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In a world where bosses control your life, and thoughts of escape fill your mind, where inspiration seems dead and cynicism rules the masses. You have a desire to break free, you feel the need to take control. Now – there exists a place where the secrets of freedom and wealth are given to those who believe. Internet Business Mastery.com – free your mind!

Sterling: Hello, and welcome to Internet Business Mastery online at InternetBusinessMastery.com. I’m Sterling….

Jay: And I am Jay…

Sterling: And we’re here to help you escape the ‘9 to 5,’ and live the lifestyle of your dreams by turning your life’s passion into a profitable internet business, even if you’re just getting started today.

On this episode of Internet Business Mastery, we have an interview with a long time Internet Business Mastery learner who shares his secrets to his success, plus in the Quick Tip, a good source for health insurance for the self employed. We’d like to also remind you that if you’d like to get a jump start on creating your own profitable internet business using our proven system, claim your risk free trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy by going to FreeAudioGift.com.

So Jay, what’s been going on?

Jay: Well I’m grinning big this morning, I was just inside the Platinum site for our Platinum Mastermind members, and seeing like what’s going on in the forums there, and it’s just so awesome to see the stuff that they’re talking about – the mindset, and the mentality, and the ‘oh, what do you think about this,’ and ‘how are you dealing with the downer people in your life,’ and hiring V.A.’s, and all this stuff that successful people talk about.

And so I’m just like this is awesome, they get it, and these people are going to succeed, this is really cool. So just seeing people in the process and breaking through to the next level is just awesome, because these are people who made themselves like the 1% of the 1% who took the time and the investment, and actions that they’re taking, and I feel like we’re in the place…definitely, we were talking about this Sterling yesterday, about breaking through to the next level.

And every once in a while, you just hit these ceilings where it takes some big actions to finally break through. As I think back, there’s been a handful of times since before I even quit my job where breaking through to the next level took a real leap of faith, I had to calculate the return on investment the best I could, I had to stack things in my favor the best I could, but then at some point I just had to make the jump.

And to give a few examples, I mean obviously quitting my job is one of those. I can remember deciding to move to New York leaving my business behind that was location dependent, and moving to New York because that’s where my wife wanted to go to school, that was a big one. Later after being in New York, jumping into the podcasting thing, it took a bit of a leap. It wasn’t a proven niche at all, like there was no information out there, I had to go to pretty much my passion and gut feel alone. There’s been times in my business where I’ve been doing consulting because that brings in cash flow, and you hit those moments…I mean no matter what, entrepreneurs are going to hit those moments where maybe they’re working a full time job and they’re building their business on the side.

And then they hit the point where their business on the side is hitting a ceiling and maybe they’re not quite making enough money to quit their job and replace their income, but at the same time they know that unless they quit their job they might not have enough time to really grow the business, or likewise there’s been times when I’ve been consulting bringing in really good consulting income, but then it’s like I realize man, I’m working dollars for hours. I’m not working on my other business things, then I have to like finish up all the clients, shut that stuff down, and take that leap of faith back into just building the business stuff that really needs the time to get going the way it needs to get going.

And now we’re in a place like that too with just saying okay, what do we need to do to bring the right people on board or invest money in the right team members to take things to the next level. I mean we’re making really good money with Internet Business Mastery, but there’s a lot more that we need to do, and you and I had a five hour meeting a couple weeks ago – ten, twenty big, big ideas on a list going man, any of these could really boost our income to the next level, but we just don’t have enough time to do maybe one of twenty things, and so it’s like what do we do.

We’re just going to have to take that leap of faith, calculate the ROI, bring the right people on board, and make it happen. And it’s a familiar feeling being in this spot, it’s scary and exciting at the same time. The exciting thing is that I always know when I calculate the ROI I stack whatever I can in my favor, and then take the leap – it always ends up paying off eventually. And so I’m excited to see where that goes.

Sterling: Yeah, no matter how many times we do this, there’s always that little bit of fear at first, but it does get easier. I mean now between the time in my mind I go oh my gosh, we need to do this next thing…to the point where it actually gets implemented and done is much, much quicker with a lot less time to be afraid and think things might not go well. It definitely gets easier, but it’s still there. You still have to have to little ‘oh, is it going to work?’

Jay: Well in the interview today, we talk about the action stuff, which is really good. But yeah, I know what you mean, because the more you take action, the better you get at taking action. The faster you get, the higher your success rate goes up, and one of the biggest things like you said, it does get easier because I think back – as we’re making leaps of faith right now – I think back to the other four or five times I’ve made big leaps and the way it paid off, so my confidence in myself – because really that’s what it comes down to is how confident in myself to make that the right decision, to make the leap the right leap.

As I think back there have been times where I’ve fumbled some because I’ve learned and had confidence in my ability to make decisions or to recover when I didn’t make the best decision I feel, I can make that decision fast to take this next leap and feel confident that whatever comes I’m going to make it work out just right or that we will make it out just right.

And so it’s that increased confidence that comes every time you take bold action, your confidence boosts and in the end that’s what you need is that confidence in yourself to reach the new levels of income. That’s why it’s really hard to go from making $50,000 a year as an employee to making a million a year as a business owner because I think just incrementally our brain needs to take those leaps a bit at a time.

If you’re a millionaire say all the time, well after the first million, the second, third, and fourth million is easy. And so it’s kind of action and confidence that it takes to jump to the next level, but it’s exciting stuff.

