TMBA 53 (LBP53) - 5 Myths About Successful Internet Businesses (+Transcript)
Dan and Ian talk about 5 common myths about internet businesses. Other topics include using video to enhance your online presence, freight forwarders, how to never miss an international conference call again and a new invention that will revolutionize the world.
Remember that this your last chance to get the first 2 Seasons for $47.
The next ustream live podcast will be on Feb 20, 7:15 PM PST.
Have fun. Leave a comment. Give us a ring. 888-554-8428. Go make it happen! :)This episode is sponsored by wordpress designers and developers, Gut Shot Studios.
Thanks to our sponsor! GutShotStudios.com
People:
Adam from New Harbor Design, check out his video skills.
@CampingGearTV (Josh) from CampingGear TV
Kate Benjamin from moderncat.net
@garyvee from WineLibrary.tv
@MatthewHooper, check out "Image SEO"
@seanogle, check out "11 Apps and Extensions for the Location Independent Entrepreneur"
@davidhme (David Hehenberger), "check out his site InstantPhrases.com"
Frank Kern from Mass Control
Stuff:
Get the first 2 Seasons for $47. This is your last chance.
CSL Freight
My post "Dear Entepreneur, don't start a blog"
Yelp
Bluehost
World Clock for Chrome
Episode #42 – [Use at Your Own Risk] Develop a Revenue Stream with the PIVOT Method
google "Spray-on liquid glass"
We like to shoot videos:People in this episode:
@anythingIan (Ian, CEO of the Company)
@TropicalMBA (Dan, Partner and Web Guy)
@DansPodcast (Show news and notes)
Call us with your questions or comments at 888-554-8428.
Episode length: 27:52
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Transcript
@JosephRooks was kind enough to send us a transcript of this week's episode. Make sure to check out his site at JosephRooks.com.
Dan: Hey podcast listener. Even if you are alone in your entrepreneurial pursuit, know that today, right now in your earbuds, you are joined by thousands of entrepreneurs all around the globe, seeking to do the same thing you are. If you want to know more about this program or this podcast or want to get barraged by a lot of annoying popups, check out our web site, lifestylebusinesspodcast.com.
Dan: Yeah buddy! Welcome to the Lifestyle Business Podcast, where we believe building a business is the ideal way to create more freedom, more opportunity, for you, your family, and those around you. Today I am joined, as per is the usual, by my cohost, my captain, a man who puts the cash in cash flow. Welcome to the program Ian.
Dan: And if you stick around to the end of the program, I'll give you a simple way to schedule worldwide phone calls without screwing up those time zones, a technology Ian believes will change the world, and a hot tip to win the affection and good graces with service providers everywhere. Today in the meat and potatoes, we're going to talk about five huge myths about online businesses. But let's get started with the news for a hot second.
Dan: First, I want everybody to mark their calendars if you got 'em. uStream date announced: February 20th. 7:15 PM, Pacific standard time. If you don't know when that is, wait until the quick tip section is and we'll let you know.
Dan: If you want to know more information about our uStream events and you want to be reminded, be sure to get on our mailing list. If you hop to our web site and you get on our mailing list, you also get a free podcast that's pretty cool. Or you can follow us on twitter, and our twitter accounts are on the blog.
Dan: Another random quick tip, Ian. There's a lot of useful stuff on the blog. In fact, one podcast listener wrote a really nice thank you email this week. Just letting us know, thanks for linking to everything that you talk about in the podcast. That is a lot of effort. We've got a full time person helping us work on the podcast (thank you David). You can go to every post and you can look at everything we talk about. Also you can talk with other listeners, which is really cool.
Ian: That was Adam Wentz from New Harbor Enterprises. Everybody should go to Adam Wentz's site, New Harbor Enterprises, and check out his video. It's pretty cool.
