Transcript continued from the Episode 021 Show notes
Mark’s Five Levels of Learning Internet Marketing
The first level, of course, is free info just like this podcast. You get some guy behind the mic or behind an ebook, or in some other publication format telling you what they know about internet marketing and a lot of times that information is free.
In fact, I contend that almost everything that you’d ever want to learn about internet marketing is somewhere out there on the internet and you can have it for free. Now, going around and collecting that and knowing what to keep and what to throw away is a big issue.
That’s really hard sometimes to decide who to trust. So that’s why there is option number two, courses that you can buy. Now, most people who put together courses are putting together information that for the most part is freely available elsewhere on the internet. I know that in my Late Night Affiliate Course that I’m working on over at LateNightAffiliate.com you can definitely find a bunch of the information that I cover in that course out on the internet for free.
It’s the information that I’ve accumulated over the last four years doing affiliate marketing, so it’s out there. Being able to find it is another problem. It can be kind of a tough problem sometimes and so that kind of gives you why the second level exists. Someone bothers to collect up all that information, put their perspective on it, and present it to you in a way that is digestible – that’s a course.
Then a lot of people offer something like e-coaching where maybe you buy a product, but it gives you access to a special members only forum or somehow it allows you to get involved directly by email with the course creator, either in a forum setting or maybe you get one email per day that you can email directly to a coach. That’s what I would refer to as e-coaching.
There’s another kind of learning or coaching that you can go through that are live events. I’m going to talk a little bit more about live events today, but there are a number of live events that you can go to. These live events are generally one of two types.
One type of live event that’s a little more rare is the learning or workshop type of event where the primary goal of the organizer is for you to learn stuff. We’re going to talk about that a little bit today, one in particular.
Then the other kind of live event that’s more common is the kind of live event where you’re getting pitched at a lot. And you’ll find a lot of those internet marketing events where the primary goal of the organizer is to sell stuff in the back of the room. In general you want to stay away from those. I won’t name any particular ones.
I guess there’s really a third kind of live event and that’s a big one like Blog World Expo or something where you have lots of technical speakers. That’s more along the lines of a technical conference or tradeshow organization type of thing, that’s what I would think of that as. So that’s kind of a third type of live event. That can be very good as well. Blog World Expo, although I’ve never been, is supposed to be fantastic. I know they draw speakers like Pat Flynn, so it can’t be all bad if he’s willing to go there.
So live events are the fourth sort of learning. The fifth one would be one-on-one coaching. And that can range in price from a few hundred dollars a month to thousands of dollars a month depending on who is doing the coaching and what the level of contact is, how much time they’re spending with you.
And I’ve done all five of these. I’ve certainly consumed massive amounts of free information, I’ve bought thousands of dollars worth of courses, I’ve done e-coaching, I’ve participated in live events, and I’ve done some one-on-one coaching as well. So I can tell you that all of those can be incredibly valuable.
Focus One-on-One Coaching
One of the things that I think is important to take away from that is that coaching in general, I think, is really valuable. And I think it’s valuable for three fundamental reasons.
The first reason is when you have a coach, if you’ve got the right coach and it’s a good coach the first and foremost thing is it can cut down your learning time dramatically by weeks and months and sometimes years, because you can get on a clear path and you can avoid repeating mistakes.
And that’s what most people are looking for, I think, is the sort of coaching where really the question you’re asking is, “Please just tell me what to do and let me know exactly what I need to do, and unstick me when I get stuck.” A lot of times if you just buy a course you’ll get to a point where either you don’t know what to do or you’re not really sure what to do, and if you don’t have someone you can ask then it makes it really hard to decide exactly what to go do next so you get stuck and paralyzed. Coaching can help you through that and that’s why some of these coaching things that come with courses can be so valuable.
The other thing that you get from coaching a lot of times is accountability. Accountability can be massive. If you’ve got to meet with your coach next week and he or she is going to ask you, “Did you do what you said you were going to do last week?” That can be a huge motivator, especially if your coach is the kind of person who demands accountability or encourages completion of tasks.