Sterling: Well it’s an interesting thing that the confidence that you need right at first to take that first leap of faith, you have to generate that from wherever, whereas when you start doing it more and more, that leap of faith – it’s less faith because you already…you’ve got the confidence that you’ve done it before, you can do it. So it’s kind of a bummer that it works the opposite of what it would be useful as. It would be nice if you had that big confidence at first, because that first leap of faith is usually the deal breaker for doing internet business especially.

If you could just get past that first one, but take that first leap of faith to start getting the training, or start taking action, that’s what’s going to lead to the success obviously, but usually that’s when you have the lowest ability or you’re really scared to take it.

Jay: Yeah, definitely. Well, as you’re saying that, I think we should do an episode on where you can derive those sources of confidence from within yourself and from people around you, where to look to find and boost that confidence. So we should do an episode, and definitely do that.

Well incidentally, and I hadn’t thought about it, but this ties in well to the next two episodes, they’re going to be about one of the big leaps that a lot of people have to make whether at the beginning or even later in their business career is choosing niches to go into and kind of just taking the leap into a new idea. So we’ll be talking about that the next couple of episodes. So I guess that ties in well to what we’re saying right here. It’s powerful stuff and obviously we like to talk about this stuff, so yeah, let’s do a whole episode on that, it’ll be great!

Sterling: Yeah obviously, and learning exactly how to find a good niche definitely gives you the confidence to take the next action, so that’s part of why doing a couple of episodes on finding a niche is so important.

Jay: Absolutely. Well one more brief thing to say, because I know we did get an email about this, is our last episode was that awesome interview with Perry, and Perry is a brilliant marketer – tests all kinds of great things, but he’s also a character that is very colorful. And so we know that we have a precedent on this show of being a clean show, and so Perry has a habit of…and even said oh okay, do you want PG or PG-13, but Perry being who Perry is we know that some swear words slipped through and honestly it just hadn’t crossed our minds.

It was like yeah, for the podcast because of the precedent, we should probably edit those out or something, because in iTunes there’s a certain expectation if it’s going to be clean or not, and most of all – wherever you’re getting the show from, the precedent that we have set on this show. So thank you for those who reminded us of that, we’ll definitely be conscious of that, because that’s not something that we want to repeat. I mean we know there’s a certain expectation you have when you come to our show, so the message is heard loud and clear and we’re thankful for that feedback.

Sterling: So we’re back to PG.

Jay: That’s right, well I’m excited about today’s interview, so let’s go ahead and dive right into that…

And now the featured segment…

Jay: Hello everyone, it’s Jay here, and I’m on the line with Sterling as well and a special guest for another interview of an Internet Business Mastery community member. As usual, very excited to talk to another community member about the success they’ve been having and things we can learn from their experience and find some new inspiration from what they’ve been doing.

Today’s guest is Colin Slade, who is also known as the ‘How 2 Trainer.’ He’s been speaking at training events all around the country and focuses on making technology easier for people. There’s lots of technology these days, so that’s a good thing. He’s trained companies such as Wells Fargo, Reebok, [inaudible], Borders Books, [inaudible] and Roland Music. By the way, we beat Deloit’s podcast in iTunes, so Deloit should be talking to us too.

No they shouldn’t, we want to keep them where they’re at. Anyway so, he’s passionate about online business and technology, he’s the owner of a site called How2Trainer, which is a web consulting and training company and has developed technology training products that even his mom can understand, now that’s pretty cool.  I always try to think hey my mom, or my dad, or even my grandma, if they want to go and do this or be able to do this. So this helps people learn, navigate, and fix their computer, technology, internet, small business issues.

Clearly as you can see, he has a passion for helping people and wants to be your guide as well through the digital age for your business, so welcome to the call Colin!

Colin: Thanks for having me guys, I appreciate it. I’m excited to be here.

Jay: And I guess I might add, he also has a mean Frisbee swing when it comes to Frisbee Golf.

Colin: I do.

Sterling: Frisbee Golf!

Jay: I had to duck last time we played, I had the opportunity once to be down there in San Diego and play a little Frisbee Golf. I guess I should mention your site – How2Trainer.com, and actually before we get started, I heard a little rumor here that even your parents listen – speaking of your mom – even your parents listen to Internet Business Mastery. Is this true, what is up with that?

Colin: It’s totally true, when I first started listening to Internet Business Mastery, I brought it home and my Dad thought I was crazy because I told him that this was going to be the new area of business after you guys first started, and recently in the last two years or so, my parents actually listen to all the podcasts. And my mom will actually start quoting you guys, so for example if I have a down day she’ll actually be kind of like, “Hey, you need to listen to episode 12 again, because that’s when they talked about the things that they went through,” or this or that. Anytime they go on a trip….my Dad knows who you guys are, my Mom knows who you are, but my Mom hasn’t quite figured out the Internet Business Mastery, so she just kinda says ‘the internet guys.’

So she tells me to bring the internet guys CD, and so they listen. They have the CDs of the first two seasons. I have all of them, but they take those in the car with them, and they’re always listening. And every time it’s like, “Oh you’ve got to try this now, you did this, have you done this in your business yet?” It’s pretty awesome, my whole family listens to it.

Sterling: Now if we can just get our families to….

Jay: We’re converting the whole clan. That’s awesome. So I guess what we need to do now is an episode about cleaning your room so your mom can be like, “Uh Colin, you need to listen to episode number 93,” next time she visits you.

