Empire Building Kit Review Week 15

Wow 100 days have come and gone by, this week consisted on 9 days so it feels warped. This is Empire Building Kit Review for week 15. For those who do not know, EBK is a course designed by Chris Guillebeau.

Click on the link to see a large version of Empire Building Kit Review Week 15 (opens in a new window/tab).

I have been complaining that the course is haphazard but this week was mostly focused on product launches. Here are some highlights of week 15.

• Transcription service: Chris recommends Verbalink as a source for reliable transcriptions. Transcripts are good for people who are disabled and can’t hear or some just prefer to read.
• Hundred Days: What’s been happening in the 100 days? Take stock and compare yourself to how you were 100 days ago.
• Why do a product launch: The main reasons to do a product launch is to pre-sell prospects, more profit, get people to take action, create anticipation and its fun. Launches have to be planned so spend some time on thinking how you will launch.
• Crafting a Launch Strategy: The goal of a good launch is to make it specific, think about the specific things about how you will communicate the launch, ensure pre-launch creates the right buzz, what will you do on launch day as well as post-launch activities.
• The Pre-Launch Plan: The major goal is to create anticipation and answer any potential objections. The major steps of pre-launch messaging is to give early notice, pre-launch message sequences (at least 2) and even on the day before. The major idea is to have some kind of process because it benefits your business to tell people beforehand.
• The Launch Day: Wake up early, test everything and ensure everything works well. Now watch orders come tat come rolling in.
• Post-Launch: Follow-up with customers. Document lessons learned and prepare for next launch.
• Advanced Launch Strategies: Tips to take it up a notch by incorporating the following:
  • Social proof
  • Video
  • Reinforce the Purchase
  • Bonuses or Incentives
  • Reward Early Buyers
  • Incorporate Affiliates

Next Steps

As day 100 has come and gone, there are several things you can do:

• Share this mind map with friends if you have enjoyed it via Twitter or Facebook.
• Agree, disagree or have questions/comments then leave a comment below.
• If you have purchased Empire Building Kit, I’d like to connect with you.
• what is your experience with product launches? I have never done any product launches.
• Check out Empire Building Kit (aff link) where you can choose from 3 different versions to purchase.

See you again next week.

Unconventional Guides Empire Building Kit Review Week 14

Late by a week again, I am going to catch up by this week but here is a mind map summary and review of my learning notes for week 14 for Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Building Kit.

Click on the link to see a large version of Unconventional Guides Empire Building Kit Review Week 14 (opens in a new window/tab).

After complaining that the course is haphazard, there was some sanity in the course because it almost exclusively covered pricing this week. Here are some highlights.

• Irrationality of Buying: We may think we are rational but buying has an emotional evaluation process.
• Price Buckets: Typically most products have a price range or bucket. It is best to price within the bucket otherwise you have to justify why you are pricing it either too high or too low. The pain point for a buyer within a range remains the same so it is best to price on the higher side of the price bucket. It is also advisable to have price tiers.
• Typical Price Ranges for Information Products: Information products tend to range from the low $20 to $1,000s. Typically, a buyer expects a multimedia solution for about $30 and for a $300 plus purchase buyers expect something in the mail. In information products, social proof is extremely important.
• Make it easy to pay you: Sounds like common sense but lots of folks make it difficult for users to pay by embedding email links to get prices. The suggestion here is to accept a deposit first even if the price range is variable and if possible always accept US dollars using Paypal.
• Cafe Gratitude Case Study: Cafe Gratitude charges higher than average prices for its smoothies and shakes. The reason they are able to price higher is due to their branding, their message, contribution to the community, their story and their statement. The challenge is how to use a similar approach to charge higher authentically.
• Small Biz Disasters, Part VI: This case study comes from Neille Hoffman, a designer who created gorgeous elegant scrapbook designs but not much sold. On hindsight, she was not really following her passion but scrapbooking was just an opportunity for her. The other reason she failed was she did not know the market well enough to create simple designs and cater for a bigger audience. Instead she created elegant designs that were not really suitable for the majority of the market.

