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Teen Brothers Strike it Rich with Bike Tires

Posted by: Get Rich Click In: Get Rich Click 26 Oct 2010 0 comments

One of my favorite Get Rick Click stories is of Zachary and Nathan Doctor,
two brothers who started a business in their dad’s garage when Zachary
was 10 years old and Nathan was 12.

The Doctor boys were your average pre-teens. They went to school,
played sports and found all kinds of ways to have fun. They also lived in
an entrepreneurial family. Zachary and Nathan did the typical entrepreneurial
businesses kids do, from setting up lemonade stands to finding
other ways to make a few bucks. Their dad is Lou Doctor, a successful
executive living in Silicon Valley. He runs a boutique investment banking
firm called Arbor Advisors.

Lou Doctor enjoys cycling. His sons also adopted the sport early on.
All three learned that in the world of cycling, special bike tires are the
equipment of choice. You must have the right tires for the right application,
from paved road to mountain path.

One day in 2002 Lou and his bike club ordered tires online from a specialty
firm in the United Kingdom. To get the best price, they had to order
in quantities of ten tires per type. When they received their first order, Lou
and his bike club were not thrilled. The tires were an odd color. No one in
the bike club wanted them on their bikes.

Lou Doctor struck a deal with his sons. He gave the boys the tires and
suggested they try to sell them on eBay. They could sell them for whatever
price they wanted, but he needed $30 a tire to cover his costs. Above
that, the boys keep anything they got above that as profit. The sons went
into action. They snapped digital photos of the ugly-colored tires, posted
them for sale on eBay and waited.

Not only did the boys sell them in quick order, but they sold them for
$35 each. Lou got his $300 investment back and the boys pocketed $50
for their efforts. The boys asked their dad to order ten extra tires next
time. The same thing happened. The boys sold the ten extra tires and
again made a tidy profit.

Zachary and Nathan wanted more! They were making money and having
fun at the same time. Soon there were more orders, more sales, more
customers and more profits. They went from ordering 10 tires to ordering
50 and as many as 500 at a time from the retailer in the United Kingdom,
who eventually gave them discounts for large volume purchases.
Then the boys opened an eBay store. They got up each day at 5:00 a.m.
and pulled the items, packed the orders, filled out the shipping labels,
and got to school at 7:30 a.m. When they came home, they went to work
printing out the orders and getting them ready for fulfillment. Every day
at 6:00 P.M., they took the packages to the local post office, where they
became known for pulling bins of boxes and placing them directly on the
back of the post office truck before it left for the distribution center.
It wasn’t long before the brothers launched BikeTiresDirect.com, their
own e-commerce website. The business kept growing — and in the Get
Rich Click spirit, Zachary and Nathan pursued online marketing, learning
how to buy the right keyword combinations to get higher rankings in
the search engines. They attribute much of their success to buying traffic
via keywords … thousands of keywords and keyword combinations
which increases the number of “free” hits they get on Google, Yahoo and
other search engines.

Thanks to the Doctor family, their tire supplier became the largest supplier
of specialty bike tires in the United Kingdom. Today Zach is 17 and
Nathan is 19. They have less time to work at the company, but they still
help with buying keywords and work during the summers. The company,
with over $8 million in annual sales at last count, now sells everything for the serious
cyclist. And it’s still growing.

Order Delivery Time in Five Minutes
Customers in virtually every country in the world order from Bike-
TiresDirect. Occasionally an order comes from a Silicon Valley customer.
For fun, Lou Doctor would drive his kids to the customer’s home, ring the
bell and deliver the order — allowing the boys to meet and get to know
some of their customers.

One day, they received an order from someone who lived only a few
streets from their home. They quickly fulfilled the order, jumped in the
car and drove to the customer’s home, arriving five minutes after the order
had been placed. When the customer answered the door, ten-year-old
Zachary and twelve-year-old Nathan were standing there, order in hand.
Needless to say, the boys had a new customer for life. Word of mouth
referrals from the delighted customer generated even more business for
BikeTiresDirect.