Colin: Luckily, she doesn’t clean my room too often any more, I have my own place now. But yeah, still if I can get it I’ll try.

Jay: Awesome. Well let’s go ahead and dive into the internet business stuff a bit, maybe tell us a bit about your story and how you got into internet business, what brought you to this whole world?

Colin: Yeah, well I’ve always been into computers, and love to kind of be on the internet. I remember when I was a kid when it first started, we had one of the first computer labs with the old, old Apple. We could get on the dial up and so I’ve always grown up on it, loved it. Loved the technology, loved being on it, and I got my degree in Human Computer Interaction here in San Diego, so always kind of had a passion for technology and for how it kind of worked for people.

And I thought I wanted to go into training and to teaching, but I didn’t think there was any money in that. And so I started working for a software company right out of school, and I worked with them for three or four years, was a developer and then eventually moved up to their V.P. of sales and marketing. And the reason that I even found out about internet business is when podcasting first came out onto the scene, one of those things – I was just playing around with it, I got one of the original iPods, figured out how to grab a couple podcasts and I just started listening to a bunch of them.

And I didn’t like most of them, most of them were pretty boring, and so I ended up stumbling in iTunes, I think just right after you guys put up your first episode. I think whenever you put up your first six or ten, I got it like a couple of days later. And so basically I knew I wanted to make money, I knew I wanted to start my own business, I knew that I wanted to help people, but I didn’t really have a means to do that. I always thought I’d have to start a software company or that I’d have to run a large corporation to get on the front of Forbes or that kind of thing.
And so what I did basically was I listened to you guys on my way home from college one weekend, and I listened to all, I think it was your first ten episodes, listened to all ten of them. I got home and I’m like, I can’t even wait, I don’t know who to talk to…I still don’t know who to talk to, because no one knows of half the stuff I’m talking about. I mean they just look at you with a glazed look and think that you’re crazy for thinking you could make money online or ‘what are you talking about?’

But I told my Dad, I said, “Dad, this is what I’m going to do for my future, and I don’t know how. I don’t know who these guys are, they don’t even give their real names at this point, but I’m going to figure out how to make this work.” So that was kind of a start, and then I started really…I didn’t even know the words to use or what to search for online, and once I started kind of listening to you guy’s podcast over the last four years, four and a half years, then I started kind of learning more things and eventually got to the point where I went to my boss and said, “If we’re going to grow this company to the next level, this software company, then I’m going to need to have a percentage of the company.”

And he said, “Yeah right, you’re a kid. Good luck with that.” And so they gave me a new contract out of a bunch of ‘I’ve got ya’s’ so about a little bit more than a year and a half ago, a day later just went in and quit and said, “I’m going to try this thing. I’m going to figure this internet business thing out,” at the time I had no real major bills or anything that I couldn’t handle. And I had a little bit of a nest egg saved up.

And so I took the jump, took a month off and just dove right into learning everything and anything that I could. I relistened to every single one of your episodes plus went into a bunch of other stuff, and that was kind of the start. And when you guys did the coaching course, I only had about $3,000 to my name, and so half of that went to you for the coaching course (actually more than half, ¾’s). But it was honestly the best move I ever made, I would pay ten times that now because it gave me a structure on where to go and it’s actually the only reason…the only way I was able to start the first business.

Jay: Well you are a man of action, I like that. I mean it’s inspiring to hear people like you know what, I had this much money to my name and I dove right in, and did what it took – and that’s freaking awesome! And that’s actually….a lot of people have that where they go home and they’re like, “Oh, I’m totally into this!” And their family is like, “Huh?” And I guess you found one strategy to get around that, you’re like, you hand them the CD and like maybe then you’ll maybe have a glimpse of what I’m passionate about now, what I’m trying to do.

So that’s super cool, but I dig that, good story.

Sterling: Okay, so How2Trainer.com – what was the idea behind that and who would you say like your primary target or who you are trying to reach with this?

Colin: Right, so when I took your coaching course, and it’s been a long work in progress, and if we get to the point where you want tips or things not to do, I’ve got a lot of those. Because even though I listened a lot to you guys, I still made a lot of the same mistakes you said not to, so that I hope that I can reiterate some of those. But I originally started it as…starting your coaching course, I had an idea, did the coaching course and I went through the whole process of choosing a niche, researching the niche.

I wrote out a whole three pages of ideas of areas that I might want to focus in, and then basically narrowed it down. And what I ended up doing was, my Mom is a home-based travel agent and so she was struggling with technology and the basics of technology. And there were thousands of travel agents just like her that were struggling with the same thing, it wasn’t so much that they didn’t know how to book travel, it was that everything had moved online and they didn’t even know the basics of how to filter their emails or how to create a little flyer, or anything.

And so that’s where the idea came from, and then I kind of tested it out through you guy’s whole process and then I basically researched, what were people searching on, and that’s where the name came from. It was purely based on keyword results because most people search for ‘how to,’ or ‘training’ when it came to computer or technology, and so I actually own HowToInternetTraining, HowToComputerTraining, and a couple of other ones. But the main one that I came up with was How2Trainer, so I thought it could kind of be a brand that could be used for multiple different things.

And the part I spent way too much time on, which we should talk about later is, way too much time on trying to get the logo and all the other things that didn’t even matter. So that’s kind of where it got started. And the main demographic was pretty much and it still is, although it’s merged and changed a lot is basically kind of the baby boomer market, or even a little bit younger – those that are familiar or have to use technology, but those that aren’t very confident or secure with having to use it.

