselves excessively) or by “entertaining ourselves to death” (to steal a line from Neil Postman.)

Actually the fact is that pursuing a positive goal for yourself is the most entertaining and enjoyable thing you can ever do.

That’s why successful people often continue at their profession or business long after they’ve blown past any financial need to continue working.

Why do they do it?

Because they love what they do and if you boil down what it is they do, it always boils down to two things: making something better or creating something new.

“What do you think can and should be improved?”

“What new thing do you feel the world needs in order to be a better place?”

“What matters to you do much that you think about it night and day? (And if there is nothing, what are you doing to dull your passion for life - is is TV, junk food, junk companions, junk ‘entertainment? Cut them out.’)

These are the questions that lead to success.

To take a business perspective on this…

What’s missing from your marketplace?

What unnecessary hassles and frustrations are your prospects and customers enduring?

What would make things easier or faster or make life brighter for them?

If one of your goals is a bigger income, these are the most productive issues to focus on.

And remember, where you are today says nothing about where you can be tomorrow. Just look at history. Every self-made person started as a helpless baby.

You’re always just one idea, one inspiration, one insight away from a dramatically different life.

If you want to make a big change in your life, decide - right now - to take part in creation instead of standing on the sidelines commenting about it.

And remember:

“It doesn’t matter where you are today…

If you’re taking action…

To get you to where you want to be tomorrow.”

It’s Labor Day weekend in the US. A good time to relax and reflect.

You might want to use some of your down time this weekend think about these things:

Where do you want to be?

And what program of action can you organize for yourself to acquire the tools and resources and understanding and alliances to move you closer to where you want to go realizing that it’s all about taking one step forward each day.

Enjoy the holiday! And plan to make the “new year” your best ever.

- Ken McCarthy

P.S. My new project for the next several months is to spend more time teaching and working with people directly.

I’ve spend so much time in recent years seeking out and helping develop talent and organizing massive training events, that I haven’t spent as much time as I’d like
on my first love: teaching.

A typical System Seminar has twenty-five workshops and an equal number of faculty members plus hundreds of attendees from all over the world.

Do the math…that’s a lot of people and events to simultaneously manage.

Now, in addition to the big annual System Seminar conference, I’m doing small seminars,
just me and an assistant. And I’m taking the seminar to you.

We just did our first one in Chicago and the next one will be in New York City on September 15th.

Later in the year, I’ll be heading to Toronto and then touring the Southwest and the West Coast.

At first, my colleagues thought I was crazy.

“Ken: Why, when you can get hundreds of people to come to you, would you travel all over the place to teach small groups?”

Here are some reasons that I’m sure you can appreciate:

* Less travel wear and tear on you

* Less expense for you too (no air fare or hotel)

* You’ll have more energy to focus on the content…and you’ll have more money after the training to invest your business

* You’ll be in a better position to shape the direction of the seminar, to customize it to your specific needs because their won’t be hundreds of people in the room

* You’ll enjoy the same advantage that so many of today’s Internet “hot shots” got when they were just getting started: learning the business directly from me.

If you’ve read this far and you’re interested in learning more about a completely unique transformational business training that you won’t be able to duplicate anywhere else at any price, visit this site for details:

http://www.SystemIntensive.com