Yes, it’s true – teachers love snow days even more than the students.

I’m no longer teaching school, but I can remember how much I took advantage of the snow days in the early days of creating my business.

So here’s a quick list of 10 things you can do in a single snow day to move your online business forward…

1. Set up an autoresponder at Aweber, and write 4 messages about a topic you know well.
2. Search for Twitter followers in your industry, and introduce yourself to them
3. Create a Facebook fan page to highlight you as an authority on your topic
4. Search Clickbank for a related product that you can review and recommend
5. Set up a free WordPress blog on your own domain and hosting account, and create 3 posts talking about what you know
6. Hold a teleseminar (even if nobody else is listening) answering the top 5 questions people have about what your business provides
7. Create a Camtasia video reviewing a product or service that you are already using
8. Write 3 articles about what you know that can connect people to a solution
9. Create and upload a YouTube video that reviews a product
10. Write a 7 page report about a resource that you find helpful

Time’s ticking – pick one of these and go for it!

Bob Jenkins

p.s. I’ve been thinking about creating a “Snow Day Profits” program for some time now, to walk people through these types of 1-day actions. Would you be interested?  It will need to wait until after SIMPLE – but I’d love to know your thoughts on this.

Check out his explanation, but don’t take any sips of coffee or tea before watching…

Check out Dan’s website at LettersFromDan.com, and be sure to get to the next NAMS so you can crack up with Dan’s sense of humor in person.

Bob

Are you tired of feeling like all the emails you’re getting are just ways to extract more and more money from your wallet?

Me too.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m in business too, and I know that what I can teach and do for you is worth investing in.

But I get the feeling that most of the people who are trying to help you succeed online are not really taking this as seriously (or as personally) as they should. After all, it’s your life and family at stake here.

This past week, I had several experiences that hit me over the head on this subject. This is kind of a rant, but I hope it helps you see the shift in my thinking that I’ve been needing to make. And it perhaps makes you think about keeping what’s important to you front and center.

The biggest was the splash that my brother made at the NAMS event in Atlanta. He was a big hit there – and not just because he’s my brother. I know that his sense of humor and excitement for his growing business stands on its own.

It had been about 5 years since we last saw each other – which is way too long. Spending time with him, and seeing how internet marketing can truly help him reminded me of how important it is to me to help him succeed with his online business. His son and daughters (my nephew and nieces) depend on it. And he’s depending on me to make sure he gets the right information at the right time.

I also know he’s counting on me to be there for him now, like he was there for me when we were kids. We joke now about the practical jokes (like when he loved to serve me a grilled cheese sandwich with the plastic wrapper still around the cheese). But he was a great big brother.

So when I teach my SIMPLE system and various internet marketing lessons, they must pass the “Jim test”. If what I’m sharing can’t make a difference for him, or if I would feel weird recommending a tool, service, or program to him, then I simply won’t do it.

I don’t talk about it much, but I have a pretty weird family. Having my brother attend his first event, watching me “do my thing”, and meeting so many awesome people in my life was awesome. And it reminded me that succeeding in my business really does impact a lot of other people, too.

Another epiphany I had came during my own mastermind meeting in Las Vegas the 2 days before NAMS. It was the first time that I had been on the “hot seat” (Adam calls them profit seats), where my business was under the microscope of 20 other peers. I love this group because it has such a wide variety of people in it. But many of them are coaches, and they have their “BS Detectors” turned up super high.

Within a few minutes, a couple of them had shattered the exterior issue I presented to them, and had me dealing with things much deeper under the surface. Among other things, they helped me realize that

a) my ability to connect with people in person was not transferring recently to my online training, and

b) I’m at my best when I’m vulnerable and relaxed – having fun and being the quirky geek that I am instead of trying to fit some external expectations that don’t feel natural.

This was not easy for me to hear. In fact, it was completely unexpected and emotionally draining. I do a pretty good job of keeping personal stuff at arms length, because I’ve been practicing it for about 30 years now. This past week has helped me realize that it’s not only hurting me, it’s hurting my ability to help you as well.

Thanks for letting me share this with you today.

I hope you remember to take what you do personally, and recognize how much what you do means to the rest of us.

Bob

p.s. Special thanks to Nancy, Therese, Judith, Jim, Jamie, Therese2, Patti, Lis, Debbie, Kathy, Adam, Bo, Heather, Bobby, Scott, Nicole, and many others for shaking the tree for me this week.

The product is a social media panel discussion, and David and a few volunteers put up the sales page during lunch.

The winner was Rafael Sanchez, from Venezuela, who sold 26 copies.

We held an impromptu interview with Rafael and his wife, to find out how he did it. And now, here’s Lynn Terry from Self Starters Weekly Tips with the story…

Become the next NAMS success story in August!

Bob Jenkins

p.s. Congratulations also to Cindy Brock who came in second!

