1st 30 Day Challenge Winner - Michael Spindelman - Original Thread.

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[Welcome Participants of the 30-Day IM Challenge!]

Welcome Participants of the 30-Day IM Challenge!

Introduce yourself and let us know what your goals are for the 30-Day IM Challenge!

The next Challenge starts on Monday, February 1st, 2010.  Will you be the next winner?

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[GinaGaudioGraves]

Now Michael, don't make me cry!  But thank you SO much for that loving healing energy!  I can most certainly use it!  I don't get in to see the doctor until May 19th so it's going to be an uncomfortable month for me.  Luckily, I have great friends like you, a wonderfully supportive husband, and a HUGELY positive mind to get me through this!

Besides ... the 30-Day Challenge couldn't come at a better time for me!  Now I have something else to focus on besides me ... ALL OF YOU!

And you are most certainly correct about my comments.  There isn't a single word that was meant to be critical at all.  Every comment was meant to steer you into a more profitable direction.

I have a comment/suggestion for everyone:

As you go through the lessons that are part of the 30-Day Challenge, please implement everything that you learn!  One of the best things that you can do is to journal your progress by writing down each week, the answers to the following 3 questions:

1)  What did you learn this week?
2)  What action did you take this week?
3)  What results did you get this week?

Early on, you may not have "tangible" results in terms of either subscribers or income.  However, you will most certainly have built assets for your business nonetheless (i.e. a new blog, an info product, etc.)

I'm going to set up a separate area of the forum that is specifically for these journal entries.  You'll find it at:

http://www.theimuniversity.com/forum/index.php?board=5.0

As you are progressing and journaling your progress, please do the exact same thing that Michael has suggested:

Do NOT take a page that I offer advice on down from the internet.  Take that page and move it to an archive area and THEN put up the new page.  When you report back to us in the forum, give us both URL's.

What we will all begin to see is a transformation in you and in your business.

Oddly enough, this transformation usually is EXTREMELY visible in my students simply by viewing their webpages.  For those who really implement every single thing they learn, I can almost look at 2 pages and see the precise improvement in the student''s mindset as well as their results.

I want all of you to see this for yourselves as well and the journaling process is the best that I know of to illustrate it.

Again, thanks for the great comments!

[keithaw2k]

Hey Michael,

I am so glad that you tried Adam's "Ultimate Confidence" MP3 download - thanks for the positive feedback.

I would also endorse your compliments to Gina.  What a great critique and done when she is not so well.  Terrific.

Regards

Keith

[Michael Spindelman]

WOW, This challenge is really challenging. Just wanted to provide a status.

Gina's advice has been extremely helpful.

First, going through the material is a major assignment. Second, some of the steps she recomends sometimes requires a major shift in thinking. Third, there are some steps that require some experimentation to figure out quite how to make them work.

All these points are normal in the learning process. For those actively working the challenge keep plugging through. There is major light at the end of the tunnel.

I thought the other day everything was progressing well. Then, I ran into some technical difficulties downloading the PLR product. I recently upgraded my virus protection to BitDefender 2008 and it is messing with the files. If anyone uses BitDefender and knows a solution let me know. I finally used another computer in the house after wasting 2 days on the problem.

I have been developing major copy changes on lots of pages. They won't be live until sometime this week. I can see immediately how the difference in perspective improves interest. I hope you all will have the same impression.

It also took me longer to figure out how to put a link on my blog in the upper right sidebar than I had expected. This point is pointed out by Gina in an earlier post.

Everyone's comments made me realize I also needed to change my "About Us" section of the blog. I love feedback.

Since this is a help site, If you want to know what I actually did was; in wordpress under <design> in the dashboard I needed to add a "TEXT" widget.  In a TEXT widget you can place FORMS, format paragraphs using <p></p>, insert a picture, use "<a href=" tags and more.

If you go to http://blog.eventronics.com you'll see what I mean under "The Book Of Answers" sidebar on the right. (I will add the form, additional formatting and an image in a few days) The text there now is a bit much. But it gives you a feel for the style change I'm working on. Your feedback on that would be greatly appreciated.

With last week being a vacation week for my kids, I took some time to check out the lake (Lake ERIE). The ice has departed and the beaches have fresh debris. My wife likes to collect driftwood and slate stones for her gardens.

I'll keep in touch. Happy discoveries.

Michael

[GinaGaudioGraves]

Hi Michael:

It sounds like you're making progress!  The materials in Lesson 4 should be a big help to you with both your blog and the technical issues.  In it, I talk about how you should arrange your sidebar as well.  Make sure that you follow that.  But, at a minimum, you definitely want an opt in box at the top.  All you need to do is to create a form in your autoresponder and then take and copy and paste the code from there into a text box in the sidebar. 