(The above excerpt is from the book, Get Rich Click!, due out May 2nd, 2011.)

Guest Post from Carol McManus LinkedIn: Network, Groups, and Access

Posted by: Get Rich Click In: Get Rich Click, Social media 18 Oct 2010 0 comments

If you implemented the two important steps from the last post, you are only three away from having your LinkedIn profile working for you. In this post I’ll let you know how to use your network, LinkedIn groups, and how to configure access to your profile.

NETWORK: Set a goal of 250 connections. For some this may seem daunting at first, but you will be surprised at how quickly you will get there. With a systematic approach of sending 5 invitations every day, you can reach you goal in a couple of months. You will go through stages of identifying and connecting with people on LinkedIn. For most of my clients it becomes a stream of consciousness…one person leads to another who reminds you of someone else and when you connect with them another person will pop up.

Start with your current database – it might be your Outlook or Yahoo or AOL email list but it is the best place to begin. Search by name to see who is already on LinkedIn and send them an invitation to connect. After you have exhausted this list, begin searching the companies you have worked for in the past as well as educational institutions you have attended. I guarantee you will find names of people you haven’t seen or talked to in years, but would enjoy reconnecting with you on LinkedIn. The third area to search is the connections of the people who you are now connected to. Take a few minutes every day and pick 1 or 2 people in your new virtual universe and see who their connections are. Chances are there will be a name you recognize and someone else to invite into your network.

GROUPS: The real secret to LinkedIn success lies in the Groups. You have the opportunity to join up to 50 groups (it took me 18 months to reach the maximum). The categories are: Alumni (look for all the schools you attended – whether you graduated or not); Corporate (join the groups of companies you have worked for or perhaps had business associations with in the past); Conference (many conferences today create their own groups to facilitate networking before and after the event); Networking (great for just common interests – mine is Starbucks Enthusiasts!); Non-Profit (great way to connect with other volunteers, fund-raisers, leaders, and members of non-profit organizations); Professional (more general groups to appeal to your profession – lawyers, doctors, CPA’s, etc.); and finally, if all else fails, there is a category for Other (covers any group that doesn’t fit into one of the other categories).

There are thousands of groups on LinkedIn and many have thousands of members. Once you are approved for membership in a group (sometimes automatic and sometimes requires approval by group manager), you can begin to dialogue with other members through the Discussion Forums. Be careful not to sell – be a valuable contributor.

ACCESS: Opening your Profile for everyone to see is the easiest thing to do and the very thing that most people do wrong! Once you have your profile ready to go, open the settings and set it to Full View. Remember, this is your online classified ad about you. What is the point if you don’t let people know about you? I am continually baffled by people who limit access to their profile. It makes total sense on a site like Facebook where you are sharing personal photos and information. But LinkedIn is your professional persona and there is no reason to hide the information.

Recruiters, hiring managers, potential clients, or new business associates will look to LinkedIn to check you out. If they can’t see the information you are slowing down the potential for new business. If you develop your profile the way you want yourself to be known, there is absolutely no reason not to make your profile public.

If you haven’t done so already, please send me an invitation to connect today.
www.linkedin.com/in/carolmcmanus

Also, send Marc Ostrofsky, author of Get Rich Click an invitation as well.
www.linkedin.com/in/ostrofsky

Guest Post from Carol McManus LinkedIn: How to Build Your Profile and Photo

Posted by: Get Rich Click In: Social media 29 Sep 2010 0 comments

If the read and followed the last blog post, then you are probably well on your way to making LinkedIn a powerful weapon in your social media arsenal. In this post we’ll delve into more detail about what you can do to start attracting more business today. Like an interview and a great resume, proper presentation yields bigger dollars!

PROFILE: It all starts with an effective and complete profile. An incomplete profile says as much about you as not having one at all and in either case, the message you are sending is not a good one. LinkedIn provides you an opportunity to present your personal biography in a positive, professional, and engaging way. It allows you to show the world everything you want people to know about you – your background, your capabilities, and your services.