So it’s the small or home based business, or even just possibly people that are just at home that want to learn. And it’s taking all those basic things like Google, and Gmail, and Google Docs, and kind of breaking down what those are, what Twitter is before you even try to explain how the strategies to use Twitter, because most of them think that Twitter is just like a bird tweeting. They don’t understand.

So it’s been a little bit of a struggle to kind of make sure that this is the correct market and it took a while for that, but yeah, that’s kind of the main content. And it’s primarily online training, like training videos and Camtasia, and things like that.

Jay: Well it certainly sounds like you’ve done your research and done your time to find out what the market is and the pain is…I mean it sounds like a great niche to me and clearly…I mean business people are always a great niche to go after because they usually stand to make money from what it is that you have to teach. And so if you’re teaching them to work with technology better, it saves them time, time is worth money, hence you’re putting money in their pocket in the end. And that’s the kind of offer that’s always easier to sell. It’s like look, you buy my thing and I’ll put a lot more money back into your pocket because this is what you’re going to save in your time in the end.

And clearly these days businesses, they have to deal with technology, it’s just a fact. So there’s an urgent pain to like understand the technology and know how to use it, and it’s a headache if you don’t, and you’re faced with having to use it. So I really like the sounds of that niche, that’s just very cool.

So you mentioned there was a little bit of a struggle to get it down just right and that’s something that a lot of people, they hit up against the choosing of their niche and we’re actually going to be talking about this in the next couple episodes in the podcast. You’ve already told us a bit about how you went about choosing that niche, but what was maybe a couple of the obstacles you ran into when it came to narrowing it down or rather redefining it. Are there some insights you can give us there as to how you arrived at the niche that worked best for you in your market?

Colin: Yeah, yeah sure. I guess the hardest part for me is, the way I think is always on a large scale so one of the biggest struggles I had was actually accepting it be okay to niche down. It was always a hard thing for me to not want to go okay, I want to have something that I can market to everyone under the sun. And that’s still a struggle, I still have to constantly force myself to continue to niche down and really think through – does this market actually need it?

And I think the biggest thing for me was, I spent too much time originally trying to pick the perfect niche rather than just trying the niche and then just kind of seeing if it works type, doing some tests, and then if it works, then go for it. If it doesn’t, then just try another one.

Jay: Okay, whoa. I want to stop you right there because you shared like the key to the whole internet marketing kingdom right there. So anybody listening, if you need to, rewind about twenty seconds and listen to what Colin just said. So anyway, good thought there.

Colin: I’ll repeat it – you’ve got to just go for one, because I spent months, I mean months researching and figuring out, and doing all this back end stuff to try to create an empire. And when I actually launched the thing, initially it was the travel market. And as everyone knows, the travel market has kind of dropped out, and so I had to readjust it anyways.

And the second time you just go for it. It’s not so much worrying about exactly what you’re going to need, because you find that out as you go throughout it.

Sterling: Yeah, they’ll tell you most of the time.

Colin: So I think it is a big deal to pick a niche, but honestly I think as long as you go and do it, as long as you get started – whether it’s a niche that’s going to make a lot of money or not, or if it’s just a niche that you’re passionate about – just completing those steps and going through the process is such an experience, and a learning experience that the next time you go to the next one, you’re not going to make those same mistakes again.
And who knows, maybe the first one is going to totally work and people are going to connect with it and then you can run with it and add in all the other stuff as they come. But it really is just try once…do your research, go down and make sure there’s a market there, but that can be done really quickly. But one thing I totally regret is I didn’t just start…like these days if I can’t start it in two weeks then it’s probably not a good enough idea for me to go forward with. And if I don’t know in a month or two what’s going to happen with it, then I’m probably not going to go forward with it.

Jay: And see that’s why it’s important to just act because clearly you’ve gotten faster at it. I mean you said, look if I can’t do it in a few weeks or in a couple months, and you get to that point. And yeah, the first time it might take a few months or more, but that’s why it’s important to get started because you get faster. And fast action is in the end what makes you money in this business. So you’re a wise, wise man Colin Slade, that’s good stuff.

Colin: A lot of failures and a lot of frustrations through the process, so I just want other people to now have to go through that.

Sterling: Well, speaking of that, what fears have you faced along the way, and even mistakes that you made that you can tell us about and how you overcame them so we can help people who are just getting started now?

Colin: Yeah, I mean a lot of fears. Just about every fear that you guys have covered in your podcast, and that’s actually one of the episodes that my Mom told me to listen to. And if you guys have it, and if you get the first two seasons, you’ll see a lot of things when Jay and Sterling were just starting out, they can really help you when you’re just starting out, because even me now listening back and seeing that they didn’t start as the #1 internet business and marketing podcast, they started as the first episode not knowing if their Mom was going to listen.

At the time if you listen back through it which is kind of cool….So my Mom would listen to those about the fears and tell me to listen to them. And I think that the biggest thing for me was, the fear of failure was huge. It’s kind of like the fear of asking a girl out, you don’t want her to say no so you don’t even try.

Jay: Good analogy.

Colin: Like the fear of not…it was terrifying. I mean taking that first step to kind of quit my job, not having a plan, even starting the first business. Don’t have the mentality that if this one doesn’t work, then that’s it. That’s your only try….

