Transcript continued from the Episode 010 Show notes
But, I think it goes deeper than that, because I think it really means that it’s about having an outward focus, both in your personal life and in your business. I think it’s particularly important in your business as you start thinking about building your internet business, which is what we’re going to be talking about, what we have been talking about, and what we’ll continue to talk about in the coming weeks, it’s really important that you have a customer focus.
You really need to be thinking about what it is that your potential customers or clients or prospects need. What will make their life better? You need to be thinking in terms of how you can get that to them and not really focus so much on whether or not you’ll get a nickel for that work, you really need to focus on what’s going to make their life better.
If you do that the compensation will follow. It’s something that Evan Pagan talks about a lot, it’s moving the free line, establishing a relationship, giving things of value to your customers. All of that has to do with having an outward focus in business.
When I was much younger I sold cutlery door to door, that was a very difficult job. When I was doing that job I participated in some sales training with a very famous sales guy named Zig Ziglar. It was actually a course, I didn’t get to work with Zig directly, it was actually a course that was put on by Zig Ziglar’s people.
The one thing that I took away from that as a very young man was that you can get everything that you want in life by helping other people get the things that they want. Nothing could be more accurate in terms of internet business. If you can structure your business in such a way that it actually helps people do what they’re trying to do or get where they want to be, you will be profitable and you’ll like the results.
It’s something that, and I think this is a phrase that I stole from Nicole Dean or Lynn Terry or something like that, it’s about helping other people profitably. So, really the way you need to think about developing your internet business is by thinking about who your customer is, who your client is, who your partners are, and trying to help them get whatever it is that they want. That’s how you can help other people and the profit will follow.
The other thing I wanted to share with you today was something really exciting that happened to me on the way down to the women’s shelter in Dallas this morning. I ducked out of my day job this morning to take a Tahoe load full of baby gear down to the women’s shelter in downtown Dallas.
A lot of you know that Baby Morgan is now almost seven months old, so she’s starting to outgrow bouncy baby seats and a lot of the other little things that you need to have when they’re super small. So, as we outgrow those things my wife particularly is interested in making sure that those get into the hands of people that really need them.
I had literally the whole back end of my Tahoe full of everything from a breast pump to a car seat. I took that down there and I had my iPod going, as I often do. One of the things I teach that’s particularly important for part time business people is to try and make use of your down time, driving in Dallas definitely generates a lot of down time, so I had my iPod on.
On came the very first podcast from one of my good friends, Pat Flynn over at Smart Passive Income. It was really funny, because Pat is just an awesome internet marketer. We’re going to have him on the show in a couple of weeks, I think you’re really going to enjoy that.
His very first podcast is excellent and I wanted to encourage you to go listen to that. It’s a really outstanding start for Pat over at the Smart Passive Income blog and I think you’ll really enjoy the podcast. One of the things that Pat was talking about is sort of the same topic about helping other people profitably, getting people what they need. He calls it internet karma.
He likes because likes to help people, but he likes to help people because he knows that in addition to the satisfaction that he gets out of helping people that it comes back to you. I really believe that and I think that’s really what Zig is talking about is that you generate this karma.
I’m not really talking about something cosmic, I’m really talking about a principle called reciprocity. When you help people it’s human nature that they want to help you and that all comes out in your favor in the very long run. So, I definitely encourage you to go check out Pat and we’ll have him on the show for you in a couple of weeks.
Our main topic for today really is mindset around what you want your internet business to be. I thought I would illustrate this with a tale about my first internet business. I’m a computer geek, I have been since I was a kid. This will date me a little bit, but I mowed lawns when I was a child to get my first computer, which was an Apple 2-e, so I was an Apple user from the very beginning. It was the first computer that I ever bought.
This Apple 2-e had one single five and a quarter inch floppy disk and if you were really fancy you had a computer with two floppy discs, because then you could copy from one disk to another without pulling the discs out over and over again. It had 64k of RAM, and I remember very clearly going to buy a 128k RAM card, which was part of the video board. It was all integrated, I remember that very clearly.
I also remember clearly that the way that we communicated with other computers was on these bulletin board systems, there was no internet that normal people had access to. Darpa was using it at the time, it was called Darpanet.
As far as the internet was concerned there were these dial up bulletin board systems and I had a 300 bod single duplex modem from Zoom Telephonics and that was blazingly fast. Then I eventually upgraded to a 1200 bod full duplex modem, very exciting.
