You can flay me with accusations of nepotistic myopia but, I will deny them to the death in praising my daughter for her breakout web business putting up custom Wordpress sites.

Rachael is an artist, trained by the Art Institutes of Denver and Phoenix who had a dandy business making web graphics, but wasn’t having fun, so she sold it. Now, after a hard headed hiatus into the joys of working a J.O.B (just above broke) and attempting to drink the Kool Aid of the “employee class” she began running ads on Craigslist to get some side business putting up Wordpress sites.

The side business quickly eclipsed her paycheck, and in a lot less time, so she had the nerve wracking “I think we need to talk” with her boss and took the leap back into entrepreneurship.

The Anti-USP/Tagline

Open her site at RachaelButts.com and the first thing you see is this amazing photograph of Rachael sitting on a skateboard hacking away at her laptop. Then, watch as the animated .gif she created rolls down text into the empty banner to the right of her picture to see a very clever way of getting a much more effective message across.

The photo establishes her membership in the cool kids club instantly. Rebel, artist, creative, non-conformist, what words come to mind for you just from the photo? The biggest punch for me is in the subtle way she communicates what she does, with an attitude that is so far from the fawning, reaching, nearly begging for business I see on most sites. She appears unconcerned about getting new business – a powerful positioning message – that is not based on price.

(By the way – she IS busy because she does excellent custom work.)

Let’s Make a Deal!

The text that drops from the top into her banner says: “I will professionally install and configure your Wordpress blog and personally show you how to use it” is what I call “the deal” she is making with her customers. A new visitor can tell in just seconds the exact nature of her site, her business, as an offer (not in dollars but in deliverable) is handed to them, to accept or decline.

If you ARE looking for someone to install, configure, or explain the use of a self-hosted Wordpress site, even if you weren’t thinking about it at the time, your brain instantly engages. If she were using some fanciful moniker like “Blogging Diva” the specificity of “the deal” would be invisible.

Come Up to the Lab and See What’s On the Slab?

The rest of her top copy using both recognizable graphics that serve as big league endorsements and seductive but clear copy to invite you into the site further. When you hover over her navigation bars you see drop downs inviting you into an impressive array of galleries of web graphics, ebook covers, and cool sites she’s created.

By using a static home page she can get her message across fast and keep the focus on her business. By publishing her /blog (available through her navigation bar) she is able to guide new visitors through her store first, and not present them with the dizzying array of bloggy click-aways.

Search Engine Optimization Services

I had no idea my daughter had become such a geek. She joined Michelle MacPhearson’s Crowd Mountain and learned how to use a keyword tool to find highly targeted keywords – which she then preloads into her client’s blogs as drafts. All they need to do is go into their dashboard and write a post on that keyphrase and publish it to began to get traffic and Google love on their theme.

This gives her clients a huge jump-start in both the confusing questions around what do I write about, and she’s gotten some impressive search engine #1 Google rankings for her customers. This is an immense benefit to a new site and a valuable service I don’t see any regular designer types offering.

Pretty or Profitable?

I’d like to brag and say that Dad told her to do all this stuff, but I did not. I did suggest she use “the deal” instead of a moniker or usp, but she wrote the text. The rest is 100% Rachael Butts.

When you use Rachael to put your business online you get not only a great designer, and SEO preloaded, you can be sure she’ll build the fundamentals of how you will make money right into the layout. This means squeeze pages, email optins, confirmations, offers, and presenting your business first.

Dad is very, very, proud…

2 Videos About Rachael:

Impromptu Interview with Rachael during a pirate Ustream webcast

While asking Rachael an off the wall question she revealed something I’d never heard her say and it moved me so much, I made this video around it…

While commenting on a friend’s Facebook note about setting goals, reaching for your big year, I started typing about an experience I’d just had driving through the mountains today. This is the actual picture I took, and what I wrote. I hope it helps you lighten up.

This afternoon I drove up into the snowy Rocky Mountains as the sun was setting on a blue sky beautiful day. I stopped by a fast moving stream where it tumbled over these slate gray rocks deep in a gorge bathed in blue gray light.

