Returns on your time investment to date |
Sometimes you take long rocky journeys, but in the end the destination makes it all worth it. Social Traffic’s existence has been something like that – when transitioning into Phase 2. Defining structure and leadership is important, unless you want everyone to run around like chickens with their heads cut off.
Sure, it wasn’t completely futile… everyone involved can use the skills they have learned and the relationships established to improve their own business or passions. Associations with such a great community alone will help all our professional persona, it has, some of the people now have ardent followers listening to them. Contacts made may lead to bigger projects, partnerships and opportunities. Some people may have even secured a client or two from the journey, or the value gained may just be that you feel like you have come out a different person – someone who’s on the other side of the table now. On one side we have the millions of mainstream users of social networks, on the other side, its people like the ones who have just completed my training… who can look at a platform and be able to analyze it from a birds eye view. Who understand it and most importantly who can plan to harness it for their businesses.
I hope that’s true for every single shareholder, but for me. I knew all this stuff already. I was hoping to come out of this a shareholder in a new, stand alone Social Media marketing company that not only had its own cash flow, but could have taken over the marketing of my Events Listed event marketing and coaching platform that would have given me more time to focus on other aspects of the start up.
That’s business. We win some, we lose some. What I love most about business is that it’s often what appears on the surface to be a loss often turns out to become invaluable assets. Never jump the gun. Where one day you might see failure, another day you may see success through different eyes. Your outlook always changes but what cannot be re-written is how we react to what we see. You just need to know how to look for the opportunity in every outcome, how to see it. Because when ever we see opportunity our reaction is always positive. And that’s exactly what myself, Doug, Johnathon, Jeff Cole, Jason, Alexander and Anne amongst others saw at the end of the phase 1 journey. Social Traffic has turned out to be a bigger opportunity in Phase 2 than phase 1 ever was. Those who saw it have re-invested their time into turning it into a reality.
Those who couldn’t see it that way still didn’t just walk away empty handed. They too left with the great relationships held together by memories that will always be associated with what is fast becoming a strong Social Media community brand like Social Traffic. My book has been titled Social Traffic for over a year. The relationships formed under the Social Traffic community brand should stay together and continue to work together. Nothing should change there. Sure, we have been exclusionary to date. That’s because we needed a core group of high performance contributors to become our foundation members.
The Social Traffic community will grow at many levels. People will be welcome to experience the same benefits all evangelists have enjoyed at any level that suits their needs. It starts with level 1. The last 12 weeks was all about filtering to find the group to be our level 1 members. The community will grow off this level and become much bigger than the business opportunity itself over time, remembering that nobody can own a social community. You can only lead one.
People follow those who add the most value. It’s not a tit for tat phenomena.
Reaping some returns on our investment:
All of our individual and community benefits aside. The real value in what we did over the 12 weeks of the EDBD campaign was in the teaching. The Events Listed Learning Center was offered to Social Traffic to give away as leverage. The idea was that if evangelists help launch and promote Social Traffic’s Earth day birthday campaign, Social Traffic would teach them cutting edge, Social Media marketing knowledge. Now that same course is being offered at a high rate of $2000 with over 1000 people of interested people already lined up to get it.
My motive for giving away 150+ FREE training courses ($200,000 in value) was obvious. Those who did it spread the word and gave others Social Proof the course is great value and with the success of the Social Traffic campaign I too got my social proof that my course is cutting edge, not just through it’s content but by being able to rank at the top of Google and Youtube for incredibly competitive terms. The results achieved by some newbies who dug in and gave it their best are phenomenal. The success of my course has been due to the value it represented to people doing it. The success of my training content was being enjoyed at the same time STi was failing to gain any traction as a Social media marketing organization for hire which confused some people. I received emails from people making comments that suggested they were going to become shareholders in the Intellectual property tied up in my training course content. As though through their time investment into the STi opportunity, they were entitled to a share in my training courses.
I am sure there is no more confusion… but for the sake of clarity: The STi Social Media marketing company opportunity was made possible through me giving the organization access to my training content for them to use it as leverage to entice people into promoting the STi Earthday campaign. All costs associated with the STi opportunity were also funded by EventsListed who was also STi’s first customer. The STi opportunity started without any physical assets, Intellectual property or license agreements. It started with 20 people prepared to work without wages to build an asset off the back of an idea that I lead and facilitated.
My personal contribution towards this opportunity was my time and my leadership. At no stage was it suggested that the STi opportunity included a stake in Simon U Fords existing company or any intellectual property associated with my personal brand. Why would I give a share in that away to 20 people who played no part in building these assets. What I did give these people was an amazing opportunity to come together and run with a vision that I presented and to turn that vision into another asset that I too would become shareholder of. This opportunity came with my personal time and support through leadership and the support of my other company who not only became Sti’s all important and very flexible first customer, it was STi’s financier who has to date invested not only it’s resources but money to fund all the costs associated with everything STi has achieved to date. What the 20 shareholders brought to the table was their willingness to invest human capital into the equation and it was hoped this combination would serve to deliver a new asset base under a new STi company.
To this point I think its clear the STi EDBD team has not managed to build an assets base and with the failure (in business terms) of our first social media marketing campaign we were not likely to attract a second customer who would pay us to fund any further pursuit of an asset base of our own. I think its fair to say that any future for STi to realize its well documented goal of becoming a social media marketing company in the short term will not be realized.
