Brent Worley Blog

Scott, if you read this, don’t yell at me too much (just kidding for anyone who is not Scott, but you’ll understand as I write more of this post!).

I’ve written about this before, but feel like I should write about it again:  The Internet Marketing Home Study Course I acquired is one of the best things I have run across in learning how to market home based businesses online.  It is extremely in-depth.

Only today did I realize how in-depth it was.

Until now, I had only read the material.  I always flipped past the DVD’s and audio CD’s and went to the written material.  And while it is good, it is nothing compared to the DVD’s (and I have not even touched the internet marketing training CD’s that are there….going to load them to my iPhone before I leave for Houston next week).

I’ve been watching/listening to the DVD’s over the last little bit.  These things take the written material and make it TONS better.

Now…I work with Scott in our very successful home based business.  All of the information and knowledge Scott has and what I have learned we give to our team members, which is an INCREDIBLE deal!  His course alone cost more than the start-up cost with our business….and there is not a way to make money from it in the way you can with the business (so you tell me which makes more sense!).

Isn’t great knowing that you work with successful people with knowledge?

brent@brentworley.com

I’m very impressed.

In fact, I’m SHOCKED at what I managed to pull off today.

I have a website out there that was not indexed this afternoon.  I had not really tried to do a lot to get in indexed, but decided that tonight was the night.  Not a lot of competition for the keyword (only around 170k), but not a lot of content on my site.

So, I took a few steps tonight:

1.  Submitted it through SocialMarker.com.  Didn’t make it through all of the sites, as there is a bug about halfway through it that takes it off the submission sites.  But Digg, Del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon all caught it.

2.  I also submitted a video for the site.  It hit around 30 video sites, blogs, Podcast directories, etc (I also expect some of the videos to hit the top 10 overnight).

And then I checked.

Not only did Google index it, but it appeared #7 for the keyword!

So now its time for Phase 2:  Break the top 5, and see if I can hit #1 or #2.

Stay tuned….

I’m breaking away from my traditional Internet marketing post to make a point about keeping focused on goals, dreams, and not being distracted by a long, difficult journey.

Over 6 years ago I met my mentor. I actually had responded to an ad he has running in a magazine.

His story was amazing. This man had faced so much in his life, had been through a lot of failure, but never gave up. He went through some of the worst times and problems a man (with a family) could face, but he believed that he could have success.

And he has had massive success since then.

When I talked to him 6 years ago, he told me that I could have success, too. I believed him.

When I began to work with him in our business, he reminded me often that I could have success. I always believed him.

When I was failing miserably, he constantly reminded me that I could have success. And I kept pushing.

But success never came.

6 years later, I understand now why it never came.

It could be that I never worked the business like I should have, or it could be that I was not in the right place at the right time. Whatever it was, it is water under the bridge now. Now I realize why I never had the success I dreamed of:

Because God wanted me where I am now.

I’m not 100% sure I would be able to do what my mentor and several other people did back in February. They all walked away from HUGE incomes (most of them 6-figure incomes). I don’t think I could have made that decision, knowing I would be jeapordizing my family, my lifestyle, etc, to do it, no matter what the reason.

God wanted me where I am now.

I never had the conviction, the belief, or the work mentality with the other company. I never knew why, as I knew a lot of people making fantastic incomes. They were humble yet energetic, and always willing to lend help, encouragement, etc. But I never could get over that hump. Pride, embarassment, whatever, kept me from promoting it like I should.

But because I know God has me where He wants me, I know that I cannot be like this anymore.

The philosophy is much different. The old philosophy focused on money. The new philosophy focuses on Him, being humble, and helping others obtain success no matter where they come from.

That is why God wants me here. He wants me to be involved with people that put Him first in business.

Now the point of this blog is not to be religious or for me to convince you that there is a higher power that ordains our moves (although that is what I believe). Regardless of whether you believe in God or not is your choice and not relevant to what I am saying (although, come talk to me sometime about that). But you have to realize that things happen for a reason, no matter whether it comes from.

And this has happened to me for a reason.

So now the gloves come off. I attend a convention on August 7-10, and then its about spreading the message.

Now realize, this journey took 6 years to get to this point. It has been long, often times painful, full of “failure” (or so I thought), and frustrating all 6 years.

But sometimes the journey takes a while…and that is where you find your purpose, your place, and your success.

brent@brentworley.com

Ok, I’m going to admit something here.

