It’s time to pack!

Hi!

Well the time has finally come and this weekend we are packing up our Port Melbourne home and heading off to the wild blue yonder- first stop Tassie to say good bye to family and then off to London.

You know what is really exciting? Having created the types of lifestyle businesses that we have, which means we can work from anywhere in the world. In the Information Age it is so easy to keep in touch. (I know I’m not really the best at that- but I do try!!)

I though i’d put a link in to one of the “Behind The Scenes Tips” from the Secrets of Selling From Stage website because it talks about staying in touch. And even though Greg and I are heading off- we will still be keeping in touch of course.

Here it is:

Anyhow, just wanted to say hi to you all since this might be the last thing i write from our little home here. I’ll let you know how the move goes and who knows- maybe I’ll even finish that series on the Ultimate Lifestyle Business soon!!

Love ya!

xx

A response to a request- my top 5

Hi!

How naughty am I? I haven’t written for so long- guess I’ve been enjoying the lifestyle too much!

Here’s a request from a blog reader, Laurent, which has inspired me to jump back on and tell you guys something:

if you get a moment: i’d love to know what you would say have been the top 3-5 “how-to” books/websites or resources (including people!) you may have come across that have taught you how to leverage/use the internet as a tool for building your business and creating your ideal lifestyle.

So here they are:

1. As you guys know is out and out Timothy Ferris’s “4-hour work week”. You are officially daft if you haven’t read it yet (I still love ya though!)
2. Andrew and Daryl Grant’s membership site model (www.andrewanddaryl.com)
3. Wayne Pickstone and Steve Baker’s advice on marketing (www.waynepickstone.com)
4. Joel Bauer’s insitence that we have lots of video online
5. Armand Morin’s awesome seminar marketing tips

That’s what’s been helping me most recently. Hope that helps you Laurent.

Hey - Helena (my blog helper) has just had a beautiful little baby boy- Daniel!! How exciting!

Love Joey x

How to Get Started In Speaking

Hi troops!

I just finished a tele-training on How anyone, regardless of industry or inexperience can get started in Speaking and Make Big Money…Thought you might enjoy listening if you weren’t on the call.

I tell ya- I shared ooooooodles of tips and strategies.  I’m diligently building up my competition!  That’s the way.  Check this out - it goes for about 90 minutes I think, so you can download it and listen to it on your ipod or whatever.

http://instantteleseminar.com/?eventid=2653149

As you have probably noticed Helena Denley is doing a divine job of making my blog look and act appropriately!  I’m so sorry I haven’t been on here much of late.  Had been having a few teething problems with the old template - but thankfully Helena has fixed it now and I can edit and upload with ease once more.

Check her out on www.helenadenley.com

Love yas all!!

J xx

Powerpoint as only a seminar attendee could appreciate

Hi guys,

I know I owe you a post on step two of the “Create Your Ultimate Lifestyle Business” process. Its coming- trust me (I’m a doctor). But one of the things that forms a big part of our lifestyle business is the speaking part. Thats why we launched www.SecretsofSellingFromStage.com and are having our 3 day intensive “spill the beans workshop” down here in Melbourne May 16-18th.

However, if you’re in the business of speaking, there is something you must know.

BEWARE POWERPOINT!!!

Useful, can make sales, but can also kill the presentation.

Here’s a very educational look at it, from DOn McMillan. Please got to the toilet before attempting to view this video, I cannot be held responsible for little accidents!

Cheers,

jo x

Joey is speaking in Melbourne Friday 28th March

Check out what we’re up to in Melbourne. Sorry, this one is girls only!

To register, contact mia@miamunro.com

Secrets of Selling From Stage is Launched!!

Well I warned you I was up to something. The last three days Greg and I have sequestered ourselves away on the Gold Coast putting the finishing touches on our new site.

And now its ready to go! Hooray!

We have just gone live with something we believe will shake up the entire public speaking industry. That’s because it’s going to put public speaking tools and strategies into the hands of regular business owners CHEAPER, FASTER and MORE EFFECTIVELY than ever before.

And this is your opportunity to have a sneak preview.