Ice cold – crystal clear – it poured from somewhere far up in the mountains inevitably down into Golden. Nothing in the world was going to stop it.

No one could discourage the water or throw it off course.

Not too deep, it’s power at any point drawn from the momentum of millions of gallons behind it and further ahead. Every drop from snowfall to river to lake exactly where it was supposed to be at this exact moment, and in each moment that followed it down.

This is what I’m shooting for.

To stop all the reaching, the struggle to wriggle out of one imagined fix and into another – but, to be here, and be me, and do just what I do without anyone else’s opinion or agenda.

So, I pull myself as close to the side of my own pool as possible, and use my own strength to spring hard from the cement and into the deep end without reservation. This is how it feels.

This is not my big year. This is not my big month. This is not my big season. I’ve thrown the calendar into the trash to live day to day and try to draw on that small but mighty stream – to water the world I’m meant to reach and nothing more.

Love to you my reader. May you find this snapshot helpful in stopping your stress about your business and giving you a quiet place to know how cool you are and how what you are is the key to what you ought to be doing next.

Rick

The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris had a profound impact on my life. For the first time I had found someone who understood that the way I wanted to live my life was not just pure laziness.

The other night my cable TV went out during a snowstorm here in Denver and so I flipped on Ustream.tv and started broadcasting. A handful of friends showed up to keep me company and we had a dandy chat.

So much thanks to my Twitter friends (whom I hope give me a big fat backlink to this page) – follow them on Twitter:

Dan Lopez – @DanLopez2012

Wendi Friesen @WendiTV (who griped in the comments so I included her)

Martin Wales – @MartinWales

Apothecary Jeri @ApothecaryJeri

Sandra Schubert @SandraSchubert

I know I’m missing some people, just put your name and Twitter ID in the comments below, and as always, I love to get your comments and always try to respond!

Hope you have enjoyed the ideas in the 7 Little Choices and are furiously scribbling the ideas it gave you on your legal pad down at the cafe?

I wanted to share a couple of quick updates with you and let you follow along as I go through the “reinvention” process myself in full view of the public – working without a net.

1 – Overhauled the home/landing page.  I’m working on a general idea about NOT dropping people on a busy confusing blog, but on communicating directly to my target customer type (idea entrepreneurs). Here’s a link to the home page http://rickbutts.com

Of course, I believe in relationship building, and I’m not putting in one-time-offers, exit-pops, etc – just being more clear and hopefully appealing to the “don’t waste my time” mindset of our tribe.

What do you think of this as a strategy? Can you please place a comment on this post and tell me?

2. I posted a very good video by Elizabeth Potts Weinstein on the blog called The Sales Funnel Sucks.  The minute I saw it I thought it was a great example of the way that most Internet marketing is not for creative types who sell our own stuff.

3. By popular demand I’m going to upload Part II of the Hawaii video.  Lots of people dug it, and wanted the rest.  Sorry for not having already put it up – I tossed it in as an afterthought while setting up the autoresponder stuff.

If you haven’t opted in yet to get 7 Little Choices that Can Wreck Your Business and Your Life – you can get the ebook AND the videos I’m sharing by entering your name and email below:

I know that after a year of rarely hearing for me – this is a lot!  I’m making up for lost time, but most of all, I’m just really excited to be clear about what I’m doing and sharing it with you!

Elizabeth Potts Weinstein hardly needs any cross promoting. She’s the new “BFF Girl” and gone viral by connecting with the kinds of people who resonate with both her ideas and her style.

In a rare moment of productivity I decided to post her video Why the Marketing Funnel Sucks here on my site because it illustrates a point I made in the introduction to The 7 Little Choices that Can Wreck Your Business and Your Life, and that is that most Internet marketing stuff is primarly aimed at teaching the “employee-class” a method for making money online – and not a good model for how “idea-entrepreneurs” build a sustainable business.

Internet Marketing Learnin’ is Primarily for the Employee Class – not Idea Entrepreneurs

What Elizabeth describes in this video is what I would call an arms-length approach of trading your prospects email address for a free download (of stated “retail value”) which should lead to a series of increasingly higher priced products.