Sterling: Yeah, that’s the kiss of death, I mean the way this works definitely like you’re saying is, you just keep going until it hits. The Internet Business Mastery for us wasn’t our first business by any means. We had many to get there, and some of them worked really well, some of them just a little bit and you just keep going.

Colin: And I think that’s the key is that you’ve got to just keep going, and for me some of the biggest mistakes I made again like I said, I spent months trying to plan a major infrastructure. I had a membership site ready, built from scratch. I had all the different things planned out, and the marketing strategy, and the business plan, and cards and all kinds of things that I spend so much time worrying about making them perfect, making it look good,  no one’s going to buy if it’s not the best looking DVD cover out there, and honestly, most of it was a waste.

Sterling: And this was all before you saw if the market was interested.

Colin: And most of it was before I saw the market was interested, or before….another thing too that I made a huge mistake, I never gave them something to buy for a long time. I went and spoke at different conferences, I gave people away some free training, I never actually came up with a product, or even a service for a long time – for like a couple of months into it. And I could have been making money through the process, and I didn’t because I just thought I need to be totally prepared, I need to be the expert, I need to have everything prepared before I start.

And don’t do that, in fact sometimes you can even get them ready in purchasing before you fully have the product, or even have the product to test it out. One of the biggest mistakes I made that I did was about forty hours of video training for the travel industry, and that was before the deal had gone through. I had a six figure deal, it was more money than I’d ever….they were going to buy me out with all the training so it was more money than I’ve ever made. This is actually a cool story, it took me eight weeks to complete the whole idea of How2Trainer, because I went through your coaching course, and about a month later I got offered to get bought out for quite a bit – high six figures, like mid six figures.

And more money than I’ve ever seen in my life, I went on vacation, was future projecting it. But again, you’ve got to expect the unexpected and the travel market went down, the company couldn’t do it, and it devastated me. But the biggest thing is to keep going, there are going to be things that happen, and that taught me so much now that I can use and implement in the businesses that I do now.

Sterling: Yeah, and at that time you had every single reason to go, “Oh, this doesn’t work! I spent all this time and effort!” And had you done that, you wouldn’t be where you are now.

Colin: Yeah, and it’s all part of the learning process, and I mean it was terrifying. I think another thing that’s really hard is being alone, it can kind of be a lone process. No one knows what you’re talking about, I highly suggest and I know that you get with a mastermind group. It’s so amazing to be able to talk with people that actually know what Aweber is or that you can actually make money online or even anything that you talk about, or even just go to a Meetup. There’s a lot of really great meetups out there that are just nice to know that there are other people sitting at their house or at their home or at their office trying to do the same things that you are.

That helps, because it can be kind of lonely and as little failures happen or things you test out, you kind of get attached to them. So I know one big thing is not to get attached emotionally to them and just kind of put them out there as tests. And as things happen you just keep evolving, keep getting better, and start small. I would start right now, even if you’re working full time. Take two hours a week and start going through the Internet Business Mastery Academy.

Like I’ll mentor people where I just tell them to go every two weeks to go through one of the modules, do the action steps. Within two to three months, you’ll have a business running that has a product and why not? What if it does work?

Jay: Yeah, absolutely. Well I think you just shared the second key to the internet marketing kingdom there, and that is….just get started, fast action, get in there and do it, but then the second thing that you just said is it’s associating with the right people, or in other words having the right relationships. Yeah, I think back – it is those moments where I went and found a Meetup or a mastermind…when I found a mentor.

I mean those relationships, you’ve got to have them in the forms of masterminds, and/or mentors, and/or partners. I mean it makes complete sense to me when I think back to my evolution as an entrepreneur and when I was able to quit my job it was shortly after I found a mentor. And one of the reasons that Internet Business Mastery has progressed so well is because I have a partner that I’m constantly working with on that. And we support each other and move each other forward, and like when one’s down, the other can pick up or whatever.

And like you hold each other accountable, and that comes with mentorship and partnerships, and/or masterminds. Otherwise it is very lonely, and if I didn’t have those relationships, I hate to say it who knows? Maybe I would have gone back and gotten a job, or I don’t know – just not as progressed as far at the very least. I don’t think I would have gone back and got a job. I wouldn’t say that much.

Sterling: Well, you know here’s a tip too. Even when I lived in Salt Lake City, Utah, I went to Meetup.com and I was still able to find an internet business and even small business groups that got together. And that’s how I first started meeting people was through Meetup.com, and now even still to this day especially here in San Diego there’s a lot of Meetup groups for the internet world. I could basically go to one or two a week easily if I wanted to.

And there is one that I go to each month, an internet business group, but yeah Meetup.com – that’s a great place to start if you’re brand new so that you can’t sit with a group of people who are actually fascinated when you figure out how to use Aweber correctly or any of these other things that any other human being that doesn’t do internet business would be bored to tears to hear about.

Colin: Yeah and I think too, you’ve got to be careful because just about everyone out there doesn’t understand what’s going on, so just about every one of them is pretty negative initially. I still have people to this day who think I’m absolutely crazy. Like what are you doing still at home, and gave up good jobs and things like that, but I get to pick what I want to do. And I just kept going, even though it wasn’t always the most glamorous of things or always the funnest, I knew that eventually it was going to turn out into the lifestyle which is a big piece – the lifestyle design that I was looking for, and the flexibility.