You see, we have been putting together an exciting step-by-step, hold your hand mentoring program that reveals everything I learnt in the last three years in the seminar game. As you probably know, in my first 12 months speaking and selling from stage, I made over $1.25 million in sales. In fact with over 3000 hours on stage, selling for my supper, I thought I might have an idea or two to share with you about how you can blow the lid on your own business by creating and delivering some killer presentations!

Anyway, here’s the exciting bit. We’re launching the site right now, and of course we’re keen to get some sales straight away! So we’re throwing in some bonuses which we hope will make the whole thing a “no-brainer” for you if you’re intending to sell your business to a group.

In addition to the great stuff you get standard as part of the program (you’ll see the list on www.SecretsOfSellingFromStage.com/signup.html), you’ll also get these things:

- Half price membership for the first 100 people. The standard price is $99 a month, but if you’re one of the first 100 people to join you get it for just $49 a month for as long as you stay a member.

- What’s more we’re running a 3-day intensive speaking workshop in May. This is not a sell-fest – I guarantee that you will walk out with a planned presentation ready to go! Tickets are $2,000 per person, but IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE FIRST FIVE PEOPLE to join the mentoring program you get one ticket to the workshop included in your membership.

- The workshop comes with 2 hours of my personal time to critique your presentation and giving you one-to-one feedback. This alone is valued at $3,500. So if you’re one of the first 5 people to join the program, you also get this great bonus.

I’m sending this offer out to my close friends and past clients first (that’s why you’re getting this!), so you get a head-start. Later today I’ll send this same offer to the rest of my list, as well as a bunch of other lists we’ve teed up. If you’re keen to lock in the charter membership price of $49 a month, please don’t wait and “think about it”.

Here’s the link to check out the site:
www.SecretsOfSellingFromStage.com

And here’s the link to join the program if you’d rather do that and read the details later!
www.SecretsOfSellingFromStage.com/signup.html

Let me know what you think.

I hope you get as much out of it as we have putting it all together!

Have fun!

Cheers,
Jo

Something Very Exciting is Happening Tomorrow

Hi guys,

This is just a quick post to let you know that something very exciting is going to be happening tomorrow. Over the last few months Greg and I have been working on something which we are really thrilled about, and we will be launching it tomorrow. Yay!!

We are on the Gold Coast at the moment, putting the finishing touches to a little something which I belive is going to be one of the best value offerings of its kind out there.

If you know me, and what I’ve done in the past you’ll be thinking :”why on earth did it take you so long Joey?!” So keep your eyes peeled.

I wanted to let all my close friends know first because there will be a limited offer that I will reveal tomorrow, and you guys deserve pole position to get the goodies.

Keep your eye on your inbox tomorrow, if I have your email… otherwise come back to the blog on Wednesday the 19th of March, Queensland time, Australia… and check out what mischief we’ve been up to!!

Love Joey

The Eight Golden Rules for a Lifestyle-centric Business Owner

Your lifestyle is ultimately your life’s work. We are all artists, whether we acknowledge that or not. And every day we are gifted with a canvas upon which to create our design. We are now operating in the Information Age, at a time of great wealth and great possibility. Yet seemingly intelligent people continue to operate under old assumptions. Too many people I know “work hard” for no other reason than they thought that’s what they were expected to do. There has never been a greater time than now to design a life the way you want it.
In this article we will look at the 7 Golden Rules for Lifestyle-centric Business Owners. Over the next couple of weeks we’ll go into each of them in more detail. But for today it’s the overview. My greatest wish for the world is that everyone lives a life of self-expression. By that I mean that one’s life is an expression of that unique identity within them. It honestly breaks my heart when I speak to business owners who describe their lifestyle as anything less than awesome. As business owners we are in pole position to craft our lives the way we want to. For heaven’s sake, if the guy or girl running the show can’t have it they way they want it, what hope is there for anyone else? I think it’s just that we get lazy. We get lazy because the truth is questioning our assumptions and making changes in the way we operate is actually harder to do than work 70 hours a week.
So let’s take a moment to break it all down into manageable pieces and digest each of them like small slices of the best brie.
1. Lifestyle First: Define Your Rules