I’ve always had this interest in computers, so I always knew I wanted an internet business and my wife was also interested in this, so we started a little business called Precious on Paper. It leveraged my wife’s ability to do things on paper, draw cartoon characters and that sort of thing, and we made custom notepads for people, some people called these Mommy Pads.
I learned very quickly that there were two problems with this paper business. One was it wasn’t very scalable. I guess the first problem was there weren’t great margins in this business, because by the time you went through the cost of your labor and the printing cost of making the pad and then sold them there weren’t huge margins in this business.
But, the real problem was that it wasn’t very scalable. There were just only so many pads that we wanted to make in our spare time and after awhile it really wasn’t very much fun. I learned very quickly that didn’t make very much sense as a business, because unless I was willing to buy buildings and build a notepad factory that just really wasn’t going to work for us long term.
I thought about online businesses, but I didn’t really understand much about how money moved around on the internet and I didn’t know enough about it to do the research correctly. So, for years and years I just had this thought that I wanted to do something on the internet, but really the examples were in front of me were things like Amazon.com and I wasn’t sure how I could start an Amazon.com.
Now, of course, everything has changed. The important thing for you to realize that you need to avoid falling in the same trap that my wife and I fell into with Precious on Paper. Luckily, that wasn’t a super successful business, because the other thing that I knew absolutely nothing about at that time was search engine optimization, so we didn’t have a lot of traffic, we didn’t make a lot of sales, but we made enough to know that it just wasn’t scalable.
But, for you and your internet business what you really need to do is imagine what you want your business to be a year, two years, three years, five years from now. You need to think about it in terms of branding. Is the business about you?
Is it a consulting business where essentially if you’re not in the business doing whatever it is that you do, creating content, writing blog posts or whatever, your business may be doing consulting, if you’re not there is that going to be a problem for your branding? Is it the Joe Smith product and if Joe Smith is not around are you not going to be able to make money?
Or is it a business with a high degree of automation, a business with a lot of margins, or a business where you can do outsourcing to get the things that your clients need delivered to your clients? Those are the kind of questions that you need to think about.
One further question around the branding topic is the question of what if you want to sell the business? A great example is MasonWorld.com. MasonWorld.com is branded as Mark Mason’s blog.
Sure, I could sell it, but Pat Flynn’s blog is branded as Smart Passive Income and while Pat is the heart and soul of that, it sure is possible to carry on the Smart Passive Income branding without Pat. It would be much more difficult to carry on the Mason World branding without Mark Mason.
So, those are the kind of things that you want to think about. You want to design your business around the lifestyle and purpose you have for your life.
Given that, we’ve got an outstanding guest for you today on the podcast. He’s a lifestyle design expert, he’s done a lot of things. He’s had big internet businesses that required too much work. He’s built stuff in his basement or a spare bedroom of his house and shipped it out to clients until he was blue in the face 16 hours a day.
He knows what all that’s about and now he teaches people about lifestyle design over at the Internet Business Mastery Academy. His name is Jeremy Frandsen and he has his radio name as Sterling, that’s what we all know him as. Jeremy has had a really interesting life, he’s been in radio, television, film, he was even on an episode of Baywatch once upon a time.
He’s an internet business entrepreneur and an incredibly successful one. I’ve got him on the phone today for you talking about this issue of lifestyle design, about a concept that he teaches called Definite Major Purpose. I think it will be really valuable for you as we set up to start talking about affiliate marketing and how you can build your business online.
That’s what we’ll doing in coming weeks and it’s really good for you to have the right mindset about what kind of business is it that you want to create and why do these business models, like affiliate marketing, make so much sense in terms of lifestyle.
With regard to future episodes, I will tell you that for a couple weeks what I want to convince you of is that you can make money on the internet without teaching people how to make money on the internet.
That’s one of the topics that I’m really sensitive about in the sense that people come to me all the time and they say, “Mark, can you make money on the internet any other way than teaching people how to make money on the internet?” The answer is absolutely “yes.”
We’re going to have two guests that illustrate that over the next two episodes. The next episode we’ll have Pat Flynn, and Pat is the guy I talked about before with the Smart Passive Income blog, but his first internet business, which is still going strong, has to do with architecture.
So, he has an internet business that’s related to his field of expertise as an architect. That’s definitely not making money online and you’ll like that very much.
