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This is Internet Business Mastery, Episode 67.

Sterling: This is Internet Business Mastery, episode 67.

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’m 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 getting started today.

Now on this episode of Internet Business Mastery, we have the seven reasons why you should start an internet business even in a recession, and in the Internet Business Quick Tip, we suggest a fulfillment house that can print and mail your information products for you. Now we’d like to remind you that if you’d like to get a jumpstart 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, you just got back from San Diego, I know you were sick. Did I wear you out, what’s up with that?

Jay: I don’t know man; I had too much fun. I guess my body couldn’t handle it, I don’t know. It’s typical, I get back from a trip; I guess I got a bug on the plane or something. But being in San Diego was awesome. That was a good time; after being down there, I’m not so sure how you get any work done!

Sterling: Yeah, well and now that it’s coming up on what, Memorial Day weekend? Yeah, the party’s already started, I had to shut my windows so that we could record this thing because the reggae and all the kids at the beach are coming. So, it’s here.

Jay: Yeah, you weren’t exaggerating after all the stories you told me, seeing the beach steps away and people there hanging out, and some people vacationing, and surfing, and body boarding, and skateboarding, and biking, and everything else. It’s a pretty smooth place to live, like I said. I’m surprised we got anything done while I was there, but it’s always good to get that face time to brainstorm the next steps for internet business, and I’m excited about the things that we have planned coming up here in the next couple months.

I guess that’s going to be a bit of a teaser for everyone. We will be kind of releasing the details. Well I guess we already kind of hinted that we’re going to be starting this platinum mastermind group, so we’ve got that solidified up, and I think we came up with some great ideas, and recorded some awesome videos, and I’m excited to get that stuff out to the community, that’s for sure.

Sterling: Yeah, it is funny that even though you were here, and we’ve got this great environment. Now we were out a lot, and we ended up filming on the beach, just thought that would be cool, and just ran out there and got some stuff for this launch. But yeah, we ended up working more last week while you were here than for a long time. I mean almost a 40 hour week, which is insane. But that’s what happens when you’re launching something.

Jay: No wonder I got sick!

Sterling: You’re like, “Oh I’ve got to work a normal week?! This is crazy!”

Jay: That’s why I got sick, my body’s like, “40 hours?! What are you doing?!”

Sterling: And the funny thing is, I was so into it once we started designing what it was that we wanted to offer to people, it’s just like, now what are we going to do? Let’s do this! Let’s make it so easy, blah, blah, blah. That stuff, I don’t imagine we ever even planned to work that much, but once we started going, we’re like oh; we’ve got to do this! We’ve got to design it all out and get it to the copywriter, get the stuff going. It gets very exciting.

Jay: Yeah definitely. But of course the most important thing that I learned from our trip is why I haven’t eaten at Sizzler for like ten years!

Sterling: Yeah a big celebration dinner, and you wanted to go to Sizzler!

Jay: Oh come on, you were having the itch too! It was one of those nostalgic weird…I mean anybody who was paying attention to Twitter knows that we had the Sizzler mishap, the misguided…”Hey let’s go check out…” I don’t know, just this nostalgic thing, how we both worked at Sizzler once and thought it would be cool to go back there and see what it was like.

Sterling: Yeah, the twenty years of not going….we know why now.

Jay: Yeah, the Texas Toast is pretty darn good; you did have a second helping of that.

Sterling: Yeah, that was good.

Jay: Cheese crusted, butter soaked toast, that’s some yummy stuff right there.

Sterling: And then everybody on Twitter’s like, “Why aren’t you guys going to Morton’s or something good?” Like I don’t know, we went for the good gross Sizzler.

Jay: Sizzler, oh boy. But yeah, everyone can be looking forward in the near future to some more information about what’s next. We’ve got some good stuff planned. You know that when Sterling and I get together in the same place that something crazy is going to happen because we can’t do that without some crazy ideas floating around. So you’ve got all that to look forward to in the near future.

Sterling: And actually if you want to sign up for the early notification list, you can go to InternetBusinessMastery.com/platinum.

