I recently read Lord Alan Sugar’s autobiography entitled ‘What you see is what you get’ WYSIWYG… below are a sample of some of the lessons I learned from one of the most successful British entrepreneurs of the past 30 years.

You either think like an entrepreneur or you don’t

At a VERY young age, Alan had spotted numerous ideas for businesses, and by young, I mean less than 12 years old. These ideas are not something you could teach, things like noticing lots of tar was being pulled up from the road during construction, and then taking the tar blocks, cutting them up and selling them to a local store and door to door as a great fire starter (everyone used to light fires in their homes back then).

What I also like about Alan is that he took massive action on his ideas, something that is essential to success.

Once you get success, people will steal, copy and snipe

This happened consistently right from his first ventures as a young child, all the way through his business career… in fact, one person followed his entire career, and would try to steal, copy and interrupt at every stage. The lesson I took from this was to expect this sort of thing, and if you managed to be first to market with something, or a pioneer in your industry, don’t sit back and expect the goldrush to continue forever, you need to always be moving onto the next thing.

Everything is negotiable

If you take the amount of money that Lord Sugar saved due to hard negotiation skills, you could buy a small island… whether it be getting $150 million for a company he would have happily took $30 million for, massive property discounts, house discounts, and buying parts and components for a fraction of what his competitors were…

It just goes to show that everything is negotiable, I have seen someone successfully haggle and get a discount in McDonalds.

Never take the first offer, and negotiate hard.

His product “lead-in” pricing never seems to fail

There was a simple formula he used here… sell a product at an entry price into the market that got people talking (he was a buzz marketer without realising it).. then, offer a “premium” version for say 25% more… he found that 80%+ of people went for the premium one anyway.

So hook them with a great price, then offer a premium version for a bit more.

Note: for my Internet Marketer friends, this is not an upsell, there were two clear options from the start… of course, in their advertising, they lead with the “lead-in” price

“entrepreneur” is NOT for you to determine

Here I will take a quote straight from the book and the man himself: “Entrepreneur is not a word to be used lightly, and it’s certainly not something you call yourself. It should be a term used by a person when describing another’s abilities”.

I have to agree, the “E” word gets thrown around a lot these days, this is a good lesson to remember.

High-ticket items are where the real profits are at

Lord Alan quickly realised that it was just as easy to sell a $100 product than a $10 one, yet he only would make say $1 on them $10 item, and would make $30 on the $100. So he sold more $100 items.

Sounds like commonsense, but MOST people did the opposite… one person mentioned in the book was actually selling everything at a loss, and while he thought his store was booming, he hadn’t noticed that he was losing money on each thing he sold (madness).

In the online business world, it isn’t quite as straight forward, as a $27 ebook also means we get a name and email address of a buyer, so we can continue to market to them… but in general, it makes sense to focus on the things that bring you the most profit, and for the most part, those will be the higher ticket items.

I do a lot of webinars, they are by far the most powerful tool in my business, and are red hot right now…

I have tested over 10 different webinar providers, and short of spending a fortune ($1 per attendee per hour) with one service, and then there is Adobe connect, which costs a small fortune… I found Gotowebinar to be the best low-mid range webinar provider.

All was good, business rocketed, I rejoiced, and heck, I even treated myself to a beer (good times)… but like any good story, there was a dark evil force, it’s name was “audio issues”.

Twice in the space of a week audio issues attacked my webinar, although everything was setup correctly at my end, and everything looked fine on the gotowebinar dashboard, the audience couldn’t hear a single word I was saying. Darn you audio issues!!!

Lot’s of research didn’t help, and I remember thinking “it would be awesome if there was a handsome, young blogger out there that shared the solution to this gotowebinar problem, so that in future, nobody will have to go through the frustration I had”.