My first 10 or so attempts at video web marketing have been fairly brutal.

Its not that I consider myself a horrible person on camera or that I cannot handle putting together a video. What I do realize, however, is that my videos come across as too much of a pitch.

So I’m switching the strategy that I’m going to use. Provide information first, do little sales techniques, and focus on content and sincerity.

In fact, most of what I am going to try when recording myself is video blogging style videos. I plan on consulting with my mentor about it and see which works out best. His videos are attractive. They are done on a little more “professional” level (I’ve seen his equipment, he has me out-classed in this department).

Here is my first cut of it. I’m using my YouTube posting. For those who know anything about video marketing, you know that its about volume…not in the amount of videos you produce, but in the amount of videos that are out there on various sites. I mention this in the video: YouTube does not always return the highest ranking hits for a keyword.

A great tool for this is Traffic Geyser. Its costly, but easy to use and will get your video out across a LOT of websites in a short amount of time. From there, its up to Google/Yahoo/Live.com/etc to pick it up and your content to interest the viewer.

I love my iPhone.

I mean, I really love my my iPhone.

It allows me to keep up with my business at all times, surf the web for people or places (if I’m on the road), play some basic games, keep my calendar up to date and with me, and take the snapshots of my girls being, well, girls.

But as much as I love my iPhone, the two biggest wants I really would like to see on the iPhone are just not there, and still noticeably absent in the new iPhone due out later this week.

1. Multimedia messages.

We catch my girls doing funny stuff all the time and don’t always have our point-and-shoot with us, but we 99.9% of the time have our iPhone with us (wife has one too, so between the two of us, we’re covered). The problem is, I cannot send that candid moment to my parents without having to email it to them.

Most people keep a phone with them but are not always near a computer. It would make sense to be able to simply send a picture from phone-to-phone, but for some reason Apple doesn’t see this.

2. Video

Granted cell phone video is sub-par for anything other than those spur-of-the-moment events, it would be nice to be able to capture some of it. For instance, we’re out and about and my daughter (take your pick on which one) starts doing something funny, cute, whatever…without my video camera, all I’ll have is my memory. With a video phone I’d at least get to relive it, even if the quality is limited.

Of course, other features will be nice with the addition of 3G, such as streaming video (something else not included), streaming audio, etc…but hopefully Apple will eventually come through on these things.

Until then, I’ll stick with my first gen iPhone.

As I posted last week, I had decided to get back to some of my basics of Internet Marketing, going back to some things I was taught early on and start building results from there. I spent some time on the phone with my mentor going over what I was doing and getting some instructions on what I need to do differently.

Its great having a mentor that is willing to help, to point out what I needed to change, and give me a lot of ideas on how to make it better. And it has.

This is where it stands:

1. I took a website with little traffic, little backlinks, little anything (other than the basic page put up) and decided to see how much traffic I could drive to it. The website is http://www.123CallBrent.com. This website is geared to gather prospects for my business.

2. I began with some basic Articles.

3. I ramped up some video marketing.

4. Blogging and forum marketing increased.

So far, so good. The last week of June I nearly quintupled my traffic (remember, small amounts). So far, the whole 3 days in July, my unique visitors counter is almost at what it was for June.

I have a lot of videos and websites in the top 20 of Google for a particular term. I had, at one point this past week, 7 of the top 10 spots in Google for this keyword combination. I have had a lot of that replaced, but nothing that cannot be done again in short order.

What is really good is the amount of conversions I am getting. This list is growing everyday with people wanting to know more about the company, my Internet Marketing, the company product, and what all we are doing. Its fairly exciting seeing all of this take place.

What is great about video marketing is that you don’t have to be great to do videos. I’ll admit, I sound like a hick on video (probably sound like this in person too, but you never notice how you sound).

But anything works for a video. For instance, I was recording today and Brooklyn decided she wanted to be in a video. I was trying to hurry as we wanted to clean out the pool and hop in.

It ended up being a GREAT video opportunity, one that I will have in multiple spots on the Internet in very short order.

In fact, one of my mentors pointed me to a website that only reaffirmed my belief that although I think I am horrible doing video I can be successful at it. Check it out, its a great website with some decent videos: http://www.stompervision.com.

What are my next steps from here?