And now the featured segment…

Jay: Alright, on this featured segment, we’re going to dive into a bit of a topic that’s been on everybody’s mind, so we may as well bring it right out here in the open, and that is the good ole’ “r” word, the recession. And what does it mean for internet business, and people have been wondering well, is now a good time to start a business? I mean we’re in a recession, aren’t we? And whether or not you fully think we’re in a recession or not, that’s not important.

Certainly it’s something that’s on people’s minds, and really it is when it comes to downturns in the economy, it’s all a mindset anyway. It’s all how people think, so it’s certainly something that’s out there. Well here’s an interesting little tidbit, a little fact I found in the USA Today article.

And I thought this was interesting, sixteen out of thirty corporations that make up the current DOW Jones Industrial Average – these are big dog corporations that have been around a long time and kind are like the heartbeat of our market. Sixteen out of the thirty that make up the DOW Jones, so just over 50%, they were started during a recession. We’re talking stuff like Walt Disney Corporation began during the recession in 1923 to 1924. Hewlett Packard began in 1938 during the Great Depression; Microsoft Corporation began during 1975 recession. McDonalds is a similar story.

So these are huge brands, leaders in the market. They have massive mindshare and market awareness, and these businesses were all started at presumably some of the worst economic times in our nation’s history, just the cycles that go on in the economy and stuff. So that is to say that really there are many reasons why starting a business in times like these is actually the ideal action to take. It’s actually the ideal time to have a business, and start one up, and bring it to success, and even more specifically why in times like these internet business is the ideal route to go, the ideal type of business to start.

So we want to in this feature segment here, give you seven reasons why you should start an internet business even if you’re in a recession. So if you’re somebody who’s in this position, and seeing everything that’s going on, and you’re a little worried about it and wondering, well here’s seven reasons that we’re going to give you to kind of debunk any of the worries that you may have.

So number one is that internet business has minimum startup costs. Of course money is the big issue right now, people’s budgets are shrinking, people are getting pay cuts, people are getting laid off, and there’s not enough credit out there, etc. So wanting to get started in a business takes some money, so what do you do if you don’t have a whole lot of money to start? Well the reason why internet business is one of our favorite, or is our favorite type of business is it has minimal startup cost. You can get started for next to nothing.

Recently I had somebody ask me…I was talking to somebody about what they were wanting to do with business, and they were like, “Well how much money is it going to take me if I start an internet business? I don’t have a whole lot of money to get started.” And I could tell he was fully expecting me to come back with an answer like, “Oh, five to ten thousand dollars,” something like that. You go to start a franchise, and I think you looked into this before Sterling, right? It’s like tens of thousands of dollars to buy yourself a franchise?

Sterling: Yeah I looked into a Jamba Juice that was already up and running. And I can’t remember, I think it was somewhere around $40,000 they wanted down and then I’d have to pay monthly from the income for a certain amount of time and that was a lot of money up front! Compared to what we’re talking about, that’s like insanity; plus the return on that Jamba Juice, that particular one that I looked at, after everything was about $100,000 a year, and you basically had to work it.

You had to basically manage it, or part of that $100,000 would go to a manager. So compared to what we do, that’s insanity. I’m so glad I didn’t have the money; that was part of it. I couldn’t get that kind of money together, so I ended up not doing it. Plus I was like I’m going to make less than I made at the time to go work as a manager even though it was my own.

Jay: So yeah, you need a bricks and mortar place where if you’ve got a store front, if you’ve got inventory, these are all things that take money, and production costs, and this, that and the other. But as we’ve talked with internet business, those things are minimal because you don’t have to have a physical store front, and in fact, you can sell information which isn’t a physical inventory or something you have to make…it’s not like you have to go and have 2,000 units and pay in advance for whatever your product is and have those things prototyped out and created. That’s going to be a cost if you’re doing something like that.

In information business, you can sit down and create an e-book, and an audio course, or whatever and have that thing up and selling without production costs. It’s so minimal to sit down and record something like we are doing right now. So my answer to this guy that asked me, well when I added it up, I said, “Okay, well you basically got website hosting, which for your first year is going to be less than $100 if you pay up front.” In fact recently when I looked it was like half off, and it was like $50 or something, or $45 or something like that. So that’s next to nothing.

Sterling: And that was for a whole year.