Then following that about two weeks later we’ll have a great call with Scott Tousignant. Scott is the brains behind Fat Loss Quickie. You’re going to love that too, because Scott is a regular guy who is teaching people how to change their lives by getting the fat off their body.
That’s what’s coming in the next episodes, but right now I’m very excited to introduce Jeremy Frandsen. Now, one last thing I need to tell you is that I had to talk to Jeremy over my lunch hour at work, which meant I had to use teleseminar recording equipment, so the audio quality is a little suspect.
I’ve cleaned it up as best I can, so I hope you’ll be able to fight through the audio quality and enjoy this call with Jeremy. He’s got a lot to offer you, he’s really a fantastic guy and here he is; Jeremy Frandsen from Internet Business Mastery, better known as Sterling.
Mark Mason: Hi. It’s Mark Mason and today I am so excited to have on the line one of my very first and most important internet business mentors. One of the people that first got me really excited about internet business and really got me on the right track with how to think about things in internet business and how to do all things related to lifestyle design.
Sterling, you may have heard of Jay and Sterling at InternetBusinessMastery.com. They are the top internet business podcast on iTunes for well over three years now. I’ve listened to every episode. In fact, I am currently the world record holder for Internet Business Mastery podcast consumption. I once listened to 47 episodes in a 24 hour period, which is almost mathematically impossible. Sterling, how are you?
Sterling: I’m great. Thanks for that fabulous introduction and thanks for having me on.
Mark Mason: Well, you know, I’m one of the long list of people and I know you hear all this time, so I know you know, but I see all these people that comment inside the Academy and so forth about how Internet Business Mastery and how specifically you and Jay have changed their lives. I’m one of those people, so I’m really excited to have you on the phone today.
Sterling: Thanks so much. I never tire from hearing it. I love it.
Mark Mason: It’s a good story, right? It’s hard to beat. So, I have a following of readers that’s very much interested in internet business, they are interested in making money online, and a lot of these people are just getting started.
I get these questions about how it’s possible to balance internet business with all the things that you have going on in life. I get questions about what they’re trying to achieve.
It made me think of you, because I know you and Jay teach lifestyle design and I wanted to see if I could spend some time talking to you today a little bit about how to think about internet business, not so much how to do it, but how to think about it and sort of what concepts are important when you go to first start to set up your internet business. How does that sound today?
Sterling: Yes, this is actually the part I’m most interested in, because learning how to do autoresponder or setting up your website, that’s all absolutely important, but honestly that stuff means nothing if you don’t have the lifestyle design and mindset stuff in place, I think.
Mark Mason: After having gone through the courses in the Academy and so forth, I completely agree with you. Obviously, that’s why I have you on the phone. I guess I wanted to start you off with a simple question.
This is kind of a loaded question, because I know the answer, but is it important to think about what your business is going to be like in a year or two from now? And why is that important, what do people need to be thinking when they’re thinking about the future of their internet business?
I know a lot of people usually get caught up in starting their internet business, but why is it important to think about the future?
Sterling: Well, there are a lot of reasons, but I’ll tell you the two major reasons. The first one is how you spend your time, and the second one is fulfillment.
So, an example of this is the very first business I started when I was selling information products through eBay and that was the very first business I started. Here’s the thing. I had no idea about thinking through some of this mindset stuff, like what my time was worth, how I was spending my time, how much time I was going to spend on my business, and fulfillment I hadn’t even thought of at all.
I just didn’t want to work at a 9:00 to 5:00 job anymore. So, that to me was the only part of my fulfillment was I get to be at home.
Mark Mason: Right, it was very tactical.
Sterling: Yes. There was no more thought to it other than that. My first business, the eBay business what happened was on one end it became very successful pretty quickly. Within six months I had pretty much gotten rid of my old income and I was making about the same amount.
The problem was I was easily working 12 hours a day, because I had picked a business where I had to actually ship the product. So, I had binders of information, I had CDs, I had to actually burn the CDs, I had to pick the cases, and put all of this stuff together. I had 20 something different products, all of which were selling every single day.
Then I had to ship the products. I had to go to Office Max and get the binders. It was a time suck like I cannot believe. Here I’m thinking, “Wow, it really works. I’m making money.” Then I’m like on the other hand going, “And I have no time for anything else.” I was just a one man operation. I actually was completely the typical working from basement office.
I made a little office in the basement and put up shelves and put all the product on the shelves, and my life became the business. Pretty quickly I actually found that I was absolutely not fulfilled whatsoever just simply sending somebody else’s product out to people.
