Yes, there were a few problems with the video, and I totally apologize for the glitches… but it’s been fixed and if you haven’t seen it yet, you can check it out here >>

For those of you who don’t know who Max Simon is, he’s the man who helped build Deepak Chopra’s products division into a multi-million dollar business. Max struggled to build a successful business and in 2008, he lost some $80,000. He then realized a few key ingredients that helped him ultimately turn his business around. In 2009, Get Self Centered did not only break even, but generated $500,000 in revenue.

Now, Max travels the world sharing these amazing ideas to help conscious entrepreneurs…

• Create thriving and authentic businesses that are in complete alignment with their personal values and spiritual path
• Experience great wealth and abundance
• Have a powerfully positive impact on the world.

Anyway, Max will be conducting a teleseminar with me speaking about The Enlightened Entrepreneur Experience and how you can experience the turning point in your business journey.

The FREE teleseminar will take place on Tuesday, January 26th  at 5 pm Pacific / 8 pm Eastern

You can sign up for it here >>

Here’s what we’ll be talking about:

• Why most entrepreneurs will never experience “the turning point” and what you can do to guarantee your place amongst those who do.
• The 5 necessary ingredients that absolutely must be present for you to experience “the turning point” in your business (and you wouldn’t expect many of them).
• How you can create a business that gives you complete freedom.
• A simple (yet potent) technique to overcome your fears, which has to happen for you to facilitate the shift (and it’s easier than you think).
• 3 simple and easy to do action steps that you can take right now to facilitate the turning point in your business immediately.
• Market Sophistication Levels: The one key idea (identified by marketer Eugene Scwartz), that causes countless people to fail with their online business.
• And much, much more…

Join us on Tuesday, January 26th  at 5 pm Pacific / 8 pm Eastern

For Those of You Who Want To Discover The 5 Necessary Ingredients To Create A Business That Gives You Complete Freedom, Click Here >>

Yes, there were a few problems with the video, and I totally apologize for the glitches… but it’s been fixed and if you haven’t seen it yet, you can check it out here >>

For those of you who don’t know who Max Simon is, he’s the man who helped build Deepak Chopra’s products division into a multi-million dollar business. Max struggled to build a successful business and in 2008, he lost some $80,000. He then realized a few key ingredients that helped him ultimately turn his business around. In 2009, Get Self Centered did not only break even, but generated $500,000 in revenue.

Now, Max travels the world sharing these amazing ideas to help conscious entrepreneurs…

• Create thriving and authentic businesses that are in complete alignment with their personal values and spiritual path
• Experience great wealth and abundance
• Have a powerfully positive impact on the world.

Anyway, Max will be conducting a teleseminar with me speaking about The Enlightened Entrepreneur Experience and how you can experience the turning point in your business journey.

The FREE teleseminar will take place on Tuesday, January 26th  at 5 pm Pacific / 8 pm Eastern

You can sign up for it here >>

Here’s what we’ll be talking about:

• Why most entrepreneurs will never experience “the turning point” and what you can do to guarantee your place amongst those who do.
• The 5 necessary ingredients that absolutely must be present for you to experience “the turning point” in your business (and you wouldn’t expect many of them).
• How you can create a business that gives you complete freedom.
• A simple (yet potent) technique to overcome your fears, which has to happen for you to facilitate the shift (and it’s easier than you think).
• 3 simple and easy to do action steps that you can take right now to facilitate the turning point in your business immediately.
• Market Sophistication Levels: The one key idea (identified by marketer Eugene Scwartz), that causes countless people to fail with their online business.
• And much, much more…

Join us on Tuesday, January 26th  at 5 pm Pacific / 8 pm Eastern

For Those of You Who Want To Discover The 5 Necessary Ingredients To Create A Business That Gives You Complete Freedom, Click Here >>

Yes, I know. It’s been months since we last posted something on this blog, and over 6 months since we last sent out anything to the thousands of you who subscribed to our “7 FREE Chain Reaction Marketing” lesson series.

Let’s just say that MindValley as a company has grown so rapidly during this time that things became pretty overwhelming… in a very good way.

We’ve had a completely spectacular time and I can’t wait to share it with you. Here’s what MindValley has been up to.