Dan: The video on your site is really cool, dude. Really well done on that. Ian and I were looking at it saying, this guy has boss video skills. I just want to step back and I want to say something directly to the listener of this podcast. First, thank you for listening to this podcast. But second, I just want you guys to know, and you ladies to know, how incredible the audience of this podcast is. The volume of emails we've been getting has been shooting through the roof. The amount of people I've talked to on the phone. We have the new mastermind group. I'm just so touched. It's so much fun to connect with the listeners, and the kinds of things people are doing are incredible. The kinds of desires people have to do big things in their lives. The kinds of things that people have accomplished.
Ian: Yeah, most of you listening to the podcast are doing some amazing things, and just know that I think you're in really good company with the rest of the people out there.
Dan: Even if you're just getting started, it's an amazing thing to want to make that kind of life change. I remember when I turned from an employee minded person to someone who said, "alright, well I'm going to go out on my own and start my own business." That was an amazing change as well, but we're in really good company here. It couldn't be more fun to do this podcast. So this is absolutely the most fun I'm going to have all week.
Dan: Alright, this is your last chance to get the first thirty episodes of the podcast at the price of $47. Again, this is no profit generating exercise. It's just a way to help pay for those helpful links, a way to help pay for the editing, it's a way to help pay for everything that it takes to get this done. We did another sale this weekend, it was just fantastic.
Ian: Dan's trying to give this stuff away for free. I told him, this is the end of it. It's going to be $47.
Dan: Going forward, what we'll do is we'll have all the fifty episodes in one big lump listeners can buy to get caught up. They want to support the show, and that'll be it. Like $97 bucks. A very nice internet marketing price. If anybody's curious, by the way, it's sort of a joke amongst internet marketers. "Oh, it'll be $97, or it'll be $100." The reason for that is basic price theory, and it's psychological. People prefer to see sevens at the end of the price. Just for people who are squinting their eyes, like, why would you say 97 instead of 99?
Dan: The bottom line is that 97 is more appealing to more people, especially when your pricing is a tad bit more arbitrary than it would be in a hard goods product. You know, we're sort of pulling that $97 out of the sky. Where do you get it from? Well you want a price that you feel like you can deliver on that value, but also the one that looks good to people, and that's why we're going to choose 97 for the podcast.
Dan: So let's just move on to the shouts. We've got two new iTunes reviews. How cool is that? First from Troy Gasnier:
Guest: "This podcast has it all! Inspiring, informative, entertaining, Dan and Ian are pumped to be on the mic every podcast. They share their experience creating profitable businesses. They offer valuable information about business, life, travel, and a way that you can keep passionate about your own ventures."
Dan: Thanks a lot Troy! You know, at the end of the day this is about purpose driven entertainment, I'd say. I'm really happy to keep our own motors going and to keep you guys' motors going.
Ian: Next iTunes review is from Alasdair:
Guest: "Is this podcast baller? Yeah buddy! Great useful information that is presented in a way that makes it fun and interesting to listen to."
Ian: Thank you Alasdair. And for anybody else that's ever gotten a check from this organization, get your butt right to iTunes and give us a review.
Dan: Yeah buddy! Padding the stacks with those paychecks. Love to see that. Today we've got a few questions, but first, a quick tip from the audience. Josh from CampingGear.tv, he's got a great web site, called in to share some quick tips about making video for your sites.
Guest: Hey Dan, it's Josh from campinggeartv.com. You know, the one thing I would recommend to businesses or bloggers that are thinking about using video, is to do something different while at the same time not. And by that I mean, differentiate from others in your space by looking at how other successful video models are being developed, and seeing how you can take some of those best practices and apply them to your industry or your niche. There are people doing really huge things with video and realizing big success, but there's not a ton of them, and it's really ripe for the taking. Do something different by borrowing best practices and applying them to your niche. Thanks man.
Dan: Commerce and content are coming together. In fact, a year and a half ago today Ian and I sat down and started a whole web site based on the very idea of videos increasing relevance to search engine algorithms.