Mark Mason: I see. So, you had built yourself another job to replace your old job and you didn’t like either one of them.
Sterling: Yes, exactly. At least the other job I didn’t have to work 12 hours a day, and I wasn’t responsible, and I wasn’t taking all the risk, and all the things that comes with owning your own business.
Mark Mason: Right. You found yourself in that position, so I guess that’s when you realized, “Hey, wait a minute. There’s got to be a better way to do this.”
Sterling: Yes. What really happened was I pulled out one of the old success books out there that was from Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. He talked a little bit about purpose and also just about the same time, maybe just a little bit after this first started happening I learned about some lifestyle business design stuff from a guy named Tim Ferris, who wrote The 4 Hour Workweek.
These were just concepts I had never ever heard about. In my mind I wanted to retire by 40 and I didn’t even really know what that meant. I’m not the type of person that at 40, just not doing anything now sounds completely terrifying and boring, to be honest.
Once I read the Tim Ferris book and it talking about designing your life in the future, design it right now, that’s the stuff that really got me thinking about, “Wow. I designed myself a business that all it does is take time from me. I don’t enjoy it all really, other than the fact that I’m at home.” That was the part that I certainly enjoyed, being able to be at home, but I didn’t even get to decide what I was going to do with my time at home, it was all work.
Mark Mason: So, you started to focus on purpose. I guess this is how you came to this concept that you teach in the Academy called Definite Major Purpose. Can you talk a little bit about the DMP, as you call it, and why that’s important?
Sterling: Okay. The Definite Major Purpose basically represents the central mission of your life right now. Napoleon Hill, again the author of Think and Grow Rich, he says that it’s the thing that you desire most. I basically say it’s the thing that you desire to do with your life the most.
Here is mine, for an example. My definition of major purpose is actually three parts. It’s total freedom, fulfillment, and inspiration. Those three things are basically the mission of my life for myself and for guiding others.
Basically, I have each of these three things really well defined on a sheet of paper. I’ve got mind maps and stuff that we talked about a lot on the show doing the mind mapping with MindJet or MindMister.com. I have my Definite Major Purpose mapped out and I describe every little aspect of what actually freedom means, fulfillment and inspiration means, so that they’re not just vague concepts.
A quick answer is those three things are my Definite Major Purpose and then I basically base all my business decisions and most of my personal decisions on them as well.
Mark Mason: Can you give an example? You say you base business decisions on them. So, you’ve got this purpose, you know what you’re trying to achieve, can you give some kind of example of how a business decision would translate against this Definite Major Purpose?
Sterling: Yes, okay. With any task I have business wise, project, or opportunity, I’m basically trying to make sure it brings me closer to my Definite Major Purpose or not, and then that’s how I decide whether or not I’m going to do it or not.
So, again, for instance, I get offered business opportunities from time to time from possible business partners. One specific one I was offered not long ago was a business friend of mine he is starting a business network online. So, it basically being called Revision Three or any of these video networks where it will have five to ten minute videos about subjects, he’s started one just for business.
What he asked me to do, he offered me the possibility to come in and be the executive producer over ten shows at a time.
Mark Mason: Whoa.
Sterling: Yes. The reason he offered that to me was because the business that I was in before I started doing this internet business was I actually worked at Warner Brothers right in Hollywood in L.A., I edited and I directed and did some writing there. So, he knew I had that background.
Basically, he offered this really great opportunity for a startup company that I know him very well and he had a lot of great backers in that, but I had to take it through the filtering of my Definite Major Purpose. So, I didn’t take it for these reasons.
Number one, no location and time freedom. Basically, where the studio was I would have to be there working and it was easily going to be 12 hours a day, because it’s a start-up.
Mark Mason: Sure.
Sterling: They had a studio and everything, but when you’re working with TV and film and doing that kind of stuff, even if it’s just for a ten minute web TV show it is a nightmare and it’s long when you start.
Mark Mason: Right, exactly. Well, startup businesses are that way. You’re head cook and bottle washer, you’ve got to do it all.
Sterling: Absolutely. So, that went against my Definite Major Purpose of total freedom. I wouldn’t have my location freedom and I wouldn’t have my time freedom.
Then the other was fulfillment wise I knew it wouldn’t fulfill me in the same way as Internet Business Mastery does, because I’d basically be producing other people’s projects that weren’t directly helping people in the way I wanted to do with my Definite Major Purpose.
