Robert Plank

Hey guys, I'm finally back from the Action Seminar which I co-hosted with Mary Wilhite and Jason Fladlien. It's been a long week. After hosting that event in Dallas for two days I hopped on a plane directly to Chicago for three days at the AM2 Platinum retreat.

I'm not allowed to talk about AM2 (non-disclosure agreement) and filling you with a bunch of takeaways from the Action Seminar wouldn't help you as much as a single point, so here it is. It's something Dale Maxwell, one of our students, put into words better than I could:

Don't ask ten cent questions! Ask $100 or $1000 questions.

If you can find the answer in a Google search, you shouldn't ask it.  I'll still answer if you ask it, but it's a way better use of your time and my time if you ask me the tough questions.  ("What's a blog?" is not a tough question.)

The first day of the Action Seminar was pretty fun... Jason and I both spoke twice, Mary Wilhite spoke, Marc Harty and Jeanette Cates spoke.

The second day was an all-day mastermind session. It was pretty cool when Jason dictated copy to David Burch (one of our old students). At one point we created a free report, squeeze page, and thank you page for Roderick Martin -- including a Flip video of him thanking people for opting in and asking to call his phone number for a free consultation.

Yes, we even uploaded that Flip video to YouTube right in front of everyone and watermarked it. It was pretty cool.

But the rest of the crowd didn't have anything specific to ask. They'd spend 5 to 10 minutes explaining every little detail of their business, and then ask, "What now?" Which was annoying, especially when Jason and I are internet marketers.

We spoke about product creation, time management, passion marketing, video creation, and e-mail marketing so why ask something completely unrelated to those things? I'd rather people asked questions in areas where we were experts so we didn't have to guess. I'm good (probably one of the best) at fast infoproduct creation, fast PHP programming, fast copywriting.

But offline marketing?  I won't touch it.  Nothing wrong with that... it's just not my area of expertise.

Anyway, that's me catching up. Do you ask ten cent questions or thousand dollar questions? Comment below and hit the submit button within the next 5 minutes.

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Hey guys, I'm back from AM 2.0 in Dallas and I'm still getting caught up on customer support issues.

I talked to Ryan Deiss the first day (I saw him speak in Dallas last year but I never got a chance to say hi).  He said, "How business?"  I said great, that I just had my first $30K month in February and that I quit my day job of three years (first and only job out of college) to attend the event.

Later that night, Armand Morin was talking to a group of people so on my way out to dinner, I fist-bumped him (my standard greeting) and he said: "Robert, double your prices.  You'll double your income instantly."  Basically, if you wanted to buy all of Armand's products it would cost you $15K.  To buy all my stuff (not including webinars), probably about $1K.  He gave the same advice to the rest of the group the following morning.

You got it, Armand.  The first product I'm doing that with is Action PopUp.  The price was $27 for the last several months, it's now $37 and it will be $47 before the end of this month once I wrap-up my new popup training course that'll go along with it.

1. This weekend was one of the best events I've ever attended.  Armand mentioned Action PopUp onstage and Ray Edwards mentioned WordPress Letter to a bunch of people.  I didn't get to meet Michel Fortin... maybe next time!

2. My goal was to have 10 webinars scheduled by the end, I left with 5.  I'm still happy.

3. March 2009 was my SECOND consecutive $30K month (actually it was slightly over $32,000).  February's goal was $30K, March goal was $31K, so now my goal for April is $32K.

4. I launched Enhanced Sales Letters and WordPress Letter just before leaving.  The night I left for the airport, I cleaned out my PayPal account and came back to an $11,000 balance.  Not bad for my first week of full-time self-employment.

5. I joined AM 2.0 Gold, the $500/month program that gets you into these seminars.  My goal is to upgrade to AM 2.0 Platinum within 10 days.  All you need to do is prove you made $100K last year (done -- in fact I've made about $80K just in 2009), and complete a 100-point checklist that all "professional" web sites satisfy.  I knocked out 58 of those 100 points in about 20 minutes this morning.

6. Armand showed a super-secret AdWords technique that my business partner is already implementing.  At the bar, DJ Dave Bernstein shared six networking strategies that made the whole trip worthwhile.  The following night I used just ONE of those techniques to pay $46 for $120 of alcohol.  Good stuff.

Bottom line: Go to seminars, know what you want out of a seminar before you go, actually make mistakes and use the stuff you learn, and most importantly... hang out at the bar every night even if you don't drink.  You'll make some connections and have a heck of a lot more fun sitting at the computer in your hotel room.

What networking events are you attending this year?

Hey guys, I'm still at AM 2.0 in Dallas.  It turns out Michel Fortin and Stu McLaren didn't make it.  But I did get to meet Armand Morin, Ray Edwards, Ryan Deiss, and a chunk-load of other people.

Last night we did a networking event, everyone in the room rotates and you get to spend a few minutes explaining yourself, what your biggest problem is, and what you get out of the seminar.

Hardly anyone shared their numbers which sucks.  I want to know how much your last product launch was even if it only make $100 or how much you made last month online even if it was only $50.

It's all 80/20 rule... 80% of the stuff in your business usually is a waste.  But if we're listening to you explain your business we don't know what 20% is making you the most money... if you don't share numbers!

I shared a couple of income numbers during the session but since no one else was doing it, it felt like bragging, so I stopped.

If you're at these seminars and you haven't make any money online, freaking tell us that too so the people you talk to can get you on track.  Share income numbers if you're trying to get advice, because that's the most important thing.

I'm back from my trip from Affiliate Incubator 2008 Dallas.

I learned a lot, and here's my tip for attending seminars: Take whatever notes you write down and turn it into a PDF report, that you NEVER show anyone else.

Not only does it train you to keep pumping out 5 to 10 page reports, the information becomes a part of you because you retyped it and revised it.

If I had a clone who wasn't able to attend the seminar, I could just hand this document over to him and he would have all the info without having to attend.

I'm a pretty rare note-taker.  If you're a smart enough businessperson you know that 99% of what's being said doesn't apply to your business, but I still wrote about 10 pages of notes.

I took the best of Perry Belcher's AdWords tips, Ryan Deiss' continuity management, Mr. X's time management secrets, Frank Sousa's traffic tips, Russell Brunson's "moving the free line" and article marketing stuff, and Anik Singal's affiliate marketing techniques... plus some stuff I learned from chatting at meals and made it into an 8 page report.

To be honest, I walked out of all the other presentations to avoid information overload.  There's only so much information you can absorb over a weekend, and with seminars I always avoid the newbie oriented stuff.

Now I've torn most of the pages out of my physical notebook and I have stuff to do for the next 30 days to keep me busy.

To be honest, looking back over my report, I'm going to ignore about half of the tips on there because I know I just won' t have time for them.

Knowing what NOT to change on is even more important than knowing what to change in your business.

Anyway, my friend Jason Fladlien wrote up a quick report of his own about the 8 mistakes he saw being made at these seminars.

Some of these are truly classic, like the SEO guy and the "60 Second Rule."  If you can't make a decision about something, give yourself exactly 60 seconds to decide.... even if it's the wrong choice.

P.S. No, I didn't get to meet Russell, but I did meet Stu McLaren, Joel Christopher, Big Jason Henderson, Blake Milton, Bobby Walker, and more.  It was great to see Eric Louviere again, and Marc Harty talking about mini-days.

P.P.S. I'm also on an article writing frenzy, setting aside one hour per day to write 7 articles... before I come off this seminar high.

Today's Question: What's your best post-seminar productivity tip?  How do you get back on track, and maintain that seminar high?

I need my ten comments... if I don't get them, I'm never attending another seminar ever again.