OIL 007: An Interview with Laura Wilson on How to Get the Lifestyle of Your Dreams

OIL 007: AN INTERVIEW WITH LAURA WILSON ON HOW TO GET THE LIFESTYLE OF YOUR DREAMS

Trent Dyrsmid: Hey everybody! This is Trent Dyrsmid with episode no. 7 on the Online Income Lab podcast. And I am super excited about my guest on the show today. Her name is Laura Wilson. And she is gonna come to us from over in England. So I guess this is my first international interview, we’ve gone global here on the Online Income Lab podcast.

So Laura, thank you very much for being on the show and welcome aboard.

Laura Wilson: Hi Trent! Lovely to be here. Thanks so much.

T: So I don’t even remember at this point how I first came across. Oh actually I do remember as a matter of fact. I came across Laura becuase I have been researching affiliate management software and one of the things that I was looking or am looking at and subsequently purchased for my Niche Site Mastery membership site is something by the name of Digital Access Pass and as a part of my research I was looking at testimonials and Laura, I guess is a user of the product, and then put up a video testimonial and that led me to her site. And she had a whole lot of personality on that video I thought this is pretty funny. I think you’re talking, you’re supposed to talk about the content dripping or something.

L: Yeah.

T: I might have to put a link to the video under the podcast so that people know what you are laughing about.

L: Well yeah. Just to give a bit of a background digital access pass was a bit of software that I’ve spent a few weeks of researching affiliate software. I was really compelled to do this video review because I’ve spent all this time researching and thought digital access pass is the best.

And one of the best features of buying the software is this drip feed thing. And I rumbled on my little video for about 10 minutes talking about everything else except for the drip feed. And then remembered after a session to put an end so I have these kinds of cuts away saying that I have to mention the drip feeds. Yes, quite a strange little video but it seems to be popular it’s gone a bit of a bar in this video just pretty cool actually.

T: Really? It’s a little bit player witch.

L: And isn’t it?

T: Alright listen. Let’s kinda hop in to this because I wanna find out first of all same question I ask everyone is what brought you, how did you learn about the fact that you could make money online? Kinda what got you into it? And what did you go to school for? What were you doing beforehand?

L: Ok. Well, my journey into online business or online marketing was in around 2007, late 2007 or 2008. And at that time I was working in a university in Plymouth in Devon in UK really. And I’ve been there for about 7 years managing the equality laws. I basically write legal policies for the university which was rather dry, rather bland and I was at the stage where I was thinking to myself, in my late 20’s is this the job for the rest of my life? And that thought just didn’t really turn me on you know so I read a book by Brain Tracy, don’t know if you’ve read it Trent, called Maximum Achievement. And in the book, have you heard of it already?

T: No. I’m very familiar with Brian Tracy but I haven’t read that book yet. Maybe I should be.

L: You know Brian Tracy, you know stuffs fantastic. This book in my view is one of the best. And I knew when I kind of started in the first few pages of the book that this was gonna be a very interactive book. I have to go out and do lots of exercises and actions. So I made a commitment to myself at the beginning of the book to do whatever Brian Tracy suggested so that was what I did. Got to the end of the book and had completed all these self reflection exercises. In a nutshell the premise of the book was if you knew you could have failed in something what would you do?

And I always loved singing, music and dance and kind of in the back of mind I had this dream I wanted to be a singer but thought you know like everyone does with their dreams oh I can’t do that, I’m not good enough or I don’t have the money or I don’t have time. We all got a hundred excuses for why we can’t do the things that we really, really love to do. And I thought right, I’m gonna make a commitment to make this happen. And so having done these exercises I established at the end of the book that I would need to do a forlorn vocal performance course in order to join a band. That was my ultimate goal. I wanted to join a band and be a lead singer. So having made this comment and I thought I’m gonna make this happen so the next few months I got to work on researching vocal performance courses and basically how to fast track getting into a band. And to cut the long story short, I gave up my job or took an extended unpaid leave from my job much to my bosses’ complete bemusement. They had no idea I wanted to become a singer as did none of my family at that time.

So but I manage to persuade them to give me 6 months of work unpaid leave. I moved to London to do this vocal performance course. Now this was like pretty scary for me coz I then now have no money. And I’m sure you know London’s a pretty expensive city to live. So I’d gone from relatively low overheads living at home and having quite a good, secure job to having no income and living in very expensive London. So my savings were kinda going down. And I thought to myself if I’m here, I’m doing this vocal performance course which was amazing, I’m so glad I did it. I thought I really need to make the best of my time in London because my courses are any like 20 hours a week.

So with the rest of my time I went to every free business person relevant seminar going and in London there’s pretty about 2 or 3 a week. So I just started going to all these business seminars and that’s where I became totally inspired by online business. And I’ll tell you why. I remember meeting a man called Mark Anastazin who’s quite a big UK internet marketer. Probably the biggest guy around. He holds a lot of seminars. I was at his seminars and I remember this young lad, I can’t remember his name but he was only about 21 or 22 at that time, talking on stage about how he had created a product and by product it was literally like a pdf book. So I downloaded a book and created a 1 page website with a buy now button and he was selling this pdf and he was making, he was selling it for $47 and he was making about $10,000 a month with this website. And that would just completely blew my mind. I’d never heard of anything like this before.