Jay: For a whole year, yeah. And then we tell everybody…well you should get a list manager from the start. You need to start building your list right away; it needs to be a dependable list manager. You should do that right, so that is worth putting money out from the start. That’s like $20 a month. So, if you were to start it today, you’d go to our suggested web host, get a year of hosting for less than $50, and then it’s $20 a month, and that’s it. He’s off and going.

WordPress is free, there’s a lot of free WordPress templates out there, if he does need a microphone to record his content, then there’s microphones and headsets for $30-$40 if you need to. Or if you want something a little nicer even for $80, you can get a microphone. So we’re talking a couple hundred bucks here rather than $5,000-$10,000 or $40,000 dollars like a lot of businesses would require, or maybe more.

So minimal startup costs is obviously…in a time when there’s a money crunch, you want to start the kind of business where it takes very little money to get started. Well what goes along with that is time, and getting your product to the market, getting your business up and going so you can see right away whether or not it’s worth the time and money you’re putting into it.

I mean time if going to be the biggest thing up front because it’s so little money, it’s just going to be a matter of you putting some time into getting this thing up and going. But you don’t want to have to wait a year or two to find out if it’s even profitable. I mean so many businesses, that is their business plan. I mean look at all these Web 2.0 companies like Twitter and stuff, and they’re doing successfully and yeah, they might their big buy out one of these days, but they’re not making money yet.

They’ve been running for over two years and they still don’t have a profit plan. Now that’s one way to do business, but obviously there’s all kinds of investment and millions of dollars that have had to go in there to keep their staff going, and hire people, and keep it growing to the point of hopefully having a big payoff one day. Whereas with an internet business like what we teach, we’re talking in a matter of a few months, maybe even less, you can know – is this a viable thing? Is it going to make money for me?

Rather than waiting two or plus years to see on some high end gamble basically, is this going to be the next idea that actually gets bought, or that we happen to find out a way to make it profitable after three years of running this thing and sinking money into it. That is not at all the model we’re going for; we’re going for ‘let’s get something up fast so you can know quickly if you’ve got the right idea.’ And if not, you move on to the next idea fast, and minimum time input, minimum money input to get you going as quickly as possible. That’s what internet business, and the style we teach is all about.

Sterling: Yeah, it actually reminds me of a story that I talk about in the Academy quite a bit. A friend of mine, we both started little businesses on the side…well I went full time into it, but he still remained working while he did his. But we both started about the same time and here’s his way of doing it.

Now his is actually to be fair, the more classic way of bringing a product to market. And I’m sure to him, he got his business degree, and he did all this stuff so he was taught to do the more classic model. And I’m sure he thought what I was doing was probably just a complete waste of time, but what he did was, he saw this product that he wanted, which he decided to do a yoga mat because his wife and friends and stuff were very, very into yoga, and they didn’t have this high end yoga mat.

So he decided that that’s what he decided he wanted to do. Now later when I asked him about it, I said, “What made you decide that? What kind of research did you do?” And he said, “Well, my wife and her friends said that the yoga mats are really thin and they would like them to be better.” That was it – let’s just say his wife had eight friends that said that. So he talked to nine people to see if that was going to be a viable product. Then he spent time, effort, and money researching different places in China where they could actually make this.

And then he finally actually put the money in, and they started manufacturing these. Now keep in mind, to this point nobody had said they were going to buy these mats from him. There was not testing, I mean this is now a year into it or so, and he’s put big money up front to manufacture these. So he had to buy a huge bulk amount, have them shipped here, all of which he’s paying for with no income. And they’re in a warehouse or in a storage unit I think is what he said. And then he pays a lot of money to have a website done, nothing like what we do now. I mean the software and stuff we suggest is free, and I think he paid I believe he said $5,000 to have his site put up.

And then he paid a P.R. person to put the mats in yoga magazines, and in Good Housekeeping and all this stuff, and he was paying that woman $5,000 a month to do that P.R. All this money, I mean this is insane amount of money, and when it was all said and done, I said, “How many of these mats have you sold?” And he said, “Very, very, very few.” And I said, “Well, how many last month?” And I think he said, “Seven.” I mean seven!