They weren’t based on inspiration and teaching other people freedom and stuff. They could have been a wide variety of shows, I didn’t know what the shows were going to be yet, and it wouldn’t be me doing them, I would just be producing them. That was the other part that I filtered through, which was again, the fulfillment part.
The other part really was working 12 hours a day for years didn’t inspire me at all, and me being behind the scenes dealing with all that kind of tech stuff meant I wouldn’t be able to do my Definite Major Purpose the part of inspiration. It wouldn’t be inspirational for me and I wouldn’t be able to inspire other people doing it.
That’s basically a kind of an example. We get opportunities, my business partner Jay and I, all the time and we basically filter them through our Definite Major Purpose, and that makes business decisions so easy. We used to get opportunities and we tried to take everything.
Mark Mason: Sure.
Sterling: We didn’t have a filtering system. Somebody said, “Hey, do you want to come do this website with us?” Okay, we’ll do anything to make extra money. Now, after doing things like that and seeing that we weren’t fulfilled and we ended up not being happy, and now we very simply filter through our Definite Major Purpose.
Mark Mason: I know from my perspective in dealing with you two guys personally, the fact that everything you’re working on is in line with your core values means that the quality and enthusiasm behind the stuff that you do is just multiplied by a factor of 10 or 100. So, you must see some of that as well, that not only is it fulfilling, but you just make a better product when you care about what you’re doing.
Sterling: Absolutely. Not only do you make a better product, but even on the sales side you bring a completely different level of credibility to people. Recently we actually started outselling some of the big gurus that have been our inspiration, we aspired to be them one day.
Mark Mason: Right.
Sterling: We were like, “Wow, look at these guys. They’re the A-list guys.” We just recently had several of them ask us how we’re doing so well when we don’t even have sometimes a tenth of their email list. Basically, we were saying that we actually love what we do and we’re out to actually help people, not just make money for ourselves, which comes across really easily.
People attach that so fast, just as I did. I saw the ones that were just trying to pitch every single thing they could so that they could make a quick buck and didn’t care if the people actually did anything with it. In fact, people kind of joked about us at first when we got in some of the bigger mastermind groups that we worried about if the people were actually doing our product.
Mark Mason: Right. You know, it’s funny, because consumption is actually one of the most critical parts of getting repeat business and follow on viral customers and so forth. If people don’t use your product and they don’t know how great it is, what gives them a reason to buy from you again? It’s very obvious.
We all know who those people are and the reason that you’re on this call is that you’re not one of those people.
Sterling: Yes. We tried very hard. Our goal was never about that. It’s funny, it just came to my mind, the episode that we just did on our podcast. Actually, I believe it came from a question that you answered somewhere, just off the top of my head I’m trying to remember.
It was about money and what’s your major reason for doing internet business. Somebody had claimed that thought it was money for you, and then you explained how it wasn’t, it was purpose and these other things. I think that’s the big difference. We’re really clear on what money means to us.
Money is very specific what it means to me, and it basically comes down again to my Definite Major Purpose that I can achieve that. That’s what I transfer money into, it’s basically time or energy or the ability to inspire others, this kind of thing, as opposed to just going, “I need 5,000,000 dollars and I’ll get it any way I can.”
Mark Mason: Right. Money is a tool that you can leverage to achieve your Definite Major Purpose.
Sterling: Exactly. That’s the whole reason for it, to me.
Mark Mason: Well, I know that you’re an incredibly busy guy, and I know this because I know how hard it was to schedule this call with you. I also know that you’re still unpacking boxes and doing all kinds of crazy things. But, there’s one question I’ve got to ask you, because I ask all my guests that are successful in internet business the same question.
I’m dying to hear your perspective on it and I know my listeners are dying to hear it too. That is the following. If you could identify three things, simple things, or important things, or easy things that you wish you’d already known when you got started, something you could back and tell yourself now.
What would those three things be if you were going to go back and talk to Sterling in the very beginning when you were leaving that Hollywood job, the one you had worked so hard to get, by the way, and you were leaving that job and there was three things about internet business that you wish you had known then that you know now, what would they be?
Sterling: Wow. There are a lot of different things. The three that came right to the top of my mind, the first one was focus. The one thing I did in the very beginning was I learned every single thing I could about everything.