So be aware that they’re for sure going to question what you’re doing because they don’t even understand it. It’s taken my parents years to actually….they’ve always supported me, but to actually understand what’s going on to be able to say oh yeah, you’ve got to keep going in this. And they’re now the ones that say oh no, you’ve got to try that idea, you can’t stop. And my Dad has a blog, he does Camtasia, he’s got YouTube videos that he’s doing now. He’s a college professor, and they’re setting him up with a Virtual Assistant this week.

Jay: You’re changing people’s lives! I love it! It just spreads, it’s so awesome. Maybe you’ve kind of answered this too, I mean clearly it’s impacted your life, but maybe you can give us a couple other examples of how internet business has…I mean you’re a long timer. You’ve been listening to us since the beginning, how’s your life changed in that time, how has internet business impacted your life?

Colin: I mean immensely, when I first got to meet you guys, I mean honestly the only reason that I only went into this realm, I didn’t even know about it and I’ve always been a computer guy, but was because of you guys. And literally…I read a lot of blogs and I look at a lot of stuff, but there is nothing better out there 100% hands down than you guy’s training.

And the training that you give away for free in the podcast that is just amazing, and then all the actual steps in the Academy. I’ve gone through and I’ve listened to every podcast, but I’ve gone through the Academy at least five times. And every single time I’m about to do it again, any time I come up with an idea, that’s the process that I’m going to go through. It’s totally changed…the only reason I quit my job was because of the ideas that you guys kind of put into my head, and it takes a while to get that mindset.

Sterling: Yeah, the unemployable corruption!

Colin: And it did, it took a couple years before I was really like, I have to try this because I will completely regret it if I don’t at least give it a try. And I don’t necessarily suggest that you completely quit your job, and I think it’s totally doable to test out and try to run some of these things while you’re doing something else. If you have the luxury to do that, then I think you’ll learn it quicker, but I also think you can do it part time.

But I have the flexibility to go eat lunch with my finace, I have the flexibility to go play Frisbee Golf once a month, there’s all kinds of other things that I could do. I do marketing for other companies, I mean there’s so much that I have flexibility to work on and do, and I’m still not quite exactly where I want to be for the future, but I’m moving towards that and learning more every day. And there’s so many ideas and opportunities that come up on a daily basis, and until you start thinking that way, you realize how many opportunities you miss because you were just kinda thinking about your next latte instead of how can you teach someone how to make lattes from home or something like that.

Sterling: Well yeah, you’ve been given great tips all along, but what are two specific tips that you would give to somebody who wants to start an internet business right now?

Colin: I would say the biggest two tips – forget about the technology. I spent way too much time worrying how to set up membership sites or do all that stuff, and the same part of that is get a Virtual Assistant. Whether it’s part time, whether you just learn how to a little bit of outsourcing, so you just pick a project and pay someone to do it, there is nothing that leverages your time more, and honestly one of the funnest things about my business, and I’m actually testing four Virtual Assistants right now – is seeing what people come up with and not having to do the work and just kind of being there to tell them what to do, because you can leverage your time so much.

And these days with outsourcing, you can have a full idea on every piece of it almost finished within a couple of weeks. There’s no reason to take much longer than that. Now when you first start out, it took me six months to probably get to the point where I felt I was understanding what was going on.

Sterling: And was that because you were trying to do everything yourself?

Colin: Yeah, I didn’t listen and I thought I’m going to learn every single piece myself, because if I don’t know it, how am I going to teach it. But these days, you don’t have to really teach them anything, you just tell them what you need – the end result, and they go figure out the process.

Sterling: Yeah, the V.A.’s

Colin: So that was one – the V.A.’s, and the other thing that I would say is just kind of back to the same thing is, start and do it with some people. Like don’t worry so much about the big idea that this is going to take over the world so you’re going to keep it quiet, just pick an idea even if it’s not your end all idea. Pick a niche and just start implementing pieces of it. Just take some action so that you can get those little kudos as you go, and then your mindset will develop and you’ll be able to take bigger risks.

Sterling: Well it’s interesting because having that kind of fellowship is why we created the mastermind community in the Academy, so people could talk to other people that are doing the same crazy thing, and be able to get started and have some support, some kind of new friend support.

Colin: And there’s no better support out there, because a lot of those guys in there have a lot of knowledge. And I’m in there too, and there is a lot of knowledge that they’ve learned and the mistakes that we’ve made, that’s what we’re there for. We’re there to help other people not go through the same ones, because I definitely… there are times I definitely do not want people to have to hit the same hurdles I did. And they were my stupidity, but they weren’t always fun through all the processes.

Jay: Well Colin, awesome, awesome, awesome stuff. Definitely like your energy and stories that you had to share, great tips, tell everybody who is listening where they can go and find you. Again, you’re the guy to go to if you need to learn some of this technology stuff and how to make it work for your business.

Colin: Yeah, they can find us at How2Trainer.com, orHowToTrainer.com and keep that as a note because you always want to get the domains that people might mistake for, so we’ve got all these tips. And it’s really on the basics of technology, on learning all of the different things like – how do you use Jing to just do a basic thing, or how to use Google Docs, or Gmail, and it’s all the really basics.

And then once you have the basics, or even as you’re doing the basics (some of you don’t even need), then you’re in the Academy starting your business. So yeah, I’m excited to be on here, I can definitely check this off of my goal list. It’s been one of my goals to be on the podcast, so I really appreciate you guys having me on here.