Even if they’re $100, he’s paying $5,000 just for the P.R. lady. He didn’t even come close to breaking even, and that’s like the classic way of doing it. Meanwhile, probably the biggest thing I paid for, ever, was a seminar. And my first seminar that I paid for was $1,000, and I didn’t even need to do that. I mean obviously nowadays, you could get online media – I guess that was four years ago or so when I first did that seminar. And back then there wasn’t stuff like we have in the Academy where you could do video, and audio, and all that stuff. There wasn’t that available. Isn’t that crazy? Only four years ago, you couldn’t stream video like that.

Jay: Yeah where were we when you got started? Geez, if only we’d been around, you’re going to spend $97 instead of $1,000.

Sterling: Yeah, well and now you can put up an idea and check it ahead of time for almost nothing, and know very, very quickly. We talk about that definitely in the Academy, it’s a very quick way to test an idea and see if it’s going to work. And you can spend easily under a hundred dollars to test an idea for sure.

Jay: So you can launch it and prove your idea fast, I mean that’s very significant in a time like this. I mean it’s an opportunity, I mean look – times of uncertainty are huge times of opportunity. So if you can act fast, then there’s a lot of opportunity to be found out there.

Reason number three is that there’s low cost, high impact marketing. I mean marketing is the key to business, you want to be a good marketer; you want to put adequate time and money into marketing. But the great thing is that marketing on the internet, there is so many low costs, there are extremely cost effective or even free ways to market yourself online that…it just amazes me to look at our marketing budget and see that it’s next to nothing.

You consider what a lot of other businesses have to spend to do billboards, or mail, or TV commercials, or whatever. But 80%, and that’s even probably on the low end. I think it’s higher than that, but 80% plus percent of our business for Internet Business Mastery; we don’t even pay a dime for it. They find us through all the different free content that we’re putting out there in podcasts, and videos, and the blog, and things like that. That’s just attracting people magnetically to us.

So a time like this with the recession, the key to surviving and thriving is to get bang for your buck. You want to concentrate your money on the things that are working really well and on the things that actually give you measurable results. Well with everything that we do on the internet, we can track it. We can track a click, we can track when somebody hits a landing page, we can track where they came from, we can track what the conversion. We have stats that we do every week, and we know if something is not working, we can dump it right away.

Compare that to what so many other businesses do when it comes to advertising, it’s just ridiculous. So internet business allows you to be very laser precise and cost effective when it comes to your marketing.

Sterling: Well yeah, and it’s interesting talking to my Grandma who actually ran an ad agency for over twenty years, and I was asking her things about how they used to test and track things. And she’s like, “What do you mean, test and track?” I mean that alone, I was like, “What?!”

So let’s say you did advertising for “x” business, a furniture business. She had a big furniture account. And I said, “How did they know what you’re doing is bringing in money?” And she said, “Well the easy way is at the end of the year, if they made an extra hundred grand, that was because we did advertising.” And I was like, “Wait a minute, you can’t know for sure that that was from the advertising, what if a new housing project got put in right next to….?” I mean there’s so many elements, you just don’t know.

So if they’re doing radio, television, and print ads, there weren’t ways for them to know for sure which one was completely working and bringing in whereas we can know exactly through the testing and tracking and stuff that we do. And I just thought, how funny is that, that whole ad agency world. They’re basically going on, “Gosh I hope what we’re doing is going to make us money.”

Now some things they can, some print things they can put a little code in there or whatever so that you have to use that code when you call or something like that. But even something like that was considered advance. She said they didn’t do any of that kind of stuff, just if the business made more money it was because of her. At least that’s how she spun it.

Jay: Yeah, she’s got to make them think that, or else they’re not going to renew their account. That’s just crazy, it’s like yeah, we’re going to not only…I mean look at our business. We have next to nothing marketing budget, and we know how effective all that…we know any money we spend, we know how effective it is versus a company that just goes out and throws ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred thousand dollars at a mail campaign or a billboard campaign, or a TV commercial campaign and has no idea.

It’s like yeah, I think business went up, it’s like just crazy. So as you can see, I mean we’re all about business super, super slimming it down, super efficient, because you can do that on the internet. Minimal startup cost, launch it fast, prove it fast, low cost, high impact marketing. So the risk is next to minimal, it’s just like well duh, why not? Just go out there and start an internet business, because you can do it so quickly and easily.