Next Steps

As day 100 approaches (God time flies so fast), there are several things you can do:

• Share this mind map with friends if you have enjoyed it via Twitter or Facebook.
• Agree, disagree or have questions/comments then leave a comment below.
• If you have purchased Empire Building Kit, I’d like to connect with you.
• Check out Empire Building Kit (aff link) where you can choose from 3 different versions to purchase.

See you again next week.

Review and Summary of Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Building Kit for Week 13

I am late by a week for this update but here it is better late than never. This post is a mind map summary and review of my learning notes for week 13 for Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Building Kit.

Click on the link to see a large version of Review and Summary of Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Building Kit for Week 13 Mind Map (opens in a new window/tab).

This was another crazy haphazard week where everything from cross-selling to affiliates to Twitter strategy was covered. Here are some highlights.

• Engage users: Chris sent an email calling for success stories to be featured. This simple email didn’t seem like a lesson unless you looked deeper to see how he was engaging his users by giving them a chance to be highlighted. This in turn would serve as a testimonial for Chris and how effective EBK is for business builders. And doesn’t everyone love success stories.
• Lessons from Tom Binh: The two important lessons here was cross-selling and how to maintain quality and control your company totally. Seek ways to produce products or services that complement the current base products or service. Another lesson from Tom Binh is how the company maintains quality through a local factory while only selling through its website and a retail store that opens twice a month. Now that’s complete control.
• Affiliate marketing revisited: How problogger makes over 60 grand every year from Amazon alone. Here the need for huge traffic is recognized plus letting readers write reviews and having the right products for the audience is important to convert.
• Press releases: Press releases are not very potent unless you have a good story and something truly eventful. Otherwise just stick to social media, hustling and guest blogging.
• Twitter strategy: Scott Stratten’s Twitter strategy of helping others, not self promoting and engaging users is the key to his success.

Next Steps

As we start Month 4, there are several things you can do:

• Share this mind map with friends if you have enjoyed it via Twitter or Facebook.
• Agree, disagree or have questions/comments then leave a comment below.
• If you have purchased Empire Building Kit, I’d like to connect with you.
• Check out Empire Building Kit (aff link) where you can choose from 3 different versions to purchase.

See you again next week.

Empire Building Kit Review (Chris Guillebeau) for Week 12

Three months in Empire Building Kit but sorry about the delay because there was a slight issue with email delivery which Chris Guillebeau sorted out quickly and professionally.

This post is a mind map summary and review of my learning notes for EBK for week 12.

Click on the link to see a large version of Mind Map for Empire Building Kit Review (Chris Guillebeau) for Week 12 (opens in a new window/tab).

As I get to know the Empire Building Kit better, I have come to expect a barrage of ideas to flood my inbox instead of a structured and linear course. This is actually good for me as an entrepreneur hardly anything I do on a daily basis is standard cookie-cutter stuff. This week covered everything from how much time to spend on marketing to price-value and good business ideas. Here are some highlights.

• Time to spend on marketing: 50% but not traditional marketing as we know it instead connecting with people and telling stories.
• Two case studies: It is funny how my wife and I just finished watching a DVD recording of Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos speaking at Stanford and the case study on EBK was about Zappos taking a $1.6 million hit for its customers due to their pricing error. This was an important lesson on choosing abundance over scarcity which resulted in massive press coverage and lifetime loyalty from customers. The other case study was from a regular business owner named Derrick and it drilled home the importance of having clear boundaries and why it pays to focus on “good” customers versus “bad” customers. It reinforced my thinking on how recently one of my customers lamented on the price increase for the Singapore part time jobs website I run and why intuitively I dealt with her appropriately. The majority of my customers are totally satisfied with the service because it delivers value in the form of helping small business owners free their time to focus on more important things as we help them find reliable part-time staff effectively.
• Bird-by-Bird Approach: This is the 3rd time I have heard the book by anne Lamott referenced which may be a signal for me to read it. It basically is about breaking down a business or a project into manageable steps and handling one relevant thing at a time as I build my empire. I get distracted easily so I should always keep this in mind.
• Business lessons: Repeat after me “price and value have no co-relation”. The other business lesson was what constitutes a good business idea? The answer i) something that is easy to understand, ii) delivers clear value to clients and iii) is high-margin for the owner. The example of such a business is Scott McMurren’s Alaska Tour Saver which is essentially a coupon books for savings in Alaska and Seattle targeted at tourists who fork out $100 per book to enjoy savings on travel deals.