Ian: Now unfortunately, we haven't followed up a lot with the video, but I think we've got some reinforcement that's going to make us go back, pick up the Flip cam, and start producing some videos.
Dan: There's two seperate issues with the video. Number one, and this is a little different from what Josh was on about, but in an ecommerce outlet, if you look at the search engine results in Google, video is playing a much bigger role. If Google has a video result to serve, they will put that up right underneath the first or second result. Now, that's totally new from three years ago so there's a real opportunity there.The second issue with SEO is that YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world. So a lot of people are going directly to YouTube to find out about products.Now the third thing, and what a lot of people are talking about, including Jason Calacanis, and Josh, is basically creating compelling entertainment content around products that's sort of illuminating, that people that are interested in those types of products would follow up. You can see this with WineLibrary.tv, Gary Vaynerchuk is a great example. You can see that with Josh's site at CampingGear.tv.
Dan: I'll give you guys a little insight into one of the industries we're involved in. Check out ModernCat.net. Kate Benjamin, who runs that site, isn't creating a lot of video content, but she's creating a lot of product-specific content in blog form, and developing an incredible audience around a message about products. And it's absolutely nuts, because what you're seeing is that content creators are in the best position to sell the products.
Dan: I never really thought about Amazon.com as a company that actually serves information about products. How many times have you gone to Amazon.com just to find out about products? They're serving content, and then when you need to buy something, boom. You're there. That's why the guys at CampingGear.tv are absolutely crushing it. Thanks a lot Josh, for calling in and sharing your story.
Dan: Everybody out there, I still believe video is brand new. It's expensive for people to produce, especially stodgy old product creators like Ian and myself. So if you've got a passion, you think you can pull together some good video content, choose a product niche, start creating a great program around it. You will crush it.
Dan: Now one other thing about that though, make sure you're passionate about this damn product. Because if you're not into camping supplies, if you look at what Josh is up to, he's got close to 200 episodes now. So you'd better be into this stuff. If you're not into it, do not go down that route.
Dan: We've got one more question. This came in over Twitter from Matthew Hooper. He asks:
Guest: "If you have any thoughts on freight forwarders and import/export procedures, I'd be interested in your experiences in that."
Dan: Now we've had a lot of experience between the two of us. We have been in charge of the import or export of close to a thousand containers. Actually, that was my first job ever, and import-export agent, which I don't recommend to anybody. Some quick thoughts about, if you're going to get started in import-export. First off, what is a freight forwarder? A freight forwarder is a firm that manages the import and export of your container goods.
Ian: And there's a ton of these companies out there. This is not a new business. It's not very hard to find any of these companies. Just type in 'freight forwarder.' One of the ones that we use is CSL. They're worldwide. So, you shouldn't have any problems finding a freight forwarder.
Ian: The most important thing when you're talking about a freight forwarder is to understand how much volume you do compared to most people out there. If you're only floating three or four containers a year, there's companies out there that float three or four containers a day. So you really need to consider that when you're talking to your representative at the freight forwarding company, so they can try and meet your needs.
Dan: A lot of freight forwarders have sort of standard routes, and standard cities that they specialize or focus on, and have more options for you. The truth is, even if your sales representative is really helpful to you on the phone, they might not be able to get the kind of stuff done that you need to get done. For example, if you need fast responsiveness out of Shanghai into Los Angeles, to get that arranged in less than a week. You definitely want to ask how people get their schedule, what they can get you in terms of routes.
Dan: Now, the other thing is rates, of course. You're not going to be able to negotiate great rates, probably, if you're not having decent volumes. You're not going to see a big swing in rates at the entry level. What I'd really focus on is that relationship with your local sales rep. If they're willing to walk you through and educate you on the sales process, let you know what the economics of the situation is. How much do they make off of every container? If they let you understand all that stuff, that's the kind of person I want to work with.
