Want to know a little secret? I get free stuff. A lot of it.

I don’t want that to sound cocky or as if i’m freeloading, but I’ve structured my businesses in such a way that I get to take advantage of a lot of, shall we say fringe benefits of blogging.

Perhaps, you remember the first episode of Location 180 Digs?

Or maybe that trip to Jordan last year?

Colorado ski trip?

Or even this most recent round at world renowned Cog Hill Golf Club.

Yep, all free.

On top of how to build a lifestyle business, the thing I get asked most often, is how to build or leverage a brand that allows you to do more of the stuff you like to do.

Pretty much every project or business I’ve built in the last 2 years has furthered a hobby, passion or interest of mine. I structure it that way on purpose, because what fun is having a business if you aren’t enjoying the stuff you’re doing?

Today we’re going to look at why free isn’t a bad word, how you can make brands fall over trying to give you free stuff, and how you’re going to make it totally worth it for them in the process.

The Mindset Shift You Have to Make in Order to Make Free the New Norm

Everyone has gotten something for free at some point in time. Maybe you won a pair of concert tickets from your local radio station, or a free dinner at a raffle. But how do you make the art of free something that’s a regular occurrence in your life? More importantly, how can you get the kind of stuff that’s truly memorable or life changing?

In order to do this, you have to make a mindset shift that seems totally counterintuitive. If you want to be successful at this over the long term, you have to stop thinking in terms of how you can get stuff for free, and start thinking about how the person or organization offering it to you is going to benefit.

I repeat, this isn’t about you, it’s about them.

My Five Step Process for Creating Win/Win Scenarios

It really isn’t that hard if you follow these five steps.

1) Decide What you Want, and Why You Want It

If you don’t know what you want, then all you’re going to do is waste everyone else’s time. You should have a very clear idea of what you want and why. For instance, if you’ve built a brand around hotels, and are trying to get a free room somewhere, you should know exactly what type of room you want. You need to be knowledgeable and prove you’ve done your research and know exactly what you’re talking about.

If you don’t do this, you’ll fail at number 2 and be dead in the water.

2) Establish the Primary Goals of the Person or Company You’re Trying to Work With

This isn’t about you, at least not at first. It’s about them. What are their goals? What do they want? And most importantly, how are you going to be the one to give it to them?

Let’s use my photography site as a good example.  These days I can pretty much get all the free photo software I want.  But why is that? It’s because I’ve proved the value with the site.  When I started out, I spent a lot of time thinking about what a software company wanted out of their partnerships.  They want to drive more sales, and gain exposure in an already crowded market.

So how did I help with that? By writing in depth reviews that were complimentary, showed off the product, and made it extremely easy for people to buy with the combination of first hand testimonials, and discount coupon codes.

Once I did this for one company, it became easy to replicate for other companies – and over time you develop a reputation as the go to person in your niche.

However, this wouldn’t have been possible if I hadn’t thought about their needs first, and proved that I could add value to their goals.

3) Build Credibility and Rapport

The vast majority of the time I just flat out ask for something without building rapport or establishing some kind of value add, I get shot down.  Over time, as you build a reputation, this gets a little bit easier, but rapport is absolutely essential.

Last year when I was taking a ski trip to Colorado with some entrepreneur friends, I wanted to get a free three day pass at the resort.  Why? Well because it was over $100 for a day pass, and at the time the snow was pretty horrendous.

So I figured, why not go win/win?

First things first, I knew what I wanted. Second, I found a unique angle that I thought would give them what they wanted – exposure for their relatively new ski technology called Epic Mix. I wanted to tell the world about how awesome this new technology was (because, it really is pretty cool).

From there, rather than asking, I started building rapport.

I got ahold of the PR and marketing person for the resort, and told them about the article I was writing. I asked questions about it. I asked her about how she would want to promote it or what features she wanted to draw attention to. I asked for other recommendations of people I should talk to.

In the end, I didn’t even have to ask. She offered the three day pass knowing that I was going to provide value by coming down there and helping gain the resort some exposure.

4) Ask

Once you’ve done these three things, the most important thing you can do is actually ask for what you want. If you follow these steps properly, it’s just a natural extension of the process. You won’t be offending anyone or be seen as greedy, because you’ll have established the mutual value – that’s what this is all about.

While yes, you’ll probably get shot down if you haven’t followed steps 1-3, I’ve been amazed at just how much I’ve been able to get simply by asking the question.

5) Over Deliver

Once you get what you want, the real work starts – yes, there’s work involved..  The reality is there really isn’t such a thing as free, because if you’re going to do this right, you’ll spend a lot of time providing as much value as possible to the people you work with.

Take for instance my new golf site Breaking Eighty. Essentially the entire purpose of this site for the first 12 months is to get free golf, and get access to courses I wouldn’t otherwise have access to.

Right now about 50% of the people I’ve approached have hooked me up with free golf – and the others were because I was trying to go during some of the busiest weeks of the year.

Take my round at Cog Hill last week. Greens fees are $155, so I saved quite a bit of money by not having to pay.

However, that being said, I took nearly 300 photos while I was on the course. I spent another 6 hours or so editing photos and writing the in depth review.

8th hole at Cog Hill

Do you realize what the opportunity cost on this is?? High. I’d be much better off paying for my round and taking those 6 hours to go make much more than $155.  But I do it because I’m excited about playing new golf courses, and creating win win scenarios for myself and the other organizations.

They now have a very complimentary and high quality review they can share via social media, and as the Breaking Eighty site gains more traction, that review will show up higher and higher in search rankings – encouraging more people to go out and play.

How Do You Get Started?

I have a little bit of an advantage when I start new sites like this, simply because of the brand I’ve already established in Location 180.  I can reference being featured in places like Forbes or Entrepreneur, and I can back up my reputation with traffic statistics and such.

However, that only goes so far.  That doesn’t change the fact that Breaking Eighty is a new site, or that basically no one read HDR Software when I first got it started.

How do you combat that?

You’ve gotta prove you’re worth it.

I spent 6 hours doing my first review on Breaking Eighty, and I (happily) paid for the round myself. Same goes for the photography site, before I even thought about approaching companies asking for stuff for free, I paid for the software and did my best to put out really high quality work that serves as an example for what I wanted to do for companies in the future.

If you aren’t willing to work for it, then there’s not a whole lot I can do to help you.

There are a lot of people out there trying to game the system without providing much value in return (ahem, travel bloggers). Make your sole purpose to get as much exposure for the company as possible.  If you don’t think over the long term you can do that, then consider finding something else to focus on.

That said, if you follow the five steps above, you’ll quickly establish yourself in your industry, and give yourself a great shot at having all kinds of free stuff come your way.

If you want more info on how to do this, including email templates and more examples, check out Hacking the High Life.

Yes, you read that right, today Location 180 is 4 years old.

This is unbelievable to me.

No seriously, I have a hard time believing that it’s actually been so long since I wrote that first post, and that I’ve been able to cram so much life into such a short time.

Even in the time since our 2 year anniversary post, things seemed to have really picked up.

This last week I’ve been in Chicago speaking at SOBcon 2013 which has had me reflecting a lot on where I’d like to see the next 4 years ago.

Note – This conference was incredible, if you’re in Portland in the Fall I highly recommend you come check out their West Coast iteration.

Today however, I want to focus on the past. The lessons I’ve learned from Location 180 and this lifestyle have been the most invaluable ones I’ve ever learned. Where college taught me what I thought I needed to know about life, writing this blog and pursuing this lifestyle has given me the lessons that I really need in order to be successful moving forward.

So here it is, Confessions of a Lifestyle Entrepreneur, if you will. These are geared towards people pursuing a lifestyle business, but regardless of who you are you should be able to get some value out of these.

1) Never Stop Selling

It’s easy to get comfortable. Just as you can get comfortable in a day job, you can get too comfortable in your own business as well.

Over the weekend I was talking about this with Scott Jangro, founder of Shareist, . And he mentioned how many businesses he’s seen evaporate overnight for reasons completely beyond the owners control.

In any business it’s easy to think you can just switch to autopilot and the sales, clients, customers, etc. will just keep rolling in.

At some point the well will dry up.  Always be selling – especially when you don’t think you need to.

This is more broadly applicable to life as well. We’re always selling, whether its our thoughts, ideas or our products, the more you do it the better you get. The better you get, the better your ability to influence the world in the way you want to see it changed.

2) Your Platform is Even More Important than You Think

Nearly everything I’ve experienced over the last 4 years has been a result of my platform.

First it was the push out the door from my day job. Then I was offered the Tropical MBA, and work with Chris Guillebeau. From there it’s taken on a life of it’s own that has given me the ability to do more in 4 years than I could have expected to do in 40, had I stayed as an analyst.

When you have a platform online you have a voice, you have leverage, and the more it grows the greater the opportunities become.

Establish your platform now, even if you don’t know where it’s going to lead or what it’s going to be all about in the long run.

Look at my previous blog posts. In the beginning, Location 180 was nothing even close to what it is now – and that’s ok.

With the way the world is evolving, your online platform will become more and more important in your ability to build relationships and do the things you really want to do in life.

3) Meet More People – But Don’t Have an Agenda

The more people I meet the more enriched my life becomes.

As a solopreneur it’s easy to hole up in coffee shops and become a bit of a recluse. I often have to force myself to go out and be social, but when I do, I’m always glad I made the push.

At SOBcon this weekend I met some unbelievable people and entrepreneurs and I did my best to get to know them first, before I found out about what they did.

I hate being the person whose always looking for the angle in a conversation. You know the whole “how can this person help me?”

Nobody likes that person, and we’re all guilty of doing it from time to time, but when you build genuine relationships with no ulterior motives you’ll usually gain more than you expected to in the first place.

Start with the relationship, and only worry about the relationship. You’ll get more out of it that way, I promise.

4) Spend At Least 1 Hour a Day Being Creative

It’s really easy to get caught up in life; the last 4 days I’ve barely cracked my laptop.

However, my livelihood completely depends on my ability to provide value to others. That means being creative, and when I fall out of that mode things can go downhill quickly.

Some people strive to write 1,000 words a day, others spend a focus amount of time on deliberate creation. However you choose to do it, make this a priority.

The more you create, the more opportunity there will be for others to consume, which in turn builds your reputation and makes you money.

During the times when I stick with this, the rest of my life is always better because of it. I get more organized, more focused, and I feel better about the work I’m accomplishing.