First things first. Go back to basics. Why did you start a business in the first place? What did you want to achieve from it? Some people would say “to make a million dollars a year” or “to be my own boss”. But I would put forward that those are simply means to an end. The “end” would be what having those things gets for you. So for instance what does making a million dollars a year get for you?
Well your answer might be freedom to travel, to spend time with my kids, to build a secure future. Now the grand irony is, if you work your guts out 70 hours a week in a business in the hope that one day you’ll have “freedom to travel and spend time with the kids”, what happens to the kids and travel in the mean time?
So Greg and I decided to do it a different way around. We started by imagining our ideal lifestyle. For us that involved travel, a certain level of luxury, spending time with our children as they grew (no we don’t have any yet and we’re not pregnant for those rumour-millers out there!) and so on. We were really clear we wanted to create a lifestyle with ultimate freedom. From this vision we then created our “Non-negotiable Lifestyle Criteria”. I have written about these before. These are criteria that we created that set up a filter through which all business opportunities were run. If the opportunity didn’t fit the criteria it got trashed. It made life very simple.
So when starting out in business, or even just reviewing why you’re where you are, start by defining your rules. What will you NOT do for money!!?
2. Passion and Authenticity

Once you have defined your rules of the game, your criteria that are non-negotiable in terms of selecting your business vehicle, then you come back to your centre and find out what your passionate about. I have seen too many people follow their passion first and burn out doing it, until their passion is something they loathe, because they didn’t do step one first!
That said you’ll never stick with something long enough to be truly successful unless you are passionate about it. I have a million ways (well, maybe thats a little superlative, but many ways) to help people uncover passion, and discover the self that they want to express in the world… keep your eyes peeled for the Passion Post in the next couple of weeks!

3. The Bigger Pie Principle

Ah… how many times have I seen people (and I include myself in this), decide that 100% of something small is better that 20% of something big. Listen, it’s not that either stand is more right than the other, but be aware of it. Most entrepreneurs I know who have at least a modicum of success started out with a minimum of three people on the team. It just seems to be the number that works. It’s a good sturdy number. There are very few solo-preneurs that I speak to who honestly enjoy doing everything themselves. (I am open to comment and being proven wrong!)
So in a nutshell the Bigger Pie Principle is the old adage of “rather than squabbling over pieces of the pie, how can you create a much larger pie that we can all share in”? In fact at the moment when Greg and I appear to have found ourselves once more being inundated with opportunities (can you believe we have had 2 multimillion dollar business offers in the last 5 days. Far out, I can’t!).. any way the question I keep asking in my mind is “what’s the bigger pie here?”
4. You have to spend money to make money

OOOOh! I can hear the shudder among personal development seminar attendees thinking “No! They told me that I just had to have a good idea”. Look at some level it’s true, but I have to say you get a whole lot done a good deal quicker if you’ll just pay the right person to do the job. I’m not saying anything here about who’s money you have to spend. I’m all for Other People’s Money. But get used to creating flow… money in…. money out!
A friend of mine Daniel Priestley put it this way: “If you’re a boxer you’re gonna get hit in the face.” Greg likes to say “If you’re gonna make an omelette you have to scramble some eggs”. Basically if you’re in business, you’re going to have to spend some money! For us that’s why we are paying our writers to write, our techies to design software, our event managers to plan events and on and on. Could we have done it all ourselves? Yeah. But I have better things to do with my life (see point 1); which brings me to …
5. Stick to what you’re good at.

his is the single greatest key to effectiveness EVER! I know my time is best spent in front of people inspiring them to take action. Perhaps even in front of my computer writing to them to take action! But it sure as heck ain’t in reconciling the bank accounts or managing the team. It’s simply not my forte. I affectionately refer to my role in the team as “the Performing Monkey”. A little derogatory? Perhaps, but it keeps my ego in check and means I keep my focus in the right place. By allowing the other team members to do what they are good at our effectiveness goes through the roof. And its more fun actually. Can’t imagine doing it any other way any more!
So what are your strengths? And how quickly can you get someone to do the other stuff… and how quickly can you stop being a control freak and allow them to do it?
6. Ask better questions of new trends

OK: Facebook case in point. How many people did (or are still doing) the “Oh that stupid thing, what a waste of time”. Or “it’ll never last”. Instead of trying to find reasons why something won’t work in your business so you get to win the “I was right award”: get over yourself. Ask a better question. Ask how could this work to grow my business? Chances are many things will assist you if only you get out of your own way long enough. This is not to say take up every opportunity… always assess in terms of impact and ease, but don’t dismiss it before you’ve assessed it.
7. The Land of Missed Opportunities