The first challenge clients usually bring up is, “I can do all that on my website, and there I don’t have to compete with everyone else’s message.” And my answer is, “That is absolutely true – but – you have to first attract people to your site and then get them to stay long enough to seek out the information about you.” This takes time, talent and money, and there are no guarantees it will work. When people visit LinkedIn, however, it is with the purpose of finding people, finding out about them, and then taking appropriate action (which may be to follow the link to your website where your services are fully displayed). Think of your LinkedIn profile as your permanent classified ad about you!

PHOTO: Why is a quality headshot your best shot? It’s simple really. For people who know you (or have known you in the past), it’s reassurance and confirmation that they are connecting with the right person. For people who don’t know you, it puts a face to a name and goes a long way in humanizing you.

A quality headshot requires you to be well-groomed, looking into the camera so people can see your eyes, and above all – smiling! This postage stamp digital image is your best way to say to the world, “I’m real, I’m human, and I’m approachable.” Dress can vary depending on what you do for a living but should reflect how you want people to perceive you as a professional and what they can anticipate if and when they meet you in person. For example, if you are competing for corporate business, then a suit is appropriate. This would also be true for lawyers, CPA’s, insurance representatives, financial advisors, etc. If you’re a doctor, a dentist, or a chiropractor, then a lab coat could work very effectively. If you’re in a business where casual dress is the norm, then men might choose an open neck shirt or polo while ladies might select a blouse or sweater. While you certainly want to look your best, this is not the time for Glamour Shots as they tend to lean toward provocative rather than professional.

A little bonus tip about photos: you should seriously consider using the same primary head shot on all your social networking profiles – Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, Squidoo, etc. Why? So that when people navigate from one site to another looking for people, you will stand out as familiar and recognizable. That visual reinforcement will encourage connecting, friending, and following. (More on this in the 3rd series article).

The next post in this series will address the specifics of your network connections, group participation, and profile access. Look for that post next week!

Guest Post from Carol McManus LinkedIn: the Grand Central Station of Business Relationships

Posted by: Get Rich Click In: Get Rich Click, Social media 16 Sep 2010 0 comments

We here at Get Rich Click are thrilled to bring you a series of guest posts from Carol McManus. In less than three years, Carol has leveraged LinkedIn to bring herself over $400,000 in new business! Carol has successfully transitioned from the old world real estate economy to the new world of on-line social media. She found a way to transition her previous success as a Sr. Vice President of Real Estate Operations for Coldwell Banker to Founder and CEO of YWait4Success — a highly successful coaching and consulting firm for entrepreneurs and businesses. While she understands all facets of social media, she has emerged as the leading LinkedIn expert. Get Rich Click is thrilled to share Carol’s thoughts on social media and her invaluable tips and tricks for leveraging dollars through LinkedIn.

From Carol McManus, America’s LinkedIn Lady:

Wondering how social media can benefit your business? If so, then read on.

Social networking is not only here to stay, it is an essential part of the new media mix whether you are a solo-preneur, a local business or a national corporation. Social media vehicles are the new ways to reach existing customers, find new potential customers, and establish your personal brand in the marketplace. There are many choices; the most well-known right now are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

While it is prudent to use more than one option, let’s focus on why LinkedIn should be the foundation of your social media strategy. LinkedIn is the only highly ranked site on the Internet that allows you to have a comprehensive biography about who you are and what you do. You may already have this information on your own website, but chances are you don’t have over 50 million individuals accessing your site on a regular basis.

Let’s put it another way. Your website could be the best website in your industry…great information, attractive design, easy navigation, and more. But without traffic your website is like a train stop in the middle of nowhere. You’re there, ready to receive passengers, but the only thing coming through is tumbleweed and an occasional broken-down pick-up. On the other hand, if you are Grand Central Station, then your passengers have no choice but to find you because you are in the middle of the action.