5) Do More of What You Want to Do (Selfish Isn’t a Bad Word)

For the last few years of my life, I’ve been incredibly selfish – and I have no problem saying it. I’ve made major changes and choices based on what I want for my life. Is that a bad thing? No way! You’ve gotta look out for #1…but there’s more to it than that.

Help yourself first, then help others.

That’s how I look at it.

Until I was happy with my own life, there was no way I’d be able to help anyone else on a large scale.

It’s because I’ve been selfish that I’ve been able to reach a broad audience and help change the trajectory of a lot of lives.  Don’t feel guilty about doing things for you, because that’s where doing things for others begins.

6) Uncertainty is an Asset

As I mentioned in my TEDx talk “The Future of the American Dream” the majority of the world will always be afraid of uncertainty – and that’s why they will never make the changes necessary to live the life they really want.

Those that embrace uncertainty and recognize that because everything is uncertain, anything is possible, will be the ones who go far and make the biggest difference in the world.

The easiest way I’ve found to get over this problem? Ask yourself the question “what’s the worst that can happen?” and really truly think about the answer.

The reality? The worst case scenario will almost never happen, and it’s usually not as bad as you think.

7) Adventure Regularly

Routine is necessary in life, but it can also drive you crazy.

If I stay in one place or my routine gets too repetitive over the course of a couple weeks, I go crazy.

How do I fix this? Adventure regularly.

Adventure is probably my favorite word in the English language. I can’t say it without conjuring thoughts of Indiana Jones or rope swings through Amazonian jungles over cascading waterfalls – but I digress.

While jungle swings are certainly cool, an adventure can be much more basic than that.

My adventures are the things I remember the most. They’re one of the key reasons why this lifestyle is so worth it.

Go to a new place, meet a new person, do something out of the ordinary. Any of those things can be adventures. Understand routine has it’s place, but don’t be afraid to break it up.

There Will Always Be Something You Could Do

As an entrepreneur, there’s always something to do. Always.

You should never be able to say “I’ve got nothing to do.”

Why?

Because you’re the heart and soul of your business. You can test, create, sell, meet, share in so many ways its not even funny. If you aren’t doing any of those, then you probably should be.

That being said, once you recognize there’s always stuff you could (or should) be working on, you can consciously make a choice not to do it.

For a long time I’ve wrestled with this. When there’s always something to do, it’s easy to feel guilty when you take time off or skip work to do something fun.

Don’t feel guilty about this. That’s the whole reason why we’ve chosen this lifestyle to begin with!

When you’re working, work hard. When you’re playing, train yourself to let work go and really enjoy what you’re doing. It’s very easy to let work creep into your play time, and that’s not fun for anybody.

And yes, I know there’s a smiley in the heading

9) Life Doesn’t Suck

I’ve adopted this tagline for myself over the last year or two.

If you’ve spent any time with me, you’ll hear me say it often. Why?

Because it’s true. Sure we all have bad days, but if you take a step back and look at your life and what you have – I’m willing to bet it really doesn’t suck that much, no matter how much you dislike your job

10) There is No End, So Don’t Dwell On It

If you haven’t realized it yet, there is no end. There is no “making it”. It’s all part of the process and the journey, so stop expecting everything to be different when you finally _____.

No matter how successful you get, or how perfect of a lifestyle you have, you’ll still have problems. Shit will still happen, and a million dollars will not necessarily make you the happiest person on earth.

So how do you deal with this?

Enjoy the ride, that’s what it’s all about anyway.

THANK YOU

Seriously, the last 4 years have been unbelievable and the next ones are only going to get better.  This wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for your support, so from the very bottom of my heart, thank you so much for helping to make this possible.

Sign up below and shoot me an email if there’s anything I can do to help out with your journey in anyway – after all, freedom’s more fun with friends

In the last 48 hours I’ve received the same question from 4 different people, so I figured now would be a good time to answer this question:

“How much information should you give away for free on your blog or website?”

This is something I used to think about a lot, and up until recently my blog posts probably suffered as a result.

I was afraid that if I gave away all my best information for free in the form of blog posts, I’d have nothing left to offer as paid content later on.

This is one of the biggest misconceptions I see people make, and a lot of it comes down to understanding exactly why people buy premium products to begin with.

Why People Buy

It’s easy to think that people buy an information product because they want to learn how to do something.

While yes, that’s a primary reason why people buy, the fact is, almost with out fail, any information you can get from a premium product you can get for free online – it just may take a little more work to dig it up.

The value in a paid product isn’t necessarily just about the information contained inside of it – in fact I’d argue that this is one of the least important reasons people will invest in a paid info product.

So in order to answer the question “how much information should I give away for free” you have to understand what the primary motivations are.

In talking with readers and customers on my site, I’ve found four key reasons that people buy my premium products.  Let’s take a look at each of those, and then we’ll answer the question of exactly how much to give away.

Reason #1: Personal Accountability

How long have you been wanting to make a major change in your life? If you’re like many of the people here, the answer is probably quite awhile.

Now, how much have you actually invested financially to help get you closer to that goal?  There’s a good chance that the answer is not very much.

The first reason people pay for premium products is because they want to hold themselves accountable.  If I gave Location Rebel away for free, do you really think there would be as many success stories coming out of it?

I don’t – simply because that investment in the product is an investment in yourself. When money is on the line, more so than any other factor, people get motivated to change.

Does everyone work that way? Of course not, some people will buy and do nothing with it – but there’s a much higher likelihood of taking action if you invested a significant amount to get the information you want.

Reason #2: Access to a “Pre-Screened” Community

Waaaaaay back when, Location Rebel started as a free community for people to talk about location independence, lifestyle businesses and other similar topics.

It wasn’t successful.

Why? Everyone in there loooooved to talk, but few people actually wanted to take any action.

After a couple months it became clear, everyone wants to make a change, but few people are willing to take any action.

These people hadn’t made any investments personally to hold themselves accountable – so nothing was happening.

However, if you can create a community where people are pre-screened, meaning they’ve each invested in themselves and are trying to make a change, all of a sudden you have people who take action, as opposed to just talking about it.

There are over 300 people in our forums who have all invested in themselves and have the exact same goals: to be able to work for themselves from anywhere on earth.

Don’t you think that accountability tool, wealth of information, and the case studies, are just as valuable if not more so than any information I could package together?

I think so – it’s the one thing I would have killed for as I was getting started four years ago.

Reason #3: Convenience

Like I mentioned above, almost all of the how-to information you’re looking for can be found for free on the internet.

That being said, it’s not necessarily just the information people are willing to pay for, it’s the convenience of it.

It’s the package as a whole where you get everything handed to you in a nice little bow, with a plan for exactly how to start, how to execute, and how to scale once you get some traction.

In better terms, people pay for the strategy and the tactics together – not just one or the other.

Bonus Reason: Access

If I found someone who was doing exactly what I wanted, and was someone I wanted to learn from, there’s very little I wouldn’t pay for increased access to that person.

One of the reasons many high end info products are so successful is they come with increased access to the entrepreneur behind it, whether that be in the form of forums, members only calls, increased email access etc.

Obviously not all information products have this, but if there’s an element of increased access then the value of the product increases exponentially.

Put some thought into your unique expertise.  Why would someone want increased access to you, and how would you package that? When you can answer that question, then the idea of how much should you give away for free becomes more or less irrelevant.

So, How Much Should You Give Away for Free?

Looking at the four reasons why people buy, only one of them really has to do with the content itself.

When I’m thinking about writing content and what I give away versus what I make private, I generally go 80/20.  I think giving away 80% of your best content, if not more, is a no brainer – especially when you’re starting out and trying to build your reputation.

If you’re consistently giving out world class, high quality information, and you have a paid product your readers are naturally going to think:

“Man, if his free stuff is this good, I can’t imagine what the paid stuff is like!”

And that’s exactly what you want.

Sure I always keep a few secrets and strategies private that will be game changing for my customers, but I try to provide as much value for free as I can.

If people want to spend hours and hours going through Location 180, they’ll be able to piece together much of the material that I talk about inside Location Rebel.

Will they get everything? Absolutely not.

Will they get the accountability? Nope.

The engaging community with the same goals as them? Not so much.

Priority email and personal forum responses from me? Not going to get that either.

If you structure your paid products in such a way that you deliver all of these other benefits then you should be able to give away 100% of your best information for free, and still have a wildly successful business.

I understand that my lifestyle and this business is a privilege, and it’s something I’ve worked hard to achieve.  Yes, I do need to earn a living, but my primary purpose is to help as many people as possible reach their own goals and their own dream lifestyles.

How do you do this? Give away as much as you can for free, and then provide world class premium content for the people who want to really take things seriously.

Image Credit: Laurence Hunt

I’ve seen a lot of crappy blogs.

No really.

I hate to say it, but I get a lot of emails from people asking me to check out their blog and give them feedback on it.  I do my best to be kind, and respond with some tips, but I’ve found that without fail, almost every single time I’m giving the exact same advice.

Now, I may not have the world’s best blog, but I’ve worked with a lot of Location Rebel members and others to help them position their blogs in the best possible place to be successful.

“What do you mean you need a tagline?!”

“Oh, I need a photo on my about page?! Says who?!” 

“Wait, people won’t sign up for just email updates?”

These are all mistakes I’ve made over the last three years

So in order to save myself a lot of time (yeah, I’m selfish like that), as well as hopefully help you improve your website, I’ve put together this 60 minute blog audit.

It may take you longer to actually implement changes, but by addressing some of these key site attributes you should be able to encourage more interaction, subscribers, shares, and in turn have more success in whatever form you quantify it.

Here’s What You Need to Do:

Get out a piece of paper, Evernote, a word doc or whatever it is you use to take notes.

Then open up your blog.

Copy down each headline in this article as you go through it, and take a minute to write down either “Ok” “Needs Work” next to each headline.

For the things that need work, take notes based on my recommendations.  When you’re done, sit down and start going down the list, making improvements where necessary.  Overtime you’ll be amazed at how a few small changes will increase just about every metric you have for blog success.

Here’s the cheat sheet for those of you too lazy to read the whole thing (although I really encourage you to spend more time and read each section):

• Do You have a Professionally Designed Logo?
• Is Your Tagline Clear Enough?
• Do You Have a Bio Box?
• Has Your About Page Been Updated in the Last Year?
• Do You Have An Incentive to Opt In?
• Do Your Headlines Suck?
• Are you Communicating With Your Subscribers?
• Are you Writing for the Reader, or Yourself?
• Are you Leveraging Social Proof?