It doesn’t have to be a nasty thing, sometimes it can just be simply that you don’t want to let the coach down. That kind of accountability can be huge and I recommend coaching really for that reason alone. That’s one of the biggest levers for me is to have a coach where I don’t want to have to send that email or make that phone call that says, “Yes, I know I said I was going to release the podcast on Thursday, but I didn’t.” I don’t want to do that, so I don’t. That’s a really helpful way to drive accountability is to pay for it.
Then the third thing is if you’ve got the right kind of coach and it’s a good match and this is a coach that matches what you’re like and what your values are you can really begin to see that success is possible. A lot of success in life, in business, and in internet business specifically really is about mindset. If you’ve got an example in front of you of the successful person who is trying to help you then that coaching can be really helpful.
So that’s a good framework for coaching. And the reason this topic came to my mind today was because – well, there were two reasons. One is that I’ve recently gotten several emails asking me if I was doing coaching or if I could recommend some kind of coaching. I respond to those as I get them and it always depends on the person’s particular situation.
That’s a bit of advice. If somebody tells you, “You need this coaching,” then if they do that without asking you what it is you’re trying to achieve run away because coaching is a very special thing that you need to match to exactly what your business goals are.
It makes absolutely no sense to get coaching from a pay-per-click CPA guru if what you’re trying to do is drive organic traffic. That just makes no sense. So you’ve got to have a match both in terms of skills and in terms of personality for good coaching. So that’s one reason.
The other reason, quite frankly, is I missed a really cool live event in February because I had another business commitment and that was the Niche Affiliate Marketing System seminar in February. And it’s coming up again in August and they’re just opening registration for that. So what I wanted to do was get the organizer of the NAMS (Niche Affiliate Marketing System) seminar on the podcast so you could hear a little bit about what that’s about.
What’s So Great About NAMS?
The reason I like NAMS, and there’s a lot of reasons – I like NAMS as something for my listeners because I know a great many of the coaches personally that attend NAMS, it’s an instructor heavy sort of conference and I know them; it’s Lynn Terry, Nicole Dean, Jimmy Brown, Paul Evans, Kevin Riley, people like that. All of these guys that I’ve either met or have used their products or talked to personally or by email, and in some cases I consider them to be friends. So I like NAMS for that reason, because I know I can trust those people.
The guy who organizes it is a really wonderful guy and is just awesome. You’ll hear on the phone call how great David Perdew is. He’s got the right idea about what he’s trying to accomplish and he is not trying to sell from the back of the room at this conference. That’s the second thing that I like about the Niche Affiliate Marketing System workshop. When you go there you’re going there to learn, it’s a workshop.
In a lot of cases they have live labs that they do during the workshop where people are actually building, in some cases, their first website. It’s split up into tracks for beginners and intermediate and advanced business owners. So there’s a lot of really good things about it, but at the end of the day it’s about delivering value and content, it’s not about selling additional stuff to you after they get you to the conference.
The third thing that I like about it is it’s really affordable. I think you’ll find out you can get a ticket to NAMS for $97 right now and it’s in a nice hotel in Atlanta. Anyway, you’ll hear about some of this in the phone call to follow here.
So if you’ve ever thought about potentially going to a live event where you’re around other affiliate marketers and really learning about internet business from people that have been where you are now and sitting next to people that are just like you and meeting those people, building relationships and alliances, and just having fun, this an awesome place to start.
You’ll hear in the podcast I’ll mention my affiliate link, and if you find this valuable use my affiliate link. But, I’m not pushing this by any means. If you don’t want to use my affiliate link just go check it out on your own at MyNAMS.com. It’s really cool and if it’s valuable to you and you want to use my link that’s great, but if not that’s cool too.
Let’s hear from David and hear what he has to say. And I’d love to hear your feedback on what you think about NAMS after hearing from David.
Mark Interview David Perdew
Mark: I’m really excited. I actually got crammed into David Perdew’s schedule this morning and I’m really excited to be on the phone with him because as much as we talk about affiliate marketing on this show I’m always looking for additional resources for all the listeners that they can really take advantage of, great content and ways to learn affiliate marketing.
I have David Perdew on the line. David, how are you this morning?
David: I’m good. Thank you, Mark. How are you?