In saying that, Events Listed had never intended to promote hand holding services to customers buying access to our learning center training videos. Our main business focus is on our event marketing platform itself, our video learning center was always designed for mid tier to advanced marketers to climb into after reading my book. People who would pay $400 to $500 for the initial video courses would continue to pay $50 odd per month continuity for a monthly video series their after. These videos were always planned to be sold as products in conjunction with a weekly Q&A webinar that were all geared towards helping EventsListed customers succeed in their marketing online. At no stage did we ever intend to provide coaching and mentoring services as STi did throughout the EDBD campaign. Events Listed don’t want a newbie market not capable of being able to do the video’s and find support in the forums without hand holding. It’s not discriminating, its just that’s not in EventsListed’s business model to build in that direction.
Turning my training videos into a fully blown business in its own right is a very real opportunity that came to light when I realized how valuable my training content was throughout the STi EDBD campaign. For all its failings in terms of its business goals a lot of positives came out of the STi EDBD campaign and seeing how well received my coaching videos were was one of those positives. I realized throughout the campaign that the content is too good for it to be sold as stand alone training videos for EventsListed customers. That they are in fact good enough to carry a global business opportunity in its own right. An opportunity that EventsListed would prefer Social Traffic take ownership of . I am already heavily invested into two start up companies so needed STi to stand on its own two feet if I was to be involved. I just don’t have the time to become key person in 3 start ups. I approached Doug and told him that if he was prepared to lead the business of Social Traffic, I was prepared to issue STi a license for them use my training content to offer a $2000 training, coaching and mentoring course for newbies (if paying a royalty percentage to me) for all courses sold of course. Doug could see the opportunities I saw and he quickly assembled a crack business team from the STi EDBD team and the rest shall we say is history.
Students of each course could promote the course as their course practicum over 8 weeks and past students could double over as mentors and progress into becoming trainers after being certified. This represented great synergy for me. My other start up (outside of EventsListed) is a state of the art community building platform that I built throughout my 10 years driving the “Sleeping With The Enemy” community. The system holds individual members of any community accountable for contributions towards community goals through a points and reward system similar to what I am doing to drive the STi community today. The big difference is that this platform allows anyone to do the exact same thing within their own communities. It connects all of the communities together across the enterprise where all members are motivated to add value through their efforts in doing so being recognized and rewarded for it.
More about these exciting plans will be revealed in time.
What kind of numbers are we looking at?
The same course we have just given away has been valued at a min $2000, Events Listed as the owner of not only the course content and the learning center would want 25% of all sales which is the same as the $400 to $500 price tag we are selling the same raw video course for without any of the bells and whistles. Social Traffic would then have $1500 gross per seat as working capital to pay brokers, commissions, mentors and admin staff . If we sold 500 seats per course, that’s a 0.75 million dollar budget per course for STi. Obviously when paying 35% to 50% commission and a 10% to 5% broker’s fee a large part of this budget will be eaten away by costs? But this is just what we turn over on every course.
So just by doing what evangelists learn in each course and applying it in teams of 100 to 500 people per course under each courses coach and their team of mentors, evangelists could effectively start earning $750 to $1000 per sale generated whilst they are doing the courses. 2 sales and their course is paid for giving us 500 to 1000 active sales reps across social media selling our next course and so on.
Who benefits from this new opportunity?
It’s a completely new opportunity. One, through lessons just learned over the past 3 months. I want to distance myself from it more than I did over the past 3 months. Events Listed will expect certain undertakings and assurances from this new STi entity as would be the case should it enter into any such licensing of It’s intellectual property. This license would become STi’s first considerable asset the basis of a product from which it could build a successful company. This is a golden opportunity for the same group of people who worked so hard to realized the initial opportunity of becoming a Social media marketing company.
One of the licensing considerations EventsListed has stipulated in granting this license to sell our courses is that Doug leads the new STi business team as it’s CEO. Another condition is that I’m working in an advisory capacity to help direct it with Doug and we will appoint a chair in the next 6 months. At the end of the day, the opportunity comes down to the people who have stood up and said they are prepared to invest more human capital into making this new opportunity happen.
Those people who have already put their hands down to investing any more time into the STi opportunity beyond Earthday has already resigned themselves to the reality that the time they invested into STi was not going to realize into a capital gain all be it they would be glad to have participated the way they did.
Had the group of 5 people in the STi executive team who came from the initial 20 shareholders investing time into phase 1 also put their hands down to more time investment beyond Earthday the organization would be finished. Likewise they could have quit and started again as a new entity and approached EventsListed for the license and proceeded under the same deal under this new entity. Don’t get me wrong, the first right of refusal to be given this license belongs to the STi EDBD shareholder group for time served. If only five of them want to re-invest time into using this license to build a new company what becomes of the half hearted who initially joined STi to start a company but walked away from it after 3 months of trying.
Well the spirit in which myself and the new leadership team work is that we want their support. Everyone was brought together under a philosophy and mind set that we must add value to become valuable. This mind set extends beyond Social Media marketing campaigns. Doug’s leadership team have decided to continue their work as an extension of the STi EDBD group and include the 20 people we called shareholders who were a part of that team who are invited to continue reaping any rewards that come from this small team building out and hopefully realizing this new opportunity.
The way I see it we have 5 groups to consider when allotting tranche 1 shares in our new company.
1) Key people whom without this opportunity would not exist nor would it survive should they walk away rendering everyone else’s shares worthless anyway. All shareholders should want this group to own as big a stake in the company as possible so they won’t ever walk away.
2) Members of the original shareholder group who contributed and added value to our phase 1 EDBD efforts. Took their shares in the spirit in which they were offered as shareholders in an opportunity they were responsible for realizing and who are still actively participating in the STi VIP group today thus adding real value towards realizing the opportunity that’s still available to the STi team.
3) Members of the original shareholder group’s leadership team who did more work and took on more responsibility than other shareholders throughout the EDBD campaign.