Ready? Got your blog open? Note taking device?

All right, let’s do this.

Do You Have a Professionally Designed Logo?

Have you actually got a real logo designed for your blog yet? Or do you still have the stock text that you entered into your WordPress backend?

Having a well designed logo does a number of things:

• It proves that you’re taking this website seriously, which in turn will make people take you seriously
• It helps define what your site is all about (more on that in the next item)
• It establishes clear branding, which will make you stand out from the other 100 million blogs out there

It’s not difficult to get a blog designed.  For less than $100 you should be able to get something well thought out and specific to your goals.  To make things even more affordable hop on Fiverr and have someone design you something for 5 bucks.

Get started with that here.

Is Your Tagline Clear Enough?

When you’re getting your logo done you should also consider whether you need to add your tagline into the design as well.

I see so many people make mistakes with their site taglines.  They get too cute with it, and in turn tell the reader nothing about what the site is actually about.

If I were going to do that my site would be:

Location 180: Because Life Doesn’t Suck…

I love that tagline, but you know what? It doesn’t tell a first time visitor anything about why they should stick around and see what I have to say.

So, do you have a descriptive tagline? Do you even have a tagline? If you answered no to either of those questions you should fix this asap. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• A first time visitor should know what your site is about in 3 seconds or less – People have short attention spans these days, don’t make them guess, make sure they know exactly what they’re going to get by coming back to your site week in and week out.
• Can you summarize your site in one sentence? “Location 180 helps people build businesses that they can run from anywhere in the world.” Clear, descriptive, and while there  is a lot more to the site than that, it offers a very clear starting point. Get your summary down and then translate that into your tagline.
• Does your current tagline reflect what your site is actually about? Often brands, blogs, and businesses change. Have you kept your brand consistent with the changes you’ve made in your business?  If you’ve changed course at all recently, make sure everything is still consistent.

By considering these issues with your site’s tagline, it will keep first time visitors more engaged, and make it much easier for people to describe to others what your site is all about. After all, if you can’t describe what you do in a single sentence, how the hell is someone else supposed to?

Do You Have a Bio Box?

Remember how I said a first time visitor should know exactly what the site is all about in 3 seconds or less? Well another way to help ensure that happens is to have a biography box on the upper right hand corner of the blog.

Write a brief descripion of who you are and what the site is, then include a photo.

After your tagline, this is often the next thing people see and is what will make them decide whether or not they should stick around and listen to what you have to say.

You don’t want people searching all over the place to figure out who you are. YOU are the most important component of your website.  Most of the people who read Location 180 do so because they’ve felt some connection or interest in me – the advice and everything else is just bonus.

People follow personalities, and you want to make sure yours shines through.

Some tips for crafting the perfect bio box:

• Is the photo clear? Make sure people can actually see who you are.  I can’t stand going to a new site and having to search everywhere to figure out who the author is. You want to make it as easy as possible to form a connection with your readers.
• Does your brief bio invoke curiosity or relate-ability? Those are two keys to a good bio box. It should either have them saying “Oh, that sounds like me.” OR “Oh, this is interesting, I want to learn more.” For instance, over on the right you see “My life sucked…” instant relate-ability to anyone who isn’t happy with their current life.
• Do you offer a solution? People read blogs because they either want to be entertained or get solutions to their own problems – and usually both.  Does you bio box do either of those things? “I quit my job, moved to Thailand, and built a business…Location 180 teaches you how to do the same thing.” Enticing with an interesting story, and an offer to help. How does your bio do those things?

I take this a step farther by including a link to the about page and a one click chance to follow me on Twitter. Make sure once you hook them, you make it easy to take things to the next step.

Has Your About Page Been Updated in the Last Year?

You change. Your business changes.  What you’re offering evolves. You about page should always reflect where you’re at currently in your business.

All too often I see vague about pages with no real information on the author or the blog, which completely defeats the purpose of having it there.

My about page is one of the 5 most visited pages on my site, so people are obviously curious. Make sure what you’re telling them is an accurate portrayal of what the site is about.

Also, one of the biggest problems I see when looking at blogs, is there’s no photo or a very vague photo on the about page. For all the same reasons as mentioned in the bio box, you should have a big ass, clear photo of your smiling mug. Why? Once again, people follow personalities.  They want to be able to visualize who’s behind the words.  I’ll often not read a blog specifically because I can’t get enough information on the person writing it.

Things to consider when building the page:

• Do you have a clear photo? Can’t reiterate this enough.
• Do you have a video you can use? While not necessary, the more information you can give to new visitors the better. It’s time for me to update mine, but it still does a good job of getting the point of the site across.
• Do you make it clear where else they can find you? This is a great time to tell people about other projects you have? Maybe it’s a product, social media account or addtional website, if you’ve grabbed their attention, they’ll often be looking for more from you.
• Make yourself stand out – This is your chance to really grab their attention. Do you have some entertaining facts you can share? A funny story about how the site got started, perhaps? Get creative and make yourself stand out.
• Don’t forget to add an opt in – If people are looking for more information, they might also be really interested in signing up for updates directly, so make sure there’s an opportunity for them to sign up for your email list.

Do You Have an Incentive to Opt In?

I’ve covered the importance of this in a couple blog posts, including:

• Everything I’ve Learned About Email Marketing (And a Little Something Special)
• How to Create a Killer List Building Offer (Even if You Have No Product to Sell)

If you read that first post on email marketing, you’ll see that I’m drastically tweaking my offer in order to make it even more appealing and valuable to readers.  The email series has worked great, but it’s time to take it to the next level.

Your list is also one of the few true assets you have for yourself online. Google can strip your search rankings or toss out your RSS subscribers, but your list is yours, and even if everything else blows up, not all is lost.

Consider the following points when crafting your offer:

• Are you Actually Providing Value? A catchy headline with sub-par content isn’t going to cut it. Sure you might drag a few people in, but they’ll likely unsubscribe and the buzz will never be generated.  I think of it like this, what would a paid product look like in the niche I’m going after? I make notes, create the product(s) and give it away for free. Example 1. Example 2.
• Do You Make it Easy to Sign Up? Do you have a box after every post? Is there a clear place to sign up on your sidebar? Are you leveraging the feature box?
• Is it relevant? If my site is about building a business and my opt in is all about taking better photos there is a huge disconnect. Make sure you’re offering the right incentive to the right audience, otherwise it will conflict with your brand recognition and keep people from signing up – or worse, not coming back to the site.

Do Your Headlines Suck?

One of the most important things I’ve done for my business is improve my copywriting.  It doesn’t matter how good your content or website is if you can’t get people to go there in the first place.

So how do you do that?

You have to garner attention with solid, descriptive, headlines.

It doesn’t matter if people see it via social media, in search results, or as a link from another site if you don’t have a way to hook people in.

Review your blog headlines and ask yourself honestly, “if I saw this on Twitter from someone I didn’t know, would I click on it?” If the answer is no more than 50% of the time, then you should probably re-evaluate what you’re doing.

My friend Dane Maxwell once told me the most useful piece of advice I’ve ever received as it relates to copywriting. He gave me his formula what he calls his instant clarity headline, and it looked like this:

End Result Person Wants + Specific Timeframe + Objection Handled

Offering one of those is a good headline.

Two is a great headline.

All three is an irresistible headline.

For instance on my Location Rebel sales page I use the headline: Make $1,000 in Extra Income in Three Months (Even if You Still Have a Full Time Job).

Result: Make $1,000 in Extra Income

Time Frame: 3 Months

Objection: “Does this work if I still work full time?”

Headlines are more important the actual blog post or page itself, here are some other things to help:

• Grab Jon Morrow’s Headline Hacks – He put together an ebook of the 52 best headlines of all time. Really useful if you run into a block trying to create better headlines.
• Split Test – I use Visual Website Optimizer to split test a couple different alternatives. One test improved my opt-ins for Location Rebel by 88%.  Also, as you begin to see what works well, you can emulate it with future posts and content.
• When In Doubt Use What Works – 9 out of my 10 most popular posts ever started with “How to”. Lists are also incredibly effective to get click throughs.  For instance: 10 Things You Can Do Today to Start a Lifestyle Business (Even if You Have No Ideas) led to my highest traffic day of all time.

Are You Communicating with Your Subscribers?

Your blog should be a way to facilitate relationship building, and the more you treat it as such, the more successful you’ll be.

How are you engaging the people who are reading your site? Are you responding to their comments? Answering their emails? Does your email series encourage them to actually engage in a conversation with you?

If not, you should seriously reconsider how you’re approaching this.

I’m actually speaking on this topic at SOBcon 2013 in a couple weeks, so if you’re in the Chicago area in early May definitely come check it out.

The bottom line is, if someone signs up for your email list and then doesn’t hear anything from you until you decide to send them some pitch to buy a product, they aren’t exactly going to be very receptive, are they?

Here are a few ways to increase communication with your subscribers and build relationships not just fans:

• Create a Newsletter – I send out a weekly newsletter that covers happenings on the site, big wins from Location Rebel members, and other cool things I’ve found throughout the week. I send it (almost) every Sunday, so people learn to expect it and there’s always an open line of communication if someone has a question about any of the content.
• Don’t Take Everything Personally – When you begin communicating more, there will be people who don’t like it.  They’ll view it as spam no matter how high quality the content is. Don’t take it personally, they aren’t your target audience anyway.
• Ask a Question – As soon as someone signs up for your email list, ask them to respond to you with the answer to a specific question.  This is the best thing I’ve ever done to get to know the people who read Location 180

As soon as you make the transition from thinking of your fans as statistics and begin to look at them as real people that you want to get to know, everything changes.

Are You Writing for the Reader, or Yourself?

This is a tricky one, and something I often struggle with.

You need to decide if your blog is going to eventually be a business or if it’s simply something for you personally.

If it’s just a way for you to write and tell friends and family what you’re up to, then by all means, write about whatever your little heart desires.

However, if you’re trying to garner a larger audience and build a business out of your website you need to stop writing for yourself and start writing for the reader.

This is a fine line.

You have to be interested in what you write about, willing to share about yourself and be vulnerable, but in the end most of what you write needs to have a takeaway and value for the reader – otherwise they’ll go get the information they’re looking for somewhere else.

Why do you think articles that start with “how to” are so effective?  Anytime you can teach someone how to do something there’s tangible value. Sure you may love writing your travel stories, and there will be people that like to read them, but you need to make sure the overwhelming amount of your content has something of value for everyone else.