Jay: It’s about time, what did it take us? Four and a half years….

Colin: I’ve been twiddling my thumbs waiting for you guys.

Jay: Yeah, I’m sure a lot of people listening are thinking yeah, I’ve got to check that stuff out and get some help with the tech – so How2Trainer.com. Well Colin, we’ll be seeing you around, and seeing you in the Academy, seeing you on the Frisbee Golf course, and just thank you again for your time and inspiration today, so we’ll be talking to you soon!

Colin: Thanks guys, I appreciate it!

Jay: Bye!

Sterling: Alright Colin, thanks so much for that interview. I hope people got something out of that. And we’d like to also let you know that the next couple of episodes we’re going to actually tackle the one thing that seems to be one of the biggest issues that people come across while deciding to do internet business and that’s niche selection. So we’re going to go through that and help you get through those fears as well – another set of fears just to get into internet business.

Jay: It’s going to be good stuff, because I mean we should remind everyone that since we started the Platinum group, like the first thing we did was spent two weeks doing twenty calls of an hour each with all these people going through their niche. And so we’re very much in the mindset of talking about this stuff, and learned a lot of great things just going through that process with those people. And so there’s lot of exciting stuff to share there, so I think it’s going to be some awesome episodes.

Sterling: Well, it’s interesting, we got an email at some point saying, “I would love to join the Academy, but I don’t know what my niche is.” And considering we have an entire course in the Academy that goes over every aspect of finding a niche, we were like, “Oh that’s in the Academy!” but we thought it’s time to dispel a lot of these fears behind niche selection and just do a couple of episodes on it. So it’s going to happen.

Jay: Well we got a cool breakthrough today, and speaking of interesting niches, this one is awesome. It’s really cool. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched those StrongBad emails with the Mexican wrestling mask that he wears and stuff, or watched the Jack Black film, I can’t even remember. Nacho Libre….

So this one comes from Adam Paxton who’s been a loyal Academy member, and he’s always in the forums saying great stuff. So here’s what he shared in the Academy forum about a recent breakthrough. He said, “This breakthrough has been several months in the making for me, and I’m really excited about the potential. I’m partnering with the world’s largest Spanish language Lucha Libre pro wrestling news magazine and website to distribute their print magazine in the U.S. The path to this partnership actually started over a year ago when I wrote an article on Lucha Libre for my learning Spanish in Mexico City site.”

[That sounds like an awesome niche – how to learn Spanish in Mexico City] and then he says, “This simple page immediately started getting some good search engine rankings and then in turn inspired me to explore the Lucha Libre mask site. That has done pretty good the last year.”

So one thing I want to point out here, and I’m breaking from the email, is this is an awesome thing that he did. So he had the one site started – learning Spanish in Mexico City. And so clearly he was attracting a list of people that wanted to learn Spanish, maybe they’re interested in Mexican culture, maybe they’re interested in Mexico City, they might be interested in Mexican travel, and so you’re thinking okay, what’s another niche that I can serve that might crossover with the same niche and Lucha Libre comes to mind. So I mean that’s a really smart thing to do is to kind of piggyback your niches off each other once you start building a list. Just find something else that serves that same type of demographic.

So he goes on to say…okay so he started the Lucha Libre mask site and he said that’s done okay the past year. And he said, “More significantly, the mask site led to an important contact with the previously mentioned Lucha Libre news site, and this past January I made the bold action to call them up and see if there was something we could do together. As it turns out, their offices were about three blocks from my apartment in Mexico City, and they were very interested in working together. After doing some smaller projects for them, and then extensive testing for this project, we finally launched Lucha Libre Revista on September 1^st, targeting Spanish speaking Lucha Libre fans in the U.S.

Using a relatively small email list, we sold 15 subscriptions in our first week meeting our target of ten, and are growing a bit each day. This is my first 100% Spanish site, and while it’s been a challenge, it’s been a lot of fun. I’m very excited about some promotional items we have coming up, and I’m seriously looking into some content licensing to support a membership site in the coming months. It all depends on what our customers want.”

Another great lesson there, he’s diving in, he’s starting to build it and we’ll see what the customers want and we’ll take it where it needs to go, but we’ll see what the market wants and what they’ll do.

Sterling: Yeah, let the customer tell you exactly what they want.

Jay: I mean this is just a great example of how to think about your niche, how to dive in, how to piggyback one niche off the other. One last lesson from this is…the Spanish speaking market is like wide open, I mean there’s a lot of this internet marketing talk about there, and of course this is an English speaking podcast. We’re in like over 126 plus countries, we get listened to, but of course Australia, the UK, and the US are the big ones because those are the big English speaking countries, and Canada.

But Spanish speaking…if you’re looking for a niche and you speak Spanish or know somebody who speaks fluent Spanish, like that something that’s successful and now do it in Spanish. And if you understand the cultural differences that need to be there, and the language – there’s one formula for success in my opinion. That’s the other lesson learned out of it.

So anyway, his site is LuchaLibreRevista.com and we’ll have a link to that in the show notes, but thank you very much Adam for sharing that success story, and for letting me say Lucha Libre like ten times in one episode.

Alright, so that’s the breakthroughs for this time, remember to share your breakthroughs in the forums, the mastermind forums in the Academy and we would love to share your breakthroughs on the show big or small. If it’s a big deal to you, we want to hear about it and share it with others.