Well, I am going to do a lot of video marketing, some with my website squeeze page and some with just my phone number. The goal is to get people to pick up the phone and call me instead of me chasing people. With the amount of traffic I am getting and the way it is picking up, I expect to see an increase of legitimate prospects over the next month.

So I have been struggling a little bit with some thoughts on Internet Marketing as I was only taking one approach. In short, I could consider myself lazy in my Internet Marketing efforts. I found that approach “worked” but wanted even better results.

I went back to my information obtained from FormerMLMLoser.com and their Internet Marketing Home Study Course and decided that it was time to get back to the basics (from the perspective he teaches it, but keeping my approach and working both ends).

First, remember that the primary goal of Internet Marketing is traffic and exposure. Secondary goal is prospects and finally sales or converts. If you do a poor job on part one, two and three are exponentially harder to accomplish. So my goal for my business marketing efforts (my main efforts right now in my internet marketing) was to keep what I was doing with my blog but use the other methods of generating backlinks, high result pages, etc, to drive more traffic to the site, to see the message more, to sign-up for my list, and to call me.

So far tonight, I have worked with my blog, two sites that allow custom content, a MySpace page, and this blog.

On one keyword, I already had most of the top 10 listings in Google for what little work I had done tonight.

The main keyword I am going to try to crack is heavily guarded by a mentor of mine, but my goal is not to overtake him (necessarily) but to get in the running with him in the top 5-10 of the main keyword.

Of course, along with that, I need to explore other keyword combinations and see what else I can work into this marketing blitz I am doing.

The bottom line to this is, my goal with Internet Marketing is to create an intriguing message, then drive massive traffic to it, and let things take their course. It is going to take a daily effort (and sometimes multiple daily efforts) to get it done, but I have a specific goal for my business that I need to hit in a short amount of time.

Oh yeah…by the way, here’s something you should consider:

The Internet Marketing Home Study Course is $497 by itself.

My company cost less than that to join. When you join with our team, you will get access to this course for free, plus a ton of marketing help, tips, and tricks that are not all included with the home study course.

How do you join? Well, call me (501-329-2687) and we can discuss.

And when you do join, I’ll release a little bit more to you (personally) about what I do to generate those high rankings in Google using the techniques from the course and what I have learned. After all, the goal is to let internet marketing market your business and you concentrate on growing.

I’ve been thinking on this for some time now, and there is no nice way to say it:

Just because you have a title does not make you a leader.

Brent, what in the world does this mean?

All too often we confuse people in a position or with a certain “badge” on their name with being a leader. A lot of times this could not be further from the truth. Just having a title or a function does not entitle you to being leader. Rather, your attitude and actions are what make you a leader.

I’ve had the privilege and honor to be in leadership on a variety of leaders and over a variety of people and groups. The one thing I always knew was that if I was going to be given a leader’s title, I had to have a leader’s actions. I could not simply take on the designation without taking on the responsibility that comes with it.

A group I used to associate with regularly all have leadership titles or functions within a common organization. To the common person, they are in leadership and therefore are “leaders.” Yet when I look at how these individuals treat others and the attitudes they carry with themselves, I realize they are nothing more than someone with the title. I would not consider any of these leaders in the sense that this article is referring to.

A leader has to accomplish two things to be a leader, and these two things must be in their daily lives and not just in the function they perform.

First, a leader must be willing to serve those who follow them. I knew when I was elected president of my fraternity in college that I had more responsibility than just leading meetings and making decisions. I had to be the one that helped the most, that served the most, and the one who set the example of what it meant to be in the frat. The same goes for various other positions of leadership I have been in. I had to work harder to serve those around me than I had to make decisions or pat myself on the back. What I see from a lot of people is a self serving attitude in leadership instead of a serving others attitude. If you are not willing to serve, you are not ready to lead. The best leaders I have served under motivated me to do my best by watching them do their best.

A leader must also possess an attitude. This term often comes across negatively, but in this case it is meant to be positive. The attitude the leader must have is one of caring, one of compassion, one of servant hood (as discussed above), and then one of authority. People do not respect leaders who show authority before compassion. People might obey, but respect is often missing. This is not always an easy task to accomplish but must be done to be a fully effective leader.

If you are sitting here doing some soul searching, as I often did in my development of my leadership thoughts, than there are probably some points in there that apply to you. How do you treat others? How do you serve? Do you set the example or do you tell others about the example?