A couple things to keep in mind:

• Have a Clear Reader Takeaway for Every Post – While I was writing this post at the top of my screen I wrote this: “Goal for audit: Help people improve their reader retention, build stronger relationships, and in turn become more profitable by making these small changes to their blog. Keep in mind occasionally this could be as simple as “entertain the reader and give them a break from reality”. I do that with my travel stories, but those are few and far between.
• Are you venting? – There are a LOT of times I want to write about a time I got screwed or when I wanted to vent my frustrations.  There’s a right and wrong time for this. These posts have the potential to bring a ton of traffic, but only if you’re venting about things relevant to everyone else. Venting about my nightmare at the DMV? Bad vent, no one cares. Do that on Twitter. Good vent? “Why America Hates Everything But the Status Quo.” Hehe, I enjoyed writing that one.
• Can You Share Someone Else’s Story to Get Your Point Across? – I should do this more. It’s one thing to use yourself as an example over and over, but if you can use case studies or tell the story of how other people have had success (or not) with your topic of choice, it can help make the concept more relatable on a broad scale.

Think about why you’re writing. If you’re still writing for yourself, it’ll be hard to garner the attention that you’re looking for.

Are You Leveraging Social Proof?

Everyone loves to jump on a bandwagon.  If you’ve had some big wins or been featured in other places around the internet, you should make that known! Do you have 10,000 Facebook fans? 30,000 RSS subscribers? Featured in Forbes?

Those are all things that should be advertised.

Even if people don’t want to, they will still look at that and say “Oh, if so many other people think this is good, it must be.”

This can go the opposite way however. If you’re site is brand new and you have a very small following, displaying small numbers can hurt you.

If you only have 20 facebook fans, that’s not going to make anyone think much of you. Wait until you have a few hundred before publicly displaying just where you’re at.

Here are a few ways you can leverage social proof:

• As featured in – Create a sidebar ad with an “as featured in” title with the logos of all the places you’ve been. Instant social proof. Take this a step farther by including a press page with links to the various posts.
• One Click Twitter Follow- Don’t want to show off your 23 Twitter followers? Use the one click follow button to help garner more followers without having to tell them right off that your only current followers are your siblings and mother.
• Have You Made the Effort? – Usually getting big media mentions isn’t something that just happens, especially not in the beginning.  Be proactive and reach out to various agencies and give them a compelling reason to tell your story for you. Here’s a strategy that works beautifully.

Social proof can be one the most powerful positive (or negative) forces on your blog. Assess where you can leverage this, and if you’re at a place where you can’t – then make more of an effort.

So How’d You Do?

The key things in this article are some of the biggest mistakes I see bloggers make.  No one is perfect, but if you make some small changes based on this audit you’ll have the potential to see a huge shift in the direction of your website over the coming months.

Was this post useful for you? I’d love it if you would share on Twitter or Facebook!

What would it look like if…

…I ran a marathon even though I’ve never done it before?

…I moved to a tropical island for two months?

…I built a business that has the potential to help thousands of people?

…I golfed all of the top 100 courses in the country – in a year?

There’s one thing that sets successful lifestyle entrepreneurs apart between most other people:

Their ability to imagine something most people would say is impossible.

What Would It Look Like If…

This is quite possibly the biggest mental reframe I’ve ever made in my life.

Before I was running an online  business and traveling all the time, I used to spend a lot of time daydreaming.

I’d pretend that I was running down a beach as opposed to the bike path in Portland.

I’d imagine that I was playing a round of golf in Bali as opposed to the local muni course.

I’d imagine that I was working on a business that really inspired me, rather than just making someone else rich.

The problem with all of those things was that for a long time I never actually thought that my daydreams could be reality.

It wasn’t until I got a random email from Dan Andrews telling me to apply for the Tropical MBA that I realized maybe there was something to this after all.

I put myself in a good position to make things happen, but at the time, I didn’t have any clue what I was preparing myself for.  Even today, I’m not entirely sure what’s going to be next.

However in that first 6 months of living in Thailand I made a profound switch.  Instead of thinking “that’d be cool” I started saying “what would it look like if?”

Why This Is So Important

You may be thinking, “yeah, yeah, big deal.”

But it is a big deal.

If you don’t have the ability to imagine something incredible that doesn’t currently exist, or the ability to imagine a life that you’re not yet living, you’re never going to achieve those things that truly excite you.

Most people thought people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were crazy. How about Alexander Graham Bell? The Wright Brothers?

For most of the things that we use on a daily basis and take for granted, there was someone behind it who people deemed crazy.

In my case I’m not inventing something that’s going to change the face of humanity as we know it. However, I have created things that have made a huge difference in the lives of many people – not the least of which is my own.

Once you believe anything is possible, you begin looking for ways to achieve it.  Once you achieve a small goal it gets easier and easier to achieve a larger goal. Before you know it, you’re not only doing all the things you thought you had to wait until retirement for, but you’re getting paid to do it in the process.

What have you always wanted to do? What have you believed would be impossible and therefore haven’t even thought about pursuing?

Do me a favor. Today, ask yourself one question:

“What would it look like if?”

Go down the rabbit hole. See how far it takes you. You may be pretty happy where you end up.

Today is my 28th birthday. In order to start the celebration I’m giving subscribers a new ebook “How to Quit Your Job” that will eventually be one of three books in the new 180 Toolkit. This will replace the “6 Steps to Location Independence” email series. More below, but definitely sign up if you haven’t already!

At the beginning of the year I made over $20,000 in one week just from sending out a series of emails offering an incredible package for Location Rebel.

Last week I sent a short email out to my newsletter list that resulted in the highest traffic day ever on the blog.

Why am I telling you this? Because in nearly 4 years of blogging I’ve come to one very important realization, the most valuable tool you have as a blogger and marketer is your email list.

There’s no better way to sell, inform, and most importantly build relationships online than via email – and that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today.

Over the last few years I’ve learned a lot of lessons about what works, and in particular what doesn’t as it relates to email marketing.

In this post I’m going to share some personal stories of what’s worked extremely well, what hasn’t, and why it’s more important than ever to communicate with your readers via email.

Are you ready for this?

Awesome, let’s get going.

The Best Piece of Blogging Advice I’ve Ever Received

Let’s face it, there are a lot of people out there that are giving terrible advice on blogging – so it can be tough to really figure out who you should pay attention to, and who is full of it.

These days there are very few people I fully trust when it comes to blogging, but one of the guys I really look up to is Derek Halpern of Social Triggers.  It just so happens a big reason for this, is he gave me some of the best blogging advice I’ve ever received.

Awhile back we were talking and he asked me what I was doing with my email list. At the time, the answer was not very much.

He told me the best way to not only build relationships with your readers but figure out what type of content to create is ask them a question in your first email to them.

I thought about this for awhile, and then decided to give it a shot.

When you sign up for my email series “6 Steps to Location Independence” the first email you’ll get from me asks you to reply to me directly and answer two questions:

1. What are you struggling with?
2. What’s your perfect day look like?

By doing this, I’m trying to show that I actually care, and I’m trying to move past statistics and make my readers real people.

I try and personally respond to every single person who answers these emails.  Why? Because I’ve been there I can totally relate to the responses people give.  I know what it’s like to daydream about your perfect day only to have month after month go by where you aren’t experiencing it.

About 25% of people who sign up for my list email me back.  Most are caught off guard and say they’ve never been asked to do something like that before.

They’re even more caught off guard when I email them back afterwards.

This simple interaction, while it takes a fair amount of time each week to respond personally, has allowed me to build relationships with my readers and get more details about exactly what they’d like to see on the site.

Action Item: Pose a question to your email subscribers and ask them to “actually hit reply and respond”

But How Do You Get Them to Sign Up in the First Place?

So right now you might be thinking, “Ok Sean, that’s great, but how do I get people to sign up in the first place?”

Ah, glad you asked.

This is one of the most common questions I get asked, and one of the biggest mistakes I see when doing website critiques for Location Rebel members.

“Sign up for Our Newsletter and Updates” is quite possibly the least enticing call to action ever.

It’s so generic that most people won’t even see something like this, or they will simply see “Oh more junk in my inbox? No thanks.”

You have to give people a reason to want to sign up.

Or as I like to say you have to create a killer list building offer.

Before I launched Location Rebel in June of 2011, I created the Location Rebel Arsenal book.  The goal of this book was to give you all of the tools and resources that you need to work from anywhere.

I tried to make the design interesting, and actually provide a resource that people would pay for if I offered it for say 20 bucks.

Within a couple days I had a few hundred email signups.

I spent hours and hours working on a resource that would truly add value to people’s lives. Taking the time to do this has paid off in spades over the last two years, as it’s the very beginning of my marketing funnel for the community.

I do something similar for my Location 180 email list.

“6 Steps to Location Independence” – I created an email series that walks you through the most important elements of building a business online.  For someone who has no clue where to start, this series is laced with value.

So instead of the reader doing me a favor by signing up, I’m doing them a favor by providing something really useful for free.

Action Item: Review what you’re currently offering your email subscribers.  Is it a killer offer? If not check out this post and get to work developing something that is going to make people excited to sign up to your email list. 

The Biggest Mistake I’ve Ever Made With Email Marketing (And How I’m Fixing It)

You’ve probably read that the best way to sell someone something is with a well crafted auto-responder sequence – which I believe is true…usually.

At the end of my 6 part series on location independence I have a call to action to join Location Rebel.  After the Arsenal ebook, you get a series of emails with links to videos I shot all about the most important elements of the lifestyle.

On their own, these are two relatively good sequences that provide a lot of value to readers.

However, there’s one BIG problem, that’s taken me longer than I care to admit to rectify.

Let’s say you’re new to the site and you join my email list over here.  Then a couple days later you see a link to the Arsenal ebook and you join that list too in order to get access to it.

You’re now signed up to TWO auto-responder sequences that are both coming from me.

If you’re like most normal people, what’s going to happen? You’re going to run away as fast as you can due to the bombardment of emails.

I’ve lost more subscribers than I care to admit because of this.

It’s essential that if you have multiple brands and offerings that overlap, you’re aware of exactly what the user is seeing, and provide the most useful and non intrusive experience ever.

So, how am I fixing this problem with my business?

I’ve thought about this for a long time, and in order to fix the problem I’m revamping everything about both funnels.

For starters however, the Location 180 opt in course will no longer be an email series.  Nope, it will now be a tool kit, with not one, or even two, but THREE resources for creating change in your life.

I’m still putting the final touches on two of them, so it will be a gradual roll out.