So, after speaking to… well, interrogating the gotowebinar support staff, they gave a reason for the problem, and a solution…

Transcript below, and then my summary thoughts follow:

Jamie A. (10:28:07):
Some of the audio issues that are happening are at our end - our entire engineering team is working to resolve them currently.  What I recommend is if you see a toll-free number available to dial into and you have not purchased our toll-free service, that number addition is causing issues on our lines.
Jamie A. (10:28:12):
Here are instructions if you see this happen:  1. Find the Webinar in list of Webinars in the GoToMeeting Software in the “my webinars” section 
2. Edit the Webinar impacted (list below)
3. Open the country list for the Webinar by selecting “Audio” from the “Change Session Settings” drop down menu.
4. Select the “Add more countries” link
5. Select the desired countries (make sure at least one additional country is selected), and close the country selection dialog. 
6. Click ‘Done’ in the dialog.
7. On the “Audio” page select the checkbox next to “Notify all affected participants of changes above.”
8. Click “Save.”  This sends an email to your participants containing the update audio information.

Your handsome hero (10:30:08):
ok, I did see a toll free option on the affected webinar… could I not just ensure that I dont use that in future?

Jamie A. (10:31:13):
The issue that our engineers are working on is how that number is randomly being assigned to accounts that do not have toll-free as an option.  What I recommend is to check the numbers you have for your Webinars and make sure you do not see toll-free listed.  If you do, follow the instructions to reset the audio options.

Your handsome hero (10:31:43): Woohoo… finally a solution, I should blog about this to help others who have the same problems.*

Jamie A. (10:32:10): Indeed you should, you handsome, sexy, charismatic beast you….. I love you, hold me in your arms and tell me everything is going to be ok.*

*Note* Those last two parts may or may not have been invented by me **

** They were invented by me

Summary

Despite the issues above, I have had more technical issues from Twitter and Facebook in the past 10 days than I have had using webinar software in the past 12 months… fact of the matter is that the Internet will NEVER be 100% reliable, so always have a plan B.

This is my plan B http://ondemandcashvault.com/2010review

I added Facebook comments to keep the interactivity and allow people to ask questions.

Hopefully ‘audio issues’ from gotowebinar has now been slayed, but I feel this post will help others avoid any frustration, so good luck.

Dean

A blog isn’t a blog unless there is an end of year wrap-up or list of some sort… so let’s get straight to it…

Here are 7 valuable business lessons I learned in 2010.

1: Multi-Leverage is key to getting big results from your time and energy.

My good friend James Schramko taught me this… basically, he believes that if you are going to put your valuable time and energy into anything, you need to ensure you get as much out of it as possible.

See lesson 2 for further info on this..

I do this in two steps:

a) If an opportunity, task or project arises, I ask myself if the likely results are going to be worth the likely time and energy… if not, it gets scrapped, or, added to my “some day” folder.

b) If I decide to do it, I look for ways to get additional leverage…

For example, if someone wants me to speak on stage at their event, a great way to get extra leverage with no extra effort, is to ensure they are filming the event, and get permission to use the content. Bingo, no extra effort, and now you have content, or even a product.

There is software that will strip out the audio from the video, and bingo, you now have an mp3 of your presentation… you now have an upsell at no extra effort.

If you are just getting one benefit from your time and energy, you may be missing out.

2: Public Speaking simply isn’t leveraged enough for me.

I got into public speaking because I wanted to push my comfort zones, but whilst it is a lot of fun, and I am pretty good at it, it is frankly a LOT more time, effort and risk than it may appear.

Here is one example from this year:

Flights & hotels: $2,000-$3,000
Other expenses: $1,000 (I was there 10 days)
Preparation time: 10 hours
Total flight time: 34 hours

I was also stuck in an airport overnight, spent 11 hours waiting in airports for flights, and lost 3 days due to severe jet-lag. The hotel wifi was terrible, so very little productivity happened during my stay, so that was 10 days away from my business.

Anyway, whilst I have no regrets, I have come to realise that I can get the same leverage for just 90 mins sat at home drinking a coffee, with zero expense… see lesson 7 for details.

Lesson 3: Coaching is a lot of fun, and provides massive value (if done at the right level)

This year I have been running a behind the scenes group coaching program with John Morgan, I have dabbled with coaching prior to 2010, but never really took to it… in 2010 I realised that I was doing it at the wrong level.

Teaching people what a blog is, or how Twitter works wasn’t getting my juices flowing…. so we positioned the Inner Circle at a higher end client… and it has been a LOT of fun, with big results.

The moral of this story is that I could have discounted coaching as something that wasn’t for me, when in reality, I am extremely strong at it… it is just a matter of tweaking to fit your own strengths and preferences.