That’s me with Mike and Sir Richard Branson on Necker Island

This one was taken after I got invited to speak at the Tony Robbins Ultimate Business Mastery Summit in Las Vegas in April

This one is with Robin Sharma, author of the best-selling book “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari”

And that’s just really the tip of the iceberg, plus we’re super excited to be back, and look forward to sharing with you lots of cool things we learned.

Seriously though, it’s crazy what can happen in just a few months.

And in many ways it wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for all the love, tears and sweat we invested into researching the best in internet marketing, conducting rigorous split testing, and a bunch of many other stuff we’ve been sharing with you here for over 3 years now.

Lastly, this would also not have been possible without your support guys, so thank you all.

Stay tuned for the return of our famous posts on split test results and internet marketing voodoo.

Should be fun.

Size Doesn’t Matter?

It does. Here’s why.

Mike and I just got back from a whirlwind trip. Dallas, Chicago and LA, where we had to squeeze in some 8 different meetings with amazing individuals in the fields of online marketing and personal growth.

One of the highlights was attending the “Green Room”. A special get-together that Eben Pagan of GetAltitude.com had organized.

Here are some pics. And a big thank you to Eben and his team for organizing an amazing event.

Alex Mandossian

Michael Koenigs

Derek Gehl

Andy Jenkins of StomperNet, and Travis

Jeff Walker

Joe Sugarman

Melissa Greczy

Kevin Wilke

Stan and Dan Hollings

Jason Potash

Trey and John Walker

On the left is Trey, who pioneered the “Dual Voice” email marketing concept and who also happens to be Frank Kern’s cousin. The dual-voice concept is a powerful but little known tool. We’ve been using it on several sites to astonishing results. My latest video in the Insider’s Program talks about how to use it to boost mailing rate responsiveness. Next to Trey is John Walker, Jeff Walker’s bro.

Overall an excellent event. I’m going to make it a point to share more pics and stories of the various networking and social events we attend. It helps put a face on the people behind this industry.

In the meanwhile — you can see more pics by joining me on Facebook. Just search for “Vishen Lakhiani” or click the image below.

It was a crazy 5 days of non-stop work, with the seminar was great and finishing at 10pm each day. There was no time to go out or even see the city…and it was AWESOME. His first session was Guerilla Wealth Tactics, in which he taught several ways of thinking to get rich faster.

1. Results Lead To Strategy

The lesson here: don’t think conventionally. Think outside the box. For example, if you are a cab driver, and you earn 1000 per month on an 8-hour shift, if you want to double your salary, you could work 16-hour shifts everyday to achieve your goal. If you wanted to triple your salary, you could– by working 24 hours a day. But if you wanted to quadruple your income, it would be almost impossible.

Don’t limit your capacity by thinking in terms of using your resources, but set a goal and then find ways to achieve it.

2. Business Is As Simple As To ‘K.I.S.S.’

Business, according to Harv Eker, is as easy as KISS.

In other words, Keep It Short & Simple. You can break it down into 3 components:

1. produce/buy/create (content/product)
2. sell
3. operations/admin

How much time do you spend on each of these things – how much time do you spend on what brings results? The ideal breakdown of your resource and time allocation should be:

• create – 20%
• sell – 60%
• admin – 20%

If you are not selling, you won’t make money. If this means that you have to reduce your operations, or outsource, then you should because you only get paid when you sell, not before.

3. The Rich Are Experts

Like Chet Holmes and Joel Roberts have said, find one area of specialty and focus on it. Find one thing and become really good at it. For example, not every project manager should have to spend time figuring out the site structure, setting up an email auto responder, and writing copy. You should professionals for each area of expertise. This way, your company can get more done, in a shorter time, with better quality.

Many of the richest and most successful people started out by making it big in one industry or by becoming an expert in one area, and after their success, they branch out.

4. Create High Price Ticket Items

Let me give an example. Take John and Peter, who are in the same industry. John has 100 customers per day, he makes 30 sales per day, and he has a 30% conversion rate. Peter, on the other hand, has 10 customers per day; Peter makes 2 sales per day, and his conversion rate is 20%.