Next Steps

As we finish off month 3, there are several things you can do:

• Share this mind map with friends if you have enjoyed it via Twitter or Facebook.
• Agree, disagree or have questions/comments then leave a comment below.
• If you have purchased Empire Building Kit, I’d like to connect with you.
• Check out Empire Building Kit (aff link) where you can choose from 3 different versions to purchase.

See you again next week.

Week 11 Summary of Empire Building Kit

Wow its amazing how quickly time flies, I don’t think I even need to introduce Chris Guillebeau anymore.

This post is a mind map summary of my week 11.

Click on the link to see a large version of my Mind Map for Empire Building Kit Week 11 (opens in a new window/tab).

Introduction to copywriting and affiliate lessons were the main two lessons for week 11 of EBK:

• Copywriting: An old VW ad copy from 1960 was analyzed. The main motive for the ad was to address all the issues that car buyers at that time would have plus to elicit a response from the customer. I’d have loved if Chris had gone into copywriting in-depth instead of detouring to affiliate marketing with a promise to get back to copywriting at a later stage. This is one of the cons for Empire Building Kit because it is not structured as a traditional course. It may be useful for some but for me I need a little bit of shift in mindset to follow through.
• Affiliate Marketing Lessons: Don’t be passive in marketing as an affiliate but put in work by providing value to your audience. On the other side, implement an affiliate marketing channel to form an additional stream of income as well as to build clout in the market. e-junkie is recommended as a simple affiliate system with 1ShoppingCart as a more advanced system. Frankly, I haven’t used both systems as an affiliate owner but I have bought things both via e-junkie and 1ShoppingCart.

Next Steps

There are several things you can do:

• Share this mind map with friends if you have enjoyed it via Twitter or Facebook.
• Agree, disagree or have questions/comments then leave a comment below.
• If you have purchased EBK, I’d like to connect with you.
• Check out Empire Building Kit (aff link) where you can choose from 3 different versions to purchase. See Chris follows his own advice of having affiliates as I am his affiliate

See you again next week.

Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Building Kit Week 10 Learning Notes

Chris Guillebeau is the author of The Art of Non-Conformity and Unconventional Guides. He runs a course called Empire Building Kit (EBK for short) that I purchased late 2011.

This post is a mind map summary of my week 10 learning notes.

Click on the link to see a large version of my Mind Map for Empire Building Kit Week 10 (opens in a new window/tab).

The main lessons for week 10 of EBK are as follows:

• Danielle LaPorte Interview Takeaways: This interview was fun to watch because Danielle’s personality shines through though Chris looks a little distracted and jaded. In my opinion, this could have been a much better interview but the lessons learned here can’t be discarded. Danielle talks about play to your strengths, being proud of being self-taught, having bucket loads of passion and how passionate work vitalizes not drains. She is a big fan of Marcus Buckingham and it shows in the interview.
• Giving yourself permission: One thing that really resonated with me in the Danielle interview was the fact about giving permission to ourselves. In life, we wait for others to give us permission just because we may be conditioned to listen to our teachers and our parents since childhood. She encourages us to break free from this and give yourself permission to succeed and grow your business. Firestarter is an upcoming book by Danielle and I’m surely going to read it.
• Reinforcement on Price Tiers: This is actually good and it really works. Recently, on my part time job site I introduced three tiered pricing and much to my delight I have sold a few of the expensive packages. So the lesson here is create price tiers.
• Blogging business: Blogging may not be for everyone but those who choose the right industry, have a passion for writing and are in it for the long haul can be very successfully via a blog. The example here is doughroller who’s literally rolling in the dough via a blog and earns much more part time than his full time lawyer job.
• Don’t give up No
• Complacency: Don’t let complacency kick your ass and watch out for it. It will set in if you start doing things out of obligation and not love. Always do it for love.

