Robert Plank

My 26th birthday is coming up in a few weeks, on Thursday, September 23, 2010. I'm having my "real" birthday party a few days before because on Thursday I'm going to be traveling to JVAlert Live in Denver.

Here's my question to you: what major city close to you, can you get to on Thursday, not for anything major, just to hang out at a bar where I buy you a drink?

I don't want to fly into the northwest, southwest, midwest, northeast, or deep south, and I'm staying in the United States... so that pretty much leaves these choices:

Update: Here's what you guys voted...

• Los Angeles, CA (17 votes)
• San Francisco, CA (10 votes)
• Las Vegas, NV (7 votes)
• Salt Lake City, UT (3 votes)
• Denver, CO (6 votes)
• Dallas, TX (9 votes)
• Austin, TX (9 votes)
• Atlanta, GA (12 votes)
• Orlando, FL (6 votes)
• New York, NY (7 votes)
• New Orleans, LA (2 votes)
• Washington, DC (2 votes)

Which of these cities can you be in to meet me on Thursday, September 23, 2010? Go ahead and vote with your comment below.  I'm not sure if I'll be doing it yet, it depends on the votes.

The winner who I'm taking as my guest to Persuasion X, a $5000 seminar, is: Pamela Miles!

Here's what Pamela had to say:

I hear that this truly is Armand's best event. I know that I really need this information to fully capitalize on the opportunities that are going to be presenting themselves with the new weight loss concept I'm bringing to the world! I've been approached by a doctor out of Texas who has offered to take my product to the board of her hospital (which also owns several hospital corporations) about having me speak at their monthly Healthy Women Conferences at their various locations around the country. I don't have a lot of public speaking experience...so if I can learn from the best...I'll really be able to catch up to speed fast!

Plus I need a chance to redeem myself (insiders Cara, Robert & Lance will know what I mean)

There were 9 people in the running... so why did I choose Pamela over everyone else?

1. Not only has she taken many of my classes, I had already seen Pamela at other seminars so I knew she would have no problem getting there. It's the worst when you choose a winner, and they can't make it.

2. She was one of the only people who didn't seem offended when I said I don't want to sit next to the winner at the conference.

3. She stated not just what she wanted to get out of the event, but what she was going to do AFTER the event.

If you didn't make it, no hard feelings... it's not you, it's me.  I wish I could take all 9 of you.

Here's the mean part: In exchange for being able to go to this $5000 seminar for free, I made Pamela promise to have her entire business setup by October 2, 2010... including an optin page, autoresponder sequence, joint ventures, paid advertising, affiliate program, articles, an improved sales letter... all of it.

She didn't know I was going to be stating this in public.  I just set a reminder in my Google Calendar to check back in October, and tell YOU guys if she succeeded or failed.

Now that you know this, go ahead right now and post a comment: congratulating Pamela, and telling her "good luck" ... she's got literally 100 items to add to her business in the next 3 months.

I want to have a bunch of "good lucks" under this post... comment below right now, ok?

I have never offered anything like this for free.  In July I'm getting trained by a guy who has made 1 million dollars in 90 minutes, speaking at a seminar.

I want to take you as my guest to Armand Morin's "Persuasion X" speaker training seminar in Las Vegas, Neveda on July 20-22, 2010. That's a Tuesday through a Thursday.

I have spoken on stage four times. A couple of weeks ago, Lance and I presented on membership sites at a seminar in Minneapolis to a room of 50 people.

7 people had already bought our $997 package in the past, but we got 7 new people to pay us $999.

Think about that, $7000 bucks from a 90 minute presentation, that I would have done for free anyway.

If you ever want to speak from the stage, if you want to get better from with your webinars, or even just become more confident, then you should come to this very secret seminar.

All I want from you, is to tell me why I should take you as my free guest. But here's the thing:

1. It's up to you to drive or fly to Vegas on your own.
2. You are on your own, hotel and food-wise.
3. I don't want you sitting next to me at the event, go find your own friends... the room is full of proven five thousand dollar buyers
4. You will get to meet with me, and talk to me at the seminar

Like I said, this seminar literally costs $5000 but I want to take you as my free guest so you can find out:

• How to become an in-demand professional speaker
• Persusasive presentation
• Control and lead your audience
• Hypnotic speech patterns
• Structure your offer so it makes the most impact with your audience
• How to sell membership products from the stage
• Exact PowerPoint designs to increase your sales from the stage
• How to "work" the stage: where to stand and what to do with your body, plus the most POWERFUL closing sequence ever created

Go ahead, tell me why I should take you as my free $5000 guest.  If you have the best answer, I'll buy your way into this $5000 seminar.

Here's my video newsletter for June 2009:

1. I'm still banned from YouTube... and have send them some e-mails, filled out their online form, sent them a tweet and send a snail mail letter... any other ideas?

2. The AM2 Platinum retreat was awesome but I only joined for the networking. Make some products first, build a list, start making money, then go to physical seminars, and THEN join a club like AM2, in that order.

3. Add Contact (PHP form mail with your physical address listed on the page) and Privacy (use a legal form generator) pages in small text at the bottom of your pages to improve your Google quality score if you do any pay-per-click.

4. You really need to switch to Gmail if you're bogged down with e-mail management.  Heck, forward your existing mail to Gmail and try it out.  The secret is using the Archive function.  Read a message and archive or delete... or reply to a message and archive.  But don't let your inbox contain more than 30 messages at one time.

The big question to cap it all off: My next product is going to be huge, different than anything else I have put out before, higher priced than anything else I have put out before.  What do you think it is?  Comment with your guess below.  Leave me 10 comments and I'll drop the next hint on you.

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?