Mark: I am absolutely fantastic. I really appreciate you fitting me in. I know your day is crazy. Mine’s a little crazy too. I think I mentioned to you earlier that I just got out of the car, literally, from driving back from Houston to Dallas so I could make this call because I want to let people know about the kinds of additional resources that are available out there for coaching and other kinds of additional information that they can get.
A lot of times I get the question, and I’m sure you get this question as well, “Is personal coaching available? Can you help me with my website? I need more stuff so I can figure out how to do this affiliate marketing thing.” I know that’s an area that you’re really active in and I was hoping maybe you and I could chat a little bit about the kind of things that you have going on with your Niche Affiliate Marketing workshop and sort of how that all works.
Does that sounds pretty good for today?
David: Sure, it does. First, I just want to tell you that I really appreciate you inviting me here. I’ve heard a lot about the Mason World podcast from a lot of my friends and some of the instructors at NAMS as well. So thank you for having me on.
Mark: One of the things I love about your workshop is that my friends teach there. I think you know, I’m really good friends with Nicole Dean and I’ve worked with Jimmy Brown quite a bit. So I believe in the kind of people that you have there.
And of course I attended NAMS myself. I guess it was NAMS4 or something like that a couple years ago. I was really blown away by not just the quality, which is huge, but the approach that you take.
So there were two things I wanted to tackle for the listeners today. One is if we have people listening that are wanting to be successful at affiliate marketing, will live coaching and instructional events help them? Is that a good idea, is it a good approach? Not just yours, but in general. And why is that? And then what’s special about NAMS in the way that you’ve constructed it and why should people consider visiting you in Atlanta?
David: Okay, on that first question there, “Will live events help people in general?” I think the answer is yes and no. I think it depends on the live event you go to and it depends on the mindset that you go to it with.
Mark: I never expected any part of your answer to contain “no.” See, that’s kind of how you roll, so I’m glad to hear that. Let’s hear what you’ve got.
David: It is how I roll. I went to my very first live event I think it was in 2004 and I was in total amazement, and it’s really what was the driving principle behind building NAMS. There were 1,000 people in this audience at an Atlanta event and it was six or seven people who were big names and they were standing in front of the room for 90 minutes whipping people up into a fervor all day long.
Everybody used the same phrase, they would ask a question over and over and then they ended with this, “Is this good or is this good?” That tells you the kind of event it was. And at the end of the 90 minute session, well actually before that at about 60 minutes they went into hard sell. At the end of that they were saying, “We’ve only brought a few of these packages today and they’re $1,995 and the first person in the back of the room will actually be able to get the package.”
I saw one woman from the front of that room run back there for every speaker and throw her credit card at a machine. It was about $7,500 that she spent that day and she bought seven high ticket coaching programs. I was sitting there with my hand on my wallet because they really can whip you up into a fervor and I was thinking, “This is insane. This woman will never use all of this stuff. These people are just up here selling as much as they can, they’re not really engaged in helping people.”
So I vowed that I would never go to another live event that was for that purpose, for me to go into the room and to learn something from people that weren’t willing to teach me.
Mark: It reminds of when you’re in Cozumel or someplace and they want to give you a free breakfast in exchange for listening to the pitch for buying the condo or the timeshare.
David: That’s exactly right. So when I made up my mind to do NAMS I really did it by accident. I had a hosting company at that time that was a specialty hosting company and you have five separate accounts on five separate servers and you were able to do some kind of special stuff, but it required some intensive training for people – because I never do anything simple.
So I decided to put together the first NAMS to do a training for those people. To my surprise, because I called it Niche Affiliate Marketing System, affiliate marketers showed up. So we had about 65 people show up at the very first one, I had six instructors and they were all in one room and we taught all day long. We broke into small groups and actually did.
For example, we had an article marketing session and how to use articles to drive traffic between sites. We had two hour article session there, one hour of it was presentation on how to do it and the next was an article writing contest for how many people could sit down and write these things. Your friend Dan Morris wont that contest.
Mark: That’s right, I remember that. That’s a point that I want to make sure people get, because that was my experience when I attended your workshop. During the teaching a lot of times there are labs that you go do. You go do stuff and the instructors are walking around answering questions, interacting with people, and helping them do their stuff. There’s just a room full of a couple hundred people with laptops completing exercises, in some cases making sales right there in the room. Right?