But when all is said and done, here’s what you’ll get for signing up:

• 6 Steps to Location Independence - Essentially it will be the same content as the email course, but will be in PDF form and updated a bit to include some of the latest stuff I’ve learned.  This will get you started with the essentials of your business.
• How to Quit Your Job - This is an ebook I put together to help you do exactly that, quit your job.  So many people here struggle with exactly how to take the steps to move on to the next phase of their lives, and this goes into detail about exactly how I (and others) have accomplished this.
• How to Create the Ultimate Bucket List - So now you’ve got the business and job stuff down, but there’s still an essential component: doing cooler stuff than all your friends.  This book walks you through creating the ultimate bucket list for you in all kinds of detail.  The best way to actually take action and do cool stuff, is to clearly establish what cool stuff you want to be doing.

I feel like this package will provide a much more valuable broad spectrum to help you achieve this lifestyle and will make those happy who don’t want to be bombarded with email.

I’ll still personally interact with as many readers as possible, and hopefully help even more people build successful businesses that allow them to do more of what they really want to be doing.

Note: This is a gradual process. Today, only the How to Quit Your Job guide is available, but the rest will show up in the next couple weeks!

Action Item: Sign up for the list to grab the new 180 Toolkit and begin your quest into the world of lifestyle entrepreneurship

Why Not All Unsubscribes Are Bad

All of that being said, it’s important to realize that not all unsubscribes are bad.

You want people on your list who actually want to be there. 

Inevitably people will join, check it out, and realize it’s just not for them – and that’s totally ok.

Many big marketers will never tell you this, but every single time you send an email out, you’ll have people unsubscribe.  It’s not something to take personally, even though everyone does at some point or another.

The goal is to find the perfect balance with your communication where your emails are something people are excited to see.

I’ve found that you should email at least once a week to increase interaction and stay relevant with your readers.  Others will say less, while some will say more.

If I’m doing a promotion or have a blog post I’m particularly excited about, it may be a bit more frequent. Once again, there will be people who don’t like this – and if they want to unsubscribe, then that’s great, they weren’t a good fit.

I never email unless I feel like I have a good reason to that will be valuable for the reader. Sure there are times where the email may be offering something they have to pay for, but if I’m doing it, it means I really do think it’s something they will benefit from.

What Do These Relationships Look Like in Real Numbers?

The bottom line is, I’m still running a business.  The more people I help, the better my business does.

So what role does email play in that?

Well as I mentioned earlier, I made over $20,000 in the first week of January – almost entirely through email.

I don’t usually go into detailed specifics about how much my business makes, but I felt this was a pretty important point to share, and it also gives you an idea of just what’s possible if you choose to adopt this lifestyle.

I knew that I wanted to put together a special deal on the Location Rebel community around New Years.  It’s the time where everyone is planning to make changes, and it seemed like the perfect time to actually follow through with their lifestyle goals.

Over a period of about 3 days I crafted an email series that highlighted some of the newest features of the course, as well as some success stories of current members.

I prepared people for something special and then put a finite window of time where they would be able to get not just 1 course, but 4 products for the price of 1 (I never discount the price of LR).

My goal was to sell a few copies and hopefully encourage people to make some changes in 2013.

The response was more than I’d ever anticipated, leading to my most profitable month ever.

To illustrate the power of building relationships via email, I converted about 1% of the entire list to a sale of a $297 product – pretty good if you ask me.

So why did it work so well?

These results don’t happen all the time, so what set this particular offer apart? Let’s take a look:

• I built real relationships, not just a list. Like I said, I try and respond to everyone. Even if it’s a brief response, I want to build friendships rather than just my ego. So when it came time to sell, I’d already had conversations with many people who chose to buy.
• I’m not selling crap. Some people push out every offer imaginable to their email subscribers. I only do it if I think there is real, tangible value.  Considering dozens of members have quit their jobs and built successful businesses, I knew exactly what was possible if people were willing to invest in themselves.
• There was scarcity. When I first launched Location Rebel to the beta group in 2011, I only opened it up to 20 people. It sold out in 48 minutes.  This was the first time since then I did a big push with deliberate scarcity. The deal was only open for 48 hours. None of that false scarcity bullshit, but it was an offer I could only do for so long.  Because of that however, people who may have been on the fence decided to act.
• I Don’t Do It All The Time. Anytime you do a promotion with more emails than usual, you’ll get some people who don’t like it – it’s all part of the process.  But I’ll only do 3-4 big email pushes a year, and I’ve found at that rate most people don’t mind, and even welcome them.

 The Technical Components of Email Marketing

Along with everything we’ve talked about here, there are some technical components and tools you’re going to need in order to make your email campaigns as successful as possible.

The first is a service that allows you to store your emails, create autoresponders, and send out emails to your list of raving fans.

Based on my experience there are two services I can recommend.

The first?

Aweber.

Aweber is what I personally use to manage my emails lists, and I’ve found it to be vastly superior for my needs compared to it’s primary competitor, Mailchimp. It allows you to efficiently create email campaigns, send out blasts, split test, and automate actions to make your life and the life of your readers that much easier.

If you’re just starting out, it’s the best service out there.

The second service I’d recommend is Office Autopilot.

This is for more established businesses and isn’t cheap at $297/month.  However it does just about everything.  Email, lead funnels, affiliate tracking, shopping cart integration – it truly is a one stop shop for all things online business.

I’m considering making the switch over to this, as it covers pretty much everything I’m looking for in a service like this.

Action Item: Make sure you’ve got a professional email marketing service like Aweber.

Your Secret Weapons

So you’ve got just about everything you need in order to absolutely kill it as an email marketer and provide a ton of value to your readers.  But a couple secret weapons never hurt anyone now did they?

There are two things I use to really push things over the edge and give myself the best shot at seeing the sales and subscribers come in.

Visual Website Optimizer

Visual Website Optimizer is the absolute easiest way to test just about anything on a website.  Want to try a different headline? No problem. Want to test two totally different pages? Easy.

All you do is add a piece of code to the header of your site and then hop in their extremely easy backend to start creating your tests.

Best of all? They have a free 30 day trial, and after that it’s only $50/month.

One split test accounted for an 88% increase in opt ins over my testing period for the Location Rebel home page.

Opt-In Skin

I’ve mentioned Optin Skin in the past, and I still believe it’s the best tool out there for non-intrusive email calls to action.

There’s all sorts of ways you can customize it, but on my photography site when people get to the bottom of a post, it seamlessly comes out of nowhere and inserts itself into the bottom of the post. I use a custom opt in box for this site, but have considered switching because Optin Skin is that good.

Action Item: Sign up for a free Visual Website Optimizer account.

Finishing Up

Hopefully this post has done a good job of illustrating just how important email marketing is to a blog or website.  The tools to really take your business to the next level are all here, it’s just a matter of sitting down, creating a dedicated plan, and then actually taking some action and making changes on your site.

Speaking of which, if you haven’t yet, make sure you sign up below and grab the first book in our 180 email kit: How to Quit Your Job.

In 2008, I had a pretty good idea that my day job wasn’t going to be a long term solution for me. However, it wouldn’t be for another 18 months that I’d actually leave my job.

During most of those 18 months I stayed stagnant, and made no progress to the goals I’d really set for myself – namely traveling the world, and building a business.

It wasn’t because I didn’t want to, but it was mostly because I didn’t know where to start. 

In 2009 things started coming together a little bit more, but it really only took about 5 months from the time that I started actually taking action to the time I parted ways from my job.

I’ve found though, that once you start moving, it’s a hard train to get off.

Your Excuses are Legit

All the time I hear from people who want to start building a business for themselves but simply don’t know where to start.

And you know what? I get it!

It can be daunting, especially if you’ve spent the last decade or two sitting in a cubicle building things for other people.

Then you factor in family responsibilities and keeping some semblance social life, and the thought of actually doing more work in your spare time seems so ridiculous you don’t do anything about it.

The good news is, it doesn’t take as much drastic action as you think it does to start building a lifestyle business.

In fact, many of the most beneficial steps to building a business are probably things you either are doing, or have been considering doing anyway.

The goal of today’s post is to give you 10 extremely actionable tasks that you can start doing today that will begin pushing you towards a business of your own and the lifestyle you’ve been wanting for years.

So, ready to stop making excuses? Ready to take a little action towards a better life? Sweet, let’s do this.

#1: Get a Domain, Hosting, and Install WordPress

This is hands down the easiest, most tangible thing you can possibly do today to get closer to a business of your own.

Every single thing I do online (social media being the exception) has been built on WordPress – my entire business revolves around it.  I don’t care what you start building.  It could be a blog, business website or even a fanpage for your favorite Spice Girl. Doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you get hosting (which will allow you to build unlimited websites), and install WordPress on your new domain.  Play, break, experience.

Once you feel comfortable with that, all of the other steps become much more attainable, because you’re removing one of the biggest technical barriers out there.

I personally recommend Dreamhost or Fat Cow hosting.

If you want a little more hand holding through the process, check out “How to Build Your First Online Asset in 48 Hours.”

#2: Send emails to 20 people who are living the life you want

Who better to build a relationship with than the people who have already successfully done what you’re striving towards?

I sent an email to Chris Guillebeau 4 years ago that completely changed my life.  We met for coffee, formed a relationship, and he became an essential part of my transformation from employee to entrepreneur.

The actual email I sent to Chris in March 2009...

That being said, there’s a right an a wrong way to approach influencers.  Don’t give them a 10 paragraph essay of your problems and life story. They are busy, respect their time.  Simply send them a quick note introducing yourself, and give a specific example of how something they’ve done or written has influenced you.

This opens up the door for further communication down the road.

Often your natural inclination is going to be to tell them as much info as possible, and then offer them everything under the sun in terms of help. Don’t go there. Slowly build the relationship as an equal, and if there’s an opportunity to meet them in person, go for it.

Do this for 20 people, and there’s a very good chance at least a few will develop into personal relationships that will be really valuable as you move forward.

#3: Find someone in the same place as you

Just as important (if not more so), is finding someone who is going through the exact same thing you are.

For me, it was my best friend Ryan.  He’d quit his job and moved to Hawaii, and as I watched him begin to live out his dreams, I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one who got left behind.

Having someone for accountability and support is so so important – especially early on.  There will be times where you struggle, don’t feel like you’re making as much progress as you should be, and where you just want to give up on it all and watch more Family Guy.

You need someone who’s going to keep you moving forward.