4) Members of the current leadership team who stepped in 3 weeks from the end of the EDBD campaign to take ownership of leading the group to complete the campaign. Had it not been for this group the STi opportunity would have ended 3 weeks out from Earthday.
5) Members of the original shareholder group who contributed to our phase 1 EDBD campaign efforts who decided further investment in the STi opportunity beyond EDBD was not a good investment of their time so have not continued to invest any time towards realizing this new opportunity or supporting the currents teams effort.
6) I think it appropriate that we allot a portion of bonus shares in the STi company to evangelists who worked just as hard if not harder than some shareholders throughout phase 1 of the STi EDBD campaign. People who were not on the register as shareholders but acted like them, who continue to work hard into phase 2 of the STi social media coaching course opportunity as leaders within the VIP group.
Our objective when ever allotting shares in a company is in working towards making the shares valuable. Our message throughout this and any subsequent allotments will always be that people who add value to the company will always earn bonus shares in it. Those people who don’t add value towards the companies goals are not valuable to the company. It really that simple!
I will leave the company’s CEO to announce the type and allotment of shares we are willing to allocate the above groups of people in private. If you think you belong to one of the groups I have outlined above and you would like to receive your shares in the new STi company please fill out this form.
Doug will take it offline and respond in the coming days.
Important: Applicants for this share offer closes Friday June 26th. You must belong in one of the 5 groups outlined above and have completed this form by June 26th to be eligible
(Image source: geekandpoke.typead.com)
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Measuring Social Traffic's success |
With Social Traffic’s EDBD campaign weeks behind us now it can be said that this campaign is well and truly over. Some of the relationships established across Social Media throughout the campaign are stronger now. My courses are still being made available to people who came through the EDBD campaign or may have learned about them through my other campaigns or social networks. Either way the conversations surrounding these courses, the exercises and discussions are still ongoing and there is little doubt the courses have delivered fantastic value to the active participants (people who made the most of this opportunity by participating in it). Nothing can go without being measured.
Just like you would in any venture, I’d like to go over Social Traffic’s original campaign (STi EDBD campaign) to see how much of a success or failure it was. We can’t expect to learn from anything unless we are willing to stop and evaluate our actions with an open mind.
This is going to be another somewhat long post, but we need to get this out of the way before moving forward. So bear with me today… keep your mind and eyes open… most of you were a part of these campaigns as much as I was, so if you disagree at any point let me know. It’s not a debate, it’s just an evaluation.
Background standpoint:
We’re not running a charity organization, nor were we ever here for the purpose of making friends or having fun. I am confident that the people following me do not mistake my belief in “building quality relationships” with “making friends”. I am not in Social Media to make friends. I am in it to build ideas into valuable assets through start-up companies. Valuable quality relationships to me are ones that represent opportunities to leverage success. These are relationships where individual entities can come together to achieve common goals whilst working towards individual accomplishments. In saying that, I have a lot of great friendships born from shared success in business. I also have two good friends through a failed business, because we earned each others respect for the way each of us handled failure. My point is this: Business is business. Good business breeds respect. Respect leads to friendship. I don’t go into business with established friends, nor am I using online platforms to meet new friends.
All of the people involved with the Social Traffic EDBD campaign are respectable people with good jobs and busy family lives. None of them really need to take hours out every day just to bond with people over the internet. Things aren’t so random in life, everything has a defined purpose. For some it might have been the feeling of self-actualization to get involved with something bigger. For some it might have been the challenge of learning new things. For some it might have been the chance to explore social networks from a different angle. For some it might have been to connect with like-minded people. For some it might have been the opportunity to lead. But all of these are just personal individualistic value outcomes. Nobody does anything without reason.
Criteria:
The value in any organization must lie in the collective force of the accomplishments and goals it set out to achieve. The ultimate true measure of success for different participants from the STi EDBD campaign must be how big of an audience were we able to pull through our efforts for Earthday Birthday…. how many Earthday events were we able to schedule on Eventslisted… how many good causes did we shortlist to raise money for… how many people did we push into one of these causes to donate their money to… how much money did we raise… and most importantly, how many people see Social Traffic as an authority on not just Earthday related events but as a Social Media Marketing agency for hire? These are the only measures that will distinguish our success against failure, without allowing emotions to get in the way of measuring our performance as a start-up venture. The accuracy of this measurement is paramount for round 1 investors (human capital) to be able to make measured decisions as to their continued investment in this opportunity moving forward. So as you will agree, being objective is critical.
Note: Now these are tangible, trackable, actionable items that can trace back the success of the STI’s EDBD first public campaign. The evangelists were sourced to be trained on social media before they could assist STi to build an audience on Earthday. All the materials and guidance was there.
Results:
So according to this measure and criteria for success, do you think the Social Traffic EDBD group has been successful in their first public SMM campaign? Has Social Traffic reached all that we set out to as a company who aimed to sell this service to other companies? If not, can we specifically identify the problem areas? Just like self evaluation is important for beautifying our characters, its as important for organizations to look at themselves and analyze their situations. I know that Social Traffic has come a long way since the EDBD campaign, with a new team leading a business focus, incorporation and structure. What it is doing now is nothing short of brilliant. But the question remains,.. how much of what is being achieved now can be attributed to the phase one team, many of whom I have not seen nor heard from since Earthday and some of them 3 weeks before Earthday. If the current team is still working hard to build the companies opportunity in a completely new direction to what we set out to build what shares should be allotted to the STi EDBD team,…our original intention was to have members of the shareholder team vote on each others performance each week but that plan folded 3 weeks inn because only two or three people would vote when sent the link. We need to see how much of a bearing that phase of our companies history had on what we are doing today before allotting shares to the members of that team.