David: That’s right. That is really fun. I think the one you attended, NAMS4, we had a guy from Venezuela who won our sales contest. We always have a sales contest during the workshop as well. Often it’s interesting to see who wins.
We’ve separated it now into students versus instructors so that we don’t have the instructors competing against the students. This year at NAMS7 we actually had a student who did more sales than the instructors.
At the one that you were at we had a guy who had no website, no list, was from Venezuela, could not sell to his own country, could not sell in Venezuela because they don’t allow credit card or bank transfers or anything from the United States, and he won the sales contest by doing email to his friends and saying, “Send these to everybody you know in other countries.”
Mark: Do you know that after that contest he came up to me and thanked me because he found you through Lynn Terry, and he found Lynn Terry through my podcast.
David: No kidding?
Mark: Absolutely true. That’s a true story.
David: So Raphael just blew us all away and he came back the next year with his wife Maria and she sat there not speaking English and he sat there translating the entire sessions to her and they work together now. It’s a very moving thing.
We’re up to about 400 people now and we have five different rooms and at the last one we had 31 instructors. The way it’s structured is that an instructor does an hour or 45 minutes presentation and then 45 minutes or an hour of workshop actually implementing what they just did.
So we have it divided in four tracks now, which we call NAMS100, 200, 300, and 400. You can think of it as a University; freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. We try to align those skill sets with those tracks and move people into the tracks.
Also at this point we’ve started doing some all day workshops on special topics. For example, last time we did public domain and Tony Laddig was our instructor.
Mark: Tony is awesome.
David: He blew them away. People left there with products in hand, they were just walking out of there with amazing things.
Mark: So I want to hit that point as well, because that’s one of things that also impressed me from the NAMS that I attended. Your skill level doesn’t really matter when you walk in the door because if you’re a beginner and this is your first time to ever do anything in affiliate marketing there’s a track for you. And if you’ve been online for five years and you’re not someone who would be an instructor yet, but you’ve got this big business, there’s a track for you. And it runs the gamut everywhere in between.
David: It’s really interesting that our tracks, because I keep statistics and I rely on feedback a lot, and I keep statistics from our feedback records of what tracks people were in. Our track statistics show that we always have 20 to 30% in every track. So it’s very interesting how we have an even distribution of students. I love that.
People come into NAMS100 sometimes with no websites, no blogs, nothing. The only qualification for being in NAMS100 is that you’ve never made a sale on purpose. So you might have made a sale, but you had no idea why.
Mark: I’ve had some of those actually, I know exactly what you mean.
David: That’s right. If you have a website, good. If you don’t have a website, that’s okay too because we’re finding that you don’t have to have websites to make sales.
Mark: Absolutely, I agree.
David: The other end at NAMS400, which I thought would be the hardest one for us to produce, turns out to be one of the most popular because the people who are in the 400 level are full time marketers making good money and they get it. They want more, they want to work less and make more. They really understand the benefit of what they’re doing. And they’re usually people who have gone through 200, 300, and 400. Almost nobody starts out in 400.
Mark: Right. I attended one of Nicole Dean’s 400 level sessions, at the time I think there were three levels when I was there. I’m always amazed by Nicole Dean, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.
David: You’re not.
Mark: It was just amazing how transparent and open the instructors were about what was really working for them in their business and what wasn’t working and what they had learned, what they were still worried about. That was another thing that I found refreshing about the whole thing was you just walk up to these people and it turns out that these people put their pants one leg at a time just like everybody else and they’ll talk to you about your business. It was really neat.
David: That’s another thing. When you asked me that first question I said my answer was dependent on two things, one was the type of live event and the other was the mindset of the people. I’m not quite sure how we’ve done this, Mark, but the thing is we have really attracted the right people. The ones who return, and we get about a 60% return rate, have what we’re beginning to call the NAMS heart.
That’s Nicole who was the one who pointed that out to me and I love it. The NAMS heart is somebody who is there not because they want to make money, but because they want to give back in some way. They’re doing it for a higher purpose, whatever that is. It may be that their purpose is that they want to provide for their family, or they might want to help a child go through college, or they might want to do some foundation work and they build an organizational system or a charitable system that will work for them.