I’ve obviously seen, you know we’ve all seen these long sales letters online but I didn’t really, unlike most people I just thought no one’s ever gonna buy from this. They don’t work. So I had no idea that you could make this kind of money online. But it really struck a chord at me because I’ve worked previously in telesales for about 5 years and I love that job but there was no leverage in it. Every customer I spoke to from which I’m trying to sell whether it’s the insurance product or any other type of product it was a one is to one transaction though I would spend 15 minutes of my time talking and that person on the other end of the phone either bought or they didn’t. If they bought, great. If they didn’t that was 15 minutes of my time gone, never to be had again. And I was doing that for 4 hours a day everyday.

So to me I was like this is like a telesales conversation but you do the work once and then it sells for you forever more so I kind of completely got the leverage and just thought this is for me. There and then I just made the decision that this is what I need to get into. So it kind of started from there really Trent and I just got back researching and you know aberrantly go into more seminars and getting to know people in the business. And starting my step up from there really.

T: That is absolutely a fascinating story. And there’s a couple of key lessons in there that I really want my listeners to grasp. No. 1 the thing that stood out for me in your answer was the mental game and I wrote a post about this recently, something about how intense is your personal desperation or something like that. But I think that was the title of it. It’s one of the most important recent post I’ll put a link to under this. And it really talked about how bad do you want something. Because you can have all the strategies and the technics and the how to do this and you can buy all the courses that teach you how to make money online but if you’re not willing to get rid of your tv you’re not likely to change your life. Because tv or going to the pub or whatever provides instant gratification and there isn’t a lot of instant gratification in the beginning of an internet marketer’s career. Would you say that that’s a fair statement?

L: I’d say that’s a very fair statement. There’s a lot of frustration at the learning curve and a lot of time spent alone in front of the laptop in the beginning.

T: Yeah. Laura sorry something’s just happened to your sound, it’s a bit odd. Did you move your mic at all?

L: Ah no. Is that better?

T: Good.

L: Ok great. Yeah I would say it’s definitely hard to start with but then you know it’s the same with anything Trent, isn’t it? There is a big learning curve but the pay off for me 3 years down the line and so many people I know is definitely well worth it.

T: Yeah. And the same for me and the people that I know is that we’ve all gone to have just the most incredible lifestyles.

So another key lesson that I’m really surprised that you grasped so early on and of course I say that not knowing really anything about your training or business but you mentioned the word leverage. And it’s such a powerful word in business because if you, you know the thing about a job no matter how much they pay you for the job there’s not, unless you’re proactively bringing in some millions of dollars you’ve got some leverage. But in a typical person’s life you’re trading your time for a finite amount of money. And even if you’re in sales which I spent my entire offline career in sales yeah you can do fairly well but as soon as you stop doing the money stops coming in. Just like you said when you were in the telesales, you could be the best telesales person in the world. And you could close a hundred percent of the people you talk to but when you’re not at work you’re not making any money.

L: Exactly.

T: So you have to keep going back to work. It’s just this never ending time sucking machine. And the joy of online courses and you nailed it, you can build these sales pages or niche sites or ads, just call them online assets or oil wells if you will, they just keep on pumping out oil and pumping out oil and pumping out oil for in some cases years. I got 1 site it’s been making money for 10 years.

L: Well exactly that’s the thing. And it’s surprising, I don’t know about you, but some of the affiliate things that I put up, just small little affiliate sites that maybe I’ve spent a couple of hours doing, starting up, is still bringing in money 3 or 4 years down the line. And I never thought it’d make any money. It’s just a little experiment you know. They’ve consistently generated income for a couple of hours work. You know that’s the equivalent of 2 hours tv watching over an evening.

T: Yeah absolutely it is. Ok so let’s go back to your story. So you had the courage to quit your job and move to London to pursue your first dream. So what did you do and I don’t wanna get too far into pursuing the singing career because this is really a show about making money online so stop me if I’m headed down the wrong direction. But when in London you started attending these events and you started getting excited about the internet, how soon into the 6 months did that happen?

L: Well I didn’t start setting up online in that 6 months. I was just in the researching phase and getting ideas together and just kind of malling over my mind. I focused on the singing but then I moved back to Plymouth and instead of, because I always do part time jobs so instead of resuming both my part time jobs I just took on the university job that I’d left. And I said to myself I’m going to spend the rest of my time focusing on business. And that was when I started setting the business side of things up.

T: Ok and by the way your sound is gone a bit of a ride again. I don’t know if your mic is doing but it’s strange.

L: How is that? Is it any better?

T: A little bit. I think we’re probably gonna have to model through and do the best we can.

L: Ok let me take my microphone out. Let me test this.

T: Ok

L: How is that Trent? Is that any better?

T: Actually yeah that is quite a bit better. The funny rings now is gone.

L: Ok great. Let’s do this.

T: Alright. So your back now in Devon I believe, did you say Devon, Plymouth?

L: Yeah

T: And so now you’re starting to study the online thing. What did you go after first? Coz at this point you’re not making a dime online, you’re completely green, you’re full of enthusiasm, but do you have a strategy?