Yet, Peter is richer and happier than John. Why? Because Peter has chosen to supply good to a market with low competition and more money. If John is selling a standard iPod, and Peter is selling a diamond-plated iPod shuffle, then Peter has a far better deal because even if he sells very little to a few people, he still makes enough to

What expensive products are you selling? You can give an exclusive seminar or a personal coaching program, and use these as your high price ticket items.

5. Piggy Backing Concept

Find someone in your field (or in a similar field) who is willing to buy a large volume of your product at one time, minimizing your marketing efforts and maximizing your income in a short time. They can sell your product in large volumes, for example, if they sell yours complementary with theirs. You can ask them to give away your free samples, and when these customers visit your site, you can upsell them on the back end.

6. Sell Them Before They Buy

By building a list of interested people, you have higher negotiation power when looking for partners/affiliates. It also means that you can move faster because you can go straight into creating a squeeze page for your already existent and interested list. This is similar to Bob Serling’s Tollgate Method and uses similar advanced JV tactics. By connecting your list to the products they are interested in, you act as a broker.

Harv Eker, for example, offers and charges for seminars a year in advance – a form of ‘selling’ without products, and using the revenue to create/fund products.

7. Focus vs. Scatter

Focus on completing one task at a time. This is not rocket science, but you’ll find that successful and rich people focus on completing one task at a time, then expanding and moving on to the next project. Idea evaluation is very important because without it, opportunities can become obstacles. Every morning, choose to accomplish 3 main goals that will contribute most to your revenue.

8. Processes and Automation

Systemize things and emphasize on processes and automation. Find all the repetitive tasks that take up your time and find a way to automate or outsource them. The definition of a successful business is one that can run without you.

It was a crazy 5 days of non-stop work, with the seminar was great and finishing at 10pm each day. There was no time to go out or even see the city…and it was AWESOME. His first session was Guerilla Wealth Tactics, in which he taught several ways of thinking to get rich faster.

1. Results Lead To Strategy

The lesson here: don’t think conventionally. Think outside the box. For example, if you are a cab driver, and you earn 1000 per month on an 8-hour shift, if you want to double your salary, you could work 16-hour shifts everyday to achieve your goal. If you wanted to triple your salary, you could– by working 24 hours a day. But if you wanted to quadruple your income, it would be almost impossible.

Don’t limit your capacity by thinking in terms of using your resources, but set a goal and then find ways to achieve it.

2. Business Is As Simple As To ‘K.I.S.S.’

Business, according to Harv Eker, is as easy as KISS.

In other words, Keep It Short & Simple. You can break it down into 3 components:

1. produce/buy/create (content/product)
2. sell
3. operations/admin

How much time do you spend on each of these things – how much time do you spend on what brings results? The ideal breakdown of your resource and time allocation should be:

• create – 20%
• sell – 60%
• admin – 20%

If you are not selling, you won’t make money. If this means that you have to reduce your operations, or outsource, then you should because you only get paid when you sell, not before.

3. The Rich Are Experts

Like Chet Holmes and Joel Roberts have said, find one area of specialty and focus on it. Find one thing and become really good at it. For example, not every project manager should have to spend time figuring out the site structure, setting up an email auto responder, and writing copy. You should professionals for each area of expertise. This way, your company can get more done, in a shorter time, with better quality.

Many of the richest and most successful people started out by making it big in one industry or by becoming an expert in one area, and after their success, they branch out.

4. Create High Price Ticket Items

Let me give an example. Take John and Peter, who are in the same industry. John has 100 customers per day, he makes 30 sales per day, and he has a 30% conversion rate. Peter, on the other hand, has 10 customers per day; Peter makes 2 sales per day, and his conversion rate is 20%.

Yet, Peter is richer and happier than John. Why? Because Peter has chosen to supply good to a market with low competition and more money. If John is selling a standard iPod, and Peter is selling a diamond-plated iPod shuffle, then Peter has a far better deal because even if he sells very little to a few people, he still makes enough to

What expensive products are you selling? You can give an exclusive seminar or a personal coaching program, and use these as your high price ticket items.

5. Piggy Backing Concept

Find someone in your field (or in a similar field) who is willing to buy a large volume of your product at one time, minimizing your marketing efforts and maximizing your income in a short time. They can sell your product in large volumes, for example, if they sell yours complementary with theirs. You can ask them to give away your free samples, and when these customers visit your site, you can upsell them on the back end.