My partner Greg lives in this land. Well… not that’s not the right way of putting it! Its more like his glasses are especially treated to see the missed opportunity in everything. He’s incredible at it. And according to him most businesses are huge great fountains of missed opportunity. More money to be made from existing customers, less money to be spent on telecoms, joint ventures to be tapped into left, right and centre. You name it. Get yourself a Greg in your business!
8. The Biggest and Best Golden Rule Ever: QUESTION YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

Whenever you hit a problem the best question you can ask yourself is “what are my assumptions here”. Just last night I was getting all in a tizz about the best course of action on a particular business opportunity we’re considering. Greg asked at that point why are we on this path?” And that started a whole barrage of assumption questioning that ultimately gained us some clarity. My favourite question is “when did we decide that…?”
So if you’re faced with a problem at any time in your lifestyle-centric business creation always question your assumption. Just because it doesn’t work in an Australian market doesn’t mean that Malaysia isn’t crying out for it. When did you decide you had to travel 3 days a week when you’d rather be at home? Who said you couldn’t afford a PA when you can hire someone for $4 an hour in India? Question your assumptions… and keep coming back to your rules.
In summary

I hope you’ve found something useful in this little article. Over the next few weeks we’ll be going into each of the steps in more detail, as well as bringing along guests who have created “Ultimate Lifestyle Businesses” and finding out what their secrets were.
Make sure you subscribe to the RSS (that means you get instant updates on your computer every time there’s a new post) or subscribe by email… or come back and visit every coupla days. There’s lots of good fun stuff coming you way!!
Love Joey.

New Directions… New Design

Hi!

Happy Chinese New Year to you. It is the year of the rat! The beginning of the cycle. So we’ve decided to get on board. This is an exciting post for me because things are going to be a – changing. Many of you have been calling in on my blog from time to time over the last 4 months or so. As you have probably noticed Greg and I are gearing up for some pretty big changes in business and life generally. And to reflect that change I am re-designing my blog and tweaking its direction.

You see, the more time I spend talking with business owners, the more I realise how few businesses are designed to fulfil the lifestyle desires of the owners. Most people have ended up in the business they’re in by accident, or they had grand plans about what they wanted their business to look like, but lost site of it somewhere along the way.

I am convinced that it is entrepreneurs and business people that are going to make the biggest difference to the world. Did you know that according to a Bank of America study entrepreneurs donate 25% more than other wealthy individuals to charitable causes? But not just that, when a business is designed to fulfil a need, to solve a social problem or in some other way make a meaningful contribution, people are employed, homes are created and families’ lives are secure.

Not everyone is an entrepreneur… they are a rare breed. Many people call themselves entrepreneurs, but they aren’t really. Did you know the word entrepreneur comes from the French: entreprendre- to undertake. So technically speaking, an entrepreneur is one who undertakes. So these rare individuals need support. They need to be encouraged and supported to make their contribution, because they are the catalysts for change.

So entrepreneurs and business owners: this site will be for you. So my vision for my blog moving forward is a resource for entrepreneurs and small business owners. When we re-launch, it is my intention to interview successful business owners and entrepreneurs to find out what makes them tick. Find out what gets them out of bed in the morning. And find out what strategies they are employing as we move further into the information age to reflect the changing needs and desires in the market place. How is the information age changing the way we do business, and the scope of what we can achieve through business?

Through the articles, interviews and other resources you’ll be finding here, I hope to provide you with inspiration, motivation, strategic advice and up to the minute notification of what’s new out there, solving the latest problems the small business owner or entrepreneur faces. You’ll find reminders to keep designing your business to support rather than hinder your lifestyle, and ways to keep keyed in and excited about the journey. Your’s is a great gift, the ability to envision a different future, and to be able to bring that future into the present through business. I hope to be able to serve you in the best way I know how.

Come back over the next weeks to see the changes and expect a lot of great value as we move forward! Oh… and it should be easier to read too!

Wishing you a prosperous life of contribution, and Business On Purpose.