L: Yes I found a website called site build it which is kind of like the equivalent of the university of online marketing I guess. It’s very white hat, very what’s the word, it’s very thorough in teaching how to set up little niche websites that are very heavily search engine optimized content based. And it’s a fantastic tool. I don’t know how I came across it. It wasn’t a marketing seminar. You know what it’s like online you find 1 website and you come across others so I just find site build it. And bought a packaged which taught how to set up these niche websites which is what I did.

So I set to work on creating my first main website which is alkalinediethealthtips.com in the health niche. And yeah kinda took it from there really so I started focusing on this for the first 2 years and to start with because it was based around search engine optimization which is as you know it is more of a long term strategy. You don’t, for your viewers I don’t know how much they know about SEO but it’s not instant like say pay per click or some of this smaller affiliate niche sites that highly focus on their rise on the search engine quickly. My goal was to create a long term sustainable authority website. So to start with certainly for the first few months my website wasn’t ranking anywhere. I was producing all this content and not see much result. It was for me at that time quite hard to stay most of the time focus, not having any income but I kept at it. And it’s paid off now. This is good.

But I think just going back quickly to the point Trent about exchanging time for money I’ve read a book by Robert Kiyosaki called The Cash Flow Quadrant. And in there he talked about the 4 types or 4 ways of making money. Being employed which I was before and most people here are, self-employed and the thing is I didn’t want to become self-employed because in my mind and as Robert Kiyosaki explained in the book, it’s still exchanging time for money even if you’re your own boss as you and I both know. Sometimes that means working even more hours and not having the same benefits as you do get in the job so in many cases being self-employed is a worst type situation than being employed. So then Robert talked about these other 2 sides of the quadrant which are being a business owner and an investor. And the business owner appealed to me. And that is the premise that you cut the link between exchanging your time for money. So what you do to make money and how you spend your time are totally separate. So in my mind I’m thinking if I can fathom this situation that means I can spend my time doing the things I love while still generating this relatively passive income so that was my goal. So with alkaline diet health tips that was how I was setting up that site.

Trent, of course of doing that and while working at my job still then I have set up a number of affiliate sites and I was just really trying to hone my skills and stay focus and getting it all together. But my point is that was always my goal to have a situation where my time and money were not linked. And I think for people starting out and for your listeners if there’s one massive tip I can give is to keep that in mind. And along the way I found that there were people coming to me saying “Can you coach? Can you consult?” And once that’s appealing coz sometimes I was offered quite high fees to consult and do you know kind of work for the people but again it was going back to, it was unleverage. So I would say keep focused, no. 1, keep that in mind the cutting the link between exchanging your time for money and not getting swayed by people. Know your customers well is another massive one. Know your customers and don’t be afraid to turn down people who are not a good fit for your business. Kind of a bit off the original topic but I just thought.

T: It’s ok. So I wanna make sure that the listeners and me understand exactly what your life look back then because it’s so awesome we find people in media and the books and so forth that are successful and the question is what was it like in the beginning. How did you get there? So you’ve come back, did you go back to the old job when you came back from your 6 months in London?

L: Yeah I went back to the old job but I only worked there part time then so I was spending the rest of my time building this business.

T: Ok so that’s one of the key take aways that I wanted my listeners to hear is that unless you wanna give up everything in your life besides sleep, something needs to give initially you would agree to take the time to build the assets which ultimately are gonna give you even more time.

L: Yes.

T: So you went back, you took a pay cut, you sacrificed something in the short term so that you could invest in alkaline diet health tips blog. How long did it take for that, coz I don’t typically suggest people to start with an authority site because it takes so long. But for you, how long did it take you to get that to the point where it was say making you a thousand dollars a month?

L: It took about a year and a half.

T: Ok. And if you don’t mind my asking now that is how old now?

L: 3 years old.

T: 3 years. Ok and how much income does it produce on average now?

L: On average now about $2,000 a month. Still not massive but there’s a lot I can do. There’s a lot of bites I could do. I did a product launch last year and to be honest Trent I launched that and started making this $2,000 a month. And there’s so much more I can do now. To be honest, I kind of left it for a little while and started focusing on the other side of my business which is the marketing side. And I just left that on take over and I’m about to do another big re-launch of that site with a lot of things kind of more optimized so we say.

T: Terrific. Now you’re using Jeff Walker’s product launch formula for that?

L: Well I used product launch formula at first launch, yes, and you know what? Going through that whole launch process was such a massive learning curve. It really was. So using product launch formula again however I’ll also be using other bits and bobs. Things like Frank Keren’s mass control. I’m gonna be using from the videos and a couple of high end programs I bought along the way as well. But I certainly learned loads from doing going through the product launch process.

T: Yeah I have the course as well and it’s a massive amount of context I will say.

L: Yeah.

T: Ok. So once you started to work as you got this other thing called the I brand boost.

L: Yeah.

T: That’s what took your focus off of the alkaline site for a while or when you talked about other things or was it building these sites?

L: Yeah. Well I was building small affiliate sites as well. About 1 a month, a combination of just straight youtube videos that are optimized with my affiliate linking. So the digital access pass video that you saw that you mentioned at the beginning, literally that was just a 20 minute video that I recorded, uploaded to youtube, added my affiliate link and I’ve been making about $200 a month since.

T: That’s brilliant. You’re the first guest I’ve had on the show who’s actually monetized or we’ve talked about monetization of youtube. So we need to hang out on this topic for a second.