I’m a bit exhausted, to tell you the truth, since I had to fly overnight through Philly to get to Atlanta.

Anyway, I have a Friday freebie for you that I think you’ll really like.  

But first, a quick reminder that the registration for SIMPLE goes up on Monday afternoon! And almost all the 10-payment plans I offered are spoken for.

• 1 and 4-part page
• 10-installment page

Okay – now for your Friday freebie…

Last week, I taught a class on business growth strategies and mistakes to avoid in 2010. I’ve had the call transcribed, and now it’s yours for no cost.

Download “Simple Path To Profit In 2010 Ebook”

Just click that link to open it up and print it out!

Enjoy!

Bob Jenkins

p.s. If you think others would enjoy the gift as well, you can either send them this post, or you can get a rebrandable version to give away.   See this page to get your rebrandable ebook.

1. Build a List

First and foremost you need to be building a list.  You need to be building a list.   Now this doesn’t just mean building a list of contacts.  It doesn’t just mean building an e-mail list in an auto responder.   It means you’re building up a group of people who know who you are, who anticipate hearing from you and are willing and able to follow what you’re doing and take action on what you’re offering.

So it comes in the form of an e-mail list like a service like Aweber.  It also comes in the format of your social networks like Facebook friends or fans or Twitter followers in other resources.  You’ve got to be the person that people want to connect to.  If you’re promoting something anonymously there’s no real way for you to build a list very effectively.  People want to connect with a human being.  They want to get to know you.  They want to get to know your business, your personal life a little bit.  They just want to get to know you so they know they can trust you.

So you’ve got to be focused on building up your list.

2. Create Free Content

You’ve got to be creating content that teaches people stuff about what you know how to do.  And you need to offer that for free.  You’re also going to create paid content.  That’s number three but let me speak to the free content first.

This takes many shapes and you don’t need to do all of them but you need to be creating and releasing and distributing content that shares with people solutions or helps them make sense of something you can help with and it proves your abilities to do things better than other people.

You don’t necessarily have to be the best but you need to be the best that that person knows about.  So you might write a couple articles every week.  You might make a video or two every week.  You might set up a couple blog posts.  You might do a free teleseminar like I’m doing with you right now.  The point is you’ve got to engage with your audience and give them stuff.

I don’t care if you have two people to talk to or two thousand people or two million people.  You still need to give them good stuff for them to learn from.  And treat each of your audience members as an individual that you’re helping.

3. Create Paid Information Products

Paid information products; what I mean by that is maybe you make an eBook or a teleseminar series or maybe instead of an info product that’s downloadable you create an information product experience like the workshop I’m holding at the end of February or a virtual event that you can put on over the phone.  Or, you create a couple of online videos that people would pay for like I created at Discover cPanel.

You’ve got to create something that people will buy because if you don’t they’re not going to generate revenue for you for long.  You can create good content that you can promote for affiliate programs but ultimately you need to create paid information products because that’s the only way that you’re going to have other people promote you as an affiliate.  We’ll get into the SIMPLE system in just a second to be more specific with that but you’ve got to create some paid information products.

Ultimately people will not take as much action with what you give them for free as much as what you charge them for.  Whether you charge them $20 or $20,000 you’ve got to get your audience members invested with you so that you can help them more.  Although your heart may be in the right place to give everything away for free what you’re going to find is people don’t take action on the free stuff nearly as much as the people who pay for stuff.

4. Support Your Existing Customers

The fourth thing is you’ve got to support your existing customers.  You’ve got to spend a little bit of time or have some assistance where you hire a support person or you have some kind of an e-mail system in place where you can support your existing customers.  The reason this is so important, I alluded to it earlier, is because your existing customers are going to be your best source for revenue.

Now this is not to say you’re taking advantage of them by any stretch.  What you’re doing is you’re making sure they consume the product they purchase.  You’re making sure that if they have other issues that you can deal with that you don’t know about initially that you connect with them.  You communicate with them and then you follow-up by creating that additional service or that additional product.

And you do that because they’ll buy from you again but also because they’ll be your biggest fan.  They’ll be your biggest supporters and they will spread the word about you.  So they’ll actually be great ambassadors for you as well.  That can be a very profitable enterprise for you to conduct yourself.

5. Connect With Partners

The fifth activity I think is essential for your success in 2010 is you’ve got to connect with partners.  I mentioned earlier one of the biggest mistakes people make is they see their completion as their enemy.  Well, if you can partner up with someone who has a compatible product line, compatible types of services and you can work together to create a new product or you can refer business to one another you’re going to grow much, much faster.

When I attended my first live event back in 2006 in Baltimore I met up with a whole lot of people but specifically I connected with six other guys and we formed a mastermind team even though we were all teaching people how to promote their business online or some aspect of that.  We saw each other as compatible people.  We saw what we were doing as all part of the same kind of mission if you will.