We have just a ton of outstanding people. Not only instructors – by the way, all the instructors are word of mouth referred, so people who send me a note and say, “How do I become an instructor?” I say “You don’t talk to me. You get referred to me by other instructors.” I just am looking for people out there who make the kind of filter based on this is a really good person and they should be involved.
Mark: I love that. I know what you mean about the NAMS heart because the thing that Nicole and I always talk about is these are people, and this is her phrase that I’ve stolen completely and I try to remember to attribute it to her, they’re making the internet a better place.
David: Exactly.
Mark: That’s what she always says and I think that’s exactly what you’re talking about. Everybody knows I don’t do any hard selling on this podcast. Actually, I don’t do any hard selling. And I know you don’t either, that’s why NAMS is the way it is. But, I want to let people know how they can find out more about NAMS if what you’ve said resonates with them.
First of all, let’s just start out with the basics. When is the next NAMS, I think it’s NAMS8?
David: NAMS8 is in August on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Now, we have an add-on workshop on the front end of that on Thursday afternoon and we’ll have a couple of them this time. One of them is always getting your website set up from scratch the right way. So we have 15 or 20 people who come and don’t have anything, but for about $47 they get an instructor or two who come in there and really help them start from scratch.
Mark: And in some cases the instructor is standing behind you while you’re editing WordPress and doing stuff, right? This is a real hands on thing?
David: Absolutely. You don’t leave there without having it done, that’s the point. It may not be great, it may not be something that you want to go primetime with, but you will definitely have your website done, your domain and all of that. That’s for people who are really pre-100 kind of people.
Then the 100 group will be people who want to take that just a little bit further, but don’t know much. They’ll get into a lot of marketing technique and tactics and getting started with it. So it’s a natural movement.
And then on Monday we always have an afternoon add-on workshop on Monday. These have always just blown people away. I actually did one at NAMS6 on storytelling that we had about 40 people leftover on Monday and they were excited about that one. That was a great one as well.
But, this last one at NAMS7 we had Paul Evans who did something called Platinum Profit – that’s not the entire name, but I can’t remember the rest of it. The tagline was, “Making big money with your big mouth,” and it was about being a speaker and how to make money from being a speaker.
That room was packed and it was four hours of intense learning and doing. It’s a product that Paul actually sells for $500 and people got it for $47.
Mark: Paul is a rock star. And one of your favorite instructors actually travels half way across the world to get there, right?
David: Well, he does, or we Skype him in. We’ve Skyped him the last time and we’re going to try to figure something else out so that we can do better technologically with him. But, he comes from Japan – and that’s Kevin Riley. Kevin is just a huge supporter of NAMS. He actually sends people to our membership site for training.
That’s something I should tell you too. In between the NAMS workshops, we have it twice a year, people were begging for a continuity of some sort, some kind of way of keeping it going. So we have what we call now the MyNAMS Premium Membership site. We have a free version and a premium version. Since we launched that last August we have about 1,000 paid members in there right now and about 2,000 free members.
We have weekly training every Wednesday night on a topic. And like you, ours is not a hard sell. There’s always something at the end, how you can get in touch with the people who do the training, but it’s our instructors who come back on Wednesday night and do some kind of special topic training.
For example, last night we had Mike Stewart and mobile marketing, which was really good.
Mark: I hate that I missed that. How was that?
David: It was outstanding. Mike is on the cusp of this mobile marketing and he is one of those guys that understands that right now business online and offline is in a huge transition. Everybody thought they were going to get rich online and give up the offline businesses, and now people realize that online is just another channel for offline.
So he’s teaching people, at NAMS he’s going to do an all day workshop at NAMS8 on how to drive more local sales and create your own online agency for small businesses.
Mark: Well, you know what they say. Everything is marketing and marketing is everything. Right?
David: That’s right.
Mark: That pretty much sums it up. Well, excellent. So this thing is coming up and it stretches over the weekend of August 3rd through the 5th, plus and minus a day it sounds like. It’s in Atlanta, right? And you’ve got a nice hotel and a room block.
David: New hotel.
Mark: Oh, it’s at a new hotel.
David: The new hotel is awesome. We’re at the Marriott Century Center now. It’s just a little further from the airport, but it has these four rooms and internet capability for 500 people and we’re good.