And it’s like the worst thing that happens is in a couple months of time it’s ah, well it’s not quite working right, so let’s try the next idea. And it’s like well, there’s a million ideas out there on the internet.

Number four is in a time like this in a recession, your competition is going to be weaker. Most people are reacting like the rest of these businesses and people, and getting afraid, and just doing silly things out of reaction or fear. They’re cutting their marketing budgets, they’re thinking like, “Oh my gosh, we’ve got to short up our budgets, no we can’t put this marketing out there. We’ve got to cut back,” and yeah, some of that might be necessary. But cutting back on your marketing in a time like this is death, how do you think earlier when we started this segment, we talked about McDonalds, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Walt Disney – how do you think these corporations became so big in a time of recession?

It’s because they stepped up and they did more marketing, and they put themselves out there, and they said, “Okay, this is an opportunity to get massive mindshare, because we know that our competition is weaker.” So rather than playing it safe, they…and the cool thing is that marketing, it was cheaper. I mean in a recession, marketing and advertising gets cheaper because less people are spending on marketing and advertising.

So now is the time to act, to pull ahead to beat the competition. There’s going to be less competition, more people are going to be going out of business because they don’t have smart marketing, and smart internet skills like what you can learn through Internet Business Mastery on their side. It’s all about being cutting edge with your marketing knowledge, which we already said is completely cost effective and cost you next to nothing anyway, and you can pull ahead of that competition and get massive mindshare. So again, another reason why it’s perfect to start now on your internet business.

Well number five; this is a nice one. I mean we’ve all…anybody who’s been in that position of wanting to start their own business….okay, when you were thinking about the Jamba Juice thing, I mean I don’t know. Did you start thinking about, “Well maybe I’ll get the money from here, or there,” I guess the point I’m trying to make is that at some point you’re like, “Hmm, do I dare ask my family to invest in this?”

Sterling: Yeah and I did. I was thinking, okay well, I know my Grandma’s got some money. So I went to her, the one that did the advertising agency, and we looked at it together. So yeah, I literally thought okay, “Grandma! Let me tell you of this wonderful opportunity!” And she’s like, “Oh no, is this MLM again?” “No, no!” Like the three other times I came to her going, “Hey, I’ve got this great opportunity for you!” And she’s like, “Ugh.”

Jay: Just taste this Peach Passion smoothie! Tell me that’s not bliss! Tell me you don’t want to invest in that!

Sterling: Exactly.

Jay: Yeah it’s always a tricky thing now…I mean I’m a huge proponent of being creative and asking yourself, “How can I afford this?” Especially when it comes to something important and life changing. When taking control of your finances, taking control of your life, doing what you’re passionate about, starting a business that will provide for that, but yeah, it’s always a tricky thing when it comes to asking family and friends to invest in something.

And that’s why MLM gets a bad wrap because just like you said, you go through five different ones, and you’re like, “Oh hey everybody, I’ve got the latest health pills for you to buy or whatever!” And after a while your friends and family are just like, oh really are you serious? So it’s a tricky thing when you get to be in that position. Well the nice thing is because internet business is so slim and trim, and you can get started so easily and minimal cost, you don’t have to ask your family and friends to invest. Steer clear of that altogether, so there’s a big one right there.

Alright number six – well there may be some people listening to this who are in this position and I know that we’ve had people talk to us about this very thing – Internet Business Mastery listeners, and that is that you might be in the position where you have lost your job, or taken a pay hit, and you need to do something about it now.

You’ve lost that income, or you’ve lost some of that income, and now the bills aren’t matching up, or medical expenses have come up or something, and you’re like how am I going to make…maybe ‘I just need a couple hundred dollars more to make that house payment next month’ kind of thing. So if you’re in that kind of position, well again, internet business is a great way because for very little money and relatively quickly you can prove an idea out, you don’t have to wait that year to get the income to go okay now, because if you’ve got problems with the house payment or the medical bills next month, you need that money asap.