Dan: You're going to be on the horn all the time with that local sales rep, yelling, screaming, can you get this information. I say if they're responsive during the sales process, run a couple of containers through them. That might work out. Again, we work with CSL here locally, and we're quite happy so we'll link up to CSL. You might want to get started by talking to them on the phone.
Dan: Thanks so much for your question via Twitter. You can follow Ian at @AnythingIan on Twitter. You can follow me at @TropicalMBA. And you can get Twitter updates on this podcast, that's like an RSS feed for this show, at @DansPodcast. That's kind of a messy branded approach, isn't it?
Ian: It's a disaster.
Dan: This isn't some kind of big branded podcast. This is like a couple of business guys just hanging out that have no idea how to use Twitter.
Ian: Yeah, at the end of the show I'm going to give out my personal address, my personal street address. You can send me a letter.
Dan: Do you like Twitter, Ian?
Ian: I do. I'm starting to like Twitter. I haven't been on Twitter for that long. I've been on Twitter for maybe six months to a year, at the most. But yeah, I really like it a lot. It's a great way to connect with people that I've met, and that I want to know.
Dan: I've stopped looking at newspapers. Like, I don't go to NewYorkTimes.com, I don't go to TechCrunch, I don't do any of that. What I do when I wake up in the morning is, I look at my Twitter stream. And I follow about 200 people that I think are really fascinating. And those are people like Ian, Sean Ogle, David, Seth MacFarlane, the comedian. All these people that I think are fascinating people. I follow Jason Calacanis. And I see what they're reading.
Dan: Mostly a tweet is just, "here's a link to what I think is interesting," nine times out of ten it's an article or a video. Instead of getting from the New York Times editors, what they think is interesting, I get from the people I admire and respect directly, what they think is interesting.
Dan: And that's why I think Twitter is so compelling. If someone would've explained it that way to me in 2006 or 2007 I would've been on it immediately. It took me a while to sort of wrap my head around what the reason is. Most people, unfortunately, wait to get on the Twitter until they feel like they have something to promote, and that's not what Twitter is good for.
Dan: Let's move on to the meat and potatoes, Ian. Today we've got five myths about successful internet-based businesses. Got a little bit of an overview, entertainment, light popcorn episode for all of you out there.
Dan: We're going to dispel the myth, deliver you the reality, the cold hard reality. First myth: If you put out compelling content to people and develop an audience, the money will follow. This is a very common myth. There's this new model that's emerged, and that's talked about in Gary V's work, and is talked about on a lot of blogs. Basically, what everybody says is, "hey, just make some awesome content, build up your audience, and the money will follow." Gary V claims that you can blog about Smurfs and eventually you're going to make a real business out of that. I don't think this is good advice.
Ian: I totally agree.
Dan: One reason why I don't think this is good advice: There's too long of a period to understand if you're going to fail or not. You can't just do something forever and win at the end. You have to know at some point whether or not your strategy stinks. And the problem with "building an audience" is that you have no idea when to declare failure, and you want to know pretty early in the process.
Dan: Here's the thing, there's a big difference between declaring failure on your strategy, and declaring failure on yourself. If your'e a business person, you're going to fail all the time, and you're going to change directions, and you're going to pivot. So don't ever give up. Don't ever give up on your business, don't ever give up on your life. But the specific things, you've got to learn how to give up, because you can't keep doing crappy ideas.
Dan: This particular scenario happens all the time. People build audiences full of tire-kickers. They build audiences full of people that don't have money, that don't expect to pay money for that kind of content, that don't actually respect that person that has paid content. You know what I mean? It's like, "Well, you were cool until you started charging me, and now I'm not into you anymore." Everybody you build up could potentially become useless as a customer. That's an absolute huge problem. Check out my blog post on this, "Dear Entrepreneur, Don't Start A Blog," if you want to see more thoughts about this.
Dan: The second myth about running a successful online business is that running an online business is different than running a traditional business.