It’s arms-length because it can all be done digitally with the content created in advanced and sent out via sequential autoresponder so each new prospect has the same timed sequence of presentations.

The Sales Funnel Elizabeth Says Sucks – Works!

You can’t swing a dead cat around the web without encountering name squeeze pages that lead to OTO (one time offers – hurry – these pdfs are fresh and won’t last at this price! LOL!) with exit popups, and fast action bonuses. The reason they are everywhere is that they work. Split tested for the highest conversion rates, even the offers you think look so bad you can’t imagine anyone clicking they buy button, are likely being snapped up at an acceptable rate by someone.

This funnel works alright, but it doesn’t work for Elizabeth. But, here’s what I think is behind her philosophy. She knows she could make sales this way, she’s exceptionally bright and savvy, but she doesn’t want the kind of clients this would generate.

I don’t mean she wouldn’t want to work with the kinds of people who bit on these offers, but that they would come pre-loaded with an adversarial, or as she says, pay for my ideas and secrets, mindset. And that is not the attitude she wants to begin the bigger relationship with.

I Love Everything She Does – but I Have One Question?

If you are expecting me to now tear into EPW with some critical seque, sorry to disappoint you. I love everything about what she is doing. She is in 100% alignment with my Stardust Factor mindset. If this gal ain’t authentic – then my radar is going in the trash immediately.

The only thing I don’t really connect with is the phrase “Live Your Truth.” Perhaps I need to read more carefully or maybe I’m lost in semantics.

Live your truth sounds like “Live Your Math.” If the “truth” she is extolling here shorthand for vision, or path, or way, or even perception, then sweet! Am I alone in feeling like these words leave me a bit off balance?

Perhaps she’ll school me via video? (God, I hate myself for how blatant that is.)

I Highly Recommend Elizabeth Potts Weinstein

She is a incredibly fun to follow, and learn from and has that kind of mystifyingly relentless energy that seems particular to the mothers of young children! Her straight yet entertaining approach guarantees me that I will always learn something and not be bored. Trust me, I dont’ click on many 7 minute videos these days!

Follow Elizabeth on Twitter | Elizabeth Potts Weinstein on the web

7 Little Choices That Can Wreck Your Business and Your Life is now officially available for download! You can go right to http://rickbutts.com/7/ and get your copy now!

I’m posting this page on my blog so that you can make any comments you like about the book. I’m excited to read your thoughts in these unusual ideas, and will respond to every one.

If you don’t have the book yet – go to the link above and get it, read it, dig it, have fun and laugh with it, and come back here to tell me how you feel about the ideas and implications.

Thanks for being a part of my life,
Rick

Harvey discovers the real meaning of Firefox burnout

Last night I began deleting old posts from my blog, with extreme malice.

A giant mad-on about the whole blog thing has been brewing in angst and frustration for about a year, and finally I could take no more. Blogging caught fire a couple years back but, like most things webbie, we took it too far.

“Blog clog” has bloated the web and our lives with useless information, distractions, un-requested opinions and advice we don’t need. Most of this clutter and noise is driven by the misguided idea that you SHOULD be writing a blog, when it’s likely that most people should step away from the Wordpress.

Why Blogs Suck

A trip back through my posts revealed how much of what was there was NOT helping my business:

* a news update about some change in my business that, if it were a piece of paper, would have been fed to the shredder long ago – DELETE

* an announcement of some marketing product launch that closed it’s doors soon after or had already gone out of business – DELETE

* a personal post that seemed so “authentic” and “real” at the time, that now makes me look like a sissfied bed wetter with inoperable emotional issues – DELETE

* a post about how yippie-skippy happy I was over a new relationship that became an old sour relationship – DELETE

(NOTE TO SELF AND EVERY SINGLE PERSON): Resist the temptation to Tweet, Facebook, or definitely blabber on about on a teleseminar about anything pertaining to a new relationship or dying relationship and unfollow your exes the moment they want to be “just friends” – sitting in a Facebook workshop on Wednesday I got a live update that “Your Old Girlfriend _______ Is Now In a Relationship!” with a little heart graphic just to amp up the sting a bit. Nice…

* a post in which the information was just obsolete and made me look like a dunce if read now – DELETE

* a post about a Twitter technique that got 25% of all the traffic on my site but had a 95% bounce rate – meaning that thousands of people came to my site – read the post and left without looking at another page on my site – much less opting in or following me. – DELETE (well kind of) This page had a big old link from Mashable so I redirected it to an offer for a Twitter product. So far it hasn’t made a penny even with thousands of clicks. Buh-bye.