L: Youtube is a great monetization tool for me. I’ve made quite a bit of money from youtube.

T: Alright. Well let’s get in to that a bit more. Let’s, throw me some other example coz I don’t even know what questions to ask you on that coz I don’t know what you’ve done with it.

L: Ok. Well I’ll tell you one of the first things that I’ve done on the first videos that I through right out and this is just an illustration that youtube is fantastic for me in making money. Coz if I did this to make money then anyone can. A product called discus fish secrets about tropical fish, how to keep this tropical fish good discus fish. And I literally as one Friday afternoon, I remember it well about a couple of years ago, I sat at home and I had literally a couple of hours before I was gonna go to the gym I thought “what can I do?” And I got a whole like massive to do list for my alkaline site, my other work, but I thought you know I just can’t be bothered to doing any of that. What can I do that I could start now and I could finish in 2 hours. So I had like the whole project complete in 2 hours. And I thought I’m gonna do an affiliate product promotion.

So literally I just went to click bank and spent about 20 minutes researching a product, came across this tropical fish niche. Don’t know how but it came up in one of the highly monetized search filters so I picked that, looked through the sales. It looked pretty good, had no idea how it would convert whether it would work or not. And I’m certainly no expert in tropical fish whatsoever. But the sales looked good to me. Product was about, I think it was $27 with a 50% commission. So I picked that and just took screen shots of the sales letter so literally I just scrolled down and took like 10 separate screen shots, uploaded it, run it into a movie, created an eye movie video which was again literally just screen shots of the sales letter because I didn’t wanna, I couldn’t speak in front of the camera about this because I had no knowledge about tropical fish. I didn’t wanna produce a powerpoint coz it will take too much time so I just uploaded it these screen shots into a video, uploaded it to youtube, optimized, that’s the key thing, optimized keywords and added my affiliate link.

T: How did you do that? How did you optimize it for the keywords? Is that just the tagging in youtube?

L: Yes. So this is important. You do need to know about keyword research which I’m good at keyword research. I spent a good 6 months or so learning the process so it’s very quick for me to go into google into the keyword tool and see how many searches there were per month for these terms around discus fish. So I found there were 4 main keywords, things like discus fish breeding, discus fish feeding and a couple of others. So I then, in youtube I put that in the title tag, in the description and in the tags, the actual tags at the bottom of the video and I have an affiliate domain as well so affording domain. And that was it basically. Uploaded this video, added my affiliate link and the optimization of the keywords and that was it. Done and dusted within 2 hours.

T: No backlinking?

L: Backlinking, no backlinking whatsoever, no and left it. Next I left it for about 3 weeks. Went into my click bank account, checked it, no sales. I thought that’s a darn I’m not gonna make any money. Over the next month I think I saw 1 or 2 and from then on this was about 2 years ago and I’ve made, I probably sold about 2 a month on average every month. So I’ve made obviously it’s not a huge amount you know I can’t, you know I can’t get more fish with that mate but the premise though, the point is that I’m making about $40 a month every month for about 2 hours work.

T: Yeah on an hourly rate basis that’s pretty high.

L: Yeah actually Trent I mean I think if you type in discus fish secrets in youtube you’ll see this video which is just so less mean job, very very amateur, anyone can do it and it’s making money. So that’s pretty a very worse example of one of my youtube affiliate products. I also do more me talking to camera type for the products that I actually use myself and really love and endorse like digital access pass. Also I think like James Dyson’s optimized press I’m making $250 a month from that. Again just

T: Using youtube?

L: Purely youtube, yes.

T: Right. Brialliant absolutely. This is one of the little nuggets that I love to find in an interview like this because I know that there are people listening to this podcast right now and the thought of building a website for them might be overwhelming. They’ve never built one before. But hey making a little youtube video I can do that. Uploading it, I can do that. I don’t need to know anything about backlinking. Learn a little bit about keyword research and I have plenty of resources for keyword research and I’ll put some of those underneath, there’ll be links underneath the podcast here. But this is absolutely, I’ve never done this. This is a naturally brilliant idea. I love this and here’s what you could do first if you’ve never done anything before. So I’m on youtube and I’m looking at, I punched in discus fish secrets and the first organic video which has had 58,042 views is dub dub the best discusfishsecrets.info. Is that you?

L: That’s the one yeah.

T: (Plays video with music) We’ll put that on pause there but I’m sure everyone’s gonna check that out. But brilliant. I love that idea. 2 hours and you’re making $400 – $500 a year.

L: Yeah it’s a killer strategy because youtube is the 2nd biggest search engine now in the world which means that there’s so many people like going straight into youtube and typing in there what they’re looking for as supposed to go into google and finding a video and going over to youtube. So take advantage of that because it’s so much easier to get high ranking position with just a small bit of keyword optimization on youtube than it is on google these days.

T: Oh absolutely because you’ve got you’re not worried about having a new domain with no domain authority you’re on youtube. Youtube’s got a boat load of domain authority and you can very quickly get your video up in the search results and if it’s not I mean it’s so easy to just drive some links to it. Something like Unique Article Wizard.

L: Exactly.