I can tell that you really "get" what I've been saying about a having a different approach to your market.  Your blog is coming along nicely.  Keep up the great work!

I know that there's a lot of material in the 30-day challenge.  In my apprenticeship program, we take an entire year to cover all of this material.  So getting it all into 30 days is a LOT.  Don't let yourself get overwhelmed, though.  Just take it one bite at a time and work at your own pace.  The most important part of getting through all of it is that you MUST implement each piece as you learn it.  If you don't implement a little at a time, you are going to become overwhelmed in the end.

As I said, keep up the progress!

Gina

[Michael Spindelman]

Gina,

Thanks for the words of incouragement. I purchased the 21 days to blogging product today. I want to simply say I had wished I had the forsight to have purchased a product like this last December. I definitely would have saved a tremendous amount of time and especially countless hours of mistakes.

I highly recommend everyone to purchase it. No matter where you are in the process, it is singly the best reference I have seen yet. For the price, it's a steal.

Regards,
Michael

PS: Without making a blantent plug for my products; The coaching program I have developed to remove applicititus is all about the little steps you discussed in your post. I agree whole heartedly that success is not measured in huge advances. Rather, it is the accumulation of small successes that hit a critical mass. The plodding along gets overwhelming at times. But, at the end of each day the smallest of steps is still a step towards progress.

The mind is so powerful if we work with it, instead of against our brilliance. The difference between success and failure many times is 24 hours of sleeping on it, to let our subconsious mind the opportunity to provide us a wiser answer.

Gina, inside of you is a shining light that really has inspired me to keep trying. Your inspiration supports the good efforts in the participants. I am glad to continue to be part of this amazing challenge.

[GinaGaudioGraves]

Hi Michael:

I hope that everyone participating in this challenge sees your wonderful words of encouragement and wisdom.  I couldn't agree with your comments more:

"I agree whole heartedly that success is not measured in huge advances. Rather, it is the accumulation of small successes that hit a critical mass. The plodding along gets overwhelming at times. But, at the end of each day the smallest of steps is still a step towards progress."

The short goal of each person participating in this challenge should NOT be to make 5 figures in the next month.  Rather, the goal should be to make one single dollar if the person has never made a penny.  The second goal should be to make that $1 each day for a week.  Only when you have finally been able to achieve such a meager sum on a consistent basis do you want to move to the next step and multiply your efforts.  At that point, you can increase your goal to something like $10 in a single day, and then $10 each day for a week.

Quite frankly, just about anybody can rake in a 5 figure income in a single month online.  Ask anyone who's ever come out and launched their very first product using a joint venture.  All it takes is going to a single seminar, networking with the right people, and getting them to promote for you.

However, I know countless numbers of people who have launched their first product, brought in 5 figures in a single month, and who are literally starving a few months later.  The reason is because that product launch experience taught them nothing at all about driving traffic, building a list, developing a relationship with their audience, etc.

A few months later, when all the money is spent, they're right back where they started ...

No one is buying their product.
No one is visiting their website.
They send email after email to the new (small) list they built during the launch, only to find that no one clicks on their links, and almost no one even opens their emails.

What each of you are learning through the 30-day challenge is SO MUCH more valuable than anything that I could teach you about product launches!  (And believe me when i say that as "The JV Queen", I could teach you a TON!)  This is the biggest reason that I retired from brokering JV's in the first place ...

I just couldn't sit by and watch another client bring in all that money only to be equally miserable a short time later.

How was I contributing to making the world a better place by doing that?  How was I helping these people to become better entrepreneurs?

I wasn't ... not one little bit!

If anything, I was actually doing more harm than good for these individuals by giving them a taste of the success they so desperately wanted, and then letting them down hard when things came to a screeching halt.  They would go from being on cloud 9 the day after they met their sales goal to being in a deep depression within a short period of time.  They almost didn't know what hit them.  They totally expected that having a single successful launch would be enough to ensure they'd be a millionaire within a year.

No matter what advice I would give them, their new-found egos would fight it.  They "knew better" ... they were making money at that point.  They would see my words of wisdom as being a "kill-joy".  Some would even construe my advice as my trying to get a piece of their ongoing business.

These were clients who would go through with a product launch even when they had no back end at all.  They "assumed" that having the money from the launch would give them the freedom to create a back end later.

These were clients who didn't even mind launching a product with no upsell, leaving tens of thousands (and sometimes hundreds of thousands) of dollars on the table.  They had worked on their product for several months, had gotten sick of having no money, and wanted success NOW!