As you know, I have launched many marketing campaigns, both across social media and offline. The aim of any campaign is to build momentum that gets people talking about what you’re doing and leading the focus into a sales funnel that narrows into a specific call to action on launch. The STi EDBD call to action was always going to be for our audience to; a- attend an Earth day event and donate $10 towards an Earthday Charity, b- network with 10 people who they could move into doing the same thing (the audience was coached by shareholders who were lead by a leadership group over 12 weeks to know how to). Leading into this call-to-action, we launched a Facebook group that was established for the sole purpose of seeing who in our shareholder and evangelist teams had been doing their bit to help reach the organizations objective leading into the campaign. The numbers we attracted into this Facebook group was to be the culmination of three months campaigning where the hundreds of trained evangelists were lead in teams of 10 by shareholders, to mirror a group down to 6 degrees.
Surely the number of people listed in this group or the amount of money raised for charity by those in it through this campaign was the ultimate yardstick of Social Traffic’s success as a SMM company. I mean what we set out to prove was that our new marketing company was a viable option that other companies could employ to market their products and services across social media for them. Surely our ability to raise money for a worthwhile charity like Earthday is directly pertinent to our ability to generate new business for prospective clients. If you were a shareholder and you didn’t list yourself on the group wall at all or if you didn’t get ten people who trust you to do the same, I would like to ask you how you think our campaign went?
Despite the efforts, their commitments to get 10 followers to act fell short. To me, this result represented Social Traffic’s failure in this campaign and the inability to add value to a client. The group was meant to become the foundation of a rolling campaign where we would funnel people into a list of participants who actually attended an Earthday event and donated $10. Using it we could launch our 2010 Earthday campaign under a plan that would run for the next 10 years. The number of people who signed up to this list as those who were “touched” by STi was lower than expected. It’s a sad result for me because I lead this campaign. However, I do know that with the restructuring of STi we are well on its way to becoming a lot more than what we set out to become all be it in a completely different direction.
Based on EDBD alone though, if I was to take my Social Traffic hat off and you were to ask me for a referral for Social Traffic as their beta client (Events Listed). I would owe it to my reputation to warn anyone interested in hiring STi to reconsider. How could I? According to an internal survey, a lot of Social Traffic shareholders actually said they would pay $25,000 to have Social Traffic market their website launch for them. The fact so many of our key people valuate the businesses potential as a marketing solution that high after seeing its performance in terms of tangible results, was reason enough for me to question the group’s ability to succeed as a business as a business team beyond the EDBD campaign. Honestly, if you’re one of the shareholders willing to pay STi $25,000 to launch your campaign… then let’s see your opinion materialize. Put your money where your mouth is and give the organization a $25,000 budget to launch your business campaign for you. The fact is that none of you would step up and pay that sort of money to STi – at least not until STi completely revamped into what it is now.
Rationale:
You see, the more you have invested into an opportunity the more diligently you evaluate the performance indicators, when it comes time to put up or shut up. It’s easy to say you would give $25,000 of your own money as a budget to a marketing company when its just words. You can afford to base your performance indicators on emotionally-charged ideals but when it comes to actually putting your money where your mouth is you will assess Social Traffics performance to date on the cold hard facts. And the fact is that STi EDBD didn’t achieve its goals.
If I am to put my Social Traffic founders hat back on I am surprised by the results, and feel that as the founder and leader I am accountable for such poor results. It was my responsibility to evaluate what had been achieved with the investment of all phase one shareholders time capital in terms of business growth so they could make a measured decision as to whether or not they would want to risk more of their time into the STi start up company beyond Earthday. The EDBD leadership team chose not to reinvest any more time into STi beyond Earthday and so did half the EDBD phase shareholders. In the face of poor results a group of shareholders and some evangelists from the EDBD phase saw new opportunities looking forward and so stepped up to take the rains and they are now reaping the benefits of a stronger collective through what has been achieved since throughout the STi VIP phase.
Moving forward:
Social Traffic reached its cross-roads recently before moving into Round 2 with a structured business focused management team. Social Traffic’s phase one team is a great group of people who had an amazing experience together learning heaps about the business of SMM and start-ups throughout the journey. Knowledge and experience is always the best asset that we take away from our failures, and you will have heard me say this many times before. My greatest assets in my business career have come through my failures, and this venture will be another rich experience that adds to that mantra.
Do I think everything we have done to date is wasted. Absolutely not. The community we built around the process of teaching and supporting people into the Social Marketing space was an insight to new opportunities that could amount to much more than our initial plans could ever have.
The question is, what’s the Social Traffic opportunity worth as an organization today. What was it worth at the beginning of round 1 before shareholders committed to investing their time into it. If its worth the same, what allotment of shares do round 1 shareholders get who are not prepared to re-invest more time into round 2? Half? If that’s the case what shareholder is going to risk their time re-investing it into making Social Traffic worth something as a business throughout round 2 knowing they have to give half of what they build to a group of people who they have not seen for months. A team who left the opportunity without a first client, without a cash flow, no assets more than half the original shareholders withdrawing any support what so ever and a poor track record in terms of its first campaign. Surly the group willing to pursue new opportunities together would be better served taking the lessons learned and starting over again.
All hopes are not gone for EDBD shareholders – like I mentioned earlier, this may come off as a harsh post, so I apologize in advance. The point of this post is not to lay blame because if one person is to blame for the EDBD campaign failings it’s me. I lead it. This post was important for everyone to understand where we are at before we define our plans for the next phase of STi… as well as the share allotments Doug and I have agreed to allot the initial group. Remember I founded this opportunity with the intent of leveraging a brand new company off the momentum I had funded through my other start up. Shares were offered to people in good faith on the basis of them adding value to the opportunities growth. I made the offer with intent to secure peoples commitment towards realizing and growing the opportunity. I didn’t offer them as gift. Keep an eye out for my next post!