I had no focus. It was like somebody was like, “Do affiliate marketing.” Okay, I’m learning everything about affiliate marketing. Then somebody was like, “Membership sites.” Okay, what about membership sites.
Before I actually started the eBay business I think I became a master of internet business purely in theory. I had learned so much stuff I could have easily taught then the same way as a professor. You just have the information, but you haven’t done it yet kind of thing.
Mark Mason: Right.
Sterling: It took me a couple of years really to really focus, because even when I had the eBay business and it was killing me with 12 hours a day I was trying to start 12 other businesses. I thought it was just this whole new thing and I was fascinated by it, but it wasn’t until I got into a little mastermind group in Salt Lake with a guy that owns WeBuyHouses.com, he owns a ton of stuff.
He said that his major, the way he makes the most money is focusing on one thing until he’s got it completely automated and can move to the next thing. I had never done that. Basically, at that time I didn’t have virtual assistants or anything. It was me doing everything, so I worked seven days a week, I had no hobbies. In fact, it was just lately that I started trying to get back into hobbies again.
Mark Mason: Like Frisbee golf, right?
Sterling: Yes, that was one of them. I’m just trying different things, because marketing has been my life for five years. Anyway, if I could go back I would say, “Take one program and do it until either A, it works and you can start automating it and then possibly move on, or it doesn’t work and you can find something that does.
Mark Mason: Right.
Sterling: For me, the focus ended up being I was able to once I found mindset and that kind of thing I found my passion, so I can focus on that and that’s what Internet Business Mastery is for me. But, that kind of leads a little bit into number two thing, which is something in fact I can almost say I never hear anybody else talking about this.
It’s self esteem. Basically, the mindset comes from the self esteem. That got triggered when I read a book called The Six Pillars of Self Esteem.
Mark Mason: I have this book on my iPod, based on your recommendation, but I haven’t gotten to it yet, because I’m listening to some other book you recommended to me. So, you keep burying me in these books.
Sterling: Okay. Well, go to this one now. Switch off the other one.
Mark Mason: Okay.
Sterling: This is the one that really helped, it actually helped both Jay and I with this mindset stuff, because self esteem sounds very self help and that kind of stuff, which is probably why I didn’t notice it before until a psychotherapist friend of mine had mentioned he loves this author, Nathaniel Brandon. He said, “I think you’ll really enjoy the book.”
It actually took me awhile to read it, because I’m like, “I’ve done the Anthony Robbins stuff and all that stuff years ago.” When I did this, this changed everything. This is probably one of my top three books I would say to read first.
Mark Mason: I would never buy a book like this, except you keep saying things like this. For me to even look at it, because I look at you and you didn’t have a self esteem problem when you bought this book. Right?
Sterling: That’s the interesting thing, because the self esteem stuff is actually more get your mindset focused incredibly well. This is the base for all the rest of the mindset stuff.
Mark Mason: I see.
Sterling: For instance, some of the pillars are like living consciously, self responsibility, self assertiveness, living purposefully. Those are the type of things that once you get these things solid, being able to find a business that not only succeeds for you financially, but also for your Definite Major Purpose and just all the things you actually inside dream about for having a business.
The core of all of it comes down to the self esteem stuff. So, that’s the number two. I would have handed that book, I would have taken the forty-five other books I was reading when I first started and put them away and started with that book.
Mark Mason: Okay. Well, I’m going to do that. I’m going to put my other book down for a moment and I’m going to start this other book on the way home, because I have the audible version. I know you’re also a big fan of audible.
Sterling: Yes. Actually, I listened to it maybe every other month or something, I listen to the whole thing again just as a reminder.
Mark Mason: Really?
Sterling: Oh, yes. It’s that important to me. Even number six was the personal integrity, that was the sixth pillar, and the discussion of that was really what helped us not only understand, but be really solid about our integrity on our show and what we teach.
I think that understanding that is part of what made our thing successful in a humongous sea filled with other people teaching internet business.
Mark Mason: Interesting. Okay. I will put the link to that book in the show notes.
Sterling: Great. Then number three is as soon as you possibly can hire out the stuff you don’t know how to do or don’t want to do.
Mark Mason: Right.
Sterling: We’re still doing this constantly. In fact, we had bumped up our hours back to forty hours, because we’re doing all these launches and stuff. Just a couple weeks into it we had gotten ourselves down to each of us working about 20 hours a week.