Once they got the taste of success through their launch, making them see that they needed to take action in a different direction was a totally losing cause.   Now they had money and their egos would grow bigger still.

As a mentor and a coach, I am more excited when a student is able to bring in a single dollar every day for a week than I was by a client launching a first product that brought in $100,000 in a single month.  To me, that student has a much greater chance of seeing true SUCCESS from their efforts than the client could ever even dream of.

That student has developed skills that will allow him to become much more successful over the long haul.
The client developed no skills whatsoever, and without adequate knowledge of what to do with the new asset that he has (the list of customers), even that is unlikely to bear fruit in the long run.

I've seen students with lists of less than 100 subscribers make more money from their list than a client with a list of 1,000 buyers.

Which brings me to your next comment, Michael ...

"The mind is so powerful if we work with it, instead of against our brilliance. The difference between success and failure many times is 24 hours of sleeping on it, to let our subconscious mind the opportunity to provide us a wiser answer."

For these students, they have learned to use their brilliance to their own advantage so that they can achieve the success they dream of.  Your mind really IS SO POWERFUL!  I truly healed myself from a condition that the doctors couldn't cure, that would have killed me in a matter of months, only when I finally stopped taking all of the medications, stopped listening to the doctors, and started using my mind to my advantage!

This is why I started the first lesson in the 30-day challenge with the topic of mindset.  If you are ever going to see the success you are looking for in your business, you must first learn to use your mind to your advantage.  Your mind alone can bring you that success ... even when you don't do everything else right.  If you have the right mindset, and you are using it to your advantage, you can make errors in setting up your blog, you can do things wrong in driving traffic, and you can make any other number of mistakes, and yet the success you're looking for can find you anyway.  That's how powerful your mind truly is!

By setting your goals up to achieve a small success on a consistent basis (like the $1 a day for a week), you are essentially training your mind so that it can help you reach bigger goals.  I actually have kept goal journals for myself since I was in the third grade.  Each time I achieve a goal, I give myself a gold star next to it.  When you set a series of smaller goals for yourself, rather than one giant goal, you are able to train your mind to be excited each time that it sees another gold star.  This in turn drives you to work harder to get the next goal under your belt, so that you can get another one!

Before you know it, you're stringing a whole series of "small success" together and they end up becoming one GIANT success!

If you set your goals too high and too big, you lose the benefit of training your mind in this way.  It becomes extremely challenging to actually achieve that goal.  And you are much more likely to fail as a result.

Anyway, keep  up the fantastic progress Michael!  And keep us posted along the way!

Gina

[Michael Spindelman]

Hello Everyone,

Here is the new squeeze page: http://www.Applicititus.com

Here is the old one: http://www.Applicititus.com/Archive

What do y'all thunk???

Regards,
Michael

PS: What do you think of this as a blog posting: http://Applicititus.com/Shift.html

[Cindy Running]

Hi Michael,
I think you need to add a second "t" to the link for your new squeeze page.

I looked at the differences in both pages -- Good Job!!! I liked the addition of the story it made me really picture the person you were describing and I felt sorry for him.

Good luck with the challenge and keep going you're doing great!

Talk with ya later,
Cindy

[Michael Spindelman]

Cindy,

Thanks for catching that and letting me know. Changed it.

It didn't get you to opt in though. What stopped you?

Regards,
Michael

[Cindy Running]

Hi Michael,
Probably applicititus! (Just kidding) I was at the "I've had enough of this computer" point and had to take a break. I just haven't gotten back yet.
I did want to know what happened with Alan....
Bye for now,
Cindy

[John Cussons]

Michael
A marked difference and improvement

Hello, My name is Michael Spindelman. I am a degreed electrical engineer turned into a Life and Career Coach.

I think you could leave the engineer info out and use it later in your story telling, I just don't think it is relevant and actually detracts from the power of being a Career Coach in my eyes

Before I tell you what Applicititus is, let me share a story.

Well you MADE me read your copy BUT you didn't tell me what it means, left perplexed and not driven to opt-in.
Not fond the font you have chosen for the story, to me it's bland and not easily read. On your archive page you were "present" with arial or verdanna and this ties into the yellow highlight I feel is overdone. You could do what you did before and use different colours and font size saving the highlight for really powerful statements.
You have obviously done a great deal of work on this, Good On Ya. Reworking a site is no cake walk.

Cheers
John Cussons
http://www.online-digital-photo-albums.com

[Michael Spindelman]

Hello Cindy & John,

Added a few more changes. You will probably need to refresh your browser to pick up the alterations. I hope this addresses both of your posts.