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The Social Traffic (2) campaign tie in… |
How the long journey ties in:
As discussed, for over two years now I have been writing posts about the gaps that I saw prevalent in the event marketing industry at large. My Event Marketing application was being built to bridge those gaps and meet those needs. Instead of just just selling my app, I wanted to educate people on how much more value they can get if they only change their perspective about events and event launches – regardless of whether they would eventually use our app or not. I identified a long time ago that the methodology I used to market physical events through nightclubs and dance parties could only be done effectively through word of mouth. Worth of mouth hand-to-hand marketing is the only form of marketing that comes with social proof built into every ad even if the audience for each run can be as little as one person.
Anything can be an event. I built my backpacker chain through applying these event marketing strategies. Whilst my competitors opened their doors 24/7 paying receptionists to field inquiries and walk-ins around the clock, we locked our doors. We demanded a minimum stay of 4 weeks per customer and promoted recurring events week in, week out. One of these events was the Sleeping With The Enemy house vacancy tours. Instead of showing beds coming free at random we insisted all occupants give 1 week departure notice and sold all of the beds coming free in any given week off three scheduled tours.
These weren’t just any tours. They were held at dinner time when the houses were most active. We were selling people to people, atmosphere, a story or an experience they could treasure for the rest of their lives – that’s what our customers were looking for. They were not in the market for the softest mattress or the nicest couch. Three nights a week for 3 hours is all we spent to focus on sales. We employed the backpacker who had the most likable personality to drive a bus load of 22 backpackers from property to property viewing vacancies for that week in two tours, three nights a week. To engage the occupants of each house into selling it, we offered $75 commission per sales into each property that Sleeping With The Enemy would give back into the house kitty reserved for house dinners or community building house nights out.
We offered hundreds of dollars in bonus payments to any houses who went the extra mile each week depending on how many beds we needed to sell in any given property. The houses would literally do stage shows, singing and dancing to convince prospects to choose their community to sleep with. Other houses would use reverse psychology and hold interviews putting the onus on the applicant to pass a house judging panel for inclusion into their community.
Through a combination of ;
1. Thinking outside the square in taking a traditional backpacker business model of selling beds to a transient prospect base, into a community-centric model of homes by allowing transient people to stop and build emotion-charged relationships for a minimum of 4 weeks.
2. Taking the sales process of what was essentially renting beds as any tourist accommodation or real estate agent does every day, and building a revolving door event marketing strategy to it.
3. Engaging my customer base lead by evangelists into taking ownership of what was 28 mini events within each property three times weekly – we built one of the largest backpacker businesses in Sydney that ran at 97% occupancy year round. The next best occupancy rate was in the mid 70%.
Our vacancy tours were legendary. Our driver and office staff were famous for some of the stunts they would play on over zealous prospects desperate for acceptance into one of our communities. We had situations where 3 people fighting for one particular vacancy would race 5km on foot, back to our office to secure it above the other two.
I identified Social Media as the vehicle through which I would replicate my ability to build physical communities, dependent on the Social proof only word of mouth marketing could deliver across distance and time. I knew from the first day I set my eye’s on My Space some six years ago that building communities across Social Media was my calling. That’s when I set about selling my capital intensive and geographically challenged backpacker business to focus on doing what I am doing today.
My point here is this. If you are a person who is entering Social Media without a long term plan or vision because the barriers are low, or because you are under the impression that it’s easy to make money online whilst working from home. Think again.
The value I represent to most who follow me diligently today is that I have invested a hell of a lot of time and intellectual property into teaching people how to not only be web2.0-savvy, successful, and consequently wealthier. I have spent two years doing it for thousands of people for very little financial gain, my motivation has been to build authority in this space and most importantly become know for adding genuine value as a way of building trust. I don’t care if people like me. I care that people respect and trust me for the value I represent to them in their business efforts. I know that people who respect my time the most (by committing to extracting the most value from it) are the people who respect me the most and that this respect runs both ways. I also know that the more people I find who I can share this mutual respect with, the more people likely to bond with me in the same way will find me through these relationships. As my network of quality relationships grows, the goodwill carries over to my company brands and the bigger these brands become the easier it is for me to leverage other start ups off any success already enjoyed.
I do all this knowing the key to my success being the people I don’t waste any of my time on for whatever the reason because its reflective of who I do invest my time and knowledge into. Any business plan I commit to these days is a 3 to 5 year commitment and most won’t forecast profit until year 2 or 3 at the earliest. All of the time and money invested up to this point is money at risk . I could invest in businesses start ups that aim to be profitable within 6 weeks – but I learned when I was very young that financial success and the frequency by which people do their financial planning are directly relative. When I started out in business I would manage my finances daily. Today I plan my finances over 5 yearly cycles. I am striving to earn enough through my current start ups to allow me to do my financial planning by the decade.
Commitment is an interesting characteristic. I can only leave it to your imagination to see how much work, time, risk and commitment has gone into my Events listed and Social Traffic start ups. This level of commitment is what it takes if you want to take any massive idea and turn it into a global company. It won’t happen unless the person with the original vision has the passion and commitment to make it happen. It’s that simple. Know one else will fight that hard for it. Plenty will get on board to help achieve a vision but very few will take full ownership of it in a way that the person who gave birth to it will.