So here’s another interesting statistic I came across and that is….I think now it’s definitely easier to start a business than it is to go out and find a job. If you have lost our job, I mean job hunting’s a pain in the rear anyway. But if you consider how many people have lost their jobs now, 1 out of 12 Americans right now are out of work. I’m living right here in Oregon, and it’s even worse, it’s like up to 12% unemployment. And I just see that in the papers all the time, I’m like man I am so glad I have got my own internet business, I don’t even have to worry about that.

And it’s an internet business that is growing. I’m living in a state where the unemployment is going up, and up, and up. So you’ve got all those job openings out there, and 80% of them are going to be filled internally within 48 hours, somebody within the company or somebody’s friend, or a friend of a friend, and it’s all through networking. And here you are competing with people way more qualified than you who just need a job. So if you look at it from that perspective, starting your own business is going to be much quicker and much easier, and frankly it’s going to be greater odds of succeeding than going out there and playing the odds with getting a job and trying to spruce up your resume, and just hoping that out of the 500 people who applied to this one position, you’re the one that gets an interview.

So if you’re going to spend three or four months anyway looking for a job, it’s like well you know what? If you’re one who’s like well at least I want to see, at least start the job hunt. But if you’ve got three or four months of job hunt at least ahead of you, why not start the internet business right now too and you might be surprised in four months, if you’re lucky and happen to get that job offer, you might be going, “Well hey, this thing is already making money for me, maybe I should keep putting my time into this.”

So it’s just another way of looking at the situation that we’re in. I mean speaking of the trip to San Diego we were talking about earlier. I was able to meet finally in person somebody who’s had great success after being a member of the Academy and listening to Internet Business Mastery. And I just love every time when he talks to us about his story, because he got laid off. And he decided to look at that as an opportunity, he’s like – well what am I going to do now?

And he said, “You know what? I’ve been listening to these guys on Internet Business Mastery, I’m going to start a business. I’m going to start my own internet business, something I’m in control of now.” And a few months later he made $8,000 in a month, and last month he made $30,000. Now even if you only just replaced your income with something like that, would it not be worth it? I venture to guess some people listening to this would take a pay cut even if it just meant…I mean everyone else is getting a pay cut anyway, it might as well be doing something that you get to sit at home and be in control of. I mean you’re not worried about getting laid off from next month.

Sterling: Yeah, I’m not sure how much an architect – that’s what he was before – makes in a year, but it’s definitely not $30,000 a month!

Jay: Absolutely. Or you know, consider Kurt who sent in audio comment to the show a little while back talking about how he had medical bills start piling up, and he needed a way to start covering those. So he started listening to what we were teaching, and putting it into action, and now he’s coming up with that money that he needs to cover those medical expenses.

And actually the thing that struck me the most when we were talking about going back to the first story about Pat who got laid off from his job, is he’s saying, “Yeah, it took me a few months to get to that point of saying, ‘I’m just going to do this,’ and then after I made that money the first month, I was like, oh my gosh, what if I had just done it a few months ago.”

Of course we said you can’t beat yourself up. He’s like, “Yeah, but I can’t help but ask myself, it’s like dang it, what if I just had taken action the moment I lost my job when I thought of it, instead of taking four months to get around….okay, maybe I’ll give this a try.” So there’s definitely an opportunity cost there as well.

Alright, number seven, and this is probably one of my favorite ones. And in a time like this, it really hits home. The number seven reason is just because in a time like this, it’s the best time; it’s a good a time as any to take more control of your life and your finances and not take for granted all the systems that we depend on. I mean it’s crazy, the society we live in and all the systems we depend on financially to keep things working, or just to get the head of lettuce delivered to the grocery store that we buy, or just to have the little conveniences of the pop cans into the vending machines at work that we buy. And sometimes we just completely take for granted that those little comforts – whether they’re comforts or base necessities for life, we just take for granted the home that we live in – that they’ll be there.

But we can see in the last several months globally, not just in the United States, but financial systems that people were taking for granted, in the housing market, and banking systems, and that just started breaking down and impacting people’s lives in huge, huge ways. Now I consider myself to be very fortunate to have weathered this time period just fine, because of the financial systems I set up, and the business that I created, and the way I sured myself up against this type of thing from happening.

And in a time when people are losing their jobs and getting pay cuts, we’re fortunate to have businesses that are actually increasing. I mean every month we’re getting a pay raise. Some people just don’t want to lose their job, we’re getting a pay raise every month, let alone every year or whatever.