Remember that even after you are gone, your character and integrity stick with people. As a leader, make sure what sticks is an example of what leadership should be and not what the title affords you.

I can honestly say one thing about my 10 year reunion:

I am glad I went.

At first, I was very skeptical about going. Most of my close friends in high school I had kept up with (although not as much as I probably could have or should have), and the rest of my close friends in high school were either from the class above or the class below.

But I was glad I went.

I got to see both of my non-frat college roomates (Garth Johnson, who was our class valedictorian, and Drew Keller, a musician friend of mine and my roommate from our freshman year at the University of Central Arkansas). Several other good friends were there too.

Friday night was a family night at the park. Essentially, that means that if you have kids you are chasing them down instead of getting to socialize. It was not that great of a time, other than seeing who all was likely to show up for the weekend. I talked to a few people I had not seen in a while, some that I see around, and, just like in high school, did not speak with many that I never spoke with.

A highlight was getting to spend time with our good friends from Mississippi (not the Memphis area, in case you are reading this), Buster and Amanda Harris. Buster was one of three people I was extremely close to in high school. We still get to hang out several times each year. They crashed at our house Friday night. We stayed up too late talking (around 2am we finally decided it was time to crash, since had had to direct a band at a Junior High Band camp the next morning). Its always a great time getting to spend time with them.

Saturday night, though, was the best part. No kids, marginal food (well, not that bad of food at least), and a chance to chill and get caught up with many people I talked to in high school that I barely recognize now. In fact, it took me half the night to recognize someone that was in band with us in high school. Others I remember quite well.

After eating, we decided to hang out on the deck at Eagle View and enjoy a very nice summer evening (which is rare here in Arkansas). Buster, Amanda, my wife April, and April Tarno (a very close and dear friend from high school and beyond), and I had a lot of catching up and reminiscing to do. We talked about the good times, the people that were there, and more about the people who were not there that we expected to be there. In fact, there were a ton of people that we were expecting to see that live near that did not show.

And of course, some that we are glad that did not show.

I owe showing up to Buster and April (Tarno, not my wife). If she had not called me Tuesday and Buster not talked to me about going Wednesday, I probably would have missed out on a good time.

So class of 1998, we’ll see most of you again in another 10 years. Hopefully, this time I’ll get a chance to talk to a few more of you.

This past weekend was a nice two-day holiday for April and me. We decided to dash out-of-town last minute and get down to Tunica for two nights.

We stayed at Sam’s Town, which is not our normal place (usually stay at Gold Strike). The rooms were okay, the gaming floor was so-so, but the poker was hopping!

We got there Sunday around 4, took forever to check-in, got settled in, and then we both decided to play a poker tournament. This is April’s 2nd live tournament ever, but she wanted to play for the pure fun of playing and have a good time.

She bubbled the final table (finished 11th, top 10 get seated at the final table), I finished 3rd for $300. Good start to the trip.

We had a medium win on a slot machine and were way up for the trip.

The next afternoon, we play the same buy-in tournament. This time I almost made the final table again (12th, took two horrendous beats, both times with getting my chips in with a big lead), but April ended up making the final table and chopping (dividing the remaining prize pool) for $400 with three other guys.

The trip was short, profitable, and fun…but mainly just short.

Energy

Zurvita, a marketing company I work with, is going to be offering energy services in the near future. Two other companies in direct marketing have done this and done it successfully, but they have been on a smaller scale within the United States.

I put the press release up on my Zurvita Blog. You can read it at http://www.brentworley.com/zurvita-blog/.

I’m big on making money (it might not buy happiness, but it does buy time freedom). Having the ability to earn on a necessity that people have, a service that they have to have.

Its an exciting time in Zurvita and things only seems to be getting better!

Reunions

This weekend is my high school 10 year reunion. At first I was a little hesitant to go (most of the people that I was close with in high school I still keep in touch with). But a couple a friends got me thinking and now we are going to one event tomorrow night for it. I’m probably going to take pictures and post them of the old group.

I’ll be surprised to see who shows up and who doesn’t. I believe we graduated 215, so if we hit 33% of that I think we’ll be doing good. I am excited about meeting back up with a few people, most of which I have been in contact with over the last few years.

So thats it for now. I’ll be back with a post reunion report and some updates on some Internet Marketing things I am experimenting with.