Ian: Not true. The most important thing about running a business is being responsible for generating revenue, and in either online businesses or traditional businesses you do have to create revenue. That's the name of the game here. This is a business. It's really important to think about your online business as if it might be a brick and mortar business. You're going to have customer service, you're going to have a network of business people around you.
Dan: This is euphemistic myth, and the myth is a euphamism for all the newbies that we see coming into online business, and they feel like online business is an opportunity to be a business person without actually having to be a business person, without actually having to go to the messy business, doing things that are difficult, like getting on the phone with people that are difficult to get on the phone. Actually having to provide real value which nine times out of ten means taking on real responsibility. That means serving your customers. That means delivering a valuable product. That means solving their problems when they have them. That means picking up the phone when they want to bitch at you.
Dan: That means all these things that people think the online world shields you from. If you think that about what online business is about, you're in for a rude awakening, because you do have to do all of those things online as well. This isn't some magic bullet that gets you off the hook, and I see a lot of people attempting to get into the online business world.
Dan: They don't see themselves as a business person and therefore they don't hang out with other business people, and they don't share tips and tricks and instead they're hanging out with a lot of other people that aren't into business. And that's a huge problem, because the point is that this isn't some sort of unique mindset. This is a business mindset. This is going to the business networking meetings. This is having entrepreneur friends. This is talking about the bottom line. This is talking about your next new idea. These are things that are shared by online and offline entrepreneurs, is absolutely no difference except for the tools that you're using.
Dan: I have friends that are offline businesses, they don't know the first thing about their web site, but we're like two peas in a pod. Now, what's the reason for that? Even though my business is primarily relies on the internet for all its leads, all its marketing, and of course now we're doing all this information marketing stuff, what's the common bind there? Well, the common bind there is much more important than what our attitude about the internet is.
Ian: Right. We're all business guys here. Think about opening a pizza parlor, and you go to open up this pizza parlor, and you've got to take out a loan for the booths in there, and to finance the operation. I think you should look at your online business the same way. Now, there's a lot of ways to bootstrap, so you might not have to take out that loan, but are you willing to take out a loan for your online business? You have to ask yourself these questions. If it's not that serious just because it's an online business, then what are you doing? You're probably wasting your time.
Dan: That's an awesome point. Ask yourself right now if you would take out a loan, because what a lot of people do is they'll take this testing mindset that the internet allows you to have, and they take it too far, like "well, I'll just blog until I'm blue in the face for the next six months, and then I'll kind of see what happens." That's not a business. That's blogging. That's writing. That's hanging out at the water cooler, and that's not what we're talking about right now. We're trying to talk about business.Number three. You need to have a great idea to have a great business.
Ian: That's the myth.
Dan: That's the myth. The idea here is that we believe that most businesses that make money both online and offline are average businesses.
Ian: We're not promoting average-ness. What we're promoting here is that you can own a business, or you can have a business and it doesn't have to be this extraordinary idea. So many times people are sitting on the side of the curb waiting to stand up because they don't have an idea, or the best, greatest idea about how to stand up. All you have to do is bend your legs and stand up.
Dan: Now there is one difference to online business, which is that a lot of times online business promotes this hyper-specialization, whereas you could open up the same chain restaurant in Cincinnati and you could open it up in Houston, but it has the same menu. Now, the same thing exists online, you just have to look at it a little bit differently.
Dan: Josh does a complex thing where he looks at Gary V crushing it with an entertaining video program about wine. That's something that people are passionate about and they spend a lot of money on it. He says, "hey, people feel the same way about camping gear." People feel the same way about guitars. People feel the same way about audio equipment. Okay, so you just start searching niches. You know a formula that works. If I make a video program like Gary V's, based on my personality, people are going to be entertained by that. So just apply it to something different. That's kind of the same thing as taking your restaurant model that works and applying it in different towns.
Ian: And this is also what we've talked about in the past, which is the PIVOT technique.