Currently my Event’s Listed 5 year master plan is just 2.2 years in and is moving into Phase 3 now. We’re still months away from officially launching the application to the public. Social Traffic which started out as a book on event marketing in Social Media was actually a small pre-launch campaign for Events Listed, designed to enhance my reputation as an authority in this space. Social Traffic has since evolved into a massive opportunity in its own right. Social Traffic and the Events Listed Social Media learning center were planned to be little more than benefits to Events Listed members. Because of the value these so called fringe benefits have come to represent to those who have enjoyed them… they have since become the nucleus of their own start-up opportunity. Remember all this is a culmination of not just 2.2 years of hard work and sweat but by putting hundreds of thousands of dollars in cold hard cash on the line.
What’s worth pointing out here is that everyone (except my now partner) in the EventsListed team was paid cash wages over the past 2.2 years. None of them will earn a share in any financial windfall that we enjoy through our overall success. That windfall rightly belongs to the people who absorb the risk of failure.
My partner in EventsListed is John Lester, John’s share looks like its going to be worth well over a million and a half dollars within the next 12 months. John took a risk in me and this opportunity by investing his time and expertise into the EventsListed opportunity over the past 1.5 years without taking any money off the table. It’s John’s mindset that will have earned him this 1.5 million dollars. His attitude is all that’s different about John’s outcome from a staff member paid $80,000 over the same period. That and the fact John added 5 times more value than the staff member on $80K because John’s focus is on success, not $80,000. Knowing success will come if he creates enough value having faith in the fact those around him won’t let him down. No, It’s not that simple. EventsListed has hit that many hurdles in our journey that would have broken the spirit of all my staff four or five times over had they not been receiving their cash compensation each week to keep them on the job. At no stage has John ever shown signs of quitting or walking away because it looked like his time investment may not be paying off in the lows.
It’s having a partner / lieutenant like John on board EventsListed under a deal that represents 100% commitment, trust and faith in ourselves and each other that will carry Events Listed to success. It all comes down to the mindset. With success comes more trust and faith between us which makes commitment that much easier. Likewise John is enjoying more value through the experience than he could buy through 6 university degree’s. I work with John directly day in day out. I teach John everything I spent 20 years putting millions of dollars at risk starting companies to learn. It’s my pleasure because I have no doubts it’s a very good investment.
The fact that I have attracted so many people just like John into the Social Traffic opportunity who are all cut with the same cloth as he, people who are all committed as John, who all trust as he does… and have the same level of faith.. It’s scary what this opportunity represents. I started to build a community around my book 9 months ago. In time, that community became active and hustling and was attracting significant traction. We pulled in notes to get conversations going on Facebook and keep everyone engaged and on the same page. The team of influencers in our initial book launch attracted 4000+ visitors to our website of which over 2000 downloaded copies of the book. Leveraging off the success of this campaign I launched a second Social Traffic (2) campaign that set out to become a stand alone social media company for hire. Social Traffic (2) came and went over a 3 months period without success in terms of achieving its business objectives yet the community around Social Traffic grew stronger because of the caliber of people evangelizing us gained more faith in the cause and were more committed and trusting. The testament for this is in who I was able to exclude from moving forward.
The catch here is that you are not in a position to exclude anyone for lack of commitment or respect for your time, until you enjoy a certain element of momentum and success. I have an announcement to make in the coming weeks that will blow the lid off any doubts anyone in the world has about Social media being a passing fad. What I have achieved through Social Media alone over the last 2.2 years without spending 1 cent on advertising is nothing short of incredible and it’s got nothing to do with selling widgets either.
So where does the line between; a- What I do, b- who Simon U Ford (the brand) is, and c- the resources made available by EventsListed in terms of our journey (investment) over the past 2 years and d- the Social Traffic (1) community I started through my book launch; end... and the new Social Traffic (2) company begin leading into e- the social traffic (3) social media coaching company?
You can read the Social Traffic (1) book launch campaign here.
You can read the Social Traffic (2) social media marketing company start up story here.
Let’s go into answering this question in my next post...
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Our Social Traffic (2) journey together… |
There was always going to come a day when the mindset that attracted us all onto the one page shifted because money would become involved. It’s natural, because when you work hard enough – your body and mind starts to expect returns. There is only so much you can push. The interesting thing is that this level of stamina varies from person to person. Some hold on for years… others break down in days.
My biggest asset in business is a fundamental understanding that the larger an organization is, the less accountable individuals within it become, to varying degrees. The varying degrees come down to efficiency in management. The more transparent each individual’s contribution is made the more accountable the organization is. In a perfect world everyone just does what is expected of them. In the real world, people just do enough to maintain their status quo and do only the bare minimum in order to enjoy the benefits. There are some people in this world who like to take the easy ride whilst it’s on offer, and bail whenever held accountable for having pitched in or not. If someone creates opportunities for them, they would take those efforts for granted. They will do what they feel they have to in order to reap the benefits the opportunity represents without investing their skin in it – without taking ownership of the fact that an opportunity is just that. It’s an opportunity that has to be turned into an asset by the people who put their hand up to own it. Someone presenting an opportunity to someone else does not mean the person presenting the opportunity owes the recipient success. It’s simple enough to identify this mindset, just add money into any equation and sit back, watch the dynamics shift… conformity and the greater good flies out the window, greed will almost always overtake the short sighted, and greed will drive them to conspire against others to secure what can only be described as short term gain. Luckily Social Traffic has now gotten to the stage where money has entered the equation – which is why I found it appropriate to discuss this mindset right now.