Mark: What’s the peach situation in Georgia in August, are there going to be peaches there?
David: Yeah, there are going to be peaches there, but truthfully I think Alabama peaches are better.
Mark: I’m going to get email over that, I’m going to get people from Georgia and you’re going to start a war with that right there.
David: That’s misinformation, Georgia is not the number one peach state. South Carolina is the number one peach state. Georgia just appropriated the name.
Mark: I may have to start a peach podcast. So if people want to find out more about you and NAMS and this whole thing that we’ve been talking about where should they go?
David: They can come to MyNAMS.com to get an overview of the My NAMS membership. One of the reasons people want to become members before the workshop is that you get the best price on the NAMS workshop as a member. For example, right now it’s a $400 discount. The price on the workshop is $497 and as a My NAMS member it’s $97 until April 15th.
Mark: Which is crazy. That’s so close to zero. I’m always amazed that you offer that price. It’s hard for me to describe without sounding like I’m trying to sell it, which I’m not. But, I was amazed at the amount of content that you end up with for the price that you charge. It’s kind of crazy.
David: It is a little crazy, actually. We’re making some changes and on April 15th the member price goes up to $197. But, we will always have it so people who attend the workshop can sign up at the workshop for the next one at the member rate of $97. So we’re there to help people to make sure that we continue building and helping them build the kind of businesses that fulfills Nicole’s phrase that you stole, making the world a better place through the internet.
Mark: That’s awesome. I am, as you know, an affiliate. If people want to use my link to sign up for your workshop they can find it at latenightim.com/workshop.
I’ll tell you, David. People can do that as a courtesy if they want, but I think the most important thing is they get over to your website and check out what you have to offer, because I really believe in the product.
Even more than that, I believe in the people behind it, because I know most of the instructors personally. I consider Nicole a dear friend, Lynn a dear friend, a lot of these other people, like I said I’ve worked with Jimmy extensively. I know these people and they’re really first class people and I want to commend you on having that sort of selection process and filter in place where you’ve got the top people involved in this. I think it really speaks to the kind of person you are and the kind of thing that you’ve put together. I appreciate it as a customer and a proponent of what you’re trying to do. I love it.
David: Thank you so much, Mark. I really appreciate that. That means a lot. We’ve got to get you out there to help us with podcasting.
Mark: I would love to come talk about podcasting. As you know, the winter session has consistently fallen on top of a conference that I’m in charge of out in California on the other coast, which has nothing to do with internet marketing. It has to do with semiconductor manufacturing, which is what I do under cover of darkness.
Well, actually I do internet marketing under cover of darkness and semiconductor manufacturing in the light of day. But, I’m hoping to be out there in August. We’ll see how it goes. I have to get permission from my wife, basically.
David: Now, we have moved the dates two weeks so it should help with that. We were towards the end of August and we moved the dates to the beginning of August so that we didn’t conflict with first day of school for so many people.
And then we moved the January workshop and I think the next one is going to be February 12th or 13th after that. We moved it a couple of weeks back into February so that we didn’t compete with the end of January stuff, like the Marketer’s Cruise is in January and the Super Bowl.
Mark: Affiliate Summit is around there too, I think.
David: Right.
Mark: David, I don’t want to take up any more of your time because I know your schedule is jammed. I really appreciate you being here. I’m going to encourage people, you know I only talk about products that I believe in on this show and I really believe in what you’re doing and I appreciate you so much coming on here. I look forward to seeing you again soon.
David: Thank you. It will be fun to see you in August so we’ll make sure we get you there.
Mark: All right. I’ll have you call my wife if I have trouble.
David: No problem.
Mark: Thanks, David. Bye.
I told you it was totally awesome. David is a great guy. He’s a guy that you can trust with your internet marketing education, as it were. And he’s got a fantastic product.
If you’re interested in that check it out at latenightim.com/workshop, as I mentioned on the call. Or go directly to the My NAMS website and just check it out. It’s really cool and I think a lot of you out there that are listening could really benefit from something like that.
That wraps it up for this week. I hope that you guys have an absolutely fantastic week, that everything goes groovy for you. Get to work on your internet business, don’t just sit there, do something this week.