Dan: Number four myth about successful online businesses: With an online business, you don't have to work as hard as a traditional business. Yes, the myth says that thanks to the wonders of technology, thanks to outsourcing and all this stuff, you can practically set it up and forget it!
Ian: Here's the thing. I love, more than anything, waking up in my bed, reaching over for my iPhone, my girlfriend yelling at me at this point, checking to see how many cart sales we did overnight when I was sleeping. I mean, it's the greatest feeling in the world to be asleep, getting cart sales. And I think people think this is how it really works. You set up an online business, all of a sudden you've got cart sales in your sleep. Truth is, I have to go to work or I have to go to the office or I have to go to the beach the next day and make that happen. So this isn't some magic ticket to getting sales, to start an online business. That's not how it works.
Dan: Yeah, absolutely. I often look at the people that I've spoken with, and now because of this podcast and just because I'm a loudmouth, I'm running around, always trying to interact with new people, I've talked with a lot of people who have online successful businesses. Not many lazy ones. Not many ones who aren't working very hard at it. Not many ones who aren't very passionate about it. And so I don't think that there aren't exceptions to this, there are a few, but they're very rare, and nine times out of ten, when you hear about somebody who's "lazy," "not working that hard," they're totally just throwing that to you.
Dan: The second thing is this: If you feel that you're lazy or indecisive right now or having a difficult time getting started, this isn't to say this business thing isn't for you. Because I felt that way too in my past. You have to take baby steps, and you have to understand that you're working towards a space where you will be able to work hard on your business.
Dan: Here's the transition that happens: You get more confident, you get more enthused, and you get more passionate, because you're getting the feedback, you're getting the results, you're seeing how much of a positive impact having a great business has on your life, and you get more excited about contributing to that. When I hang out with fellow entrepreneurs, everyone's pumped up. Everyone's excited to make those changes, because they feel like the actions they do will have real results. I don't want you to get discouraged if you don't feel like you have the best work ethic in the planet, because I think that your environment can change the way you feel about that.
Ian: Yeah, all this hype about being lazy and starting a business online is mostly marketing hype to sell you the information that you need to start a business online.
Dan: If you want to start an online business with little to no work or effort or knowhow, buy the first two seasons of our podcast!
Ian: Exactly.
Dan: Here's the final myth of successful online businesses: Successful online businesses stay online.
Ian: Not true. Our businesses were online. We had some online e-commerce stores, and very quickly that turned into phone calls, expos, office visits and meetings and plane tickets. Most online businesses don't stay online. There becomes components that have to happen offline. Even if it's just going to the bank.
Dan: Philosophically, Ian, you can look at this like the most high-bandwidth situation is in person, and when you look at Yelp as a great example, they hired a massive, country-wide sales force, and of course that's an extreme example of success, but look at something that you'd think would be purely online like Bluehost. Well, they've got to have their servers somewhere, and they've got to have people managing them and writing software and all this stuff.
Dan: Think about Frank Kern, famous internet marketer who's now teaching people to find deals offline, and he's doing consulting himself at a high level. Businesses have real offline components, and that's where this stuff goes, so this is another push towards the beginners who think this is just going to be something that you come home, put in a couple of articles into your thing and call it a day.
Dan: Look at Sean Ogle's success. Look at how his blog has essentially driven him into these offline relationships. Imagine if Sean never met anybody in person. What would be your prediction about Location 180?
Ian: I talked to Sean last time he was here, and he said one of the main reasons he's been successful over the last year is because he's gone out and made him accessible to all these people. He was just in L.A. last weekend meeting with a bunch of people, ran into a bunch of people that he didn't think he was going to meet. Opportunities turned up. It really makes sense to be on the ground, even if you're online for sixteen hours a day.
Dan: Most of the biggest deals that we've ever cut, and the biggest things that have ever happened for our business, happened offline, on the telephone, in person, and that has to do with bandwidth. You can create more trust, more depth of interaction, and therefore you can get more integral, important, big-time stuff done. If you have a purely online business right now, what I'd say is make sure that you're funneling things. Your funnel is pushing down to that meeting, that phone call, that big phone number in the middle of your web site.