* etc – DELETE

That’s One Thing I Hate About Blogs (dead content living on) Here’s the Other = Truly Great Content is Buried, in Chronological Order

Next up I’ll be talking about how I’m implementing a new strategy in my own business. But, for now I am gonna post this to my blog, as it’s hanging by a thread.

Now this is an AD!

It is hard to put a value on this type of idea in advertising.

But, let’s take a shot?

First, there is the HUGE power of the way this ad catches your eye by the clever change of modality – just by changing Fairy to Furry.

Second, is the way “Furry Godmother” makes the target customer feel. A dog love is a dog LOVER – they are fanatical about their pets – and one of the things they like about their dogs is that they are, well, FURRY. They feel nice. They are fun to pet.

By acknowledging this in the ad – the advertiser makes an instant unspoken “connection” with the reader/buyer.

I know, because I AM that target market. I have a miniature-pinscher dog and man, Iove that dog. Yeah, it’s funny to see us walk down the street – I’m 6′ 1″ and 2 hundred and plenty pounds – and my dog is maybe a foot tall and weighs in at a whopping 15.

Did I mention I love my dog?

Somehow by phrasing this headline with the humorous and connecting twist – I just KNOW this person is going to see the world the same way I do. Trust is strong.

Then, let’s consider the Godmother part of it.

This word is just pregnant with all sorts of images – and all of it is positive, in this context.

Godmother summons words like:

wise – caring – mature – spiritual – nurturing – reliable – fun – Wizard of Oz – go ahead – add your own.

Furry Godmother – the combination is marketing alchemy!

But there is yet another advantage of this phraseology – and it’s force and currency endures long after the ad is read.

It’s the momentum of a good marketing nickname.

Do you think that someone might call and say “Am I speaking to the Furry Godmother?” – - – YOU BET!

If she’s smart – (and we already suspect this!) she’ll latch onto this and use it again and again – in cards – in advertising – in her invoices – in her emails – well doggone it – it’s GREAT!

Are you getting ideas for your business from this?

You should.

Like carrying this onto special names for product packages, “The Furry Four” – or a newsletter, where she gives advice – - and if she hires helpers – well, they could have fun titles, too.

So here in Denver Colorado – a marketing spark is lit – and if she rides it this one single marketing idea can carry her right up to “I’m sorry, I have to put you on a waiting list.”

Of course, if she were an investment banker, handling millions of other people’s dollars, or a CPA who was being counted on to be highly analytical this might need to be considered in light of the CUSTOMER perspective. Furry would be out, obviously!

Here’s the kicker for YOU.

Look at ideas that are out of your discipline – outside of your business theme – and think of how you could apply them to your business marketing concepts, products, offerings, and communications.

Great marketing is all around us – and implicit in any great marketing is it’s essence – it’s idea.

If you take the time to PAY ATTENTION – you’ll soon begin to see these ideas emerge – and then you can tame them for yourself.

Want a clue as to how to start doing this?

Simply ask yourself, how does this poster, ad, billboard, jingle, packaging, etc, make me FEEL? What am I thinking when I look at it.

Not necessarily what you get from concentrating on it.

But what you get from concentrating on your first impressions.

Remember, great marketing is all around you – you simply have to pay attention!

Thanks for playing,
Rick

Tags: marketing ideas, Rick Butts, , marketing strategies, marketing tips

Click here for the FREE Twitter Method Videos Mentioned in This Audio!

Nothing is more frustrating than looking at all the activity on Twitter and realizing you have no idea how to leverage it into a sensible business strategy.

