Learn Internet Marketing Strategies For Your Business

We’re a few days away from SIMPLE, and for many of the people coming, it will be their very first event. I’m honored and privileged to host that experience for them.

And it reminds me of my very first event I ever attended.

What a jump start that was for my business! But I almost didn’t go.

I was still working full time then. It wasn’t easy to take off work. In all ten years in the classroom I missed a total of 11 days!

But something in my gut told me that I needed to get there. I had been trying to get going with my internet marketing business and was slowly gaining traction. This was in September of 2006. I had invested about $3000 in mentoring at that point; another $4000 in wasted Adwords; and lots of little expenses on ebooks and gizmos that added up to a lot, especially on my teaching salary.

Fortunately, the event – The Internet Marketing Main Event II – was in Baltimore. Literally 15 minutes from my house. If it wasn’t so close, I would have let any number of excuses get in my way for going.

Boy would that have been a tragic mistake!

Going into that first event I had made a bit of progress. I had created my first information product – Free Ad Report. I didn’t have a blog yet, and I was not seeing steady income. My list was about 1000 people (from FAR).

I’m sure I looked like a deer in the headlights when I walked in the room.

For the previous 6 months, I had been getting mentoring from Paulie Sabol, Donna Fox, Mike Filsaime, and Tom Beal in the i5 Gold program. I had been active on a couple of forums, and was excited that many of the others would be there.

Throughout the event, I told anyone who would listen how excited I was about my big idea: helping other teachers make money online through TeachersInBusiness.com. In that crowd, I got a lot of smiles and nods; but few shared my enthusiasm for the project.

In fact, a couple of people pointed out to me that a) my target market didn’t spend a lot of money; and b) I hadn’t made much money myself, so how would I be able to teach that to other teachers? (this was my first run-in with the “credibility gap” that cripples so many business opportunity seekers).

As the weekend progressed, I listened to over a dozen speakers. (You can see the entire schedule from the TIMME webpage). Needless to say, with people like Rich Schefren, Jeff Walker, Deb & JP Micek, Gary Ambrose, and others, it was an overwhelming amount of information. I took a ton of notes. And I felt like I squeezed in about a year’s worth of learning in that one weekend.

But to be honest, that’s not what I remember the most. And looking back at, the sessions are pretty much a big blur.

What I remember most are the people I met in between the sessions and at the dinner table.

I remember how awesome it felt to be in a room with a bunch of people who really understood what I was trying to do. Not so much the Teachers In Business thing; but rather the idea of striking out into the world of entrepreneurship. Of having a vision of a better lifestyle, better income, and the ovewhelming uncertainty of how it would all unfold.

Back at work, whenever I’d try to talk about online business stuff, they just wouldn’t get it. Most were skeptical, and the moment you stopped your sentence many would be pretty dismissive of the whole idea.

But inside that conference room that weekend, I was surrounded by peers who wanted to see me succeed.

And it wasn’t just the other people there like me, at the starting gate.

The speakers, too, were genuinely rooting for me and the others there. And no, this wasn’t because I bought their stuff (I was on a strict no buy budget that first event).

Specifically, I remember meeting Joel Comm there. I had been active inside his Adsense Secrets forum for a couple months before the event. But I never figured he would know who I was. I quickly learned how memorable the “Bob The Teacher” name was, because he not only recognized me, but he we had a couple of solid conversations during the event. When we met up again a few months later, he saw the progress I made and agreed to promote Squidoo Secrets during the launch. (sweeet!)

I also connected with a few other guys who had been hanging out in the i5Gold forums, and participating in the coaching calls. You may recognize some of their names now: Glen Hopkins, Dan Kelly, Scott Tousignant, Martin Salter, Tim Brocklehurst, and Matthew Glanfield. There were others, too, but towards the end of the event, the 7 of us decided to form a mastermind team.

This was a totally unexpected result of going to the live event. But it was the most profitable outcome.

The truth is, I could have learned everything the speakers taught during the event somewhere else. On teleseminars, in their home study courses, etc.

But I would have never made the connections or formed the partnerships that have been at the heart of my success if I had not gone to that live event.

Because of those connections…

• I held my first 6 teleseminars within 45 days of that event
• I had a cheering squad keeping me focused on completing projects
• My mastermind team helped me realize how limiting the school setting was for me – without their help, I may still be in the classroom
• We promoted each other to our growing subscriber base, “lifting all boats”
• We partnered up on a few projects together
• Eventually, Scott and I became accountability partners. I know I wouldn’t be half as far along in my business without his kicks-in-the-ass every week!

So obviously my point in bringing you down memory lane is to impress upon you the importance of attending a live event.

And it’s because they’ve had such a powerful impact on my business that I am hosting SIMPLE at the end of the month.

Be there, and I’ll be sure to “pay it forward” by giving you the training and environment you need to form those partnerships, and move forward more confidently in your business.

Get To SIMPLE

I’ve made a couple of videos to share more details about the event. Click through the link above to watch them. And if you have any questions about the event, be sure to post them below.

Bob Jenkins

p.s. Sure, I’ll have a home study course coming out of this event. And you may feel that will be enough for you. But I can’t over-emphasize the importance of being here live, connecting with the others, and forming partnerships that will do more for your business than any home study course ever will.