#4: Do the Brainstorm Exercise

One of the most common excuses I hear, is “I want to do something, but I don’t have any ideas.”

I promise that you have way more ideas than you think.

I believe that you can start a website that will make you at least $500/month around literally any topic. 

I built a site around my love of photography. More recently, I started a new one all about my love of golf.

So, what’s the brainstorm exercise?

Make list of every product, hobby, niche, and interest you have think you might be able to build a site around.  Seriously, spend 20 minutes on this.  You should have at least 50 items.

Then begin narrowing down which ones make the most sense.

For more help with this check out “How to Build a Niche Site that Brings in At Least $500 a Month.”

For most people it’s not a lack of ideas, it’s a lack of making a decision.  Just pick something. When you’re first starting out, there is no wrong decision. Just going through the process will put you miles ahead of where you would have been otherwise.

#5: Start SEO Writing

If you’ve been a reader here for awhile, you know that I’m a firm advocate of a three step process for building a lifestyle business:

1. Build Skills – If you don’t know what you’re doing, you won’t be successful. Take the time to educate yourself.
2. Freelance – Pick one of the primary skills in the post above and build a freelance business around it.  This will give you some income and the confidence to know you can make this work.
3. Take those Skills and Build Your Own Projects - Once you have the basics you can do whatever you want. Membership sites, e-commerce, info products, affiliate sites – the list goes on.

Dozens of people have leveraged SEO writing inside Location Rebel to successfully transition into their own businesses online. It’s the easiest way to start making money this week.

It’s not sexy, but it’s a fantastic way to make the transition from employee to employer.

For more information on how to get started check out: The Easiest Lifestyle Business to Start Right This Second

#6: Register for eLance

Keeping with the same theme of finding ways to make money right now, register for eLance.  This is a site where people post all types of freelance work from copywriting to web development and much more.

There are a lot of things you may not be qualified for, but probably more than a few that you would be perfectly capable of completing.  Sign up and peruse through a few of the ads – if one catches your eye, bid on it.

Again, this isn’t a be all end all solution.  You won’t make as much on elance as you might through other sites – but that’s not the goal at this point.  The goal is to help you build the confidence necessary to be successful with your own business over the long term.

#7: Set attainable goals with how to actions

“Be making $1k/month by September” is not a good goal.  Why not?  Because you have no direct control over it – not only that, the time frame is way too far out.  Something like this can be a good thing to shoot for long term, but you need much smaller more attainable milestones throughout the process.

As I mentioned, you’ll have ups and downs, but if you’re continually reaching your goals, you’ll have much more confidence to stick with it.

Here are a few examples to get you going:

• Buy a domain
• Write my first blog post
• Comment on 25 other blogs
• Get your first comment on your own blog (you don’t have control of this, but it’s attainable enough that I think it’s worth adding).
• Write your first piece of sales copy
• Bid on a job on eLance.

#8: Build a habit

In my newsletter last week I mentioned I just finished the book The Power of Habit. When you’re working for yourself, building good habits are more important than ever.

Start with one.  That one will make it much easier to form another, and another…

For me personally, I rarely eat breakfast. So I decided to start making breakfast every morning.  It’s amazing how that one commitment has led to greater productivity, and doing things like going to the gym every day.

You can use a tool like Ask Me Every to help you stay accountable for this one keystone habit.

#9: Improve your copywriting skills

Life is all about selling. Whether you’re convincing someone to go to coffee with you, buy your product, or simply side with you on which bar is best for drinks on a Friday night.

If you can sell and persuade, your life is going to be much easier.

It’s important to note that I don’t mean you should be deceitful or scammy in your persuasion. You should simply recognize it’s a part of life and do everything you can to put yourself in a good position to succeed.

If you’re going to do anything online, copywriting (persuading through written words) is especially important.  Luckily there are some resources out there that will get you moving in the right direction really quickly.  These are the resources that have helped me improve the most:

• Influence by Robert Cialdini – Cialdini looks at all of the different methods of persuasion and gives great examples of how they have worked on him in his own life.
• Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz – Recommended to me by multiple marketers, it can be tough to find a high quality copy, but is worth the effort.
• Cashvertising – I think about the “Life Force 8″ just about anytime I’m writing sales copy.
• Copyhour – Arguably the most effective out of all of them is Derek’s method of handwriting sales pages.

#10: Create something

Anytime I’m feeling unproductive, I look at my desktop where I have a note that says “Are You Consuming or Creating?”

Regardless of what you do in your lifestyle business, you’re going to be creating something. So you might as well start now.

Write a blog post, edit a photo, start a website – create something. If you get in the habit to creating as much as you consume, you’ll be amazed at how quickly things can progress.

BONUS: Join Location Rebel

You don’t need to spend any money or join any course to have a successful online lifestyle business. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying – you can find all the information you need, out there for free.

That being said, there are tools and resources that make the path much easier – and Location Rebel is one of those resources.

It has detailed blueprints to help you with all ten of the previous steps in this post. It has a community of hundreds of people who were exactly where you are right now – and have built successful businesses on their own.

Having that support system coupled with an exact roadmap for what you need to do is everything I wish I had when I was getting started.

Jason made $4,000 on his own within 30 days of joining. Carlo joined in December and just booked a one way ticket to Thailand. Tristan joined in January of last year and 9 months later had his first 5 figure month and 2 employees.  The stories like this go on and on.

You don’t need this program, but I’d love to see you inside if you’re ready to make a commitment to building a life where the only boss is yourself.

Sign up for Location Rebel

What actions would you recommend people take right now in order to gain traction with their dream lifestyle?

It’s 1:23 pm on a cloudy Monday afternoon in New York City.

You’ve just hopped off the NJ Transit train to Newark Liberty International and you’re excited to get back home after 10 days of networking, socializing and business meetings.

As you’re on the Airtrain you pull up Tripit to figure out which terminal you’re supposed to be getting off at.

“2:45 – JFK Gate 23 Terminal 3″

You know that moment where you realize you’re at the wrong airport less than 90 minutes before your flight? Yep, that’s me as of about 20 minutes ago.

I’ve been relatively lucky with my travels, as this is the first full on, all out, stupid mistake I’ve ever made. Sure I’ve had some close calls and other stressful situations, but this is the first time I’ve ever had to slump back in my seat, look out the window, and finish out my train ride to not only the wrong terminal, or even the wrong airport – but to an entirely different state than where I was supposed to be.

So what do you do in a situation like this? Do you frantically call up a desk agent and plead your case? Do you fall to the ground screaming “noooooo!”while cursing the world and raising your fists in the air?  Do you just give up and go back into NYC for an indefinite period of time?

I did none of those things.

I walked up to the desk, told them what happened and told the agent I’d gladly pay the $50 change fee for a flight that gets me in only two hours later.

Now I just have an extra few hours to kill in Newark and a slightly bruised ego.

The Adventure of it All

In the last three years I’ve been to a lot of places and had a lot of incredible (both good and bad) travel experiences.

Just last night I was telling the story of my motorbike fiasco in Bali a year back.

I was meeting the General Manager of the Como Shambhala Estate in Ubud and had a 45 minute or so ride from Seminyak to get there.  Everyone told me it was pretty easy, so I didn’t think much about it, and gave myself plenty of extra time just in case.

Ubud is in the middle of the island, and about 90 minutes into my trip I come around a corner and see something extremely unexpected:

The Oceean.

That’s not good.

It took me another hour plus to wind my way through the jungles of Bali, stopping and asking for directions every few kilometers, before I finally found myself in Ubud.  It also didn’t hurt another dude on a motorbike was polite enough to let me follow as he was going the same direction.

In this situation, similar to the one I’m currently facing, I could have panicked and freaked out at the fact I could miss my meeting, or at the fact I had to practically use sign language to get my point across to the locals I was talking to.

But once again for whatever reason I stayed calm and did what I needed to do to get to the right spot.

The Secret of Stress Free Travel

In this post I could throw down bullet points and common sense checklists that you’d skim, maybe nod your head to a couple times, and move on from.  But the fact is, most of that would have nothing to do with why I’m successful at traveling stress free 98% of the time.

No, the real secret is that I treat my life as an adventure.

Just the fact that over a year later I’m still telling the story of my Balinese motorbike incident means it was totally worth it. I did something memorable, something that made for a good story.

When was the last time you told the story about your routine cross country flight where you arrived on time and slept the whole way through? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

The beauty of this lifestyle is that if you wish to, you can make every day an adventure.

One of my first days living in Thailand I saw an elephant walking down the street. A year later in LA I’m getting life and business advice in an incredible mansion from Orlando Jones.

You have to take the bad with the good and recognize that almost always a bad situation will make for a great story later on.  Sure it might be inconvenient, frustrating, or even expensive, but it’s all part of the fun.

How much would life suck if you didn’t have stuff like this happening to keep you on your toes?

Most of the time travel goes off without a hitch.  Sometimes things happen beyond your control.  Other times you’re just a complete idiot and get off at the wrong airport, or decide to hop on a Cambodian Death Bus*.

*Note: This was the not-so-affectionate nickname we gave to our overnight sleeper bus in January to Siem Reap from Pnomh Penh. We learned the hard way that not only are those buses disgusting and beyond old, but there are no paved highways through the country side.

Was that night miserable? Of course it was! But it was an adventure and a great story.

How are You Framing Your Experiences and the World Around You?

Most people go through their daily routines with insane monotony.  Doing the same thing over and over with no change can drive you insane.

However regardless of whether you have a stable life with a good job, or you’re a global entrepreneur, making the mindset switch from living a life on repeat to living a life of adventure can make all of the day to day stuff not only more bearable, but more fun and memorable as well.

I like to think of my life as one giant version of The Amazing Race.

Just yesterday I was walking through New York trying to find my way from Grand Central to Columbus Circle.  I passed by Spiderman in Times Square and had one of the cities finest $.99 slices of pizza.

Inside Grand Central Station in NYC

Each stop was another aspect of the race and getting to each one became part of the experience.

I still have a ways to go today before I land safely in Portland, and technically I don’t even have a confirmed ticket yet.

But you know what? From now on, whenever some asks me what my best travel tip is, I can say without hesitation:

“Make sure you show up at the right airport.”

 UPDATE: 

So in an absolutely shocking twist of events (sense the sarcasm?), when I returned to the counter an hour later to finalize the flight change, the new guy working the desk informed me in not-so-polite terms that I was an idiot for thinking the change was only going to be $50.

It was actually $143.