Tom Deeter shows you how anyone can use his Twitter Method to get leads and turn them into sales without playing the time wasting “follow you – follow me” game.

This blog has become the bane of my existence, the object of my ire, the whipping boy, escaped goat, and swirling black hole vortex of all my energy. Every time I think of RickButts.com I get an “eye-tick” and involuntary hand shake followed by an immediate desire to pack up my stuff and toss Little Dog into the truck and head out for a long drive in the Rocky Mountains. (How do you spell avoidance?”)

I bought this domain the day that a domain broker offered me $50,000.00 (yes that’s fifty thousand dollars) for butts.com – (do not go there now, or ever). It has alternately been my professional speaking site, Internet marketing site, banned by Google for a year for black hat SEO and now, 10 years on, it is an archive of a few flashes of creative genius surrounded by a whole lot of self-doubt and awkward attempts to make a buck from affiliate marketing.

Why should I continue to pay bandwidth charges for proof that I have had an ongoing identity crisis for 2 years?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, my SEO buddies recite the mantra “never take a page down off the Internet” because those pages are useful for page rank juice and bad links make you look bad to Google – but upon checking my stats I was even more depressed about this site.

1/4 of all my traffic comes from different iterations of “how to change your Twitter username” for which I am ranked #1 in Google. With the help of a link from Mashable, more than 1000 people hit this page each month.

But, that page has a 95% bounce rate – which means that nearly all 1000 of them enter on this page – and leave from this page.

These ungrateful bastards don’t even follow me on Twitter! So how is this traffic of any use to me?

For the last 3 weeks I’ve had a 301 redirect set on it so that all these cowbirds are taken immediately through my affiliate link to The Twitter Method – but it doesn’t appear that I’ve made any sales of that either.

As for the rest of my search engine traffic, I continue to get hits from searches related to my last name Butts – if these unsavory leads DO become customers, I don’t wanna know. (Massive volumes of “butts traffic” was part of the reason I sold butts.com. The $50,000.00 was the other part

Honey, I Blew Up the Blog!

This is my plan. I’m going to go through this darn wordpress installation with the help of my cool daughter. She has started a business installing, configuring Wordpress and even sitting down with Go To Meeting and showing her clients how to actually use it!

Once clean, pretty, and functional, I’m doing the following:

* Deleting posts about dead affiliate plays.
* Deleting posts about my unfounded personal issues.
* Deleting posts about my accurate personal issues.
* Creating a custom 404 error page so that traffic to those pages gets “the news” and an opportunity to optin to my Stardust Factor giveaway.
* Using 301 redirects to send purely affiliate related traffic directly to the offer.
* Regularly check stats and my Easy Link Manager for the effectiveness of this traffic.

Then I’m going to take the 10,000 ideas I’ve NOT written about because I wasn’t sure what “direction” I was going with my life/work – and get the good one’s out.

The best advice I’ve ever gotten about being a writer is 2 words – “Writers write…”

I’ll write what I want to here on my personal blog, and let the horses run with my marketing stuff on StardustFactor.com

The whole Stardust Factor thing, the teleseminar product, the 90 Minute Stardust Sessions I’ve been doing for $250, and the crazy idea that worked “Unlimited Monthly Consulting” for a handful of clients has transformed my life.

So, what have we learned?

• Never Give Up Refining Your Shizzzle. It’s so worth the effort.
• Try Stuff, and Embrace Failure. Most stuff won’t work, but you’ll learn so much more from trying than making little notes on your legal pad.
• Adjust on the Fly. The decision to add the 90 minute Stardust 1 on 1 sessions less than an hour before I did the Stardust Factor teleseminar turned out to be the most important idea I’ve had in years! The impact on my business and my life from this one little tweak is beyond calculating, but had I not “tried” the Stardust Factor as a product, it never would have happened.
• Stay Authentic. Every time I’ve succumbed to the temptation to “manufacture” some kind of persona or effect, it’s turned into an exhausting chore that I was unable and uninterested in sustaining.

Your comments – your tweets – and trackbacks are gently encouraged. “And, in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love, you make. Paul McCartney”