Sterling: Yeah not even every year, it’s every month. And then it’s even if we want even more, we just come up with a new thing. Like we really wanted to offer everybody this new platinum group. Well that’s going to be a major pay raise, just because we want to do this new thing. And we get a pay raise, we get to do what we really want to do and get more money for it. It’s insane.

Jay: So the word that comes to my mind is ‘autonomy.’ It’s freedom, it’s autonomy, it’s the ability to be able to continue the life in the way that you want, at a comfort level that you want, doing the things that make you passionate without being dependent on systems that either you hate, like a job that you hate, or ones that you just take for granted and they could actually disappear next year like we’ve seen with the housing and the banking systems and stuff.

So a time like this is a great reminder of you know what? It might be good to do some things now, to maybe have that financial system that we’re a little more in control of, that we don’t have to worry about losing our job because it’s something we control and we have direct access, and direct control of where the money’s coming from. And yes, maybe the economy might affect our business, but guess who is the one that just has to make a quick decision and can quickly change things so that you reverse that?

It’s just you, and in your business you can see that happening at a moment’s notice, change things, adapt, make it so that your business turns things around. But when you’re a part of a huge corporation, they don’t see things that quickly, they don’t move that fast. And next thing you know, you’re losing your job because somebody high up wasn’t effective enough with money, and it just trickles down and you’re the one that gets the shaft.

So take your pick, you can either be subject to a huge corporate job, or one that you could lose at any moment or you can be in control of your own thing, your own financial situation through your own business.

So stuff happens and we need to be prepared, why do you think we get on the microphone over and over again teaching this stuff? It’s because we want to bring that increased autonomy and freedom to people. We want people who are in those kinds of situations ready to take some kind of step, ready to change something in their life, ready to bring more passion to themselves, ready to free themselves from a job they hate, or don’t want to have to worry about how they’re going to make their house payment next month, and give them the tools that they need to find that increased autonomy.

That is what makes us passionate and that is why we get on the microphone all the time over and over for Internet Business Mastery, to teach these things, and it’s also one of the great reasons to start an internet business, even in times like these.

So there you go, seven reasons – minimal startup costs, you can launch and prove the idea fast, it’s low cost, high impact marketing, your competition is weaker in a recession, you don’t have to ask your family and friends to invest. Maybe you’ve lost a job or taken a pay hit, and you need to do something now to make up for that. And number seven is it’s a great time to take control of your life and your finances, and internet business is the best way we have found to do that. And Internet Business Mastery provides the tools for you to do exactly that.

So we’d love to hear what you have to think as well. Are there other reasons why a recession is a great time to start a business, or other worries that you have about starting a business in a recession? And certainly we can speak to those in later episodes. So by all means, let us know what you think about this whole topic, and other questions, or worries, or insights that come to mind.

You can go back to the blog for this episode – episode number 67 in Internet Business Mastery, and comment in the comments, and we would love to have your perspective as well.

Alright, a quick announcement, and then a couple breakthroughs. The announcement is – don’t forget, we have a new call in number. If you’d like to send in an audio comment, or a question, you can call us at toll free – 877-877-7507. And just quick message on the phone, it’s free for you to call, and we’d love to include that on the podcast.

Sterling: Alright, so our first breakthrough that we have is from Tony Patternight. And we’ve got to say sorry if we slaughter the last name on these things. So Tony says, “This month I ended my partnership with my stressful, time-consuming partner. I was working fifty hours a week on a business that did not fit my definite major purpose. He wanted to split, I agreed to leave the company for monthly payments over the next fifteen months. This will help me fund and create time for my dream business.”

So congratulations on that, that’s awesome to hear. Fifteen months – that’s plenty of time, you’re set.

Jay: Well we talk about escaping the ‘9 to 5,’ I mean yeah, he already had his own business, but he was miserable in it. And this is as awesome as hearing about somebody quitting their job because it just didn’t fulfill them, and they wanted to create something on their own.

So I love that he’s like yeah, why am I putting up with this business if I have a stressful time consuming partner, and this business doesn’t fit my definite major purpose at all, then what am I doing here? And so he found his way out of it. So congratulations on that, and we definitely look forward to hearing how that goes for you in the future and certainly hope that you won’t be working fifty hours a week anymore.