We went back and forth and brought in the original agent, as well as the manager.  Delta has a same day change policy that essentially allows you to show up at the airport and make any same day changes for $50.

ONLY however, if you’re at the same airport – I was not, hence the higher price.

The lady told me that in normal circumstances they’d honor her word, give me the ticket at $50 and be done with it.

But an hour had past since then (as I was told needed to happen), and when they went to finalize the booking, the price of the flight change had jumped to $459.43.

Seriously.

I mean I get that I’m the idiot in this situation, but this was getting ridiculous.

They told me I could head to JFK and they can put me on another flight for $50 there.  There was a direct flight to Portland in just under two hours.

“You might want to take a cab” the agent said.

Gee, thanks. Asshole.

$143 in fares, tolls, credit card fees, and tip I arrived at JFK 1 hour before the flight.

I gave the new agent the 30 second rundown and she got to work.

“You barely made it, 3 minutes later and I wouldn’t be able to get you on this flight. But we can get you on the direct flight for $50.”

“I love you.”

–

The whole time all of this is happening all I could think about is the first half of the post I’d written 90 minutes prior:

“Sure it might be inconvenient, frustrating, or even expensive, but it’s all part of the fun.”

This afternoon proved to be all of those things.  But it makes for a good story and is a solid reminder that sometimes you just need to be able to have a laugh at your own expense and enjoy the adventure.

Email is the most important component of my business.  When I get to communicate one on one with readers and help them find solutions to their problems, everyone wins.  Yet as this blog grows, the email grows with it and managing it can be really difficult at times.

A few months back Arman Assadi got in touch with me and was telling me about his new course for managing it.  I was seriously intrigued.  After checking it out, I was even more sold on his strategies and asked him to do an in depth overview of how to really implement a strategy for removing all the emails that I didn’t want to see each day.

Needless to say, he delivered.  So with that, I’m going to turn it over to him!

Enter Arman

I wasn’t always a Gmail ninja. In fact, I thought I’d be just fine sifting through my Hotmail searching for that funny viral video my friend sent me, amongst all the “penis pill” spam emails.

For years I was drowning in my inbox, praying that email would become obsolete and I’d never have to look at or respond to another email again. Well, that day hasn’t come (yet), and we live in a world where electronic-mail is still the primary way people contact one another.

If you’re stressed, frustrated, or even just annoyed with email and all the spam in your inbox—trust me, I understand.

Eventually, I started to realize that my individual success as an employee, and now a solopreneur, depended heavily on my ability to communicate with others like a professional.

My post-college career started at 3M, and at that time our division was running on Lotus Notes, which was probably created by an email masochist. Wow, was that painful. During that time I had no system, it was merely a matter of looking at my emails in chronological order and seeing which ones had not been opened yet.

My personal email was also flooded with spam and all those annoying notification emails. It seems that no matter how many times we uncheck that little box that says “Yes, I would like to receive all your special ‘dealios’ and I want 10 emails a day from you!” we still keep receiving them, don’t we?

After 3M, I got an opportunity to join Google in the Enterprise division, working on Google Apps (Gmail). I quickly realized that moving from an old-school manufacturing company selling consumer goods and running on Lotus Notes, to a company that ran on an email platform it created itself was going to be a very different experience.

Right away it was sink or swim. I was immersed in a pool of uber-talented, super-sharp, technology-savvy folks. Not only did everyone have a strong handle on technology, but they were constantly looking for ways to improve themselves and bring value to others.

Email was our number one communication tool. The number of emails I received (and needed to respond to) practically quadrupled overnight. I looked around and noticed that those who were at “inbox zero” and had set up some sort of email management method tended to be the most successful all around.

I knew that looking at emails chronologically and just clicking on the unread ones was not going to fly here. I also noticed that my personal email accounts were completely flooded with LinkedIn notification emails, Groupon deals, bill reminders, etc.

I couldn’t differentiate the important emails from the non-important ones, and that’s the last thing I wanted to happen as a Noogler (“New Googler” – official terminology).

I became obsessed with email. I read every single book, article, magazine, and strategy by all of the top gurus out there. I talked to other Googlers that were considered “Gmail Ninjas” and asked them to show me their inboxes. I picked their brains, I implemented new strategies, and eventually, I created my own.

The system started to become very popular with my co-workers, and people started asking me to teach them the strategy and help them reclaim their inboxes. Word started getting out and before I knew it I was teaching people outside of Google, and started getting paid well to do it.

I’ve had the privilege to work with some incredibly successful and talented people. I’ve trained CEO’s, startup founders, brilliant engineers, and serial entrepreneurs. After I left Google, I continued my consulting, but I quickly realized this model of 1-on-1 consulting wasn’t scalable if I wanted to share this system with as many people as possible.

Now, here I am today as a solopreneur, ready to share my world-class strategy with you.

I didn’t hate my job, but I knew one thing: I wanted to work for myself and create a lifestyle of absolute freedom. I took my system and created a full course called Effortless Email, teaching people like you how to eliminate spam and annoying emails, reclaim and reboot their inboxes, and boost their productivity.

And that’s what I’m going to share with you today. Below, I have laid out the secrets to eliminating spam and annoying emails forever, step-by-step.

Let us begin our Effortless Email training!

You, like many of the people I’ve helped with Effortless Email, may have an inbox full of email. That number may be in the hundreds, or even thousands; but regardless of how disastrous it is, the Inbox Reboot steps below will show you how to completely reboot and refresh your inbox in under two minutes.

Sounds magical, I know.

Part 1: Inbox Reboot

Goal: Target all the messages in your Inbox that are more than 30 days old, and archive them all.

How: We’ll create a custom search query, then use that to identify all the messages we want to Archive. 

Why: Take control of our inboxes and start organizing from a manageable state. Eliminate all spam and stress, while increasing productivity and automating the entire email process to make it completely…Effortless!

Action:

1. Type this search term into the Search bar at the top of your Gmail account: “label:inbox before:{date}”
2. Where it says “{date}” make sure to replace it with a date 30 days before the day you perform the search (in the format below).
3. So for example, if today is March 11, 2013, my search will be: “label:inbox before:2013/2/11”
4. You should now get a search result with all those emails.

Next steps:

1. Select all (click on the box at the top, select “All”)
2. Now select the text at the top that says “Select all conversations that match this search”
3. Hit the Archive button – DO IT!
4. Feel better

Easy, right?

Summary:

1. Must archive all emails more than 30 days old currently in your Inbox
2. Do a search and Archive all emails in that search result
3. Smile!

We must do this so that we can look at only the last 30 days of emails. From here, we can now easily see the different newsletters, notifications, subscriptions, and other annoying emails we’ve received in the last 30 days and begin our elimination process.

We’re going to start our elimination process with mass unsubscribes. Usually, to unsubscribe from an email you have to open it, find the unsubscribe link, click it, and hope you’ll never hear from them again.

But we’re going to skip all that and automate the process.

Part 2: Elimination

Unroll.me – Use this free service to identify unwanted emails and manage your subscription list.

 *Effortless Email tip:

• Only use this service to perform a mass unsubscribe from the subscriptions you don’t want. Don’t allow the “Rollup” feature” to organize your emails/subscriptions for you.
• When logged into Unroll.me, go to the Rollup Settings and Deactivate Rollup Delivery.

Part 3: Automation

Filter any remaining subscriptions you want to keep, but don’t need to see every day in your inbox (details in section below).

The key to becoming more productive here is that you should only be seeing the most important emails in your inbox. By filtering emails that aren’t as important, you eliminate the distractions.

When the time is right, you can visit your “shopping” folder and check out the latest deals; otherwise, they shouldn’t be in your inbox. 

Step 1: Find and select an email you want to filter.

Step 2: Click the More icon at the top of the email

Step 3: Select Filter messages like these. The filter will default to the email address that it is being sent from

Step 4: Select Create filter with this search

Check off:

• Skip the inbox (Archive it)
• Apply the label (select the appropriate label)
• Never mark it as important
• Also apply filter to [X number] matching conversations
• Click Create Filter

Suggested Filters:

• Notifications – Annoying and unnecessary confirmation emails, junk mail, etc. e.g. credit card statements, PayPal, social media notifications (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).
• Shopping/Deals – Groupon, Living Social, and any other speciality shopping emails
• Banking – Banking statements, financial services, etc.
• Career – For anything work related
• Bills/Receipts
• Blogs – Newsletters or blogs you are subscribed to and don’t read daily

*Create filters for any additional niche emails you receive 

Part 4: Prevention

So, at this point we’ve eliminated what was already in our inbox and started with a completely fresh slate. We’ve unsubscribed from all those annoying subscriptions, and we’ve filtered out the ones we don’t need to see every day.

The last step is to make sure we prevent more of this in the future, and there’s a nice little trick for that.

For all future product/service signups or registrations that ask for an email address, use:

your-email+signups@gmail.com

So for example, if my email was tobias@gmail.com, I would use:

tobias+signups@gmail.com.

Props to the folks that picked up on the Arrested Development reference. For your filter, you can use any word you like, and you can do this as many times as you want with different words.

I’ve found that this trick works the majority of the time, but on occasion the signup form will tell you to use a “valid email address”.

After you’ve signed up:

• Create a filter for any emails sent to that address to skip the inbox
• Be sure to check the emails in that label/folder for a confirmation email, in case it’s required in order to activate service.
• Filter the new unnecessary emails right away as they arrive in your inbox

And that, my friends, is the Secret to Eliminating Spam and Annoying Emails Forever.

Next Steps

So, take these steps and put them into action immediately! You will feel 10x better after implementing them and will see instant results.

Remember, check out the free training webinar video we’ll have up for a very limited time where you can watch me over-the-shoulder as I show you some of my favorite email secrets.

There are some really cool free bonuses you can access, and I’ll share how you can find out more about my Effortless Email training.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this article, I believe the best way to learn more is from each other.

Let me know in the comments below!

Be amazing.

Arman Assadi is the creator of Effortless Email, and the Freedom Lifestyle movement at WhyILeftGoogle.com. Arman is an ex-Googler, turned solopreneur. Make sure to follow the Freedom Lifestyle on Facebook for access to updates and resources, and follow Arman on Twitter: @armanassadi

Last April I decided to take a trip to China and see what kinds of opportunities I could find for myself over there.

I had three potential markets in mind that I wanted to explore:

• Wood Watches
• Backpacks for the “flashpacker”
• Opportunities to import into China.