Warm regards,

Joanna

The 7 Biggest Mistakes I’ve Seen in the Seminar Game and How to Avoid Them

Good morning troops!

I’ve been doing a spot of consulting for a few businesses of late and I am noticing some rather disturbing themes. These businesses are great businesses, trying new things and achieving reasonable levels of success. The business owners have looked around them and seen the current love affair that consumers have with seminars, and thought “I could do that”. Now, hats off to them for giving the marketing medium of speaking a go. However, I have to admit that its a game that has a lot more to it than meets the eye.

I have been repeating myself a few times of late with these guys so I thought I’d jump on here and share what I’m noticing with you, before you too fall prey to “trend chasing” of seminars. I guess for me its a case of “you don’t know how much you know til you realise how little others know”.

So, this is information that I have gathered and integrated over the last few years in my work. It predominantly comes from studying direct response marketing (a la Dan Kennedy, Mal Emery etc) and applying those models to the spoken word, rather than the written word. I have picked up invaluable lessons for which I am forever grateful from my work with Chris Howard as well. Chris’ Breakthrough to Success, his 3 day weekend seminar, is still one of the best examples of a great seminar I’ve seen. I have worked with some of the best in the industry, people who’ve been behind the scenes (and in front for that matter) for some of the most successful seminar companies in the world, and the lessons I have gathered are priceless. I hope you gain some benefit from them. So here goes…

Mistake #1: People running a seminar for all the wrong reasons.
I’ve seen people get on stage because they want to feel important, stroke their ego, they want to get rich quick and figure “everyone else is doing it” and “I can do that”. WRONG!!! This industry is highly volatile, and as soon as you step on stage, people notice. That means whatever is going on in your business gets amplified, for better or for worse. Sure, you will generate new leads if done successfully, but if you have no systems to support that you could be worse off than before.

You must have a clear strategy for your seminar, and know how you are going to leverage it. Ask yourself some questions:

• How does the seminar fit into your overall business plan?
• What are you selling? Your time? Products? Nothing?
• Who is the best person to deliver it? (it may not be you!)
• How are you going to leverage the opportunity? Are you going to record it and sell it as a product? Give it away for free as a bonus? Leverage leverage leverage!!

Mistake #2: The seminar is designed to teach and not sell.
If you are putting on a seminar, there had better be something in it for you. I say that because otherwise, next time, you won’t be able to afford to put on another seminar. I am not saying that you have to sell something at every seminar, it depends what your business strategy is, but if you’re clear your seminar is for selling, then you had better design it so it sells stuff!!

Most people tend to think if they teach good enough content then people will love them and that will be enough for them to take their credit cards out, but it’s just not true. My personal belief is that good content is a necessary component (I don’t agree with the school of three day sales pitches with no information); but the content you deliver should be selected to support the product or service you are selling. This is a science beyond the scope of this one post, but it is a balance that is vital to strike. You must decide what products or services you are going to sell, then design your seminar around that.

One very useful tip is to have an “ascension plan”. That means selling a low end priced item early to build trust, and throughout the event progressively increasing the price point, and saving your biggest and best product til last. Just the same as in the direct response marketing game.

Mistake #3: Presenters focus only on the words they are saying and not on the complete participant experience
We arrived at an evening seminar just last night. The presenter was fantastic, he was inspiring, magical in fact, and Greg and I really resonated with what he was saying. But unfortunately we were late. Now you could say “well serve you right for being late”… but what if I was a new prospect and wanted to spend some money?

When we arrived there was no-one outside the room to greet us, we had to guess in fact that we were in the right room. When we walked in their were no spare chairs and we had to spend the first 15 minutes sitting on the ground at the back of the room before an appropriate break to seek chairs out. None of the organising crew noticed this because they were sitting up the front of the room. So the poor presenter was left stranded noticing two uncomfortable people at the back but with no opportunity to do anything about it. The moral of the story: manage the entire participant experience.

Participants will never arrive on time, leave on time, or do anything you want when you want actually. In fact the entire event management experience is one of herding cats at the best of times. So don’t be righteous about how your participants should behave. Get over it and deliver the best damn experience you can muster.

Some basic things to think about:

• Have you selected a good room with enough room for activities?
• Is there adequate lighting?
• Have you got adequate AV equipment?
• Have you got an event team you can trust?