T: Yeah ranking a youtube video is not a difficult thing to do. Brilliant little idea. Love it. Absolutely love that one. Ok so let’s go back to, I’m trying to decide if I wanna dig in, is there anything more significant than youtube that you wanna share or did you just basically replicate this little process that you just explained for a couple of other products and they’ve all worked?

L: Well I would say much strategically no as moved towards more formal motion videos like you say me in front of the camera but just as an overall strategy in terms of my total business, you know I tend to do the whole spectrum of things and have done over the years, so from article marketing to press releases to twitter to facebook to youtube, you know I’ve done a lot of different things online and youtube is really up there with giving me the best exposure for a loads of different things. A lot of people contact me and say I saw your youtube videos really I’m invited on interviews a few times as a result of youtube, got some high end clients directly by people who say they saw my youtube videos, sold my alkaline diet products, did a lot of my launch stuff invite via youtube. I do a lot of customer service in youtube so for me it’s an outstanding strategy.

T: Yeah sounds like it. So how … go ahead.

L: But like when I first started I’m quite introverted. And for me the thought of sitting and talking in front of a camera was very nerve wrecking and the first few videos on it even if it already turned out 2 or 3 minutes long it would take me like an hour or so just to get a couple of minutes of footage. Coz I thought I messed it up, I wasn’t good enough and I sounded really, really stiff and so I would say it’s worth pushing past that because no one will get it to start since it’s a recording and starts on video it’s not a natural thing to do. But it’s worth getting past that coz if you can it puts you into the higher excellence of online marketers because most people are afraid to sit in front of the camera and record a video. So if you are not afraid to do that, if you’re fearless about doing that and you could put it past your personality where as the static text online is 9x out of 10 it’s pretty plain and boring and people don’t remember it. A video is fantastic. You can do it in a lot quicker time and it’s much more effective so I’d say that is a skill worth learning getting over your fear if you have one of doing these videos.

T: Yeah I agree completely. The more times you do it the easier it’s gonna be. Do you have a lot of different youtube channels?

L: I’ve got 4 I think. Yes my I brand boost one is my main one. Alkaline diet 1 and then a couple of different affiliate channels as well.

T: Ok. Well that is very, very interesting. Thank you for sharing that. Let’s talk a little bit about I brand boost. What is that?

L: Ok. Well I brand boost I set up because through the course of setting up my alkaline diet site and my affiliate site and just going through these seminars I suddenly find after a year and a half I had this new set of new skills that I wanted to share to the people. I was receiving a lot of inquiries by my alkaline diet sites for people saying “how did you set up your website?”, “ how are you marketing it?”. And on facebook as well as on twitter. It was kind of a natural reaction really to talk about that. I was also invited to speak at high profile seminars in London about how is making money with my alkaline diet site. So it was kind of like a natural progression rate to set a part of my business dedicated to teaching marketing and social media as well. Because using these things well to market my business and the demand that I was receiving from people allowed me to do that. So I set up Ibrandboost.com and put together video training series, my own name branding. I had to set up simple websites that rank well in google and an SEO training and some free reports. So that’s kind of 1 aspect of I brand boost. And then I also do search engine optimization and online branding and social media marketing for some high end local clients.

Now this is kind of exchanging my time for money but the way I’m working it Trent is I stay clear of small transactions with a lot of customer service. I’m only taking on a few select clients that I kind of find in this. You know I really enjoy it. Making large profile companies that got money to spend and that really utilize well the schemes that I’m able to offer. So that’s the other half of my business.

T: Interesting. So with I brand boost so it sounds like, I’m just really trying to make sure that I and the listeners understand, so it is a platform for you to communicate your online marketing expertise. And you have a free, I’m on the home page now, and there’s a free opt-in. So if someone just stumbles across this page and they opt-in they get their free report what do you do with them next? Is there a monetization strategy behind that?

L: Well I promote different affiliate products and seminars. And at the moment I’m in the middle of, I’m nearly finished with my next product launch which is called The Online Branding Academy which is gonna be a 2 month, roughly 2-month, 8-week training on how to go from zero to a fully working wordpress website that’s making money with membership site kind of back end and a good sales funnel.

T: Interesting.

L: That’s what I’m about to launch at the next couple of months. But generally from that site it’s just things that I recommend so hey I’ve just discovered digital access pass, I’ve created this youtube video, go and check it out. And of the videos I produce, the affiliate videos are based upon questions and emails I get from my subscribers saying “you know what, I’m trying to set up a membership site I’ve no clue how to start. What have you used? What do you recommend? Can you give any advice?” And then if I’ve got time I’ll just do a video about it if not, I mean I’m sure you know, some questions come on time and again so I just go and do the research and create a video on it.

T: Yeah absolutely. That’s one of the things that I’m gonna be rolling out within Niche Site Mastery very shortly is video answers to certain questions that come up over and over and over again so they’re all in one library in the research book.

So the whole process of your creating your online presence and the I brand boost sounds like that you’re directly soliciting them, you ended up getting some high profile clients. Is that correct?

L: Yes.

T: Interesting. So how often does that happen? How long does those engagements usually last and what portion of your income do you think comes from working with clients?

