Reflections About San Antonio - Ideas You Can Use Today!

Yes, I'm back from San Antonio!

I had a really great time at Joel Christopher's workshop. I learned so much! More about that in a minute...

First, I want to give a shout out to Joel, George, James, Rod, Chuck, Kumar, Maria, and Pat. You all made this past weekend a great experience. Thank you!

Second, I'm sorry I didn't provide any audio updates after Sunday (when I created an audio post during my presentation). Knucklehead here lost the number.

My presentation on RSS went well, I think. I ran out of time. I had so much more to share. Believe it or not, two hours seemed to just breeze by.

There was a fierce storm outside as I was presenting. It had me sweating a bit, wondering if the power was going to fizzle on me. The lights actually flickered twice. I could have presented in the dark, but I think trying to emulate the RSS experience using a flashlight and by drawing stickmen just wouldn't have worked that well.

Joel treated us like kings and queens while in San Antonio, a city I had never visited.

• We ate at the 56-story, rotating restaurant called The Tower (incredible views and food!)
• We walked the Riverwalk (very Disney-like, which means I was in heaven!)
• We saw the Alamo (did you realize this thing was in the middle of downtown? I had no idea! I thought it was out in the middle of nowhere. It kind of caught me off-guard)

For those of you who don't know about Joel, he's known as The Master List Builder. He's world-famous for his systems and strategies for helping businesses build massive, and profitable opt-in mailing lists. He's worked with greats such as Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul books) and Jay Conrad Levinson (Guerrilla Marketing).

When Joel speaks, gold seems to just fly out of his mouth.

Here are just a few highlights of the ideas I picked up that I plan on implementing.

Identity

Joel shared with us the importance of identity - a tag that people identify you by. For Joel, he's the Master List Builder. He's a master at helping his clients build their opt-in list. When someone thinks of building their opt-in list of subscribers/clients, Joel wants them to think of him, and they do. Over 160,000 of them!

An identity should be a short title that reflects exactly what you offer.

Why is an identity so important? Because people aren't so much interested in your actual name (usually), but what problem you can solve that they need solving. An identity helps you convey the benefits you offer, which is what most people are interested in.

I think I've almost put my finger on my identity. Look for it soon...

Tag-line

Every successful business has one of these. Here are a few well-known examples:

• We love to see you smile
• The REAL Thing
• Quality is job #1
• Eat Fresh

A good tag-line is typically a 10 to 30-word, benefit-laden description of what you have to offer. It should be used on your Website, business cards, email signature, or any other place you promote your business.

A tag-line is so important in helping people quickly understand how your products or services can help them in some way.

Once again, I think I've almost crafted the one I'm going to use.

Products

I have a lot of quality information that I've created over the years and that I continue to create. The only physical reflection of this hard work has been my 5 books, as well as the content on this site.

In the coming year I plan on turning some of my best stuff into no fewer than 6 different product offerings. There will be ebooks, software, home-study courses, as well as live workshops. I'm not sure why I've waited so long to get some of this stuff out the door, but that will change in the coming year.

If your into RSS, blogging, multimedia, and search, and how you can maximize your use of each to propel your business forward in really exciting new ways (and I really do mean new), then stay tuned, or better yet, grab my RSS feed on the right side of the page.

I have to say, I already knew Joel was the real-deal, but over the weekend, his genius came through in so many ways, and I'm really thankful that I was able to be there to soak it in.