6. Sell Them Before They Buy

By building a list of interested people, you have higher negotiation power when looking for partners/affiliates. It also means that you can move faster because you can go straight into creating a squeeze page for your already existent and interested list. This is similar to Bob Serling’s Tollgate Method and uses similar advanced JV tactics. By connecting your list to the products they are interested in, you act as a broker.

Harv Eker, for example, offers and charges for seminars a year in advance – a form of ‘selling’ without products, and using the revenue to create/fund products.

7. Focus vs. Scatter

Focus on completing one task at a time. This is not rocket science, but you’ll find that successful and rich people focus on completing one task at a time, then expanding and moving on to the next project. Idea evaluation is very important because without it, opportunities can become obstacles. Every morning, choose to accomplish 3 main goals that will contribute most to your revenue.

8. Processes and Automation

Systemize things and emphasize on processes and automation. Find all the repetitive tasks that take up your time and find a way to automate or outsource them. The definition of a successful business is one that can run without you.

Anybody and everybody in a new company should be spending 80% of their time on selling

That’s a bold statement, because people are usually too afraid to communicate the importance of revenues, profits and sales. Michael Masterson says that in launching new businesses, many entrepreneurs do the opposite of spending 80% of their time on selling. If you’re not doing it, you’re wasting time, energy, effort and resources because that’s what it takes to create a successful company.

If your sales generating model isn’t running well, your core is not right. How will you get anywhere if you don’t have any money coming in? All the books I’ve read lately have communicated that message. I love creating the world’s most democratic workplace and pushing that to the next level, but what comes first is sales.

I’m totally comfortable saying that, and I’m glad that many other successful entrepreneurs articulate the same thing. If you don’t sell, you don’t impact people’s lives. I don’t believe that people who read free lessons have as much impact as the people who buy. Very simply, if we don’t get people to buy, we’re not impacting people’s lives.

I will quote his point directly from his book.

It doesn’t matter what sort of expertise you bring into a new venture, whether you area numbers person, a people person, or a systems person, to be truly effective in a startup you must become your business’ first and foremost expert at selling. There’s only one way to do this: invest more of your time, attention and energy into the selling process. The ratio of time, creativity, and money spent on selling as opposed to other aspects of business should be something like 80/20.

How did he learn this lesson? After his first success with a product idea, he and JSN (his partner and mentor) worked together almost every other day. Because he’s a high achiever, Michael Masterson was driven by a view to improving their product.

“How do you know the product needs any improvement?” JSN asked. “I just know it does,” Michael said.

When JSN asked Michael Masterson whether their customers had actually asked for or complained about any of these things, Michael Masterson said, “No, not yet…maybe they will…well, I’m pretty sure they will –these are obvious improvements…”

JSN’s advice? When they start complaining, you can start talking about their complaints but before that, you shouldn’t think about that at all. You should only be thinking about:

1. The sales you are currently making,
2. How many sales you made yesterday
3. How you will make more sales today

That is something most of us don’t think about all the time. I was a victim – it took me 3 years to learn this. We tend to look at things and think, how can we make it better?

Michael Masterson says it very clearly: if you’re not even selling it yet – don’t think about making it better! Think about how to sell more of it.

As a perfectionist, I know how it feels to have 10 ideas to make something better even before it’s released to the market, but sometimes you have to realize that it’s the last thing you should be doing. It’s not about making something better, but about selling something, selling a lot more of it, making the sales process better, and then improving it based on what your customers say.

It takes a different way of doing things – many experienced people have noticed the lack of emphasis on sales because it’s perceived to be something bad or ‘evil’.

What should you be thinking?

Again, I’ll quote from his book. Just what should you be thinking when you think about the sales you are making?

• You should be thinking about how to make more sales.
• Don’t think about what’s wrong or right with the product –there’ll be time for that later.
• Think about how many units you sold last night
• Think about what you are doing today to improve sales

If you make a habit of that, if and when your customers tell you that they want you to improve this product, you will have the money to make all the improvements that they want.

Most business schools don’t appreciate the importance of selling at any time – whether it’s at the beginning, the middle or the end of a customer or company life cycle

That’s the reason why so many MBAs go into business unprepared to take selling seriously. I totally agree with Michael Masterson – it is hard to take selling seriously sometimes. We’ve all been corrupted.