L: Working with clients 90% of my income from that time. But that’s because I’ve been very, very selective with who I take on. So like I said I only take on high end clients. I got into a bit of a trap about a year ago where I was receiving especially from speaking at big London seminars I was getting maybe 3 inquiries a day from people saying “can you set up a website?”, “can you do this for me?”, “can you coach me?” and I was tempted to say yes to it all. And then I started becoming, a lot of them were time wasting, not time wasting but not a good fit for me. You know my skills now are quite high not best suited to teach one on one, someone how to install a wordpress. You know and it’s not in my view the best way to spend your money because there’s copious, a mine of youtube videos that will show you. So hey me, a hundred bucks an hour when there’s videos out there. So I started becoming more selective and now really I’m only working with clients who are typically spending a lot of money on things like google adwords. Maybe $10,000 a month for adwords and I can reduce that spend by doing SEO. So my job now with my offline companies is to get them to the top of google and anywhere else where people might be looking for them online with SEO and social media and online branding. So yes because I happen to be selective and I’ve tend to turn down 9 out of 10 inquiries I receive because they’re just not a good fit for me, the people I have taken on is a good income now.

T: Terrific. And it gives you the flexibility to work wherever you wanna work. I don’t imagine you do meet or do you have to do meetings with these people? Or are they all over skype and online?

L: Well a couple of my clients once one because they’re local and I just enjoy really working for them. You know they’re an absolutely pleasure to work with. Before when I wasn’t really specific and really honed in to who I can best serve and who is best gonna benefit from the skills I have to offer and vice versa it was a pain you know meeting with people. Now because I’ve been very clear naturally I wrote down a big long list what, I can’t remember who coined the term Evan Pagan or Frank Hern, just write down a customer avatar, who is your ideal customer, what is their income, what business are they in, how old are they, what are their demographics, what family life they have. You know write down a very, very specific list of attributes of your ideal customer. And because I’ve done that and I’m now very clear my ideal customer is an absolute joy to work with because we’re so suited. So I’m quite happy to go on a meet. I meet on average once a month with my clients which is fine you know. If I’m away somewhere else around the world then generally I’m home 1 week in a month so.

T: Yeah interesting. So the speaking seminars or speaking engagements that you picked up along the way, and I just wanna touch on this briefly in case anyone here is listening who does have a craving to do that, I have a number of friends that speak in the internet marketing space and for them it’s very lucrative. They have their products that they sell from stage and they convert a large percentage of the room. One friend of mine, Deborah, she will go on and speak and she’s gonna make $30,000 in a day from the stage. So for you, first of all, how did you get the speaking gigs? Was it a by-product of everything else you’re doing and people simply approach you or did you have a strategy for that?

L: I’d like to say I had a strategy but no it’s just got approached from my own strategy, you know my own online branding strategies that were working. I just had a few people contact me and say I like your work, you seem to know what you do, you seem to know what you’re doing, you seem very knowledgeable, come and speak. I think one of the things that has probably stood out is the, firstly my videos but secondly I do spend a lot of time researching. I’m a massive researcher and I will look at things thoroughly so when I put that video review on something it’s generally good. Not to blow my own trumpet but I’ve done the legwork, I’ve done the research so the people who have asked me to speak on their gigs have seen the video like digital access pass review and said ok she knows her stuff, you know when you speak on that topic.

I’m also a bit of audacity as well like one person who I spoke for, Mark Kanastazi whose seminar I went to back in 2007 and 2008, one of the first marketing seminars that I went to, and he’s now a good friend. I just emailed him every few months for about a year and a half saying can I come and speak in your gigs? And he would say “no Laura, you know, no, no everytime”. And this seminar came up at the beginning of this year called The Ultimate Facebook Marketing Seminar and I emailed him again and said “Mark, can I come and speak at your gig?. You know I’m making a fabulous money on Facebook.” And he said “no, sorry we’ve got other speakers, maybe next time”. So this was maybe like the 5th time he said no to me speaking. And then about a week before the event one of his speakers dropped out so he contacted me and said “will you come and speak?” So I was like “yeah fine”. So I made it easy for him you know, I was there the last minute and spoke.

So that was good I think for anything you have to be persistent. You have to not be afraid of rejection time and time again which I learned from telesales. You know, getting a hundred no’s a day everyday for 4 years. Hard to do on rejections so I was not afraid to keep asking, keep asking for what I wanted. And I wanted to speak in one of his gigs and I got to which was cool.

T: And that is a very, very key lesson right there. Most people give up way too soon lest the expression you know the guy digging in the mine for the gold usually stops an inch shy of the gold and the next guy that comes in picks up where he left his stuff digs for the day and gets the gold. Whether your business is online or off there is one that again separates people who succeed from people who don’t. And that is their ability to keep going in the absence of immediate results. And that goes back to the whole unplugging the tv thing. People love watching tv because you get instant gratification. Building websites, building niche sites, building a product that you’re gonna launch, building youtube videos there is no instant gratification.

But boy oh boy the gratification when it comes to start into place is really fantastic. And then of course you make this transition from the employed to being the business owner and now you’ve detached your time from your income and you have all the much more time to create. And now you have the confidence because you know it works to keep creating more and more and more stringent income for yourself and your lifestyle just gets better and better and better and better. And all of that, none of that would have happened without the fortitude to keep on going in the absence of immediate results. And that cannot drive that home enough for everyone who’s listening to this not necessarily have success online that they want to.