Then there also people you can bank your life on. Their loyalty to the cause is evident from their actions and decisions. They’re upfront about their perspectives rather than letting hypocrisy seep through their skin. They are your indispensable lieutenants, and they make or break your business and campaign. No matter what you bring into the equation, they won’t fail to look at the bigger picture. Their focus is always to elevate their intent in order to enhance the effect they have on any opportunity. They play for the team of people who have taken ownership of the opportunity, their focus is on how to beat the odds with a view to achieving common goals. They understand that its up to them to turn any opportunity into an asset. A lot of people on this journey have been following me for anywhere up to 2 years. What has been most rewarding to me is to see that 2/3 of all the evangelists who added the most value to the Social Traffic organization’s efforts in wave one are people who had been following my blogs for a long time. These guys know me well. They will tell you my mantra advice is always to add value to become valuable. I can’t tell you how much satisfaction I get from seeing so many of these people adding so much value throughout this leg of our journey together. These are the people along with the other 1/3 of stars who only joined me throughout wave 1 that I want in my business circle. These are the people who I talk about when I discuss quality relationships being so much more valuable than a large quantity of relationships across Social Media.
Sometimes all you really need is patience to see things tie into place, and trust to believe that it will.
Everything that I have done so far for both Events Listed and Social Traffic has been part of a bigger plan. I have put a lot of money at risk to launch my online business and invested a lot more into the right knowledge to succeed. What a lot of people who are new to Social Traffic wont know is that this campaign was launched off the back of my already extremely successful Social Traffic book launch campaign executed in Facebook over 9 months ago now. I attracted 4000 people to a sales page where more than half of them downloaded copies of my book, called “Social Traffic”. I wrote and launched my book for the sole purpose of establishing myself as an authority in applying Social Media, in event marketing. My 3 month book launch campaign was one of 12 revolving door campaigns my Events Listed team had prepared from pre-launch to post-launch, as part of our master plan to become a world authority in Social Media and Event marketing. The Social Traffic (2) campaign was the second part in my Social Traffic (1) book launch campaign. The Social Traffic launch series began after 6 revolving launches for my Events Listed parent campaign.
These campaigns have seen me practice what I preach in that those reading my book are participants in a real world example of my excution of what I preach. My revolving door launch strategy is in full flight and I have an announcement to make that will cement these strategies as being one of the most effective social media launch campaigns in the history of social media. My milestone announcement will humble all of the internet marketing guru’s million dollar launch promotions into insignificant, and it was achieved by doing exactly what I wrote about in my book. This milestone is much bigger than my target of becoming one of the top 5 bloggers on the internet in the space of Event Marketing in new media. Stand by for a massive announcement that will shift all social media boundaries in the coming weeks.
Stay tuned for another post tomorrow where I will continue my wrap up of the Social Traffic (2) launch campaign which includes my evaluation of Social Traffics Earthday Birthday campaign and our bid to start up a company with zero dollars working capital that would try its hand at being a Social Media marketing firm available for hire.
My book has the step by step details of exactly how you can achieve this same level of success in Social Media marketing - Social Traffic.
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We're on the radio |
Click the play button to listen…
31 Jan 2009 -
07 Feb 2009 –
14 Feb 2009 –
21 Feb 2009 –
28 Feb 2009 –
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Social Traffic VIP's Sign Up |
Welcome Social Traffic’s VIP team.
This team can beat Google at their own game not just because we know how, most importantly, we act when called upon.
We have big plans to keep this power community together for the long term. The criteria for members should be crystal clear to those who belong. If you’re not sure, you don’t.
Once your place on the VIP list is confirmed you will receive some more information along with this weeks course password.
Social Traffics Next training course starts in July 2009!
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Watch a 4 minute preview of our Twitter Strategies training video (14 min’s total) here. This is one of 50+ Social media training videos our evangelist work through and will apply to our Earth Day Birthday campaign next month.
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Organise an event this Earth Day(22nd April 2009) |
What Social Traffic’s bringing to the table
The Global Connection Behind a Global Consciousness
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This earth day, millions of people will be getting together everywhere around the world to celebrate the earth… |
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But these events are all isolated and locally limited…. |
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Imagine if everyone going to one of these events chipped in just $10 to buy Mother Earth one big, fantastic present…. |
Imagine what we could get for the earth!
Is it possible?
Yes it is. We are making that vision a reality right now. It’s called Earthday Birthday and we’re asking you to join us. It’s your party, care if you want to. Add yourself to the guest list.
Who Benefits?
Earth-conscious event organizers:
- List your earth day event on EventsListed for free.
- Free state-of-the-art event management and promotion tools (budgeting and task managers, multi-media, search engine submission, networking, ticketing sales, and much more!)
- Free super-promotion for your event by the experts at Social Traffic
- Free top-caliber event launching training
- Full connection though the Google Friend Connect engine for quality relationships
- Free premier training on harnessing the power of Google Friend Connect
Individuals who care about our world:
- Connect with hundreds of thousands of people around the world who care as deeply about earth day as you do
- Become a part of a critical mass for real-world results
- we provide the global connection for the global consciousness
- Chip in with everyone else for Mother Earth’s Earthday Birthday gift!
Us:
- We launch our valuable services to the globe
- We start with a reputation of being able to move serious numbers of people for real-world returns in a way that has not been done before, while at the same time helping the world.
And of course Mother Earth:
- She gets the best present of all!
- For the first time since earth day was founded, the whole world can come together to celebrate and honor it.
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Quitting for a Cause |
Hey Smokers!
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You have a special opportunity to help the world and help yourself this earth day. Have you ever thought about quitting? Have you tried? We know it’s not easy. But we’ve got something that could be very valuable to you.