We promoted each other.  We did teleseminars together.  We blogged with each other.  We commented on each other’s posts.  Some of us continue to this day to meet.  I met my accountability partner through that process of meeting at a live event and then connecting through a mastermind and then continuing to work together.

You’ve got to spend some time and energy this year connecting with partners.  The best way to connect with partners is to attend a live event.  But you can also work through Facebook or through Twitter and through even the e-mail lists that you’re already subscribed to and see who can you be part of.  Or in the membership forums that you’re a part of, okay?

But you cannot do this alone.  You cannot succeed in business these days working by yourself in isolation.  You’ve got to get out.  You’ve got to meet some people and you’ve got to think, “How can I present a win-win situation to other people and become part of a project that other people are instrumental in?”

Put ALL 5 Into Action In 2010 For Best Results

So those are the five business activities that I really think you should be focused on:

1. List Building
2. Creating Free Content
3. Creating Paid Information Products
4. Supporting Your Existing Customers
5. Connecting With Partners Where You Can Grow Together and Magnify Each Other’s Success

Which of these 5 areas is a strength of yours? Which do you need the most help with? Share with a comment below.

Bob Jenkins

p.s. If you are not 100% confident in your ability to carry out all 5 these profitable activities, then I encourage you to get expert help quickly. I’ll be including all 5 areas throughout the SIMPLE training event – more details are available at the event page.

In fact, you likely came to this page because of this strategy in action.

Here’s how you do it….

If you’re using WordPress, it’s simple enough just to get a plugin like TweetMeme, or to get a button from OnlyWire or SocialTwist.

But what about on your other sites, and on your teleseminar landing pages?

All you need to do is create a hyperlink with a few variables attached to the end of it.

Here’s the code to use for your link (URL) target:

http://twitter.com/home?status=your+message+goes+here+and+link+to+http://yourlink.com

Here’s an example you can test out for yourself.

http://twitter.com/home?status=RT+@BobTheTeacher:+simple+way+to+make+a+retweet+this+link+http://askbobtheteacher.com/blog/retweet-this

Go ahead and click it and login to Twitter to see what happens.

The + symbols will become spaces, and are necessary for sites like WelcomeToTheCall.com (Instant Teleseminar) or other sites that have a form field to enter your links. Without the +, the [space] creates a break in the link.

If you’re in the source code (HTML) of your page, you don’t need the + because you’re going to be able to enclose the entire link with quotes.

Since a lot of people may be tweeting the same thing, I personally like to turn mine into a retweet (like I did above). Notice how it starts with RT @BobTheTeacher:

This has the additional advantage of putting your username in the tweets, which makes it more likely for you to get more visibility.

You can do the same thing with quotes or anything else that you’d like to see go viral.

And now you know a simple secret that will send you more traffic with the help of Twitter!

Bob Jenkins

p.s. I’ll be sharing more social media traffic strategies when I speak at live events. To see where I’ll be teaching, check out my travel schedule.

p.p.s. This retweet this link also makes for a great affiliate tool with systems like Butterfly Marketing or Digital Access Pass that allow for dynamic affiliate links.

And although that brings to mind delicious slices of warm Apple pie, with a flaky crust and vanilla bean ice cream on top, there’s a business metaphor in here as well.

Sorry to ruin your taste buds fun :)

In business, you’ll often hear people talk about getting a bigger piece of “the pie”. In the traditional marketplace, this means your slice gets bigger when you take more away from the others, i.e., your competition.

Unfortunately, this is a win-lose situation that typically results in a rush to take away from your slice, too.

And this mindset is one of the biggest mistakes I see business owners making right now. It puts you at odds with your competition.

Instead of seeing your competition as your enemy, try to choose some of them and turn them into partners or collaborators.

The traditional pie model reveals a finite market. But when you are able to use internet marketing in your business, and reach a larger audience, your slice of the pie can get bigger because the pie gets bigger.

You’ll also realize that there’s “enough to go around”, so that you can switch your mindset from win-lose pursuits to win-win opportunities with your competition.

When you do this with the right people, both of your businesses can grow much faster than you ever will chipping away at each other. Plus, your customers will enjoy their experience more because your marketing is likely to be more positive and inclusive.

Sure that may sound “froo-froo” to some; but it’s worked really well for me while the win-lose folks continue to struggle.

I encourage you to take a new look at your competition. And invite those that share your values and high level of quality to a new relationship where you can grow through multiplication instead of division.

Bob Jenkins

p.s. This is just 1 of the 7 deadly mistakes I’m seeing business owners make right now. I’ve recorded an audio program showcasing the other 6, along with additional business success principles. For a limited time, I’ve posted it free – no opt-in required – on this page. Check it out!

p.p.s. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this lesson. Post a comment below and join in the conversation!