Simply put, LinkedIn is the Grand Central Station of business relationships on the web and you want to be there. You must be there! If you are in the B2B market (business to business), then this is the place to be. If you are a solo-preneur serving individual consumers, this is the place to be. Very quickly, you will discover that LinkedIn is the best way to position yourself, to be found, and to attract new connections.

If you’re still not sure, here are some specifics that may convince you to give LinkedIn a try. The average age of LinkedIn users is 41 – certainly not the teens and tweens you will find on MySpace. The average household income of LinkedIn users is $109,703 – respectable by any national standard. Looking for an educated audience? 80% of LinkedIn users are college graduates with a high percentage holding graduate degrees. One quarter of the users have a portfolio value of over $250,000. And most important, over 50% are senior level decision-makers in their businesses – hence the reason LinkedIn is ideal for you.

Okay, enough statistics. So what are the keys to make Linkedin work? The answer is to focus on the following:

• Maintain an attractive profile with all sections completed
• Use a high quality and current headshot as your photo
• Strive for a network consisting of a minimum of 250 connections as your goal
• Join a minimum of 10 groups and get actively involved in the discussions
• Open access to your profile so that people can find you and find out about you even before they are connections (biggest benefit over Facebook)

Of course, LinkedIn is not the only site you should use as part of your online media strategy. Any single strategy will have limited success. But this one is an arrow in your quiver that needs to be straight and sharp at all times. In my coming guest posts, you will learn more secrets about how to use LinkedIn effectively to build your business.

In the meantime, please send me an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. Please mention Get Rich Click. Linkedin.com/in/carolmcmanus

Passive Income, Part 2: Applying It in Your Business

Posted by: Get Rich Click In: Passive Income 02 Sep 2010 0 comments

In part 1, we looked at the idea of passive income not as a lifestyle, but as a sound business strategy for various stages of your business. Investing time into setting up passive income streams early in your business can provide you stability, cash flow, even growth capital if it goes well. In a mature business, passive income can increase profitability without significant expansion. It can also provide an exit strategy for the founder, allowing you to move out of the day-to-day management of the business.

Passive income concepts can be applied in nearly every business. It may not be your core product or service, but if it’s complementary, you may find it a useful marketing tool, as well as a revenue generator. Here are a few ideas that are applicable to a wide variety of businesses:
Information products – Can you create a book, workbook, white paper, audio program, video, etc., that is not merely a loss leader (i.e., a free give-away), but of compelling enough value for people to actually purchase it? One management consulting firm created a library of over 100 white papers, ranging in price from under $10 to around $200. It generates tens of thousands of dollars for them annually, as well as providing well-qualified leads and educating potential clients before they spend one-on-one time with them.

Affiliate programs – Can you sell your product or service online through affiliates, rather than just your own site? Everyone from the solo e-book author to the largest online retailer does. There’s software available for managing your own affiliate program, or you can sell your products through an established site like Clickbank, or make your program available through an affiliate network, such as Commission Junction or LinkShare.
Drop shipping – Is there a product that already exists that you could sell to your current customers, or promote in online marketplaces, that can be drop-shipped from the supplier?

Auto-ship – Can you develop a consumable product that you can set customers up to automatically receive on a monthly or other regular basis? For these purposes, consider things like books and music consumables – think book-of-the-month club.

Licensing – Sell the rights to your intellectual property to someone else – let them productize and market it. This could be a patent you hold or perhaps training materials. You could even allow them to rebrand and resell your e-book (“private label rights”, or PLR). One innovative web site licensed the custom software that runs their site to another company going after a completely different market.

Subcontracting – In the services industry, this is often the key strategy for moving from being a solo consultant to running a consulting firm. By using subcontractors, rather than referring clients to other solo consultants for work that you either don’t do or can’t do right now, you maintain control of the client relationship and can start to earn money off of other people’s hourly work, not just your own.

Odds are that one or more of these models can be applied in your business – if not to your core offering, to a closely related one. If not, find a passive income model you can do personally, outside your business. It’s easiest to do at the outset of your business, before you’re tied up in the operation of a “going concern”; however, it’s never too late to start. The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll realize the benefits of passive income.