It’s time for the Internet Quick Tip….

Jay: Alright, on today’s Quick Tip, we are going to address a question I know a lot of people who are thinking about moving from the employee quadrant into the business owner quadrant, I know a lot of people get hung up on ‘what am I gonna do about insurance thing,’ and the quick answer is – you pay for it. It may seem different, because obviously when you’re with an employer it’s subsidized by your employer, but when you work for yourself you are your employer so to speak.

So there’s a lot of different options out there, and one that I want to bring up that’s here in the U.S. just to give an example. I mean really there’s a broader Quick Tip here, but let me throw an example out of some possibilities, because an employer can get a cheaper rate because there’s a group of people and now all of a sudden you’re by yourself as a self employed person and maybe it’s just you and maybe it’s even a partner, or maybe it’s you and one or two employees.

But you can’t get as good as a rate, so a lot of times you can join different kinds of associations. Like I know in New York City, there’s like a freelancers or a guild or something like that, as long as you work at least ten hours for yourself a week, you can join the thing and get insurance from them, or there’s a national association for the self employed which is the one I wanted to bring up as an example.

I think this is only available here in the U.S. probably.

Sterling: But there’s probably something similar in other countries.

Jay: Yeah, I’m sure. But the point being is you should look for these associations that you might be able to join and get benefits through and get a cheaper rate because now you are a part of a group that can negotiate better rates. So we’re not necessarily endorsing National Association for Self Employed, but definitely throwing that out there as an example. I know some other Internet Business Mastery community members have brought that up before. And I’m actually in the process of looking for a new policy myself, so that’s something I might check into.

So anyway, I was going to ask you Sterling, what do you do for your health insurance?

Sterling: I have a policy that’s called catastrophic coverage which means mine is $5,000 or $3 million dollars, I’m completely covered. But from the first dollar to the five thousand dollars, I have to pick that up. And then you also do a think called a health savings account where you can put money into…before tax income, you can put it into this health savings account and that’s what you do for that $1-$5,000. Hopefully this isn’t too complicated sounding. It’s actually really super easy.

Jay: So I guess the way that works then is… I guess that makes a lot of sense…so basically for smaller things like a doctor’s visit or going and picking up a prescription, you’re just saving some money away, but you’re saving it away in such a way that it’s pre-tax, so it’s like a business write off. So you’ve got this money sitting in this savings account and you go to the doctor and you pay out of that, and so you’re paying with pretax money.

Sterling: Yeah, and it’s not some weird thing, like when I went to my agent and I was going…I need to do insurance now that I’m working for myself, what are my options? And this was the first option they mentioned, and I was like, “Oh, I like that one!” And so getting that health savings account, if I go to the doctor rather than paying a $15 copay, I actually pay for the office visit, but I pay with a check from my health savings account which means I still get the supposed discount that insurance companies give on that stuff, so you’re not paying the full doctor visit.

And actually it was worked out really really well for me, and that’s the particular way I do it. How are you guys doing it?

Jay: Well, we’ve done something similar to that in the past too where we save money up and pay the smaller stuff out of pocket, and a lot of times it can make some financial sense because if I add up in a year what we spend on doctor visits or maybe prescriptions of some things like that, it’s actually less than what we would have paid for big fat insurance premium to have the super coverage for 100% doctor visits or whatever, that kind of thing.

But obviously you want to be protected if you go and have a crazy skiing accident and go to the emergency room and next thing you know you have a $10,000 bill, or heaven forbid you get cancer or something, you don’t want it to wipe you out. So that’s where the catastrophic coverage is really helpful because it’s like okay, you’re protected against the big stuff, but for the small stuff financially it just makes sense to take care of yourself but do it in such a way that it’s a tax writeoff too. So it’s like Uncle Sam is paying part of your…or your government, or whoever it might be is paying part of your medical bill so to speak.

Yeah lots of options out there, it’s definitely something worth looking into, asking your CPA about. We’re just starting to work with a new CPA and the same one you’re using Sterling, and so that’s why I’m going to talk to him and switch coverage around and make more business sense the way it’s set up. But yeah, lot of possibilities so it’s definitely not something to be scared of – the whole ‘oh what am I going to do about insurance if I lose my job or leave my job.’ There’s a lot of possibilities out there, and of course health care is a huge issue in the news these days with everything going on with Obama and all these things.

So I guess it’s a very hot topic, it’s like what does this self employed person do about insurance? So there’s some of the things that we’ve looked at, thought about, done ourselves, and I guess that’s a broad Quick Tip about how to get health insurance for your own business.

Sterling: Now if you’ve like dozen of other resources such as this one, you can find them in the Internet Business Mastery Academy along with video tutorials of us showing you exactly how we use them. And to get a 30 day no risk trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy, visit freeaudiogift.com.

That’s it for this episode of Internet Business Mastery, until next time we wish you ultimate success in your internet business.

You’ve been listening to the Iconiclass of the 9 to 5, and the purveyors of freedom and fulfillment – Sterling and Jay! Sterling and Jay invite you to discover one of their most popular audio programs ever, the free builders of designing your ultimate internet lifestyle! Visit freeaudiogift.com now and sign up for the free weekly Internet Business Mastery email newsletter! And you’ll get instant access to the life changing audio presentations, pulled directly from the content of the acclaimed Internet Business Mastery Academy membership community. Go now to freeaudiogift.com! Internet Business Mastery – free your mind!