Although Vishen always had a sales-minded attitude, I have had to be corrected because I’ve developed several bad habits even though I’ve gone to 2 business schools. It was good to finally read these things –that it’s not just ‘ok’ but vital for the growth of your business. I’ve come a long way because just 3 years ago, I didn’t ‘get’ it.

If you are not talking about sales and revenues 80% of the time, you are not doing your job as an entrepreneur. Sales and growth are the ultimate measurement. You cannot build your company or your business without achieving those goals. In short, focusing on sales is not bad; it is not evil – it is almost required.

Charlie Munger is the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffet is the CEO. These guys are like demigods in the business world.

Chet Holmes was said to be “America’s greatest sales and marketing executive” by Charlie Munger. He said that he had run 40 businesses and never seen anybody consistently achieve the kind of breakthrough results that Chet Holmes had achieved again and again.

Chet Holmes shared his formula and it is SO simple that I’m already smiling because I know what kind of That’s it? reactions this will get. What he managed to do is pretty impressive.

The company he ran started at about 20M in revenue per year. After one year, he took it to 40M. After another year, he took it to 80M. And by the third year, he took it to 160M. Those are impressive results. It’s more impressive that to grow from 20M to 40M, he didn’t grow his head count nor his resources. Even more amazing is that he did this with basically zero additional funding, capital, or people.

He didn’t share the specific stats for the following years growth so I cannot make them up, though I wish they were also zero because that would be really compelling but I’m sure at some point the company had to grow to handle that kind of increase in volume.

Chet said that he did only one thing to keep growing the company, year by year.

How to gain mastery

He said to pick one thing, and do it better than anything else, and do it better than anyone else. Pick that one item and own it completely. His key message is to forget about being a scatterbrain and chasing 50 different ideas because that doesn’t work.

He said that if you can do 4000 activities 12 times, or 12 activities 4000 times, which would you pick.

4000 activities 12 times might be fun, depending on the situation I wouldn’t want to watch 12 movies 4000 times, for example. But there is a trade-off.

Chet Holmes is a ‘turn-around expert’, and he chose the latter option: 12 activities 4000 times.

In every company he went into, he noticed that people are doing a gazillion things a few times, and they end up mediocre at everything. You might say that what he did was almost brutal: he went in, diving into the sales organization and completely turning it around by asking the question, “How are we going to become masters at sales?”

This is how he achieved breakthrough with no new sales people and no additional resources. He would just figure out how to make the company masters at sales and turn the company around. Find out what the 12 things are, and become world class at doing those.

One thing he emphasized was the importance of weekly trainings. He said it is absolutely vital because it’s the only way to get breakthrough results. In addition, in every training, he would teach the same thing. He wouldn’t repeat himself, of course, but it would all fit into the 12 different activities.

We all start at a mediocre level, and you have some training, and your insights go up. And then you go back to doing some normal stuff, and then slowly work your way up. But, it’s not going to be done just because you have one training session.

Tim Ferriss in his book, the 4 hour workweek figured this out. How do you get to a state of mastery? It’s by intensely doing something over a short amount of time very frequently. He won the World championship in Tango dancing at 4 months, which is amazing considering that some people spend their whole life learning and practicing and don’t get close to that. It’s about the intensity of experience.

Chet Holmes did the same thing. He is also brilliant at sales, which helps because that was how he could train people and turn things around. He would pick one battle, pick a strategy, master one skill and execute that to the nth degree. I found that interesting because people do many things at once, which I agree is sometimes a danger.

In MindValley, we have identified a few things as our “core DNA” and we are focusing on those. Our weekly trainings began when we read Chet Holmes’ book, the Ultimate Sales Machine, because it was one of the 12 things he said you have to do to grow your business. He said to drag your people into the training, repeat key points, and push your team to implement.

Remember, to achieve results especially on the Internet where there is so much to distract you, replicate a proven system “find 12 things to master and watch your business grow.”

i. Think like a marketer in everything business-related

ii. Measure everything –you need to know the metrics of your business

Today, I’m going into deeper discussion on the second point, measurements.