Again, we ramped up just recently and a couple of weeks of working 40 hours, we just had a conversation a couple of days ago and I was like, “That takes up my whole day.” It’s been awhile. So, what we do now is there’s stuff we’re doing that we shouldn’t be doing if we’re working that much.
So, what we did is we went, “Let’s look at our calendar and what we’re doing every day and let’s hire out more people to do the stuff that we should not be doing.” Basically, now we try and get to the point where we’re doing the three top things we’re either really good at and/or really love to do. Everything else we hire out.
I don’t mean hire like we’ve got employees at an office, these are all virtual assistants and virtual technical people that we’re able to manage them over the internet. It’s basically through Skype and different instant messaging that we’re able to get them all on task.
So, just a couple of days ago we just decided to hire two more people so that we didn’t have to keep working so much. Again, our whole goal is lifestyle design and eight hour a day working was really cramping my style, I’ll tell you.
Mark Mason: Especially in the greater San Diego area, you need time to enjoy that when you’re down there.
Sterling: Exactly. That was part of actually what triggered us to go down, we were at about 30 hours a week down to 20, because I was like, “I’m here on the beach. I want to learn surfing, I want to do some body boarding, I’ve got to do my bike riding.”
Again, this all came, this didn’t just happen overnight. I worked really hard at the beginning to make this happen. But, this is the stuff that I would have told myself. We could have been much, much further in our business and basically our mission if we had learned to hire out the small stuff and the stuff we didn’t like, and the stuff we still don’t like to do.
I still barely know how to put up a website by myself and I’m proud of that. Even though I teach internet business, I’m very proud that I hire somebody to do it instead. I’m not talking about hiring somebody for 40 or 50 dollars, that’s something we teach is how to hire virtual assistants all around the world where the money exchange makes it so it’s very small amount of U.S. dollars, but it’s very good pay for them.
There’s a lot of little aspects of this, but that would be definitely the third thing I would have told myself right off, hire the stuff you don’t like out right off. I think actually most people quit when they start realizing, “I don’t want to do some of this stuff.”
Mark Mason: Right. Internet business is a lot of work. It turns out you can’t get something for nothing. I saw an ad come across my Twitter feed this morning, “Make money when you sleep. Invest nothing, earn 780 dollars a day.”
I thought, “Invest nothing,” obviously, as you guys teach, it doesn’t take a lot of startup capital to start an internet business, but it takes a lot of sweat equity.
Sterling: Yes. This is a real business.
Mark Mason: Exactly.
Sterling: This world is mailing envelopes or whatever all that other stuff is, the stuff that I’ve never heard actually works. It’s a real business.
Even if you just want to make 500 dollars a month there’s going to be a startup in terms of your time. You’ve got to actually learn how to do the marketing and how to do this business so that it actually works well.
Mark Mason: Well, sir, those are three outstanding tips. I know everyone is really going to appreciate that. I have one very important question that I know is burning in the minds of my listeners. I just want to clear it up for all time.
True or false, you appeared on an episode of Baywatch?
Sterling: I’m sure they’ve been dying to know. I actually did basically extra work back when I was an actor for a few years. Baywatch, I think I had one quick line or something, but I considered that basically extra work.
Yes, I was on. It was maybe three seasons in and you barely see me, but yes, Baywatch. Actually, Jay makes jokes about that all the time. That was the least fun one I actually worked on, but yes.
Mark Mason: That’s excellent. Well, thank you so much. It’s a real pleasure for me to have you on the phone and I really appreciate your time. How can people find you if they want to hear more about what you and Jay have to say?
Sterling: Okay. There’s a couple ways. One of these is just to go to InternetBusinessMastery.com. We’ve got the blog and podcast and all that stuff is there.
Another is if you want to just listen to the podcast first, you can go to iTunes and just type in Internet Business or Internet Business Mastery and we’re the first podcast that comes up. Or you can actually get some of our other free audio by going to FreeAudioGift.com.
Mark Mason: Outstanding. I really do appreciate it. Thank you so much. I hope you have a fantastic day and that whatever you do for the remainder of your day is completely aligned with your Definite Major Purpose.
Sterling: Yes. Thank you very much. I’m actually going off to listen to my daughter play in the orchestra.
Mark Mason: Excellent. Thank you very much. Enjoy that and have a great day.
Sterling: All right. Thanks.
Mark Mason: Thanks. Bye.
My name is Mark Mason from MasonWorld.com, I hope you have an absolutely fantastic day. Thanks.
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