Next Steps

There are several things you can do:

• Share this mind map with friends if you have enjoyed it via Twitter or Facebook.
• Agree, disagree or have questions/comments then leave a comment below.
• If you have purchased EBK, I’d like to connect with you.
• Check out Empire Building Kit (aff link) where you can choose from 3 different versions to purchase. See Chris follows his own advice of price tiers

See you again next week.

Notes From Week 9 of Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Building Kit (Another Disappointing Week)

Chris Guillebeau is the author of The Art of Non-Conformity and Unconventional Guides. He runs a course called Empire Building Kit (EBK for short) that I purchased late 2011.

This post is a mind map summary of my learning notes from week 9 which I again found to be disappointing like week 7 because it milks the first webinar call to keep providing “lessons”. This week 5 out of 6 lessons were from that damn webinar.

Click on the link to see a large version of my Mind Map for Empire Building Kit Week 9 (opens in a new window/tab).

The main lessons for week 9 of EBK are as follows:

• Networking from newbies: Talk to everyone you know and everyone you have heard of. Send like 5-10 emails daily and make connections but don’t stick to one industry. I admit I have not gone into the practice of doing this but I must.
• Starting over AONC?: One different thing for Chris if he had to restart AONC is focusing more on guest posting. Getting the word out through powerful blogs to build momentum quickly.
• Why online audio and video and not just print? The main reason is because not everyone likes print and multimedia creates a valuable addition.
• Partner up with a charity. I am in the midst of doing precisely that for singapore Part time Jobs.
• Should you pay interviewees? No
• How to get a newspaper column? Have a unique angle during pitching and start with one opportunity first. I’d love to have a newspaper column which reminds me to submit an article to the Recruit section of Straits Times.

Next Steps

There are several things you can do:

• Share this mind map with friends if you have enjoyed it via Twitter or Facebook.
• Agree, disagree or have questions/comments then leave a comment below.
• If you have purchased EBK, I’d like to connect with you.
• Check out Empire Building Kit (aff link) where you can choose from 3 different versions to purchase.

See you again next week.

Learning Notes for Empire Building Kit by Chris Guillebeau – Week 8

I’ll start off with an introduction, Chris Guillebeau is the author of The Art of Non-Conformity and Unconventional Guides. He runs a course called Empire Building Kit (EBK for short) that I purchased late 2011.

This post is a mind map summary of my learning notes from week 8. Enjoy! Click on the link to see a large version of my Mind Map for Empire Building Kit Week 8 (opens in a new window/tab).

The main lesson for week 8 of Empire building Kit for me was the importance of email lists. The other topics discussed were traffic and lessons from Brooke Thomas:

• Web Traffic: How traffic is the lifeblood of an online business. 8 ways to generate traffic including writing to all your contacts in a non-spammy way and getting traffic from social networks.
• Importance of building email lists: The major major lesson for me was the reinforcement of how email lists are really useful. I used to use AWeber (aff link) but then started using Feedburner since it was free. Now I have a list of over 2,000 people on Feedburner list for Singapore Part Time Jobs website but I am going to bite the bullet and convert to AWeber since it supports multiple lists, segmentation, split testing and follow-up series. The importance of having an incentive to sign-up was another major lesson for me. I have given myself some deadlines to first create two incentives for employers and job seekers and then convert the list to AWeber.
• Brooke Thomas lessons: Another emperor or empress lesson in this case and local marketing was discussed which was again very good for me. The main lessons were shifting mindset to contribution than promotion while thinking of all past clients who have found the service useful. This applies to me so much as sometimes I am hesitant to approach business owners even though we can have a win-win. The last lesson from Brooke was to align with like minded businesses which has got me thinking about synergistic local businesses.

Next Steps

There are several things you can do:

• Share this mind map with friends if you have enjoyed it via Twitter or Facebook.
• Agree, disagree or have questions/comments then leave a comment below.
• If you have purchased EBK, I’d like to connect with you.
• Check out Empire Building Kit (aff link) where you can choose from 3 different versions to purchase.

See you again next week.