We are starting measure a lot more, and it is really powerful.

Every industry does this –it’s called benchmarking. We are now finally in a position to start doing that internally, and that is going to dramatically accelerate our success.

If I asked you right now, “What is your shopping cart abandonment rate,” would you be able to answer? In 30 seconds?

If not, that is really bad because this is how you make your money.

The beauty of benchmarking is this: when you have several different websites, on all of them people start out on step one of the buying process. But, you have to know how many people who get to the check out actually make it to the ‘Thank You’ page.

Why? Because it’s crazy not to! This is a very important statistic you need to know, so you want to know if your checkout is world class.

What is your shopping cart abandonment rate?

10%? 20%? Or 50%? Do 10% or 50% of people on that particular website complete the checkout? If you have 4 websites, can you tell in 30seconds which is doing better than the rest?

Even if you have that data available ‘somewhere’, that doesn’t really count because it must be easily accessible. If it takes 10minutes and is a painful, painstaking process, people won’t check on those figures.

Is it worth getting something that takes 3minutes down to 10seconds? YES.

Because if not, you never check the data because there is resistance. You won’t know for a long time if your checkout is broken on Internet Explorer 6.0, for example.

If you had this data at hand, you could check all the time and instantly see if there was a problem, if your sales suddenly dropped to 10% from an average of 50%. You could see that you have a problem on a particular website, and then you could go in and fix it. It’s easy to do. That is what I mean by world class benchmarking.

If you knew all this important information instantly, you could also add industry averages to your equations. Or maybe you would just know that the industry shopping cart abandonment rate is 50%, and you would then analyze and instantly know how your business is doing.

The fact is, any time that it’s hard to get data, you get lazy. But, if you don’t do this, your checkout can be broken for three months and you wouldn’t know it. Doing it manually is just not good enough.

If it’s not easy and effortless, people just don’t do it. And if people don’t do it, you don’t know if you’re world class.

Lesson consumption.

Without a little more effort, you can probably track this way better than you are doing right now. You want to be able to know if you are world class in email deliverability and/or in email copywriting.

• Look at the percentage of people you email.
• You want to be able to instantly see which website is doing well, and which isn’t.
• When you know those figures, that is cool. ‘Not cool’ is not having any idea at all.

On which of your sites is Lesson 1 working better, A or B?

And what does ‘good’ even mean in relation to all these?

When you have these answers, you can immediately improve your business. You want to be able to see all these facts and make the comparisons. Only such analytics can quickly tell you if your checkout really is working or if you need to improve your emails for any one of your websites.

Benchmarking is a very powerful tool to have at your fingertips, especially when you launch new businesses. When you can just go straight in and see these graphs, it can be crazy powerful stuff.

Another thing that could potentially be tested with foresight is your auto-responder. Perhaps you have always had the hypothesis that email deliverability is better on one provider than another –and maybe you’ve never checked it because of lack of proper data.

When you make all of your money via email, imagine if emails from A get read 25% more times than emails from B. Which would you want to use? By making the right choice after testing and measuring, your whole business would grow in revenue and profit overnight.

That is the power of collecting these numbers.

World-class benchmarking and world-class measuring will sky-rocket your innovation because when you have this data in front of you, the moment you compare and see a drastic difference you will take action.

Incremental improvement is the single fastest way to drive revenue.

Study the Toyota way.

How did they become a world-class car manufacturer? Toyota does this: continuous improvement.

With Kaizen and all the other systems they have put in place, this is what they do:

• They benchmark.
• They measure.
• They improve.
• They fix.

Now, online measurement is really hard –-a lot of the time, you don’t get Google analytics and your E-commerce figures to sync. The good thing is though, it doesn’t matter when you benchmark because the same floor applies to all of them.

This kind of benchmarking will help you to very rapidly move ahead.

Other core questions

How long does it take people to buy from your websites, after they have signed up? Is it one day? 3 days? 8, 21, 30? What are the figures by website?

You may not know the answer today but imagine knowing that people from Website A buy after 4 days, from Website B buy after 21 days, etc. Again, measuring shows you the power and effectiveness of which site is better at getting customers to buy.

Benchmarking like a world-class business will really take you to the next level and can be game changing for your business when you have to right data on which to take action. How are you measuring?