The one I was most excited about at the time were the watches.  My girlfriend Tate has a wooden watch that looks pretty cool, is a unique idea, and is a magnate for comments.  Everytime she wears it she gets at least 1 or 2 comments asking about it.

There was a ton of potential in the market, as few people had really started looking into opportunities with making watches out of wood.

I enlisted a couple friends of mine who knew more than I did about manufacturing and doing business in China, and headed to one of the world’s largest sourcing events: The Canton Fair.

Here you can literally find someone to make you anything you want.  Diapers? Check. Sex toys? Yep. Tractors? Mmmmhmmm. Saunas? You got it.

So obviously there was a plethora of watch companies that will make you exactly what you were looking for.  I even found the factory that manufactured Tate’s watch and bought a sample of essentially the same model at a 90% discount.

Well, for various reasons I decided it wasn’t the right time for me to start manufacturing.  I simply had the other things that I needed to focus on more.

Enter Ryan Beltran.

A good friend and travel companion, he also had a huge interest in watches and saw the same potential as me when we first showed up at the fair.

The difference between us?

He ran with the idea, and has made almost $100k in his first week on Kickstarter for his latest line of wood watches, Original Grain.

Ryan is one of the coolest guys I know and has worked his ass off to make this business a reality.

Few people are out there providing really good information on what it takes to not only create a product in China, but to be successful bringing it to market.

Ryan and I Tuk Tuk'n in Cambodia last month (notice that sweet watch of his)

Because of this I wanted to do an interview with him talking about the process for developing the watch, raising the money on Kickstarter, and ultimately, providing a roadmap for others considering doing something similar.

I emailed him some of the most pressing questions I had, below are his answers:

Where do you even begin looking for people who can actually make a product for you?

Once you’ve determined the product you’d like sell, knowing where to look for suppliers can easily seem like one of the most overwhelming tasks on your list. Thankfully for me, the largest trade show in China (The Canton Fair) was just a quick train ride away. Spanning over three weeks with three different phases, you can literally find any and all products there.

If you do decide to invest in a trip to attend the fair, the key is to have a well established game plan prior to going. I can still vividly remember the first time I walked into that massive complex and having no idea where to begin. However, if you come prepared with specific products in mind you can get started from day one meeting with suppliers and setting up visits later that week. I’d highly recommend attending The Canton Fair or similar trade shows to find manufacturers and inspire your product ideas even further.

If I can’t make it over to a sourcing fair, where should I go? Can I still do this?

Absolutely.

For those without the start-up budget to travel and attend a sourcing fair, other alternatives do exist. I’m sure most people are aware of websites like Ali Baba, where you can virtually search for any product and find more suppliers than you’d ever need. This is great place to start. But you’ve gotta be really careful, quality control is really difficult when you’re not on the ground, and you never quite know what you’re going to get.

This is why going to someplace like the Canton Fair is so nice, because you can feel samples of other products and get an idea of the quality.  Sean and I went through literally dozens of watch manufacturers and only found a handful that were up to my standards for Original Grain.

If you’re really serious about doing this without going to China, you’re best bet is to get in touch with someone on the ground there who knows what they’re doing.

I have a couple American friends who do nothing but sourcing for a living, getting in touch with someone like that will ensure that you enter the process with your eyes wide open.

So, the initial idea was for a wood watch. You took it even farther than I could have envisioned,  how did you evolve it into something so unique?

This initial idea goes way back to my original research into the watch market and stemmed from the fact that there was minimal competition. Once we left the fair and I’d determined there truly was a need in this niche, I knew there was one more thing to do…niche down even further and come up with something that hadn’t been done before.

After talking with consumers, we learned some of the big problems with other products out there were a lack of durability, little reliability in the cheap Chinese movements, and a lack of “day-to-day” wearability.

So I went to work, and the result was a hybrid design that features 100% all-natural wood and stainless steel. The evolution was definitely a little more complicated than that, but at the end of the day my goal was to offer an innovative and simply better alternative to the current wood watches available, that you could wear day in and day out in any situation.

How did you design it? Can the factories pretty much do anything you want?

The design process was easily one of the most exciting parts about taking the watch from concept to physical prototype. If you want to create it, you can find a factory to make it. I’m by no means a professional designer, but my previous background in product development definitely made things easier.

Factories are generally very helpful when it comes to developing your product. In my experience with these watches specifically, they had an in-house team of designers that were able to help refine things prior to making a prototype. As a side note, having someone who can speak the native language is essential if you need a lot of help with this.

This is also another benefit of being close to the manufacturer, I could hop on a train and meet in person with the team that was actually creating my watch.  We made a lot of changes in the early going that I simply don’t think would be possible if I wasn’t there in person.
What sets you watch apart from other similar watches? (Inspiration, high quality materials etc)

The number one thing that sets my watch apart from others is the design. It truly is unique. Second, these watches offer a much higher quality feel than their competitors. By incorporating wood and stainless steel into the design, I was able to give it that natural wood look, with a more classic and “real watch” feel.

We source the majority of our materials and parts from around the world, and the factories were a huge help in facilitating that process. For instance, we didn’t want a cheap movement. We wanted the watch to be reliable, and still affordable. So we went with one of the most well-regarded Japanese movements out there. In terms of perceived quality, it’s second only to Swiss movements, which cost many multiples more.

We also sourced our own wood from various countries. We don’t alter the wood’s natural color, but simply give a protective polish that will maintain it’s original look. 

How much time did it take from idea to having a working prototype? What big changes took place?

I had the initial idea back in May of 2012 when Sean was in China, sat on it for a while, and then decided to really make it happen in July.

Once you find a reliable, quality supplier to manufacture your product the timeline really isn’t that long to have a working prototype. You have to understand the fact that these factories are extremely good at what they do and can pump things out in a hurry. Once I had the initial designs ready, it took about a month to receive a prototype. 

The majority of your time will be spent tweaking designs and finalizing everything. For example, I had to purchase new molds for the case and band, I shaved off fractions of a millimeter from the wood bezel, and slightly altered my face designs. All of which takes time.

Are there minimum order quantities you have to have to even get a factory to work with you?

The minimum order quantity (MOQ ) levels will vary depending on the product.

Of course the cheaper your per unit cost is, the higher the MOQ and vice-versa. When I first started to manufacture products in China, I thought there was little wiggle room to negotiate the minimum order with factories, but what I’ve found is they are actually pretty flexible. This is yet another reason why it’s beneficial to visit the factory in person, as they will be more likely to work with you on this if you do so.

Very rarely is the initially quoted MOQ going to be a deal breaker if you can’t meet their requirement.

What are all of the costs associated with the manufacturing process? (Design, Proto development, QC,)

This will vary by the product you’re dealing with and from person to person depending on skill set, where you live, and personal preference. If you have the ability to do the design yourself then you can factor out that cost. Prototypes can add up quickly if you need to make a lot of adjustments. For example, I had to purchase molds for my watch case and band in order to get the exact specifications I wanted. Then purchase samples to test color combinations and different face designs.

Quality control comes down to your preference, time, and location. For me, I was able to be on the ground from start to finish.

But for most I assume this is not the case. I would suggest for those who are not able to either go visit the factory at all or do quality control, hire out someone to do this for them. Absolutely do not try and do this from your home country and outsource with no help from someone on the ground. And I strongly advise you make a visit to see your factory at some point.

If I were to put a rough estimate on the amount of money one should expect to spend starting a similar type of project, I’d say $5,000…on the high end.

That would easily get you through the design stage, into factory samples and prototypes with more precise specifications, and a final product with packaging. I’d even go so far to say this much initial capital could get you to China for a factory visit. At that point, you’re going to be a little strapped for cash to market your product/business or get a super baller website, but that’s why platforms like Kickstarter are so great!

Now let’s jump into the fun stuff. Kickstarter. $25k in 24 hours, going on closer to $100k now after almost a week.  What do you think led to so much fast success?

As I’m sure most of you know, the key for success with any online business is generating traffic.

So, prior to launch that was my number one priority. I reached out to everyone I knew. I told them all about my project and launch date, and really tried to get as many people to contribute in the first few hours of going live as I could.

No one wants to be the first person to join something, so if I could get the people that had already committed to donating to do so early, I knew that could be a big factor in building momentum.

One of the biggest unexpected factors was receiving enough momentum to land on the front page of Kickstarter in their “popular” category – which generated even more traffic.

I had my goal of $10,000 reached in less than 5 hours and I truly believe it was huge for creating a buzz around the project. Who doesn’t want to hop on a fast moving train?

Your video looks sweet, how’d you put it together? Did you have any experience?

This question makes me laugh for a number of reasons. First and foremost, let me come right out and say that I literally had zero hours, minutes, or seconds in video editing experience prior to making the Kickstarter video. That being said, I too was pretty amazed with the finished version.

Like all things when you’re starting your own business, it was yet again another great learning experience…frustrating at times, but invaluable in the long run.

One piece of advice I can give when it comes to making a video for Kickstarter, is do your research. Watch countless videos, especially projects similar to yours (that were successful), and see what they did. Take bits and pieces from their videos and craft a unique story. People want to connect with you on another level beyond your awesome product.

With the money you’re raising, what’s next for the brand?

I’ll be honest and say prior to the campaign my answer to the “next steps” question was a little different…for obvious reasons! With the success I’m having and the money I’m raising, knowing where to allocate funds is crucial as I work to manage the growth. 

Continuing to build my online presence will remain a priority, however I now have a lot more leverage in finding retailers to carry my brand. Being able to fall back on the fact I’ve received so much demand in only a few days since I launched, immediately establishes a new level of confidence, and more importantly, credibility with my product. With that said, I’m crafting an in-depth sales and marketing strategy to sell my watches beyond an e-commerce platform and extend my reach into as many physical retail outlets as possible.

Exciting times for us at Original Grain and we can’t say thank you enough for all of the support. I welcome an questions people have about the manufacturing process or strategies surrounding the Kickstarter campaign, and will get back to everyone as quickly as possible.

You Ready to Get Original?

I’m stoked to see how the rest of this year plays out for Ryan and Original Grain. We spent a lot of hours on Tuk Tuks and in the back of buses talking about how he was going to approach this launch, and obviously he did a lot of things right.

Ryan was also cool enough to give me a prototype of the maple design, and I get compliments on it every time I wear it.  The owner of the highest end watch shop in Portland even said “oh wow, this is a really cool piece” when I took it in to get the links resized.

Interested in watches or any other aspects of making products in China? Just drop a comment!

Check out the Original Grain Kickstarter Campaign to donate and grab your very own OG watch.