Lesson 4: “Information is a one-way street”

I got the above quote from Tim Ferriss… James Schramko says it as “You are either creating or consuming”… both are essentially saying that trying to multi task is a productivity killer… if you have a product to create, don’t be reading eBooks or playing on Facebook… if you want to consume a new training program, that is fine, just don’t try and build a website on the same day.

I created by far my best EVER product recently, I was expecting it to take 3 months, and I did it in 10 days… how?

1) I switched off gmail, Facebook, my phone etc… I didnt read a single blog post, or book, I watched no videos, and thought of no opportunities or ideas…

2) I broke the project down into small, specific chunks… always focusing only on what the NEXT action item was.

3) I outsourced the stuff I suck at and hate.

4) I combined an unrealistic deadline with massive, unmovable accountability… specifically, I did this by arranging a live webinar with my friend Phil Henderson where I would sell said product.

This removed all excuses, and gave me massive accountability… I couldn’t make excuses or extend the deadline, it was all or nothing.

Remember, a task will expand in size to fit the time allocated to it… if I had given myself 3 months, it would have taken 3 months.

Lesson 5: Despite a few bad eggs, people in the online business world are nice, warm, friendly and fun.

We have all heard the horror stories, and I know of a few people who seem to have no shame or morals, but on the most part, I find the people in this industry to be quite simply awesome… I could name hundreds of names, but that would be dull, so quite simply, if we met in 2010, or spoke or chatted in any way, then consider yourself awesome

Lesson 6: The comfort zone is like a muscle.

I strongly believe that very little in life or business is done from within a comfort zone…

Think of your comfort zones as muscles, that if stretched, will grow and expand.

In 2010 I have spoken at a Dan Kennedy event (I was terrified), spoken in Sydney twice, the first time I was averaging 60 mins sleep per night, I held my own event in Nashville, a first for me… I did numerous interviews, including one for CNBC, consulted with celebrities, did live webinars (see lesson 7), and on a personal level, sold ALL my belongings, moved home and country to be with the girl I loved (We are now getting married), I also jumped out of a plane for charity.

From the outside looking in, it may seem that I live a charmed life… but look at the above list, this is a tiny sample of things that scared me, heck, some of them terrified me, but I did them anyway… and that is what gets results.

If I had been too scared to do my first ever event, then I wouldn’t have been in Nashville, and therefore I wouldn’t have met my soon to be wife… you create your own luck in life.

Lesson 7: Webinars are THE most underrated business tool on the net right now.

I have taught everything from blogging to buzz, content to copywriting, social media to social psychology… but there was always one big missing piece to the jigsaw….

A solid, converting sales method.

I am not a fan of long, traditional sales pages, they have their place, and they work for some… but I believe they offer no real value, they take a ton of time and effort to produce, they all look the same, and ultimately, most people don’t like creating them, and most people don’t like reading them… it is a lose/lose.

So when I started doing webinars, everything changed…

I now had a medium that delivered MASSIVE value, even to the non-buyers, it is fun to do them, converts x10 better than written sales pages (I have converted up to 44% on webinars), and the leverage points are huge too….

At no extra effort you can build:

* An email list
* A product
* A brand

In 2011, webinars will be my main focus… I am opening the doors to a few more people in January to On Demand Cash Vault… which teaches EVERY step in success with webinars… so if you are not already on the early bird list… then I tut in your general direction.

Summary:

Another year has passed by, and once again, we wonder where the time went… we ponder and dream for the year ahead, we lick our wounds, and tally up our achievements… we look to what can be done, and what could have been done better, we thank those who helped us on our journey, and give thanks to those who made us love, laugh and even cry.

To all my friends, I hope you had a great year, let’s make 2011 the best yet.

To our journey.

Dean Hunt

Me and my future wife.

This is a controversial video that talks about the hidden dangers and impracticalities of relying on step-by-step.

What are your thoughts?

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This is a call I did with Miriam, an expert on how to be “More than Organized” in your business.

We discuss THE formula for getting massive results, and how most creative/entrepreneurial types are missing a huge piece of the jigsaw.

Enjoy, and comment below.

Dean