Passive Income, Part 1: Pipe Dream or Sound Business Strategy?

Posted by: Get Rich Click In: Passive Income 27 Aug 2010 0 comments

Passive income. It’s the Holy Grail of lifestyle entrepreneurship. It sounds great – work four hours a week and make a full-time living. Spend your time on the beach, with your family, or doing whatever else floats your boat.

I know people who’ve done it, but they’re few and far between, which has a tendency to make a lot of skeptics, who then dismiss the concept entirely.

Big mistake!

Most entrepreneurs don’t start their business with the goal of one day owning a second home in Colorado or the Caribbean. (Or both.) They either saw a great opportunity, had an itch that needed to be scratched, or had a big idea of how to change the world.

And most of them fail. Why? One of the most common reasons is cash flow. All too often it’s not even a very big shortfall, nor a very long one, but the business owner simply doesn’t have any more available cash or credit and the orders just aren’t quite there yet, or the product’s not quite finished, or whatever.

And that’s where passive income comes into play.

Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster ride – passive income just makes sure that you don’t bottom out in the natural dips that come with the territory. Think of it as a heavy-duty shock absorber. And for all those businesses that don’t have piles of VC cash sitting in the bank, it can be a critical business survival strategy.

Passive income isn’t just a startup strategy, though. For a mature company, it can be a path to increased profitability, or a way to expand your business without an external capital infusion. It can also be an exit strategy for the founder – the way to transition from managing your business on a day-to-day business to owning it as an investment – an “asset under management.”

Let’s first understand what passive income really is, and what it isn’t. There are two general categories of passive income:

Residual income is received over time from work done once, for example:

• An insurance agent who gets commission every year when policies renew
• A direct sales rep’s income from her customers when they reorder consumable products
• A dance instructor who produces a video and sells it at the studio where she teaches
• A life coach who creates a workbook and sells it online
• A photographer who makes his photos available through a stock photography clearinghouse and gets paid a royalty whenever someone buys one of his images

There are many different ways to generate residual income across a wide variety of businesses. It may be recurring income from current customers, or automated sales of a product to new customers. It doesn’t have to be fully automated, but any human involvement must be minimal.

Leveraged income is money you make off the work of other people, for example:
• An information product publisher selling through online affiliates
• A network marketer who builds a downline and receives commissions on those sales
• A general contractor who makes a profit margin on the work done by sub-contractors
• Franchising your business model to other entrepreneurs

Again, there are many different models in many different businesses. The key is that you are making money off of other people’s labor, rather than primarily your own, and that you are only paying them when revenue is actually generated, i.e., little or no overhead expenses.

Passive income is not merely recurring income, such as a consultant on a monthly retainer, or a subscription-based publication. While these structures may offer more stability, they also come with an obligation to perform in a timely manner, which has a tendency to rear its head at the most inconvenient times for your core business activity. With truly passive income, basically all you do is process transactions.

There are a lot of misconceptions about what is really passive income and what isn’t. Blogging is not passive income – unless you’ve outsourced everything to a team of writers, designers and virtual assistants and are still making money on top of that. Buying and selling on eBay isn’t passive income – unless you’re selling exclusively items that can be drop-shipped, without you ever touching them. Self-publishing a book which gets sold primarily at the back of the room at your speaking engagements, by you, is not passive income. Making your speaking deal include a copy of the book for every attendee…is.

In part 2, we’ll take a look at specific ways you can apply passive income concepts in your business.

Little Actions Can Make a Big Impact

Posted by: Get Rich Click In: New Ideas 01 Aug 2010 0 comments

I spent the last few days at James Malinchak’s Millionaire Speaker Secrets event. During one of his presentations, he was making a point about how little actions can make a big difference. He shared this video, in which dentist Dr. Bill Dorfman (of Extreme Makeover fame) shaves his head for charity after raising $121,000 in donations for the LEAP foundation. James was also the one who called in the final donation that put them over the top on their goal. Little actions, either over time or at exactly the right time, can have a big impact. Do you stay on the lookout for big-impact opportunities in your life and business?