Here’s the idea – Nicotine Solutions is a company with a 90% success rate of helping smokers quit. They have teamed up with the Earthday Birthday campaign for a common cause. They help you quit, you apply some of the money you save on cigarettes to Earth’s gift on earth day, you benefit, earth benefits. |
What makes this work better than things you’ve tried before? A number of things:
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Nicotine Solutions is a serious company founded by a former smoker that stopped smoking in 1978. They are offering a big discount for their services for smokers involved in Earthday Birthday. |
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It’s not just for you, it’s for the Earth. |
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Hundreds of thousands of other smokers around the world will be quitting with you, and you can keep in touch with them throughout. |
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Join our video campaign of how you are saving $10 for the earth from buying less cigarettes and post it along with all the others doing the same. |
Sound interesting? Here’s how to get involved:
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Go to Nicotine Solutions to check out a preview of what they do to see if it sounds reasonable to you. I think you’ll be impressed. |
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Tell Lela Bryan you want to join in through the Earthday Birthday campaign at easeout@nicotinesolutions.com. |
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Connect to other smokers doing the same process through our twitter, facebook, events listed, and other networks. |
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Everyone will be adding videos of how they are saving $10 – add your own if you like by going to Post Video. |
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Follow along with others around the world, tracking your progress and tracking the growing contributions for Earth’s gift. |
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Begin a life where you are looking forward to more than just your next cigarette and smiling inside knowing how your journey helped out you and Mother Earth. |
We’d love to hear how it’s going. Find us on twitter or facebook and let us know how it’s going, or add a comment below. We’ll be looking for your videos in the Eathday Birthday’s YouTube Channel too!
Thank you from us and Mother Earth.
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Raising funds to help the Earth this Earthday Birthday |
We have this exciting discussion going on in Facebook about collecting the donations into one pool so we can do something on a much grander scale than ever seen before.
The good thing about our presence on social networks is that it’s possible for us to be able to raise tens and thousands of dollars if we approach it the right way. If our core 100 people just get 10 of their trusted friends to join the cause… and if everyone just puts away $10… we’d have $10,000 off the bat right there and then. Now instead of increasing the amount per person, we can just spread the message out horizontally to a larger audience base, consequently inviting more people to join in. The best and most tested social approach of doing that is to choose the right ten people in the front place – if you get 10 people, who believe in the cause, suave to same moves, beat the same drums; then they would easily be able to invite ten of their close friends as well. So that can effectively result in 100 (core) * 10 (friends) * 10 (friends of friends) * $10 each = $100,000 within a day or so with zero marketing. I mean lets face it, in a world where people have at least 200 online friends here, a good 300 online friends there – finding ten isn’t the problem… the real problem is making sure we choose the right kind of people.
Follow this step by step guide to making a difference.
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Choose a charity you will support with a $10 donation (you will be sent an email with links to charities if you don’t have one). |
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Think of ten people you can depend on. People, who if they say they’re in, are good for their word. Remember, someone thinks you are! |
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Add your name and email address into the form below. |
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Add your ten contacts names and email addresses into the forms below. Warning: If you receive a notice telling you that your email addresses are invalid. Place the cursor before/ after the email addresses entered and click delete to remove spaces. |
| [iframe http://www.socialtraffic.biz/testing/vfg.html 600 720] Can’t see the form – Click here |
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Amend the message if you like. |
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Submit the form to your friends. You will be redirected to our survey form. |
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Complete this survey informing us of the charity you are donating money to and how much. |
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You will receive an email subscription CONFIRMATION in your email inbox. Follow these instructions to white list the email address support@socialtraffic.biz |
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CONFIRM your subscription. You will be sent a welcome email that includes a list of charities you may want to donate to. |
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Donate the amount of money you nominated in the survey or donate the money then return to the survey to report it. |
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You will receive another email explaining Social Traffic’s, Earthday Birthday plans for next year. The 40th anniversary. |
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Next week you will receive another email informing you of how much money we raised. |
Read our Earthday Birthday 2009 campaign below:
- Tiiimmbbbeeerr…..
- How can we help the Earth?
- Earth Day Birthday – Promoted by the Social Traffic Inc
- Raping what we love the most; our deceptive relationship with Earth
- Raising funds for Earth Day – the good type of pyramid scheme
- The complexities of trust in fund raising
- Becoming the trustee of our own contributions
- The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes
- The Earthday Donation Wall
- Selecting a cause to donate funds to
- Saving is a prudent choice | Earthday Birthday 2009
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It’s Your Party, Care If you Want To |
Get involved!
Earthday Birthday is a huge movement, culminating on April 22. Thousands of people around the globe are already participating in numerous ways, and you can get involved too through many channels:
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Get connected. |
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Contribute to Mother Earth’s gift.
Save $10 on something you would normally spend it on, and dedicate it towards a gift for Earth. We’ll collect everyone’s $10 on Earth day and get the perfect gift for mother Earth! |
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Show the world you’ve chipping in.
Go to Post Video for instructions on posting your own video on your youtube page of how you are saving $10 for Mother Earth’s gift and where you are keeping it safe until the big day. See what others are doing at the Earthday Birthday Youtube Channel |
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Join the movement.
Become an evangelist and help us spread the word. Not only are you helping the cause, you’ll receive free, top-notch, hands-on training on harnessing the power of the social media networks as we run our campaign. |
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Host an event.
Publish your online event for Earthday Birthday. Follow the wizzard. We’ll get you hooked up! |
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Attend an event.
Events in your area will be listed closer to Earth day, stay in touch! |
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Learn more.
Read our stories here |
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Power-up your own efforts.
There are 100 million people out there. The world is listening. When you connect to us, you connect to them. Do you use Google Friend Connect yet? If you have your own blog and want to be heard you need to! Get a jump start at Roaming Heads – Google Friend Connect Search Directory. |
The Earth Thanks You!
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