Sterling: Well and here’s another thing to point out about this, one of the things that we talk a lot about in the Academy, and especially right up front is, figure out what business you want based on the lifestyle you want to create for yourself so this doesn’t happen. Had he gone through let’s say the stuff we talk about before he created this business and said, “I don’t want to work fifty hours a week, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to work for something that isn’t in my definite major purpose.”

I mean these are all really super important things, and now he’ll have the chance to go figure that out. But it’s really, really a bummer to get up the guts to do what it takes to start a business only to end up without another crummy job, even if it’s your business. So we address that heavily in the Academy.

Jay: Yeah, now he can take the time to do that, all the lessons he learned with the first business, and do that, set it up the right way now.

Alright, this next one I was excited to see about. You’ll recall earlier in the year, we interview Matt Drake who had had success with doing iPhone apps. He had taken massive action early on and put in money to fly to a convention and be one of the first people to learn about how to make iPhone apps. And he’s been creating them over the last several months, actually it’s probably been a year or so now.

And I remember when we interviewed him about it, both of us were thinking, dang well do you have a product about how to make an iPhone app? And he said he’d been mulling that over as an idea, and it sounds like he finally jumped in and made it happen, because he posted this to the forum recently.

He said, “Earlier today I finally released my first info product, an e-book on how to write iPhone apps. At about six this evening, I sent an early notification email to my mailing list with a discount coupon. It’s only 8:05, and I’ve made $186.00 in sales. Not bad at all, I’ve spent the last three months building up my mailing list and website, and it is finally starting to pay off. The best thing is that I made money while I was out to dinner with my wife.”

So there you go, that’s the way to do it. So his website is HowToMakeaniPhoneAppBook.com, and we’ll put that link in the show notes. So congratulations Matt on launching that. That’s an awesome idea, I mean we’re definitely not taking credit for that idea, I think he had that idea before we mentioned it. But I thought it was a great idea, so I’m glad to see he finally jumped on that, and got that product out. And look, it’s making money for him already. I’m sure it will just be up from here.

I mean that is a hot market right now, and I think I’ll be buying it, because we’ve talking about wanting to do some stuff with iPhone apps. So very cool stuff, Matt.

Sterling: Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

Jay: We’ll make our way over there and grab it, in fact looking at it, I think I can already tell, you should raise your price Matt. But that’s another topic.

Sterling: Yeah exactly. That’s our answer to everything though; raise your price! What are you thinking?

Jay: Well Matt, thanks for sharing that with us.

It’s time for the Internet Business Quick Tip….

Jay: On this episode’s Internet Business Quick Tip, we’re going to answer a question we’ve had a few times. And that is, where can I go to have somebody fulfill my product for me? Put it together and ship it for me?

So say you’ve got an information products that’s kind of a course with manuals that need to be bound and printed, and CDs that have to be burned and put together, and then everything packaged up and sent away for you, and you don’t want to do that anymore yourself. Or maybe you’re being smart enough and saying, there’s no way I’m going there and having that take over my time and energy and maybe even a whole bedroom in my house to have to do it myself.

Where can you turn to have this done for you? Well one that we have seen a number of high end speakers, and gurus, and authors and people use is SpeakerFulfillmentServices.com. Now this is not one that I have used personally myself, however a lot of respected colleagues use this service. And I have met the owner of this company before, and definitely seemed like a good guy, so I feel comfortable recommending it here just because of the clientele I know they have.

Have you every used it yourself Sterling?

Sterling: I haven’t, and I stopped doing a lot of physical product sales by the time I have heard of them, but I have heard good things about them. And definitely, you do not want to do what I did. I did the bad thing, and that’s let physical products take over an extra bedroom. Don’t do it, just let somebody else do it for you, you just send them the order, and then they’ll send the actual product rather than you having to ship it out and do all that stuff.

So yeah, I haven’t used them myself, but I would have now if I still had the physical stuff I wanted to send out.

Jay: Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve sent physical products out, but yeah, this is who I would turn to if I did start doing something like that. So SpeakerFulfillmentServices.com, and we will have a link to that over in the show notes for episode #67.

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!