I want both of you to know how much I appreciate your input.

Warmest Regards,
Michael

PS: Did you get the other link for a Blog posting? LetMeKnow. - thanks.

[John Cussons]

HUGE DIFFERENCE, great stuff
are you utilizing the 'ALT" tag for images? Sorry not enough time at the moment to check source code

Cheers
John Cussons
http://www.online-digital-photo-albums.com

[GinaGaudioGraves]

WOW Michael!  That's much improved over the archived version!

But I wouldn't be the Gina you know if I didn't have some further suggestions, now would I?   

Ok -- take a look at the page that I put together using your graphics and most of your copy:

http://www.abundancegroup.com/kelly/

So what's different about my page?

Several things, actually.  Let's see if I can enumerate a little for you:

1)  I'm trying to get the opt in form as high as possible on the page.  The less your readers have to scroll to find it, the more likely they'll be to read to the end of the page.

2)  The font.  I'm not sure why you bold everything.  Frankly, it's annoying.  The same is true with the centering.  It makes it difficult to read the text.  Centering is fine for headlines, but for copy it's got to go.

3)  I moved the graphic down to the bottom and got the headline up front, in the reader's face, where it needs to be.  The picture of the woman pulling her hair out wasn't helping you or your readers at all, so it left the page completely.

4)  The copy itself is more conversational on my version.  You don't sound quite as much like an engineer.  (From talking to you in person, I know how your voice sounds and it does NOT sound like your version of the copy!  You're not a scientific geeky guy -- you communicate openly, in a friendly tone which is what I tried to get across.)

5)  I tried to humanize Alan a little more.  I remember him well.  I actually thought about adding something that mentions that he looks, sounds, and seems like a good ole' sea captain (which he is) because that really describes him well, except that he is much thinner than most sea captains that I think of.  Your reader must identify with Alan.  They must see Alan as a reflection of themselves.  Talking about him in a distant way, by starting off with the "He was a tall, thin, gentle, man with kind eyes and a smiling face. As he approached I noticed he was either in his late 50’s or early 60’s. But there was something about him that made me realize we were both at this event for a reason" makes him too distant and your readers aren't likely to identify with him as much.  Even you're talking about him from afar.  Why would your readers see themselves in this way?

6)  Without realizing it, you completely killed your credibility in your copy.  Here's what you say:

" I was a last minute fill-in, on the last day, delivering the last breakout session for this event on Learning How To Use The Internet To Leave A Legacy. You see, I help people uncover their legacy and leverage their authentic brilliance. I am a Life and Career Evangelist."

You do NOT want your readers thinking of you as being the last speaker, an after-thought so to speak.  They need to see you as an expert -- the very FIRST guy on the platform;  the very FIRST guy to get an invitation to speak.  Whether this is a true statement or not, it hurts your credibility and it simply isn't necessary to convey your message.  I changed it to simply read:

"During my Ohio presentation"

I had already gotten the other important part into the copy right in the first paragraph of the story where I say:

"Alan had traveled from his home in the United Kingdom to Sandusky, Ohio to attend a conference on  "Learning to Use the Internet to Leave Your Legacy" where I led a breakout session."

This is important for the readers to know that you led a breakout session or else they won't understand the rest of the story.  So get it right up front.  That way, as they're reading the story they're already thinking of you as an expert -- a speaker, a leader.

For Alan, this is also an important statement.  He didn't just travel from Cleveland to Sandusky in search of the "secret key", he traveled all the way from the UK.  That completely changes his level of desperation and your readers might identify with that.

7)  I changed the background color to a lighter blue.  I'm not sure if this is the right color yet.  You might want to split test it.  The blue that you selected is simply too bright.  It makes this serious topic seem too light-hearted.  You want it to be serious, and professional without being somber.  I would split test this color blue against a navy blue (something in a much darker shade of blue such as that on the page at:  http://www.abundancegroup.com/kelly/darkblue.htm )



Otherwise, I think you did a GREAT job!  Keep up the progress -- I think you're almost there!

Gina

[John Cussons]

I think the dark blue background is best, it means business to me and in fact I found it easier to read the text (now I may have a different view ob that after the cataracts are removed) but I don't think so.

Gina, you do good work!!

BUT I am still left 'miffed' because I read the copy to find out what 'Applicititus" means and not only did I not get the answer I am not told to sign up to get it (an oversight I am sure)

Other than that what a great squeeze page

Cheers
John Cussons
http://www.online-digital-photo-albums.com

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