L: I think you’re absolutely right. I think like you mentioned earlier mindset is so incredibly important because still even in 2011 everyone’s online but the majority of people still seem to think that internet marketing is a scam and no one can make money online. You know for a couple of years all my family was, you know they were horrified when I said I was gonna eventually give up my well paid job.

T: I’m sure they were.

L: You know they were mortified that I was gonna do that and I took the leap and left my job before I was even earning a massive amount online. And they thought I was mad. And you know what it would have been the easiest thing for me to say well I gave it a good try but I’m in a recently well paid job I’ll get attention in in 30 years. I get holiday pay, it’s not too bad I’ll stay. You know, but that would be settling for mediocrity. You’ve got one life and you’ve got to live it. You got to take risk and you’ve gotta have that confidence in yourself because at the end of the day the one thing that kept me going was look if I’m gonna make it, it stands for me. My family was skeptical and my friends were skeptical but who are they to judge because if you’ve got confidence in your ability, if you know that you’re gonna make it work come hell or high water, then it will work. The only way it’s not gonna work is if you stop and if you give it up. Then that’s failure and until you give up it’s just a learning curve and you keep going and keep going. But the beauty is in this business is once you hit it and you find something that works then that’s a residual income. You do that work once and then it’s gonna bring you money forever more maybe not forever more but possibly for a few months or a few years. And in that time when that’s giving you money passively you can be building the next online income. So it’s cumulative rather than I work for an hour I get paid $30, 50 pounds, a hundred pounds. You know I’ve got friends earning 500 pounds an hour. Great!

T: We had a complete drop of audio there. So you said friends that are making 500 pounds an hour?

L: Yeah and you know that’s good but it’s still the same old problem. They stop working and they don’t get paid anymore so there’s no freedom in that in my mind.

T: Correct.

L: So I think it’s about having the confidence, having the persistence and the tenacity to just make it happen whatever. And also a third thing, I don’t think many people talk about but I think it’s equally important and that’s about having permission. Sometimes when I talk about my health website people ask “are you a qualified doctor?” I say no. “What are your qualifications?” Well, my qualifications are that I live a healthy lifestyle. I used to be a smoker. I used to be slightly overweight. I used to be unhealthy and unfit. Now I’m fit, healthy, I’m a marathon runner, I train at the gym 6 days a week, I’m a singer, I’m a dancer, I live a very healthy lifestyle. That’s my qualifications if you like. And people say “how can you do that?” “How can you write a book on health and who says that you can do that?” People always think that you need permission. You don’t need permission. You need to give yourself permission. No one’s gonna come up to you and say “you know what? Well done. You’ve been working in your job for 10 years. Or you’ve been doing x y and that for 5 years. You’ve now gotten enough experience to call yourself an expert so here’s a certificate saying that you’re an expert. Go out and teach it to the world.” And that’s not gonna happen. You need to give yourself permission to go out and do it. And by setting that intention naturally just putting them you know, creating an e-book, creating a video series, that simple website you gain authority and you gain that expert status from taking the action rather than the other way around.

T: I couldn’t agree more and I love that you’ve mentioned that because the other podcast that’s gonna be published either just before this one or just after this one, it’s already recorded I was just in the editing process, is with a fellow who has 10 different websites. Each one of them is a niche and each one of them is a how to course on a topic that he is not a direct expert in. But yet they make him about $10,000 a month in aggregate. And my question to him was “well, what gives you the, I didn’t phrase it this way but from the skeptics point of view they’ll say it, what gives you the right to say you’re an expert with this?” He says it’s simple, “I went to Amazon, I bought a bunch of books, I read them all, I took the best ideas from all the books, I created my own video course and the by-product of all of that study was I became an expert.” You know what? Isn’t that what most authors do? They’re looking at what knowledge is already out there. They’re thinking how can I put my unique twist to this coz all of us have some level of experiences, some level of something that allows us to make, to bring unique angle to knowledge that already exist.

L: Yes.

T: But there is an, Amazon for example, there is a 160,000 books on relationships, a 160,000. Did every one of those books bring a new idea to the marketplace that it never been written about before? I’m thinking maybe not. But yet the publishers keep cranking the book so why is that? Because of the result. Because people want the information one format or another.

So I love that you mentioned that because that is the huge limiting belief for people thinking that’s great Trent you created your own course, the Niche Site Mastery, but I’m not an expert yet. What could I do? What course could I create because I mean, I love information products, the profit margins are very high. If you pick the right niche they will sell. Just become an expert at something. Study it, it’s not that hard to do. The average person, you know, knows less than nothing about a topic so if you have 50 hours or 20 hours or 10 hours of studying you’ll know a whole lot more than they do. And that gives you every right to be considered to be an expert for that particular topic. I mean maybe if you’re gonna be a brain surgeon you might need more than 10 hours of training but you get the idea.