Which brings me to…

Mistake #4: Having an event team, but not training them adequately.
If you are the person on stage: get over yourself. Your event team have more power to make or break the event than you do. In my days as a trainer I was always aware that the participant experience was a delicate balance of three crucial areas: the training, the event management and the environment created through the AV and lights.

You must therefore select a good, no, GREAT event manager. Someone who is great with people and has eyes like a hawk and efficiency to match. This person has to be able to see an unhappy customer at a 100 paces and be able to choose exactly the right strategy and person to deal with it. They need to be able to read the trainers mind… so choose wisely.

Create great systems for the event manager to follow. Better still, create them with the event manager, and have them teach the staff at the event.

If your event relies on volunteer crew, or even paid crew: TREAT THEM LIKE GOLD. These people are responsible for ensuring the people with the credit cards enjoy themselves! Take a leaf out of Branson’s book: “look after your employees, let them look after the clients and that will look after the shareholders”. Crew are gold I say - GOLD GOLD GOLD!!

Ah… I could go on about that for hours, and no doubt will down the track, but next:

Mistake #5: The trainer thinks a seminar is about imparting information only.
People learn through their emotions. Not their intellect. I studied medicine. I remember which type of antibody is responsible for which part of the immune system because my girlfriends and I laughed so hard making up stories about Bruce Willis saving the world to remember them! I don’t remember the Kreb’s cycle because I studied solo that year! Emotions are the glue that make learning stick. So when you teach how are you managing the emotions of your audience?

You need great presentation skills sure. There are tomes of information out there on presentation skills, so this is not what I want to talk about.

One of the best ways to manage emotion is through the skilful use of AV. If you’ve been to a movie you know what I mean. It’s not just speaking is it? It’s changes in lighting, in music… all to augment the experience. The truly great and successful seminars, in my experience, maximise the use of sound and light. It was the same whether I was directing plays in the theatre or teaching a training.

The greatest challenge is finding a skilled and intuitive AV person. I have been blessed to work with a couple. I have learnt so much from them and when it flies it’s like poetry, but they are few and far between. If you find someone… keep em!!

Mistake #6: Looking like crap on stage
For the love of god, if you are teaching or selling, I don’t care who you are, please make yourself look at least half way decent. If you can’t pull it together, get an image coach. I was fashion-retarded, and investing in Terriane, my consultant was the best decision I ever made. I don’t mean wear Armani. I mean flatter what you’ve got and stand out. Unless your message is how to fade into the background. Which I doubt.

And last but by no means the least. In fact possibly the most important…

Mistake #7: Having no integrity or out and out lying from stage.
I hate that I even have to mention this but the sad truth is there are some presenters and companies out there who will tell you one thing and then do another. I have even witnessed speakers lying through their teeth on stage. Just don’t be one of them.

It is transparent and people can see straight through it. My belief is if you are privileged enough to be given the undivided attention of a group of people, you have a responsibility to deliver quality, passion and truth. I’m not saying don’t tweak the details of a story to make for more impact, or to preserve confidentiality; but just don’t lie.

Moreover I have a real bee in my bonnet about the number of speakers out there who tout messages of spirituality, health, wealth creation and communication and have lives riddled with crappy relationships, bad health, average finances and poorly run companies. They give the industry a bad name and result in the publication of books like “SHAM”… which makes some very pertinent observations, but is pretty damning. It is a shame because many of these skill sets are really useful. None of them are perfect or even accurate, but many are useful.

I’m not pretending for a second that anyone is perfect, but we can all strive to be living examples of whatever it is we say from stage. If you’re an accountant speaking about accounting, have your books in order as best you can; if you’re a doctor speaking about health, have a regular exercise regime; if you’re a financial planner selling funds, have some passive income yourself.

I have dream that those delivering the advice have enough experience to do so. Some might say that’s not realistic, but I say if you’re not passionate about the subject, and you don’t practice what you preach get the hell of stage and let someone else do it.

I sure as heck only want to work with people who are transparent and passionate about what they do, and if I’m giving up an evening or a weekend of my life to listen to your views of the world, I believe I deserve this simple courtesy.

Well… hope there’s some useful stuff there. Look forward to hearing what you think!

Jo

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