How Dr. Bill Dorfman Shaved His Head for Kids

This also made a great lead-in for Darren Hardy’s talk about his new book The Compound Effect – definitely want to download the free excerpt and have a listen to the sample audio.

13 Entrepreneurs Who Built Powerful Personal Brands Online

Posted by: Get Rich Click In: Case Studies 26 Jul 2010 0 comments Tags: entrepreneurs, online content, personal branding, Social media

Becoming “slightly famous” isn’t a prerequisite for success, but it is one path to it, and social media has made it more accessible than ever before. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s available to anyone with a computer without a huge expense.

Author David Garland has interviewed some 200 entrepreneurs for his web and TV show, The Rise to the Top. He recently highlighted 13 unique entrepreneurs who have used online content via social media to build their brands and their businesses. If you’re interested in that as part of your path to success, I think you’ll find them both inspiring and informative:

1. Chris Brogan discusses how he built his business around his blog. (parts 2, 3 and 4)

2. Ali Brown started with an e-zine and shows us how she built a multi-million dollar empire.

3. Online influencer Sarah Evans shares the inside story of her rise.

4. Gary Vaynerchuk shares how he built, marketing and monetized Wine Library TV.

5. Y outhologist Vanessa Van Petten shares how she built her Radical Parenting brand.

6. Personal branding specialist Dan Schawbel shares how he created his personal branding empire.

7. Founder of the extremely successful Small Biz Trends Anita Campbell shares her rise to the top.

8. Timothy Sykes makes over 1.3 million dollars a year blogging about investing. Here is how he does it.

9. Josh Shipp shares how he dominates the youth market as a speaker and content creator.

10. Adventure Girl Stefanie Michaels tells her story about how she has nearly 1.5 MILLION followers on Twitter and has built a brand around her love for travel.

11. Show host, entrepreneur and author Amber Mac talks about starting podcasts, shows and building her brand.

12. The founder of Duct Tape Marketing John Jantsch shares his rise to success.

13. David Heinemeier Hansson discusses how 37 Signals built a blog before a product.

Gravity. Just a theory.

Posted by: Get Rich Click In: New Ideas 21 Jul 2010 0 comments

The New York Times recently reported that physicist Erik Verlinde is causing a stir in the scientific community with his claim that gravity, seemingly the most obvious and ever-present physical force in our daily lives, is an illusion, “a consequence of the venerable laws of thermodynamics.”

Sure, it’s controversial now, but what happens when he proves it (to the extent that any theoretical physics can be proven)? What happens when one of the most fundamental concepts of our world view is stood upside down on its head?

And yet, this happens every day on the internet. With the accelerating pace at which technology and science are moving forward, what you think you know isn’t even reliable. Data from 6 months ago is irrelevant, except maybe to look good on a graph presented to investors. Planning beyond a few months (OK, maybe a year) is virtually meaningless, when you consider that the odds are good that a major competitor or even a game-changing disruptive technology may come into play within that time.

Consider this:

Amazon introduced the Kindle holiday season 2007. As of holiday season 2009, Kindle e-books outsold hard cover books on Amazon.
YouTube is now the #2 search engine on the web. It didn’t exist 6 years ago. It was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion less than 2 years after its launch.
Facebook now tops Google in weekly traffic. It added over 200 million users in the past year. If it were a country, it would be 3rd largest in the world. It’s been open to the general public less than 4 years.

Learning how to run a successful internet business isn’t something you’re ever done with, and you can’t run a successful business based on plans and data that’s several months old. Internet businesses now run in real-time. Put the tracking and analytics tools in place to give you a current view of your business, and put the monitoring tools in place to stay on top of the trends and technologies that potentially impact your business. Plan for change. Expect the unexpected and you won’t ever be taken by surprise, even when you find out gravity is just a theory.

Image credit: the mad LOLscientist