L: Yeah well exactly. I mean that was kind of my part in so becoming known in this online branding expert. I never set out to be labeled that but that’s kind of what I’ve become to be known at. And this is how I did it right. I went to Amazon and bought the top 6 books that I could find on online marketing and social media marketing and on online branding. And also I’ve set about reading them I got this 1 book called The Social Media Bible which is this huge book, massive book. It’s about 1,000 pages and it weighs about 2 kg. And so I started reading this book and also I’d made a promise to myself that I was gonna start with my I brand boost youtube channel. And I was gonna produce, I wanted to produce I think 30 videos in 2 months so 1 new video every other day. And I was thinking what to put on this channel. I was really kinda wracking my brain thinking what I could produce but I didn’t wanna spend ages with powerpoint and similar to discus fish secrets. I wanted to be able to do something quickly that I could produce you know 10 minutes, 10 minutes here and there every other day. So I combined the 2 things, I combined my researching with my Amazon books and create new youtube videos so what I did was I just read a new chapter, a new couple of pages from this social media bible, literally just me to camera in my bedroom at home of all places, reading a chapter from the social media bible. And I did that and I got loads of exposure from that and all of a sudden people said you’re overseeing an online branding expert. And I thought I sat here reading from a book.

T: Wait a minute, wait a minute. I gotta jump in here. You mean you just read into the camera or you’ve read it and then re-phrased what you learned in your own words?

L: No. I got the book and I was reading straight from the book into the camera and that was my video. And I got loads of inquiries people saying you’re overseeing an expert and furthermore I had, are you still there Trent?

T: Yeah I’m still here.

L: Ok sorry. I had the author of the book, Lon Safco, a massive online marketer I had no idea how big he was but I should have done by the fact that he wrote this mammoth book, he contacted me and said “can I interview you?” “Will you come and speak at seminar?” I couldn’t come and speak to the seminar because he was at the other side of the world and I was quite busy at that time but he said “I wanna, can I include your affiliate link for my products in your videos?” So that’s what I did.

T: So the author of a book, you sit in front of a camera, read his book into a camera, he somehow gets wind of this and wants you to come speak at his seminar?

L: Yes.

T: If that is not the single greatest lesson of this entire podcast I don’t know what is. I’ve got to make sure that people listen to 57 minutes in this podcast because that is absolutely brilliant. And self included people would think you’re out of your rock. How are you gonna position yourself an expert by reading out of a book? But you know what, I think the take away is that you had the courage to do something that nobody else would do. They don’t want to put themselves on camera. They just want to make a boring powerpoint presentation so what it’s a unique and this is the reason to be honest I contacted you. You have a great personality. You’re hilarious on your youtube videos. People like that. People wanna be entertained more than they wanna be educated all day long. That’s why the movie industry makes more than. That’s why the video game industry is so big because people just wanna be entertained. So you can entertain and educate at the same time. Hallelujah all the power to you.

L: Yeah.

T: And I’m guessing in your video you were reading out of the book, I mean were you adding a little special Laura sauce in there or were you just…

L: Oh yeah I mean to start with because it’s my new channel and I was still a bit nervous about doing it, I just would read straight. But I usually had, coz I’m so into music, I have like a tune in the background let’s say I’m listening to Hector Rivera’s or this salsa tune is amazing or I was dancing to this last night so I give my own twist and then just go straight in. But then towards the end you know, I became a lot more comfortable and will sit there drinking a beer on a Friday reading a book and would give my, interject with my own views you know.

T: Bingo.

L: Which yeah it worked, it worked. And I did that I think I produced about 15 of those videos and I moved on to other stuff. But I still get comments and posted feedback from those now which is great.

T: It is. And there’s another little golden nugget that you gave right there that I wanna make sure that my listeners get. You read a section out of a book but then you gave your own twist. You’re like “here’s what the author wrote. Here’s what I think about it. Here’s how I think you should use it.” Here’s some way some how put your own personal spin with your personality, your music and your beer and in doing so you endeared the viewer to you.

L: Yeah I guess so.

T: Yeah absolutely brilliant. Laura we are at 59 minutes and 45 seconds of podcast and I try and keep, I’d love to keep talking to you all day long coz this has been an absolute blast. I have more questions but we’re out of time. So I’m probably gonna want to have you back on the show again. You mentioned making a lot of money on facebook. I wanted to talk about that. There’s just so much more that we could talk about but unfortunately we don’t have the time in this particular episode.

So I wanna thank you very much for being on the show. It has been just an absolute pleasure. As I mentioned listeners there’s gonna be links underneath this and you’ll be able to get this podcast. If you’re listening to this on Itunes or anywhere else you can go to the onlineincomelab.com/session007. It’s what I’ll use for this one. And underneath the podcast I’m going to put links to a number of the things that we’ve talked about, several of the youtube videos because I think that for the beginners maybe pursuing that youtube strategy might just be a brilliant way for you to get your feet wet. So there’s gonna be a number of links and resources here under the podcast for you to come and check out. So again it’s onlineincomelab.com/session007 like James Bond and how appropriate that we’ve got someone in jolly old England. Laura, you are hereby nominated as our special agent 007.

L: Yehey!

T: So again thank you very much for being on the show. It’s been an absolute pleasure. We’re gonna have you back soon.

L: Trent I’d love it. I’d love to come back. That’d be great. Yeah.

T: Yap absolutely. Yeah I’m gonna have you back so just gotta get my auto music rolling here and we will talk to you again another day. Thanks everybody so much for checking into the online income lab podcast. If something in this podcast caught your attention or you have more questions please use the comment form below. I love reading the comments and I’m sure that myself and / or Laura will provide an answer to you in a relatively short period of time.