Dan: Alright guys, thanks for listening to the meat and potatoes. Now we're going to move on to the quick tip, tricks, and/or funny jokes section. So, Ian, I've had a big problem, and this quick tip might not be so exciting for most of our audience, but I've got to say, for me, I've always had a huge problem scheduling appointments given that I'm always in these weird time zones. Sometimes it has to do with daylight savings time, sometimes it has to do with I didn't know I skipped a time zone, or a lot of times it just has to do with pure idiocy. Like, I'll forget that when I quote someone a time, it's a day forward or a day behind.
Ian: Yeah, this just happened with our mastermind group. Luckily everybody showed up at the right time, but there was a lot of confusion.
Dan: I always wished that there was a program that would help me solve these problems, because of course even the smallest mistake, if you're one hour off, you've blown your whole thing, and given that in these time zones you can be on the weekend and one guy can be on the week, you can literally lose a week if you mischedule a call. What I downloaded into my Chrome browser is this plugin called World Clock. If you check it out on our blog, go to lifestylebusinesspodcast.com, you can download this plugin. Totally free. You can figure out, here's where I am, you type in a hypothetical time, and here's where they are. It's like clockwork. I'll never miss another Skype appointment.
Ian: Very cool.
Dan: Ian, you've got an interesting quick tip about relationship building.
Ian: The other day we got a line of credit from our bank, and this is because we actually had $100,000 in our bank account. But we sealed the deal with some flowers, and the reason we sent some flowers to our account agent is because she was very helpful, and because I want to set up up for success in the future working with her. I just want to thank you thank you for everything you did, and I'm looking forward to working with you in the future.
Ian: Let me tell you about how I hacked the flower situation. And this, you can do for Mother's Day, you can do it to your banking agent, you can do it to your friend, whatever. This is my flower hack. Instead of going to FTD.com, what I do is go to Google, I type in flower shop, and then I type in the zip code, and then I look for one that's like two to five miles away. So then I'll call the flower shop directly, and this is what I'll say: "I'm looking for an assortment of flowers that can be delivered to this address for under $35."
Dan: And I'm totally into this whole idea of doing very leveraged small activities, like in your case you're suggesting five minutes and $35 to seal this high-level relationship that can have a high yield for you. Another way you can do it is to give a gift certificate to Starbucks. Send a hand-written personal note, maybe without a gift in it. But something like a heart-felt, "Hey, that really helped us out. We really appreciated it."
Ian: Again, there are going to be components of your business that are offline. These can be some of the most important components of your business.
Dan: Absolutely. And one really quick tip. There's a niche that you've identified, that you think is world-changing, and we're not going to do anything about it. So why don't we offer up a freebie to the audience out there?
Ian: That's right. I know that this is going to be huge. This is really going to change a lot of things. Go to Google. Type in spray-on liquid glass. This stuff is going to revolutionize the world. I'm confident of that. It's this very thin layer of glass that you can spray on to clothes, or surfaces, and it basically protects from spills or bacteria. It can protect paint. All sorts of things. I think this is going to be revolutionary. It's going to destroy companies that make cleaning products, because this virtually keeps out bacteria. Very cool stuff.
Dan: Let me give you a little quick tip, dear audience, about what Ian just said. I can't remember the last time he said something like that where he wasn't right, and the first few times he ever said that to me he got me out of a job and into a business that did $90,000 last month.
Dan: Alright guys, thanks a lot for listening to the podcast. Today we're going to play you out with a track that I wrote in GarageBand, because I wanted to start owning this podcast 100%. I'm a greedy mo-fo. Alright, let's get out of here. We'll talk to you guys next time. If you've got questions about the podcast, feel free to email me. Dan@lifestylebusinesspodcast.com, or Tweet me, @TropicalMBA, or @AnythingIan.